Microsoft Research, at 15, looks ahead to more innovations
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Microsoft Research, the software company's university-style pure research arm, celebrated its 15th birthday by showcasing some of its recent greatest hits.
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Microsoft can change.  Just give it a few more decades.
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(InfoWorld) - What struck Microsoft executive Marshall Phelps at a recent series of conferences in developing nations was that government, business and academic leaders often asked him, "How can we invent the next Google?" It's not that he took it as a slight that they said "Google" and not "MSN." What struck him was the view that a single big idea could transform a country overnight. "Not everything has to be the next big breakthrough," said Phelps, the company's corporate vice president for intellectual property, during an interview last week. The key to building a prosperous economy is to create an environment that supports innovation, he said. Innovation can take place at a piecemeal pace and does not have to happen in one fell swoop -- and usually, it doesn't. Phelps had just finished a series of conferences on innovation cosponsored by Microsoft in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The idea was to bring together national leaders and help them figure out how to encourage innovations that play to the strengths of their countries, and how to create an environment to ensure that innovation continues. For example, Phelps said, in Indonesia many people are artistic, and the country has started to focus this talent on visual multimedia software. A drawback for the country is that around 65 percent of college graduates go abroad to find jobs. In Thailand, government agencies tend to be aggressive and forward thinking, and that can help strengthen a number of industries. Medical tourism is booming there, and Thailand is growing into an automobile titan in Asia. Innovation can occur in any of these industries -- especially with software, Phelps said. The idea of drawing on local strengths can be applied to the U.S. too, said Bob Hayward, a managing consultant in Thailand with Strat-etech Consulting Co. Ltd. The U.S. software industry is a by-product of a business environment that relies heavily on new technology for efficiency. "You must work with what's in your environment," Hayward said. Malaysia is the most advanced of the three countries Phelps visited. It has high-tech parks and attracts investments from global technology companies, which in turn support innovation locally by providing training and engineering jobs that increase the skills of the work force. Malaysia also has strengths in building data centers, and in "Islamic finance," a type of financing that does not charge interest for religious reasons. South Korea is one country in the region that has developed so far in recent decades that it is now a technology leader in some areas. It's years ahead of other countries in certain types of Internet applications because of its early focus on broadband. Its online gamers are famous, and a host of multiplayer games developed there, such as "Guild Wars" and "The Legend of Mir 2," have won acclaim outside Korea. Many poor nations are still struggling to adjust their economies to the modern world, and they are often wary of solutions proffered by rich nations and multinationals. The innovation conferences give Microsoft a chance to meet local officials and try to win their trust. It gets other benefits too, such as boosting its image and giving it a chance to discuss issues that are important to the company, like intellectual-property enforcement. The countries where the conferences were held certainly face hurdles to innovation. They are still largely agricultural, and are moving into heavier industries, where less money is traditionally spent on research and development. Intellectual-property rights are not strongly enforced, meaning inventors see their products copied in the local market, making it hard for them to expand in their country, much less internationally. Such countries may have intellectual-property laws on their books, often enacted to meet the criteria of trade deals, but enforcement of those laws moves slowly. "Once R&D is near or approaching 1 percent of a country's gross national product, then their enforcement of IP gets very serious," Hayward said. Another hurdle is the lack of a "culture of failure" in Asia, Phelps said. Government and business leaders need to be realistic that some companies and some products will fail. Governments often provide resources to keep companies afloat artificially because, they fear, if they fail it will reflect badly on their development policies. There is also a debate in many countries over which economic model to follow, and how to create a modern nation without losing cultural identity. While these are sensitive issues, several countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, have found ways to develop while maintaining their cultural roots. The best economic model is "not a mystery," according to Hayward. "We kind of know what works and what doesn't." For him, capitalism, for all of its faults, is the best economic system available. The next step for Microsoft is to arrange more meetings and create better coordination between government officials and local Microsoft offices, Phelps said.
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The American Geophysical Union got a peek at techniques and tools from Microsoft Research's eScience group.
