EDITOR'S EYE

The World of Software Development.

May 2006

When you think computers, "reliability" isn't the first word that comes to mind. (Can you say "blue screen"?)

Anyone who has lost data to a failed hard disk, power glitch, or similar heartbreak knows what I'm talking about. Which makes the goal of reliability that much more important.

Reliablity is just one of the goals of the Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed systems laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. The RAD Lab, which launched in December 2005 under the direction of UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences David Patterson, is adapting advances in statistical machine learning to the task of maintaining the large distributed computing systems needed to run data-intensive Internet businesses. These distributed systems typically require hundreds of engineers for development, debugging, and ongoing maintenance. The RAD Lab is designing software architecture to automate this.

The RAD Lab was launched with $7.5 million in funding over five years from Google, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. This week IBM, Hewlett-Packard, NTT Multimedia Communications Labs, Nortel Network, and Oracle signed on as affiliate members, each pledging annual contributions of up to $170,000 for the next five years.

All software and applications emerging from the RAD Lab will be made freely and openly available to the public, with source codes distributed using the Berkeley Software Distribution license. However, foundation and affiliate members of the RAD Lab will have access to the new technologies at least six months before the general public. Representatives from the companies will act as consultants and provide advice for the center's participants, but will not work at the RAD Lab.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:53 AM  Permalink |

Digital images provide the perfect cover for hiding information. Anyone who's seen "The Da Vinci Code" knows this.

There's nothing knew about this concept; it even has its own name--steganography. What is new, however, is the emerging science of detecting such files, a field called "steganalysis."

"We’re taking very simple steganographic techniques and trying to find statistical measures that we can use to distinguish an innocent image from one that has hidden data," said Clifford Bergman, a math professor and researcher at Iowa State University. "One of the reasons we’re focusing on images is there’s lots of ‘room’ within a digital image to hide data. You can fiddle with them quite a bit and visually a person can’t see the difference."

"At the simplest level, consider a black and white photo--each pixel has a grayscale value between zero (black) and 255 (white)," added ISU math professor Jennifer Davidson, who with Bergman is working on a steganalysis project funded by the Midwest Forensics Resource Center. "So the data file for that photo is one long string of those grayscale numbers that represent each pixel."

Given the huge number of potential images to review and the variety and complexity of the embedding algorithms used, developing a quick and easy technique to review and detect images that contain hidden files is difficult. Bergman and Davidson are utilizing a artificial neural net (ANN) pattern recognition system to distinguish between innocent images and stego images.

Training the ANN involved obtaining a database of 1300 "clean" original images from Ed Delp at Purdue University. These images were then altered in eight different ways using different stego embedding techniques--involving sophisticated transfer techniques between the spatial and wavelet domain--to create a database of over 10,000 images. Once trained, the ANN can then apply its rules to new candidate images and classify them as either innocent or stego images.

"The ANN establishes kind of a threshold value," Bergman said. "If it falls above the threshold, it’s suspicious.

"If you can detect there’s something there, and better yet, what method was used to embed it, you could extract the encrypted data," Bergman continued. "But then you’re faced with a whole new problem of decrypting the data … and there are ciphers out there that are essentially impossible to solve using current methods."

In preliminary tests, the ANN was able to identify 92 percent of the stego images and flagged only 10 percent of the innocent images, and the researchers hope those results will get even better. An investigator with the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation is currently field-testing the program to help evaluate its usefulness and a GUI is being developed to make the program more user friendly.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:50 AM  Permalink |

Few issues have been so consistently quarrelsome over the years as schemes used to compress images and their associated file formats.

GIF, the "Graphics Interchange Format," is the first that springs to mind. Introduced by CompuServe in the late 1980s, GIF is based on LZW data compression, a technique patented by Unisys--a fact that only came to light after GIF was in widespread use. Royalties were claimed and lawsuit threatened. It was a mess that really only went away when Unisys the patent expired in 2003. (For details on GIF, see "Reading GIF Files" by Wilson MacGyver Liaw; DDJ, February 1995.)

Then in 2004, Forgent Networks threatened to sue a bunch of hardware and software vendors, including the likes of Dell and Apple, for allegedly infringing on its claim to a algorithm in the JPEG, the "Joint Photographic Experts Group" file format. Also developed in the 1980s, JPEG is based on a patented algorithm Forgent laid claim to based on its acquisition of Compression Labs in 1997. That patent is due to expire later this year. (See "JPEG-Like Image Compression," by Craig A. Lindley; DDJ, July and August 1995.)

And then just today (05/26/06), Groklaw reports that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has ruled the Forgent patent invalid.

Clarification (06/01/06): Subsequent to this blog entry, I received the following clarification from a Forgent spokesperson:

Please note the USPTO did not reject Forgent’s ‘672 patent. The USPTO rejected 19 of the 46 claims found within the ‘672 patent, not the entire patent. If you would, please correct the wording in this paragraph. It appears Groklaw obtained this piece of information from the announcement the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) put out on May 26.

Then PNG came along, a dollar short and a day late as it turned out. A public domain alternative, PNG ("Portable Network Graphic) avoided most of the acrimonious legal wrangling of GIF and JPEG, but was introduced too near the end of the LZW patent lifecycle to gain much traction. Why shift to PNG, in other words, when the LZW patent will expire in a few months? (See "PNG: The Portable Network Graphic Format," by Lee Daniel Crocker, DDJ, July 1995.)

Over the years, other compressed image file formats came aboard, including the likes of JPEG 2000, Apple's PICT, TIF and PSD from Adobe, SVG, the "Scalable Vector Graphics" from the W3C, and Microsoft's BMP, to mention a few.

