Taiwan lab develops panda robot

The world's first panda robot is taking shape at a cutting-edge lab in Taiwan where an ambitious group of scientists hope to add new dimensions to the island's reputation as a high-tech power. The Centre for Intelligent Robots Research aims to develop pandas that are friendlier and more artistically endowed than their endangered real-life counterparts.

"The panda robot will be very cute and more attracted to humans. Maybe the panda robot can be made to sing a panda song," said Jerry Lin, the centre's 52-year-old director. Day by day, the panda evolves on the centre's computer screens and, if funding permits, the robot will take its first steps by the end of the year.

"It's the first time we try to construct a quadrupedal robot. We need to consider the balance problem," said 28-year-old Jo Po-chia, a doctoral student who is in charge of the robot's design. The robo-panda is just one of many projects on the drawing board at the centre, which is attached to the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, the island's version of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Taipei-based centre also aims to build robots that look like popular singers, so exact replicas of world stars can perform in the comfort of their fans' homes. "It could be a Madonna robot. It will be a completely different experience from just listening to audio," said Lin.

Commercial value is what counts for Lin, who hopes to contribute to the Taiwan economy at a time when it has matured and no longer exhibits the stellar growth of the earlier take-off phase. "If I write 25 academic papers, I won't contribute anything. But if I create something people need, I will contribute to the Taiwan economy," he said. Lin and his team are also working on educational robots that can act as private tutors for children, teaching them vocabulary or telling them stories in foreign languages.

There is an obvious target market: China, with its tens of millions of middle-class parents doting on the one child they are allowed under strict population policies. "Asian parents are prepared to spend a lot of money to teach their children languages," said Lin.

Robots running amok are a fixture of popular literature but parents do not have to worry about leaving their children home alone with their artificial teachers, he said. "A robot may hit you like a car or a motorbike might hit you. But it won't suddenly lose control and get violent. Humans lose control, not robots. It's not like that."

Lin's long-term dream is to create a fully-functioning Robot Theatre of Taiwan, with an ensemble of life-like robots able to sing, dance and entertain. Two robotic pioneers, Thomas and Janet, appeared before an audience in Taiwan in December, performing scenes from the Phantom of the Opera, but that was just the beginning, Lin said.

"You can imagine a robot shooting down balloons, like in the wild west, using two revolvers, or three, but much faster than a person. Some things robots can do better than humans with the aid of technologies," Lin said.

His vision is to turn the show into an otherworldly experience where robots and humans mix seamlessly on stage, leaving the audience in doubt which is which. But the bottomline is the bottomline. Lin wants commercial viability, in the interest of his home island.

"I want to be able to go to an amusement park in the US and see a building where on top it says, 'Robot Theatre from Taiwan'. That's my lifetime goal," he said.

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Source:

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/technology/6077266/taiwan-lab-develops-panda-robot/

Tags:

China, Taipei, Robot panda, Robot Theatre of Taiwan, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Global IT News, The Centre for Intelligent Robots Research,

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Dispute Finder: Intel Program Finds Dubious Online Claims

Intel has launched software that sniffs out questionable claims at websites.

A "Dispute Finder" crafted by Intel researchers in Berkeley, California, for Firefox web browsers alerts Internet surfers to contentions that are contradicted by information elsewhere online.

"The reason this is important is that very often you'll read a website and not realize this is only one side of the story," Intel research scientist Robert Ennals said in an online video.

Dispute Finder automatically highlights text containing contested claims and then links to boxes summarizing points and counter-points. The data base is designed to grow and evolve with user input.

Votes regarding the reliability of information are used to filter dubious data. Researchers reportedly envision a version of the software that will scan caption information in television programs for specious claims and a mobile device capable of "listening" for questionable comments in conversations.

The mini-program, which works with Firefox web browsers, became available Thursday online at disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu.

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Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090619/tc_afp/usitinternetsoftware

Tags: Intel Labs, DisputeFinder, Firefox, Berkeley, Dubious data, Rober ennals, Global IT News, Global Best Practice, contested claims, competing claims, opinion comparison,

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A Glimpse Of Intel's Futuristic Gadgets

Wouldn't it be useful to have a gadget that immediately warned you when the information you just saw on the Internet or heard from a buddy might be baloney?

