Microsoft Research TechFest Videos

Microsoft research hosts an event called TechFest to show off the cool things they are doing.  Check out some of videos from TechFest.

 

New innovations and cool technologies being shown at TechFest 2009.

Back-of-Device Touch Input This demo explores how to add pointing input capabilities to very small screen devices. On first sight, touch-screens seem to allow for particular compactness, because they integrate input and screen into the same physical space. The opposite is true, however, because the users fingers occlude contents and prevent precision. Microsoft Research Redmond has created a 2.4 inch prototype that allows a back-of-device interface. This clip explains how and why it works.

TechFest: GeoLife 2.0
The increasing availability of GPS-enabled devices is changing the way people interact with the web and brings a large number of GPS trajectories representing peoples’ location histories. GeoLife 2.0 is a location based social-networking service on Virtual Earth that enables people to build connections with each other using their location histories. By mining the similarity between location histories, this system can help a user automatically discover potential friends in a community with similar interests. This system also enables travel experts who can help plot the ideal sight-seeing locations for you to visit in any part of the world.

TechFest: Social Desktop
Today, it's easy to share a webpage or a blog post, because items on the web have unique IDs: URLs. We don't have this on the desktop. Social Desktop adds URLs to the files and folders on your desktop, letting you share anything on your computer with anyone who can click a URL. Persons receiving links can either access via e-mail or comment, tag and search across all shared items via the Social Desktop webpage.

Find more videos from TechFest here:

https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/techfest2009/videos.aspx