You'd think that with all these alternatives, we have all the compressed image files we need. Think again.

Microsoft has jump into the deep end of the file format pool again, this time with its Windows Media Photo Specification. To be built into Windows Vista, WMP is a file format for continuous-tone still images that supposedly delivers 25:1 compression ratios for most uses of digital photography (by comparsion, JPEG delivers a maximum of about 12:1 for consumer JPEG images). According to Microsoft, WMP supports features such as:

• Multiple color formats for display or print
• Fixed or floating-point high dynamic range image encoding
• Lossless or high-quality lossy compression
• Efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions
• Minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decode

According to EE Times's Rick Merriott:

WMP is based on a symmetrical algorithm that supports both lossless and lossy compression. It requires no complex math or special hardware support, and is based primarily on add and shift operations with few multiplies in its inner loops. Memory requirements are also minimal, in part because the algorithm supports encoding and decoding imagines in stripes that only need small buffers.

To preserve compatibility with existing systems, the WMP format uses the existing TIFF "container" including its approach to metadata. The choice of TIFF however limits file sizes to 4 gigabytes, a limit Microsoft will address for high-end users in the future. Microsoft will also release tools to support WMP on existing Windows XP systems.

Microsoft released to a broad group of licensed development partners a developers kit that includes source code for WMP. The kit will let chip and system makers build support for WMP in their products.

One interesting question data-compression expert Mark Nelson asks over at the Data Compression News Blog is whether WMP will hasten my the demise of the JPEG format.

The one thing for sure is that, while it likely will make a splash, WMP won't be the last word in compressed image file formats.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:43 AM  Permalink |

Keeping track of programming contests has become a full-time job.

Why, in the past few weeks alone I've reported on the ACM Collegiate Programming Contest, Game Court 2006, DARPA's Urban Challenge, the 57th Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the Goldegg Packaging Sprint, and the Computing Olympiad, among others.

Then there's all of the contests that I haven't mentioned: the University of Waterloo Programming Contests, the Google India Code Jam, the Annual Berkeley Programming Contest, and so on--not to mention a whole slew of contests on everything from multithreading to algorithms hosted by Topcoder. And of course, there is the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. I mentioned this one, and a bunch of others (including the Dr. Dobb's "Handwriting Recognition Contest") in my original "And the Winner Is...".

Criminy! There are even books on programming contests--Steven Skiena and Miguel Revilla's Programming Challenges: The Programming Contest Training Manual and The First 10 Prolog Programming Contests, by Bart Demoen, Phuong-Lan Nguyen, Tom Schrijvers, and Remko Troncon, come to mind.

Why, if a person had a mind to, they could make a career out of entering contests. Professional sweepstakers exist elsewhere--why not in programming?

With that in mind, the most recent programming contest I've run across is the Windows CE Shared Source Contest sponsored by Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices Group. All you have to do is come up with a real-world project that combines Windows CE along with either or both of two Shared Source components--the Windows CE WebCam driver and/or the Windows CE DVR engine. The Grand Prize is a Xbox 360 setup consisting of the Xbox 360 console, 34-inch HDTV, games, and accessories. Three other winners will be awarded Xbox 360 game consoles.

Good luck, clean coding, and let me know if you win.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:49 AM  Permalink |

Congratulations to all participants in the 57th Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. They're all winners in my book.

The Intel ISEF is the the world's largest pre-college science competition. Now in its 57th year, the Intel ISEF is the world's only science project competition for students in grades 9 through 12. The Intel ISEF brings together students, teachers, corporate executives, and government officials from around the world. Students compete for scholarships, tuition grants, scientific equipment, and scientific trips.

This year, nearly 1500 students from 47 countries competed for nearly $4 million in scholarships and prizes in a variety of scientific categories ranging from Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics, to Physics, Earth Science, and more.

In the field of Computer Science, the First Award went to:

• Maria Estela Godinez, 16, from Guanajuato, Mexico for her "Deyabu: Reading and Writing Interface for the Blind".

Second Awards went to:

• Caroline Elizabeth Pietsch, 17, of Ossining, New York for her "A Novel Approach to the Automatic Recognition of Emotions in Natural Speech."
• Raphael Ouzan, 18, from Jerusalem, Israel for his "Two Eyes Vision Motion Detection: Tracking and 3D Positioning of an Intruder ".
• Justin Moore Solomon, 18, of Alexandria, Virginia for his "Three-dimensional Face Recognition from Video: Facial Surface Reconstruction and Analysis Using Tensor Algebra and Differential Geometry."

Third Awards were granted to:

• Vidya Ganapati, 18, Portland, Oregon for "Building a Power-Optimized MIPS Pipeline".
• Kristopher Kyle Micinski, 15, Decatur, Texas for "Compiler Design".
• Nadia N. Naja, 17, Dearborn Heights, Michigan for "Java Based Algorithm Automated Prescription Reminder and Renewal".
• Sagar Indurkhya, 16, Durham, North Carolina for "A Study on the Design and Implementation of an Artificially Intelligent Control System".

Fourth Award were given to:

• Vasily Dyachenko, 17, Saint-Petersburg, Russia for his "Back-In-Time Debugger".
• James Daniel Brandenburg, 14, Cocoa, Florida for "Modeling Wave Characteristics".
• Kelley Marie Fleming, 16, Tulsa, Oklahoma for "An Excel-lent Test Analyzer".
• Jonathan J. Pezzino, 17, Glendale, Wisconsin for "Viability of an Alternative Linking Algorithm".
• Nat Piyapramote, 17, Ratchaburi, Thailand for "Statistical-based Adaptive Binarization for Document Imaging".

