Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Mapping a path for the 3D Web
PALO ALTO, Calif.--With the spread of online games, virtual worlds and services like Google Earth and MySpace.com, people may soon be spending more time, communicating more and shopping more in complex 3D Web environments.
That's why several dozen of the most influential figures in video game design, geospatial engineering, high-tech research, software development, social networking, telecommunications and other fields gathered here Friday and Saturday for the first Metaverse Roadmap Summit.
The event, held at the SRI International and produced by the Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF), was the initial step toward what organizers and attendees alike hope will be a coherent path to the so-called metaverse--an Internet dominated by 3D technology, social spaces and economies.
As such, the invite-only group spent the two days in a series of talks, small breakout discussions and group presentations--all in the pursuit of consensus about what the metaverse, or some would say 3D Web, will look like in 10 years.
In the end, organizers will sift through hours of recordings of the various discussions and plan to produce a public document by the end of the summer that will lay out what they believe were the overriding conclusions and directions of the event. First, though, attendees will pore over two drafts of the document in the coming months to weigh in on the organizers' take on the so-called road map.
Ultimately, the ASF hopes to produce regular small Metaverse Roadmap gatherings, as well as full summits at least every two years.
In the meantime, the organizers have their work cut out for them because agreement about the metaverse of 2016 was hard to find.
While many took issue with the basic premise that an overriding 3D Web will be in place within 10 years, it was clear that most in attendance relished mixing it up as part of an august group that included Microsoft's Robert Scoble, former Sony Online Entertainment chief creative officer Raph Koster, PARC researcher Bob Moore, online game pioneer Randy Farmer, There.com founder and currently IMVU CEO Will Harvey, and CNET Networks editor at large Esther Dyson.
"I thought we were going to focus a bit more on virtual worlds because when I hear the term metaverse, I hear 3D virtual worlds. And we ended up talking about virtual worlds as well as augmented reality, which to me is kind of separate technology in its vision," Moore said. But "it was good to get this group of people together because it is a group with a lot of common interests. And so I think it's good to get the group as a network together."
Several times Friday and Saturday, participants went off in groups of six or so to brainstorm various questions about the future of the metaverse. Primrily, the questions revolved around specifically what the metaverse of 2016 will look like and about what the chief research and development challenges might be in the interim.
After each breakout session, the groups returned to an auditorium to present their thoughts.
One of the questions asked most frequently throughout the event was whether an overriding metaverse of 2016 will be commercially owned or open source. There was little agreement about that, but it was clear that the companies seen as most likely to provide the tools for a single metaverse upon which many 3D, social applications could be built are Microsoft and Google.
In part, Google was seen as more likely because of its development of Google Earth and its recent purchase of the maker of the 3D modeling software, Sketchup.
But some felt that Microsoft could make a major play to become the metaverse provider and that it may well seek to buy something like the open-ended virtual world "Second Life" as a precursor to a larger play in the field.
Still, as the groups reported back, it seemed that few had reached clear visions of what the metaverse of 2016 will be, despite agreement that most people will be spending far more time in 3D, virtual environments than they do today.
In addition, there was a general consensus that--as mobile devices become more sophisticated--the 3D Web would become much more the province of such devices and far less of the kinds of desktop or laptop computers we know today.
During one break in the schedule Saturday, two members of the team producing Croquet, an open-source software platform designed for creating collaborative, multiple-user online applications, showed off their software. And as word spread about the demo, nearly everyone in attendance suddenly scrambled to watch.
Quickly, about 30 people gathered in a tight semi-circle around the two Croquet team members as they showed off the software's ability to let people move in and out of rich virtual spaces easily and with little of the lag and complicated user-interface of virtual worlds like "Second Life."
The demonstration was one of the highlights of a day filled with engrossing conversations, but short on tangible progress toward the road map everyone had come to create.
To some, the format of the event presented hard challenges to achieving the stated goals. But some felt that organizers had gotten it right.
"I'm not necessarily a huge believer in central planning of technological and cultural advances," said Corey Bridges, co-founder of the Multiverse Network, a sponsor of the event. "But happily, that's not what we're doing here. We are identifying areas to explore. We're seeing mountains in the distance and saying, 'There's something there, someone should go investigate it.'"
Bridges also applauded the makeup of the group that had come to the event.
"I think this was a wonderfully diverse and cantankerous group," Bridges said. "I was a little worried that we might get a bunch of starry-eyed people who weren't grounded...(But) we have all learned to temper our enthusiasm with our level-headedness and that is serving us well."
He also cited comments Dyson made as mirroring the feelings many at the event had.
