Esther Schindler of IT World recently discussed a number of new technologies that have a definite cool factor in addition to plenty of real world applications. She focuses on facial recognition technology: “The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology used clever geek bait to attract me to its booth: video clips from The Big Bang Theory. Formally, the project ‘focuses on the exploration of new methods in computer vision to enable detection and analysis of faces and people in both images and video’… For instance, touching the screen can bring up the actor’s record on imdb.com (destroying any argument with your spouse that begins, ‘Really, that’s the same actor who was in an episode of Firefly!’), or enabling better video search results (such as, ‘Show me all the scenes with both Sheldon and Penny’).” Read more

James Vincent of The Independent recently wrote, “Officially launched on 4 of December the Open Data Institute (ODI) is an independent, non-profit and non-partisan company that aims to become the UK’s premier academy of big data. Considering the current hype surrounding terms such as ‘big data’, there are some that might view this new initiative with suspicion but the ODI seems part of an understated if confident shift in how the UK is taking advantage of a natural resource of the information age: data. The project was first conceived by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton Nigel Shadbolt. The pair made a joint statement in The Times, detailing their vision for data-driven innovation and increased government transparency regarding this information.” Read more

Leading standards organizations are endorsing OpenStand principles that hope to drive innovation and commerce, a recent article reports. It states, “Five leading global organizations — IEEE, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Society and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)—today announced that they have signed a statement affirming the importance of a jointly developed set of principles establishing a modern paradigm for global, open standards. The shared ‘OpenStand’ principles—based on the effective and efficient standardization processes that have made the Internet and Web the premiere platforms for innovation and borderless commerce—are proven in their ability to foster competition and cooperation, support innovation and interoperability and drive market success.” Read more