The computer was immediately nicknamed ‘Baby’ — something of a misnomer, since it was an enormous device. Its size is illustrated by a picture of the device (below) that recently turned up in an old file at the university.

But the picture only shows one part of Baby, as university press officer Alex Waddington explained: “There was a full panoramic shot of Baby, which was made by photographing it bit by bit, and then fitting the pictures together in one long picture. I’ve checked all the material we published back then and also the clippings from the media, and I can’t see the full panoramic shot anywhere, so it seems it was never released.”Crucially, the picture does not show the output device. The output was, in fact, “read directly from the face of a CRT [cathode ray tube]“, Waddington said.

The Small-Scale Experimental Machine, as Baby was officially named, successfully executed its first program on 21 June, 1948.

By today’s standards, Baby was an extremely primitive machine. In modern terms, the prototype Baby had a random access memory (RAM) of just 32 locations or ‘words’. Each word in the RAM consisted of 32 bits (binary digits) and a total of 1,024 bits of memory. According to Waddington, the computing speed was 1.2 milliseconds per instruction, equivalent to a clock speed of slightly under 1kHz, more than two million times slower than a typical desktop processor today.

Waddington pointed out that an 80GB Apple iPod “is capable of storing 640 million times more information than the original Baby”.

Baby was built using metal racks from the Post Office along with hundreds of valves, and the keyboard was a series of push buttons and switches, mounted vertically.

All this year, the University of Manchester will be hosting a series of events to celebrate the birthday of Baby and the work of its inventors, Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams.

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Calais 2.0 has a dozen new semantic entity types, which Reuters says will increase its utility for “pop-culture publishers and bloggers covering media, music, entertainment and sports, as well as those covering pharmaceuticals, medicine and healthcare.” In addition to expanded semantic identification capabilities, Calais 2.0 can now prints results in the Simple Tags format and Microformats, as well as the original RDF.

More than 3,200 developers have signed up to work with Calais since launch, according to product lead Thomas Tague, who said in a press release that Calais and plugins and services built on the API will “make it easy to kick-start metatagging and enter the era of the Semantic Web.”

Along with an updated web site, a handful of new code samples and libraries, Thomson Reuters is announcing three new plugins that utilize Calais.

• Calais Marmoset is a tool that enables developers to automatically create metadata for use with Yahoo!’s open search platform, Search Monkey (our coverage).
• Calais is also announcing the official release of Tagaroo, a Wordpress plugin that allows bloggers to automatically tag relevant people, places and things in their posts, as well as pull in semantically relevant Flickr photos. We wrote recently about an unofficial Wordpress plugin for Calais, and noted that its utility would be limited mainly to business and tech bloggers because those were the API’s strengths. Calais 2.0 should theoretically improve the utility for both plugins for a wider variety of bloggers.
• Though they’ve been out since last month, Thomson Reuters is also officially introducing their Calais plugins for Drupal, a popular content management system, that it developed with Phase2Technology.

Calais is an awesome top-down semantic API that can help fuel the bottom-up approach by combing unstructured data and spitting out structured tags. We’re excited for the second version of Reuters’ product and the added utility that new semantic entity types should bring.

Souce

It looks a bit iPhone-esque, with its glassy display area, generally flat profile, and rounded corners. Still, the Bold comes configured with a hardware QWERTY keyboard, and it retains the general dimensions of its predecessors, so it’s much shorter and somewhat thicker than the iPhone. The Bold’s removable back is covered in black leatherette, and you’ll be able to personalize the device by buying replacement backs in different colors (blue, brown, green, gray, and red).

The redesigned keyboard has guitar-inspired frets–thin metal strips–between each row. The keys themselves are sculpted to help users avoid fingertip slippage. The device also carries a 2-megapixel camera capable of up to 5X digital zoom.

Here’s the rundown:
• Has 802.11a/b/g plus good GPS, typically a tradeoff with BBs
• GPS is enhanced and assisted, and the handset has better map rendering, says Laptop
• 480 x 320 resolution screen with 65,000 colors—Crave says “never seen a better-looking display”
• 624MHz Intel PXA270/Marvell Tavor PXA930 processor (reports differ), up from 312MHz
• Runs BlackBerry OS 4.6
• Keyboard has 8800-style “sculpted keys,” says PC Mag, “but the rows are separated by curved barriers”
• 4.5″ tall x 2.6″ wide x 0.5″ deep, weighing 4.7oz
• Side-loading MicroSD/SDHC slot for up to 16GB additional
• 2MP camera with flash
• Talk time of 5 hours, with standby of 13 days
• MP3, WMA, AAC, DivX4 and WMV3 codec support
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• “Pretty powerful speakers—none of that weak, tinny junk,” says Crave
• 128MB of flash plus 1GB of onboard memory (with encryption)
• Black leather back panel that can be swapped for other color leather plates
• Pricing will be $300 to $500 says BGR, a pretty wide (and obvious) range; Crave narrows it to “$300 to $400″

Source: PCW, Gizmodo

Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts, Bits, The Social, The Real McCrea, Inside Facebook, Guardian Unlimited, Brij’s One More Idea, Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, Running With Foxes, AppScout, The Inquisitr, Valleywag, FaceReviews, WebProNews, VentureBeat, All Facebook, Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable!, Web Community Forum, WebGuild…

Can Facebook Build a Better Passport It didn’t take long for Facebook to react to the announcement by MySpace Thursday that it would enable other Web sites to tap into information about its users and their friends.

