JGemmell@microsoft.com
1288 Pear Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043 directions
Mailing address: 1065 La Avenida, Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA
Fax: (650)693.3329 (put "to jgemmell" on fax) personal web site
I am a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, currently working on next generation search. I hold a PhD from Simon Fraser University and a M. Math from the University of Waterloo.
Total Recall, the book I co-authored with Gordon Bell, is coming out this September. This book is the culimation of our thoughts regarding MyLifeBits and the larger CARPE research agenda. I was proud to chair the first and second CARPE workshops and to be guest editor for the IEEE Multimedia special issue on CARPE. I also initiated and led the administration of the Digital Memories (Memex) RFP funding/software/hardware package. The research projects supported by this RFP had impressive output.
I have done research on the topics of personal media management/enhancement, telepresence, and reliable multicast. I produced the on-line version of ACM97 and co-authored the PGM RFC. PGM shipped in Windows XP and is used by Microsoft MSMQ. I also helped the Windows Deployment Services team design a reliable multicast protocol included in Windows Server 2008 (slide deck).
I made the bing flight status answer.
I am collaborating with William Jones and Harry Bruce of the UW iSchool on a research project called Structuring Personal Information Collections, part of Keeping Found Things Found.
I used to be part of the Next Media research group. Before that, I was in Jim Gray's Bay Area Research Center, working with Gordon Bell and Roger Lueder.
Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell, A Digital Life, in Scientific American, March 2007
Desney Tan, Mary Czerwinski, Gordon Bell, Emma Berry, Jim Gemmell, Steve Hodges, Narinder Kapur, Brian Meyers, Nuria Oliver, George Robertson, and Ken Wood, Save Everything: Supporting Human Memory with a Personal Digital Lifetime Store, in Personal Information Management: Challenges and Opportunities (eds. William Jones and Jaime Teevan), 2007
Jim Gemmell and Zhe Wang, Clean Living: Eliminating Near-Duplicates in Lifetime Personal Storage, no. MSR-TR-2006-30, March 2006
Mary Czerwinski, Douglas W. Gage, Jim Gemmell, Catherine C. Marshall, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñonesis, Meredith M. Skeels, and Tiziana Catarci, Digital memories in an era of ubiquitous computing and abundant storage, in Communications of the ACM, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., January 2006
Jim Gemmell, Gordon Bell, and Roger Lueder, MyLifeBits: a personal database for everything, in Communications of the ACM (CACM), vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 88-95, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., January 2006
Jim Gemmell, Aleks Aris, and Roger Lueder, Telling Stories With MyLifeBits, in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo , IEEE, 6 July 2005
Aleks Aris, Jim Gemmell, and Roger Lueder, Exploiting Location and Time for Photo Search and Storytelling in MyLifeBits, no. MSR-TR-2004-102, October 2004
Jim Gemmell, Lyndsay Williams, Ken Wood, Gordon Bell, and Roger Lueder, Passive Capture and Ensuing Issues for a Personal Lifetime Store, in First ACM Workshop on Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences (CARPE '04), New York, NY, October 2004
Jim Gemmell and Ketan Mayer-Patel, MPEG2Event: A Framework for Developing Analysis Tools for Compressed Video, no. MSR-TR-2004-111, October 2004
John Roberts, Edward Lank, and Jim Gemmell, Histogram-based Visualizations for Large Time Dependent Datasets, in Proceedings of HCI 2004: Design for Life, 6 September 2004
Jim Gemmell, Roger Lueder, and Gordon Bell, The MyLifeBits Lifetime Store, in ACM SIGMM 2003 Workshop on Experiential Telepresence (ETP 2003), Berkeley, CA, November 2003
Jim Gemmell, Roger Lueder, and Gordon Bell, Living With a Lifetime Store, in ATR Workshop on Ubiquitous Experience Media, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, Japan, September 2003
Jim Gemmell, Roger Lueder, Joshua Blumenstock, Evan Solomon, and Gordon Bell, Telephone, Television and Radio in the Home of the Future, in Internet and Multimedia Systems and Applications (IMSA) 2003, Honolulu, Hawaii, August 2003
