TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft

2011-03-01T10:12:00.001-08:00

(PhysOrg.com) -- Kinect, Microsoft's attempt to bring motion controls to the Xbox 360 video game console, is soon to have a non-commercial SDK released for it that will hopefully allow third-party developers to create new uses for the motion-based system, some of them may even be outside of the world of gaming.

The non-commercial SDK is being developed by a team led by Don Mattrick, president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, and is expected to be released to developers as a free download at an as yet undetermined date in the spring of this year.

The SDK is expected to give developers access to the system application programming interfaces and the audio system, as well as granting direct control of the Kinect sensor itself.

Microsoft also has plans to release a commercial version of the SDK at a later date. The free version will be a kind of an SDK starter kit, designed with users from the academic research community and enthusiasts in mind.

For those of you not familiar with the device, Kinect is the motion-based control system that was launched for the Xbox 360 in November of 2010. It uses a camera bar in order to allow users to interact with the games. Kinect currently retails for $150. The device has a fairly large user community, with more than 8 million Kinect devices sold in its first 60 days on the market.

The Kinect device has already had several attempts to hack it made public, with varying levels of success. For example, one successful hack exploited the USB connection which allows the device to connect to the Xbox 360.

Software news

2011-02-28T10:49:00.000-08:00

South Korea's biggest mobile phone carrier has devised a smartphone application to revive a flagging custom -- raising the national standard over homes on important holidays.

The application automatically displays the distinctive "Taegeukgi" flag on the wallpaper of phones in standby mode on national holidays, such as March 1 and August 15.

March 1 commemorates heroes of the independence movement against Japanese colonial rule, and August 15 is the anniversary of liberation in 1945.

"We developed the application to rekindle the custom of hoisting the national flag," Lee Joo-Shik, head of new business at SK Telecom, told Monday's Korea Times.

"As we are in the mobile era where many people have smartphones on hand we determined that these devices could be a means of raising the flag."

The app also provides instructions on how to hoist a real flag as well as information on the history and design of the Taegeukgi. An MP3 file of the national anthem is included.

On the day before the virtual flag is to be hoisted, the app uploads a posting on the user's Twitter or Facebook account, and sends messages to his or her friends on social networks to encourage people to remember the event.

Iphone

2011-02-24T02:25:00.001-08:00

Argon, the augmented reality web browser, available now on iPhone

February 23, 2011 By David Terraso

Enlarge

Blair MacIntyre and his Augmented Environments Lab developed Argon to move the Web into the world. It does so by taking video from the phone’s camera and rendering graphical content on top of the video to provide users with an experience that merges space with cyberspace. Credit: Rob Felt/Georgia Tech

You’re in a bookstore checking out the bestsellers. You scan the book with your iPhone camera and immediately see information floating in the air, provided by the store’s information channel. You add your own book club channel to the view, overlaying additional reviews from friends and other relevant information from shopping sites on the Web.

While skimming the book reviews, you notice a note that looks as if it’s floating in the air on your personal channel, reminding you about a nearby restaurant you’ve been meaning to visit. You buy the book and head to lunch, looking forward to reading a bit over lunch before heading back to work.

No, this isn't you in 20 years --- it's a scenario possible in the very near future thanks to a new technology designed to bring the Web off your hand-held device and into the real world. Developers hope to port Argon to other platforms, such as Android, in the near future.

“Our goal is to provide a foundation for millions of Web developers to begin writing applications so they can provide users with new experiences that are unique to the world of AR,” said Blair MacIntyre, KHARMA project director and associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. “Basically, we want to move the Web into the world.”

The Argon mobile augmented reality browser was developed with funding support from Alcatel-Lucent through its University Innovations Program.

"Alcatel-Lucent is actively involved in supporting open standards across mobile and fixed devices to enable consumers and business users to enjoy rich communication anywhere, anytime and over any device. Our participation as a project sponsor in Georgia Tech's development of the world’s first open standards-based mobile augmented reality browser is an example of that," said Marc Goodman, director of Alcatel-Lucent's University Innovations Program.

Augmented reality allows people to view the physical world with computer media overlaid on top of it. The approach is often suggested as a way of adding information to the world and improving the way that people can interact with that information, but can also be used for games, art or any imaginable application where the media content relates to nearby people, places or things.

Argon marks the first significant step in marrying the power of the Internet to the world of augmented reality. Until now, most AR applications had to be developed and deployed on the user’s mobile device, limiting the reach of the technology. Commercial attempts at creating more general AR browser platforms have offered limited content and interaction options.

What makes Argon different from standard mobile Internet browsers is its ability to put content out into the world. Argon takes video from the phone’s camera and renders graphical content on top of it. With this initial release, any content that can be displayed in the iPhone’s Mobile Safari Web browsercan be pushed out into the world on virtual billboards. Other content can be created using forms and Javascript. Future releases will also include support for a range of 3D content.

