second life

TV Station¿ Television Broadcasting in Second Life

Posted Jul 31, 2007

TV Station produces movie (machinima) for your advertising and also promote it via our SL Television. We have a large complete broadcasting studio so that we can produce various kinds of Machinima such as SL news reporting, talk show, concert, and island presentation. If you have your own machinima, you can also promote it via SL Television. See SLnews - www.slnews.tv See TV Station - http://slurl.com/secondlife/TVstation/172/84/22

new animation movie out

Bee Movie - Trailer

Posted Jul 18, 2007

Barry B. Benson is a graduate bee fresh out of college who is disillusioned at his lone career choice: making honey. On a rare trip outside the hive, Barry's life is saved by Vanessa, a florist in New York City.

Wikipedia:10 things you did not know about images on Wikipedia

This image is free, so I can use it here and you can use it too!
10 things you did not know about images on Wikipedia is a list of insights about Wikipedia specifically targeted at people who have limited foreknowledge about images on the project, such as new editors and new readers. These explanations should not surprise experienced editors, but hopefully will help the rest of the world to shape an informed opinion of our work and understand why sometimes it seems we do not have an "easy to get image" of something.
1. We want images.
However, we primarily want freely licensed images which are compatible with our policies and goal of creating a free resource for everyone. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a free one is giving a thousand words to everyone who wants to use it and will ever see it; a non-free one only gives visitors to this single website a thousand words.
We depend on people like you to author and contribute images for Wikipedia, and the rest of the world, to use, as long as you are willing to release the images under a free license.
When we say freely licensed we're talking about the freedom of use the public has with images, not the price.
More information: Wikipedia:Requested pictures, The Definition of Free Content
1. We want usable images.
Please do not upload images that should not or can not be used in an article. While we permit a limited amount of images for users to use on their user page, we do not need a 9th image of your Jack Russell Terrier on that article. The Wikimedia Foundation is not a free webspace for your images. Please use a website designed for this.
2. We have 750,300 images.
We reached 1 million images on all Wikipedia projects in July of 2006. There are over 1.75 million images on Commons. On the English Wikipedia we have over 750,000 images. You can help Wikipedia by going through images and looking for problems such as missing source and licenses. You can nominate images for deletion via IFD. You can cleanup images too; see Wikipedia:Images for cleanup.
More information: Special:Statistics, Commons:Special:Statistics, Special:Unusedimages.
3. All images uploaded must have a source and license.
Failure to provide a source (who made it) and license (how it can be used) will result in the image being deleted, possibly as soon as 48 hours. You must provide this information for all images uploaded. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You must provide this information for all images you upload, with no exceptions, or the images will be deleted. Blatant and completely unjustifiable violations of copyright law and our image policies can be (and are) deleted almost immediately.
We have a long term mission to create and promote content which is free of the typical encumbrances of copyright law. This mission requires us to take copyright very seriously. Unlike (most) other websites that allow user submission and generation of content, we aggressively remove all copyright infringements as soon as we can find them and block people who willfully ignore this after being warned.
1. Because free content is a fundamental part of our mission our policy on image licensing is more restrictive than required by law.
More information: Wikipedia:Non-free content
4. Use non-free images only when nothing else is possible.
