technology X

New Midas Rex(R) High-Speed Electric Drill for Surgeons

2010-06-29T23:38:00.000+08:00

MINNEAPOLIS, Jun 25, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Medtronic, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!mdt/quotes/nls/mdt (MDT 36.13, -0.74, -2.01%) today announced availability of the company's new Midas Rex(R) Legend(R) EHS Stylus Touch(TM) high-speed electric drill for spinal, cranial and orthopaedic surgical procedures. This is the first electric drill from Medtronic with integrated finger control and is based on the well-established Legend EHS Stylus(R) motor. With high torque and a compact size, the Legend EHS Stylus Touch drill offers excellent balance and maneuverability for procedures in tight anatomic spaces. Surgeons can operate the drill using finger control only, footpedal control or both.

"With almost 50 years of leadership and innovation in high-speed surgical drills, we're excited to offer our newest Midas Rex drill for surgeons who prefer the convenience and familiarity of finger control," said Darren Woodruff, product manager for Spinal Power with the Neurologic Technologies division at Medtronic. "The Legend EHS Stylus Touch doesn't require a footpedal at all, which can be advantageous during multi-surgeon procedures and at busy trauma centers."

Additional features of the Legend EHS Stylus Touch drill include:

-- Ergonomic positioning and true variable speed adjustment

-- Easy-to-use design and quick set-up

-- Adjustable speeds from 200 to 75,000 RPM

The Legend EHS Stylus Touch drill is powered by Medtronic's Integrated Power Console (IPC(R)) system, a multispecialty surgical power console that offers improved intraoperative functionality. With the IPC system's intuitive touchscreen interface, surgeons can use saved custom settings, quickly adjust irrigation via simple remote control, and run multiple Medtronic handpieces.

As part of the standardized Legend platform, the Legend EHS Stylus Touch drill works with Medtronic's interchangeable Legend tools and attachments for a broad range of surgical procedures.

"The Legend EHS Stylus Touch drill continues our tradition of innovative, powerful high-speed surgical drills, and is a direct result of listening to our customers' needs," said Bob Blankemeyer, president of the Surgical Technologies business and senior vice president at Medtronic.

About the Surgical Technologies Business at Medtronic The Surgical Technologies business develops products for the diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases and disorders of the ear, nose and throat; surgical devices and implantable products for the treatment of cranial, spinal and specialty small-bone conditions; and state-of-the-art navigation equipment used in operating rooms to assist physicians in neuro and spinal surgery procedures.

About Medtronic Medtronic, Inc. (www.medtronic.com), headquartered in Minneapolis, is the global leader in medical technology -- alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life for millions of people around the world.

Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties such as those described in Medtronic's periodic reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ materially from anticipated results.

SOURCE: Medtronic, Inc.

:::::5 Technology Predictions for the New Year

2010-01-03T09:34:00.001+08:00

By BECKY WORLEY and KATIE BOSLAND
Jan. 1, 2010

When it comes to gadgets, tech consumers are always eager to know what's next. In 2009, iPhones and Kindles exploded in popularity, but what's going to be the new "it" craze of 2010? Technology investor Guy Kawasaki stopped by "Good Morning America" to take a look at five popular technologies and figure out what's next for the new year.

Becky Worley looks at what new technologies are coming in the new year.

What's next for e-books?

From phones, to computers, to self-serve ticket counters at airports, touch screens are nothing new. What is new is the increasing competition and variety in ways to use them, and e-books are no exception.

With Sony, Amazon and Barnes and Noble all scrambling to get the largest share of the e-book market, what will happen in 2010? Kawasaki predicts that there will be one winner but that it's still too early to tell who it will be. He also insists it may not just be about who has the nicest hardware, but also who carries what title, "who gets the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, basically the magazine you want."

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In addition, rumors abound that 2010 might be the year of an Apple touch-screen tablet combining an e-reader, music player and web browser.

"I think it'd be great," Kawasaki said. "Journalism and newspaper and that kind of newsgathering need a jump start and I think it's fairly predictable that in the next 10 years or so most of us will be reading our news on Kindle, table, plastic logic kind of things."

He added, however, that it still may be too soon to tell if the technology will actually be on the market this year.

What's Next for Phones?

In addition to e-books, the touch screen iPhone has grown so popular that it too is seeing its fair share of competition. Predictions for 2010? Competition with Verizon's Droid, which is already becoming a real competitor for the iPhone, is only going to increase in the new year.

Although it may be the year for the touch screen phone competition, when it comes to competition between the carriers and the iPhone, all bets are off.

When asked if he thinks the iPhone will ever go to another carrier besides AT&T, Kawasaki jokingly replied, "ask Steve [Jobs] -- I have no idea."

Can cloud ships and space sun shades fix the planet?

2009-11-10T13:18:00.001+08:00

By Matt Ford, for CNN
cnnAuthor :By Matt Ford, for CNN

(CNN) -- In order to stop dangerous climate change we may be forced to construct giant solar shades and cover great swathes of land with artificial trees that suck up carbon dioxide.

These are the conclusions of a year-long scientific survey of "geo-engineering" technologies by the UK's Royal Academy published earlier this year. From fake trees to cloud making ships, the ideas are designed to provide planet-scale alterations to our climate if efforts to cut emissions fail.

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But while the Royal Society believes some of the technologies show promise, such as firing tiny reflective particles into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, the report sounds a strong note of caution about the potential unintended consequences of geo-engineering.

Its authors are concerned that excitement about new technology might distract from efforts to cut emissions.

"Geo-engineering is not a magic bullet and nothing we now know about any of these technologies suggests that they will be able to cancel out emissions in the near future," Professor John Shepherd, an oceanographer at Southampton University, and chair of the Royal Society working group, told CNN.

"We are not arguing for the development of these technologies, but for research that will enable us to make a sensible decision about them in the future.
"We were concerned that, particularly in the run up to Copenhagen in December, some of the hype about geo-engineering could have a negative effect on efforts to reduce emissions, which is still absolutely critical."
Bold solutions but with a high price?

But while the Royal Society argues for research rather than action, there is a growing interest in geo-engineering technology and others are much more forthright in their endorsement, even arguing that it offers an alternative to cutting emissions.

"We need to end our fixation on cutting carbon through deals like Kyoto and Copenhagen, because experience shows us that those just aren't working," Bjorn Lomborg, director of the think-tank the Copenhagen Consensus Center and author of "Cool It" and "The Skeptical Environmentalist", told CNN.

Research by Lomborg's own Copenhagen Consensus Center has suggested that spending $9 billion developing cloud whitening technology to reflect solar radiation might be able to cancel out this century's global warming in a relatively short timeframe, while in contrast, he argues, the shift to a low-carbon economy based on green energy could take much longer.

"Consider that electrification of the global economy is still incomplete after more than a century of effort," said Lomborg.

Any attempt at geo-engineering the Earth's climate would require massive industrial projects, and professional engineering institutions point to the potential economic, as well as environmental, benefits.
"We estimate that up to two million new jobs will be created in this sector by 2050," said Dr Tim Fox, Head of Environment and Climate Change at the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which recently issued a report arguing that geo-engineering technology could pave the way to a greener future.

"At the moment no-one is taking greenhouses gases out of the air and no-one is trying to reflect back solar radiation. If we were to do either of these they would develop into billions of tonnes of gases per year or thousands of square miles of reflective devices. That equates to probably millions not thousands of jobs worldwide."

The Institution is calling for the British Government funding of up to £20 million ($33 million) to help establish a new research center for geo-engineering, and believes both the UK and USA would be well-placed to take advantage of the new industries.

"[Geo-engineering] could operate tomorrow, but it is a double question of scale and cost. We have not done this before, and whilst we don't need any technological inventions to help us succeed, we do need to go up a learning curve," said Fox.

Russian roulette with the future of the planet
But in sharp contrast to this enthusiasm many environmental groups are strongly opposed to geo-engineering,. They argue that it is a dangerous distraction from what they see as the key issue: reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Geo-engineering is not a plan B for the climate," Greenpeace UK's chief scientist, Dr Doug Parr, said in a press statement.

"It should be used only in desperation, [could have] widespread undesirable impacts, and raises major ethical and political issues of its own. It may be very expensive, and it may well never work.

"Many of these proposals still have risks - there is no simple global thermostat that can be turned up and down and proposals that reflect sunlight can still... have impacts on weather and precipitation leading to exactly the sorts of problems we are trying to avoid by averting climate change.

"Geo-engineering is now being investigated because we have collectively, as a society, failed to take on the fossil fuel interests."
Mike Childs, Head of Climate at Friends of the Earth also remains wary of the impact of many geo-engineering concepts.

"The benefits of geo-engineering are unproven," he told CNN.
"We haven't got time to play Russian roulette with the future of the planet. Science tells us we need to make quick and substantial cuts in global carbon emissions if we have any hope of avoiding runaway climate change."

There is even the risk that even if some geo-engineering projects work, they may draw humanity into further difficulties that we will struggle to manage over the long-term.

"We are not sure that some of the solar technologies are at all sustainable," said Shepherd.

"They are based on balancing one human intervention against another, and we would have to keep maintaining that balance as long as the greenhouse gasses are in the atmosphere, and that could be hundreds of years.

"We shouldn't begin something like that without understanding our exit strategy."

New Intel Processor Fights Rootkits, Virtualization Threats

2008-05-12T14:15:00.000+08:00

But experts say new features still aren't true anti-rootkit technologies

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Senior Editor, Dark Reading

Intel today rolled out a new desktop processor for business machines with hardware-based security features that it says can help prevent stealth malware attacks and better secure virtual machines.

The new vPro 2007 Platform, which was code-named Weybridge by Intel, also comes with an upgraded feature that better tracks and logs network traffic for malicious patterns, as well as support for 802.1x and Cisco NAC platforms so that if the operating system is down, you can still manage the endpoints because network security credentials are stored in hardware. Intel's new vPro platform also comes with new built-in management and energy-efficiency features.

Mike Ferrin-Jones, Intel's director of digital office platform marketing, says attackers increasingly are writing stealthier malware that evades detection by software-based tools, and some that even disable them: "That gives them free rein over the system." That has held some enterprises back from going with virtualization technology, he says.

Intel's new processor -- via its so-called Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O features -- can better protect virtualized software from these kinds of attacks by detecting any changes to the virtual machine monitor; restricting memory access by unauthorized software or hardware; and protecting virtual machines from memory-snooping software, according to the company.

Stealth malware expert Joanna Rutkowska, founder of Invisible Things Lab, says Intel's new Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O features sound like a step in the right direction for protecting against stealth malware attacks, as are AMD's SKINIT and External Access Protection features, which were released last year.

"I don't believe we can address some problems like kernel rootkits and especially virtualization-based rootkits, without help from the hardware vendors," she says.

Rutkowska says based on what she could surmise from the press materials provided to her, Intel's Virtualization for Directed I/O appears "to let you create more secure hypervisors and deploy secure micro kernel-based OSes, she says.

Still, these technologies aren't true anti-rootkit technologies, she says. "They are, rather, technologies that [for example] would allow [you] to build better OSes, not prone that much to rootkit infections as the OSes we have today [are]."

The key, Rutkowska says, is for OS and software vendors to use Intel's new hardware-based security, as well as AMD's in its new Barcelona processors. "It's all in the hands of software and OS vendors now," she says. "If they don't redesign their products to make use of those new technologies in a proper way, those new technologies will be pretty useless."

Intel's Ferrin-Jones says hardware-based security in the new platform, based on Intel's Core 2 Duo processor and Q35 Express chipset, help where software-based security cannot. "Most security applications run inside the OS," he says. "For the systems to be protected and secured, those apps have to be up and running, as does the OS." Features such as "remote wakeup" capabilities aren't secure or available if the OS goes down.

Meanwhile, major computer makers and resellers are now selling desktops with the new vPro processor, according to Intel, including Dell, HP, and Lenovo, and the company says 350 organizations have already deployed it.

Intel is also currently working with virtual machine monitor and security software vendors to enable their products to work with the new platform, Ferrin-Jones says.

New technologies help autistic children communicate

2008-05-12T14:11:00.000+08:00

New technologies are helping autistic children communicate like never before.

At the Pacific Autism Center for Education in Santa Clara, California, each morning begins with a power point presentation, launching a day filled with technology.

Two out of every three students at the center are non-verbal, but thanks to a voice output device 12-year-old Alex is able to get the snacks he craves.

Malique also uses the device to "talk" for him.

"The largest benefit is the ability to give them a voice, gives them a voice that offers a breadth of options and the third benefit is the social interactions that come from having the ability to speak," explained the center's Kurt Ohlfs.

Technology also makes communicating less cumbersome.

Imagine trying to carry around a book with pictures of everything you wanted to convey in a day.

Now the students have all that information at their fingertips.

21-year-old Daniel is using a more advanced, hand held device that offers him a menu with hundreds of icon options.

He selects the ones he wants and the computer talks in sentences, conveying his thoughts.
"It's amazing when we've given some of this technology to our students and it's opened up that door and now the students are suprisingly prolific when it comes to expressing their thoughts," said Ohlfs.

Fujitsu Develops Technology Enabling Real-time Multiple-Point Temperature Measurement

2008-04-08T18:35:00.001+08:00

Kawasaki, Japan, Apr 4, 2008 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. announced today the development of a new technology, based on optical fibers, that enables accurate and real-time temperature distribution measurement in large datacenters which have multiple heat sources.

Through a single optical fiber, this technology makes it possible to measure simultaneously the temperature of over 10,000 areas in a facility, thereby enabling visibility of temperature distribution in large datacenters. Combining this technology with an air conditioning control system will enable fine-tune air conditioning, allowing for more energy-efficient large-scale data centers.

With mounting concern over global warming resulting from greenhouse-gas emissions, there is a growing awareness of the importance of reducing the energy consumed by air conditioning, which is one cause behind the increasing consumption of energy in recent years. In the IT industry, with increasingly powerful servers, larger systems installations, and expanded operational times, the waste heat generated by data centers has been on a continuous upward slope.

Thus, in order to lower both energy costs and CO2 emissions, there is a need for more efficient air-conditioning systems in large datacenters. As part of Fujitsu's Green Policy Innovation[1] initiatives, which seek to help customers reduce their environmental footprint, the group is researching ways to help lower the energy demands of IT systems.In the past, air-conditioning systems would monitor temperatures at a few specific points and cool the building to a uniform temperature, which could lead to temporary cold spots. To solve this problem requires not only designing more energy-efficient servers and other heat generators, but also fine-grained temperature control based on multiple-point temperature readings in a large facility.

Technological ChallengesConventional building temperature measurement is executed using semiconductor-based sensors and thermocouple temperature sensors[2] which can only measure the temperature at specific points. Because all these systems use power sources and signal lines, multiple-point temperature measurements would entail a proliferation of cables that would be difficult to manage and be expensive.

Particularly for mid-sized or large data centers, which have numerous server racks, collecting data from multiple points in real time and flexibly adjusting to equipment changes or the addition or subtraction of server racks in response to changes in operational requirements has been extremely difficult.As a currently available technology method for multiple-point temperature measurement, there is a method that entails using optical fibers as sensors to measure the strength of Raman scattering light[3].

However, as this method lacks" position resolution"[2], it is not suited for temperature measurement of multiple heat sources, and thus it is difficult to accurately measure temperature distribution in large data.Newly Developed TechnologyBecause the minute Raman scattering light intensity of an infrared laser shining through an optical fiber changes, the optical fiber itself can be used as a way to measure temperature.

By improving the position resolution, Fujitsu Laboratories developed a practical method technology for measuring with high accuracy the temperature distribution in large data centers.Key features of this technology are as follows:1. By combining the following two technologies, the new technology enables accurate temperature measurement (position resolution of less than 1 meter) of large data centers which have multiple heat sources, such as from severs, within the facility:-

A technology that adjusts variations in measurement that occur depending on the width of a pulse inserted into an optical fiber, or if the pulse widens during transmission- A technology based on thermo-fluid simulation that optimizes the method in which optical fiber is laid2. As the new technology makes it easy to assess positional information about the point being monitored, it can accommodate changes and updates of server racks.ResultsBecause a single strand of optical fiber can measure up to 10,000 locations in real time, large data centers can measure their temperature distribution precisely and inexpensively (assumes optic fiber length of 10 km).

As this system uses only light to take measurements, it imposes no risk of disrupting electrical signals in nearby servers and networking equipment. Because the system can be used to monitor temperature irregularities of servers and air-conditioning systems in real time, it can help lessen the risk of high temperatures creating fires.Future DevelopmentsFujitsu plans to develop this technology for use in air conditioning control systems, as well as complementary technologies to effectively use waste heat, thereby enabling large data centers to consume less energy.

Automakers look for new technology to reinvent the car

2008-03-17T20:59:00.000+08:00

Fiona Anderson, Vancouver SunPublished: Thursday, March 13, 2008
Representatives from the big automakers may disagree about which new type of car is best, but they do agree advances in technology are needed before consumers can afford to switch from petroleum-fuelled transportation.

While hybrids can improve fuel efficiency in city driving by as much as 89 per cent, the cars still rely on petroleum, and companies are looking for alternatives.

Next in line may be plug-in hybrids which, as the name implies, plug into regular power sources to recharge. The problem is developing an affordable battery that can be continually recharged.

"The key challenge we yet have to overcome is still technology," said Nancy Gioia, the director of sustainable mobility technologies and hybrid vehicle programs at Ford Motor Co., during a a panel Wednesday at Globe 2008, a business and environment conference taking place in Vancouver.

Andrew Frank, a professor at the University of California, Davis said a plug-in hybrid should run 90 per cent of the time on electricity and 10 per cent on gas.

"We have plugs in the wall and we have gas stations," he said "And we have nothing else. So the plug-in hybrid uses the two infrastructures that we have."

But John German, manager of environmental and energy analyses at the American Honda Motor Co., believes the increased cost of plug-in cars may not be worth the benefit.
And before plug-in hybrids can be affordable, there has to be a breakthrough in battery technology, he said.

But German cautioned against looking for one solution. "There's no silver bullet," he said. "The problem is so immense we need everything and we need to avoid the trap of single solutions."
General Motors was showcasing its hydrogen-fuel cell car at the Globe 2008 trade show. And GM's vice-president of environment, energy and safety policy, Beth Lowery, said the company is currently rolling out cars for customers to test drive. The cars aren't ready for market yet, though GM's target is to have a financially competitive model by 2010, Lowery said. But hydrogen gas stations will have to become more widespread before the cars can become mainstream.

Technology Formerly Known as Bluetooth

2007-10-12T15:21:00.000+08:00

You've got ZigBee and Z-Wave for sensor and control networks, Near Field Communications (NFC) for proximity payments, RFID for tracking assets, Ultra Wideband (UWB) for high-speed connections between devices. You might throw Wi-Fi into that mix for networking. And, oh, don't forget about Bluetooth.

Bluetooth has become fairly ubiquitous in today's society. You can't turn around without seeing someone sporting a Bluetooth earpiece and its little blue flashing lights. It's not just geeks and business users. I've seen soccer moms with them. And there are more and more stereo headsets using Bluetooth.

Headsets were the first place Bluetooth found a home, but you're seeing it used in a lot more devices and applications now. There are watches with Bluetooth, even car radios with Bluetooth. The new ways Bluetooth is being used was driven home to me last week when I attended Motorola's annual technology forum for analysts and the press.

Several short-range technologies were part of some demonstrations - NFC to use your phone to pay at the check-out register and ZigBee to create an ad-hoc mesh network for firemen and again to monitor equipment in a hospital. But Bluetooth seemed to be used in more demonstrations as a way to connect not only mobile phones but other equipment like TV monitors, computers and storage devices.

Analysts are forecasting a slowing in the spread of Bluetooth. In-Stat says the number of Bluetooth devices will increase 34% this year, a healthy number but still down substantially from recent years. I think that shows a maturation of the technology. You can't keep doubling every year.

I'm skeptical there will be much slowing in Bluetooth's growth, though. There are some new technologies joining Bluetooth that could push it into more devices and new areas. One is the integration of the Wibree low-power technology, which is under way now with the merger of the two groups. Another advance is Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR (enhanced data rate), which could be in devices by Christmas. Still another is the integration of the UWB broadband technology from the WiMedia Alliance. You haven't heard a lot about the latter, so I have to wonder if that integration is proving to be more difficult than originally thought.