In the category of Engineering, First Awards went to:

• John Pease Moore, IV, 18, Miamisburg, Ohio for his "Development of Fixed and Flapping-wing Surveillance Micro Air Vehicles".
• Carl Anthony Turner, 16, New Prague, Minnesota for "Designing an Optical Sensor to Easily Decipher the Relative Longevity of a High Pressure Sodium Light Through Spectral Analysis".
• Jessica Lynn Laviolette, 18, Ortonville, Michigan for "Optimizing Ethanol Production Efficiency".
• Erin F. Eppard, 17, Phoenix, Arizona for "Operator Injury Mitigation Using Electronic Sensing, Mechanical Braking, and Decoupling Devices in Hand-held Circular Saws".

The Intel Foundation Young Scientist Awards (and a $50,000 scholarship for each) went to:

• Hannah Louise Wolf, 16, Allentown, Pennsylvania for "Sleuthing Epicenter Direction from Seismites, Cretaceous Wahweap Formation, Cockscomb Area, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah".
• Madhavi Pulakat Gavini, 16, Columbus, Mississippi for "Engineering of a Novel Inhibitor of Biofilm-Encapsulated Pathogens".
• Meredith Ann MacGregor, 17, Boulder, Colorado for "Cracking the Brazil Nut Effect".

These are by no means the only recipients of awards. Again, congratulations to one and all and thanks to sponsors such as Intel, Agilent Technologies, and others for supporting programs such as ISEF.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:16 AM  Permalink |

Call it what you want--pervasive computing, ubiquitious computing, mobile computing, sentient computing. Whatever. It's still embedded systems to me.

And with advances in small-footprint hardware devices, the chances of pervasive computing being the real deal is becoming more and more of a reality. Like German Puebla, a researcher at Madrid Technical University, recently said, "hardware development has reached a stage where it is possible to have a fully-fledged computer with processor, memory and operating system on a board the size of a sliver of chewing gum." The problem, as Puebla goes on to say, isn't in the hardware, but in developing the software.

For the most part, researchers have used low-level languages like C, which can be efficient but also complicated to code and platform specific. Because pervasive computing involves multiple different distributed platforms communicating among themselves, the software needs to be interoperable. Moreover, because of the limited processing and power resources of battery-operated pervasive devices, software must be as efficient as possible

Enter the ASAP project. Short for "Advanced Specialization and Analysis for Pervasive Computing," the ASAP project is an open source analysis and optimization toolkit for pervasive computing systems. Based on the use of Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) languages and jointly developed by the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf, and Roskilde University (RUC), ASAP is based on Ciao Prolog, a high-level declarative language optimized to reduce resource consumption.

According to Puebla, "software created with the toolkit is comparable in terms of resource demands to code written in C if it is designed to do the same thing. But Ciao programs can also do much more complex tasks, and with our toolkit it is feasible for them to run on pervasive systems," Puebla explains. "Ciao is also much easier to use--programmers don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they need to create or adapt a program."

Self-tuning and resource-aware analysis and specialization algorithms let the toolkit, dubbed CiaoPP, produce specialized programs that are automatically optimized to meet particular processing and resource constraints. The analysis and transformation tools can also act as a meta-language between a broad range of high and low-level languages to optimize and verify programs for pervasive computing. Because of the automatic nature of the tools and the limited need for hand coding, the risk of errors in the code is also reduced.

All of this stuff is important because pervasive computing is about more than an iPod or cell phone stuck in your ear. In industry, pervasive systems will be able to monitor hazardous materials or be part of the protective clothing of workers to improve safety and security. In healthcare, ubiquitous devices could check on patients' health remotely. And in the home, embedded devices could turn on the heating, dim the lights, and the like. "The uses for pervasive systems are almost infinite, and the market is potentially huge," Puebla notes.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:34 AM  Permalink |

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles are "unmanned, untethered submersible robots that are capable of carrying out missions autonomously". What's fascinating about them is that they're a little bit robotics, AI, mechanical engineering, embedded systems, sensors, and software--and a whole lot of Jules Verne.

AUV projects come in all kinds of different flavors--see the Florida Atlantic University, the University of Maine, the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and others.

A couple of years ago, in fact, Dr. Dobb's published an article by Ruben Patel entitled "Remotely Controlling Windows Applications" which described an AUV project at the Institute Of Marine Research in Norway.

More recently, a team of engineering students at the Rochester Institute of Technology have built an underwater remote-operated vehicle (ROV) that they'll use to explore shipwrecks resting on the bottom of Lake Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean. The nine-member team is led by Dan Scoville, a 2005 RIT graduate who has located and explored three previously undiscovered shipwrecks in Lake Ontario in the past five years. Scoville has his sights set on two undisclosed Lake Ontario shipwrecks (one is an 1800s-era schooner--the names and precise locations of the vessels won’t be revealed until this fall) and, working with the Undersea Research Center at the University of Connecticut, the steamship Portland, which sank off the coast of Gloucester, Mass, in 1898.

Some of the fewer than a thousand ships lost in Lake Ontario have been discovered and salvaged, while others are in water too deep to explore, Scoville says. That leaves a small number--perhaps a dozen--in the 100-to-400-foot-depth range in the area from the Niagara River to Oswego accessible to explorers such as Scoville.

The RIT ROV is a 60-pound, battery-powered vehicle equipped with up to four removable video cameras, four high-intensity lamps, a navigational compass, a timer, and sensors to measure depth, pressure and temperature. Four variable-speed motors enable vertical, forward and reverse movement and turning maneuverability. RIT students custom-built most circuit boards, wrote the software and created the graphical user interface used to control the device. All components are housed in watertight canisters (using 88 seals); a lightweight aluminum frame is rugged and modifiable.

