- Gates vs. Jobs headlines D5 conference
- GestureTek's Wii-like control could be next killer enterprise tech
- Space: Net's final frontier?
- Will machines do our thinking?
- Cisco to hit high-tech home run
- High-tech T-shirt does air guitar
- MIT Prez: Teach cooler stuff
- DEMOfall to land soon
- Kaboodle, Kosmix and Gravee -- Oh My!
- Your next (bus) ride?
May 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Gates vs. Jobs headlines D5 conference
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs to lock horns on the future of digital technology
Boxing fans had Ali vs. Frasier. Wrestling fans had "Hulk" Hogan vs. Andre the Giant. And now tech enthusiasts will have a chance to witness Gates vs. Jobs next week at the fifth annual D: All Things Digital conference, or D5.
Of course, the duo won't be engaging in fisticuffs (most likely), and any steel chairs will be used for sitting on, not whacking one another with (probably), but it's safe to predict verbal sparring and jabs (and maybe a low blow or two?) as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs share the stage and go mano a mano this Wednesday for "an unrehearsed, unscripted ... conversation" about the history and future of the digital revolution.
Rhonda Ascierto over at Computer Business Review has some entertaining predictions as to what the two tech titans will talk about and the predictions they'll make. She also makes this amusing observation:
"The pair likely will appear as somewhat of an unintentional spoof of Apple's TV campaign, which has a hip-looking slim guy representing a Mac and a tubby, dorky-looking man in a suit representing a PC.""Jobs, no doubt, will don his trademark black mockneck, blue jeans and trainers, while Gates will sport a slightly crumpled business shirt, khakis and disheveled helicopter hair."
Other speakers will include Cisco CEO John Chambers, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Palm founder Jeff Hawkins.
The D: All Things Digital conference, organized by The Wall Street Journal, takes places in Carlsbad, Calif. Alas, if you were keen on attending, it's all sold out, according to the event Web site, though there is a waiting list.
Posted by Ted Samson on May 25, 2007 02:11 PM
May 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
GestureTek's Wii-like control could be next killer enterprise tech
Think the upcoming Apple iPhone's touchscreen interface is "revolutionary," as Steve Jobs suggests?
Think different -- or at least beyond the touchscreen. GestureTek's Nintendo Wii-like motion-control input tech (see video demo) will advance the cell phone beyond telecom.
The technology uses the camera's input, gauging movement by comparing images in the stream, and it doesn't have to be run on high-end phone, says the company's co-founder and president, Vincent John Vincent.
But with smarter phones and advanced networks, it's not hard to envision more advanced applications for business with its possible multi-user interaction and collaboration.
The company signed a major deal with Japan's NTT DoCoMo to embed its tech on advanced phones last month, and it has a deal with Verizon in the U.S. for downloading its tech for use with two games. It works with 25 Verizon phones.
The company has been developing such technology, mainly using video surveillance cameras, for 20 years. But bringing the technology to mobile is its next frontier with games the obvious first round. "This is taking our [technology] to the cell market."
Games are the obvious "first splash" for the Wii-like tech for mobile, but as mobile applications like maps develop, the possibilities for turning mobiles into control devices seem endless to me.
John Vincent describes scrolling on maps, and zooming and panning, as obvious applications. And the iPhone with GestureTek technology could be very cool, with a possible "3D finger" capability for touchscreens.
Multi-user applications, such as playing a multiplayer game or collaboration on a project in 3D, could be made possible with 3G streaming videophones, such as those that are popular in Asia with carriers like Hutchison's Three and NTT DoCoMo, John Vincent says.
Where it goes next is open for market forces, and I could see it easily plugging in to enterprise applications or workforces in health care, just for one instance. John Vincent would not comment on if any deals were in the works on business applications.
Posted by Mike Barton on May 21, 2007 03:26 PM
April 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
News that the U.S. military will put an Internet router in space may mark the final frontier for the little network that could, with Iris destined to remove the link with terrestrial networks in favor of satellite-to-satellite.
From our news report yesterday:
To send a message from one remote terminal to another via satellite today requires the first terminal to send the data to the satellite, from where it is bounced back to an earth station for routing. The earth station retransmits it to the satellite on a different frequency, selected depending on its destination, and the satellite bounces it back to its destination. With the router in space, the satellite can pick the channel used to send the message to its destination. By eliminating the message's round trip to the earth station, operators can increase satellite capacity and reduce transmission times between remote terminals by using fewer hops and fewer frequencies for each message.