My only concern about the future of Bluetooth is that the technology and the organizations backing it - specifically the Bluetooth Special Interest Group - are becoming unwieldy and cumbersome. Bluetooth is becoming an umbrella of technologies that don't necessarily work together.

A recent report from the analyst group IMS Research says all this expansion of Bluetooth technology may hurt it in certain areas, especially among car manufacturers. Bluetooth was in 4 million vehicles last year, IMS Research says, and it still expects it to grow in the auto segment more than 300% in the next five years. Most of the interest from car makers is for hands-free uses and for audio streaming, IMS says.

But, says the report, some in the automotive industry don't think they can keep up with all the new capabilities on the horizon for Bluetooth, since the design cycle for cars is 4 to 5 years. Incidentally, IMS Research is forecasting 800 million Bluetooth devices will be sold this year, up 40% from 2006.

Detecting Liquid Explosives On A Plane

2007-10-07T19:07:00.000+08:00

After the plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airlines with liquid explosives was uncovered in London in August 2006, there has been pressure on the airline industry, and Homeland Security, to find new ways to not only detect liquids in baggage and on airline passengers, but also to figure out what they are. Now, the DHS Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) is teaming with scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to find a possible solution.

"Having to place your consumable liquids through the baggy routine when going through airport security may one day be history," says S&T Program Manager on the project, Mr. Brian Tait, "and that's going to make a lot of people very happy. This is a new screening prototype that definitely shows promise."

In late June, Los Alamos National Laboratory team successfully completed proof of concept of an extremely sensitive future screening technology. The new technology scans the magnetic changes of individual materials at the molecular level and stores them in a database, which then allows the differentiation and identification of many materials that may be packaged together or separately as they go through the screening process.

It uses the same technology that brain scans are performed with, and is based on ultra-low field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which is already being used in medical field for advanced brain imaging. The end goal is to eventually put it next to the current x-ray screener.

The SENSIT technology has already demonstrated the ability to differentiate more than four dozen materials considered "safe" for carrying onto aircraft --from everyday personal items like toothpaste to mouth wash -- to those that are considered hazardous .

"With the MRI signal, we want to distinguish between harmful items, and many common carry-on liquid consumables," says Tait. "The goal is reliable detection of liquids, with high throughput, that is non-contact, non-invasive, requires no radiation, produces no residue and uses the existing airport security portal."

SENSIT is one of S&T's Homeland Innovation Prototypes (HIPS) projects -- high-impact innovative technologies that have shown great promise and are on their way to being transitioned to industry for manufacturing and distribution.

"We're working hard on getting the SENSIT technology to an airport near you very soon," says S&T's Innovation Director, Roger McGinnis.

As IBM Launches Innovation Center to Fuel Entrepreneurship

2007-09-25T17:36:00.000+08:00

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it will open a new IBM Innovation Center to help start-up companies, software developers, and independent software vendors (ISVs) create new software and hardware applications and services.

Located in Dallas, Texas, and serving local companies, the new IBM Innovation Center will provide technical support and expertise to help businesses test, build and optimize applications based on open platforms. The new center is designed to meet the growing demand from Business Partners and venture funded organizations looking to harness IBM expertise around innovative technologies such as System z, Cell Broadband Engine and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

This effort is in response to the tremendous growth that the Dallas technology community is achieving. According to the Greater Dallas Chamber Index, Dallas Fort Worth commands the highest concentration of technology activity in Texas with one-third of all tech establishments and 40 percent of the state's technology jobs.

With the introduction of this new center, IBM will now host a network of more than 35 IBM Innovation Centers around the world. Since their inception over ten years ago, IBM Innovation Centers have become a key component of IBM's strategy to help companies build innovative solutions before they expand into new markets. In 2006 alone, more than 6,000 business partners leveraged IBM Innovation Centers worldwide to build and test new solutions.

Growing Network of Global IBM Innovation Centers

The new IBM Innovation Center in Dallas will offer R&D expertise to enable start-ups, software developers, and other small to mid-sized companies to create new software and hardware applications and services. These efforts will provide start-ups an entry-point to IBM's Research network, accelerating innovation by providing insights into emerging technologies.

To meet the demands from companies that are looking to stay up-to-speed on new technology, the center will also sponsor workshops and best practices for local businesses to take advantage of emerging technologies such as SOA and Cell Broadband Engine architecture. Additionally, IBM will also host connection events offering companies unique networking opportunities for business growth.

Building on Global Successes

In addition to local companies, businesses throughout the world will also be able to take advantage of the resources available at the new IBM Innovation Center in Dallas. For example, through IBM's Virtual Loaner Program, Business Partners around the globe gain access to System i, p and x machines, giving them the same benefits as a loaner machine at their own site, but with the added bonus of IBM managing and hosting the hardware.

IBM has also recently added a new component to the IBM Innovation Centers efforts that will now provide a well-connected global support for Business Partners, independent of their location. IBM will enhance the global integration network that will now seamlessly connect its worldwide IBM Innovation Centers, giving instant access to top researchers and technical experts for all companies, regardless of their proximity to a center.

For example, a Business Partner who requests an engagement with their local IBM Innovation Center in Dublin, Ireland may learn that the IBM Innovation Center in Dallas, Texas is better equipped to meet their technical needs. With access to an Internet connection and just a few easy clicks of the mouse, a company will be able to receive hands-on support from their local IBM team while leveraging the technical resources of an IBM Innovation Center halfway around the world.

"With more than 150 IBM Business Partners in the Dallas area, and that number growing each day, this new investment is being led by the demand from these partners for increased expertise in their local region," said Jim Corgel, general manager, ISV & Developer Relations. "As companies continue to look for ways to grow and expand into new markets, IBM is looking to our partners to set the agenda for ensuring that our resources are meeting their specific needs."

Building on Local Successes
Since 1974, ARX Technologies, based just outside of Dallas, Texas, has worked hand-in-hand with utilities and public sector organizations to create and develop an array of software solutions. An IBM business partner for over 30 years, ARX has learned to take full advantage of the many resources IBM offers to its partners. For example, ARX Technologies has worked extensively with the remote assistance provided by the global network of IBM Innovation Centers to test, validate and modernize its solutions.

"As a rapidly growing company, ARX Technologies is always looking for new ways to leverage the wide range of resources IBM offers to its partners, especially on a local level," said Charlotte Foulkes, CTO, ARX Technologies. "By launching a new IBM Innovation Center in Dallas, IBM is making it possible for us to not only use its facilities for application testing and validation, but having a physical location in the Dallas region also provides us with the opportunity for our staff to attend training sessions and maintain their skills and certifications. More importantly, it provides us with a local facility that we can bring our customers to for hands-on support from IBM."

Today's announcement further demonstrates IBM's commitment to the success of its Business Partners.

Asymtek introduces new technologies

2007-09-18T18:59:00.000+08:00

Asymtek has introduced two coating/dispensing technologies for applying catalyst inks onto membranes in electrode assemblies of proton exchange and direct methanol fuel cells. Pulse spray coating technology provides quick large area coverage, allowing for uniform film thicknesses. DispenseJet technology deposits the ink with a uniform

thickness and density so lines and patterns are smooth, even, and the same consistency throughout. The consistent and precision application of the ink increases the porosity of the film so fuel and byproducts can pass through the membrane efficiently. Asymtek offers fuel cell manufacturers two types of application technologies for increased dispensing flexibility: spray coating and discrete dot dispensing.

Spray coating is for large areas, for controlled thicknesses, and even film thicknesses. Discrete dot dispensing is used for specific patterns with high edge definition and exact film build up of highly volatile inks. Asymtek has a multiple array of coating and dispensing technologies for catalyst inks, polymer electrolytes, gasketing, and sealing depending on the application.

Catalyst inks are very expensive because of the platinum content. With the Asymtek jet, the ink is deposited precisely where it is programmed to be placed, so there is limited waste. The jet deposits discrete dots in whatever pattern is desired without masking. Asymtek's closed-loop system measures the exact amount of fluid that's deposited.

Process controls and Asymtek's Easy Coat(R) for Windows XP(R) (ECXP) software regulate the volume, size, shape, and viscosity of the dot. "The success of the catalyst ink depends 50% on its chemistry and 50% on its application," said Jim Klocke, Asymtek senior business development manager. "While most application methods use spray technology, the catalyst inks may vary in thickness and density. With Asymtek's jet dispensing, all those problems are eliminated and the ink is deposited precisely, with uniform thickness and density."

Germany: Siemens VDO announces new technologies at Frankfurt motor show

2007-09-18T18:55:00.000+08:00

Siemens VDO is displaying a number of technologies at the IAA in Frankfurt.
The PN 4000 and PN 6000 portable navigation devices equipped with a DVB-T receiver as a standard feature: The units offer high-resolution map graphics displayed in a 2D or ...

CNSE and the birth of NanoEconomics

2007-09-16T22:37:00.000+08:00

The history of mankind is one of innovation and change. However change does not happen at a constant rate. Historically, each new technology introduced over time has penetrated established markets at a faster rate than its predecessor. The time that it has taken successive technologies to penetrate one quarter of the overall U.S. consumer market has declined from 55 years (for the automobile) to 7 years (for the Internet). For us, this means that today we can witness and study the birth, introduction and impact of many new technologies.

The purpose of new technologies is to solve problems. When we solve a problem using a new technology it is either to improve our quality of life or to help us create more value in our everyday labor. Whatever the case, new technologies drives us to do things in a better manner and consequently, makes us in general more productive.

Productivity is the effectiveness of productive effort. With passing centuries our conception of productivity has changed dramatically. Moreover, with the advent and growth of the computer and information technology industries in the last 40 years we have witnessed a tremendous technological change. The convergence of computing, information and communications is transforming every aspect of society and creating new possibilities for improved productivity. The productivity in the semiconductor industry is and has been, for several decades, a driving force for the economic growth of the world. Productivity growth in the semiconductor industry has averaged 20 percent for the last 10 years, compared to less than 5 percent for all manufacturing industries.

Productivity in this industry is inevitably related to Moore's Law, meaning the regular increase in performance and data processing capabilities in computer chips. Moore's Law is the engine for continued growth, an engine not to be found in any other industry on the planet. Furthermore, this increase in productivity has occurred hand in hand with a decline in consumer prices. The price of a single transistor was $1.00 in 1968 . Today you can buy millions of transistors for $1.00. What other item has declined in price like the transistor?

IBM Instantly Connects People to Free Technology Service

2007-09-09T19:40:00.000+08:00

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a free service that will allow users of any computer or mobile device such as the iPhone to gain real-time access to thousands of technical resources and emerging technologies with a simple click of a button.

This extension of syndication that IBM is making available is bringing the widest range of technical know how to the fingertips of millions of Yahoo!, Google, NetVibes users and owners of mobile devices such as iPhone.

Developer gizmos from IBM aim to help reach a broader set of users and enable them to more easily interface with technology content, to streamline their daily tasks, and to keep up-to-date on new technologies arming them with the right resources to build innovative applications. Now, with a click of a button, any computer or mobile device user can easily gain the power of syndication on a technology topic of their choice with no programming, training or technical expertise required.

The unique syndication tool gives users centralized and mobile access to the widest range of open source technologies across a variety of topics including Web 2.0 technologies, game development, Web innovation and more through a website called IBM developerWorks, the central hub for thousands of technical resources. Developer gizmos are all widgets, gadgets, modules, or any technological items that are customized to display IBM technology content within a browser, operating system, user's desktop or syndication mashup page.

Developer gizmos are an extension of the services offered by Yahoo!, Google, and NetVibes, customizing the publicly available code or processes to allow users to export content from IBM through podcasts, forums, blogs, educational briefings and "how-to" tutorials, instantly, all at the push of a button, with no extra development necessary.

This move is another step by IBM to ensure that early technology adopters, developers and small to mid-sized businesses are able to capitalize on modern technologies such as Web 2.0, and integrate social networking applications into their businesses in a simple, cost-efficient manner. No other vendor is taking such a simplified and open approach to helping users leverage technology and resources to simplify their personal and business requirements.

This functionality further simplifies the user's experience and emphasizes IBM's commitment of giving the community the ability to decide what content is relevant to their needs. It also makes it easy for developers to obtain relevant content without having to conduct several searches. On an average, developers spend 50 percent of their time searching for relevant content to support their efforts to build applications. This new form of syndication alleviates developers from having to conduct web searches for several hours to obtain the right content in real time.

A small business owner can also benefit from this by creating a customized gizmo on their MyYahoo! web page to receive free updates and information on Web 2.0 technologies.

For example, if a small video game company that specializes in Playstation 3 console development wants to increase revenue by making its games more advanced, the game developer could create developerWorks Gizmos to syndicate the latest technical information directly from the game development space on developerWorks right to his iGoogle, Netvibes or MyYahoo! personal page. Having realtime access to up-to-the-minute information on Cell broadband technology enables him to tap into the power of the Playstation 3, so he can build beautiful, more robust visual effects, not to mention smarter and tougher opponents into the game. This in turn gives the small company a competitive advantage in the marketplace, which can translate into higher profits.

"The IBM developerWorks site is a comprehensive resource that covers the technologies most important to developers today, such as the recent tutorial on Yahoo! Pipes," said Chad Dickerson, senior director, Yahoo! Developer Network. "The addition of the Add to MyYahoo! Button will make it even more convenient for developers and users to tap into the vast array of new technologies made available free of charge from IBM."

How it Works

These gizmos provide a simple interface that enables any user to select content from the IBM developerWorks website, the central hub for thousands of technical resources, and export it to customizable web pages, such as MyYahoo! and iGoogle that are used by millions of users on a daily basis. With a simple click of a button, users can now create custom gizmos that allow them to take advantage of IBM technical content without the need for any additional programming skills or registration.

They can also tailor this information to their areas of interest and receive up-to-the minute updates directly to their home page, eliminating the tedious task of searching for information that is critical for their personal interests or organizational needs. IBM is now bringing the information directly to users through their gizmos on a daily basis.

Free for Taking

With today's news, IBM is bringing the power of thousands of new technology resources, free code to create applications on open standards and how-to tutorials from IBM's developerWorks to millions of users worldwide based on their topic of choice.

For example:
-- Gaming enthusiasts can get up-to-date information on how to improve
their online gaming experience. By using a gizmo, the users gain access to
forums and information on the latest technological advances in gaming while
learning how to create better gaming applications. For example, as a result
of using this gizmo, users who enjoy playing Sudoku would receive a
tutorial that shows them how they can create their own version of the game
that automatically generates new puzzles to solve each time you play.

Developer gizmos from IBM will also give early adopters access to emerging software services from IBM research and development labs. For instance, an IT professional working for a small business that is an early adopter of Web 2.0 technologies visits IBM's website for developers on a regular basis to learn about the latest technologies that can provide viable solutions for their business.

With this new functionality, the user can select blogs, forums, wikis, and more and with the push of a button, create a custom Yahoo! Widget, Google Gadget, and NetVibes Module displaying all new content from IBM on their personal page of choice. Users receive updates right to this page in real-time. This allows them to aggregate the topics that are relevant to their business right within their workspace without having to do several searches or visit multiple pages.

IBM is providing four new avenues for custom syndicated content:

-- IBM developerWorks community spaces -- This is a unique channel that
provides an open platform for developers to build communities on a broad
range of topics and business trends, such as Web 2.0 and SaaS. There are
nearly 20 community topics available. Each topic space includes portlets
displaying blogs, forums, wikis, technical resources, feature stories,
tutorials, and podcasts that are related to the topic. Now users can tap
into these resources by exporting any portlet within the space as a Google
Gadget, NetVibes Module or Yahoo! Widget.

-- IBM developerWorks "build your own feeds" application -- Users have
the ability to select any combination of developerWorks open source topics,
technologies or IBM product brands and export the corresponding article or
tutorial feeds as RSS, ATOM, HTML and now, also as a Yahoo! Widget, Google
Gadget, and NetVibes Module.

-- IBM developerWorks Google Desktop Gadget -- By downloading the IBM
developerWorks Google Desktop Gadget, users can view content and search the
developerWorks website right from their desktop.

-- For all Apple iPhone users -- Users can view the top stories from IBM
developerWorks, sorted by topic, through an interface optimized for the
iPhone. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/iphone.

"With this effort IBM is expanding its ecosystem of IT professionals by bringing new technology resources to the user directly rather than the user having to search for this information," said Kathy Mandelstein, Director of Worldwide Developer Programs for IBM. "This new feature will also allow small businesses and early adopters with no programming skills to take advantage of all the technology resources IBM has to offer to help businesses build innovative solutions."

Car Navigator features 4.3 in. widescreen 16:9 format LCD.

2007-09-03T12:20:00.000+08:00

With hands-free calling option, TomTom GO 720 offers voice recording capability, audio options, FM transmitter, dual-audio volume control, and real-time traffic and weather forecasts. It comes with Map Share(TM) technology, safety features, and maps of US and Canada preloaded on 2 GB internal flash memory. Measuring 4.7 x 3.2 x 0.9 in. and weighing 7.7 oz, device features 400 MHz CPU, 64 MB RAM, SD card slot, GPS receiver, RDS-TMC Traffic receiver, and Bluetooth(TM).

The New TomTom GO With Unique New Features and Map Share(TM) Technology is the Ultimate Car Navigator

o Elegant and slim design with high-quality finish

o Latest version of TomTom's award-winning navigation software

o Unique new TomTom Map Share(TM) technology allows users to improve maps instantly and to benefit from all improvements made by other users

o Extra large 4.3 inch touchscreen with high-quality 3D graphics

o Extensive range of safety features

o Enhanced hands-free calling

o Built-in FM Transmitter to transmit sound over car stereo

o New smart & fun extras such as the ability to record driving instructions

CONCORD, Mass., June 5 -- TomTom, the world's largest portable navigation solutions provider, today reveals the TomTom GO 720 US & Canada edition. Ground-breaking new technology allowing for daily map improvements and a host of new features, such as safety extras and the ability to record driving instructions, have been combined into one compact and stylish design, providing users with the ultimate driving experience.

"The new TomTom GO 720 sets the standard in smart car navigation," says Jocelyn Vigreux, president of TomTom Inc. "With this introduction, we are making unique new features and technologies available to our users to deliver the highest performing, most cutting-edge satellite navigation solutions available on the market today. Our unique TomTom Map Share(TM) technology harnesses the power of our large installed user base for the benefit of all our users."

"Next generation navigation users are looking for navigation offerings that provide more than simple directions," said Thilo Koslowski, vice president and Lead Automotive Analyst, Gartner Inc. "These consumers want solutions that improve their individual driving experience and provide daily relevance via innovative personalization options, seamless communication functionality, intelligent safety features and dynamically updated content including map data."

Sleek Design

The TomTom GO 720 features a new elegant slim design with a high-quality finish that allows it to fit perfectly in any car or to be carried in a shirt pocket. The large 4.3 inch touchscreen has TomTom's renowned easy-to-use and intuitive user interface with 3D graphics, including building footprints, that ensures drivers have an even better overview of their surroundings.

Unique TomTom Map Share(TM) Technology

The TomTom GO 720 also introduces TomTom's unique new map improvement technology, TomTom Map Share(TM). This technology enables drivers to easily and instantly improve their own maps. TomTom Map Share(TM) users will always have the most accurate and up-to-date information available. The technology also enables users to share improvements and benefit from all other users' improvements daily, automatically and easily via TomTom HOME - TomTom's free desktop application. TomTom has the world's largest satellite navigation community with over 10 million users. TomTom Map Share(TM) users can contribute and exchange all their improvements amongst each other, making the best maps available for all of them. TomTom Map Share(TM) means TomTom drivers can always have the most up-to-date maps and inside local knowledge at their fingertips (see separate press release for more information on TomTom Map Share(TM)).

