News - Cutting Edge

You could easily forget a business birthday, but Google wields more star power than most. It was officially incorporated 10 years ago this Sunday while co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still working from a garage.

To celebrate, the journal Nature has asked researchers and business pundits to postulate on which young technologies might have as much impact on the world as Google 10 years down the road. After all, in the last 10, Google has grown from running a few loaner servers to a vast network of data centers that can not only deliver a map to a local store but also could have major effects on scientists' understanding of nature.

According to Nature, the common theme of their projections is the integration of "the worlds of matter and information." Here is a selection of responses.

Sam Schillace, engineering director at Google: better browsers. (Oddly enough, Google just introduced its own browser, Chrome.)

"The next generation of browsers...will make communication and collaboration even more transparent and let me focus on what I really want to do--connect with the person at the other end and get work done together. It will turn the web into a superconductor for interactions with other people and change the way we work pretty radically."

Bill Buxton, principal researcher at Microsoft: electronic paper.

"The history of communication technologies over the past century tells me that anything that's going to impact on the next ten years is going to be ten years old already. (The components that made Google possible 10 years ago were already there 10 years earlier, with the creation of the Web.)

"One prime candidate is electronic paper, displays that are as easy to view in ambient light conditions as paper and that consume hardly any power. It started with E Ink a decade ago; now we are seeing it in devices such as Amazon's Kindle."

Investor Esther Dyson, board member of DNA start-up 23andMe (which was co-founded by the wife of Google co-founder Brin): the mining of genetic information.

"Everyone dies of something; your genome gives you hints of which causes are most likely for you. But it doesn't predict precisely or with certainty, or tell you when. People's level of understanding of statistics in relation to soccer or gambling always amazes me, so there is hope that people can likewise understand the difference between correlation and causation in genetics."

Ian Pearson, a futurist with the U.K.-based Futurizon group: video visors.

"We're crying out for technology that will allow us to combine what we can do on the Internet with what we do in the physical world. One technology that springs to mind is the video visor, which gives you a computer image superimposed over the world around you."

And in the really out-there category...

Vincent Hayward, professor of engineering, Pierre and Marie Curie University: haptic, or tactile, computer interfaces, e.g., for mobile phones.

"A dry, flat screen will be able to simulate the feel of fur or wetness."

We have robots for sweeping floors, mowing lawns, and playing chess. So why not a helicopter that can perform its own flips, rolls, and pirouettes?

Computer scientists at Stanford University on Tuesday said they've developed artificial intelligence software for a helicopter so that it can learn and perform its own aerobatic maneuvers. The hope is that the robotic helicopters could one day be deployed in dangerous missions like putting out wildfires.

The robotic helicopter "watches" another helicopter flown by a human expert, meaning that it records data on its movements, such as position by GPS and velocity. The robot then adapts those maneuvers with new controls every 20th of a second, according to the Stanford computer scientists.

Stanford professor Andrew Ng said that the technology is a demonstration of "apprenticeship learning," in which robots learn by observing an expert, rather than by way of a code.

"In order for us to trust helicopters in...mission-critical applications, it's important that we have very robust, very reliable helicopter controllers that can fly maybe as well as the best human pilots in the world can," Ng said in statement.

Here's Stanford's demo:

Roz Savage, the Brit who aims to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific, is back on land for the first time in nearly 100 days and is marking a milestone.

She arrived in Hawaii on Monday morning, completing the first of three legs of her journey across the Pacific Ocean. That's after setting off from San Francisco in her 24-foot rowboat known as the "Brocade" just before midnight on May 24. In all, she rowed about 2,600 miles.

Roz Savage arrives in Hawaii after nearly 100 days of rowing solo across the Pacific Ocean.

(Credit: Courtesy of Roz Savage )

Savage was met by family, friends, other well-wishers, and the media. After she landed at the dock of the Waikiki Yacht Club, one of the first things she did was hug her mother, Rita.