"Esther Dyson wonderfully stood up during the introductions," Bridges said, "and said she has not drunk the Kool-Aid but she was here to see what the flavor of the Kool-Aid was."
Indeed, Dyson said she was somewhat skeptical of what such an event could produce, but added it really depended in large part on how people can work through the problems that they perceive stand in the way of the goals.
"The connections people made here I'm sure will lead to people doing interesting things in collaboration," said Dyson, who writes Release 1.0 for CNET, the publisher of News.com. "But we're not coming together to promulgate a standard. We're trying to get a common vocabulary, a common understanding."
And in the end, that's what the event's organizers were really after.
"I feel that people came and engaged, and that part of it was extremeley successful," said Bridget Agabra, the Metaverse Roadmap's project manager. "Now the hard work begins again. But this is fun because it's content and ideas...When you see the magic (participants) were doing, the magic they were making with their minds, that was brain food for me."
source:http://news.com.com/Mapping+a+path+for+the+3D+Web+-+page+2/2100-1025_3-6069459-2.html?tag=st.num
Smaller cable firms take aim at Net neutrality fans
WASHINGTON--Young, wealthy Internet companies like Google shouldn't expect to get "special favors" from network operators that have sunk billions of dollars into fiber investments, the head of a smaller cable company said Monday.
Rocco Commisso, CEO of New York-based Mediacom Communications, delivered the latest commentary in the ongoing Net neutrality fray at an annual Washington, D.C., summit organized by the American Cable Association, a lobbying group for small and medium-size independent cable companies. Mediacom, which bills itself as the nation's eighth-largest cable television provider, counts 1.5 million basic-cable subscribers across 23 states, according to its Web site.
"I think what the phone industry's saying and what we're saying is we've made an investment, and I don't think the government should be coming and telling us how we can work that infrastructure, simple as that," Commisso said during a panel discussion about issues faced by companies like his, adding, "Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?"
The remarks indicated it's not only the nation's largest broadband players, both in the cable and the telecommunications sectors, that have voiced public opposition to what they refer to as unprecedented governmental regulation of the Internet. They've said repeatedly that without evidence of a problem, there's no need for new laws.
Net neutrality, also called network neutrality, is the philosophy that network operators should not be allowed to prioritize content and services--particularly video--that come across their pipes. Proponents have launched a campaign to enact detailed regulations barring such practices, and so far they've won over some congressional Democrats.
Network operators counter that they deserve the right to charge premium fees to bandwidth hogs in order to offset their vast investments in infrastructure and to ensure the quality and security of their products. Mediacom has made $1.7 billion in capital investments over the past decade, according to Commisso.
"It's incredible that a company like Google that's got market capitalization bigger than the combined value of the cable business....these guys just started five, 10 years ago, and they're asking for special favors already," Commisso said.
His statement conjured up earlier admissions by telecommunications power players, including one Verizon executive who cautioned that Google should not be entitled to a "free lunch."
Net neutrality advocates--which include Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com and a medley of mostly left-leaning consumer groups--argue that such a business model would lead to increased costs for Web surfers and would assault the Internet's historically open architecture.
Their rallying cry--and their very selection of the term "Net neutrality"--is nothing more than a "very, very clever D.C. campaign," charged Tom Might, CEO of Arizona-based Cable One, which has customers in 19 states with large rural populations. Politicians, he suggested, "don't know what it is, but they're afraid to be against Net neutrality because it sounds so wonderful, like Mom and apple pie."
source:http://news.com.com/Smaller+cable+firms+take+aim+at+Net+neutrality+fans/2100-1028_3-6069873.html?tag=nefd.top
Warner to start movie downloads
Warner Brothers is to start selling film downloads via the internet using the same technology once blamed for helping people swap illegal copies. 
The Hollywood studio has reached a deal with the web company Bit Torrent, which uses peer-to-peer technology to allow the quick distribution of large files.
Warner says users will be able to buy downloads of films and TV shows on the same day they become available on DVD.
Pricing for a feature film will be about the same as the DVD release.
The cost of a television show could be as low as a dollar.
Rivals to follow?
Warner added that whether a TV show or feature film, it will only play on the initial computer used to make the download.
The downloads will not therefore work on other PCs or standard DVD players.
Other Hollywood studios are now likely to launch similar services.
They believe movie fans will prefer to pay a reasonable price for a legal downloaded movie rather than risk illegally swapping a computer file that could contain viruses or be a poor quality copy of a film.