Smart and Fun Extras

With the new TomTom GO, drivers can choose from a host of smart extras, ensuring that their destination is reached in a relaxed and enjoyable way. A number of personalization options have been added for the first time, including:

o Voice recording capability, so users can be guided to their destination
with the voices of their children, family or friends
o Millions of points of interest, including over 100 different
recognizable brand icons to help spot favorite coffee shops,
restaurants and more
o Extensive audio options for integration with the car stereo. Dual-
audio volume control allows the user to set navigation instruction
volume level separately from music volume level. Drivers can play their
favorite songs through the integrated MP3 player or by connecting their
iPod® to the TomTom GO. The built-in FM Transmitter enables
navigation instructions and music to be heard through the car stereo
o Real-time traffic, five-day weather forecasts and celebrity voice
downloads*

New Safety Features

Safety is a key priority in the development of all TomTom products. The new TomTom GO comes with uniquely designed safety features so drivers always have direct access to safety and roadside assistance information wherever they go. The extensive 'Help Me!' menu includes information such as the nearest police station, hospital or car repair service center. It also allows the user to quickly identify their location for emergency assistance providers. Another new safety feature is the shortcut menu, so drivers can jump straight to their favorite, most accessed information with just one touch on the screen for even easier and safer navigation (see separate press release for more information on the extensive safety features).

Enhanced Hands-Free Kit

The enhanced hands-free kit features a new high-quality sound system via Bluetooth®. With optimized acoustic design, enhanced noise reduction, echo cancellation and an automatic answer function, the TomTom GO 720 ensures drivers can make and take calls easier while keeping their eyes on the road.

TomTom HOME and TomTom PLUS

As with all TomTom products, the new TomTom GO 720 comes with TomTom HOME, a free desktop application. TomTom HOME is the essential tool to keep devices up-to-date at all times. Customers can easily download new software versions as well as the latest maps. TomTom's large satellite navigation community can contribute and exchange their map corrections with each other through TomTom HOME, making the most accurate maps available to all users. In addition, the new TomTom GO 720 comes pre-installed with a host of other TomTom PLUS services including TomTom Weather and TomTom QuickGPSfix (for extra fast connection between the devices and GPS satellites). Users can also shop for more services and prepare for trips on their computer.

Traffic Ready

The new TomTom GO 720 offers the latest and most up-to-date traffic information through an RDS-TMC Traffic receiver* and TomTom Traffic subscription*, making driving more efficient and stress-free. The enhanced traffic interface monitors current traffic information and gives precise details about traffic incidents.

TomTom GO 720

The TomTom GO 720 comes pre-installed with the most up-to-date maps of the US and Canada stored on the internal memory.

Availability

The new TomTom GO will be available across the US and Canada starting the end of July.

Product technical specifications
o 4.3" widescreen 16:9 format LCD (WQVGA: 480*272 pixels)
o CPU 400 MHz, 64MB RAM
o Maps of US and Canada preloaded on 2GB internal flash memory
o SD card slot
o High-sensitivity GPS receiver
o RDS-TMC traffic information receiver (optional accessory, not included)
o Integrated FM transmitter
o Bluetooth(TM)
o Lithium-polymer battery (5 hours operation)
o Optimized integrated microphone and speaker for high quality hands-free
functionality
o Dimensions: 4.7" x 3.2" x 0.9"
o Weight: 7.7 ounces

* Not included with the TomTom GO720. Available for separate purchase from www.tomtom.com.

For more information please contact:
Karen CK Drake,
TomTom Inc.
Telephone: 978-405-1688
Email: us.publicrelations@tomtom.com

About TomTom

TomTom NV is the world's largest navigation solution provider. TomTom's products are developed with an emphasis on innovation, quality, ease of use and value. TomTom's products include all-in-one navigation devices which enable customers to navigate right out of the box; these are the award-winning TomTom GO family, the TomTom ONE range and the TomTom RIDER. TomTom PLUS, is the location-based content and services offering for TomTom's navigation products easily available through TomTom HOME. TomTom also provides navigation software products which integrate with third party devices; the TomTom NAVIGATOR software for PDA's and smartphones. TomTom WORK combines industry leading communication and smart navigation technology with leading edge tracking and tracing expertise. TomTom's products are sold through a network of leading retailers in 25 countries and online. TomTom was founded in 1991 in Amsterdam and has offices in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. TomTom is listed at Euronext, Amsterdam Stock Exchange in The Netherlands. For more information, go to http://www.tomtom.com/.

Source: TomTom

Web site: http://www.tomtom.com

New Intel Processor Fights Rootkits, Virtualization Threats

2007-08-28T10:03:00.001+08:00

But experts say new features still aren't true anti-rootkit technologies

AUGUST 27, 2007 | 10:34 AM

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Senior Editor, Dark Reading

Intel today rolled out a new desktop processor for business machines with hardware-based security features that it says can help prevent stealth malware attacks and better secure virtual machines.

"I don't believe we can address some problems like kernel rootkits and especially virtualization-based rootkits, without help from the hardware vendors," she says.

Intel is also currently working with virtual machine monitor and security software vendors to enable their products to work with the new platform, Ferrin-Jones says.

Europe Unlocks Wireless Potential

2007-07-30T13:33:00.000+08:00

lONDON - Telecommunications companies and wireless operators in Europe such as Nokia and Ericsson look set to get a healthy chunk of their 3G license costs reduced, after the European Commission proposed further liberalization of the wireless communication spectrum Wednesday.

The Commission aims to repeal a 20-year-old directive that reserved the use of certain radio frequencies for GSM-standard services, which initially helped make the European standard a success but ended up making spectrum space scarce for new technologies like 3G--"third-generation"--broadband and wireless data services.

"This proposal is a concrete step towards a more flexible, market-driven approach to spectrum management," said Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding. "It will increase competition in the use of spectrum bands and enhance accessibility of European citizens to multimedia services."

Until now, national regulators across Europe have allocated bands in the electromagnetic spectrum according to specific technologies, a process that tends to be excessively bureaucratic and slow to respond to new services and technologies.

The old system also pushed up license fees for operators, whose fierce competition over a limited slice of spectrum led to high prices and equally high losses for 3G investments. Companies including Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news - people ), Deutsche Telekom (nyse: DT - news - people ), France Telecom (nyse: FTE - news - people ) and Hutchison Whampoa (nyse: HTX - news - people ) have desperately battled to reclaim tax compensation on $100 billion worth of European 3G licenses bought in 2000, but last month their appeals were rejected.

If the new proposals are adopted by the European Parliament, the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands previously reserved for GSM usage will be opened up to other technologies. 3G services currently use the 2100 MHz frequency, allocated in the 1990s.

"With this decision it's going to be a lot cheaper to deploy 3G," said Matthew Howett, analyst with Ovum Research. "It's cheaper to use the lower frequency and allows you to cover a much wider area," he added.

The European Commission said that the wireless communications sector could see reductions in network costs of up to 40% over the next five years. The trade association GSMA said last month that a 3G network in the 900 MHz band would achieve up to 40% greater coverage for the same costs as within the 2100 MHz band.

Don't Blink: Interview with Jeff Harrow

2007-07-29T13:27:00.000+08:00

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 7/28/2007
Jeff Harrow is the author and editor of the Web-based multimedia "Harrow Technology Report" journal and Webcast, available at www.TheHarrowGroup.com. He also co-authored the book "The Disappearance of Telecommunications". For more than seventeen years, beginning with "The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing", the Web's first and longest-running weekly multimedia technology journal, he has shared with people across the globe his fascination with technology and his sense of wonder at the innovations and trends of contemporary computing and the growing number of technologies that drive them. Jeff Harrow has been the senior technologist for the Corporate Strategy Groups of both Compaq and Digital Equipment Corporation. He invented and implemented the first iconic network management prototype for DECnet networks.

He now works with businesses and industry groups to help them better understand the strategic implications of our contemporary and future computing environments.

Question: You introduce people to innovation and technological trends - but do you have any hands on experience as an innovator or a trendsetter?

Answer: I have many patents issued and on file in the areas of network management and user interface technology, I am commercial pilot, and technology is both my vocation and my passion. I bring these and other technological interests together to help people "look beyond the comfortable and obvious", so that they don't become road-kill by the side of the Information Highway.

Question: If you had to identify the five technologies with the maximal economic impact in the next two decades - what would they be?

Answer:

A) The continuation and expansion of "Moore's Law" as it relates to our ability to create ever-smaller, faster, more-capable semiconductors and nano-scale "machines." The exponential growth of our capabilities in these areas will drive many of the other high-impact technologies mentioned below.

B) "Nanotechnology." As we increasingly learn to "build things 'upwards" from individual molecules and atoms, rather than by "etching things down" as we do today when building our semiconductors, we're learning how to create things on the same scale and in the same manner as Nature has done for billions of years. As we perfect these techniques, entire industries, such as pharmaceuticals and even manufacturing will be radically changed.

C) "Bandwidth." For most of the hundred years of the age of electronics, individuals and businesses were able to 'reach out and touch' each other at a distance via the telephone, which extended their voice. This dramatically changed how business was conducted, but was limited to those areas where voice could make a difference.

Similarly, now that most business operations and knowledge work are conducted in the digital domain via computers, and because we now have a global data communications network (the Internet) which does not restrict the type of data shared (voice, documents, real-time collaboration, videoconferencing, video-on-demand, print-on-demand, and even the creation of physical 3D prototype elements at a distance from insubstantial CAD files), business is changing yet again.

Knowledge workers can now work where they wish to, rather than be subject to the old restrictions of physical proximity, which can change the concept of cities and suburbs. Virtual teams can spring up and dissipate as needed without regard to geography or time zones. Indeed, as bandwidth continues to increase in availability and plummet in cost, entire industries, such as the "call center," are finding a global marketplace that could not have existed before.

Example: U.S. firms whose "800 numbers" are actually answered by American-sounding representatives who are working in India, and U.S. firms who are outsourcing "back office" operations to other countries with well-educated but lower-paid workforces.

Individuals can now afford Internet data connections that just a few years ago were the expensive province of large corporations (e.g., cable modem and DSL service). As these technologies improve, and as fiber is eventually extended "to the curb," many industries, some not yet invented, will find ways to profitably consume this new resource. We always find innovative ways to consume available resources.

D) "Combinational Sciences." More than any one or two individual technologies, I believe that the combination and resulting synergy of multiple technologies will have the most dramatic and far-reaching effects on our societies. For example, completing the human genome could not have taken place at all, much less years earlier than expected, without Moore's Law of computing.

And now the second stage of what will be a biological and medical revolution, "Proteomics", will be further driven by advances in computing. But in a synergistic way, computing may actually be driven by advances in biology which are making it possible, as scientists learn more about DNA and other organic molecules, to use them as the basis for certain types of computing!

Other examples of "combination sciences" that synergistically build on one another include:

- Materials science and computing. For instance: carbon nanotubes, in some ways the results of our abilities to work at the molecular level due to computing research, are far stronger than steel and may lead to new materials with exceptional qualities.

- Medicine, biology, and materials science. For example, the use of transgenic goats to produce specialized "building materials" such as large quantities of spider silk in their milk, as is being done by Nexia Biotechnologies.

- "Molecular Manufacturing." As offshoots of much of the above research, scientists are learning how to coerce molecules to automatically form the structures they need, rather than by having to painstakingly push or prod these tiny building blocks into the correct places.

The bottom line is that the real power of the next decades will be in the combination and synergy of previously separate fields. And this will impact not only industries, but the education process as well, as it becomes apparent that people with broad, "cross-field" knowledge will be the ones to recognize the new synergistic opportunities and benefit from them.

Question: Users and the public at large are apprehensive about the all-pervasiveness of modern applications of science and engineering. People cite security and privacy concerns with regards to the Internet, for example. Do you believe a Luddite backlash is in the cards?

Answer: There are some very good reasons to be concerned and cautious about the implementation of the various technologies that are changing our world. Just as with most technologies in the past (arrows, gunpowder, dynamite, the telephone, and more), they can be used for both good and ill. And with today's pell-mell rush to make all of our business and personal data "digital," it's no wonder that issues related to privacy, security and more weigh on peoples' minds.

As in the past, some people will choose to wall themselves off from these technological changes (invasions?). Yet, in the context of our evolving societies, the benefits of these technologies, as with electricity and the telephone before them, will outweigh the dangers for many if not most people.

That said, however, it behooves us all to watch and participate in how these technologies are applied, and in what laws and safeguards are put in place, so that the end result is, quite literally, something that we can live with.

Question: Previous predictions of convergence have flunked. The fabled Home Entertainment Center has yet to materialize, for instance. What types of convergence do you deem practical and what will be their impact - social and economic?

Answer: Much of the most important and far-reaching "convergences" will be at the scientific and industrial levels, although these will trickle down to consumers and businesses in a myriad ways. "The fabled Home Entertainment Center" has indeed not yet arrived, but not because it's technologically impossible - more because consumers have not been shown compelling reasons and results. However, we have seen a vast amount of this "convergence" in different ways. Consider the extent of entertainment now provided through PCs and video game consoles, or the relatively new class of PDA+cell phone, or the pocket MP3 player, or the in-car DVD...

Question: Dot.coms have bombed. Now nano-technology is touted as the basis for a "New Economy". Are we in for the bursting of yet another bubble?

Answer: Unrealistic expectations are rarely met over the long term. Many people felt that the dot.com era was unrealistic, yet the allure of the magically rising stock prices fueled the eventual conflagration. The same could happen with nanotechnology, but perhaps we have learned to combine our excitement of "the next big thing" with reasonable and rational expectations and business practices. The "science" will come at its own pace - how we finance that, and profit from it, could well benefit from the dot.bomb lessons of the past. Just as with science, there's no pot of gold at the end of the economic rainbow.

Question: Moore's Law and Metcalf's Law delineate an exponential growth in memory, processing speed, storage, and other computer capacities. Where is it all going? What is the end point? Why do we need so much computing power on our desktops? What drives what - technology the cycle-consuming applications or vice versa?

Answer: There are always "bottlenecks." Taking computers as an example, at any point in time we may have been stymied by not having enough processing power, or memory, or disk space, or bandwidth, or even ideas of how to consume all of the resources that happened to exist at a given moment.

But because each of these (and many more) technologies advance along their individual curves, the mix of our overall technological capabilities keeps expanding, and this continues to open incredible new opportunities for those who are willing to color outside the lines.

For example, at a particular moment in time, a college student wrote a program and distributed it over the Internet, and changed the economics and business model for the entire music distribution industry (Napster). This could not have happened without the computing power, storage, and bandwidth that happened to come together at that time.

Similarly, as these basic computing and communications capabilities have continued to grow in capacity, other brilliant minds used the new capabilities to create the DivX compression algorithm (which allows "good enough" movies to be stored and distributed online) and file-format-independent peer-to-peer networks (such as Kazaa), which are beginning to change the video industry in the same manner!

The point is that in a circular fashion, technology drives innovation, while innovation also enables and drives technology, but it's all sparked and fueled by the innovative minds of individuals. Technology remains open-ended. For example, as we have approached certain "limits" in how we build semiconductors, or in how we store magnetic information, we have ALWAYS found ways "through" or "around" them. And I see no indication that this will slow down.

Question: The battle rages between commercial interests and champions of the ethos of free content and open source software. How do you envisage the field ten years from now?

Answer: The free content of the Internet, financed in part by the dot.com era of easy money, was probably necessary to bootstrap the early Internet into demonstrating its new potential and value to people and businesses. But while it's tempting to subscribe to slogans such as "information wants to be free," the longer-term reality is that if individuals and businesses are not compensated for the information that they present, there will eventually be little information available.

This is not to say that advertising or traditional "subscriptions," or even the still struggling system of "micropayments" for each tidbit, are the roads to success. Innovation will also play a dramatic role as numerous techniques are tried and refined. But overall, people are willing to pay for value, and the next decade will find a continuing series of experiments in how the information marketplace and its consumers come together.

Question: Adapting to rapid technological change is disorientating. Toffler called it a "future shock". Can you compare people's reactions to new technologies today - to their reactions, say, 20 years ago?

Answer: It's all a matter of 'rate of change.' At the beginning of the industrial revolution, the parents in the farms could not understand the changes that their children brought home with them from the cities, where the pace of innovation far exceeded the generations-long rural change process.

Twenty years ago, at the time of the birth of the PC, most people in industrialized nations accommodated dramatically more change each year than early industrial-age farmer would have seen in his or her lifetime. Yet both probably felt about the same amount of "future shock," because it's relative The "twenty years ago" person had become accustomed to that year's results of the exponential growth of technology, and so was "prepared" for that then-current rate of change.

Similarly, today, school children happily take the most sophisticated of computing technologies in-stride, while many of their parents still flounder at setting the clock on the VCR - because the kids simply know no other rate of change. It's in the perception.

That said, given that so many technological changes are exponential in nature, it's increasingly difficult for people to be comfortable with the amount of change that will occur in their own lifetime. Today's schoolchildren will see more technological change in the next twenty years than I have seen in my lifetime to date; it will be fascinating to see how they (and I) cope.

Question: What's your take on e-books? Why didn't they take off? Is there a more general lesson here?

Answer: The E-books of the past few years have been an imperfect solution looking for a problem.

There's certainly value in the concept of an E-book, a self-contained electronic "document" whose content can change at a whim either from internal information or from the world at large. Travelers could carry an entire library with them and never run out of reading material. Textbooks could reside in the E-book and save the backs of backpack-touting students. Industrial manuals could always be on-hand (in-hand!) and up to date. And more.

Indeed, for certain categories, such as for industrial manuals, the E-book has already proven valuable. But when it comes to the general case, consumers found that the restrictions of the first E-books outweighed their benefits. They were expensive. They were fragile. Their battery life was very limited. They were not as comfortable to hold or to read from as a traditional book. There were several incompatible standards and formats, meaning that content was available only from limited outlets, and only a fraction of the content that was available in traditional books was available in E-book form. Very restrictive.

The lesson is that (most) people won't usually buy technology for technology's sake. On the other hand, use a technology to significantly improve the right elements of a product or service, or its price, and stand back.

Question: What are the engines of innovation? what drives people to innovate, to invent, to think outside the box and to lead others to adopt their vision?

Answer: "People" are the engines of innovation. The desire to look over the horizon, to connect the dots in new ways, and to color outside the lines is what drives human progress in its myriad dimensions. People want to do things more easily, become more profitable, or simply 'do something new,' and these are the seeds of innovation.

Today, the building blocks that people innovate with can be far more complex than those in the past. You can create a more interesting innovation out of an integrated circuit that contains 42-million transistors today - a Pentium 4 - than you could out of a few single discrete transistors 30 years ago.

Or today's building blocks can be far more basic (such as using Atomic Force Microscopes to push individual atoms around into just the right structure.) These differences in scale determine, in part, why today's innovations seem more dramatic.

But at its heart, innovation is a human concept, and it takes good ideas and persuasion to convince people to adopt the resulting changes. Machines don't (yet) innovate. And they may never do so, unless they develop that spark of self-awareness that (so far) uniquely characterizes living things.

Even if we get to the point where we convince our computers to write their own programs, at this point it does not seem that they will go beyond the goals that we set for them. They may be able to try superhuman numbers of combinations before arriving at just the right one to address a defined problem, but they won't go beyond the problem. Not the machines we know today, at any rate.

On the other hand, some people, such as National Medal of Technology recipient Ray Kurzweil, believe that the exponential increase in the capabilities of our machines - which some estimate will reach the complexity of the human brain within a few decades - may result in those machines becoming self-aware.

Don't Blink!

FERC announces pilot project licensing process for new hydropower technologies

2007-07-28T13:25:00.000+08:00

Washington, D.C., July 27, 2007 -- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced it will convene a technical conference on licensing pilot projects for ocean energy hydro technologies to discuss a staff proposal for a process that could complete licensing in as few as six months.

Commissioner Philip Moeller will lead the conference, to be conducted Oct. 2, 2007, in Portland, Oregon. This is the latest in a series of measures the commission has undertaken since 2006 to address intensifying interest in the development of ocean, wave and tidal, or hydrokinetic, technologies.

"Perhaps the greatest barrier to realizing the potential of new hydrokinetic technologies is that they are unproven," chairman Joseph T. Kelliher said. "These technologies must be demonstrated before large scale commercial deployment can occur. Today we take a major step to reduce the barriers to the success of these new hydro technologies, by proposing a simplified licensing process suitable for licensing pilot projects."