“Basically, there are lots of little programs that provide the ability to use AR to put some information out in the world around you. Some, like these early browsers, also allow users to contribute content, but none allow the full range of dynamic content, control and interactivity of the Web, with everything hosted on your own servers,” said MacIntyre.

By building on top of open Web technologies and standards, the KHARMA development platform opens the door to AR applications with a full range of possible interactivity, collaboration, Web mashups and connections to cloud services that users and developers have come to rely on.

For example, rather than just displaying the locations of businesses or other nearby places, you can customize the content delivery as you desire. When you use the browser to view the channel for a theater, the channel might display the movie times, allow you to view previews of the films, or create in-browser games and interactive experiences tied to the movies you choose. Those games might be collaborative with other nearby viewers, or with people at another theater across town or across the country. The possibilities are endless.

“If you look at the history of any media, such as film or the Web, initially the content creators are the same people who created the technology,” said MacIntyre. “But at some point that begins to change, and tools come along that allow many people to begin to work with the technology. When that happens, we begin to discover what the medium is truly about. With the KHARMA specifications, and the Argon browser, we want to put AR into the hands of the millions of people who know how to create websites, and hopefully take a step toward understanding the potential of AR.
”

2011-02-20T07:21:00.000-08:00

Gaming wars go mobile

February 17, 2011 by Sebastien Guine

Enlarge

The chief executive officer of Sony Ericsson, Hans Vestberg, speaks on February 14 during the opening of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. Sony Ericsson packed a PlayStation pad into its latest smartphone, unveiled this week at the mobile industry's annual get-together in Barcelona.

The video game wars are going mobile.

Sony Ericsson packed a PlayStation pad into its latest smartphone, unveiled this week at the mobile industry's annual get-together in Barcelona.

And rival Microsoft swiftly replied by offering an Xbox link to lure gamers to its Windows Phone operating software.

Sony Ericsson opened the new front on Sunday, the eve of the mobile show here, revealing the widely anticipated Xperia Play, already dubbed the PlayStation phone.

Powered by Google's latest Android system, Gingerbread, the classic-looking black smartphone stands out from its Android rivals in one respect: it has a slideout PlayStation gaming panel.

It is the first PlayStation certified mobile, and the gaming pad will be familiar to gamers who know PlayStation I, II, III and PSP with the same basic layout of buttons and controls.

Nevertheless, "we're not competing really with the consoles," said Sony Ericsson product planner Christoph Jabs at a stand surrounded by Experia Play phones for people to test.

"It's a different offer. This one is a phone. The performance of the phone is important. Then we offer a better game experience."

The PlayStation phone, to be launched early April is aimed at 20-30 year olds rather than younger users because it will be pricey at about 600 euros ($800) if sold without phone operators' subsidies.

For Jabs, it's ideal, for example, "if you have 2O minutes waiting for the doctor."

Games will be downloadable from Android Market for about 5-10 euros.

Microsoft, which already offers some Xbox games on its Windows Phone 7 operating system, replied Monday by offering greater integration to lure players.

A connection with the Xbox will be available in a major Phone 7 update from about March, chief executive Steve Ballmer said, roughly the same time that Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play is due out.

Interaction with Xbox will allow a "richer experience," said Microsoft France mobile division chief Olivier Ribet.

For example, it would allow a player to start a game on the smartphone and continue it on Xbox, or for multiplayer games in which some players are on their smartphones and others on Xbox.

Other manufacturers are in pursuit.

South Korea's Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S II, touted as the world's thinnest smartphone at 8.49 millimetres (0.3 inches).

It features a "3-axis gyroscopic sensor", which Samsung says allows new gaming possibilities with titles available from partners such as Gameloft and Social Network Games
.

Software

2011-02-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

Champions shaping up for browser battles

February 18, 2011

Enlarge

A screen displays the logo of the open-source web browser Firefox in 2009 in London. Google on Friday released a revved-up version of Chrome as rivals Microsoft and Mozilla beefed up their own champions for the competitive Internet browsing software arena.

Google on Friday released a revved-up version of Chrome as rivals Microsoft and Mozilla beefed up their own champions for the competitive Internet browsing software arena.

In keeping with the arrival of the lunar year of the rabbit, Google product managers Jeff Chang and Li Chan touted the latest test version of Chrome as "quick as a bunny."

The latest Chrome release came a week after Microsoft fielded an Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) "release candidate" boasting improvements in speed, security, privacy, and website graphics capabilities.

IE9 had been downloaded more than two million times as of Friday, according to Ryan Gavin, the senior director of the IE team.

"We are especially excited to see the number of partners and developers embracing IE9 and taking advantage of the performance capabilities," Gavin said in a blog post.

Mozilla last week released a test version of its Firefox 4 web browser with enhancements that included a "Do Not Track" feature people could use to signal websites that they don't want their online activities recorded.

"We've continued our work to improve performance and stability, while also implementing a 'Do Not Track' privacy feature to provide more control over online behavioral tracking," Mozilla said.

