Technology, Gadgets, IT, Games

The boffins at Microsoft Research have given us a glimpse into their crazy minds, and into what can be done by thinking outside the box, or inside it…

This cardboard dome houses an omnidirectional projector, and it displays a spectacular view of the cosmos. But that’s not the best part. The images can be manipulated by hand gestures in the air – just like Minority Report, and you don’t even need gloves!

You may recognise the origins of this technology as Microsoft Surface – the multi-touch coffee table that’s been full of promise but hasn’t made much of an impact in the real world.  I’m not sure whether this new dome has a practical application in a commercial or home setting, but I can see a ton of uses in the defence and space industries.

I don’t suppose it’ll be too long until this thing flips inside-out and we get a gesture controlled globe for Google Earth Bing Maps.

What uses can you think of for this thing? More pictures and videos below… Read more

The Center for Information Work at Microsoft concentrates on taking emerging and new technology and finding real-world applications for it. One product they have developed is the DigiDesk workstation, shown off at Convergence 07. The DigiDesk is a workstation intended for use at a manufacturing plant or suchlike, and it combines many managerial functions into one station. From this desk, you could check for errors on the system, see where stock is, calculate whether there is enough stock to fulfil any new orders, automatically order new stock, alter the schedules and rotas to accommodate changes and publish them directly to the web. It also includes a document digitizer (OCR), natural language input (speech recognition) and loads of fancy user interface gimmicks such as manual on-screen document moving and resizing. No word on when this would actually be implemented anywhere, but the concept is great. Video after the jump. Read more

Hanwang Technology have combined a mouse with a handwriting input to solve the problem caused by limited special-character keys on keyboards. Simply draw out the character you want to type into the middle of the mouse with the provided stylus, which slots neatly into the side of the mouse, and it will translate it into text. Such a simple and useful idea with a decent implementation is what gadgetry is all about. They get the thumbs-up from us.

Read: enet (Translated)