MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (AFP) — Collaboration trumped competition on Thursday as Microsoft researchers showed peers from rivals such as Google innovations being developed in their labs.
Microsoft Research engineers demonstrated a dozen projects, fielded questions and exchanged ideas during an afternoon "Silicon Valley Road Show" at the US software giant's campus in Mountain View, where Google is based.
"There is some cool stuff," Adobe Systems researcher Russell Schmidt said as he perused projects and chatted with colleagues, some of whom were longtime friends.
"It's part of the new Silicon Valley. Sometimes you are collaborators and other times you are competitors."
Technology on display ranged from software that detects spam-sending servers to machine-based language translation and using lasers to frugally convert almost any flat surface into a touch-control pad for computers.
Bilingual "built-ins" translated video subtitles, foreign language news stories and real-time conversations in Microsoft's free Live instant messaging service.
"The more it's used the more it learns," Microsoft researcher Lane Rau said of the software, which figures out word meanings statistically based on surrounding words.
"And with the instant messaging there is no learning curve. You don't download anything."
Researcher Raman Sarin's "InkSeine" software lets tablet computers be controlled pens instead of keyboards or a mouse and Frank McSherry's creation lets database data be mined for trends without revealing private details.
"You want people to be able to use information in aggregate but you don't want to blow it and reveal something specific," McSherry said of a challenge facing hospitals, search engines and others.
Andrew Birrell is tackling the problem of optimizing the potential of new, powerful multi-core computer chips with software that gets varied processors to work simultaneously on separate tasks.
Researcher Catherine van Ingen's team is focused on developing programs that help Earth-friendly scientists efficiently sift gems from the "landslide of data" available in the Internet age.
"My job is to look forward five years and find out where the dragons are and where the food is," van Ingen said as she reveled in the company of fellow researchers.
"It's wonderful to be face-to-face with others trying to do the same."
"I think it's great," Sun Microsystems researcher Lachlan Gregor said as he consulted with van Ingen. "It's good to collaborate."
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