Facebook’s announcement, in a blog post Friday afternoon, is a bit sketchy on the details and has all the appearance of being rushed to match MySpace. Still, what the company calls Facebook Connect offers many of the same capabilities and a few more, too.

Facebook Answers MySpace Data Availability With Facebook Connect Yesterday, we brought you news of MySpace’s surprising Data Portability partnerships with Yahoo!, Twitter, and Ebay, which will allow MySpace users to port their public profiles, photos, videos and some friend data from one site to another. Facebook, not looking to be outdone, has announced plans to launch their new Facebook Connect platform, which has similar functionality to MySpace’s Data Availability.

Facebook announces Connect, to use your data on external sites The Facebook developers blog has announced Facebook Connect, which “allows users to ‘connect’ their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site”.

Facebook to open the gates with ‘Facebook Connect’ Social network Facebook announced Friday the debut of Facebook Connect, a new technology for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites. It makes the company the latest major Web site to embrace the concept of data portability.

Facebook: Our Doors Are Just As Open As MySpace’s Yesterday MySpace (NWS) announced Data AvailabilityFacebook Connect – a new service that allows you to share data with third-party sites that will launch in a couple of weeks. – a new service that allows you to share data with third-party sites that will launch in a couple of weeks. Today Facebook announced

Facebook sees MySpace’s Twitter partnership and raises it Digg We’re at the point that when either of the two social networking giants, MySpace and Facebook, does something, the other has to respond. Yesterday, MySpace unveiled its “Data Availability” initiative, allowing other sites around the Internet to utilize its users’ data to update profiles, photos, videos and other attributes. Today, according to a TechCrunch scoop, Facebook is following that up with “Facebook Connect”. Which does, wait for it — the exact same thing.

Facebook Counters MySpace; Will Let Users Port Profile Data On the heels of yesterday’s “Data Availability” announcement from MySpace, Facebook has just announced the launch their own initiative to allow users to port their profile data to other web sites. Here’s what will be included in Facebook’s version according to a post on the company’s developer blog:

Facebook Responds To MySpace With Facebook Connect Facebook will announce later today Facebook Connect, which has similar functionality to MySpace Data Availability, announced just yesterday. The actual product won’t be released for at least a few weeks, so the timing on this, coming immediately after MySpace, is somewhat suspicious.

Facebook follows MySpace’s lead in letting users share personal … The popular online social hangout Facebook Inc. says it is setting up a new system that will allow its 70 million users to take their personal profiles with them as they surf other websites. Users will be able to automatically copy pictures, personal information and other customized applications established on Facebook to other websites without extra effort once the changes that were announced Friday take effect.

Well, after reading all this, I didn’t want to even comment on the subject.

Reminds me of the time-lapse video of the Techmeme front page created by Amit Argawal (see his blog post) shows how bloggers herd around stories. This entertaining video, which covers 50 hours in the life of the Internet–interestingly, the two days surrounding the Scoble Facebook kerfuffle–shows stories popping on and off the front page of the service, and it graphically illustrates how bloggers and other journalists report on items that have just been covered by their peers and competitors.

See also this post on News.com analyzing this techmeme-effect.

Microsoft-bashing was in vogue the last century!!!

My partner asked me recently why people hate Microsoft so much and it’s a question I’ve been pondering for a while, as well as thinking about my own attitudes towards the world’s largest software company. I consider myself to be in an unusual position in that I’m a Java developer who does actually like Microsoft. This is considered heresy by many in the Java world where the assumption made is that you can’t like both. I may just have lost some readers who visit this site for the occasional Java content, but I don’t take such a binary view of the world. I think that Microsoft is just about the best place to work if you’re passionate about developing software and even those who work for competitors grudgingly agree. I should love to work as a developer at Microsoft if I were a lot cleverer and if I could stomach living in America (no offense intended if you do).

It’s not accidental that a large proportion of the brightest people in the business work for Microsoft. Some would claim that this is down to the lure of MS cash. I don’t buy that argument because for people this smart remuneration would be generous at any company, besides which the acquisition of wealth is not their prime motivation. It’s the opportunity to do great stuff and reach a large number of people. As I’m writing this I’m deliberately trying to be as objective as I can and I’m trying not to just come across as an MS fanboy because I don’t think I am. I’m certainly not reticent about criticising Microsoft when I think they need to do better; indeed you can find several examples on this site.

