Microsoft Translator Hub

Posted on March 13, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://hub.microsofttranslator.com/SignIn?returnURL=/Home/Index
Microsoft Translator Hub empowers businesses and communities to build, improve, and deploy customized automatic language translation systems—bringing better and specialized translation quality to established languages, as well as the many native languages of the world that are not yet supported by major translation providers.

Powered by Windows Azure™, Microsoft Translator Hub is an extension of the Microsoft Translator platform and service. You can build a superior translation system easily, within a private website, by combining your translated documents with the power of Microsoft Translator’s big data back end. Once you are satisfied with your translation, you may share it

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Interacting without touching – Microsoft Research

Posted on March 13, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/touchless/default.aspx
Theme: Interacting without touching

Theme: Interacting without touching Understanding the properties, challenges and social consequences of touchless body-based interactions

Through our bodily relationship and actions with objects, places, and each other, we are able to express and create a rich variety of meaning and human value. Gestures, movement trajectories, spatial positioning, and proximity are all means through which we communicate, interpret, and control our world. With the emergence of evermore sophisticated sensing techniques we are able to interact in new ways with the digital world without touch. Proximity, orientation, gesture full body movement, and even the use of brain waves are all means by which we can interface with the digital world without touch. These new mechanisms open up opportunities for exploring new genres of experiences and applications in a variety of new contexts where touch-based interactions alone may neither be possible, desirable, or as engaging. The important concerns for this theme are to understand the properties, challenges, and social consequences of touchless body-based interactions and how to design experiences with these mechanisms that achieve value and meaning for people in everyday contexts.

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FetchClimate – Microsoft Research

Posted on March 13, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/groups/science/tools/fetchclimate/default.htm

FetchClimate is a fast, free, intelligent climate data retrieval service that operates over the cloud to return only the climate data you need. FetchClimate can be accessed either through a simple web interface, or via a few lines of code inside any .NET program. FetchClimate is intended to make it easy for you to retrieve data for any geographical region, at any grid resolution: from global, through continental, to a few kilometres, and for any range of years (1900 – 2010), days within the year, and / or hours within the day. FetchClimate can also return information on the uncertainty associated with the climate data and data sources used to fulfil the request. When multiple sources of data could potentially provide data on the same environmental variable FetchClimate automatically selects the most appropriate data sources. Finally, the entire query you ran can be shared as a single url, enabling others to retrieve the identical data.

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Microsoft Research Cliplets

Posted on March 13, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/cliplets/

What Are Cliplets?

A still photograph is a limited format for capturing a moment in time. Video is the traditional method for recording durations of time, but the subjective “moment” that one desires to capture is often lost in the chaos of shaky camerawork, irrelevant background clutter, and noise that dominates most casually recorded video clips.

Microsoft Research Cliplets is an interactive app that uses semi-automated methods to give users the power to create “Cliplets” — a type of imagery that sits between stills and video from handheld videos. The app provides a creative lens one can use to focus on important aspects of a moment by mixing static and dynamic elements from a video clip.

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Tools | new tools for new science

Posted on March 13, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/groups/science/tools/default.html

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Announcing Windows Azure price reduction for storage and extra small compute

Posted on March 12, 2012 by dwhite4580

We are pleased to announce that effective March 8, 2012, we are lowering the monthly cost of Windows Azure storage from $0.1793 per GB to $0.1601 per GB, a savings of over 10%.

Last month we announced a new billing model for SQL Azure. This new billing model lowers your cost per gigabyte by 48%-86% as you grow your databases greater than 1 GB. This new billing model also lowers the price of entry-sized databases that are up to 100 MB by 50%.

To continue our momentum of providing a low entry cost for Windows Azure, we have reduced our price of our extra small compute instances by 50%, also effective March 8, 2012.

Please note that all compute hours are converted into small instance hours when billed. So instead of reporting 1/3 of a small instance hour for each elapsed hour an extra small instance is deployed, we now are reporting 1/6 of a small instance hour. This results in a 50% lower price. Please click here for additional details on our different compute instance sizes.

This means that customers on our 3 Month Free Trial or one of our MSDN offers can use twice as many extra small instances per month without charge than they could previously. For example, if the offer provides for 750 small instance hours per month, you can apply these hours for up to 4,500 hours of extra small instances during a month.

We are excited to be able to share these positive changes to our pricing. For further details on our pricing, please refer to our Pricing Overview page. These changes are part of our continued commitment to deliver world class services in a cost effective way to customers.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Windows Azure Team

This message from Microsoft is an important part of a program, service, or product that you or your company purchased or participate in. Microsoft respects your privacy. Privacy Statement.

Microsoft
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA, 98052
USA

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Microsoft releases Robotics Developer Studio 4, bring your own Kinect!