Seems a little full-circle is at play here too: "Iris is to the future of satellite-based communications what Arpanet was to the creation of the internet in the 1960s," Don Brown, of Intelsat General, one of the companies who will build the platform, told the BBC.
I hope that means the end of Internet monopolies such as cable in the suburbs too. But grander things are in the stars, the BBC report says.
With IP becoming more prevalent for use in space, Nasa and internet pioneer Vint Cerf have also investigated the possibility of using internet technology across the solar system.Although some work has been carried out on the necessary standards and protocols, no definite schedule has been announced for this interplanetary internet.
Surely Cerf's involvement in the movement means Google is thinking Interplanet Janet for the Internet too.
Far out? Talk back to us.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 13, 2007 01:46 PM
December 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Will machines do our thinking?
Two pieces of news about human versus computer intelligence is certainly highlighting the fact that computers are getting smarter. But the question is not how smart they get but how much decision making we are willing to give up to a machine.
First news report, ala "Minority Report," the futuristic crime stopping movie starring Tom Cruise, it seems Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, is actually working on a similar system.
If you recall in the movie a world government could predict who was going to commit a crime before they did it. Following the prediction the police were sent out to arrest the future perpetrator prior to the commission of the crime.
Reported by Micahel Matza, staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the article states that a University of Pennsylvania criminologist, Richard Beck, a statistician by trade, believes he can build a statistical model using data on parolees from Philadelphia probation department to determine who is most like to attempt or to commit a murder.
Matza reports that the system can be used by case workers to predict with 40 percent higher accuracy than current methods who will likely commit such violent crimes.
Like all statistical programs, the system plugs as many relevant data points as possible into a computerized checklist which comes up with a score of most likely parolees to commit "future lethality," reports Matza.
Statistical analysis is indeed scary, balancing as it does free will against predictability of human behavior.
While no one can predict what a single person will do under any circumstance, statistics that track behavior of large groups of people is used today, for example, by retailers to predict shopper behavior, so I suppose it stands to reason that the same models could be used by criminologists.
But what if it is expanded to include who is most like to commit a robbery, steal a car, snatch a purse? And what if this system is used as a tool before someone is given parole? Would they be denied parole if the computer decided they were likely to commit one of these crimes?
Sound crazy? Did you know that companies already use computerized tests to decide if a person is likely to make a good employee.
And there is no appeal from these tests. If you fail the test you will not be hired, no matter how good you might have looked during an HR interview.
When organizations rely on systems to do their thinking without an appeal to real people I think we have gone too far in our reliance on machines.
Second piece of news reports covered by InfoWorld reports on a debate on "Will a 'conscious' machine ever be built?" between Inventor Ray Kurzweil and Yale University professor David Gelernter.
The big question they debated as reported by Nancy Weil of the IDG News Service was on "are we limited to building super-intelligent, robotic 'zombies,' or will it be possible for us to build conscious, creative, even 'spiritual' machines?"
The debate and a lecture that followed were part of MIT's celebration of the 70th anniversary of Alan Turing's paper "On Computable Numbers," which was published in 1936 and is widely held to be the theoretical foundation for the development of computers.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 4, 2006 03:19 PM
November 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Cisco to hit high-tech home run
Cisco has been working out a deal to build a high-tech stadium for the A's in Fremont, California, in the SF Bay Area between San Jose and Oakland, reports say.
In an announcement Monday, Cisco said a press conference on Tuesday would provide information on "Cisco Field and ballpark village."
The region is rife with high-tech-branded sports parks: The A's currently play at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland. The San Jose Sharks' home is the HP Pavilion, and in baseball, the Giants are based at AT&T Park in San Francisco, IDG News Service reports.
But this one will likely go beyond mere title sponsorship. Last month, Cisco President and Chief Executive Officer John Chambers described a ballpark of the future at which fans could use their smart phones to buy electronic tickets and later to keep score and hit an instant-replay icon to re-watch a controversial play.
The company's new TelePresence high-definition videoconferencing system could be used to show the game in restaurants at the ballpark and let diners contact remote friends to watch along with them.
