DEMOfall ’09 product spotlight: HP Skyroom

SAN DIEGO - One of the most striking enterprise products on display at this year's DEMOfall show has been HP's Skyroom videoconferencing software that combines instant messaging capabilities with high-definition video streaming. Even more interesting was the software's ability to create windows on their desktops where they can drag and drop pictures, audio files and video files that the person on the other end of the videoconference will then see on their own screen. During the product's demonstration at DEMOfall Tuesday, HP workstation global business unit vice president and general manager Jim Zafarana showed how users can simply click on names displayed on their Skyroom buddy lists to start impromptu HD videoconferences. During the demonstration, Zafarana received a streaming trailer for the film "Monsters, Inc." after his friend dropped it into the Skyroom conference window.

So when I purchase HP Skyroom, I'm not paying for any additional equipment? Slideshow: 13 hot products from DEMOfall '09 After his presentation, Zafarana sat down with Network World to discuss Skyroom's system and bandwidth requirements, its security features and its ability to integrate with existing enterprise chat protocols. I'm only paying for software? You have to meet the minimum system requirements of having a 2.3 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, and your machine has to run on Windows XP or Vista. Yes. We're planning on having a version that runs on Windows 7 out in November.

One of my colleagues in Boston, for instance, has fiber-to-the-home and he uses a VPN to hook onto the HP network and conference with us using Skyroom. We're targeting business customers and this software can really be optimized through company networks, whether it's an onsite network or a VPN with a good network connection. How fast of a data connection do you need to make Skyroom effective? If you have a one-on-one conference, then it's a 1Mbps requirement for high-quality video and you can dial down the quality to make it work at around 500Kbps. It depends on what you're doing.

If you do things such as video and picture sharing it'll take up more bandwidth. Is this designed for people who want to talk to people in other companies, or is it just for coworkers who want to collaborate? With the Monsters, Inc. video clip I shared today during the demonstration, for instance, I was probably adding 5Mbps to the requirements. At this point it only allows for intra-company conferencing. The bits traveling over the network are encrypted at 256Kbps and they can only go through a VPN or a secure corporate network, so it's pretty secure.

What are its security features? How much does Skyroom cost? Additionally, every new HP desktop workstation will ship with Skyroom as a complementary part of the entire package. The pricing model we have now is $149 per user for a license to use the software and there's no subscription fee. How do I add "buddies" to my Skyroom videoconferencing list? If you have corporate Microsoft infrastructure with Office Communicator, for instance, it will pull your Office Communicator buddy list into Skyroom and all your colleagues on that list will show up as available for you to connect to as long as they have Skyroom installed.

There are multiple ways for you to populate your buddy list. You can also use other communication software products such as Jabber Server, to leverage you buddy list into HP Skyroom. Any plans on expanding that? And finally, Skyroom currently limits that number of people who can participate in an HD videoconference to four. Obviously we could do that in the future but we're not talking about that at this point.

Twitter's Revamped Retweets: The Good, the Bad, the Missing

Twitter's new retweet function is slowly rolling out across its network. Retweeting goes to the heart of what Twitter is all about, because it exposes users to interesting topics, blog posts, or news items they may not have otherwise seen. If you don't see the new feature yet, you will soon, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said in a recent blog post. For the uninitiated, a retweet is a way to rebroadcast another twitter user's message.

If the retweet took up less than Twitter's 140-character limit, you could also add your own comments. Originally, you had to copy the username and message into Twitter's text entry box and type the letters RT in front of the message. Now, with the new retweet feature, you can rebroadcast messages in just two clicks. Like many other features on Twitter, the custom of retweeting started with Twitter's community of users before the company formally adopted the practice. Retweeting is currently available only on Twitter.com, but third-party developers do have access to the new feature so it should be coming to your favorite Twitter client in the near future.

