Microsoft Research & Live Labs will demonstrate three upcoming projects. These include: Teaching young kids to program, using the XBOX & XNA; viewing mobile information; and using modeling the structure of natural signals to summarize personal images, and create aid vaccines.

Demo: Boku: Teaching young kids programming concepts, using the XBOX & XNA.
Boku is a project about programming for young kids. Through a simple interactive environment, young children can teach Boku and his friends how to harvest apples, herd flying saucers, and play games. Boku re-imagines programming as an engaging participatory process, helping to teach the next generation that computers are for creativity first. This project is built using XNA for the XBOX, and teaches programming concepts just using the controller (not requiring a lot of typing).

Demo: Mobile Information Viewer
This technology preview demonstrates a new information viewing experience tailored for mobile phones and other small screen devices. The viewer design is utilized to enhance the mobile web browsing experience, providing users with a full ‘as designed’ view of virtually any web site on their mobile device.

Demo: Modeling Natural Signals: Images to DNA
By modeling the structure of natural signals, such as images, audio recording, DNA sequences, etc., we demonstrate how we can use similar techniques and algorithms to create summaries and predict patterns. We have used the techniques to “magically” solve a range of difficult problems, such as deriving personal media summaries, detecting spam, and creating vaccines for viral disease such as HIV or malaria.