Peer-to-peer connections enable people to quickly swap files between their computers without having to go via an internet server.
source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4753435.stm
Japan solicits help with supersonic jet
TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Stung by repeated setbacks, Japan's space agency plans to start talks next month with NASA about jointly developing a supersonic successor to the retired Concorde, an official said Monday.
Japan is trying to leapfrog ahead in the aerospace field with a plan to build a next-generation airliner that can fly between Tokyo and Los Angeles in about three hours. But a string of glitches, including a nose cone problem during the latest test flight in March, has led the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to look for an international partner.
"In the future, we think we need some kind of cooperation with NASA," JAXA spokesman Kiyotaka Yashiro said. "Every developed country is doing some kind of research, the U.S., Europe and Russia. International cooperation is essential."
Japanese researchers and engineers plan to meet counterparts from the U.S. space agency next month to discuss possible cooperation, Yashiro said, calling the June meeting a "first step."
Yashiro's comments came in response to a Japanese newspaper report that said JAXA would ally with NASA and the U.S.-based aerospace manufacturer Boeing Co. on the next stage of development. Japan is expected to develop the engine, which would generate 1 percent of the noise of the Concorde, while Boeing builds the airframe, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said.
Yashiro said the report was premature and that no decisions have been made on partners.
A breakthrough in supersonic flight could help transform Japan's aerospace industry. The country, which does much of parts manufacturing for Boeing, has only a limited domestic airplane industry.
Japan aims to have the Concorde's successor making regular flights by 2025, Yashiro said. But research will still be needed through the next 10 years before a prototype can be built, he added.
Among the hurdles are two difficulties that plagued the Concorde, jet-engine noise and high fuel consumption. Japan has already successfully tested an engine that can theoretically reach speeds of up to mach 5.5, or more than five times the speed of sound.
But test flights of an arrow-shaped test model over the Australian desert have had mixed results.
In one incident, the aircraft prematurely separated from its booster rocket and crashed. Then, in a much-vaunted March 30 trial, the airplane failed to reach its target altitude and the nose cone cover failed to jettison as planned.
The Concorde first flew in 1969 and became a symbol of French and European industrial acumen. But the planes were retired from commercial service in October 2003, never having recouped the billions of tax dollars invested in them.
The Concorde exploded in flames after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris on July 25, 2000. The accident, which killed the 109 people on board, presaged an end to the career of the sleek but costly supersonic aircraft.
The Japanese project uses a so-called Supersonic Combustion Ramjet -- or scramjet -- engine that was designed for speeds of up to 5,000 miles per hour, or 10 times the speed of conventional aircraft.
The United States has already carried out a flight test with a scramjet engine, while the European Union, Japan, China, Russia and India are in different stages of testing their technologies.
Japanese companies slated to participate in the venture include Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co.
source:http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/05/08/japan.supersonic.jet.ap/index.html
Wal-Mart seeks smiley face rights
 Wal-Mart uses the smiley face on staff uniforms and promotional signs |
A Frenchman who claims to have invented the yellow smiley face back in 1968 is opposing the US retail giant's move.
For some, the image is a reminder of 1970s counter-culture, for others, a useful shorthand when sending e-mails.
But since 1996, Wal-Mart has used the image in the US on uniforms and promotional signs, and it wants sole rights to it in the US retail sector.
Global rights
Franklin Loufrani - just one of a number of people who profess to have invented the image - has marketed the sign since the early 1970s.
It's a mark that we have a tremendous investment in and is very closely identified with our company 
He and his London-based company SmileyWorld today own the rights to the logo in more than 80 countries around the world.
The US is not included in this list, and SmileyWorld and Wal-Mart are now at loggerheads before the US Patent and Trademark Office.
A final decision is expected in August.
Ironic
Until now the smiley face had been considered in the public domain in the US, and therefore free for anyone to use.
Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley told the Los Angeles Times that it had not moved to register the trademark until Mr Loufrani had threatened to do so.
"It is kind of ironic that this whole dispute is about a smiley face," said Mr Simley.
"But in the end, it is what it is: it's a mark that we have a tremendous investment in and is very closely identified with our company."
SmileyWorld said it did not have anyone who could comment on Monday.
Disputed creation
The authorship of the smiley face is hotly disputed.
While Mr Loufrani says he came up with the image in 1968, American Harvey Ball contends that he first designed the logo in 1963.
Mr Ball, a Massachusetts graphic artist, claims he devised the cartoon to cheer up disgruntled staff at a newly merged insurance firm.
Another American, Seattle-based advertiser David Stern, also claims to have invented the image.
Mr Sterns says he devised the sign in 1967 as part of an advertisement campaign for financial services firm Washington Mutual.