"It's taken me about a million oar strokes to get here from California," Savage said, according to a story in the Honolulu Star Bulletin. "If I just said, 'One little oar stroke isn't going to make any difference,' I'd still be standing in San Francisco. What I really wanted to do was let people know they can make a difference. Every action counts."

On the ocean for 99 days, Savage relied on a number of gadgets to keep her on course and keep herself entertained. She chronicled her journey with daily blog postings, a semiweekly podcast series, and Twitter messages.

In an interview via satellite phone last month, she talked about having what she calls "a ha" moments during her time on the water. "You never regret being ready sooner rather than later," she said in August. There's a flip side too. "You'll never be 100 percent ready." But, as Savage said, "I've managed."

Now back on land, Savage said she most looked forward to taking a shower and getting some rest on a bed that doesn't rock back and forth, according to her representative.

As part of her historic quest, Savage aims to raise awareness about the effects of pollution--in particular, plastic--in our oceans. Her trip is a project of the Blue Frontier Campaign, whose focus is on "seaweed (marine grassroots) efforts" surrounding ocean and coastal conservation.

Dan Basta, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, said in a statement: "Roz's steadfast determination reminds us that we must connect our everyday actions to protecting the ocean."

It is her second attempt to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific. Last summer, Savage set off only to be foiled by bad weather some two weeks into the trip. She was rescued by the Coast Guard about 90 miles off the California coast.

Early next year, she plans to row another 2,600 miles to Tuvalu. In all, she expects to travel more than 7,000 miles, ending up in Australia in 2010.

Roz Savage rows near Diamond Head in Hawaii on Monday.

(Credit: Courtesy of Roz Savage )

The U.S. Army plans to spend up to $200 million on iRobot products over the next five years, iRobot announced Tuesday.

The contract iRobot previously had with the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation expired in May 2008 and was limited to the purchase of PackBots.

iRobot's PackBot with RedOwl Sniper Detection Kit.

(Credit: iRobot)

The new contract gives the U.S. Army the freedom to purchase parts, training, and maintenance services from iRobot, as well as any robots from the company's industrial or consumer lines over the next five years, according to iRobot.

However, the $200 million five-year contract that was awarded is a "ceiling priced Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract," iRobot said in a statement.

That means the U.S. Army may or may not spend the full $200 million in products promised.

IDIQ contracts are common between vendors and U.S. government agencies because they are flexible and unrestricted.

According to Federal Acquisition Regulation on IDIQ contracts, the U.S. government does not have to spend the full dollar amount to fulfill its contractual obligations with the vendor. It also allows the government to use the money designated for that vendor on any products and services as needed over a designated period of time, rather than restrict it to purchasing a specific list and quantity of items.

While vendors are not guaranteed that the full contract amount will be realized, it does give them the opportunity to offer new products as they become available. Whether or not this type of flexibility is advantageous to vendors is up for debate.

It's clear why the U.S. Army would want the option to purchase parts and maintenance from iRobot. About 1,700 PackBots have now been sold to the U.S. military, according to iRobot's latest figures. The Department of Defense has ordered that the older models be kept in use in some capacity if possible. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Army announced it had found a way to recycle old PackBots for new uses.

iRobot also announced in June that it won a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office to develop a "ChemBot." The new type of robot will be made of flexible material and be able to squeeze into tight spaces.

Tim Roberts, founder of Infectious.com, standing next to his Audi wrapped in art called green bandana funk.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

Tim Roberts' black Audi A3 has something called green bandana funk.

It's not slang for a mechanical problem or lingering bad smell, but rather, lime-green graffiti art in bandana patterns that dot the exterior of his otherwise shiny urban sedan. Roberts, a longtime tech executive who previously helped Twitter get off the ground, sometimes forgets the vinyl stickers are there, until they prompt a nearby driver to roll down a window and ask about his artwork. Once he even found a pack of young skateboarders surrounding his car in a parking lot taking pictures with their cell phones.

"It's this totally social experience," Roberts said from the office of Infectious.com in San Francisco's Mission District.