Firefox debuted in 2004 as an innovative, communally crafted open-source browser released as an option to Internet Explorer.

Google last month released extension software for its Chrome browser that lets users opt out of being tracked by a growing set of companies adopting industry privacy standards regarding online advertising.

"Keep My Opt-Outs" lets people opt out of having snippets of code referred to as "cookies" installed on their computers to track online behavior for the purpose of targeting ads.

Microsoft "Tracking Protection" was built into IE9, but users need to be savvy enough to activate the feature and create lists of the third-party websites that they do not want to track their behavior.

Internet Explorer is the most widely used Web browser in the United States followed by Firefox, Chrome and Apple's Safari
.

US state scrutinizes Google search tactics

2011-02-17T10:53:00.001-08:00

US state scrutinizes Google search tactics

February 16, 2011 by Glenn Chapman

Enlarge

The top attorney for the state of Texas on Wednesday revealed a list of demands for inside information intended to ferret out whether Google abused its power in the online search ad arena.

The top attorney for the state of Texas on Wednesday revealed a list of demands for inside information intended to ferret out whether Google abused its power in the online search ad arena.

Texas attorney general Greg Abbott wanted names of people responsible for Google ads, search results, and business relations along with internal documents and minutes from meetings at the California firm.

The "civil investigative demand" paperwork dated July 29 of last year stated the intent was to investigate "the possibility of monopolization in the market for Internet search advertising."

Abbott's office would not discuss whether Google had complied with the demands.

"We're continuing to work with the Texas attorney general's office to answer their questions and understand any concerns," Google said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.

"Since we started Google we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry, and while there's always going to be room for improvement, we're committed to competing fair and square."

Google is focused on delivering the most relevant results and ads to users, said deputy counsel Don Harrison who disclosed Abbott's antitrust inquiry more than five months ago in a blog post.

"Our focus is on users, not websites," Harrison said.

"Given that not every website can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it's unsurprising that some less relevant, lower quality websites will be unhappy with their ranking."

The more than 50 requests itemized on three pages included any documents related to the manual override of search results generated by Google's automated algorithm, as well as the blacklisting of any websites.

Google's dominance of the multi-billion-dollar online search market has put it in crosshairs of regulators concerned it might abuse its position.

The US Justice Department is reportedly considering a court challenge to Google's $700 million acquisition of travel information company ITA Software.

Federal antitrust lawyers were said to be examining whether acquiring ITA, which powers many of the Web's most popular travel sites, would give the Internet search giant too much sway over the online travel industry.

Online travel firms have urged the US authorities to block the deal.

ITA, a 500-person firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializes in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.

Its QPX flight data organization tool uses algorithms to combine flight information from airlines, including pricing and availability, to create a searchable database.

QPX software is used by online travel agencies and airlines. Microsoft's Bing search engine, Kayak, Orbitz and TripAdvisor are ITA customers.

Italy's antitrust authority in January closed a probe into Google for alleged abuse of its market position, saying it accepted pledges made by the search engine to provide greater transparency.

European Union regulators in November launched a full-frontal attack on Google, formally opening an antitrust probe after rivals accused the Silicon Valley giant of rigging the online search market.

Smaller companies accused Google of "unfavorable treatment" of their services in both unpaid and sponsored search results, the crucial listings that make the Web navigable
.

technology news

2011-02-15T06:07:00.000-08:00

IBM computer, Jeopardy! champ tied after first day

February 15, 2011 by Chris Lefkow
Enlarge
The IBM supercomputer, named "Watson" seen here, is playing two games of Jeopardy! over the next three days against Ken Jennings, who holds the show record of 74 straight wins, and Brad Rutter, winner of $3.25 million in prize money.
An IBM computer displayed a few quirks but played to a draw on the opening day of a man vs. machine showdown with two human champions of the popular US television game show Jeopardy!.

"Watson," a supercomputer named after the founder of the US technology giant Thomas Watson, and human contestant Brad Rutter each had $5,000 after the first day of the three-day match.
The other human player, Ken Jennings, was trailing the pair with $2,000.
Watson, represented on stage by a large computer monitor, was frequently quicker to the buzzer than Rutter and Jennings, correctly answering questions in its artificial voice.
Jeopardy!, which first aired on US television in 1964, tests a player's knowledge in a range of categories, from geography to politics to history to sports and entertainment.
A dollar amount is attached to each question and the player with the most money at the end of the game is the winner. Players have money deducted for wrong answers.
In a twist on traditional game play, contestants are provided with clues and need to supply the questions.
Watson receives the clues electronically by text message at the same time as they are revealed to the human contestants. The first player to hit the buzzer gets to answer the question.
Watson showed an impressive grasp of the Beatles songbook.
"What is Maxwell's silver hammer?" replied Watson to the clue "Bang, bang, his silver hammer came down upon her head," a reference to the Beatles song.
"What is Eleanor Rigby?" Watson answered correctly to the clue "She died in the church and was buried along with her name, nobody came."
Watson at one point built up a commanding lead with $4,000 to $200 each for Rutter and Jennings.
But the machine then began to slip up, oddly repeating a wrong answer to a question Jennings had already answered incorrectly.
Jennings wrongly identified the 1920s as the decade during which thecrossword puzzle and the Oreo cookie were introduced.
Given its chance, Watson also said in the 1920s.
"No, Ken said that," Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek admonished Watson.