But unlike other grassroots Twitter features such as hashtags and @replies, there are things to love about Twitter's official retweeting function, and things to complain about. If you've already seen the link, retweets like this can plug up your Twitter stream with a lot of noise and no added value. The Good Less Noise: Sometimes a popular link or comment can be reposted by any number of Twitter users you follow. Now, the same retweet sent by multiple people you follow will only appear once in your Twitter stream. (Click for a closeup of the illustration.) Granular Controls: You may love to see tweets from your sister, but what if she sends out way too many retweets? You'll still receive her original posts, but all those annoying RTs will be gone forever (unless she uses the old school RT method, that is). Context and Discovery: Whenever you see a retweet, Twitter will present you with the original, unedited tweet next to the name and photograph of its author. Twitter has got you covered by allowing you to turn off all retweets from your sister.

This means you may see a lot of unfamiliar faces popping up in your Twitter stream from now on.   The advantage of seeing all those new users is that you're immediately exposed to new users, and you may even choose to start following some of them. This will bring up three different tabs to see recent retweets by other people, your retweets, and who is retweeting your messages. Retweet Sidebar: If you're worried about missing the latest RTs, just click on the "Retweets" filter in the right-hand sidebar on Twitter.com. The Bad No Added Comments: You may be getting better context by seeing original tweets, but now you can't add your own comments when rebroadcasting these messages to the world. Williams said editing and commenting on retweets could be integrated into Twitter at a later date.

No more quips like, "this is hilarious!" or "LOL" or "so true, yet heartbreaking." But don't worry too much, because this may only be a temporary state of affairs. If you feel you can't retweet without putting your own stamp on it, you can still use the original copy-and-paste method. Let's say someone you follow retweets an interesting message from PC World's Matt Peckham. What's Missing Follow/Unfollow Button: Now that you're seeing all these new people in your Twitter stream, it would be nice to have the option to follow them without navigating to a different Web page. If you wanted to start following him, you'd have to navigate to Matt's profile page and then choose to follow him from there. Some third-party clients already do this, and it would be a great addition to Twitter.com.

It would be so much easier if you could just choose to follow new users from your Twitter stream instead. Twitter's newest feature may not be a welcome improvement for everyone, but if you value greater exposure to new voices over adding your commentary then you're going to love the new style of retweeting. Connect with Ian Paul (@ianpaul).

NJ judge issues mixed order on use of e-voting machines

An order this week from a New Jersey judge has electronic voting critics and e-voting machine maker Sequoia Voting Systems both claiming some level of victory in a six-year-old lawsuit seeking to decommission the machines. Sequoia praised the judge's ruling. Mercer County Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg issued an opinion Monday finding Sequoia's paperless, direct record electronic (DRE) voting machines to be safe and reliable absent any "premeditated criminal activity." But Feinberg also ordered that the state's 11,000 voting machines be re-evaluated by a panel of computer experts, with the panel determining whether the state should continue using them. The decision "affirms what Sequoia and our customers throughout New Jersey and the United States have long known and experienced - that our voting equipment is indeed safe, accurate and reliable," Jack Blaine, the company's CEO, said in a statement.

Feinberg, in the 191-page ruling, seemed to reject the need for paper backups as a way to recount votes recorded on e-voting machines. "There is simply no evidence to conclude that absent complete access, coupled with malicious intent to alter the results of an election, the voting machines have failed to correctly and accurately count every vote cast," Feinberg wrote. "The court rejects the notion that the AVC (Advantage from Sequoia Voting Systems) is not reliable because it cannot be secured from tampering." Without paper backups, there's no way to know, countered Pamela Smith, president of VerifiedVoting.org, a group pushing for changes to e-voting machines. "That's kind of a stunning statement," she said. "My sense was that she has a lot of faith that the state would sort of do the right things ... but I felt like there were some things that she didn't understand." The lawsuit was filed in 2004 by the Rutgers School of Law-Newark on behalf of a group of voting rights advocates, including the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action. While critics of e-voting machines praised Feinberg for ordering the re-evaluation, some of the judge's determinations in the ruling left them baffled. The groups had sought a restraining order against the use of DREs in the state. Instead, the record is replete with testimony from state and county election officials that, over the many years of use, not one election result in the state has been adversely affected." Critics of the system were holding it to an impossible perfection standard, the judge said. Feinberg discounted testimony describing Sequoia machine hacks by university researchers, instead saying there's no evidence of a Sequoia machine being compromised during an election since the first machines went into operation in 1979. "Not one witness presented evidence that the AVC, outside of a controlled academic setting, has ever been hacked," she wrote. "There is no evidence of tampering of an AVC (Advantage) in any election in this state, or any impermissible alteration of any vote. Smith disagreed, saying critics know no voting system is perfect. "I felt like she kind of missed some pretty basic things," Smith said. "You have to have a way to audit the system.