VC-backed Infectious.com is Roberts' newly launched Web site for buying car art from independent designers like Nico Berry, formerly of skate magazine Thrasher, and Apple Creative Director Andy Harding. The vinyl stickers, which range from Barack Obama logos to bubbly characters riding spaceships, adhere to any part of the car and can come off with the use of a blow dryer. For between $35 and a few hundred dollars, anyone can add some artistic flare to their wheels, Burning Man-style.

It's hard to predict whether car art will sweep the nation (most likely, not), but Infectious is just one of a new generation of graphic designer collectives that are finding new avenues to sell their artwork--from car graffiti to stationery to sneakers and skateboards.

Most of these upstarts are cherry-picking from a business trend called crowdsourcing, in which they ask professional or aspiring designers to submit artwork, and then a larger community votes on the best of the bunch. The Web site sells the best choice; and the winning designer gets a cut of the sales or a cash reward.

An early prototype from Misk1 for Infectious.com.

(Credit: Infectious.com)

Of course, the low-hanging fruit of the crowdsourcing business--T-shirt art and photos--has already been picked over by popular sites like Threadless.com (for T-shirts) and iStockPhoto.com (photography). But now a range of companies are trying to tap into design talent for a much broader swath of products, and help make artsy goods more affordable and accessible to the masses. Executives in the business say crowdsourcing is one of the best ways to stay on top of consumer trends.

"It's more powerful when the consumer is telling you what they want," said Mariam Naficy, CEO and founder of Minted.com, a high-end design site for wedding invitations, birth announcements, and holiday cards.

Minted.com, a venture-capital-backed site that launched this summer, takes the idea for crowdsourced high-end design to the $10 billion annual stationery business. To be sure, the site features cards and stationery from established brands like Dauphine Press, but it also finds new artists from a body of work submitted in regular contests. For example, Meaghan Nolan, an associate editor at Town & Country, won $1,000 in a recent design challenge for thank-you cards.

"It's saying the brain trust for good ideas isn't being held by a few people," said Charlene Li, a technology consultant and former analyst with Forrester Research.

The economic advantage of this business is that Minted.com doesn't create the designs itself, nor does it house inventory. It prints on-demand, and pays artists when the market has deemed them worthy for sale. The challenge is to build a thriving community of aspiring artists and buyers, but if it does, stationery is a high margin business (an estimated 50 percent). That's why Minted is working on ways to incentivize the average person to vote on designs, according to Naficy, who didn't disclose those details yet.

For Infectious' Roberts, crowdsourcing is a way to get people used to a relatively new idea of putting disposable art on their cars. But ultimately, he sees taking art submissions to other types of products, which could include skateboards, book bags or other unique items.

He has competition for attracting high-end street designers, however. This week, Andy Howell, a former professional skateboarder and longtime graphic designer, launched Artsprojekt.com, a collective of skateboards designers like Shepard Fairey to sell various products like skateboard decks.

"I call this a neo-contemporary art movement--the combination of commercial and fine art, like Warhol did in the '80s," said Howell. "Our vision of Artsprojekt is to liberate every artist in the world by allowing them to productize their ideas and monetize their obsessions."

Artsprojekt is a subsidiary of Zazzle.com, an older print on demand site for T-shirts and coffee mugs. The spinoff is a nod from Zazzle that it wants to appeal to higher-end designers, too.

Former pro skateboarder Andy Howell founded Artsprojekt to sell new artistic skateboards and other goods.

(Credit: Andy Howell/Artsprojekt.com)

No matter whether it's skateboards or stationery, the trend shows that it's only getting less expensive to attract creative. Sites like Minted, Infectious and Ryz invest in the technology system to make it easy for talented people to showcase work and allow for the community to vote. The trick is developing a community.

Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, said in a recent interview with CNET News that crowdsourcing works particularly well for graphic design because there's a low barrier to entry. The model naturally drives the best ideas up to the top.

"You have a lot of people who can do low-end design. You know they can create a logo. They can lay out a Web page, even though they're not professionals," he said. "They're adequate enough that they can make a supplementary income doing it or do it for fun."

