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Student Creates Multi-Touch Software and Table for Science Project

Brad Baldwin — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:54:59 +0000

Here’s one student that takes the “Science Fair” to the next level. Bridger Maxwell, a high school student at Utah County Academy of Sciences (UCAS) decided to create a multi-touch table for his Science Fair entry–kinda like an iPhone screen, and Microsoft Surface on a budget.

The multi-touch experience allows for object movement, rotation, growing and shrinking, and even multi-hand, multi-person use. Inspired by movies like Minority Report, Maxwell leverages Apple OS X, code developed during Google Summer of Code called Open Touch, and his own code. The table, made from plexiglass and a dissembled Acer monitor, uses infrared light emitting diodes and an IR camera to detect and transmit fingertip motions as inputs.

Maxwell also expects to experience a future where multi-touch technology becomes a standard way to interact with applications, particularly for graphic manipulation and even gaming. Maxwell submitted his code back to the community at code.google.com/p/corkboard/ and has received coverage on Ars Technica and a local NBC news story.

Maxwell also expects to experience a future where multi-touch technology becomes a standard way to interact with applications, particularly for graphic manipulation and even gaming. While Maxwell didn’t get a summer internship on the iPhone team “this” year, has received coverage on Ars Technica and the local NBC news station. Not bad for a high school student.

Tags: Apple, Brad Baldwin, Bridger Maxwell, Google, iPhone, Multi-Touch, RockyMountainVoices, Summer of Code, Surface, Utah

MailShadow Syncs Outlook to Gmail and Google Apps

Brad Baldwin — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:28:04 +0000

Cemaphore Systems’ MailShadow for Google Apps keeps your Microsoft Outlook environment in sync with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Gmail Contacts. Make a change in one, and the other is instantly updated to reflect the change. MailShadow for Google Apps is receiving a lot of attention since organizations can eliminate the expensive infrastructure, hardware, and co-location facilities required by Exchange, but still allow users to leverage the client-side productivity features in Outlook.

Tracy Scott, the VP of Marketing at Cemaphore, shows the beta version of MailShadow for Google Apps to Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices. And if you’re interested in giving it a try, the beta sign-up is still open.

Tags: Brad Baldwin, Cemaphore Systems, Gmail, Google, MailShadow, Tracy Scott

Classic Scoble : eBay Demo Expo: Prototype eBay tagcloud gets emotional

Robert Scoble — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:02:00 +0000

What was Scoble up to one year ago today? Check out today’s video for a trip down memory lane.
And for more context, check out his blog, from one year ago today!

I was one of the few outsiders to visit eBay and witness an internal “Demo Expo.” The Demo Expo was a way for employees to come up with a new technology or feature and show it off to eBay’s employees and executives. I picked my favorite four teams, and this is one of them. Thanks to eBay’s Disruptive Innovations team, which is the one that put together the Demo Expo and invited me along. The only rule was that these projects had to use eBay’s standard publicly-available APIs.

Here Neel Sundaresan, distinguished research scientist, eBay Research Labs, shows me Emosi Sosial, which is like a tag cloud, but shows me very quickly whether a seller is highly regarded or not in the areas most important to the interested buyer.

Other posts from a year ago:
eBay Demo Expo: Second Life prototype
eBay Demo Expo: Prototype eBay Toolbar
The details behind eBay’s Demo Expo, internal innovation competition
eBay Demo Expo: EXCLUSIVE: New eBay Web 2.0 To Go Widget now shipping

Tags: eBay, Demo Expo, Disruptive Innovations, Neel Sundaresan, tag cloud

Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst at Forrester, at AMD’s BlogHaus

editor — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:00:26 +0000

What’s ahead for open social? How does the social networking universe continue to impact the way we do business? What parties is Jeremiah going to? These important questions are answered in this brief video podcast interview with Forrester Senior Analyst Jeremiah Owyang. He spoke with InternetGeekGirl Stephanie Agresta at AMD’s BlogHaus at SXSWi.

