Story of Verdana, Part 1 - Getting in Trouble

September 25, 2009 Dave Ohara

Working on Green Data Centers can be a little frustrating at times, pushing for changes to do the right thing. One of the regular stories I enjoy telling is the story of Verdana.

The Verdana typeface family consists of four TrueType fonts created specifically to address the challenges of on-screen display. Designed by world renowned type designer Matthew Carter, and hand-hinted by leading hinting expert, Agfa Monotype’s Tom Rickner, these sans serif fonts are unique examples of type design for the computer screen.

The Verdana family resembles humanist sans serifs such as Frutiger, and Edward Johnston’s typeface for the London Underground, and Carter himself claims to see the influence of his own Bell Centennial in the face. But to label Verdana a humanist face is to ignore the fact that this family isn’t merely a revival of classical elegance; this is type designed for the medium of screen.

But, Dave why should I listen to your story as you are not referenced in any of the Verdana material? Because I can tell you how the pieces fit together and the bigger story of the social network required to get the font done in an environment that was against Verdana. Also, I was the one who brought Matthew and Tom to the Verdana project as I had worked with both while I was at Apple and knew I wanted the best to work on Verdana. A tidbit from Tom’s meticulous note taking.

7/26/1994 Later in the afternoon, Dave Ohara called, with Matthew Carter and Tom Stephens in the room, to talk about the Verdana face. Matthew said that he was sad to read my note the other day, but found out soon after that we would still get a chance to work together on the Verdana face.

So, let’s start off when the first time I got in trouble for Verdana. One afternoon, my Microsoft general manager Steve Shaiman came looking for me, and he yelled “what the hell did you do?” What? BillG (Bill Gates email alias, back then we called people by their email alias, I was DaveO) thinks we should be doing fonts for screen and Pan-European typefaces.

I didn’t talk to Bill or send him e-mail. How did he find out about my typeface idea? Steve explained I talked to Peter Pathe. Yeh, I was walking through building 16 in the morning and ran into Peter who was my hiring manager into Microsoft, and the general manager of Word at the time. Steve continues you told Peter your idea for typefaces for the screen and pan-European. Well, he asked me what I was up to, and I told him. It turns out Peter had a BillG review for Word later that morning, and Bill asked Peter who was the ex-TrueType Director “what’s new in fonts?” Peter said we are looking at fonts for the screen and pan-European character sets. Bill said that’s a great idea!

What’s the problem? My general manager Steve Shaiman, typographer Robert Norton, TrueType Architect Eliyezer Kohen, and many others had no involvement with this project, and had current plans to digitize hundreds of typefaces Microsoft had licensed for preserving historical typefaces, bringing the rich history of type to the Win3.1 user base with more font packs.

Uhh, what users wanted this?

This was just the start of the internal battles to ship Verdana. Why were there battles? Verdana was a disruptive typeface that changed the typeface development models and who was in charge. How serious was the disruption? This was the last typeface I ever worked on, and I was asked to leave the group as I refused to cave in to the politics. Leaving type was one of the best career decisions I made. As time has proven the ideas were right and social networking was a power that was difficult to beat.

The viral strength of the ideas and network of people is the story I am going to tell. This is part 1. Part 2 is on the people who were involved and their relationships. The relationships of the team, the network effects are what the “plan of record” could not stop. And, now users recognize Georgia, Tahoma, Calibri, and the infamous Comic Sans were all developed for the screen.

Story behind a Viral Font, Comic Sans

WSJ has a front page article about the typeface Comic Sans. I can give you an interesting insider story on this as I worked in this group at Microsoft and can provide some history.

Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will

By EMILY STEEL

Vincent Connare designed the ubiquitous, bubbly Comic Sans typeface, but he sympathizes with the world-wide movement to ban it.

Vincent Connare

Thanks to Microsoft shipping Arial, Helvetica is history far many and a movie.

Who cares that Microsoft didn’t ship those other 300 historical typefaces it licensed.

In these times, the typeface in your browser, iPhone, and Blackberry are more important.

