Tired of your face? Use Face Swap to try your friend’s on for size originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If there’s one thing that’s certain about the Kinect, it’s this; Microsoft wants it to be versatile. Case in point, Code Space — the next extracurricular activity for the gaming controller which sees it teaming up with smartphones and laptops to present information on a shared screen. The project is aimed at presenting and exchanging code in developer meetings using a large display and simple hand gestures, though we could easily see this being adopted in both the classroom and the boardroom as well. In other news, the Kinect will be able to paint your house this spring, even if you may not be crazy about the final color…

Microsoft outlines Code Space, looks to include Kinect in conference rooms, PTA meetings originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s challenging to be the lone remote worker in a team where most of the members are located in the same office. You miss out on opportunities like impromptu meetings, informal gatherings at the water cooler, and most offline collaborative activities. The phone and the web are your only means of connecting and participating with the hub.

The good news is that many companies are now offering in-office avatars or embodied social proxies (ESPs). Basically robots that can be remotely controlled, the ESPs are a substitute for a remote worker being in the same building as the rest of the team. The ESP usually has a speaker, video screen, microphone, and camera, which allows real-time audio and video to be sent and received by both the satellite and the hub. It’s like having your own robotic avatar roaming around the office building.

We’ve previously covered these ESPs or in-office avatars here at WWD, specifically mentioning Anybots – which costs ,000 per unit. Similar products include VGo (,995 for the unit and a ,195 annual service fee) and the Texai Remote Presence System (no pricing information yet).

The costs of these in-office proxies tends to make one skeptical about whether the value they provide is worth it. Will companies get a return on their investment? And what benefits can we expect from using these things?

What ESPs can do for remote workers and hub teams

According to researchers from Microsoft Research and the University of California, Irvine, the continuous presence of the proxies in each team improved their social connections as well as their mutual support in work activities. The lone remote workers were easily available to participate more fully in meetings and impromptu discussions. This lowered uncertainty among colleagues and gave them a closer sense of proximity.

Other studies support this, including this recent study published by ACM Press. Researchers Min Kyung Lee and Leila Takayama noted that even though teams previously used phone and video conferencing, these proved to be too limiting because the remote workers were often left out of meetings and decision-making. With the ESP, “[...] remotely controlled mobility enabled remote workers to live and work with local coworkers almost as if they were physically there.”

The informal and spontaneous interactions probably contributed a lot to this sense of proximity. Based on the interviews with the participants, impromptu work meetings, worker availability, and planned social interactions were the top three activities that showed the most improvement. Impromptu meetings, which were usually for getting answers or sharing ideas, mostly took place in hallways and other shared spaces. This kind of spontaneity would be almost impossible with web-based conferencing, email, or chat, since workers would have to return to their workstations to conduct these types of meetings.

The researchers note that these spur-of-the-moment meetings could show commitment and build stronger social connections among geographically distributed workers.

Apart from more nuanced real-time interactions, ESPs also provided the most value during creative design tasks. According to the Microsoft Research and Univeristy of California paper, “Teams involved in creative design activities perceived a greater use value of ESPs, as they allowed the satellite members to more fully participate in the design process, inside and outside meetings.” Remote workers and on-location teams could easily participate in fast-paced design discussions. It was also much easier for both parties to communicate ideas visually via gestures, diagrams, and whiteboards.

The challenges of using ESPs

Apart from cost, there are a few disadvantages or inconveniences to using ESPs.

The first of these is the remote worker’s difficulty simply driving the ESP. Though this is learned over time, driving was usually done simultaneously with other tasks such as conversation or presentation. In the study conducted by Lee and Takayama, sometimes it was more inconvenient to use the proxies for meetings because they had to drive it to the meeting room. Though driving in itself wasn’t difficult, it consumed a lot of time. Remote workers then had a tendency to be late for meetings.

Experiencing network delays also proved to be challenging. When the internet connection is slow or unreliable, the delays made it hard to achieve the impromptu and nuanced discussions that the ESPs were supposed to provide.

There were also cases when the quality of the machine had an impact on the perceived quality of the worker. When, unbeknownst to the remote worker, the machine was too loud, colleagues perceived the worker himself as loud and disruptive to the workplace.

New etiquette rules were also needed to foster smoother interactions between remote workers and hub teams. For example, it was sometimes seen as a violation of personal space when colleagues changed the volume, orientation, or location of an ESP without asking the remote worker’s permission. Co-located teams, on the other hand, found it rude whenever remote workers did not drive their ESP away at the end of a conversation — even if they were no longer paying attention to whatever went on around their ESPs.

