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January 04 2012
Microsoft Patents a Way to Tell You Where Not To Go
Anyone who’s journeyed on foot through a strange city can confirm that there’s a lot maps don’t show. For instance, whether it would be a really bad idea to wander through certain neighborhoods with an expensive camera around your neck. Or whether there’s a low-lying neighborhood that will be about 3 degrees cooler than it is everywhere else. Those kinds of things.
Though you won’t find that variety of information on Google Maps’ walking directions, you might soon see it on Bing Maps. Microsoft has just received a patent on a method for incorporating information like violent crime statistics into walking directions, so users could choose a specific rate of crime that they are personally comfortable with when planning a route (bike gangs, OK, murders, no). Other layers of information, like temperature measurements or falling-apart sidewalks, could also make appearances.
A tool like that will have plenty of users, though you know people are going to be disgruntled when their favorite neighborhoods get slapped with a D for dangerous (prepare yourself for an Internet freakout, Microsoft). What we’re really looking forward to, though, is a layer that routes you past all the grocery stores with free ...
December 02 2010
Kinect Hacks: Turn Invisible, Make an Instant Light Saber, & More
The next generation of video game control is upon us with the release of Microsoft’s Kinect–which allows users to control special XBOX 360 games with their entire body.
Hackers have been eagerly digging into the device, especially since Microsoft’s Shannon Loftis told Science Friday’s Ira Flatow that no hackers would get in trouble for finding alternate uses for the Kinect:
“I’m very excited to see that people are so inspired that it was less than a week after the Kinect came out before they had started creating and thinking about what they could do.”
Here’s a list of some of our favorite, jaw-dropping hacks: Invisibility without the cloak, 3D video, Minority Report-style computing, real-life Star Wars, and the best shadow puppets you’ve ever seen.
5. Makes the best shadow puppets EVER:
Built in a day by Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille, this little hack replaces your hand and arm with a movable bird puppet. You can control the bird, and even make it squawk.
Video: Vimeo/Theo Watson
4. Real-time light-saber action:
YouTube user yankayan hacked his Kinect to transform a normal wooden stick into a light-saber in real-time, with real light-saber whooshing sounds!
Video: YouTube/yahkeyan
3. Cloak-less invisibility:
Kinect hacker Takayuki Fukatsu hasn’t revealed details on how he became invisible, but it seems like he probably just overlaid his body with a picture of the room behind him. The effect is still pretty darn cool.
Video: YouTube/TakayukiFukatsu
2. Real-time 3D Video:
This one might be cheating, since it uses TWO Kinect cameras, but the outcome is simply amazing. Placing the two cameras at a 90 degree angle to each other, he captured video simultaneously and made a manipulable three-dimensional video!
Video: YouTube/okreylos
1. Minority Report-style computing:
An MIT-based team at the Media Lab Fluid Interfaces Group hacked the Kinect to turn an everyday computer into a gesture-controlled Minority Report style-future machine, without even needing the glowey-fingertip gloves! The video below is from another group, the multi-touch company Evoluce, which is working on the same project. Their system seems close to fully developed–the user can click and navigate, and even use an on-screen keyboard.
Video: YouTube/evoluce1
Related Content:
Discoblog: Psychology’s New Phobia-Fighting Tool: An Augmented Reality Cockroach
80beats: 4D Invisibility Cloak Bends Time as Well as Space
80beats: The 3D Invisibility Cloak: It’s Real, But It’s Really Tiny
80beats: Holographic Video Device Could Bring Star Wars Tech to Your Living Room
Science Not Fiction: The Fundamental Problems of Minority Report-style Biometrics
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Virtual reality illusions produce out-of-body experiences in the lab
DISCOVER: Virtual Reality Fires up Research Efforts (video)
Image: Flickr/bm.iphone
November 05 2010
The Secret Knowledge of Taxi Drivers Could Be Added to Online Maps
Microsoft researchers in Beijing are trying to best Google maps by culling knowledge from a mythical beast known as the taxi driver.
The Microsoft folks are trying to improve their online maps using the cabbies’ deep knowledge of Beijing. The problem with typical maps and the directions they offer is that the shortest route isn’t always the fastest route. In big cities, cabbies know which side streets offer shortcuts, and what areas of the city to avoid at which times.
The researchers are trying to rake that data out of the cabbies’ habits by analyzing the GPS data from over 33,000 taxis in Beijing. The group at Microsoft Research Asia, led by Yu Zheng, developed an approach (called T-drive) to analyze and merge this cabbie data with satellite maps to improve the mapping experience and offer faster directions–even if the driver doesn’t engage in the lane swerving, honking, and pedestrian slaloming that give cabbies an edge. 
As Technology Review reports:
According to the Microsoft researchers, the routes suggested by T-Drive are faster than 60 percent of the routes suggested by Google and Bing maps (which provide essentially the same driving time estimates as each other). Overall, T-Drive can shave about 16 percent off the time of a trip, the researchers say, which translates into about 5 minutes for every 30 minutes of driving.
This approach could work just as well in other dense, cabbie-infested cities. The team is also working on projects that will incorporate real-time accident and traffic data into these “smart” maps.
Technology Review reports that other companies trying to improve maps and directions are taking data from driver’s cell phones in California and Boston, while a person-to-person route sharing application called WAZE allows you to share tips with your social network.
Related content:
Discoblog: Google Street View Goes to Antarctica, Brings Maps to the Penguins
80beats: NASA Satellites Use Lasers to Map the World’s Tallest Forests
80beats: Google Street View’s Privacy Blunder Just Keeps Getting Worse
Cosmic Variance: Self-Driving Cars
Bad Astronomer: Astronomer make first map of extrasolar planet!
DISCOVER: Big Picture 5 Reasons Science [Hearts] Google
Image: Flicrk/Boris van Hoytema
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