The explorer is controlled by a joystick attached to a laptop computer that communicates with a microprocessor (the ROV’s "command center") via a 680-foot-long fiber-optic cable. A human at the controls sees what the ROV sees through live video streaming and sensor readings.

The device is capable of diving at about two feet per second to a depth of 400 feet--about twice as deep as a skilled scuba diver can descend. A foam top helps achieve neutral buoyancy, enabling the ROV to remain level while underwater. A 100-minute battery life allows it to stay underwater longer than human divers. Future enhancements may include the addition of a mechanical arm and extended diving capabilit--perhaps enabling the explorer to reach Lake Ontario’s maximum depth of about 800 feet.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:35 AM  Permalink |

On the heels of yesterday's note about AI and Grid Computing, Sun Microsystems has announced its Cool Apps Contest for Sun Grid Compute Utility, a program to promote grid application development. Now here's the really cool part--up to $100,000 in prizes.

You can compete in two ways: By building an application that runs on Sun Grid Compute Utility, or one that's built with the Compute Server Plugin for NetBeans. First prize for both categories is $15,000. To jumpstart the contest, Sun is offering a promotion of 100 free CPU hours for qualified Sun Grid developers who join Sun's Grid developer community.

Sun's Grid utility service, launched in early 2005, gives users on-demand access to grid's processing power at the rate of $1/CPU hour, along with access to the Sun Grid storage array. The grid currently is made up of servers running about 5000 AMD Opteron processors.

Among other parts of the program, Sun is providing private project spaces for ISVs for developing and porting applications to the grid, and the Compute Server Community Project which gives developers an environment for distributed execution of parallel computations.

For more information on Sun's Grid, see "The Distributed Resource Management Application API" by Frederic Pariente and "Gaps in the Grid" by Shannon Cochran.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:48 AM  Permalink |

There's nothing like the terms "AI" and "natural language" to put a smile on a researcher's face--and a shiver down an accountant's spine. Still, it's going to happen, commercialization or not.

For instance, in the most recent instance, five European research institutes are collaborating on the "New Ties" project to create a emerging world populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and culture--and that interact socially.

"While individual (or machine) learning and evolutionary behavior have been quite well studied, social learning is still an unknown quantity," says project coordinator Gusz Eiben, an AI professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Joining Vrije are the University of Surrey, Budapest’s Eotvos Lorand University, Edinburgh’s Napier University, and Tilburg University in The Netherlands. The goal of the multidisciplinary team is to study natural processes (like language development), and advance the construction of collective artificial intelligence.

The New Ties project will be running across a grid of 60 computers, although plans call for scaling up to 5000 computers. "No one has ever created an engine of this complexity," says Eiben, adding that it will support about 1000 agents at first, building up to millions--each one a unique entity with its own characteristics, including gender, life expectancy, fertility, size, and metabolism. The agents will not be labelled, but will have their own distinguishing characteristics to make them recognisable. Their traits will be inherited from their parents, and passed on to their offspring, but they will be able to learn from their own experiences and from each other.

The agents will be able to communicate using a few simple words--food, near, and agent. "One interesting question is how they will communicate," says Eiben. "Naturally, the linguists want to see how they develop a spoken language, but for the AI researchers we will also test to see if there are possible alternatives--telepathy, for example." Some basic rules will also be given, along the lines of, "if it’s hot, it burns," but agents are expected to add to the rule set as they discover new laws of nature.

For more information on building grid computers, see "Building Grid-Enabled Data-Mining Applications" by Alex Depoutovitch and Alex Wainstein, "The Media Grid" by Aaron E. Walsh, and "Grid Computing and the Linda Programming Model" by Rob Bjornson and Andrew Sherman.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:56 AM  Permalink |

This past weekend, I replaced a hard disk drive in a laptop computer. After mirroring the old hard disk using the Ez Upgrade Hard Drive Upgrade Kit I removed five tiny screws and voila!--I painlessly went from 20 to 80 GBs of storage in a flash.

Well, not technically a "flash." That happened later in the weekend, when I picked up a 2 GB flash drive for under $50. Putting aside how inexpensive storage is, what never ceases to amaze is how small it is. The hard drive was only slightly bigger than my iPod Nano (which itself has 4 GB of storage and is about the size of my business cards) and the flash drive is hanging from my keychain.

These minuscule storage devices make me recall my first hard disk--an 8 MB behemoth with multiple 8-inch platters that I needed help in moving around. The only reason I had the beast in the first place was that I had to write the user and service manuals for it. So tell me, when was the last time you had to read a hard disk owner's manual?

But storage memory isn't about how small the package is--it is mostly about how big the storage capacity can be. For instance, IBM researchers have just announced they have demonstrated a world record in data density on linear magnetic tape--the computer industry's oldest and still most affordable data storage technology.

The researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center packed data onto a test tape at a density of 6.67 billion bits per square inch--more than 15 times the data density of today's most popular industry standard magnetic tape products.

According to IBM, the demonstration shows that magnetic tape data storage should be able to maintain its cost advantage over other technologies for years to come. When these new technologies and tape become available in products--projected to be in about five years--a cartridge the size of an industry-standard Linear Tape Open (LTO) tape cartridge could hold up to 8 trillion bytes (terabytes) of uncompressed data. This is 20 times the capacity of today's LTO-Generation 3 cartridge, which is about half the size of a VHS videocassette. Eight terabytes of data is equivalent to the text in 8 million books, which would require 57 miles of bookshelves.

For more information on storage for iPods and similar mobile devices (including an analysis of flash versus hard drives), see Tom Coughlin's article "Putting Portable Storage in Perspective".

