One of the technology areas that was of particular focus at Tuesday's event is one from Microsoft's front lines -- search engines. Microsoft Research demonstrated several projects that aim to improve Internet search, and at least one of those technologies -- which attempts to make searches more relevant -- will likely wind up in Windows Live Search.

That technology, called Query Projections, was developed by the Adaptive System and Interaction team at Microsoft Research in Redmond. The technology, as demonstrated by Jurij Leskovec, a Carnegie Mellon computer science student who worked as an intern on the project, creates graphs that map the relationships between links served up when a Web user poses a search query. These graphs are used to see how many of the top search results are actually the most relevant ones for that query, he said.

Dan Liegblig, who also worked on Query Projections, said his team talks daily with the Windows Live Search product team and hopes to use its work to improve the relevancy of results delivered by Microsoft's search engine. However, no timeline has been set for when that might happen, he said.

Another search technology on display came out of the Integrated Systems Team in Cambridge. That project, called InSite Live, displays a visual graph of a Web site's site map and can show, using graphics of pushpins or by highlighting parts of the site, which areas of the site deliver information to search queries.

This graph can be used to show Web site administrators what areas visitors are most interested in, so they might be able to provide better or more information on those pages, said Eduarda Mendes Rodrigues, one of the team's researchers.

While Microsoft may be trying to cook up new search technologies to compete with Google Inc., one area in which the company surpasses the search leader is in its open-door policy that lets outsiders get a glimpse of corporate culture, said one TechFest attendee. Opening up TechFest to people outside the company for the first time is one example of that, said Brad Neuberg, an independent researcher in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Something that's really refreshing about Microsoft is their corporate culture has really opened up," he said. "The joke in the Bay Area is that if you're at a party with someone from Google and you ask them 'What are you working on?' they will say, 'I can't tell you.' You rarely encounter that with Microsoft and Yahoo."

TechFest continues on Wednesday and Thursday, when it is open only to Microsoft employees.