Dr. Dobb's Journal March, 2005
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz (http://www.ucsc.edu/), are developing new assistive technologies for the blind based on advances in computer vision that have emerged from research in robotics. A "virtual white cane" is one of several prototype tools for the visually impaired developed by Roberto Manduchi, an assistant professor of computer engineering, and his students.
Manduchi's alternative to the traditional white cane is a laser-based range-sensing device about the size of a flashlight. A laser is combined with a digital camera and CPU that analyzes and integrates spatial information as users move the device back and forth over a scene. Users receive feedback about the scene in the form of audio signals, and an additional tactile interface is being developed for future prototypes.
Dan Yuan, a graduate student working with Manduchi on the virtual white cane project, built the initial prototype. The UCSC researchers are collaborating with the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, a nonprofit research institute in San Francisco (http://www.ski.org/), on the virtual white cane and other projects, such as a project Manduchi refers to as "MapQuest for the blind." The project hopes to create a feedback environment so that blind people can explore maps on the computer. The feedback would be provided by a "force-feedback mouse," which vibrates to produce a variety of physical sensations users can feel as the pointer moves across features on a computer screen. These devices are readily available, so the project involves creating software that will enable the blind to use a force-feedback mouse to "feel" their way through a map.
The Python Software Foundation has announced the release of Python 2.4 (from http://www.python.org/2.4/). New language features include multiline imports; failed import cleanup; function/method decorators; and an -m command-line option, which invokes a module in the standard library. Additionally, Python no longer generates Overflow warnings, and the compiler now treats assigning to None as a SyntaxError.
New language features, however, are not the focus of the release. Instead, Python 2.4 concentrates on performance enhancements and ease-of-use improvements. Several optimizations have been added to the interpreter, and some modules new in Python 2.3—including sets and heapq—have been recoded in C. Python 2.4 runs the pystone benchmark 5 percent faster than Version 2.3, and 35 percent faster than Python 2.2.
The W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has completed an ambitious Recommendation titled "Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One" (published at http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/ REC-webarch-20041215/#app-principles). The document sets out "core-design components, constraints, and good practices...by software developers, content authors, site managers, users, and specification designers."
Tim Berners-Lee is cochair of the TAG, along with HP's Stuart Williams; other participants in the group are drawn from Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Day Software, and the W3C.
Motorola, the University of Warwick, and the manufacturing company PVAXX Research & Development say they have jointly developed a mobile phone cover that sprouts into a sunflower if it ends up in a landfill. A special biodegradable polymer that looks like ordinary plastic was used for the case, and it was embedded with a small transparent window containing a dwarf sunflower (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/NE1000000097300/).
Motorola has not officially committed to bringing the cell phone cover into production, but said that products using the new polyvinylalcohol polymer could be on the market as early as midsummer. PVAXX says the biodegradable material can be made rigid or flexible in shape.
While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that discarded electronic equipment now comprises only 1 or 2 percent of the 210 million tons of solid waste the U.S. produces annually, that number is expected to rise dramatically over the next few years. The European Union requires mobile handset manufacturers to eliminate toxic substances (mercury, lead, and brominated flame retardants) from their mobile handsets by 2006, and has set a cell phone recycling/reuse target of 65 percent.
The Smart Sensor Enabled Threat Recognition and Identification (Sentri) system combines video cameras, microphones, computers, and software modeled after neural sound processing to identify gunshots, pinpoint their location, and relay the coordinates to a command center. Developed by Theodore Berger at the University of Southern California's Center for Neural Engineering (http://www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/CNE/), the software uses wavelet analysis to divide sound into fragments, then match fragments to established audio-wave patterns, while still analyzing the incoming noise. Sentri uses acoustic recognizers, posted in groupings on utility poles, which are tuned to certain specific warning sounds with extremely high accuracy. A directional analyzer calculates any authenticated gunshot's location, using the difference in the time the sound arrives at the different microphones on a Sentri acoustic unit. Field tests with real weapons have shown 95 percent accuracy with respect to gunshot recognition. Chicago is installing the first five of a planned 80 devices in high-crime neighborhoods.
Internet Explorer's total market share has dipped below 90 percent for the first time in years, according to one web analytics firm, while the open-source browser Firefox is accelerating in popularity. OneStat.com reports that Mozilla's browsers now have a total global usage share of 7.35 percent—up from 2.1 percent at the end of May—while Internet Explorer has slipped five points to 88.9 percent.
What's more, the two browsers developed by the Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla and Firefox, don't appear to be competing with each other. OneStat.com noted a small uptick in the number of Mozilla users at the same time that the new Firefox user base appeared. Instead, it appears that most new Firefox users are previous Internet Explorer users.
While the exact numbers are disputed—OneStat.com's rival WebSideStory pegs Internet Explorer's market share at 91.8 percent—analysts agree that Firefox's momentum is continuing. According to WebSideStory, Firefox's usage share grew by 13 percent in October and 34 percent in November.