European researchers working on the ASTRA project are combining the instant sharing capabilities of social networking with emerging ambient intelligence systems that use sensors and smart objects to create an awareness of a user’s activities. The researchers say that combining the two technologies could create a new way to stay in touch with friends and relatives. The ASTRA system would use smart objects and sensors distributed throughout a person’s office or home to continually update their status information, automatically informing friends and families if a user is busy in a meeting or doing a chore and unable to answer the phone, for example. “Not only is this information generated automatically, depending on the criteria set by each user, but it does not have to be displayed on a computer screen or in any other distracting way,” says the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute’s Achilles Kameas. “In a smart home or office environment, the system could let users know if someone is available for a phone call or not simply by changing the color of the frame of a photo of them.” Phillips Electronics and mobile operator Telenor are conducting trials of the ASTRA technology, and Kameas says the response from test users has been positive, though some have raised concerns about privacy and security issues. He says the ASTRA system is similar to Facebook in that users can determine how much information is shared and who has access to that information. The researchers plan to launch a follow-up initiative for adaptive pervasive awareness systems based on the concept of a trustworthy personal “bubble” to ensure privacy.

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

The Bush administration’s edict that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) give the lead role in information technology (IT) research projects to companies rather than academia has severely weakened the U.S. IT industry. Restoring the original model is key to undoing the damage and protecting the country’s global domination of IT, writes University of California, Berkeley professor and former ACM president David A. Patterson. Another flaw in the Bush-era DARPA operational model was the requirement that DARPA-funded programs reach milestones in 12 to 18 months or face cancellation, a prospect that Patterson calls “absurd.” He writes that as a result of these policies, “not much progress has been made in solving some of the biggest IT problems confronting us. One worth singling out in particular is developing technology so software can run on multi-core, or parallel, processors.” Patterson says that under the leadership of Tony Tether, DARPA allocated tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to private companies, but none of the research they performed with those funds has made much of a dent in the parallel processing challenge. He warns that if another nation successfully meets this challenge, “the software center of the universe could move from the United States to someplace else.”

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

The European ECOSPACE project has developed a standardized architecture for online group collaboration. The project’s researchers analyzed collaboration applications from various companies to identify the most common and essential aspects of the programs. The researchers then used their findings to develop a standardized architecture with software building blocks, or basic collaboration services, which would allow the collaboration applications to interoperate. The architecture uses a semantic ontology to define and correlate the concepts and terms used by the applications. Prototypes of the system allow users of common collaboration tools to all work on the same documents and projects. The ECOSPACE project also developed several tools to eliminate other barriers to online collaboration, including understanding who is available for collaboration, what their job is, and how they are progressing. One development is an expectation awareness tool that automatically tracks users’ expectations, and can help keep users aware of upcoming deadlines or notify them when a deadline has been missed. The tool makes goals and expectations explicit. Meanwhile, ECOSPACE’s collaboration mining tool oversees a project’s progression by keeping track of who is making changes or is involved in an online project, information that is normally not visible.

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com