Rutter then answered correctly -- the 1910s.

Enlarge
L-R: Contestant Brad Rutter, Jeopardy host Alex Trebek and contestant Ken Jennings. An IBM computer displayed a few quirks but played to a draw on the opening day of a man vs. machine showdown with two human champions of the popular US television game show Jeopardy!.
On another question, about a one-legged US Olympic champion, the clue was "It was the anatomical oddity of US gymnast George Eyser who won a gold medal on the parallel bars in 1904."
Watson replied "What is a leg?" instead of "What is missing a leg?"
"Watson's very bright, very fast but he has some weird little moments once in a while," Trebek said.
Watson, which is not connected to the Internet, plays the game by crunching through multiple algorithms at dizzying speed and attaching a percentage score to what it believes is the correct response.
Watson, which has been under development at IBM Research labs in New York since 2006, is the latest machine developed by IBM to challenge mankind -- in 1997, an IBM computer named "Deep Blue" defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match.
Developing a supercomputer that can compete with the best human Jeopardy! players, however, involves challenges more complex than those faced by the scientists behind "Deep Blue," according to IBM researchers.
Watson uses what IBM calls Question Answering technology to tackle Jeopardy! clues, gathering evidence, analyzing it and then scoring and ranking the most likely answer.
"You are about to witness what may prove to be an historic competition -- an exhibition match pitting an IBM computer system against the two most celebrated and successful players in Jeopardy! history," Trebek said to kick off the show.
Jennings holds the Jeopardy! record of 74 straight wins while Rutter won a record $3.25 million on the show.
The winner of the Jeopardy! showdown is to receive $1 million. Second place is worth $300,000 and the third place finisher pockets $200,000.
IBM plans to donate 100 percent of its winnings to charity. Jennings and Rutter plan to give 50 percent of their prize money to charity.
(c) 2011 AFP

Science

2011-02-14T06:52:00.000-08:00

In Holland, land of windmills, flap over wind farm

Enlarge

nesday, Feb. 2, 2011, a cameraman films a row of wind turbines of the dike near Urk, Netherlands. In a land that prides itself as an advocate of green, it may be surprising that a spat over the wind park on the dike of the Ijssel Lake has gone to the nation's Cabinet and threatens to land at the country's highest court. It also is perhaps ironic that Holland, the land of the windmills, should be engulfed in a dispute over windmills. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

On an outcrop near this town's lighthouse, a woman in stone perpetually scans the horizon for the fishing fleet returning home. To the dismay of townspeople, her view may soon be obscured by some of the world's tallest wind turbines.

In this eco-friendly nation where windmills are embedded in the culture, it may seem strange that a spat over wind power threatens to land in the country's highest court.

But these turbines are a far cry from the squat four-bladed mills used for centuries to drain the swamps and create new land from the sea. They are giants, with gray metallic blades that will scrape the clouds at 650 feet (about 200 meters) - and residents say they'll destroy a way of life.

"They are the highest buildings in Holland," says Leen van Loosen, Urk's undertaker who is campaigning to stop the project. "It's just crazy."

As wind turbines sprout up across Europe - and increasingly off its coastlines - tussles between energy developers and local opponents are increasingly common. In the United States, too, wind farm proposals often face determined defiance, most famously the Cape Wind project off Cape Cod that took 10 years to win approval.

But with oil prices again toying with $100 a barrel and global concerns mounting over climate change, electricity from wind, solar, biogas and other renewables is seen by many as the long-term answer to energy security, pollution and curbing greenhouse gases.

Among those emerging resources, wind is the cheapest and its technology well developed.

Last year alone nearly 10,000 megawatts of wind power capacity was installed in the European Union, lifting the EU's total to 84,000 megawatts, or nearly 10 percent of the EU's power generation, the European Wind Energy Association said in a report this month. Worldwide, wind capacity grew by nearly 36,000 megawatts last year, or 22.5 percent - nearly half of it in China, said the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council.

But if the Dutch can't learn to love wind power, what hope is there for the world to adopt it as a major energy source?

"In Holland, there's hardly any project that doesn't get delayed," said Michiel Muller, the wind unit manager of Ecofys, a research and consultancy firm on sustainable energy, who is not connected with the Urk project.

Across Europe, each installation faces a slew of hurdles, starting from the required Environmental Impact Assessment to regulatory approvals by often more than a dozen authorities. It takes an average of 55 months to wade through the bureaucratic tangle before work can begin, the wind energy association said.

