Microsoft's TechFest this year is witnessing researchers who have gathered to converse and to reveal information regarding some interesting and emerging technological projects that the company plans to come up with in the near future.

Among the demonstrated ones, the most highlighted is the mobile version of Surface platform. This is a voice-recognition transcription system which facilitates auto-translation and some of the projects that turn a body into computer interface. The translating telephone, which makes use of Microsoft Communicator, is capable of offering a written version of a voice call conversation automatically and also has a speech recognition technology. The research proposal states, "Transcriptor! requires the use of a headset, and a powerful computer, and for now, an American accent".

Mozilla introduced second developer preview of Firefox, supported by Gecko 1.9.3. Noticeable is the disjointed Flash and Silverlight plug-ins from Firefox. Currently only functioning in Linux and Windows, this division will result in not affect on the browser if the two plug-ins crash.

In the fest, Microsoft made an announcement stating that, from July, it will no longer be backing the Windows 2000 and XP Service Pack 2 in July. It also said that it will issue a revised patch for the problem of the "Blue Screen of Death" that was faced in February.