EDITOR'S EYE

The World of Software Development.

June 2006

Every office has them. Back rooms with stacks of keyboards, rows of 15-inch monitors, piles of desktop CPUs, and miles of cables, just for starters. That's fine for PCs, but what do you do with over-the-hill supercomputers?

That's the question that Sandia National Labs faces, as it prepares to put ASCI Red, at one time the world's first teraflop supercomputer, out to pasture.

"I've never buried a computer before," said Justin Rattner, Intel Chief Technology Officer.

Sandia vice-president Rick Stulen added, "ASCI Red broke all records and most importantly ushered the world into the teraflop regime. It still holds the record for the longest continuous rating as the world's fastest computer, four years running." But in the "what have you done recently for me" world that we live in, ASCI Red was still decommissioned.

ASCI Red was a critical part of NNSA's Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program. The simulation capabilities developed by the ASC program, and conducted on supercomputers like ASCI Red, provide the nuclear weapons and materials analysis that NNSA needs to keep the nuclear weapons stockpile safe, secure. and reliable without underground nuclear testing.

ASCI Red first broke the teraflops barrier in December, 1996 and topped the world-recognized LINPAC top-500 computer speed ratings seven consecutive times from June 1997 to June 2000. (A teraflop is a trillion operations per second.) Originally rated at 1.6 teraflops, a chip upgrade raised it to 3.1 t-flops just when it looked as though its world supremacy would be lost.

Sandia director Bill Camp said that ASCI Red had the best reliability of any supercomputer ever built, and "was supercomputing's high-water mark in longevity, price, and performance."

"It was almost mystical in scalability," said another Sandia director, Rob Leland. "All these other machines would be tailing off and Red would still be cruising along,"

"When we first talked about running a machine with 10,000 processors, it seemed ludicrous," Rattner said, apparently anticipating massive downtimes. But instead of 27 hours average time between hardware-caused interrupts--the figure predicted in the design phase--Red achieved an average of several hundreds hours.

Sandia researcher Michael Hannah running, emphasized that the machine was not being decommissioned because of technical problems. "It's not a reliability issue, because ASCI Red is still reliable," he said. "It is about getting more bang for the buck with nine-year-newer technology and terminating significant costs in space, power, and cooling."

No, old supercomputers like ASCI Red don't die, they just scale down.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:58 AM  Permalink |

Like most of us who have commuted in rush-hour traffic, I'm never amazed at what I'll see next. Shaving, applying make-up, talking on cell phones. Ha! Child's play. The real pros can handle reading the morning paper at 70 mph, changing the baby's diapers and lanes at the same time, or eating a bowl of breakfast cereal while driving and talking on a cell phone. Now that takes some skill or stupidity, depending on your point of view.

It's no surprise that a recent study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute concluded that drivers paying attention to everything but driving are three times more likely to be involved in crashes as more attentive motorists. And according to the study, cell phone use is the most common distraction for drivers.

"All of these activities are much more dangerous than we thought before," Charlie Klauer, a senior research associate at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press. "But also we're very concerned about the fact that not only are we drinking our coffee and we're disciplining our children and we're eating sandwiches in the car, but the proliferation of technologies in the vehicle have just exacerbated the amount of time that drivers are distracted," Klauer said.

One solution to keeping driver's hands on the wheel and eyes on the road is voice-controlled technology.

"Speech recognition is at the beginning of a tidal wave in cars," says Pioneer Electronics' Karen Rubin. "Drivers can now enter destinations, search for points of interest, and access their music on the built-in hard drive using their voices."

Pioneer's solution is its AVIC-Z1 system, which features a voice recognition system for navigation destination entry and audio track search, together with text-to-speech voice guidance of street names. The AVIC-Z1 is built around IBM's Embedded ViaVoice text-to-speech (TTS) engine and phonetic data from geographic content supplier Tele Atlas, which can increase the quality of speech technology used in map-based applications by providing more precise pronunciations of location and directional information. For example, the system will pronounce, "turn right onto La Jolla Street" with an "H" sound for the "J" in Jolla and "Y" sound for the double "L," helping to greatly improve its assistance ability.

The AVIC-Z1's voice recognition has a large vocabulary, letting it understand a broad array of spoken commands. Drivers can search for destinations by saying a command, like "go to Los Angeles International Airport," without having to specify the action, such as "Points of Interest Search," or category of the destination, such as "airport." Full address searches can also be done by naming the city, street, and house number allowing drivers to use alternative words for the same command, such as "go to" or "search," instead of "destination."

Using a 30-GB hard drive, the AVIC-Z1 uses the Tele Atlas map database to offer dynamic route guidance, detailed mapping and valuable road information that crosses the entire U.S. and Canada. In some areas of the country, navigation includes lane information, letting the driver know specifically which lane to be in for the next turn. Almost 11 million points of interest help make it easy to find gas stations, restaurants, stores, and other business listings.

Voice commands for audio-visual sources and other attachments like Bluetooth wireless technology-enabled cell phones are just as easy. Drivers can directly access the built-in music library, which is 10 GB of the hard drive allocated to ripping and storing a personalized music collection of their CDs. Contents of the music library can be accessed by saying the artist name, song title, genre, or album title. Similarly, customers can wirelessly access their Bluetooth-enabled phones to place a phone call, and to speak hands free through the built-in microphone on the AVIC-Z1 and speakers on the vehicle.

Of course, the skeptics among us might say, "Great--even more distractions." I say "Thank goodness for telecommuting."

Posted by Jon Erickson at 11:44 AM  Permalink |

Okay, we thought we thought we were pretty clever in publishing in the July 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal an article on turning your cell phone into an AM/FM radio. But I admit, we're occasionally outdone.

Thanks to technology developed by Verrus, motorists in Vancouver BC can now use their cell phones to pay for parking at any of the city's 7800 on-street parking meters. To use the service, all you do is call a local number posted on the meter (604 909 PARK), provide the meter number, and minutes required. No more digging in your pockets or rooting around under the car seat for spare change. Moreover, you can receive a parking expiry reminder by text message and a receipt by e-mail. And, of course, remotely add more time if you're not ready to leave the bar--ah, meeting.

The service requires that you set up an account so that parking charges are billed to your credit card, and a 30-cent service fee is added to each transaction. Assuming that each of Vancouver's 60,000 existing Verrus customers use the system at least once a day, well, that's not pocket change.

