Once a year, Microsoft Research gives outsiders a glimpse of its high-tech frontiers: gizmos that transform your fingers into ghostly digits on the screen, or make you look like a Webcam celebrity ... viewers that let you unravel the inner workings of the cell, or explore the outer depths of the cosmos ... sensor networks that monitor how climate change affects glaciers in the Swiss Alps, or how the chemistry of life works at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Even though I work right on Microsoft's main campus, I'm usually counted as one of those outsiders - but today, I finally got my first glimpse at TechFest, a science fair geared for grown-ups.
Microsoft Research TechFest has been around for seven years, but until last year it was meant exclusively for the software company's employees. It's actually a cross between a science fair and a trade fair, with researchers showing their innovations to product developers who might actually use them.
Last year, the company opened up the TechFest displays for one day to potential customers and partners, as well as journalists and dignitaries. The same system was in effect this year.
Microsoft may be a partner (along with NBC Universal) in the msnbc.com joint venture, but we're treated pretty much like other journalists when it comes to press access. So, armed with my press pass, I walked over to Building 33 on the Redmond campus this morning, waltzed in the door and blended in with the crowd - which included representatives from NASA, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and a host of universities.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/04/730229.aspx
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