Cisco is looking to breakout of its stodgy enterprise LAN foundation with technology for home entertainment and for IP (Internet Protocol) TV, the IDG News Service report says.
Posted by Mike Barton on November 13, 2006 05:40 PM
November 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)
High-tech T-shirt does air guitar
Australia's nation science body, the CSIRO, has developed a high-tech textile-based T-shirt that gives real life to air guitar.
Check out the video: How the shirt works
Scientists at the CSIRO's Textile and Fibre Technology division in Geelong have woven electronic sensors into a T-shirt so that it can be played liked a real guitar.Movements by the wearer's arms are mapped and beamed by radio to a computer which interprets them and turns them into musical notes.
The wearer only has to act out playing the instrument to make sounds.
"The left arm chooses a note and the right arm plays it," said Richard Helmer, a CSIRO chemical engineer who led the project. The arrangement can be reversed for left-handed musicians.
"You can play with yours hands above your head," said Dr Helmer. "You can turn around and jump. Whatever you like."
The market for budding air guitarists is huge, no doubt, but Dr. helmer told the SMH it was more about letting the cat out of the bag on the CSIRO's work on high-tech textiles.
People wearing shirts with sensors could operate computers and play computer games without ever having to touck a mouse or a touch pad.Intelligent clothes could create 3D replicas of physiotherapy patients to help teach them to walk and bend again after injuries.
Patients could even be examined by specialists in another city or country. And electronic clothes could even be used to teach people to play golf or tennis.
Posted by Mike Barton on November 13, 2006 03:42 PM
October 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
U.S. universities should focus on cooler topics as they try to attract more students to the engineering profession, according to MIT President Charles Vest.
Vest said that focusing on nano-science and large systems offer "mind-boggling possibilities" and "daunting challenges," and will draw more students into the engineering field.
Vest made the comments during a lecture "Educating Engineers for 2020 and Beyond," at MIT's Bartos Theater , in an address Oct. 12 as part of the Brunel Lecture Series on Complex Systems, which was hosted by the Engineering Systems Division at MIT.
Nano-scale projects at MIT like batteries constucted out of viruses and the study of large scale systems like transportation and the environment will keep MIT on the cutting edge, and draw more young students into the field, Vest said.
"As we think about the challenges ahead, it's important to remember that students are driven by passion, curiosity, engagement and dreams," Vest told a standing-room-only audience.
Vest also told the audience, in so many words, that engineering programs should do more to help their students get a life.
Too much focus on individual study and core engineering coursework doesn't prepare students for "an ever-evolving social, political and economic context," said Vest.
Engineering programs should focus more on group work, team projects, research and exprimental learning, and less on lectures.
21st century engineers will need communication skills and an understanding of ethics and social responsibility, business organization, innovation and product development. So it's not a bad idea to take a few humanities courses while you're at it, Vest said.
A number of recent reports have warned that problems in the U.S. education system and a lack of investment in basic research are eroding the country's lead in the engineering and the sciences.
Posted by Paul Roberts on October 19, 2006 01:09 PM
September 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
If emerging tech is what you live for, DEMO is the lifeblood. The showcase for next-gen tech is heating up and I thought I'd point out a round-up of what's getting blogged as a precurser to our own coverage of next week's event.
And despite the lackluster IT economy in general, reports say venture capitalists are ready to back the hopefuls. Let's hope some money flows and we start seeing an explosion of dot-com era innovation again.
But the fun part is the zanyness, as InfoWorld's Paul F. Roberts points out, highlights here:
Want a theme for this year's DEMO shows? Search. (Now there's a shocker.) Not surprisingly, many of the companies at Demospring and, we can assume, at Demofall, will be trying to hone in on Google's business.Gravee's AdShare "fundamentally changes the economic model for search -- shifting power from content distributors (such as search engines) to content owners," Kosmix has "developed algorithms and technology that solve a complex engineering problem: categorizing the entire Web into understandable categories, such as women's health and adventure travel." Biggerboat is "the Internet's most comprehensive, entertainment industry specific search engine delivering cross-category, cross-format, and cross-retailer search results to online entertainment consumers." I could go on (and on..and on...)