Verrus offers a number of mobile payment services across Europe and North America, and Vancouver isn't the first city to offer such services, although it is the largest city in North America to do so.

Now if the company could just help me find a parking spot in the first place....

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:06 AM  Permalink |

Don't say I didn't warn you. Why, it was just last week I pleaded "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Mathematicians".

As if there aren't enough reasons, Ron Eglash, an associate professor of science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has uncovered mathematics embedded in the designs of everything from cornrow hairstyles ("transformational geometry") and Navajo rug weaving ("Cartesian coordinates") to graffiti ("Cartesian and polar coordinates") and Yupik star navigation ("counting, modular math"). Putting this breakthrough information to work, he's gone on to develop a series of interactive, Web-based teaching tools to prove that math can be entertaining and educational. Right.

Eglash started thinking this way in 1999 when he discovered that fractal geometry--the geometry of similar shapes repeated on ever-shrinking scales--is apparent in the designs of many cultures on the continent of Africa, revealing that traditional African mathematics may be much more complicated than previously thought. He documented fractal patterns in cornrow hairstyles, weavings, and the architecture of villages, as well as many forms of African art.

Working with math teachers on ways to use this discovery to get African American students interested in the subject of math, Eglash began focusing on the geometry of cornrow hairstyles as a way to connect with popular culture. He developed Cornrow Curves, his first "culturally situated design tool," which helps students learn transformational geometry and iteration while they create simulated cornrow designs on the computer. Cornrow Curves was followed by a program focused on scaling iteration in the traditional ivory sculptures of Africa’s Mangbetu people.

Why if this keeps up, Mathematica will be outselling Max Payne, Doom, and Madden NFL before long. Jeez, what's the world coming to?

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:30 AM  Permalink |

Congratulations to all participants of Microsoft's third annual Windows Embedded Student ChallengE, a competition that pitted teams of undergraduate students from around the world to create Windows CE-based embedded devices that address real-world issues.

Out of a field of 367 teams from 17 countries, the team from the Politehnica University of Bucharest (Romania) was recognized for its "Forest Watcher" project as having the created the most innovative device that fit this year’s theme "Preserving, Protecting and Enhancing the Environment." Using Windows Embedded CE, the team designed a monitoring system for preventing forest devastation. The solution includes a network of sensors placed in the forest, which gather information about cutting noises, temperature, humidity, pressure and carbon monoxide in the area. Data is processed and via a mobile smart client the forester is informed about problems like fire or illegal logging. The team was awarded $8000 for its award-winning design.

The runners-up in order are:

• The University of Southern Florida (U.S.) for its "Erebus Scarecrow," an intelligent system to reduce eradication of protected and rare birds in fish in fish farms.
  
• Xidian University (China) for "Starswave," a system designed to conserve electricity through controlled street lamp lighting.
  
• Politehnica University of Bucharest (Romania) for "BirdSpot," a system for identifying and classifying bird species.
  
• Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (China), for "ACES," an A1coal mine enhancing system.

These teams will also receive cash awards ranging from $6000 to $3200. For full project descriptions go to, http://www.windowschallenge.com/finalists.aspx.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:56 AM  Permalink |

If you're interested at all in Ruby and Ruby-On-Rails -- and you darn well should be -- then don't miss Mike Riley's blogs and podcasts from the RailsConf 2006 Conference in Chicago.

Over the past couple of days, Dr. Dobb's correspondent Mike Riley has covered the sold-out conference that's included speakers such as David Heinemeier Hansson, Martin Fowler, Dave Thomas, and Paul Graham, among others.

Mike reports on the surprises--and there were a lot of them--and the programming tricks and techniques that make Ruby-On-Rails perhaps the next great development environment.

Don't miss it: http://www.ddj.com/blog/lightlangblog/archives/railsconf/index.html.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:53 PM  Permalink |

Even if you travel no further than the corner coffee house with its free WiFi access, you're familiar with the headaches of one network talking with another. And if you travel around the world and need network access, well...don't forget the aspirin. In short, network cooperation is easier said than done.

Making network cooperation a reality is the goal of the Ambient Networks project, which is creating network solutions for mobile and wireless systems beyond 3G. Ultimately Ambient Networks seeks to avoid patchwork of extensions to existing architectures, instead providing access to any network, including mobile personal networks, through instant establishment of inter-network agreements. In other words, the project is planning a wireless network solution built around an architecture for self-configuring network components that reduces deployment and operational costs and a complete protocol suite for network composition evolved from IPv6.

To make this happen, the Ambient Networks project is addressing a number of technical objectives, including:

• New algorithms for efficient management of radio resources across different radio technologies and multiple domains to provide efficient and low-cost access, irrespective of administrative boundaries,
• Design of an innovative link layer solution for easy adaptation and incorporation of existing and new radio interfaces,
• A protocol suite for network composition ensuring connectivity, resource management, security, manageability, conflict resolution, and content handling,
• Support for dynamic agreements that provide any subscriber with access to any network in any place including an end-to-end QoS concept,
• Advanced multi-domain mobility management for users and user groups over a multitude of heterogeneous, wireless access networks, including new forms of wireless access networks such as personal area networks or vehicular networks,
• Efficient support for multimedia delivery by developing cross-domain media flow routing and transport functionalities, balancing QoS by considering different access technologies, networks, end-device capabilities, and the QoS requirements of different media flows,
• Context-aware networks to improve efficiency and enable new applications,
• Common, scalable and secure interfaces between network domains,
• Innovative self-management not only for new network nodes but also complete newly composed networks.

As a proof-of-concept, the project has developed Smart Multimedia Routing and Transport(SMART) technology which provides novel types of customized routing schemes for multimedia services that can vary and be dynamically chosen to best suit the multimedia content and service characteristics. The SMART prototype will next be integrated into the final prototype.

"The comprehensive prototype will include multi-access technologies that will give the user or networks the choice of using the appropriate radio technology automatically, such as switching between different flavors of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, Code Division Multiple Access, and Wireless LAN, Bluetooth or a forthcoming 4G radio, " says project coordinator Henrik Abramowicz at Ericsson AB.

