Thursday 28 August 2008

Sprint's WiMax service to include local features

Sprint Nextel will put location-based services front and center on its Xohm WiMax service, offering a portal with widgets for local weather, traffic, events, reviews, and other information.

The carrier was set to announce on Thursday a partnership with uLocate Communications, along with Google, AccuWeather, Navteq, reviews site Yelp, and other content providers.

Sprint will discover subscribers' locations using information from its WiMax base stations. With uLocate's Where platform, it will present local content and services from the other partners, said Art Spivy, director of content and community services for Xohm. By the end of the year, Sprint also hopes to integrate uLocate's Buddy Beacon friend-finding service in the service.

Xohm will be a data-oriented service that users will access on devices sold by manufacturers at retail rather than by the carrier, as is common for cell phones. In addition, those devices won't have a standard "deck" or lineup of services constantly presented by Sprint. Client devices are expected to start with laptop cards and eventually include MIDs (mobile Internet devices), personal entertainment devices and other platforms. The service is set to launch in September in Baltimore, with more markets added in the coming months.

The location-based content will be presented on a Xohm Web portal and will change as a subscriber moves from one place to another. Subscribers will also be able to personalize the portal to offer information on the kinds of things they want. But they won't be forced to use that portal as a home page.

"We're not trying to replace AOL's or Yahoo's portal," Spivy said. "We're really trying to be a great start experience for your mobile session."

The content partners' information will be presented through widgets on the portal page. Other initial partners are set to include events and tickets company Eventful and localized news provider Topix. Sprint later plans to open up the portal to many more partners through a developer program. Policies for the privacy of user data will be included in that partner program, he said.

Sprint's move is part of an overall trend away from tight service-provider control of mobile content, according to analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Research. Using the location data it gathers will help to draw subscriber's to Xohm's own portal on devices that could easily be used simply for Web access, but in the wake of the iPhone's personalized home screen, Sprint is not alone, he said.

"Everything, generally speaking, is moving toward greater openness and customization," Sterling said.

Palm Jumeirah to implement UAE's first vacuum sewerage system

Original Article

Dubai: Nakheel, a Dubai World company and one of the world's top real estate developers, announced on Thursday details of Palm Jumeirah's state-of-the-art vacuum sewerage system, which is the first system of its kind in the UAE and the largest of its kind anywhere in the world.

Nakheel said the vacuum sewerage system will play a key role in helping meet its sustainability objectives for the Palm Jumeirah.

Corodex Electromechanic, a part of Concorde-Corodex Group, has developed the system, which is one of the world's suppliers of water supply engineering and wastewater treatment systems.

The advanced vacuum sewerage system at Palm Jumeirah serves 2,000 villas through 900 collection chambers, 40 kilometres of pipeline and the world's largest vacuum station. The vacuum system delivers wastewater to a membrane bio-reactor MBR system sewerage treatment plant (STP) located on the Trunk of Palm Jumeirah.

In line with the Blue Communities ethos of minimising the environmental impact of Nakheel's developments, the state-of-the-art system has been designed so that there is absolutely no emission of treated effluent into the sea. Instead, the treated, safe wastewater is reused to irrigate landscaping on Palm Jumeirah, which reduces the demand for desalinated water and helps protect this vital resource.

The system's design offers a number of other environmental benefits, from low-cost and low-impact construction, to the ability to cross water protection areas because leaks cannot occur. This means that, unlike traditional treatment processes and pipe networks, the vacuum system is completely odourless. As the pipe network is all underground, it is also unobtrusive, providing an ideal solution in an urban environment.

Etisalat starts new applications portal for BlackBerry users

ABU DHABI - Etisalat launched a brand new applications portal for BlackBerry users to expand their productivity with access to a wide variety of applications from Navigation to document management applications.

The initiative which is a first for BlackBerry users in the Middle East will enable them to literally carry their office with them through their BlackBerry service, said a Press release on Tuesday.

Users can visit the portal at "bb.etisalat.ae" through their BlackBerry browser to download and use these applications. The applications available at the Etisalat portal cater to both individuals and business users, who can download and use the applications for a fee. Additionally, users can also access a whole range of free applications like the "Holy Quran" in Arabic, Free RSS Reader, Financial Times News Reader and the Blackberry Stock Ticker.

Abdulla Hashim, VP, Enterprise Solutions , Etisalat, said: "While wireless access to email and corporate information was the primary driver for the popularity of the BlackBerry device among corporate users, access to applications will transform the service into an absolute must have for people on the move. This is where Etisalat is empowering our customers and extending the versatility of the BlackBerry service with a wide range of value added applications to transform their BlackBerry into their most productive tool ."

He added, "The launch of these applications will enable customers to increase their productivity and efficiency and reinforces Etisalat 's commitment to always going that extra mile to satisfy customer needs."

Sony to launch world's slimmest 40-inch LCD TV

OKYO - Sony Corp. said Thursday it will launch the world's thinnest and lightest 40-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) television, seeking to trump its rivals ahead of the key year-end shopping season.

The new ZX1 model, part of the firm's popular Bravia series, is just 9.9 millimetres (0.39 inches) thick at its slimmest section

Weighing 12.2 kilograms (26.9 pounds), it can be hung on a wall like a framed painting.

Equipped with a fast wireless connection, the screen display is separated from the tuner so it does not need signal cables.

The ZX1 series will be put on the market on November 10 with an estimated price tag of about 490,000 yen (4,500 dollars) in Japan.

Sony also announced three other new series of Bravia LCD televisions with screen sizes ranging from 40 to 55 inches. They will be sold in Japan from October 10.

Of them, the W1 series can project images moving four times faster than conventional models.

"We will expand our line-up of products with displays at 40 inches or larger as demand for them is on the rise," Takao Yoshikawa, Sony's director of flat TV business division, said.

Sony is "on its track" to meet its global TV sales target of 17 million units for the year to March 2009, he said.

Wednesday 27 August 2008

Who’ll Win ‘Smart Grid’ Gold? Keep an Eye on Duke, Ambient, eMeter, EnerNOC, GridPoint, Trilliant & More

Original Article - EnergyTechStocks.com

Posted: August 27, 2008

Much has been written about the critical need to fix the faltering power grid, the rapid development of plug-in electric hybrid vehicles in the face of record pump prices, and corporations’ strong interest in energy efficiency to combat rising power costs. Not much has been written – yet – about what has to first be in place for all this to happen, namely: the technology for making a power grid “smart.”

The “smart” electrical power grid, parts of which are now under development by many different companies, will act like a cellular telephone network. Its computer-controlled technology will permit two-way communication between power plants and literally everything that runs on electricity. The technology will include power management chips embedded in every TV and toaster, plus sophisticated monitoring systems all along the distribution chain – in the plant, on the lines, and in your home and office, where advanced programmable thermostats will, for the first time, put at your fingertips the power to save money and limit your greenhouse gas emissions.

The smart grid will make it possible for businesses to instantly adjust the energy usage of dozens of large factories, retail establishments, and other power users at the same time. It will make it possible to plug in millions of electrically-powered cars and trucks at any given time without overloading the system. Indeed, it is expected that the electricity stored in plug-in cars’ batteries will become a vital power source in its own right since utilities will be able on command to pull that electricity out of all those batteries when extra power is needed quickly to avoid a blackout. That, plus the inherent ability of a smart grid to diagnose and repair itself before trouble develops, will go a long way toward fixing what’s wrong with today’s faltering grid.

A lot of companies are racing for smart-grid gold, and given that it’s been estimated that the smart grid may generate some $45 billion in revenue for its developers, there should be multiple gold medals handed out. So here’s a list of companies that appear to be in line to make their investors happy along with some reasons why. The list is by no means exhaustive; it’s intended only to give investors a sense of the many different money-making opportunities that exist with smart grid development. (Look for frequent updates.)

Duke Energy and XCel Energy are the two investor-owned U.S. electric utilities trailblazing smart grid applications on their systems. Both have regulators pushing them to go green so their interest is unlikely to wane. Both may wind up acquiring cutting-edge technology firms, which could result in significant licensing fees as the rest of the notoriously slow U.S. electric utility industry plays catch-up. (For more on Duke see The Electric Revolution (Part 3 of 4) – Duke Energy’s David Mohler: ‘Utility of the Future’ Arrives Next Year.)

