9 ms·

Microsoft Garage releases Mouse Without Borders

117 points by alexsb92 15y ago

xtracto 15y ago
>"Microsoft Garage projects are projects that Microsoft employees perform in their nights and weekends" This does not sound right... does Microsoft own what their workers do on their nights and Weekends? I understand Google owning what its employees do on the 20% free time, but on weekends?
- simonbrown 15y ago
  See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9705/what-can-i-do-about-my-employers-intellectual-property-policy http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9705/what-can-i-do-about-...
cleverjake 15y ago
I have been doing this for years...http://synergy-foss.org/ http://synergy-foss.org/
- rplnt 15y ago
  Same here. And I probably stay with synergy as it is multiplatform that microsoft thing has some extra functionality. See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2983052 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2983052
drivebyacct2 15y ago
Revolutionary! Despite competing open source projects that have been around for years with more features and no arbitrary limitations of four computers.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  When all your progress comes from a single source, you tend to consider anything that comes from there revolutionary.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  I've been accused of writing a troll-bait post, so I thought I'd elaborate on my thoughts. There seems to be this cheering of the notion of "Microsoft Garage" despite the fact that Microsoft still gets to say if it's released at all, and how. I'm more sad to see that this was it's own project instead of a modification/fork/extension of Synergy. If the focus and energy used to develop this were instead spent on cleaning up the Synergy UI and adding drag-and-drop... it would have been a net-less amount of energy spent and a better, more widely usable product.
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    Thanks for the downvote and no reply! It's totally awesome that Microsoft is taking control of their developer's community projects and totally awesome that they incorporate these projects and relegate them to internal use only instead of encouraging the betterment of existing tools. How dare I suggest otherwise. I totally deserve to be downvoted. THANKS.
avolcano 15y ago
Before you pass this off as a Synergy clone, check this out: > As Microsoft's Steve Clayton explains, "I have two PC’s on my desk at work connected to 3 LCD screens and using Mouse Without Borders I can move my mouse between the 3 screens, even though one of them is attached to a different PC from the other two. What’s more, I can move files between the 2 computers simply by dragging them from one desktop to another." > In addition to the file movement features, Mouse Without Borders also allows the user to log onto all the PCs linked together by the program via just one PC. So yes, more than just a limited Synergy.
- mamp 15y ago
  So the question is do you need a whole separate unit within a company to create this "innovation"? Sometimes in microsoft land "innovation" == "not reading widely enough".
  - robert_nsu 15y ago
    You don't, however, I think the article is playing up the word "innovation" a bit too much. All I see is some guy (who works for Microsoft) writing a program to make his life a little easier.
    - xpaulbettsx 15y ago
      I would tend to agree actually, I always cringe at the words "grassroots" and "innovation". The Garage is all about some people who are frankly way more like the HN crowd than most inside Microsoft, trying to bring back Hacker Ethos, DIY code culture to Microsoft. If it doesn't exist, hack it out and make things more awesome. Trying to release what comes out of it externally is trickier, many of the things that come out of it just don't make sense outside of MS, but for the things that do, they should see the light of day (ideally, as Open Source, but that's trickier). The point is, there are folks inside Microsoft who Get It, and they're trying to turn the battleship around, even if it seems like small beans to the rest of the world. Whether they are successful or not will determine whether anyone will care about Microsoft in ten years. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the people who was on the Garage Council)
Urgo 15y ago
Will give this a shot since maybe since its by microsoft it will integrate a bit better but yeah its nothing new. Many of you already brought up synergy as doing this same function which is true, I used to use that, but for the past 3 or so years I've been using Input Director (http://www.inputdirector.com/ http://www.inputdirector.com/) which also does the file transfer thing. I don't really see this being any different then Input Director..
- jtreminio 15y ago
  Input Directory is a top-notch program, and I suggest it to all my friends over Synergy.
- meatmanek 15y ago
  To save some folks a click: Input Director seems to be Windows-only.
cincinnatus 15y ago
The most annoying thing about this is not the existing similar products. It is that Microsoft was demonstrating this capability in their business showcase on the MS campus almost 10 years ago! Drag from desktop to laptop, shared mouse and drag and drop to copy. Lots of great ideas never seem to get past prototype.
ck2 15y ago
Input Director - used it with my netbook for years now. It also does shared copy/paste which is really handy. http://www.inputdirector.com/ http://www.inputdirector.com/ And it can encrypt the communications, I wonder if MS bothers?
- evanlong 15y ago
  When I was at MSFT there was an internal tool call Magic Mouse that did what Mouse without Borders does. Magic Mouse had encryption so I would venture a guess that Mouse without Borders does as well.