Tags: open social, social networking, Forrester, Jeremiah Owyang, InternetGeekGirl, Stephanie Agresta, AMD, BlogHaus, SXSWi

Meeting the user input visionary, Doug Engelbart

Robert Scoble — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:13:39 +0000

If you haven’t heard of Doug Engelbart, you really should do some Google searches and get to know some of the things he’s invented. Let’s just start with the mouse. But here Doug Engelbart and Valerie Landau show off a new user-input invention they are working on: a glove that you can type and control the cursor with. Really great conversation with one of the true visionaries in our industry.

Tags: Doug Engelbart, Valerie Landau

John Battelle on 2007 predictions and advertising industry

Robert Scoble — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:01:58 +0000

You might have heard of John Battelle. He plans the Web 2.0 Summits, wrote a book about Google, runs an online advertising company, among many other things. I spent some time with him this week talking about his predictions (which, for the past few years, have turned out to be quite accurate) as well as his advertising business, Federated Media, which provides advertising and revenues for famous blogs like Boing Boing and TechCrunch.

Tags: John Battelle, Web 2.0, Google, Federated Media, Boing Boing, TechCrunch

Udi Manber A Supernova 2007 Spotlight

Aron Pruiett — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:13:52 +0000

Udi Manber is Vice President of Engineering at Google. During his Spotlight session for Supernova 2007 he spoke of the challenges of search as well as the progress. What direction is search taking us and is search the center of the internet experience are questions that Manber is an authority on.

Tags: Udi Manber, Google, Supernova 2007

Getting open and social with Hi5

Robert Scoble — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:01:30 +0000

Hi5 is a very popular social network — 100,000 new people join it every day and it’s the most popular network in many countries like Mexico and in Asia. I sat down with Akash Garg, co-founder and CTO, to find out what Hi5 is up to and also to hear his thoughts on Google’s Open Social platform because Hi5 is a key member of that alliance.

Tags: Hi5, Akash Garg, CTO, Google, Open Social

The best mobile search engine?

Robert Scoble — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:40:10 +0000

Do you think Google is the best search engine for cell phones? Think again with Taptu’s Bob Last. He’s senior vice president of business development there and talks with me about search engines and how mobile phones aren’t well served by the major search engines from Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft.

Tags: Google, search engine, cell phones, Taptu, Bob Last, business development, mobile phones, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft

Demo of how Taptu is way better than Google for mobiles

editor — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:34:43 +0000

We do a little test comparing Google to Taptu on a mobile phone. You might be surprised by how much nicer Taptu is for many searches. Here Bob Lastt, senior vice president at Taptu, and I have a race and Bob shows off some of the cool features of Taptu.

Tags: Google, Taptu, mobile phone, Bob Last

ADSDAQ: A Stock Exchange for Advertising, Part 2

John Ince — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:29:39 +0000

Jay Sears, senior vice president for Context Web and ADSDAQ talks with John Ince about how advertising exchanges have suddenly emerged as premium Web properties with Google acquiring Doubleclick for $3.1 billion, Yahoo! acquiring Right Media for $800 million and Microsoft acquiring aQuantive for $6+ billion. Sears believes that this trend is significant because the ad exchange model drives value both for publisher and advertisers. In spite of the trend, ADSDAQ remains privately held with backing from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Updata Partners.

Tags: Jay Sears, Context Web, ADSDAQ

(Explicit) Dan Farber on…

Steve Gillmor — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:24:08 +0000

Is the valuation a term that is taken too lightly? These days, new tech companies like Facebook seem to be popping up from every part of Silicon Valley. Can Facebook actually monetize the bazillion apps that are being thrown their way? And from the consumers perspective, do we care? Farber and Gillmor discuss the particulars of Facebook’s valuation and the possible efforts of the mighty Google, building a similar platform. And who’s the guy telling us this is private property?

What’s Hot In Search Strategies?