EnerNOC Inc. appears to be on a roll as a provider of demand response (DR) systems that rely on smart-grid-like computer controls to trim customer demand on the command of a utility when the grid is in danger of overloading. Increasingly, EnerNOC is using its technology to do forensic analyses of companies’ power usage, which will be another function of smart grid technology. (For more on EnerNOC see EnerNOC CEO Healy Sees ‘Demand Response’ 10% of Power Generation Mix In Less Than 5 Years.)

Ambient Corp. is a company developing technology intended to give the smart grid two-way communication capability. Utilities are going to need to turn their “dumb” electrical wires into “smart” wires capable of Internet-based communication in order to execute all sorts of demands to optimize and minimize power usage.

Echelon Corp. and privately-held eMeter are developing advanced meters that will serve as collection points for information passed along wirelessly and by Internet-capable power lines. Advanced meters will be key to utilities providing innovative pricing plans that encourage power users to switch their consumption to times of day when demand is low – and so is the price. (For more on Echelon see The Home-Improvers: 5 That Could Do Well Improving Home Energy Efficiency — #1 Echelon.)

GridPoint Inc., which is also privately held, is developing back-up power systems for when the power is interrupted. These smart battery-based systems will automatically spring into action, helping manufacturers and others avoid power breaks which, even if they last only fractions of a second, can force a company to lose hours because it needs to reprogram its computers. (For more on GridPoint see Follow the Money: 5 Firms Grabbing Big Bucks That Belong on Investors’ Radar Screens: #5 GridPoint.)

Meanwhile, Freescale Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Atmel Corp. and Ember Networks, the first three publicly held, are all involved in developing the power management chips that will go into the many millions of TVs, toasters and other appliances. Privately-held Trilliant Inc. wants to be the main company that puts power management chips onto circuit boards, creating a wireless mesh network for communication within a home or office as well as back to utilities. (For more on Trilliant and other smart grid development firms, see Part 1 of 2 - An Insider’s Perspective On ‘Smart Grid’ Tech Plays That May Make You A Lot Of Money and Part 2 of 2 - From Meters to Washing Machines, ‘Smart’ Grid Components May Make Investors $$.)

Tuesday 26 August 2008

Moving Security to the Cloud

Original Article

Combining scanning approaches could keep PCs safe from viruses.

Most people know better than to connect a computer to the Internet without first installing up-to-date antivirus software. But even the best software protection won't catch every new virus, and performing a thorough system scan can require plenty of processor power, slowing some computers to a crawl.

New research from the University of Michigan suggests that computers could be better protected from viruses without sacrificing performance if antivirus software were moved from the PC to "the cloud"--a collection of servers that work seamlessly as one powerful machine. Using this approach, researchers found that they could detect 35 percent more recent viruses than a single antivirus program (88 percent compared with 73 percent). Moreover, using the distributed software, called Cloud AV, they caught 98 percent of all malicious software, compared with 83 percent, on average, for a single antivirus solution.

"We were concerned about the fact that the detection coverage of antivirus software from most popular vendors was poor," says Farnam Jahanian, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan. If a single PC could use a combination of antivirus services, Jahanian says, security could be improved, but this would be a huge drain on resources. "We can run multiple programs, in parallel, and by doing that we're moving the antivirus functionality into the network cloud and addressing the limitations of antivirus services that reside only on the personal computer," he adds.

Jahanian and his colleague Jon Oberheide started by scanning 10,000 malware samples collected over the past year using several different antivirus programs. Oberheide notes that each program had its own strengths and weaknesses and that malware missed by one program would often be caught by another. So, to make the most of each program, the researchers installed 12 different antivirus programs on servers running the University of Michigan's College of Engineering network. Volunteers also installed a small piece of software on their computer to detect the arrival of any new file, whether that was an e-mail attachment or a downloaded program.

New files are converted into a unique string of characters, or a "hash," of less than 100 bytes, which is sent to Cloud AV for analysis. If a file can't be identified, it is sent in its entirety for full analysis. Other files can be identified as either safe or a threat based on hashes stored in a database maintained by Cloud AV.



In addition to employing several antivirus services in parallel, Cloud AV makes use of information received from multiple users. Whereas ordinary antivirus software simply looks at the files and activity on one machine, Cloud AV can compare the files on thousands of machines. Catching a virus on one system automatically protects any other machine connected to Cloud AV from the same threat.

"We're able to do something that's impossible to do when you run antivirus software only on your desktop," says Jahanian. This network effect also helps keep bandwidth requirements low because once Cloud AV has analyzed one particular spreadsheet, it doesn't need to scan the entire file again when it arrives on someone else's computer.

"Sometimes the best ideas are simple ideas," says Wenke Lee, a professor at the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Lee adds that the research provides a realistic scenario. "A lot of papers are written using synthetic data or small-scale network traffic, but this work is an actual demonstration of the system's capabilities," he says.

Although other companies offer server-side antivirus services, these only use one detection system and can only analyze files being sent across the network. Google provides a similar scanning service, called Google Message Security, for companies that use its Web-based applications. "We very much agree that putting these types of solutions in the cloud makes a lot of sense, given the way that they evolve, morph, and mutate," says Adam Swindler, head of Google applications security.

But it's still unclear whether a network-based solution like Cloud AV could be deployed very widely. "If you start putting billions of messages through this process, some questions of scalability arise," says Swindler.

Another issue is privacy, since such a system logs every file that comes in and out of a computer. This is one more question that has yet to be answered. "When you talk about cloud-computer and data security, you've got to be sure, based on the terms of service, that the data is going to be provided to the customer [when he or she wants it] and made secure," says Swindler.

Dh50 billion Culture Village inches closer to completion

: Dubai Properties, master real estate developer and a subsidiary of Dubai Properties Group (DPG), a member of Dubai Holding, announced that the Dh50 billion Culture Village project has crossed key construction milestones, including the completion of 90 per cent of the Dh1 billion infrastructure works.

Dubai Properties recently premiered Culture Village's residential component at Harrods in London to an excellent reception from investors.


Canal works within the 40 million sq. ft. Culture Village site, situated next to the Garhoud Bridge along the Dubai Creek, is 95 per cent complete. While the residential, commercial and retail districts within the project are being developed by 15 private developers, building works for these districts are being simultaneously undertaken. One of the most distinct developments on site will be the Palazzo Versace Dubai, a project by Gianni Versace Spa and Sunland Group Ltd, which is also 25 per cent complete.

Hashim Al Dabal, Executive Chairman, Dubai Properties Group, said: "Culture Village is an important element of Dubai Properties' total portfolio. It gives me great pride to witness the steady realization of a dream that began when Dubai's leadership envisioned a project that would strengthen our city's art and cultural offerings."

Reem Island's 25km road network poised to be a landmark achievement

Abu Dhabi: To the untrained eye, the development of the arterial road network, which will serve the 200,000 residents and visitors of Abu Dhabi's Reem Island, looks more like the result of a giant burrowing creature.

However, through the expert eyes of Bunya's CEO, Tariq Hatim Sultan, an integrated regional road and mass transport system is rapidly emerging. It is one he predicts will be the envy of many other Middle Eastern cities.

According to Sultan, work on the main 25-kilometre road network, which will criss-cross the 870-hectare natural island in the Capital City of Abu Dhabi, is on schedule.

Building the roads and utilities infrastructure for Tamouh's, Sorouh's and Reem Investments' projects on Reem Island was Bunya's primary mandate when it was established.


"All the key infrastructural components for Reem Island of which the roads are central are moving closer to reality," he said. "We are on track to provide effective and efficient regional roads and utilities for Phase I development by the end of 2009."

He adds that the permanent road system is going to be unique in many ways. "Some six million cubic metres of dredged infill are being used to create a series of raised roads more than five metres above sea level. This will enable utilities such as power, water, telecommunications, gas, district cooling, and sewerage corridors to be quickly and easily installed and ready for all three master developers and their third party developers."

Wireless sensors learn from life - Self Assembly Networks

Original Article

PhysOrg.com) -- European and Indian researchers are applying principles learned from living organisms to design self-organising networks of wireless sensors suitable for a wide range of environmental monitoring purposes.

Monsoon rains in the Indian state of Kerala often bring increased risk of landslides. What can be done to warn nearby communities that a landslide is imminent?

One answer is to use a wireless sensor network to monitor geological conditions. Wireless sensors are becoming popular because the sensor nodes are small, simple and cheap and require no cabling to connect them together and to the control centre. They can be used for numerous purposes and are well suited to environmental monitoring.

There are downsides, though. Sensors and communication links can fail, and the nodes rely on battery power. Large networks can become congested with many sensors reporting at the same time to the same control centre.

