Microsoft tantalises with TechFest demos

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 08 March 2007 08:32

Business IT - Technology

Google is perhaps the best known example of a company that allows 'side projects' - activities not immediately directed towards current or planned products and services - but Microsoft's TechFest shows it still knows something about innovation.

More than 100 innovations were on display in the software giant's technology showcase held in Seattle this week. Some will end up in future products, others will fade into obscurity.

Among the projects were:

Asirra asks users to prove they are human by distinguishing between pictures of cats and dogs drawn from a library of over two million images - think captcha (the current technology used to distinguish real users of web sites from automated systems intending to leave spam messages), but with natural images instead of distorted text.

Boku is intended to introduce children to programming. Although it runs on Xbox and has a game-like appearance (the task is to program a virtual robot to move around and interact with objects) it serves the dual function of developing a new generation of programmers and taking the Xbox beyond pure entertainment.

BubbleBoard is an answering machine interface that shows waiting messages as 'bubbles' on a touchscreen, allowing the user to play messages in any order rather than the chronological sequence enforced by conventional devices.

Read on for more projects.