REDMOND, Wash.--Microsoft already has several tools that stitch together a bunch of smaller photos to create a larger representation. With Photosynth, Microsoft even uses a collection of still images to re-create a three-dimensional experience.
Now a team of researchers is trying to do the same thing with video, in real time. The idea is that, at any given event, there are lots of people with cell phones capable of recording video. But the resolution of any one of those videos is pretty limited.
At the company's annual TechFest internal science fair on Tuesday, Microsoft showed how, in real time, multiple cell phone video streams can be stitched together to create one higher resolution video. The idea was developed by a trio of folks in Microsoft's Cairo, Egypt, labs as a way to provide video of class lectures. Pretty quickly, though, the team realized that the technique had much broader uses, everything from citizen journalism to live streaming a family wedding to distant well-wishers.
"There are lots of people that have mobile phones in their pockets," said Ayman Kaheel, a development manager at Microsoft's innovation center in Cairo and one of three people involved in that project. (I've embedded a video below of Kaheel talking about the project and giving a quick demo.)
A few steps over, Darren Edge was showing a project called Notes Scape that aims to create virtual sticky notes that travel with you wherever you go, appearing on any cell phone or laptop that you have nearby. I was a little fuzzy on the technology, but someday Edge said the approach could help visualize and organize information, particularly once we all start walking around with the kinds of heads-up displays that remain largely the stuff of science fiction.
While many projects are aimed at evolving traditional objects into their ultra-high-tech equivalent, the team from Microsoft Research India takes a different tactic. As part of their efforts to bring technology to the rural poor, the group often looks at what might be the lowest level of technology needed to solve a particular problem.
A few years back, the team discovered that a TV and DVD player was a far more effective way of showing improved agricultural methods to rural farmers than trying to use laptops.
This year, the team from India is showing a couple of education projects that try to take advantage of the limited technology that is already pervasive. In one, the group has taken books and digitized them to play on a standard DVD, using the fast-forward button to move from page to page. At TechFest, Microsoft showed a Dr. Seuss book running from a standard DVD, with audio added in the background.
"DVDs are a very cheap medium, much cheaper than textbooks," said Microsoft researcher Sarubh Panjwani.
Thousands of books can fit on a single DVD, said Panjwani. That means a school that can't afford many books can still have a library. It also means that the school can have a means to send books home with students. Even in rural areas, more than 70 percent of people have access to a TV and DVD players are also fairly common.
Plus, a book on TV can be shared by an entire classroom if need be, Panjwani said.
"A TV is big enough to share the content," Panjwani said.
I'll have more from TechFest in a little bit, including details on more research projects, more videos and pictures, as well as an interview with Microsoft Research head Rick Rashid.
Microsoft Research head Rick Rashid and Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie on Tuesday kick off TechFest, Microsoft's internal science fair.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET Networks)REDMOND, Wash.--Although some companies might see basic research as something to put on the chopping block in tough economic times, Microsoft's top strategy officer argued Tuesday that's the worst place to cut.
Craig Mundie, Microsoft chief research and strategy officer, said companies that slash research do so at their own peril.
"A great many companies have a fairly short lifespan," Mundie said, kicking off the company's annual TechFest internal science fair. Even many big, great companies only last 30 years or so, he said.
"The company would struggle I think to survive and certainly to prosper if we didn't have the research investment," Mundie said.
Microsoft Research head Rick Rashid put it more bluntly.
"It's really about an investment in survival," Rashid said.
He noted that in the early days of the software business, when Microsoft had only a few thousand workers, it made a decision to start up its basic research operation. Other companies in the business, he said, made a different choice.
"Most of those competitors aren't with us anymore," Rashid said.
Asked which of the technologies on display this week are likely to help Microsoft move beyond the recession, Mundie pointed to some of the types of new computer interfaces that will help the industry move beyond the mouse and keyboard.
Rashid, meanwhile, said it's hard to know which research bets will pay off.
"You invest in basic research precisely because you don't know what the future is going to hold," he said. "If you knew what you were going to get, it wouldn't be basic research."
Among the several dozen projects on display to the press Tuesday is an effort to build a better thesaurus that CNET News covered last week.
Microsoft employees will have a look and an even broader assortment of technologies on display starting Wednesday.
The goal of TechFest is to expose those in Microsoft's product groups to what is cooking in the labs.
LOS ANGELES--You may not know it, but you are carrying 100 watts of power inside you.
The problem is, much to the lament of all those whose cell phones and iPods run out of battery juice, researchers haven't found a very good way to harness that energy.
In an interview with CNET News, Microsoft research chief Rick Rashid said the best that researchers have come up with is to put solar panels on a hat or perhaps harness some power by putting something in one's shoe.
"You can get power, but not a whole lot," he said of the shoe approach. On the solar front, he said, "It really would only work in Los Angeles."
The issue is, it takes quite a bit of energy to power all our digital devices. In part, he said, that's why we hear every now and then about a cell phone or PC catching fire when a battery glitch occurs.