I welcome diversity in the computing arena and I actively take opportunities to learn about non-Microsoft technology. For example, today whilst I should have been working I read quite a lot about Apple OS X—which I think is a great OS—and I also burnt a CD with Knoppix Linux on it (more about that another time).

What really annoys me is when people are so blinded by their hatred of Microsoft that they lose all objectivity and go about spouting drivel to others, when they haven’t even thought about what it is they’re actually saying and why they’re saying it. Often they’re just repeating the anti-MS mantra because that’s what you do. When so-called IT professionals display this prejudice in an official capacity in meetings, I’m afraid I lose all respect I may have had for them. I flip the bozo bit. The same goes for those who refer to M$ or Micro$oft.

I believe that competition is healthy and improves the breed. I’m glad that Linux exists and continues to improve because it keeps Microsoft focused on improving the Windows operating system that I choose to use. Witness Windows Longhorn, which is shaping up to be the most exciting and interesting realise of Windows for a decade. I may not always choose to use Windows (or whatever its successors are called) but it serves my present needs well. Similarly, Java and J2EE forced Microsoft to do something about its mediocre developer tools offering at the time of Visual Studio 6, which led to the creation of .NET. This in turn has forced Sun to wake up and improve its technology. It’s no co-incidence that Java 1.5 is the most interesting version of Java in years and features language improvements—such as generics—that are also debuting in C# soon.

Talking of Java, it’s often claimed that Microsoft tried to destroy Java because they added Windows-specific extensions to their J++ variant. It’s easy to see how Microsoft would feel threatened by Java, which is after all a platform in its own right that to an extent makes the underlying operating system irrelevant, no matter what it happens to be. There were/are undoubtedly executives within Microsoft who made or make it their top priority to neutralise the Java threat. However, people don’t generally see the other side of the coin, which is that there are developers within Microsoft who are Java enthusiasts and who wanted to make it a great platform for developing Windows applications. And to do that, they had to add in some platform-specific features which you could take advantage of if you knew you were writing for Windows only and if you wanted to. It’s also worth remembering that for a time the Microsoft JVM that shipped with Internet Explorer was the fastest one around that actually ended up on user’s machines. Of course it’s hopelessly out of date now, which benefits no one.

Anders Hejlsberg, the powerhouse behind Borland Turbo Pascal and one of the brains behind Borland Delphi, was involved with the creation of J++, which in many ways laid the groundwork for what was to follow with .NET. C# is often called a rip-off of Java, but it’s not a shameless clone because it added some neat new tricks of its own. And Sun Microsystems aren’t the origin of everything original within language and framework design any more than Microsoft or any other single company are; Borland helped Sun design their JavaBeans component architecture because Sun were impressed by Borland’s VCL created by…Anders Hejlserg et al.

I don’t view Microsoft as some monolithic entity, with 50,000 employees focused on the one aim of destroying their closest rivals. It’s hard enough trying to get tens of people pulling together in the same direction—believe me I know—let alone tens of thousands! Time and time again the accounts coming out of Microsoft from insiders are of a company that in many ways is run along Darwinian lines, with different groups competing against each other and not co-operating. Hardly an environment conducive to nurturing grand conspiracies.

I think that the two biggest threats to Microsoft right now are previous versions of its own software and its reputation. The two are closely linked because Microsoft’s current reputation is largely formed from what it’s done in the past and not what it’s doing today. I’m thinking in particular about Windows and its reputation for being insecure and unstable. I’m not saying that reputation is undeserved because both of those things have been true about Windows for a long time, but I genuinely believe that the situation is getting better and that’s happening because Microsoft’s customers are demanding it. Windows XP Service Pack 2 does a lot of right things in the area of security and Windows has been a stable operating system for years now. I haven’t seen a blue screen of death on either my home or work PC for at least three years. Really.

Windows has got such a bad reputation that there are those within Microsoft who are even suggesting the unthinkable: that Microsoft throw away the Windows brand name plus all that’s invested in it, and call the next version something else. I don’t think it will happen but it’s an intriguing idea. It’s very easy to criticise Windows over security and stability without really thinking about why it’s the way it is. What many of the naysayers don’t consider is the fact that the direction of Windows is driven by consumer demand. The top priority at Microsoft when developing software has almost always been to preserve backwards compatibility, because Microsoft knows full well that customers won’t tolerate not being able to run their existing software using a new version of the OS. This has informed the design direction of Windows and has led to many complex trade-offs involving compatibility, security and stability. If you don’t believe me then go and read Raymond Chen’s blog—it’s a real eye-opener. This stuff is damn hard to get right. Don’t forget that Apple have completely broken backwards-compatibility more than once and a fraction of the software that Windows has to support runs on the Macintosh.