How about a gizmo that helps you remember the names of people you encounter whose faces you only vaguely recall? Or a personal robot with such a gentle touch it could fetch your reading glasses without leaving a scratch?

These are among more than three dozen futuristic concepts being explored by Santa Clara chip maker Intel. Some might seem an odd fit for a company known for its sophisticated microprocessors, which serve as the brains of personal computers and other devices. But Intel's researchers, often working with universities, are constantly looking for innovative products or new uses for those it already sells.

"We want to be focused on breakthrough technologies," Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner said during an unveiling of the research recently at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. "We believe our mission is to take risks and define the exceptional opportunities."

Here are a few of the ideas the company is working on:

Dispute Finder: This experiment, recently being tried out at http:// disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu/, is designed to enable Web surfers who install a browser extension to instantly know when a news article, blog or something else they are reading online is contradicted by other information.

Disputed snippets of text are automatically highlighted. When clicked on, these sections reveal contrary or supporting facts, which have been submitted by other Web users, similar to the way Wikipedia compiles its information. Users also can vote on the relative importance of the evidence, with the evidence receiving the most votes getting the most prominent display.

Robert Ennals, Intel's principal investigator for the idea, envisions people one day carrying mobile devices that can check the reliability of what others express verbally.

"The plan is to use voice-recognition software to automatically transcribe what is being heard into text" and then compare that with a copy of the dispute-finder database stored on the device, Ennals said. "We don't think that voice recognition is quite good enough to do this yet, but we hope that the technology will be good enough fairly soon."

He added that the mobile device might be designed to vibrate if it finds evidence contrary to what is said.

Face recognition: If you often can't remember the names of people you've met and suddenly encounter again, Intel is working on something for you. It's a gadget you'd wear that would be equipped with a camera and a database full of images of your acquaintances.

That way, if you're at a party or other place and run into somebody whose name you can't recall, the gizmo would recognize their face and remind you who they are.

Tour guide: Intel thinks mobile devices with visual-recognition capabilities also would prove useful to people who find themselves in unfamiliar places.

One version might contain information about the interior layout of buildings so it could direct a patient to a doctor's office in a large hospital, for example. Another might function like a vacation tour guide, said David Bormann, an Intel official exploring such ideas.

If you're visiting Paris and go to the Eiffel Tower, such a device would recognize the structure and provide interesting facts about it, he said. And if you point it at a bistro where you're considering having lunch, he added, the device might find reviews of the restaurant "so you can decide if you want to eat there."

Gentle robots: To lessen the likelihood of robotic devices damaging objects they grab, Intel is experimenting with versions of the machines that are capable of electrolocation, an ability some fish have to detect things by bouncing electric fields off them.

The company, which has equipped a mechanical hand with that capability, says the technology gives robots the "nervous sense of reluctant touch" that human hands display when grasping something delicate.

Intel envisions robots one day fetching and doing all sorts of other tasks for people.

"The robotics industry today is at a point analogous to the personal computing industry of the early 1980s," the company says on its Web site. "In the next decade the number of personal robots deployed in unstructured environments like homes could grow dramatically."

Intel officials generally wouldn't speculate on how long it might take for these concepts to wind up on the market — if ever. But a poster displayed at the event noted, "your kid's kid's kid won't think what we're doing is crazy at all."

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Source: http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_12681133

Tags: Intel, Gadgets, Gentle Robots, David Bormann, electrolocation, robotics, Facial recognition, Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Visual recognition, Dispute finder, Global IT News, Dispute finder software,

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Microsoft Steps-Up Battle With Google

Microsoft is set to broaden its battle with Google this week as it pushes ahead with online versions of some of its core software, including final plans for a “cloud” operating system designed to extend Windows to the internet. The news comes days after Google took aim at Microsoft with the announcement of a PC operating system of its own, dubbed Chrome OS.

