Web rights

A buddy of mine, Jim Pitkow and his latest company Attributor was featured in a Wall Street Journal article today talking about the technology these folk have created to scan the web for content as a means for tracking digital rights use/abuse on the web.

This could be huge, with the explosion of images, audio, and video not to mention the massive amounts of other intellectual property published on the web -- being able to track this could be an important piece to the puzzle on how to keep the web semi-organized and 'safe' for all publishers of content.

Having spent some time with DRM systems, I've always been suspect of how such systems can scale and survive on the Net. Some of them have been closed systems that require all things to be under one tent. All of them have suffered from the ability of smart people to 'break' their system, thus rendering them ineffective and setting up an arms race between the DRM and the hacker community.

On the other hand, tracking content on the web has been a challenge due to the massive scale that must be dealt with. A different kind of search engine, in this case dealing with finding and tracking specific pieces of information through, one can imagine, some form of fingerprinting technology that they've developed. A very interesting problem, I hope they've found a way to crack it.

Very cool stuff, and good luck to the Attributor team!

Kipp

Weather anyone?

From the MIT Technology Review, I caught the personalized weather forecast that IBM's supercomputer is spitting out. The article talks about why this resolution can be beneficial and what some of the downsides are.

Personalized Weather Forecasts by Duncan Graham-Rowe
An IBM supercomputer forecasts weather down to a one-kilometer resolution.

Pretty nifty animations (well, time-lapse jpegs) of tempature, cloud and precipitation, wind and surface conditions.

Now, can you link this to an investment strategy?

Kipp

BCS - Bracket Can Succeed

What if the BCS had a tournament -- okay, so it's not an original question, but still a good question. Buddy of mine (Greg Mills) sent me this, a hypothetical bracket given the final BCS standings this year. That would be a fun set of games to watch. I don't think any of them are easy, but some have a much higher probability. USC/LSU, the battle of the TLA (three letter acronyms) would be a good game. Oh come on BCS, where's the spirit of adventure? I think this could work....

Oh well, I'm sure Auburn would argue that they should have been in the bracket, but instead they get to play Nebraska!

Kipp

Peter Freeman moving on from NSF

Our very own (Georgia Tech) Peter Freeman officially announced his departure. This was not a surprise move, term expiration and all. A nice write-up can be found at the CRA site as well as on the NSF site.

He's staying in DC to work for The Washington Advisory Group. This looks to be a high-powered consultancy group that helps various organizations in R&D and higher education, presumably with a perspective towards policy and other strategery work...

Peter was the Dean of CoC the first time I came to Tech and I have fond memories of his tenure here as well as the work he has done at NSF.

Kipp