The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.
Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.
"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.
The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.
The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.
The Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs. The DHS already has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad. There could be multiple records of one person's prints.
"It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."
If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.
In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI's database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints. A possible match is made -- or ruled out--as many as 100,000 times a day.
Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.
More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a "rap-back" service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees' fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are ever arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.
Advocates say bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances to catch criminals. The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said. There are 900,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.
The FBI's biometric database, which includes criminal history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center's database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI's master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.
The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI's biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.
Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.
Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, CITeR's co-director. "It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists," he said.
Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.
In the world's first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers' faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.
To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.
Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to "fuse" fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.
At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI's biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.
Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.
Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, CITeR's co-director. "It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists," he said.
Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.
In the world's first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers' faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.
To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.
Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to "fuse" fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.
To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.
"We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure the data," Bush said.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the ability to share data across systems is problematic. "You're giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate," he said.
In 2004, the Electronic Privacy Information Center objected to the FBI's exemption of the National Crime Information Center database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was "not fully reliable" and that files "may be incomplete or inaccurate." FBI officials justified that exemption by claiming that in law enforcement data collection, "it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete."
Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. "Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever," said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data's security. "If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can't just get a new eyeball," Saffo said.
In the future, said CITeR director Lawrence A. Hornak, devices will be able to "recognize us and adapt to us."
"The long-term goal," Hornak said, is "ubiquitous use" of biometrics. A traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without ever stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera, he said.
"That's the key," he said. "You've chosen it. You have chosen to say, 'Yeah, I want this place to recognize me.' "
Monday, December 24, 2007
The Software That Will Take Digital F/X to the Next Level
Jos Stam is standing on a pearl-white beach under a cloudless sky. He is visiting his parents, who are vacationing in Faro, a medieval town on Portugal's Algarve coast. Stam, a 41-year-old computer scientist specializing in 3-D graphics, doesn't look at the world the way the rest of us do. Reality is a binary riddle to be cracked, a series of fleeting images best appreciated after they've been rendered into 1s and 0s. Even here, watching the waves hit a beach in Portugal, his thoughts drift, as they always do, toward numbers. He begins scribbling in a small black notebook filled with mathematical interpretations of everything he sees.
Stam is a Nordic Goliath, a neck-craning 6'8", with blond hair, pale green eyes, a deeply cleft chin, and hands the size of bear paws. He wrote the software behind many of the visual effects in modern Hollywood films — he is one of the few programmers to have won an Oscar — yet he's all too aware that no software can re-create the aquatic spectacle before him. Computers can simulate simple fluid motion, but on their own they still can't reproduce the complexity of a breaking wave
Sure, Titanic and The Perfect Storm had digitally created oceans. But those effects depended on the tedious melding of multiple rudimentary computer simulations. Ten years later, no software can produce believable effects that don't also require untold hours of manual tweaking — and any time additional components are layered in by hand, the finished effect is less realistic. Stam calls the creation of a believable crashing wave, in all its multidimensional complexity, "the holy grail of computer animation." And he may be closer than anyone to finding it.
When I first meet Stam to discuss his work, at a tapas bar near his office in downtown Toronto, I admit right off that I'm a bit confused. "Aren't graphics programs already doing physics-based animation?" Answer: sort of. He glances around the room. He points out flickering candles, a sloshing glass of wine, and the billowy pleats and folds on the blouse of our waitress, who has just delivered a plate of lobster confit. All are formidable "problems," he explains, using the innocuous term that graphics coders reserve for the most daunting challenges. Stam himself has already devised an algorithm that crafts digital smoke with startling realism (it was used in The Lord of the Rings and War of the Worlds). But to create a digital wave or flickering flame that can realistically interact with other objects and forces (including rocky shorelines or light breezes) would require a CG-effects system that truly behaves in accordance with all the laws of physics. Such systems are still in their infancy — they're used to animate the simpler cartoon physics of videogames and certain discrete elements of movies — but it's not clear if any processor or software program will ever be powerful enough to mimic reality at the click of a mouse.
