PARC News

What Your Phone Might Do for You Two Years From Now

Bob Tedeschi — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

But James Begole, a principal scientist at PARC, the research lab based in Palo Alto...said screens, at least, would be fundamentally different.

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PARC’s software, called Magitti, is in its testing phase in Japan, and could reach the American market in the spring of next year.

AIP awards Industrial Physics Prize to inventor of digital x-ray detector

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"The American Institute of Physics (AIP) is awarding the 2010 Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics next month to Robert Street of PARC. Street's pioneering work at PARC in the early 1990s led to the development of flat-panel digital X-ray detectors, a commercially available technology that has replaced traditional film X-ray machines for many medical applications. His current research explores finding novel low-cost and large-area electronics for applications ranging from new flat panel displays to radiation sensors. Projects he has been involved with in recent years include ink-jet printing of organic electronic devices, constructing flexible electronic displays, developing technology for truck-size scanners for homeland security, and researching new solar cell structures."

Rethinking What Leads the Way: Science, or New Technology?

John Markoff — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"The popular view is that technology is the handmaiden of science — less pure, more commercial. But in 'The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves,' W. Brian Arthur, an economist [and PARC Visiting Researcher], reframes the relationship between science and technology as part of an effort to come up with a comprehensive theory of innovation. In Dr. Arthur’s view, the relationship between science and technology is more symbiotic than is generally conceded. Science and technology move forward together in a kind of co-evolution. And science does not lead."

FlexTech Alliance Opens Registration and Announces Keynote for 2010 Flexible Electronics & Displays Conference

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Kicking off the three-day Business and Technical Conference will be a keynote address by Mark Bernstein, President and Center Director for PARC. Bernstein will share his thoughts and observations on flexible electronics as a strategic technology and how it fits into PARC's research relationships with its industry partners."

PARC overflowing with new ideas

Ian Hardy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Bo Begole, manager of the ubiquitous computing area in PARC, is working on a project that allows computers to recognize our presence immediately and react accordingly - one application of the technology could be in a changing room in a clothing shop...In another part of the building, PARC researchers are working on a centrifugal water filtration system that separates molecules without using membrane barriers and - at the same time - saves energy, vast amounts of equipment and space. Meng Lean, principal scientist at PARC, says: 'One possible use for the equipment in the future is seawater purification, which many see as vital as the world gets warmer.'"

Palo Alto gets green recognition

Ryan Mac — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Currently PARC is working to use completely compostable materials and recently started installing automatic light sensors. Other initiatives include subsidizing an alternate transportation program in which the company gives small financial incentives for employees that take the bus, ride bicycles or carpool to work."

Where Wikipedia Ends

Farhad Manjoo — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"...revisions made by infrequent contributors are much likelier to be undone by élite Wikipedians. [Ed] Chi also notes the rise of wiki-lawyering: for your edits to stick, you've got to learn to cite the complex laws of Wikipedia in arguments with other editors. Together, these changes have created a community not very hospitable to newcomers. Chi says, "People begin to wonder, 'Why should I contribute anymore?'" — and suddenly, like rabbits out of food, Wikipedia's population stops growing."

PARC’s Solution for Algae Fuel: Going Down the Drain

Michael Kanellos — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"PARC has built a prototype that can cycle 1,000 liters of fluid a minute and is now seeking a grant in conjunction with a major oil company from the Department of Energy to experiment with it on a larger scale...If it works on a large scale, scientifically calibrated swirling could become one of the more notable advances in algae in the past few years. Separating the algae from water sounds easy, but it's time-consuming and energy intensive...PARC's research seems destined to draw other companies into this space as well."

FCC to World: How Should We Do This Broadband Plan?

Michael Weinberg — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dr. Van Jacobson of PARC "noted today’s internet was designed to share resources, not to share data. This distinction is at the heart of a number of problems manifesting themselves today – especially security problems."

Robert Spinrad, a Pioneer in Computing, Dies at 77

John Markoff — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Robert J. Spinrad, a computer designer who carried out pioneering work in scientific automation at Brookhaven National Laboratory and who later was director of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center while the personal computing technology invented there in the 1970s was commercialized, died...

