WebProNews

First, a little one-minute note from my editor. I’m giving Marc Canter what he wants. More, shorter, pieces.

Second, you get a choice — this is of the Microsoft Research TechFest, which my camera got a personal tour around. The full one-hour tour (actually, only half the tour, the second hour — and more “Editor’s Choice” clips will be up tomorrow).

Or, if the full hour is too long, go for a short version, which includes just the coolest stuff. First short version is here (12 minutes). Second short version is here (16 minutes).

Either way, THANK YOU VERY MUCH to everyone at Microsoft who made this tour possible. Especially Kevin Schofield, who showed me around the floor (he’s the guy you see throughout the video).

Kevin is the guy responsible for moving technology from Research into the product teams, so he seems to know everyone working on Research and what’s cool about it. This is the first tape. It’s about an hour long, but you’ll meet some really great technologists who are doing some eye popping research. If you can’t handle the long version (a second one will come up in a few days) we’ve picked a few of the cooler parts and will put those out shortly.

What will you see?

1. 2:11: VIBE group shows off synchronizing via mobile phone research


2. 10:09: Andy Wilson shows off a cool set of apps that use video cameras in a new way (don’t miss this, it rocks!)


3. 19:50: Daniel Robbins shows off a new “tap UI” for phones.


4. 23:35: Matt Uyttendaele shows off HUGE (4 gigapixel or so) photos with a killer “tiling” system that displays them wicked fast.


5. 29:52: Linking the real world to the Web with pictures (killer camera phone research).


6. 34:04: Speech recognition for podcasts.


7. 36:50: Frank Seide shows video exploration and discovery for Media Center PCs.


8. 45:31: Richard Harper demonstrates a bunch of hardware concepts and trials for home users.


9. 52:00: Vibhore Goyal shows using SMS to blogging and research in India.


10. 54:25: Rajesh Veeraraghavan is doing research with farmers in India to find better education systems for them.

If you only want to watch one thing, don’t miss Andy Wilson. His stuff is so freaking cool. His demos are in this short video.