Stam is wearing designer blue jeans, purple lace-up combat boots, and a black T-shirt beneath a retro corduroy sport jacket. (When did coders stop being geeks?) He's so tall, he looks like he's about to fall out of his chair. He clutches the table and leans toward me. "Watching those waves really made me appreciate how hard it is to animate something that complex," he says of the beach in Portugal. "I'm fascinated by the mix of water, sand, and froth. But how would you model that? Is there an equation that accounts for all of it?"
Current animation software can't handle a lot of elements interacting within a single shot. A ship ablaze on a stormy sea, lashed by gale-force wind and rain, would be impossible to animate completely with existing software. The animations for the waves, ship, flames, wind, and rain have to be solved individually, then painstakingly blended and layered element by element into each frame of film. This can take a team of animators at a visual effects house many months and cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Stam has a better idea: Teach visual effects software all the fundamental laws of physics and let it do the grunt work for you. Think of it as a unified field theory for animation — the animator can simply plug in the variables:
Wind speed: 25 knots
Wave height: 7 feet
Ship's mass: 46,000 tons
Ocean depth: 7,000 feet
Additional details might include air and water temperature, time of day (for lighting effects), wind direction, source of ignition... you get the idea. With the parameters set, hit Enter and voilá — the software would crunch the numbers and spit out the finished scene. At least, that's the theory. In practice, while algorithms for individual components (fire, water) already exist, integrating them all together has proven to be hideously complicated
This feature is from wired
Stam is a Nordic Goliath, a neck-craning 6'8", with blond hair, pale green eyes, a deeply cleft chin, and hands the size of bear paws. He wrote the software behind many of the visual effects in modern Hollywood films — he is one of the few programmers to have won an Oscar — yet he's all too aware that no software can re-create the aquatic spectacle before him. Computers can simulate simple fluid motion, but on their own they still can't reproduce the complexity of a breaking wave
Sure, Titanic and The Perfect Storm had digitally created oceans. But those effects depended on the tedious melding of multiple rudimentary computer simulations. Ten years later, no software can produce believable effects that don't also require untold hours of manual tweaking — and any time additional components are layered in by hand, the finished effect is less realistic. Stam calls the creation of a believable crashing wave, in all its multidimensional complexity, "the holy grail of computer animation." And he may be closer than anyone to finding it.
When I first meet Stam to discuss his work, at a tapas bar near his office in downtown Toronto, I admit right off that I'm a bit confused. "Aren't graphics programs already doing physics-based animation?" Answer: sort of. He glances around the room. He points out flickering candles, a sloshing glass of wine, and the billowy pleats and folds on the blouse of our waitress, who has just delivered a plate of lobster confit. All are formidable "problems," he explains, using the innocuous term that graphics coders reserve for the most daunting challenges. Stam himself has already devised an algorithm that crafts digital smoke with startling realism (it was used in The Lord of the Rings and War of the Worlds). But to create a digital wave or flickering flame that can realistically interact with other objects and forces (including rocky shorelines or light breezes) would require a CG-effects system that truly behaves in accordance with all the laws of physics. Such systems are still in their infancy — they're used to animate the simpler cartoon physics of videogames and certain discrete elements of movies — but it's not clear if any processor or software program will ever be powerful enough to mimic reality at the click of a mouse.
Stam is wearing designer blue jeans, purple lace-up combat boots, and a black T-shirt beneath a retro corduroy sport jacket. (When did coders stop being geeks?) He's so tall, he looks like he's about to fall out of his chair. He clutches the table and leans toward me. "Watching those waves really made me appreciate how hard it is to animate something that complex," he says of the beach in Portugal. "I'm fascinated by the mix of water, sand, and froth. But how would you model that? Is there an equation that accounts for all of it?"
