Key Differences Between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

Among Web 2.0’s key attributes are the growth of social networks, bi-directional communication, diverse content types, and various “glue” technologies, and the authors note that while most of Web 2.0 shares the same substrate as Web 1.0, there are some significant differences. Features typical of Web 2.0 Web sites include users as first class entities in the system, with prominent profile pages; the ability to connect with users through links to other users who are “friends,” membership in various types of “groups,” and subscriptions or RSS feeds of “updates” from other users; the ability to post content in various media, including blogs, photos, videos, ratings, and tags; and more technical features, such as embedding of various rich content types, communication with other users through internal email or instant messaging systems, and a public API to permit third-party augmentations and mash-ups. Web 1.0 metrics of similar interest in Web 2.0 include the general portion of Internet traffic, numbers of users and servers, and portion of various protocols. About 500 million users reside in a few tens of social networks with the top few responsible for the bulk of the users and traffic, and traffic within a Web 2.0 site is more difficult to measure without help from the site itself. The challenges for streamlining popular sites for mobile users differ slightly between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, in that instant notification to users through mobile devices can be facilitated because of the short or episodic nature of most Web 2.0 communications. Most communication in Web 2.0 is between users, so Web 2.0 sites have no easy way to select during overload; however, the sites apply varying restrictions to guarantee that overall load and latency is reasonably maintained. Some of the Web 2.0 sites are eager to maximize and retain members within an “electronic fence,” which can facilitate balkanization, although total balkanization is likely to be prevented by a countercurrent stemming from the prevalent link-based nature of Web users continuously connecting to sites outside the fence. The authors point out that there are substantial challenges in permitting users to comprehend privacy implications and to simply represent usage policies for their personal data.

First Monday (06/08) Vol. 13, No. 6, Cormode, Graham; Krishnamurthy, Balachander

Designers on Quest to Build $12 Computer

A group of computer designers at MIT’s International Development Design Summit are trying to develop a $12 computer. Derek Lomas is basing the computer on a device he saw people using in Bangalore, India, in which a cheap keyboard was combined with a Nintendo-like device and connected to a home TV. Lomas and others at the MIT symposium hope to improve the system, based on old Apple II computers, to have rudimentary Web access and other features. “We see this as a model that could increase economic opportunities for people in developing countries,” Lomas says. He thinks that with some help from programmers, the Apple II computers can be developed into more capable devices and give schools in third-world countries computer labs. A six-member team at the MIT conference is working on writing improved programs and connecting the devices to the Internet using cell phones. The group also wants to add memory chips to allow users to write and store their own programs. Apple II enthusiasts have been recruited to help with the programming, and the group has contacted an Indian nonprofit that has expressed interest in using the devices.
Boston Herald (08/04/08) Kronenberg, Jerry

Little Sensors Are Heavyweights in Rainforest Information Gathering

University of Alberta scientists are creating wireless sensor networks for use in remote locations. One of the first projects, called ECOnet, will place small sensors in rainforests in Brazil and Panama this fall. The sensors will form a network that will create a 3D image of what is happening in the atmosphere, says Alberta professor Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa. He says the sensor network is like taking a MRI of the forest. To test the system, six sensors have been placed in the university’s Atrium Oasis, a tropical display greenhouse. Data collected during ECOnet is available online for anyone to examine, allowing scientists to collect information daily from remote locations without having to travel. “You can take a snapshot of the environment you’re monitoring, or you can get more, long-term data, which will allow scientists to determine if there are certain patterns that emerge or if there are any anomalies occurring,” Sanchez-Azofeifa says. The sensors are still evolving, and Sanchez-Azofeifa expects them to become smaller and less expensive to the point where it may be possible to fly over a location and drop thousands of the sensors into the canopy. The sensors are currently powered by small lithium batteries and have a life of about three years, though that may change as well. Sanchez-Azofeifa says the school’s computer engineers are working on using the motion of the forest to power the sensors.

University of Alberta (06/02/08) Poon, Ileiren

Are We Closer to a ‘Matrix’-Style World?

