Microsoft Research Asia bares new breakthroughs
The new breakthroughs demonstrate how researchers are turning ideas into reality and defining the future of computing.
"Our mission is to transfer researches to products that could change the world. We focus our researches on areas where we believe we will make the biggest impact on people’s lives," said Harry Shum, managing director of Microsoft Research Asia.
The public display of the lab’s completed and ongoing works took place during the holding of MSR Asia’s Innovation Day 2006 here recently. There were notably quite a number of innovations in the area of information search and mining, prompting questions to Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief technical officer for advanced strategies and policy, if the company would soon go after Google’s market.
"Search is not a market. For me it’s a capability," said Mundie. "If it’s a market then Microsoft is already a player from the enterprise segment to the Internet. We’ve been integrating search into our own products like in the upcoming Vista (operating system). We don’t think of search as a market or just people typing queries. The world of search, up to this point, is a generic one. For consumers, that’s not what they really want. They want friendlier interface. We are looking at search that’s not just Web-based but one that extends the user interface to non-textual forms of data and provides domain-specific search which I believe will be important."
Some of the new search technologies showcased by MSR Asia included:
• Mobile Search – With the goal of extracting and presenting a more condensed search result to mobile users, researchers at MSR Asia developed Mobile Search, which breaks a webpage into different segments by their functions and level of relevance. Using this technology, mobile device users can explore Web search results more efficiently.
• News Search – A new multimedia news reader wherein text, map information, images and background music are incorporated to provide users with more efficient news search results and a more enjoyable news reading experience.
• Image Search Results Clustering (ISRC) – A new user interface and search algorithm that not only extracts images but also categorizes and presents them alongside search results. Using ISRC, a search for Jaguar, for example, will return images of the animal called jaguar in one group and images of the vehicle Jaguar in another.
• Product Search – A best-of-breed product search engine that includes a powerful toolkit of classification, extraction, integration, and ranking functions, effectively uncovering product information from the Internet for the use of consumers, especially online shoppers.
Some of the other innovations presented were particularly geared toward helping empower Asia by addressing requirements unique to the region. In the early days of MSR Asia, its researchers contributed to improving one of the most compelling computing problems faced by Asian users. The difficulty of inputting text using previous user interface models, particularly in China and Japan, proved to be a significant obstacle to the efficient and enjoyable use of computing devices. To overcome this, MSR Asia researchers worked with Microsoft product groups in China and Japan to improve both the Chinese and Japanese Input Editor systems.
Specific innovations showcased by MSR Asia researchers for the benefit of regional users included the Chinese Couplet Generator, Bilingual Speech Recognition, Chinese Painting Designs in Gaming Scenarios, and Handwriting- and Speech-based Chinese Input.
Tech transfers
MSR Asia’s 201 technology transfers in the last three years accounted for thrice the number of technology transfers it announced in 2003. Calling 2005 a watershed year for MSR Asia, Shum said that as their lab matures, the more it will continue to contribute new technologies to Microsoft products to benefit users around the world.
"In our seven years, we have reached 201 tech transfers or ideas that made (their way) into different Microsoft products. We have lots of innovation efforts in Microsoft and one thing unique we’re doing here is we share our research with the academe. Over 12,000 papers have been published so far, many of which have been accepted in international conferences. We have also funded projects across the region, collaborated with the academia, and have taken over 25,000 interns from around the region and from other parts of the world, who later moved on to work in the government and other IT companies, carrying with them what they have learned and experienced during their stay in our lab," Shum added.
Among MSR Asia’s 201 technology transfers are key innovations that can be found in products such as Windows Live, Microsoft XP Tablet PC Edition, Microsoft XP Media Center Edition, Xbox 360, Microsoft Office 2003, Windows Vista, and 2007 Microsoft Office System.
Some of the lab’s latest tech transfers were successfully completed with the beta release of Windows Live Academic Search. Innovations such as object ranking and extraction, online object integration services, and grouping results by object, enable users of Windows Live Academic Search to explore thousands of academic journals.
Windows Live Academic Search is just the beginning of a new breed of search engines employing vertical search technologies.
In addition, there are unique projects from the Beijing Film Academy, the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Shanghai’s Tongji University in the areas of multimedia, mobile and embedded technologies, and visual computing and graphics that are now part of MSR Asia’s extensive University Relations program.
Meanwhile, one of MSR Asia’s earliest tech transfers was a key feature that captured writing in ink. Smart ink analysis and novel ink user interface, which today can be found in Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, allow unstructured notes to become structured. This unique technology eliminates the need to write in strictly horizontal rows and gives users the freedom to capture their creative ideas by writing, diagramming, and sketching using their tablet PCs.
MSR Asia also works closely with Microsoft’s IP Licensing Team to license cutting-edge technologies to entrepreneurs and businesses across the region and elsewhere in the world.
Microsoft research
Founded in 1991, Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Its goals are to enhance the user experience on computing devices, reduce the cost of writing and maintaining software, and invent novel computing technologies.
Its researchers focus on more than 55 areas of computing and collaborate with leading academic, government and industry researchers to advance the state of the art in such areas as graphics, speech recognition, user interface, natural language processing, programming tools and methodologies, operating systems and networking, and the mathematical sciences.
"Innovation is really at the heart of Microsoft," said Mundie. "Through an average annual $6-billion investment in R&D, close to 17 percent of our total revenue, Microsoft is ensuring that the most advanced technologies find their way into the hands of Microsoft customers. Today, Microsoft ranks first in the world in terms of investments in computer science and software and 10th in the world in any category for research investments."
On a global basis, Mundie said governments bear the biggest burden of doing fundamental research. But even with the global decline in fundamental research, Microsoft’s computer science research continues to recognize that IT is at the heart of improving not just business but every field of endeavor, he added.
"Today, few companies invest at the level that Microsoft does in this critical area. We hope to foster innovation and our unrelenting drive to push ideas to reality is at the heart of Microsoft to diversify its business and face competition globally. Chance favors the prepared mind so we believe that through our researches, we can fully prepare the company for the future," he said.
MSR Asia, founded only in 1998, shares the entire Microsoft research organization’s vision and its role is not just regional, Mundie emphasized. "MSR Asia’s contributions and operations are on even basis with the company’s research centers in four other countries," he said.
Knowing that hiring and retaining talented people is key to the success of MSR Asia, Mundie called on the Chinese government and other leaders in the region to commit themselves to the development of their manpower resources, not just their vital infrastructure. He also asked governments in the Asia-Pacific to protect intellectual property rights, which he said "play a big role in the development of business and tech industry anywhere in the world."
Microsoft recently signed deals with the Chinese government and four large computer manufacturers, which Mundie said would improve software procurement practices in this side of the world. "It’s a long road but it’s the biggest step so far taken based on the contracts we have signed so China can advance as a knowledge-based economy," he said.
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