The Web Scene » tech

Tech Volunteers Aiding Haiti Relief Efforts

sparky3887 — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:44:10 +0000

Software developers and tech-savvy individuals from around the world are organizing to help with the Haiti relief effort. For example, Noel Dickover co-founded CrisisCommons to provide non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and others in Haiti with better information and situational awareness. “If we can improve situational awareness and information sharing, we can help NGOs have better performance across the board,” Dickover says. Projects already underway include the Haiti OpenStreetMap, a global positioning system-compatible street map of Haiti. Another project is the We Have, We Need Exchange program, an online marketplace for the exchange of resources and services geared toward NGOs in Haiti. Other projects include a timeline of events, a wiki hosted by National Public Radio, an English to Creole dictionary for iPhone and Android mobile devices, and a system to use Twitter messages to ask for or offer assistance. Other volunteer tech efforts include a collaborative effort between Ushaahidi, InSTEDD, and Thompson Reuters to launch a disaster information service using local SMS short code for people in Haiti to text their emergency needs.

View Full Article

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

Intel Joins Search for Thought-Controlled Tech

sparky3887 — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:23:07 +0000

Researchers are developing technology that would enable people to control electronic devices using only their thoughts. The technology uses software that can analyze and interpret patterns in the brain’s electrical activity when people think about specific words or actions. “If we could access the global information network simply by using the power of our thoughts, it would open up incredible new opportunities for computing technology,” says Intel’s Dean Pomerleau, who has been working with Carnegie Mellon University researchers to study brain patterns. The U.S. Army is working with University of California, Irvine researchers to study how to harness brain waves to send nonverbal messages in battle. Meanwhile, Mayo Clinic researchers think thoughts can be read faster by placing sensors inside the skull. The Mayo Clinic’s Jerry Shih says that one day people’s brains could be implanted with microchips similar to those used for personal computers. Already, University of Southern California researchers have implanted chips into the brains of rats to try to study ways to boost memory, with applications for Alzheimer’s patients in mind.

View Full Article

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

Georgia Tech Broadens, Diversifies Computing Education

sparky3887 — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:26:19 +0000

The Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Computing has received a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue its Georgia Computes! program, which promotes computer science to both students and teachers across the state. The program’s initiatives include encouraging women, minorities, and people with disabilities to participate in computer science programs, doubling the number of schools that provide Advanced Placement computer science classes and the number of Hispanics that take the exam, designing eight summer computing camps, and improving 25 percent of the computing programs in George at the university level. Elementary and high school students are guided by mentors from a variety of backgrounds, including high school students, undergraduates, or members of youth organizations. Students ages 10 to 18 can attend summer computing camps, while high school teachers can attend computing workshops. Undergraduate students can attend computing workshops as well, and can serve as mentors to elementary and high school students. Researchers are studying why there is less interest in computer science at the undergraduate level. Graduate students can work as mentors and also chart the number of computer science majors in Georgia. In the future, Georgia Computes! will add computer centers to Columbus State and Armstrong Atlantic State University and will provide online access to computing workshops and classes. The program also will study state university computer science programs and will chart the course students take from secondary school-level summer camps, workshops, and classes to their current majors.

View Full Article

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

Georgia Tech to Transform Unemployed Technology Workers Into High School Computing Teachers

sparky3887 — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:55:34 +0000

The National Science Foundation has awarded $2.5 million to the Georgia Tech College of Computing to implement Operation Reboot, a three-year program that will train 30 unemployed information technology (IT) workers to work as high school computing teachers. Current computing teachers will work with IT workers for one year, sharing their classroom responsibilities and training them. In turn, computing teachers will learn important IT skills. At the end of the year, the IT professional will have earned an initial teaching certificate with a computer science endorsement. IT co-teachers will help high schools provide more computing courses, improve their curriculum, and generate more student interest. Georgia Tech predicts that the expertise IT professionals will bring to the classroom will lead to a 30 percent increase in the number of students with classroom computing experience. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that there will not be enough computer science professionals to meet the demands of the industry, which is expected to offering rapidly rising employment opportunities until at least 2016. Operation Reboot plans to provide improved computing education to 4,600 students over the next three years. The results of the program will be published and made available as a model for other states to follow.