However, what matters is not so much the reliability of the individual sensors but the reliability of the network as a whole. Does this system reliably monitor air pollution in the city centre? Does that system reliability measure weather conditions on the motorway bridge?

Biological analogy

These are the kinds of problems being tackled by WINSOC, an EU-funded project to find new ways of organising wireless sensor networks to make them robust against node failures and capable of being implemented on large scales.

What makes WINSOC different from earlier projects is that it has taken its cue from biological systems. Where sensor networks are made up of many individual sensors, living organisms are made up from many individual cells.

“Living systems are intrinsically robust against cells dying or being damaged,” says Sergio Barbarossa of the University of Rome 'La Sapienza', who is the scientific coordinator of WINSOC. “The behaviour of most organs is an emerging feature, resulting from the interaction of many cells, where no cell is particularly robust or even aware of the whole behaviour.”

A striking example is the rhythm of the heart, which is controlled by the interaction of several pacemaker cells, each of which can be seen as a pulse oscillator. Even though individual oscillators are not particularly stable or reliable, the heart as a whole is extremely stable and can readily adapt to changing conditions.

Self-organisation

“The starting point in WINSOC was to provide mathematical models of biological systems and translate them into algorithms to determine how the sensor nodes should interact with each other,” says Barbarossa.

A prototype sensor node is being developed, but the challenge is to make the network able to continue to function even when several sensors fail.

The answer is self-organisation. In the WINSOC approach, sensor nodes communicate with their neighbours to arrive at a consensus on what has been sensed. The network then finds the best path through the available nodes to relay this information to the control centre.

Q & A: Futurist Ray Kurzweil

Original Article

We caught up with the visionary inventor at SpeechTek 2008, where he talked with InformationWeek about speech technology, his new cellphone reading machine, and two new movie projects.

By Michael Greene
InformationWeek
August 26, 2008 04:00 AM

Greene: You've been a pioneer in a number of areas, but I've read where you've said that applications of the technology benefiting disabled people that have brought you the greatest gratification. Can you talk about your ideas regarding speech and assistive technology?

Kurzweil: One vision we had dating back to 1980 when we started speech recognition was to apply to this to the deaf. The idea is that a deaf person would have a little display, which could be built into their eyeglasses where they would basically get subtitles on the world.

On the one hand it's a demanding technology because it has to be speaker-independent, have a large or unrestricted vocabulary, and support continuous speech. On the other hand, it doesn't require perfect accuracy. The early reading machines were highly inaccurate, but a blind person would be able to make up for it from context. A deaf person could similarly understand from context what was being said. Indeed human speech recognition, particularly in compromised acoustic environments, is not perfect either, and we can pick up from context in chat at cocktail parties, or at least pretend to understand what's being said.

I think we're pretty close to being able to do that at least in good acoustic environments, maybe not at a cocktail party, but if the person is being picked up, with pretty good accuracy. If you take something like Dragon Naturally Speaking, which combines the original Dragon technology in the Kurzweil speech recognition, which is now in Nuance, which actually used to be Kurzweil Computer Products, my first company. That accuracy is quite high. A New York Times reporter recently wrote that using his own voice with no training with the software never having heard him before was over 98.3% accurate on a 100,000 word vocabulary. And that's certainly accurate enough for the deaf application. I think prototypes of that could be put together that would work, at least in good acoustic environments.

Greene: You're currently demonstrating the KNFB Reader Mobile, which is a cell phone that is also a reading machine. What is the background for this device?

Kurzweil: In 2002 the President of the National Federation for the Blind said, 'Ray for years you've been saying that one day a blind person will be able to use a pocket size device to read signs, meeting handouts, menus, and other displays. When do you think this will be feasible?' I said according to our models we'll have the requisite hardware in six years. He said, 'OK, how long will it take to develop the software? I said, well about six years, so he said let's get started. We began in 2002. Right on schedule this spring, hardware that could run this application, a 4-mega pixel camera, sufficiently powered computers of about 300 megahertz and enough memory became available for the first time.

A little to our surprise we also got the software done on time and we introduced it this summer. Now about 1,000 blind guys and gals and dyslexic individuals are going around taking pictures of signs on the wall and handouts at meetings like this one and using this device.

The device is also a GPS navigation system, MP3 player, e-mail reader, web browser, phone and camera as well as being a reading machine in seven languages that also does the translation. This is all done with voice-directed output and voice prompts to help guide a blind or dyslexic person through use. We're working on additional features in our laboratory such as face recognition, object recognition, and the ability to recognize indoor scenes, like a hallway and office to help tell a blind person where they are.

Greene: Speech technology and intuitive design could also make a big difference in quality of life of seniors, but they are not usually mentioned in discussions on technology. What are your thoughts regarding this group?

Kurzweil: Seniors are a big part of our market for our reading machines. We have a version of a reading machine that's very easy to operate and is used by seniors so that they can read print. Even if they are not blind, they may not able to read very well.

Speech recognition can also be used to provide intuitive interfaces into devices. All of these technologies that help us interact with machines can help senior citizens if they are easy to use. Good design and user interface is the key. A lot of devices are not intuitive to use but speech technology can be interactive. It should be like an intelligent assistant that can guide the user regardless of how old they are, how to perform certain functions. You don't ever want to look at a user manual.

Greene: What do you consider good design principles regarding seniors?

Kurzweil: Well I am amazed at how poor interfaces are in general. They are very often not intuitive. You can't read what is happening it's not clear how to accomplish common tasks. That's just an issue of good design principles. These interfaces should be tested with people who have not read the manuals to see if they can actually use them and figure out what to do

Some companies have gotten it. Apple has built its whole company on intuitive interfaces that are easy and fun to use. It's not easy to do but the companies that will do that will succeed. It's not really a speech technology issue.

Greene: In your talk you state the importance of timing, that it's not just about the invention but what we might call the whole ecosystem of related technologies coming together at the right time in order for an invention to work. Is it one technology or a range of technologies that we are requiring here?

Kurzweil: Well, input technology, such as speech technology and character recognition are definitely part of the puzzle. Good user interface design is important. Seniors may have decreased visual acuity or hearing problems, so these issues become more important, but it's really the same issue for any user. We also develop technologies for very young users like children, where again it has to be intuitive and easy to use.

But the technology is getting more intelligent. The market is rewarding products like the iPhone that are intuitive and easy to use. Hardware technologies like flexible touch screens are coming into play. We're getting good speech recognition and character recognition. So over time these will come together and we'll have intuitive products that are easy to use with interfaces that are like an intelligent human assistant that is sort of guiding you through a process.

Greene: Do you see video communication as an area that can also expand seniors' accessibility?

Kurzweil: I think in the next decade, the teen years, we'll be routinely visiting with each other like you and I are doing now in real reality, even if we're hundreds of miles apart and not just as a grainy postage stamp sized video conferencing image on your screen but as a full immersion experience where we really seem to be with the other person. It will be a full immersion visual and auditory virtual reality. We'll have images beamed into our retinas from our eyeglasses. We'll be online all the time. The electronics will be woven into our clothing and in our belt buckles and we'll routinely be visiting with other people in these full immersion environments.

We'll have augmented reality so we'll see real reality but there will be an overlay of virtual reality on top of that helping guide us through the real world. It will direct us inside and outside, not with a navigation system on a small screen that we carry in our palm, but one that's actually built into our field of view. We'll look at a person and it will remind us who they are and give us background about them. That will be very helpful. I mean how many times are you at a cocktail party where you see someone and think you know who they are but you're not quite sure. It would be great get that confirmed and we will have technology like that. It'll help the elderly but it will help all of us. You don't have to be 80 years old to have a senior moment.

Greene: Onto another topic I know your now involved with a couple of film projects. I believe there are two movies coming out that you're involved with one based on your book and the other a documentary about you.

Kurzweil: I'm making a movie based on my book the Singularity is Near. It's called The Singularity is Near: A True Story about the Future. It's an intertwined A line documentary with a B line narrative story. It goes back and forth between the documentary and the dramatization.

In the documentary, I interview 19 big thinkers. People like Marvin Minsky, the father of AI, Richard Clarke, who was the head of counter-terrorism under Clinton and Bush, Alan Dershowitz on the legal rights of machines and 15 or 16 others.

In the B line narrative story it's a story of an AI, Ramona. It starts actually with true documentary footage where I created Ramona at the 2001 Tech conference then Ramona goes into the future and becomes more and more realistic, more and more humanlike. She hires Alan Dershowitz who plays himself to press for her legal rights to be recognized as a person. The judge says I will grant you legal rights as a person if you can pass the Turing Test. She goes and gets coaching from Tony Robbins who plays himself to learn the secret of what it is to be human and the story goes on from there.