Who benefits the most?

Based on the studies and tests done on ESPs so far, it seems that these devices are best used when the company setup includes a hub office where most workers are co-located, while having only very few remote workers. Fast and reliable Internet connections should also be available to both the hub office and the remote workers — without it, your team won’t experience the benefit of richer real-time interactions.

It’s clear that ESPs have their benefits, but whether these benefits are worth it would depend on how your team works and the kind of work that you do.

Do you think ESPs would be useful in your company? Why or why not?

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Anybots.

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Edit Note : This is the first of a two-part post. Part 1 will outline core devices and technologies, and Part 2 tomorrow will look at networks and systems.

I had the privilege of keynoting the inaugural IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium last week in Hong Kong, where I listened to the world’s leading academics, engineers, executives, and government officials project what the world will look like in 2020. Their predictions were based on revolutionary technologies for processing, sensors, and displays becoming integrated into global systems that can do everything from enhance the human experience to improve environmental sustainability.

Predicting the future is a challenge, since its course depends on rapidly changing technologies integrated into large-scale systems whose acceptance will depend on human behavior, global demographics, and macroeconomic and political dynamics. Nevertheless, the IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium helped provide a glimpse into the possible. As Rico Malvar, chief scientist of Microsoft Research pointed out, today’s innovative new products such as Microsoft’s Kinect require interdisciplinary collaboration. In the case of the Kinect, that collaboration spanned computer vision, machine learning, human computer interaction, speech recognition, and more.

The components

Intel's new 3-D transistors at 22nm.

I began my keynote by reviewing a number of disruptive technologies that are surprisingly far along. These include Intel’s “Ivy Bridge” Tri-Gate 3-D transistors, which are built vertically like a skyscraper instead of horizontally like a mall, and are being readied for production in 2012; quantum computers, which are no longer just a theoretical concept, but are being shipped commercially; and the long-theorized fourth circuit element, the memristor, now prototyped by HP, may find use in replicating the function of the human brain (sub. req’d). Plus chips aren’t just for processing or memory: Wouter Leibbrandt of the Advanced Systems Lab at NXP Semiconductors, stated that NXP’s new sensor chip has the power of the original Pentium chip but fits on the head of a pin: beginning to make the possibility of “smart dust” sensors a reality. All of the technology means smarter processing power will be faster, smaller and cheaper.

The devices

Displays are getting thinner, lighter, higher-resolution and more power-efficient, using various approaches such as OLED and e-Ink. Experts such as Prof. Hoi-Sing Kwok of Hong Kong’s University of Science & Technology (HKUST) were confident that transparent, flexible, color touchscreen displays are, well, on a roll and just around the bend with existing prototypes continuing to improve.

If you like HD, just wait. While today’s 1080p displays have a resolution of 2 Megapixels (1K x 2K), 35 Megapixel displays have been already been fabricated, 100-Megapixel tiled displays are commercially available, and 287-Megapixel tiled video walls have been constructed.How much is enough? Kwok has calculated that a medium-sized room fully enabled with video walls at the resolution of the human eye would need 3 Gigapixels, 1500 times today’s HD. Such a room might be useful for viewing HKUST’s record-breaking photograph, which is over 150 Gigapixels.

One surprising challenge in building large displays is that distributing TVs at an economically attractive scale requires using today’s transportation infrastructure, limiting the size of the glass to one car lane wide and short enough to fit under an overpass. However, wall-sized flexible displays could be rolled up, shipped, and carried through the front door.

While today’s 3-D approaches have an uncertain future, Kwok believes the most promising 3-D display technology is electro-holographic (picture Princess Leia’s “Help me, Obi-wan.”) A challenge for large, high-resolution displays and electro-holographic displays is not just the display itself, but the processing power required to drive it. Moore’s Law and the technologies I reviewed above should help. Large images may not require large devices; Kwok expects every cell phone to have a pico-projector—a laser projector that can project onto a surface larger than the device—incorporated, the same way that every cell phone now has a camera.

It’s not news that touch screens are becoming popular, but the next enhancement will be “hover” touchscreens, enabling gestural interfaces without touch, where each pixel is also a sensor. Such technology was shown off last year and would require adoption by device makers as well as developers.

