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Transcription

I had not

THE LEADING EDGE FORUM PRESENTS:
EXTREME DATA:
Rethinking the “I” in IT
ABOUT THE LEADING EDGE FORUM
As part of CSC’s Office of Innovation, the Leading Edge
access to a client-driven programme of research, confer-
Forum (LEF) provides clients with access to a powerful
ences, information exchanges and advisory services.
knowledge base and a global network of innovative thought
leaders who engage technology and business executives
The LEF Technology Programs offer CTOs and
on the current and future role of information technology.
other senior technologists opportunities to examine
The LEF stimulates innovation and thought leadership
timely technology topics and explore innovative
through two core offerings:
initiatives by leveraging CSC’s technology experts,
alliance partners, research centres and events.
The LEF Executive Programme helps companies leverage
IT for business benefit through an annual retainer-based
For more information about the Leading Edge Forum,
service that provides CIOs and other senior executives with
please visit http://lef.csc.com.
LEF TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS
LEADERSHIP
In this ongoing series of reports about technology
directions, the LEF looks at the role of innovation in
the marketplace both now and in the years to come.
By studying technology’s current realities and anticipating
its future shape, these reports provide organizations
with the necessary balance between tactical decision
making and strategic planning.
WILLIAM KOFF
PAUL GUSTAFSON
Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,
Director, LEF Technology Programs
Office of Innovation
Paul Gustafson is an accomplished technologist
and proven leader in emerging technologies,
applied research and strategy. As director of the
LEF Technology Programs, Paul brings vision and
leadership to a portfolio of programs and directs
the technology research agenda. Astute at recognizing technology trends, how they interrelate,
and their implications for business, Paul brings his
insights to bear on client strategy, CSC research,
leadership development and innovation strategy.
He has published numerous papers and articles on
strategic technology issues and speaks to executive
audiences frequently on these topics.
Bill Koff is a leader in CSC’s technology community, providing vision and direction as vice
president and chief technology officer for the
Office of Innovation. Bill plays a key role in
guiding CSC research, innovation, technology
thought leadership and alliance partner activities,
and in certifying CSC’s Centers of Excellence. He
advises CSC and its clients on critical information
technology trends, technology innovation and
strategic investments in leading edge technology.
A frequent speaker on technology, architecture
and management issues, Bill’s areas of interest
include system architecture, digital disruptions,
innovative uses of data, and the open source
movement.
[email protected]
[email protected]
Return to Table of Contents
EXTREME DATA:
Rethinking the “I” in IT
CONTENTS
2
How the “I” in IT Is Changing
6
DATA EVERYWHERE
Data in many places, changing the rules
18
TIME AND PLACE
Data about when and where people and things are, and what’s happening now
31
SOCIAL CONNECTIONS
Data that strengthens connections between people
41
MEANING
Data that helps make sense of it all
56
APPENDIX: HANDY WEB SITES
60
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
How the “I” in IT Is Changing
It is remarkable how far we have come with
used in new ways – enabling new business
digital information.
processes, interpersonal connections and
knowledge for business, government, commu-
Sensors can report the real-time status of an
nities and individuals. In this world, organiza-
engine in the bowels of a ship so that costly
tions need to understand and leverage their
emergency shut-downs can be avoided. Data
data opportunities, putting information to
from your car can report your actual driving
work for them like never before.
behavior and lower your insurance rates. From
your home PC you can access air quality and
It wasn’t always like this. The organization’s
other EPA ratings for your neighborhood, or
data used to be centralized, sanitized and
take an aerial “fly over” of your town or just
authorized. It resided inside a walled fortress,
about anywhere in the world. Cell phone
the data center, where it was guarded and
blogging based on your location is taking
managed. It was structured, well-defined data
hold. Camera phones are becoming common-
from databases and corporate systems. And
place. You can even use your multifaceted
it was official – data that was generated by
cell phone to check in for an airplane flight
the corporation and tracked.
or, in the future, to take the place of a train
ticket.
Today, data has broken free and is growing at
a breathtaking rate. Data is mobile, operating
2
An information explosion is underway, giving
freely outside corporate boundaries. It is messy
rise to an era of extreme data and dramatic
and unstructured, coming in many shapes and
new applications. Extreme data is new types
sizes: short-hand text messages, pictures, voice
of data, generated by new devices, and being
snippets, video clips. It is informal – generated
on the run and much of it “in passing,”
enough information to fill 500,000 libraries
reflecting Internet time and the 24/7 pace of
the size of the U.S. Library of Congress print
global business. This data has energy, as the
collections.1
cover image of this report reflects.
Meanwhile, U.S. federal regulations such as
There is a strong consumer component. Data
Sarbanes-Oxley (accounting and auditing
that we’ve known about for years in consumer
standards) and HIPAA (privacy standards
applications but has taken a back seat in the
for personal health information) have made
corporate world is now front and center, prop-
organizations responsible for their volumi-
agating into the business world. Businesses are
nous, widely-scattered piles of information.
adopting technologies like instant messaging,
The ability to exploit both structured and un-
voice over IP and MP3 data as part of their
structured data has never been more critical.
information technology infrastructure. The
“I” in IT is changing.
Some say all this data is not necessarily a good
thing – that it is more than we can digest and
IT organizations are recognizing and leverag-
put to meaningful use, and it poses serious
ing new forms of data in real-world situations
privacy and security issues. For example,
today. Although much of this activity has
computer storage technology is getting cheap
not reached critical mass, innovative organi-
enough that one day you will be able to record
zations are showing the way, and more will
every conversation of your life and decades
follow.
of photographs, but it is not clear that search
technology will keep pace so you can make
Part of the extreme data story is the sheer
sense of all this data.
volume of data being generated. Nearly all
organizations are coping with an explosion of
The vast amounts of digital data all around
documents, presentation slides, spreadsheets,
us make organizations and individuals
e-mail messages and instant messages. New
increasingly vulnerable to information theft.
data is being measured in exobytes (1018).
What happens when U.S. passports get RFID
According to a study by the University of
tags and a person unknowingly passes by a
California at Berkeley, some five exobytes of
surreptitious wireless reader that steals his
new data was created and stored in 2002 –
passport data? The same problem exists for
3
those smart cards in your wallet. This report
does not focus on privacy and security issues
E X T R E M E D ATA
but recognizes they are real and need to be
addressed.
D ATA E V E RY W H E R E
The world of extreme data is one of produc-
Data in many places, changing the rules
tivity, innovation, convenience and communication. The “I” in IT has been redefined
as a broad swath of data that runs wide
and deep, including mobile, personal and
corporate data; new types of data that go well
beyond text; and enormous volumes of data.
In short, this is not your father’s data.
T I M E A N D P L AC E
Data about when and where people and
things are, and what’s happening now
This report examines four dimensions of
extreme data: data everywhere, time and
place, social connections and meaning. These
dimensions make today’s data different and
put it on new footing, challenging organiza-
SOCIAL
CONNECTIONS
Data that strengthens connections
between people
tions to explore the extreme side of what is
possible with data today.
MEANING
Data that helps make sense of it all
Source: CSC
4
TECHNOLOGIES
A P P L I C AT I O N S
Portable devices, PDAs, smart phones, USB
Identification, information, entertain-
drives, cameras, smart cards, MP3 players,
ment, training, diagnostics, transactions,
implants, wearables, embedded processors,
navigation, manuals
biometrics
Location technologies, GPS, RFID, GIS,
Tracking, positioning, monitoring,
wireless, sensors, cameras, smart dust (motes)
navigation, identification, real-time
updates, alarms, warnings, emergencies
Messaging, conferencing, text-voice-video
Finding people, developing personal
IM, wikis, blogs, RSS, podcasts, VoIP,
networks, collaborating, information
Bluetooth, shared workspaces, peer-to-peer,
sharing, broadcasting, narrowcasting,
virtual communities
publishing, linking, filtering, trusting,
co-creating
Image-audio-video-text search, XML, RDF,
Multimedia search; integrated desktop,
metadata, Semantic Web, taxonomies,
company and Web search; pattern
ontologies, artificial intelligence, mapping,
identification; industry standards;
visualization
machine-to-machine communications;
trend analysis; data mining; expert systems
5
D ATA E V E RY W H E R E
DATA IN MANY PLACES, CHANGING THE RULES
The evolution of computing from centralized and
monolithic to highly distributed and small is legendary,
and with that has come the dispersion of data all
around us, like confetti. In the past decade, data has
spread from its familiar homes – the data center, the
server room, the PC – to the very edge of the network
where we work and play. Now data can be found all
around us: in your wallet, in your pocket, in your
briefcase, in your car, and even in your own body.