"This new generation of hydrokinetic technologies will bring hydropower to the forefront of the renewable energy debate," Moeller said. "It is generating a lot of enthusiasm throughout the country, particularly in coastal states like my home state of Washington. FERC wants to harness this enthusiasm by exploring ways to reduce the regulatory barriers to realize the amazing potential of this domestic renewable power source?one that can help meet renewable portfolio standards established by states."

The goal of the commission staff proposal is to complete the full project licensing process in as few as six months, provide for commission oversight and input from affected states and other federal agencies, and allow developers to generate electricity while conducting the requisite testing.

The process would be available for projects that are 5 megawatts or smaller, removable or able to shut down on relatively short notice, located in waters that have no sensitive designations, and for the purpose of testing new hydro technologies or determining appropriate sites for ocean, wave and tidal energy projects.

At its December 2006 conference on hydrokinetic energy, FERC learned that these technologies are in a developmental phase, which presents significant risks for developers due to a lack of information about engineering performance and environmental effects, and limited access to financing.

In response to FERC's February 2007 notice of inquiry on preliminary permits for the new technologies, at least 14 entities addressed the need for a pilot program licensing process.

Comments included recommendations that FERC address the unique characteristics of pilot projects by: permitting connection to the national grid both for study purposes and to generate revenue; implementing a simpler, faster review process; requiring site restoration following experimental deployments; and requiring a license period of five years rather than 30-50 years.

Comment: Managing technological risks

2007-07-27T13:24:00.000+08:00

27-July-2007: Recent comments by former United nations secretary General Kofi Annan over the role of genetically modified sed in african agriculture have reopened debate over the risks posed by new technologies.

And this is the point I want to make.

Technological risks to society and the environment have become an integral part of global public policy. Managing these risks and responding to public perceptions of them are necessary if engineering are to be effectively deployed to meet development needs.

New technologies have been credited with creating new industrial opportunities but also with destroying the status quo. In fact, maintaining the status quo comes with its risks as well. In some cases the risks of doing nothing may outweigh the challenges associated with investing in new responses to social challenges.

In the past, technological risks were confined to countries in which new technologies emerged or even to the sectors in which they were applied. Concerns two decades ago over the use of microprocessors in industry were restricted to their possible impact on employment displacement in the manufacturing sector.

Workers and labor organizations around the world protested the use of this emerging technology. Today echoes of these debates are still heard in discussions of the “deskilling” of workers.

Although interest in the impact of microelectronics on employment was expressed in many parts of the world, it did not become a mass movement involving a wide range of social groups, for at least two reasons.

First, the possibility of job displacement was weighed against the benefits of raising industrial productivity. Second, the global economy was not as integrated as it is today, and many debates were localized. Globalization gives technological risk a wider meaning and turns local debates over certain products into mass movements.

This is itself a source of new risks.

Risk perceptions vary considerably across technologies, and this defines the scale of social mobilization. Attempts in the 1980s to promote the adoption of renewable energy technologies were bedeviled with social opposition.

Sporadic opposition was recorded in many parts of the world, but it did not translate into mass movements. Risk perceptions of pharmaceutical products are not a major challenge to the use of new medicines, partly because of the limited range of options available to consumers in life-threatening situations.

Fear of genetic engineering, for example, stems from scientific, technical, economic, cultural, and ethical concerns. Opposition is differentiated along product lines (transgenic crops, fish, trees, cattle). Many people oppose genetic engineering because of corporate control of the industry, which they perceive as a social risk.

A focus on technological risks can overshadow the possible benefits of an emerging technology, which are often difficult to predict. At the time of their invention, computers were envisioned as able to perform nothing more than rapid calculation in scientific research and data processing. The rise of the Internet as a global phenomenon could not have been predicted based on the early uses of information technology.

Technological risks have to be weighed against the risks of existing technologies as well as the risks of not having access to new technologies. The risks of not having access to the Internet may outweigh the risks of employment displacement that shaped many of the attitudes toward information technology in its earlier years.

The concerns over employment displacement were genuine, but the risks were often projected to whole industries or sectors. The debate is dominated by concerns over job displacement rather than the potential contributions of the new technologies to economic productivity.

There are also numerous cases in which society has underestimated the risks posed by new technologies or adopted them without adequate knowledge about their dangers. Managing technological uncertainty will require greater investment in innovative activities at the scientific and institutional levels.

At the technical level, technological diversity is essential to ensuring that society is able to respond to emerging challenges with the knowledge at its disposal. Technological diversity demands greater investment in scientific enterprises as well as the creation of measures to facilitate access to available technical options.

It also requires flexibility in institutional arrangements, to enable society to respond swiftly to technological failure. Such flexibility can be built into the design of technological systems themselves. Diversification of energy sources, for example, is an institutional response to the risks posed by dependence on centralized fossil fuel power plants. Similar diversification principles apply to information storage, especially as the world community moves into the information age.

Trends in industry suggest that a combination of incentives and regulations can shift technological change to meet environmental goals. Already enterprises are responding to the growing environmental consciousness among consumers and starting to adopt new environmental standards in fields such as emissions and energy use.

Efforts to focus on risk in the absence of actual technology will remain hollow exhortations and a distraction from genuine development efforts. Using emerging technologies without considering their risks is likely to elicit social pressures that can undermine technological development. The challenge is to maximize the benefits of new technologies while reducing their risks.

Calestous Juma teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government where he directs the Science, Technology and Globalization Project.

Two HDTV Technologies Worth Waiting For

2007-07-26T13:21:00.000+08:00

LED backlighting and 120-Hz refresh rates are coming to mainstream HDTVs like the ones Samsung showed off this week.

If you're planning an HDTV purchase this fall (or looking ahead to one this winter), keep an eye out for two emerging technologies. 1080p is now everywhere, LCD HDTVs are taking over, and 40-inch displays are evolving into the new sweet spot. But new sets slated for this fall and winter are will be among the first mainstream displays to incorporate several new technologies that can significantly improve picture quality.

Samsung, for example, recently showed off its latest lines of LCD HDTVs due out in August. One line sports a 120-Hz refresh rate--double the 60 Hz of standard LCD TVs--which makes for sharper fast-moving images. Another line uses LED backlights, which dramatically boost contrast and allow for a wider range of colors.

Both technologies should be available from a wide variety of vendors this fall, including LG Electronics, Philips, and Sharp. And as these enhancements make their way into more and more TVs, the price difference between standard LCD TVs and these newer models should shrink rapidly. Here's a look at Samsung's plans for 120-Hz HDTVs and LED backlighting, and why you might want to wait for a television that makes use of either technology.

120-Hz Displays

Momentum behind 120 Hz has been building since early this year. JVC was among the first vendors to ship a 120-Hz display, and Sharp's Aquos D82U and D92U series televisions began shipping back in February. This summer, Philips, LG, and Samsung all announced their respective 120-Hz technologies, with products coming by this fall.

At 120 Hz, the television's refresh rate is double the previous standard rate for displaying video content. By doing so, it can smooth out any residual motion blur that results from fast-moving action found in such content as sports and a scrolling news ticker on the bottom of the screen. Video content is filmed at 30 frames per second, which means such content is best shown at 60 Hz or 120 Hz.

Samsung showed a split-screen demonstration of its 120-Hz technology at an event here in San Francisco, with one side showing the 120-Hz technology, and the other side showing 60 Hz. The difference between the two was noticeable: At 120 Hz, the ticker moved more smoothly and fast-moving video appeared sharper.

The 71 series displays that Samsung is launching in August use a technology called McFi--short for Motion Compensated Frame Interpolation--to create new interpolated video frames and insert them between each frame of video to smooth out fast motion. Samsung's technology looks for any movement, then it creates an average of those movements to insert a frame in between them. Other HDTV makers insert a black frame in between frames, an approach Samsung claims fixes the motion-blur issue, but degrade the panel's brightness.

LED Backlighting

If you're less concerned about fast-moving images, a display with an LED backlight may be more to your liking. The big advantage to LED-backlit TVs is improved contrast ratio. Samsung says its 81 series of displays can automatically adjust the backlight for specific parts of the picture, depending upon the source content. This allows the display to achieve deeper blacks and crisper whites than can be achieved with the Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp technology (CCFL) traditionally used by LCD HDTVs.

In CCFL, the tubes light up the back of the display; those tubes can be all on, or all off, and they allow some degree of light leakage. But LED backlighting allows a greater degree of control, which enables Samsung to claim a dynamic contrast ratio of 100,000:1, a four times improvement over its CCFL displays.

Price Premiums

While 120-Hz displays won't be that much more expensive than standard 1080p displays are today, you will pay a premium for an LED backlit display. The 40-inch model in Samsung's 120-Hz 71 series line should retail for $2699 when it ships in August, for example, while Samsung's 40-inch LED backlit model from the 81 series will go for $2999.

At least with TVs in that price range, other key HDTV technologies have become standard. A year ago, 1080p resolutions were still a rarity--and available in to higher-end models only. As we head into the fall, 1080p is de rigueur on HDTVs at sizes of 40 inches and up. Samsung, for example, will have only three non-1080p models going forward in that size range. HDMI 1.3 is also getting more pervasive across a wide spectrum of LCD (and for that matter, plasma) displays.

Power & Cooling Meet The New Tech Wave

2007-07-25T13:19:00.000+08:00

How Innovative Technologies Are Changing Data Center Infrastructures

nnovations in data center technologies continue to transform productivity throughout the enterprise, giving way to increased flexibility and less downtime. Yet as a parallel consequence, many of these same innovations are forcing data center and facilities managers to alter their overall outlook toward power and cooling needs.

In the long run, changes forced by newer technologies can be positive because the increases in productivity can eventually outpace the increased costs to cool the devices. However, older data center rooms aren’t necessarily equipped to adequately handle new equipment, such as blade servers, and in turn can encounter far more heat issues than what existed with older devices.

“Most advances in technology require additional horsepower to take advantage of new product features and benefits,” says Kevin Houston, virtualization and consolidation practice leader at Optimus Solutions (www.optimussolutions.com), which helps firms plan, build, and maintain their IT infrastructure. “Data center consolidation projects can be complex and can easily overwhelm an IT organization struggling to maintain current operations.”

Blades Burrow In

Ask any data center manager to select a technology that’s sparking the most change in power and cooling requirements, and you’re likely to hear “blade servers” as the answer. Although these devices save power on one hand, they often require overhauled cooling infrastructures on the other.

“Blade servers are challenging the existing data center design and requiring audits to identify and propose the additional power and cooling resources to maintain an environment that meets the server manufacturer’s optimum operation requirements,” says Bill S. Annino Jr., director of the converged network solutions group at Carousel Industries (www.carouselindustries.com), a communications systems integrator and reseller.

Unlike traditional servers, blade servers forgo redundant components in their chassis, instead using single components and sharing them among the computers in the chassis. Blade enclosures also use a single power source for all the blades within them, which helps to boost the overall efficiency of the server environment.

That single blade rack can replace several traditional racks, which will help enterprises save power. “We’ve seen a tremendous increase in interest for blade technologies, as customers recognize the benefits of physical consolidation through a centralized ecosystem of power and cooling,” Houston says. “Both HP and IBM have made significant investments in their blade chassis to reduce the power and cooling needs for a server environment with as much as 50% over an equivalent physical rackmount environment.”

On the downside, many older data centers in small and midsized enterprises are designed to deliver a consistent level of cooling throughout the entire environment. The high-density form factors of blades require more concentrated cooling in specific areas, which means that a transition to blades could require facilities to be revamped to accommodate hot spots. After all, the cold air requirements for blade racks can be quadrupled�or more�when compared to the requirements for traditional racks.

This challenge becomes more difficult when SMEs mix blades with traditional servers because they still need traditional cooling methods but also need to remove the heat generated in specific areas by the blades. In these mixed environments, some experts recommend removing the traditional racks near the blade to allow for greater heat dispersion.

Call For A Change

Other increasingly popular technologies are also making their mark on power and cooling demands, albeit in different ways. In particular, VoIP is enjoying increased popularity in SMEs, and managers are witnessing a trade-off between power consumption and overall costs.

“Although VoIP phones require additional power consumption by drawing greater Power over Ethernet, or PoE [power], it is important to always evaluate the total cost of ownership,” Houston says. “Although power costs may increase, the boost in productivity from operational efficiencies and application integration�not to mention long-distance savings�outweighs any increase to the energy bill in most scenarios.”

Elizabeth King, general manager of Hitachi’s Servers System Group (www.hitachi.us), notes that VoIP creates stress on networks, storage, and computing resources. Further, while the technology hasn’t reached mainstream status, “there is enough experience to indicate that it will require corporations to expand their computing and network capabilities,” she says.

Of course, more capabilities often lead to more equipment, and more equipment means increased cooling and power demands. “The impact of the VoIP revolution has definitely added to the computer room,” explains Gregory T. Royal, chief technology officer and executive vice president of Cistera Networks (web.cistera.com), a company providing enterprise application platforms and engines for IP communications. “The vendors in this space have yet to face up to the heat and power requirements of this growth. Over time I expect that we will move to more efficient servers and predominantly blade servers [to handle the requirements].”

According to Royal, in theory, the endpoints accomplish 90% of the media (or heavy) work involved with new VoIP solutions. For example, he says, a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) server provides “traffic cop” capabilities, rather than actively participating in the calls. Again in theory, this means that a given CPU can support far more endpoints than traditional PBXes, he says.

“There has, however, been a trend for a long time for PBX to shrink into what are now essentially soft switches,” Royal says. “However, there is a great increase in media gateways, media conferencing, video, applications, and other CPU-intensive applications. Unified voicemail, conferencing, notification, and quality assurance systems are now all mainstream in IP PBX environments.”

While VoIP technologies continue to push more equipment into data centers, their presence has removed the need for larger, older PBX installations that consumed plenty of floor space, similar to mainframes of the past, Royal says.

Virtual Help

Additional technologies, such as load balancers, application accelerators, caching servers, and middleware are also being increasingly deployed in today’s data centers. But Royal notes that they also bring benefits. “A lot of these new technologies now use standard, off-the-shelf technology such as Intel CPUs, which means there are better economies of scale in dealing with [power and cooling] issues,” he says.

Power and cooling concerns are also being mitigated by virtualization technologies, which allow SMEs to boost production without increasing the number of devices in their data centers. And thanks to advances in virtualization management tools, managers can now more easily integrate the technology into their data centers.

“VMware Infrastructure 3, for example, offers a complete solution for management and optimization of virtual servers, storage, and networking,” Houston says. “We’ve seen consolidation of infrastructure through virtualization deliver transformative cost savings by greatly reducing power and cooling requirements.”

Cool It Down

Regardless of whether new technologies can run more efficiently or help to save space, there’s no denying that the number of overall devices in data centers is ramping upward as enterprises converge their data centers with business practices. But while this alignment can serve to help the business in general, it can literally cramp the style of managers looking to push down power and cooling costs.

BT Group (www.bt.com), which is building an all-IP network known as the 21st Century Network, requires plenty of power to run its data centers, but it is deploying innovative methods to handle the needs of today’s newer technologies. One of these involves the use of DC power, which BT has chosen over AC to handle its power-hungry data centers.

“BT estimates that this change alone reduces power consumption by 30%,” says Steve O’Donnell, global head of data center and customer experience management at BT. “While the acquisition of switches and servers that run on DC power is more expensive, the savings in power consumption offsets the cost.”

The company also has worked with suppliers to adapt equipment from recirculated-air cooling to fresh-air cooling, which O’Donnell says allows BT’s equipment to run within a range of 5 to 50 degrees Celsius (41 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit), compared with traditional higher ranges. BT has also revamped the physical structure of its data centers to reduce contamination from fresh air.

German workers fear Asian competition, bemoan slow move to new technologies

2007-07-24T13:07:00.000+08:00

BY KIRSTEN GRIESHABER ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BERLIN--then Thomas Haebich started working on the assembly line at Daimler-Benz AG two decades ago, he thought he had a job for life. But he no longer feels he can count on it.

On the contrary, today the 40-year-old auto worker often fears that he might lose his job at the car plant in the southern German town of Sindelfingen. He is convinced that on the long run German companies will not be able to compete with the emerging automobile industry in Asia.

"Only last year, Daimler paid compensation for 3,000 workers because they wanted them to leave the company," Haebich said. "If you look ahead another 10 years, China will push forward on the automobile market in such an aggressive way that we will no longer be able to beat their cheap products."

Haebich works weekly rotating shifts at the assembly line that makes the Mercedes E-class model, installing pedals and brake systems on up to 260 vehicles during a regular eight-hour workday.

Technically he has a 35-hour week, but in practice he works 40 hours a week and then gets to take compensatory time off when the company has fewer orders and not enough work to keep all 22,000 employees at the Sindelfingen plant busy.

Haebich became a member of the IG Metall union when he joined Daimler-Benz--now DaimlerChrysler AG--at age 20. He earns $4,682 a month pretax--after all deductions he has $2,118 left to cover his living expenses. By German law, Haebich has to have health insurance, pays into a pension fund and also deposits money into a life insurance fund offered by Daimler.

He worries that he will not get by on his compulsory pension fund once he retires.

"It would make sense to start an additional private pension but I can't really afford that," said Haebich, who is married and has an 11-year-old daughter.

He blames management for his worries. "They knew for a while that resources were getting scarce and more expensive--why didn't they invest much more in new technologies for cars that use less fuel?"

DaimlerChrysler agreed in May to sell 80.1 percent of its money-losing U.S. unit Chrysler to the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP in a $7.4 billion transaction, paving the way for a streamlined Daimler to concentrate on its luxury Mercedes brand and its truck business.

Haebich also said he can see the impact of globalization at work every day.

"The pressure to perform for new markets around the globe is constantly getting more intense," he said. "And while they used to hire workers on fixed-term contracts before, today they try to get by with cheaper temp workers."

Haebich is glad that he has a full-time contract but keeps telling his daughter that she will not be as lucky as he was.

"I always tell her: By the time you're grown up you must be flexible," he said, "even if that means taking a job in China."

New media: Good for democracy?

2007-07-23T16:08:00.000+08:00

By Dusty Horwitt

Earlier this year, pundits and politicians were again buzzing about the apparent democratic power of the Internet when a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois posted a video on YouTube portraying rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York as an Orwellian dictator.

Take a close look at the Internet, however, and its democratic luster disappears like Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

Let's begin with the ad about Senator Clinton. It was reported that the video had spread to television, where network and cable news shows had aired portions of it. The Washington Post reported that within days, it had been "viewed" online more than 2 million times. Two million views, however, does not mean 2 million people. "Views," "visits" and "visitors" are typically registered each time a person visits a Web site.

In a 2005 analysis of the top blogs among U.S. Internet users, comScore Media Metrix, a company that measures Internet traffic, found a large disparity between the number of "visits" the blogs received and the number of people, or "unique visitors," who accounted for those visits.

Over the first three months of 2005, for example, the liberal DailyKos.com attracted almost 3 million visits but only about 350,000 people - a little more than 0.1 percent of the U.S. population. ComScore noted that many of these unique visitors read the blogs infrequently, indicating that a large number of those views are likely by a fairly small number of people who visit the site often.

In June 2006, comScore data showed that of an estimated 30 million or more blogs, only about 70 reached an audience of 100,000 or more U.S. Internet users during that month. Of these 70, about 10 focused on noncelebrity news or politics. Their audience size ranged from 117,000 for LittleGreenFootballs.com to 1.4 million for Breitbart.com.

Why do these numbers matter? Because in a democracy, citizens who want to make a difference must be able to reach a broad audience. Only by winning a coalition of support can most people exercise political power. For example, Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff write in their 2006 Pulitzer-winning book, The Race Beat, that broad media coverage was essential to the civil rights movement's success.

The problem with the Internet is that it buries citizens' voices under an avalanche of information.

"When you think about the amount of information that is published to the Web, it is a physical impossibility for the vast majority of that stuff to spread virally," said Derek Gordon, marketing director for Technorati, a firm that measures the popularity of blogs.

The larger problem is that the Internet siphons audiences and revenue from the media outlets that can give citizens a voice, causing them to shrink and further impairing the media's democratic power.

Of course, the Internet is hardly alone in this. An array of technologies fueled by inexpensive energy, including cable, satellites and DVDs, has in recent years helped to consolidate the media by overproducing information.

Much like farmers hurt by overproduction of food, media companies have been forced to give away their data for less while becoming more dependent on advertisers and expensive new technologies.

