The event featured more than 20 demos from MSIDC, MSR India and Microsoft IT-India. One of the highlights of
TechXchange 2008 was the ‘Robust Location Search’ project, which is a good example of an area of
collaboration between MSR India and MSIDC.
TechXchange 2008, the annual event designed to highlight innovation and create a platform that promotes
collaboration and knowledge exchange, was hosted by
Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC) and Microsoft Research India (MSR India) at the Microsoft Hyderabad campus in India on December 11
and 12, 2008. TechXchange 2008 was the second edition of the event, showcased a large number of efforts and
innovations by the teams at MSIDC and MSR India.
MSR India, established in 2005, currently has close to 60 people. It has already transferred technologies to
product groups and has a number of research projects now approaching maturity. MSIDC has grown to 1500 people,
and has made significant contributions to developing Microsoft’s latest products.
The event featured more than 20 demos from MSIDC, MSR India and Microsoft IT-India. One of the highlights of
TechXchange 2008 was the ‘Robust Location Search’ project, which is a good example of an area of collaboration
between MSR India and MSIDC.
Robust location search solves two key problems that arise when users search for addresses: 1) often these are
unstructured, incomplete or misspelled, and 2) there is no single common address format. This project takes a
radically new approach to location search by using keywords to find places, rather than commonly used address
rules, to answer queries. This enables relevant results regardless of the address type and structure, and
also enables cross lingual address searches. For example, an address specified as being ‘near NIMS’ with a
building name in Hindi can be located by using Robust Location Search. This automatically identifies the
building near Nizam Institute of medical Sciences in Hyderabad. This Robust Location Search started as a
research project at MSR India, and is now being developed by MSIDC as a feature of the Live Search Maps
service.
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Channel9
Some Demos at TechXchange
Nericell
The Nericell project in the MNS group at Microsoft Research India focuses on road and traffic monitoring
using an ensemble of mobile smartphones carried by people in normal course.
Robust Location Search
Robust, global, address geocoding is challenging because there is no single address format that applies
to all geographies, and in any case, users may not restrict themselves to well-formed addresses. We
present a demo of our geocoder that addresses most of above issues.
NetPrints
Today’s home networks have a number of components - multiple desktops and laptops, wireless access
points, routers, printers, and modems. It is not uncommon to run into configuration problems when so many
different devices have to interact. NetPrints tries to make this debugging process as automated as
possible using the principle of "shared wisdom".
India Digital Heritage
This is a collaborative initiative between the MSR India, Academia and the government, with the aim of
using novel techniques to efficiently capture and present various aspects of India’s diverse heritage,
while at the same time advancing the state-of-the art in related research areas.
User Authentication using multiple face image and spoken passwords
This demo shows a simple user-interface with a PC/Laptop and webcam which captures multiple profiles of
a person through a very short and simple enrollment process and then offers access control with the
captured face biometrics.
Yogi-Smash
A research project within the Rigorous Software Engineering group at Microsoft Research India on
software property checking.
Mobile Broadband
Windows® 7 users, can now connect to the Internet, from any location that has cellular connectivity.
Customers can connect via 2.5G, 3G, GSM or CDMA based cellular data services and enjoy the same
uniform experience as available to users of Wi-Fi and other broadband technologies.
Agile VPN
With the all new Agile VPN tunnel and Mobility Manager, you can enjoy the seamless VPN connection
switchover automatically to a new network when the underlying network changes. With seamless switchover
users can now enjoy uninterrupted connectivity to corporate network and the applications running on
top of the VPN connection.
Microsoft® Direct Access
Direct Access allows mobile information workers to stay connected with the corporate network from any
location with Internet connectivity, without the need for a VPN.
BizTalk® RFID Mobile
The platform that extends RFID application development to RFID Mobile devices. BizTalk RFID Mobile
enables a developer to write mobile applications regardless of the type of RFID hardware.
Live Mesh
The platform that integrates and syncs your data from across your wide spectrum of digital devices,
gives you ubiquitous access to this rich superset of content from any device and allows you to share
this seamlessly with your circle of friends.
Instant Answers
The Live Search team at MSIDC Hyderabad is continuously working to bring relevant content on Live Search,
and churning out Instant Answers to meet consumers’ information needs is our priority. An Instant
Answer (IA) provides more direct information than traditional web results and is intended to reduce the
time it takes for a user to find the information they are looking for.
Mobile Search & Maps for India (Direct to Customer)
Mobile Search and Maps for India offers users to search for Mobile Sites, World Wide Web, News, Images,
Spaces, Weather, Encarta Answers, Business Listings, Directions and Maps. This is built on Microsoft’s
Live Search Service, thereby allowing users to search for geographical information, places of general
interest and business listings at http://m.live.co.in.
Live Search Maps
Live Search Maps for India offers users access to detailed listings and street maps for 9 Cities,
business listings across 29 Cities and access to highway networks to 20,000 cities and towns. Live
Search Maps for India is on Microsoft’s Live Search Service, thereby allowing users to search for
geographical information, places of general interest and business listings both on the PC and Mobile
at http://maps.live.co.in and http://m.live.co.in. This is the first version of its local mapping
service for India with the key features developed by MSIDC.
Microsoft® Easy Assist
Microsoft Easy Assist is a remote support solution based on the Microsoft Unified Communication
technologies. It is specifically designed for the support session workflow so that support agents can
get started quickly and be productive. Easy Assist delivers a simple experience to your customers. With
just a few clicks and no pre-installed support software, the customer is connected with the support
agent and can start sharing their desktop.
Office® Mobile
Use Microsoft Office Mobile 6.1 on your Windows Mobile phone to get the familiar Microsoft look & feel
as well as the services you are used to. The latest version of Office Mobile allows you to work with
all popular Microsoft Office document formats, including those created with Microsoft Office 2007.
Data Lifecycle Management
Data Protection Manager 2007 is a member of the Microsoft System Center family of management products,
which are designed to help IT Professionals manage their Windows Server infrastructure.
Mobile Developer
Microsoft Silverlight™ powers rich application experiences wherever the Web works, including mobile
devices. It is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next
generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.
Visual Studio® Team System Test Edition
VSTS provides a modular approach to manual and automated functional testing for multiple environments,
an intuitive unit testing tool, an extremely scalable web testing and load testing solution, a
customizable test management console, built-in traceability between requirements, test cases, defects
and code changes, support for testing in virtualized environments, and a powerful reporting
capability.
Visual Studio Team System Lab Management
Lab Management is a core application lifecycle management capability within Visual Studio Team System.
It leverages virtualization build bridges across development and testing teams throughout the
application development lifecycle.