Of some 200 wind energy projects studied in 2007-8 in Europe, 40 percent were ensnared in lawsuits, and 30 percent more faced slowdowns because of local resistance or questioning from nonprofit environmental groups, the association said. It had no figures on how many projects were killed before they got started.

With 430 megawatts of capacity, the wind park near Urk, population 18,000, would provide enough electricity for 400,000 homes and rank among Europe's largest. It would help the Netherlands as it races to catch up with the stiff target set by the European Union to generate 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. The Dutch now have a capacity of 2,237 megawatts from wind - far short of its 12,000 megawatt national target for 2020.

The 86 turbines are to be erected in three rows, 38 on land and 48 off shore. The first will be one mile (1.6 kilometers) from the statue of the fisherman's wife, a 1986 monument on the north side of town that is encircled by plaques with the names of hundreds of Urk's fishermen lost at sea since 1717.

Residents cite a long litany of dangers from the wind park. Fishing and tourism will suffer, they say. The tranquil panorama of the local lake will be disrupted, the town will tremble with the constant rumbling noise of blades, birds will be traumatized, and the whole project could undermine a dike slated to host turbines.

"We are all for green energy," says Van Loosen, "but this is out of proportion."

Advocates dismiss such concerns as misinformation, saying the turbines will be far enough from the town that they will not be heard and barely will be seen. One of their leaders says the modern mills simply follow a hallowed Dutch tradition.

"Windmills belong to the Netherlands," says Janneke Wijnia-Lemstra, who represents the farmers behind the privately-financed euro1 billion project. Government subsidies will guarantee a competitive price for the energy produced.

While the focus today is turbines, they're not the only target of Dutch resistance to environmental projects. Hostility by the citizens of Barendrecht killed a proposal in 2009 to bury carbon dioxide under their town that is siphoned from a Royal Dutch Shell refinery in nearby Rotterdam.

Instead, the plan for the experimental project was shifted to the more sparsely populated north of the country, but it has now run into equally fierce protests from villagers there. The government has said it will decide in a few weeks whether to go ahead.

Economics Minister Maxime Verhagen says the wind project, set to go up 55 miles (90 kms) northeast of Amsterdam, fits with the energy mix that the Netherlands needs, and that every energy source has a down side.

"You could say 'no' to wind energy because it will spoil the view. You can say 'no' to nuclear energy because of the waste. And you can say 'no' to coal as well - leaving us with no energy at all in the Netherlands," he told Dutch television when asked about Urk's revolt.

After eliminating seven turbines from the plan, the government signed off on the wind farm last month - 12 years after it was first proposed. The town says it won't back down unless another 15 turbines are ditched, and vows to appeal to the Council of State, the country's highest court, and possibly to European courts.

The farmland where the turbines are to be built is under the authority of the municipality of Noordoostpolder, Urk's neighbor. Noordoostpolder's council decreed against more windmills being erected on individual farms, partly because the scattered turbines would be too unsightly. That's when it was decided to concentrate them in a large park along the coast.

Urk has been inhabited for some 1,000 years. Nearly all the town's revenue derives from fishing or the tourists who come to see the harbor and the old quayside cottages.

Until the 1940s it was an island, and residents are still resentful that they were not consulted before a dike was built that created the North East polder - land reclaimed from the sea - connecting the mainland to their rocky knoll. Ironically, it's just behind this dike that nearly half the turbines will rise.

"It's an island culture and history," says Urk Mayor Jaap Kroon.

To accusations of indulging a not-in-my-back-yard attitude, the mayor retorts:

"This is not our back yard. It's our front yard."

Software

2011-02-13T01:58:00.001-08:00

Microsoft releases near-final Internet Explorer 9 version

Enlarge

(AP) -- Microsoft Corp. released a near-final version of Internet Explorer 9 on Thursday, saying the updates make the Web browser even better at tapping into a computer's powerful processors to help multimedia-laden websites load and run faster.

IE9 is a free download that works Windows Vista and Windows 7 computers. It's not compatible with Windows XP.

With IE9, Microsoft followed the visual lead of Google Inc.'s Chrome browser. IE9 has far fewer buttons, icons and toolbars filling the screen, leaving more room for the contents of Web pages. It mimics some features in Windows 7, the newest PC operating software from Microsoft, in that it lets people "pin" individual websites to the taskbar at the bottom of the PC screen to make permanent one-click shortcuts.

Based on feedback from the beta version, which Microsoft said was used by 25 million people, the software will let people add a new row of tabs to the bar at the top of the browser window. It will also pop up fewer notifications.

The new browser is much more than an aesthetic overhaul. IE9 can take advantage of multicore microprocessors to crunch website code faster. It also uses the PC's graphics processing unit - the same chips that make the images in elaborate video games run smoothly - to make movie clips and other visuals load and play faster.

