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The Inside Microsoft Research blog

> Groups > Research Technology

Cambridge Innovation Development

Cambridge Innovation Development (CID) is a small development group based at Microsoft Research Cambridge working in partnership with Microsoft Research. CID’s goal is creating experiences drawing on Microsoft research, and making those experiences available to broad audiences. This is accomplished through traditional technology transfer, incubation, licensing, and at times through direct product release.

Our projects range from short single-person tasks to multi-year, multi-person projects. Each team member can own any aspect of a project, including specification, program management, development, test, release management, and technical and/or business relationship management. Relationships include internal and external partners of all levels, ranging from individual contributors to CEO’s.

Cambridge
Innovation Development

Microsoft® Touch Mouse
This is a mouse with a twist: a built-in multi-touch sensor and gesture recognition software. Touch Mouse was produced in collaboration with Microsoft Hardware (including The Applied Sciences Group) and Microsoft Research, incorporating innovations from the Mouse 2.0 research project. Working with Mouse 2.0 researchers and Microsoft Hardware, The CID team produced an instrumented research platform for evaluating Touch Mouse’s gesture support, and implemented the final contact tracking and gesture recognition engine. The end result is a mouse supporting a family of gestures for working with Microsoft Windows 7.

AutoCollage
Photo collages celebrate important events and themes in our lives. Microsoft Research presents AutoCollage, an advanced computer vision and image processing program which automatically creates collages of your pictures. Face detection, saliency filters, and other Microsoft research identifies interesting parts of pictures. Advanced object selection and blending technologies seamlessly combine these pieces into a beautiful new AutoCollage. Pick a folder, press a button, and in a few minutes AutoCollage presents you with a unique memento to print or email to your family and friends.

Nimbus: Secure Peer Accelerated Downloads
Millions of people download files over the internet every day, and servers can’t always keep up with the demand. Secure peer accelerated downloads distribute authorized files to more people more quickly than any server can alone. Based on Network Coding research, Microsoft Research’s secure peer accelerated downloads use proven security technologies like TLS and digital certificates in innovative ways, protecting clients and publishers alike. We also use the latest networking technologies like Teredo and IPv6 to help computers communicate with each other in situations they otherwise could not. Secure Peer Accelerated Downloads with network coding – embodied in the Microsoft Secure Content Downloader - were recently used to distribute Visual Studio 2008 Beta-2 to customers.