Microsoft Research recently revealed some of the research projects its working on in order to ”speed the way to a richer computer experience”, and it’s not hard to see why Microsoft is not a leader in innovation.

More than a 100 innovations are being shown at Microsoft Research TechFest 2007, the company’s annual showcase of research projects. Microsoft Research was founded in 1991 and is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering.

During a presentation at TechFest 2007, Microsoft Research Senior Vice President Rick Rashid, moderated a demonstration of three key research projects:

1. A “World-Wide Telescope”, which allows people to peer deep into the heavens on their PCs
2. Mix: Search-Based Authoring, a new way to build and share digital content at home and work, and
3. Boku, an “innovative way” of using Xbox to teach kids how exciting and rewarding computer programming can be.

World-Wide Telescope allows people to turn their PC into “one of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world”. Well that’s Microsoft says, but actually, Word-Wide Telescope is an electronic planetarium based on tens of millions of digital images of stars, galaxies and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Until now, the images were difficult and time consuming to search.

Obviously, Microsoft is to create a Google Earth for Space. Admittedly that’s kind of interesting, but someone better explain to Microsoft that while Google Earth, and its own Virtual Earth, have some practical and commercial applications, World-Wide Telescope can never be more than an amusing diversion. Microsoft, take note, Futarama is just a cartoon.

Mix: Search-Based Authoring is being touted as a “living scrap book” that allows you to “pull data from many sources – different Web sites, the computer’s hard drive and databases – and integrate the data into one document that can be easily shared with friends, family members or co-workers.” Members of the group can continue to add content to the document, automatically updating it for the entire group.

Haven’t we been doing this with Microsoft Word for the past few years?

Last, but not least when it comes to lameness, Boku is an attempt to get kids interested in programming at early age. Using an Xbox, kids as young as four years of age can program an onscreen robot to interact with its world, travel around among various objects the kids create, and even eat an apple.

According to Rashid, there’s an ongoing and deepening crisis in computer science, and their goal is to “stem the tide by showing young kids the magic of software programming.” Do I even need to comment about Boku?

While these projects may have some merit, I’m so utterly surprised that they’re being trotted out by Microsoft Research as though they’re somehow ground breaking, or even that interesting. Have we really gotten to the stage in software innovation where the best that Microsoft’s research arm can do is come up with an online planetarium, a souped up scrap book, and a game for the Xbox 360?

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 3:03 pm under Microsoft, Science and technology.

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