Web Concepts

Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ Category

Mark Micire, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, proposes using Surface, Microsoft's interactive tabletop, to unite various types of data, robots and other smart technologies around a common goal. It seems so obvious and so simple, you have to wonder why this type of technology is not already widespread.

In defending his graduate thesis earlier this week, Micire showed off a demo of his swarm-control interface, which you can watch below.

You can tap, touch and drag little icons to command individual robots or robot swarms. You can leave a trail of crumbs for them to follow, and you can draw paths for them in a way that looks quite like Flight Control, one of our favorite iPod/iPad games. To test his system, Micire steered a four-wheeled vehicle through a plywood maze.

The system can integrate a variety of data sets, like city maps, building blueprints and more. You can pan and zoom in on any map point, and you can even integrate video feeds from individual robots so you can see things from their perspective.

As Micire describes it, current disaster-response methods can’t automatically compile and combine information to search for patterns. A smart system would integrate data from all kinds of sources, including commanders, individuals and robots in the field, computer-generated risk models, and more.

Emergency responders might not have the time or opportunity to get in-depth training on new technologies, so a simple touchscreen control system like this would be more useful. At the very least, it seems like a much more intuitive way to control future robot armies.

[UMass Lowell Robotics Lab via BotJunkie]

By drawing on the ever-evolving organism that is the Internet, Engkoo (loosely meaning “English vault” in Chinese) should be able to stay abreast of changes in colloquialisms and idioms in both the source language and the one it is translating to. In theory, it should also be able to catch errors or mistranslations easier, since an error is unlikely to be prevalent across the entire Web.

When a user searches for a word or sentence in either language – Microsoft plans to adapt the system for other languages but this initial phase is focused on Chinese-to-English translation – the software driving Engkoo searches through the database for the relevant data and draws upon statistics to translate as accurately as possible. Where possible it links to the sources where it drew the initial data from and often can provide example sentences for a word or phrase.

Engkoo is also a multimedia experience. Computer generated audio translations exist for many English words and sentences to help Chinese speakers with their pronunciation, and researchers are cultivating a video dictation library so users can see the way native speakers’ lips move as they enunciate.

Next up? Ultrasound images that show the movement of the tongue inside the mouth, a critical step in learning pronunciation but one that is often hidden from plain view. Researchers are already gathering ultrasound data for the library, but those of you who find that kind of imagery less-than-savory, worry not; the black-and-white ultrasounds will be converted into cartoon animation to make them a bit more – how do you say? – palatable.

There’s also a mobile app in the works that will run on Windows phones – other mobile OS types are being considered – that allows for translation on the go. Which means perhaps we’re seeing the first real baby steps toward the universal translator you can keep in your pocket for real-time translation of any language into your own.

[WSJ]

The software giant’s Terapixel project stitched together 1,791 pairs of red-light and blue-light plates from telescopes in California and Australia. The result is the map above, which covers the night sky of the northern and southern hemispheres.

Using WorldWide Telescope and Bing maps, you can zoom in on the cosmos, peering through the dust of the Milky Way to distant galaxies. Microsoft announced Terapixel July 13 at its annual Research Faculty Summit.

To view every pixel of the image, you'd need a half-million high-definition televisions. If you tried to print it, the document would extend the length of a football field, Microsoft says.

The project required re-computing all the image data collected by the Digitized Sky Survey during the past 50 years. The images, produced by the Palomar telescope in California and the Schmidt telescope in Australia, each cover an area of the cosmos six and a half degrees square.

The map’s quality and clarity stems from computerized changes to the original images, which have varying levels of brightness, color saturation, noise and vignetting, which is darkening of the corners.

Developers ran parallel code on 512 computer cores in a Windows High Performance Computing cluster, and were able to process the raw digitized data in about half a day, according to Microsoft. Once the files were decompressed, they had to undergo some changes to correct the vignetting problem. Red and blue plates had to be precisely aligned to make a color image, and then everything had to be stitched together, which took about three more hours.