Current animation software can't handle a lot of elements interacting within a single shot. A ship ablaze on a stormy sea, lashed by gale-force wind and rain, would be impossible to animate completely with existing software. The animations for the waves, ship, flames, wind, and rain have to be solved individually, then painstakingly blended and layered element by element into each frame of film. This can take a team of animators at a visual effects house many months and cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Stam has a better idea: Teach visual effects software all the fundamental laws of physics and let it do the grunt work for you. Think of it as a unified field theory for animation — the animator can simply plug in the variables:
Wind speed: 25 knots
Wave height: 7 feet
Ship's mass: 46,000 tons
Ocean depth: 7,000 feet
Additional details might include air and water temperature, time of day (for lighting effects), wind direction, source of ignition... you get the idea. With the parameters set, hit Enter and voilá — the software would crunch the numbers and spit out the finished scene. At least, that's the theory. In practice, while algorithms for individual components (fire, water) already exist, integrating them all together has proven to be hideously complicated
This feature is from wired
AT&T, Vonage End Patent Feud
Firms finalize a quick settlement in a patent infringement claim over VoIP technology.
NEW YORK, - Digital phone service Vonage (VG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it has settled a patent dispute with AT&T (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
Vonage was hit by a string of patent suits since going public in May 2006. It settled a suit with Sprint Nextel (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and another one with Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in October.
AT&T sued the company, accusing it with using packet-based telephony products, which allows voice conversations to be carried over the Internet, based on products that use technology covered by AT&T patents.
Vonage did not disclose the nature of the settlement, which it said occurred on Nov.
A patent infringement lawsuit filed by AT&T against voice-over-IP telephony provider-Vonage has been settled, according to Vonage representatives.
The settlement brings an unusually speedy end to the lawsuit, which was filed by AT&T on Oct. 17. It alleged Vonage wilfully infringed an AT&T patent related to telephone systems that allow people to make VoIP (voice-over-Internet Protocol) calls using standard telephone devices. A breakdown in talks between the two companies over the issue led to the lawsuit, said AT&T at the time.
Less than a month later, on Nov. 7, the two companies said they had tentatively agreed to a settlement. At that time Vonage said it would pay AT&T around US$39 million under the terms of the settlement.
Final terms were not disclosed on Friday when, in a brief statement, Vonage said the dispute had been settled.
Vonage previously settled a patent suit with Verizon Communications for $80 million to $120 million, depending on the results of its appeal of a court ruling on two patents, and with Sprint Nextel for $80 million. As part of the Sprint Nextel deal Vonage agreed to license more than 100 patents covering technology for connecting calls from a traditional phone network to an IP network. The Verizon settlement came after a court found Vonage had infringed upon the carrier's patents
NEW YORK, - Digital phone service Vonage (VG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it has settled a patent dispute with AT&T (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
Vonage was hit by a string of patent suits since going public in May 2006. It settled a suit with Sprint Nextel (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and another one with Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in October.
AT&T sued the company, accusing it with using packet-based telephony products, which allows voice conversations to be carried over the Internet, based on products that use technology covered by AT&T patents.
Vonage did not disclose the nature of the settlement, which it said occurred on Nov.
A patent infringement lawsuit filed by AT&T against voice-over-IP telephony provider-Vonage has been settled, according to Vonage representatives.
The settlement brings an unusually speedy end to the lawsuit, which was filed by AT&T on Oct. 17. It alleged Vonage wilfully infringed an AT&T patent related to telephone systems that allow people to make VoIP (voice-over-Internet Protocol) calls using standard telephone devices. A breakdown in talks between the two companies over the issue led to the lawsuit, said AT&T at the time.
Less than a month later, on Nov. 7, the two companies said they had tentatively agreed to a settlement. At that time Vonage said it would pay AT&T around US$39 million under the terms of the settlement.
Final terms were not disclosed on Friday when, in a brief statement, Vonage said the dispute had been settled.
Vonage previously settled a patent suit with Verizon Communications for $80 million to $120 million, depending on the results of its appeal of a court ruling on two patents, and with Sprint Nextel for $80 million. As part of the Sprint Nextel deal Vonage agreed to license more than 100 patents covering technology for connecting calls from a traditional phone network to an IP network. The Verizon settlement came after a court found Vonage had infringed upon the carrier's patents
Top 10 Startups ,in 2008
In the IT sector the grooming upgrowing market and innovative technology presentation is now a days showing the global invention compitition.
Credit crunch? Recession risk? You'd never know it, judging by the frenzy of startup activity. In fact, it's a pretty good time to start a company. Generous payouts from Web 1.0 IPOs and more-recent acquisitions have given rise to a new generation of angel investors and venture capitalists. Plus, getting acquired by Google is an attractive and plausible exit strategy for many entrepreneurs. Those factors have combined to make a startup market almost as frothy as the dot-com bubble.