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Seeing as it was late to the game with Web 2.0, Microsoft is making a preemptive effort to be ready the next time around. The company has pledged $500,000 in research grants toward what it calls "Intelligent Web 3.0," in which the Web becomes more aware of where and how it's being accessed in order to custom tailor information.
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Microsoft Research in India has formed a group to work on advanced software algorithms, looking for a way to more efficiently process and analyze the large volumes of data generated by Web applications and scientific research.The challenges thrown up by the increased data volumes can&#39;t be solved by throwing more computing resources at them, said Padmanabhan Anandan, managing director of Microsoft Research India, on Thursday.The focus of new algorithms has to shift to sampling data efficiently, rather than trying to analyze all of the data, even if results may not be completely accurate, he said.&#8220;You have to do statistical sampling when mining such large quantities of data to get patterns in it, and perhaps help scientists see laws in it,&#8221; said Ravindran Kannan, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, who heads the new group.Algorithms are conceptual and mathematical descriptions of a method for solving a problem, which are then included in computer programs. Traditional algorithms depend on analyzing data that is stored locally, and focus on achieving exact results even if it takes time. That approach is no longer suitable because of the large volumes of data being analyzed, Kannan said.The research into principles and techniques for the new algorithms will be relevant across a wide variety of applications, he said.Microsoft decided to work on algorithms in India because educational institutions in the country have considerable expertise in theoretical computer science, which makes it easier to find and attract talented staff, Anandan said.The research lab in Bangalore also works on other areas including cryptography, security, mobility, and technologies for bridging the digital divide. It works in tandem with top educational institutions in the country, such as the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Research that could differentiator for Microsoft&#8217;s own business tends to be done in-house, however, and later patented by Microsoft, Anandan said.
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Microsoft's technology-laden home of the future will feature smart appliances connected by Web services and controlled by tablet PCs or cell phones.
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(InfoWorld) - Flying bikes, cell phone robots, smart walking sticks, and audio speakers that defy logic are inventions all on display Tuesday at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters. On the second day of the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft researchers and their academic partners showed off some of their projects. They ranged from the wacky to the relatively staid. The Flying Bike is a project that would let users ride a stationary bike that is integrated into a video game. In the demonstration, the game was Flight Simulator X and players have to pedal fast enough to stay airborne in the game. But Yolanda Rankin, a computer science researcher at Northwestern University and one of the developers of the project, envisions lots of other games that users could play using the bike, such as racing games and shooter games where players must flee or chase opponents. InkSeine is an application that tightly integrates search with pen computing. Users can write a word on the screen with a special pen. Holding down a button on the pen and drawing a circle around the word pops up a menu that allows users to search for the term online or on the hard drive. InkSeine has other unique user interface features: Making a circular motion with the pen on the screen will scroll a Web page down. Itâs an easier movement than trying to touch the small box in the narrow column on the right side of the screen with the pen and then pull it down. One of the more amazing inventions on display is Personal Audio Space. In the demo, 16 small speakers in a vertical line simultaneously play two songs: a rock song and a piece of classical music. Up close, they let off a cacophony of sound. But standing on one X marked on the floor around five feet from the speakers, a listener only hears the rock song. Standing on another X about two feet away next to the first, a listener hears only the classical music. The technology could be used in a variety of applications, said Ivan Tashev, one of the Microsoft researchers working on the project. In a shared office, two workers could listen to music or their phones without bothering the other. Two people could sit on their front porch at home, each listening to their own favorite music. A baby sitter could watch TV with a baby asleep in the next room, because the speakers could be used simply to direct sound to one place. The system works by distorting the audio so that it cancels out in some areas and steers the sound into others. Ultimately, the system could use cameras and microphones to detect where a person is and then point the sound to that person on the fly, Tashev said. Oscar Almeida, another Microsoft researcher, showed off a prototype of a walking stick that uses a gyro sensor to detect stability. When it detects instability, it could send a message warning a caretaker that the user might have fallen. The technology is a better idea, he said, than those that might simply detect when a walking stick is horizontal, which could lead to lots of false negatives and positives. Another fun project on display was the result of Microsoft researcher Brian Cross' idea for how to use mobile phones that are discarded when users upgrade. His Wimobot is a small robot that uses the phone as its "brain," he said. In his demonstration, he sends a text message that is a small program from a phone to the phone in the robot. The program instructs the robot to lower a pen onto the white board it sits on and draw a square. Andy Wilson, also a company researcher, is developing a device that could serve as a less expensive form of the surface computer that Microsoft recently unveiled. That computer will cost thousands of dollars. Wilson's invention uses a projector to display an application onto any surface, like a table top. Two infrared lasers pointed at the surface would allow users to grab and drag items with their hands. The company developers who showed off the projects work in Microsoft Research, a group of around 800 researchers developing about 60 projects. In his opening remarks on Tuesday at the summit, Rico Malvar, managing director of Microsoft Research, said that the mission of the group is to expand the state of the art in areas it does research, rapidly turn innovative technologies into Microsoft products, and ensure that Microsoft products have a future. Without getting more precise, he said the group uses a small portion of Microsoft's $7 billion research and development budget.