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:26 AM  Permalink |

Having trouble keeping all your videogames straight? Did you mindlessly try to jam your Atari 2600 Meglamania cartridge into your PS2? Relax. Help is on the way.

Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) has announced the launch of the Game Innovation Database (GIDb), an online encyclopedia of videogames. The goal of the online database is to classify and document every innovation in the history of videogames. The GIDb provides a taxonomy for videogame innovations and is implemented through an online Wiki, which lets you update existing entries and contribute new ones.

Want to find out about "Joe Montana II Sports Talk Football," "Thief: The Dark Project," "F-Zero GX," or (here's my favorite) "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!"? They're all here, along with a bunch others.

"Videogames have been, and continue to be, an area where innovation is flourishing," says project advisor Jesse Schell, an instructor of Entertainment Technology who specializes in game design at the ETC. "So many videogame innovations have occurred so fast that there is a danger that many fascinating and important innovations will be forgotten. We have created the Game Innovation Database in order to create a historical record of which innovations appeared when, and why they are important.

"The videogame industry has existed for around 35 years, and there is still no comprehensive resource for the history of videogame innovation," said Eric Keylor, a member of the development team. "The GIDb will fill this need. Academics and instructors can use it as an educational resource, while fans can use it to learn something about their favorite games and to discover related games," Keylor said.

The database had a few hundred entries at its launch, but as the community becomes aware of the database, it is expected to grow. Users with a strong interest in expanding the database may apply to join the GIDb Editorial Board.

It is worth noting that the ETC offers an interdisciplinary master's degree program with the College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science. Although students come from both fine arts and technology backgrounds, they are not expected to master both fields. Instead, the program focuses on honing the students' existing skills and teaching them to work effectively with other professional groups. Carnegie Mellon is the only university to offer the Master in Entertainment Technology (MET) degree.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:05 AM  Permalink |

Researchers have been sniffing around for electronic olfactory capabilities for years and the Spot-Nosed project may finally be, well, spot on.

A project of the European Community for the implementation of the Fifth Framework Programme, Spot-Nosed is a single protein nanobiosensor grid array that's based on the electrical properties of single olfactory receptors (protein). The olfactory nanobiosensor array consists of an array of elementary nanobiotransducers, each of which will consist of a single olfactory receptor attached on a functionalised metal nanoelectrode.

Developed and tested by researchers in Spain, France, and Italy with funding from the European Commission’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme, Spot-Nosed might eventually lead to electronic noses based on natural olfactory receptors that could be used in healthcare, agriculture, environmental protection, or security.

Here's how Spot-Nosed works: By placing a layer of proteins that constitute the olfactory receptors in animal noses on a microelectrode and measuring the reaction when the proteins come into contact with different odorants, the system detects odorants at concentrations that would be imperceptible to humans.

"Our tests showed that the nanobiosensors will react to a few molecules of odorant with a very high degree of accuracy. Some of the results of the trials surpassed even our expectations," says project-coordinator Josep Samitier. These tiny bioelectronic sensors, he says, represent a 'major leap forward' in smell technology and a clear example of a biomimetic devices obtained by converging Nano-Bio-Info technologies.

Several hundred different proteins, which the Spot-Nosed researchers genetically copied from rats and grew in yeast, would be needed for an electronic nose to detect almost any smell because different proteins react to different odorants and it is the resultant combination of reactions that identifies a certain smell. Nanotechnology makes such an electronic nose feasible, the coordinator notes, even though the human nose uses 1000 different proteins to allow the brain to recognise 10,000 different smells.

While the Spot-Nosed project focused on replicating the physical reaction that takes place in animal noses, project partners are planning to continue their research and develop the instrumentation and software tools necessary for an electronic nose to recognize smells--the role played by the brain in the olfactory system. In this sense, new high accuracy electronic instrumentation capable of performing electrical measurements at the nanoscale level has been developed and adapted to an atomic force microscope with atofarad precision (10^15).

Posted by Jon Erickson at 11:04 AM  Permalink |

Bambi may be cute on the movie screen...but not on the highway. In the U.S., in fact, there are annually more than 1.5 million accidents involving vehicles and deer, totally more than $1 billion in vehicle damage.

And for the most part, the best preventative measures that highway engineers have been able to come up with are deer-warning signs, which are generally considered ineffective according to studies documented by the University of Wisconsin's Deer-Vehicle Crash Information Clearinghouse and elsewhere.

That may be changing, however, as embedded, sensor-based systems move from the lab into the woods. For the most part, two technologies are being implemented in developing animal-detection systems like those needed along highways--"area-cover" and "break-the-beam" sensors.

Area-cover sensors use infrared light or microwave radio signals to detect animals within a certain range. In some cases, the sensors are intelligent enough to distinguish between animals and moving such as vehicles. Break-the-beam sensors activate when animals break the beam--typically infrared, laser, or microwave radio signals--between transmitters and receivers.

When low-power (approximately 35.5 GHz) beams are broken in an experimental break-the-beam system at Yellowstone National Park, the system is triggered and warning lights start flashing. The system does require direct line of sight, with transmitters/receivers within one-quarter mile of each other. Solar panels power transmitters/receivers, and excess power stored in batteries for nighttime monitoring and alerting.

The evaluation of various technologies such as these is the subject of ongoing research at the Western Transportation Institute.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:31 AM  Permalink |

On the heels of studies such as the recent Computing Research Association analysis that reported a 17 percent drop in the number of bachelor's degrees in computer science awarded at Ph.D.-granting universities in the 2004-05 compared with the previous year, the Students and Technology in Academia, Research and Service Alliance (a consortium of universities) has received a $2 million National Science Foundation grant to recruit a diverse group of students to earn college degrees in information technology (IT), computer science, and other computing fields.