It stars Pauley Perrette as Ramona, she's the star of the TV show NCIS. It's due to come out early 2009.

There's also a full length motion picture being made about my life, career and ideas called Transcendent Man and that's on the same schedule. They're going to be released as a double feature. It's another venue to communicate my ideas about the future.

KurzweilTech
KurzweilAI

Monday 25 August 2008

Bringing Green Mainstream

Cherokee Investment is backing the Mainstream GreenHome, a residential laboratory for green building practices they believe will protect the environment and provide solid returns to investors










Pull up to the house on a cul-de-sac in one of Raleigh (N.C.)'s dozens of subdivisions, and it's hard to see anything noteworthy about the red-brick farmhouse-style McMansion. Spacious—the house has five bedrooms—with a wide front porch and ample concrete driveway, it blends easily with its neighbors, just one more comfortable upper-middle-class home in a town full of the same.

Incognito is just how the house, and its financial backers, Raleigh investment firm Cherokee Investment Partners, like it. But the house, which Cherokee dubbed the "Mainstream GreenHome," requires 96% less energy to heat hot water than a comparable dwelling—and is predicted to save 80,000 gallons of water per year through smart conservation methods. It was built under the National Association of Home Builders' Model Green Home Building Guidelines and just last month won a Gold Award in the NAHB Research Center's 2008 EnergyValue Housing awards. It also got one of the best scores ever in the Environmental Protection Agency/Energy Dept.'s Energy Star home efficiency rating system. In short, Cherokee claims it's one of the most environmentally friendly homes in the country—and yet it's maybe the only one that looks 100% typical. Boring even. No grass grows on the roof. Good luck spotting a solar panel. All of this is intentional—the point of building the house was to show just how normal an environmentally sensitive home can look.
From Cleaning Up to Building Clean

The house isn't so typical for Cherokee and its CEO, Thomas Darden. In 1993, Darden and a partner launched a predecessor firm that invested in environmentally impaired assets remediating contaminated industrial sites—which then made money from developing that land into a mix of commercial and residential space. Cherokee raised its fourth private equity fund in 2006, pulling in $1.24 billion from investors such as public pension funds that like the firm's strong track record of returns. Typically, Cherokee invests on a much grander scale than a single family home in the North Carolina capitol. The firm has played a major role, for example, in rehabilitating a large swath of the New Jersey Meadowlands. It rarely looks at investments under $100 million.

But a couple of years ago, Darden says, he became convinced that cleaning up the land just wasn't enough. More of the environmental impact over the long term would come from what was built on that land than anything he could do to improve the quality of the soil itself. Back then, few builders wanted to touch the term "green."To them, it seemed like a fringe market.

Cherokee set out to show that green could mean profits as well as sound environmental practices. The house "is very different from what we've done historically," says Darden. "We focused on remediation and land planning. That may be responsible for 20% of Cherokee's carbon footprint. The rest is the buildings being built."
Every Green Amenity

Although the GreenHome isn't ostentatiously eco-friendly—and some might argue that its mere size precludes it from any claim to sustainability—a trained eye wouldn't have too much trouble finding many of the tricks that allow the house to rack up energy and water savings. Its newly planted garden is full of native and drought-resistant species, perfect for this recently rain-free region. Inside the house, the attic and crawl spaces are sealed rather than vented, a big help with the heating bill and air quality. A passive solar thermal hot water system sits beneath solar panels on the back side of the home's roof; the panels themselves are thin enough to be a dead ringer for standard roof tiles. Radiant flooring keeps the cork kitchen floor toasty, and a glass-doored, half-sized refrigerator in the median accommodates the kids' habit of standing with the door open to contemplate the best snack.

Using the grill atop the stove saves on washing pots and pans, and the IceStone countertops glint with recycled glass and other materials.

Sensing that few potential home buyers walk into a house to check out its attic insulation, the GreenHome's builders instead focused on the things they thought a buyer would care about. The floors throughout the main hall, living room, and dining room are made of richly colored reclaimed hardwood flooring. A North Carolina company called Cape Fear Riverwood makes the floors from logs pulled up from the bottom of the Cape Fear River, the watery graveyard of decades past when the river was lined with mill towns. In the living room, pocket doors, molding, and elaborate built-in shelving took great effort to develop to sustainable standards, but seemed mandatory to compete in a market where they are standard to new construction. GreenHome reused discarded glass and wood, and employed materials, including finishes, with low levels of "off gassing." That means the air quality is better from the moment of installation and over the life of the home because there are far fewer VOCs (volatile organic compounds). A closet on the first floor is made from "responsible" hardwood plywood, built especially for the house by a company called Closets by Design, which has since decided to launch it as a whole new business line.

Naturally, all of this costs money. Cherokee has a team of students at the University of North Carolina's business school study the payoff. So far, the residents of the house, one of Darden's staffers, his wife, and their four children, are using 71% less electricity than families in comparable homes, and spending far less on heating and cooling. Those 80,000 gallons of water per year will be saved through conservation methods including using recycled rainwater for flushing toilets and washing machines. When the family doesn't need all the electricity they're making in the house, they can sell the excess to the regional grid.
A Growing Sector

For now, the GreenHome remains at the cutting edge. But forecasts predict that green building in the residential sector will grow from a $7.4 billion business in 2005 to a $38 billion one by 2010. Green home projects in other states have sold for a nice premium—as much as 25% above the local market, while the average construction cost increase of using green materials was just 4%. But, Cherokee chief Darden isn't banking on builders replicating the GreenHome en masse. He thinks corporations and multifamily landlords are more likely to embrace green technologies first since they can more easily focus on the payback in energy savings over the long term. The typical homeowner is more caught up in the monthly mortgage payment than a return that might take 5 to 10 years to materialize.

With the GreenHome, then, Cherokee is "trying to advance the state of the art and stay closely connected to what technologies are available," says Darden. He also aims "to maintain our knowledge about green building issues so we can be articulate" when pushing builders at other sites to use green technologies.

IBM's Speech Recognition

Original Article

Demand for the technology is expected to rise dramatically over the next few years, and IBM's speech research group is focusing on forming partnerships to take it to market

There aren't too many good-news stories coming out of Iraq, but here's one. The U.S. military is bridging the communications gap between its soldiers and Iraqis by tapping some innovative speech recognition technology from IBM Research (IBM). Using a laptop computer or PDA, soldiers speak into a microphone and the software translates what they say in English into Arabic. Iraqi soldiers or civilians see and hear the words in Arabic, and their answers are immediately translated into English. About 10,000 of these systems are in use in the battle zone.

But what's a boon for the U.S. military highlights a conundrum for IBM Research, which provides the technology gratis. When the military selected speech recognition technology for a new medical records network, it chose an offering from market leader, Burlington (Mass.)-based Nuance Communications (NUAN). For all of IBM's expertise and resources, the 3,000 or so scientists in its basic research facilities worldwide face a major challenge to shepherd their innovations from the lab into the marketplace.
Partnering Up

David Nahamoo, the chief technology officer for IBM Research's speech and translation division, is out to change that. On Aug. 18, Nahamoo announced a new strategy at SpeechTEK 2008, a gathering of the leaders in the speech recognition industry in New York City. Rather than trying to push its technology mainly through IBM's product and services divisions, the speech research group is focusing on forming partnerships with other companies to take the technology to market. Partners include Vlingo, the company that provides speech services for Yahoo! oneSearch (YHOO); PhoneTag, which converts mobile voice mail to text; and Jajah, which offers real-time phone translation between English and Mandarin. "We can find partners, spread the risk, and improve our ability to address these markets," says Nahamoo.

IBM has been performing research into speech recognition for four decades. Some of the technology has found its way into products sold by the company's software and services business, notably in the auto industry. But the technology hasn't had the kind of impact that Nahamoo and his bosses believe is possible, in applications including autos, mobile phones, call centers, medical systems, and transcription services. The issue for IBM? That each of these applications on its own represents a relatively small market. That's why IBM needs partners who are experts in different niches. "This new strategy gives very talented people in IBM an outlet for their work," says William Meisel, president of technology consulting firm TMA Associates.
A Combined Technology

Overall, demand for speech recognition technology is expected to rise dramatically over the next few years as people use their mobile phones as all-purpose lifestyle devices (so barking "find pizza" into your phone would load directions to the nearest pizza parlor). In-car entertainment and navigation systems are increasingly controlled by voice commands. This growth in adoption is being fueled by steady improvements in speech recognition accuracy.