The rival moves point to an intensification of the battle between the technology giants, with Google trying to extend its internet platform to PCs, and Microsoft moving in the opposite direction. While Google’s PC operating system is not due to appear in new computers until the second half of 2010, Microsoft’s cloud operating system will be launched formally this year.

The software company’s latest moves into internet services, due to be revealed at its annual partner conference in New Orleans starting on Monday, mark a milestone in the “software plus services” strategy it has pursued for three years.

After investing heavily in the datacentres and software development to support these moves, it is now ready to outline plans for internet versions of some of its key products. Among the most closely watched will be its plans for the next version of the Office suite of software applications, due to be launched early in 2010.

So far Google has had little success in selling corporate subscriptions to its own suite of lightweight online applications which rival Office, with paying customers said by the internet company to number only in the “hundreds of thousands”. But a free version of the software has attracted more than 15m users, putting pressure on Microsoft to offer more free elements of its own Office suite.

Steven Elop, head of Microsoft’s Office business, reiterated that the company’s aim was to extend the ways it offers its software to customers. Most analysts believe a free, stripped-down version of Office online to rival the free Google Apps service would do little to hurt Microsoft’s revenues, since it would only appeal to relatively small numbers.

Microsoft is also set to spell out pricing and launch plans for its internet-based operating system, called Azure. This will see it leapfrog Google in the business of selling computing resources over the internet, allowing developers to buy capacity to run their applications based on the amount of storage, bandwidth or other resources they use.

Amazon has taken the early lead in this market, selling access to the computer network it built up for its online retail operations. However, the large base of developers who already rely on Microsoft’s technology, and the company’s ability to use its massive scale to undercut on price, are likely to make it a significant force in the market.

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Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1c2cfb40-6f09-11de-9109-00144feabdc0.html

Tags: Steven Elop, head of Microsoft’s Office business, online versions of some of its core software, cloud operating system designed to extend Windows to the internet, Chrome OS, Azure, Global IT News, Global IT and Business News, Office Online,

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Space Tourism Celebrates 5 Year Anniversary

SpaceShipTwo designer Burt Rutan peeks out from one of the rocket plane's windows during construction at Scaled Composites in Mojave, Calif.

Five years after the private-sector space age began, rocketeers are taking circuitous routes to turn their spaceship dreams into reality. And the pioneers of the age say that's just as it should be.

The Space Age, with capital letters, dates back more than 50 years to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 on Oct. 4, 1957. That marked the first time an artificial satellite was put into orbit. The 5-year-old space age I'm talking about dates back to June 21, 2004, when the SpaceShipOne rocket plane became the first privately developed craft to carry a civilian astronaut into outer space.

When SpaceShipOne flew, some observers thought regular folks would be going on day trips to outer space within just a year or two. Indian-American millionaire Chirinjeev Kathuria, who helped extend the life of Russia's Mir space station in 2000 and now serves as chairman of the PlanetSpace rocket venture, certainly thought so.

"When the industry started out, I think everyone - including ourselves - were naive in saying we could do this in 12 months or 24 months," Kathuria acknowledged. "I think everyone's becoming more realistic. That's why no one is saying, 'OK, we're going to do it this year or next year' anymore."

Other observers were far less optimistic, even back in 2004. Millionaire investment adviser Dennis Tito, who became the first paying passenger to visit the international space station in 2001, told me five years ago that "it may take many decades" for private industry to create passenger spacelines.

The most realistic time frame for suborbital space tourism seems to have come from aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan, who famously designed SpaceShipOne on a restaurant napkin and is now leading the development effort for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo at Scaled Composites in Mojave, Calif.

"We at Scaled are very aware and proud of what we did five years ago," Rutan told me in an e-mail this week. "Memory fails me of what I was predicting would happen, so I did a Google search and came up with apodcast that had a prediction."

Rutan pointed to a speech he gave at the Academy of Achievement in 2004, 10 days before SpaceShipOne's first sally into space. "At the end of the pitch I predicted that the public would be able to buy tickets for a spaceflight 'about 10 to 12 years from now.'"

Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic are on track to beat that schedule, even if SpaceShipTwo's first commercial flight doesn't come until 2012 or later.

"There is a lot of activity at Scaled right now on manned spaceflight," Rutan said. "Not a large number of folk working, but very impressive hardware being developed and tested for Virgin. We all know how important the work is, and our team has a passion for the goal of providing public access to the black sky view of our planet."

Small steps

Some small steps were taken toward the fulfillment of Rutan's prediction just today: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and other dignitaries gathered at Spaceport America to break ground for the multimillion-dollar space terminal that's being built for Virgin Galactic's operation. Richardson said the groundbreaking ceremony was "an important step toward our goal of being at the forefront of a vibrant new commercial space industry."

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn provided the latest word on SpaceShipTwo's time line. After the ceremony, he told me in a phone call that the rocket plane would have its unveiling and first unpowered glide test in December. Dec. 7 has been reported as the target date, but Whitehorn said it's too early to pencil that into the appointment book.

He said he expected SpaceShipTwo's first rocket-powered test flight past the 100-kilometer-high space boundary to take place within 12 to 13 months after its unveiling. The test flights would be conducted in Mojave, but he expected the first $200,000-a-seat commercial flight to take place in New Mexico (with Virgin's billionaire founder Richard Branson on board). That milestone would most likely come in the 2011-2012 time frame.

Whitehorn emphasized that the schedule was dependent on how the test program proceeds. Unlike the superpowers who started the Space Age, the SpaceShipTwo team feels no pressure to run a space race. "We're in a 'race' with only one thing - a race with safety," Whitehorn told the crowd in New Mexico.

The safety theme was brought home today when the carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo, known as White Knight Two, set out from its Mojave base to fly over the New Mexico ceremony. En route, an indicator light came on,forcing a diversion to the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport for a safety check. (You can see photos of the craft here on Flickr ... thanks toHyperbola's Rob Coppinger for the pointer.)

Scaled later reported that a speedbrake actuator had failed during the descent for the flyover. Weather permitting, White Knight Two would fly over New Mexico's Las Cruces International Airport at around 9:30 a.m. MT Saturday during the return trip to Mojave, according to a statement from Spaceport America.

Even though today's flight didn't turn out exactly as planned, it nevertheless marked White Knight Two's first point-to-point journey.

The rocket report

Here's a fifth-anniversary status report on five other suborbital ventures that have been active in the "New Space" age. If I'm missing anyone, please feel free to fill me in by leaving a comment below.

Blue Origin: You don't hear much from New Space's most secretive player, but it's virtually certain that the venture - backed by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos - will start commercial spaceflights by 2010 as originally envisioned. In February, Bezos told talk-show host Charlie Rose that Blue Origin was working on its second test vehicle, and that there would be at least one more test vehicle after that.

PlanetSpace: Kathuria's venture lost out on NASA funding for a space station resupply rocket, and lost an appeal of that decision as well. But Kathuria told me PlanetSpace was still "looking for opportunities" at NASA, and is also seeking Pentagon funding for the development of an unmanned aerial vehicle. That vehicle would be a quarter-scale version of PlanetSpace's Silver Dart space glider design. "After the UAV is proven and built out, we'd eventually use that vehicle for point-to-point space tourism," Kathuria said. He's grown increasingly realistic over the past five years: "Building launch vehicles and spacecraft is not an easy process," Kathuria said. "It's a difficult process, and it a very capital-intensive process."

Rocketplane Global: The Oklahoma-based company says it has beenhit hard by the current economic downturn but is still working out the plans for development of its rocket plane as well as spaceport arrangements. About $100 million is needed to turn the plans into reality, Rocketplane's Chuck Lauer has been quoted as saying.

Rocket Racing League: The league is working with Armadillo Aerospace to turn two airplanes into rocket-powered racers for a demonstration flight, most likely in November at the Aviation Nation air show at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base. "We're looking at Nellis, and we have other options, too. We're just not in a rush," the league's co-founder and CEO, Granger Whitelaw, told me. The planes won't appear at September's Reno Air Races, as previously hoped. Whitelaw said the league will wait out the downturn before proceeding with plans for competitions. "When the market comes back to us, we'll be there. ... Had we been out there and starting to race right now, we probably would have been in a bad position," he said.

