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Microsoft Research Turns 10
Alec Muzzy writes: "Did you know that Microsoft Research, the first research laboratory started by a software company, just turned 10 years old? Their website is currently featuring some highlights of their research in the past 10 years and how it is applying to the new products Microsoft is making today - for instance their work in Real-Time Fur will be used in some XBox games, and Speech Recognition may be in future Pocket PC's. Reading these pages gives you a real insight into what new technologies Microsoft is working on."
In the late 1990s the college of engineering at my university would have reps and engineers from Apple's ATG (Advanced Technology Group) visit to judge projects, talk about the industry, and share stories over a BBQ. From what I understand, the ATG was a research group that had free reign to experiment with software and hardware projects, some of which were eventually wrapped into shipping Apple products. In about 1994 I remember a demo/presentation that included some neat webserver CGIs for "intelligent" searching and document organzation (cool for that time period). We were also shown a cool speech recognition + text-to-speech utility that utilized facial recognition as well as displaying a spooky relaistic animated talking face. I also recall a semi-working mockup of a 3D version of the Macintosh Finder (Apple's Macintosh desktop / file manager). One of the coolest things I remember was that not all of their projects were on Apple Macintosh hardware. Most were, but a few were on IBM RS/6000 (AIX) and SGI Indigo (IRIX) workstations.
Cool stuff.