With data everywhere, the foundation is laid for a
world of extreme data and applications that are
changing the rules of business and our personal lives.
As data has gotten closer to people and further away
from corporate walls, it has become mobile. Data can
be easily transported, in large quantities, to where it
is needed. The simplicity and immediacy of having
data where you need it is opening up new opportunities
for business and consumers.
6
Consumer devices crammed with data and functionality are pressuring the enterprise to put more of its
data everywhere. Many consumer devices are already
being deployed in the enterprise and are driving the
rethinking of business processes. With that comes a shift
in IT power from corporate to consumer, as employees’
use of consumer devices at home influences IT decisions
in the enterprise.2
“Everyone should remember the PC, which started
out as a toy for hobbyists and was shunned by the
enterprise. Consumers led the way, and a company
called Microsoft became the number one software
maker,” recounts Paul Gustafson, director of the LEF
Technology Programs. “Today’s consumer devices that
put data everywhere are challenging the enterprise to
figure out how to put its data at the edge of the network
to benefit customers, partners and employees.”
With data everywhere, the foundation is
laid for a world of extreme data and
applications that are changing the rules
of business and our personal lives.
There are a slew of consumer devices out there: mobile
phones, camera phones, sophisticated PDAs, digital
cameras, digital video recorders, digital audio recorders,
digital music players. Enterprises must recognize that
these “edge devices” are first-class citizens that need to
be incorporated into business processes and supported
by IT. And as with all matters IT, there are challenges to
face, notably with privacy issues and data management.
We are seeing enhanced field service because technicians
can tote a massive field service database in their pocket;
training delivered on personal digital assistants (PDAs)
for road warriors; an online music industry that is
taking off; car insurance rates that are based on data
reported by the car – not to mention new media like
podcasting and personalized TV that could one day
unseat traditional radio and TV.
That said, the data train has left the station. We
already live in a world of data everywhere, and it will
only become more so. The benefits of having data
everywhere are manifold, with efficiency, convenience
and flexibility topping the list. Let’s look at some
of the most extreme examples of data in its many
places and the transformations taking place as a result.
(Note: We will see examples of data everywhere
throughout the report, particularly in the chapter on
Time and Place.)
DATA IN THE FIELD: MOBILE BUSINESS
PLATFORMS
New applications are taking enterprise data out into
the field where it’s needed – at the point of contact
with clients and business processes. The IT business
platform has gone mobile, providing data and applications so that workers can function more effectively
wherever they are.
Workers are being armed with souped-up PDAs
that no longer just manage personal information but
can now contain complete field service databases and
comprehensive training documents. Enterprises can
put databases everywhere to get the job done.
Field Service. Mobile workers like field service technicians need the ability to work offline. To this end,
Pocket PCs can now carry full-function databases
for field service, enabling technicians to do their
jobs more effectively with the information they need
literally in their hands.
Such a disconnected wireless database enables the
worker to gather and analyze data in the field, and to
consult and update large corporate databases while
mobile and disconnected from the network. This is a
major step forward for mobile functionality, boosting
handheld capabilities to the level of desktop capabilities.
Training. Periodic training in new technologies, tools
and processes is essential to keeping workers up to
date, but the mobile work style makes traditional
classroom training difficult to schedule. At its Training
Enterprises must recognize that these
“edge devices” are first-class citizens
that need to be incorporated into business processes and supported by IT.
Center of Excellence, CSC has studied the use of
PDAs as a platform for mobile training. Interactive
training materials and applications are downloaded
to a PDA, and can be accessed anywhere and anytime.
With the advent of smaller, more powerful computing
devices with larger built-in storage, the time is ripe for
a scaled-down version of the enterprise database
coupled with replication directly to the master database
on the server. In the past, handheld databases weren’t
considered enterprise-ready – powerful enough or
secure enough – and they replicated with a local copy of
the database on your PC. But now the handheld database and replication are moving to the enterprise level.
Using the Pocket PC, wireless (WiFi) Internet, SQL
Server and IIS, CSC created a pilot question and observation database for field personnel at Canadian-based
Bombardier, a world-leading manufacturer of innovative transportation solutions, from regional aircraft and
business jets to rail transportation equipment. Field
personnel can query and record inspection information
or ask questions in the system while disconnected or
out of range from the local network. When the technician returns to the office, where there is a wireless base
station, he or she is able to sync the data with the master
database, which resides on an enterprise server.3
Bombardier is experimenting with Pocket PCs for field
personnel who service the Las Vegas monorail, made by
Bombardier. Field personnel can query and record
inspection information in a local database while disconnected
from the network, and sync the data directly with the
master database later on. Such a disconnected wireless
database enables field personnel to gather and analyze
data in the field, and consult and update large corporate
databases while mobile and disconnected from the network.
Source: Bombardier
7
The Defense Acquisition University and other CSC
clients are keenly interested in how they can use PDAs
to deliver effective mobile training to a highly mobile
workforce.
it continues to evolve, the multifaceted mobile phone
is taking on even more roles, being used for airport
check-in, watching news and other TV clips, and even
scanning documents.
At the U.S. Department of Agriculture, veterinarians
are now able to download training documents about
the import and export of animal products onto
tablet computers in the field via a wireless connection.
In addition, the Training Center of Excellence’s
Collaborative Writing Environment (CWE) is being used
to generate documentation for USDA emergency programs pertaining to bio-security and other emergency
incident response topics. The CWE exports content via
a variety of open and closed source formats for use
by multiple handheld and other devices. The system
leverages wireless, XML and HTML technologies.
What’s next? How about your mobile phone as a train
ticket. Use your phone instead of a smart card to pay
train fares at the gate by tapping the phone on a reader;
this is being tested in Japan during 2005 and planned
to be operational in 2006. The phone will contain an
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip that is
compatible with the current smart card payment system
used by 10 million Japanese commuters.
MOBILE PHONES: GOING BEYOND
THE CALL
Mobile phones are already a lot more than just phones,
used for e-mailing, text messaging, taking photos,
playing music, accessing the Web and, yes, talking. As
With this, though, comes a note of caution. “The phone
should be the reader,” asserts Doug Neal, LEF Research
Fellow. “People should carry readers, and objects and
fixed locations should be outfitted with RFID tags. This
way the individual has control over the transaction and
privacy can be maintained. The tag can’t be inadvertently read as the person passes near an RFID reader.
Eventually this will happen as RFID technology matures,
but the trend for the immediate future is more RFID tags
in things that people carry, including cell phones.”
In Japan, your cell phone can be used as a train ticket starting in 2006.
8
Source: NTT DoCoMo, Inc.
Airport Check-In. Travelers on Scandinavian Airlines,
the fourth largest airline in Europe, are able to check in
for their flights via mobile phone. Working with CSC,
the airline has created a system that uses text messages
to the mobile phone that alert the traveler to call a
voice system for check-in. The process is convenient
and cost effective, and decreases check-in lines at the
airport. Since the service was launched in January
2004, the number of subscribing passengers has
increased by approximately 10 percent per month
to over 22,000 today, resulting in over 23,500 text
messages issued per month. Due to its success and
innovation, the project received the coveted CSC
Award for Technical Excellence.
The text message system and voice system recognize
the traveler by his mobile phone number (the systems
support four languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian
and English). Travelers receive a Short Message Service
(SMS) text message on their mobile phone approximately 22 hours prior to departure. The message
identifies the flight number and the telephone number
of the voice system, which the traveler calls to check in
and obtain a seat assignment. At the end of the call the
traveler receives a text message with seat information
as a confirmation of his check-in. The traveler can save
the message and refer to the seat assignment when
boarding the plane.
The same approach can be used in other areas of selfservice, such as scheduling a doctor appointment. The
customer receives a text message with suggested
appointment times and calls a service to accept or
decline the appointment.
For airlines, the service can be expanded to include
booking and rebooking flights, waitlist confirmation,
lost luggage handling, a hot line for bypassing certain
queues, and other functions. It’s all about delivering
customer service in a competitive marketplace. “We
are going to continue developing products that make
travel easier,” says Jörgen Lindegaard, president and
CEO of The SAS Group. “We are also going to offer
more mobile self-service solutions, including better
SMS and voice recognition services.”