Posted on March 11, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/10/microsoft-releases-robotics-developer-studio-4-bring-your-own-k/

“It’s been available in beta for a few months, but Microsoft has now made the final version of its Robotics Developer Studio 4 toolkit available for download. As before, it remains completely free, and it’s also now compatible with the release version of the Kinect for Windows SDK so you can build your own beverage-carrying robot like the one Microsoft shows off in the video after the break. Hit the links below to download the software or see a few more examples of what can be done with it.

Continue reading Microsoft releases Robotics Developer Studio 4, bring your own Kinect

Microsoft releases Robotics Developer Studio 4, bring your own Kinect originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Mar 2012 12:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments”

-Sent from Weave for Windows Phone 7

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earthzine

Posted on March 11, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://www.earthzine.org/

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Dallas Developers Do Demos (with Kinect!

Posted on March 11, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://usergroup.tv/videos/dallas-kinect-for-developers-demos

“Today’s inspirational 16 minute video is a overview of what 50 developers created in a 8 hour Kinect hack-a-thon. There are a number of interesting projects demo’d in this video. I think my favorite is the dog demo, but that could be because my dog is staring at me right now, looking for a treat (good dog… no, don’t eat the cat… good dog… wait until Mom’s left then you can eat the cat… good dog..). The Learning to Tell Time demo was also pretty cool too…

The point is is that developing stuff for the Kinect doesn’t have to be difficult, that in a bit of time, you, yes, I’m looking at you, can develop cool apps too…Dallas Kinect for Developers Demos

These are the applications that the developers put together in one day, after one day of labs.

Project Information URL: http://usergroup.tv/videos/dallas-kinect-for-developers-demos”

-Sent from Weave for Windows Phone 7

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Entering the HIVE (Highly-portable Immersive Virtual Environment) with NASA!

Posted on March 11, 2012 by dwhite4580

http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/kinect/Entering-the-HIVE-Highly-portable-Immersive-Virtual-Environment-with-NASA

“Today’s another inspiration video show off how the NASA Langley Research Center is using the Kinect to create the HIVE… I find it pretty awesome just how broad and varied the scenarios where the Kinect for Windows sensor and SDK are being used (and come on, it’s NASA! Inside the HIVE (Highly-portable Immersive Virtual Environment)

Team Location: NASA Langley Research Center

Authors: Nathan Walker, Jasmine Walker, James Farmer, Jeremiah Dunn, Matei Bivolaru, Shawn Martin

Advisors/Science Mentors: Nelson Hillyer

Abstract: The Highly-portable Immersive Virtual Environment (HIVE) uses stereographic shutter glasses to create a 3D environment to display 3D models and complex information. The design allows for ease of disassembly and transportation to deliver visualizations wherever they are needed. For the 2011 summer term, the HIVE team worked on forming a partnership with SERVIR to display near real-time environmental data such as MODIS fire data from the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) and earthquake locations from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). As part of the HIVE’s continuing goal to keep up to date with the latest and greatest technologies, the HIVE team began research and implementation of different types of interaction and immersion. One implementation was a new environment using the Unity engine to create more immersive and dynamic scenes. Another implementation was continued research and integration of Microsoft’s Kinect with the newly released software development kit to provide motion controls and head-tracking.DEVELOP’s HIVE on the Leading Edge of Natural User Interfacing

Team Location: NASA Langley Research Center

Authors: Nathan Walker, Jasmine Walker, William Taylor, Matei Bivolaru.

Other Acknowledgements: James Farmer, Jeremiah Dunn, Shawn Martin.

Abstract: The Highly-portable Immersive Virtual Environment (HIVE) uses stereographic shutter glasses to create a 3D environment to display various models or complex information. The design allows for easy disassembly and transportation to bring its visualizations wherever they are needed. The primary focus of the HIVE team during the Fall 2011 term was to perform several upgrades to the HIVE system. This included switching the HIVE from the antiquated Windows XP Operating System to the current Microsoft OS, Windows 7. The purpose of this switch was to allow for a more immersive user experience through the use of motion controls via the Microsoft Kinect and its Windows 7-specific Software Development Kit (SDK). The SDK grants access to the raw data streams of the Kinect and allows us to develop HIVE-specific gesture controls for a more natural user interface. This Natural User Interface (NUI) reduces the HIVE control learning curve to create a more user-friendly experience. By improving interaction with the HIVE, the visuals it displays will be more controllable and accessible to the general population, aiding the HIVE’s role as an information dispersal tool.

Project Information URL: http://www.earthzine.org/2011/08/10/inside-the-hive-highly-portable-immersive-virtual-environment/, http://www.earthzine.org/2011/11/10/develop%E2%80%99s-hive-on-the-leading-edge-of-natural-user-interfacing/”

-Sent from Weave for Windows Phone 7

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