The judge also ordered the state to disconnect any e-voting and vote-tallying machines from the Internet, to conduct criminal background checks on anyone who works with the machines, and to put in place a new protocol to inspect the machines for tampering. "It's kind of an odd ruling," Venetis said. "We clearly proved our case that the machines are vulnerable. New Jersey can't audit what they've got, and until they can, there's no reason for the public to have confidence, regardless of what the state does." Rutgers law professor Penny Venetis, who represented the plaintiffs in the case, said she was happy the judge ordered a new review of the Sequoia system, although Feinberg gave only 120 days for the review to happen. She's taking some steps to fix a system that's clearly broken." The plaintiffs are still considering their next step, Venetis said. Researchers have shown several hacks of Sequoia machines. "We should not be promoting systems that are vulnerable," she said. She said she's disappointed that Feinberg rejected the work of computer scientists that showed the system vulnerable. The plaintiffs should not be claiming partial victory, said Michelle Shafer, vice president of communications and external affairs for Sequoia.

That did not happen, so in spite of what the plaintiffs and Ms. Venitis are spinning to the media and the public, they lost their case." The judge found some structural problems in the state's voting system certification process, and the "limited" re-examination of the voting machines will look at those issues, Shafer said. The plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the voting equipment, and instead Feinberg rejected claims that it violated voting rights, she said. "It was very clear from the plaintiffs' testimony that they wanted Sequoia's voting equipment tossed out of New Jersey on its ear and shown to be unconstitutional," Shafer said. "They brought this case forward with that intent. But Eugene Spafford, an e-voting critic and computer science professor at Purdue University, called the ruling a "narrow decision on some points of law." The decision was not a technical review, he said. "The judge's statements repeatedly note that no problems have been detected so far: there may have been undetected (or unreported) problems that were therefore unavailable for the court to consider," Spafford wrote in an e-mail. "Also, simply because something has not happened yet does not mean it will not happen." The judge's decision should not be considered a "green light" for jurisdictions to buy e-voting machines, Spafford added. "Instead, municipalities purchasing new voting equipment should strive to get the best, unbiased advice available to obtain equipment that meets the highest standards of dependability, auditability, security, and accuracy to protect the voting process," he said.

Microsoft to discontinue MSN Direct

Starting in 2012, users of certain GPS devices will no longer get traffic updates, weather reports and other data because Microsoft is discontinuing its MSN Direct service. That program was the first to use the MSN Direct service to send information like news headlines, stock quotes, weather and traffic information to special wristwatches. Microsoft has posted a notice on its MSN Direct Web site informing users that the service will be available only until Jan. 1, 2012. MSN Direct is most often associated with Microsoft's Smart Watch program. MSN Direct uses FM radio frequencies to deliver the data.