XCOR Aerospace: I've written quite a bit about XCOR's step-by-step approach to spaceflight. At last report, XCOR is still on target to begin flight tests of its Lynx Mark 1 high-altitude rocket planenext year. This month, The Globe and Mail quoted COO Andrew Nelson as saying about 30 people have paid part or all of the $95,000 fare for a Lynx flight. The Mark 1 is meant to blaze a trail for later flights that will go beyond the outer-space boundary.

Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/06/19/1971623.aspx

Tags: Burt Ratan, Spaceship2, PlanetSpace, Rocketplane global, XCOR Aerospace, virgin galactic, Dennis tito, Armadillo aerospace, space tourism, sputnik, aviation nation, reno air races, global IT news,

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Technorati to Launch Twittorati

Apparently, Technorati is still going. The seven-year-old blog index site once threatened to be to the web’s nascent conversational search paradigm what Twitter Search is now, but has limped along for the last couple of years - plagued by server downtime, broken links, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Blog Search’s rise and the overtaking of blogging by social networking and microblogging in the tech fashion stakes.

So now it’s launching Twittorati, an attempt to have some of Twitter’s magic rub off on it. Somewhat confusingly, it’s a feed of tweets from Technorati’s Top 100 listed bloggers, complete with its own list of most popular hashtags. The idea appears to be providing an on-ramp to Twitter streams from the “highest authority” bloggers...

CEO Richard Jalichandra blogs (and tweets): “This is where the Blogosphere meets the Twittersphere. Twittorati shows what top bloggers are tweeting about, and how these trends compare to Blogosphere trends.” But will web users care for such a service any more than Technorati itself, which, while denying being overtaken by tweets, must otherwise be lamenting the splintering of blogs in to 140-character messages…

Jalichandra: “We’re asked all the time how platforms like Twitter and Facebook are impacting the Blogosphere. This is what we’re seeing: Twitter is not replacing blogs, but it has evolved as a major awareness vehicle for bloggers and people who read blogs (same goes for Facebook status updates).”

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HP Web-Connected Printer: No PC Needed

Hewlett-Packard on Monday introduced an Internet-connected inkjet printer that lets people print coupons, movie tickets, maps, and other items from Web sites without having to turn on a PC.

The HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web has a 4.33-inch touch screen for navigating to sites. The printer includes software for accessing Web content from HP partners, including USA Today, Google, Fandango, Coupons.com, DreamWorks Animation, Nickelodeon, Web Sudoku, and Weathernews.

HP also launched HP Apps Studio, a site for downloading future applications for the printer. HP has included application programming interfaces with the printer's software platform for third parties to build software and make it available through the Apps Studio, a strategy made popular with Apple's launch of the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The new printer can connect directly to the Internet through a wired orWi-Fi connection. The device also supports Bluetooth for printing directly from digital cameras and other devices.

HP's pitch with the new product is its ability to go directly to Google, for example, and print out maps or a person's weekly calendar, or to print movie tickets or supermarket coupons from Fandango and Coupons.com, respectively. Users can also view, print, and upload photos to Snapfish, HP's photo-sharing and printing Web site.

"By giving people access to the content they want at the touch of a finger, the ability to customize their printing experience and create their own apps, and enabling easy one-touch wireless setup, we are driving a significant shift in how people will be printing in the future," Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP of the Imaging and Printing Group at HP, said in a statement.

Besides printing, the HP printer also faxes, copies, and scans documents. The device is scheduled to ship this fall and will sell for $399. HP's latest printer reflects the company's strategy to keep its consumer printing business growing at a time when people can access photos, maps, and other content on and off the Web through a smartphone or mini-laptop. While HP is making printing off the Web easy, it remains to be seen whether the convenience is worth the cost of the printer, ink, and paper.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/peripherals/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218100736&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News

Tags: HP Photosmart, HP, Touchsmart Web, USA Today, Google, Fandango, Coupons.com, DreamWorks Animation, Nickelodeon, Web Sudoku, Weathernews, App Store, iPhone, iPod Touch, HP Apps Studio, Snapfish, Bluetooth, Global IT News,

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Google Attacks The Heart of Microsoft Directly

Google has taken direct aim at Microsoft’s core personal computer software business, with the announcement of a PC operating system to rival Windows.