It’s amazing how many jokes Windows has become the butt of, particularly when it comes to stability. It’s even entered mainstream culture. We’ve all heard those jokes, some of us have probably made them too. I regularly get exposed to them at work. There’s a Java related website I visit that features a different programming question every day in the style of the Sun Certified Java Programmer exam. I came across this question recently:

“Your chief Software designer has shown you a sketch of the new Computer parts system she is about to create. At the top of the hierarchy is a Class called Computer and under this are two child classes. One is called LinuxPC and one is called WindowsPC. The main difference between the two is that one runs the Linux operating System and the other runs the Windows System (of course another difference is that one needs constant re-booting and the other runs reliably). Under the WindowsPC are two Sub classes one called Server and one Called Workstation. How might you appraise your designers work?”

—Amongst the possible multiple choice answers were:

“3. Ask for the option of WindowsPC to be removed as it will soon be obsolete.”

These aren’t official questions from Sun and I didn’t dignify this one with an answer. Yes, Windows 9x wasn’t a paragon of stability but then it was never designed to be. It was designed to be as stable as possible within the constraints of the other requirements that it had to meet. The top requirement was that it had to run all your old 16-bit Windows and MS-DOS software as well as the new 32-bit applications. Of course, no customer actually asked for instability in Windows 9x, but they ended up with some because it’s a trade-off. The vastly superior Windows NT was always planned to replace it, it’s just taking years for that to happen.

In terms of security, of course Microsoft have to do a lot better and I believe that they will. Their biggest headache is the masses of machines out there connected to the Internet that are running a legacy version of Windows that was developed when the explosion of the Web caught Microsoft by surprise. Consumers weren’t demanding security then. I draw parallels with the automotive industry, which is also driven by consumer demand. In Europe, for years only the luxury car manufacturers offered safety features over and above the basic. I’m thinking of technologies such as airbags, side impact protection and anti-lock brakes. Now safety has become a major selling point and differentiator that can make the difference between the car buyer closing the deal or walking away. It’s the same with computer security, which is now Microsoft’s stated top priority.

There’s no denying that things that used to be turned on by default in previous versions of Windows are turned off by default in Windows Server 2003. The focus has shifted 180 degrees from ease of use with positive action required to make things secure, to secure by default with positive action required to make things less secure. Interestingly, I was in a meeting last week where someone pointed out that the Oracle 9iAS J2EE application server comes with a lot of features turned on by default post-installation, some of which could be exploited and used to compromise the system. I know it’s a different order of magnitude from millions of computers running Windows but I don’t hear Oracle getting it in the neck even slightly over that.

Windows is often mindlessly criticised for being bloated, as if its EXEs and DLLs are somehow padded out with zeroes in a grand conspiracy to use more disk space and sell more hard drives. The code taking up the space does actually do something you know! The people who whinge that Windows is a bloated behemoth would be the first to complain if they couldn’t run all their software under a Diet Windows or if using it was unfathomable to them.

Over the years I’ve noticed that those who hate Microsoft often fit into one or more of the following categories:

• People who hate Microsoft because of their size. Microsoft is a high visibility target. There’s a nice quote I like by Windows spelunker Andrew Schulman that says that Microsoft aren’t the biggest fish in the ocean, they are the ocean. It wasn’t always thus. Lots of people hated Apple Computer in the 1980s at the time when Apple was the giant ruling the computer industry with an iron fist and bullying the lesser players with endless lawsuits.
• People who hate Microsoft because it’s the thing to do. In other words, lots of other people do it. Microsoft bashing has become a popular pastime. Just as no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft, so no one ever got beaten up for hating Microsoft. Well, maybe in Redmond.
• People who hate Microsoft because they think the software is rubbish. I’m sure if you asked the Windows developers at Microsoft if there were things they’d have done differently given the opportunity to start afresh with no backwards compatibility constraints, they’d have been giving you suggestions all week. In fact, that’s what happened with the Windows NT architecture. And it worked, because it’s been with us eleven years now (sixteen years if you include development time).
• People who hate Microsoft because of the antitrust actions. You can tell these people because they take great delight in using the terms “Microsoft” and “convicted monopolist” together whenever they refer to the company. Did the antitrust actions really achieve anything apart from make some lawyers richer and produce a funny video clip of BillG looking awkward whilst testifying?
• People who hate Microsoft because they’re just whingers. After all, complaining is far easier than actually taking positive steps to improve their own software. This is also known as The Larry Ellison Syndrome. Scott McNealy was also a sufferer of this but has recently been cured by a large injection.
• People who hate Microsoft because of Bill Gates. Everything I’ve read about Bill Gates indicates that money is not his prime motivator. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care about it and he certainly doesn’t appear to squander it! It would seem that Bill’s passion is improving people’s lives through software. Microsoft software, yes but then what do you expect? That’s his company! It’s called c-a-p-i-t-a-l-i-s-m, get over it. Someone has to be the richest man in the world and I’d rather it was someone like Bill Gates who gives an awful lot of his money to charity. It’s easy to be cynical about these things but I’d rather live in a world where philanphropists pour huge sums of cash into AIDS research (for example) than not.
• People who hate Microsoft because Microsoft are phenomenally successful. I’ve never understood the notion of excessive profits or the idea that businesses should somehow be penalised for being too successful. Who sets the bar on these things? Great fortunes can be built in business and great fortunes can quickly be lost by businesses when they take their eye off the ball. IBM ruled the roost for years. I genuinely believe that you can be successful if you build a better mousetrap and persevere.