Do not go to the nearest website and grab an image of a person/place/building. It is extremely likely that image is both copyrighted and fails our Non-free content policy, which states that a non-free image may be used only when it cannot be replaced. For example, there's no way whatsoever that a logo of a political party or a screenshot of a video game can be replaced by a free image, but a photo of someone or a certain location can almost always be replaced, even if doing so may be very difficult. Search for free images, especially for living persons, existing buildings and places. Don't upload an image just because the article doesn't have one right now; we can (and will) wait for a free image to be created or released. If you are going to upload a non-free image, see Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria first. Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline will be helpful as well.
More information: Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria #1
5. Non-commercial, educational-only and non-derivative images are NOT "free" images.
All such restrictions unacceptably limit how other people may use the image off of Wikipedia, which completely contradicts the entire point of "free images" and "Free content" (See above). These licenses are not valid at all and such images must be justified as "fair use" or they will be immediately deleted.
6. No one has a perfect understanding of the copyright law.
Even if you are licensed attorney who practices in this area, US copyright law (which applies to Wikipedia) is complex, and while an understanding of how it applies to Wikipedia may be achievable, there is a considerable gray area and deciding the status of one image in a complex situation can be very difficult, if not impossible, at times.
7. We have an image use policy.
Once an image is uploaded and correctly sourced and licensed, it may then be used in articles. See Wikipedia:Image use policy, which describes the accepted ways of displaying, formatting, etc. images. If you use images in an article, you should be familiar with it. Example: Did you know ... that the largest an image can be displayed in an article is 550 pixels wide?
8. Ideally, there would not be any images stored on Wikipedia, they would all be on Wikimedia Commons.
Because we want free content, all images uploaded would ideally be free for everyone and therefore would be acceptable on our sister project, Wikimedia Commons. Images submitted to Commons are automatically available here... and on hundreds of other Wikis run by the Wikimedia Foundation. If you're looking for an image for an article, be sure to search using the commons Mayflower search.
More information: Wikipedia:Free image resources
9. Uploading the same image 8 times is not needed.
You can edit the image page! Just like every other page on Wikipedia, the image description page can be edited by anyone. Just click "edit this page" while looking at the image page. Forgot to license or give the source for the image when you uploaded it? Do not re-upload the image: edit the image description page and add the license!
Also, the wiki software can control the size of the images, so you do not need to re-upload a smaller version of the same image. See Wikipedia:Extended image syntax. There, you can learn how to use frames, control the position in the article and about captions! For more on captions, see Wikipedia:Captions.
10. You can use (free) images on Wikipedia yourself, anywhere you like.
You can use images that are on Commons and free images on Wikipedia provided you comply with the individual image license terms, not (necessarily) the GFDL. While all articles text are licensed under the GFDL, free images have several licenses to choose from. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags/Free licenses for the many possibilities. You can use them on any page on Wikipedia. You can even use them OFF Wikipedia, such as on a website, printed material, anywhere! All "Free" image licenses allow these uses.
1. You cannot use non-free images anywhere except in relevant encyclopedia articles.
Non-free images can only be used in the article namespace where they have a rationale for existing. You cannot use them anywhere else, such as on policy pages, discussion pages, templates, or user communication pages. If you need to discuss them, link to them by putting a colon (:) between the "[[" and "Image:" like this: [[:Image:Imagenamegoeshere.ext]]

