7 New Popular Programming Languages

Seven increasingly popular niche programming languages offer features that cannot be found in the dominant languages. For example, Python has gained popularity in scientific labs. "Scientists often need to improvise when trying to interpret results, so they are drawn to dynamic languages which allow them to work very quickly and see results almost immediately," says Python's creator Guido von Rossum. Many Wall Street firms also rely on Python because they like to hire university scientists to work on complex financial analysis problems. Meanwhile, Ruby is becoming popular for prototyping. Ruby sites are devoted to cataloging data that can be stored in tables. MatLab was originally designed for mathematicians to solve systems of linear equations, but it also has found a following in the enterprise because of the large volumes of data that organizations need to analyze. Although JavaScript is not a new programming language, new applications for JavaScript are constantly in development. For example, CouchDB uses JavaScript's Map and Reduce functions to help bring harmony to both client and server-side programming. Other popular niche languages include R, which also is known as S and S-Plus, Erlang, Cobol, and CUDA.

Internet Users To Hit 2 Billion: UN agency

The number of Internet users will surpass two billion this year, approaching a third of the world population, but developing countries need to step up access to the vital tool for economic growth, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday. Users have doubled in the past five years, and compare with an estimated global population of 6.9 billion, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said. Of 226 million new Internet users this year, 162 million will be from developing countries where growth rates are now higher, the ITU said in a report. However, by the end of 2010, 71 per cent of the population in developed countries will be online compared with 21 per cent of people in developing countries. The ITU said it was particularly important for developing countries to build up high-speed connections. “Broadband is the next tipping point, the next truly transformational technology,” said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure, of Mali. “It can generate jobs, drive growth and productivity and underpin long-term economic competitiveness.” Access varies widely by region, with 65 per cent of people online in Europe, ahead of 55 per cent in the Americas, compared with only 9.6 per cent of the population in Africa and 21.9 per cent in Asia/Pacific, the ITU said. Access to the Internet in schools, at work and in public places is critical for developing countries, where only 13.5 per cent of people have the Internet at home, against 65 per cent in developed countries, it said. A study last week by another U.N. agency showed that mobile phones were a far more important communications technology for people in the poorest developing countries than the Internet.

Face of FaceBook

Through Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg aims to create something that moves beyond search engines and other Web-indexing tools. Three years ago, Zuckerberg announced Facebook's transition to a platform for applications devised by outside developers, while two years ago he introduced Facebook Connect, an app that allows users to sign onto other Web sites, gaming systems, and mobile devices with their Facebook account. Spring 2010 marked the unveiling of the Open Graph, which lets users reading articles see what articles their Facebook friends have read, shared, and enjoyed. Zuckerberg ultimately envisions Facebook as an underlying layer of virtually every electronic device. Such ambitions require people to be willing to cede more and more personal information to Facebook and its partners, and last December Facebook amended its privacy policies so that much more of users' information would be publicized by default. Users and institutions such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center balked, and in response Zuckerberg announced a streamlined version of the privacy settings. Critics say his vision of the world as a more honest place through greater transparency does not align with many individuals' inclinations.

5 Indispensable IT Skills of the Future

In the future, the most sought-after information technology (IT)-related skills will be those that involve the ability to mine large amounts of data, protect systems from security threats, manage the risks of growing complexity in new systems, and communicate how technology can increase productivity. By 2020, IDC predicts that the amount of data generated every year will reach 35 zettabytes, which will stimulate a high demand for IT workers that can analyze the data, as well as work with business units to define what data is needed and where to find it. Risk management skills also will be in high demand through 2020, especially at a time when business is working with growing IT complexity, says futurist David Pearce Snyder. Meanwhile, robots will have taken over more jobs by 2020, says futurist Joseph Coates. Protecting users' privacy also will be very important in 2020, because fewer interactions will be face-to-face, more personal information will be available online, and new technologies could make it easier to impersonate people, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. In addition, network systems and data communications management will be a top priority in 2020, Snyder says.

Future on Display

National Taiwan University (NTU) researchers have developed a lamp that can convert a multitouch tabletop display into a three-dimensional (3D) projection. Users viewing an image projected onto a tabletop display can zoom in on specific areas by positioning the lamp device on them. "We combine an infrared projector and a standard color projector to simultaneously project visible content and invisible markers on the table surface," says NTU's Li-Wei Chan. The lamp is equipped with infrared cameras and can use the hidden markers to compute its position in three dimensions. The lamp analyzes the information to control the projection of high-resolution images onto the correct place on the tabletop display. The NTU team also has created a tablet computer that enables viewers to see a two-dimensional scene in 3D. Users hold the computer over a specific area on the map, and a 3D view of that area will appear on the screen.

3D Virtual Learning

Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) researchers working on the eMadrid project are studying how to use three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds for teaching. Three-dimensional virtual worlds must include teaching elements such as a training program, with a sequence of activities for students to acquire knowledge, as well as a methodology to evaluate previously defined learning results, to become a learning platform, says UC3M professor Carlos Delgado Kloos. "The 3D learning environments are not only appropriate for transmission of knowledge, but also for teaching competencies, and if they also include augmented reality elements for the manipulation of a three-dimensional world with real physical elements, even better results are obtained, as the barrier of a fictional world immersion is reduced," Kloos says. The eMadrid project is working to achieve these standards by collaborating with researchers from other universities, including Autonoma, Complutense, Politecnica, Rey Juan Carlos, and the National Distance Education University of Spain. The researchers are developing defined standards and best practices for implementing teaching environments in 3D virtual platforms.

Watching 3D Without the Glasses

Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group (APG) has designed a lens that could help make it possible to watch three-dimensional (3D) movies without glasses. The lens is thinner at the bottom than at the top, a design that steers light to a viewer's eyes by switching light-emitting diodes along its bottom edge on and off. When combined with a backlight, the switching diodes make it possible to show different images to different viewers, or to create a 3D effect by presenting different images to a viewer's left and right eye. "What's so special about this lens is that it allows us to control where the light goes," says APG's Steven Bathiche. Microsoft's display can deliver 3D video to two viewers at the same time no matter where they are positioned. The 3D display uses a camera to track viewers so it knows where to steer the light. The lens design, which includes a rounded, thicker end, dictates how the light bounces around and when and where it can escape, Bathiche says. He says the lens could replace the traditional backlight in a liquid-crystal display to create a glasses-free 3D display.