Ben H. Bagdikian has identified similar trends in his book The New Media Monopoly. Mr. Bagdikian notes that as late as 1970, when the U.S. had about 100 million fewer people than it does today, there were three newspapers in my hometown of Washington, D.C., with daily circulations of 200,000 to 500,000. The papers likely had even wider reach because of multiple readers per copy. Today, only one local paper has a circulation of 200,000 or more, and its readership and staff are dwindling.

Similarly, as late as 1980, the three network newscasts reached 25 percent to 50 percent of the population each night. In 2006, nightly newscasts on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX and MSNBC combined reached less than 10 percent. According to a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, some newspapers have attracted additional readers online, but visits to newspaper Web sites tend to be very brief.

The conventional wisdom is that the media and the rest of us can make the transition to the digital world. But the evidence strongly suggests that the blizzard of online data makes such a transition - at least in a way that promotes democracy - impossible.

IBM Rides the Portal Wave

2007-07-22T16:05:00.000+08:00

IBM is looking to ride its leadership position in the enterprise portal space into a similar position in the Enterprise 2.0 arena, where Web 2.0 technologies intersect with the enterprise.

IBM on July 20 announced that research firm IDC had named IBM the leader in the enterprise portal space market for the fifth consecutive year. IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y., is moving to parlay that leadership into new areas with additional features in its WebSphere Portal offering. According to IDC, IBM had a 31.5 percent market share in 2006, followed by BEA Systems with 19.6 percent and Oracle with 10.5 percent.

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"I see their leadership stemming from a few things," IDC analyst Kathy Quirk said. In particular, IBM is "successfully selling portal solutions to businesses of all sizes in conjunction with other complementary products, especially those used for collaboration," she said.

The company is aggressively adding features and capabilities to its portal software and improving the usability of the software for business users, Quirk said. IBM also is "working to make the portal environment easier to get up and running and administer on a day-to-day basis," she said.

Larry Bowden, vice president of portals and Web interaction services at IBM, said the company is integrating its WebSphere Portal software with advanced Web 2.0 expertise to create a more dynamic, personalized version of a portal. In addition, IBM's commitment to Web 2.0 and SOA (service-oriented architecture)-based systems will continue to make its collaboration software more flexible and more useful, he said.

"Portals are a natural home for a lot of the new technologies coming forward," Bowden said. "We are seeing the new social networking technologies coming into the portal."

Another thing driving the merging of portals and Web 2.0 is the collaborative element of the technologies, Bowden said.

"Portals have been primarily used to distribute information, but now things are getting more interactive," he said. "You can have instant messaging, real-time chats with customers and constituents, and even video."
Click here to read more about IBM's Web 2.0 offerings.
Bowden said some of the new directions for WebSphere Portal will include "simplifying mashup creation so that end users have the power, so that every consumer can take feed No.1 and mash it up with feed No. 2. We have customers doing it today, but it's not as easy as we want it to be."
IBM also is improving the performance of the portal. "We're investing in the response experience of the portal," Bowden said. "We're going to be able to refresh just those fields that are new and not the entire page."

Another area of focus is semantic tagging, a feature that enables the portal to deliver a more personalized experience to users based on the way they navigate through the portal. "We don't ask you questions, we build a profile based on the way you navigate the portal," he said.

Additional features include enhanced integration with forms processing and with social networking technology, as well as the ability to take portal capabilities offline using IBM's Lotus Expeditor technology.

IDC projects that the enterprise portal software market will expand more than 50 percent by 2011, to $1.4 billion. The market grew nearly 11 percent in 2006, with license and maintenance revenue of $901 million, IDC reported.

IDC also anticipates solid market growth fueled by mashing up portals with new Web 2.0 collaboration and development technologies. A recent IDC report on the subject said. "Web 2.0 collaboration features are finding a welcome home within the portal.

As business users want to take advantage of these new egalitarian methods that offer easy ways for end users to customize content, while IT can take comfort in the portal's ability to deliver them within a secure deployment environment."

ALONG Mobile Displayed its New Cell Phone Network Game at the 5th China Digital

2007-07-19T16:02:00.000+08:00

In this exhibition, ALONG introduced one of its innovative core games, "Code of Life" (or "COL"). As one multiplayer online casual game in China, COL contains several innovative features. COL is designed to be a friend-making WAP game on a massive scale, with powerful community functions that enable users to form personal relationships through role-playing. This game will also facilitate forming friendships via cell phone by integrating the powerful functions of a mobile phone terminal, with satellite positioning based on GPRS and individualized photo uploads.

Mr. Li Jianwei, CEO of ALONG, commented, "The vast market of over 400 million mobile phone users in China is creating the opportunity to develop the next wave of mobile phone network games. 'Code of Life' is designed to take advantage of easy operations and community while meeting the taste of modern consumers pursuing a simple, fast-paced and interactive life style. An exciting game will accelerate the bloom of the mobile phone network game market."

As one of the top three digital interactive entertainment conferences in the world, ChinaJoy attracts top-tier game developers, operators and hardware providers from all over the world.

Mobile phone games, a new force in the ChinaJoy Show, have developed at an extremely rapid pace in the last two years. With ALONG's presence at ChinaJoy 2007, it will further accelerate the development of the mobile phone game industry.

United Technologies' Net Income Rises on Aerospace

2007-07-17T15:59:00.000+08:00

By Rachel Layne

July 18 (Bloomberg) -- United Technologies Corp., the maker of Otis elevators, said second-quarter profit rose 4.1 percent on higher overseas sales to airlines, governments and building developers. The company boosted its 2007 sales and profit forecasts.

Net income increased to $1.15 billion, or $1.16 a share, from $1.1 billion, or $1.09, a year earlier, exceeding analysts' estimates. Revenue climbed 13 percent to $13.9 billion on gains in all six business segments, the Hartford, Connecticut-based company said today in a statement.

United Technologies, which gets more than 60 percent of sales overseas, benefited from orders for electrical systems at Hamilton Sundstrand and aircraft at Sikorsky. Pratt & Whitney spare jet engine parts and service contracts increased. Otis and Carrier air conditioning sold more equipment for high-rise buildings in fast-growing Asian economies including China.

``These were solid results and we are pleased with the improved performance at Carrier despite the weaker North American residential market,'' wrote Nicole Parent, a New York- based analyst at Credit Suisse. She has an ``outperform'' rating on the stock.

Shares of United Technologies fell $1.17 to $75.67 at 10:13 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Before today, they had climbed 33 percent in the past year, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 26 percent. The stock had added 6.6 percent from July 10 through yesterday.

No Surprise

``We wouldn't be surprised to see the stock take a breather today despite the good results,'' wrote Myles Walton, an analyst at CIBC World Markets in Boston, in a note to clients today.
Chief Executive Officer George David raised the annual per- share profit forecast to $4.15 to $4.25 a share, up from $4.05 to $4.20, the statement said. The company also increased its revenue forecast to $53 billion from $51 billion. Analysts, on average, estimated $4.17 in earnings and $52.4 billion in sales.

Sales from businesses the company has owned more than a year, or ``organic'' revenue growth, should continue to rise, adding to a four-year pattern and prompting the forecast increase, David said. Such sales increased 10 percent in the quarter.

``Solid markets worldwide in commercial aviation and commercial construction, coupled with the successes of a wide range of new UTC products, are doing this,'' David said in the statement. ``We see these conditions continuing over the balance of the year and into 2008.''

Fire and Safety

United Technologies, which also owns UTC Fire and Security, used a 7-cent tax-related gain in the year-earlier second- quarter to help pay for cost reductions. Excluding that gain, profit would have climbed 12 percent in the just-ended quarter. The current quarter includes 2 cents a share in restructuring costs, the company said.

Otis, the world's biggest elevator and escalator maker, increased profit 13 percent to $532 million on a 13 percent sales gain to $2.86 billion. Profit at Carrier, the world's biggest air-conditioner maker, rose 19 percent to $489 million as revenue grew 8.1 percent to $4.06 billion.
Income at Pratt & Whitney declined 2.4 percent to $522 million as revenue rose 14 percent to $3.11 billion. Excluding a gain in the year-earlier period and restructuring costs, profit would have climbed 15 percent, United Technologies spokesman John Moran said.

Sikorsky sales climbed 56 percent, driving a more than doubling of profit to $87 million. Hamilton Sundstrand profit gained 16 percent to $246 million on a 9.6 percent sales rise.

The average estimate was for profit of $1.15 a share from 15 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.

In 2006, the company cut its workforce by 3,800 positions and closed 500,000 square feet of factory and office space, according to its annual report filed with U.S. regulators.

New technologies for food industries

2007-07-15T12:38:00.000+08:00

Rob Cockerill, Tuesday July 10th 2007 (Source: gasworld.com)

Consolidated Industrial Gases Inc. (CIGI) and Southern Industrial Gas (SIG) will introduce new technologies aimed at enhancing the capabilities of the food processing and packaging industry.

After gaining new ground with the government's focus on agribusiness, the industry will set in motion initiatives to expand the agricultural and fishery product mix through high value crops, while also adding value through innovative packaging and agro-processing.

CIGI and SIG have gained access to global technologies in food freezing and cooling since becoming part of The Linde Group in 2006. These technologies include the design and supply of tunnel and spiral freezers, refrigerants like liquid nitrogen and carbon dioxide, food grade gases, pipeline systems, gas mixing panels and other such equipment.

The newest addition to the range is the Cryoline tunnel freezer, a multi-purpose, cryogenic freezer that combines state-of-the-art technology with a high quality hygienic design. It is flexible and easy to use with optimized application of cryogenic gases this can be used for meat patties and pieces, whole fish and fillets, various kinds of seafood and many other food products.

The two companies are bringing these technologies closer to the end-users by participating in International Food Exhibitions like the recently held Food Processing and Packaging Technology Exhibit in Davao and the upcoming World Food Exhibit in Manila.

NEW DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES TO MAKE LCDS OBSOLETE

2007-07-08T22:53:00.000+08:00

LCD displays were hailed the best technology in displays, however they have their own inherent problems. One is it is bulky ofcourse. Second is it is expensive and thirdly after a long use, the displays get permanently marked. However a new technology promises to lessen this problem. A new generation of super-thin, power saving displays are making their debut in the market that not only save battery lives, but also makes images sharper and crisper.

LCDs are commonly used in mobilephones, games, and MP3 players, however they require backlighting that consumes a lot of battery power. New technologies such as OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) and bi-stable are now being developed that glow on their own, consuming less power as well as making displays thinner.

However displays based on OLED and bi-stable technologies are still years away.

NTC plans to auction new 3G wireless licences in October

2007-07-03T19:53:00.000+08:00

KOMSAN TORTERMVASANA

New third-generation wireless licences will be auctioned starting in October, according to Gen Choochart Promprasit, the chairman of the National Telecommunications Commission.
A final framework on the new licences, which include frequency allocations in the five-gigahertz band, would be completed by September, he said.

Telecom and IT network providers have been pressing the regulatory body to clarify its position on third-generation mobile and wireless technologies such as WiMax. Analysts said Thailand has been slow to implement new technologies offering broadband transmission speeds direct to mobile handsets

Gen Choochart said four 3G licences could be offered, but declined to comment on the method of allocation.

Existing mobile operators, who use 2.5G technologies such as Edge, have argued that they should be given priority in bidding for new licences. Authorities could choose to hold a straight auction, with the winning licences offered to the highest bidder, or hold a ''beauty contest'' in which the bidders' qualifications, experience and technological platforms are also used to evaluate winners.

Gen Choochart said the Council of State has already ruled the NTC could award new telecommunications licences without waiting for the creation of the National Broadcasting Commission.

The process of awarding new 3G licences has been stalled for years over legal questions on whether the NBC, which has been delayed due to political infighting, was required before new frequency spectrum was awarded for use. ''We will try to have all the issues finalised by September, to allow the industry to move forward starting this October. We see four 3G licences being awarded altogether,'' Gen Choochart said.

TotalView Technologies Announces Totalview 8.2

2007-07-02T12:24:00.000+08:00

DRESDEN, Germany, june. 2007 -- TotalView Technologies, the world's leading provider of scaleable debugging and analysis software solutions for the multi-core age, today announced the availability of TotalView Debugger 8.2. This updated version of TotalView provides new features and support for important new platforms, allowing a greater range of users to benefit from the product's capabilities.

TotalView is a comprehensive source code and optional memory debugging solution that dramatically enhances developer productivity by simplifying the process of debugging data-intensive, multi-process, multi-threaded, or network-distributed applications.

Built to handle the complexities of the world's most demanding applications, TotalView is capable of scaling from one to thousands of processes or threads with applications distributed over multiple machines or processors.

TotalView Debugger is the only product on the market that supports mixed environments including mixed parallel paradigms (Open MP and MPI) and mixed languages (Fortran 90 and C++, for example) in one debugging session, and mixed versions of compilers in one session.

TotalView supports over 2,500 compiler variations and countless combinations of parallel programming paradigms and compilers. TotalView is robust and easy to use, with an intuitive GUI that enables users to quickly isolate and identify the root cause of problems.

SAMSUNG Showcases The Latest Mobile Technologies At CommunicAsia 2007

2007-07-01T22:25:00.000+08:00

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a leading provider of mobile phones and telecom systems, today showcased a total of 53 mobile phones and its latest mobile technologies at CommunicAsia 2007.

Key highlights were the Ultra Edition II 12.1 (U700), the slimmest and elegantly designed HSDPA slider, the Ultra Edition II 10.9 (U600) 2.5G slider, and an exciting fashion phone lineup including the SGH-E950, E840, and J600. Samsung also introduced the Mobile WiMAX U-RAS Hub System (HS) and Convergence System (CS) for the first time in the world today.

Samsung’s diverse, innovative and market-leading handsets and technologies, including its brand new Ultra Edition II range and Mobile WiMAX technology, reinforces Samsung’s position as a design-led, forward-thinking company that heavily invests in research and development to advance the market and fuel consumer demand for innovative new technologies.

Mr. Geesung Choi, President of Samsung’s Telecommunications Network Business, said :

“The introduction of Samsung’s new Ultra Edition II range is testament to our strategic focus on the premium segment. In addition, Samsung’s vision for the future of mobile technology is increasingly becoming a reality with our successful Mobile WiMAX demonstration, underlining the converged mobile device as the future hub of all communications. With our increased focus on the Southeast Asian market, we will continue to provide a wide variety of mobile phones customized for local needs.”

Key highlights from Samsung at CommunicAsia 2007 include :

ULTRA EDITION II

Building on the runway success of Samsung’s Ultra Edition range, launched in July 2006, the Samsung Ultra Edition II embodies the best of advanced technology, revolutionary mobile designs and must-have business and consumer multimedia functions with four of the slimmest, most powerful and best looking handsets in each form factor. The Ultra Edition II range consists of two stylish and functional sliders, the Ultra Edition 10.9 (U600) and the Ultra Edition 12.1 (U700), a metallic clamshell, the Ultra Edition 9.6 (U300), and a candy bar handset, the Ultra Edition 5.9 (U100). Each of these designs offer advanced features such as a 3-megapixel camera and camcorder, high-speed internet connectivity, as well as extensive multimedia and audio capabilities.

Proving that Samsung truly is at the heart of the consumer’s needs, each of these handsets incorporates innovative consumer-driven design elements to improve the user experience, including external multimedia navigation keys for ease of use and a jewel-inspired casing.

FASHION PHONE LINE UP

For design- and style-focused customers, Samsung unveiled three fashion phones reflecting the latest design trends and cutting-edge multimedia features. The SGH-E950 is a powerful 3-megapixel camera phone equipped with an improved, unique touch navigation user interface, while the SGH-E840, with its minimalist and futuristic design, boasts a super slim frame at just 10.6mm and a glossy, mirror-like surface. The SGH-J600 comes with an affordable 1.3-megapixel camera in a variety of vivid, lively colours.

Secure Computing Enhances URL Filtering Solution with Next-Gen Reputation System

2007-06-25T16:20:00.000+08:00

Enterprise gateway security company Secure Computing Corporation announced Friday a newly enhanced version of its URL filtering solution, SmartFilter 4.2 with TrustedSource.

The new version is set to provide granular protection against today's Web 2.0 threats, allowing companies to leverage Web 2.0 technologies without compromising corporate policy.

TrustedSource is the company's global reputation system and SmartFilter 4.2 marks the fourth Secure Computing product integrated with this technology. More Asian organizations today are embracing Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, tagging and social networks to increased corporate efficiency through digital collaboration.

While these new technologies provide organizations with new means to improve stakeholder relationships with user driven content, Web 2.0 technologies also present a different set of security issues such as data leakages, phishing, malware and spam.

"With Internet use a requirement in today's world, organizations -- from financial institutions to education systems -- must implement sound strategies to protect their networks against Web 2.0 threats," said Benjamin Low, Managing Director for Southeast Asia and India, Secure Computing.

"SmartFilter 4.2 provides the security protection needed in the Web 2.0 world while allowing users to access information on the web safely.

"As part of Secure Computing's vision to provide companies of all sizes with comprehensive security at the web gateway, SmartFilter now incorporates global intelligence from the company's industry-leading reputation system, TrustedSource.

Like a credit agency provides credit scores to enable reliable commerce, TrustedSource provides source-based reputation scores for URLs, domains and IP addresses as well as content-based reputation scores for web page content, messages, attachments and images.

Using this real-time scoring, SmartFilter 4.2 allows organizations to detect and prevent web security threats such as spyware, phishing and other malware.

SAMSUNG Showcases The Latest Mobile Technologies At CommunicAsia 2007

2007-06-24T19:05:00.000+08:00

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a leading provider of mobile phones and telecom systems, today showcased a total of 53 mobile phones and its latest mobile technologies at CommunicAsia 2007. Key highlights were the Ultra Edition II 12.1 (U700), the slimmest and elegantly designed HSDPA slider, the Ultra Edition II 10.9 (U600) 2.5G slider, and an exciting fashion phone lineup including the SGH-E950, E840, and J600. Samsung also introduced the Mobile WiMAX U-RAS Hub System (HS) and Convergence System (CS) for the first time in the world today.

Samsung’s diverse, innovative and market-leading handsets and technologies, including its brand new Ultra Edition II range and Mobile WiMAX technology, reinforces Samsung’s position as a design-led, forward-thinking company that heavily invests in research and development to advance the market and fuel consumer demand for innovative new technologies.

Mr. Geesung Choi, President of Samsung’s Telecommunications Network Business, said :
“The introduction of Samsung’s new Ultra Edition II range is testament to our strategic focus on the premium segment. In addition, Samsung’s vision for the future of mobile technology is increasingly becoming a reality with our successful Mobile WiMAX demonstration, underlining the converged mobile device as the future hub of all communications. With our increased focus on the Southeast Asian market, we will continue to provide a wide variety of mobile phones customized for local needs.”

Key highlights from Samsung at CommunicAsia 2007 include :

ULTRA EDITION II

Building on the runway success of Samsung’s Ultra Edition range, launched in July 2006, the Samsung Ultra Edition II embodies the best of advanced technology, revolutionary mobile designs and must-have business and consumer multimedia functions with four of the slimmest, most powerful and best looking handsets in each form factor. The Ultra Edition II range consists of two stylish and functional sliders, the Ultra Edition 10.9 (U600) and the Ultra Edition 12.1 (U700), a metallic clamshell, the Ultra Edition 9.6 (U300), and a candy bar handset, the Ultra Edition 5.9 (U100). Each of these designs offer advanced features such as a 3-megapixel camera and camcorder, high-speed internet connectivity, as well as extensive multimedia and audio capabilities.

Proving that Samsung truly is at the heart of the consumer’s needs, each of these handsets incorporates innovative consumer-driven design elements to improve the user experience, including external multimedia navigation keys for ease of use and a jewel-inspired casing.

FASHION PHONE LINE UP

For design- and style-focused customers, Samsung unveiled three fashion phones reflecting the latest design trends and cutting-edge multimedia features. The SGH-E950 is a powerful 3-megapixel camera phone equipped with an improved, unique touch navigation user interface, while the SGH-E840, with its minimalist and futuristic design, boasts a super slim frame at just 10.6mm and a glossy, mirror-like surface. The SGH-J600 comes with an affordable 1.3-megapixel camera in a variety of vivid, lively colours.