If Threadless is any example, then new sites like Minted.com and Ryz for sneakers may have success.

Threadless is the grandfather of crowdsourcing for T-shirt design. It originally started in 2000 when two guys met on design forum and put up their first T-shirt design challenge. Eight years later, the site has an ongoing call out to designers to submit art for T-shirts and posters; and it receives roughly 200 submissions a day. People among its 800,000-person registered user base vote on the designs and Threadless puts up six winners once a week. (It pays designers $2,000 in cash, $500 in gift certificates for the site.)

Like other such sites, Threadless also commissions art from well-known designers.

Threadless is profitable, according to its CEO Thomas Ryan, and late last year it opened its first retail store in Chicago, where it's headquartered. It also plans to open a Threadless kids store in the area and has talked about other locations around the country.

Ryan said that Threadless also intends to introduce other new products based on a recent project called Naked and Angry, which allows designers to submit patterns. He would not say what those products would be but it has tried out neckties.

"The age of community has arrived to the degree that companies are able to foster a vibrant community of designers as a way of creating new types of products," said Ryan, who joined Threadless three months ago from the music industry.

"That is, products that lend themselves well to self expression."

Car art from "Buff Monster."

(Credit: Infectious.com)

Rocket fans are a little closer to having their own spectator sport--thanks to a new engine design and the sponsorship of fashion brand DKNY.

The Rocket Racing League, an aspiring Formula 1 for rocket racing, said Wednesday that it completed its three test flights with a new liquid oxygen-alcohol engine from Armadillo Aerospace, a suborbital space company founded by Doom creator John Carmack. This summer, the RRL also secured a high profile sponsorship from a clothing brand that people wouldn't necessarily associate with rockets: DKNY for men. The premiere racer for the league now will have the luxury clothing maker's name permanently brandished on its vehicle--a potential marketing coup if the RRL eventually airs on TV, as expected.

More importantly, the successful engine trials mean that New York-based RRL is that much closer to production of its fleet of rockets and upcoming public races, which have been pushed back several times. Now, the RRL needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is no small feat and could cause more delays.

"This will now be the primary engine for the next rocket racers," said Granger Whitelaw, CEO and co-founder of the RRL. The league is building five rockets so that it will have six by next spring.

Whitelaw said he hopes to have FAA approval in time to fly an exhibition run at the Reno Air Races in September, or hold a public race later this year.

The rocket from Armadillo will replace one from Xcor, which makes a pump-fed engine powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene. Armadillo, which builds rockets for suborbital space flight that have been tested by the military and NASA, retrofitted its pressure-fed engine earlier this year so that the RRL could test them for winged vehicles that would eventually be used to race in public events.

Armadillo's is a pressure-fed engine that runs on liquid oxygen, helium, and ethanol. Whitelaw said that the RRL chose the Armadillo engine because it satisfies the safety, power, and reliability standards that it needs for a racing league.

"We had always planned on testing different engines, similar to Formula 1," said Whitelaw.

Armadillo's engine runs on 2,500 pounds of pressure and flies for about 10 minutes at about 300 miles per hour. It can go from zero to 110 miles per hour in 6 1/2 seconds. Whitelaw said that it has more thrust than an F18 jet--the Navy's fastest combat vehicle--on "full afterburner," or the button that gives the jet that extra juice.

The RRL's aircraft is made by Velocity Aircraft, which was acquired by the league earlier this year.

Whitelaw said he expects the RRL's first TV event by the end of 2009, or beginning of 2010. But, until then, fans can get a fix on YouTube, here:

NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff, Expedition 17 flight engineer, works with an experiment in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station.

(Credit: NASA)

The first ever reported computer virus has infected at least two laptops onboard the International Space Station more than 200 miles above Earth.

The worm, believed to be W32.Gammima.AG, steals personal information used to play online games from infected computers and then attempts to send the information back to a remote computer, according to SpaceRef.com, which broke the news on Monday.

The virus was not the first to hit a space station last month, just the first one that was reported, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries told Wired News. He described it as a "nuisance" that infected computers that are mostly used for applications like e-mail and not critical systems.