Fonts for the screen wasn’t a bad idea, just a little controversial in 1994.

Attending Gartner Data Center Summit, Dec 1 – 4 2009

September 25, 2009 Dave Ohara

I’ll be attending Gartner’s Data Center Summit on Dec 1 – 4, 2009.

I’ve never been to a Gartner conference, but have read many Gartner reports. I don’t reference any of their reports unless there is a public non-subscription disclosure.

Given I am attending the event as a blogger I can write about the things presented at a public event.

Interesting things I see in the agenda that relate to the green data center are:

Maintaining the 21st Century "best in class" Data Center
A decade into the 21st Century data center managers are not only facing traditional data center facility issues but are being hit with a list of new challenges. The growing interest in green IT initiatives, the obsolescence of data centers based on power and cooling issues, and the impact of virtualization are just a few of the new concerns. Even just measuring the efficiency of their data centers is a daunting task. Data center managers are continuing to grapple with cost, technology, people, location, and environmental issues, while continuing to deliver a highly available, secure, flexible server infrastructure as the foundation for the business's mission-critical applications. This track provides new insights into power and cooling solutions, greening the data center, and facilities considerations.
Some session highlights:

Emerging Trends in Data Center Design: Modernizing the Beast

Obtaining Cost-Effective Data Center Facilities

The Datacenter Container - When and Where Does it Make Sense?

Analyst/User Roundtables
Analyst/User Roundtables: Tap into sound advice for challenging times. Facilitated by Gartner analysts, these highly informative sessions offer the chance to learn directly from other participants' experiences. These sessions provide a peer-to-peer forum for sharing experiences and challenges on topics such as:

Green IT and the Data Center

Application Performance Management

Architecting for Extreme Availability

Increasing IT Business Alignment Through Communications and Metrics

Let me know if you’ll be there, and we can try to meet at the event.

Apple’s environmental impact accounts for everything

September 24, 2009 Dave Ohara

news.com has an article on Apple’s latest environment site update.

Apple updates site with environmental impact

by Jim Dalrymple

Apple on Thursday updated its Web site with a new section on how its products are impacting the environment.

Apple has made public information in several categories including Life Cycle Impact, Product Usage Impact, andProduct Environmental Reports. The company also created a section dedicated to its own environmental updates.

Taking a look at the power management section will give you an idea of how extensive the information is that Apple provided. According to Apple, Mac OS X even regulates the processor in between keystrokes, saving power.

"Designing green products includes considering the environmental impact of the materials used to make them," reads Apple's Web site. "From the glass, plastic, and metal in our products to the paper and ink in our packaging, our goal is to continue leading the industry in reducing or eliminating environmentally harmful substances."

Going to the Apple environment site here is the life cycle view.

Apple’s data center impact is included in 3 percent reporting for facilities.

Facilities

Apple’s facilities — including corporate offices, distribution hubs, data centers, and retail stores — account for 3 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions.

275,718 metric tons of
greenhouse gas emissions

Apple reports 53% of the energy consumption

Energy Efficiency

Because 53 percent of Apple’s greenhouse gas emissions are a result of the power our products consume, we design those products to be as energy efficient as possible.

15-inch MacBook Pro 2.8GHz using the Pages application.

Intel Labs – Future of Energy Efficiency Processors – Self-Tuning Performance

September 24, 2009 Dave Ohara

I learned more than I thought I would at Intel Developer Forum. There was a lot of excitement about the latest processors and news.com has thorough coverage of IDF.

IDF 2009: Intel plays to its strengths

by CNET News staff

At the annual developer forum, Intel shows off what it can do with silicon and what to look forward to from systems built around its chips.

