NEW DELHI, INDIA: It always feels good to know about what new technological innovations are happening from India. And when one gets to know about 20, its a delight.

Microsoft Research India (MSRI) and Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC) demonstrated their latest research projects and products at the event 'TechXchange 2008' held at Microsoft Hyderabad Campus on 12th December 2008. The event was the second edition that is held annually to enable deep integration between Microsoft's researchers and products teams in India.

Dr. P. Anandan, MD, MSR India said that “ TechXchange is a platform that demonstrates the abundant talent and potential we have in India to become world leaders in technology.” He and Srini Koppolu, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director, MSIDC, jointly addressed the media at the event and also walked them through demonstrations of some of the latest technologies being developed by Microsoft in India.

Here's a peek at some of them:

Nericell: It is a unique project being undertaken at MSR, Bangalore that focuses on the monitoring of the road and traffic condition using an ensemble of mobile smartphones. When this softwareis installed on the smartphone, then it senses the road and traffic conditions like speed breakers, honking, potholes etc. It will relay this information back to the Nericell service that will aggregate this incoming information from various smartphones to create a traffic picture of the place.

Robust Location Search: The project is a good example of an area of collaboration between MSR India and MSIDC. This project takes a radically new approach to location search by using keywords to find places, rather than commonly used address rules, to answer queries. This enables relevant results regardless of the address type and structure and also enables cross-lingual address searches.

India Digital Heritage: Its a collaborative initiative between the MSR India, academia and the Indian government. It aims at synergistic use of multiple forms of media such as photographs, video and voice to create uniquely compelling 2D and 3D user experiences of Indian heritage for the general public, whereby one can experience a 3D walk-through around the heritage, with voice over of historical details about it and also one can zoom in and out of the visual to see the finer details of the heritage site. For the pilot project around 6,000 pictures of the Sri Andal Temple in Tamil Nadu were taken and technology applications like Photosynth were used to make it an interactive visualization of the temple.

Other products demonstrated at this event and which are going to be part of the Windows 7 were of 'Agile VPN', which gives users seamless VPN connectivity while switching over networks automatically when an underlying network changed, and 'Direct Access', which allows users to access corporate data and intranet applications by staying connected to the corporate connection from any location.

The event also showcased how India is strengthening its position as a global R&D hub.