Speech recognition isn't one technology but several combined. You start building a voice recognition engine by recording words, phrases, and sentences, and putting them in a database. Then you create a library of the specific pronunciations of the different words to be recognized. Then you map the sounds in the recordings to the word pronunciations. Last, you build a large table of the most commonly occurring patterns of words people are likely to speak.

Algorithms are created that combine all these sources of information to come up with the right answer in a specific situation. In the past few years, scientists at IBM and elsewhere have been learning how to adapt their voice recognition engines more quickly to a specific person or sound environment. Nuance's newly released Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 PC speech recognition software translates speech into text with up to 99% accuracy.
Nuance and Vlingo

Nuance is the giant of the speech recognition industry, with products for nearly every niche. Annual sales are expected to top $900 million this year. Steve Chambers, president of the company's mobile speech and consumer-services division, says this breadth of experience has made it possible for the company to collect a huge treasure trove of speech samples from people with different languages and accents, which helps it improve its technology rapidly. "The technology is unlike others in research land. It has to be used to improve. The name of the game is scale and usage," he says.

Even without Nuance's scale in this field, IBM Research has managed to produce very effective speech recognition software. Vlingo evaluated IBM's technology against Nuance's and a couple of others. Dave Grannan, Vlingo's chief executive, says IBM had the best combination of speed of processing and accuracy in his company's tests. Another attraction: He didn't fear that IBM might some day decide to get into his business. Nuance, on the other hand, competes with Vlingo."Because IBM Research is not a go-to-market part of IBM, there wasn't a competitive issue with them," he says.
"Spoken Web"

Nahamoo's group is focusing on commercial opportunities right now. But IBM researchers are also exploring areas where the social impact could be huge. One example, spearheaded by scientists in India, is what it calls the "spoken Web." In a handful of villages in the state of Andhra Pradesh, the company is helping locals create Web pages and search the Web purely with voice. A plumber or farmer goes to a kiosk with mobile phones and builds a Web page promoting his or her products, produce, or services by speaking the answers to 10 or so questions. Then other villagers can use a mobile phone to speak commands to search for those Web sites; they hear the search results, rather than see them.

If successful, the technology could help open up the Internet to the world's hundreds of millions of illiterate people. "It has the potential to transform these regions," says Paul Bloom, IBM Research's business executive for the communications sector.

Flexible nanoantenna arrays capture abundant solar energy

Press Release
Idaho National Engineering Lab

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Researchers have devised an inexpensive way to produce plastic sheets containing billions of nanoantennas that collect heat energy generated by the sun and other sources. The technology, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, is the first step toward a solar energy collector that could be mass-produced on flexible materials.

While methods to convert the energy into usable electricity still need to be developed, the sheets could one day be manufactured as lightweight "skins" that power everything from hybrid cars to iPods with higher efficiency than traditional solar cells, say the researchers, who report their findings Aug. 13 at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2008 2nd International Conference on Energy Sustainability in Jacksonville, Fla. The nanoantennas also have the potential to act as cooling devices that draw waste heat from buildings or electronics without using electricity.

The nanoantennas target mid-infrared rays, which the Earth continuously radiates as heat after absorbing energy from the sun during the day. In contrast, traditional solar cells can only use visible light, rendering them idle after dark. Infrared radiation is an especially rich energy source because it also is generated by industrial processes such as coal-fired plants.

"Every process in our industrial world creates waste heat," says INL physicist Steven Novack. "It's energy that we just throw away." Novack led the research team, which included INL engineer Dale Kotter, W. Dennis Slafer of MicroContinuum, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) and Patrick Pinhero, now at the University of Missouri.

The nanoantennas are tiny gold squares or spirals set in a specially treated form of polyethylene, a material used in plastic bags. While others have successfully invented antennas that collect energy from lower-frequency regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as microwaves, infrared rays have proven more elusive. Part of the reason is that materials' properties change drastically at high-frequency wavelengths, Kotter says.

The researchers studied the behavior of various materials -- including gold, manganese and copper -- under infrared rays and used the resulting data to build computer models of nanoantennas. They found that with the right materials, shape and size, the simulated nanoantennas could harvest up to 92 percent of the energy at infrared wavelengths.

The team then created real-life prototypes to test their computer models. First, they used conventional production methods to etch a silicon wafer with the nanoantenna pattern. The silicon-based nanoantennas matched the computer simulations, absorbing more than 80 percent of the energy over the intended wavelength range. Next, they used a stamp-and-repeat process to emboss the nanoantennas on thin sheets of plastic. While the plastic prototype is still being tested, initial experiments suggest that it also captures energy at the expected infrared wavelengths.

The nanoantennas' ability to absorb infrared radiation makes them promising cooling devices. Since objects give off heat as infrared rays, the nanoantennas could collect those rays and re-emit the energy at harmless wavelengths. Such a system could cool down buildings and computers without the external power source required by air-conditioners and fans.

But more technological advances are needed before the nanoantennas can funnel their energy into usable electricity. The infrared rays create alternating currents in the nanoantennas that oscillate trillions of times per second, requiring a component called a rectifier to convert the alternating current to direct current. Today's rectifiers can't handle such high frequencies. "We need to design nanorectifiers that go with our nanoantennas," says Kotter, noting that a nanoscale rectifier would need to be about 1,000 times smaller than current commercial devices and will require new manufacturing methods. Another possibility is to develop electrical circuitry that might slow down the current to usable frequencies.

If these technical hurdles can be overcome, nanoantennas have the potential to be a cheaper, more efficient alternative to solar cells. Traditional solar cells rely on a chemical reaction that only works for up to 20 percent of the visible light they collect. Scientists have developed more complex solar cells with higher efficiency, but these models are too expensive for widespread use.

Nanoantennas, on the other hand, can be tweaked to pick up specific wavelengths depending on their shape and size. This flexibility would make it possible to create double-sided nanoantenna sheets that harvest energy from different parts of the sun's spectrum, Novack says. The team's stamp-and-repeat process could also be extended to large-scale roll-to-roll manufacturing techniques that could print the arrays at a rate of several yards per minute. The sheets could potentially cover building roofs or form the "skin" of consumer gadgets like cell phones and iPods, providing a continuous and inexpensive source of renewable energy.

Flexible nanoantenna arrays capture abundant solar energy

Original Article

Researchers have devised an inexpensive way to produce plastic sheets containing billions of nanoantennas that collect heat energy generated by the sun and other sources. The technology, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, is the first step toward a solar energy collector that could be mass-produced on flexible materials.

While methods to convert the energy into usable electricity still need to be developed, the sheets could one day be manufactured as lightweight "skins" that power everything from hybrid cars to iPods with higher efficiency than traditional solar cells, say the researchers, who report their findings Aug. 13 at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2008 2nd International Conference on Energy Sustainability in Jacksonville, Fla. The nanoantennas also have the potential to act as cooling devices that draw waste heat from buildings or electronics without using electricity.


The nanoantennas target mid-infrared rays, which the Earth continuously radiates as heat after absorbing energy from the sun during the day. In contrast, traditional solar cells can only use visible light, rendering them idle after dark. Infrared radiation is an especially rich energy source because it also is generated by industrial processes such as coal-fired plants.

"Every process in our industrial world creates waste heat," says INL physicist Steven Novack. "It's energy that we just throw away." Novack led the research team, which included INL engineer Dale Kotter, W. Dennis Slafer of MicroContinuum, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) and Patrick Pinhero, now at the University of Missouri.

The nanoantennas are tiny gold squares or spirals set in a specially treated form of polyethylene, a material used in plastic bags. While others have successfully invented antennas that collect energy from lower-frequency regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as microwaves, infrared rays have proven more elusive. Part of the reason is that materials' properties change drastically at high-frequency wavelengths, Kotter says.

The researchers studied the behavior of various materials -- including gold, manganese and copper -- under infrared rays and used the resulting data to build computer models of nanoantennas. They found that with the right materials, shape and size, the simulated nanoantennas could harvest up to 92 percent of the energy at infrared wavelengths.

The team then created real-life prototypes to test their computer models. First, they used conventional production methods to etch a silicon wafer with the nanoantenna pattern. The silicon-based nanoantennas matched the computer simulations, absorbing more than 80 percent of the energy over the intended wavelength range. Next, they used a stamp-and-repeat process to emboss the nanoantennas on thin sheets of plastic. While the plastic prototype is still being tested, initial experiments suggest that it also captures energy at the expected infrared wavelengths.