We say almost, because the spending is a bit less lavish than before, and because -- unlike 1999 -- many of the new crop of startups have real promise. Here are 10 pre-IPO, pre-acquisition companies worth watching in 2008.
23andMe
There's a lot you could buy with $1,000, but for that price 23andMe offers something never before sold to the masses: your DNA. Are you predisposed to prostate cancer? Glaucoma? Heart disease? 23andMe, profiled recently in Wired, can tell you. The implications could rock the medical world -- and the ethical one. As the science of genomics continues to improve, 23andMe should be able to provide ever-better information. In 2008, it will also provide social networking between customers who share traits ranging from ethnic origins to disease profiles.
Founders: Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki
Funding: $12 million, from Genentech, Google and New Enterprise Associates
Employees: 30
37Signals
There's a reason nobody ever uses the phrase, "It's as simple as computer programming." But Chicago's 37Signals has made life simpler for programmers and small businesses alike with products such as Basecamp (project management software) and an increasingly popular open source web framework called Ruby on Rails. The company ditches the philosophy of "more features, more better" in favor of simplicity and accessibility: Focus only on the most important features and make things easier to use. The company itself embodies its keep-it-simple philosophy: Fewer than 10 staffers, working from humble offices, create programs quickly and nimbly adapt them based on user feedback. 37Signals released version 2.0 of Ruby on Rails in December, which should give many programmers a happy new year.
Founders: Jason Fried, Ernest Kim, Carlos Segura
Funding: Undisclosed sum from Bezos Expeditions
Employees: 8
AdMob
When AdMob launched in 2005, its prospects did not look bright. As a startup mobile-advertising network, it would have to compete with Google, and how feasible is that? But AdMob has defied the odds. While Google is just four months into testing a mobile version of its advertising network, AdMob has already served 12 billion ad impressions to mobile users. As more consumers buy web-enabled mobile phones, the prospects for mobile advertising can only improve.
Founder: Omar Hamoui
Funding: Undisclosed Series A from Sequoia Capital; $15 million Series B from Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital
Employees: 65
BitTorrent
As a peer-to-peer, or P2P, download protocol, BitTorrent was perfect for illegal file sharing. But in late 2007, the parent company of that protocol -- also called BitTorrent -- unveiled a potentially disruptive new use for its P2P technology: a platform that software providers and media companies can use to help customers download high-resolution files faster (and legally). By reducing distribution hurdles, BitTorrent will make online video and software sales increasingly viable in 2008 and will challenge the notion that the idiot box is the primary way to get your CSI fix.
Founders: Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin
Funding: $28.75 million from Accel Partners and DCM (formerly Doll Capital Management)
Employees: 60
Dash
Today, GPS is a one-way street, with a satellite beaming instructions to your device. You turn left because a chip inside your GPS device calculated that would the best route. In 2008, Dash will chart a new course with Dash Express, a GPS that learns from its users. If a Dash owner is moving 5 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, Dash servers will realize he's in traffic and warn other Dash drivers to choose faster routes. Sure beats calling 5-1-1.
Founders: Brian Smartt, Mike Tzamaloukas, Steve Wollenberg
Funding: $45 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Skymoon Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, ZenShin Capital Partners, Artis Capital, Gold Hill Capital, and several individuals
Employees: 85
Fon
You pay for internet access at home, so why must you pay for it again at the coffee shop, the airport and the hotel? That frustration spawned Spanish Wi-Fi startup Fon. It's a simple idea: Give and you shall receive. "Foneros" first agree to share their home wireless connections with other Fon customers using a special router, which splits the signal into public and private streams. In exchange, they get the privilege of using any of the network's wireless signals anywhere in the world for free. Fon has inked important deals with TimeWarner Cable in the United States, BT in Britain and Neuf in France, and its network has expanded to an impressive 600,000 registered users worldwide. Free global internet for the price you already pay at home? Sign us up!
