By DAMON DARLIN
Published: October 20, 2005
A Google map is no longer just a Google map.
You can still search Google Maps to figure out how to get from here to there, but why would you, when you can use it to pinpoint kosher restaurants in Cincinnati, traffic cameras in Dublin, or hot spring spas anywhere in the United States? How about finding coffee shops in Seattle that provide free wireless Internet access? Or would you prefer to locate the McMansion your boss just bought and find how out exactly how much he paid for it?
An army of programmers, most of them doing it just for fun, has grabbed the software code that generates the distinctive maps with their drop-shadowed virtual pushpins, and combined it with other data like the locations of potholes, taco trucks and U.F.O. sightings, and even the sites of murders and muggings.
The result is Google map mash-ups, the latest form of Internet information repackaged for entertainment and, perhaps, profit. For instance, type the official airline flight abbreviation and flight number into the Google search engine and FBOweb.com should come up at the top of the results page. Click on that and you will see a pushpin marking the spot where the plane is. The service also provides a data box listing the speed, altitude and estimated time of arrival of the flight.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Friday, September 30, 2005
US deploys global IP strategy
USPTO launches three-pronged attack
By Faultline
29 September 2005
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of US global hegemony, and this week a new initiative, supposedly from US President George Bush, and talked up by US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, was intended to push the intellectual property agenda overseas.
There are three new initiatives, one to put intellectual property rights experts on watch in key overseas countries including Brazil, China, India and Russia, and a new Small Business Outreach program to educate US small businesses on how to protect their intellectual property rights and a global intellectual property academy which is expected to provide training for foreign government officials on IP issues."
By Faultline
29 September 2005
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of US global hegemony, and this week a new initiative, supposedly from US President George Bush, and talked up by US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, was intended to push the intellectual property agenda overseas.
There are three new initiatives, one to put intellectual property rights experts on watch in key overseas countries including Brazil, China, India and Russia, and a new Small Business Outreach program to educate US small businesses on how to protect their intellectual property rights and a global intellectual property academy which is expected to provide training for foreign government officials on IP issues."
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Information Commons: A bright star for the future of information
September 27, 2005
-Posted by Chris Jablonski
In the eyes of its creators, the World Wide Web was never designed to take on the role as the be-all end-all architecture for a truly distributed global information system. But while large vendors, standards groups and technologists have grown dependent on the Web and treat it that way, some researchers are taking a revolutionary approach to the problem and addressing it at the very core of information design. A newly published white paper from Harbor Research (a firm specializing in pervasive computing), entitled Designing the Future of Information, The Internet beyond the Web looks at two initiatives—the 'Information Commons” of Maya Design, and 'Internet Zero' from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms.
The Information Commons is a universal database to which anyone can contribute, and which liberates information by abandoning relational databasing and the client-server computing model, according to the white paper. It has been under development at Maya Design for over 15 years as the result of a $50 million research contract from several federal agencies, including DARPA, to pursue 'information liquidity,' or the flow of information in distributed computing environments. Their goal is to build a scalable information space that can support trillions of devices.
I spoke today with Josh Knauer, director of advanced development at MAYA Design about the Information Commons and how it is progressing. According to Knauer, Maya (which stands for Most Advanced Yet Acceptable) is using P2P technology—in the sense of information sharing and not file sharing—to link together repositories of public and private datasets in the public information space created by Maya. These data and data relationships are stored in universal data containers called 'u-forms,' which are then coded with a UUID, or universally unique identifiers. These are the basic building blocks of the company's Visage Information Architecture (VIA), which allows data repositories to effortlessly link or fuse together to achieve 'liquidity' (the paper has more details)."
-Posted by Chris Jablonski
In the eyes of its creators, the World Wide Web was never designed to take on the role as the be-all end-all architecture for a truly distributed global information system. But while large vendors, standards groups and technologists have grown dependent on the Web and treat it that way, some researchers are taking a revolutionary approach to the problem and addressing it at the very core of information design. A newly published white paper from Harbor Research (a firm specializing in pervasive computing), entitled Designing the Future of Information, The Internet beyond the Web looks at two initiatives—the 'Information Commons” of Maya Design, and 'Internet Zero' from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms.
The Information Commons is a universal database to which anyone can contribute, and which liberates information by abandoning relational databasing and the client-server computing model, according to the white paper. It has been under development at Maya Design for over 15 years as the result of a $50 million research contract from several federal agencies, including DARPA, to pursue 'information liquidity,' or the flow of information in distributed computing environments. Their goal is to build a scalable information space that can support trillions of devices.