Officials were trying to figure out how the virus got onboard. The space station has no direct Internet access--astronauts send and receive mail through a KU band data link, according to Humphries. Reports speculated it may have spread via a USB memory device.

The International Space Station is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the space agencies of Japan, Russia, and Canada.

The International Space Station with Earth in the background.

(Credit: NASA)

There's something funny going on in the venture capital world: a tipster pitched multiple media outlets the story that some sketchy business had surrounded the early-stage investment in photo-sharing site Photobucket, a 20 percent stake in a company that eventually was acquired by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media for about $300 million.

The Wall Street Journal, coincidentally also owned by News Corp., ran with the tip. The publication explained that an early investment in Photobucket had been made on behalf of Insight Venture Partners' executives, excluding the investors in the firm--which include, among others, the endowment fund for Yale University.

The firm's investors weren't notified and didn't reap any of the benefits of Photobucket's acquisition, and it didn't help that Insight itself has been reported erroneously as one of Photobucket's investors on occasion.

We all like a juicy, Smartest Guys in the Room-ish scandal, but legal experts quoted in the Journal indicate that Insight's executives weren't technically bending any rules. The venture firm focuses on later-stage investments, and Photobucket at the time had three employees.

As one of the firm's investors told the Journal, "Perhaps they should have told us about this, but it was such a small deal. Would we have wanted a piece of it in hindsight? Sure. But for every one of these successes, there are a hundred failures."

This instance of VC deal making doesn't deserve much scandal mongering other than wondering what kind of beef the anonymous tipster has against Insight Venture Partners. But the broader issue deserves a look: to what extent should fund executives make their investors aware of personal investments? It's debatable.

If outer space had sound, what would it be?

If you're composer Nolan Gasser, it would be a mixture of high-pitched violins, crashing cymbals, and low-pitched trombones. To him, outer space is a symphony of melody and solar science intertwined. In his new composition, "Cosmic Reflections," Gasser plans to prove it.

"I can hear parts of it in my mind," he said. "One of the things I know I want to do is...write a theme that will permeate throughout the entire work that will somehow be a 'universal theme.' How I'm going to depict that musically? I'm not sure yet."

For Gasser, this is not the first time he has had to combine space and music. His previous project, the "GLAST Prelude" (listen to the piece here), introduced him to cosmology. He composed a 10-minute musical piece for NASA's GLAST observatory, which launched into orbit on June 11. The first images from GLAST will be released at a press teleconference Tuesday, and the observatory will be given a new name.

However, the idea for the music came from Stanford physicist Peter Michelson. As one of the principal investigators in the GLAST project, Michelson wanted to launch the new spacecraft with a musical performance. Through a friend, he found Gasser, who also serves as the chief musical architect of the Music Genome Project, the musical technology behind Pandora's Internet radio service.

Composer Nolan Gasser is taking on the history of the universe with "Cosmic Reflections."

"When we started the GLAST project, we wanted to find ways to communicate not only the science results to a broad audience, but also tell the story of how the observatory was built by an extraordinary international team of scientists and engineers," Michelson said. "The Prelude effectively communicates the excitement of building and launching the observatory and provides a glimpse of what GLAST may see in the high-energy universe."

GLAST (Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope) is currently orbiting 350 miles above the Earth, where for at least five years it will search for answers behind gamma ray bursts, dark matter, and the acceleration of material in black holes. According to NASA, GLAST is the first imaging gamma-ray observatory that will survey the entire sky every day. The ship contains two instruments: the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM).

Gasser's "GLAST Prelude" was a culmination of the history behind the telescope, an homage to astronomers of the past, and a musical depiction of the electromagnetic spectrum and gamma rays.

The piece made its debut in a musical recording by the American Brass Quintet that was played at GLAST's June 11 launch party. Paired with visuals provided by the Goddard Space Flight Center, the "GLAST Prelude" turned into a science music video that has made its way onto several educational Web sites, according to Gasser.