View Full Article

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

Experimental Tech Turns Your Coffee Table Into a Universal Remote

sparky3887 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:33:44 +0000

The recent ACM SIGGRAPH conference offered a video demonstration of Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces (CRISTAL), a multitouch tabletop display that acts as a universal remote. Australian researcher Christian Muller-Tomfelde, who is currently writing a book on research in tabletop displays, says CRISTAL is easy to use. “It is a clever use of the tabletop as a ‘world-in-miniature’ interface to control room elements,” he says. CRISTAL uses a camera to deliver a streaming video view of the room, including the TV, radio, DVD player, lamps, and digital picture frames, on the tabletop. The video image of a device acts as the interface, so the user could make a sliding motion on the TV to adjust the volume. The user also could drag the image of the cover of a movie on the multitouch screen and drop it on the image of the TV to watch it. The team behind CRISTAL says such a tabletop remote could cost $10,000 to $15,000, and could reach consumers in a few years if it is combined with Microsoft’s Surface multitouch display. “We wanted a social aspect to activities such as choosing what to watch on TV and we wanted to make the process easy and intuitive,” says the University of Waterloo’s Stacey Scott, who worked on the CRISTAL project.

View Full Article

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

U.S. Tech Education Push Gets a New Techie Weapon

sparky3887 — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:16:17 +0000

Raytheon recently presented an open source computer simulation and modeling program designed to improve science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to the nonprofit Business-Higher Education Forum. The Raytheon model uses more than 200 variables to assess the effectiveness of policies and programs to encourage students to pursue STEM paths. “Our country is founded on creativity and innovation,” says Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. “In order to have that in the future, we need a robust pipeline of STEM graduates to enjoy what our generation has enjoyed.” Brian Fitzgerald, the forum’s executive director, says the use of a modeling program is a major departure from standard measurement techniques. Fitzgerald says the program will give the STEM promotion effort more relevant information, so efforts to improve STEM education do not rely on “policy by anecdote.” In 2005, 1.3 million high school graduates were academically ready for college, and 277,550 declared STEM majors, but only 166,530 were expected to graduate with STEM degrees. That 40 percent dropout rate is a major concern to U.S. educators and policymakers, Fitzgerald says. The Raytheon modeling program will enable researchers to explore data variables to see how changes could affect STEM graduation rates. The program is the first to use this type of computing, called systems dynamics modeling, on STEM education, says Kathryn Sullivan, director of the Battelle Center for Mathematics and Science Education Policy at Ohio State University.

View Full Article

For more information please visit: http://www.cpccci.com

O’Brien: Gap Between Boys and Girls Persists in Tech

sparky3887 — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:55:10 +0000

A recent ACM study concluded that there is still a major gap between how teenage girls and boys view computers and careers in computer science. The nationwide ACM survey of college-bound high school students age 13 to 17 found that 45 percent of boys thought majoring in computer science would be “very good” while only 10 percent of girls shared that viewpoint. There were also major disparities when asked about different technical tasks, such as learning a new software program, setting up a wireless network, or editing music or video on a computer, with boys consistently giving more confident responses than girls. “Using technology doesn’t necessarily enhance your idea of creating technology,” says Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology president Telle Whitney. “If you think about how you think about your car, it kind of makes sense. I think many girls are like that.” In the ACM study, when asked to do a word association based on computers, boys responded with words like design, games, and video, while girls responded with words like boring, hard, and nerd. “As long as teenagers believe that computer science is boring, difficult, anti-social, or doesn’t have much impact on solving the world’s problems, they’re unlikely to choose it for their future,” the study says. Whitney says the Borg Institute is working to change these misconceptions among young women by arguing that computer skills are necessary for success in a world that is increasingly dominated by technology. Whitney believes that much of the change will come from establishing mentoring programs so girls can find successful role models in the technology industry. “One of our messages is that you can like pink and you can like princesses and still be good at programming a computer,” she says.