GPS makers Garmin and Pioneer sell a range of units that can receive MSN Direct data. But Microsoft says that there are better ways to send such information today. "Leveraging unused FM radio spectrum to broadcast data represented a step forward in 2004, however, many choices today including WiFi, cellular, FM RDS [Radio Data System] and other digital networks are now readily available and are continuing to grow in popularity," according to the MSN Direct Web site. "Despite good initial MSN Direct adoption, these alternatives have significantly reduced demand for MSN Direct service." After it launched the watch program, Microsoft began marketing the MSN Direct service to other devices, including GPS units, weather stations and even coffee makers. Garmin did not immediately reply to a request for comment about whether it will try to replace the MSN Direct information service. Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder, seemed to be a big fan of the watches, launching the program at the Consumer Electronics Show. Microsoft said that products that support the service will continue to be available "for some time." Some people may be able to return a device because of the impending end of service, however. "If service beyond 01/01/2012 is a concern, please see your retailer for information on device returns," Microsoft wrote on the Web site.

In 2004 after MSN Direct first launched, a Microsoft executive said there were thousands of people subscribing to it for their watches. However, the Smart Watch never really took off.

IBM offers Symphony on Keepod USB devices

IBM announced Tuesday that its free Lotus Symphony office productivity suite is now available on Keepods - thin USB devices made by the Italian company NSEC. Big Blue's Symphony suite is based on OpenOffice.org and includes word processing, spreadsheets and presentation creation. Keepods are roughly the size of a credit card and hold up to 16GB of data. The new Keepod version, available through the Keepod store, employs VMware's ThinApp virtualization software, which wraps applications into an executable file that is isolated from a computer's operating system, mitigating compatibility and security concerns. Prices start at €19.90 (US$29.78) for a 2GB "Base" version.

Eighty percent of respondents polled for a Forrester Research report earlier this year said their companies were using some form of Office, and 78.4 percent had no plans to deploy any alternatives. A 2GB Secure edition, which includes 256-bit AES hardware encryption, is priced at €69. Although a USB deployment option could make Symphony attractive to more users, Microsoft retains an iron grip on the office productivity market. IBM does not formally track Symphony installs but estimates about 10 million people are using the software, said product manager Jeanette Barlow. The Keepod announcement comes in response to "a huge push from enterprise customers for supporting mobile workers," she said. Many companies are still in the tire-kicking stage, running pilot programs or deploying the software on a departmental level, she said. IBM expects interest in Symphony to jump significantly next year, when a new version based on the OpenOffice 3 codebase is released, according to Barlow.

Browser Market Share Transparency a Given

It used to be when a new software product was launched, reporters dutifully asked the vendor how it was doing a few days or weeks thereafter. It's not like this anymore as evidenced by the Computerworld story assessing last Thursday's launch of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). The story talks about how IE8 market share can be tracked hour by hour from the moment it was launched. Invariably, the response went something like this: Reporter: "How's the new spreadsheet software doing now that it's been in the market for a few days?" Vendor: "Great, we're on target." Reporter: "How many have you sold?" Vendor: "That's confidential." In other words, users, investors or whatever constituency had to rely on vague and sometimes misleading claims or third party estimates. In this case, it was two services that monitor such things, namely StatCounter and Net Applications.

Their results as of yesterday were within one tenth of one percent of each other, suggesting the data is reliable. It's the same transparency that President Obama talks about. As of midday, Net Applications"said IE8 had 2.1% of the browser market and StatCounter said 2.0%. Both companies, coincidentally, were founded in 1999. StatCounter tracks browser usage using something called a web tracker which is code put on the sites of StateCounter's two million customers. From that, StatCounter extracts a sample and from there determines which browser – IE8, IE 7, IE6, Firefox 3, Firefox 2 and so forth – was used for view each every page. "They're not measuring IE8 downloads, but rather what percentage of those four billion page views came from an IE8 browser," she said. That equates to three million web sites and four billion web pages a month, a spokeswoman said. For several years, the Internet has put everything in full view.

You can run, but you can't hide.