The nanoantennas' ability to absorb infrared radiation makes them promising cooling devices. Since objects give off heat as infrared rays, the nanoantennas could collect those rays and re-emit the energy at harmless wavelengths. Such a system could cool down buildings and computers without the external power source required by air-conditioners and fans.

But more technological advances are needed before the nanoantennas can funnel their energy into usable electricity. The infrared rays create alternating currents in the nanoantennas that oscillate trillions of times per second, requiring a component called a rectifier to convert the alternating current to direct current. Today's rectifiers can't handle such high frequencies. "We need to design nanorectifiers that go with our nanoantennas," says Kotter, noting that a nanoscale rectifier would need to be about 1,000 times smaller than current commercial devices and will require new manufacturing methods. Another possibility is to develop electrical circuitry that might slow down the current to usable frequencies.

If these technical hurdles can be overcome, nanoantennas have the potential to be a cheaper, more efficient alternative to solar cells. Traditional solar cells rely on a chemical reaction that only works for up to 20 percent of the visible light they collect. Scientists have developed more complex solar cells with higher efficiency, but these models are too expensive for widespread use.

Nanoantennas, on the other hand, can be tweaked to pick up specific wavelengths depending on their shape and size. This flexibility would make it possible to create double-sided nanoantenna sheets that harvest energy from different parts of the sun's spectrum, Novack says. The team's stamp-and-repeat process could also be extended to large-scale roll-to-roll manufacturing techniques that could print the arrays at a rate of several yards per minute. The sheets could potentially cover building roofs or form the "skin" of consumer gadgets like cell phones and iPods, providing a continuous and inexpensive source of renewable energy.

All that solar energy is wasted overnight, but now there’s a way to capture it

Original Article

The folks at the Idaho National Laboratory say they’ve come up with a way to make solar energy work round the clock. The sporadic nature of solar energy and the need thus to store day-time solar for night-time use has long been one of the biggest bugaboos cited by solar doubters. “Yeah, solar’s okay but it’s so not 24-7. Not like nuclear, or coal.”

Now a new idea makes the darkness in many lattitudes a second solar dawn. Nanoantenna capture the residual solar energy that remains in soil, asphalt, cement, bodies of water–all those things that heat up during the day. A plastic film has been developed containing billions of nanoantennas. These can collect heat energy generated by the sun or any other radiant source. They capture the heat in the wave-length of infrared. The same radiation that allows night goggles to “see.” Current solar technology can use only visible light waves.

Here’s the press release on their findings from the federally funded lab in Idaho. Yes, tax dollars actually being used to find alternative fuel, not drilling for more oil or natural gas. Does Dick Cheney know this? Maybe he stopped caring so much.

The Idaho researchers hope to turn this captured heat into electricity. So far they have used gold, copper and manganese to make their nano-collectors. The nano tech would allow collection of a wider spectrum of the solar energy that hits the earth. This tech could also be used to cool buildings or factories that give off heat.

NEW NUCS ALSO BEING RESEARCHED

Here’s the front page of the Idaho Lab’s website. They are also working on advanced nuclear power plants . “This [web]site will explain how the energy created by a high temperature gas-cooled reactor can assist our national pursuit of energy independence.” Of course, their proposed plant still has to get licensing and it may need changes in outdated federal laws.

======

A Home Network Where Your TV Talks to Your Fridge

Original Article

BERLIN — Across the consumer electronics industry, leading players are revamping their audio and video equipment for a future centered around the Internet, a world in which televisions, stereos and computers — even dishwashers and refrigerators — can communicate with each other over a wireless home network.

Expanded lines of networked entertainment equipment will take center stage this week at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin, the largest consumer electronics convention in Europe, with 1,200 exhibitors and 200,000 visitors.

Sony plans to introduce plug-in adapters to enable some of its Bravia television sets to connect to the Internet wirelessly. The Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips will demonstrate a line of stereo systems that can wirelessly tap into music stored on personal computers or laptops in other rooms, streaming music through the house.

Pioneer, Samsung and Sharp will present flat-panel TVs that hook up to the Internet, some with wires, some without. Hewlett-Packard’s MediaSmart L.C.D. TV will wirelessly stream high-definition video.

Some industry executives say the new focus on Internet content and wireless networks reflects a fundamental shift in home entertainment.

“The Internet is so massive,” said Tim Page, technology marketing manager at Sony Europe. “So are the opportunities for electronics makers, content providers and consumers to get connected.”

The convergence of telecommunications, consumer electronics and computing is bringing together a new set of competitors. Telecommunications operators, seeking to increase their revenue from data traffic, are actively promoting home Internet access that is both easier and more sophisticated.

One way is through so-called residential gateways, boxes that combine an Internet router with a modem and software than can wirelessly shuttle video and audio among devices in a home. France Télécom has sold six million of its Livebox gateways through 2007, according to Parks Associates, a research firm in Dallas.

Major online businesses also view the living room as a potentially lucrative new location for their services, with consumers turning to their TVs instead of PCs to reach the Internet. Google and Yahoo have said they will jointly produce software to make it easier to display Internet content on TV screens.

But the development of wireless home networks will require a shift in consumer thinking.

“Consumers really aren’t driving the trend toward networked devices, the device makers are,” said Steve Wilson, an analyst at ABI Research in New York. “The companies are pushing this to try to build a new business, to offer new services. It is really a matter of getting the infrastructure in place.”

While networked devices like Internet-ready TVs, set-top boxes, residential gateways and game consoles are increasingly common, the truly networked wireless home is still a few years off, industry experts say. By the end of this year, 370 million homes worldwide will have broadband Internet, Parks Associates estimates. But only 5 percent, about 17 million, will have residential media gateways.

The technology already exists to enable many home electronic devices, including kitchen appliances, to communicate over a wireless network, said Alon Ironi, the chief executive of Siano, an Israeli company that makes video receivers for devices like digital picture frames. The problem, Mr. Ironi said, is that most devices are unable to communicate with other manufacturers’ products because of different technological standards.

Although most major consumer electronics makers — Samsung, Sony, Philips, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sharp, Toshiba — belong to the Digital Living Network Alliance, a consortium whose common protocols ensure that their devices communicate with one another, that has not stopped some from hedging their bets. In July, Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi and Motorola joined the Israeli company Amimon in a new standards group for wireless communication, called Wireless High Definition Interface, which is working to produce a new HD video standard.

“What this means for consumers is that some people may bring products home and discover that they can’t communicate with others on their networks,” said Kurt Scherf, a senior analyst at Parks Associates. “We are just starting to see the first networked products roll out and a shakeout in standards is inevitable.”

Still, manufacturers clearly think the appeal of a new information age centered on the living room couch will be strong enough to win over consumers who may be unimpressed by the early results. That is one reason that the former cordless telephone business of Siemens is starting to think about combining its phones with the Internet. Siemens sold 80.2 percent of the telephone unit, which makes Gigaset cordless phones, to Arques, a private equity firm in Munich, on Aug. 1. Although the transaction will not be completed until Oct. 1, the company is already considering plans to combine its phones with audio players and a wireless home network.

“Very soon, I don’t think there will be any consumer electronics device on the market that isn’t connected to the Internet,” said Jochen Eickholt, the chief executive of the Siemens unit.

Sunday 24 August 2008

Accell Shares Get Jolt as Electric Bike Sales Surge

Original Article


Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Accell Group NV Chief Executive Officer Rene Takens is powering up an electric bike to outpace Giant Manufacturing Co., Asia's largest bicycle maker, and help reverse his stock's 28 percent drop in the past year.

The company's Sparta ION GLS travels up to 87 miles (140 kilometers) before its batteries need recharging, 17 percent farther than a comparable model from Taiwan-based Giant. The new engine means Accell, based in Heerenveen, the Netherlands, is worth at least 30 euros a share, 23 percent more than yesterday's close in Amsterdam, said Marc van der Maale of Aviva Plc's Delta Lloyd Asset Management, Accell's biggest investor.

Rising gasoline prices and worsening road congestion have prompted Europeans to seek alternative ways to get around, boosting demand for electric bikes. In Germany, a $2.5 billion bicycle market that's Europe's largest, battery-powered bikes accounted for 1.5 percent of the 4.6 million bicycles sold in 2007, according to Bike Europe magazine. Sales of electric models may rise to 5 percent in a few years, Takens, 54, said.

``The e-bike is an enormously interesting alternative to the car,'' said Frederik van Beuningen, a director at Darlin NV, Accell's second-biggest shareholder, with an 8.5 percent stake. ``The real markets are the countries surrounding the Netherlands, where it's just a bit hillier,'' he said.