Still, there's more than just search. Krugle and Jitterbit are two companies presenting cool new technology aimed at the open source community: Jitterbit has an open source integration tool for Windows and LInux for designing, configuring, testing and deploy integration solutions. Krugle's got a search engine for accessing open source code and other supporting information.
Then there's moobella, which is, as far as I can tell, an ice cream vending machine that can "produce a delicious scoop of ice cream within 45 seconds."
Now that's technology I can use!
To get an idea what to expect via video, check out the spring show. And check back at InfoWorld.com here from Friday for our early coverage.
Posted by Mike Barton on September 20, 2006 04:58 PM
August 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Kaboodle, Kosmix and Gravee -- Oh My!
We all know that the DEMO shows, which market themselves as a "launchpad for emerging technology" can get a bit zany and hype-driven.
That's never more true than ever at this year's DEMOfall show, scheduled for Sept. 25-27 in San Diego. Scanning the list of companies who were at DEMOspring might make you think you've stumbled into the software aisle at Kaybee, what with names like BiggerBoat, Bones In Motion, Blurb, Gravee, Kosmix and MooBella on board.
Want a theme for this year's DEMO shows? Search. (Now there's a shocker.) Not surprisingly, many of the companies at Demospring and, we can assume, at Demofall, will be trying to hone in on Google's business.
Gravee's AdShare "fundamentally changes the economic model for search -- shifting power from content distributors (such as search engines) to content owners," Kosmix has "developed algorithms and technology that solve a complex engineering problem: categorizing the entire Web into understandable categories, such as women's health and adventure travel." Biggerboat is "the Internet's most comprehensive, entertainment industry specific search engine delivering cross-category, cross-format, and cross-retailer search results to online entertainment consumers." I could go on (and on..and on...)
Still, there's more than just search. Krugle and Jitterbit are two companies presenting cool new technology aimed at the open source community: Jitterbit has an open source integration tool for Windows and LInux for designing, configuring, testing and deploy integration solutions. Krugle's got a search engine for accessing open source code and other supporting information.
Then there's moobella, which is, as far as I can tell, an ice cream vending machine that can "produce a delicious scoop of ice cream within 45 seconds."
Now that's technology I can use!
Posted by Paul Roberts on August 30, 2006 04:01 PM
August 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Could this be your next (bus) ride? The folks at MIT new research lab think so. The new MIT Design Laboratory is focused on bringing emerging technology to urban planning, and combines existing MIT research groups like PlaceLab and SENSEable Cities, as well as others. The new lab will work on "problems of social, economic and cultural importance," according to a press release from the university.
The idea is to create a comprehensive design approach to buildings and urban areas, not just focus on using technology in the context of individual projects. Among the projects the new lab is working on:
The City Car. This one has been around for a while. A "stackable car for two passengers," City Car can be deposited at stacks, which are located at convergence points like bus and subway lines. Kind of Zip Car meets Duplo."Each stack receives incoming vehicles and electrically charges them. Users simply remove a fully charged vehicle from the front of the stack just as they would pick up a luggage cart at the airport."
The Digital Mile. A mile-long, programmable wall of water in Zaragoza, Spain,that replaces a set of train tracks that was removed from the city center. "Sensors respond when someone approaches, causing the water to rise or fall or propagate waves." OK. Now that's cool, even if the name does make it sound like Chris Anderson's next book.
The Electronic Lens. (Flash preso) A system of talking landmarks in Barcelona, Spain (what is it with Spain and futuristic architecture?) that provides pedestrians with on-the-spot information about the city's resources.
Posted by Paul Roberts on August 29, 2006 08:45 AM
August 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Cisco CEO John Chambers announced earlier this year that telepresence would be a multi-billion dollar product line for the company in coming years.
Cisco's not the only major player investing in the technology. HP has already injected telepresence-like features into its Halo Collaboration Suite. The companies may be on to something. Over the next decade, telepresence technology will find its way into virtually every major Global 5000 company, according to a report released today by Human Productivity Lab (HPL) titled "Telepresence, Effective Visual Collaboration and the Future of Global Business at the Speed of Light."
(HPL, by the way, bills itself as both an independent research company and a consultancy for the telepresence industry. The paper was sponsored by ATK Services, Destiny Conferencing, Digital Video Enterprises, HP, MedPresence, Polycom, Telanetix, and Teliris -- all players in the telepresence industry.)
