Posted by Rob Knies Imagine that you walk into a store, select an item to purchase, and approach the cash register. A wireless-proximity transmitter within your smartphone detects your presence, and a facial-recognition program determines your identity. The transaction is recorded onto video, and...

Posted by Kevin Schofield There is much discussion these days of the role of touch-based systems in interface design. But this week at Techfest, Helena Mentis and her teammates in the Socio-Digital Systems group in Microsoft Research Cambridge were showing two projects exploring interfaces where the...

Posted by Kevin Schofield Perhaps it’s just me, but I wince whenever my American phone or GPS tries to pronounce a French restaurant name or a Spanish street name, or the name of one of my non-American friends. While we’ve made much progress in creating text-to-speech (TTS) systems...

Posted by Steve Clayton There are a lot of really cool projects at TechFest this year - if you pushed me to pick a personal favorite, I'd choose FetchClimate ! . With amazing demonstrations such as Holoflector and Illumishare , this is one that you may not expect...allow me to explain why I'm so excited...

Posted by Kevin Schofield One of the perennial challenges for teachers is to find new ways to keep students engaged and interacting in class. Some have embraced a new generation of in-classroom technology where each student has a pocket-sized wireless keypad. The teacher can “poll” the...

Posted by Steve Clayton We talk about Bing as a “decision engine” that anticipates your intent and surfaces search results to help you quickly make an informed decision. Built into this concept is the assumption that productivity is your chief goal. The Socio-Digital Systems group in...

Posted by Kevin Schofield Of the 6800 “living” languages in use around the world, close to half are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. The historical and cultural heritage represented by those languages is in danger of being lost forever – in fact, some experts predict that if the...

Posted by Steve Clayton With most digital cameras these days, you can shoot still photos or video. The critical question, then, is which one to use when you’re at your child’s soccer game or out with a group of friends: a picture often won’t do it justice, whereas shooting video...

Posted by Steve Clayton I’ve learned to track the work of Hrvoje Benko from Microsoft Research quite closely. He’s been involved in projects such as MirageTable , LightSpace , Pinch-the-Sky Dome and products such as the Microsoft Touch Mouse . This week at TechFest, he’s been...