Both Mr Ball and Mr Stern further say that they did not think of trademarking the image at the time.
Since the 1970s, the smiley face has been adopted by a number of different groups.
It appears on number plates in the US state of Kentucky, has featured on an American postage stamp and was the unofficial symbol of the late 1980s acid house dance music movement.
The image was also spoofed in the 1994 movie Forest Gump, in which the title character inadvertently comes up with the logo by rubbing his wet and dirty face on a white T-shirt.
source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4984138.stm
I.B.M. Seeks to Make the Mainframe Modern Technology
For years, the I.B.M. mainframe business has been running on an ever-accelerating treadmill. The company must go faster and faster, with performance improvements and price cuts, just to keep mainframe technology in place and relevant in modern corporate data centers.
That campaign has been remarkably effective, defying predictions of the mainframe's demise year after year.
But now, I.B.M. wants to go further. It is to make a series of announcements today introducing software tools, academic programs and support for outside developers that I.B.M. says are intended to bring new business and new programmers to the mainframe. I.B.M. is trying to position the mainframe for corporate customers as a "hub of Internet-based computing."
The announcements, according to analysts briefed on them in advance, signal a shift from defense to offense in the company's mainframe strategy. Last month, I.B.M. introduced a machine priced at $100,000, about half the previous starting price for its mainframes, which can run up to several million dollars. The announcement of the low-end mainframe was made in China, which I.B.M. regards as a promising market for the machines.
"I.B.M. is actually trying to expand their base in the mainframe business," said John Phelps, an analyst at the technology research firm Gartner. "It's trying to attack new markets."
Many companies have made the shift from a mainframe — a single computing engine — to clusters of small server computers powered by low-cost microprocessors. Ultimately, the change can reduce expenses and provide greater flexibility. But some companies still use mainframes because the switch can be a costly, time-consuming process that involves rewriting the software used to manage businesses, like accounting and customer records.
The mainframe business, while far smaller than it was, remains crucial for I.B.M. Sales of the machines alone account for only about 5 percent of I.B.M.'s revenue. But all mainframe-related hardware, software and services account for a quarter of its revenue and, more important, about half of I.B.M.'s total operating profit, A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, estimates.
The trajectory of the mainframe business depends on how it is measured. I.B.M. points out that even though prices are falling, the use of mainframe computing — typically measured in MIPS, or millions of computing instructions per second — is growing at a healthy clip.
Competitors say most of that growth comes from a comparatively small number of big customers like banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies and some government agencies, whose growing computing needs in general require continued investment in mainframes. The number of mainframe computers in use worldwide, analysts say, is about half what it was a decade ago.
"The installed base is clearly shrinking," said Tim O'Brien, a manager in Microsoft's platform strategy group. "The reality is that the mainframe is old technology and all I.B.M. can hope to do is to limit the bleeding."
Two years ago, Microsoft founded the Mainframe Migration Alliance, a group of technology companies that helps corporations move software applications from mainframes to smaller computers powered by low-cost microprocessors and typically running Microsoft's Windows server operating system. The group, Mr. O'Brien said, is currently working on more than 50 projects.
I.B.M. asserts that the mainframe is often the lowest-cost technology when running many different programs because fewer people are needed to maintain a mainframe, and it consumes less power, than a cluster of many smaller machines.
The software tools I.B.M. is introducing will enable traditional mainframe programmers and programmers skilled in modern computer languages, like Java, to write software programs tailored for the mainframe but including Internet technology. This Web services technology makes programs more flexible as individual building blocks of code will be able to communicate with others automatically. Customer records, for example, can be accessible to several different software programs, like ones for marketing, shipping and sales analysis.
I.B.M. will offer no-cost consulting to outside software companies interested in developing offerings for the mainframe. To encourage students to acquire mainframe skills, it is visiting universities, offering expertise and suggesting course curriculums. It will sponsor "master the mainframe" contests for students.
"We are getting a next generation," said Steven A. Mills, senior vice president in charge of I.B.M.'s software business, "by adding new people and enabling other programming languages on the mainframe."
The company is working with some big customers to convince university computer science departments that mainframe programming is a skill of the future. A group from the online brokerage firm Charles Schwab and I.B.M. spoke last month to the faculty at Arizona State University.
There is a coming shortage of mainframe software engineers, they said, as this generation reaches retirement age. "Our message was this is a skill you can acquire and still use all the modern tools," said Jeremy Lamb, vice president for mainframe services at Schwab.
source:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/technology/08ibm.html?ex=1304740800&en=598e03dd6e98aa78&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Chip Power Breakthrough Reported
A tiny Silicon Valley company is proposing a novel way to synchronize the operations of computer chips, addressing power-consumption problems that are a major issue facing the semiconductor industry.