'Big Ideas' on Broadband Likely to Push Threshold of User Adoption, Say FCC Experts

Christina Kirchner — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"A concern brought up by Van Jacobson, research fellow at PARC, is that advancing broadband speeds do not ensure higher quality of security. 'Internet is a big part of our lives,' said Jacobson. 'We use it for online banking, to pay bills and to check updates on our checking account. When you want to transfer funds online, are you giving your account number to the bank or to the host that is supposedly representing your bank?'"

Wikipedia to Add Layer of Editing to Articles

Noam Cohen — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

“Ed Chi of PARC, which specializes in research for commercial endeavors, recently completed a study of the millions of changes made to Wikipedia in a month. He concluded that the site’s growth (whether in new articles, new edits or new contributors) hit a plateau…also found...that there was “growing resistance from the Wikipedia community to new content.”

Evolution 2.0: On the origin of technologies

W. Brian Arthur — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PARC Visiting Researcher W. Brian Arthur on his new book: "Because new technologies arise from existing ones, we can say the collective of technology creates itself out of itself...Of course, technology doesn't create itself from itself all on its own. It creates itself with the agency of human beings, much as a coral reef creates itself from itself with the assistance of small organisms."

The Origin of the Computer Mouse

Larry Greenemeier — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Mouse technology found its way from Engelbart's lab to Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center...in 1971, when Bill English, a computer engineer who had worked for Engelbart at SRI, joined PARC. Xerox was the first to sell a computer system that came with a mouse—the 8010 Star Information System in 1981, but the term 'mouse' wouldn't become a part of the modern lexicon until Apple made it standard equipment with its original Macintosh....The emergence of the Microsoft Windows operating system and Web browsers hastened the mouse's pervasiveness throughout the 1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century."

PARC Forum talk “Innovation at Google: The Physics of Data”

Terri Griffith — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"I can’t say there was standing room only at Marissa Mayer’s...PARC Forum talk 'Innovation at Google: The Physics of Data' -- because the fire code for the auditorium doesn’t allow standing. They did bring in extra chairs and let the rest watch via TV in the lobby... I’d gone because of the big data and innovation focus and came away with a better understanding of their process, and how their management style is as empirical as their products."

Wikipedia Passes the 3 Million Article Mark

Steven Walling — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"The studies by PARC are some of the best scientific analysis of Wikipedia's community ever done, but it has led to some rather sensationalist conclusions by media outlets. PARC's models for Wikipedia's growth and community are ones shared by some within Wikipedia's community, but neither contingent is openly saying that the site is on its last legs."

Wikipedia approaches its limits

Bobbie Johnson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"The website that has become one of the biggest open repositories of knowledge is due...to hit the mark of 3M articles in English...From the numbers, it looks as though Wikipedia is stagnating. Why? One of those who has spent his time studying what happens on Wikipedia is Ed Chi...at PARC.... His team...wanted to understand what was happening on the website in order to build better collaborative software."

Chart of the Day: Wikipedia's Growth Tumbles

Dan Frommer — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"It had to happen at some point, but it looks like Wikipedia's growth has hit its peak. ...(More charts and discussion here from PARC.)"

Is Wikipedia in Decline? Scientists Search for Answers in Wikipedia's Numbers

Clay Dillow — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Wikipedia's ascendancy to the top of a large pool of online reference sites has come to an end, new research shows." The PARC "team will present its research at the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration this October, though Dr. Chi has already begun blogging about the team's analysis."

After the boom, is Wikipedia heading for bust?

Jim Giles — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"...a new study shows that [Wikipedia's] explosive growth is tailing off and also suggests the community-created encyclopaedia has become less welcoming to new contributors... Ed Chi and colleagues at PARC ... warn that the changes could compromise the encyclopaedia's quality in the long term. 'It's easy to say that Wikipedia will always be here,' says Chi, a computer scientist. 'This research shows that is not a given.'"