John Ince — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:00:01 +0000

Erik Collier, director of product management for Ask.com, talks about how new research in usability are driving innovation in search. Ask has developed a new user interface that blends search results while Google has introduced “Universal Search” that integrates images and videos with text based results. And Collier’s colleagues at Ask add that they don’t really miss the butler.

Tags: Erik Collier, Ask.com

The IT doctor is in

Robert Scoble — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:31:39 +0000

Ever wonder about information technology trends inside hospitals? I had lots of questions about the technology being used inside Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (where our son, Milan, was born three weeks ago). So I sat down with Christopher Longhurst, a general pediatrician at the hospital, and we talk about all sorts of things that are happening inside the medical field. Think this doesn’t matter? Well, Microsoft just announced its Health Vault service where you can track your own medical history and Christopher is working with Google on a competitive service, coming soon.

Tags: Christopher Longhurst

Proximic brings new contextual search and advertising platform

Robert Scoble — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:00:37 +0000

One problem with existing contextual advertising is that it isn’t very contextual when placed on blogs and other Web information. For instance in Google’s advertising. Proximic, today, is releasing a new search platform that’s taken five years to develop. They demonstrate how it could be used on blogs and other places to build related links Widgets and new kinds of contextual advertising. Here Philipp Pieper, CEO, and Thomas Nitsche, CTO, talk about their new platform and also demonstrate its advantages.

Tags: contextual advertising, Proximic, Philipp Pieper, Thomas Nitsche

Dreamforce: Building the Ultimate Google Salesforce Mashup

Tom Foremski — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 05:12:53 +0000

Salesforce has always been a powerful platform for creating mashups, and the latest platform features make it more capable than ever. This session offers an introduction to some of the more popular Web APIs and shows how they can be leveraged inside your apps. Presentations include sample code demonstrating these services, as well as example mashups.

Speakers: Jeff Ragusa, Developer Programs Evangelist, Google Inc.

Tags: Salesforce, Jeff Ragusa

Web 2.0 Search: Finding the Best of the Best on the Web with Wookah

John Ince — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:16:40 +0000

Ari Klinger, CEO of Wookah.com, talks with John Ince about their multi-engine search platform. Wookah searches in discreet categories using a major search engine like Google or Yahoo. Essentially it’s a way to do a deep search across the best sites all from one window.

Tags: Ari Klinger, Wookah.com

And how much power do all these computer servers require?

Margot Gerritsen — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 19:49:11 +0000

It wasn’t that long ago that newspaper headlines began calling our attention to claims that large computer server systems like those used by companies like Amazon.com, Google, Yahoo, and EBay (to name but a few) were consuming more than 10 percent of all electricity in the U.S. It sounds pretty bad — can it possibly be accurate? Not exactly, at least according to Dr. Jon Koomey, scientist at Lawrence-Berkeley labs. The actual number is closer to 1.5 percent, but that’s still quite dramatic! What may still be surprising is that a very large part of this energy is not used for running the actual computers, but for all the infrastructure around them, especially the equipment required for cooling. No wonder that computer manufacturers are working frantically on the design of new processors that supply more computing bang for the proverbial power buck.

Tags: Jon Koomey, Lawrence-Berkeley labs

Creating Your Own YouTube - Part 1

John Ince — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 18:11:14 +0000

Steven Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net, explains how anyone who has a Website or wants to build one can have their own YouTube-like video channel almost overnight. The Magnify.net platform searches video channels like YouTube looking for cool videos that match the keywords that you enter, and then posts them on your Website. Magnify and the Website owner then share Google Adsense revenues 50-50.