More information: Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria #9
[edit] Other media
All the above applies to audio and video too.
We allow other forms of media, such as audio and even video. The same rules apply for these media as they do for images.

Wikipedia:10 things you did not know about Wikipedia

10 things you did not know about Wikipedia is a list of insights about Wikipedia specifically targeted at people who have limited prior experience with the project, such as journalists, new editors, and new readers. These explanations should not surprise experienced editors, but hopefully will help the rest of the world to shape an informed opinion of our work.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
1. We are not for sale.
If you are waiting for Wikipedia to be bought by your friendly neighborhood Internet giant, do not hold your breath. Wikipedia is a non-commercial website run by the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in St. Petersburg, Florida. We are supported by donations and grants, and our mission is to eventually bring free knowledge to everyone.
More information: http://wikimediafoundation.org/
2. Our work can be used by everyone, with a few conditions.
Wikipedia has taken a cue from the free software community (which includes projects like GNU/Linux and Mozilla Firefox) and done away with traditional copyright restrictions on our content. Instead, we have adopted what is known as a "free content license" (specifically, the GFDL): all text and composition created by our users are and will always remain free for anyone to copy, modify, and redistribute. We only insist that you credit the contributors, and that you do not impose new restrictions on the work or any improvements you make to it. Many of the images, videos, and other media on the site are also under free licenses, or in the public domain. Just check a file's description page to see its licensing terms.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
3. We speak Banyumasan…
…and about 250 other languages. Granted, only about 60 of those Wikipedia language editions currently have more than 10,000 articles — but that is not because we are not trying. Articles in each language are generally started and develop differently from their equivalents in other languages, although some are direct translations, which are always performed by volunteer translators, and never by machines. The Wikimedia Foundation is supported by a growing network of independent chapter organizations, already in seven countries, which help us to raise awareness on the local level. In many countries, including the United States, Wikipedia is among the ten most popular websites.
More information: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias and http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=wikipedia.org
4. You cannot actually change anything in Wikipedia...
…you can only add to it. Wikipedia is a database with an eternal memory. An article you read today is just the current draft; every time it is changed, we keep both the new version and a copy of the old version. This allows us to compare different versions, or restore older ones as needed. As a reader, you can even cite the specific copy of an article you are looking at. Just link to the article using the "Permanent link" at the bottom of the left menu, and your link will point to a page whose contents will never change. (However, if an article is deleted, you cannot view a permanent link to it unless you are an administrator.)
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
5. We care deeply about the quality of our work.
Wikipedia has a complex set of policies and quality control processes. Editors can patrol changes as they happen, monitor specific topics they know about, follow a user's track of contributions, tag articles with problems for other editors to work on, report vandals, discuss the merits of each article with other users, and a lot of other things. Our best articles are awarded "featured article" status, and problem pages are nominated for deletion. "WikiProjects" focus on improvements to particular topic areas. Really good articles may go into other media and be distributed to schools through Wikipedia:1.0. We care about getting things right, and we never stop thinking about new ways to do so.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_so_great, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Attribution, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
6. We do not expect you to trust us.
It is in the nature of an ever-changing work like Wikipedia that, while some articles are of the highest quality of scholarship, others are admittedly complete rubbish. We are fully aware of this. We work hard to keep the ratio of the greatest to the worst as high as possible, of course, and to find helpful ways to tell you what state an article is currently in. Even at its best, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a primary source, with all the limitations it entails. We ask you not to condemn Wikipedia, but to use it with an informed understanding of what it represents. Also, as some articles may contain errors, please do not use Wikipedia to make important decisions.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer
7. We are not alone.
Wikipedia is part of a growing movement for free knowledge that is beginning to permeate science and education. The Wikimedia Foundation directly operates eight sister projects to the encyclopedia: Wiktionary (a dictionary and thesaurus), Wikisource (a library of source documents), Wikimedia Commons (a media repository of more than one million images, videos, and sound files), Wikibooks (a collection of textbooks and manuals), Wikiversity (an interactive learning resource), Wikinews (an experiment in citizen journalism), Wikiquote (a collection of quotations), and Wikispecies (a directory of all forms of life). Like Wikipedia itself, all these projects are freely licensed and open to contributions.
More information: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects
8. We are only collectors.
Articles in Wikipedia are not signed, and contributors are unpaid volunteers. Whether you claim to be a tenured professor, use your real name or prefer to remain without an identity, your edits and arguments will be judged on their merits. We require that sources be cited for all significant claims, and we do not permit editors to publicize their personal conclusions when writing articles. Editors must follow a neutral point of view; they must only collect relevant opinions which can be traced to reliable sources.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
9. We are not a dictatorship nor any other political system.
The Wikimedia Foundation is controlled by its Board of Trustees, the majority of whom the Bylaws require to be chosen from its community. The Board and Wikimedia Foundation staff does not take a role in editorial issues, and projects are self-governing and consensus-driven. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales occasionally acts as a final arbiter on the English Wikipedia, but his influence is based on respect, not power; it takes effect only where the community does not challenge it. Wikipedia is transparent and self-critical; controversies are debated openly and even documented within Wikipedia itself when they cross a threshold of significance.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not
10. We are in it for the long haul.
We want Wikipedia to be around at least a hundred years from now, if it does not turn into something even more significant. Everything about Wikipedia is engineered towards that end: our content licensing, our organization and governance, our international focus, our fundraising strategy, our use of open source software, and our never-ending effort to achieve our vision. We want you to imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That is our commitment — and we need your help.
More information: http://wikimediafoundation.org/

COMDEX Las Vegas 2003 to Examine Latest In IT Security; Sessions to Focus on Security Strategies for Today's Heterogeneous Business Environments

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

COMDEX Las Vegas 2003

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 31, 2003

MediaLive International, Inc., producer of the world's best-known events, related media and marketing services for technology buyers and sellers, announced today that security will be a key focus of COMDEX Las Vegas 2003, November 16-20, 2003. Through a series of discussion panels, educational tutorials and hands-on demonstrations, COMDEX will highlight trends in current security practices for organizations of all sizes, the costs and benefits of each, as well as what the future holds, including wireless security, secure Web services, spam reduction and biometrics.