Jim Gemmell, Todd Montgomery, Tony Speakman, Nidhi Bhaskar, and Jon Crowcroft, The PGM Reliable Multicast Protocol, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., March 2003
Jim Gemmell, Gordon Bell, Roger Lueder, Steven M. Drucker, and Curtis Wong, MyLifeBits: fulfilling the Memex vision, in ACM Multimedia, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., December 2002
Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell, A call for the home media network, in Commun. ACM, vol. 45, no. 7, pp. 71-75, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., July 2002
Rogerio Schmidt Feris, Jim Gemmell, Kentaro Toyama, and Volker Krüger, Hierarchical Wavelet Networks for Facial Feature Localization, 20 May 2002
Jim Gemmell and Roger Lueder, Progressive Layered Media : It gets better every time, no. MSR-TR-2002-26, March 2002
Jim Gemmell and Dapeng Zhu, Implementing Gaze-Corrected VideoConferencing, International Association of Science and Technology for Development, March 2002
Jim Gemmell, Kentaro Toyama, Rogerio Schmidt Feris, and Volker Krüger, Facial Feature Detection Using A Hierarchical Wavelet Face Database, no. MSR-TR-2002-05, January 2002
Jim Gemmell, Lawrence C. Zitnick, Thomas Kang, Kentaro Toyama, and Steven Seitz, Gaze-awareness for Videoconferencing: A Software Approach, in IEEE Multimedia, IEEE, May 2000
Jim Gemmell, Thomas Kang, Kentaro Toyama, and Larry Zitnick, Software-enabled Gaze-aware Videoconferencing, April 2000
Jim Gemmell and Jim Gray, Fcast Multicast File Distribution, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., January 2000
Jim Gemmell, Thomas Kang, and Kentaro Toyama, A Warp-Based Feature Tracker, October 1999
Jim Gemmell and Jim Gray, Fcast multicast file distribution: "Tune in, download, and drop out", October 1999
Jim Gemmell, Jim Gray, and Eve Schooler, Fcast Scalable Multicast File Distribution: Caching and Parameters Optimizations, no. MSR-TR-99-14, June 1999
Jim Gemmell, Kentaro Toyama, and C. Lawrence Zitnick, Manipulation of Video Eye Gaze and Head Orientation for Video Teleconferencing, no. MSR-TR-99-46, June 1999
Jim Gemmell, Eve Schooler, and Roger Kermode, An Architecture for Multicast Telepresentations, January 1999
Jim Gemmell, Eve Schooler, and Roger Kermode, A Scalable Multicast Architecture for One-to-many Telepresentations, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., January 1998
Jim Gemmell and Eve Schooler, Using Multicast FEC to Solve the Midnight Madness Problem, no. MSR-TR-97-25, September 1997
Dave Bassett, Jim Gemmell, and Jorg Libeherr, An API for Scalable Reliable Multicast, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., September 1997
Jim Gemmell, Scalable Reliable Multicast Using Erasure-Correcting Re-sends, no. MSR-TR-97-20, June 1997
Dave Bassett, Jim Gemmell, and Jorg Liebeherr, In Search of an API for Scalable Reliable Multicast, no. MSR-TR-97-17, June 1997
C. Gordon Bell and D. James Gemmell, Non-collaborative Telepresentations Come of Age, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., April 1997
Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell, On-ramp Prospects for the Information Superhighway Dream, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., July 1996
D. James Gemmell, Dilip D. Kandlur, Harrick M. Vin, Lawrence A. Rowe, and P. Venkat Rangan, Multimedia Storage Servers: A Tutorial, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., January 1995
D. James Gemmell, Jiawei Han, Richard J. Beaton, and Stavros Christodoulakis, Delay Sensitive Multimedia on Disks, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., January 1994
D. James Gemmell and Jiawei Han, Multimedia Network File Servers: Multi-Channel Delay Sensitive Data Retrieval, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., January 1994
D. James Gemmell, Multimedia Network File Servers: Multi-Channel Delay Sensitive, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., January 1993
Jim Gemmell and Stavros Christodoulakis, Principles of Delay Sensitive Multimedia Data Storage and Retrieval, in ACM Transactions on Information systems , Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., January 1992
IETF RFCs
Speakman, T., Crowcroft, J., Gemmell, J., Farinacci, D. , Lin, S., Leshchiner, D., Luby, M., Montgomery, T. , Rizzo, L., Tweedly, A., Bhaskar, N., Edmonstone, R., Sumanasekera, R., Vicisano, L., PGM Reliable Transport Protocol Specification, RFC 3208, December 2001. rfc3208.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3208.txt
