Global News

Touch cube points to future toys Andrew Fentem has worked on innovative human computer interfaces for some time now. He began his career in military research and development, specifically missiles. His latest creation, the Fentix Cube, is generating a lot of interest from toy manufacturers and buzz on the Internet, based on a few clips he put up on YouTube. A small plastic cube with playful lights, it could be mistaken for a mass market throwaway toy manufactured by the million in the Far East. The cube contains a large battery, an array of LEDs and crucially three accelerometers which can detect the pitch and yaw of the device, and sensors on the inside surface for touch control. The accelerometers are essentially chips that can sense the direction of gravity; once you know that, you can work out which way is up and down. The cube has been programmed to play a handful of games, such as a PacMan-inspired maze game. But the combination of touch, light and three dimensions opens up a range of possibilities—from music games, to puzzles and even a lifestyle device. Fentem said he was inspired to build the cube because he was dismayed by the quality of many of today’s electronic toys. Up until the age of 22, Fentem worked at Thorn EMI on highly classified projects, and had to sit in a Faraday cage, a shielded space, which prevents any sort of transmission in or out. Disillusioned by the industry he moved to London and fell into the art and electronics scene. His previous designs include multi-touch screen interfaces for musical applications, which won him an innovation award from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. He has also worked on touchscreen surface technology, for creating musical scores, playing games, interactive floors and artistic purposes.

IBM offers free e-mail search tool IBM has created a free semantic e-mail search engine aimed at users of the company’s Lotus Notes software and Microsoft Outlook. The engine, called IBM OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES), allows users to search their mail based on concepts, such as dates and phone numbers, according to IBM. It also allows searchers to define their own concepts. Once the software is installed, it indexes and analyzes the user’s e-mail store. Searches are conducted through a browser interface that delivers results through a stripped-down, Google-like interface. Users can enter simple keyword-based queries or ones using basic natural language constructions. For example, to find e-mails from a friend named Mark Smith, you could simply enter “from Mark Smith.” But to find only the e-mails Smith sent in a certain month, a query might be constructed as “Mark from January 2007.” You could find his phone number by typing “Smith’s phone number.” The results don’t show a list of e-mail headers or display the messages in full. Instead, the software extracts the passage it believes contains the right answer, and highlights what it deems to be the specific information requested, such as a phone number. Users can also search for attachments, with search results providing direct links to the documents in question. E-mail is a good target for developing a semantic search engine because users frequently repeat certain phrasings and words and repeatedly exchange the same type of information. Researchers in a number of IBM labs worked on the project for the past year and a half, according to Vaithyanathan. The product has been quietly available on the company’s alphaWorks site for a couple of months, but only now is IBM attempting to drive widespread adoption, according to a spokeswoman.

Hitachi, Canon, Panasonic join to further display tech Hitachi, Canon and Panasonic have agreed to a wide-ranging collaboration that will see the three companies share the cost, burden and benefits of development and production of flat-panel displays. The move comes hot on the heels of a tie-up announced last week between Toshiba and Sharp and continues a major realignment in the fast-moving industry. Under the terms of the initial agreement Canon and Panasonic will each buy a 24.9% stake in Hitachi Displays, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi that already makes small and medium size LCD (liquid crystal display) panels. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to be completed before March 31, 2008. The wide-ranging collaboration and cooperation announced Tuesday is the first step of a series of planned moves that will eventually have Canon take control of Hitachi Displays and Panasonic take control of IPS Alpha Technology, the three companies said. In addition to the LCD alliance, Canon and Hitachi plan to work together on development of OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays. OLED is a fundamentally different technology from LCD and PDP and has been under development by many display makers for several years. It’s viewed by some as a potential replacement for LCD technology because it provides a brighter and richer picture but a lot of work remains before it can be produced in sufficient volume and at a low enough price to compete with LCD. The world’s first commercial OLED TV recently went on sale in Japan. Sony’s XEL-1 has an 11-inch screen and is just 3-millimeters thick — another advantage of OLED because a backlight unit isn’t required — but comes with an equally impressive ¥200,000 ($1,750) price tag.

Cisco Green Plan looks beyond routers Cisco Systems wants to turn the enterprise data network into an electricity meter. Using open standards, the company wants to get server and storage vendors to collect and share information about their equipment and send it to Cisco routers and switches. The data could include power consumption, operating temperature and more. It’s becoming a critical job, and because the network touches all IT resources across the enterprise, data collection should happen there, according to Paul Marcoux, Vice President of green engineering. Power is a growing issue in data centers as the cost of energy rises and concerns about global climate change increase. Being able to collect and analyze information about power usage is a big part of the battle and becoming more crucial in the age of virtualization, according to Marcoux. By the same token, consolidated data centers typically serve many departments of an enterprise and consume a lot of power, but those groups generally don’t have to pay for their part of the power. In fact, the electricity bill often bypasses even the IT department, going to building management instead, Marcoux said. Collecting data about the power consumed by each device, and eventually by individual transactions, would allow enterprises to bill each department for the power it uses. Software on routers and switches would collect the information and then take actions or forward it on to separate building management, energy management or virtualization control systems. Given the large amount of energy data to be processed, Cisco may introduce daughtercards for its platforms to provide extra computing power, he said.