Haptic technology, which simulates the sense of touch through tactile feedback mechanisms, has been described as “doing for the sense of touch what computer graphics does for vision.” Haptics are already common in devices such as smartphones, where touch sensations such as clicks and vibrations…
João Castelo was quick to perceive the exciting new possibilities presented by Socl, the unique social network from Microsoft Research that celebrates the creativity of its users. Committed to the expression of ideas through visually rich posts that are easy to create, collect, comment on,…
Following fast on the heels of its original BLINK app for Windows Phone 8—which captures a burst of images when you take a photo so you can select the best shot—Microsoft Research Redmond is releasing an updated version of BLINK, along with a new app…
Springtime in Paris this year sees the Association for Computing Machinery’s 31st Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in full swing from April 27 through May 2, welcoming experts and students from more than 60 countries. A large contingent of researchers from Microsoft…
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center Medical imaging today gives surgeons an ability to obtain a virtual peek inside the human body in a way that rivals the campy 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage, in which a team of physicians is miniaturized and injected…
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research In August 2010, Bing Maps rolled out the first images from its Global Ortho program, a multiyear mapping project launched that spring to provide the Bing Maps platform and consumer website with consistently high-quality aerial-photo images of the continental…
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center As the state geologist for Arizona, Lee Allison knows granite from sandstone, a syncline from an anticline. But he has lacked the ability to look through rocks to visualize the inner workings of the Earth. Until now.…
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research During Interspeech 2011, the 12th annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association being held in Florence, Italy, from Aug. 28 to 31, researchers from Microsoft Research will present work that dramatically improves the potential of real-time, speaker-independent, automatic speech…
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center The human face is a complicated thing—powered by 52 muscles; contoured by the nose, eyebrows, and other features; and capable of an almost infinite range of expressions, from joy to anger to sorrow to puzzlement. Perhaps that…
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research Not long ago, Internet content was mostly text-based, with search tools supporting the need to index text efficiently and browsers providing the ability to search within a document for every instance of a keyword or phrase. Now, multimedia content…
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research Hallway conversations at UIST 2010 can sound like planning discussions for science-fiction-movie special effects, buzzing with terms such as “wearable computing,” “augmented reality,” and “smart rooms.” UIST, the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM’s) Symposium on User Interface Software and…
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research Since 2003, Microsoft Research’s Faculty Summit Design Expo program has promoted interdisciplinary collaboration between the design and computer-science academic communities, while fostering closer ties between Microsoft and design schools. Each year, Microsoft Research invites some of the top interaction-design…
