Microsoft facility a space to envision home, office of future

A woman walks through the Envisioning Center, where Microsoft has built a model home/office to showcase what it thinks are the technological directions/developments that will happen in the next five to 10 years.

By Janet I Tu Put a pan on your stove as you prepare to make a stir-fry, and an interactive chef on the big screen in your kitchen tells you a wok would probably work better.Take a sketch of something you’ve been drawing on your tablet, and swipe it over to a large digital screen that doubles as your work surface. Then get that sketch to appear on a huge wall screen so that you and a co-worker halfway around the world can work on the sketch simultaneously.Those are some of the scenarios Microsoft says could happen in the next five to 10 years — and has brought to life now in its new Envisioning Center, which opened this month.For nearly 20 years, Microsoft has had the Microsoft Home (also referred to as “Home of the Future”) in a building on its Redmond, Washington, campus. In that facility, Microsoft replicates a home outfitted with technologies that it thinks will be in use five to 10 years in the future.Since 2002, Microsoft’s Office division has had a similar futuristic workplace that includes productivity technologies.Now Microsoft has combined the two to form the Envisioning Center, a completely revamped home and office of the future, complete with a “third place” area meant to represent spaces such as retail stores and restaurants.It’s like a concept car, said Jonathan Cluts, Microsoft’s director of strategic prototyping. Not every single thing will come to be in five or 10 years, but “we’re going to show you a future that we believe in, that we are investing in.”Microsoft won’t disclose the square footage of the Envisioning Center, but it sits in the space formerly occupied by the old home and office, located on the second floor of the company’s Executive Briefing Center. Like its predecessors, it is not open to the public.Rather, it’s designed to give visiting customers and dignitaries a sense of where the company is headed, and to help some Microsoft employees think through products and services they’re developing.On a recent tour, Cluts and Anton Andrews, Microsoft’s director of Office envisioning, showed off the new digs, which were created with Olson Kundig Architects and design firm NBBJ.The new centre features more open, flexible spaces than the former “home” and centres on the themes of bringing people together, making people smarter, and using natural gestures, speech and touch to do things.The new centre also offers a clearer, more focused picture of how Microsoft is integrating the work of its various divisions and how that integration can play out as the company evolves from providing strictly software to providing devices and services.Kinect motion- and voice-sensing technology is everywhere. So are huge, multitouch screens from Perceptive Pixel, the company Microsoft acquired last year.Technologies from Microsoft’s Online division and Server and Tools business are evident in everything from search results to relevant information that pop up in various contexts.Open the door to the facility, and you’ll enter an open office space in which there are stations for individual work, brainstorming sessions and team collaboration.Content on the “team action wall” can change instantly, depending on the team or on the person who’s walking by the wall. A marketing person, for instance, would see a timeline of marketing decisions to be made, along with tools to help them make the decisions.The “third place” area includes a pop-up retail space in which a user can place a toy car on a screen to find out more about the toy by touching various areas of the car. The setup then allows the toy to be sent as a gift using the information already on your smartphone.In the home area, there’s a big window that can become a giant display screen; a kitchen with a digital whiteboard that can, for instance, display each family member’s calendar or an interactive chef that can be called up to guide you through making dinner.In the living room, more screens demonstrate how a grandmother in another state can read an interactive story with a grandchild. The grandmother is on one screen, and scenes from the story — which can change, depending on what actions the child takes — appear on the other screen.The new centre is built around Microsoft’s investments in three main technological areas, said Craig Mundie, senior adviser to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and a former chief research and strategy officer at the company:• Big data: the ability to synthesise huge amounts of data to produce information that’s useful to the user;• Natural user interface, in which people use natural motions such as talking or gesturing to interact with computers;• Machine learning: teaching computers how to see, listen, translate and do other tasks.“We never guess completely right. But we were probably closer to right than wrong in each succeeding generation” of the Microsoft Home, said Mundie, who added that some of the technologies displayed in earlier homes — such as digital picture frames — have come into widespread use.Despite efforts such as the Envisioning Center, though, Microsoft has frequently been dinged as not being innovative.Mundie doesn’t see it that way. “We’ve had execution challenges as opposed to innovation challenges,” he said.Those execution challenges have meant “we’ve had to work our way back” in areas such as smartphones and touch devices.But, Mundie said, “we at least have the capabilities” to be a big player in all those areas, as demonstrated by the Envisioning Center.“We are the most diversified company in terms of the ability to play across all domains of computing,” he said. “In a sense, we’re in so many things that people forget all the areas we’re in.” — The Seattle Times/MCTSamsung pulls out all stops with Galaxy S4 smartphoneBy Troy Wolverton Having grabbed the smartphone lead from Apple, Samsung now seems determined to overwhelm its archrival by announcing a new version of its Galaxy S4 smartphone that’s bigger and better and includes a large laundry list of new features.With the new Galaxy S4 smartphone that it announced on Thursday, Samsung appears to be trying to prove it can beat the iPhone not only in sales and specs, but in Apple’s bread and butter: software and innovation. But it’s anybody’s guess whether the company is taking things too far.Samsung’s event unveiling the Galaxy S4 is emblematic of the company’s ambitions, its desire to distinguish itself from Apple — and its lack of restraint.Held at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the event featured Broadway star Will Chase and numerous other actors playing out skits designed to illustrate new features of the Galaxy S4. It included a tap-dancing kid; supposed backpackers making their way through Brazil, Paris and China; and scads of lame jokes.The event was bizarre and over-the-top and in sharp contrast to what we’ve seen from Apple, whose events are typically understated — if overhyped.That’s true of Apple’s products as well. Each new iPhone has typically had one main feature that distinguishes it from its predecessors and its competition.The list of new features for the Galaxy S4, by contrast, is both impressive and overwhelming — and maybe more than consumers can get their heads around.It has a 5-inch screen, which is even bigger than its predecessor’s and dwarfs that of the iPhone 5. The display also offers a greater pixel density than Apple’s vaunted Retina Display.The new phone’s 13-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front cameras are higher-resolution than those on the iPhone. And unlike Apple’s phone, it includes a humidity and temperature sensor, though it’s not yet clear how that will be used.It’s true that many of these specs feel more like feature creep than real innovations. For example, if the average person can’t spot the pixels on an iPhone 5, then there really is no need to have a screen with even greater pixel density (and smaller pixels), because no one will be able to tell the difference.But to a consumer who wants to have a device with the latest and greatest hardware, those specifications may seem impressive.Samsung, however, isn’t content with just upgrading the hardware. Most of its presentation focused on the new software features it built into the S4. And it’s there that Samsung really may make iPhone fans jealous.The S4’s camera has several new features. One allows users to incorporate a picture of themselves — taken with the front camera — into a picture or video they take of others. Another will take a burst of pictures and incorporate images from the best of them into one collage. Still another feature allows users to erase unwanted people from photographs.But the software innovations go beyond the cameras. Perhaps the most innovative involve gesture recognition and eye tracking. Users can answer a phone call or turn a page just by waving their hand in front of the phone. The device will scroll pages when users merely tilt it up or down while looking at it, and it will automatically pause videos when users’ eyes leave the screen.The Galaxy S4 also includes a translator program that’s able to listen to foreign speech and translate it to English and vice versa. It has a feature called Knox that separates work and personal files and applications on the phone. And its video chat feature is now more like a video conferencing system, able to accommodate three-party calls, allow users to make notes on the screen while talking and stream video from both the front and rear cameras at the same time.It’s unclear whether any of these new features will catch on with consumers. There are so many of them it may be hard for the company tout any particular one as the primary selling point of the new phone.But it’s clear that Samsung is trying to show that the Galaxy S4 is not just as good as or distinct from the iPhone. It’s trying to convince consumers that it’s much, much better.I’m eager to play with the Galaxy S4 and find out if it is. — San Jose Mercury News/MCT