"This year's attendees will agree that COMDEX is the best place for the IT buying community to immerse themselves in mission-critical topics such as ensuring the security of their organization's intellectual property, Web domains, email systems, software systems and wireless infrastructure," said Eric Faurot, vice president and general manager of COMDEX. "With emerging technologies and standards such as Web services, Wi-Fi and Linux, it is critical that technology buyers understand security in the context of their overall architecture -- only COMDEX provides the broad-based, neutral platform required for that scale of interaction."
Advertisement

Security leaders and emerging companies who will be involved in COMDEX Las Vegas 2003 include: Cerberian; Computer Associates; Counterpane Internet Security; Cryptography Research; McAfee; Microsoft; Nokia; SonicWALL; Symantec Corp.; and more. The conference will showcase solutions for the key security issues businesses face including securing wireless networks, solutions for fighting Spam, how to securely deploy Web services and open-source software, authentication, virus protection and biometrics.

COMDEX Security Education Sessions

The COMDEX security conference will be anchored by a keynote address from Symantec Corp. CEO John W. Thompson, at 9 AM, Wednesday, November 19, in room C5 of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

In addition, the event will feature a Security Power Panel, "How Much Security is Enough?" at 11 AM on Monday, November 17, in room N109. Moderated by Tom Standage, technology correspondent for The Economist, the panel will focus on what businesses need for effective, efficient security. Panel participants include Christian Byrnes, vice president and service director for the META Group; Ben Golub, Verisign's senior vice president of Security, Payments and Managed Security; Dan MacDonald, vice president, Nokia; Ron Moritz, chief security strategist for Computer Associates; and Bruce Schneier, CTO and founder of Counterpane Internet Security.

Continuous security-related presentations will take place at the COMDEX Security Innovation Center, where experts from SonicWALL, McAfee, Cerberian and the ASCII group will share their knowledge and oversee attendees participating in hands-on, business security challenges.

Session topics at COMDEX's Security Conference include:

-- Deploying Wireless LANs Securely

-- Intrusion Prevention Systems

-- Security Policy

-- Where Hardware Security Meets Software Security - Weak Points

and Real Attacks

-- Identity Management - The Future of Security

-- Making Sense out of Web Services Security

-- Dealing With Spam

-- Antivirus Measures: Critical Business Process or Costly

Overhead?

-- Web Threats and Countermeasures

-- Securing Microsoft IIS

-- Choosing the Authentication Method that's Right for Your

Organization

-- The Promise of Biometric Technologies

-- Deploying Biometrics in Your Workplace

COMDEX also is offering five specific, full-day security tutorials, November 16-17, each concentrating on a different issue, such as defeating junk mail, usage of Secure Sockets Layer, intrusion detection and a live, hacking demonstration.

COMDEX Las Vegas 2003 focuses on IT in the B2B marketplace and covers seven core technology themes: Linux and Open Source, Wireless and Mobility, the Digital Enterprise, Web Services, Windows Platform, On-Demand Computing and Security. Together, these themes represent the fastest growing areas of technology advancement that will drive the majority of market innovation in support of user needs in 2003 and beyond. For further information about the extensive security tracks COMDEX Las Vegas offers this year, visit www.comdex.com.

How to Register for COMDEX

Online registration is available immediately at www.comdex.com/lasvegas2003/register, or by calling toll free at 888-508-7510 or 508-743-0186 (outside the U.S.). Call center hours are Monday-Friday 7 AM - 5 PM, Pacific. Closed Saturday and Sunday.

About COMDEX

Part of the MediaLive International, Inc. family of global brands, COMDEX hosts educational forums, events and conferences that focus on the technology areas most critical to today's IT buyer. COMDEX fosters ongoing collaboration, communication and commerce for the $879 billion IT market by connecting IT vendors with decision makers in Global 2000 companies. Upcoming regional events include COMDEX Sweden 2004, January 23-25, in Goteborg; COMDEX Saudi Arabia 2004, March 14-17, in Jeddah; and COMDEX Canada 2004, March 24-26, in Toronto.

About MediaLive International, Inc.

MediaLive International is producer of the world's best-known events, related media and marketing services for technology buyers and sellers. MediaLive International's products and services encompass the IT industry's largest exhibitions, including COMDEX and NetWorld+Interop, such highly focused educational programs as BioSecurity and Next Generation Networks, custom seminars including JavaOne, respected publications including Business Communications Review, and specialized vendor marketing programs. Created in 2003 from the assets of Key3Media, MediaLive International is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco, with offices throughout the world. For more information about MediaLive International, visit www.medialiveinternational.com.

