Latest News
What Standardization Will Mean For RubyMirko StockerInfoQueue March 19, 2010 - Ruby's inventor Matz announced plans to standardize Ruby in order to
"improve the compatibility between different Ruby implementations [..]
and to ease Ruby's way into the Japanese government". The first
proposal for standardization will be to the Japanese Industrial
Standards Committee and in a further step to the ISO, to become an
international standard....A very different approach to unite Ruby implementations is the
RubySpec project -- a community driven effort to build an executable
specification. RubySpec is an offspring of the Rubinius project...
...Full StoryNIST, Partners Develop Testing Infrastructure for Health IT Systems
NISt techbeat March 19, 2010 - Fully incorporating modern information technology into the healthcare system promises many benefits, including better quality care, less paperwork and fewer medical errors while reducing unnecessary costs. In any such critical application, however, it’s important to ensure that the new technology behaves as expected. To meet this need in health information technology, a broad array of public and private stakeholders have been working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST has released the first of four installments of a new health IT test method and related software.
Starting in 2011, the federal government will provide extra Medicare and Medicaid payments to physicians’ offices that implement health IT systems conforming to specific technical standards and put to “meaningful use”, performing specifically defined functions. Late last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) identified the required standards and provided a concrete definition of “meaningful use.” To help physicians’ offices evaluate possible health IT systems against these requirements, the HHS’s Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has established a national health IT certification program.
As mandated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), NIST and HHS are working with health IT system vendors, standards organizations that include the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel, certification bodies and system implementers to develop a suite of software tools to support the health IT testing infrastructure. The tools are intended to help vendors test their health IT products and ensure basic functionality, such as the calculation of body mass index or proper formatting of common electronic health records in XML (eXtensible Markup Language).... ...Full Story
NFC breathes new life into tombstones
Bill Ray
The Register.com March 19, 2010 - An American outfit has started selling RFID tags for embedding in headstones, making life easier for the next generation of the Time Team.
A 'Personal RosettaStone', utilising technology from Objecs as reported by NFC World, will set you back something between a tenner and two hundred quid depending on how long you want people to be able to read your details, and comes with useful icons* in case humanity has moved beyond the use of radio frequencies by then.
The tags come in adhesive form good for 300 years, or embedded in granite for that 3,000-years-plus longevity. Assuming, of course, that the NFC standard lasts that long.... ...Full Story
World Wide Web Consortium Must Seize High Ground on Web Standards Earlier, Says New CEO Jeffrey Jaffe
Wade Roush
XConomy March 19, 2010 - When Tim Berners-Lee and colleagues from CERN proposed the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and the hypertext markup language (HTML) as Internet-wide standards back in the early 1990s, they didn’t face much resistance, because there weren’t any competing ideas for doing what Berners-Lee wanted to do—that is, setting up a global network of hyperlinked electronic documents.
How different the world is today. On the online video front alone, there are at least four contenders for the title of de facto Web video standard, including Flash (controlled by Adobe), VC-1 (Microsoft), Ogg Theora (favored by many free software and open source software developers), and H.264/MPEG-4 (supported by Apple, Google, and others)....The longer this state of fragmentation lasts, the harder it will be for companies and consumers to know how to invest their resources, especially as the Web goes mobile.... ...Full Story
CodePlex Foundation Announces Creation of Second Open Source Gallery, Acceptance of Anchor Project
Press Release
CodePlex Foundation March 18, 2010 - The CodePlex Foundation today announced the creation of its second project gallery, the Systems Infrastructure and Integration Gallery, and the acceptance of the first project into that gallery, the Network Monitor Parsers Project. The gallery and project, contributed by Microsoft, the Foundation’s founding sponsor, were evaluated for acceptance using the Foundation’s Project Acceptance and Operation Guidelines.
Interoperability is a key need for IT customers who increasingly rely on heterogeneous computing environments. While open APIs and documented technical bridges from technology providers help assure interoperability, CodePlex.org believes that the collaborative open source development process benefits everyone....The Network Monitor Parsers project, the gallery’s anchor project, is an important first step in the overall Network Monitor project, which will open up specifications for substantial APIs where Windows platform technology interfaces with network protocols.... ...Full Story
JAPAN AIMS TO SET STANDARD FOR ELEC-CAR CHARGERS
Press Release
Toyota et al. March 18, 2010 - Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, will help lead a cross-industry effort to create a global standard for high-speed battery chargers for electric cars in Japan.
