Microsoft Research conducts both basic and applied
research. Our researchers push the state of the art in
computer science, which ultimately leads to new insights
for the industry and innovative products for consumers.
Great ideas can develop beyond Microsoft Research’s labs
through a variety of technology transfer mechanisms,
including our dedicated technology transfer team,
product incubations and intellectual property (IP)
licensing. Our philosophy is that successful
technology transfer is a social process, not a
mechanical or logistical one. It is about people —
relationships, communication and trust. With established
relationships and ongoing collaboration between research
and the product teams, technology transfer happens
naturally. As a result, new ideas and technologies born
in Microsoft Research are shared with Microsoft product
and incubation teams. But the sharing of ideas is only
the beginning. Once the technology transfer process
begins, close collaboration between research and the
product teams turns ideas and technologies into products
that can benefit consumers. Beyond Microsoft, research
technology is licensed externally through the company’s
IP licensing program, bringing innovative technology and
new ideas to the industry and consumers.
Dedicated Technology Transfer Team
Technology transfer is a top priority for Microsoft
Research. Early on, we created a technology transfer
team dedicated solely to bridging the long-range
research and near-term product development functions
within the company.
For 16 years, Microsoft Research has been
successfully innovating new technologies and
transferring them into key Microsoft products. Today,
our work touches nearly every product Microsoft Corp.
ships, whether by contributing new core technologies,
providing new algorithms, developing and sharing code,
consulting with product teams, designing new user
interfaces, creating better developer tools, or
contributing in a host of other ways. From the Answer
Wizard in Office 95 and more than 75 new innovations in
the 2007 Microsoft Office system to Windows Vista and
“Halo 3,” the success of this partnership continues to
grow.
The technologies featured here are just a small
representation of the Microsoft Research technology
transfers into Microsoft products that shipped in 2007.
MSN adCenter
- Ad aggregator pricing
algorithm. Pricing of advertisers now takes into
account the ads they display on their pages,
allowing merchants that sell goods and services to
users to compete fairly against ad aggregators and
spammers that simply display ads. As a result, the
sponsored links will not lead users to an endless
series of ads.
BizTalk
- The schema-driven
adapters are software components that enable
line-of-business systems to interface with BizTalk.
Researchers together with the BizTalk team came up
with some ideas for reducing the code that adapter
writers have to write, by developing a framework
that automates the data parsing and most management
activities, and asking the developer to specify the
adapter at a higher level of abstraction.
Community technology preview (CTP)
- The task parallel
library uses modern C# features such as delegates
and generics to offer an easy way for developers to
add parallelism in existing and new code that can
take advantage of multicore machines to speed up the
program.
“Halo 3”
- TrueSkill is a
skill-based ranking system for Xbox LIVE developed
at Microsoft Research. The system identifies and
tracks the skills of gamers to be able to assign
them into competitive matches.
- Lighting texture
compression algorithm. Microsoft Research designed a
compression algorithm based on signal frequency
analysis. If the lighting inside a texture chart
remains constant or varies smoothly, it can be
compressed greatly without losing too much detail.
- Parameterized
Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF)
under an area light source. Microsoft Research
developed an efficient and elegant Cook-Torrance BRDF that can render specular response under an area
light source, with nothing more than three tiny
global lookup textures required as storage. The area
specular component became a backbone of the “Halo 3”
specular model that seamlessly tied other components
together and with the incoming lighting environment.
Live Search
- Microsoft Research
contributed a ranking algorithm used for both text
and image searching.
Live Search Maps
- Landmark-based distance
estimation technology is used in the algorithm that
computes driving directions in
http://maps.live.com.
- Microsoft Research
contributed a tool that allows users to import maps,
layer them and share them on a Web site using the
Microsoft Virtual Earth platform.
Live Search Video
- Smart thumbnail
automatically indexes video by subject matter.
MSN adCenter
- French entity
identification can help the ad delivery engine
easily recognize the brand name to solve bad
relevance on a brand name query.
MSN Shopping
- Opinion index.
Microsoft Research contributed to the design of a
sentiment detector component of the opinionindex,
which intelligently crawls review sites and
abstracts the pros and cons as well as the topics
that drive the online conversation.
.NET Programming Language
- F# is an advanced
Microsoft .NET programming language that provides
the much sought-after combination of type safety,
performance and scripting, with all the advantages
of running on a high-quality, well-supported modern
runtime system.
Office Communications Server 2007
- Answering machine
detection identifies whether a person or an
answering machine is answering a call.
Office OneNote 2007
- Phonetic audio search
enables users to search for spoken keywords in audio
recordings. By means of phonetic speech recognition,
the audio search technology allows OneNote 2007
users to locate meeting recordings in which a
certain topic is talked about, and to narrow down
where exactly in the recording the words were said.
Office Project Portfolio Server 2007
- Constraint solvers
automatically derive prioritization scores and
develop intuitive charts to help effectively
evaluate competing investments from varying angles
utilizing constraint solvers.
Outlook 2007/Exchange Server 2007
- Computational puzzles
for fighting spam. Outlook E-Mail Postmark applies a
computational puzzle that acts as a spam deterrent
to e-mail messages it sends. The puzzle is read by a
receiving Exchange Server 2007 server as a check for
the reliability of the incoming message, improving
mail legitimacy and security.