MOBILE WIMAX

Samsung today also unveiled the latest mobile convergence devices ready for Mobile WiMAX technology. Samsung conducted live demonstrations of Mobile WiMAX, including various applications such as push-to-all, IP TV, and more. At this year’s CommunicAsia, Samsung proudly showcased the newly developed U-RAS Hybrid System (HS) and Converged System (CS), which offer more cost-effective system installation and maintenance by reducing the size of Mobile WiMAX Base Stations (U-RAS) and enlarging the coverage of Base Stations (U-RAS).

New Digital Screens Transform Outdoor Ads

2007-05-31T15:55:00.000+08:00

by Erik Sass, Wednesday, May 30, 2007 7:45 AM ET

SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO BE two-dimensional. Take the new generation of technologies that are shrinking video screens to the width of a vinyl poster--or even thinner. In the coming decades, these new displays promise to revolutionize a variety of media beyond television, including outdoor advertising.

The newest entrants to the field came from rivals Sony and LG Philips, which both demonstrated flexible, paper-thin video screens at the Society for Information Display industry expo in California last week. Although the companies only gave attendees a glimpse of the technology in operation, their new video screens appear to function even while being bent into non-linear shapes--far exceeding the current capabilities of both liquid crystal and plasma screen displays.

Of course, the new technologies are also attracting the interest of outdoor advertisers. In general, digital displays offer the possibility of multiple message displays, allowing billboard owners to charge more for high-traffic day-parts--and to modify or remove ad copy quickly and cheaply, as required for client objectives.

According to Stephen Freitas, the chief marketing officer of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, the industry is keen on new display possibilities--but is also taking its time in considering all available options. "Right now, the most mature technology is still the LED displays," Freitas said, "but we're looking at all the new technologies currently in development."
Indeed, the new technologies may cut the legs out from under LED displays. In a 2006 interview, Clear Channel Outdoor boss Paul Meyer said the company was experimenting with a new kind of digital sign technology called MagInk that could drastically reduce the cost of digital billboards.

MagInk billboards use plastic tiles coated with helix-shaped molecules one micron long to produce ultra-thin images, which can be changed up to 70 times a second, holding out the possibility of video-like animation. Once it appears, each new image does not require a continuous power supply to be visible; it will remain until another electrical charge substitutes a new image.

A 10-foot by 20-foot MagInk display currently costs around $50,000 to install--about five times the cost of a conventional display, but far less than the $500,000 price tag of an equivalent LED screen. And once the display is up, it obviates further expenditure on paper, printing and labor costs--yielding huge savings for advertisers and the proprietors of signage infrastructure. Because their power consumption is low, the MagInk billboards also save costs on cooling systems.

The new OLED technologies from Sony and Philips, the electroluminescent displays, emit their own light without the need for extra power. Most of their power consumption goes to animating the displays. Japanese cell phone manufacturers have incorporated ultra-thin, flexible video displays into a new generation of mobile handsets. It's not hard to imagine potential applications for consumer electronics, including televisions that double as wallpaper or pull down from the ceiling like movie screens. Sony's first ultra-thin TVs are said to be ready for commercialization in Japan. In Taiwan, researchers may use the technology in personal-identification cards.

The OLED also has some things in common with MagInk, including ultra-thin displays and relatively low power consumption. However, MagInk probably has a leg up for outdoor advertising, as it has already been commercialized for use in billboards in Europe. What's more, the OLED displays are also still quite small--measuring just a few inches on a side, although it's not clear how long it will take to scale them up enough in size (and down in cost) to make them viable for use in poster or billboard-sized displays.

But what if the outdoor advertising category grew to include, say... clothing? Sony's reps at the California expo speculated about incorporating OLED video displays into clothing, which would effectively make wearers into walking video platforms. It's not farfetched in a world where consumers gladly advertise brands on clothing already. Here, the flexibility of the new OLED technology would be crucial for the comfort of the displays, er, people.

New technologies may help in the early detection of glaucoma

2007-05-30T17:31:00.000+08:00

PARIS — New functional and structural tests can allow an earlier and more accurate diagnosis of glaucoma, helping prevent the silent progression of undetected glaucomatous damage, according to a specialist speaking here at the French Society of Ophthalmology annual meeting.

"We can now go beyond the limitations of standard automated perimetry and use more sensitive, sophisticated technologies," said E. Bluwol, MD, of the Hôpital Saint-Antoine, Paris.

Dr. Bluwol and colleagues conducted a prospective study including 84 patients with ocular hypertension and 51 patients with preperimetric glaucoma. In all cases, investigators performed Humphrey Matrix frequency doubling technology perimetry (Carl Zeiss Meditec), blue-yellow perimetry and retinal nerve fibers analysis with GDx VCC scanning laser perimetry (Carl Zeiss Meditec).

"Blue-yellow perimetry and FDT Matrix allowed an early differentiation between ocular hypertension and preperimetric glaucoma. The association with GDx VCC increased their diagnostic sensitivity. On the other hand, the association of FDT Matrix and GDx seemed to be the most effective in the early diagnosis of ocular hypertension," Dr. Bluwol said.

Measuring corneal hysteresis using the Reichert Ocular Response Analyzer can also provide useful diagnostic data for the early detection of glaucoma, according to a study presented by N. Fayol, MD, of the Fondation Rothschild, Paris.

"We have compared the corneal hysteresis and corneal pachymetry data of 192 normal eyes, 43 ocular hypertension eyes and 119 glaucoma eyes," he said. "We have found that corneal hysteresis was significantly different in the three groups. It was lower in the eyes with ocular hypertension and even [lower] in glaucomatous eyes than in normal eyes. Pachymetry data were not equally significant in discriminating between the three groups."

Motorola Showcases New Technologies At The Cable Show

2007-05-24T14:58:00.000+08:00

In addition to the technology displays, five Motorola executives will join four panel sessions to share insights on how to deliver a more engaging, interactive and enjoyable experience.

Monday, May 07, 2007: Motorola, Inc. is demonstrating new technologies that enable media mobility for cable customers at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association’s The Cable Show in Las Vegas this week. The company will showcase solutions that enable cable operators to maximise bandwidth, resolve network issues and extend unique and innovation services to the customer’s living room.

In an on-demand world, ubiquitous, immediate access to entertainment is an essential component of any consumer service offering,” said Dan Moloney, president, connected home solutions, Motorola Inc. “Motorola’s strong heritage in innovation and industry-leading expertise in home entertainment and mobile communications enables us to bring media mobility solutions to the broadband cable operator.”

Motorola will also demonstrate the DCH series of digital cable receivers. Introduced earlier this year, Motorola’s set-tops deliver high-definition video, surround-sound audio, a hard drive for time-shifting of TV shows and storage of customer-created media, and advanced processing.

The DCH receivers also enable the Motorola Follow Me TV experience, which lets consumers place-shift video, pictures, music and more throughout the home and to compatible mobile devices.

The products support CableCARD technology, Motorola’s Linux-Java software platform and the Open Cable Application Platform (OCAP) initiative.Another attraction will be the first application on its Seamless Mobility Applications Server (SMAS) – Caller ID, which allows users to view incoming caller ID notifications and call logs on their television screens.

The Motorola SMAS enables seamless delivery of applications and services regardless of access type, network or device through a modular, scalable architecture.

Tech’s Black Hole

2007-05-15T13:58:00.000+08:00

Pew report shows almost half of Americans are slow to the web.

May 7, 2007
By Leah Messinger

A Pew Internet & American Life Project report released today said 49 percent of American adults never or only occasionally use computers, gadgets, and cell phones, a sobering assessment that suggests many technology industry forecasts pointing to huge revenue growth may be far too rosy.

The report comes at a time when it seems almost everyone is connecting to the Internet or carrying around a cell phone. But it suggests that technology developers and marketers have yet to break through to a huge swathe of Amercian adults, who remain light users or are simply not interested in experimenting with new systems and devices.

About 30 percent of American adults interviewed for the survey were characterized as “light but satisfied” users or “off the network” adults. This group includes many women over 50 who are not likely to go online each day and are among the most likely to watch TV. Some in this group have neither cell phones nor Internet connectivity.

The study described 20 percent of those surveyed as “middle-of-the-road tech users” who are avid cell phone users, but infrequent Internet surfers. Many in this group find themselves overwhelmed by the huge quantity of information available online.

As many as 31 percent of Americans belong in the “elite tech user” category, which means they are rabid Internet users and carry feature-packed cell phones. These people likely form the bulk of the estimated 19 million people that research group IDC says go online each day to research products.

Analysts recognize that time alone will eventually bring many late adopters online, but they say that engineers and product designers still have a lot of work to do to overcome the poor design and functionality common in the industry. Designers need to “think about it from the user out, rather from the device in,” said Outsell analyst Ken Doctor.

In other words, product developers must consider how a user will approach a new technology from the moment he sits down at a desk or picks up a new gadget. “I don’t want to read a 400-page manual,” said Mr. Doctor. He added that Americans, in general, “want the simplicity of a radio and a television: when you turn it on, it works.”

Bill Moggridge, co-founder of Palo Alto, California design firm IDEO said designers can take a lesson from game developers who have mastered the art of making their products easy and fast to learn. “If it’s not five seconds, don’t bother with it,” Mr. Moggridge said.

The art of creating simple interfaces is especially important to attract the “light but satisfied” and “off the network” consumers. But the ubiquity of high-speed Internet connections will likely force marginal users to adapt to more sophisticated technologies. “Over time, it’s going to be difficult to get dial-up,” said John Horrigan, Pew Internet project associate director and the report’s lead author.

Mr. Horrigan added that there is not always a direct relationship between those who adopt high-level technologies and those who have good experiences with it. He said high-tech users aren’t always excited about fast connections, business social networking requirements, and having Internet access both at work and at home. For many hi-tech users, “It just kind of bugs them to be so available to people,” said Mr. Horrigan.

Dundee joins £9.5M stem cell research collaboration programme

2007-05-08T13:50:00.000+08:00

News release from ITI Life Sciences

ITI Life Sciences is very pleased to announce that it has reached its first technical milestone in its Stem Cell Technologies (SCT) R&D programme, and as a result Dundee University has joined the £9.5 million programme, which started in January 2007.

Dundee University will join the programme’s other research providers, Swedish biotech firm Cellartis AB and the University of Glasgow, in a collaborative effort to develop technologies that will enable automated processes to produce high volumes of high quality human stem cells. This capability does not exist anywhere in the world and its development will put Scotland at the forefront of stem cell research as well as bringing closer the use of stem cells as therapeutics.

The initial phase of the programme has focused on developing optimal conditions under which human embryonic stem (hES) cells can be tested (screened) for their ability to differentiate into specific cells. Having achieved this crucial step, ITI Life Sciences is now in a position to bring in Dundee University’s complementary screening expertise, which will be instrumental in developing additional technologies towards the programme’s ultimate objectives.

Dr Eleanor Mitchell, ITI Life Sciences’ acting CEO, said: “We are extremely pleased to have reached this milestone in our Stem Cell Technologies programme so quickly. This technical advance allows us to progress our programme quicker than expected and to bring in an additional excellent research provider in the form of Dundee University.

“Stem cell research offers huge potential for the life sciences sector in Scotland. Scottish academic studies in this field, as well as the location of a growing number of international stem cell players here means it is viewed as one of the country’s major strengths. The ITI programme aims to accelerate Scottish research and reinforce its prominence and reputation in this important area.”

Professor Julie Frearson, University of Dundee, said: “Novel technologies, such as these under development within the ITI programme, require expertise across a range of disciplines. The ITI programme provides a great opportunity for groups with such complementary skills to collaborate effectively in a situation that otherwise could not exist in any single emerging company or university.”

Professor Graeme Milligan from Glasgow University said: “We are delighted that progress on the Stem Cell Technologies programme has been rapid. This new phase means we can now begin detailed interactions with our new partner university in what is a very exciting project.”

Mr Mats Lundwall, CEO Cellartis AB, said: “We are delighted that the programme is proceeding to plan and welcome the addition of Dundee University to what is a very exciting programme.”
ITI programme
The ITI programme will use pre-existing hES cell lines (meaning that no new hES cells will need to be collected). This phase of the programme will be deemed a success if it results in a robust and standardised procedure for generating multiple human cell lines of interest to the pharmaceutical industry from undifferentiated hES cells.

Such cells will be extremely valuable tools for pharmaceutical companies, enabling them to test new drug candidates for activity (efficacy) and toxicity in biologically and disease-relevant human cells. For example, human heart cells may be used to test drug candidates designed for treating heart diseases, or human liver cells may be used to assess drug toxicity. ITI Life Sciences will own all intellectual property generated by the programme.

The market for cell-based tools within the pharmaceutical industry is large and rapidly growing: according to ITI Life Sciences’ foresighting analysis, it was worth US$1.4 billion in 2001 and has grown at a considerable rate ever since. Rapid growth is expected to continue in the future and stem cell based tools are forecast to capture a significant share of this market.

ITI Life Sciences

ITI Life Sciences is a unique and entrepreneurial organisation contributing to Scotland’s economic growth in life sciences; it aims to leverage Scotland's research excellence to develop new technologies targeting future market needs.

Publicly funded, but commercially driven, ITI Life Sciences funds and manages early stage technology research and development programmes in the life sciences arena. It selects programmes based on assessing future market needs, identifying technology opportunities, and responding to ideas, initiatives and proposals from the research and business communities. ITI Life Sciences works in collaboration with partners from industry, academia and the financial community.

ITI Life Sciences is one of three Intermediary Technology Institutes (ITIs) focused on important areas where Scotland has strong economic and business potential; the other areas are Techmedia and Energy.

ITI Life Sciences commenced full operations in April 2004. It plays a key part of Smart Successful Scotland, the Scottish Executive’s strategy for economic growth. ITI Life Sciences is based in Dundee, Scotland.

Dundee University

The University of Dundee has powered its way to an internationally recognised position of excellence in life sciences and medical research with particular expertise in cancer, diabetes and tropical diseases. The University has both a 5* rated medical school and School of Life Sciences, with research expanding from “the cell to the clinic to the community”. It was voted in 2004 and 2005 as the best scientific workplace in Europe in an international poll by Scientist magazine, and is home to 1% of the world's most cited scientists. Since the completion of the £21m Centre for Inter-Disicplinary Research, the University has a larger medical research complex than the National Institute for Medical Research in London.

Cellartis

Cellartis AB is a Swedish biotechnology company focused on human embryonic stem (hES) cells for drug discovery, toxicity testing and regenerative medicine with the main objective to develop hepatocytes and cardiomyocytes from these cells. The company is the world’s largest single source of defined hES cell lines, and has developed more than 30 well documented cell lines. Two cell lines are listed on the NIH Stem Cell Registry and 20 in the UK Stem Cell Bank. In addition, Cellartis has successfully established and characterised the first truly xeno-free hES cell line, an important step towards the clinical use of hES cells. The company’s strategy is to accelerate product development by working in partnership with academia and industry. Cellartis focuses on quality and scale-up cell production, which are crucial factors for future growth. The company was founded in 2001, has 41 employees and is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden.

University of Glasgow

The University of Glasgow is one of the UK's leading universities with an international reputation for its research and teaching and an important role in the cultural and commercial life of the country. The Institute of Biomedical & Life Sciences (IBLS) is an internationally recognised centre for research and teaching in the biological sciences. With 140 permanent academic staff, 200 contract workers and almost 300 research students, IBLS is one of the largest centres for biological research in Europe.

With almost 800 staff, the Faculty of Medicine is among the largest in the UK and is at the forefront of leading-edge clinical interventions and discovery.

Sandia Computer Simulation Monitors Traffic In Contraband Nuclear Material

2007-05-03T13:43:00.000+08:00

Science Daily — A Sandia National Laboratories researcher has developed a new technology, a simulation program designed to track the illicit trade in fissile and nonfissile radiological material well enough to predict who is building the next nuclear weapon and where they are doing it.

By using a cluster analysis algorithm coded into a program, this new technology," says Sandia researcher David York. "I evaluated those traffic patterns and routes in which thefts, seizures, and destinations of materials were reported. Data from these examinations were enough to allow me to retrospectively depict the A. Q. Kahn network before it was uncovered."

Kahn is a Pakistani scientist linked to the illicit proliferation of nuclear technical knowledge. Cluster analyses link data of common place, time, or material. Testing a computer simulation on a known past event is one accepted means of establishing the program's validity.
Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory.

In the Kahn analysis, York generated an analysis of networked routes indicative of a nuclear trafficking scheme between countries. In several verified incidents, inspectors seized uranium enriched to 80 percent, as well as dual-use items indicative of small-scale development of crude nuclear devices.

In the study, York collected and collated data from 800 open-source incidents from 1992 to the present, along with the movement of dual-use items like beryllium and zirconium. He plotted the incidents on a global information system (GIS) software platform. He came up with a network of countries and routes between countries indicative of an illicit nuclear and radiological trafficking scheme.

"The number of incidents and the quantity and quality of material seized is disturbing," York says, "particularly because this may represent a small percentage of the actual amount of material being trafficked."

The situation may be worse than it appears because much information about nuclear material traffic is classified, York says, to prevent embarrassment to countries through which a nuclear weapon or the materials to fabricate a weapon may have passed.

York presented his results in October at the International Safeguards Conference sponsored by the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. He has also been invited to present his methods and conclusions to the European Union's Illicit Trafficking Working Group at the June meeting of the IAEA.

How does the method work? "One begins by conducting cluster analyses on the GIS platform for material or activity similar to the incident in question. This gives the analyst an idea of corridors used by potential smugglers. It also indicates where the material might have come from and where it is," says York. "If the trafficker has only a certain amount of time to reach a destination and you have that information, one can ask what is the shortest route from point A to point B, or find major highways needed to accommodate a large shipment."

For the tool to be effective, "Enough information must be collected under a cooperative international framework," York says. "Then info must be analyzed to separate patterns from noise, essentially creating intelligence."

Nation-states that reuse nuclear fuel through reprocessing can create and ship dangerous materials that previously were confined to the more industrialized world.

"We're trying to develop a market niche for this kind of tracking program," says Sandia manager Gary Rochau, "and I think we're ahead of everyone's headlights."

The method can be used to track other materials, such as drugs. "We have a lot of interest from a lot of agencies," says Rochau.

Trafficking may be engaged in by amateur smugglers trying to feed their families in a post-Soviet era. It may also be practiced by those involved in organized crime who find a lucrative market in moving illicit materials, and by terrorists interested in the potential devastation and psychological effects of the use of nuclear materials.

York developed the program as part of his master's thesis while a student intern at Sandia.

Electric Car Pioneer ZAP Prepares to Move to Next Level with Lotus Engineering

2007-05-01T14:17:00.000+08:00

SANTA ROSA, Calif., April 30 PRNewswire-FirstCall — Alternative transportation pioneer ZAP (OTC Bulletin Board: ZAAP) held automotive talks over the weekend at its headquarters in Santa Rosa with the management team of Lotus Engineering, including CEO Albert Lam, Project Manager Steven Woolley, and West Coast Operations Manager Rexford Park.

Lotus Engineering came to Santa Rosa to explore the next steps in the development of a new generation of electric vehicles with ZAP. The team of ZAP and Lotus Engineering has targeted new technologies and technology suppliers with the goal to create the most advanced electric cars in history. Representatives from these other companies were invited to the meeting and ZAP CEO Steve Schneider expects to announce more developments soon.

"This was an important meeting because ZAP and Lotus Engineering are working to bring new technologies to bear that could change the auto industry forever," said Schneider. "With Lotus Engineering's capabilities, and ZAP's vision and entrepreneurship, we are building a world-class team to tackle this important endeavor."

Lotus Engineering has been behind the design and construction of some of the most successful cars in history and is one of the world's premier automotive consultancies with engineering centers in Asia, North America and Europe. CEO Albert Lam said the venture with ZAP is a "fantastic" opportunity for Lotus Engineering to be a leader for green automotive technologies.
"The venture with ZAP is a dream come true because we are creating the most advanced electric vehicles in history," said Lam. "Lotus Engineering is very happy to be associated with ZAP in bringing this vehicle to market. The technology is ready for electric vehicles so they don't have to be slow, they can have a long range, and they can be exciting to look at."