Terapixel then used an image optimization program to create a seamless, spherical panorama of the sky. That took about four hours, according to Microsoft.

The final image is 802 GB.

[Microsoft Research via HPCWire]

NASA scientists have been crunching data for three years on more than 100 computers to come up with the brand-new Mars map. Its image collection spans the Viking orbiters nearly 40 years ago to the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is still snapping pictures.

NASA says it was looking for a way to share its wealth of Mars images, and WorldWide Telescope was a good fit. To use it, you have to download the PC-only free program, or use a Web client.

NASA says the map may lead to new scientific discoveries.

The program lets you fly through a 3-D rendering of Victoria Crater, soar past Olympus Mons and examine rock formations with surface-level detail.

In some Martian locales, you can right-click an image, and you'll find Web pages for the missions that captured them.

The 3-D effect is derived from information provided by an instrument called MOLA, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, which flew on the Mars Global Surveyor. Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., combined the data with regular images to come up with 3-D views.

The images themselves reside on the Nebula cloud at NASA-Ames.

Two NASA scientists also offer video tours. James Garvin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., walks viewers through the geological history of Mars and discusses three possible landing sites for human missions there. Carol Stoker of Ames addresses the question of whether Mars harbors life, and discusses the findings of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander.

[NASA]

The 2.5 million 3-D HDTV sets that are expected to land in homes this year might seem like a lot, but it's really only a drop in the TV bucket. Early adopters will always exist, but this current wave of next-gen home-theater gear has more standing in its way than price. Who wants to wear those glasses? (Especially when most 3-D TV packages only come with two pairs, with extras running at least $50 a pop.) Doesn't exactly make for the best 3-D World Cup viewing party, now does it?

We've seen small-scale glasses-free 3-D displays before, like the LCD screen on Fuji's 3-D camera that use light directed at each eye individually to deliver a stereoscopic image. Microsoft's display does a similar trick, but on a much larger scale. Their lens has a series of LEDs along the bottom edge of the screen that switch off and on rapidly and at varying angles to control where the light goes.

The screen can deliver a 3-D image to two different viewers' eyes at once. In order to do so, its onboard computer has to track their eyes to target the light to each individual. In the past, such systems have been very bulky to account for air space needed between the lens and projector; Microsoft's design, though, uses a lens that tapers from 11 millimeters thick at the top to six millimeters at the bottom. This taper means that the light can travel through the lens instead of thin air, Applied Sciences Group Director Steven Bathiche told Technology Review, meaning the entire setup can substantially shrink in size.

Light from the diodes enters the lens along the bottom and bounces through the lens until it reaches the proper viewing angle, at which point it escapes.

Though the setup currently only has a viewing angle of about 20 to 40 degrees, it's still early in the development stages. One day the lens could oust the now-conventional backlight in LCD HDTVs to bring home a glasses-less screen.

[Technology Review]

Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates' successor as chief architect at Microsoft, gave the keynote address at Microsoft's Mix Conference in Las Vegas. Ozzie explained that online advertising will play a crucial role in Microsoft's web strategy. While he did not rule out paid subscriptions for special software services, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect did say that the company would mainly finance its web investments from advertising. This, he said, is one of the main reasons why Microsoft is working so hard to take over Yahoo. He did not, however, wish to comment on the tug-of-war that has resulted from Microsoft's attempt to take over the search engine and media provider.

When he addresses the Mix audience on Thursday, CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to provide more details on such issues, especially now that Yahoo plans to fend off a hostile takeover by restructuring its supervisory board. Yahoo, number two on the online advertising market, is also reported to be negotiating with AOL, Disney, and News Corp. about possible holdings as alternatives. In February, Microsoft offered Yahoo nearly 45 billion dollars, which the company declined.