Tags: Steven Rosenbaum, Magnify.net, Adsense revenues

Office 2.0 and the future of work

editor — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 18:50:41 +0000

Will the use of online apps change the way people work? That’s a question discussed by a panel at theOffice 2.0 conference, moderated by Om Malik from GigaOm: Steven Aldrich, VP of strategy & innovation, Intuit; Denis Browne, senior VP, SAP Labs; Danny Kolke, CEO of Etelos; Richard McAniff, corporate VP, Microsoft Office; and Jonathan Rochelle, product manager, Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

Also on TechOne: Larry Magid talks about the controversy and interviews Apple VP Phil Schiller about the pricing on the day of the original announcement. It was before the firestorm and Jobs’ “apology.”

Tags: Office 2.0, Om Malik, GigaOm, Steven Aldrich, Intuit, Denis Browne, SAP Labs, Danny Kolke, Etelos, Richard McAniff, Microsoft Office, Jonathan Rochelle, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, TechOne, Larry Magid, Phil Schiller

San Francisco’s Green Garage

Matt Kelly — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:30:04 +0000

Pat Cadam is owner of Pat’s Garage, an independent auto repair shop located in San Francisco’s SOMA district. He and his mechanics work primarily on hybrids like the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight. He’s also one of the few “green” auto repair shops in the Bay Area. Not only that, but Pat and his team are part of the A123 Systems Hymotion team, doing all the conversions of hybrids to plug in electric vehicles, for companies like Google.org, as part of their ReChargeIT initiative, (our coverage of the story is here) Wisconsin Public Power, and others.

Tags: Pat Cadam, Pat’s Garage, ReChargeIT

The guy who runs Stanford’s undergraduate computer science department

Robert Scoble — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:01:47 +0000

Mehran Sahami is the associate chairman of undergraduate education. What does that mean? He runs probably the most important computer science undergraduate department in the world. This is the department that gave birth to Google, after all (and a bunch of other companies). This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to sit down and learn about the latest in computer education trends and what’s happening inside Stanford University’s computer science department.

Tags: Mehran Sahami, Stanford

Social media in the enterprise: How to deal with IT roadblocks

Tom Foremski — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:48:54 +0000

Josh Hallett and Alex Kim, from Solution Set, talk about building social media platforms within enterprises and the roadblocks that IT departments create. Lots of good advice on overcoming those obstacles. A Silicon Valley Watcher report from a meeting of the Third Thursday club held at Voce Communications, in Palo Alto. Also on TechOne: Larry Magid’s report on Google Docs and Spreadsheets; and Michael Cote talks with William Hurley about commercial open source.

Tags: Josh Hallett, Alex Kim, Solution Set, social media, Silicon Valley Watcher, Voce Communications, Larry Magid, open source

Improving education with teacher of the year

Robert Scoble — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:28:31 +0000

Dr. Elliot Soloway has taught some interesting people in his classroom at the University of Michigan. How about Larry Page, co-founder of Google? Among others. He’s been named “Teacher of the Year,” but that’s not why I talked with him. What we talked about is the state of education and how he sees it being improved. He’s quite passionate and this is one of my favorite interviews so far. He’s also started a company, GoKnow Learning, although we don’t talk about that much here, focusing instead on the changes that are coming to education due to technologies like the cell phone.

Tags: Elliot Soloway, Larry Page, Google, education, GoKnow Learning

Google Earth Reaches Out

Catherine Girardeau — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:30:28 +0000

Tools are tools, whether you’re using a bow and arrow, a GPS unit, or a search engine. Google is bringing together all the technology tools at hand to help non-profit organizations tell their stories in the vivid, 3-D language of Google Earth. In this video podcast, Catherine Girardeau takes you on a virtual tour through Google Earth Outreach’s world. We’ll start behind the scenes at Google with Rebecca Moore, then fly to the Amazon rainforest to meet Almir, a tribal chief who’s using GPS technology and satellite imagery to try to save his people’s land. We’ll also visit Dr. Jane Goodall’s Gombe chimpanzee reserve and research blog, check out an ancient temple in Pakistan with the Global Heritage Fund, and learn how to help a region in crisis by visiting Darfur.

Tags: search engine, Google Earth, video podcast, Catherine Girardeau, Rebecca Moore, Almir