Microsoft invents fat (finger) controller

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From Technology Review…

Retrieving the stylus for a personal digital assistant takes time. But for detailed work, a stylus is usually better than a finger. Microsoft researchers believe that they’ve found a better way to activate tiny targets, such as a name on a contact list or a street on a map.

Microsoft’s solution, called Shift, allows users to employ their fingertips to select pixels in a new way. First, the user presses a finger on the screen over the area of interest. Holding down her finger activates the Shift software. A detailed view of the area of interest appears nearby on the screen, in a pop-up window on top of the original image. With slight movements of her finger, the user can guide a pair of crosshairs over her desired target within the pop-up window and then make her selection by lifting her finger off the screen…

BBN back in the network design business

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Aaah!….. a blast from the past. Tech Review reports that Bolt Beranek and Newman have got the contract to rethink the network design.

NEW YORK (AP) — A government contractor that played a key role in the Internet’s birth will oversee efforts to redesign the network from scratch.

The National Science Foundation announced Monday that BBN Technologies Inc. will get up to $10 million (euro7.5 million) over four years to oversee the planning and design of the Global Environment for Network Innovations, or GENI.

Many researchers want to rethink the Internet’s underlying architecture, saying a ”clean-slate” approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since the Internet’s birth in 1969.

The NSF already has been funding several projects at universities and elsewhere through Future Internet Network Design, or FIND. It has been pushing to build GENI as a testbed for researchers to explore clean-slate ideas without damaging the current Internet.

Much of the work on GENI so far has been conducted by professors and other researchers. Naming BBN brings a full-time staff to the project, said Larry Peterson, chairman of computer science at Princeton University and head of the GENI planning group.

”They have a track record in large government projects of this sort, and they are very much committed to working with the research community to build the experimental facility we want and need,” Peterson said of BBN…

Footnote: Hmmm… That AP report isn’t entirely accurate. Although BBN played the central role in the design and implementation of the ARPANET, I don’t think it had any significant role in the ‘internetworking’ project that followed from 1973 onwards.

Intel steals a march on OLPC

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Cute, isn’t it? Wonder if Bill Gates put them up to it. (He’s been very rude about the One Laptop Per Child project in the past.) Anyway, Intel claims to be shipping this gizmo to the developing world. According to the blurb:

Classmate PCs are rugged and include features that are commonly found in today’s mainstream PCs (such as storage and built-in wireless), and are capable of running mainstream applications including video and educational software. These PCs are equipped with unique functions such as a water-resistant keyboard, an integrated educational feature set that allows teacher-student and teacher-parent collaboration, and an advanced theft-control feature using a network-issued digital certification. Intel works in each market with local software, hardware and communications companies that manufacture, distribute, service and support these Intel-powered classmate PCs.

Translation: these devices run Windows and are designed to (a) wean poor people onto Microsoft software and (b) make piracy difficult.

Over at OLPC, Nick Negroponte is not amused.

There are various differences in both the hardware and software, but Professor Negroponte believes the main problem is that his machine uses a processor designed by Intel’s main competitor, AMD.

“Intel and AMD fight viciously,” he told CBS. “We’re just sort of caught in the middle.”

Professor Negroponte says Intel has distributed marketing literature to governments with titles such as “the shortcomings of the One Laptop per Child approach”, which outline the supposedly stronger points of the Classmate.

Mr Barrett [Intel’s CEO, Craig Barrett] told CBS: “Someone at Intel was comparing the Classmate PC with another device being offered in the marketplace. That’s the way our business works.”

He dismissed claims that Intel was trying to put OLPC out of business as “crazy”.

“There are lots of opportunities for us to work together,” he said.

According to the BBC report, “Intel says it already has orders for ‘thousands’ of Classmates, which currently cost over $200 (£100).”

Bushed Telegraph

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The Daily Telegraph site was completely unavailable for most of this (Monday) afternoon. Bit flaky for an organisation that is betting the ranch on the Web.

Hogwash

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BBC News reports that

Gordon Brown says he is “truly humbled” by the scale of the backing given to him by Labour MPs as their choice to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister.

Aw shucks. I prefer Simon Hoggart’s observation that “Gordon Brown does humility like he does ballet lessons”.

WordPress hits its first million

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Hooray! WordPress.com is about to celebrate its millionth free blog. What’s the secret? Robert Scoble says

It’s audience per blog is much higher than Microsoft’s Live Spaces, for instance. The audience that hangs out on WordPress is a lot more engaged, too, and I believe that blogs on WordPress.com get more than their fair share of Google traffic. Matt told me that more than half of the traffic that comes to WordPress.com comes from Google — the HTML is automatically SEO’d (optimized for search engines).

Indians don’t blog, apparently

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So Foreign Policy magazine claims:

India is known for its vibrant public discourse on everything from politics to Bollywood. But in this nation of 42 million Internet users, those conversations aren’t happening online. Recent research suggests India has just 1.2 million bloggers. By comparison, China has around 30 million. One northern India-based blog-hosting company, Ibibo, has even resorted to offering cash prizes to entice people to blog regularly. Indians’ tendency to be bashful about blogging appears to stem in part from a problem of perception. “The perception [is] that blogging is for people possessing superior writing skills,” says Ibibo executive Rahul Razdan. In a country where nearly 40 percent of people are illiterate, that perception spells trouble. Before blogs can burgeon, Indians may need to learn their ABCs.