Founder: Martin Varsavsky
Funding: Approx. $35 million from Skype, Google, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Excite, Digital Garage and BT
Employees: Approximately 90 worldwide
LinkedIn
LinkedIn, a career-oriented social networking site, found 16 million users, yet until recently has been eclipsed by much larger, livelier competitors. Now, a much-needed upgrade has the 4-year-old startup looking pretty good after all. A new developer platform aims to bring LinkedIn networks to the web at large, starting with Business Week's website, which will show your connections to any companies mentioned in news articles you're reading. LinkedIn still emphasizes utility over frivolity, and that's just the way we like it. Instead of virtual hugs and stripper name generators, expect the site to add "modules" that gather news and events from your industry. The dull-but-useful strategy seems to be working: LinkedIn projects revenues of nearly $100 million in 2008 -- not too shabby compared to much larger Facebook's estimated $150 million for 2007.
Founders: Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Valliant
Funding: $27.5 million from Sequoia Capital, Greylock, the European Founders Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, and numerous individual angel investors
Employees: 200
Powerset
It's gotten hard to imagine a world where Google doesn't dominate internet search, but some believe that if anyone can dethrone the king, it's Powerset. The San Francisco company is developing an alternative "natural language" search technology, which takes into account the actual meaning and context of words in a sentence. Of course, it's not the first time someone has tried to make computers think more like human beings, and HAL 9000 is still MIA. And despite an impressive demo at the TechCrunch 40 conference in September, Powerset's management has struggled recently, losing one founder (Steve Newcomb) while another (Barney Pell) stepped down from the CEO position. Even if Powerset's search engine doesn't make it to market in 2008, Silicon Valley will be closely watching to company for any signs of progress -- or lack thereof.
Founders: Steve Newcomb, Barney Pell and Lorenzo Thione
Funding: $12.5 million from Foundation Capital, The Founder's Fund and several angel investors
Employees: 60
Slide
In the battle of Facebook vs. the OpenSocial gang, there's one assured winner, and it's not even technically in the fight. Slide, the largest provider of third-party applications (aka "widgets") to websites and social networks, stands to win no matter which network comes out on top. (Slide's chief widget-making rival, RockYou, is also well in the mix.) Slide's success is only pegged to the social networking trend, which shows no signs of flagging in 2008.
Founder: Max Levchin
Funding: Initial funding from Max Levchin; a rumored $20 million from BlueRun Ventures, The Founder's Fund, Khosla Ventures, Mayfield Fund
Employees: 60
Spock
Google can search the web by keyword, but Spock gets more directly at a single question: What does the web know about you? By crawling the web for personal information and combining that with social network data, Spock creates a hub for information about actual people. Enter your name in Spock's pared-down interface and find out what the internet knows about you, or search by a keyword to find, say, ornithologists or sommeliers. Spock generates its profiles automatically, but individuals can "claim" theirs and correct any misinformation. In fact, you might want to check yours right now....
Founders: Jaideep Singh and Jay Bhatti
Funding: $8 million from Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital
Employees: 25
Credit crunch? Recession risk? You'd never know it, judging by the frenzy of startup activity. In fact, it's a pretty good time to start a company. Generous payouts from Web 1.0 IPOs and more-recent acquisitions have given rise to a new generation of angel investors and venture capitalists. Plus, getting acquired by Google is an attractive and plausible exit strategy for many entrepreneurs. Those factors have combined to make a startup market almost as frothy as the dot-com bubble.
We say almost, because the spending is a bit less lavish than before, and because -- unlike 1999 -- many of the new crop of startups have real promise. Here are 10 pre-IPO, pre-acquisition companies worth watching in 2008.
23andMe
There's a lot you could buy with $1,000, but for that price 23andMe offers something never before sold to the masses: your DNA. Are you predisposed to prostate cancer? Glaucoma? Heart disease? 23andMe, profiled recently in Wired, can tell you. The implications could rock the medical world -- and the ethical one. As the science of genomics continues to improve, 23andMe should be able to provide ever-better information. In 2008, it will also provide social networking between customers who share traits ranging from ethnic origins to disease profiles.
