Dan DeLong

This portrait of Arfa at the age of 10 accompanied my story about her in the Seattle P-I in 2005.

Arfa Karim Randhawa, the computer programming prodigy who became the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional at 9 years old, has passed away at the age of 16, according to reports out of her native Pakistan this weekend.

She had been in the hospital for nearly a month after reportedly suffering an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest. Two weeks ago her outlook appeared to improve. In recent weeks, Microsoft had stepped in to help provide expert medical care.

As explained in this earlier post, I met Arfa and wrote a story about her in 2005 as a newspaper reporter covering her visit to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, when she was 10 years old. After seeing the reports this weekend, I went back and found some of the audio clips from my interview with her, including her talking about meeting Bill Gates, learning to program and what she planned to do when she grew up.

I've pieced together the highlights in this audio file, to provide a better sense for what she was like. One of the most remarkable parts, apart from her recounting the conversation with Gates, is hearing her talk with such authority about developing Windows applications.

As you'll hear at the end, Arfa at 10 years old had also settled on her philosophy of life, and committed it to memory. She told me about it after our interview, when she was having her picture taken outside, so I turned my recorder back on and asked her to repeat it for me on tape.

"If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind," she said. "If you think shy, you act shy. If you think confident you act confident. Therefore never let shyness conquer your mind."

Todd Bishop is co-founder of GeekWire, a technology news site based in Seattle.

By Todd Bishop
Geekwire

Posting from Las Vegas: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer generated lots of applause and more than a little confusion with this statement Monday night during his Consumer Electronics Show keynote address: "Tonight, I’m thrilled to announce that Kinect is coming to Windows on February 1st, in just a couple of weeks."

People use the Kinect sensor today to control their Xbox 360s with gestures and voice commands. So Ballmer’s statement was interpreted by many casual fans to mean that everyone will be doing the same thing with Kinect on Windows PCs starting Feb. 1. We’ll soon be scrolling through email by waving our arms, or maybe saving documents by scratching our noses, right?

Sorry, but that’s not the case, at least not yet.

Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shows his trademark enthusiasm at the CES keynote.

What Ballmer was announcing was the official launch of the commercial Kinect for Windows program, which includes a new version of the Kinect sensor specially tuned for Windows and the official release of a software development kit that companies can use to make Kinect applications that run on Windows.

As noted in the Amazon.com product listing, the sensor requires the software development kit to work on Windows.

In other words, it was a business-to-business announcement at a consumer show. Hence the confusion.

Over time, the program is expected to result in Kinect-based programs for Windows, but they’re more likely to show up first in business settings, such as car dealerships and retail stores. This is not coming to your home computer in a couple weeks.

As Ballmer went on to note during the keynote, Microsoft is working with more than 200 companies on Kinect for Windows applications. He cited the example of United Health Group, Toyota, Telefonica, Mattel, American Express. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Another clue that the Feb. 1 launch isn’t about the home is the cost of the Kinect for Windows sensor, $250, which is $100 more than the price of the Kinect for Xbox 360. Microsoft priced it that way with companies and software developers in mind.

The price of Kinect for Xbox 360 is effectively subsidized by the fact that Microsoft is counting on people to also buy Kinect games. Once Kinect for Windows is targeted to the home, the price would likely drop in recognition of similar mass-market dynamics.

But just to be clear, that isn’t what is happening in a couple weeks.

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 Todd Bishop is co-founder of GeekWire, a technology news site based in Seattle.

T-Mobile

A Microsoft Windows Phone, the Nokia Lumia 710

A recently approved GPS patent by Microsoft has been tagged as the "avoid ghetto" app because it involves route changes due to "unsafe neighborhoods."

The word "ghetto" is nowhere to be found in the patent, but it seems as though the phrase caught on, and like a contagion, has infected and tainted the coverage of "Pedestrian route production." (Msnbc.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

Here's the short version of what its intent is:

As a pedestrian travels, various difficulties can be encountered, such as traveling through an unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures. A route can be developed for a person taking into account factors that specifically affect a pedestrian. Moreover, the route can alter as a situation of a user changes; for instance, if a user wants to add a stop along a route.

