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Look What's Cooking At Microsoft Labs
stinkymountain writes "Writer John Brandon spent two days at Microsoft Research Labs in Redmond and got an inside look at some pretty
interesting projects under development, including a robotic receptionist, a new type of touch screen for people with fat fingers, and an electronic table that allows multiple people to collaborate in real time. Brandon also talks about some of these research projects on this NPR podcast."
If they get a patent on using a touchscreen with fat, cheetos-covered fingers, linux is doomed!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Dude, you haven't truly sexually harassed anyone until you've sexually harassed a robot receptionist.
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
Looks like something that we see in spy movies where a Command Center has access to all the topographical maps and information that it needs in an instant but for disaster recovery and planning. Looks promising. Like all collaborative efforts, success will depend on how well the individual components work well together (databases, etc). Big ass collaboration
Kiosk technology. Not really intended for home users. At $12,500 each (with discounts), I see this more as a novelty more than practical. Big ass table
I'm not exactly sure what this is. It appears to be the software that Surface runs so I don't think it counts as a separate project. Software for big ass table.
An interactive semi-transparent monitor ala Minority Report. The main difference was the interaction in Minority report was with holograms and this is a hard surface. Big ass touchscreen wall monitor.
News aggregator that is focused more on relationships and content than search terms. Might be useful for data mining. Big ass aggregator
Extends touch surfaces on mobile by allowing users to reach behind the screen so that your fat fingers don't block what you are trying to select. This however doesn't solve the compromise of portability of mobile devices with the need for larger screens. Touch surface for your big ass fingers.
Extends software development from sharing code to data models as well. Big ass application development modeling
Well this uses OSLO and is the next version of Visual Studio so putting it into its own project is a bit of a stretch. Big ass IDE.
New MS mice will allow to be used on rougher surfaces like tile and wood than before by increasing the sampling rate of the laser among other advances . New laser mice with big ass oversampling
I think this is software but a virtual receptionist that can interact with and track visitors. Big ass big brother.
Did I miss any big asses?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.