Disclaimer: I used to work in a incubation group that was under MSR. Although there's plenty to gripe about at Microsoft, MSR is not one of them. It's a shining example of an awesome research group. (It probably employs more computer science researchers than any other company and was a great place to bounce ideas off of your peers, who are some of the smartest people in the field.) But one thing you should know, researchers aren't great web developers. Just look at any top computer science professor's personal websites. Judging a project's worthiness by its website is exactly like judging a book by its cover. It's pointlessly idiotic. At least balance it out with a comment about the projects on the page.
"Judging a project's worthiness by its website is exactly like judging a book by its cover. It's pointlessly idiotic."
A valid point, but there's another side floating around here unmentioned. I've lost count of the times I've had CS types sneer at my chosen profession (web development) as "child's play" and "not real programming". And yet for a task that is apparently infantile it's instructive to see how frequently it's done poorly by so-called "real" programmers.