And a search through the document comes up with this:

For example, when a user travels as a pedestrian, she is commonly more exposed environmental elements. If it is relatively cold outside, then a pedestrian is far more likely to feel an impact than if a vehicle equipped with a heating system protected her. Moreover, it can be more dangerous for a pedestrian to enter an unsafe neighborhood than a person in a vehicle since a pedestrian is more exposed and it is more difficult for her to leave an unsafe neighborhood quickly. However, there are advantages to being a pedestrian traveler; if a pedestrian takes an incorrect action (e.g., turns down a wrong street), then correction can be easier since there are commonly fewer one-way pedestrian streets. 

From these examples, "avoid ghetto" was born.

It looks like the app focuses on walking navigation, rather than by car, and takes into account variables such as weather, terrain and "security information." That's probably another phrase that some (not I) have interpreted as having racial undertones. But, it could also point to areas with documented crimes, which can also be in any neighborhood. (My own is rife with petty crimes and is probably not the best for pedestrians, but I wouldn't call it a ghetto.)

Here's some of the rationale behind the need for the app:

A large amount of focus in route generation has focused upon vehicle route generation and little attention has been paid to pedestrian route production. Since a large number of individuals travel by vehicle, application to pedestrian travel has been ignored. However, there has been a long felt need for route generation towards individuals that do not commonly travel by vehicle--for instance, many economically challenged areas are populated with individuals that do not own motorized vehicles and generally travel by walking. In addition, unexpected results can take place through practice of the disclosed innovation. As an illustration, a pedestrian could arrive at a location faster than if she traveled in a vehicle by taking more direct paths, yet a vehicle commonly travels much faster. Due to detailed route planning, a direction set can be created that allows a user to take more diverse paths that can compensate for a general lack of speed. 

While "economically challenged areas" can signify code for "ghetto" to some (again, not to me), it could also acknowledge the fact that in many urban areas people don't drive. What do you think? Take our poll and let us know.

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Microsoft

Microsoft and its advertising agency have reached a settlement with a company that accused them of copying its ads in a Windows Phone campaign lampooning society’s obsession with smartphones.

At issue was the “Really?” campaign that accompanied the launch of Windows Phone 7 last year. One Microsoft ad showed a man so engrossed in his smartphone that he ignored his wife’s overtures in the bedroom. Another showed a man dropping his phone in a urinal while trying to use the device in a public bathroom.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Microsoft and ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky were sued in July by the maker of Cell-R-Derm, a gag gift that spoofs nicotine patches as a way of passive-aggressively informing friends or significant others that they’re using their mobile phones too much.

Cellrderm LLC, based in Boca Raton, Florida, alleged that Microsoft’s ads copied its own ads for its product — albeit with a significantly larger budget than the novelty company.

According to the court docket, the case was settled for undisclosed terms after a Dec. 6 mediation, and the settlement was finalized by the court this week.

The settlement was reported this morning by PaidContent.org. 

The ads that focused specifically on the bathroom and bedroom scenarios have been marked private and are no longer available for viewing from the official Microsoft account on YouTube. Could that be a condition of the settlement? Microsoft declined our request to comment on the settlement.

You can still get a sense for the scenes in the overview ad below, and compare them to the Cellrderm ads below that.

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Seattle P-I

Arfa Karim Randhawa on the Microsoft campus in 2005.

Doctors are expressing new hope about the condition of Arfa Karim Randhawa, the 16-year-old computer programming prodigy from Pakistan who has been in intensive care since experiencing an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest nearly two weeks ago, according to reports out of the country.

Her father, Amjad Karim Randhawa, tells the Express Tribune newspaper that doctors believe they can successfully activate her brain, and they no longer consider her case hopeless. Doctors at the hospital have been receiving help from medical experts, including a neurosurgeon from King Edwards Medical University in Lahore, Pakistan. Scans of Arfa’s brain have been mailed to experts in Australia and other countries.

“Now we believe that a miracle will take place,” allowing her to survive, her father tells the newspaper.

Doctors previously said they didn’t believe she would pull through.

A native of Faisalabad, Pakistan, Arfa made headlines as a 9-year-old, when she became the youngest person in the world to be named a Microsoft Certified Professional, a designation for independent experts in Microsoft technologies. That certification led to an invitation to visit Microsoft in Redmond in 2005 to meet Bill Gates and other executives from the company.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

As a newspaper reporter at the time, I covered the story of her Microsoft visit. As I recalled in this post last week, she was gracious to Gates but also wasn’t afraid to question him on issues such as the relatively small percentage of women on the Microsoft campus.