The system, based on Google’s Chrome web browser, is designed for all classes of PCs, “from small netbooks to full-sized desktop systems”, and will be available in machines from “multiple” PC makers in the second half of next year, the company said.

Google also promised that the new software would solve many of the frustrations felt by users of Windows-based PCs, from slow start-up times to threats from computer viruses.

Google’s venture into the PC operating system business caps a steady move into software that has seen it encroach on to Microsoft’s turf. As well as a series of internet-based applications to rival Microsoft’s Office suite of software applications, those moves have included the Android operating system for mobile handsets and, last year, the Chrome Web browser.

Pushing those initiatives to their logical conclusion, Google said it would now extend Chrome to become a full PC operating system.

A number of PC makers had already started to explore using the open-source Android software on low-priced netbook computers – the fastest-growing category of PCs – and the announcement of the Chrome OS replaces that with a purpose-built piece of software that the company said would be better suited to PCs.

“We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better,” Google said in a blog note posted late on Tuesday in California.

Among the main attractions promised for the Chrome OS is much faster “boot” time to give users instant access to their e-mail and web browsers. That echoes a wider challenge to Microsoft from other software makers who have also targeted the slow start up times of PCs.

In other veiled attacks on the Windows operating system, Google added that users “want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them”, and that they “don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”

Microsoft has faced considerable criticism over the slowness of its Windows Vista operating system, though the next version of its operating system, Windows 7, has already drawn good reviews for working far faster, particularly on low-powered, cheaper machines such as netbooks.

Google said the Chrome OS would first appear on netbooks in the second half of 2010, and that it was announcing the software now because it had already started discussions with hardware makers that wanted to use it in some their machines.

The new software, based on the so-called kernel, or core, of the open-source Linux operating system, had been designed to run Web-based applications such as those developed by Google itself, the company said, making it the first PC operating system developed from scratch for the internet age.

In another attack on one of the main pillars of Microsoft’s business, Google said developers would be able to write applications for the Chrome OS using standard web development tools – a challenge to Microsoft’s own developer tools business.

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/86b864c0-6b87-11de-9320-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Tags: Google Chrome Operating system, Microsoft Windows, Chrome OS, Global IT News, Windows 7, PC’s, Google Android, Google Chrome Web browser, Technology, Software, IT, Web apps, Netbooks,

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Introducing Augmented Reality

During this difficult economic time, augmented reality has the potential to help you enhance your role as a visionary business technology leader, inspire your team, and steal the march on your competitors.

OK, a little word-association game here: Below I'm going to describe a brilliant new technology that I think will launch some powerful applications, but first I'm going to share with you the name of this new techno-breakthrough. As soon as you read it, shout out what you think it means. Here it is:

"Augmented Reality."

C'mon, don't just make a funny face and grumble about what a dumb term it is -- what does it make you think of? Maybe controlled substances? Transcendental meditation? Or maybe the explanation you got from your teenage son about why he missed his midnight curfew Friday night?

On the other hand, try this example that leaves out the name and instead focuses on its capabilities: This week at the Wimbledon tennis tournament, IBM is showcasing a mobile application that lets people point their mobile-phone cameras at various real things around the sprawling Wimbledon complex -- such as Court 2, or maybe a strawberries-and-cream stand -- and the mobile device will overlay additional multimedia information about that real object.

I think this new technology will gain rapid and widespread acceptance across multiple industries and trigger huge implications in how shoppers evaluate products, how children learn, how workers absorb training, and how marketers can enrich the experiences their products offer.

CIOs of the world, take note -- you need to have some of your smartest people get their hands on this and play around with it and come up with 25 brainstormed ideas for how it can help your company excite and delight your customers and prospects.