Virtual reality technology is progressing rapidly thanks to advances in computing power and graphics, and some researchers believe a “Matrix”-style world where it is difficult to distinguish the real from the virtual is right around the corner. “We’ve reached a level now where we can make very realistic images: Five to 10 hours to make images more or less perfect, where people say, ‘Wow, that’s a photograph!’” boasts University of California at San Diego professor Henrik Wann Jensen. He says achieving the same level of photorealism in real-time animation is upcoming thanks to new graphics processors. Jensen is tackling the challenge of power efficiency by slashing the computational costs of photon mapping and ray-tracing algorithms. Whereas previous techniques sampled photons randomly across a light source, Jensen’s method maps the relevant photons along the light’s entire route, allowing a graphics interface to follow the light around a scene and measure the degree of light absorbed, reflected, or scattered by other objects. A notable achievement in touch-based interface technology has been facilitated by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute using magnetic levitation, in which a device hovers about its base using magnetic fields, while the position and orientation of a virtual object on a computer display can be manipulated by a handle. The object’s interaction with obstacles is simulated tactilely by haptic feedback generated by electrical coils. To advance technology that could lead to empathetic virtual characters, researchers have developed the Sensitive Artificial Listener, which can maintain a human-computer dialogue for prolonged periods by employing its sensitivity to non-linguistic signals as well as a repertoire of verbal and non-verbal cues and statements.
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MSNBC (05/05/08) Nelson, Bryn

Seven “Grand Challenges” Face IT in Next Quarter-Century

Gartner has identified seven technologies that will “completely transform” the business world over the next 25 years. The technologies include parallel programming, wireless power sources for mobile devices, automated speech translation, and computing interfaces that detect human gestures. “Many of the emerging technologies that will be entering the market in 2033 are already known in some form in 2008,” Gartner says. Gartner predicts more natural computing interfaces that can detect gestures and compare those gestures in real time against a gesture “dictionary” that tells the computer what action to take. Mobile devices will no longer have to be charged as power will be transferred by a remote source, eliminating the need for batteries. Researchers will develop persistent and reliable long-term storage that will store the world’s digital information on digital media permanently. To create reliable storage that can last 20 to 100 years, researchers need to overcome challenges related to data format, hardware, software, metadata, and information retrieval. Programmer productivity will increase 100-fold, with the output of each programmer increasing to meet future demands fueled by an increasing reliance on software development products. The reuse of code will help, but optimizing the reuse of code is a challenge in itself. Gartner also predicts that IT workers will be able to provide exact financial outcomes for IT investments.

Gartner Says
Network World (04/09/08) Brodkin, Jon
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Industry Giants Try to Break Computing’s Dead End

 

Intel and Microsoft yesterday announced that they will provide $20 million over five years to two groups of university researchers that will work to design a new generation of computing systems. The goal is to prevent the industry from coming to a dead end that would halt decades of performance increases in computers. The researchers’ efforts could enable the development of new kinds of portable computers that will help computer engineers address a variety of challenges, including speech recognition, image processing, health care systems, and music. The research grant will be used to create independent laboratories at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Each lab will work to reinvent computing by developing hardware, software, and a new generation of applications powered by computer chips containing multiple processors. The research effort is partially motivated by an increasing sense that the industry is in a crisis because advanced parallel software has failed to emerge quickly. The problem is that software needed to keep dozens of processors busy simultaneously does not exist. Although much industry discussion has focused on centralized cloud computing, the new research labs will instead aim to create breakthroughs in mobile computing systems. Professor David Patterson, past president of ACM, will head the new Universal Parallel Computing Research Center at Berkeley, while the Illinois lab will be led by professors Marc Snir and Wenmei Hwu.

New York Times (03/19/08) P. C2; Markoff, John
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MIT Names Its Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008

Graphene sheets are not entirely flat, © A Geim, U. Manchester

Graphene transistors will be one of the top emerging technologies of 2008, according to researchers at MIT. Microchips built with graphene have the potential to work faster than silicon-based circuits, produce less heat, and conduct it away more rapidly. The MIT researchers are high on nano radio, in which carbon nanotubes are used to build tiny radios for applications such as medical diagnostics, computer interfaces, and personal communications devices. They see electromagnetic resonance being used to bring wireless power to devices. They expect significant progress will be made in integrating the centralized data synchronicity of Web-based “cloud computing” applications with localized data presence and processing to deliver offline Web applications. Seven of MIT’s top 10 emerging technologies are in computer science and information technology disciplines, and the other IT-related developments involve modeling surprise, probabilistic chips, and reality mining. The new technologies are at different stages of development, and some are already in use today.

The IT related emerging technologies chosen by MIT are:

• Graphene Transistors – Graphene is a form of carbon consisting of layers merely one atom thick. Microchips built with graphene might run orders of magnitude faster than silicon based circuits while generating far less heat and conducting it away more rapidly. Moore’s Law might hold a bit longer.
• Modeling Surprise – Take massive amounts of historical data and apply machine learning in the form of Bayesian probability modeling to data about both past the experience and events in real time, and surprises can be made somewhat less surprising. That’s the theory. But hey, Spamassassin works.
• Nano Radio – Building tiny radios out of carbon nanotubes might have big impacts on everything from medical diagnostics to computer interfaces and personal communications devices.
• Offline Web Applications — Combining the centralised data synchronicity of web-based “cloud computing” applications with localised data presence and processing holds promise to realise at least some of the long held IT visions of near real-time collaboration and truly distributed computing.
• Probabilistic Chips — Building microchip circuits that get close rather than exactly correct results at least some of the time can save power and heat generation, potentially helping to extend Moore’s Law in some applications where precision isn’t of paramount importance such as scientific computer modeling and multimedia processing.
• Reality Mining – Collecting and analysing data generated during ordinary activities can help map and understand social networks and relationships, adding new tools people can use in their lives and enabling new insights.
• Wireless Power – Using electromagnetic resonance, devices can be powered or their batteries recharged simply by being in proximity to power sources.