I spoke today with Josh Knauer, director of advanced development at MAYA Design about the Information Commons and how it is progressing. According to Knauer, Maya (which stands for Most Advanced Yet Acceptable) is using P2P technology—in the sense of information sharing and not file sharing—to link together repositories of public and private datasets in the public information space created by Maya. These data and data relationships are stored in universal data containers called 'u-forms,' which are then coded with a UUID, or universally unique identifiers. These are the basic building blocks of the company's Visage Information Architecture (VIA), which allows data repositories to effortlessly link or fuse together to achieve 'liquidity' (the paper has more details)."
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
The $100 laptop moves closer to reality
By Mike Ricciuti, CNET News.com
September 28, 2005, 8:55 AM PT
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--A low-cost computer for the masses moved one step closer to reality on Wednesday.
Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detailed specifications for a $100 windup-powered laptop targeted at children in developing nations.
Negroponte, who laid out his original proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, said MIT and his nonprofit group, called One Laptop Per Child, is in discussions with five countries--Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa--to distribute up to 15 million test systems to children."
September 28, 2005, 8:55 AM PT
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--A low-cost computer for the masses moved one step closer to reality on Wednesday.
Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detailed specifications for a $100 windup-powered laptop targeted at children in developing nations.
Negroponte, who laid out his original proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, said MIT and his nonprofit group, called One Laptop Per Child, is in discussions with five countries--Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa--to distribute up to 15 million test systems to children."
Coming Next Year: The First 'Trusted' Linux Operating System
Sept. 27, 2005
By Larry Greenemeier
InformationWeek
Red Hat, with help from IBM and Trusted Computing Solutions, plans to put its operating system through the paces of the National Information Assurance Partnership's Common Criteria evaluation program to create the first 'trusted' Linux operating system.
By Larry Greenemeier
InformationWeek
Red Hat, with help from IBM and Trusted Computing Solutions, plans to put its operating system through the paces of the National Information Assurance Partnership's Common Criteria evaluation program to create the first 'trusted' Linux operating system.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Mitigating Risk by Hiring Open Source Developers
Hiring a new employee is almost always a risk, and hiring the wrong employee is one of the most costly mistakes that a manager can make. As a result, tech companies spend ....
If, however, you are choosing a candidate from the ever-growing pool of programmers who contribute to open source projects, you can get an inside look at a programmer's work on actual projects with actual team members by examining the open source projects he participates in.
[More ...]
Monday, August 01, 2005
Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act.
SSSCA, CBDTPA, and BICCA: Acrimonious Acronyms
by Susan at 09:17PM (EDT) on July 29, 2005 | Permanent Link
All three of these acronyms stand for federal legislative attempts to design digital devices and applications. The first two failed. The third has just been proposed.
So what are these things? The first, the 2001 Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, suggested that any "interactive digital device" (defined as "any machine, device, product, software, or technology, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine, device, product, software, or technology, that is designed, marketed or used for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving, or copying information in digital form") needed to respect digital content restrictions and "certified security" technologies. Because standards for indicating digital content restrictions (and implementing them) didn't exist, industry was supposed to come up with them.
[More ...]
by Susan at 09:17PM (EDT) on July 29, 2005 | Permanent Link
All three of these acronyms stand for federal legislative attempts to design digital devices and applications. The first two failed. The third has just been proposed.
So what are these things? The first, the 2001 Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, suggested that any "interactive digital device" (defined as "any machine, device, product, software, or technology, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine, device, product, software, or technology, that is designed, marketed or used for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving, or copying information in digital form") needed to respect digital content restrictions and "certified security" technologies. Because standards for indicating digital content restrictions (and implementing them) didn't exist, industry was supposed to come up with them.
[More ...]
Open-Source Software Ratings System
A university, a startup, and chip giant Intel are pushing a proposal for
a standard model to rate open-source software to provide customers with
a better sense of the maturity of the more than 100,000 open-source
projects available today.
The Business Readiness Ratings (BRR) model unveiled Monday (http://www.openbrr.org/) is the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University (Profile, Products, Articles) West's Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI) and is being cosponsored by open-source testing and certification startup SpikeSource and Intel.
[More ...]
a standard model to rate open-source software to provide customers with
a better sense of the maturity of the more than 100,000 open-source
projects available today.
The Business Readiness Ratings (BRR) model unveiled Monday (http://www.openbrr.org/) is the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University (Profile, Products, Articles) West's Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI) and is being cosponsored by open-source testing and certification startup SpikeSource and Intel.
[More ...]
Sunday, July 31, 2005
OGRE3D: 3D Rendering Package
OGRE v1.0 [Azathoth] represents the culmination of 4 years of continuous development, resulting in what is now regarded by many as the leading open source real time 3D rendering engine. OGRE is packed with features to make your development life easier, whether you're making games, architectural visualisation, simulations, or anything else which requires a top-notch 3D rendering solution.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Eclipse.Org
Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular. Find out what eclipse is all about - check out the Eclipse Roadmap, white paper, read some technical articles, visit the newsgroups, take a look at the projects, and pick up the latest downloads. Don't forget to check out the Eclipse Project FAQ and online documentation. You can find out about eclipse-related events, projects, plug-ins and websites on the Community page.