"The idea is to get people excited about science at a time when there are lots and lots of budget cuts for science and research at a lot of institutions, including Stanford," he said. "The more the public is interested in science, the better it is going to be. So much of what we can be grateful for comes out of cutting-edge science research."

For Gasser to be able to compose music about science, he had to dive headfirst into a subject he hasn't studied since high school.

"I found myself really falling in love with science and with the science behind GLAST...in terms of particle physics, cosmology, and astronomy," Gasser said. "So it's been an eye-opener for me as well--that these two paradigms are so compatible."

One way he made art and science compatible was to illustrate wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum with the instruments in the quintet. The trombones would slide in opposite directions like waves as the music got faster and faster to demonstrate the frequencies from microwaves to gamma rays. The prelude also had snippets of national anthems of the six countries involved in the project. Most importantly, the GLAST theme, which Gasser said was the most melodic and thematic part of the piece, depicted the observatory in space.

"The beauty of this satellite in orbit...I really wanted to capture that," he said.

The GLAST observatory before launch aboard the Delta II rocket in Florida.

(Credit: Carleton Bailie/United Launch Alliance)

After the success of the "GLAST Prelude," Gasser decided to take on "Cosmic Reflections" to incorporate all orchestra instruments in a story about the universe. The symphony, which has yet to be composed, will start with the Big Bang and cosmic microwaves, follow the formation of structures and our solar system, and end with a piece about the evolution of intelligent life on Earth. The 30-minute piece will be performed by the Boston University Symphony at the GLAST Observatory Symposium, slated to be performed at the Kennedy Center of the Arts in the fall of 2009.

"The idea is that it will be a little bit of Peter and the Wolf meets Gustav Holst's The Planets. Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf is a story, with the depiction of the story in music with the orchestra. There's a section of text, which is read, and music follows that and sonically depicts what is spoken. Occasionally, there is text under the music."

Along with images and video from Goddard, the piece will feature a libretto by Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and author of The Physics of Star Trek, and Pierre Schwob, CEO of the Classical Archives, where Gasser is also the artistic director.

It's not the first time classical music has combined with outer space; it begs remembrance of the dramatic opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, the two seemingly polar opposites rarely come together to create art.

"They certainly don't seem to have a lot in common," Gasser said. "One would say they might be different sides of the brain. My process of working through this makes me feel there is a lot in common."

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking blinks an eye to control a computer and voice synthesizer. But with the use of a new technology, he could use his tongue instead.

Engineers at Georgia's Institute of Technology have developed technology that would allow people with severe disabilities, such as Hawking, to operate a wheelchair or computer by moving their tongue. They only need to get as hip as a tongue-pierced punk.

The technology, which was described in this month's issue of the Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, involves a small magnet the size of a grain of rice, which gets pierced into the person's tongue. A companion device embedded with magnetic sensors, such as an orthodontic brace or headset, can then trace the movement of the tongue and transmit those signals wirelessly to a nearby portable computer.

People can set six tongue motions, such as a right-click, and use their tongue like a joystick to direct movements of a cursor on a computer screen or power a wheelchair.

The engineers hope to evolve the technology, called the Tongue Drive System, so that people could eventually use their teeth as a keyboard. The technology is still in a trial phase.

Georgia Tech chose to focus on the tongue, instead of the hands and feet, because the tongue's function is controlled by the brain through a cranial nerve that generally escapes damage in severe spinal cord injuries or neuromuscular diseases, according to Maysam Ghovanloo, a lead on the project.

"Tongue movements are also fast, accurate, and do not require much thinking, concentration or effort," Ghovanloo said in a statement.

Hawking, who suffers from Lou Gehrig's Disease, once used a hand switch to control a computer-driven synthesizer. But his muscles have become too weak in recent years, so he now uses an infrared blink switch.

Georgia Tech has received a $120,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and $150,000 from the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

Georgia Tech assistant professor Maysam Ghovanloo (left) points to a tiny magnet pierced to a student's tongue that would help him control a computer cursor or power a wheelchair.

(Credit: Georgia Tech/Gary Meek)