Multigig Inc., a closely held start-up company in Scotts Valley, Calif., says its technology is a major advance over the clock circuitry used on many kinds of chips.
Semiconductor clocks work like the drum major in a marching band, sending out electrical pulses to keep tiny components on chips performing operations at the right time. In microprocessor chips used in computers, the frequency of those pulses -- also called clock speed -- helps determine how much computing work gets done per second.
One problem is that the energy from timing pulses flows in a one-way pattern through a chip until it is discharged, wasting most of the power. Clocks account for 50% or more of the power consumption on some chips, estimates Kenneth Pedrotti, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Partly for that reason, companies such as Intel Corp. have all but stopped increasing the clock speeds of microprocessors, a popular way to increase computing performance through most of the 1990s.
John Wood, a British engineer who founded Multigig in 2000, devised an approach that involves sending electrical signals around square loop structures, said Haris Basit, Multigig's chief operating officer. The regular rotation works like the tick of a conventional clock, while most of the electrical power is recycled, he said. The technology can achieve 75% power savings over conventional clocking approaches, the company says.
A typical chip would use an array of timing loops, in a grid akin to a piece of graph paper, Mr. Basit said. The loops automatically synchronize their timing pulses. That feature helps address a problem called "skew" -- the slightly different arrival times of timing pulses throughout a typical chip -- that tends to limit clock precision.
Multigig says its self-synchronizing loops can run efficiently at unusually high frequencies.
Mr. Pedrotti said past attempts to address the skew problem have tended to increase power consumption. He and his students, some of whom receive research funding from Multigig, have performed simulations that so far back up the company's claims, though the team is just about to start tests using actual chips, he said.
Multigig is in talks to license its technology to chip makers, as well as design some of its own products to use the clock technology. Besides microprocessors and other digital chips, the approach could help synchronize frequencies of communication chips, Mr. Basit said.
"This is a dramatic way of clocking circuits," said Steve Ohr, an analyst at Gartner Inc. He cautioned it could take years to get existing manufacturers to modify existing products to take advantage of the new technology. "Intel is not going to redesign the Pentium tomorrow because of it," he said.
source:http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114705296852946325-3BYa1bGdLzw_IHzyEATcFXEawhM_20060515.html?mod=blogs
OpenLogic to Pay Open-Source Developers for Support Services
The Broomfield, Colo., company has launched a consolidated enterprise support offering that taps the extended open-source community to provide support for the various open-source projects and technologies that OpenLogic offers its customers.
OpenLogic calls its new initiative its Expert Community program, through which OpenLogic will pay qualified experts in the open-source community to provide support for projects they are intimately familiar with.
Company officials said the OpenLogic Expert Community features experts from more than 50 leading open-source projects, including Apache HTTP Server, Ant, Hibernate, MyFaces, Spring, Struts and Tomcat.
Moreover, to qualify as a member of the OpenLogic Expert Community, developers must have "committer" status on an open-source project or must be referred by a committer for one of the open-source products supported and certified by OpenLogic, the company said.
OpenLogic is looking to extend its Expert Community, and interested open-source developers can visit www.openlogic.com for more information about the program.
Open source is turning heads on Wall Street. Click here to read more.
OpenLogic officials said their approach to tapping the extended open-source community differs from some companies that simply try to hire away open-source experts and project leaders. Instead, OpenLogic directly compensates developers while enabling them to maintain whatever endeavor they are currently involved in. Meanwhile, in addition to paying the developer, OpenLogic has vowed to donate funding to the various projects the developers represent.
Company officials said OpenLogic provides enterprise support for more than 150 certified open-source products. And while OpenLogic will handle tier 1 and tier 2 support, it will tap the OpenLogic Expert Community to take on more complex issues, the company said.
"We have heard loud and clear from our larger enterprise customers, some of whom are using more than 400 open-source products, that they want one throat to choke for open-source support," said Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic, in a statement. "OpenLogic's Expert Community program is being launched to help address this need in a new, creative way. Enterprises get the support they require, and open-source committers and contributors can earn money to support the work they love to do."
Although OpenLogic's move might be seen as creative in its effort to compensate open-source experts for their work, IBM in late 2003 received a patent that defines a mechanism for paying programmers who work in an open-source-like model.
Check out eWEEK.com's Application Development Center for the latest news, reviews and analysis in programming environments and developer tools.
source:http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1958756,00.asp