Travelers on Scandinavian Airlines can check in for a flight
via their cell phones. The traveler receives a text message
roughly 22 hours before departure asking him to check in
by calling the voice-activated check-in system. CSC designed
the check-in system, which can also be used for other selfservice applications.
Source: CSC
CNN and More. Your mobile phone can be used for
watching news and other TV clips. Using Verizon’s
VCAST service on its new 3G network, users can download and view more than 300 daily video clips from
channels like CNN, NBC and ESPN on EV-DO mobile
phones. Content is custom-formatted for the small
screen, and some new entertainment series are being
created especially for this new medium. The notion of
“mobisodes” (mobile episodes) is just one more foray
into digital entertainment for the person on the go.
Scanner. Mobile document imaging software by Xerox
Research Center Europe in Grenoble, France turns
a cell phone into a device that can photograph notes
on a white board, contracts and other hand-written
correspondence and then convert them to a format for
processing, either in hard copy or on your computer.
This software, which could be on the market by the
end of 2005, is for anyone with a job that requires
research in the field (architects, insurance claims
adjusters, real estate professionals, etc.).
9
Books. The idea that you can read a book on your
mobile phone has emerged in Japan, where mobile
phone users push the envelope on applications. Several
Web sites offer hundreds of novels, some written
especially for the new medium. In some cases users can
download novels in short installments and run them as
Java-based applications. Although the small screen may
not be ideal, the idea of reading a book on a mobile
device is appealing – you can read a book just about
anywhere without having to carry around a bulky text.
PDAs can also play the role of portable book, loaded
with book reader software and sporting a larger screen.
With books on mobile phones, PDAs and even
iPods, commuters can review small books (maybe The
One Minute Manager), training materials, conference
sessions and legal briefs on their way to work.
THE STORAGE THAT MAKES IT
POSSIBLE
Hitachi now delivers a 3.5-inch hard drive that holds
a whopping 500 gigabytes of data. The Japanese
electronics maker also offers a tiny one-inch microdrive
This trend has been in the making for years, particularly for music. Now, with a big boost from Apple’s
iPod/iTunes duet, we are witnessing a complete reorganization of the music industry and legitimization
of the download business model, posing the biggest
challenge to the music industry since Napster and its
file-sharing cohorts started the digital threat. The centerpiece of the model is granting the user listening rights
rather than selling the music per se. Although you
purchase a song, you are actually buying a license to
listen to that song on several devices and to make copies
on CDs for personal use. (Even peer-to-peer file sharing
services are becoming legal as innovative companies
“stream” or temporarily broadcast the content rather
than have it occupy space on the user’s hard drive.)
Although Apple’s iTunes Music Store made downloading digital music a legitimate thing to do, and
Microsoft’s MSN Music store is coming on strong,
Apple and Microsoft are hardly the only players in
town. At the end of 2004, some 230 legal download
services were operating in 30 countries, compared to
about 50 at the end of 2003.
that packs 8-10 gigabytes. These drives help put data
everywhere – specifically, video and music playback in
mobile phones and other small devices. For instance,
the Archos AV400 series pocket video recorder uses
Hitachi 2.5-inch drives that range from 20-100 gigabytes
and can record from 80-400 hours of TV programs
and video content.
MUSIC , RADIO, TV: ONE SIZE NO
LONGER FITS ALL
The rise of digital entertainment – songs, radio shows,
TV programs – is challenging the “one size fits all”
delivery model of traditional media industries.
Programming once served on large platters is being
sliced and diced into bite-size segments at the will
of the consumer, who orders exactly what song or
program he wants when he wants it. Falling by the
wayside are fixed CDs – why buy the entire CD when
you only want one song? – and, potentially, fixed
radio and TV schedules.
10
Recognizing an important new player, a study by
market research firm Shelley Taylor & Associates rated
France’s FnacMusic number one of the 15 download
music stores it evaluated at the end of 2004. The store
went live in September 2004 with a catalog of 300,000
tracks and immediately won recognition from the public
and press for its customer-friendly features, including
discounts for buying multiple tracks and the ability to
download music videos and purchase concert tickets.
FnacMusic was designed and implemented by CSC in
nine months, in response to Fnac’s need to redefine its
strategy for online music distribution. Fnac is the top
distributor of media and entertainment products in
France; the company had been selling physical music
in its stores for 35 years and on the Internet for five
years. But facing declining CD sales, weak presence
in online music distribution, the explosion of peer-topeer network usage, and the emergence of players
such as iTunes, Fnac called on CSC in 2003 to help
the company plan how to re-enter the online music
market, including identifying synergies with the
company’s 60 stores in France and its existing Web site
for books, CDs and technical products.
Physical products,
concert tickets
Download
video logos,
ring tones
My account
New albums,
promotion
Access by
music style,
mood, top
hits
Album push
Packaged
offers
New tracks
of the week
Top selling
tracks
Most popular
playlists
France’s FnacMusic online music store (www.fnacmusic.com), designed and implemented by CSC, gives consumers a broad
range of functionality via a simple and friendly interface.
Source: Fnac
“Fnac wanted to sell digital music via the FnacMusic
site, providing consumers with a similar experience to
its stores. CSC helped to design a site with a broad
range of functionality and yet a very simple and friendly
interface,” notes François Momboisse, FnacMusic
director. The FnacMusic project was a CSC Award for
Technical Excellence winner.
FnacMusic features tight connections to both fnac.com
and the physical Fnac stores. For example, CSC and
Fnac standardized the data that goes with a song and
implemented cross references with the catalogs of
the physical stores. This categorization was essential
for Fnac to set up the marketing necessary for online
music sales, which would be coordinated with the more
traditional music promotions in Fnac stores.
FnacMusic fundamentally changed how Fnac’s customers buy and listen to music, and how artists get
paid. The story of legal downloadable music is a classic
case of extreme data driving a new business model. Or
as Ian Clarke, creator of the peer-to-peer network
Freenet, once put it, “If your business model is selling
water in the desert and it starts to rain, you’d better find
a different business model.” As music has migrated from
vinyl to CDs to the Internet, a physical product once
limited in supply now flows as digital streams in seemingly limitless supply, prompting a new business model.
If your business model is selling water
in the desert and it starts to rain, you’d
better find a different business model.
Being able to hand-pick your digital entertainment is
impacting not just the music industry but radio too.
With the advent of podcasting, or time-shifted radio,
11
listeners are not confined to their local radio station
but can listen to programs from all over (as long as the
program is available as an audio file on the Web).
Listeners download audio files to their audio players
and listen to what they want, when and where they
want. Nearly 30 percent of the 22 million U.S. adults
who own MP3 players have listened to podcasts,
according to an April 2005 study by the Pew Internet
& American Life Project.4
Podcasting, a term created from “iPod” and “broadcasting,” has been gaining momentum over the last
year not just with listeners but with a new breed of
do-it-yourself broadcasters. This combination of
independent listening and independent broadcasting is
what gives podcasting such potential. For the listener,
podcasting has been likened to “TiVo for radio,” putting programming control in the consumer’s hands.
Consumers can not only select what they listen to and
when but also receive podcasts automatically (via RSS
feeds, discussed in Meaning). For the broadcaster, just
about anyone can set up shop and broadcast content
without a broadcast tower or license.
Thousands of podcasts exist, with the number growing
daily. Traditional shows include WGBH’s “Morning
Series” and most of Air America Radio’s shows, along
with a host of home grown broadcasts covering everything from movies to politics to sports. While not an
immediate threat to radio, podcasting presents a new
channel that traditional broadcasters need to recognize.
As digital audio players proliferate, podcasting will only
become more popular, providing mass customization
for a traditionally one-size-fits-all medium. (For
more on podcasting, see Social Connections.)
The same can be said of MythTV, akin to podcasting
for TV. Similar to TiVo but with more functionality,
MythTV lets you record TV or other video for later
playback as well as turns your PC into a full-function
cable box, eliminating the need to rent one from your
cable provider.
This do-it-yourself set top box lets you control what
programs you watch and when, skip ads and surf the
Web. In terms of data everywhere, this is TV data –
typically the purview of industry executives – now at
12
your disposal. As more and more TV shows can be
downloaded and shared, this could threaten the
broadcast and cable TV industries the way Napster
threatened the music industry.
MythTV is software (an open source program) and
hardware that transform your computer into a digital
video recorder like TiVo and much more: a Web
browser, an e-mail client, a game player. The creator
wanted “the mythical convergence box,” he states on
the MythTV Web site – a convergence of computing
and TV.