Crowdsourcing takes center stage at DEMOfall ’09

One unmistakable trend at this year's DEMOfall show is the number of Web sites and applications that rely to some degree on crowdsourcing. 13 hot products from DEMOfall '09 Crowdsourcing – a buzzword loosely defined as giving large crowds of users the ability to collaboratively create or change content on Web sites or applications – was made popular by open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia and has since become a staple of Web 2.0 applications. So why does crowdsourcing have such an appeal for developers? "With all due respect it's because developers are lazy," laughs Micello founder and CEO Ankit Agarwal. "When I crowdsource it means that I don't have to do the work to get data myself." But crowdsourcing does have perks beyond getting other people to do your work for you. Among the new crowdsourcing technologies to debut at DEMO this fall are Article One Partners' AOP Patent Studies, an open-source enterprise service that employs an online community of patent advisors to research patent claims; Waze, a mobile application that can be used to update traffic conditions in real time; TrafficTalk, a mobile application that is similar to Waze but also lets users provide traffic updates simply using their voice rather than typing into their mobile phone; Micello, a mobile app that aims to be the Google Maps of indoor spaces; and Answers.com, a Web site that combines established reference resources and crowdsourcing to create a comprehensive information database.

Some crowdsourcing developers say if you can create an application that meets a common need and gives people a real stake for getting involved, then it can go a long way toward growing your product's popularity. It's a shared pain of being frustrated by traffic jams and the like, but our goal is to resolve that pain and to minimize the wait during commutes." Greenfield says that while larger crowds are obviously better for an application such as TrafficTalk, the application can be relatively successful even if only two people who trust each other are using it. TrafficTalk founder Larry Greenfield, whose product is still currently in its alpha testing phase, says that he has found fertile crowdsourcing ground in the form of frustrated commuters during tests he has run of his software. "For us, crowdsourcing has to create a sense of community among our users," he says. "There has to be something that binds people together. After all, he notes, if one friend who shares a commute route with another friend can notify that friend of a traffic accident using TrafficTalk, the application will have served its purpose. Demo's biggest stars of all time Answers.com, on the other hand, is a Web site that really does require massive participation if it is to meet its lofty goal of becoming a central hub for people seeking answers to their queries.

Even so, he says the application needs around a dozen or so people to really reach its potential. Right now, the Web site lets users ask questions whose answers are partially provided by information culled from licensed professional encyclopedias and dictionaries and partially provided by user-generated Wiki-style content. This past August, for instance, Answers.com got around 45 million unique visitors. "Crowdsourcing for us really starts to work when you get to a certain scale," he explains. "Right now we get 45,000 new questions asked each day and then about one third of those are answered every day. Answers Corp. founder and CEO Robert Rosenschein says that as the Wiki portion of the Web site has grown over the past year, participation has snowballed to the point where the company doesn't have to work as hard to promote itself. Those answers are the most valuable thing we have even though some are more detailed and some less so… When you start to get that sort of scale it just sort of happens.

As Rosenschein acknowledges, crowdsourced answers are far more likely to contain factual errors than are answers taken from professional sources. The more new questions you get, the more new answers you get." Of course, the paradox of success is that the more popular your crowdsourcing site is, the more likely it will become the target of vandals. This is why, he says, it's so important to foster a tight community that takes pride in keeping the site accurate and will work quickly to clean up any vandalism. Because the service uses its online community to research the validity of patent claims – a time-consuming task if there ever was one – it pays money to users who are the first to come up with a correct solution to whether a patent is valid or not. For AOP Patent Studies, developing a sense of community is also important, but it's not the only incentive it uses to push its users toward greater accuracy. It basically works like this: a company comes to AOP Patent Studies and pays them to look into a patent claim.

The first two people to get results get paid a portion of the money. The Web site then throws the case to its online community for research. Still, Article One Partners CEO Cheryl Milone thinks that monetary incentive can't help your crowdsourcing site if you don't first develop a strong sense of cooperation among users. "There really has to be a sense of camaraderie and loyalty," she says. "Whether people are brought to the site because they know a lot about a particular technology or because they feel strongly that the patent system needs to be strengthened, it's the feedback they get from the community that keeps them coming back and is in itself compensation for their efforts."