For software licensing, website terms of use, and legal FAQs, please see our legal stuff page. Eclipse logos and graphics are found on our logos page. And, our thanks to HP, IBM, Intel, Magma and Novell for generous donations to our website infrastructure!
Monday, July 25, 2005
voip-info.org: Open Source VoIP Wiki
Welcome to the VOIP Wiki - a reference guide to all things VOIP
This Wiki covers everything related to VOIP, software, hardware, service providers, reviews, configurations, standards, tips & tricks and everything else related to voice over IP networks, IP telephony and Internet Telephony.
Comprehensive list of Open Source Telephony work at:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Open+Source+VOIP+Software
This Wiki covers everything related to VOIP, software, hardware, service providers, reviews, configurations, standards, tips & tricks and everything else related to voice over IP networks, IP telephony and Internet Telephony.
Comprehensive list of Open Source Telephony work at:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Open+Source+VOIP+Software
Sunday, July 24, 2005
SourceLabs: Installation/Support/Certification
SourceLabs lets corporate IT buyers realize the strategic flexibility of using open source software without trading off the dependability, convenience and mission critical support that production systems require.SourceLabs sells support and maintenance subscriptions for tested, certified "stacks" of open source infrastructure software, which we provide free of charge. Rather than simply repackaging the unit tests produced by open source communities, the company's rigorous CERT7 testing framework produces a documented, reproducible certification for functionality, scalability, stress response, failover and security.
Groundworks: Open IT Infrastructure Management
GroundWork's open source IT infrastructure monitoring solution delivers enterprise-class availability and performance for a fraction of the cost of commercial alternatives.Based on powerful open source software such as Nagios, RRDTool and MySQL, GroundWork Monitor is a complete and practical solution for today's mission-critical IT infrastructures.
Open Source Availability and Performance Monitoring
GroundWork Monitor provides a low-cost, open source-based solution for accurately monitoring your network availability and performance. Using active and passive agents, GroundWork Monitor queries applications, network equipment, servers and other components to identify availability and performance, and communicates these system metrics via a browser-based interface. If service levels or availability dip, GroundWork Monitor proactively alerts your IT staff via pagers, email, and phone calls.
Black Duck: Open Source License Compliance
Black Duck offers software compliance management solutions that help companies govern how software assets are created, managed, and licensed. The company was formed in late 2002 to apply advanced technology to this challenge — a challenge addressed today by manual, expensive, and error-prone approaches.
Software development has changed radically over the past ten years. One aspect of this change is the routine use of third party and open source components to boost productivity. But building on code from third parties injects business and licensing issues into the software development process — issues that can put software assets at risk.
Plone: Content Management with Python
Plone is powerful and flexible. It is ideal as an intranet and extranet server, as a document publishing system, a portal server and as a groupware tool for collaboration between separately located entities.The Plone Foundation was formed in May 2004 to serve as a supporting organization for Plone. We are modeled after similar ventures, such as the Apache Software Foundation, and will be providing support for the development and marketing of Plone. In addition, the Foundation will be the legal owner of the Plone code, trademarks, and domain names. Our goal is to ensure that Plone remains the premier open source content management system and that we broaden its acceptance and visibility.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Open Source Industry over the next 10 years
'The future is open source'
Dawn Kawamoto and Stefanie Olsen
CNET News.com
July 22, 2005, 08:50 BST
That's the view of many top players in the industry, as they explained at a Stanford conference yesterday.
In the next five to 10 years, the open source movement will transform the software business, according to several top industry executives speaking at the AO 2005 Innovation Summit at Stanford University.
"We're building a whole new world in the software industry," said Ray Lane, a partner at venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins Caufield &Byers, who was moderating the open source panel.
[More ...]
Monday, July 18, 2005
PLoS: Public Library of Science
PLoS Biology is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a non-profit organization committed to making scientific and medical literature a public resource.
PLoS Biology (eISSN-1545-7885; ISSN-1544-9173) is an open-access, peer-reviewed general biology journal published monthly, online and in print, by the Public Library of Science (PLoS). PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource.
Open-Access
All works published in the PLoS Biology are open access, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Everything is immediately available without cost to anyone, anywhere — to read, download, redistribute, include in databases, and otherwise use — subject only to the condition that the original authorship is properly attributed. Copyright is retained by the author.
Scope
PLoS Biology features works of exceptional significance in all areas of biological science, from molecules to ecosystems, including works at the interface with other disciplines, such as chemistry, medicine, and mathematics.