MediaLive International, COMDEX, NetWorld, NetWorld+Interop, Next Generation Networks, Business Communications Review, BioSecurity and associated design marks and logos are trademarks or service marks owned or used under license by MediaLive International, Inc., and may or may not be registered in the United States and other countries. Other names mentioned may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Business Wire
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

Skype recounts tale of 'perfect storm' outage

It was a dark and stormy upgrade, and it won't happen again they say

Peter Sayer

August 21, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- The situation that prevented millions of people from accessing Skype Ltd.'s Internet telephony service late last week was a "perfect storm" and should not reoccur, the company said Tuesday.

The company initially attributed the problem, which began on Aug. 16, to the near-simultaneous rebooting of millions of computers, as Skype users running the Windows operating system attempted to reconnect to the service after downloading a series of routine software patches from Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Update service.

Skype's service relies on some of its users' computers to act as "supernodes," routing traffic for other, less well-connected, users. But as Skype customers tried to reconnect, many of those supernodes were themselves in the process of rebooting. The remaining supernodes were soon overwhelmed because a bug in the company's software did not efficiently allocate the network resources available.

Users were skeptical of this explanation. Microsoft regularly issues patches that may cause Windows computers to reboot, and they haven't caused problems for Skype before. Microsoft releases software updates on the second Tuesday of each month, a day known to systems administrators as "Patch Tuesday."

Skype spokesman Villu Arak offered a more detailed explanation of Skype's outage on Tuesday: Last week's problems were the result of a "perfect storm" of exceptionally high traffic through the service at the same time as the Windows Update process led to a shortage of supernodes in the service's peer-to-peer network.

The company did not offer an explanation for the high traffic, but accepted full responsibility for the software problem.

"Skype and Microsoft engineers went through the list of patches that had been pushed out," Arak wrote. "We ruled each one out as a possible cause for Skype's problems. We also walked through the standard Windows Update process to understand it better and to ensure that nothing in the process had changed from the past (and nothing had)."

The catastrophic effect on Skype's service was entirely Skype's fault -- a result of its software being unable to deal with simultaneous high load and supernode rebooting, according to Arak.

On Aug. 17, the day after the problems began, Skype released a new version of its software client for Windows to correct the problem. That update should behave better the next time high traffic coincides with a scarcity of supernodes, he said.

Skype had updated versions of its software client for Windows, Mac and Linux since July's patch Tuesday and before last week's outage, but the changes made in those updates were not responsible for the problem, according to company spokeswoman Imogen Bailey.

Reprinted with permission from

idg.net
Story copyright 2006 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Zink Imaging LLC's Zink: Inkless Photo Printing

Mark Hall

August 20, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Zink Imaging LLC Zink

Johannes Gutenberg might have judged the folks at Zink Imaging LLC as heretics. After all, they have removed ink from the publishing process, eliminating what has been a fundamental element of printing since the first Bible rolled off the press in 1456. Instead, the scientists at the Waltham, Mass., firm focused their genius on the other key part of the printing paradigm — paper.

“The magic is in the paper,” says Stephen Herchen, chief technology officer at Zink, which is short for “zero ink.”

Herchen says Zink started as a project inside Polaroid Corp. in the 1990s before the storied camera company spun out Zink as a fully independent entity in 2005. The technology invented at Polaroid and perfected by Zink uses millions of colorless dye crystals layered under polymer-coated paper, making the prints durable enough for long-lasting photos. When the crystals are heated at different temperatures at specific intervals, they melt onto the paper in the traditional cyan, magenta, yellow and black used by ink-jet, laser and other printing devices. At the Demo Conference in Palm Desert, Calif., earlier this year, Herchen showed this reporter how it worked by lighting a match and holding it under the sample blank white paper to get the crystals to melt into a rainbow of colors.

Wow Factor
Inkless Photo Printing



Dye crystals embedded in special paper become colored when a printhead heats and activates them.

According to Zink’s CTO, like a lot of scientific teams involved in breakthrough projects, the 50 chemists and physicists involved at Polaroid and then Zink went through a long process of trial and error to create the right combination of molecules that could be controlled on the paper. And the final result had the look and feel of a regular photograph, he says.

Another upside is that consumers will no longer have to dispose of environmentally iffy ink cartridges, Herchen says. And pricing will be less than $2 per 10-sheet pack, the company says.

IDC analyst Ron Glaz says the technology is certainly innovative, but he says not to expect it to replace a desktop or network printer anytime soon. “It’s a niche product for a niche market,” he says.