"We want to encourage more people--particularly women, underrepresented minorities and people with disabilities--to pursue careers in computer science and information technology," said Florida State's Larry Dennis. Fewer foreign nationals and immigrants who specialize in IT are migrating to the United States, and changing demographics mean there are fewer white men in the labor force overall. That means women and others have great opportunities to fill some of the 1.5 million new IT and computing jobs expected to be created by 2012, according to Florida State research associate Anthony Chow.

But first a little image enhancement is in order. The "nerd" reputation actually poses a serious barrier to getting students interested in computing careers, says Florida State computer science professor Lois Hawkes. Consequently, one of Florida State's roles within the alliance will be to develop a targeted print and Web campaign to shatter the stereotype of the antisocial IT guy. The campaign's "Reach for the Stars" theme will use role models to highlight market trends and career opportunities and will address computing myths--including the one about women not being good at technical stuff.

"Women often suffer from the 'imposter syndrome,' " Hawkes said. "They feel that they are imposters and couldn't possibly know all that their male counterparts do."

Universities participating the program include North Carolina State, Meredith College, Georgia Tech, Spelman College, Auburn, Florida State, Florida A&M, the University of South Florida Lakeland, and Landmark College.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:08 AM  Permalink |

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in collaboration with IBM and New York state, has announced a $100 million partnership to create the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI), supposedly the world’s most powerful university-based supercomputing center.

The CCNI system will be made up of massively parallel Blue Gene supercomputers, POWER-based Linux clusters, and AMD Opteron processor-based clusters, providing more than 70 teraflops of computing muscle.

CCNI will focus on reducing the time and costs associated with designing and manufacturing nanoscale materials, devices, and systems. Designing and manufacturing smaller, cheaper, and faster semiconductor devices is crucial to sustaining Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors per a given area doubles roughly every 18 months. Chip designers and manufacturers have sustained Moore’s prediction by continually shrinking the size of devices on semiconductor chips. Today’s circuit components measure about 65 nanometers (nm) in width, or 65 billionths of a meter. According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, this needs to shrink to 45 nm by 2009, 35 nm by 2012, and 22 nm by 2015.

The center will be a resource for companies of any size--from start-ups to established firms. The computing power also will benefit faculty and student research projects at Rensselaer, such as in biocomputation, which involves the modeling and simulation of tissue, cell, and genetic behavior.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:09 AM  Permalink |

If you want to find out about ubiquitous computing and its impact on the classroom, Kent State University's Research Center for Educational Technology (RCET) is the place to go.

In addition to maintaining a web site on the topic, the Center has released a DVD entitled "Ubiquitous Computing: How Anytime, Anywhere, Anyone Computing is Changing Education," which has been distributed to every K-12 school and teacher education program in Ohio. The DVD was developed to support teaching, professional development, and research as it relates to the impact on teaching and learning and the use of PalmPilots, PCs, cell phones, and other such mobile devices. The DVD is available at no charge, although you have to think that the offer is intended for teachers.

The DVD follows RCET's two CDs, "Palm Education Pioneers: Examining the Potential of the Handheld Computer" and "Technology & Education: The Research on Where We Have Been, A Vision of Where We Are Going." The DVD, like the two CDs, informs practitioners and other interested parties about how to most effectively use technology to improve students' learning.

In addition, RCET researchers recently co-edited a book featuring findings from the major researchers in the field of ubiquitous computing. The book, entitled Invisible Technology, Visible Impact: Ubiquitous Computing in K-12 Education, will be available in August.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 07:46 AM  Permalink |

There are those who have said that "rap music" is an oxymoron. Not me. But then I'm also a big fan of The Trailer Park Troubadours and Junior Brown.

Still you can't help but relate to Algorhythms, the debut album from the self-proclaimed world's great computer science gangsta rapper--MC Plus+.

According to the CD's promotional material "this 11 track debut album contains the crystallized essence of Computer Science gangsta rap. Many are already heralding this work as the defining musical contribution to this fast growing genre." Would-be music critics (and technology writers) add that MC Plus+'s "innovation blends the world of PhD candidate in computer science with the rough and raunchy world of hard-core rap. The result is a sweetly groovin', code-rich, sometimes very non-PC music genre known as CS Gangsta Rap." Well, I don't know that I'd go that far, but it is entertaining.

In truth, MC Plus+ is Armand Navabi and Dan Maynes-Aminzade, two computer science students who went to Purdue and Stanford, respectively.

Algorhythms is made up of songs such as:

• Blunt Code
  
• Computer Science for Life
  
• Alice and Bob (a song about encryption that even mentions Bruce Schneier).
  
• Dear Engineer
  
• End of File (Feat. Logic the Android & Vitamin Z)
  
• Have to Code

Okay, time for a break. I think I'll go back to a little Al Stevens. Al, a Dr. Dobb's senior contributing editor and long-time C programming columnist, has just released "Alone Together", his latest jazz CD which features him playing all the instruments in various combo configurations from piano and bass to three horns and rhythm. And you thought C programming was hard.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:36 AM  Permalink |

Believing that nanotechnology will be the next big thing, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has released a series of essays in which industry experts predict profound impacts of nanotechnology on society.

Addressing topics ranging from commerce and molecular manufacturing, to ethics and economics, to name a few, they are available at Wise-Nano.org and KurzweilAI.net. This new collection illustrates the profound transformation that nanotechnology will have on every aspect of human society.

