Vaccine tracker, screen ad stopper...more coming

A three-woman team from the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) here has developed an application for Windows Phone 7, named the 'Immunisation Tracker'.

Also referred to as a 'Code for Her', it's a Windows Phone 7 application aimed at making a mother's life easier on vaccinations for a child; it, clearly, can be used for other reminder-applications on what a child needs.

With this app, a woman only needs to input the date of birth of the child. The app provides the rest of the information, such as the kinds of vaccinations needed to be administered in a particular month and in which country. “This app could target a woman's domestic problems or anything that can help her,” says Varsha Sharma, senior software engineer at MSIDC, adding: “We already have a list of six countries, including India, that support data on this front. We are getting the data from a very reliable source.” She declined to elaborate.

Another innovation developed by one of the MSIDC teams is MediaPlus —a 'drag-and-drop' application that enables one to resize/zoom or move a video on the screen. “There are plenty of sites, including YouTube and Channel9, that display videos on a daily basis on the Internet. This tool (MediaPlus) gives a lot of power there. It can resize the video that you want to watch, move it around wherever you want to on the screen and also give a light-sound effect,” says N Parasuram, software engineer.

With MediaPlus, all a user needs to do is click on the MediaPlus icon and get it loaded. On gaming sites, too, there are a lot of advertisements that people don't wish to have interrupting their plays. The app enables one to 'crash' those ads temporarily on the gaming site's page, enabling the gamer to continue play. “MediaPlus is available on www.nparasuram.com. The entire source code hosting has been done from the MicroSoft open source initiative,” Parasuram adds.

These two innovations - Code for Her and MediaPlus - were part of the 50 ideas showcased at Microsoft's Garage Science Fair at MSIDC today. Conceptualised by Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, USA, three years earlier, it is aimed at encouraging grassroot 'after work' innovations among employees.

“The first edition of the fair in Hyderabad saw 30 innovative ideas, while this year's event is showcasing 50 ideas. India is one of the active communities (of employees) in these fairs. Cloud, mobile and Xbox Connect are the areas these innovations are primarily focused on. A few of these projects do make a big impact on the company's global products. Innovations in single-digit numbers from Hyderabad have been selected and are being incorporated in some of our global products, currently under development,” says Matt Hempey, principal solutions manager from Microsoft's US headquarters.

Meanwhile, Sharma, who practices yoga and is a fan of Baba Ramdev, is also planning to develop 'Yoga for Her', as part of the 'Code for Her' initiative. “I wanted to promote yoga and share the benefits of the practice with other women,” she says. Will these apps be commercialised by Microsoft? “It is the company that needs to decide,” replies Sharma.