research

If you've ever done a search on Wikipedia.org, you know that as you read a particular article there are hundreds of links to related items that are incredibly hard not to click on. In my experience, I'll go into Wikipedia with a specific goal in mind only to find myself reading something completely different 20 minutes later. While this could be because of my desire to see it all, I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say some of the most interesting Wikipedia pages are the ones you stumble across you never would have known existed otherwise. Unfortunately, clicking around on links is not conducive to getting your originally planned research done.… Read more

I failed to see this last week, but Acacia Research, the patent troll that recently went after Red Hat and Novell, got its first day in court with a Texas jury and lost. Big time. It was seeking $900 million in damages, as paidContent notes, and instead got 35 percent of its stock price chopped.

I weep for Acacia. OK. Maybe not. Looking at this stock chart, I will admit that a smile has played across my face:… Read more

MONTEREY, Calif.--In August, researchers unveiled a new way of shrinking or expanding photos called seam carving. Now it turns out the technique applies to video, too.

Ariel Shamir, a senior lecturer at the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science in Israel and a visiting scientist with Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, showed off the technique at the 6sight digital-imaging conference here last week. (Adobe Systems has hired another seam carving researcher, Shai Avidan.) The technology analyzes a picture for vertical or horizontal "seams"--the term the researchers use to describe a path traversing the photo where pixels are … Read more

Perhaps huffing at your computer might get you somewhere if research at the Georgia Institute of Technology comes to fruition.

Shwetak Patel and Gregory Abowd from Georgia Tech have published a paper that describes how to use a computer microphone to determine where on a screen a person is blowing. The technique, which they call BLUI for Blowable and Localized User Interaction, can distinguish between the different sounds air makes depending on where the breath is directed.

"BLUI supports blowing at a laptop or computer screen to directly control specific parts of an interactive application, such as blowing at … Read more

MONTEREY, Calif.--Get ready for a new era in which your camera knows not just when you took a picture but who's in it, too.

Many cameras today can detect the faces of those being photographed, which is handy for guiding the camera to set its exposure, focus, and color balance properly. But the more difficult challenge of face recognition is more useful after the photo has been taken.

That's because of a concept called autotagging, one of a number of technologies that make digital photography qualitatively different from the film photography of the past.

Tags of descriptive … Read more

BOSTON--Bill Bradley cannot possibly be running for president.

The former senator did not sugarcoat any of his opinions at a keynote address that took place as a question-and-answer session led by AMR Research CEO Tony Friscia at the Executive Leadership Conference 2007 in Boston on Tuesday.

Friscia questioned Bradley's ideas put forth in his book, The New American Story and its message of collectiveness and necessary sacrifice if the U.S. is going to stay on top.

The topics discussed--while grounded in effects on technology companies globally--took many unusual turns. Bradley waned, waxed and warned on the sorry state … Read more

BOSTON--Emerging markets will be found in BRIC. That's Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

And unless companies start thinking and operating more collectively and less individualistically, they will not survive--let alone thrive on-- this change.

That was the message given on Tuesday to a group of CIOs, CEOs, and other executives at AMR Research's Executive Leadership Conference 2007.

Major challenges facing companies in the emerging BRIC-driven world economy will include how to manage data and how to mobilize a skilled workforce from one currently made up of aging skilled workers getting ready to retire and young unskilled workers.

AMR … Read more

MONTEREY, Calif.--A start-up called Artificial Muscle hopes its actuator technology will provide a cheaper, quieter, and lower-power alternative to the host of motors and other devices that control mechanical movements inside cameras.

The company's technology employs a particular variety of resilient substances called elastomers. This variety changes properties when a voltage is applied across them, growing softer or firmer. Artificial Muscle mounts a ring of the material to a central disk that's pushed by a spring; when the material relaxes, the spring pushes the central disk outward.

The distance the disk travels, or "throw," is … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--BlackBerry's users, often referred to as "CrackBerry" addicts, will now have easy access to the popular social-networking site Facebook.

The two companies, which have been working in secret for the past six months, announced Wednesday that they have integrated the Facebook Web application with Research In Motion's Blackerry smartphones.

Mike Lazaridis, founder of RIM, joined Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, to formally unveil and demonstrate Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment show here.

T-Mobile USA will be the first mobile operator to provide the software application to subscribers, the companies … Read more