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Microsoft's Innovations from India
At TechXchange 2008, over 20 latest projects and products were showcased, some of which will be part of upcoming Windows 7 and Microsoft Live Search
Rahul Sah
Thursday, January 01, 2009
It always feels good to know about what new technological innovations are
happening from India. And when one gets to know about 20, its a delight.
Microsoft Research India (MSRI) and Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC)
demonstrated their latest research projects and products at the event 'TechXchange
2008' held at Microsoft Hyderabad Campus on 12th December 2008. The event was
the second edition that is held annually to enable deep integration between
Microsoft's researchers and products teams in India.
Dr. P. Anandan, MD, MSR India said that “ TechXchange is a platform that
demonstrates the abundant talent and potential we have in India to become world
leaders in technology.” He and Srini Koppolu, Corporate Vice President and
Managing Director, MSIDC, jointly addressed the media at the event and also
walked them through demonstrations of some of the latest technologies being
developed by Microsoft in India.
Here's a peek at some of them:
Nericell: It is a unique project being undertaken at MSR, Bangalore
that focuses on the monitoring of the road and traffic condition using an
ensemble of mobile smartphones. When this softwareis installed on the smartphone,
then it senses the road and traffic conditions like speed breakers, honking,
potholes etc. It will relay this information back to the Nericell service that
will aggregate this incoming information from various smartphones to create a
traffic picture of the place.
Robust Location Search: The project is a good example of an area of
collaboration between MSR India and MSIDC. This project takes a radically new
approach to location search by using keywords to find places, rather than
commonly used address rules, to answer queries. This enables relevant results
regardless of the address type and structure and also enables cross-lingual
address searches.
India Digital Heritage: Its a collaborative initiative between the MSR
India, academia and the Indian government. It aims at synergistic use of
multiple forms of media such as photographs, video and voice to create uniquely
compelling 2D and 3D user experiences of Indian heritage for the general public,
whereby one can experience a 3D walk-through around the heritage, with voice
over of historical details about it and also one can zoom in and out of the
visual to see the finer details of the heritage site. For the pilot project
around 6,000 pictures of the Sri Andal Temple in Tamil Nadu were taken and
technology applications like Photosynth were used to make it an interactive
visualization of the temple.
Other products demonstrated at this event and which are going to be part of
the Windows 7 were of 'Agile VPN', which gives users seamless VPN connectivity
while switching over networks automatically when an underlying network changed,
and 'Direct Access', which allows users to access corporate data and intranet
applications by staying connected to the corporate connection from any location.
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Dr. P Anandam and Srini Koppolu addressing media
at the event. |
The event also showcased how India is strengthening its position as a global
R&D hub.
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Demo of India Digital Heritage project giving a
guided tour of Sri Andal Temple. |
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