According to the Center, nanotechnology is posed to bring greatly improved efficiency and productivity in many areas of human endeavor. In its mature form, known as molecular manufacturing, it will have significant impact on almost all industries and all parts of society. Personal nanofactories may offer better built, longer lasting, cleaner, safer, and smarter products for the home, for communications, for medicine, for transportation, for agriculture, and for industry in general.

On the other hand, as a general-purpose technology, molecular manufacturing will be dual-use, meaning that in addition to its civilian applications, it will have military uses as well--making far more powerful weapons and tools of surveillance. As such it offers both benefits and risk.

Among the essays in the collection are:

• "Nanoethics and Technological Revolutions: A Précis," by Nick Bostrom.

• ""Molecular Manufacturing and the Developing World: Looking to Nanotechnology for Answers," by Don Maclurcan.

• "Considering Military and Ethical Implications of Nanofactory-level Nanotechnology," by Brian Wang.

• "The (Needed) New Economics of Abundance, by Steve Burgess.

• "Corporate Cornucopia: Examining the Special Implications of Commercial MNT Development," by Michael Vassar.

Although clearly not part of the Center's collection of essays, you can read what Michael Swaine has to say about nanotechnology in Dr. Dobb's Journal, such as:

• "Size Matters".

• "Smart Dust and Gray Goo".

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:38 AM  Permalink |

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has approved the DisplayPort interface standard which lets high-definition digital audio be available to the display device over the same cable as the digital video signal.

Designed as an open, extensible standard, DisplayPort enables for the first time a common interface for both external and internal display connections within a PC notebook or desktop display. This allows for standardized connections between source devices and display devices, such as LCD panels, without the need for signal translation. This direct drive capability simplifies display product design and reduces cost. DisplayPort may be applied within notebook PCs, and for external display connections, including interfaces between a PC and monitor or projector, between a PC and TV or between devices such as DVD players and TV displays.

The external connector is small and optimized for use on thin profile notebooks in addition to allowing multiple connectors on a graphics card. DisplayPort incorporates a Main Link, a high-bandwidth, low-latency, unidirectional connection supporting isochronous stream transport. One uncompressed video stream with associated audio is included in Version 1.0. DisplayPort is seamlessly extensible, enabling support of multiple video and/or audio streams. Version 1.0 also includes an Auxiliary Channel to provide consistent-bandwidth, low-latency, bi-directional connectivity with Main Link management, and device control based on VESA's EDID and MCCS standards. The Main Link bandwidth of up to 10.8Gbit/s, equivalent to a data transfer rate of 1080 Mbytes/second, uses four lanes; the auxiliary channel features minimal delay, with maximum transaction periods less than 500 microseconds.

Data is transmitted across the DisplayPort interface using a micro-packetized format which provides both high performance and the flexibility to handle the evolving requirements of a high performance display interface.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 07:55 AM  Permalink |

International crime rings and highway construction were two of the winning concepts at Game Court 2006, hosted by the University of Texas at Austin's Science, Technology and Society (STS) Program and the Electronic Game Developers Society.

The competition encouraged students to design non-violent and non-sexist games.

In the "Commercially Viable" category, Jeff Linwood took first place for his "Interstate Highway Builder" which is about building highways across different terrain and using certain equipment to solve transportation problems. The game also took first place in the "Socially Constructive" category. In the "Looks Like Fun" category, Joe Rowland's "Art Thief," which concerns a thief who is trying to reclaim art from villains in Paris.

Judges included Rodney Gibbs, executive studio director, Amaze Entertainment; Steve Jackson, president, Steve Jackson Games; Dr. Okan Arikan, assistant professor, Department of Computer Sciences; and Chris Norden, independent contractor working with Sony on the upcoming PlayStation 3 system.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 04:54 AM  Permalink |

DARPA has announced plans to hold its third Grand Challenge competition on November 3, 2007. Unlike last year's dash across the Mojave Desert, the DARPA Urban Challenge will feature autonomous ground vehicles executing simulated military supply missions in a mock urban area.

DARPA will award prizes for the top three autonomous ground vehicles that compete in a final event where they must safely complete a 60-mile urban area course in fewer than six hours. First prize is $2 million, second prize is $500,000 and third prize is $250,000. To succeed, vehicles must autonomously obey traffic laws while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles.

Big deal. It seems to me that the real challenge will be to complete the 60-mile course on less than $60 of gas, and then find a parking place. Good luck.

Challenge planners are more optimistic than I am, however. "Grand Challenge 2005 proved that autonomous ground vehicles can travel significant distances and reach their destination, just as you or I would drive from one city to the next," said DARPA Director Dr. Tony Tether. "After the success of this event, we believe the robotics community is ready to tackle vehicle operation inside city limits."

To accelerate development of the autonomous ground vehicle technologies required for urban operations and to ensure the widest possible participation, DARPA announced two ways for teams to qualify and compete in the Urban Challenge. One way involves teams submitting a detailed proposal for up to $1 million of technology development funds in response to a DARPA solicitation. The Government will obtain limited license rights to technologies developed using this funding. Applicants that do not submit a proposal or who are not selected to receive development funds may still compete in the Urban Challenge using the second track.

The second track is similar to that used for Grand Challenge 2005: teams will submit applications and participate in a series of qualification activities. Each team that participates as a 2-2-2 semi-finalist in the National Qualification Event (NQE) will be awarded $50,000. Each team that is successful at NQE will receive $100,000 and compete in the Urban Challenge final event.

To learn more about the Grand Challenge, hear what Mike Montemerlo, software lead for the Stanford University Racing Team, has to say about some of the challenges the team faced in winning the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:40 AM  Permalink |

If any two terms have become synonymous, those terms would be "RFID" and "privacy concerns."