View Full Article

For more information please visit: http://www.cpccci.com

Hi-Tech Aims to Improve Lifestyle

sparky3887 — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:11:01 +0000

A three-year project is exploring how people react and behave when information on their energy use and activity levels are presented to them through mobile phones, energy meters, and online social networks. Previous research found that the way people are told about poor lifestyle choices can influence how they react and respond. Instead of simply telling people to stop, it is more effective to reveal how their behavior compares to their peers. Through three separate investigations, the Charm Project, led by Kingston University reader Ruth Rettie, will collect data about consumption or usage behavior in relation to sustainability, send that information back to the participants, and see how their behavior changes. The first investigation will use mobile phones that feature software capable of measuring their users’ activity levels using accelerometers to measure how far people walk and global positioning systems for those that bike. Participants will be given feedback on their activity levels and whether they are more or less active than others in the group. Information may be presented in different ways, such as a flower garden representing all users, with more active members’ flowers growing taller. A second investigation will monitor household energy use. Information on a home’s energy use could be sent back to the resident using a text message, a project Web site, or a postal letter. The third investigation will focus on the social networking site Facebook and will explore how friends influence one another and see what methods are necessary to get people to live a more sustainable way of life.

View Full Article

For more information please visit: http://www.cpccci.com

Tech Can Help World’s Problems, Ex-President Clinton Says

sparky3887 — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:00:22 +0000

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton says that technology companies can play a significant role in solving the world’s most difficult challenges if they apply their innovative thinking to problems such as climate change and healthcare. Clinton says the technology community is well-suited to addressing questions about climate change, hunger, AIDS, and other problems. Technology groups could help bring electricity and technology to remote locations and clinics, or help the United States find new ways to provide healthcare without continuing to increase costs, he says. Technology also could help raise the standard of living in countries such as Puerto Rico by creating new energy sources, and technology and government leaders could collaborate to find innovative ways of dealing with massive, overflowing landfills in India and poverty in Haiti. World Bank Group director of global information and communications Mohsen Khalil says technology does not necessarily create innovation itself, but it can be a platform for new ideas. “Innovation for developing countries is not a question of technology or invention,” Khalil says. “Innovation is a matter of change in process, in developing new solutions and transformation of ideas.”

View Full Article

For more information please visit: http://www.cpccci.com

Tech Standards Loom as Last Big Hurdle to Internet of Things

sparky3887 — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:35:41 +0000

Technology companies say that a consensus on technical standards is the key to the successful commercialization of the Internet of Things (IoT), a next-generation Web in which billions of digital-enabled objects are networked. “If you think about connecting billions or trillions of objects together on the Internet, you really need to have the right standards,” says Cisco Systems chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior. Twenty-five tech companies formed the Internet Protocol for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance in September to accelerate the development of IoT standards. The success of the Internet hinged on its founders’ decision to base its communications protocols on free and open standards, and Google’s Vint Cerf says “there’s a strong incentive to do something that works with other people’s stuff rather than build a closed, proprietary system.” Developing standards to enable communication between radio-frequency identification (RFID), non-RFID, and Internet networks is a major challenge. Observers say the IoT needs lead users to spearhead innovation, the catch being that such pioneers might create customized solutions to fulfill their own requirements. IBM’s Bernie Meyerson says no one company has the sway to reign over the IoT, and adds that the IoT can expand with multiple standards being established worldwide. The IPSO Alliance is promoting an Internet protocol-based strategy to link sensor networks and objects to the Web, but Meyerson says IBM intends to primarily focus on “the international engineering organizations that perform the actual technical work on industry standards.”

View Full Article

For more information please visit: http://www.cpccci.com