Accell has fallen on concern that higher aluminum and rubber prices may drive up costs of its city, mountain and speed bikes sold under 17 brands, including Batavus and Koga. Accell plans to raise prices by as much as 5 percent for some models next month, Takens said. The company generated 44 percent of its 476 million euros ($704 million) in 2007 revenue from the Netherlands.

Buying Shares

The shares added 58 cents, or 2.4 percent, to 25 euros in Amsterdam, the biggest jump in a month. Giant slipped 0.6 percent to NT$82.50 in Taipei.

Van der Maale, 39, added 169,000 Accell shares for a 1.8 percent stake, according to a June regulatory filing. He manages the 170 million-euro Delta Lloyd Select Dividend Fund. Delta Lloyd Asset Management owns more than 20 percent of Accell, according to spokesman Rob Nieuwenhuizen. Sue Winston, a London- based spokeswoman for Aviva, the second-largest U.K. insurer, declined to comment on its Accell stake held by Delta Lloyd.

CEO Takens made the Sparta engine 70 percent more powerful. The new pedelec -- for pedal electric cycle, as it's commonly called -- travels as fast as 25 kilometers an hour with pedal support. The model, with the batteries embedded in the bike's frame, will go on sale Sept. 1 for 2,399 euros in the Netherlands, compared with 1,899 euros for Giant's Twist Comfort, which carries its rechargeable batteries in saddlebags.

Pedelecs ``had a terrible image, like a bike for the disabled,'' Takens said.

Bridges, Dykes

The older Sparta ION models quickly overheat in hilly areas, according to Hannes Neupert, president of ExtraEnergy e.V., a Germany-based consumer group that tests bicycles. ``In the Netherlands, the steepest climb is a bridge or a dyke,'' he said.

Takens's next stop is Friedrichshafen, a German lakeside city close to the Alps, which will hold Europe's biggest bicycle fair Sept. 4-7.

Some of the company's 1,700 employees are working overtime as demand rises, Takens said last month. Accell made two-thirds of all electric bikes sold in the Netherlands, according to Frank van Wijk, an analyst at SNS Securities in Amsterdam. Pedelec sales in the Dutch market reached 89,000 units in 2007 and 25,000 units in the first quarter, industry group Bovag estimates.

``It's clear it's a hit in the Netherlands,'' said Van Wijk, adding that Accell introduced its first pedelec in Germany two years ago ``when the e-bike was still in its infancy.''

Demand Increases

Van Wijk is one of two analysts who advise buying Accell shares. Three say hold and one recommends selling.

In the Netherlands, 6.4 percent of the 1.4 million new bikes sold last year were battery-assisted, more than four times the ratio in Germany, figures from Dutch and German industry groups show. The German market for e-bikes will expand 75 percent this year to 120,000 units, outpacing the 43 percent growth predicted for the Netherlands, Neupert said.

Competition is set to intensify in Europe, as cheaper bikes from China arrive in German and French shops, pushing prices lower, according to Han Goes, a former product development director at Giant and now a consultant at Lelystad, Netherlands- based Q Square, which advises bicycle makers including Giant.

The average cost of a bicycle in Germany is 350 euros, about half of that in the Netherlands, Goes said. Aldi Group, Germany's largest discount retailer, recently offered e-bikes for 699 euros each. In China, a pedelec costs between 2,000 yuan ($292) and 4,000 yuan, he said.

Schwinn, Mongoose

Accell's 2007 revenue from bikes and parts was about 75 percent more than Taichung, Taiwan-based Giant. The biggest bicycle manufacturers in North America include Dorel Industries Inc., the maker of Schwinn and Mongoose brands, and closely held Trek Bicycle Corp. and Specialized Bicycle Components Inc.

Before today, the company's shares had underperformed Giant by 52 percentage points and Montreal-based Dorel by 39 points in the past year. It trades at 8.9 times estimated 2008 earnings per share, versus 13 for Giant.

Takens holds a master's degree in engineering from the Technical University of Twente. He headed the Italian unit of CSM NV, a supplier of ingredients to bakeries, before becoming Accell's CEO in September 1999. Since then, Accell's stock has jumped fivefold, with revenue and profit increasing every year.

The shares, which will join the Amsterdam Small-Cap Index next month, return a gross dividend yield of 5 percent, compared with 4.7 percent for the 25-company benchmark. That's one of the reasons Delta Lloyd's Van der Maale is attracted to the stock, he said.

``Nowadays, people still mock about the electric bike,'' he said. ``That image will change.''

Toronto's Zenn Electric Car Sells in California, Banned at Home

Original Article

Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Mike Borbely likes his Canadian-made Zenn electric car so much he's planning to install solar panels on his garage roof so he can charge it for free.

``The Zenn really takes care of the lion's share of my commuting needs,'' said Borbely, a 45-year-old home designer from San Jose, California. He drives the boxy two-seater, which has a top speed of 25 miles (40 kilometers) an hour, to visit clients, he said.

Good thing Borbely is from California. He couldn't buy the Zenn in Toronto. Zenn Motor Co. has no customers in its hometown because the Ontario government has banned low-speed electric cars such as the Zenn from public roads, citing safety concerns.

At least 40 U.S. states, including California and Washington, and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Quebec deem electric cars like the Zenn to be safe as long as they don't exceed their mandated maximum speeds. Ontario says more research is needed.

``It's been somewhat mind-boggling; the U.S. has been much more welcoming than Canada,'' Zenn Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Ian Clifford said in an interview at his Toronto office. ``Why is this niche treated so differently in the two countries?''

Off Limits

The Ontario Ministry of Transportation this month ordered studies of low-speed electric cars to see if they are safe for public roads. The government has been testing the vehicles in parks across the province since 2006. Until the studies are complete, as late as 2011, Zenns will be off limits in Canada's most populous province.

``We want low-speed electric vehicles on our roads, and we are looking at how it can be done safely,'' Transportation Minister Jim Bradley said in a statement announcing the new research.

Small electric cars like the Zenn typically meet only three of 40 safety standards required of regular passenger cars for brakes, bumpers and other components or functions, said Emna Dhahak, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Transportation in Toronto.

Ontario's ban hasn't deterred investors. Zenn has jumped fivefold on the Toronto Stock Exchange since its initial public offering in 2005, boosting its market value to C$160 million ($153 million). The stock fell 10 cents to C$4.80 yesterday.

No Emissions

The Zenn, an acronym for ``zero emissions, no noise,'' is the result of six years of tinkering by Clifford, 45, a former photographer and technology entrepreneur. He sold his Toronto Internet marketing company, digIT Interactive Inc., in 2000 to focus on developing an electric car.

His team originally planned to revive and convert the Dauphine, a French sedan built by Renault SA more than 40 years ago. Zenn built prototypes and sold them at the 2001 Toronto auto show.

Further experimentation led to a more modern design, and the company teamed up with France's Microcar SA to make a chassis and shell. Assembly began at Zenn's plant in Saint- Jerome, Quebec, in late 2006.

Zenn's niche is a tiny one. The company, which has 40 employees, has sold 350 Zenns, about a third of them in California. It lost $C6.98 million last year on sales of $C2.3 million.

General Motors Corp., the biggest U.S. automaker, says it will produce 10,000 Volt electric cars in the model's first full year after it hits the market in 2010. Toyota Motor Corp. plans a plug-in version of its best-selling Prius hybrid, also in 2010.

``We don't want to become a GM or Toyota,'' but a developer of new electric drive systems, Clifford said.

Running Cost

The basic Zenn, without options such as air conditioning, a sunroof and power windows, sells for $15,995. The car plugs into a conventional electrical outlet and can go 30 to 50 miles on a single charge, depending on how fast it's driven and whether the air conditioning is used.

The attraction for Zenn drivers is an operating cost of two cents a mile, according to the company. That's about a third of the cost of running a gas-electric hybrid vehicle and a sixth of what it takes to drive a conventional car, the company says.

Todd Madeiros, president of Greenrides, an electric car dealership near San Jose, says he sells an average of three Zenn cars a month, about half his monthly volume. Queries from potential customers have soared since gasoline topped $4 a gallon earlier this year, Madeiros said.

``We're getting four times the calls we were three months ago,'' he said. Madeiros says he will open a second dealership in San Luis Obispo on the California coast by the end of next month.

Bigger, Faster

Zenn CEO Clifford says he's not going to spend more time trying to get the Ontario government to approve the present Zenn.