At issue is the ability of retailers and others to use data collected via RFID devices for nefarious purposes, such as tracking people and what they do and where they go after making a retail purchase. (Use of RFID to track items in the supply chain is of less concern to consumer groups and privacy advocates.) Two recent announcements directly address these privacy concerns.

First discussed late last year, IBM has formally formally announced that it has developed a feature that limits the distance an RFID tag can transmit information. The Clipped Tag lets consumers disable RFID tags on items after purchase and lets companies use the information on the tag to identify product returns or recalls. Consumers can tear the Clipped Tag label along a perforated edge to remove part of the tag's antenna after purchasing an item to reduce the signal distance the chip can transmit. "The tag rips about a quarter inch from the chip to disable part of the antenna," said Eric Gabrielson, director of worldwide RFID solutions. "You can still read the information on the chip, but the reader and tag need to be within one inch, rather than many feet."

In a related announcement, a working group made up of large companies, public interest groups, and consumer advocates has released a set of "best practices" designed to promote respect for consumer privacy in the use RFID. The document offers guidance for companies that use RFID technology to collect data that can be linked to consumers' personally identifiable information. Drawn largely from principles of "fair information practices," the best practices outline how consumers should be notified about RFID data collection, what choice they should have with regard to their own personal information, and how that information should be treated by the companies that collect it. Organizations contributing to the document include the Center for Democracy and Technology, the American Library Association, Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, the National Consumers League, VeriSign, and Visa USA, among others

For more information on RFID, see:

• RFID Blocker Tags.
  
• Java and RFID Tags.
  
• Counterfeit Software, Digital Rights Management, and Security.
  
• Security Remeasured.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:27 AM  Permalink |

Silly me. I use my cell phone mainly for, well, talking to people. Sure, I send the occasional e-mail, use it as an alarm clock when traveling, send a photo to mom now and then, and keep track of the time (who needs a wrist watch anymore?). But what that boils down to is that, like most Americans, I'm a piker, cell phone wise, at least compared to mobile phone users in, say, Asia.

In Japan, for instance, people use their cell phones to buy items from vending machines, purchase train tickets, pay for food, open doors, trade on the stock market, wager at on- and off-track betting, and change selections on their DVD or TV sets. Moreover, they're now watching TV on their cell phones at no charge, not to mention digitally recording TV programs. Advertisements routinely have bar codes that can be scanned in via mobile phones, then allow purchases to be made on the spot. All in all, approximately 20 million Japanese have mobile phones that support advanced features such as these.

So why don't U.S. cell phone users have this kind of functionality? Why is, asks Takeshi Natsuno, VP for multimedia services at NTT DoCoMo (as reported in a Knight-Ridder article), the U.S. "the world's most behind country" in mobile functionality? One reason is apparently that Japanese carriers are willing to take a risk without a clear revenue model in place, something U.S. carriers shy away from.

If case you've missed it, we've been diving into mobile-phone technology for a while now, in articles such as:

• Mobile Java & 3D Applications.
  
• Displaying GIF Images on J2ME Mobile Phones.
  
• Programming Mobile Phones.
  
• Getting Personal with J2ME's PIM API.

Coming up shortly in the June 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal (and available here) are article such as:

• "OpenGL ES and Mobile Devices" in which we show how OpenGL ES provides cross-platform real-time 3D graphics for mobile devices.

• "Heightmap Terrain Rendering" where we use heightmaps and Java's Mobile 3D Graphics API to create realistic 3D graphics for mobiles devices.

Then in the July 2006 issue, we present "Radios, Cell Phones, and Java" which uses Java's Advanced Multimedia API to turn your cell phone into an AM/FM radio.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:25 AM  Permalink |

It hasn't been that long ago that "podcast" wasn't even a word, let along something that most of us listen to daily. Then in late 2004 and early 2005, podcasts started popping up and , thanks to to The New Oxford American Dictionary, "podcast" officially became an official word.

By early 2005, the number of estimated podcasts had grown to 3000-4000. In May 2005, Apple's Steve Jobs Jobs said there were more than 8000 podcasts, while others said there were upwards of 10,000. Clearly all of these numbers are guesses at best. No one knows how many podcasts there are out there. Still, the number (or guesses) keep growing. Podnova.com, a podcasting directory, currently tracks nearly 80,000 podcasts. So how many are really out there? My guess? A bunch.

Naturally we've been adding to the guestimates, with regular podcasts on a regular basis. Recent podcasts include:

• RadRails Ruby on Rails IDE: Part 1. Mike Riley interviews Kyle Shank, lead developer of the RadRails Ruby on Rails IDE. The goal of RadRails is to provide Rails developers with everything they need to develop, manage, test, and deploy their applications. The RadRails IDE is built on the Eclipse RCP. RadRails tools are also available as Eclipse plug-ins.

• RadRails and Podcasting: Part 2. Kyle Shank of RadRails talks about using podcasts to promote new releases of the RadRails IDE. He also compares his experiences at this years’ EclipseCon and Canada on Rails.

• Data Miniaturization: No Extraction Required. Mark Arman introduces Data Miniaturization technology, explaining how it differs from data compression and why it is well-suited to mobile devices.

• Loading Modules On-The-Fly With Smart Clients. Microsoft's Eugenio Pace continues expoloring the Composite UI App Block (CAB) modules and how the event system provided by Object Builder can allow teams to create rich, loosely coupled events for module communication.

• A Look at AJAX and Web 2.0. Dror Matalon discusses the AJAX standard, the differences between AJAX and Web 2.0, and AJAX development toolsets.

That's just for starters. For a complete list of our podcasts, check out the Dr. Dobb's Media Center.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 04:19 AM  Permalink |