Microsoft said Thursday that it has improved several aspects of the browser that make it run faster than the beta that was released in September. It fine-tuned the engine for rendering JavaScript, a widely used Web programming language, so pages load faster. IE9 now also decides on the fly when to tap into the graphics processor for more speed.

Competitors including Google and Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, are also working on similar technical upgrades to their software. This new crop of browsers will be competing with "apps," small programs for smart phones, tablets and other devices that deliver the some of the same content as websites but in a way that's easier to navigate on smaller screens.

2011-02-11T23:33:00.000-08:00

Computer scientists lay out vision for a 'science of the Web'

Researchers need a clear agenda to harness the rapidly evolving potential of the World Wide Web, according to an article in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Science. Calling for the creation of an interdisciplinary "science of the Web," a group of computer scientists suggests the need for new approaches to tap the full richness of this powerful tool, while ensuring that it develops in a way that benefits society as a whole.

"If we want to model the Web; if we want to understand the architectural principles that have provided for its growth; and if we want to be sure that it supports the basic social values of trustworthiness, privacy, and respect for social boundaries, then we must chart out a research agenda that targets the Web as a primary focus of attention," wrote the team of computer scientists, which is led by corresponding author James A. Hendler, visiting professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Hendler is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, and in January 2007 he will become senior constellation professor of the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer, where he will lead a team of faculty dedicated to advancing the research agenda described in the Science article.

"Despite the incredible importance of the World Wide Web to people all around the globe, and its increasingly important role in society and politics, the Web has not received as much interest within the traditional computer science research world as it deserves," Hendler said. "My research focuses on what might be called 'Web science' -- understanding the Web in its full richness, exploring the underlying technologies that make it work and its social and policy implications, and developing new technologies to keep the Web growing ever more useful as it reaches further into our lives."

Hendler will focus the work of the new Tetherless World Constellation on increasing access to information at any time and place without the need for a "tether" to a specific computer or device. "How often have you wished you had a phone number that was sitting on your computer at home, or that you could find interesting activities in the city you're visiting without lugging your laptop along?" Hendler asked. He envisions an increasingly Web-accessible world in which personal digital assistants (PDAs), cameras, music-listening devices, cell phones, laptops, and other technologies converge to offer the user interactive information and communication.

Widely recognized as one of the inventors of the Semantic Web, Hendler says this extension of the World Wide Web will bring new information resources to the Web by enabling computers to interpret the meaning and context of words and numbers. This technology could be used to bring informative databases -- from Internet business to basic biology research -- to the Web in more searchable and usable ways, according to Hendler.

Hendler's coauthors on the Science article are Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel J. Weitzner of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT; and Wendy Hall and Nigel Shadbolt of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

At Rensselaer, Hendler will play a lead role in structuring the new Tetherless World Constellation. Led by outstanding faculty in fields of strategic importance, Rensselaer constellations are focused on a specific research area and comprise a multidisciplinary mix of senior and junior faculty and postdoctoral and graduate students.

Science

2011-02-11T23:28:00.000-08:00

Web experts ask scientists to use the Web to improve understanding, sharing of their data in science

February 12, 2011

Peter Fox and James Hendler of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are calling for scientists to take a few tips from the users of the World Wide Web when presenting their data to the public and other scientists in the Feb. 11 issue of Science magazine. Fox and Hendler, both professors within the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer, outline a new vision for the visualization of scientific data in a perspective piece titled "Changing the Equation on Scientific Data Visualization."

As the researchers explain, visualizations provide a means to enable the understanding of complex data. The problem with the current use of visualization in the scientific community, according to Fox and Hendler, is that when visualizations are actually included by scientists, they are often an end product of research used to simply illustrate the results and are inconsistently incorporated into the entire scientific process. Their visualizations are also static and cannot be easily updated or modified when new information arises.

And as scientists create more and more data with more powerful computing systems, their ability to develop useful visualizations of that data will become more time consuming and expensive with the traditional approaches.

Fox and Hendler ask the scientific community to take some important lessons from the Web.

"…visualizations on the Web are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and interactive," they write. At the same time, those Web-based visualization are also inexpensive and easy to use, according to Hendler and Fox.

Simple Web-based visualization tool kits allow users to easily create maps, charts, graphs, word clouds, and other custom visualizations at little to no cost and with a few clicks of a mouse. In addition, Web links and RSS feeds allow visualizations on the Web to be updated with little to no involvement from the original developer of the visualization, greatly reducing the time and cost of the effort, but also keeping it dynamic.

"Visualizations are absolutely critical to our ability to process complex data and to build better intuitions as to what is happening around us," the researchers write. They use the example of an online weather report. With such visualizations, Web users can click on their area for a forecast or watch videos specific to their region. Without these visualizations, no one but a trained meteorologist would be able to make sense of the mess of raw data behind those pretty maps and graphical snow clouds.