"The advantages of Ambient Networks technologies are that users will have more choices and more simplified access, " he adds. "Users will be able to instantly connect to a network without a commercial contract. It’s like going to a shop where you don't need a prior agreement to become a customer. We have begun validation of the different components of the overall project and are starting to implement the respective technologies into a comprehensive prototype showing a complete set of functions."

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:52 AM  Permalink |

Can it be? Is AI is really 50-years old? Well, almost. It will be exactly 50-years old at the end of August, but the festivities are underway sooner than that.

Okay, we acknowledged the anniversary earlier this year in the January 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's. It was in 1956 that John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky (who along with McCarthy founded MIT's AI lab), IBM's Nathaniel Rochester, and Bell Lab's C.E. Shannon presented "A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence" at the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference. The conference and the project, convened with the goal of creating truly intelligent machines, established AI as a unique field of study within computer science.

To celebrate the occasion, Dartmouth will be throwing a party. Okay, a conference. Officially entitled "Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years," the AI@50 conference will convene on the Dartmouth campus July 13-15 and include talks by McCarthy, Minsky, Rod Brooks, Stuart Russell, Nils Nilsson, and other luminaries in the field of AI.

According to conference director James Moor, there will likely be considerable debate about the future direction that AI should take. He says that the plan for the conference is not only to honor the past and assess present accomplishments, but also to help seed ideas for future artificial intelligence research.

"AI has come a long way in 50 years, and it has a bright future. Although computers may never replace us, smart machines will be prevalent in our environment, and may someday be even implanted in us. The future of artificial intelligence deserves careful and sustained scrutiny."

He considers the field on two levels:

• One is the applied computing level that involves the development of "expert systems," for such areas as spectrographic analysis, stock market patterns, and medical diagnostics; and the development of robotic systems for driving cars as well as software for searching the Internet.
• The other is the philosophical level that tries to answer a question such as, what is the nature of intelligence?

He thinks that bridging these two levels is challenging, but very useful in developing a fuller understanding of minds. Science forces philosophy to be more empirical and philosophy forces science to be more reflective.

"The initial hope was that AI could do much more than has actually panned out in 50 years," he says. "Language use and translation by machine, for example, was once expected to be quite easy. Turns out that language use requires extensive knowledge of how the world works. This complex knowledge usually assumed in ordinary conversation, which is easy for us, but it's difficult to teach a computer voice inflection, social and cultural idiosyncrasies, as well as a multitude of social contexts."

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:38 AM  Permalink |

Robots are all the rage--again. For whatever reasons, robotics has recently moved from the lab to the headlines, with new tools and programs poping up like C3PO's sensor.

Maybe it has something to do with robotics industry associations in North America and Japan projecting that the global robotics market will expand over the next five years in both the service and personal robotics fields. Or maybe it is because they're just downright fun.

In any event, the College of Computing and College of Engineering at Georgia Tech recently announced its Robotics and Intelligent Machines center--coined "RIM@Georgia Tech"---an interdisciplinary research center that draws on the strengths and knowledge of robotics experts from both colleges. Leveraging the strengths of the College of Computing and the College of Engineering, and with support from the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the Office of Research, "RIM@Georgia Tech will serve as the flagship for Georgia Tech’s robotics efforts, coordinating the university’s capabilities in this field under one roof and facilitating the transfer of research results to the industry," said Henrik Christensen, director of the new research center. RIM@Georgia Tech will focus on personal and everyday robotics, as well as the future of automation, and both undergraduate and doctoral degree programs are being planned.

Then there's the Microsoft Robotics Studio, a just-announced Windows-based environment for creating robotics applications across a variety of hardware. The Microsoft Robotics Studio is a scalable, extensible runtime architecture that spans a variety of hardware and devices. The programming interface can be used to address robots using 8-bit or 16-bit processors as well as 32-bit systems with multicore processors and devices from touch sensors to laser distance finding devices. The Microsoft Robotics Studio programming model can be applied for a variety of robot hardware platforms, enabling users to transfer their learning skills across platforms. Third parties can also extend the functionality of the platform by providing additional libraries and services. Both remote (PC-based) and autonomous (robot-based) execution scenarios can be developed using a selection of programming languages, including those in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Express languages (Visual C# and Visual Basic.NET), JScript, and Microsoft IronPython 1.0 Beta 1, and third-party languages that conform to its services-based architecture.

Not to be outdone, Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute--to my way of thinking, the granddaddy of all robotic centers--is creating its new Center for Innovative Robotics, a resource that will help make robotics accessible to a broader range of individuals and businesses.

"Innovation in robotics is difficult today because the software development costs are so high," Illah Nourbakhsh, associate professor of robotics and director of the new center. "People who have ideas for a new robot, or a new use for an existing robot, too often abandon the effort because they lack the specialized knowledge necessary for making hardware, software and sensors work together."

If software development for robotics becomes less daunting, Nourbakhsh added, more inventors and businesses may be willing to test their ideas and perhaps create innovative new robots or applications for robots. It's not enough to just swap software for controlling robots, Nourbakhsh said. Hardware solutions and sometimes even video showing robot behavior can be means to successfully sharing insights into robotics. The center, established with financial support from the Microsoft Robotics Group will utilize Microsoft's Robotics Studio.

Showing that's it stays on top of things, robot wise, CMU's Robot Hall of Fame wil hold its annual ceremony today (6/21/06) by inducting:

• Gort of "The Day the Earth Stood Still"
• Maria of the classic silent film "Metropolis"
• David of "Artificial Intelligence: AI,"
• Sony's four-legged AIBO
• The industrial robot known as SCARA.

Participants in the ceremony include emcee Anthony Daniels, who played the robot C-3PO in all six Star Wars movies.

Finally, it worth mentioning that CMDragons'06, CMU's robot soccer team, won this year's RoboCup 2006 World Championship (small robot league category) in Bremen, Germany. The team's five robots, cube-shaped machines with 7-inch sides, outscored opponents by a combined 53-3 margin in the six games played at the international competition. The small robot league is one of six leagues that compete in the games.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 11:06 AM  Permalink |

Good games need more than great graphics. Sure, you need your math, your video card, and your controller--but a background in psychology and sociology is helpful too.