Some observers -- including a few of those I've linked to below for more background on this topic -- say that this powerful new technology with the goofy laboratory name will find only limited uptake for a few years, primarily among gamers and other geeky enthusiasts. I think that's nonsense -- sort of like saying Twitter will be limited only to those people who don't like writing messages of more than 140 characters.

No, the power behind this augmented-reality technology is that it will allow people in all walks of life to do more of what we have shown an almost-limitless capacity for wanting to do: understand and engage more deeply with those parts of the world that interest and appeal to us.

For example: You want to buy a house in a neighborhood you're not familiar with, but you don't want to go through the formal thing yet of talking to a real estate agent. So you drive through the area, see a house for sale, point your mobile-phone camera at it, and the yet-unbuilt app -- perhaps it'll come from some innovative real estate player such as Zillow -- gives you an immediate history about surveys, taxes, school districts, renovations, ownership history, utility bills, traffic volume on this and other local streets, zoning regulations, and much more.

As they say, imagine the possibilities. But hey, who dreamed up that dog of a term, "augmented reality"? Makes me think of the old joke about a certain world-renowned IT company from back when it created great products but disdained marketing: If HP had invented sushi, they would have called it cold, dead fish.

I think the sheer obtuseness of that term affected even IBM's thinking about the very cool mobile application it's rolling out this week at Wimbledon, because here's the name IBM came up with: the Seer Android Beta. Yes indeed, the Seer Android Beta.

Well, at least it didn't go with the runner-up name, which reportedly was "the Mobile-Device Information-Overlay Application." But, I nitpick -- the power and potential of this new technology will overwhelm some uninspiring early-stage names, and just imagine the thousands of creative applications that will arise when this technology is placed in the hands of teenagers and young professionals whose mobile devices are indispensable extensions of themselves and the ways in which they experience and engage with the world around them.

And it's precisely that huge potential across entertainment, marketing, education, product evaluation, merchandising, training, and much more that make it so important for strategic CIOs to seize the initiative in getting to know seemingly wacky new stuff like "augmented reality" and exploring how their companies can exploit its novelty and its capabilities.

Indeed, I think augmented reality can serve as a perfect example of the new ways in which CIOs must continue to get out in front of technology trends and innovations, looking way beyond IT infrastructure and toward new gizmos and applications and technologies that offer unprecedented ways for your companies to interact with customers, engage with them, appeal to them, showcase your value propositions to them, and encourage them to work with you to exploit those new tools to their fullest.

Here are some examples of how a handful of companies are doing just that, from a recent column in Advertising Age by Garrick Schmitt of Razorfish:

- Lego: "Simply hold up the Lego box to an in-store kiosk with a web cam and watch a rendering of the toy assemble itself."

- Topps sports trading cards: "At Toppstown fans get the full 3-D experience, can make the tiny players bat and pitch, plus explore stats and game info."

- Toyota: "Toyota employed the technology to show off its new small car, Toyota IQ, which allows consumers to interact with the car and discover its agility and interior space."

- "Enkin wants to 'reinvent navigation,' by combining GPS, orientation sensors, 3-D graphics, live video, and several web services into something wholly new."

And then there's the IBM mobile app for Wimbledon mentioned above. Here's how a subsequent Ad Age article described what the Seer Android Beta can do: "For example, pointing the phone's camera lens towards a court will bring up information and scores about the match being played on that court, as well as information about forthcoming matches. Point the phone at a cafe and a menu and an update on the length of the queue for strawberries and cream appears."

You'll also find some interesting background and perspectives on augmented reality at a site called MobiThinking.com. We all know that right now you're battling with budgets, doing more with less, fighting to keep your team together, and trying to enhance the strategic business value you and your team offer to your organization and your customers. In such a context, you might think that you don't have time to diddle around with some unproven and still-kinda-squishy technology that has a goofy name.

But I would say that augmented reality and its potential provide precisely the right type of opportunity for you to reassert or enhance your role as a visionary business technology leader, for you to inspire your team and rekindle within it a sense of excitement and exploration and fun, and for you to steal the march on your competitors by helping rewrite the rules of how your industry plays the game.

