Software Adds Smarts to Sensor Nets
A University of California at Berkeley team that produced the TinyOS embedded operating system has created a company that will provide software intelligence to wireless sensor networks. The company, known as Arch Rock, will offer the Primer Pack environment that builds on middleware work done by Berkeley on three generations of “motes.”
Source: Loring Wirbel, EE Times, October 30, 2006; summary from ACM TechNews in its November 6, 2006 issue
Four years ago, when four German and Austrian friends founded London-based Last.FM, Web sites blending online music with community and social networking barely existed. Their idea was a precursor: a streaming-audio service that tracked user tastes and suggested new music. But then along came mashups, willy-nilly mergers of disparate Internet programs, and Last.FM zoomed off into a new world.
Source: Dan Carlin, BusinessWeek Online, November 13, 2006
Social policy makers and town planners will soon be able to play ‘SimCity’ for real using grid computing and e-Science techniques to test the consequences of their policies on a real, but anonymous, model of the UK population. Dr Mark Birkin and colleagues, who are developing the model at the University of Leeds, will be demonstrating its potential at the UK e-Science stand at SC06, the world’s largest supercomputing conference in Florida, this week.
Source: Research Councils UK, via EurekAlert!, November 13, 2006
Metadata labelling for multimedia content
Remember that photo you took with your digital camera in Spain last summer? Now try to find it. Identifying and retrieving the right multimedia content in your PC or company server can be like panning for gold - the nuggets are few and far between. The IST project aceMedia is developing a solution.
Source: IST Results, November 15, 2006
European Space Agency and Google Earth showcase our planet
Ever wanted to see what volcanic eruptions, dust storms and changing ice glaciers look like from space? The European Space Agency (ESA) has created a special layer of content that will appear in Google Earth, enabling people to see over 130 new ESA satellite images including natural phenomena and manmade landmarks such as the Palm Islands in Dubai.
The new images can be accessed easily by clicking on the ‚ÄòFeatured Content’ checkbox in the Google Earth sidebar and further clicking on the ESA icon.
Source: European Space Agency, November 16, 2006
Social networking melds with videoconferencing
Can you see me now? A small company called Paltalk is trying to walk a line somewhere between MySpace and YouTube.
Boaz Frankel loves to talk politics. During the recent elections, the computer consultant knew debate would be burning up blogs, message boards and chat rooms. Instead, he turned to Paltalk, another online soapbox from which to speak his peace–one that allowed his voice not only to be heard but also enabled his audience to see his face.
Source: Greg Sandoval, CNET News.com, November 17, 2006