At the other end of the spectrum are very small displays. The next generation mobile devices may not be handheld, but perch on your nose, or float on your retina. Masahiro Fujita, president of Sony Systems Technologies Laboratories, outlined a concept for eyeglasses with transparent lenses that double as augmented reality displays, wirelessly linked to your social network and real-time information, providing you live information as you visually scan. It could offer details such as, “That’s the restaurant where Bobby had that great salad, and, it’s got a table free in 10 minutes!”, or, as Jian Ma, chief scientist of the Wuxi Sensing Institute wryly observed, could alert a traveler that “your luggage is no longer with you.”

The next step is the wireless contact lens display, which is already under development. Ultimately, though, devices won’t be something we wear, but something we implant. Brain-computer interfaces that let us control devices using our mind (PDF), or directly stimulate the cortex for artificial vision have been built.

Sound is also important. Fujita of Sony demonstrated a 7.1 channel sound system with “high” front speakers and a “high” mix, enabling sound sources to traverse not only left to right, but also top to bottom. If that’s not enough, NHK has been experimenting with 22.2 channel sound that delivers more surround sound with 24 speakers. Next-generation gaming and entertainment will leverage all of these approaches: Fujita played a cinema-quality video of racing cars, challenging the audience to determine which components were real and which were computer-generated (answer: everything was CGI), pointing out that the vehicle dynamics (bouncing, traction) could be generated interactively in real time.

So what does all this mean for the networks and the backend systems? Please read Part 2 on Sunday for the details.

Joe Weinman leads Communications, Media, and Entertainment Industry Solutions for Hewlett-Packard. The views expressed herein are his own.

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If you ever get tired of poking away at your smartphone’s screen like a doorbell, you’re not alone. The forward-looking folks over at Microsoft Research have been working away at a new touchscreen system designed pick up on more natural, whole-hand movements, effectively allowing users to break free from the finger-based paradigm that governs most tactile devices. Developed in coordination with engineers at Microsoft Surface, the company’s Rock and Rails interface can detect three basic hand gestures: a balled fist, which holds items on the screen, an extended hand that can align objects (see the cell marked “d,” on the right) and a curved paw, around which users can pivot images (see cell b). This taxonomy opens up new ways for users to crop, re-size or generally play around with their UI elements, though it remains unclear whether the display will trickle down to the consumer level anytime soon. For now, it appears to operate exclusively on the Surface, but more details should surface when the system’s developers release a paper on their project, later this year. Hit the source links to see a video of the thing in action.

Microsoft’s Rock and Rails touchscreen lets you massage your photos with both hands originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 May 2011 00:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are so many programming languages that I can’t keep track of them all any more. Presumably each has specific strengths and weaknesses, but I couldn’t tell you what those are, nor under which circumstances any particular language is the best one for the job. Lots of people are still using Fortran, for example, which I was led to believe was as dead as the Dodo. Given the mind-boggling number of existing niche languages, it seems somewhat strange that a powerhouse like Microsoft, with their huge install base of C# and VisualBasic .NET would enter into the fray with a new programming language. And yet, that’s exactly what they’re doing with F#, available as a fully-supported language in Visual Studio 2010.

F# was developed by Don Syme at Microsoft Research, and is a variant of ML. F#, like ML, is a functional language. According to an article at The Register, F# is well-suited for the financial industry, as well as a good choice for parallel processing on multi-core systems.

Just how F# is better than ML, or OCaml, or other functional languages is not particularly clear. My layman’s guess is that it’s the strength of the underlying .NET framework available to F# that makes it a strong contender in an already crowded space. The Register article cites major savings in terms of lines of code, and I can’t imagine that the new language itself offers that much savings, so much as the list of supporting libraries that are part of the .NET framework help programmers reduce duplication and write more svelte code.

I’m not a programmer by trade so I asked a full-time developer friend of mine. While not specifically familiar with F#, he observed that F#’s support for Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and lambda expressions is a big deal. “Transformative” was his word, actually.

It’ll take quite a bit of effort to get programmers to see that F# may be a good choice for anything, given the saturation of available alternatives. Most interesting to me was this bit:

Syme also is convinced that F# has a future that goes beyond financial analysis. He sees it as ideal for web programming, thanks to its use of lightweight “agents” that sit waiting to react to an event such as a network communication.

So in addition to “traditional” .NET languages, and all of PHP, and Java, and good ol’ fashioned Perl, Microsoft is hoping to bring F# to the web development party…

“It’s clearly a niche thing,” is how my programmer friend concluded his remarks. Since Microsoft has made no real effort to advertise F# as part of Visual Studio 2010, I’m inclined to agree. And I guess Microsoft does, too.