Founders: Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki
Funding: $12 million, from Genentech, Google and New Enterprise Associates
Employees: 30
37Signals
There's a reason nobody ever uses the phrase, "It's as simple as computer programming." But Chicago's 37Signals has made life simpler for programmers and small businesses alike with products such as Basecamp (project management software) and an increasingly popular open source web framework called Ruby on Rails. The company ditches the philosophy of "more features, more better" in favor of simplicity and accessibility: Focus only on the most important features and make things easier to use. The company itself embodies its keep-it-simple philosophy: Fewer than 10 staffers, working from humble offices, create programs quickly and nimbly adapt them based on user feedback. 37Signals released version 2.0 of Ruby on Rails in December, which should give many programmers a happy new year.
Founders: Jason Fried, Ernest Kim, Carlos Segura
Funding: Undisclosed sum from Bezos Expeditions
Employees: 8
AdMob
When AdMob launched in 2005, its prospects did not look bright. As a startup mobile-advertising network, it would have to compete with Google, and how feasible is that? But AdMob has defied the odds. While Google is just four months into testing a mobile version of its advertising network, AdMob has already served 12 billion ad impressions to mobile users. As more consumers buy web-enabled mobile phones, the prospects for mobile advertising can only improve.
Founder: Omar Hamoui
Funding: Undisclosed Series A from Sequoia Capital; $15 million Series B from Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital
Employees: 65
BitTorrent
As a peer-to-peer, or P2P, download protocol, BitTorrent was perfect for illegal file sharing. But in late 2007, the parent company of that protocol -- also called BitTorrent -- unveiled a potentially disruptive new use for its P2P technology: a platform that software providers and media companies can use to help customers download high-resolution files faster (and legally). By reducing distribution hurdles, BitTorrent will make online video and software sales increasingly viable in 2008 and will challenge the notion that the idiot box is the primary way to get your CSI fix.
Founders: Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin
Funding: $28.75 million from Accel Partners and DCM (formerly Doll Capital Management)
Employees: 60
Dash
Today, GPS is a one-way street, with a satellite beaming instructions to your device. You turn left because a chip inside your GPS device calculated that would the best route. In 2008, Dash will chart a new course with Dash Express, a GPS that learns from its users. If a Dash owner is moving 5 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, Dash servers will realize he's in traffic and warn other Dash drivers to choose faster routes. Sure beats calling 5-1-1.
Founders: Brian Smartt, Mike Tzamaloukas, Steve Wollenberg
Funding: $45 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Skymoon Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, ZenShin Capital Partners, Artis Capital, Gold Hill Capital, and several individuals
Employees: 85
Fon
You pay for internet access at home, so why must you pay for it again at the coffee shop, the airport and the hotel? That frustration spawned Spanish Wi-Fi startup Fon. It's a simple idea: Give and you shall receive. "Foneros" first agree to share their home wireless connections with other Fon customers using a special router, which splits the signal into public and private streams. In exchange, they get the privilege of using any of the network's wireless signals anywhere in the world for free. Fon has inked important deals with TimeWarner Cable in the United States, BT in Britain and Neuf in France, and its network has expanded to an impressive 600,000 registered users worldwide. Free global internet for the price you already pay at home? Sign us up!
Founder: Martin Varsavsky
Funding: Approx. $35 million from Skype, Google, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Excite, Digital Garage and BT
Employees: Approximately 90 worldwide
LinkedIn, a career-oriented social networking site, found 16 million users, yet until recently has been eclipsed by much larger, livelier competitors. Now, a much-needed upgrade has the 4-year-old startup looking pretty good after all. A new developer platform aims to bring LinkedIn networks to the web at large, starting with Business Week's website, which will show your connections to any companies mentioned in news articles you're reading. LinkedIn still emphasizes utility over frivolity, and that's just the way we like it. Instead of virtual hugs and stripper name generators, expect the site to add "modules" that gather news and events from your industry. The dull-but-useful strategy seems to be working: LinkedIn projects revenues of nearly $100 million in 2008 -- not too shabby compared to much larger Facebook's estimated $150 million for 2007.