Her father tells the Express Tribune that he received “a flood of calls” and offers of help after news of Arfa’s condition was made public last week.

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Microsoft

Nick Hayek Jr. of Swatch with actress Mischa Barton and Bill Gates, unveiling new watches in 2004.

Microsoft’s Smart Personal Object Technology, also known as SPOT, was originally unveiled by Bill Gates a decade ago. It was a neat concept — using FM transmissions to deliver lightweight data services such as news headlines, sports scores, gas prices and weather to devices. It started with watches and later expanded to GPS navigation units and even a coffee maker.

Microsoft

Of course, it was our phones that ended up being the smart devices in our lives, giving us all of that information and more via cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

And yesterday marked the official end of the Microsoft initiative, as the MSN Direct service that powered the devices went dark, as noted by Engadget.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

The end of the service was not a surprise. Sales of the watches were discontinued in 2008, and MSN Direct’s Jan. 1, 2012, end of life was announced in October 2009. The SPOT initiative was long ago relegated to the status of flop.

I’ve covered this one almost since the beginning, and remember listening to Bill Gates as he demonstrated his watch to a group of reporters at a small gathering after the SPOT unveiling in Las Vegas. Even back then, Gates seemed to realize that it was a bit of a novelty product, in part because of the bulky designs of the first-generation watches, but also in a broader sense.

The watches and follow-up devices pointed accurately to a future of connected devices, but in the end they weren’t the right implementation to connect with mainstream consumers. It’s an example of Microsoft having a good sense for where technology was headed but not clearly seeing how people would incorporate the connected world into their everyday lives.

But hey, let’s give the company some credit for at least attempting to do Dick Tracy proud.

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Follow Todd Bishop of GeekWire on Facebook and Twitter, if not on your watch.

This portrait of Arfa Karim Randhawa, by Dan DeLong, accompanied a Seattle P-I story about her 2005 Microsoft visit.

Computer programming prodigy Arfa Karim Randhawa, a 16-year-old girl from Pakistan who seven years ago became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in the world, is on life support after suffering an epileptic attack, according to a newspaper report out of the country.

Her father, Amjad Karim Randhawa, tells The Express Tribune, “only a miracle will allow my brilliant, genius daughter to live now."

In 2005, when I was working for the Seattle P-I newspaper, I got a chance to meet and write a story about Arfa. She was 10 years old at the time, visiting the Microsoft campus to meet Bill Gates and other executives from the Redmond company.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

As I wrote in the story at the time, She made an impression through a combination of charm, flattery and boldness uncommon for someone her age. For example, during Arfa’s meeting with Gates, she presented him with a poem she wrote that celebrated his life story. But she also questioned him about what she perceived to be the relatively small proportion of women on the campus.

In short, she is a remarkable person. She is also very thoughtful, and after the article ran, she made a point of keeping in touch with me via email. It was fun to periodically get messages from her out of the blue, updating me on her progress in school and her plans for the future.

Arfa was extremely proud of her accomplishment as the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional, even including the phrase “Youngest MCP in the World” in her email signature line. So a few years ago,when a 9-year-old from India broke her record, I sent Arfa a link and asked her what she thought.

I went back this morning and found her response …

“This is the first time I’ve seen this story. But I must say that I’m really happy to have read it. This is exactly what I had been wishing for ever since I got to bring laurels for my country. I am very glad to see that people are following what I did and have succeeded in beating me. I don’t know whether you’ve heard or not but a boy, named Bilal, from Gujranwala in Pakistan also became a Microsoft Certified Professional at the age of nine. I would say that the other youngsters should follow suit, thereby convincing the people to take us kids seriously. Our generation is very talented and so should be promoted.”

She was 13 at the time, and working hard in school in hopes of attending her “dream university,” MIT, where she wanted to study computer science.

Todd Bishop is co-founder of GeekWire, a technology news site based in Seattle.

YouTube

I've watched Apple fanboys declare their love for all things iOS and iPhone in a lot of strange ways while pretending that those who favor other mobile platforms would never do anything silly. But today the pretense is over — because there's simply no way to ignore the existence of rapping Windows Phone fangirls.

Yes, you read that right.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

For whatever reason a group of girls — who call themselves Carly, E-Town, Elise, and Emily — decided to express their love for Windows Phone in an absolutely ridiculous rap video. As someone who would never have the guts to make such a video, I've got a lot of respect for the girls' bravery and envy them for the fun they appear to be having.