Behind MythTV is peer-to-peer file-sharing software
that delivers large TV (and other) files to your desktop
in minutes rather than hours. The leading program,
BitTorrent, now accounts for over half the peer-to-peer
traffic on the Internet and is a major innovation in the
distribution of new media.
From online music stores to podcasting to MythTV,
we are seeing a wake-up call to traditional media
industries to be more flexible and look at ways to
enable mass customization of their content – or be left
behind while consumers do it.
PORTABLE ID: STRONG, SECURE
New forms of data, and lots of it, can be easily toted
around in your wallet or your pocket. Data storage
devices, once the size of a stack of dinner plates, have
become breathtakingly small, enabling people to carry
enormous quantities of data as easily as they carry a
credit card or key chain. Smart cards and flash drives
are being used to store biometric and other personal
data, eliminating the need to carry numerous ID cards
or paper documents and providing strong security
and identification.
Belgium’s new electronic identity (eID) card for its 10
million citizens is a smart card containing a digitized
version of the individual’s complete identity document,
as well as strong electronic authentication and digital
signature capabilities for verifying one’s identity online
and conducting online transactions. The card has reinforced security through biometrics (currently limited
to a digitized facial picture in the first version, but ready
for any biometrics technique). As such, the card serves
as a single identity tool for all citizens. Issued to every
citizen age 12 or older, the card replaces a traditional
laminated paper document considered no longer
secure enough.
forms, an almost unlimited range of applications can
exploit the eID card, including physical access control,
Web site and portal access, single sign-on, e-procurement, e-invoicing, e-mail, and office documents,
including PDF forms, that require digital signature.
Belgium’s new electronic identity card for its citizens is the first national identity
card of its kind – a smart card containing the individual’s full identity documentation,
Additionally, as designed by the
team, the same card can also be
used as a student card, municipal
card or health care card by complementing the standard eID card
with data or functions specific to
those uses, such as an electronic
purse for parking or cantine payment, access rights, or rebates for
specific services. In terms of online
safety, the software can be used to
verify that a remote chatter is not
older than, say, 14 based on his
identity data. (Microsoft is integrating the eID technology into its
MSN Messenger instant messaging
software.)
electronic authentication and digital signature capabilities, and biometric data.
Similar initiatives have begun elsewhere in Europe
(Italy and Estonia), but Belgium is the first country
in the world to introduce such an electronic identity
card for every citizen.
By mid-2004, 80,000 eID cards had
been distributed as part of a pilot
with 11 municipalities. Full rollout began in October 2004 and is
expected to be completed within three years, with the
first three million cards distributed by the end of 2005.
Many have publicly praised the card, including Belgian
government officials and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
The card supports the development of e-government
applications, such as electronic tax returns, as well as
online safety, such as for teen chatting, through the
authentication and signature capabilities.
CSC led the design and implementation of the eID
card and related software, including the security
functions, and coordinated the project. This work
earned the CSC Award for Technical Excellence.
The work was performed in line with European
Commission institutions and technology groups and
the key development groups (Microsoft and major open
source groups) in order to leverage the technology
for future eID projects in other countries. The United
Kingdom, Spain and Australia have expressed interest.
“Many people today already use the eID tools developed
by CSC and are very pleased with the quality. What
more can you want than happy users?” observes Bart
Sijnave, eID project manager at the Belgian Ministry of
Information and Communications Technology.
CSC led the design and implementation of the card and its related software.
Source: CSC
Since the eID card was designed to be used in any circumstance where electronic interactions require strong
authentication or signature of electronic documents and
In the United States, the Transportation Security
Administration is piloting a biometric identity card for
its workers that carries fingerprint and other biometric
13
data. The data links workers to their identities and
other related information, and eliminates the need to
carry different ID cards for different transportation
centers. TSA plans to test the ID cards with as many as
200,000 workers at 34 transportation hubs in six states.
The idea of being able to carry biometric data on an
ID card was unheard of five years ago, but today it is a
reality that is reshaping security policy.
Another reality of having enormous amounts of
portable data storage is that you can carry not just
your ID but your medical information as well. The
plug-and-play nature of flash drives make them wellsuited to store medical records, providing timely
access to a person’s complete medical history. This can
be crucial in an emergency when the individual is
incapacitated. (In the United States, the Bush administration is pushing for electronic medical records for
all Americans over the next decade.)
DATA IN A FLASH
Signaling a growing trend in secure portable data,
flash drives are being used to store all sorts of data:
operations manuals that can weigh over 10 pounds,
playbooks for professional football players, student
contact information for teachers at a day care center,
sensitive client files for attorneys, and files for college
The E-HealthKEY contains your complete medical history,
prescription information and other personal health data
on a flash drive. Small and portable, it can be carried on a
key chain or on your person.
Source: MedicAlert
become the standard way to communicate special
medical conditions. And, MedicAlert hopes the
E-HealthKEY will be used by individuals not only
for emergencies but also for ongoing management
of their personal health records – a one-stop shop for
prescription information, family immunizations,
X-ray data and the like.
students so they can access campus workstations
without requiring a password or network storage.
The flash drives put data everywhere in a lightweight
and convenient, yet secure, form.
MedicAlert’s new E-HealthKEY is a flash drive for
storing personal medical information. You carry the
E-HealthKEY in your pocket or on a key chain, and a
medical professional or first responder simply plugs
the device into a USB port on any computer to access
your medical information. The E-HealthKEY can hold
a person’s complete personal health record, including
medical images; this data is also uploaded to the
MedicAlert database as backup, with support from the
company’s response center.
MedicAlert hopes the E-HealthKEY will become the
standard way to communicate full medical histories,
much like the company’s trademark bracelets have
14
Privacy issues aside, being able to put more data about
you on your person is providing important improvements in health care and security.
INFORMATION IMPLANTS: INVISIBLE,
INDELIBLE
Implantable chips take this a step further. Although
medical implants have existed for years (e.g., rods,
plates, pacemakers), you can now have an information
implant that makes you and your personal information
inseparable. Although implantable chips can conjure up
unsettling images of “Manchurian Candidate” brainwashing, they are already being used by governments
outside the U.S. for security applications and have
been approved for use in the U.S. for health care
applications. As implantable chips become more
accepted, they may enable new identification and
electronic transaction applications, like identity or
credit cards that cannot be easily lost or stolen. Indeed,
that’s the great thing about implanted information: it’s
invisible and indelible.
The stage was set for human-implantable chips with
animal-implantable RFID tags in pets. For several years,
veterinarians have been implanting passive RFID tags
about the size of a grain of rice into dogs and cats, so
a lost pet can be identified even if the traditional metal
ID collar tag is missing.
In humans, in the United States, implantable RFID tags
made by VeriChip have been approved for health care
applications. If a patient arrives at an emergency room
either unconscious or unable to effectively communicate, doctors can quickly obtain information about
the patient’s condition by scanning the RFID tag with
a hand-held scanner and accessing his patient records,
which are stored in a patient database. The tag contains
a 16-bit identifier that is used to look up the person’s
records in the database.
In one experiment, the CIO of Harvard Medical School
implanted a VeriChip tag near his elbow to test how it
works. The tag, about the size of two grains of rice, was
implanted with a needle in a five-minute procedure.
When scanned, the tag’s ID number directs medical
personnel to the CIO’s records at a hospital in Boston.
Although such indelible ID is new for the United States,
human-implantable RFID tags are already in use in
Mexico, where the Attorney General and at least 160
staffers have received RFID implants that are used to
verify who the person is in order to control access to
high-security rooms used in Mexico’s battle against
drug cartels.
Less invasive than an implant, when temporary ID
will do, is an RFID stick-on tag or wristband for
patients. Again, the idea is to have critical personal
information available on the spot, especially if the
patient is non-responsive.
The U.S Food and Drug Administration has approved
the use of a stick-on RFID tag that will help prevent
surgery mistakes in U.S. hospitals, such as operating on
the wrong patient or the wrong organ. The tag contains
the patient’s name, the type and date of scheduled
surgery, and the name of the surgeon. The tag is attached
to the patient near the site of the surgery before the
patient is sedated in the operating room. Before the
surgeon begins the procedure, the tag is scanned and
verified with the patient’s chart to ensure that no
mistakes will be made.