And me? As I stated at the beginning, I like Microsoft and its software. I don’t think Microsoft are perfect and I know that their software isn’t, but I think that they get more things right, more of the time than most of their competitors do. The important point is that I make up my own mind about things and try to keep it open.

Source: John Topley

Also many cool features:
* Enhanced SVG inport capabilities
* Improved EMF rendering
* Enhanced performance
* Calc solver
* Gstreamer multimedia integration for Linux operating systems
* 3D Impress effects for Linux (Windows support arrives in 3.0)
* And many more smaller improvments

More information about OxygenOffice Professional:
http://ooop.sf.net/

OxygenOffice Professional is based on OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 This latest and greatest version has new functions like enhanced PDF management and direct export to LaTex and MediWiki. The OxygenOffice Professional team of international developers changed the name of the project , (which was formerly known as OpenOffice.org Premium), to simplify things and point out that this project is independent from the OpenOffice.org project. Our team loves and supports the OpenOffice.org project, and did not want to cause any potential confusion.

More information about OpenOffice.org:
http://www.openoffice.org/

Changes in the recent version:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Feature_Freeze_Testing_2.4

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/New_Features_2.4

http://www.oooninja.com/2008/03/new-features-openofficeorg-240.html

You can download OxygenOffice Professional 2.4.0 from here:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170021
ftp://ftp.fsn.hu/pub/oxygenoffice/

Supported platforms:
Linux 32 bit (RPM and DEB), Linux 64 bit (DEB and RPM) and Windows 32 bit

A source (Apple Inc employee), who chose to remain anonymous, told us that senior executives of the two companies have already met once on Tuesday and the next meeting has been scheduled for Friday morning. The source confirmed that the executives will continue discussions over licencing and implementation issues of iPhone haptics.

Apple’s competitor Nokia - whose upcoming phone is likely to be called Tube 5800 - has also licenced haptic technology from Immersion Corporation that will enable it to incorporate a wide range of tactile feedback in it cellphones. Haptic technology refers to technology which interfaces the user via the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations and/or motions to the user, but it should not to be confused with touch or tactile sensors that measure the pressure or force exerted by the user to the interface.

Apple’s on-screen keyboard has a major drawback as it lacks “haptic response.” In other words, users cannot feel the keys as there is no pressure back on the finger when a virtual key is released. Haptic technology allows users to use a touchscreen and receive feedback like they are pressing on real buttons through vibration technology.

Immersion Corporation develops haptic technologies that engage the sense of touch in the digital world for communicating, driving, designing, training, or just for fun.

Source:palluxo.com

]]> http://techwatch.reviewk.com/2008/04/leaked-apple-to-licence-haptic-technology-for-iphone/feed/ http://techwatch.reviewk.com/2008/04/live-mesh-explained/ http://techwatch.reviewk.com/2008/04/live-mesh-explained/#comments Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:55:11 +0000 techwatcher http://techwatch.reviewk.com/?p=139 Microsoft’s uncovered Live Mesh at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco today, and ever since everyone is writing about what it is. Of course, there is a lot of speculation too. In this mess, found this post which explains it in plain English what it means. So here is the Live Mesh 101, Live mesh explained for dummies, whatever you call it.

What - Live Mesh is a service that lets you synchronize your settings, files, feeds and applications on several computers.

What’s the big deal - there are already ways to synchronize stuff on the net. Foxmarks is a good example: you install it in Firefox on several computers, and your bookmarks sync seamlessly. Live Mesh, however, is a single platform that will make it easier for 3rd party app developers to do this. If Microsoft does this right, you’ll get used to using the Live Mesh for syncing all your devices, files as well as most or all of your applications.

Is this like a WebOS (Webdesktop, Webtop?) - yes, although everyone seems to be avoiding the term, this is a lot like all those WebOS apps you’ve seen. You get a virtual desktop with 5GB of storage and you can access it from anywhere. It’s integrated with Windows’ Remote Desktop, so it’s really simple to set up.

How will it look and feel in practice (we’re talking about the future here) - Let’s say that you and three other coworkers have a shared Mesh desktop. You fire it up, check out the log to see who changed what. Great, Mike added the graphics you needed. You add some notes to the graphics and drop them into the Mesh, but you share it only with your devices; they’re not ready to be seen by everyone just yet. On the way to work, you want to start some downloads on your computer at work, so you remotely connect to it through your iPhone. The rest of the trip you read your feeds; the ones you read at home are marked read so you can just keep reading where you left of.

