Who strummed the banjo and sang?

 

“Dressed in colors pink and pleasant,

Glows in the dark ‘cause it’s iridescent”

 

Yes. It’s Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. How many times have you struggled to find a movie line? Microsoft is fixin’ to help out. Have you heard about MAVIS? That’s slang for Microsoft Research Audio Video Indexing System.

 

MAVIS allows you to search full-motion video and multimedia content - like Google allows you to search the web. So what? Well, think beyond helping you win "Name That Tune," MAVIS opens up a world of possibilities. Turn up that hearing aid - 508-compliance on steroids. How about searching CCTV for dodgy schemes? The possibilities are mind boggling.   

 

Yes, I too feel the shudder of George Orwell. That said, MAVIS opens up a world of new possibilities that take us one step closer to HAL - for better or worse…

 

Now, Microsoft isn’t the first company that springs to mind when we think of innovation. Perhaps the folks in Redmond should open up the doors to their labs more often? What we have here is a failure to communicate…

 

There’s a lot more than Outlook and Word bubbling in Bill’s test tubes.