The Kitsap Sun reports that Microsoft is joining an effort to develop a work-at-home program with a group of businesses and other organizations in Kitsap and Jefferson counties. The Telework Pilot Project, an effort of the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council, aims to build a set of guidelines and tools for working from home. A Microsoft spokesman told the Sun that 50 of the company's 130 employees working in the area expressed interest in participating. The company will offer technical and human resources staff as advisers to the project.

JIM BATES / THE SEATTLE TIMES

David Treadwell runs and catches the bus across the 520 bridge on his exercise commute between home on Queen Anne and work in Redmond.

David Treadwell, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Live Platform Services, covers up to 12 miles of the distance between his Seattle home and company headquarters in Redmond on foot. He takes the bus for the balance of the commute -- typically the span of the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. This unusual run-bus commute is featured in a profile today by Seattle Times reporter Richard Seven.

On my way back to Seattle from Redmond Thursday evening, I watched as Microsoft Connector shuttles streamed by in the carpool lane. Saving time, and, if Highway 520 gets tolls in two years, saving money. In any case, those who want to share their two cents on the tolls will have five opportunities in the coming weeks.

As my colleague Brier Dudley noted, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie just described spatial interaction with computers as a major new frontier in computing.

He also showed progress Microsoft has made in robotics and natural user interfaces such as speech and facial recognition. He gave one demonstration of how Microsoft is putting these big ideas in practice.

Microsoft is working on "robotic receptionists" for its buildings that will perform one of the most common but mundane tasks that the real receptionists do dozens of times a day: scheduling shuttles, Mundie said.

This interesting report in The Economist on how mobility is changing urban and suburban landscapes pulled some solid examples from our region. One brought to my attention is a description of the afternoon clog on Highway 520. An urban movement researcher focusing on how traffic patterns are evolving discussed in his 2006 book "a 'reverse commute' in Seattle [in which] lots of male computer scientists at Microsoft in the suburb of Redmond raced downtown to find females---a weekday ritual called 'the running of the programmers.' "