NetworkWorld has a brief review of 10 projects happening in Microsoft Research which you can review online here.

These include a visualisation and mapping tool for disaster-recovery teams; a multi-touch table for social interaction; a comparison engine for trends in blogs and media reports; a screen that lets you 'reach behind'; and a robot receptionist (now, no jokes please about the calibre of some human receptionists). Some of you may already have seen Craig Mundie demonstrating these new software-based receptionists which are going to be trialled on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond.

All of these projects are worth a review, although I think there's other work of equal interest if you surf the Research team's pages.

Technorati tags Microsoft Research innovation technology policy creativity