For all patients, not just those undergoing surgery,
there is the RFID wristband, which has been tested as a
replacement for the standard-issue plastic wristband. The
RFID wristband contains the patient’s name, gender,
birth date and medical record number. Doctors and
nurses use tablet PCs with an RFID reader that picks
up the information off the band over a wireless (WiFi)
connection. With proper authorization, this data links
to a central database containing the patient’s medical
records and information from labs, pharmacy and
billing. The RFID wristband has been tested as a way to
streamline administrative tasks and improve the accuracy
of handling patients’ treatment and medical information.
TELEMATICS: DIAGNOSTICS AND
DISCOUNTS
For years, machines ranging from spacecraft to
elevators have been reporting diagnostic data about
themselves to improve maintenance and productivity.
This self-diagnosing gets extreme when it’s your car
and it’s reporting about you, the driver.
Your car has been reporting data about itself for some
time, analyzing its own exhaust for inspection officials
and providing location data for safety systems like
OnStar. Now your car can report data about your
driving habits in an effort to promote safe driving and
grant insurance discounts.
Self-diagnosing gets extreme when
it’s your car and it’s reporting about
you, the driver.
Devices aimed at consumers – specifically, parents of
teen drivers – are serving as event recorders in cars,
similar to the “black box” event recorders in airplanes.
15
Two of these devices are the Road Safety Teen Driver
system and Davis Instruments’ CarChip. The devices,
which plug into the car’s onboard diagnostics (OBDII)
port, capture driving events such as speeding and
aggressive driving (e.g., hard braking or aggressive
starts), as well as time of the event, and enable data
downloading to a PC for analysis.
The devices, which sell for under $300, are like having
a parent in the car at all times. “Road Safety and
CarChip are the most proactive investments you can
make for your teen drivers,” declares LEF Technology
Programs director Paul Gustafson.
The devices are also being used to parlay safety into
lower insurance rates. The CarChip is the basis of a new
insurance program in the United States by Progressive
Casualty Insurance Company. Using technology from
Davis Instruments similar to the CarChip, Progressive
has developed a system that records the driver’s behavior
while he or she is driving (e.g., time trip started, duration
of trip, mileage, aggressive braking events, aggressive
acceleration events, speed at 10-second intervals). The
purpose of Progressive’s TripSense program is to give
safe drivers, as demonstrated by their actual driving
habits, discounts of up to 25 percent on their auto
insurance rates. For now, Progressive is focusing on
when and how the vehicle is driven, not where.
The Road Safety device is the size of a small book and
can sit under the driver’s seat; the CarChip is about the
size of a domino. The Road Safety system beeps when
the driver exceeds thresholds set by the parent, and
includes GPS (Global Positioning System) location
capabilities. The CarChip includes engine diagnostic
codes so drivers can perform simple diagnostics,
like determining what the “check engine” light means
and resetting it. Both devices come in versions for
professional fleets of vehicles too.
Road Safety issues reports like these
showing actual driver behavior. The
report at left is a summary of driver
activity from March 5 to May 11, 2005.
It shows such things as highest speed
during this period (82 m.p.h.) and highest
gravity forces (.65 Gs) from excessive
turning, braking or accelerating. Above,
a second-by-second detail report shows
the driver’s speed during 60 seconds
on April 1. The car’s owner, who lives
in Colorado, sets the thresholds for
speed and Gs; if anyone driving the
vehicle exceeds them, the Road Safety
device sounds an alarm and reports it
as an excessive event.
16
The CarChip snaps into your car and reports data about
your actual driving habits. It is used to encourage safe driving,
especially among teens.
Source: Davis Instruments
Participation in the program, which launched a pilot in
Minnesota in August 2004, is optional for Progressive
customers. Participants plug a TripSensor recorder into
the OBDII port of their cars. Periodically, participants
remove the TripSensor to review their driving data on
their home PC. To be eligible for the discount, participants must then upload their data to Progressive.
Such driving behavior data is enabling a new way of
doing business at Progressive: usage-based discounts.
A usage-based discount program is one of many firsts
at Progressive, which initially tested a usage-based
insurance program using GPS and cellular technology
in 1998 (which proved not cost effective at the time).
In 2002, Progressive shared its knowledge of usage-based
programs with Norwich Union, granting the U.K.
insurer exclusive rights to Progressive’s patented
method of determining usage-based auto insurance
premiums. Norwich Union is now running a Pay As
You Drive pilot in the U.K. and expects to make the
program fully available to its customers in 2006.
Unlike Progressive, Norwich Union is using GPS and
cellular technologies in its black box, a bit smaller than
a video cassette. The device is installed in the car’s trunk,
and data from it will be used to adjust drivers’ premiums
on a monthly basis based on how often, when and where
the vehicle is driven. The approach, modeled after similar
“pay as you go” pricing schemes for gas and electricity,
is intended to be fairer and to give consumers more
control over their insurance rates. The response to the
pilot has been overwhelming, with the company turning
down many volunteers once it had the 5,000 it needed.
The 5,000 volunteers have the GPS device installed in
their car’s trunk. The device calculates such factors as the
time and place of a car trip. The data is reported directly
to Norwich Union every 24 hours via the cellular technology. This allows Norwich Union to actively determine
a premium for the insurance policy marketed to parents
of young drivers. The fixed component of the premium
covers the standard risks not associated with the highly
risky time between late evening and early morning.
When insured drivers operate their vehicle during these
times – for instance, a teen is driving at midnight – they
are charged an additional premium.
Norwich Union hopes Pay As You Drive will change
customer behavior behind the wheel, increasing safety
and reducing premiums. The goal is fewer accidents,
which translates to higher profits for the insurer.
Additionally, the approach starts to change the
insurance product from something that most people
do not want to buy, think costs too much, and don’t
plan to ever use (i.e., file a claim) to a desired product.
Using GPS data, Norwich Union can begin to provide
value-added services, such as paying tolls.
We have come a long way from collecting data about the
car’s diagnostics. Collecting data about driving behavior
is relatively new, but it is a natural outgrowth of data
collection by the car. In the U.S., 90 percent of all new
cars sold come with a black box that collects crash data;
some 30 million vehicles already on the road have this
box, a traditional event data recorder. The data can
be used for safety research, car design and accident
investigations. The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration has proposed that the boxes be standardized by 2008 so that the same data is collected in the same
format, leading to better analysis and, ultimately, safer
car designs. The data holds obvious interest for crash
investigators, insurers, consumers and lawyers. As part
of the proposal, auto manufacturers would have to
disclose the data to vehicle owners and make it easier for
researchers and crash investigators to access the data.
From cars to cards to cell phones, data everywhere
is transforming the nature of business and consumer
activities. Data is being unleashed from the enterprise
to the edges of the network, putting it within our grasp
and providing new levels of efficiency, convenience
and flexibility.
17
T I M E A N D P L AC E
DATA ABOUT WHEN AND WHERE PEOPLE AND
THINGS ARE, AND WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW
You are stuck in traffic and need real-time traffic
information to figure out an alternate route. Time and
place data can help.
The integration of location-detection technologies,
digital cameras, real-time sensors, wireless and mobile
devices, and geographic information systems has
enabled new types of applications that focus on
time and place – applications that use data about
when and where people and things are, and what’s
happening now.
Extreme data applications dealing with time and place
encompass location, mobility, real-time and presence.
Typically these elements do not appear in isolation
but rather interact to enable a wide variety of exciting
new capabilities:
Let us look at time and place data through the lens
of where the data originates: location technologies,
digital cameras and real-time sensors.
Extreme data applications use data about the
current location of people and mobile objects.
Location detection technologies such as GPS and
RFID, coupled with map data from GIS (Geographic
Information Systems) technology, enable four important capabilities: location awareness, dynamic mapping,
object tracking and rapid identification.
Users are often mobile themselves and use cell
phones and other wireless devices to retrieve
information that is immediately useful at their
current location. Many times their current location
is key to the application.
Extreme data describes what is happening now –
real-time data that can drive immediate business
or personal decisions.
Extreme data provides insights into what is happening at a remote location. It provides a remote
presence to users or computer applications by using
data from cameras and real-time sensors.
18
Taken together, time and place data are about providing
visibility – that is, giving a much more accurate picture
of a business process (copper production) or situation
(traffic), or simply where someone or something is.
People make business and personal decisions all the
time based on timing and location, so having the best
data possible is critical. Time and place data move
us closer to real-time scenarios, or at the very least
minimize delay. This has bottom line impact for
everything from production processes and supply
chains to public safety and personal connections.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Location Awareness. The location of a person or object
can be automatically detected, and services can be
provided that are tailored for that location.
