REDMOND — When Microsoft Corp. researchers think about the consumer technologies of the future, some of the physical touchstones of today, like sticky notes and souvenirs, take on digital form.
Researchers from all over the world converged on Microsoft’s main campus Tuesday to show off their latest projects in a hall set up like a school science fair. All the programs and gadgets on display were works in progress, and only some will make it into real-world technology.
But even as the software maker tightens its belt to survive the economic downturn, it has pledged to continue spending money on research that doesn’t neatly translate into profits.
Researchers from Cambridge, England, traveled to the annual meeting, dubbed TechFest, with a series of prototypes meant for the home. One, called Family Archive, is the digital equivalent of stuffing memorabilia and photographs haphazardly into a box and tossing it in the basement.
David Kirk, one of the Cambridge researchers, plugged a thumb drive into the device, which looks like a portable kitchen cart with an embedded touch screen. Digital pictures splashed onto the screen, and Kirk could spin and zoom by dragging his fingers across the surface — much like how Microsoft’s touch-screen Surface table is operated.
The program lets people create virtual boxes to stash photos, and eventually, videos. It can also take a photo of an object placed on the surface and stash that, too. Kirk said prototypes have been placed in three families’ living rooms, with surprising results.
The Cambridge group also showed off a program to help archive digital ephemera, from photos to Twitter messages, along a timeline, and one that “hand-delivers” saved messages and reminders when people with linked Bluetooth phones stand in close proximity.
Researchers demonstrated projects that fall into a category they call “augmented reality,” or adding a layer of digital information to the physical world. Michael Cohen pointed a cell phone camera at a building facade. On the phone screen, labels popped up, and Cohen described a scenario in which clicking on one would bring up a restaurant’s menu. The underlying program matched the shapes and shades in what the camera “saw” to a stored image and its labels.
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