Microsoft talks future tech. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. It has turned into an annual event that Microsoft calls Techfest. Microsoft researchers from around the world gathered at the Redmond headquarters this month….and were joined by thousands of other employees….for a look at technologies to come. Rick Rashid, founder and leader of Microsoft Research…says among the highlights…a new answering machine of sorts that shows pictures of people who have called and displays information about what they were calling about. Then there is new technology using digital photos to map out 3D spaces…

"The idea is just to take a collection of pictures taken of the same location. Not necessarily at the same time. And the software automatically determines where in space the pictures were taken from and creates a 3D map of the environment in which the pictures were taken. So you can sort of navigate the space and walk through it. We've also developed some techniques for effectively assembling a large number of photographs and creating what amounts to a super photograph. We call it HD View of an environment. Multi giga pixel images for example of the city of Seattle, where you can go very deep into the photograph and see very tiny objects or step out and see the whole panorama."

Microsoft, by the way, has developed a new format for digital images called HD Photo…that it hopes will compete with or replace the JPEG standard. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.