According to Katherine Isbister, an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and director of the Friendly Media project, effective character design needs to take into consideration psychological and socilogical concepts if characters are to make powerful and emotional connections with players. In other words, says Isbister, the key to good character design is leveraging player psychology. Designers who understand what’s memorable, exciting, and useful to a person about real-life social interactions, and can then integrate that knowledge into their designs, can create more realistic characters that players can identify with on an emotional level.

Isbister, who is author of the recently published book Better Game Characters by Design, believes game designers need to to carefully consider and appropriately assign a character’s traits--its voice, face, body, interactions with players and non-characters--to achieve the realistic results. Factors such as gender and culture can influence character perception. (An excerpt of Better Game Characters by Design is available here.)

"With the greater realism and processing power of the next-generation game platforms comes an opportunity for game designers to take characters to the next level in terms of realness," says Isbister. "Accounting for player psychology during the creation process can help designers avoid the potential pitfall of creating eerie characters that look extremely beautiful and life-like, but move and interact like zombies."

Isbister goes on to say that today's interfaces frequently limit our physical movement, emotional expression, and subtleties of social rhythms, forcing us to become more machine-like. She believes that iIf we consider the development of other technologies past and present--musical instruments, sports equipment, furniture--we can see that this is neither an inherent quality of tools nor a necessary sacrifice. Rather it is an inadvertent omission worthy of revisiting and reparing as these technologies move deeper into our everyday lives. With this in mind, the Friendly Media project bases its research and design efforts on the belief that:

• Interfaces should be enjoyable and physically and emotionally engaging--experience is as important as outcome.
• Interfaces should be designed to support and enhance human expressive capabilities.
• The research and design process should be in and of itself engaging, supportive, and humane.

The Friendly Media project currently includes three main initiatives: Research on the social and physical qualities of gaming in the Games Research Lab, Body and Interface explorations, and Embodied Conversational Agents.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:40 AM  Permalink |

How can you not admire someone who isn't afraid to tackle anything--and that surely includes University of California, Berkeley professor Mina Aganagic who has set out to figure out, well, the "theory of everything."

After all, Albert Einstein spent most of his life trying to find a theory of everything, and he couldn't pull it off. He did put forth the theory that linked geometry and physics, which just happens to be Aganagic area of interest and expertise. However, Einstein was stumped by quantum mechanics, which is the point where classical geometry breaks down. And that's where Mina Aganagic steps in.

"The basic question is what does geometry look like at very short distances?" says Aganagic, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Physics and Department of Mathematics.

The distances that Aganagic deals with are on order of the Planck scale, 10 to the minus 33 centimeters, the smallest unit of space in the universe. That's where geometry, which goes hand-in-hand with physics, fails and string theory emerges.

String theory attempts to unite Einstein's general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics under one umbrella, or "theory of everything," that explains all of the fundamental forces and particles in our universe. According to string theory, all elementary particles are tiny vibrating strands of energy.

"String theory is the only known solution to the problem which is at the core of modern physics: the incompatibility of quantum mechanics and gravity," says Aganagic. "If you could look at them from far away, they'd look like points," she goes on to say, "but if you get close enough, you'd realize that they're really one-dimensional loops."

These loops of string vibrate in 10 dimensions, and every kind of particle and force corresponds to the particular vibrational pattern of a string. While there is no experimental proof yet that string theory is correct, Aganagic says that putting the physics through the mathematical ringer is not entirely unlike experimental verification.

"You could say that what we're discovering is quantum geometry," she adds.

For example, one problem she has investigated, as reported by UC's David Pescovitz, involves calculating the entropy of black holes. According to classical physics, material that falls into a black hole could vanish from our universe entirely, violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. However, string theory provides a "fantastically clever way of solving the problem," Aganagic says, without violating any fundamental laws of nature.

"Unlike in Einstein's time when the relevant mathematics was already in existence, the mathematics we need now hasn't been fully developed yet," Aganagic says. "This time around, math and physics are being discovered in parallel."

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:50 AM  Permalink |

Researchers at Penn State University have developed an algorithm thatlets users of cell-phone and other mobile devices pick up data that may have been "missed" when first broadcast. And because it minimizes channel switching, the algorithm also leads to reduced power use, thereby extending battery life.

According to Prasenjit Mitra, an assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) "cell-phone users don't have to wait for fewer broadcast cycles to retrieve the data as the mobile device can pick up objects broadcast across parallel air channels."

Mitra, graduate student Padmapriya Ayyagari, and professor of computer science Ali Hurson, say that data dissemination for mobile devices now occurs through one of two techniques:

• Unicast, which is common when data is sent to a single person.
• Broadcast, when data is sent to multiple people over parallel air channels.

While broadcast is more common when the same content such as emergency alerts, weather information or television shows reaches multiple people, the typical algorithm currently used can't take advantage of data that is broadcast repeatedly on different channels. Instead the data has to be broadcast in cycles. This wastes both time and power.

"If you can retrieve all the data you want in fewer broadcast cycles, then the user saves on time and battery power," Mitra said. "The power-consumption reduction is achieved because the technique fetches all the objects requested by a client while minimizing the number of channel switches required."

As part of their study, the researchers developed and compared the performance of the four kinds of algorithms--greedy, random, branch-and-bound, and select first--that could be used to improve object retrieval and reduce power consumption. Of these, the researchers' greedy algorithms created an efficient and quick solution to object retrieval that also decreased battery drain.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 12:17 PM  Permalink |

If John F. Kennedy had been a mathematician instead of a politician, his Pultizer-prize winning book Profiles In Courage might well have been titled "Profiles In Numbers."

Luckily, Steven Krantz, a professor of mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis, has picked up where Kennedy left off with Mathematical Apocrypha Redux, a sequel to his Mathematical Apocrypha. Published by the Mathematical Association of America, the book is a collection of anecdotes about famous mathematicians.

Putting a human face on mathematicians is Krantz's goal with the book. Not that mathematicians are any different from the rest of us, of course. If I recall it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said in his short story "The Rich Boy" that (and correct me if I'm wrong here) "Let me tell you about mathematicians. They are different from you and me." (Or was he talking about rich people, or maybe rich mathematicins? Whatever.) In any event, Krantz pulls together a bunch of humorous anecodotes about people you may or may not have heard about before. For instance:

• One day, a very famous mathematician at Princeton University named Willie Feller and his wife were trying to move a large table from their living room into their dining room. But they couldn't get it through the door. They struggled and they struggled and they just couldn't do it, and finally, in exhaustion and frustration, Feller sat down and did a mathematical derivation to prove that the table couldn't be gotten through the door. Meanwhile, as he was doing that, his wife got the table through the door.