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Microsoft researchers from the software giant's labs around the world gathered on Tuesday to conspire on innovations intended to change the world.
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By 2015 the net will be used to deliver data about smells to users' computers, suggests report.
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The so-called next-gen filesystem to come from Microsoft is really looking to earn that generational distinction, and in more ways than one.
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Although it is not yet widely visible to the outside world, some people inside Microsoft are beginning to change how the company has traditionally developed software.
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PRAGUE -- Following the European Commission's call Wednesday for increased technology research, Microsoft launched an initiative to invest in scientific research centers in Europe.
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Next high-tech revolution may be 'cloud computing.'
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Forrester predicts the PC population will hit 1 billion next year, and 2 billion by 2015.
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Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates has been giving keynote speeches at Las Vegas conventions, including the Consumer Electronics Show and the now-defunct Comdex, for decades. Before his last&#160;CES keynote speech&#160;as a full-time company employee, he talked with IDG News Service Executive News Editor Marc Ferranti about his legacy as an innovator, the background behind some of the deals announced at CES this week, and directions for Microsoft.The following is an edited version of the interview:IDGNS: We&#39;ve been tracking your career for some 30 years. One bone of contention has been when people have said that Bill Gates is a business mastermind, but not really an innovator. Can you point out a couple of innovative things you&#39;re particularly proud of?Gates: In terms of what we&#39;re proud of, I think it&#39;s the personal computer that we&#39;re proud of. It was a crazy idea at the time, that we could take the microprocessor and create a software industry around it. There was no software industry. Computing was about big businesses, and what we did in 1975, with me dropping out of school, was to say that we could build an industry that was about empowering people. We could seek out partners to build the hardware. We&#39;d let anyone write software for the work we did, and everything we&#39;ve done, over these 30 years, has been about that vision of personal computing. We were first ones with that vision.And now we&#39;re tackling the new frontiers. We&#39;re bringing TV, we&#39;re bringing new educational experiences, health experiences, onto this device that empowers people in a new rich way. And so it&#39;s pretty broad, the PC industry and our innovations in it -- I don&#39;t think there&#39;s anything in the last 30 years that has had as much impact.IDGNS: In the consumer space, since we&#39;re at CES, can you point out some recent innovations Microsoft can leverage in the next couple of years.Gates: Well the dollars spent on games and Xbox in the U.S. is greater than Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii combined. Really, that&#39;s because of the innovation in Xbox Live -- connecting people up, letting players find each other, matching them, getting video online. It&#39;s a real breakthrough way of thinking about even the future of TV.We&#39;ve got a million people using our Mediaroom, which is TV delivered over the Internet. Companies like AT&amp;T and 19 other phone companies around the world bet their future on this being the new video platform. And what that means is when you think about news, and you go and use Mediaroom news, you see the things that you care about, the ads are targeted at you.Look at what we&#39;ve done with Surface, directly touching and manipulating things -- that&#39;s gonna be a centerpiece.I can go on and on, there&#39;s so much that has to do with making it natural, bringing these things together and integrating them. We&#39;re the company that&#39;s doing the walk -- a lot of business focus but enough consumer focus that, from the biggest game phenomenon in the world to the biggest instant messaging thing, we have a lot of success that represents the innovation we&#39;re put into it.IDGNS: With increasing competition from abroad, innovation is of increasing importance to American companies. What&#39;s your thinking around the link between innovation and intellectual property?Gates: Well, we&#39;re a company that&#39;s based in the United States, but obviously we&#39;re drawing on engineering talent from all over the world. We&#39;ve got an