While the company plans to add four-seat and truck utility versions of its low-speed Zenn for approved markets, Clifford says he will develop a bigger, faster vehicle called the cityZENN by early 2010. It will be sold initially in Europe, where the certification process is quicker, he said.

According to Clifford, the car should reach speeds of 125 kilometers an hour, and go 400 kilometers between power charges, aided by a new technology being developed by privately owned EEStor Inc. of Cedar Park, Texas. Dick Weir, EEStor's founder and president, declined to comment.

San Jose Zenn owner Borbely says he's heard of the cityZENN. ``Boy, if that did come out it would revolutionize everything,'' he said.

Friday 22 August 2008

Open Architecture Network

Portal Entry

How do you improve the living standards of five billion people?

With 100 million solutions.

Architecture for Humanity

Open Architecture Network

Architecture for Humanity

Building a more sustainable future using the power of design. Through a global network of building professionals, Architecture for Humanity brings design, construction and development services to communities in need.

Open Architecture

Original Site (dormant since 2004)


This weblog has been created as a result of the article A communism of ideas, towards an architectural open source practice. It proposes a reorganization of architectural practice in order to deal with the diminshing role of the architect in spatial planning issues. Instead of continuing the battle of egos this weblog sets out to explore new models of cooperation that can reinvent architectural practice and develop innovative spatial models at the same time. - Dennis Kaspori

David Macaulay: All roads lead to Rome Antics

Jaime Lerner: Sing a song of sustainable cities

Open Planning Project

The Open Planning Project (TOPP) is a non-profit incubator for projects and technology to catalyze large scale social change.

TOPP identifies opportunities where great improvements to the world can be brought about by focused action. We leverage our expertise in technology development, media production, and urban policy to drive positive change.

The Open Planning Project (TOPP) is a non-profit incubator for projects and technology to catalyze large scale social change.

TOPP identifies opportunities where great improvements to the world can be brought about by focused action. We leverage our expertise in technology development, media production, and urban policy to drive positive change.

http://topp.openplans.org/

Open Source House

The Ficker Group

Cameron Sinclair: TED Prize wish: Open-source architecture to house the world

Edward Burtynsky: TED Prize wish: Share the story of Earth's manufactured landscapes

William Kamkwamba: How I built my family a windmill

Amy Smith: Simple designs that could save millions of childrens' lives

Ross Lovegrove: The power and beauty of organic design

Thom Mayne: Architecture is a new way to connect to the world

William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle



Norman Foster: Building on the Green Agenda

The Communications Substructure

Architectual Inspiration: http://www.ted.com/themes/rss/id/10



TED Theme: A Greener Future?http://www.ted.com/themes/rss/id/15



Robin Chase: Communication and Transportation intersection: The Free Mesh Network





Surveillance made easy

Original Article



"THIS data allows investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time."

So said the UK Home Office last week as it announced plans to give law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public bodies access to the details of people's text messages, emails and internet activity. The move followed its announcement in May that it was considering creating a massive central database to store all this data, as a tool to help the security services tackle crime and terrorism.

Meanwhile in the US the FISA Amendments Act, which became law in July, allows the security services to intercept anyone's international phone calls and emails without a warrant for up to seven days. Governments around the world are developing increasingly sophisticated electronic surveillance methods in a bid to identify terrorist cells or spot criminal activity.

However, technology ...

Thursday 21 August 2008

The First Tessla Delivered.



Players in the Design of New Cities

http://www.tanmiyat.com/home.html

http://www.nakheel.com/

http://www.aldar.com/

http://www.alarkan.com/english/default.asp

http://www.qataridiar.com/

http://www.sarayaholdings.com/

http://www.abyaar.com/

LivePlace - Virtually THERE

Original Article



TechCrunch found a virtual world service (think Second Life) called LivePlace, which aims to render very realistic environments in real time by rendering it first, then pushing image data to devices. The service is supposedly working off of a service from OTOY which specializes in server-side graphics. In the case of LivePlace, you'll be using that pre-rendered "massive" cityscape to walk your avatar around in.

What's great about this tech is that because they render all this stuff serverside, this beautiful imagery can be streamed to even the crappiest of devices. Case in point, the leaked video above was shown on a Treo 700 at 240kbps while being rendered somewhere else. Hotness doesn't begin to describe something of this quality that can then be customized to your liking. [TechCrunch - Thanks Ariel!]

OTOY Developing Server-Side 3D Rendering Technology

Original Article
Imagine you could play video games - and immerse yourself in virtual worlds - with 3D graphics comparable to those found in blockbuster films like Transformers or WALL•E. And then imagine you could experience and control those graphics in real-time from any internet-enabled device, whether it be a desktop computer, set-top box or even iPhone.



Sound far-fetched? It doesn’t to Jules Urbach, founder and CEO of a Los Angeles-based company called OTOY, who has been working with microprocessor manufacturer AMD since 2006 to make the idea of server-side graphics processing a reality. If all goes as planned, 3D rendering will become just another computer task that jumps from the client to the cloud. Call it gaming as a service (GaaS) if you will. No more Xboxes, no more PlayStations, and no more souped-up PC towers. Just a monitor, some controls, and a way to receive and display frames generated by a powerful server farm.

But let’s take a step back for a second. Before it’s even possible to deliver movie-quality graphics through a thin client, there must be a way to produce those graphics - and in real-time. Movie producers have the luxury of knowing ahead of time just how they want their frames to look. Visual effects studios like Industrial Light and Magic don’t have to respond to user inputs, so they can spend hours rendering each and every frame. Game producers, however, rely on engines that must respond quickly to user behavior and serve up graphics at near-instantaneous speeds. That reliance constitutes perhaps the main reason why in-game graphics have lagged behind their big-screen counterparts for years.

Just the other week, however, AMD announced an initiative called Cinema 2.0 that promises to narrow the gap between movies and games with a new RV770 GPU. To demonstrate the power of AMD’s new consumer graphics cards, Urbach and his art teams in Spain, Canada and the US pulled together a set of videos that approximate the CGI you’d expect from movies. He took us through an overview of that work here:



Most of his demos focus on recreating Autobots and Decepticons from the Transformers movie. And the results are very impressive, even if they don’t quite match those found on the big screen. The stills at the bottom of this post are from voxel-based animations that were rendered in real-time, such as the one embedded at the top of this post.

But the rendering of machinery poses far fewer challenges than producing humanoid models that suspend disbelief. To achieve the organic in addition to the inorganic, Jules has worked on a project called LightStage that takes panoramic shots of real humans in motion and turns them into animated 3D models. Watch below as Jules explains how the Lightstage works:





All of this is just an extension of what has been done by technologists so far to mimic reality within virtual experiences. Urbach’s bold and particularly innovative proposal is that he can deliver these experiences through the browser. While we’ve seen 3D games delivered through the browser before, this time it’s very different.

First of all, OTOY-powered graphics can potentially go far beyond those found on any consumer device because they aren’t actually rendered by whatever hardware is sitting on your desk, resting in your hand, or laying on your living room floor. In the video below, Urbach shows how AMD graphics cards installed on the server (rather than the client) can be hooked up to work in parallel and deliver highly complex graphics from afar, in the form of pure frames.



The main limitations are bandwidth and server power (i.e. how fast the client can receive frames generated by the server, and how fast the server can generate those frames for all its concurrent users). Urbach claims that his technology can deliver up to 220 frames per second (fps), which is overkill for most monitors and the human eye. As for lag, he experiences 12-17 milliseconds on the west coast (where his current test server is located) and 100 ms in Japan. The compression codec used to deliver these levels of performance was developed internally, although with help from AMD’s engineering team.

The second main difference is that Urbach’s technology doesn’t require any browser plugin whatsoever (although it can take advantage of those, too). OTOY-powered graphics can be delivered via Ajax, Flash, Java, or ActiveX. Surprisingly, the Ajax-powered version in Safari works fastest. That’s good news for future iPhone 3G owners since this graphics delivery system is compatible with that mobile device (and any other device with a full-featured browser, such as Android). The possibilities here make one wonder whether the days of PSPs and other portable gaming devices are limited. And they suggest that the future of the web-enabled cell phone is bright indeed.

Expect one of the first commercial implementations of LightStage and this server-side rendering technology to come in the form of a virtual world. Urbach also plans to release a full suite of developer tools to those who want to leverage OTOY for their own applications.

OTOY is privately funded, although much of its GPU-based hardware will be provided by AMD. More stills from real-time renders and LightStage results are provided below.