Teaching Mobile Computing

Mobile computing will be the focus of research and teaching at the Mobility Research Center, a new facility that Carnegie Mellon University plans to open this fall at its Silicon Valley site. James Morris, dean of Carnegie Mellon West, says mobile computing makes sense as an academic discipline because billions of people around the world are being introduced to computation and the Internet because of handheld devices such as cell phones, rather than desktop or laptop computers. "The United States needs to have that perspective as we look at a global market for computing devices on the Internet," Morris says. Context-aware applications and services, serendipitous collaboration, and rich semantic information to enable novel data and media management, visualization, and access will be specific interests of the multidisciplinary program. "We have probably 30 faculty members who work in various areas--anything from antenna design [to] anthropology and psychology--and we're getting a lot of these people together into teams to perform research to look at the way people are going to use mobile devices in the future," Morris says.

IT Skills' Trend

Advances in technology continue to create demand for new IT skills, while making other skills obsolete. HTML programming is a high-tech skill that will no longer boost the pay of IT professionals. Companies want Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX, and expertise in AJAX and XML has increased salaries by 12.5 percent in the last six months of 2007, according to Foote Partners. Legacy programming languages such as Cobol, Fortran, PowerBuilder, and Jini noncertified skills were among the lowest-paying skills over the second half of last year. Demand for Novell's network operating system NetWare has been surpassed by interest in Windows Server and Linux skills. Non-IP network expertise and know-how in technologies such as IBM's System Network Architecture (SNA) is another low-paying skill. "For networking, IP skills have replaced SNA skills," says Foote Partners CEO David Foote. The demand for PC tech support skills is also in decline.

Future of the Web

Google Australia engineering and site director Alan Noble says there are a couple of "pretty amazing" trends developing, including a move toward gadgets, mini-applications, and widgets. He says applications are being improved by gadgets by democratizing them and making it possible for developers to disaggregate applications in a completely new way. He says another major trend is a shift toward cloud computing, which he believes will have profound implications. He says Google has "taken a whole range of applications that users traditionally thought of as client-side applications and moved them online ... It basically means you have access to your applications anytime, anywhere." Noble says there are still a lot more applications that need to be moved to the cloud, but the trend towards cloud computing is clear. As for the future of Web content and rich content Web searchers, Noble admits that video and image searching techniques are rudimentary, but the technology is improving. Noble cites research at the University of Queensland in Australia that has been able to classify videos and detect similarities with other videos. He says the Internet is becoming richer and being able to search through rich content will be crucial.

Amsterdam Robot Conf

A team of students from the University of Amsterdam won the top prize at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in Amsterdam on March 15. The public voted "Phobot," which mimicked human phobia, as its favorite robot at the competition of seven teams from technical universities from around the world. During the demonstration, a menacing larger robot inspired fear in Phobot, which retreated and then spun in circles to display a sense of panic. To overcome this fear, the team exposed Phobot to small robots and then to larger ones. "This robot is there as a sort of buddy to help a child having any kind of actual fear, doing it step by step," says team member Ork de Rooij. A team from Carnegie Mellon University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology took second place and the jury's prize for developing "Pot Bot," which was designed to monitor potted plants and determine when they need more water or sunlight. The contestants used Lego robotics and software from National Instruments to build their robots.

US Military Networks

Gen. Kevin Chilton, the top U.S. commander in charge of cyberspace, said the nation's military networks are being targeted by an increasing number of attacks. Chilton said there is evidence that links China to many of the incidents, though he did not formally accuse the Chinese government of involvement. A recent Pentagon report said that China was expanding its military power into cyberspace, which angered the Chinese. Although the People's Liberation Army repeatedly denies being behind the hacker attacks, the U.S. government has linked China to several cyber attacks, including the hacking of a Pentagon email system used by the Secretary of Defense's office. A 2007 Government Accountability Office report warned that the nation's infrastructure, including water-treatment and power plans, are at risk of being targeted by a cyber threat. Chilton said the military is concerned that the increasing number of "mining" attempts could just be the beginning of a growing cyber threat. He said hackers could eventually attempt to knock out classified networks or slow down the nation's government, media, and financial Web sites. "You don't shut the system down completely, but you slow it down," Clinton says. "I would consider that an attack."

Intl Animation Competition

Animation teams can upload animation reels to the ACM SIGGRAPH Web site for FJORG!, its International Animation Contest, until May 7, 2008. Sixteen teams of 3D and 2D animators will be chosen to compete over 32 hours before a live audience to create a 15-second, character-driven animation that adheres to specific themes, and they will be judged by an expert panel of representatives from leading graphics, feature film, animation, and gaming companies. FJORG! was a success a year ago, but the organizers of the contest have decided to make some changes. Solo animators will be able to qualify and will be organized into additional teams for a "Pot Luck" submissions category. And a "Vikings vs. Pirates" division has been created to give students an opportunity to compete with professionals. "Our goal is to build on the resounding success of the competition's first year that resulted in new friendships and prizes for many of our participants," says Patricia Beckmann-Wells, SIGGRAPH 2008 FJORG! Chair from Walt Disney Animation Studios. FJORG!, which will take place during the SIGGRAGH conference in Los Angeles on Aug. 11-15, could be a tremendous benefit for participants, says DreamWorks animator W. Jacob Gardner, who was a member of last year's winning team. "Professionally, I know that I wouldn't be where I am today without the experience and connections my team and I gained through the FJORG! competition," he says.

Collaborative eLearning

Collaboration between geographically dispersed student teams is the focus of a European project that has devised an online platform that combines e-learning, social networking, and project management components to help virtual teams fully leverage their practical experience. "Collaborative learning through teamwork projects need an entire project management system, but with e-learning functionality built in," says Germany L3S Research Center researcher Xuan Zhou, who is a member of the COOPER project. The project's platform delivers a virtual environment that far-flung teams can use to converse, get in touch with tutors, establish project workflows, and submit documents. The COOPER platform's flexibility is facilitated by a method known as Dynamic Process, which is mated with the WebML modeling language to allow project teams to construct their own, specially tailored project management system and workflows. The platform also integrates voice over IP and videoconferencing systems, enabling team members to speak with one another, conduct virtual meetings, or leave messages for tutors or other team members. To address the impact assessment problem inherent in project-based learning, the COOPER project's research partners are devising tools that follow a system from the Central Institute for Test Development and the Open University of the Netherlands, which includes long-term evaluation schemes. COOPER invests project results with additional value by analyzing and archiving all project output to compile a "project memory bank" that can be utilized to augment study programs and for institutions to supply public information about their curricula and innovative initiatives. Most of the COOPER platform will be freely downloadable over the Web once the project concludes in March.