MIT’s non-IT related emerging technologies selections include:

• Atomic Magnetometers – Building tiny magnetic field sensors that could revolutionise magnetic resonance imaging in medicine.
• Cellulolytic Enzymes – Designing better protein structures for extracting biofuels from cellulose.
• Connectonomics – Tracing neural connection paths to advance knowledge about brain development and disease.

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The Inquirer (UK) (03/13/08) Orion, Egan

Looking for a dog

Dear blog readers I am desperately looking for a puppy Labrador or Boxer to buy. If you have any offer please drop me an e-mail (k.khedo@uom.ac.mu). I am looking for a loving, affectionate, intelligent and loyal breed. I am not much interested in small breed (e.g. Griffon or Teckel) even if they are very cute. Apart from Labrador and Boxer do you know about other breeds with the above characteristics? Suggestions are welcomed.  

New Super-Efficient Chip Could Run on Body Heat

MIT researchers, working with researchers at Texas Instruments, have developed a chip that uses 70 percent less voltage than current chip technologies, which could lead to an order-of-magnitude increase in energy efficiency for electronics in the next five years. “It will extend the battery lifetime of portable devices in areas like medical electronics,” says MIT electrical engineering professor Anantha Chandrakasan. “When you look at the digital processor, the fact is that we may be able to reduce the energy needed by 10 times.” The chip uses so little power that it could allow sensors, communication devices, and other gadgets to run on body heat and movement alone. Better batteries and circuit design have already led to smaller, more mobile electronic devices, but changing a battery is often not an option for military and medical personnel. Military researchers at DARPA, which helped fund the MIT research, want to increase the lifespan of mobile technology, and even eliminate the need to recharge a device. Military strategist believe that such low-power chips could be used in body and environmental sensors. Creating a low-voltage chip is difficult because transistors use voltage to switch on and off, and at low voltages variations introduced during transistor production can cause errors. “When you scale voltages, the first thing to break is memory on a chip,” Chandrakasan says. “You have to redesign the memory and logic so you can handle the variation.” Chandrakasan says working with scalable energy voltages requires a whole suite of design techniques, including a fundamental change in the memory cell from six transistors to eight.

Wired News (02/04/08) Madrigal, Alexis
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Travelling to India…..

I will be travelling to India from 02 Dec 2007 to 31 Dec 2007, I will therefore not be regular on my blog.

I will be attending the following conferences and visiting a number of places including Simla, Agra, Allahabad, Varanasi, Bangalore, Manipal and Goa. Travel tips are welcomed.

Third International Conference on Wireless Communications and Sensor Networks, December 13-15, 2007
Organized by Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad

International Conference OnAdvances in Information and Communication Technologies(ICICOT07)

Department of Information and Communication Technology, Manipal Institute of TechnologyManipal University Manipal 576104, Karnataka, India, 28^th – 30^th December, 2007

Conference Theme:  Pervasive and Secure Computing

New Technology Can Be Operated by Thought

Physically disabled people can compose and send emails and operate a television by thought thanks to advances in brain-machine interface (BMI) technology, and further breakthroughs may even make the mental operation of prosthetic limbs a reality in time. “By permitting the subject to adaptively recode the generated neural activity, the overall performance of the [BMI] device is dramatically increased,” says the University of Pittsburgh’s Andrew Schwartz. “Furthermore, as we have progressed in this work, it has become apparent that the basic idea of ‘intention’ during learning is very important and can be addressed by the direct observation of the neuronal transformations taking place during this fundamental processing.” Thought-controlled operation of PCs by severely handicapped patients has been facilitated by a brain computer interface (BCI) developed by the Wadsworth Center in Albany, N.Y., and Wadsworth Center researcher Eric Sellers says the system can conceivably function with little technical oversight and offer significant improvements to communication and quality of life. Meanwhile, Washington University School of Medicine researchers have developed a BCI that allows individuals to mentally control a cursor on a computer screen, a wheelchair, and a robotic arm, and a current focus is the use of the BCI to improve the rehabilitation of stroke and brain injury patients using data demonstrating that one hemisphere of the brain can compensate for functions impaired by damage to the other hemisphere. The project involves repurposing the interface to respond to signals from only one hemisphere. University of Chicago graduate student Dennis Tkach and fellow researchers are concentrating on the modification of BMI systems for use by paralysis victims through the harnessing of congruent neural activity.
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Science Daily (11/09/07)