In addition to the ease of using and developing visualization on the Web, visualizations on the Web can also be easily modified, updated, customized, and recreated by other users thanks to the use of Uniform Resource Identifiers. This "linking" of data is a key feature of the new vision that Fox and Hendler outline. It is of particular importance when dealing with what they refer to as "big science" on topics such as climate change that involves data that ranges from distinct fields like biology to geology.

"The challenge is that many of the major scientific problems facing our world are becoming critically linked to the interdependence and interrelatedness of data from multiple instruments, fields, and sources," they write.

Fox and Hendler urge scientists involved in such vital scientific projects to take some tips from large Web companies like Google and Facebook, and even massive online communities such as World of Warcraft. These large companies use new data integration approach such as NoSQL, "big data," and scalable linked data to rapidly expand and maintain their capabilities. These new capabilities provide easy-to-use, low-end tools to generate visualizations and scalable tools for curating very large visualization projects that scientists can model their own visualization after, according to Fox and Hendler
.

Google

2011-02-11T10:50:00.001-08:00

Google account users get extra security

Enlarge

Google just made it harder for hackers to hack into Google user accounts.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Google announced on Thursday that they are giving their Gmail users additional account security, free of charge. As of Thursday Google account users can turn on a "two-step authentication" feature that will require them to type in a special second password in addition to their normal password to access their account.

Users can acquire this short-lived code either by a phone call, text message, or use of smartphone apps for Android, iPhone and Blackberry devices. This feature has been available to paid Google Apps users for the past six months, and now Google has been testing the feature internally with users who have been having problems with hackers getting into their accounts.

The process for turning on this feature in your Google account is a little involved and requires approximately 15 minutes to set up. Users will be given the option to give out a backup phone number incase their phone is lost or stolen. Also Google account users who use IMAP access to their Gmail will require a special 16-character, randomly generated password instead of the normal password.

So what happens if you lose your phone and backup number? Google considered this may happen and gave users a way to regain access to their account with tough-to-answer security questions.

This security feature can pose a problem for anyone who travels overseas and may not be able to receive text messages while traveling. The smartphone apps for Android and the iPhone will generate password codes without a network connection.

The “two-step authentication” feature is currently only available in English however Google is working on translation and should be available for smartphone apps to all Google users in their native languages in a few months.

Archaeology and fossils

2011-02-11T02:19:00.000-08:00

On their own 2 feet: 3.2 million-year-old fossil foot bone supports humanlike bipedalism in Lucy's species

February 10, 2011

Enlarge

This image shows the position of the fourth metatarsal Australopithecus afarensis (AL 333-160) recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia, in a foot skeleton. Credit: Carol Ward/University of Missouri

A fossilized foot bone recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia, shows that by 3.2 million years ago human ancestors walked bipedally with a modern human-like foot, a report that appears Feb. 11 in the journalScience, concludes. The fossil, a fourth metatarsal, or midfoot bone, indicates that a permanently arched foot was present in the species Australopithecus afarensis, according to the report authors, Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, together with William Kimbel and Donald Johanson, of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins.

The research helps resolve a long-standing debate between paleoanthropologists who think A. afarensis walked essentially as modern humans do and those who think this species practiced a form of locomotion intermediate between the quadrupedal tree-climbing of chimpanzees and human terrestrial bipedalism. The question of whether A. afarensis had fully developed pedal, or foot, arches has been part of this debate. The fourth metatarsal described in the Science report provides strong evidence for the arches and, the authors argue, support a modern-human style of locomotion for this species. The specimen was recovered from the Hadar locality 333, popularly known as the "First Family Site," the richest source of A. afarensis fossils in eastern Africa, with more than 250 specimens, representing at least 17 individuals, so far known.

"This fourth metatarsal is the only one known of A. afarensis and is a key piece of evidence for the early evolution of the uniquely human way of walking," says Kimbel. "The ongoing work at Hadar is producing rare parts of the skeleton that are absolutely critical for understanding how our species evolved."

Humans, uniquely among primates, have two arches in their feet, longitudinal and transverse, which are composed of the midfoot bones and supported by muscles in the sole of the foot. During bipedal locomotion, these arches perform two critical functions: leverage when the foot pushes off the ground and shock absorption when the sole of the foot meets the ground at the completion of the stride. Ape feet lack permanent arches, are more flexible than human feet and have a highly mobile large toe, important attributes for climbing and grasping in the trees. None of these apelike features are present in the foot of A. afarensis.

Enlarge

Paleoanthropologists report in the Feb. 10 edition of Science on the recovery of a fossilized foot bone recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia, locality 333, popularly known as the "First Family Site," the richest source ofAustralopithecus afarensis fossils in eastern Africa. Credit: Donald Johanson/Institute of Human Origins/Arizona State University

"Understanding that the foot arches appeared very early in our evolution shows that the unique structure of our feet is fundamental to human locomotion," observes Ward. "If we can understand what we were designed to do and how natural selection shaped the human skeleton, we can gain insight into how our skeletons work today. Arches in our feet were just as important for our ancestors as they are for us."

