Since 2009, Microsoft has set up its Garage program for its employees to work on projects in their spare time that interest them. The company opened up a building on the Redmond, Washington campus dedicated to the Garage program in 2011. This week, Microsoft released a new video that showcased what many of its employees have been doing in the Garage building, while also revealing a new section of the offices called the Maker Garage.
The clip, as posted on YouTube, shows Microsoft employees showing off their inventions as part of its annual Garage Devices Science Fair. They included a small robot arm that was made via 3D printing materials and a piano with keys that use water to move via a regular MIDI keyboard. Yet another Garage project in the video is called Rainman and Zoltar, which offers poker advice in real time via a "crystal ball."
The final part of the video showed the opening of the Maker Garage part of the offices, which will let Microsoft employees have access to 3D printers at any time to develop their projects. Microsoft has been hyping up the fact that Windows 8.1 has native support for 3D printers and that they would like to see this support to be as mainstream as desktop publishing is today.
Source: Microsoft on YouTube