microsoft research

Create panoramic images with Microsoft ICE

Microsoft Image Composite Editor (or ICE) is a multiple image assembler that allows you to quickly import images to generate panoramic photos. You just simply have to drag and drop photos into the application, and ICE will automatically scan and combine the images to create a seamless, high-res panorama.

Despite its long, complicated name, Microsoft Research's app is simple and straightforward. You aren't required to prepare photos or perform any complex ordering. ICE automatically scans each image to determine the best method of stitching images together, both vertically and horizontally. Although I didn't expect it to perform … Read more

Microsoft SoundWave: It's like Kinect, but skips the cameras

Microsoft has already come up with a neat way to interpret motion by way of a camera. Now it's using sound to accomplish the same goal.

The SoundWave technology recently unveiled by Microsoft Research allows users to control the software on their computers with only the movement of their hands. However, unlike the company's Kinect, which uses cameras to achieve that functionality, SoundWave is able to pick up motion based on sound.

According to Microsoft, SoundWave relies on a speaker and microphone to work. The technology emits an inaudible tone from the speakers that is interrupted when people … Read more

Microsoft forges ahead with new home-automation OS

More than a decade ago, Microsoft execs, led by Chairman Bill Gates, were touting a future where .Net coffee pots, bulletin boards, and refrigerator magnets would be part of homes where smart devices would communicate and interoperate. Microsoft hasn't given up on that dream.

In 2010, Microsoft researchers published a white paper about their work on a HomeOS and a HomeStore -- early concepts around a Microsoft Research-developed home-automation system. Those concepts have morphed into prototypes since then, based on a white paper, "An Operating System for the Home," published this month on the Microsoft Research site. … Read more

Microsoft brings future to life at TechForum

A computer monitor and keyboard are so yesteryear.

At Microsoft's annual TechForum expo earlier this week, the company showed off several amazing concept products that will have you thinking far into the future. Luckily, we have some great pictures and videos of some of these devices, which deliver a computer experience unlike anything commercially available today.

Buckle up and click on our gallery below to see innovations including a 3D augmented-reality desktop, software that tracks the history of the world, a mirror with holograms, and much more. … Read more

Share physical objects remotely with Microsoft's IllumiShare

Imagine having a real-time card game with a friend thousands of miles away without looking at a computer screen.

Microsoft Research is showing off IllumiShare, a virtual shared whiteboard that works on any surface. Despite having the innocent appearance of a lamp, the low-cost device actually shares the surface it's illuminating over the Internet. This means you could sketch a portrait with someone else using real paper, or create a real-time dynamic learning scenario that enables a remote tutor to teach a child much more effectively than ever before. You could even play a game of Canasta with your grandmother if you wanted to. … Read more

Microsoft's 3D computer offers a world for your hands

The way we use computers now looks very antiquated compared with a new interactive see-through OLED display from Microsoft Applied Sciences.

Jinha Lee, an MIT Media Lab Ph.D. student and a research intern at Microsoft, worked with Cati Boulanger (a researcher at the company) on a new type of computer that seems like a stepping stone to something much greater. Lee describes the see-through 3D desktop in greater detail on his personal blog. … Read more

Microsoft shows 'touch screen' for any surface

Microsoft Research is unveiling technology that turns any surface into a touch screen at a user interface symposium this week in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Dubbed OmniTouch, it is a wearable system that allows multitouch input on "arbitrary, everyday surfaces," according to a description on a Microsoft Research Web page.

"We wanted to capitalize on the tremendous surface area the real world provides," said Hrvoje Benko of the Natural Interaction Research group at Microsoft.

The technology combines a laser-based pico projector and depth-sensing camera, the latter not unlike Microsoft's Kinect camera for the Xbox 360. But … Read more

Relief: IE users not stupid after all

Updated at 3:47 p.m. PT: The author of this fine non-study has now come forward. He is Canadian-based Tarandeep Singh Gill and he told ReadWriteWeb that he is the founder of AtCheap.com. He said he was specifically targeting IE6. "While working on my latest Web site, IE6 compatibility was being a pain in the ass. So I thought of doing this, with a hope that this would knock off a few people from IE6," he said. It will be interesting to see who or what gets knocked off in the coming days.

Here at Technically … Read more

Microsoft offers scientists data analytics tool

Microsoft unveiled new technology today designed to give academics better tools to harness the vast quantities of data available to them.

"We're living in a data deluge right now," said Tony Hey, corporate vice president of Microsoft Research Connections.

Scientists generate massive data in their work in areas such as environmental science, particle physics, astronomy, and other disciplines. Analyzing that information becomes ever more cumbersome.

So Microsoft released Daytona, a tool kit that lets scientists run a wide variety of analytics and machine-learning algorithms on Windows Azure. The technology is intended to free up those scientists from … Read more