spheres

Microsoft researcher talks tools, telescope, and iPhone

LOS ANGELES--As he began his speech on Wednesday, Microsoft Research chief Rick Rashid talked up his ties, not just to Microsoft's products, but also to those from Apple.

"If you use a Macintosh or an iPhone, which honestly I would not recommend, you would be using code that I wrote more than 25 years ago," Rashid quipped to a crowd of developers at the company's Professional Developer Conference here. In his Carnegie Mellon days, Rashid helped create the Mach kernel that is at the heart of Mac OS X (Note: I originally stated that it was … Read more

Microsoft aims to get more touchy-feely

Bill Gates may not be hanging around Microsoft's research labs 24/7, but his vision for going beyond the mouse and keyboard seems to be doing pretty well without his day-to-day oversight.

At a user interface conference this week, the software maker plans to present several research papers, including a number designed to take the multitouch interface used in Microsoft's Surface and expand it into new arenas.

Although Microsoft's tabletop computer is still in the midst of its earliest commercial deployments, the company is already hard at work trying to figure out where the technology can go … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Taking a spin with Microsoft Sphere

Microsoft recently pulled an operating system switcharoo--a la the Folgers taste test or the Pepsi Challenge--on a focus group with the hopes of changing public perception of Windows Vista. Now the company has posted some of the videos of people's reactions online. But will the marketing scheme work? And separately, while in Redmond, reporter Ina Fried got an up-close look at an experimental research project, called Sphere. News intern Holly Jackson checks in with Ina on both those stories.

Also in this podcast: after a 17-month antitrust saga, satellite radio companies Sirius and XM are now one; a new … Read more

Microsoft's computer in the round

REDMOND, Wash.--When it comes down to it, Microsoft's Sphere really is kind of like taking the Surface computer notion and squishing it into a giant ball.

"The basic design is really quite simple," Microsoft researcher Andy Wilson told CNET News in an interview last week. Like the tabletop Surface computer introduced last year, Sphere uses a combination of infrared cameras for input and a projector for output to create a multitouch computer. "The camera and the projector share the same optical axis by virtue of mirrors."

Unlike the tabletop, though, Sphere is a ball-shaped … Read more

Academics to get a glimpse of Microsoft's Sphere

REDMOND, Wash.-- A group of academics will be among the first people outside Microsoft to see Sphere, a spherical surface computer developed by Microsoft Research.

The sphere-shaped, multitouch computer is similar to the tabletop Surface computer that Microsoft announced last year after years in development. This incarnation, however, remains a project within Microsoft Research and the company has no current plans to bring it to market.

The university researchers are at Microsoft as part of its yearly Faculty Summit. Also at the event, Microsoft announced a series of tools for researchers, including a plug-in for Office that lets people … Read more

OneSpot feeds publishers' content

If you don't have content to populate your site, OneSpot has some for you. The Austin-based start-up joins a host of other companies in the business of delivering contextual links for publishers. OneSpot CEO Matt Cohen makes the claim that OneSpot "democratizes vertical or affinity publishing, helping anyone find, select, and deliver links to the best content on the Web."

OneSpot sifts through more than 200,000 RSS feeds to make content selections. Users provide the system with a set of sample sites, and OneSpot identifies related feeds, looking at link overlaps, Cohen told me. The selected … Read more

Gadgettes 89: The Mother's Day episode

Mothers deserve more than a lousy microwave. Take it from the Gadgettes. Two out of three of us know from experience. As for Jason, he's hiding under the desk trying to avoid scary birthing stories. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 89

The photograph-to-digital-picture converter http://www.popgadget.net/2008/05/the_photograph.php

Track your missing purse via GPS http://www.popgadget.net/2008/05/track_your_hand.php

What Molly thinks you should buy http://themolly.com/blog/?p=73

What Molly got her mom for Mother’s Day: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-QuickCam-Deluxe-for-Notebooks/ dp/B000O9GGLY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s= electronics&qid=1210278711&sr=8-5… Read more

Behr colors outside the lines with JBoss Application Server

Behr, the paint manufacturer, was looking for a way to upgrade its Behr.com website from IBM's Websphere to make it more cost-efficient, flexible, and improve reliability and response times. Instead of opting for more of the same with another proprietary solution, Behr chose Red Hat's JBoss Application Server.

The result?

Behr has already reaped significant benefits from implementing JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. For starters, the JBoss technology is completely compliant with industry standards, and doesn't lock Behr into a particular vendor's products. "That's the nice thing about open source - it's open, it's consistent, and you know it's going to work," said [Behr]....

Response time for visitors of the website has dramatically improved, making for a better customer experience. And bringing a new node into the cluster, which took a full day under WebSphere, takes just an hour with JBoss. "With WebSphere, you had about six different processes to complete, and then you crossed your fingers and hoped it worked," said Stevenson. "JBoss practically installs itself."...… Read more

Gadgettes 80: The Everything Old is New Again Episode

EPISODE 80

Special report: Are we getting iPhones soon? http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9886460-1.html

Taser party! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19353066

Ford Fiesta! It’s back! http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9887525-1.html

You cook, Readybot cleans http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9887236-1.html

Robo-lawnmower goes hybrid http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9887567-1.html

Rotating Sphere Lounger http://dvice.com/archives/2008/03/claustrophobia.php

Toy for children who want to grow up to work at the TSA http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/ toy_for_children_who_want_to_grow_up_to_work_at_the_tsa_9059.asp

A propos (of) nothing (Oh, my god edition) Squeezebox Duet http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-media-receivers/ logitech-squeezebox-duet/4505-6739_7-32815168.html… Read more

Is there life after or with IBM for Geronimo?

The Server Side is reporting that Geronimo, the little application server that largely couldn't, is struggling to catch up with JBoss, but is falling short largely because of its biggest corporate sponsor: IBM. IBM provides productized versions of Geronimo but they don't bring home the WebSphere revenue bacon (neither do support subscriptions around it), leaving Geronimo's future very much in doubt.

Apparently, getting one's sponsorship from a company with a competing, proprietary product to protect is not a winning strategy:

Geronimo is much like Eclipse: not formally controlled by IBM, but since most of Geronimo's core committers are employed by Big Blue, control more or less belongs in IBM's hands.… Read more