GPS, with its origins in the military, has become
nearly commonplace today, found in everything from
cell phones to car navigation systems. GPS data
tells where a person or object is, providing location
coordinates to within 10 meters. Several consumer
transportation applications – stuck in traffic? speeding?
waiting for a bus? – and two commercial applications
that track vehicles and employees get our attention as
extreme uses of GPS.
Instant
Notification
Traffic is slow
Road is partly blocked
Location
Knowledge
Flexible
Re-Routing
Destination
Addresses
Interpretation
2097 N. Collins Blvd.
Richardson, TX ...
Location
Information
Traffic & Road
Conditions
Mapping /
GeoCoding
Translation
Long: 96.793566
Lat: 33.032327
Location
Data
Basic
Tracking
Location data, leveraged by mobile communications, plays a critical role in supply chain management.
Source: Hanns-Christian L. Hanebeck and Bryan Tracey, “The role of location in supply chain management: how mobile communication enables supply chain
best practice and allows companies to move to the next level,” International Journal of Mobile Communications (IJMC), Vol. 1, No. 1/2, 2003, pp. 148-166.
If you drive in San Francisco or certain other trafficclogged metro areas, a service by Zipdash lets you
know where traffic jams are, alternate routes, and how
long you are likely to be stuck in traffic. The service,
accessed via your GPS-equipped Nextel mobile phone,
displays real-time traffic speeds and congestion on a
moving map, so you can pick the fastest way home
or delay your trip until the traffic clears. The service
transmits your car’s location and speed at regular
intervals and aggregates this with similar data from
other Zipdash users, as well as data from other sources,
to determine traffic speed and flow.
In the car itself, Pioneer Electronics has introduced a
system that integrates real-time traffic data with the
car’s navigation system. Traffic conditions are continually broadcast, and alternate routes plus millions of
points of interest are available. The Pioneer AVIC-N2
receives traffic data from an XM Satellite Radio service
and displays it, using icons, on a 6.5-inch color monitor
in the car. When introduced in November 2004, this
was the first aftermarket in-car navigation system to
incorporate satellite-based traffic data. (Live video of
traffic data is also becoming available to drivers; see
Traffic and Safety later in this chapter.)
Rand McNally, known for its road maps, recently
announced a traffic service for roughly 90 U.S. metro
areas, delivered to cell phones. Users enter zip codes
for traffic areas they are interested in, and receive realtime traffic information and speed maps on their
phone. Eventually, the service will be available for
GPS-equipped phones, obviating the need to enter zip
codes. But zip codes can be handy for the service’s
Commute Wizard, which lets commuters enter the
starting and ending zip codes of their routes and
delivers the relevant traffic information.
Now say the traffic has cleared and you are driving
home fast to save time. A device from Origin blue i, a
UK-based company, lets you avoid fixed speed traps
by sounding an alert as you near a speed trap camera.
The system uses GPS to compare your car’s location to
a database containing the location of thousands of speed
trap cameras. Using GPS is much more accurate than
conventional radar detection because many cameras
being installed these days do not emit radar waves.
19
And if you are taking the bus instead of driving,
NextBus Information Systems not only plots the location of a bus en route but predicts the arrival time of
the next bus at your stop. The NextBus system outfits
buses with GPS devices and feeds the location data
into its proprietary modeling software, which factors
in traffic and other stops to calculate when the bus
will get to a specific stop. This information is updated
constantly and can be accessed via Internet-enabled
mobile phones, two-way pagers, PDAs and Web
browsers. The result: real-time arrival information,
not static bus schedules, that helps riders manage
their time.
On a much larger scale, GPS is being used to track
vehicles that are hundreds or even thousands of miles
away. Satellite Security Services, or S3, offers a GPSbased commercial satellite tracking service for organizations and individuals. From a command center in
San Diego with banks of computer screens, staffers keep
track of hundreds of vehicles in real time: school buses
in Washington, D.C., milk trucks in Houston, oil tank
trucks in the Midwest, teenage drivers. S3 is one of a
growing number of private companies providing
satellite tracking services, which the company reports
have improved security and efficiency for its clients.
Overall, people accept the use of GPS for tracking
vehicles and, by extension, the people in them. But
what about using GPS to unabashedly track mobile
workers on the factory floor? At first glance this smacks
of Big Brother, which is what makes it extreme. But
Xora Inc. markets its GPS TimeTrack service as an
efficiency booster, and companies in everything from
construction to service industries are signing on.
Employees don GPS-enabled mobile phones and go
about their work day; the boss can know their whereabouts throughout the day as the phone tracks and
records their locations. Employees also clock in and
out of work, or when they start and finish a job, via
the phone.
Overall, the GPS system is being upgraded with the
next set of modernized spacecraft, with launches
beginning in late 2005. Enhanced capabilities will
include higher power for existing signals and new civil
and military signals.
20
GPS has shown great commercial benefits, to be sure,
but it has limitations that other technologies are
addressing. GPS is for locating people and things
outdoors or in line-of-sight to a GPS satellite; a
complementary emerging technology, Ripple, is for
locating people and things indoors. Think of GPS
as global and Ripple as local. For example, Ripple
technology has been piloted in an airport to locate
passengers in real time so they don’t miss a flight.
Dynamic Mapping. In addition to tracking and identifying, location data can be used for mapping. People
and objects can be further tracked by superimposing
their location and movements on a map. Or, data
about the environment can be superimposed on a
map, providing a more intuitive understanding.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is using
geospatial data – geographically-referenced data about
natural or man-made features on earth, such as rivers
and roads – to generate maps for its environmental
data. Through its EnviroFacts online database, the EPA
provides public Web access to air quality, water quality
and toxic waste information for a specific area, displaying results on dynamically created maps. Enter
your zip code in the “Window to My Environment”
portion of the site and see a local map; from here you
can click on items such as hazardous waste and toxic
releases and redraw the map to see if these things are
in your area, and where. Being able to map the data
to its location is crucial to understanding at a glance
where environmental problems may be.
Object Tracking and Rapid Identification. People and
applications can track the movement of an object,
vehicle, animal or person through a building or across
the country. Moving objects, vehicles, animals or
persons bearing RFID tags can be rapidly identified
as they pass by a sensor; the tag’s identity data is used
as a database key, and data about the object is then
rapidly retrieved and updated.
BHP Billiton, a diversified energy and natural resources
company based in Melbourne, Australia, is using RFID
tags to track large, costly stainless steel plates used
in the production of copper. RFID is used to boost
production efficiency and reduce maintenance costs
of the plates, which wear down over time. At the RFID
trial site in Chile, CSC estimated a return of $1 million
over five years. If RFID is implemented at other BHP
Billiton copper plants in South America, savings are
estimated to be greater than ten million dollars over
five years.
100 suppliers to deploy RFID tags as of January 1, 2005
was scaled back due to start-up difficulties. By midJanuary, 57 of the 100 suppliers were using RFID on
cases and pallets. Wal-Mart’s read rates were less than
99 percent, and several other system problems were
encountered.
For optimum copper production, the performance of
the plates should be periodically evaluated. Poorperforming plates result in lower grade copper and are
refurbished or eventually retired from use. Previously,
there was no good way to identify individual plates due
to the harsh environment they operate in. The plates
were visually inspected but the process was not efficient.
As Wal-Mart works out the wrinkles, its move puts a
stake in the ground with RFID, which has seen sluggish
adoption due to competing standards and cost. But
with a giant like Wal-Mart making a commitment,
suppliers and retailers are following suit, realizing that
RFID is here to stay. In January 2006 an additional
200 suppliers are scheduled to go live with RFID; some
of those suppliers are already up and running.
The plates, each about one meter square, are dipped in
a chemical bath in a large tank, where they are subjected
to hot, acidic conditions followed by repeated mechanical shock (flexing and hammering) to get the copper
off the plates. These harsh conditions prevent the use
of other identifying technologies such as bar codes,
which cannot withstand the acid corrosion. About
30,000 plates are in the bath at any one time; a new
copper plant BHP Billiton is planning at the Spence
mine in Chile will house 40,000 plates in total.
Working with CSC, BHP Billiton chose RFID technology embedded in a small, protective capsule about an
inch long and affixed a capsule to each plate. The plates
can be identified as they move through the tank house
and their performance evaluated during each five-day
production cycle, optimizing the amount of high-grade
copper produced and making more efficient the identification of plates that actually need maintenance.