• My friend Ken Rosen is most successful textbook authors around -- he has a very successful book on discrete math. And this book is actually used in Kuwait. In fact, the Kuwaitis had some trouble with this book's section on logic. And one of the things you do in sentential logic is you teach the students to analyze the truth value of the various sentences. There are some famous examples that you always use. So, one of the examples in this book is: if one plus one equals three, then God does not exist. Another example is: if two plus two equals four, then pigs can fly. He has these in his book. And the Kuwaitis were very unhappy with him because they thought the first sentence was blasphemous, and the second sentence somehow associated the unclean pig with God. They had to undergo some negotiation.

• John Nash gave a talk in 2002, after the movie "A Beautiful Mind" had come out. It was very well attended. I think 2000 people went to the talk, and it was a very technical talk. The next day, my friend from Sweden, Christer Kiselman, went up to John Nash and congratulated him on the talk. He said, "Gee, I was very pleased to see how many people came out to your talk." And Nash said, "Well there's this movie starring Russell Crowe that seems to have gotten a lot of attention."

Of course, Krantz better watch out because he could end up being the subject of someone else's book. After all, he's a mathematician who has published 53 books himself and got his Ph.D. at the advanced age of 23. He received the Chauvenet Prize of the Mathematics Association of America (MAA) in 1992 for expository writing, and the Beckenbach Prize of the MAA in 1994 for his book, Complex Analysis: The Geometric Viewpoint.

According to Krantz "Being a mathematician is a bit like being a manic depressive: you spend your life alternating between giddy elation and black despair."

I know the feeling--every month when I add and subtract (mainly subtract) while balancing my checkbook.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:21 AM  Permalink |

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science have come up with a new way for computers to generate 3-D reconstructions of 2-D images.

Using machine-learning techniques, Alexei Efros and Martial Hebert and graduate student Derek Hoiem have taught computers how to spot visual cues that differentiate between vertical surfaces and horizontal surfaces in photographs of outdoor scenes.

Identifying vertical and horizontal surfaces and the orientation of those surfaces provides much of the information necessary for understanding the geometric context of an entire scene. Only about 3 percent of surfaces in a typical photo are at an angle, they found.

Using images located via a Google search, Hoiem presented to a computer examples of vertical and horizontal surfaces, letting a machine-learning program develop statistical associations between certain shapes, shadings, and other characteristics typical of each orientation. The program also takes advantage of the constraints of the real world--skies are blue, horizons are horizontal and most objects sit on the ground.

Hoiem found the computer often discerned which surfaces were vertical or horizontal, and whether a vertical surface faced left, right, or toward viewers. Based on the examples it was shown, the computer identified each feature in an image and assigned to it a probability that it had a horizontal or vertical orientation.

A program they've written lets the computer generate 3-D reconstructions of scenes based on a single image. Animations of the 3-D models are also available. The program, which is freely available in executable form, takes in an original image, a superpixel image, and learned models of geometry. It outputs a labeled image, confidence maps for labels, and the VRML files. Data files (in .mat format) are also available for for training and testing the system.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:03 AM  Permalink |

It used to be that a "platform" was something that you dove off of into the lake, stuck in your shoes if you were vertically challenged, or used as a formal declaration of views by politicians in elections.

But that's before "platform" became a computer industry buzzword--and there was no letting up of buzzing around platforms at TechEd 2006, as Microsoft did its part to redefine what a platform is. For instance, the Microsoft Application Platform is:

a portfolio of technology capabilities, core products and best practice guidance, focused on helping IT and development departments to partner with the business to maximize opportunity -- the ability to drive the right efficiencies, customer connections and value added services for business growth.

That's perfectly clear, right?

Central to this message is that, according to Microsoft, data (and buzzwords?) is growing faster than users can interpret and harness it. (Okay, I go along with that.) So Microsoft says it is going beyond traditional data management with a data platform (there's that word again) that can support new and expanding data types while supporting the secure capture and management of anonymous data outside data center. Further, data management for Microsoft means supporting the new breed of dynamic apps--data-driven, highly mobile, and occasionally connected.

Process-based and service-oriented approaches are key to connected and adaptive applications. Microsoft recognizes the inherent complexities of connecting systems in heterogeneous environments (does that mean Linux and OS X?) and aligning core business activities and development teams. A flexible service-oriented approach helps customers manage change, streamline and automate business processes and interoperate with existing IT investments. (What happened to "platforms"?)

Collaborative development environments fuel business-driven software. (By that, more than a single person works on solving a problem. See "development teams" above.) Delivering software initiatives that drive business value on time and at desired quality (not "best" or "highest" quality?) requires aligning the right roles and teams across business and IT. Ensuring individual and team productivity requires the right level of visibility, collaboration and control within the software development process (thanks for mentioning that software developers develop software). Real-time data capture and customizable lightweight process and reporting are vital for compliance, project estimation, impact analysis, and repeatable success.

In any event, Microsoft went on to announce a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of SQL Server Everywhere, an offering for storage on clients of all types that provide a lightweight, compact, but rich subset of the capabilities found in other SQL Server editions. Beyond having rich local data management capabilities, SQL Server Everywhere Edition also includes support for seamlessly synchronizing with other SQL Server editions and provides features that promote building rich client applications that operate effectively in "occasionally connected" environments.

In short, Microsoft sees mobile devices that are sometimes connected to networks (wirelessly or not)and that require synchronization with host databases to be really important.

In this spirit, Microsoft also recently announced the Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (listen to this Dr. Dobb's podcast. The Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals includes tools that enable software development organizations to collaborate more effectively. Other announcements include BizTalk Server 2006 R2 builds on BizTalk Server 2006’s business process management capabilities by extending a company’s core process management technologies into supply-chain and trading partner scenarios. Lastly, developers familiarizing themselves with the Visual Studio Tools for Office Cypress plug-in for the 2007 Microsoft Office system, with the first CTP available now.

Actually, Cypress does appear to be useful and interesting. It is free add-on to Visual Studio 2005 which lets you build applications targeting Office 2007. It provides application-level add-ins for Office applications such as Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, InfoPath and Visio, and supports a programming model and runtime support for Ribbon, Custom Task Panes, and Outlook forms regions.

