Investing Internet Technology Windows Internet Tech. Compaq, which moved into the facility in May, threw open the doors to guests Wednesday to show off its East Coast research lab, one of three Compaq labs nationwide. A sort of fantasy camp for engineers, the facility employs a staff of 50 charged with dreaming up, developing and commercializing ways humans and technology can interact. For the giant PC and server maker, it's a way to find new applications for core technologies and ensure new revenue streams years down the road.
Imagination seems to be behind a lot of what goes on there.
Most of the ideas appear destined to show up, in some form, in consumer applications. Compaq has collected thousands of music recordings in a database and applied technology that can do simple indexing of, say, all the songs by the Beatles. But it goes one better. If you play a song you like, the system can produce a list of similar-sounding songs based on traits like tonal quality and rhythms. A possible use includes licensing BoogeeBot to music-selling Web sites to let customers search for music similar to their favorites.