Category: Emerging Technologies

MercuryNews writes:

When it comes to creating realistic characters in video games, computer artists have made brilliant replicas but they still struggle with the last frontier: making a human face that acts like the real thing.

The gap between what players see on the screen, and what they expect, is sometimes called “the uncanny valley.” The subtleties of what makes faces appear human still confounds artists trying to replicate it in digital form.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman believes his latest start-up, San Francisco-based Mova, has the answer. Paradoxically, he acknowledges that the closer artists get to making a precise digital replica of a face, the more weird it can appear if it doesn’t move as if it were human.

SPIEGEL ONLINE writes:

Biologists, epidemiologists and disaster control experts are discovering Google Earth as a powerful tool in their work. The success of the digital globe has reawakened interest in computer mapping models.
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Epidemiologists, meteorologists and urban planners have also discovered the magic of Google’s model of the globe. For them, one of the program’s most attractive features is the ability to graphically depict many different types of data on the digital planet. They can set position markers for cases of bird flu or the locations of crimes. The markers have already been used to label hundred of volcanoes. Clicking on the volcano markers opens a window containing images and explanatory text and even a Web camera shot of a smoking crater. Maps, showing data such as population density or ocean temperatures for example, can be layered over the globe.

The Oil Drum has a discussion by Robert Rapier, debunking Vinod Khosla’s assertions. “Khosla says that ethanol is significantly cheaper to produce than gasoline, that Brazil has shown us the way, that there are significant carbon emission reductions, and oh, by the way, it has an energy balance twice as good as petroleum. Yet despite all of those supposed advantages, he is requesting legislation and funding an initiative in California, in order to level the playing field. Who is he kidding? Khosla is trying to hedge his bets. He invests in ethanol producers, and then tries to influence legislation to help out those producers. Yet with all of those claimed advantages, if Khosla believes what he is saying he should spend less time lobbying, and more time building his own cellulosic ethanol plants and E85 pumps. One wonders why he doesnt. Seriously, if you had a product that is as good as claimed, would you spend any time lobbying for even more advantages? No, unless the product really isnt as good as advertised.”

Also read the follow-on post about a conversation between Rapier and Khosla.

Business Week writes:

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the entrepreneurs who created the pioneering Web applications Kazaa and Skype, are working on a new communications venture, BusinessWeek.com has learned. The pair plans to develop software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Working under the code name “The Venice Project,” Zennstrom and Friis have assembled teams of top software developers in about a half-dozen cities around the world, including New York, London, and Venice. The teams are currently in negotiations with TV networks, although it’s not clear whether any agreements have been reached.

Dr. Dobb’s Journal has an article by Max Fomitchev of Penn State:

This trend of decentralized computing met a subtle reverse in ’90s when the Internet and World Wide Web provided a means for integrating decentralized computational resources into a unified client-server environment. In reality, what seems like 60 years of technological advancement represents a full evolutionary cycle: We started with shared computational resources occupying rooms of equipment and through brief desktop detour arrived at shared computational resource model built on the backbone of intranet/Internet. There is unquestionable numerical difference between what we 30 years ago and what we have now in the sense that computers now are used by much larger population and for a far wider range of tasks. There is a characteristic difference too: we kept our desktop PCs and we use them for more then mere terminals. In fact computing did not just come a full circle; it came a loop of spiral: We have not really come back to good old centralized computing but rather to arrived at distributed computing model. Although a bulk of work may be done by centralized resources such as servers providing computational services, our desktop PCs and client workstations handle independently multitude of tasks.

ZDNet has an interview by Roland Piquepaille:

Inexpensive phones and pay-as-you go services are already spreading mobile phone technology to many parts of that world that never had a wired infrastructure. In terms of the people who had been left behind by previous technology revolutions, the mobile phone has already reached more people from more different walks of life than the PC or Internet did. As chips grow more powerful, even the least expensive phones will become cameras and Internet terminals.

The most important benefit of affordable PCs, phones, and bandwidth is encouraging the growth of literacies in the use of ICTs for the purposes of the poorest people in the world. The diffusion of the physical technologies is already being driven by the market.

The New York Times writes:

The advances can also be seen in the emergence of bold new projects intended to create more ambitious machines that can improve safety and security, entertain and inform, or just handle everyday tasks. At Stanford University, for instance, computer scientists are developing a robot that can use a hammer and a screwdriver to assemble an Ikea bookcase (a project beyond the reach of many humans) as well as tidy up after a party, load a dishwasher or take out the trash.
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Though most of the truly futuristic projects are probably years from the commercial market, scientists say that after a lull, artificial intelligence has rapidly grown far more sophisticated. Today some scientists are beginning to use the term cognitive computing, to distinguish their research from an earlier generation of artificial intelligence work. What sets the new researchers apart is a wealth of new biological data on how the human brain functions.

Forbes writes:

Flash-based computers have been around for a decade now, but steep prices have kept them in niche markets, such as industrial and military users, who need a machine that can withstand abuse. Alan Niebel at Web-Feet Research estimates flash drive makers will generate $500 million selling to PC makers this year.

But now, tech observers predict that a steep drop in memory prices will make flash-based PCs and laptops a mass-market item. A more realistic bet: Look for more hybrid machines that combine the best attributes of hard disks and flash memory–and at a fraction of the cost of an entirely flash-based drive.

Flash prices are dropping–at a rate of about 40% a year–but hard drive prices are moving at the same pace, according to Semico Research. That means even as flash drives become more prevalent, hard disks will remain an attractive storage medium.

Fortune writes about a discussion amongst VCs at the Brainstorm conference:

Gary Rieschel, the founder of Qiming Venture Capital Partners, a firm focusing on early-stage companies in China, said that medical technology firms and energy start-ups in China are two areas that excite him the most.

Other VCs also raved about the prospects in China.

Kevin Fong, managing director of the Mayfield Fund, said that one of his most promising investments is in a company called Sports GG, which has developed a service that allows Chinese consumers to legally bet on sports using their cell phones.

“I am more interested in India than China,” said Aneel Bhusri of Greylock Partners. “People are so focused on China and I am surprised that they are not paying as much attention to India.”

Hans-Peter Brndmo shares his thoughts:

Why should I listen to what you say about your product or service when I can just as easily seek the wisdom of a crowd? Whether you think the “mob” is smart, or gets it or not, is of little consequence. With consumers enabled by new technologies and pervasive connectivity, you can engage with them one way: facilitate and join clean, well-lighted virtual spaces where they can congregate and share with you, and each other, exactly what they think, what they like, and how they feel.

When every phone has a 5 megapixel camera that can scan barcodes for any product and instantly compare prices and pull up reviews, and when every phone has a built-in video camera that turns us all into sleuths and entertainers, and when every phone has a GPS chip that lets us leave virtual notes and reviews at any location with a couple of clicks, forget spin or trying to control messages. Openness is the only way, lest you be outed as a fraud.