March 4th, 2005
Microsoft Research lifts the curtain on its latest wares
Microsoft Watch reports on Microsoft’s in-house TechFest showcase this week, open mostly to the company’s employees and some journalists. The mini-expo gave Microsoft researchers from around the world a chance to show off projects they have been working on, such as a plush prototype teddy bear that runs on Microsoft Windows and will eventually interact with a child, by reading stories or playing games. In another project, dubbed TouchLight, a piece of glass mounted vertically and a projector becomes a touch-sensitive interface that allows things on screen to be moved around with your hand (think Minority Report).
But not all projects were sci-fi demonstrations. Other displays were more practical, such as Web search results that can be tailored to the person doing the searching, or just plain nifty, like a traffic monitoring system called SmartPhlow which can predict when the next backup will occur, and even adjust your alarm clock depending on traffic conditions.