As the HPL defines it, "telepresence is the science and art of creating visual conferencing environments that address the human factors of the participants and duplicate, as closely as possible, an in-person experience."
Deployed in telepresence studios, the technology employs high-speed IP audio and video, enabling users from disparate locations to hold meets as if they're virtually in the same place.
That may sound a lot like video conferencing, but HPL cites some advantages of telepresence: "life-size remote participants, fluid motion, accurate flesh tones, studio quality acoustics and lighting, true eye-contact or the approximation of eye-contact, and immersive and/or mirrored environments that establish a consistency-of-quality among disparate locations."
Those benefits aside, the report declares there's a potential cost savings to be had using telepresence in favor of having employees travel to far-off destinations. Travel expenses, of course, can vary greatly from company to company, so your mileage may vary.
To give a sense of the potential costs of telepresence, though, the report says the "solutions from HP and Teliris can run north of $10,000 dollars per month, per location. Deploying a site to an international location with limited fiber optic capacity can run as high as $40,000+ per month."
In addition to creating virtual board rooms for traditional meetings, the report states that "specialized telepresence solutions have been developed for diverse applications such as neurological operating rooms, pharmaceutical research and film production."
The HPL's report can be downloaded from here.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 9, 2006 04:33 PM
July 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Forget Microsoft's Origami-based UMPCs. Engadget writes: "The new hotness is running 'Leopard Mobile' on your iPod, which is no small feat considering the devices' sub-100MHz processors and lack of a touchscreen or Internet access..."
See the YouTube video here.
"We were a bit skeptical at first too, but just click on the Read link and see for yourself -- as we all know, YouTube won't host a video until it's been verified as completely legitimate."
OK, so this is obviously a fake, but how hard would it be to get a touchscreen on the friendly iPod and tweak OS X for a mobile version? Add a phone and you have the next must-have tech gear purchase.
One can always dream. I'm not terribly impressed with the current state of the smartphone market after promises how great they'd be by now. PalmOne's Treo is getting tired and the trusty BlackBerry is too "square" for the trendy gadget set.
Motorola's Q is a step forward, but it is not as elegant as a touchscreen iPod running OS X Mobile could be.
I reckon only the iPod has the brand power, and Apple the design smarts, to make smartphones mainstream.
Talk back to us...
Posted by Mike Barton on July 5, 2006 11:40 AM
June 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)
"A team from Google Research has developed a prototype system that uses a home computer's internal microphone to listen to the ambient audio in a room, determine what is being watched on TV and offer web-based supplemental information, services and shopping contextual to each program being watched," reports TechCrunch.
Okay, so the same week Google's Sergey Brin admitted to compromising its principles to appease Chinese authorities' over censorship demands might be a bad week to go into Big Brother zone.
Google said it addressed privacy concerns "by compressing captured audio on the user’s computer before transmitting summary data to the database for comparison and by offering a mute button in the program", TC writes.
Here are some of the tech's possible applications (from TC):
--Personalized information layers Here's what Tom Cruise is wearing in the show you are watching and here's where you can buy the same clothes in your zip code.
--Ad hoc social peer communities If you would like to chat about this show, ten of your college friends are watching it right now as well.
--Real-time popularity ratings Nielsen requires hardware and the results arent available in real-time. You might want to know if there is a spike in viewers watching the show on channel 9 right now. Advertisers might want to know that too.
--TV-based bookmarks Click to save a show or clip into your video library and there will be more than just a few shows available for watching later.
Sounds cool. But with AT&T spying case under way and fresh news that VOIP wiretapping has received the nod, this seems a little too Big Bro for the average consumer.
Would you test and use it in your home? Talk back to us below.
Posted by Mike Barton on June 9, 2006 11:50 AM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The ink is hardly dry on the future of newspapers, but Engadget reports that moving the dead tree scrolls to e-ink has begun in earnest.
It said that De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, has put their paper on iLiad e-ink eBook readers. The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune are among others said to be in discussions to roll out e-newspaper subscriptions later this year.
The first devices are likely to look like Sony's Reader.
The devices are monochrome now but color is coming from companies such as Fujitsu.
Timely, this news, as another Earth Day passes.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 24, 2006 01:50 PM
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