But there's just no way to take lines such as "keep my phone in my back pocket, Powerpoint's always on my hip socket" seriously.

Watch the full video and you'll see what I mean:

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Microsoft has issued a temporary fix to the pernicious Duqu virus — also known as "Son of Stuxnet" — which could affect users of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 as well as Windows Server 2008.

The company promised the security update earlier this week as it races to deal with the virus, which targets victims via email with a Microsoft Word attachment. The virus is not in the email, but in the attachment itself. A Symantec researcher said if a user opens the Word document, the attacker could take control of the PC, and nose around in an organization's network to look for data, and the virus could propagate itself.

To learn whether your computer could be at risk, visit Microsoft's security page, and get the temporary fix here. The company said it is also working on a "high-quality security update to address" Duqu. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBCUniversal.)

"The security advisory provides a workaround that can be applied to any Windows system," wrote Jerry Bryant of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group on the company's blog. "To make it easy for customers to install, we have released a Fix it that will allow one-click installation of the workaround and an easy way for enterprises to deploy."

Security researchers became aware of Duqu in October when Symantec said it had found a virus that contained code similar to Stuxnet, a piece of malicious software believed to have wreaked havoc on Iran's nuclear program.

Symantec's Vikrum Thakur told Red Tape's Bob Sullivan last month that the authors of the virus are brilliant and mean business, and that Duqu may be looking to gather intelligence as a precursor to a future industrial-strength attack on infrastructure computers.

"There is a common trait among the (computers) being attacked," Thakur said. "They involve industrial command and control systems."

Microsoft, in its posting Thursday night, said that, if successful, the Duqu attacker could "install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. "

Despite the dangers, right now Microsoft believes "the risk for customers remains low."

However, Bryant wrote, "that is subject to change, so we encourage customers to either apply the workaround or ensure their anti-malware vendor has added new signatures based on the information we’ve provided them to ensure protections are in place for this issue."

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Microsoft

"More than half of the mail in a typical inbox is newsletters or deals, 17 percent is social updates, and about 14 percent is person to person email," says Dick Craddock of Hotmail. "The rest represents mail from group distribution lists, shopping receipts and commerce and true spam."

Hotmail Monday announced changes to help users streamline email overload, some of which Microsoft refers to as "graymail."

Those who work on Hotmail, which has tightened up email security and imposed stronger spam filters, "realized that getting rid of true spam wasn’t enough, because 75 percent of the email messages that people reported as spam are really legitimate newsletters, offers, or notifications that you just don’t want anymore," said Dick Craddock, group program manager for Hotmail on a Windows blog. "We call this type of unwanted email graymail."

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

To deal with graymail, Hotmail is adding these features, which will roll out in the "coming weeks," he said:

A new "newsletter' category: "In our last release we delivered automatic categorization of social updates, messages that contain Office documents, messages with photos, and even shipping notifications," Craddock wrote on the blog. "We’re now adding a special category for newsletters. We use the same SmartScreen technology that helps us fight spam."

Microsoft

One-click unsubscribe: If you feel inundated by newsletters or offers you once signed up for with relish -- but now could care less, "Click on unsubscribe, and we’ll do the rest — let the site know to stop mailing you, use Sweep (email cleanup tool) to immediately clean up your mail and remove all the old newsletters from that sender, and finally send any new ones that come in to your junk mail until the sender takes you off their list."

Microsoft

Schedule Cleanup: This tool lets you choose whether you want to keep only the latest message from a certain sender; delete messages as they get old (choosing form 3 days, 10 days 30 days or 60 days old); or move messages to a folder.

Ways you can use Schedule Cleanup, Craddock says:

• Keep only the latest event calendar email from your favorite site
• Keep only the latest deal from Groupon or LivingSocial, or any other deal vendor
• Delete your newsletters after 10 days — that way, whether you read them or not, they are never clogging up your inbox
• Automatically archive mail from your financial institutions to a folder after 30 days

Microsoft

Flagging your mail: Just as with Outlook, yo'll be able to flag messages to pin them to the top of your inbox (yea and finally!).

Custom categories: Ditto here (yea and finally): "While we think these automatic categories work great for most customers, we recognize that some customers want even more control over their inbox, or they like using labels in products like Gmail. So we’re adding support for custom categories, powered by Sweep and Schedule Cleanup, so they are easy to set up and use."

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Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.