Asynchronous Layered Coding (ALC) Protocol Instantiation, Luby,M., Gemmell, J.,Vicisano, L.,Rizzo, L.,and Crowcroft, J., RFC 3450, December 2002. rfc3450.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3450.txt
Layered Coding Transport (LCT) Building Block, Luby, M., Gemmell, J., Vicisano, L., Rizzo, L., Handley, M., and Crowcroft, J., RFC 3451 , December 2002. rfc3451.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3451.txt
Forward Error Correction (FEC) Building Block, Luby, M., Vicisano, L., Gemmell, J., Rizzo, L., Handley, M., Crowcroft, J., RFC 3452, December 2002 rfc3452.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3452.txt
The Use of Forward Error Correction (FEC) in Reliable Multicast, Luby, M., Vicisano, L.. Gemmell, J., Rizzo, L., Handley, M., Crowcroft, J., RFC 3453, December 2002 rfc3453.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3453.txt
Lecture Diary
11/13/2007 UC Berkeley I School - MyLifeBits
9/18/2007 Rice U. Scientia lecture series - MyLifeBits
8/16/2007 Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning eLearning workshop - MyLifeBits
6/12/2007 Dublin City U. - MyLifeBits
5/4/2007 FXPAL - MyLifeBits
4/7/2006 eChronicles workshop - panelist statement
11/30/2005 U. Washington iSchool - MyLifeBits
8/19/2005 MSR Faculty Summit, Redmond WA - Digital Memories RFP
2/17/2005 Princeton U. - MyLifeBits
2/15/2005 U. Maryland - MyLifeBits
2/9/2005 TTI Vanguard - MyLifeBits
11/30/2004 Ricoh Innovations - MyLifeBits
10/29/2004 UC Berkeley Database Seminar (w. Roger Lueder) - MyLifeBits
10/15/2004 ACM Workshop on Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences – MyLifeBits
10/13/2004 Columbia University - MyLifeBits (w. Gordon Bell)
9/16/2004 Intelligent Systems conference, Perugia, Italy - MyLifeBits
7/29/2004 NPUC workshop, IBM Almaden Research Lab – MyLifeBits (w. Gordon Bell)
6/10/2004 NASA Ames Research Center – MyLifeBits (w. Gordon Bell)
6/4/2004 MSR Cambridge – MyLifeBits
6/4/2004 Cambridge University - MyLifeBits
2/11/2004 General Print Office of US Federal Government (at Microsoft Silicon Valley campus) – MyLifeBits
1/19/2004 SDForum Distinguished Speaker series – MyLifeBits (w. Gordon Bell)
11/19/2003 Georgia Tech – MyLifeBits
10/2003 San Francisco State U. MyLifeBits
10/2003 Arizona State U. MyLifeBits
10/2003 Microsoft Research Technical Advisory Board (at Microsoft Silicon Valley campus)
9/2003 ATR Workshop on Ubiquitous Experience Media - MyLifeBits
7/2003 International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval – Panelist statement on Experiential Computing
5/2003 UCLA MyLifeBits
5/2003 U. North Carolina MyLifeBits
4/2003 UC Davis MyLifeBits
12/2002 ACM Multimedia Conference – MyLifeBits Poster presentation
11/2002 CIIT – GazeMaster paper presentation
10/2002 U. Virginia – MyLifeBits
10/2002 U. Minnesota – MyLifeBits
10/2002 U. Illinois – MyLifeBits
8/2002 IMSA – PLM paper presentation
4/2002 MSR Cambridge – Reliable Multicast
4/2002 Cambridge University - GazeMaster
2/26/2002 San Francisco State U. – GazeMaster
4/2000 Stanford U. – GazeMaster
3/2000 UC Berkeley – GazeMaster
10/1999 IMSA – Fcast
10/1999 U. Virginia – Fcast & GazeMaster
2/1999 Cal Tech – Fcast
11/1998 Stanford – Multicast Telepresentations
3/1998 UC Berkeley - Telepresentations
2/1998 U. British Columbia – Telepresentations
2/1998 Simon Fraser U. – Telepresentations
12/1997 Xerox PARC – Telepresence/multicast
10/1997 CMU - Telepresence/multicast
10/1997 MIT - Telepresence/multicast
10/1997 NY Polytechnic - Telepresence/multicast
10/1997 Columbia U. - Telepresence/multicast
9/1997 ICCCN – Reliable Multicast APIs
11/1996 UC Berkeley
Selected MyLifeBits news articles
Don't forget to back up your brain, Fox News, 11/14/2007
Remember This?, The New Yorker, May 28, 2007
Total recall becomes a reality, The Telegraph, 4/21/2007
Your Whole Life is Going to Bits, Sydney Morning Herald 4/14/2007
Researcher Records His Life On Computer, CBS Evening News 4/9/2007
Perfect Memory,WATTnow, March 2007
Lifeblogging: Is a virtual brain good for the real one? Ars technica, 2/7/2007
On the Record, All the Time, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/4/2007
How Microsoft’s Gordon Bell is Reengineering Human Memory (and Soon, Your Life and Business), Fast Company, Nov 2006.
