Meet Microsoft Garage! A Microsoft Community full of passionate individuals and cheerleaders that come from vastly different backgrounds, and bring with them a variety of talents, ideas, and interests to pursue things they love to do in their spare time.
Why Garage? Hmm… Allow me to put a simple question to you for answering the same. What’s common between Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon?
All born in garages! Surprised? It may be possible that it was on this premise we can infer the software giant was looking to find a spot of its own to help nurture that can-do, startup spirit and have an individual’s own startup within Microsoft. The result, on any given day at The Garage, numerous species of geeks, from business-savvy minds to heads-in-the-clouds tinkerers, Hackers, makers, artists, tinkerers, musicians, inventors, etc. can be found under one roof.
Ideas born in The Garage at Microsoft
Mouse without Borders
Mouse without Borders is a product that hands over complete control of up to four computers to a single user from a single mouse and keyboard. This means that with Mouse without Borders you can copy text or drag and drop files across computers. Bing Keyword Distribution Graph. As an advertiser, you may be managing thousands of keywords exploring opportunities to optimize them correctly and quickly. The Garage project – Bing Keyword Distribution Graph adopted by Bing has helped the advertiser achieve the result by allowing them to more easily track and visualize thousands of online search keywords.
Forgotten Attachment Detector
It was ‘The Garage’ where the idea for the forgotten Outlook attachment reminder was hatched. The feature now incorporated by Microsoft Outlook 2013, prompts users when they fail to attach an email. Microsoft developer Bhavesh Chauhan, the man behind the scenes, decided he wanted to be the one to fix the most common of email faux pas – the forgotten attachment. The Hyderabad-based employee spent evenings and weekends (neglecting his beloved cricket) to develop the Forgotten Attachment Detector. With some guidance and matchmaking from Garage members, he got the attention of the Microsoft Outlook team. His project became a feature in Outlook 2013, and is available as an add-in for older versions of the program.
BusAlarm
This Windows Phone app, created at a Garage intern hackathon, is designed to wake dozing commuters when they’ve arrived at their stop.
Codeflow
A code-review program now used by nearly 40,000 Microsoft engineers. The program was hatched over beers and developed in The Garage.
Next Lock Screen app for Android
Next Lock Screen app for Android is designed to enable its users to have a glance at their calendar, emails, text messages, & missed calls; connect to a conference call, and more with a single tap without unlocking their devices.
Big Names at The Garage
Todd Rawlings, who leads strategic projects and teams for Microsoft’s cloud services, is an expert in business leadership but pursues his special interest at The Garage. One of his current projects involves bringing in use Kinect, a pair of Oculus goggles and a quadrocopter to let pilots use their bodies to navigate and therefore experience the sensation of flying.
In short, The Garage is chock full of people with projects in various stages of evolution. Some have become features in Microsoft’s software and services while some are merely flights of fancy. Others, for example, Mount St. Awesome, are purely for fun.
Visit the Microsoft Garage to read the dozens of stories that can inspire and get you started or turn you into a Garage geek in an instance. In the Garage’s nearly six years, more than 3,000 employees have completed more than 10,000 projects all varying wildly in size and scope.