unbelievable research group in China, we&#39;ve got an unbelievable research group in India, and we&#39;re delivering to consumers all over the world as well. And we file for intellectual property in all of these countries. They&#39;re all in different stages in terms of copyright, or patents, and it tends to be a pretty complicated area.Other countries look at what&#39;s going on in the United States and they say they&#39;d like their engineers to have those same opportunities, those same incentive systems, and so there really is a sense of progress in that. It&#39;s just one of the elements that make sure people are willing to take risks and keep the innovation in this industry the fastest of any industry in the world.IDGNS: You&#39;re going to be talking here about new partnerships for Microsoft&#39;s MSN, Xbox Live and Mediaroom IPTV services that will provide more content to drive Microsoft&#39;s consumer entertainment strategy. Can you talk about what you needed to do -- on the technology side and on the business side -- to make these deals happen?Gates: XBox Live is attracting virtually all the content people because of the volume we&#39;ve got there, and they see this group of very engaged users spending a lot of hours and finding new media in that environment, so that&#39;s made it easy for us. Our announcement with NBC on the Olympics is about our innovations in Silverlight, where you can view interactive content, multiple video streams, so it&#39;s really a perfect match for the Olympics where you have all this different content and yet different people care about different parts of it.IDGNS: As your consumer entertainment strategy comes to fruition, how will your business model change from what it has been in the past? Can you quantify goals for advertising-generated revenue?Gates: We&#39;ve seen good growth in our advertising revenue. That&#39;s an area where Google&#39;s the leader and we need to be very innovative to drive the scale. A huge partnership with Viacom is helping us with that. We&#39;ll be signing up more partners around the world. Taking the advertising platform to scale is very valuable for things like the search property we offer.We participate in a lot of business models. We have consumer software like games that you buy on a one-time basis. We have things that you can pay as a monthly fee, that we run up in our servers, as more of a service type model. We have some software we give away for free. And so, ads are coming in as a big, strong component but I don&#39;t see it replacing the others. We need all modalities to be strong.IDGNS: In your philanthropic work, you&#39;ve focused on fundamental health issues for the developing world. In the tech sector, there have been efforts such as the OLPC, and Microsoft&#39;s efforts to reduce prices in developing countries. But there&#39;s been criticism about these efforts. People have been saying, well, a $200 laptop isn&#39;t going to do a kid much good if he doesn&#39;t live to age five. With this in mind what do you think technology companies -- that need to make profits -- can do to spur development in emerging markets?Gates: Companies make their contribution by both giving some cash to broad areas but also by having their products in their area of expertise be tailored and donated to people who are poor. So in the case of Microsoft, we went and got involved in putting PCs in libraries. We went to Chile to put PCs in the libraries there, so by having a really robust machine connected to the Internet, going through the training, working with the government, getting all the pieces right -- we learned how to do that in the United States -- those projects were incredibly successful.So while I admit for my Foundation the top priority is health, Microsoft is about software. It&#39;s got a product, that&#39;s what the company knows. And that&#39;s where, in its activities around the world, its helping educators, it&#39;s helping kids who have curiosity, and I think that&#39;s fantastic for Microsoft to do that.I&#39;m taking the success that Microsoft had and putting tens of billions of that into the basic needs where breakthroughs can be made -- and there, we&#39;ll be using software. We&#39;ll be using mobile phones, we&#39;ll doing data gathering, so we&#39;ll be using software as a tool to do it. I wish every company was doing as much as Microsoft is to take their expertise and look into that developing world and see what role they can play . We&#39;ve had great impact, great success, and it helps us attract better employees. It makes our employees feel good because we were founded on the idea of empowerment. We&#39;re not just talking about it, we&#39;re out in over a hundred countries delivering it in a significant way.
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New technology could lead to safer, more effective drugs.