Blog category: Garage Projects
Three words sparked an AI breakthrough in restaurant operations: “Hair. On. Fire.”
That’s how an EcoLab® executive described decision‑making for quick‑service restaurant managers during peak rush—raw instinct, pure adrenaline, with seconds ticking away. That moment sparked a Microsoft Garage Hackathon project that became RushReady™, turning frontline kitchen data into real‑time guidance that helps managers boost sales per hour, speed of service, and profit margin. What started as a hackathon idea now helps....
Robotics for wildfire protection and mitigation
Amid this chaos of relentless wildfires in the United States during the summer of 2022, a hacking team in the Microsoft Garage developed a groundbreaking solution: Robotics for Wildfire Protection and Mitigation. The idea originated during Microsoft’s Global Hackathon 2022, inspired by the urgent need for advanced wildfire protection. Through relentless iterations, the team achieved remarkable technical breakthroughs, integrating robots....
Dream big, change the world
At Microsoft, innovation isn’t just a buzzword – it’s a way of life. Through The Microsoft Garage, employees are given the tools, resources, and freedom to dream big and turn those dreams into reality – and with big impact. It’s a space that empowers employees to apply insights from their day-to-day work, unlock their creativity, and collaborate across Microsoft on....
Saving the planet one hard drive at a time
At the 2022 Microsoft Global Hackathon, Principal Data Scientist Ranganathan Srikanth led the Secure and Sustainable Disposal of Hard Disks project, addressing the environmental and data security challenges posed by data centers. The team developed a robot to disassemble hard drives, enabling the recycling of valuable materials while ensuring data security by destroying sensitive data. This innovation builds on Microsoft’s....
Welcome to the digital preservation of languages: Microsoft Language Bank
The Microsoft Language Bank, an initiative born from the 2022 Microsoft Hackathon, addresses the urgent need to preserve the world’s languages, 40% of which are endangered. Spearheaded by a team of ten in Beijing, the Language Bank employs AI to develop text-to-speech (TTS) technology for underrepresented languages like Inuktitut, Kurmanji, Hakka, and Minnan Chinese. By collecting voice data and innovating....
Repowering coal
A seed of an idea can become a thriving forest. The Microsoft Global Hackathon, the largest private hackathon on the planet, is coming back again this fall. We’ll be sharing stories of some of the winners in the coming months, and we want to share this one with you. On a typical Tuesday morning, Conor Kelly, a 15-year Microsoft veteran,....
Garage project Journal becomes Microsoft Journal
Big news for enthusiasts of digital ink—Journal, a Garage project, is now Microsoft Journal. Microsoft Journal, an app for Windows, offers a delightful freeform personal notetaking experience that lets you take notes and reason through ink. Thank you for using Journal as a Garage project. Your input has shaped it into what Microsoft Journal is today. What makes Journal special?....
A new way to author and share Excel named formulas: advanced formula environment, a Microsoft Garage project
Advanced formula environment, a Microsoft Garage project, enables Excel users to write complex formulas efficiently and then share them in an Office Add-In for Excel. With the recent addition of the LAMBDA function to Excel, it is now possible to author your own custom functions using the same formula language that powers millions of spreadsheets today. Excel LAMBDA significantly expands....
Garage project Journal celebrates its anniversary with folders to keep you organized
Journal, released as a Microsoft Garage project one year ago, continues to delight today. It is designed—from the ground up—for personal journaling and notetaking with a digital pen. The Journal app is powered by AI to help you write, search, and annotate your ideas quickly and naturally. “We think of Journal and our other incubations as platforms to explore and....
Journal, a Garage project, adds tactile signal support for a more natural and intuitive writing experience
Ink feels more natural and gestures feel more intuitive with support for tactile signal capable pens and devices. Now, you can experience tactile signals on devices like the Surface Pro 8 and Surface Laptop Studio with our Surface Slim Pen 2, when you download the latest version of Journal from the Microsoft Store. Experience these tactile signals in two ways—ink-feel....
Garage project Journal makes your ink more powerful with improved lasso, multi-select, support for different languages, and more
Journal, a Microsoft Garage project, is an ink and touch-first note-taking experience that uses AI to help you stay in the flow of your writing. You can use scratch out to quickly erase something, tap ink to quickly select a word or sentence, and use search to filter to things you’ve written like an item you starred or doodle you....
A new digital assistant for your browser with Stay Current, a Microsoft Garage project
We view the browser as a “window to the world”. As we browse online, we have access to all kinds of resources and information. There are some tasks we do every day that are monotonous and can very much be automated. With Stay Current, our mission is to transfer the power to automate to the people with relatively little effort—users....
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