Founders: Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Valliant
Funding: $27.5 million from Sequoia Capital, Greylock, the European Founders Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, and numerous individual angel investors
Employees: 200
Powerset
It's gotten hard to imagine a world where Google doesn't dominate internet search, but some believe that if anyone can dethrone the king, it's Powerset. The San Francisco company is developing an alternative "natural language" search technology, which takes into account the actual meaning and context of words in a sentence. Of course, it's not the first time someone has tried to make computers think more like human beings, and HAL 9000 is still MIA. And despite an impressive demo at the TechCrunch 40 conference in September, Powerset's management has struggled recently, losing one founder (Steve Newcomb) while another (Barney Pell) stepped down from the CEO position. Even if Powerset's search engine doesn't make it to market in 2008, Silicon Valley will be closely watching to company for any signs of progress -- or lack thereof.
Founders: Steve Newcomb, Barney Pell and Lorenzo Thione
Funding: $12.5 million from Foundation Capital, The Founder's Fund and several angel investors
Employees: 60
Slide
In the battle of Facebook vs. the OpenSocial gang, there's one assured winner, and it's not even technically in the fight. Slide, the largest provider of third-party applications (aka "widgets") to websites and social networks, stands to win no matter which network comes out on top. (Slide's chief widget-making rival, RockYou, is also well in the mix.) Slide's success is only pegged to the social networking trend, which shows no signs of flagging in 2008.
Founder: Max Levchin
Funding: Initial funding from Max Levchin; a rumored $20 million from BlueRun Ventures, The Founder's Fund, Khosla Ventures, Mayfield Fund
Employees: 60
Spock
Google can search the web by keyword, but Spock gets more directly at a single question: What does the web know about you? By crawling the web for personal information and combining that with social network data, Spock creates a hub for information about actual people. Enter your name in Spock's pared-down interface and find out what the internet knows about you, or search by a keyword to find, say, ornithologists or sommeliers. Spock generates its profiles automatically, but individuals can "claim" theirs and correct any misinformation. In fact, you might want to check yours right now....
Founders: Jaideep Singh and Jay Bhatti
Funding: $8 million from Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital
Employees: 25
The year in technology:IPhone Sales: 5 Million Down, 5 Million to Go?
Could Steve Jobs already be halfway to meeting his iPhone sales goal? According to 9to5Mac, Apple is expected to announce it has moved nearly five million iPhones as soon as next month's Macworld Expo.
If that number is accurate, it will mean the company is exactly halfway to hitting its target of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 -- not a bad position to be in considering Apple has another 11 months and presumably some big launches in countries like Japan, China, Spain and others.
Of those five million, sources tell the site that Europe contributed one million in sales, while the U.S. accounted for the remaining four.
The iPhone was great, except for its restrictions. And guess who's dialing up a better mobile Web now?
You'll balk if I label 2007 "The Year of the iPhone." True, news of Apple's new device hit the world within two weeks of New Year's 2007 and dominated tech coverage pretty much incessantly afterward. But as several cynical Salon letter writers pointed out at its launch in late June, the iPhone, cool as it was, failed to revolutionize human relations. "Hey, did your iPhone end the war? No, it didn't, so shut up!"
But tech doesn't work that way. Only a handful of Macheads seriously expected the iPhone to deliver an exit strategy in Iraq, cure AIDS and forestall foreclosure on millions of subprime mortgages. Most techies had lower expectations, and it's true that for some of us, the iPhone didn't meet even those. As a phone, the thing didn't stand out. It lacked, moreover, several necessary features, and more than a few people still can't get the hang of its damned keyboard.
Still, every conversation about tech in 2007 spirals into a conversation about the iPhone; the device, as I wrote after two weeks using it, marks a new way of living. For some people constant access to the Internet is a pleasant dream, while for others it's a dreaded nightmare. This year, for all of us, it became a reality, the unavoidable future.
Apple skeptics point out that cellphones have offered on-the-go access to the Web for years, long before the iPhone came along. But that's a bit like deriding the utility of the internal combustion engine on the basis that horses did basically the same thing. The iPhone's mobile Web is fundamentally different from anything that has come before -- hassle-free, easy to use and functionally the same as the browser on your desktop.
And this suggests the iPhone's true impact -- it forced us, for the first time, to confront the thorny public policy issues that the mobile Web will raise, issues sure to consume Silicon Valley, Hollywood and regulators in Washington for the foreseeable future.
