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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."
No, Slashdot is just fucked. Not even Google Chrome (faster than a speeding french fry!) can save it now.
Only those of us who can figure out how to get around their ajax crap stand a chance.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Quite a few actually. See http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/
Singularity was an interesting project. I only wish that they would have shepherded it along until it was closer to a commercial product.
That's what I thought was so funny about this part:
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.
There's pretty much zero chance of that research reaching the public.
There's no doubt that MS Research gets into some interesting stuff, but very little of it ever sees the light of day. The main reason for this is precisely because they do get into some interesting stuff. It's really difficult to make a product out of something that uses one hand for coarse actions and the other for fine actions, or to build an actual, working universal translator.