“The RFID technology is an enabler that will allow us
to significantly reduce the capital cost of the plant,” says
Alan Pangbourne, BHP Billiton project manager for
Spence plant development. In other work with BHP
Billiton, CSC is designing RFID solutions to track
vehicles in underground mines, to track special tools
and test equipment, and to track inventory.
Many retailers are exploring RFID tags to track inventory and cut out excesses – and thus costs – in the
supply chain. Retail giant Wal-Mart is leading the way,
though its highly publicized effort to require its top
Wal-Mart, known for its IT prowess and relentless
pursuit of operational excellence, expects its use of
RFID to cut billions from its supply chain by reducing
inventory, better matching current stock to current
demand, and curtailing theft.
Everyone knows that logistics, poorly
executed, can suck the lifeblood out
of a business. Having stage-by-stage
information mitigates risk.
Put another way, the number one job of RFID in the
supply chain is to mitigate risk. “Everyone knows that
logistics, poorly executed, can suck the lifeblood out
of a business,” stresses Peter Cochrane, co-founder of
ConceptLabs and former chief technologist and head
of research for BT. “Having stage-by-stage information
mitigates risk. RFID tags on every item and container,
with corresponding scanning capability, is the best
current route to end-to-end pervasive tracking.” The
tradeoff, Cochrane cautions, is having exponentially
more data to manage. However, because having an
inefficient supply chain is far worse, Cochrane urges
that RFID is worth tackling.
A sophisticated location system by AeroScout uses RFID
and other location technologies to provide several kinds
of location information, including presence detection,
21
real-time location and choke-point detection (i.e., that an
asset has passed through a door or gate). The AeroScout
Visibility System, based on a WiFi infrastructure, is
being used by one transportation logistics provider to
automate its trailer-tracking process once tractor trailers
enter the company’s 60-acre cross-docking facility. The
system is saving time and money as trailers are located
nearly instantly rather than in 30 minutes by a human
“spotter” and moved to their appropriate place in the
facility for receiving or unloading cargo.
UPS is conducting two RFID pilots, one with reusable
containers and one with vehicles once they reach a UPS
facility. The reusable containers are for holding irregularly shaped packages. Bar codes on these containers
have not been easy to read and often deteriorate over
time; the RFID tags improve the read rates of these
containers. With the vehicles, UPS hopes that RFID
will improve dispatch and security processes. Overall,
the company, which delivers over 13 million packages
per day worldwide, is focusing on real-time package
flow information to improve efficiency and reduce
delivery vehicle travel distances.
Financially-strapped Delta Air Lines plans to track most
baggage with RFID by 2007 to cut costs associated with
misrouted baggage, which reportedly can amount to
$100 million per year for the airline. RFID is more accurate than the current bar code method (99 percent of
bags with RFID tags are read correctly, versus 85-89
percent with bar code tags ), and thus should reduce
misrouting. RFID can provide not only basic identification and routing information but also link to information
about the contents of the bag gleaned from screenings.
This AeroScout device fits on a truck or other vehicle to
provide location information, such as the precise current
position of a truck as it moves through a cargo facility.
The device uses RFID and other location technologies and
WiFi wireless communications.
Source: AeroScout
RFID is being used in numerous other applications to
track things as varied as packages, baggage, livestock
and students. Efficiency and safety are key motivators
as the cost of RFID tags has fallen to as low as 25 cents
per tag, making them economically viable in many
applications. (Some argue that prices must fall below
10 cents to bring RFID into mainstream applications,
replacing bar codes. There are security issues with RFID
as well.5)
United Parcel Service, which has been using RFID for
years starting with large trucks, is exploring newer
RFID technologies and multi-protocol readers that
would be more flexible than a single-protocol reader.
22
Elsewhere, livestock is being tagged with RFID to
prevent or limit the spread of disease, such as mad cow
disease. Cattle producers in the United States, Canada
and Australia are using RFID for tracking livestock. The
U.S. National Cattleman’s Beef Association launched a
nationwide livestock RFID program in January 2005
that involves ranches, retailers and restaurants. It is worth
it to the industry to make the RFID investment rather
than risk losing business due to infected meat or the
perception of infected meat. An RFID tag is attached to
the cattle’s ear; the objective is that cattle can be tracked
through the supply chain in less than 48 hours versus
several days of labor-intensive effort. CSC has conducted
tests of RFID tagging for cattle in Switzerland; CSC
has been leveraging its test and evaluation experience
to propose approaches for a U.S. animal tracking system
to be fielded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
At school, some 28,000 students near Houston are
piloting the use of RFID badges that they press against
a reader when they get on and off of school buses, in
an effort to prevent losing children accidentally or
from kidnappings.
SEEING IS BELIEVING
The power of visual information is driven home by
pictures from digital cameras and other sensors that
let you see what is happening at a remote location or
inside an otherwise inaccessible area or process. The
Web cams of CAMNET monitor air pollution and
visibility for numerous U.S. cities, updating their data
every 15 minutes; the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam
provides near real-time imagery of the erupting
volcano. We can “be there” thanks to live Web cams
that bring us to the scene of a remote situation.
Web cams are not new; they have monitored surf and
ski conditions, among other things, for years. What is
new is the surge of camera data being put to work
in new ways, from traffic and safety to health care,
mapping and information retrieval.
Traffic and Safety. Cameras are key components in
traffic management systems, which have become
increasingly networked in an effort to manage traffic
in real time for optimal flow. From Maryland to
California, systems that deploy hundreds of cameras,
sophisticated networks and powerful computers are
seeing to it that traffic moves safely.
One system aiming to integrate the use of video at new
levels is the Colorado Transport Management System
(CTMS). The state of Colorado is a leader in sharing
video data, being one of the few states that shares
video data state-wide today. The media, cities, state
regions and traveling public have access to real-time
video feeds via closed circuit TV and the Web (wired
and wireless). CTMS, a project being done in partnership with CSC and Enroute Traffic Systems, seeks to
integrate cameras with other devices for intelligent
traffic management.
For instance, just before a Denver Broncos football
game starts, a scenario will execute across a number of
devices including cameras. Dynamic message signs near
the stadium will announce “Game Today – Alternative
Route Advised,” while cameras at congested intersections will automatically turn to view traffic inbound
to the stadium. Afterwards, a post-game scenario will
execute automatically, turning cameras to view outbound traffic and later clearing the signs.
“Intelligent traffic management is the vision of CTMS.
Integrating camera data into an overall solution that
allows the cameras to work with other devices in a
complex scenario is a big part of this vision,” says Jason
Westra, CSC’s system architect for CTMS.
Other visions for CTMS include using cameras that
can learn the norm and then report anomalies in traffic
flow such as changes in speed. CTMS would automatically populate speed and incident maps for traveler
awareness.
Another use of cameras on the highways is the
infamous red-light cam, which takes a picture of your
car and license plate as you illegally pass through a red
light and promptly issues you a ticket in the mail. The
cameras spark fear in drivers, mostly for the good as
they change their behavior and obey traffic signals. But
sometimes the outcome can be bad if cam-aware drivers
brake rather than proceed safely through a yellow
light, and get rear-ended in the process. Cameras like
these are used in over 100 American cities including
Baltimore, San Diego and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Camera data is also making its way into the driver’s
hands, via the mobile phone, to help drivers see actual
traffic conditions. TrafficLand’s AirVideo service
enables mobile phone users to view live video of traffic
conditions in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.
Live traffic images from over 400 traffic cameras can
be viewed on Web-enabled HTML-capable mobile
phones. This is camera data getting to where it needs
to be, informing drivers anywhere and anytime.
Another innovative use of camera data is in the City of
Westminster, in the heart of London, where some 40
cameras are being deployed in a wireless network to
help fight crime. Because the cameras are mobile, they
can be moved around, making it harder for criminals
to elude them. In one case, suspected drug dealing was
captured on camera and used as evidence in court. The
dealers knew where the fixed surveillance cameras were
and could avoid them by changing locations, hiding
their heads or wearing masks. But when a wireless
camera was affixed to a lamp post opposite a suspect
corner in Soho, the dealers were caught on camera.
23
With the wireless cameras, the City of Westminster has
reported a significant reduction in crimes committed
during the portion of the day when the majority of the
city’s crimes occur. The wireless cameras are part of the
city’s Wireless City initiative; Intel has worked closely
with the Westminster City Council as a strategic advisor,
and joins Cisco Systems, BT, Vertex, Cap Gemini and
Telindus in supporting the effort.