Scott Wicker, Zink’s chief marketing officer, doesn’t disagree. What sets Zink apart is that it “enables printing where it doesn’t currently exist,” he says, explaining that without the need for ink cartridges or ribbons, printers can now be built into small, mobile devices such as digital cameras.

Wicker says the company will control the manufacture of the Zink printer paper, but partners will build and distribute printer products, an approach Glaz says could improve the likelihood of Zink’s success. Wicker adds there are no restrictions on the paper size that Zink can produce, although he says that the first paper to ship with products late this year will be 2 by 3 inches.

Cleversafe's Dispersed Storage

Robert L. Scheier

August 20, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Cleversafe Inc.

Cleversafe Dispersed Storage Unique algorithms disperse data over the Internet to servers on a grid

After selling his music services company MusicNow to Circuit City Stores Inc. in 2004, Chris Gladwin took a break to organize his own music and photos. It was then that Gladwin realized the usual method — storing multiple copies of data — was complicated and expensive.

A longtime inventor with an interest in cryptography, Gladwin developed algorithms to securely split and save data among multiple nodes and reassemble it when needed. That November, he founded Cleversafe Inc. to commercialize his work. Now a 29-person company, with Gladwin serving as president and CEO, Cleversafe is funded by more than $5 million from Gladwin and other early employees as well as “angel” and venture investors.

Wow Factor
Slice-and-Dice Storage

Unique algorithms slice, scramble, compress and disperse data over the Internet to servers on a grid.


Cleversafe’s Dispersed Storage software splits data into 11 “slices” of bytes, each of which is encrypted and stored on a different server across the Internet or within a single data center. This approach provides security, says Gladwin, because no one slice contains enough information to reconstitute any usable data. The self-healing grid provides up to 99.9999999999% reliability because data can be reconstituted using slices from any six nodes. Scalability is ensured, Gladwin says, because adding more storage requires merely adding servers to the grid or storage to the existing servers.

Among the biggest cost savers, says Gladwin, was the reduction in total storage needs achieved by eliminating the need for separate copies for backups, archives or disaster recovery. Compared with ratios of 5-to-1 or 6-to-1 of “extra” vs. original data in copy-based storage environments, Cleversafe requires ratios of 1.3-to-1 or less. While Gladwin has no specifics on how his software will be priced, he says customers should see savings “at least proportional” to the reduction in total stored data.

Originally, the team thought in terms of gigabytes of data to be stored. “Now,” says Gladwin, “we think in terabytes and even occasionally petabytes.” He says the first target will be secondary storage, where Dispersed Storage could replace tape and optical drives for backup and archiving.

This approach could “completely change the way storage administrators conduct their daily operations,” says John Webster, an analyst at Illuminata Inc. n Scheier is a freelance writer in Boylston, Mass. Contact him at rscheier@charter.net.

Ghost Inc.'s Ghost: The Everywhere OS

Gary Anthes
ugust 20, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Ghost Inc. Ghost

Ghost is founded on the passionate belief that the Windows and Mac model of your operating system — with your precious applications and data all walled inside one physical computer — is obsolete,” says Ghost’s creator, Zvi Schreiber.

The Global Hosted Operating System, or Ghost, is the logical next step in a trend to move applications and files from client computers to the Internet, says Schreiber. It is a Web-hosted image of your desktop or laptop — a virtual computer that can be accessed by any client device via a Web browser.

Ghost doesn’t require software upgrades or patches for user machines, and it’s always backed up. But its key selling point is the mobility and device-independence it offers users, says Schreiber, CEO of start-up Ghost Inc. in New York. “Young people do a lot of computing at school, and business people don’t want to carry their laptops everywhere,” he says. “People want to get their computing environment from anywhere.”

Wow Factor
The Everywhere OS

Free PC environment can be accessed from any browser, with single online file system, single log-in and file sharing.


Offered as a set of application services inside a virtual computer, Ghost is free for users. Schreiber says revenue will come from vendors who remit fees to the company when they sell products or services to Ghost users.

Ghost is in an alpha, “open to the public” release, Schreiber says, and it’s available at http://g.ho.st/home. “We don’t feel we are offering a complete service by any means, mainly in terms of the number of applications that are nicely integrated into Ghost,” he says. “But that’s changing pretty rapidly. By the third quarter, it will be a beta [release]. Not perfect, but really usable.”

Ghost users can’t use client-based applications like Microsoft Word or Excel, but they can use Web-based alternatives such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Schreiber says over the next year or so, he will seek partners to create Web-hosted versions of all popular desktop programs and help users migrate their data to them.