To put it really simple: the promise of the Mesh is that you won’t have to care where you are or which device you’re using - your data will always be there. You’ll only have to care about which data you want to share with whom.

Which devices - Right now, we’re talking only about Windows XP and Vista computers; in the future, it will work with Mac, mobiles, etc.

Who built it - Microsoft’s CTO Ray Ozzie, and a team of about a hundred other engineers at Microsoft.

Other links of interest:

Mesh’s official home page and its accompanying blog

Ten things to know about Microsoft’s Live Mesh

Microsoft’s Mesh Revealed—Sync All Apps And All Files To All Devices (As Long As They’re Windows)

Ray Ozzie delivers with Live Mesh

Hands on with Live Mesh

Full Text of Ray Ozzie Mesh Memo

Introducing Live Mesh

When looking at the image above, are you able to discern where one image begins and another ends? Are you able to tell the semantic content of the images? Since computers look at the pixels of an image, this is a very difficult task and something that separates humans from computers. Many Websites are currently using the text-based CAPTCHA technologies to ensure that the user filling out a form is indeed human by requesting that the user input a set of numbers and letters from a distorted image. Some examples of these sites are listed in the Project Background section below. Text-based systems have been defeated by computer vision and especially shape matching algorithms. In this project, we aim to develop image-based CAPTCHAs that only human beings can solve. We call the project IMAGINATION because we want to leverage the endowed imagination power of humans.

Project Personnel

This project is being conducted within the research group of Prof. James Z. Wang and Prof. Jia Li at The Pennsylvania State University. Ritendra Datta and Dhiraj Joshi are the main researchers.

Demonstration :: Realistic Alternative

Natural image based CAPTCHAs - IMAGINATION demonstration

Other Info: user study; presentation slides [.PPT]

Publications

Ritendra Datta, Jia Li and James Z. Wang, “IMAGINATION: A Robust Image-based CAPTCHA Generation System,” Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia Conference, pp. 331-334, Singapore, ACM, November 2005. (download)

Project Background

Example websites

Websites which use text-based CAPTCHAs to prevent denial–of-service attacks or mass-scale registration

1. Yahoo! Mail - Sign Up
2. PayPal - Sign Up.
3. MSN Hotmail account Sign Up.
4. Domain name owner search at Register.com.
5. Search for availability of tickets at Ticketmaster (including tickets to Penn State football games !)

Proposed Security Protocols which rely on CAPTCHAs

Countering Distributed Denial-of-service attacks: W. G. Morein, A. Stavrou, D. L. Cook, A. D. Keromytis, V. Mishra, and D. Rubenstein, “Using Graphic Turing Tests To Counter Automated DDoS Attacks Against Web Servers,” Proc. ACM Conference on Communications and Computer Security, 2003. [PDF]

Preventing attacks on user-defined passwords: B. Pinkas and T. Sander, “Securing Passwords Against Dictionary Attacks,”Proc. ACM Conference on Communications and Computer Security, 2002. [PDF]

Related Publications :: Breaking conventional text-based CAPTCHAs

[A] Relevant Publications

1. K. Chellapilla and P. Y. Simard, “Using Machine Learning to Break Visual Human Interaction Proofs (HIPs),” Proc. NIPS, 2004. [PDF].
2. G. Moy, N. Jones, C. Harkless, and R. Potter, “Distortion Estimation Techniques in Solving Visual CAPTCHAs,” Proc. IEEE CVPR, 2004. [PDF]
3. G. Mori and J. Malik, “Recognizing Objects in Adversarial Clutter: Breaking a Visual CAPTCHA,” Proc. CVPR, 2003. [PDF]
4. A. Thayananthan, B. Stenger, P. H. S. Torr, and R. Cipolla, “Shape Context and Chamfer Matching in Cluttered Scenes,” Proc. IEEE CVPR, 2003. [PDF]

[B] Public-domain resources on breaking CAPTCHAs

1. PWNtcha - captcha decoder
2. The OCR Research Team (commercial).

Lucky engineers at the University of Michigan College of Engineering are charged with designing the sensors for this stealth bat. The director of the project, Kamal Sarabandi says, “Bats have a highly-attuned echolocation sense providing high-resolution navigation and sensing ability even in the dark, just as our sensor must be able to do.”

The engineering team expects many industrial and medical spin-offs from this project. I would imagine law enforcement might also be taking an interest in the Spy Bat.

Echolocation allows real bats to navigate by emitting sounds and detecting the echoes.

The bat robot’s body would be about six inches long. It would weigh about a quarter of a pound and use about 1 W of power.