ZAP automotive dealers, who were in Santa Rosa on Friday for electric car service training, received an exclusive presentation from Lotus Engineering on ZAP's future projects. Lotus Engineering also toured ZAP's manufacturing and distribution facilities for the XEBRA electric car and truck.

Earlier this year, ZAP and Lotus Engineering entered into a feasibility study to explore the development of innovative electric vehicle designs, including a crossover electric SUV called ZAP-X, based on Lotus Engineering's award-winning APX aluminum chassis technology. In the past few months, officials from ZAP and Lotus Engineering have held meetings in Norwich, England and Santa Rosa, California, "to take the venture to the next level," said Schneider.

About ZAP

ZAP has been a leader in advanced transportation technologies since 1994, delivering over 90,000 vehicles to consumers in more than 75 countries. At the forefront of fuel-efficient transportation with new technologies including energy efficient gas systems, hydrogen, electric, fuel cell, ethanol, hybrid and other innovative power systems, ZAP is developing a high-performance crossover SUV electric car concept called ZAP-X engineered by Lotus Engineering. The Company recently launched a new portable energy technology that manages power for mobile electronics, like cell phones and laptops. For more product, dealer and investor information, visit http://www.zapworld.com.

Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, continued acceptance of the Company's products, increased levels of competition for the Company, new products and technological changes, the Company's dependence upon third-party suppliers, intellectual property rights, and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE ZAP

New technologies bringing persons with disabilities into mainstream, UN forum told

2007-04-26T15:33:00.000+08:00

2007 – A “dazzling array” of technologies is bringing persons with disabilities into the workforce and integrating them further into society, an expert on assistive technologies said today at a forum at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Technology helps employers to bring work to persons with disabilities, said the expert, Irene Morris-Sambur, Chief Executive Officer of Coraworks. “Assistive technologies currently exist,” she said. “They have to be brought to workers with disabilities, instead of trying to bring these workers to the workplace.”

At the first Global Forum of the UN Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), accessibility experts and executives of corporations such as IBM, Yahoo, Internet Speech, Deque Systems, NiiT Ventures and e-ISOTIS showcased new products – from video-descriptions to screen readers – and mapped out a field that is seeing a “significant beginning of venture capital investment,” according to to Barry Fingerhut of Synconium.

Government regulations are helping to fuel this development, said Larry Goldberg of the National Center for Accessible Media. Canada now requires that 90 per cent of TV programmes be captioned, and in the United Kingdom up to 5 per cent of TV programmes show a sign language translator. Japan, Mexico and Australia are preparing similar legislation to make TV more accessible.
However, industry vendors should incorporate accessibility features from the start of the product development, said Alex Leblois, Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT. “A number of ICT vendors are well-intended, but tackle the issue of accessibility too late in the product life cycle,” at a higher cost.

Legislations and regulations should aim at creating unified markets for accessible products, he said, so as to encourage mass production at low cost. “The reason why people can make calls through a cell phone that costs very little is because the same telephone is being used in the United States, Kenya and Latin America. The same dynamics of mass production, standardization and harmonization can be achieved for assistive technologies, and for inclusive ICT products in general.”

Accessibility had multiple business values, said K. Anne-River Forcke of the IBM Worldwide Human Ability and Accessibility Center, such as “the value businesses organizations can realize as employers by adopting accessibility, and the value that organizations can realize when they address their constituents and their customers”.

“We have learned a tremendous amount from employing people with disabilities,” she said, “and we incorporate that into the software, the hardware and the business systems that we use internally at IBM today. We have learned that there are a number of best practices for the development of software, for hardware, and as we are learning more about the services science, we are learning how to ensure accessibility in the delivery of services.”

“The Web has the ability to be even more accessible than other parts of society,” said Judy Brewer, Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative at the World Wide Web Consortium, the leading technology standard organization for Web technology. Adaptable policy frameworks should be developed, she said, “because the technology continues to advance all the time, and it is important to keep the policy frameworks up to date with the technology.”

Solutions that were developed in a particular industry or standards organization should not be automatically made available in a country. “It is very important to partner with disability organizations within every country and try to make sure that those solutions are relevant locally,” she said. “That really yields the best solutions in the end.”

Hendrietta Ipeleng Bogopane-Zulu, a Member of South Africa's Parliament, recalled the “digital divide that still exists between people with disabilities and those who are non-disabled”, and said that beyond access to the Web, the problem for many developing countries was basically affordability. “Everything is imported,” she said, “and getting the technical assistance when a computer breaks or something happens is a nightmare. The problem is not only the access, it is also affordability, support systems and training.”

Some 200 representatives of industry, government, academia and civil society attended the Forum, which was organized by the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development and the Boston-based Wireless Internet Institute in cooperation with the Secretariat of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Yoga, new technologies offer hope to Parkinson’s patients

2007-04-20T04:34:00.000+08:00

Deepa Suryanarayan

Andheri resident Anubhav Mehta (name changed), 65, an engineer, was on the verge of retirement when the first symptom struck. “It was my son who first observed that I was having trouble with my right hand,” said Mehta. A battery of tests later, the neurologist gave the diagnosis. It was Parkinson’s disease (PD), a degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system.

Now, four years later, Mehta leads a relatively normal life. “The disease has not been crippling, as it has only affected my right hand and made my reflexes slower. But it was a blow as I have been a sportsperson all my life,” he said.

Today, Mehta continues to drive his car, goes swimming and even practices yoga. “Though it is difficult to accept the fact that you don’t have complete control over your movement, being diagnosed with PD doesn’t mean the end of one’s life,” he explained.

Mehta will be of 350 members of the Parkinson Disease and Movement Disorder Society (PMDS) who will participate in a yoga session on Wednesday, to observe World Parkinson’s Day on Wednesday.

The session will be conducted by Yogacharya BKS Iyengar, whose institute has carried out a scientific study to determine the efficacy of yoga in influencing the quality of life in patients with PD. The results showed that there was a significant improvement in patients’ movements and quality of life.

“PMDS, founded in 2002, aims at spreading awareness about the ailment and improving the quality of life,” said Dr Maria Barretto, coordinator of PMDS, adding that, “PD requires a multi-disciplinary approach. The focus right now is too much on medical treatment.”

On the medical front, Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a new technique that offers hope to PD patients, say neurologists. A surgically-implanted, battery-operated medical device called a neurostimulator, similar to a pacemaker, delivers electrical stimulation to areas in the brain that control movement, blocking abnormal nerve signals that cause tremors.

The functional neurological centre at Jaslok Hospital, headed by Dr Paresh Doshi, has completed over 100 DBS surgeries — the highest in Asia. And Hinduja Hospital, has acquired new technology that enables this procedure to be performed with no risks whatsoever to the patient.

“We are the only hospital here with Stealth Neuronavigation system — a new software which allows the procedure to be done flawlessly,” said Dr Milind Sankhe of Hinduja Hospital.

Better Than X-Ray Vision

2007-04-16T11:40:00.000+08:00

New technologies provide brain and heart surgeons with a much clearer view
By Josh Fischman

There are some worries surgeons don't share with patients before an operation. That they are going in blind, while carrying a sharp knife, is one of them. "It's kind of like a labyrinth. You can only see right in front of you, but not around the next bend," says Alexandra Golby, a neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Adds Christopher Moir, a pediatric surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., "You hope the structures look like what you've seen before, but you really don't know."

How can this be, in an era when technologies like computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging give unprecedented views of the inner body? Because, surgeons say, the scans omit crucial information. MRI and CT images that show the shape of body parts, for instance, don't capture electrical activity there; the section of a heart causing a dangerous rhythm can look just like normal muscle. And because most scans are done before surgery, they don't provide the real-time detail that would allow Golby, say, to shift an incision left or right by a millimeter or two-and safely remove a brain tumor without stealing a patient's speech.

Now, however, imaging is rapidly gaining new powers. Muscular computer programs meld images of anatomy with vibrant views of the structures in action, making "a lot of impossible things possible," says Richard Robb, head of Mayo's biomedical imaging lab. Robb has developed scans that reveal abnormal spots of electrical activity in the brain causing epileptic seizures, allowing surgeons to remove them from patients for whom, previously, surgery would have posed too great a risk. In experiments, combining multiple scans into one image has pinpointed deadly, rapid heart rhythms, too-and may turn a dangerous six-hour repair procedure, much of it spent poking around, into a relatively simple one-to-two-hour job.

Doctors have also moved magnetic resonance imaging to the surgical table, where scanning during the operation is already making brain surgery and prostate cancer surgery more precise. "This really is the dawn of a new surgical era," says Michael Schulder, a neurosurgeon at New Jersey Medical School University Hospital in Newark, who uses MRI during tumor surgery. "We're taking a lot of the guesswork away."

AN EPILEPTIC'S STORY

Michael Hutton certainly hoped for better than guesswork when his surgeons began cutting in 2004. "I told the doctors that I didn't have a lot of extra brain," says the insulation installer from Chippewa Falls, Wis. "So I couldn't afford for them to take out the wrong spot." He couldn't afford to skip surgery, either. Hutton, 45, was having 70 epileptic seizures a year, sometimes four in a day, and medications weren't helping.

But finding the exact spot to cut out was a challenge. A scalp electroencephalogram often isn't powerful enough to pinpoint misfires deep in the brain, says Elson So, a neurologist and epilepsy specialist at Mayo. Instead, Hutton benefited from an imaging technique pioneered by So and Robb in which an injected radioactive ink gloms on to blood flowing to an active seizure region. A scan sensitive to this ink, called SPECT for "single photon emission computed tomography,"
showed a big clump in Hutton's right temporal lobe. Once a computer program laid this image over an MRI of Hutton's brain anatomy, the surgeons were able to open a small hole in his skull and remove an area "smaller than the tip of my thumb," Hutton recalls. Today, he is seizure free on a low dose of medication. "I even got back into my favorite hobby," he says. "Sky diving."

Visual-cortex simulator sees animals as humans do

2007-04-15T10:00:00.000+08:00

April 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Celeste Biever

The human brain can tell the difference between a tiger and a moving branch in less than 20 milliseconds, an ability that can be crucial to survival. Now, a software model of the visual cortex is shining light on how we do it.

As well as offering an explanation for how we make such snap decisions, the software may also provide new ways to build intelligent vision software for robots and security cameras.

The human brain shows evidence of distinguishing between animals and non-animals and faces and non-faces even before a person is are aware of having seen anything. In 1989, Simon Thorpe, now at CNRS in Toulouse, France, first suggested that this extraordinary ability might be the result of an initial "sweep" of neuronal activity occurring before "feedback loops" inside the brain have time to kick in.

Now Tomaso Poggio and colleagues at MIT in the US have built a computer model that appears to support this description of how humans achieve rapid visual recognition. "I am very excited about this," says Thorpe, who was not involved with the work. "It confirms the hypothesis that I made in 1989."

The model contains a simulation of groups of neurons found in the human visual cortex and mimics the response of these neurons to visual features. Signals are passed from one group of neuron to the next in the same hierarchical fashion as in the brain.

Lines and edges

The process starts with neurons associated with basic feature recognition and moves up to ones that perform more sophisticated recognition tasks. The first set of neurons identifies lines and edges, while the next identifies different ways in which lines and edges intersect. This escalation in complexity continues through to neurons that fire when a particular category of objects – such as animals – is recognised.

Crucially, unlike the human brain, the model does not have the ability to do "back projections", where a signal higher up the neuronal chain is fed backwards to an earlier neuron group for more detailed analysis.

Nonetheless, when shown 150 animal images, and 150 non-animal pictures, the software classified them with the similar accuracy as human subjects. While the human brain performs this task in just 20 milliseconds, according to brainscans, the software takes much longer.

The fact that the software can assign the images without performing "back projections" suggests that humans rely on the same trick, as Thorpe originally suggested. "It confirms the conjecture that these very rapid categorisation tasks are done without the need for feedback," says Poggio.

Similar mistakes

The software even incorrectly classified the same images as human participants, strengthening evidence that the computer model is doing rapid visual recognition in the same way, says team member Thomas Serre: "It's not proof, but it's very strong evidence."

The next stage of the project is to teach the software how to perform back projections, to probe how humans recognise objects over longer periods.

"Poggio's work is really outstanding," says Luis von Ahn, a computer vision expert at Carnegie Mellon University in the UK, "both in terms of advancing our understanding how our brains work, and attempting to write a computer program that can see as well as we can."

The model may have practical applications. In a separate study published in February 2007 (IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (vol 20, p 411), the team showed that such a model can efficiently recognise objects in street scenes.

Other computer vision systems do not closely mimic the neurons in the brain, so this offers a new direction for vision software. "This is the first time I have seen neuroscience able to teach something to computer science," Poggio says.

Electric Cars(where did they go?)

2007-04-05T19:50:00.000+08:00

In 1900, most drivers preferred electric cars to gas or steam engines. After all, gasoline cars were noisy, smelly and, most critically, difficult to start. This changed radically with the invention of the self-starter for internal combustion cars in 1913. Within a few years, the electric car was almost completely wiped out, not to resurface for about sixty years.

The last few drivers of GM's EV1 bid farewell to their electric cars at a funeral held in Los Angeles in July 2003.

Largely spurred by the oil embargo of 1973 and a burgeoning environmental movement, backyard tinkerers started to test the limits of golf-cart batteries and plastic car bodies. These entrepreneurs picked up the challenge of increasing the speed and driving range that was left off six decades earlier, and as a result, learned a lot about batteries and electric vehicle technology.

ZEV Standards in California

In 1990, the auto industry was forced into the electric car business when California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) took the audacious step of establishing a Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program:

2% of the vehicles produced for sale in California had to be ZEVs, increasing to 5% in 2001 and 10 percent in 2003

The carmakers immediately stepped up their anemic alternative fuel programs, while teaming up with oil companies to wage a multi-million dollar lobbying and advocacy campaign to fight the CARB mandates. They stirred up public fears of increased taxes and lack of automotive choice. By 1996, CARB backed down on the 1998 deadline. In 2001, the program relaxed its standards to include “partial” zero emission vehicles.

Based on further changes agreed upon in 2003, the ZEV program is now scheduled to restart in 2005 with a set of complicated rules and tables which allow carmakers to use low-speed, low-range electric cars, hybrids, full function electric cars and ultimately fuel cells to pass prescribed standards and quantities up through 2017. These ZEV mandates could significantly increase the number of hybrids on the road.

Fate of Existing Electric Cars

So what happened to the 4,000 battery-powered ZEVs placed in California by major automakers between 1998 and 2003? (Most of the cars were leased rather than sold.) Despite the overwhelming enthusiasm and advocacy of electric car drivers, Ford, GM, Honda, and Toyota have all scrapped their electric vehicle (EV) programs, saying there's just no market for the cars. At a mock funeral for their electric cars, a group of EV drivers expressed their condolences. One participant said, "Unfortunately, very few Americans had a chance to drive an electric car before it was canceled."

"Some of us still believe in electric drive and pure battery power," said Robert C. Stempel, the former GM chairman and chief executive who helped start the EV1 program. Forced out in the early 1990s, Stempel now runs a company that develops batteries and alternative automotive technology. Improvements in battery technology, especially with lithium ion batteries, may one day resurrect EVs by extending their driving range.

Many of the strongest EV advocates and engineers are now looking at gas-electric hybrids that, unlike the current commercial hybrid offerings, could be plugged in (so-called "plug-in hybrids") to provide much greater capacity for running purely on electricity.

Tireless, reliable physio-robots take on stroke paralysis

2007-04-04T11:37:00.000+08:00

April 2007
Emma Young
Magazine issue 2598

TWO days before his 40th birthday, Michael Marin of New York suffered a stroke that left him paralysed on one side of his body. After three years of physiotherapy, he had regained control of his left leg, but not the use of his arm.

In an attempt to recover some arm movement, last August Marin began three months of therapy with two trial robotic rehabilitation devices. He is now able to do push-ups. "They're not perfect gym push-ups, but I'm getting there," he says.

Each year 700,000 people in the US and 130,000 in the UK suffer a stroke, making it the biggest cause of severe disability in both countries. Standard physiotherapy can work well for some people, but it is expensive so patients often spend only a short time with a therapist. The standard of therapy can also vary hugely between practitioners, producing variable results. Improving stroke rehabilitation could ...

The complete article is 1389 words long.

New Bar Codes Can Talk To Your Cellphone

2007-04-02T19:58:00.000+08:00

It sounds like something straight out of a futuristic film: House hunters, driving past a for-sale sign, stop and point their cellphone at the sign. With a click, their cellphone screen displays the asking price, the number of bedrooms and baths and lots of other details about the house.

Media experts say that cellphones, the Swiss Army knives of technology, are quickly heading in this direction. New technology, already in use in parts of Asia but still in development in the United States, allows the phones to connect everyday objects with the Internet.

In their new incarnation, cellphones become a sort of digital remote control, as one CBS executive put it. With a wave, the phone can read encoded information on everyday objects and translate that into videos, pictures or text files on its screen.

“The cellphone is the natural tool to combine the physical world with the digital world,” that executive, Cyriac Roeding, the head of mobile-phone applications for CBS, said the other day.

In Japan, McDonald's customers can already point their cellphones at the wrapping on their hamburgers and get nutrition information on their screens. Users there can also point their phones at magazine ads to receive insurance quotes, and board airplanes using their phones rather than paper tickets. And film promoters can send their movie trailers from billboards.

Advertisers say they are interested in offering similar capabilities in the United States, but cellphones in the States do not come with the necessary software. For now, consumers have to download the technology themselves.

Still, big advertising and technology companies like Hewlett-Packard and the Publicis Groupe, an advertising conglomerate, are pushing to popularize the technology here.

Until now, in most parts of the world, Web surfing has been separate from everyday activities like riding the train, watching television and driving. But the new technology may erode that distinction.

“You’ve picked up this product, and you don’t want to go back to your PC,” said Tim Kindberg, a senior research at the Bristol, England, lab of Hewlett-Packard. “Or you’re outside this building, and you want more information. We call it the ‘physical hyperlink’.”

In much the same way that Web publishing took off because of the ability to link to other people’s sites, cellphone technologies linking everyday objects with the Web would reveal the digitally encoded attributes of tangible things on grocery shelves or newsstands.

“Everything in the physical world has information related to it somewhere electronically, including yourself and the desk you’re sitting in,” said Chas Fritz, chief executive of NeoMedia Technologies, a company developing these cellphone capacities.

The most promising way to link cellphones with physical objects is a new generation of bar codes: square-shaped mosaics of black and white boxes that can hold much more information than traditional bar codes. The cameras on cellphones scan the codes, and then the codes are translated into videos, music or text on the phone screens.

American universities and technology companies have been experimenting with the codes in their labs for several years. Now, as more cellphones come equipped with cameras and the ability to run small computer programs, the codes are beginning to appear on some state drivers’ licenses and on some mailing labels, mostly for commercial use.

There are other technologies being developed for consumers to scan objects, including radio waves, computer chips or satellite location systems, but the bar code technology is the most developed - and simple and cheap enough even for individuals to publish them on printed materials or on Web sites.

But Hewlett-Packard and the Publicis Groupe are meeting for the second time with cellphone companies in May to advocate for the technology. Technology companies like Motorola and Microsoft have also been researching uses for the codes.

In Japan, the codes did not become mainstream until the largest cellphone companies started loading the code readers on all new phones a few years ago. Now, millions of people have the capability built into their phones, and businesses, in turn, are using them all over - on billboards, street signs, published materials and even food packaging.

In the late 1990s, several dozen start-up companies tried to create devices that would scan print content and ads and then reveal extra information to the reader. But consumers balked at using a special device only to interact with publications.

But now the time seems right for cellphones, ubiquitous and increasingly sold with cameras, to be pressed into service as the scanners.

“There are three things you tend to carry - your keys, your wallet and your phone,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief executive of Denuo, a unit of the Publicis Groupe that focuses on emerging and future technologies. “I can see something in advertising in one place, scan it with my phone and recall it later when I am shopping. Or, imagine, I can buy it using my phone.”

About a third of the 84 million households with cellphones in the United States have phones that have cameras on them, according to Forrester Research, and that number is expected to grow as consumers replace their phones. But few people with those phones have downloaded the software to read the codes.