Rick Boyd, a Catholic priest and self-described “computer nerd” in Park Rapids, Minn., says he uses Ghost to host and manage his bookmarks, files and documents. “I use it every day, and I find it very convenient,” he says. “I believe that Web-based applications are the future.”

Boyd says he likes being able to access his bookmarks from any computer, no matter where he might be. “But it’s not just a bookmark manager,” he says, “it’s a virtual desktop, and that’s very innovative.”

Ghost is built from OpenLaszlo, an open-source platform for the development and delivery of Web applications that have the appearance and functions of traditional desktop applications. Ghost is hosted by Amazon Web Services.

Despite the use of OpenLaszlo and Amazon, Ghost developers still had to write a fair amount of software and do considerable systems integration work, Schreiber says.

“We had to think about the architecture very carefully to make it scalable, robust and secure,” he says. Scalablility was enhanced by pushing some of the processing and memory use from the server to clients, Schreiber adds.

10 Cool Cutting-Edge Technologies on the Horizon Now

Eleksen Group's wearable gadgetry kicks off this year's Horizon Award winners

Robert Mitchell

August 20, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Eleksen Group PLC Sideshow Wearable Display Module

It started as an idea for making more life-like puppets for the British TV show Spitting Image. Four years later, Eleksen Group PLC is hoping that its interactive textile technology will form the foundation for a new generation of wash-and-wear computer control and display devices.

The centerpiece of the technology is ElekTex, a fabric-based, pressure- sensitive control interface that can be integrated into jackets, bags and other textile products. The technology is already used as a remote control for iPods and cell phones in backpacks and coats. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Eleksen presented its latest design concept, which integrates ElekTex fabric controls with an LCD display that can interact with Windows Vista’s Sideshow feature. The latter exports information from a Vista laptop to a secondary display. Mini-applications, or “gadgets,” written for Sideshow can then wirelessly deliver e-mail, alerts or other updates to the remote screen even if the laptop remains in its case and turned off. Fabric-based controls and embedded control electronics interact with the display. Iver Heath, England-based Eleksen is also planning support for secondary displays on the Macintosh.

Wow Factor
Wearable Gagdetry



Schedules and recent e-mails are viewed without powering up a laptop, through a fabric-embedded module.


Initial implementations of ElekTex will likely be integrated into laptop bags with embedded button controls and small color LCD displays, says John Collins, vice president of marketing and business development at Eleksen. However, Collins envisions an eventual move to flexible displays based on color organic LED technology. That would allow the control and display surfaces to be embedded on any fabric surface, including a shirt. “Imagine receiving critical information from enterprise information systems on your sleeve,” says Vassilis Seferidis, vice president of product management.

ElekTex fabrics are constructed from woven layers of nylon and carbon-impregnated nylon that’s not only bendable, but also washable. Because of the nature of the material, it can be sewed, glued or even heat-welded into other fabrics. Mark Treger, national sales manager at Goodhope Bags Inc. in Chino, Calif., has embedded ElekTex sensors into backpacks to control iPods. “You can just sew through it. It just works,” he says. The one limitation is cost. Collins estimates that a laptop bag with the technology would cost about $200. But Treger says the cost of the ElekTex technology has already dropped by 50% in the past year. He sells a fabric keyboard for use with the BlackBerry that sold for $169 last year. Today, it’s priced at under $130, and by the holiday season, he says, retailers will be selling them for about $80.

The technology and the manufacturing process took years to perfect, says Collins — and that gives the company a leg up on any competition. “Their strength is understanding how to do the wiring and connections and create control surfaces with the right amount of tactile feedback,” says Leslie Fiering, an analyst at Gartner Inc.

“The knitted, woven materials allow us to get x, y and z coordinates,” says Collins. Currently, Eleksen is producing button and scroll controls. Next, it plans to support gestures across the control surface, simulating a mouse or fabric-based touch pad. “It’s a matrix arrangement, similar to what you’d find on touch-screen displays,” Collins says.

Seferidis expects viable bendable displays to be available in about two years. But he is working with vendors to make displays do more than just bend. “Our work will be to make them washable,” he says.

The Sideshow capability is “pretty cool,” says Fiering, but even more interesting will be what designers can dream up if the technology catches on. The most fascinating applications, she says, haven’t even been thought of yet.