Virtual Headphones

This article caught my eye. Computer Speakers for Your Ears Only.

Microsoft Research have developed an algorithm which effectively creates a focused beam of sound that acts as virtual headphones. This will mean that you can "target focused sound so that a person can walk around an office and hear" while on a video- or computer-aided audio conference call. Information about a person's location could be collected by hardware peripherals and fed back into the speaker software, allowing the virtual headphones to move with the user in real time. As explained by Ivan Tashev the Microsoft Software Architect who is leading this research. Now that is cool !