Microsoft Research touts the future of computing
WinInfo | at | by Mike
At a mini-trade show this week on the Microsoft campus, Microsoft Research members showed off some of the James Bond-like future technologies the company is investigating, including a gesture-based computer interface straight out of the Tom Cruise flick "Minority Report," in which the user moves onscreen windows by flicking his wrist. Dubbed GWindows (for Gesture Windows), this technology could see the light of day within a few years, Microsoft says (though I'm sure Apple will ultimately take credit for it). Other technologies showed off this week include MyLifeBits, a new personal information database that takes advantage of storage gains to record all of life's moments digitally; SkyServer, an astronomy database, PageTurner, which incrementally checks Internet searches to find updated information and No Spam @ Any Speed, which attacks the spam problem with an interesting cryptographic puzzle solution. If most of this stuff sounds kind of pie-in-the-sky, you've forgotten how fast the computer industry moves. And if the past is any indication, you'll also soon be reading yet another story about how Microsoft never innovates too.