And no where is it referred to as a "platform."

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:15 AM  Permalink |

Microsoft's TechEd 2006 kicked off in Boston with a pre-conference keynote by Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie, who spoke on the topic of how how services will open the door to enterprise infrastructure and applications that are more flexible, agile and cost-effective.

Ozzie referred to this as "service disruption." In a prepared statement, here's some of what Ozzie had to say:

We are rapidly entering a new era in which Internet-based services will transform the way we create, deploy, manage and use information technology. I’ve been referring to this as the "services disruption," and I believe it will give rise to a dramatic shift in the computing and communications landscape that will be felt across this industry and by every market segment, from consumers to small businesses to educational institutions and governments. In particular, I believe that the services disruption will have significant impact on corporate IT and the way we think about both infrastructure and business solutions.

Q: Why is this disruption emerging now?

Ozzie: Like previous technology disruptions, the services disruption is fueled by ongoing innovation and improvement in low-level, enabling technologies like processing power, storage capacity and network bandwidth. Today the telephone in my pocket has a processor that is 10 times faster than the supercomputers I used in college. A decade ago, the state-of-the art was a laptop with an 810-MB hard drive. Today you can buy a 1-GB flash SD card for your camera for $25. Meanwhile, more and more of us have become addicted to our always-on high bandwidth connection at work and at home.

So far, the impact of all of these trends can be seen most clearly in the consumer realm -- in areas like gaming and messaging. To meet the incredible growth in consumer demand for more and better service-based offerings, companies like Microsoft are building vast data centers that are designed to serve hundreds of millions of users, store petabytes worth of information and move trillions of e-mails. The key questions are a) what impact does the consumer services boom have on the way individuals want to work, and what does that mean for corporate IT?, and b) how can companies take advantage of the data center investments to reduce costs and grow revenue?

Q: You said that the services disruption is of particular importance for the enterprise. In what ways?

Ozzie: Combining software plus services is a powerful concept that is extremely well-suited to the needs of today’s business environment. Corporate IT departments continually look for ways to reduce complexity, and they are constantly asked to find ways to drive down costs while driving up agility. Meanwhile, they have to help their organizations adapt to the realities of the global economy, meet the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce, and fulfill the requirement to integrate more easily with partners and suppliers. We believe a blended client-server-services approach will help IT departments tackle these challenges with greater flexibility and efficiency.

Q: As the services disruption takes hold, what will the enterprise of the future look like?

Ozzie: IT vendors and IT professionals have traditionally had a view that if it’s inside the firewall it can be managed and if it’s outside the firewall, it represents a potential threat to corporate security. Services will provide IT with new options to extend management outside the firewall to registered devices, software and systems, regardless of where they reside. This will be critical as people increasingly look to bring personal laptops, smart phones, and USB memory keys into the enterprise because they find them useful. Services will enable people to use a variety of self-supported devices that that they find useful while giving IT the tools to protect the company’s interests.

We’re entering an era where there is tremendous opportunity for IT in the realm of what I call Management as a Service or "MaaS." These are Internet-based management services that can be federated with existing enterprise management systems and that can reach out and touch a wide range of software and devices. An example of the power and value of MaaS can be found today in our Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services, which includes anti-virus, anti-spam, archiving, disaster recovery and encryption capabilities, all of which can be delivered and managed purely as an Internet service.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 07:58 AM  Permalink |

What's with this video game fixation? Everytime you turn around, it's video game this and video games that.

In yesterday's blog, for instance, I mentioned how the researchers at the University of Southern California are developing user-testing tools for games that capture and analyze play experience to automatically detect design weakness and flaws.

Not to be outdone, another program at USC is trying to use video games to promote world peace. In this case, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy hosted a competition to design a prototype or modify a game incorporating the fundamental characteristics of public diplomacy. First place, and a $5000 check, went to PeaceMaker, a cross-cultural political video game simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict . Second place went to Hydro Hijinks, a project designed to promote discussion about international water issues, and third place to Exchanging Cultures, a diplomatic game to facilitate the creating virtual communities and relationships based on the exchange of cultural items.

Then there is the Cornell University all-female team that recently took first place with their interactive game "Green, Eggs, and Pan" at the Games4Girls programming competition. Why games? Why not word processors or spreadsheets?

Okay, while one group is promoting video games, another is helping video game addicts get over their jones. Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants, an addiction treatment provider in Amsterdam, has opened Europe's first treatment center for video game addicts. According to reports, nearly two dozen addicts have seeked help from the center, prompting the center to kick off a new gaming program next month. The program will apparently be associated with the center's gambling treatment since, according to a BBC report, counselors "saw enormous parallels between problems with gaming and alcohol and gambling." Those seeking treatment are almost always adolescent males, and they must commit to up to eight weeks of in-house treatment.

Then there are our elected officials, who want to solve the video game "problem" once and for all. In Minnesota, lawmakers have decided to go after consumers. Minnesota bill HF1298, which goes into effect on August 1, 2006, mandates a $25 civil penalty against any underage person who purchases a M or AO-rated game. It also makes mandatory for retailers to put up signs that explain the ESRB rating system to customers. Likewise, Maryland has passed video game law that centers its definition of what is "obscene" around nudity and sex, to the exclusion of violence. A law was proposed in Tennessee to the ban of the sale of violent videogames, regardless of consumer age; it was ultimately withdrawn. California's video game legislation restricts the sale of violent games to minors and requires manufacturers, distributors, importers, and retailers to put extra labels on such games. It's under review by the courts. And China’s Ministry of Culture has taken steps that a lot of U.S. legislators wish they could--outright banning of games they don't like.

Sometimes it's worth remembering that, as the old saying goes, "it's only a game."

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:57 AM  Permalink |

Who says user testing is supposed to be fun? (DDJ blogger Michael Hunter notwithstanding, of course.) Who says, for that matter, that education is supposed to be fun? Well, researchers at the University of Southern California, that's who.

To prove their point that you can have your game and play it to, USC researchers are developing user-testing tools for games that capture and analyze play experience to automatically detect design weakness and flaws.

