Microsoft Shows Off Future Product Tech 61
adeelarshad82 writes "Microsoft opened a portion of its fifth TechFair to Silicon Valley residents, demonstrating more than 15 technologies, which included everything from real-time translation to mobile-to-mobile networking to improved image stitching. The top two that really stood out were the translating telephone, which actually used no 'telephone' at all — it was a test to discover how well Microsoft's speech algorithms could interpret speech, translate it, and then speak the translation using text-to-speech algorithms — and Manual Deskterity, a new paradigm for a user interface; a right-handed user's left hand, for example, can be used for coarse manipulations of objects, while the right can be used for fine manipulation, such as with a pen. It sounds a bit simplistic, at least at this stage. Since one of the charters of Microsoft Research is that the work should eventually be moved to product teams, there's a good chance that the prototypes will eventually be made available to the public at large."
Will it become real?? (Score:4, Funny)
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No. [technet.com]
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Re:Will it become real?? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, microsoft's "previews of future tech" are entertaining. As many dog-and-pony shows are.
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Re:Will it become real?? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I thought was so funny about this part:
Since one of the charters of Microsoft Research is that the work should eventually be moved to product teams, there's a good chance that the prototypes will eventually be made available to the public at large.
There's pretty much zero chance of that research reaching the public.
There's no doubt that MS Research gets into some interesting stuff, but very little of it ever sees the light of day. The main reason for this is precisely because they do get into some interesting stuff. It's really difficult to make a product out of something that uses one hand for coarse actions and the other for fine actions, or to build an actual, working universal translator.
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Microsoft Research is a nerd-fest only. It's a hobbyist fair. Entertainment for geeks. It has nothing to do with actual product development.
Microsoft's product development is all done outside the company:
- Windows is a clone of Mac
- MS Office is a Mac app
- DOS was a clone of CP/M
- XBox is a clone of PlayStation
- Zune is a clone of iPod
- Bing is a clone of Google
None of this stuff came out of Microsoft Research.
So yes, zero chance that this latest nerd-fest produces any products.
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Microsoft Research is a nerd-fest only. It's a hobbyist fair. Entertainment for geeks. It has nothing to do with actual product development.
MSR is responsible for some important bits of .NET, which is definitely very much a shipping product.
Just because you don't know about it, doesn't mean that it does not exist.
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That's one...
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Ah, an opportunity to make the tired old claim of "Microsoft doesn't innovate"! Who can turn that down?
Let's see, off the top of my head, a list of MSR products that made it into production:
SPOT watches and the like
F#
Pieces of SQL Server
That thing with the little LCD display in the lid of a laptop, pretty sure that was MSR
Photosynth (with credit to University of Washington for collaboration)
That's just what I can think of, I'm sure I missed a few. Does MSR crank out a lot of stuff that will never see the l
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"That thing with the little LCD display in the lid of a laptop, pretty sure that was MSR"
Um... that's kind of underwhelming. Not the kind of thing that rises to the level of requiring MSR brains, I don't think.
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There's pretty much zero chance of that research reaching the public.
There's no doubt that MS Research gets into some interesting stuff, but very little of it ever sees the light of day.
Actually, quite a lot of their stuff sees the light of the day - it's just not often credited as such, and usually vastly reworked from the original prototypes.
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There's pretty much zero chance of that research reaching the public.
There's no doubt that MS Research gets into some interesting stuff, but very little of it ever sees the light of day.
Actually, quite a lot of their stuff sees the light of the day - it's just not often credited as such, and usually vastly reworked from the original prototypes.
Not really. This Willy Wonka stuff they show off never makes it out, and that's what I'm referring to. The "vastly reworked" stuff you are referring to is a tame version of the "oh, this is cool" stuff.
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Hey, come on. It's not Microsoft's fault that they got confused between their viable products and an Elite's Imperial spaceships.
Maybe a winner (Score:2)
One of the technologies showcased looked a little bit interesting. It was a "pseudo-3D". Here's from TFA:
"Akeley's prototype uses depth filtering, layering different focal planes on top of one another to give the eye something to focus upon as a 3d object moves "closer" and "farther" from the eye."
Could it mean 3D without funny glasses? I have no idea, but I hope so.
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Could it mean 3D without funny glasses? I have no idea, but I hope so.
Given Microsoft's penchant for announcing vaporware, I'll believe it when I see it. However, if it means 3D without headaches or eyestrain, I'll take it--even if it does come from Microsoft.
What About Javascript? (Score:1)
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No, Slashdot is just fucked. Not even Google Chrome (faster than a speeding french fry!) can save it now.
Only those of us who can figure out how to get around their ajax crap stand a chance.
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i have most of it disabled (classical comments view and all). Still some areas that revert to 2.x style tho.
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I too have the classic discussion system enabled in my prefs. The performance issues are one thing, but I can't figure out what the fuck's what with the 2.0 version. Every time I scroll, the page seems to go nowhere, then it offers to load "x" number of more comments, which then changes to a completely random "x" again. What a god-awful mess. If this was an attempt to mimic Digg's discussion system (and aren't most recent Slashdot developments a reaction to Digg's popularity?), then they failed miserabl
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I for one welcome us, the new overlords :)
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One of these words does not belong (Score:1, Troll)
Innovative
Revolutionary
Creative
Cool
Microsoft
Can you figure out which one?
Re:One of these words does not belong (Score:4, Funny)
Can you figure out which one?