In Japan, some highway billboards have codes large enough for passing motorists to read them with their phones. Hospitals put them on prescriptions, allowing pharmacies to instantly scan the medical information rather than read it. Supermarkets stick them on meat and egg packaging to give expiration dates and even the names of the farmers who produced them.

One of the most popular uses in Japan has been paperless airline tickets. About 10 percent of the people who take domestic flights of All Nippon Airways now use the codes on their cellphones instead of printed tickets.

Yasuko Nishigai, 22, used her cellphone recently to buy a ticket from Tokyo to the Japanese tropical island of Okinawa. To board her flight, she waved the code on her cellphone screen over a scanner.

“I didn’t use a single piece of paper, just my phone,” she said.

The codes are “a natural extension of print,” said Nina Link, the president of the Magazine Publishers Association. “How many times have you engaged with a magazine and you’ve seen something and you’ve said, ‘Boy, I’d really like to remember to get that information.’ And you have to remember to write down the URL.”

The new technology would allow phones to read the codes from computer screens, too. Commuters rushing out the door could scan Web sites on their computer screens with their phones to take the content with them. MySpace users could put a code on their personal pages, so that their friends can quickly transfer the profiles to their phones.

The technology would also allow advertisers to do something they could never effectively do before: monitor the impact of their ads in old media like magazines and billboards by measuring how often their codes are clicked.

In the Philippines, the Daily Philippines newspaper has run ads with the codes. In Britain, News Group Newspapers, the division of the News Corporation that includes newspapers like The Sun, is testing the codes along with some of its sports articles. Readers can scan the code in the newspaper and then see videos relating to the article. Similarly, Economie Matin, a magazine in France, is testing the codes.

In the United States last fall, the Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies placed the codes on concert posters. The publisher Prentice Hall is including the codes in a new marketing textbook for undergraduates so that they can get updates on case studies using the codes.

Executives at Verizon, AT&T and Sprint declined to say whether they were in discussions with the companies that make the code reading technology. Bar code companies said the carriers stood to benefit from the codes because they might encourage consumers to add Internet service plans to their accounts and spend more time on their phones.

The wireless companies have other options to help cellphones interact with the physical world. They could, for instance, adopt image recognition software, which would allow phones to recognize anything - a Coca-Cola can, for example - and deliver related messages. Or, text messaging, currently the most common way that advertisers interact with consumers on their phones, has many advertiser applications.

Advertisers have also experimented with Bluetooth wireless devices and radio frequency identification to beam messages from billboards to consumers’ cellphones, but those technologies are more expensive than the codes.

Even if the wireless companies adopt the bar codes, they will have several formats to choose from. The most widely used ones have names like Semacode, QR Code and Qode.

Getting consumers to use new technologies like these codes takes a lot of marketing by the carriers, said David Oberholzer, associate director of content programming at Verizon Wireless.

He said Verizon is just starting to profit from the work it did to create interest in text messaging.

“The consumer needs a reason to do it,” said Jim Levinger, chief executive of Nextcode, a bar code company. “They don’t just wake up and say, ‘Hey, let’s go scan some bar codes.’ ”

Radioactive Boy Scout

2007-04-01T00:40:00.000+08:00

Teenager achieves nuclear fusion at home
by Stephen Ornes

In 2006 Thiago Olson joined the extremely sparse ranks of amateurs worldwide who have achieved nuclear fusion with a home apparatus. In other words, he built the business end of a hydrogen bomb in his basement. The plasma "star in a jar"—shown at the left—demonstrated his success.

For two years, Olson researched what he would need and scrounged for parts from eBay and the hardware store. Flanges and piping? Check. High-voltage X-ray transformer? Check. Pumps, deuterium source, neutron bubble dosimeter? Check, check, check. “I have cross-country and track, so during those seasons I don’t have much time to work on it,” says Olson, a high school senior in Michigan. “It’s more of a weekend project.” Last November the machine finally delivered the hallmark of success: bubbles in the dosimeter. The bubbles indicate the presence of neutrons, a by-product of fusion—an energy-releasing process in which two hydrogen nuclei crash together and form a helium nucleus. Fusion is commonplace in stars, where hydrogen nuclei fuse in superhot plasma, but temperatures that high are hard to achieve on Earth. Still, the prospect of creating all this energy while forming only nonradioactive helium and easily controlled neutrons has made harnessing fusion one of the most sought-after and heavily funded goals in sustainable energy.

Olson’s apparatus won’t work for generating commercial power because it takes more energy to run than it produces. But he has succeeded in creating a “star in a jar,” a tiny flash of hot plasma. “The temperature of the plasma is around 200 million degrees,” Olson says modestly, “several times hotter than the core of the sun.”

Robert Bussard, a nuclear physicist who has spent most of his career investigating fusion for both the government and private companies, applauds Olson’s ambition. “These kids are studying much more useful physics than what the country is spending billions on,” he says. “It causes them to think. They’re not going down the mainstream path to oblivion.” And, aside from using high voltage and emitting low-level radiation, the machine has been deemed harmless.

“About a week ago, the department of health from Michigan called my principal,” Olson says.

“They wanted to come over and inspect it. They did that, they were impressed, and it checked out.”

EXA Infosys Announces Significant New Technologies for Database Monitoring and Ontology

2007-03-31T22:28:00.000+08:00

Arthur Tisi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of EXA Infosystems Inc. announced today the release of a Beta Version of its new Data Monitoring and Ontology Engine codenamed P2U. This new technology is the result of over 20 man years of work in this area and is designed to give a user capabilities to be very specific about the conditions and restrictions of monitoring and understanding of the different definitions of the physical data to be identified with clarity and precision that should drive critical business decisions. All major databases and data feeds are supported and the P2U tool utilizes JDBC drivers and the Ontology tool is compliant with the Semantic Web RDF Specifications. The technology has been available in an alpha version for internal use and has been provided to a number of key strategic partners for internal use and evaluation.

Stamford, CT (PRWEB) March 30, 2007 -- Arthur Tisi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of EXA Infosystems Inc. announced today the release of a Beta Version of its new Data Monitoring and Ontology Engine codenamed P2U. This new technology is the result of over 20 man years of work in this area and is designed to give a user capabilities to be very specific about the conditions and restrictions of monitoring and understanding of the different definitions of the physical data to be identified with clarity and precision that should drive critical business decisions. All major databases and data feeds are supported and the P2U tool utilizes JDBC drivers and the Ontology tool is compliant with the Semantic Web RDF Specifications. The technology has been available in an alpha version for internal use and has been provided to a number of key strategic partners for internal use and evaluation.

EXA's CEO, Arthur Tisi said, "These two technologies are vital for monitoring and understanding any type of data across physical platforms of any type - foe example, data across databases, websites and other platforms. In essence you can program a website to be automatically updated any time another website's information is updated or data in any database changes. You can also create a common language across computer systems and that is a main reason why Web 2.0 is based on Semantic Web. This is a very important set of tools if you want to manage data across different data sources."

The P2U platform uses some of the most advanced algorithmic, calculus and statistical programming available and was conducted as a global effort between EXA's technical teams in Moscow, India and Israel.

Tisi also praised the two leaders responsible for these advances, "Oleg Margolin and Oleg Alshansky are pioneers in the areas of data integration, business intelligence and analysis, they have found a seam in the data goldmine."

Oleg Margolin EXA's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), said, "This follow-on to our original research will make next generation research and real-time changes to data a reality. The fact is this is a huge step forward in the area of data monitoring using open architectures." He also stated, "

"The monitoring requires no additional access rights to the database except "read-only". The approach does not require any knowledge about database table structures given the fact that this tool discovers metadata and allows the user to have a complete and comprehensive view of the discovered metadata." Margolin made it clear that the understanding of semantic is key, "By building a web of complex ontological objects and describing their relationships, our tool creates a true foundation of the real world data integration capabilities that allows an understanding of the different definitions of the physical data to be identified with clarity and precision that will drive critical business decisions."

Oleg Alshansky, EXA's Vice-President of Development was the manager of the development effort. He stated, "The monitoring mechanism includes complex rule-based algorithms that gives a user capabilities to be very specific about the conditions and restrictions of monitoring.

In this regard, we have accomplished something very powerful while our Ontology tool is compliant with Semantic Web RDF specification making it easy to import/export ontologies that are created or used by other software tools"

Data monitoring and Ontological solutions have to date have been associated with relational data. With EXA's announcement , areas related to web based information are now incorporated into data models.

EXA Infosystems Inc. is a privately held technology products company located in Westchester, New York. EXA has four divisions which specialize in Business Data Systems, Financial Systems, Global Sourcing and Research solutions. The Company provides services which are described at its web site, www.exainfosys.com .

Second Humanoid Robot In France Welcomed

2007-03-29T14:48:00.000+08:00

Science Daily — The HOAP3 humanoid robot has just arrived at the Laboratory for Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics of Montpellier (LIRMM -- CNRS -- University of Montpellier 2). This platform supplements the one that was installed at the LAAS in Toulouse last June. They were both made in Japan and represent a strong robotics research potential for France.

Research activities in the field of human robotics are expanding rapidly. The establishment of the JRL (Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory) based in both Japan (Tsukuba) and France (Toulouse-LAAS and Montpellier-LIRMM) contributed strongly to the realization, reinforcement and dynamization of the robotics research community in this field. The two humanoid robots are at the core of JRL's research.

The acquisition of HOAP3 by LIRMM, 50% co-financed by the CNRS, is part of this process. Within the framework of JRL-France, the LIRMM will thus offer the national community an open experimental platform for the validation of models or control methods contributing to ambulation and the handling of objects while maintaining balance.

This 8.8 kg, 60 cm tall robot has 28 motorized articulations. It has a large number of sensors including accelerometers, rate gyros, an infra-red range finder, pressure sensors and two cameras. This unit is based around a completely open software platform (RTLinux) allowing all of the researchers interested to freely evaluate and test their new theoretical developments concerning the modeling, control, vision or learning of these.

This platform supplements the one already installed at LAAS in Toulouse, the HRP2 robot, which is more realistic because it is on a "human scale," but also more complex. HOAP3 will allow for very rapid progress because its use is simple and does not require prior validations on a simulator. Furthermore, the software platform used to control the robot will facilitate the integration and the harnessing of work already developed with Linux.

On the other hand, the fact that HOAP3 is small means that it cannot perform all of the tasks that a humanoid robot might do in a life-size environment. For these tests, the platform installed at LAAS will thus be complementary. Lastly, HOAP3 has a wireless communication link that allows it to handle teleoperation work or collaboration of mobile robots. One of LIRMM's hopes is to soon have several humanoids so that it can study robot cooperation.

You can discover HOAP3 at the National Humanoid Robotics Exhibition to be held in Montpellier on March 29 and 30, 2007 (http://www.lirmm.fr/JNRH).

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by CNRS.

Upgraded Version of Xbox 360 to Be Introduced by Microsoft

2007-03-28T14:02:00.000+08:00

By LAURIE J. FLYNN

Raising the ante in the video game wars, Microsoft is bringing out a new version of the Xbox 360 game machine that has a bigger hard drive, better high-definition video support and a stylish black finish, not an insignificant feature in a world where looking cool ranks high.

The idea is to appeal to an elite class of hardcore game players who would like a little more of everything.
“Today’s games-and-entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content,” said Peter Moore, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, in Redmond, Wash.

The Xbox 360 Elite, which is to be announced today and will be in stores in late April, will have a list price of $479, or $80 more than the Xbox 360 Pro and $180 more than the basic Xbox 360. The new model has a 120-gigabyte hard drive, in contrast to the standard model’s 20-gigabyte drive. It also has a high-definition multimedia interface port and cable and a wireless controller and headset. Current Xbox 360 owners can buy the new 120-gigabyte hard drive as a separate accessory for $179.

Microsoft is clearly hoping to fill what it sees as a hole at the top end of the market. The Nintendo Wii has been outselling the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 in recent months, but that system is largely positioned as a family-friendly game machine that can be purchased for $50 less than the lowest-priced Xbox. The Sony system is priced higher than both the Nintendo and the Microsoft systems, with the cheapest model priced at $499.

Both Microsoft and Sony have positioned their consoles as entertainment hubs, not just for playing sophisticated video games but also for listening to music and viewing downloaded movies and television shows.

John Rodman, group product manager for the Xbox platform and Xbox Live, pointed to a recent Microsoft survey that revealed that nearly 40 percent of the time that Xbox 360 users spent with their consoles was for activities other than gaming.

Yet when it comes to gaming, Xbox 360 users are serious, Mr. Rodman says. Six out of 10 Xbox 360 users use Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming service.

“We don’t feel like the Wii customer and the Xbox customer are the same thing,” he said. “We think that as soon as the Wii customer turns 14 they want something else.”

James L. McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said that Microsoft hoped to encourage customers to spend more money downloading movies and games, which require considerable hard-drive space.

IBM Announces Tool to Help Visually Impaired 'See' Internet Multimedia

2007-03-27T20:53:00.000+08:00

Millions of senior citizens may experience streaming video, animation

March 25, 2007 - IBM has announced a first-of-its-kind emerging technology that helps blind and visually impaired people experience streaming video and animation on the Internet. It is estimated that there are more than 161 million people with these impairments and the vast majority are senior citizens.

The multimedia browsing accessibility tool hasn't been named yet, according to Information Week. "Chieko Asakawa, a senior accessibility researcher at IBM who has been blind since the age of 14, spearheaded the development of the new software out of frustration with streaming video," IW says. It was designed at IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory.

The emergence of multimedia content has raised usage levels of Web content. Yet people with low or no vision have not been able to enjoy the benefits of these advances. Screen-reading software and self-talking browsers cannot handle multimedia applications, which are designed for intuitive visual use. Visually impaired users cannot see multimedia control buttons appear on a screen.

In addition, the audio of a streaming video --- which automatically starts playing after the page is loaded --- interferes with a synthesized assistive voice from screen-reading software, a vital assistant for visually impaired users. Furthermore, most multimedia content operates with a mouse rather than keyboard, making it impossible for visually impaired people to use it.

The new multimedia browsing accessibility tool offers people with visual impairment the same multimedia control features sighted people see and operate with a mouse.

To enjoy a streaming video on video sharing websites, for example, visually impaired people can select the "play" button by simply pressing a predefined shortcut key to control the media instead of roaming the content to search for buttons to control the video. The tool also allows users to control video replay speed, volume and even speed up the sound since to people with visual impairment, listening to the sound streaming video offers is painfully slow.

"The new multimedia browsing accessibility tool will enable persons with visual impairments the opportunity to access dynamic multimedia web content, quickly and easily. This tool is another example of IBM Research developing innovative solutions for persons with disabilities," said Chieko Asakawa who leads accessibility research at IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory.

The new multimedia browsing accessibility tool can adjust the volume of an individual source, allowing users to identify and listen to different sound sources including screen-reading software and the sound of a video. If a content creator wants to offer a voice narrative to a video, the new accessibility tool provides the flexibility of metadata, which contains a text script explaining what is happening on screen.

The tool automatically makes adjustments to let voice guidance synchronizes with the video, even with the speed control capability.

"IBM has a long history of developing innovative solutions for persons with disabilities, and the new multimedia browsing accessibility tool is another example of IBM innovation that will enhance the web experience for persons with visual impairments," said Frances West, director, IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center.

IBM plans to open source (make available for others to help develop) the new multimedia browsing accessibility tool to accelerate the enhancement and adoption of the tool to make multimedia contents accessible for visually impaired.

"IBM has developed other technologies for the visually impaired, including a talking browser and programs that help people with visual impairments adjust font sizes and color contrast on Web pages," reports Information Week.

IBM (www.03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/TechWatch.wss)

Blood Bank uses new technology

2007-03-25T20:14:00.000+08:00

Siouxland Community Blood Bank is the first in the nation to introduce the Cymbal System created by Haemonetics.

The Cymbal System is a new generation of automated red cell collection technology for volunteer blood donors who choose to donate double red cells. The Siouxland Blood Bank has had double red cell donation capability since September of 2001, when it introduced the Haemonetics first generation technology. Now at half the size of the first generation series, the Cymbal System is highly versatile for a mobilesetup. It is battery operated and allows volunteer blood donors to donate twice as much blood in a single visit.

The Cymbal System is designed for ease of the donors. Donating double red cells takes about 15 to 20 minutes longer than a single unit donation, but donors only have to donate half as often. The donation interval with double red cells is 112 days as opposed to 56 days with a single unit donation, potentially allowing donors to donate the maximum amount of blood a year in only three visits.

Double red cell donation uses a smaller needle to collect blood in only one arm. Then, a machine separates the red cells and the donor gets back the platelets, plasma and white cells.

"At the Siouxland Community Blood Bank, we remain committed to being a leader in our field for introducing cutting edge technology," said Janette Twait, chief executive officer with the Siouxland Community Blood Bank.

"Our partnership with Haemonetics has allowed us to introduce the newest and latest technology that blood banking has to offer so that we are able to ensure that the needs of patients in 36 area hospitals are met safely and sufficiently.

"To be eligible for double red cell donations, men must weigh at least 130 pounds and be 5 feet 1 inch tall, women must weigh at least 150 pounds and be 5 feet 5 inches tall.

To be eligible to donate blood individuals must be at least 17 years of age; (16 in the state of Iowa with a signed SCBB parental consent form); however there is no upper age limit as long as the donor is in good health. In addition, donors need to weigh at least 110 pounds and have not donated whole blood in the past 56 days. A photo I.D. is required at the time of registration.

New technology gives doctors the big picture

2007-03-21T20:40:00.000+08:00

By Rick Bentley / The Fresno Bee
03/20/07 03:45:11

Dr. Charles Smith, medical director of the Department of Medical Imagery, stares at the images on four computer screens. The screen is filled with the sonogram image of a kidney of one of his patients. The screen is covered with 16 smaller images of the same kidney.

The images give Smith the opportunity to look at how the patient's kidney has changed over the past year. And all it took was a few seconds on the computer.

Children's Hospital Central California is now using the multimillion-dollar Picture Archiving Communication System, or PACS. The system, put in place in December, will eventually phase out the way doctors have dealt with X-rays, CT scans and other ways to peek inside their patient's bodies. The old system required doctors to hold up huge sheets of X-ray film to a light for scrutiny. That system is being replaced by computerized imaging.

Now, instead of the images being on film, digital versions are collected and stored in the computer. These digital images can be accessed in an instant by the physicians. And they can be accessed by multiple doctors simultaneously, even doctors who happen to be on vacation at other points on the globe.

Keith Pipes, director of Imaging Services, says that the new system is better for the doctors, the patients, the hospital and even the environment.

"In the past, a patient would have an X-ray made. The film would have to be processed. That would take a few minutes. How much detail was in the image depended on the technician," Pipes says. "We now use what is called computerized radiography. There is no more film; it is like an Etch A Sketch. A special plate is used. You make the exposure with X-rays, but instead of going to the darkroom, you enter the plate into the computer, and it pops up on the screen immediately."

Under the old system, once the image was made, it had to be shipped around the hospital, depending on the patient's needs. If the X-ray got lost or misfiled, the doctors had no history of the patient's condition. With PACS, the images are available to be seen as soon the information can be loaded into the computer.

Another plus is the additional information available through the digital images. Film X-rays have only one contrast. Because the image is collected digitally, the doctor can change the contrast on the image to see as much or little detail as necessary.

"You could not do that with film." Pipes says. "This is considerably higher resolution than you can get from a view box."

A huge bonus for doctors is that the images can be shared. It is possible for the X-ray to be seen at the same time by a doctor doing an operation, a specialist in another part of the hospital and by the patient's doctor who is at home. Those doctors would have had to be in the same room to simultaneously view an X-ray under the old system.

Smith is a big supporter of the new system.

"In the past I would have had to look at large stacks of X-rays of the patient. To get those X-rays I would have to order them from the files. Sometimes they got lost. Now all I have to do is call up the images on the computer screen," Smith says.

PACS is designed to allow doctors to examine one image or multiple images taken over an extended period of time. The computers feature terabytes of storage and make it possible for the doctors to look at the patient's medical reports at the same time.

In the past, patients were given the large film X-rays when they left the hospital. Depending on how long the patient was under a doctor's care, that could end up being a hefty stack. Now, the patient is sent home with the images stored on a CD.