Microsoft Developing Smartphones to Detect Your Mood

Microsoft is working on new smartphone technology that can sense your mood and automatically share it with friends on social networking sites.

A research paper written by Microsoft Research in Asia — and first discovered by Techworld Australia — reveals the company is experimenting with smartphone "mood sensors" that can detect how you are feeling. The technology — called MoodScope — would allow users to automatically share those moods with friends in real time on networks such as Facebook.

Some sensors measure light and acceleration, but MoodScope would measure the mental state of its users and classify participants as feeling tense, happy, upset, bored, calm, stressed or excited.

"[P]rivacy concerns aside, these moods would enhance social networks by allowing users to share mood states automatically," the researchers wrote in a paper.

"Users would be able to know better how and when to communicate with others."

Microsoft said this could help inform others of your mood before you speak with them — with advantages like knowing ahead of time that your boss is upset.

"Mood sensing can enable users to digitally communicate closer to the way they would in real life," the report read. "For mood sharing, an automatic mood sensor will not only improve the usability but also more importantly, lower the social barrier for a user to share their mood: we do not directly tell others our mood very often, but we do not try to conceal our mood very often either."

According to the report, Microsoft has already built a prototype that could infer your mood with about 66% accuracy, on average. In a study with 32 participants, the accuracy level of detecting a mood jumped to 95% after two months of training.

Microsoft said other services could benefit from mood detection, too.

"Video and music recommender systems such as Netflix or Spotify would benefit from using mood as an input to their recommendation algorithms," the researchers wrote. "By knowing the user’s mood and building preferences based on previously selected items, these providers could recommend different media to match the user’s current mood."

Mashable composite; image via iStockphoto, MrIncredible

Windows 8.1 May Include a Boot to Desktop Option

By Pete Pachal

SEE ALSO: The Philosophy Behind Windows 8, From One of Its CreatorsThe most recent numbers show PC sales dropping like a rock, with many blaming the radical changes in Windows 8 for scaring away customers. A new rumor suggests the drop has prompted Microsoft to consider reversing course on at least one aspect of the new user interface.

Microsoft may introduce a "Boot to Desktop" mode in the next major update to Windows, called either Windows 8.1 or Windows Blue, according to a post on WinBeta. A version of the updateleaked out last month, and someone who examined the code discovered that it includes a line of code for suppressing the Start screen.
Even before Windows 8 launched last October, many felt that throwing users into the new Windows UI at startup might not be the best solution for all customers, particularly those focused on productivity (i.e. office workers). Also, since the number of apps created for the new environment was relatively few (even the new Microsoft Office runs as a Desktop app), the benefits of always starting in the new UI were questionable.

Microsoft told Mashable it wouldn't comment on the rumor, but its position has generally been that the new UI and the traditional desktop work in conjunction with each other; they're not walled-off environments. The Charms menu, for example, is still accessible from the Desktop, and the two versions of Internet Explorer in fact share a lot of functionality on the back end, even thouhg they appear to be completely different apps.

Nonetheless, surveys suggest an option to suppress the Start screen could alleviate some users' fears of upgrading. However, the less time those users spend in the "proper" Windows 8 environment, the less developers will be interested in creating apps for that environment — the most likely reason Microsoft has been reluctant to include the Boot to Desktop option.

But if users are rejecting Windows 8 outright (as the PC sales numbers suggest), then Microsoft obviously needs to re-examine its approach. Will that include Boot to Desktop in Windows 8.1? We should find out for sure at the Microsoft BUILD developer conference in June.