I'm going to guess Innovative because it's the only one that starts with a vowel? Or maybe Revolutionary because it uses all the vowels (even the sometimes vowel)?
Re:One of these words does not belong (Score:5, Interesting)
Revolutionary.
Microsoft research does good work. Some of the ideas that come out of there are definitely cool and creative, like surface. Others are new and innovative, like the tablet. What Microsoft can't seem to do is to move ideas from research into products. There's a big institutional roadblock that prevents them from pushing new, innovative, creative, and cool ideas out the door. The result: no revolution.
And yeah, I think it will kill them in the long run if they can't fix that problem.
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Can't they just hire someone from Bell Labs who has actually turned an idea into an awesome product the entire world relies on?
Where is the flaw? Do they think they're the Yankees and can just throw more money at it? Maybe they need to start thinking along the lines of the A's and try instead to build intelligently and within their means.
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The sad fact is Yankees win world series and Billy Beane's A's never do. Microsoft _is_ the Yankees (or modern-day Chelsea for our UK brethren) of technology. Lotta money and they keep winning, even if people don't like it.
Yes there have been teams on the cheap that pop up and win every so often. But when it's an open-market free-for-all (no salary caps or revenue sharing) like MLB or the English Premier League, the teams with the money win the leagues.
So Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and HP (and now Google?) will
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I know that some of MS Research stuff is really good. I've been to some academic presentations from people working there.
I find current MS status exactly as how Xerox was when Apple and MS begun. PARC labs where doing a lot of really good stuff but the management failed to transform it to real useful products. It will be other small companies who will come to do it... that in theory, of course patents will ultimately block such kind of innovation. yay!
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Microsoft Surface is revolutionary? Have a lol [youtube.com].
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Microsoft, it has nothing to do with those other words. :)
Re:A Three Hour Tour... (Score:4, Insightful)
Name two (Score:1)
Browsing through there I found one - Destination Maps.
Only it doesn't show up at all in Safari using Bing Maps. Have they really delivered it? I cannot say.
They have a ton of talk about the amazing integration of Microsoft R&D in products, but again very little I see as shipping things or core features - even Destination Maps is more of an adornment than a core feature, and one I doubt more than a handful of people use day to day.
The crime of it all is they do have brilliant people there, but they up
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http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/brochure-7.aspx
There are lots of examples on the site I originally linked to.
Deskterity (Score:2)
This might not be far-fetched at all. I identified decades ago, before I was even legally an adult, that I had precisely that division of labor between my two hands and arms, and indeed probably between both entire halves of my body and brain: one half performed brute force maneuvers requiring strength, while the other specialized in performing actions requiring precision. Thus I write and manipulate a spoon with one hand, while using the other to throw a ball, swing a bat, and wield a steak knife. To so
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Wacom has a fancy tablet-with-integrated-display called the Cintiq, it has buttons on it that you can use to rotate the image... with your left hand, while you're holding a stylus with the right. Microsoft is late to the party.
Oh no, we know what this is all about... (Score:2)
Market testing.... That's what MS does with new ideas... but it doesn't mean they will produce.
regarding "improved image stitching" (Score:2)
I wish I could be more impressed by that.. but I'm not. It's already trivial to...
1. take a video source
2. split up into images
3. from those images, sort by quality (least blur to most blur)
4. map them onto the panoramic plane (thanks to it being video, you can use motion vectors to help this process, but it's not really needed.. existing algorithms will chew through them easily enough)
5. remove those images that are superfluous (i.e. not needed for covering the entire canvas)
6. blend (using al algorithm a
Manual Deskterity (Score:2)
"Manual Deskterity" (did not see this term referenced in the slideshow by the way - where did it come from?) sounds like something they developed just so they could patent it. This seems like the natural progression for something like the Wiimote or possibly even an iPad-like device, considering it's what people do naturally anyway.
Funny thing I noticed flipping through the slideshow: many of the annoying pop-up mouseover ads open a bing window (including the word "Apple"). Of course there are also Google a
Journalism Fail (Score:2)
Microsoft opened a portion of its fifth TechFair to Silicon Valley residents, demonstrating more than 15 technologies...
Good god, I thought schools taught people to count up to one hundred AT LEAST.
right-handed/left-handed (Score:2)
Or you can just plug a second mouse in. People freak out when they see it ("that can't work!") but it does. Just pick two mice with a different number of "mickeys" resolution.
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> "a right-handed user's left hand, for example, can be used for coarse manipulations of objects, while the right can be used for fine manipulation, such as with a pen"
Or you can just plug a second mouse in. People freak out when they see it ("that can't work!") but it does. Just pick two mice with a different number of "mickeys" resolution.
have you found anything that works to have two cursors simultaneously in windows?
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You could try drinking until your eyes cross - Windows has been known to do that to people ... it won't make Windows run any better, but it will dull the pain :-)
Lack of imagination (Score:2)
It would be nice to see a real article about the more interesting sounding things but as it is, I'm not impressed.
Check out this page, Paul Haeberli's wonderful old site Grafica Obscura from when he was at SGI.
http://www.graficaobscura.com/merge/index.html [graficaobscura.com]
This is his famous image merging by projective warp program, where he could take a bunch of snapshots and automatically warp and stitch them together. I think this is from 1995 or so. It references papers from 1991 and this one from 1994: S. Mann and R. W.
We get this every few months (Score:2)