Take telecom policy. Until recently, "network neutrality" -- the proposal to prohibit Internet service providers from imposing discriminatory rules on the network lines coming into our homes -- was an issue most experts associated with the wired Internet, not wireless networks.
We get mad when Comcast or AT&T monkeys with what we can do on the Web at home, but few took notice that cellular carriers have always restricted our behavior on wireless networks -- they dictate what phones we can use, which programs we can run on those phones, and what we can do with those programs. For a long while, the prohibitions raised few objections because the mobile Internet was too useless to get very worked up about.
The iPhone altered our calculus of concern. By illustrating the possibilities of the mobile Web, the phone cast wireless networks as ground zero in the battle for computing freedom.
Ironically, Apple itself wound up on the wrong side of the fight. Among my chief complaints about the iPhone was Apple's policy prohibiting third-party developers from creating programs for it. The restriction undoubtedly came about as a consequence of Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T, which, like other wireless companies, is afraid of wayward applications hurting its bottom line. If you were free to use the Internet phone service Skype on your iPhone, you might make very cheap calls overseas -- and why would AT&T want to let you do that?
The restrictions showed up Apple CEO Steve Jobs' idea that his phone was a full-fledged mobile computer. The iPhone did seem to have the potential to act as a true minicomputer -- but if it remained closed, it could never match the wizardry we're used to on the desktop.
In late September, Apple moved to shut down hackers who had rigged the phone to run in unapproved ways. Many customers were apoplectic. Apple subsequently promised that it would offer a way for programmers to create their own iPhone apps -- a recognition that the iPhone's true utility lies in the innovation that developers across the world will bring to it.
If Apple's innovation pointed to the possibilities of a wireless Web, another company moved aggressively to realize those possibilities. Right, Google.
During the summer, the search firm pushed the Federal Communications Commission to adopt a set of "openness principles" on the 700 MHz band of radio space, a wireless bounty that the government will offer to high rollers at a grand auction early in 2008.
Google did not persuade regulators to make the spectrum fully open, but it did win some benefits for consumers. Specifically, the FCC set aside a block of radio space on which wireless firms will not be allowed to prohibit customers from running devices and applications of their choice. Google also announced it would bid for wireless space, and it unveiled Android, an open-source operating system for mobile phones that will allow developers to create applications that run on a wide range of phones.
Google's not doing these things altruistically, of course. The company sees billions in the wireless Web: More people using the Internet means more people using Google's services.
Fans of the search firm see its moves as a rare instance when private ambition aligns with the public good. After all, Google's gambit has already produced gains for customers. Phone companies wary of a direct fight with Google are now tripping over themselves to bring a measure of openness to their networks.
But how long can we trust Google -- a firm that now dominates every aspect of our digital lives -- to protect our interests? The year ends with that cliffhanger.
When, a decade from now, you think back on these times, you may well remember the iPhone's launch as a mere footnote to a more momentous story: 2007, the year the mobile Internet got its start -- or, you know, the year Google finalized plans to take over the world.
Israeli and US scientists partner to make progress with nano-particles
Nonotechnology is spacing its own in technology and science research,
Participants in a research partnership between the Haifa Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and US research organization The Scripps Institute have announced progress in the development of new nano-particles with multiple medicinal and technological uses. Their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scienceslast week, suggests that molecules modeled upon the spherical forms of viruses, known as 'capsids,' are ideally suited for use in pinpointed drug delivery, gene therapy, and nano-computing. The team, led by Technion chemist Ehud Keinan, conducted computer simulations of capsid formation processes, concluding that the natural structures can be artificially reproduced through lab-based chemical engineering
Participants in a research partnership between the Haifa Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and US research organization The Scripps Institute have announced progress in the development of new nano-particles with multiple medicinal and technological uses. Their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scienceslast week, suggests that molecules modeled upon the spherical forms of viruses, known as 'capsids,' are ideally suited for use in pinpointed drug delivery, gene therapy, and nano-computing. The team, led by Technion chemist Ehud Keinan, conducted computer simulations of capsid formation processes, concluding that the natural structures can be artificially reproduced through lab-based chemical engineering
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