U-M researchers intend to improve on current technologies. They’ll work to develop quantum dot solar cells that double the efficiency of current cells. They expect their autonomous navigation system, which would allow the robot to direct its own movements, to be 1,000 times smaller and more energy efficient than systems being used now. They believe they can deliver a communication system that’s 10 times smaller, lighter and more energy efficient than today’s technologies.

The bat would be designed to perform short-term surveillance in support of advancing soldiers. Or it could perch at a street corner or building for longer assignments and send back reports of activity as it takes place.

“Throughout this research, we expect to make technological breakthroughs and have a much wider range of applications for other types of engineering problems, from medical to industrial,” Sarabandi said.

Few Internet entrepreneurs practice what they preach as devoutly as LinkedIn Corp. co-founder Reid Hoffman, whose business revolves around his belief that good fortune flows from good relationships.

Hoffman, 40, has put that principle to work by mining his own vast network of Silicon Valley connections to rake in one Internet jackpot after another.

A college friendship led Hoffman to PayPal and his first windfall when eBay Inc. bought the online payment service for $1.5 billion in 2002. Since then, he has become even wealthier by investing in other Internet startups he discovered through friends and former colleagues.

Along the way, Hoffman also used some of his PayPal proceeds to help start LinkedIn, an online business-networking service that helps professionals like him realize the value of their contacts from the past and present.

With more than 1 million people joining each month and projected 2008 revenue of $75 million to $100 million, LinkedIn Corp. seems likely to deliver another big payoff for Hoffman.

“LinkedIn is a great expression of who Reid is,” said John Lilly, chief executive of the Firefox Web browser maker, Mozilla Corp., where Hoffman sits on the board of directors. “It’s really his brain on the Web.”

LinkedIn tries to help people who know each other elsewhere more easily meet others who might help their careers. For example, if Mary and Bob are both part of Fred’s online network, Mary could ask Fred for a referral to Bob, who could then decide whether he wanted to embrace a new relationship with Mary.

LinkedIn’s focus on professional networking distinguishes it from social playgrounds like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace, where users are encouraged to share their personal lives by posting party photos and adding favorite bands.

Although it may not sound as much fun, LinkedIn appears to be thriving. About 18 million people now have profiles on the site, roughly twice as many as a year ago.

Hoffman, who remains LinkedIn’s chairman and largest shareholder five years after starting the company, said the Mountain View-based company will probably file for an initial public offering of stock before 2010 if he isn’t first tempted to sell to one of the suitors that have inquired about buying LinkedIn. Hoffman wouldn’t identify the suitors.

“I know we are going to be much more valuable in a year or two,” Hoffman said. “We have had (buyout) conversations with all the usual suspects, but I think an IPO is by far and away the most likely outcome.”

Nonetheless, LinkedIn has its share of detractors, who see it as little more than a tool for job hunters and employment recruiters, a slightly different twist on online help-wanted services like Monster.com or Yahoo Inc.’s HotJobs. Besides selling ads, the site lets employment recruiters and others pay for expanded access to LinkedIn members.

Although former LinkedIn executive Keith Rabois isn’t as harsh, he believes Hoffman needs to pursue an IPO as soon as possible to create a bigger buzz about the service.

“Right now, LinkedIn just doesn’t seem to be at the center of the Internet universe and an IPO would be an amazing marketing opportunity,” said Rabois, who left LinkedIn last year to join another rapidly growing startup, Slide Inc.

LinkedIn so far hasn’t generated the same kind buzz as Facebook Inc., which has been attracting many of the same users as LinkedIn. With 60 million users, privately held Facebook already boasts a $15 billion market value and has indicated it will pursue its own IPO in 2009 or 2010.

Hoffman happens to have a stake in Facebook, underscoring his knack for identifying promising Internet opportunities in their early stages.

“It’s like he is able to look at the Internet and figure out where all the pieces fit together,” said Mark Kvamme, a partner at Sequoia Capital and a member of LinkedIn’s board of directors.

While Facebook could produce Hoffman’s biggest investment return, it threatens to become a thorn in his side if it diminishes the amount of time people spend at LinkedIn.

As a countermeasure, LinkedIn in recent months has been adopting more Facebook-like features. The changes have allowed LinkedIn users to display pictures next to their personal profiles and opened up the site for outsiders to post mini-applications, known as widgets, designed to help people with common connections to share information.

Read complete story here

20 Ways to Increase your Alexa Rank

Here is a collection of methods you can use to boost your Alexa Rank. Most of these tips are derived from several fellow webmasters I know who claimed to have derived positive results through their experiments with the Alexa Rankings.

Some of the other tips were derived articles and sources, which I have duly referenced at the end of this post.

Do these tips work? According to some, yes they definitely do work. But do note that most of them require active effort of some sort and hence, they will work as long as long as you are consistently performing specific actions.

To increase your Alexa rank in the long run, I would highly recommended that one focus on developing quality content which attracts and maintains a large audience instead of purely focusing on artificially increasing your Alexa Rank.