RoundTable
- Active speaker
detection accurately and efficiently detects the
speaker by integrating the sound source localization
technique with visual information.
Microsoft Surface
- Multitouch and object
recognition. A hardware- and software-based method
for separately recognizing multiple objects that are
placed on a display surface.
Unified Communications
- The unified
communications vision, prototypes and much of the
intellectual property are based deeply in Microsoft
Research work.
Visual Studio Team System 2008
- Code metrics is a new
tool window that helps users find and act on complex
and unmaintainable areas within an application. The
feature calculates five metrics: Maintainability
Index, Cyclomatic Complexity, Depth of Inheritance,
Class Coupling and Lines of Code.
Windows Live Photo Gallery
- Panoramic image
stitching automatically and seamlessly stitches
photos into panoramas.
Windows Live Search
- Search recognition for mobile was enabled by the
development of the speech recognition grammars and
text normalization.
Windows XP/Windows Vista
- The Microsoft Windows MultiPoint software development kit helps developers
create programs that affordably increase the reach
of existing classroom computers. With MultiPoint, a
single computer can have multiple mice connected,
making it possible for groups of students to work on
one computer at the same time.
Windows Vista Network Map
- Link layer topology
discovery enables automatic discovery of all the
computers, switches and hubs in a network. It is
designed for home- and small-office networks, which
typically do not have expensive managed network
switches.
Windows Vista/Internet Protocol
Television
- Compound Transmission Control Protocol (CTCP) is a new transport
protocol that enhances the standard TCP in very
high-speed and long-distance environments.
Xbox LIVE
- Games platform.
Microsoft Research contributed a games platform with
persistent user identity that plugs into search.
Product Incubation
Incubation is an important part of the innovation
ecosystem at Microsoft. Microsoft Research collaborates
with several product incubation teams to deliver
cutting-edge technologies through its applied research.
Live Labs, the adCenter Incubation Lab and the Internet
Services Research Center are three examples of teams
that bring together top-notch researchers and product
teams to incubate and rapidly prototype technologies for
the Internet, advertising and search. With the
ever-changing pace of the Internet age, incubation
groups allow Microsoft to be more nimble and accelerate
the pace of innovation even further, so that we can
rapidly deliver Microsoft Research technologies to
customers and drive Microsoft’s overall growth.
Following are examples of 2007 incubations.
- Response Point
started as an incubation project in Microsoft
Research in 2005, and launched as a product in
November 2007.
- Windows Live
Translator translates foreign-language search
query results into the user’s native language, and
presents them in a unique and attractive bilingual
view. Windows Live Translator was a Microsoft
Research incubation.
- Microsoft Robotics
Studio was developed by the Microsoft Robotics
Group, an incubation team that is now a product
group.
IP Licensing
Technologies developed within Microsoft Research are
sometimes licensed externally through the company’s IP
licensing program. IP licensing is a collaborative
approach to bringing great ideas to customers and
driving industry innovation, product choice and market
opportunity. IP licensing presents a tangible business
opportunity to venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and
government economic development organizations to help
stimulate the development of local economies and connect
with the global market. By creating empowering new
technologies, enhancing our existing products and
services, exploring the frontiers of computing and using
these technologies internally as well as licensing them
externally, we not only are further helping Microsoft,
but also are bringing innovative ideas and technology to
customers — driving innovation throughout the industry
and enabling businesses to realize their full potential.
The following list is representative of just some of
the IP that Microsoft Research licensed in 2007.
- Graphics. Weta
Digital Ltd. offers world-class visual effects for
international feature films and commercials. Weta
licensed graphics technologies developed in
Microsoft Research to deliver newer, richer graphics
and special effects to audiences around the world.
- Audio watermarking
and identification. Audio watermarking and
identification technology licensed to Harper
Security Consulting AS of Norway helps its forensic
tracking of digitally distributed content. The
licensed technology consists of digital audio
watermarking and fingerprinting software tools that
provide for the marking and decoding of audio files.
- Mobile video
optimization. Biucasa Sri, a startup in Italy,
licensed mobile video optimization technology
developed in Microsoft Research that optimizes the
speed of a mobile device so that it can better
receive video communications.
- Detours. Six
European companies — Sophos Pic., InfoVista SA,
AppSense Ltd., SmartPeak, BioObservation System Ltd.
(PixAlert) and MSoft Ltd. — licensed Detours
technology to expand systems’ functionality.
- Digital photo frame.
Microsoft Research technology in Samsung’s 8”
Digital Photo Frame SPF-83V enables customers to
enjoy photos wirelessly in their home and display
photos from sharing sites such as Windows Live
Spaces or from personal collections on their PC.
- Worldwide Media
Exchange (WWMX). PlanetEye is for travelers
looking to experience the world differently. The
goal of PlanetEye is to immerse travelers in the
essence of a destination. The company took the
vision of WWMX and created a business around it.
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For more information about Microsoft Research:
http://www.research.microsoft.com
For more information,
press only:
Julie Woodbury
Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
(503) 443-7000
Rapid
Response Team
Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
(503) 443-7070
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