Todays keynote was exceptional. The topics were coming from Microsoft Research and although the first half hour or so was full of stuff mentioning how important Microsoft Research is to Microsoft and to the world, the remainder of the presentation was unbelievable good.
Sorry about the lack of pictures and videos this time; I didn’t have the camera ready. Sorry. The most cool stuff is at the end of the article so keep reading.
Keep reading to read about SecondLight
There was a talk about how MSR works in the field of medicine, helping researchers analyzing fast amounts of data. And although you really got the point that Microsoft’s technology is helping in that field, it didn’t feel really special.
There also was a talk about very tiny measuring devices for temperature and humidity and things like that, that are actually installed at the convention centre. The devices itself use about 4K of memory (remember that from the old days?) and only have a circuit board that’s the size of a quarter coin. It has a radio transmitter and, to give you a sense of things, there are about 100 of those sensors installed in the main hall. Microsoft has gathered the data about temperature and such during the last couple of days and presents the (vast amount of) data in nice graphical form. It really showed how the cooling system works and what the impact of the equipment, audience, and the cooling system is to the conditions in the hall.
Next, a new programming language for kids, called Boku, was shown. It uses a XBox console to let kids program a ‘games world’ and do really fantastic cool stuff using iconized commands. The speaker spoke quicker than a rapid firing machine gun, but what he showed was really AWESOME and I want one of those for my kids! This will be a very good reason for me to by an XBox (not quite sure if it was a PC or XBox that was used). Go look up the videos on Boku that are probably out there. It really was amazing to watch.
But, the real highlight of the key note was the stuff on what Microsoft calls SecondLight. Really DO GO find videos on that. It comes down to this. It uses a special kind of LCD and infrared cameras. The LCD can be made transparent by applying some kind of current to the screen.The effect is that the LCD will not only display the images as you know, but also lets a second image go through, to be projected on a simple piece of paper. And the fun thing is: this second image can be totally different from the image that is shown on the LCD. The effect is that you can display secondary information about (pieces of) the image on the primary LCD. (Side note: I just hear a fellow programmer calling home about this and he calls it “Freaking Cool”). You can hold a piece of simple paper just above the screen and show some detail information about the stuff that’s under that.
I find it hard to express in words, but really, really, go find videos and other information on this. It is freaking cool.
It really made me ponder about my own work. What a amazing boring job I have! I want to be working for Microsoft Research!
Bye,
Bart
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3 comments:
Cool.
Here and here.
Cool??? I say it's seriously uncool to have to hold up a peace of paper to reveal 'secret information'. Well, maybe 8 year olds playing spy kid would think it's 'neat'.
Grown ups would simply touch a button to make the extra info show up normally, on screen that is.
@Victor: the first demonstrations (holding a piece of paper to reveal the secondairy information) may not be practical. I am sure though that in time more practical things will emerge. The cool thing is that it actually works and maybe one had to be there to experience the coolness.
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