  - vtbassmatt 15y ago
    MWB = Magic Mouse v.next
  - tallanvor 15y ago
    Mouse Without Borders is Magic Mouse - they just renamed it a few months ago is all.
artursapek 15y ago
I like that this blurs the line between individual computers. To what extent does this combine their processing power though? Right now it just sounds like an easier way to transfer files. I wonder how much further this will be taken. Perhaps one day it will be easy to temporarily bunch together a few computers into one super-performing machine.
hamidpalo 15y ago
This is an internal tool that has been apparently been made public. All employees at MSFT get more than one machine connected to many screens. Mouse Without Borders was developed by a group of employees in their free time to make it easier to deal with multiple Windows desktops. IMHO it is much nicer and more secure than Synergy for managing Windows machines. It's not a clone of anything. The Garage is MSFTs version of 20% time where you can work on whatever projects you want. There are some extremely interesting and useful projects that are part of the Garage beyond this one that haven't been made public yet. Disclosure: I'm a dev at MSFT.
- Michiel 15y ago
  From the video it doesn't sound like 20% time ("nights and weekends")
  - fabjan 15y ago
    Isn't it the same at Google? But there they do their regular work in nights and weekends instead. That's just what I've gathered from reading articles about Google workers. Maybe I'm wrong and they really do work no more than 40 hours per week, including the 20%. But that is not the impression I've gotten from reading.
- PyErr_SetString 15y ago
  "All employees at MSFT get more than one machine connected to many screens" Just out of curiosity, why does everyone need more than one machine?
  - techsupporter 15y ago
    They don't. Perhaps all devs get more than one machine, but not every employee ("blue badge") gets a 2nd or more system. My sole company-issued computer is a ThinkPad. Note: I'm in Ops at MSFT.
    - PyErr_SetString 15y ago
trollLikeABoss 15y ago
Two things - MS needs to learn how to make fun tech videos, and its just so uncool not sharing the code in the age of social coding. The music in the background is extremely loud, enough to drown the engineer's voice at times - and no demo? Just compare it with videos that come out of google (labs) ... The CEO(one and only) said it best long time back "The problem with Microsoft is that they have absolutely no taste ..."
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
sakura_k 15y ago
Perhaps if the article were more accurate - "Microsoft developer releases side project into the wild" - this would be better received? The Garage is a loose collective of people building things in their spare time. It's not a formal organization and people who work on Garage projects come from all over the world. Those who are drawn to ambitious side projects would probably fit in pretty well here. Kudos to this project for maturing as far as it has!
- mellifluousmind 15y ago
  I agree. For those that never worked for MSFT will have a hard time to know that Garage is an internal MSFT lingo for MSFT version of 20% free time. But yes, essentially, it is a MSFT Dev who wrote the code as side project and released to the wild. It is a great for PR, but they really need to make a better video. I couldn't understand what he was saying, because the volume was so low.
spiralganglion 15y ago
An observation. There's a bizarre inconsistency in the videos coming out of Microsoft. The video for this (pretty bleeding cool) evening-and-weekend side-project couldn't sell anything, but that's not the point. The Mango video[1] looks and sounds pretty good, like it was made by professionals. But their Windows 8 videos[2][3] are unbelievably slipshod. This is so counterintuitive. Obviously, the Mango video is intended to give some dearly-needed promotion to a fledgling product in a fiercely competitive market. But Windows is their flagship product! The [3] Win8 video was watched by 10x as many people as the [1] Mango video, so obviously these early Win8 previews are getting a lot of buzz. But the more recent [2] Win8 video shows only subtle, insignificant improvements over the earlier [3] video (the sound is better-recorded). I would love to know why such little care is given to the public unveiling of a product that's tremendously important to their customers, and their bottom line, while absolute TLC is showered on something that doesn't even have a foothold in the market. They obviously have the tools and talent to do better, so someone decided not to exert the effort. This fascinates me. [1] Mango: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP30F3ZxTmw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP30F3ZxTmw [2] Win8 boot time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ia3zBs42cc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ia3zBs42cc [3] Win8 metro preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I
- rkwz 15y ago
  Different audience.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    Which is really interesting. Who are they trying to sell each product to?
radarsat1 15y ago
It has to be said though, a major advantage of Synergy is that you can use it to switch between Windows, Linux, and OS X. For some, this is the main reason for having multiple machines.
wvenable 15y ago
A noticed a lot of people mentioning Synergy, but if you're running nothing but Windows PC's then I highly recommend Input Director ( http://www.inputdirector.com/ http://www.inputdirector.com/ ). It's much easier to configure than Synergy and is a lot smoother.

