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Microsoft shows off new technologies

Microsoft shows off new technologies

Microsoft has demonstrated a number of new technologies, including a sphere-shaped touchscreen device, at its annual faculty get together.

Sphere is a multi-touchscreen, similar to Microsoft's Surface computer, but it is round. Microsoft envisages that it could be used in a collaborative public environment, like a hotel lobby.

"There is no master-user position," said Hrvoje Banko, a Microsoft researcher who showed off the Sphere at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington.

That means that users standing on either side of the globe could separately manipulate the device, viewing photos or videos independently of each other. But it was designed to ensure that such users could also interact with each other, he said. A user on one side can swipe a photo to send it around to the other side.

The Sphere was one of many devices on display at the event's demo fest. Ken Perlin, a professor in New York University's computer science department, showed off what he calls the UnMouse Pad. It looks like a mouse pad, but rather than using a mouse, people just touch the pad with their fingers to navigate a computer.

It's quite sensitive, Perlin said, so it could be easier on wrist and hand muscles than a mouse, and it could be useful to people with disabilities who may have limited use of their hands.

Graduate students from design institutions also showed off prototypes of concepts they developed as part of Microsoft Research sponsored classes. Nadim Matuk Villazon of the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico, displayed Foodmate, a system designed to help kids eat better.

Kids would wear a bracelet that they can wave over the barcode of a food product. The bracelet grows wider based on the nutritional value of the product. The bracelet will then shrink if the child does enough exercise to work off the calories from the food.

Foodmate comes with software that parents use to monitor the calorie intake of their children and the number of calories they've burned off. It also offers them tips on balanced meals and good nutrition. Villazon and his colleagues are working with the health department in Mexico to set up a pilot of the product, he said.

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