"Traditionally," says Tim Marsh, a post-doctoral researcher at USC's Viterbi School of Engineering, "game companies hire teenagers, and turn them loose trying to find flaws and gaps in the game," which they report either verbally or in writing, along with their impressions."

Marsh contends that this approach is neither systematic nor scientific. Instead, the approach he and his team, which includes Cyrus Shahabi, Kiyoung Yang, and Shamus Smith, are proposing analyzes "immersidata." Shahabi came up with the term when referring to a machine-readable record of commands sent to the computer by keyboards, joysticks, and other controls, collected in parallel with a videotape recording of the player at the game session.

The testing tool, called "ISIS" (short for "Immersidata AnalySIS')identifies data of interest and index events within the videotape. For the game development application, ISIS returns examples of six different kinds of occurrences, or "points" in the immersidata/video record:

• Activity completion points.
  
• Task completion points, which let researchers review the performance of a task.
  
• Break points, when nothing is happening.
  
• Wandering points, when user-player are moving, but not selecting objects .
  
• Critical events, actions leading up to accomplishment or non-accomplishment.
  
• Navigation errors. Collisions which indicate inadequate or poor design.

By backtracking from the points, researchers can see how the point developed.

According to Marsh, the system effectively finds problems in the areas it is set to look for. Improvements to ISIS include adding functionality for finding and identifying other potential problem areas--recognizing repetition patterns by players, and replacing and/or supplementing the video capture with a replay of the game from the player's point of view. Marsh is also working on ways to use immersidata to capture more aspects of the game experience, including emotional/empathetic elements.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:24 AM  Permalink |

My first mouse, officially referred to as a "pointing device" if I recall, was a decidedly non-ergonomic one-button brick that plugged into a TRS-80 Color Computer.

The reason I had the thing in hand was that I had to write an owner's manual for it. Forgive me, but I'm trying to remember what I said. Maybe something like. "Plug it into the serial connector and move it around."? The service manual was easier: "If the device doesn't work, throw it away and give the customer a new one that does work." The software development manual for it was a little more interesting, but almost as short.

By now, of course, most of us know the history Douglas Engelbart, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and the mouse. If you need to catch up, check out the MouseSite. (That's Mouse "SITE", not Mouse "CLUB".)

Over the years, mouses ("mice"? No one has ever cleared that one up.) have progressed, thanks in part to the likes of Logitech and Microsoft. There were even mouses that looked like mice, down to a cute little nose and whiskers. The mouses I use today are wireless, wheeled, and optical--a Microsoft mouse for my desk and Kensington mini Pocketmouse for traveling. Certainly a long way from the one-button brick that required adverbs and adjectives on my part.

For instance, Microsoft Research India has come up with a "multimouse" for collaborative experiences. Granted, the multiple-input technique, coined "Single Display Groupware," has been around for a while and is mostly a software solution.The software, developed by research assistant Udai Singh Pawar, assistant managing director Kentaro Toyama, and research intern Sushma Uppala, enables multi-colored cursors to co-exist on a single computer monitor.They also wrote mouse drivers that would let Windows use multiple mice and cursors on one monitor simultaneously. The team also is building a SDK (available this summer) that includes games and applications to that schools, teachers, and students can build their own Multimouse content.

The team presented its findings, particularly as applied to education, in a paper entitled "Multiple Mice for Computers in Education in Developing Countries" at the recent International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development.

In the meantime, companies like Logitech are moving forward with mouse innovations of their own. With names that sound more like sports cars than computer mouses, Logitech's latest offering include the "Logitech MX 610 Laser Cordless Mouse" and the "Logitech LX7 Cordless Optical Mouse." The MX610 for instance, can receive and process wireless communication from the PC, sensing when the computer shuts off and powers down accordingly. And with integrated its LEDs, the mouse notifies people when they receive an important e-mail or instant message, or when the mouse battery is low. According to Logitech:

Sculpted for the right hand, the Logitech MX610 Laser Cordless Mouse delivers a comfortable fit to go along with its stylish silver and black design.

Come on, it's a mouse--not a bottle of champagne.

Not to be outdone:

Sculpted to fit comfortably in the right or left hand, the sleek Logitech LX7 Cordless Optical Mouse is sculpted on both sides of the mouse, giving it an hourglass shape. The mouse features a soft-touch, rubberized grip, helping maximize comfort. Also, the product comes in two different stylish color combinations: glossy metallic blue/piano black and quartz gray/piano black. Designed to make using a cordless mouse easier than ever, the mouse has a battery life of up to eight months and features a clutter-reducing wireless USB mini-receiver that is plug and play.

Jeez, and to think all I could come up back with my TRS-80 mouse was "plug it in and move it around."

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:22 AM  Permalink |

Ben Liblit, an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's department of computer sciences, has put together the Cooperative Bug Isolation Project, a project he refers to as "statistical debugging" because it finds bugs in programs via automated statistical analysis instead of laborious manual inspection.

The way the project works is that Liblit and his team distribute specially modified versions of open source software such as Evolution (similar to Microsoft Outlook), Gnumeric (a spreadsheet), Rhythmbox(similar to iTunes), and Spin, a CPU simulator from Bell Labs.

The software in the Project's download area has been augmented with extra instrumentation code that runs along side the application to monitor its behavior. The specific behavior the Cooperative Bug Isolation Project monitors varies depending on how the application was built. In general, Liblit is looking at data values and decisions within the application, and testing them to see if they show unusual patterns. If monitoring picks up something unusual, and the application also crashes, then they may have isolated the cause of a bug.

Clearly recording everything an application does is too slow and could also be a serious invasion of privacy. Instead, Liblit only looks at a very sparse sample of what is going on. The instrumentation they add is not active all the time. It turns on/off randomly while the application runs, with most of its time spent off. That gives Liblit a partial but fair picture of what the code is doing without slowing you down. You can participate in this project without worrying that our extra monitoring will get in your way. All in all, Liblit has posted 192 versions of eight different open-source applications. These special versions monitor their own behavior while they run, and report back.

The system averages just under 3000 new reports per month, and bug rates vary a great deal across applications, he says, with "crash rates" as high as 8 percent in one application to a low of 0.4 percent in another. All in all, the "kill board" has recorded 546 outright program crashes and 11,369 lower-level errors as of April 2006.

The ACM thinks Liblit is on to something. It named Liblit's doctoral dissertation on cooperative bug isolation (from the University of California-Berkeley) as the best computer science and engineering dissertation in 2005.

