For those that aren’t familiar, KCRW is a Los Angeles-based radio station and product of Santa Monica College. The station is generally known as Southern California’s leading National Public Radio affiliate, featuring an eclectic mix of music, news, information and cultural programming. The station boasts one of the nation’s largest arrays of locally-produced, nationally-distributed talk program content, with internationally recognized programming and DJs that have become household names in the music and recording industry.

I had the opportunity to oversee the project for Roundarch while we worked in collaboration withPRX (Public Radio Exchange) and The Echo Nest to assist KCRW in the strategy, design and development of a next-generation music / media discovery application. The concept, albeit technically complex, is quite simple: create a playful, engaging way for people to discover new music, learn more about artists, and get closer to the original content that KCRW produces every day.

Music mine features top songs played on KCRW each week, as well as direct links in to each of the KCRW shows, offering a completely different way to explore music and KCRW programming: by artist, track or show on which the song has aired.  Once a user dives into the experience, they are presented with a mosaic of KCRW shows, artists and popular songs, and exclusive videos of live performances recorded inside the KCRW studios. The user interface consists of tiles that can be explored by the user, and the tiles are laid out on the screen with the most recent songs appearing towards the center, and the less recent content spread out towards the edges of the mosaic.

Drilling into an artist / song provides a bunch of additional content related to the user’s selection, with a quick and easy way to view photo galleries, biographies, and links to YouTube videos and blogs related to each artist.  One of the things we especially wanted to accomplish with the application was an ability to not only explore, but also to share new music with others through Facebook, Twitter and email integration.  Of course, if users really love the newly-discovered music, the songs can be purchased directly from the iTunes store by clicking a link from within the Music Mine application.

The process of designing this application was done collaboratively by working with PRX and the team at KCRW led by Anil Dewan, KCRW’s director of New Media. In addition, our team worked with music fans for input during the design process and to ensure that the experience that came through in the software was representative of our design strategy.   When we began the project, we came up with the concept that the application should provide a good way to visualize the week’s popular tracks, but also provide the feeling of digging through a great collection of curated music to find the gems you’d want to share with your friends.

I can speak for the entire Roundarch team when I express how proud we are to have been able to play such an influential role in the strategy and design of this experience for KCRW. Our focus on user experience really worked well in this collaboration.  As a company with many serious music fans, we were able to design something that we wanted to use each and every day to get our fix for both the latest and greatest unreleased music as well as classics that we’ve heard time and again.

When our clients find success, the formula most often begins with an exceptionally well-crafted strategy supported by Roundarch’s ability to deliver on user experience; visual and technical solutions that ultimately help set them apart from their competition or solve their business problems.

This formula for success is illustrated in the work we’ve done for clients including: The New York Jets, HBO, Bloomberg Sports, Avis, Alinea and others. We have also recently had the good fortune to be recognized for our efforts by an industry leading organization. Last week, I was notified that Roundarch would be honored as a 2011 Laureate in Innovation, an award given by the Computerworld Honors Program.  For more than two decades, the Computerworld Honors Program has recognized individuals and organizations that create and use information technology to promote and advance public welfare, contribute to the greater good of society and change the world for the better.

Roundarch will receive this award in recognition of an initiative that is several years in the making and is a product of the Roundarch “Labs” program that I have the responsibility of managing.

The technology at hand has been at the center of several of our most innovative customer solutions and offers many opportunities to enable forward-thinking user experiences across the many channels of digital content/devices that have (and continue to) emerge.  The technology, better known as Device Connectivity Framework or DCF is a proprietary technology developed by Roundarch.

Our DCF technology seeks to enable cross-device / cross-language /cross-OS and cross-network interactivity between software applications, providing a starting point for our developers to create applications on any platform that can easily interact with applications on any other platform, taking much of the heavy lifting out of the device-to-device communication.

The Computerworld Honors Program specifically recognized our use of DCF technology in a situation where we utilize it as the enabling technology for software that we also developed for use within the mobile phone industry – by carriers and device manufacturers.

It’s an honor to be recognized as a 2011 Laureate, taking a spot next to other well-known organizations such as IBM, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Siemens who were also named as Honors Laureates this year.

I’d like to congratulate everyone at Roundarch, especially those who have contributed to the success of our DCF technology. I’d also like to thank those who’ve been willing to place trust in the processes related to innovation and the incubation of emerging concepts and technologies.

Here’s to the future.

Turns out Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) does have a plan for Windows 7 powered tablet PCs after all.

In a keynote speech Monday at the opening of Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C., CEO Steve Ballmer said Windows 7 powered “slate” devices are coming in “the next several months,” from partners including Asus, Dell, Sony, Samsung and Toshiba.

It’s one of the few times we’ve heard the term “slate” used since Ballmer briefly showed off a prototype slate from HP (NYSE:HPQ) at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. HP was reportedly unhappy with how Windows 7 performed on that particular slate, and HP’s subsequent acquisition of Palm was seen as a possible death knell for the device.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that Ballmer was referring to Windows 7 and not Windows Embedded 7. “We expect some slates to be available before the end of the year,” the spokesperson said in an e-mail.

This, incidentally, is the same timeframe Microsoft has provided for the arrival of Windows Phone 7 devices and suggests that Ballmer will have plenty to show off when he keynotes at CES next year.

Windows 7 slates will come in a variety of form factors and price points, and some will have keyboards while others won’t, Ballmer told the roughly 8800 partners in attendance. One thing all slates will be able to do is run Windows 7 and Office applications, making them ideal for knowledge workers, Ballmer noted.

Partners don’t doubt Microsoft’s ability to develop slates for business scenarios, but some believe that Microsoft will have to alter its traditional partner model if the slates are to be competitive on the consumer side.

Dave Meeker, director of emerging technology and co-director of Roundarch Labs, a Chicago-based Web development firm, says Microsoft needs to take a page from the Apple playbook and exert more control over the hardware and the software. He’s also unsure if unmodified Windows 7 is the best OS for slates.

“If Microsoft tries to attack the tablet market without really making a hardware-savvy and tablet-specific operating system, these slates might follow the path of Kin,” said Meeker. “You can’t just push products out the door in today’s market without absolute focus and perfection.”

Andrew Brust, chief of new technology for twentysix New York, a Microsoft partner in New York City, thinks the key to slate’s fate in the market will hinge on whether Microsoft pays careful attention to developing a flawless user interface.

“To compete effectively with the iPad, there needs to be a touch-optimized user interface that’s built by Microsoft, rather than the OEM,” he said.

At this point there are more questions than answers about Microsoft’s slate plans. But with a single declaration, Ballmer has people once again wondering what Microsoft may have up its sleeve.