Microsoft Shows Off Future Product Tech

adeelarshad82 writes "Microsoft opened a portion of its fifth TechFair to Silicon Valley residents, demonstrating more than 15 technologies, which included everything from real-time translation to mobile-to-mobile networking to improved image stitching. The top two that really stood out were the translating telephone, which actually used no 'telephone' at all — it was a test to discover how well Microsoft's speech algorithms could interpret speech, translate it, and then speak the translation using text-to-speech algorithms — and Manual Deskterity, a new paradigm for a user interface; a right-handed user's left hand, for example, can be used for coarse manipulations of objects, while the right can be used for fine manipulation, such as with a pen. It sounds a bit simplistic, at least at this stage. Since one of the charters of Microsoft Research is that the work should eventually be moved to product teams, there's a good chance that the prototypes will eventually be made available to the public at large."

Comments

Re:Will it become real??

[gig]

Microsoft Research is a nerd-fest only. It's a hobbyist fair. Entertainment for geeks. It has nothing to do with actual product development.

Microsoft's product development is all done outside the company:

- Windows is a clone of Mac
- MS Office is a Mac app
- DOS was a clone of CP/M
- XBox is a clone of PlayStation
- Zune is a clone of iPod
- Bing is a clone of Google

None of this stuff came out of Microsoft Research.

So yes, zero chance that this latest nerd-fest produces any products.