Posted by Rob Knies You might have heard of Drew Purves before. As head of the Computational Ecology and Environmental Science Group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, he has gained attention for a number of his projects, from modeling forest dynamics to FetchClimate, that use big…
Posted by Rob Knies Many businesses and individuals talk a mean game about how they’re changing the world, catering to customer demands, delivering bold new user experiences.And why not? It’s easy. Such claims rarely are held accountable. They’re easy to twist into whatever direction is…
Posted by Rob Knies Perhaps you’re engrossed in the ongoing enthusiasm and enlightenment that is TechFest 2013, but, for whatever reason, you aren’t able to participate in person. Never fear—we are delighted to offer you the next best thing to being here.Presenting the TechFest 2013…
Posted by Rob Knies Among the most engrossed attendees of the first day of TechFest 2013 had to be this year’s class of Microsoft Research PhD fellows, who received an invitation to the event by virtue of their selection to the program. The fellows are…
Posted by Rob Knies For those who have upgraded to Windows 8, here’s a beguiling project featured during TechFest 2013. Called Making Smooth Topical Connections on Touch Devices, it offers an alternate, graphical way to mine, browse, and search through a database.The documents within the…
Posted by Rob Knies TechFest 2013 began promptly at 9 a.m. March 5 in the Kodiak Room of the Microsoft Conference Center with a keynote address by Rick Rashid, Microsoft chief research officer and head of Microsoft Research. Rashid discussed the present-day shift toward more…
Posted by Rob Knies Welcome to TechFest 2013, Microsoft Research’s annual tech showcase featuring many new, fascinating projects that point toward the future of computing.Over the next couple of days, we’ll be shining a light on some of the high-profile projects being shown during the…
Posted by Rob Knies Setting an objective is often the first step to achieving it. Case in point: Image Watch.Image Watch is a Visual Studio 2012 plug-in from the Interactive Visual Media (IVM) group at Microsoft Research Redmond. The tool enables anyone building image-processing applications…
Posted by Elizabeth Grossman, Technology Policy Group, Microsoft Many of the amazing capabilities of technology today are made possible by research done years ago, and innovations and impact sometimes result from unexpected combinations and outcomes at unexpected times. One example is Kinect for Xbox 360,…
Engineers Week: it takes place every February, a celebration of accomplishments in mechanical, civil, chemical, and biomedical engineering. Why, I wonder, do we hear so little about the breakthroughs powered by computer and information sciences? And why do we almost never hear about the importance…
Posted by Rob Knies Last year, David Rothschild of Microsoft Research New York City used a versatile, data-driven model to predict correctly the results of the U.S. presidential election in 50 of 51 jurisdictions—the nation’s 50 states and the District of Columbia.Given the overwhelming accuracy—better…
I WANT YOU…. Anyone who grew up in the United States, as I did, is familiar with the famous World War II recruiting poster of Uncle Sam exhorting young Americans to enlist in the armed forces. (No, I wasn’t alive then, but the poster is…