117 points by alexsb92 15y ago

>"Microsoft Garage projects are projects that Microsoft employees perform in their nights and weekends" This does not sound right... does Microsoft own what their workers do on their nights and Weekends? I understand Google owning what its employees do on the 20% free time, but on weekends?

simonbrown 15y ago
See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9705/what-can-i-do-about-my-employers-intellectual-property-policy http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9705/what-can-i-do-about-...

cleverjake 15y ago

I have been doing this for years...http://synergy-foss.org/ http://synergy-foss.org/

rplnt 15y ago
Same here. And I probably stay with synergy as it is multiplatform that microsoft thing has some extra functionality. See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2983052 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2983052

drivebyacct2 15y ago

Revolutionary! Despite competing open source projects that have been around for years with more features and no arbitrary limitations of four computers.

rbanffy 15y ago
When all your progress comes from a single source, you tend to consider anything that comes from there revolutionary.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
I've been accused of writing a troll-bait post, so I thought I'd elaborate on my thoughts. There seems to be this cheering of the notion of "Microsoft Garage" despite the fact that Microsoft still gets to say if it's released at all, and how. I'm more sad to see that this was it's own project instead of a modification/fork/extension of Synergy. If the focus and energy used to develop this were instead spent on cleaning up the Synergy UI and adding drag-and-drop... it would have been a net-less amount of energy spent and a better, more widely usable product.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  Thanks for the downvote and no reply! It's totally awesome that Microsoft is taking control of their developer's community projects and totally awesome that they incorporate these projects and relegate them to internal use only instead of encouraging the betterment of existing tools. How dare I suggest otherwise. I totally deserve to be downvoted. THANKS.

avolcano 15y ago

Before you pass this off as a Synergy clone, check this out: > As Microsoft's Steve Clayton explains, "I have two PC’s on my desk at work connected to 3 LCD screens and using Mouse Without Borders I can move my mouse between the 3 screens, even though one of them is attached to a different PC from the other two. What’s more, I can move files between the 2 computers simply by dragging them from one desktop to another." > In addition to the file movement features, Mouse Without Borders also allows the user to log onto all the PCs linked together by the program via just one PC. So yes, more than just a limited Synergy.

mamp 15y ago
So the question is do you need a whole separate unit within a company to create this "innovation"? Sometimes in microsoft land "innovation" == "not reading widely enough".
- robert_nsu 15y ago
  You don't, however, I think the article is playing up the word "innovation" a bit too much. All I see is some guy (who works for Microsoft) writing a program to make his life a little easier.
  - xpaulbettsx 15y ago
    I would tend to agree actually, I always cringe at the words "grassroots" and "innovation". The Garage is all about some people who are frankly way more like the HN crowd than most inside Microsoft, trying to bring back Hacker Ethos, DIY code culture to Microsoft. If it doesn't exist, hack it out and make things more awesome. Trying to release what comes out of it externally is trickier, many of the things that come out of it just don't make sense outside of MS, but for the things that do, they should see the light of day (ideally, as Open Source, but that's trickier). The point is, there are folks inside Microsoft who Get It, and they're trying to turn the battleship around, even if it seems like small beans to the rest of the world. Whether they are successful or not will determine whether anyone will care about Microsoft in ten years. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the people who was on the Garage Council)

Urgo 15y ago

Will give this a shot since maybe since its by microsoft it will integrate a bit better but yeah its nothing new. Many of you already brought up synergy as doing this same function which is true, I used to use that, but for the past 3 or so years I've been using Input Director (http://www.inputdirector.com/ http://www.inputdirector.com/) which also does the file transfer thing. I don't really see this being any different then Input Director..

jtreminio 15y ago
Input Directory is a top-notch program, and I suggest it to all my friends over Synergy.
meatmanek 15y ago
To save some folks a click: Input Director seems to be Windows-only.

cincinnatus 15y ago

The most annoying thing about this is not the existing similar products. It is that Microsoft was demonstrating this capability in their business showcase on the MS campus almost 10 years ago! Drag from desktop to laptop, shared mouse and drag and drop to copy. Lots of great ideas never seem to get past prototype.

ck2 15y ago

Input Director - used it with my netbook for years now. It also does shared copy/paste which is really handy. http://www.inputdirector.com/ http://www.inputdirector.com/ And it can encrypt the communications, I wonder if MS bothers?