Mac computers not immune to malwareBy John Boudreau The biggest vulnerability to Macintosh computers is the belief among their devoted users that Apple’s superior operating system makes them immune to malware, experts say.“Some Mac users have this perception that the Mac is free from hacks and that is completely wrong,” said Zheng Bu, senior director of research for FireEye, which develops anti-malware products.Mac users, said Kevin Haley, Symantec director of product management for security response, “have let their guard down.”While the vast majority of malware is aimed at Windows operating systems, the growing market share of MacBooks and iMacs is making Apple computers a bigger target. In recent years, Macintosh computers have garnered about 20% of the US consumer market, said Stephen Baker, the hardware analyst at the NPD Group. “They are gaining,” he said.Macs going mainstream may be great for Apple’s bottom line, but it also makes the Macintosh operating system a bigger target for hackers, experts say.“We are seeing more and more Macs getting infected,” Haley said.The first computer viruses actually were aimed at Apple computers, said Andrew Conway, a researcher at Cloudmark, which works on Internet security problems. “Back in the day, the first virus appeared on Macs,” which was more sophisticated than Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS, he said. “You could write a virus on it, and you couldn’t do that on DOS.”Many Mac users have long assumed Apple’s operating system, which is tightly knitted with the hardware the company also designs, has stronger security than Windows. Conway, though, said there is no way to prove that is true.While Apple is good about fixing its vulnerabilities, “the Mac hasn’t come under the kind of attack we’ve seen with the Windows PC,” he said.The Macintosh operating system is “not a super-system made by super-people,” Conway added.What is certain is the Macintosh operating system is once again becoming attractive to hackers.Last year, the Flashback Trojan malware infected an estimated 600,000 Macs by appearing to be a browser plug-in but actually stole personal information. In February, Apple said Macs operated by Apple employees were infected with Java-related malware when they visited a software development website. The Cupertino, California, company did not disclose how many of its employees’ computers were infected or when.One of the biggest threats to Mac users is third-party software, such as Java, a popular vehicle for cyber thieves to infect Windows and Mac machines by writing only one attack code. In such cases, simply visiting an infected website that exploits a Java vulnerability can enable malware to get onto a Mac, which is what happened with the Apple employees, Haley observed. He called it a “drive-by download.”“In this case, (infected) Java software was used to download malware onto machines,” Haley said. “You would have no idea.”Adobe software is also another vehicle used by hackers to infect computers, Bu said.“Both Apple and Windows need to work closely with third-party (software makers) to make safer software,” he said. “Then they need to build a rapid process to quickly address issues.”Haley said Mac users can also take steps to ensure they avoid malware traps. Perhaps the most important move is to quickly accept software updates from Apple and other vendors, such as Adobe, which often close security vulnerabilities.“It’s a good idea not to ignore those,” he said, adding, “People are always good about computer security after they have been hit with malware.” — San Jose Mercury News/MCTFive ways to make Macs safer* Accept software updates from Apple and third-party vendors as soon as they become available. These often include security patches.* Do not click on unexpected attachments, even from e-mail that appear to be from people you know.*Do not click on suspicious links.*Be careful about clicking on links on Facebook or Twitter from someone who appears to be a friend “offering” photos of you.* Consider using anti-virus protection software for Macintosh computers.SOURCE: Kevin Haley, Symantec director of product management for security response.