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Look What's Cooking At Microsoft Labs

Posted by timothy on from the smart-people-cool-toys dept.

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."

5 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. History by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 3, Insightful

    MS Labs have a long history of hit-or-miss projects. Some are great, most are not and get killed off sometime during product development. Let's hope some of them get to see a release date!!

    1. Re:History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So does Google. If everybody has to spend part of their time on their own projects and Google employs several thousand engineers then they must have thousands of failed experiments. For every successful Linux project there are a thousand stillborn on sourceforge.

      Really R&D always has more failures than successes, its just the nature of the game, but its those successes that give you your competitive advantage.

  2. Re:uh oh by ChrisStrickler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I once worked where we had to wear environmental hazard suits, and we had a few keyboards that were meant for the fat-fingers of the gloved hands - so I could see at least one instance where this would be nice (assuming you needed to operate a touchscreen while in a hazard suit).


    I am sure there are others besides the self-checkout aisle of your local Wal-Mart.

  3. No need to apologize by El+Lobo · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Isn't interesting that every time there are news about some MS project, some people have the need to almost apologize for liking some of their products/ideas? DON'T DO THAT. Be proud. MS are like any other company out there: with some great ideas/ products mixed with some not so great ones. Sure, this is slashdot and it's not hip and cool to say that you are:

    - A windows user and satisfied with it

    - A .net developer who think .net is a great platform

    - An user who thinks that the ribbon are is a great innovation

    etc...

    But hey, there is no need to apologize. Don't be part of that stupid trend.

    "This sounds very civic-minded, innovative, and useful." - There, I fixed that for ya.

    --
    It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
  4. Re:uh oh by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why now do we see Microsoft trying harder than before?

    Actually, they have been doing this sort of stuff since 1991. A lot of reseach goes on inside the walls of Microsoft, including stuff that would obviously never have any commercial prospects.

    Back in the 90s, I remember being amazed at the large number Microsoft employees delivering papers at computer science conferences. I find it interesting that Microsoft has always had a large presence at SIGGRAPH, and yet Microsoft Paint continues to suck.