Tech meccas: The 12 holy sites of IT

Dan Tynan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tech mecca No. 6: Xerox PARC -- Palo Alto, Calif.

"Besides being the geek equivalent of Jerusalem, Mecca, and the mythical city of El Dorado rolled into one, PARC is also an independent research business, having spun off from Xerox in 2002. It now delves into such arcana as context-aware computing, human-machine interfaces, and biomedical systems, to name but a few. In other words, don't even think about trying to get in without a VIP pass, though a regular Thursday lecture series is open to the public."

Dinosaur Study Backs Controversial Find

Robert F. Service — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"When scientists reported 2 years ago that they had discovered intact protein fragments from a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, the skeptics pounced. They argued that one of the main lines of evidence, signatures of the protein fragments taken by mass spectrometry, was flawed...prompted Asara to release his complete mass-spec data set to other experts to allow them to judge for themselves. So researchers from PARC in California and the University of California, Davis, decided to do just that. They reanalyzed Asara's mass-spec data using a different set of bioinformatics tools and statistical tests."

Reanalysis of T. rex Spectra Confirms Findings of 2007 Study

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"A new study lends support to a 2007 study in which researchers said they discovered proteins in a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil... In the current JPR study, the researchers from PARC and the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis reevaluated the entire T. rex data set...and searched the spectra against the database using ByOnic tool. They then compiled a protein list using the program ComByne. Based on their results, the researchers concluded that 'the identification of bird-like collagen at the protein level is clearly significant.'"

NEC Reinforces Human Interface Research and Development

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

NEC announced a partnership with PARC and Carnegie Mellon at the 2009 HCI International Conference: "This collaboration with leading human interface research centers provides additional support for NEC's existing HI development designs, and incorporates 'usability modeling' as an important new tool for efficient, low-cost development of easy-to-use HI for a wide variety of products."

Privacy matters: When is personal data truly de-identified?

Jay Cline — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Validating that personal data can be de-identified in a way that still retains commercial and social usefulness could set a precedent for many other privacy-related standards and debates...

Philippe Golle of PARC in 2006 published a paper that used the 2000 U.S. Census data to estimate that one could use these same data fields -- gender, ZIP code and date of birth -- to uniquely identify 63% of the U.S. population.

Wikipedia Expert Tips: How to Keep the Facts at Your Fingertips

Thomasz Finc — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"But if you want to go deeper and become a Wikipedia power user, the following tips and tools will get you started... To track changes to Wikipedia edits inside Wikipedia, click the History link at the top of any page; but to turn those sometimes confusing edit trails into an easier-to-understand chart, visit website WikiDashboard."

PARC's Responsive Mirror = Every Girl's Shopping Fantasy Come True

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

By streaming video taken by the camera through their spatially oriented machine learning software, PARC researchers have figured out how to give people like me a real-time interactive comparison shopping experience... The technology hasn't hit retailers yet, but PARC researchers are hoping to implement it in dressing rooms soon.

Mr. Taggy & the History of Search at PARC

Steven Leckart — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

There are plenty of nifty search engines that don't begin with "Goo" and end with "gle," as Wired points out. But one site they forgot to include is MrTaggy, which was created by PARC's Augmented Social Cognition Area...The goal: be part-search, part-recommendation engine by tapping the wisdom of the crowd.

PARC: Flexible Electronics

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

By building circuits and electrical connections into bendable plastics, glass, and metal foil substrates, they're paving the way for new technologies like flexible flat-panel displays, medical image sensors, and electronic paper. Because flexible electronics are super lightweight, rugged, and can be rolled or folded into smaller pieces, they are expected to take mobility and portability to new levels.

Cell Phones That Listen and Learn

Kristina Grifantini — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Kurt Partridge, a researcher at PARC, who has also created cell-phone software that tracks behavior, believes that the SoundSense project exploits an underused resource. "I don't think the field has really realized both how little power audio-based activity-sensing takes, and how informative it can be," Partridge says. "Audio can distinguish so many more activities [and] adds a social aspect to contextual sensing that's not possible otherwise."