BBC NEWS | dot.life | This was dot.life - a blog about technology from BBC News.Rory Cellan-Jones is the BBC's technology correspondent.Maggie Shiels is the BBC's tech reporter based in Silicon Valley. Update: Rory and Maggie have now moved to dot.Rory and dot.Maggie.

Microsoft shows off research wares

Darren Waters
24 Feb 09, 21:00 GMT

Want to know what the boffins at Microsoft are up to? Well, every year Microsoft's Research Labs around the world open up to demonstrate some of the more exciting technologies they are exploring.

Forty technologies from the many hundreds the firm is working on are shown to Microsoft employees first hand in Redmond, Washington, at the annual TechFest.

According to Microsoft, technologies shown at TechFest "have found their way into Live Search, Visual Studio, Microsoft Office, digital media technologies and other products".

Among the tech on show this year is a tool that enables small videos from devices like mobile phones to be "stitched" together into one higher-resolution video in real time (see photo above).

Also shown was an in-car dialogue technology called Commute UX, which is designed to let drivers ask natural language questions of entertainment and diagnostic systems.

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This is dot.life - a blog about technology from BBC News.

Rory Cellan-Jones is the BBC's technology correspondent.
Maggie Shiels is the BBC's tech reporter based in Silicon Valley.