"Your typical laptop is a bomb," Rashid said. Even an iPod or cell phone battery has a whole lot of potential energy in a small space. "If you at any point thought that would be released all at once you wouldn't put that in your pocket. It would blow a nice hole in you."
We also talked about more pleasant subjects--in particular, some of the work that Microsoft researchers have been doing to deliver basic technology to get farming tips and health care to the rural poor.
The company's Project Green uses DVDs to bring farming tips to remote farmers in India, while another effort aims to distribute information on crop conditions to shared community cell phones via text messages.
Update: One other interesting tidbit--Microsoft plans to change the name of Boku, the programming tool for kids that Rashid demonstrated in his keynote on Wednesday.
The thing is, a Google search for Boku turns up some extremely not-safe-for kids images. This time, Rashid said Microsoft will look for a name that has no association to anything, just to be safe. I suggested Visual Studio 2010 Junior Edition, but I don't think that's the route they will go either.
Check below for a video interview I did with Rashid on Project Green and health-related initiatives. Sorry, no battery talk in the video.
Microsoft researcher Rick Rashid speaks to developers Wednesday at the Professional Developer Conference.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)LOS ANGELES--As he began his speech on Wednesday, Microsoft Research chief Rick Rashid talked up his ties, not just to Microsoft's products, but also to those from Apple.
"If you use a Macintosh or an iPhone, which honestly I would not recommend, you would be using code that I wrote more than 25 years ago," Rashid quipped to a crowd of developers at the company's Professional Developer Conference here. In his Carnegie Mellon days, Rashid helped create the Mach kernel that is at the heart of Mac OS X (Note: I originally stated that it was at the heart of FreeBSD, but others have pointed out that's not accurate).
Rashid noted that it's also a testimony to the staying power of core technology ideas.
"If you'd asked me 25 years ago if I thought code I was (writing, would be) running today on a cell phone, my reaction would have been 'what's a cell phone?'" Rashid said.
"It just shows you things really do survive and get used in interesting ways," Rashid said.
Later in his talk, Rashid is expected to show off some of the latest technology from the labs. (I'm betting we see Microsoft's Sphere surface computer, since Microsoft started the keynote Wednesday with a thank you note to the company that makes the display that powers Sphere.)
Update, 9:12 a.m. PDT: Microsoft put out a release noting some of the things Rashid will cover.
Microsoft plans an update to its Worldwide Telescope software and also detailed the Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008, software developer tools that aim to "make it easier to develop loosely-coupled concurrent and distributed applications."
Microsoft sensor technology is being used to create maps for research and work related to protecting the environment.
(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET News)Other topics include: DryadLINQ (a project that enables ordinary programmers to write large-scale data parallel applications to run on large PC clusters), a tool to help kids learn to program known as Boku, as well as Second Light, a surface computing research project I wrote about earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Microsoft researcher Feng Zhao is discussing how computers factor into the world's energy use. In the U.S. for example, computing uses about 1.5 percent of all electricity, according to a 2006 EPA report. However, computers can also be used to make other systems, such as heating and air conditioning, more efficient.
A slide of updated telescope software features.
(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET News)Zhao showed a sensor map from Microsoft research that helped chart the temperature in the main convention hall over the last couple of days. He noted that Microsoft uses 10,000 such sensors throughout its data centers.
"It's...good for our customers," he said. "It's also good for the world."
Update, 9:45 a.m. PDT: Rashid discussed the update to the telescope software, which Microsoft is calling the "equinox" update.
The new update, going live now, offers more than double the data of the original release, including 55 new panoramic images from the Apollo moon and Pathfinder Mars missions.
The demos drew loud applause as Rashid showed a wide range of views, including a display of the entire viewable universe.
REDMOND, Wash.--Microsoft kicked off its annual TechFest internal science fair on Tuesday, touting a wide range of projects that span from new views of outer space to efforts much closer to home.
Among the projects being shown are several efforts in the area of search, where Microsoft has been counting on its research team to help the company better compete against Google.
Research chief Rick Rashid didn't mention Google by name, but did say that investing in basic research can help a company when technology shifts and as new rivals emerge.
"You don't know what's coming around the corner," Rashid said. "Research creates a reservoir of technology, of ideas, of people, that can be brought to bare when things get bad. It gives you agility."
On Wednesday and Thursday, about 7,000 Microsoft employees are expected to tour a collection of 150 research projects to see which of the efforts might fit with work they are doing in their product groups. About a quarter of the projects are on display for the non-Microsoft folks assembled today.
Other projects include the well-publicized WorldWide Telescope and LucidTouch, a new touch-based interface for mobile devices.
Although he is now one of the event's biggest champions, Rashid conceded that he thought the whole concept was a bad one when first approached about doing TechFest.
"I didn't ever really want to do this," Rashid said. "I kept saying, 'Gosh, you know that would be such a bad idea. It would be kind of a waste of time. I don't know if anybody will show up."
Amid continued pressure, Rashid eventually conceded to try it several years back as an experiment. The company has been doing it ever since.
- prev
- 1
- next