The real excitement of the project, Liblit says, is that it could dramatically improve the ability to enhance software post-deployment.

"Software developers deploy their programs and rarely hear directly from users, but the poor guy in tech support gets an earful," he says. "That's the only kind of feedback you get; you lob it over the wall and hope it works.

"It has been cynically observed that software developers use their consumers as beta testers," he says. "I think there's a lot of truth to that observation. The problem is consumers are not very good beta testers. They're not very disciplined, they don't keep good records, they never do the same thing twice. My solution is to make them better beta testers."

Posted by Jon Erickson at 04:52 AM  Permalink |

The world of research labs can be a confusing one. We've all heard about Bell Labs. Then there's Microsoft Research (which I wrote about last week), a bunch of IBM labs, the legendary Xerox PARC, and a raft of government labs scattered from Los Alamos to Brookhaven and back. And all those are just for starters. But one research facility we don't hear much about is Sun Labs.

That's surprising considering that of the approximately 170 employees, two--James Gosling and Guy Steele Jr.--of the five Sun Fellows who work there have received Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Awards.

In an effort to elevate its visibility, Sun Labs recently hosted, in concert with the Computer History Museum, an open house that featured peeks at next generation technologies and talks by Sun research scientists. Sun Labs is no garage-shop operation. Since launching the research facility in 1991, Sun has invested nearly $2 billion per year in R&D, much of which has found its way back into Sun product units. That may change, however, due to the company's recently announced restructuring plans.

According to Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's R&D efforts will emphasize emerging technologies for service architectures. He added that although Sun will continue to develop products for traditional corporate computing, much of the company's research will focus on scaleable hardware/software for organizations with business models similiar to Salesforce.com, Amazon.com, and Google. On the corporate IT side, Papadopoulos said advances will be made to help large service providers manage networks tied together in clusters or grids as well as developing operating systems standards for what he called to as "horizontal computing." Central to this will be Sun's focus on
multithreaded architectures powered by multicore processors.

Among other projects showcased, Sun researchers showed an innovative media browser that lets users search for, say, movie titles based genres, rather than lists and so on. Another project optimized database architectures on clusters, while others used wireless sensors programmed in Java. Yet another project combined social-networking and video-conferencing so people can interact over high-resolution video screens.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:53 AM  Permalink |

The usual excuse given for moving offshore, say to India, is to take advantage of cheap labor. However, that's probably not the case with Microsoft Research (MSR), which opened an R&D lab in Bangalore at the beginning of this year. So what is Microsoft Research up to?

In a recent interview with MIT Technology Review's Wade Roush, MSR India's assistant managing director Kentaro Toyama explained what's happening. According to Toyama, MSR India is conducting research on six areas:

• Cryptography.
• Digital geographies (any kind of digital map or location-based services and software).
• Multilingual systems (speech recognition, natural language processing, and the like).
• Communications hardware (distributed sensor networks).
• Software engineering (tools to make software development easier).
• Emerging markets.

It's worth noting that the MRS India web site also included "Security and Algorithms" as another area of research.

When it comes to software development (or "Rigorous Software Engineering" as the web site puts it), it is no surprise that research into collaborative global development of particular interest For example, as Toyama points out, how do you "write specifications for a particular program such that you can really just throw it over the fence [to a team in a different country] and it doesn't require a lot of discussion?" Toyama goes on to add that MSR India researchers spend time with Microsoft product groups, educating them about emerging markets.

All in all, MSR is a 700-member group with labs in Redmond, the San Francisco Bay Area, Cambridge, Beijing, and Bangalore.

To its credit, MSR has been open about sharing its research activities at conferences, papers, and in articles such as:

• "Predicting Communications Bottlenecks", by Stathis Papaefstathiou.
• "Composing Reactive Animations", by Conal Elliott.
• "Improving Performance with Custom Pool Allocators for STL", by Anthony Aue.

among others.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 07:45 AM  Permalink |

Offshore outsourcing continues to be in the headlights of everyone from Dilbert to Lou Dobbs--and it continues to be the real deal, at least according to Evans Data’s Spring 2006 North American Development Survey.

According to Evans Data, there has been an 18 percent increase in the use of contractors and a 25 percent increase in overall outsourcing over the past year. Outsourcing by the corporate enterprise segment, which accounted for 57 percent of the development effort, increased by 37 percent. Offshore outsourcing saw more than 37 percent of North American companies sending development offshore, representing a 20 percent increase from the prior study. Additionally, in this same period the study indicates an increased willingness by a greater number of small and medium companies to pursue outsourcing and off shoring.

"The focus has shifted away from outsourcing or off shoring simply to save costs toward strategic talent acquisition of more highly qualified workers who have been trained in the technology areas that are driving business process change and revenue generation," said John Andrews, President of Evans Data. "We see this trend continuing to play a critical role going forward as the pressure on IT to be ever more agile and innovative will only increase."

Other findings from the Spring Survey included:

• Wireless development efforts are expected to double to 40 percent in the next 24 months.
• 69 percent of respondents consider Linux viable for mission critical applications, driving the 50 percent adoption rate expected by the year end. Corporate enterprises, typically the last segment to adopt non-commercial applications, are adopting Linux at growing rates.
• AJAX has seen an 11 percent adoption increase since the release of the previous study.

Another study, this one by research firm Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), says that Central and Eastern Europe and North Africa are set to become the next favored locations for outsourcing centers, especially for companies based in Europe. According to EIU, India is becoming too expensive and European firms want a closer cultural fit. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, has opened offices in eastern European cities Bucharest, Sofia, and Bratislava where it expects staff to increase to 4000 by the end of 2007 from 1500.

As reported by Reuters in a VAR Business article, the global offshoring market is worth between $40 billion to $50 billion a year, and it is growing by around 30 percent annually, according to the EIU survey. It may be as much as $100 billion by 2008. According to the article, Romania, Egypt, and Jordan are some of the new locations for the offshore IT industry, the survey said.

In a related note, the immigration bill passed recently by the U.S. Senate proposes to raise the annual H-1B cap from 65,000 to 115,000 workers. In 2005, the 2006 fiscal year H-1B cap at 65,000 was reached a month before the fiscal year started.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 07:52 AM  Permalink |