Great link-worthy content will leads to an natural increase in site traffic and is an excellent way to passively increase your Alexa rank.

It is important to emphasize that you should devote most of your efforts in growing your site audience alongside integrated implementation of any of the following tips below.

1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day. According to some, each click counts as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.
3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.
4. Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.
5. Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.
6. Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.
7. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer useful feedback. It’s also a good way to give back to the community if you have useful articles to share with others.
8. Write content that is related to webmasters. This can fall in the category of domaining and SEO, two fields in which most webmasters will have the Alexa toolbar installed. Promote your content on social networking websites and webmaster forums.
9. Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Try this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?techrunch.blogspot.com . Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will count a unique IP address once a day so clicking it multiple times won’t help. There is no official proof that redirects positively benefit your Alexa Rank, so use with caution.
10. Post in Asian social networking websites or forums. Some webmasters have suggested that East Asian web users are big Alexa toolbar fans, judging by the presence of several Asia-based websites in the Alexa Top 500. I suggest trying this only if you have the time or capacity to do so.
11. Create a webmaster tools section on your website. This is a magnet for webmasters who will often revisit your website to gain access to the tools. Aaron Wall’s webpage on SEOTools is a very good example.
12. Get Dugg or Stumbled. This usually brings massive numbers of visitors to your website and the sheer amount will have a positive impact on your Alexa Rank. Naturally, you’ll need to develop link worthy material.
13. Use PayperClick Campaigns. Buying advertisements on search engines such as Google or Exact Seek will help bring in Traffic. Doubly useful when your ad is highly relevant to webmasters.
14. Create an Alexa category on your blog and use it to include any articles or news about Alexa. This acts as an easily accessible resource for webmasters or casual search visitors while helping you rank in the search engines.
15. Optimize your popular posts. Got a popular post that consistently receives traffic from the search engines? Include a widget/graph at the bottom of the post, link to your Alexa post or use Alexa redirection on your internal URLs.
16. Buy banners and links for traffic from webmaster forums and websites. A prominent and well displayed ad will drive lots of webmaster traffic to your website, which can significantly boost your rank.
17. Hire forum posters to pimp your website. Either buy signatures in webmaster forums or promote specific articles or material in your website on a regular basis. You can easily find posters for hire in Digital Point and other webmaster forums.
18. Pay Cybercafe owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as the homepage for all their computers. This might be difficult to arrange and isn’t really a viable solution for most. I’m keeping this one in because some have suggested that it does work.
19. Use MySpace . This is a little shady so I don’t recommended it unless you’re really interested in artificially inflating your Alexa Rank. Use visually attractive pictures or banners and link them to your redirected Alexa URL. This will be most effective if your website has content that is actually relevant to the MySpace Crowd.
20. Try Alexa auto-surfs. Do they work? Maybe for brand new sites. I think they are mostly suitable for new websites with a very poor Alexa rank. Note that there be problems when you try to use auto surfs alongside contextual ads like Adsense. They aren’t also long term solutions to improving your Alexa Rank so I suggest using with caution.

Resources on Alexa Rank

Several of the tips listed above were taken from Aaron Wall’s article on Alexa Ranking. This post by Aaron will also give you some insight on Alexa’s webmaster bias.

A lower Alexa number means a greater level of traffic, and the traffic drops off logarithmically. You can fake a good Alexa score using various techniques, but if it shows your rankings in the millions then your site likely has next to no traffic.

Alexa by itself does not mean that much, but it simply provides a rough snapshot of what is going on. It can be spammed, but if a site has a ranking in the millions then it likely has little traffic.

Peter Norvig writes about Alexa Toolbar and the Problem of Experiment Design. He examines some problems with Alexa as a traffic measuring tool:

But one bias they
don’t really comment on is the selection bias: the data would be good if it truly represented a random sample of internet users, but in fact it only represents those who have installed the Alexa toolbar, and that sample is not random.

The samplees must be sophisticated enough to know how to install the toolbar, and they must have some reason to want it. It turns out that the toolbar tells you things about web sites, so it is useful to people in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry, so it overrepresents those people.

Google’s Matt Cutts compares his website against Ask.com and explains why his website enjoys such an impressive Alexa ranking:

One possible source of skewing in Alexa data is a bias toward webmaster-y sites. Alexa shows how popular web sites are, so it’s natural that webmasters install the Alexa toolbar.

Some do it just so that their normal day-to-day visits around the web (including their own site) are added to Alexa’s stats. The net effect is that webmaster-related sites are going to look more important to Alexa

Marketing Scoop has some tips on improving the Alexa Rank.

A very long thread on Digital Point which sees webmasters having a discussion on how Alexa Ranks can be gamed or manipulated through scripts and auto-surfs. Worth a read.

There you have it… twenty ways to boost your Alexa Rank and increase your site’s monetization potential.

What do you think of Alexa? Have you tried increasing your Alexa Rank by any of these methods?

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