Forget the name. Focus on the potential. And go out and augment your company's competitive reality.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218100702&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News

Tags: Augmented Reality, IBM, Ad Age, Enkin, Razorfish, Toppstown, Global IT News, MobiThinking, Seer Android Beta, Global CIO, 3-D graphics, Mobile-Device Information-Overlay Application, Zillow, Wimbledon, CIO,

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26 People Who Mislead You On Twitter

Earlier this month, I covered various ways people are spamming Twitter in my Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article. Since then, I’ve been diligently reporting some of the more annoying spam I see. Despite this, none of the reported accounts have been closed. So, it’s time for a public spam report — and some education along the way.

Public spam reports suck because often they just bring traffic to the company or individuals who were spamming in the first place. Nevertheless, I figure it’s worthwhile to do in this case to properly illustrate the problem.

Let’s do the name and shame part first (I won’t link to the accounts, but people can visit them directly):

AdaCardwell

AmazingMoney

AmazingProfits

AmazinTwitties

AmberMoore48

bizpromotion

ChristineSnider

EmilyBrown13

EricaEsau

EvaJimmerson

ExpertMoney

HeidiSomarriba

JaneDDavis

JaniceAnderson

JoannaHill23

GloriaHayes

KimberlyCheek

KristiHernandez

Melinda_Martin

NetworkPromoter

onlinmarket

PaidPerTweets

Priscilla_Ortiz

socialclicks

SusanMccartney

RichOffAdsense

I’ve spotted all of these people — technically Twitter accounts, it could be one person running them all — tweeting links that don’t match the content of what they’re talking about.

Let’s take AdaCardwell, who recently tweeted this:

Devver Promises To Speed Up App Testing For Ruby Frameworks - http://rubyurl.com/…

Interesting, right? And I especially liked the use of the RubyURL shortener to make it seem even more legit. Well done, sir, well done. I’ve killed the actual link, so that I’m not giving any direct benefit to some pay-per-tweet program or affiliate along the way. It doesn’t lead to the “real” article or anything that matches the content of the tweet.

Instead, it leads me over to some supposed blog tips site. But then the trip is interrupted with an ad for another site, and you in turn get redirected to it. This other site is pitching a social “blasting” tool that no doubt helps other people do all the misleading crap that Ada is doing. Where is the “real” article, by the way? Five days ago, TechCrunch IT tweeted the “original” tweet:

techcrunchit: Devver Promises To Speed Up App Testing For Ruby Frameworks http://tcrn.ch/4IL by @leenarao

Part of the bait-and-switch for Twitter spammers is to grab a “real” tweet like this and simply swap the URL with something else. My Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article has some further illustrations of this. Earlier, I’d said I’d reported these accounts. That’s pretty easy to do. You follow @spam on Twitter. You’ll immediately get followed back. Then you can send a direct message with the spam report.

I’ve been doing that for two weeks now. Some of the accounts above, I’ve reported twice or three times. It’s done nothing. They remain active. Close them down, Twitter.

I know, I know. They’ll just come back. Hopefully, as I covered in my earlier article, Twitter will find a more automated way of stemming them. Certainly keeping them out of Twitter Search reduces the impact they have. And if Twitter can’t do it, then check out Clean Tweets, a Firefox add-on that helps (and see our review, Clean Tweets: New Add-On Zaps Twitter Spam).

As for those doing this type of misleading tweeting, you’re almost certainly too young to remember when in 1999, the US Federal Trade Commission took action against a site that was spamming search engines with listings that appeared to be about things like kids games but instead lead to porn. The FTC deemed that misleading advertising and shut them down. You sure you want the FTC potentially coming after you?

Source: http://searchengineland.com/26-people-who-mislead-you-on-twitter-21561

Tags: Twitter search, Firefox, Twitter spam, Cleantweets, US Federal Trade Commission, Global Best Practice, Global IT News, Spam, List of Twitter spammers, Techcrunch, Ruby Frameworks,

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