Ozzie focused more on Microsoft's plans to restructure its software portfolio to get more users to switch to Windows Live and other services. He explained that the entire software portfolio would be redesigned to provide greater symmetry between locally installed software, SaaS architectures, and Web services. Windows Live Workspace, which enables Internet-based access and storage of office documents, is to become the centerpiece for individual users of productivity applications. In contrast, the Sharepoint Server content management system will be provided for corporate users. Since the beginning of the week, Microsoft has been offering a web-based version of SharePoint Server that is not installed on corporate servers, but accessed via the web from Microsoft. Such services were also launched simultaneously for the exchange server e-mail software and the SQL Server database system. These services are reserved for a select group of users as beta versions at the moment.

Ozzie's keynote address climaxed with a demonstration of Silverlight 2 and Internet Explorer 8, both of which are available to all users for downloading as a public beta test. Expression Studio 2, Visual Studio 2008 and ASP.net MVC Preview are available for both of these programs as new developer tools.

IE 8 focuses mainly on interoperability with Firefox and Safari. Judging from what we have seen already, Microsoft seems to have done quite a bit of work. Special functions for the grouping and bookmarking of related websites provide some interesting ways to find bookmarked documents and preview updates of entire groups.

Silverlight 2 has an impressive new zoom function for animated websites and videos. Web developers also have a new set of tools to combine multiple images in one view, from where users can then zoom in on details. There is also a fast rewind and replay function for live videos, which was demonstrated on NBC's website for the Olympics. In a procedure called "adaptive streaming", videos automatically adjust to the conditions of the network connection and the target computer to provide the best playback quality for each user.

Silverlight is already available on mobile operating systems. A representative of Nokia demonstrated Silverlight videos on an S60 Symbian cell phone. Web developers can thus write software for PCs and mobile systems in the same programming environment.

Software giant Microsoft Corp. looks to overwhelm another competitor's nascent technology on Wednesday with the release of an enterprise server product that brings something called "virtualization" to the forefront of the IT industry.

In Toronto to announce Microsoft's largest enterprise software launch yet, chief operating officer Kevin Turner said the company developed its Windows Server 2008 software after witnessing how strong the demand was from the industry for virtualization tools.

Normally, chipsets residing in powerful computer servers only use 15% or less of their capacity, but virtualization software emulates the machine's hardware and makes it possible to run multiple operating systems without the need for additional equipment.

The benefits for IT departments are staggering. Instead of using eight machines to do one job, it can be done by only one, saving companies millions in IT expenditures, maintenance and energy costs.

"We want to help our customers save time and money," said Mr. Turner in an interview. "The ability to spend less time on maintenance and more time on creating innovative things to the marketplace ... the way to do that is to allow people to maximize their resources."

However, Microsoft is just getting in now and it does face established competition. The current virtualization market leader is Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware Inc., which already has about 85% of the market after popularizing the idea that you could efficiently use all your computers processing power.

While it's not first to the game, Microsoft's foray into the realm of virtualization is well timed. Only 10% of the potential market is already using the software and its value is expected to double from US$6.5-billion to US$11-billion by 2010, according to data from research firm Gartner Inc.

Yet Microsoft won't make an immediate splash on the market, said Drue Reeves, a vice-president research director with IT analyst firm Burton Group.

"In the short term, I don't think it's going to have an effect on VMware's [business]," said Mr. Reeves, "But long term, it's a different story.

"As Microsoft ties their applications to its operating system ... that allows them to capture a better portion of the market."

VMware is certainly not taking Microsoft's announcement lying down and is even taking a page from the software giant's playbook. The company announced agreements with Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc., International Business Machines Corp. and Fujitsu Siemens Computers to distribute their servers with VMware software already installed -- a tactic that Microsoft has perfected in ensuring its operating system is run on most of the world's computers.

"Microsoft is a serious and powerful competitor, but we're doing a lot of things to level the playing field," said Bogomil Balkansky, senior director of product marketing at VMware in an interview. "We do have the better technology and product-wise, we're years ahead of Microsoft."

Microsoft plans to sell its latest Windows Server product for about one-third less than what VMware's software costs. But customers will still need to spend a bit of time testing both software offerings before deciding which to use for their IT needs, added Mr. Reeves.