Microsoft Research

created by tim_three

(thing) by illusionist (5.9 mon) (print) ? I like it! Sat Jun 02 2001 at 5:07:00

Microsoft Research is one of the larger groups inside of Microsoft whose purpose is to come up with the neat technology to put into Windows and into Microsoft products. MS's Research division, in my experience, is reasonably well respected both in academia and in the industry for being cooperative and a good citizen, unlike many other conceptions of Microsoft the company. I have had the distinct pleasure of working underneath this large organization.

The research end of Microsoft is spread out over four locations: Beijing, San Francisco, Cambridge (UK), and of course Redmond. This large organization works with many academic and industry groups to form the products that will obviously have a big impact on technology and the way people use computers in the future.

Innovations and enhancements that have come out of Microsoft Research recently include:

Microsoft Reader: While the initial idea behind this technology is not original, Reader is the first commercial application of the sub-pixel density rendering for LCD displays, making it useful as we transition away from CRT based monitors.
IPv6 for Windows 2000: The IPv6 implementation for Windows is published and maintained by MS Research. It is not otherwise supported through normal channels yet, but it will be increasingly important as the next generation of the Internet moves in.
SAPI: The speech APIs were originally developed by Microsoft Research as an add-on to Windows, but SAPI 5.0 will be standard on all Windows XP installations. This set of APIs allows one to manage and deploy TTS and Voice-recognition applications easily using a standard API.
Microsoft Agent: One of the more controversial UI elements to come out of Microsoft, Agent is a series of character animation technologies designed as a new form of interactive interface. The technology has had it's noticable problems with both usability, and public opinion.
Intelligent Help systems: The Microsoft support site, and the algorithms that govern the help system were originally designed my Microsoft Research, and are now a part of the everyday Windows experience.
Kerberos: While originally developed by MIT, the Kerberos for Windows collaboration was handled through Microsoft Research.

Microsoft Research has wide and varied interests, including many items that are not usually associated with a large corporation, let alone Microsoft. Their listed interests include:

Ubiquitous computing
Graphics
Distributed Computing
Networking
Security
Adaptive computing
Natural Language Computing / Natural Language Processing
Vision
Cryptography
Theory

Microsoft Research also houses a division called University Relations. The purpose of such is to try to connect with schools and form mutually beneficial research partnerships (many, many companies do this). UR has even been given permission to give out part of the heavily guarded Windows source code to selected universities with specific research interests. The Kerberos project was a good example of such a collaboration.

The Microsoft Research website can be found under:

http://research.microsoft.com

The Microsoft Research - University Relations website can be found under:

http://university.microsoft.com

printable version
chaos

Microsoft HTML de-bastardization	CYA	Bullshit squared is still just bullshit	amphetamine
intentional programming	navel piercing	Q*bert	Kerberos
Microsoft	Microsoft Research DRM talk	Using gzip to do computational linguistics	IPv6
TaskGallery	multi-threaded	computer science	Dr Pepper
research	OCD	Secret Fortress Building Inspection	Brainwashing
Microsoft Linux	Charles Simonyi	Microsoft Reader	Alameda, California

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