Developing Code using Open Source: ADP Lessons Learned
Open-Source Developers Need New Ways Of Thinking About Their Business
By Mitch Wagner
InformationWeek
July 14, 2005
Open-source developers can't afford to have blinders on and think only about technology. They also need to be sensitive to intellectual-property issues and maintain relationships with the open-source community, says the head of R&D for systems integrator ADP.
SAN DIEGO--Developers working on open-source projects for business need to develop new ways of approaching the business issues of software development.
They need to be careful where they get code that they believe to be open source, to be sure the code doesn't have licensing provisions that can cost their employers money in the future, cautioned Mark Rankin, director of research and development and a research fellow at ADP Dealer Services.
He also said developers need to get used to the idea that they can count on getting some--but not all--of their tech support from the open-source community. And they need to give back to the open-source community, by donating code to open source so that other organizations can use it.
ADP avoids using code licensed using the General Public License, which governs the terms and conditions for modifying and distributing Linux and other open-source projects. The reason: the license requires developers who modify GPL code to make the modified code public under the GPL, effectively giving up their intellectual property. Instead, the company uses the BSD open-source license, based on the open-source Berkeley Software Distribution Unix, which allows developers to keep modified code proprietary.
[More ...]
By Mitch Wagner
InformationWeek
July 14, 2005
Open-source developers can't afford to have blinders on and think only about technology. They also need to be sensitive to intellectual-property issues and maintain relationships with the open-source community, says the head of R&D for systems integrator ADP.SAN DIEGO--Developers working on open-source projects for business need to develop new ways of approaching the business issues of software development.
They need to be careful where they get code that they believe to be open source, to be sure the code doesn't have licensing provisions that can cost their employers money in the future, cautioned Mark Rankin, director of research and development and a research fellow at ADP Dealer Services.
He also said developers need to get used to the idea that they can count on getting some--but not all--of their tech support from the open-source community. And they need to give back to the open-source community, by donating code to open source so that other organizations can use it.
ADP avoids using code licensed using the General Public License, which governs the terms and conditions for modifying and distributing Linux and other open-source projects. The reason: the license requires developers who modify GPL code to make the modified code public under the GPL, effectively giving up their intellectual property. Instead, the company uses the BSD open-source license, based on the open-source Berkeley Software Distribution Unix, which allows developers to keep modified code proprietary.
[More ...]
Friday, June 24, 2005
Intel overclocks Chinese IT fund with $200m | The Register
Intel overclocks Chinese IT fund with $200m | The Register: "Intel overclocks Chinese IT fund with $200m
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Monday 13th June 2005 18:29 GMT
Like any technology giant worth its salt, Intel has put aside $200m to nurture young IT firms in China.
Handouts from the Intel Capital China Technology Fund will go to Chinese companies that fit in well with Intel's hopes and dreams. Intel plans initially to target players in the cellular, broadband and semiconductor design markets. Overall, the idea is to create a larger, more sophisticated Chinese IT market which will in turn spur demand for Intel's chips.
'Intel plans to stimulate local technological innovation and the continued growth of China's IT industry,' said Intel CEO Paul Otellini. 'We will invest in Chinese companies to accelerate technology adoption locally and to foster development of innovative technologies with potential for global distribution.'"
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Monday 13th June 2005 18:29 GMT
Like any technology giant worth its salt, Intel has put aside $200m to nurture young IT firms in China.
Handouts from the Intel Capital China Technology Fund will go to Chinese companies that fit in well with Intel's hopes and dreams. Intel plans initially to target players in the cellular, broadband and semiconductor design markets. Overall, the idea is to create a larger, more sophisticated Chinese IT market which will in turn spur demand for Intel's chips.
'Intel plans to stimulate local technological innovation and the continued growth of China's IT industry,' said Intel CEO Paul Otellini. 'We will invest in Chinese companies to accelerate technology adoption locally and to foster development of innovative technologies with potential for global distribution.'"
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Google developing online payment system
Google developing online payment system: "Google developing online payment system
Tue Jun 21, 9:01 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc.(Nasdaq:GOOG - news) is developing an online payment system but not a direct rival to eBay Inc.'s PayPal, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday.
Schmidt spoke after several days of heated speculation over reports that Google was working on a potential rival to PayPal, eBay's popular online payment system.
Schmidt said Google does not intend to offer a 'person-to-person stored-value payments system' like PayPal's, in which money briefly resides in PayPal's control during the transaction, but he did not give details of how the Google system would differ."
Tue Jun 21, 9:01 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc.(Nasdaq:GOOG - news) is developing an online payment system but not a direct rival to eBay Inc.'s PayPal, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday.
Schmidt spoke after several days of heated speculation over reports that Google was working on a potential rival to PayPal, eBay's popular online payment system.
Schmidt said Google does not intend to offer a 'person-to-person stored-value payments system' like PayPal's, in which money briefly resides in PayPal's control during the transaction, but he did not give details of how the Google system would differ."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)