This species, whose best-known specimen is "Lucy," lived in eastern Africa 3.0��.8 million years ago. Prior to A. afarensis, the species A. anamensis was present in Kenya and Ethiopia from 4.2 to 4.0 million years ago, but its skeleton is not well known. At 4.4 million years ago, Ethiopia's Ardipithecus ramidus is the earliest human ancestor well represented by skeletal remains. Although Ardipithecus appears to have been a part-time terrestrial biped, its foot retains many features of tree-dwelling primates, including a divergent, mobile first toe. The foot of A. afarensis, as with other parts of its skeleton, is much more like that of living humans, implying that by the time of Lucy, our ancestors no longer depended on the trees for refuge or resources.

Enlarge

This is the fossilized foot bone -- fourth metatarsal of Australopithecus afarensis (AL 333-160) -- recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia. Credit: Elizabeth Harmon/Arizona State University

The Hadar project is the longest running paleoanthropology field program in the Ethiopian rift valley, now spanning more than 38 years. Since 1973, the fieldwork at Hadar has produced more than 370 fossil specimens of Australopithecus afarensis between 3.4 and 3.0 million years ago – one of the largest collections of a single fossil hominin species in Africa – as well as one of the earliest known fossils of Homo and abundant Oldowan stone tools (ca. 2.3 million).

Through ASU's Institute of Human Origins, the Hadar project plays an important role in training Ethiopian scholars by offering graduate degree and postdoctoral opportunities in the U.S. Promotion of local awareness of the global scientific importance and Ethiopian cultural heritage value of the Hadar site is also a project priority. Additionally, the fundraising phase of a planned "Hadar Interpretive Center" at Eloaha town, 30 kilometers from the site, was successfully completed in January 2011
.

2011-02-10T11:24:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! joins tablet craze with digital newstand
February 10, 2011

Yahoo! is building a digital newsstand called "Livestand" that will turn tablet computers into personalized magazines rich with stories, images and video suited to individual tastes.
Yahoo! is building a digital newsstand called "Livestand" that will turn tablet computers into personalized magazines rich with stories, images and video suited to individual tastes.
Ads by Google
Open Standards Technology - Save Up to 30% Capital Costs Using Additional Network Vendor; See How. - Juniper.net/Open+Standards+Technology

Livestand will launch later this year with content from Yahoo! websites along with an undisclosed array of partners, chief product officer Blake Irving said on Thursday.
"The magazine knows what type of story you are reading; it privately knows where you are and where you've been," Irving said while briefing reporters on Yahoo!'s plans.
"What we are building is really device and operating system agnostic," he said.
"Tablets allow beautiful execution, and we will bring it into smaller forms down to mobile phones and then port it to PCs (personal computers) and TV."
Livestand is intended as a platform to allow magazine or newspaper publishers big or small to deliver content matched with the interests of people who log into the Yahoo! online venue.
"It's a digital newsstand, your digital newsstand," Yahoo! vice president of mobile product management Irv Henderson said while demonstrating Livestand.
"The more you use this, the better it is at telling what you are interested in."
Livestand will focus on tablet computers at launch, with Yahoo! keen on the soon-to-be released Honeycomb operating system that Google is developing for those types of devices.
Digital magazines will be ad-supported, with Yahoo! sharing in the revenue with publishers, according to Henderson. The platform will eventually allow publishers other money-making options, including subscriptions, he said.
(c) 2011 AFP

Intel's tiny new SSD 310 drive to appear in Lenovo ThinkPad laptops

2011-01-01T13:49:00.001-08:00

Intel has launched a new solid-state drive that is a mere one eighth the size of a typical 2.5-inch version, which could find its way into new tablet devices and laptops. Lenovo has already confirmed that it plans to include the new drive across its ThinkPad laptop lineup.

The Intel SSD 310 is a mere 5mm thick and comes in 40GB and 80GB capacities. As impressive as the drive’s micro-size is, its performance is equally compelling: Intel claims that the SSD 310 provides the same performance as drives in the company’s X25 lineup of desktop SSDs. (Though Intel doesn’t say if the performance is equivalent to the value, mainstream, or extreme series of X25 drives.)

In addition to serving as a tablet PC’s sole storage source, the SSD 310 is expected to be paired in laptops with a larger hard drive to help speed up boot times. With the drive’s introduction, Intel will compete with Toshiba, which supplies the SSD drives in Apple’s latest MacBook Air laptops, in this emerging market.

2010-12-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

Many people see technology as a solution to some of the problems that exist on our planet. It’s true that technology can be used for good, but with new developments come new challenges issues. The digital divide is one such issue, one that people are actively trying to overcome. Telecentres aim to bridge the digital divide by providing people access and knowledge about information technologies. A global telecentre movement is growing right now. Unfortunately, even where computer facilities are readily available, the digital divide persists—even in the world's most wealthy countries, access to the latest and most beneficial technologies is limited for those in rural areas and people with disabilities.