evanlong 15y ago
When I was at MSFT there was an internal tool call Magic Mouse that did what Mouse without Borders does. Magic Mouse had encryption so I would venture a guess that Mouse without Borders does as well.
- vtbassmatt 15y ago
  MWB = Magic Mouse v.next
- tallanvor 15y ago
  Mouse Without Borders is Magic Mouse - they just renamed it a few months ago is all.

artursapek 15y ago

I like that this blurs the line between individual computers. To what extent does this combine their processing power though? Right now it just sounds like an easier way to transfer files. I wonder how much further this will be taken. Perhaps one day it will be easy to temporarily bunch together a few computers into one super-performing machine.

hamidpalo 15y ago

This is an internal tool that has been apparently been made public. All employees at MSFT get more than one machine connected to many screens. Mouse Without Borders was developed by a group of employees in their free time to make it easier to deal with multiple Windows desktops. IMHO it is much nicer and more secure than Synergy for managing Windows machines. It's not a clone of anything. The Garage is MSFTs version of 20% time where you can work on whatever projects you want. There are some extremely interesting and useful projects that are part of the Garage beyond this one that haven't been made public yet. Disclosure: I'm a dev at MSFT.

Michiel 15y ago
From the video it doesn't sound like 20% time ("nights and weekends")
- fabjan 15y ago
  Isn't it the same at Google? But there they do their regular work in nights and weekends instead. That's just what I've gathered from reading articles about Google workers. Maybe I'm wrong and they really do work no more than 40 hours per week, including the 20%. But that is not the impression I've gotten from reading.
PyErr_SetString 15y ago
"All employees at MSFT get more than one machine connected to many screens" Just out of curiosity, why does everyone need more than one machine?
- techsupporter 15y ago
  They don't. Perhaps all devs get more than one machine, but not every employee ("blue badge") gets a 2nd or more system. My sole company-issued computer is a ThinkPad. Note: I'm in Ops at MSFT.
  - PyErr_SetString 15y ago

trollLikeABoss 15y ago

Two things - MS needs to learn how to make fun tech videos, and its just so uncool not sharing the code in the age of social coding. The music in the background is extremely loud, enough to drown the engineer's voice at times - and no demo? Just compare it with videos that come out of google (labs) ... The CEO(one and only) said it best long time back "The problem with Microsoft is that they have absolutely no taste ..."

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

sakura_k 15y ago

Perhaps if the article were more accurate - "Microsoft developer releases side project into the wild" - this would be better received? The Garage is a loose collective of people building things in their spare time. It's not a formal organization and people who work on Garage projects come from all over the world. Those who are drawn to ambitious side projects would probably fit in pretty well here. Kudos to this project for maturing as far as it has!

mellifluousmind 15y ago
I agree. For those that never worked for MSFT will have a hard time to know that Garage is an internal MSFT lingo for MSFT version of 20% free time. But yes, essentially, it is a MSFT Dev who wrote the code as side project and released to the wild. It is a great for PR, but they really need to make a better video. I couldn't understand what he was saying, because the volume was so low.

spiralganglion 15y ago

An observation. There's a bizarre inconsistency in the videos coming out of Microsoft. The video for this (pretty bleeding cool) evening-and-weekend side-project couldn't sell anything, but that's not the point. The Mango video[1] looks and sounds pretty good, like it was made by professionals. But their Windows 8 videos[2][3] are unbelievably slipshod. This is so counterintuitive. Obviously, the Mango video is intended to give some dearly-needed promotion to a fledgling product in a fiercely competitive market. But Windows is their flagship product! The [3] Win8 video was watched by 10x as many people as the [1] Mango video, so obviously these early Win8 previews are getting a lot of buzz. But the more recent [2] Win8 video shows only subtle, insignificant improvements over the earlier [3] video (the sound is better-recorded). I would love to know why such little care is given to the public unveiling of a product that's tremendously important to their customers, and their bottom line, while absolute TLC is showered on something that doesn't even have a foothold in the market. They obviously have the tools and talent to do better, so someone decided not to exert the effort. This fascinates me. [1] Mango: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP30F3ZxTmw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP30F3ZxTmw [2] Win8 boot time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ia3zBs42cc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ia3zBs42cc [3] Win8 metro preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I

rkwz 15y ago
Different audience.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  Which is really interesting. Who are they trying to sell each product to?

radarsat1 15y ago

It has to be said though, a major advantage of Synergy is that you can use it to switch between Windows, Linux, and OS X. For some, this is the main reason for having multiple machines.

wvenable 15y ago

A noticed a lot of people mentioning Synergy, but if you're running nothing but Windows PC's then I highly recommend Input Director ( http://www.inputdirector.com/ http://www.inputdirector.com/ ). It's much easier to configure than Synergy and is a lot smoother.