Changing the Way Undergraduates Are Taught

 

Washington University in St. Louis has received a $562,000 National Science Foundation grant to research changing how undergraduate students are taught. The new “active learning” approach, led by associate professor of computer science and engineering Kenneth J. Goldman, replaces passive learning through lectures with a stronger emphasis on studio courses that involve team projects and interdisciplinary collaboration. “Passive learning can be done effectively out of class. We want students to interact in the classroom more instead of hearing a lecture,” Goldman says. “We will be making video and audio from lectures available on the Web. We can then assign these, much like reading assignments, so that students can arrive in class ready to do something with that knowledge.” Undergraduate courses affected by the change will be divided into two groups–foundation courses that will concentrate on fundamental problem-solving skills, and studio courses in which students apply their fundamental knowledge. Students will experience active learning and frequent critiques from faculty and students in both types of courses. As passive material is phased out, it will be made available through an online course management system so students can view the material to prepare for in-class learning. The course management system will also be used to track where the class is in the curriculum and allow students to keep portfolios of their project work. “People are attracted to computer science and engineering because it is a creative discipline,” Goldman says. “Educational research shows that if students are creating during class, rather than sitting there listening, motivation will be higher and the students will learn more.”

Washington University Record (St. Louis) (10/25/07) Fitzpatrick, Tony

Wireless Bridge Sensors Without Batteries

Wireless monitoring of civil engineering structures such as bridges and overpasses has gained a lot of interest in the recent years. Bridge collapses happen suddenly and unpredictably and often lead to tragic loss of human lives. Many will remain in service for many years, they need monitoring and rehabilitation.

Wireless battery-powered sensors that monitor bridges and report changes that may lead to failure are easy to install, but it is unwieldy to provide power for the sensors. Each bridge needs at least several sensors, many installed in hard-to-access locations. Replacing millions of batteries could become a problem, adding to the expense of maintaining the bridges. Another important factor is environmental impact of discarding used batteries. The Clarkson researchers have found a way around this problem.

Clarkson University researchers have developed technology that uses the vibrations caused by passing traffic to power wireless bridge monitoring sensors. They consider using vibration of bridges caused by passing traffic, wind and microtremors to power the bridge monitoring sensors. The battery is completely eliminated from the equation. Hermetically sealed sensors powered by bridge vibration can remain on the bridge for decades and provide continuous monitoring.

Click here for more info.  

Intelligent Clothing

Virginia Tech professors Tom Martin and Mark Jones have spent the past six years developing electronic textiles and clothing with embedded wires and sensors. One such piece of clothing is a suit that can monitor the movement of the person wearing it, including whether the person is walking, running, standing, or sitting. “One student could even figure out what dance you were doing,” says Martin. The suit contains steel wires that are so thin and lightweight that they feel and move like fabric, and the sensors can be removed so the suit can be washed. Such technology may eventually be used to make clothing that can be used to tell when a person is about to fall, or to monitor a person’s heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and other statistics. The collected data would be sent to a computing device, possibly a home PC or mobile device, where it can be analyzed and monitored for potential health problems. Currently, the garments Martin and Jones are creating are not really suitable for wearing in public because the researchers are focusing on computer engineering more than aesthetics. However, the researchers have also designed a rug that lights up in different patterns when stepped on. “It’s a really good example of what I call working in the margins with computer engineering, textile design, and garment design,” Martin says. “You really have to pay attention to all three of them.”
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Computerizing Clothing at Tech
Collegiate Times (10/17/07) Oliver, Ashley

Forecast: Sex and Marriage With Robots by 2050

LiveScience (10/12/07) Choi, Charles Q.

In David Levy’s recently completed Ph.D. thesis at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands on human-robot relationships, “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,” he predicts that robots will become so human-like that by 2050 humans and robots will have intimate relationships and even marry each other. “There’s a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans,” says Levy. In 2006, founder of the European Robotics Research Network Henrik Christensen predicted that people would be having intimate relationships with robots within five years, and Levy thinks that is likely. As for marriage, Levy believes it will happen with time. “One hundred years ago, interracial marriage and same-sex marriages were illegal in the United States,” he says. “There has been this trend in marriage where each partner gets to make their own choice of who they want to be with.” Levy argues that almost all of the reasons that people fall in love, such as similar personalities, knowledge levels, and interests, are programmable. “The question is not if this will happen, but when,” Levy says. “I am convinced the answer is much earlier than you think.”
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