The trio will join Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. in chairing a consortium of 158 companies and organizations established Monday....European engineering group ABB Ltd. and German autoparts manufacturer Robert Bosch GmbH will also take part. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will be among 24 observers.
The forum aims to standardize how chargers communicate with cars....If Japan's standard becomes the world's, Japanese manufacturers will gain an advantage over their foreign rivals, which are working to promote their own charging technologies. International competition in the field looks likely to heat up.... ...Full Story
Open Identity Exchange Launches at RSA
Press Release
OIX.org March 18, 2010 - Industry leaders Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA, and Booz Allen Hamilton today announced at the RSA Conference 2010 the formation of the Open Identity Exchange (OIX) www.openidentityexchange.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to building trust in the exchange of online identity credentials across public and private sectors. With initial grants from the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) and Information Card Foundation (ICF), OIX has been approved as a trust framework provider by the United States Government to certify online identity management providers to U.S. federal standards for identity assurance.
Trust frameworks are a new way for one site to trust the identity, security, and privacy assurances from another site (the "identity provider") acting on behalf of a user. Google, Paypal, and Equifax are the first three identity providers certified by OIX to issue digital identity credentials that will be accepted for privacy-protected registration and login at U.S. government websites. Verizon is currently in the certification process and is expected to be completed shortly.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the first government website accepting these credentials, including OpenID and Information Card logins, a capability it demonstrated today at the RSA Conference. Citizens can use open identity technologies to support a number of online services across websites, including customized library searches, access to training resources, conference registration, and medical research wikis, with strong privacy protections, all designed to ensure accessible and transparent communication between the government agency and U.S. citizens.... ...Full Story
New consortium aims to increase mobile broadband capacity tenfold
Lynnette Luna
FierceBroadbandWireless March 18, 2010 - Alvarion is leading a new initiative aimed at significantly increasing mobile broadband infrastructure capacity density.
Called Beyond Next-Generation Mobile Broadband (BuNGee), the initiative is looking to increase mobile broadband capacity tenfold. The $6.4-million project is funded in large part by the European Commission and will see European service providers, technology equipment vendors, universities and research organizations collaborate on the initiative.
The consortium's primary objective is to increase the overall mobile network infrastructure capacity significantly beyond what current technologies promise. The goal: 1 Gbps per square kilometer. The project will identify new network deployment strategies, especially for dense urban environments where demand for mobile broadband services is the heaviest.... ...Full Story
New Mexico Innovators Join Forces on Fulldome Research
Press Release
University of New Mexico March 17, 2010 - The most common experience many people have with "fulldome immersive environments" is with planetariums such as the LodeStar planetarium at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. In today's digital age, however, it's not surprising that the technology used in producing such immersive environments is evolving quickly and that New Mexico is playing an important role. A new, statewide research partnership called "PFI: Consortium for Fulldome and Immersive Technology Development" received $597,220 in funding March 1 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Partnerships for Innovation program.
PFI grants promote innovation by bringing together colleges and universities, state and local governments, private-sector firms, and nonprofit organizations. PFI helps these organizations form partnerships that support innovation in their communities by developing the people, tools, and infrastructure needed to put new scientific discoveries to practical uses.
The new consortium will develop the hardware and software that will make it possible to use fulldomes as interactive, multisurface environments that help people visualize, simulate, or experientially comprehend a wide range of information, from educational and artistic material to evaluating scientific data and complex systems.
Two of UNM's most creative labs are cornerstones of the consortium – the Advanced Graphics Lab in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department of the School of Engineering and the multidisciplinary ARTS Lab.
The other two cornerstones are based in Santa Fe: the Santa Fe Complex and the Institute of American Indian Arts.... ...Full Story
Carbon Trust launches green fuel consortium
Cath Everett
BusinessGreen March 17, 2010 - The Carbon Trust has today launched a new consortium of UK businesses committed to developing a commercially viable process for converting municipal and wood waste into a biofuel boasting higher levels of environmental sustainability than those currently on the market.
The consortium, which will be funded to the tune of £7m over the next three to four years, will attempt to refine a process known as pyrolysis, which can be used to produce biofuels from existing organic waste material rather than controversial energy crops.
Pyrolysis works by heating organic material to extreme temperatures in the absence of oxygen. The process breaks down the material to create either a gas or oil that can then be used to create biofuel.... ...Full Story