Digital age may bring total recall in future, CNN 10/16/2006.
El hombre que guarda todos los recuerdos de su vida en bits, La Crónica de Hoy (Mexico), 7/16/2006.
That's My Life, Aria Magazine April 2006.
The ultimate digital diary The Dominion Post 5/31/2006
In 2021 You'll Enjoy Total Recall Popular Science 5/18/2006
The Memory Machine, Varsity.co.uk, 3/2/2006
Life Bytes, NPR Radio "Living on Earth" show, 1/20/2006
The man with the perfect memory - just don't ask him to remember what's in it The Guardian, 12/28/2005
Bytes of my life, Hindustan Times, 11/17/2005
Total Recall, IEEE Spectrum, 11/1/2005 Podcast on IEEE Spectrum Radio (Choose arrow on October 2005 show and select "MyLifeBits -- the digitized life of Gordon Bell")
Turning Your Life Into Bits, Indexed, Los Angeles Times 7/11/2005
Wouldn't It Be Nice The Wall Street Journal 5/23/2005
Life Bits IEEE Spectrum Online May 2005
How To Be A Pack Rat, Forbes.com 4/29/2005 - see also blog entry by Thomas Hawk at eHomeUpgrade
Computer sage cuts paperwork, converts his life to digital format The Seattle Time 4/9/2005
Channel 9 video interviews 8/21/2004 Intro Gemmell Lueder
Slices of Life Spiked-Online 8/19/2004
Next-generation search tools to refine results CNET 8/9/2004
Life in byte-sized pieces The Age, 7/18/2004
Removable Media For Our Minds TheFeature 3/25/2004
This is Your Life San Jose Mercury News 3/6/2004
Navigating Digital Home Networks New York Times 2/19/2004
Offloading Your Memories New York Times Magazine Year in Ideas issue 12/14/2003 "Bright notions, bold inventions, genius schemes and mad dreams that took off (or tried to) in 2003"
Logged on for life Toronto Star 9/8/2003
This is your life--in bits U.S. News & World Report 6/23/2003
My Life in a Terabyte IT-Analysis.com 5/14/2003
How MS will know ALL about you ZD AnchorDesk 4/18/2003
Memories as Heirlooms Logged Into a Database The New York Times 3/20/2003
Microsoft Fair Forecasts Future AP 2/27/2003 (This story ran on many newspapers and news sites, including USA Today, The Globe and Mail, The San Jose Mercury News, and ABC News)
This Is Your Brain on Digits ABC News 2/5/2003
A life in bits and bytes c|net News.com 1/6/2003 (run also by ZDNet)|
Your Life - On The Web Computer Research & Technology 12/20/2002
Saving Your Bits for Posterity Wired 12/6/2002
Microsoft works to create back-up brain Knowledge Management 11/25/2002
Microsoft Creating Virtual Brain NewsFactor Network 11/22/2002
Microsoft solves "giant shoebox problem" Geek.com 11/22/2002
Would you put your life in Microsoft's hands? Silicon.com (run also by ZDNet News) 11/21/2002
Microsoft Plans Digital Memory Box, a Step Toward "Surrogate Brain" BetterHumans 11/21/2002
E-hoard with Microsoft's life database vnunet.com IT Week 11/21/2002
Microsoft plans online life archive BBC News 11/20/2002
Software aims to put your life on a disk New Scientist 11/20/2002
