MIcrosoft today announced the formation of Microsoft Live Labs, a partnership between MSN and Microsoft Research to develop applied research programs focusing on Internet technology. As the name suggests, one area where Live Labs will concentrate effort is Windows Live, Microsoft’s forthcoming Internet-based application and services suite.
Live Labs will be run by Dr. Gary William Flake, now a Microsoft technical fellow and formerly head of Yahoo’s R&D efforts as well as Chief Science Officer at Overture. “Live Labs is a fantastic alliance between some of the best engineering and scientific talent in the world. It will be the pre-eminent applied research laboratory for Internet technologies,” Flake said. “This is a very exciting opportunity for researchers and technologists to have an immediate impact on the next evolution of Microsoft’s Internet products and services and will help unify our customers’ digital world so they can easily find information, pursue their interests and enrich their lives.”
Live Labs is expected to work on applications and applied technologies in the areas of multimedia search, distributed computing, data mining (a topic Flake worked on at NEC), machine learning, with an eye toward immediately applicable technologies which can quickly be put into the hands (and hard drives) of everyday computers users. Live Labs won’t be turning its back on academia, however, and plans to offer a range of grants, sabbaticals, internships, and fellowships to academic researchers and students.
Microsoft also announced it has hired Dr. Ashok Chandra to head up its Search Labs, to be split between Redmond and Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View, California. Despite being one of the leading online portals, Microsoft’s Internet search offers have always been an also-ran behind competitors Yahoo and Google. Search Labs will focus on areas of personalization, socialization, privacy, and user experience.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.