Intel unveils system-on-a-chip for TVs
The CE4100 is designed to bring Internet content and services to digital TVs, DVD players, and advanced set-top boxes.
(Posted in Nanotech: The Circuits Blog by Brooke Crothers)
September 24, 2009 1:30 PM PDT
Intel's Maloney: Our business is do or die
Sean Maloney, a favorite to eventually become Intel's CEO, says there are good reasons the chipmaker is pushing back against Europe's antitrust charges.
(Posted in Nanotech: The Circuits Blog by Brooke Crothers)
September 24, 2009 10:26 AM PDT

With all the hype, I was filtering, looking for something really game changing. Something that will change things to be more efficient. I found it in a booth staffed by Intel Labs stuck in the back of the exhibit area where Shih-Lien Lu was demonstrating Self-Tuning Processors.

By modifying Vcc Voltage and clock frequency, the processor can be set up for energy efficiency or performance.

How big? 21% more throughput or 37% less power!!!

And there is a middle ground of 5% better performance and 28% less power.

Here is the prototype board.

There must be a catch to why isn’t Intel shipping this concept already.

Because it requires a different mindset for the market and users. The below diagram shows the Vcc Voltage and Temperature Fclk guardband typically existing for processors. There is a margin of safety to insure Intel Processors reliability over a 7 year period. Huh? But, what if I don’t want seven years? Welcome to the problem with enterprise computing. Lowest common denominator type of thinking to reach the market masses means you get burdened with conservative designs.

What happens if you only wanted a guardband designed for a 3 year period? You could in theory do what Intel Lab shows and have lower Vcc voltages with higher clock frequencies, but this would require Intel marketing and finance to rethink how they price processors. What is the value of a 7 to 3 year change in product reliability?

Why go through all this effort?

Do you want a 21% performance improvement for the same power?
Do you want to save 37% processor power for the same performance?
Do you want 5% more performance for 28% less processor power?

Sound confusing. Yes it will make customer procurement process complaints increase as they are handed a performance energy design envelope.

This is another example of the Flaw of Averages where people want a single number when in reality there is a distribution of performance.

Intel Developer Forum presentation Social Networks and Innovation, a new method for data centers

September 23, 2009 Dave Ohara

Intel Developer Forum is a big technical media event. There are lots to see and the media coverage is huge. Here is a partial picture of the media room as people are busy writing about Intel’s latest announcements. This room can hold over 200 people and it is full.

While I was in the media room I missed the most useful presentation of the day. Below is a picture of Eleanor Wynn, Social Technology Architect and Principal Engineer, Intel Corporation, staffing the booth for IT-CMF

I caught Eleanor moving, and here is a better picture.

What is IT-CMF?

IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF)

Ran across an interesting piece of work out of Intel Corp. The IT Capability Maturity Framework trys to take a stab at a common problem. What attracted me to this framework was the business oriented approach this framework takes. But after digging through their site I was hungry for more information. I couldn't find much more information besides a high level explanation. They do have a sample assessment out there that give you a better idea of the framework.

From IT-CMF Website:

From the synthesis of leading academic research, proven industry best practices and Intel's own experience in transforming the Intel IT organisation, Intel developed the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF). Based on the lack of existing frameworks and the huge appetite from other top Business and IT executives for such an approach, Intel has decided that the best way to further develop and disseminate the IT-CMF, its associated tools and practices is to have it included as part of IVI’s research and education agenda.

The IT-CMF consists of four integrated strategies:

So, this is cool, but then I realized I missed Eleanor’s presentation on Social Networks.

What does Social Networks have to do with data centers? Social Networks characterize the behavior in the data center system for those companies/people who are doing the most innovative work.

Eleanor and I had a chance to talk for 3 hours at IDF, so I learned a lot even though I missed her presentation. One big concept which was helpful to describe issues is the “tribal knowledge” in IT vs. meme.

: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

Which gets to my point of why Social Networks and Memes are important characteristics in Innovative Green Data Centers.

The most innovative people in data centers are networked to share and receive ideas.

The social network enabled organizations know this.

Your head may hurt with these concepts, but here is summary to help you. My head hurts a little bit too, but I’ve been playing with these ideas for a while, and luckily I can follow up with Eleanor.

Some of the most innovative data center people are figuring out how to build their data center social networks as a competitive advantage.