In addition to lowering crime, the wireless cameras are
cutting costs. In the past the City of Westminster had
successfully deployed closed circuit television cameras
for security monitoring, but the cost of installation was
high. Wireless cameras can be installed for a quarter
of the cost of wired cameras.
The city of Essen, Germany, has piloted similar wireless
surveillance cameras at the Zollverein mine, an openair tourist attraction, and has explored transmitting the
camera images in real time to PDAs carried by security
guards. This way guards can make observations while
on patrol and respond quickly as an event happens.
The wireless security solution enables a few guards
to monitor a large, open area that would otherwise be
difficult to secure. The solution is being considered
by the local police department.
Face-To-Virtual-Face. Another way networked cameras
are being used is to provide the presence of an expert.
Telemedicine – the remote presence of a medical
professional via a camera – is seen as a way to make the
most of a scarce resource, doctors. At least 18 hospital
systems in the United States have adopted new eICU
(Enhanced Intensive Care Unit) technology to improve
the care provided to patients in intensive care units.
The eICU systems allow critical care doctors and
nurses at a control station to monitor dozens of patients
at different hospitals simultaneously, much as an air
traffic controller keeps track of several planes. A camera
provides the remote doctors a live view of the patient;
heart rate, blood pressure and other patient information
is also displayed at the remote control station. The
hospitals emphasize that the technology is meant to
enhance, not replace, in-person care by allowing doctors
to quickly catch and respond to trouble more quickly.
ICU patients report that they find the cameras to be
reassuring rather than an invasion of privacy.
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Similarly, patients are reporting positive results with
telerounding, whereby a camera mounted on a robot
conducts the doctor’s rounds. A 5.5-foot tall, armless
robot nicknamed Rudy has been making rounds at
Sacramento’s UC Davis Medical Center, visiting
patients after surgery. With Rudy at the patient’s side,
the doctor can see, hear and navigate the area of interest
– in this case, the patient. The doctor controls the
robot via the Internet from a PC outfitted with a
camera, microphone, joystick and software from the
robot’s manufacturer, InTouch Health. The robot
responds in kind, interacting with the patient and
objects in its local environment via two-way audio
and video. The doctor can get a close view of a surgical
incision as well as hear a patient’s weak voice. Such
RP-6 robots (RP stands for remote presence) from
InTouch Health have been installed in over two dozen
hospitals.
You might ask, “Who wants to interact with a robot?”
According to Dr. Yulun Wang, CEO of InTouch Health,
many patients have reported high satisfaction with
the robotic rounds. He cited a study by Johns Hopkins
University that indicates patients would prefer to see
their own doctor via the robot than to see another
attending physician in person. But whether telerounding becomes widespread remains to be seen.
Still, as the Baby Boomers age, if the number of
doctors cannot keep pace, technologies such as Rudy
may become commonplace.
Just as facial cues are critical to the doctor-patient
relationship, they can also enhance the companycustomer relationship, resulting in more customerfriendly products. Cameras are being used to record
users’ facial expressions and comments as they test
new software. In the past, only keystrokes and mouse
movements were monitored, but a new application
from TechSmith Corporation called Morae uses
cameras to get a closer look at how users respond to
software. The cameras provide emotional feedback,
such as a scowl or smile, that is difficult to ascertain
from traditional data. This feedback can give powerful
clues about which parts of the software are easy to use
and which are not, which in turn can inform software
design decisions.
The doctor is in, visiting his patient remotely via a robot from InTouch Health. The robot's camera lets the doctor see and be
seen; patients report they would rather see their own doctor this way than see a different doctor in person.
The remote presence provided by networked cameras
has numerous potential uses, from conducting site visits
to technology reviews to job interviews. Being able to
deal with another person face-to-face without leaving
the office is a powerful tool for organizations.
Mapping the Planet and Your Neighborhood. Camera
data is not confined to business applications but can
be used broadly by everyone. Google and Microsoft
provide a wealth of map and other GIS data right from
their Web sites, effectively servicing the planet with
satellite and aerial imagery and other geographic
information.
Google Maps and the more recent Google Earth are
mapping services that incorporate satellite imagery.
With Google Maps, you can type in a city name or street
address and zoom in on it, or map a road trip. Google
Earth offers a new level of functionality, enabling
Source: InTouch Health
people to search for a location, zoom in on aerial
images, and add driving directions on top of the
3D map. (Google Earth supersedes Google’s Keyhole
offering; Google acquired Keyhole in 2004.) Also, users
of Google Maps will be able to view better satellite
imagery.
In response to Google’s services, Microsoft has
announced Virtual Earth, which combines satellite
imagery with local search (local search is discussed
in Meaning). Users can overlay mapping data on
satellite imagery to find local landmarks and buildings,
for instance. Users can also view images such as
buildings from a 45-degree angle, providing a unique
3D perspective.
Google Earth uses satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe,
a leading commercial supplier of GIS data whose
roots are in the military. DigitalGlobe was the source
25
BE F O RE
DigitalGlobe was the source of many before and after images of the coastlines hit by the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean
tsunami, as reported in newspapers and on TV. The satellite images on these two pages show the hard-hit Banda Aceh
northern shore on the northern tip of Sumatra. Such GIS data, once held primarily by the military, has become readily
available for commercial and consumer use.
Source: DigitalGlobe
of many before and after images of the coastlines hit by
the Indian Ocean tsunami, as reported in newspapers
and on TV.
Another commercial supplier of GIS data, ORBIMAGE,
provides geospatial satellite imagery for applications
such as pipeline routing, new construction planning,
farming, forestry and travel planning. “Imagery adds
an additional data layer for today’s GIS systems to
help organizations manage facilities and resources,
make better decisions and save money,” states Alex Fox,
vice president and CIO of ORBIMAGE.
Even NASA is supplying GIS data to consumers through
its World Wind service, which can be downloaded
free of charge from the Web. Released in January 2005,
World Wind leverages satellite imagery and radar
topography data from Shuttle missions to let people
zoom in and visit the earth’s terrain in rich 3D.
26
As many more commercial applications of GIS data
are expected, the OpenGIS Specifications are being
developed to support solutions that “geo-enable”
the Web, wireless and location-based services, and
mainstream IT. The specifications enable developers
to incorporate complex spatial information into all
kinds of applications.
As well, the U.S. government is preparing for an
impending surge in visual data. The National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), formerly the
Defense Mapping Agency, is exploring automated
feature extraction and automated change detection
software to exploit the wealth of visual data expected
from NTM (national technical means), Unmanned Air
Vehicles (UAV), commercial imagery, motion imagery
and what the military is calling “persistent surveillance”
(continuous video coverage of specific locations for
extended periods of time).
A F TER
To date, a widespread application of automated feature
extraction and change detection has not been extensively implemented in a production environment. One
of the key challenges, in addition to processing so many
pixels, is understanding the problem. A 100 percent
solution may not necessarily be the goal. In other words,
if searching for vertical obstructions, false positives
may be acceptable (though not preferred), as no aircraft
will crash into a false positive. If the software uncovers
even one vertical obstruction, that is a better solution
than putting huge amounts of imagery files in archives
without being able to extract any information from
them. CSC is exploring automated feature extraction
and visualization techniques to support NGA’s needs.
What Monument Is That? Cameras in mobile phones
are being used to help people access information on
the spot. Two services, ShotCodes and SnapToTell,
provide information based on an image received from
the mobile phone. These services show the promise of
mobile information retrieval using images rather than
cryptic, hard-to-type text. The camera phone becomes
the mouse for the mobile user.
With ShotCodes, by Swedish mobile commerce
company OP3, the user scans a shotcode, a black
and white symbol that is put on a sign or dynamic
plasma panel, to retrieve information associated
with that shotcode. Special software reads the camera
phone’s picture of the shotcode and prompts the
phone’s browser to go to a particular Web site, where
the information resides. Attendees at a trade show
could scan the shotcode at a vendor’s booth for product
information. People walking by an advertisement could
scan the shotcode on it and be linked to the corresponding site, where they could browse a catalog,
register for a newsletter or even purchase a product.
The camera phone becomes the mouse
for the mobile user.
27
The shotcode underlying technology, which was developed by Intel and Cambridge University as SpotCodes,
has also been commercialized by Bango.net as Bango
Spots, which return tailored text, images, audio and
video to the user’s phone.
SnapToTell uses GPS technology in conjunction with
the camera phone to access information. The experimental system is designed for tourists, who take a
picture of a monument or building and, based on the
location of the phone and the content of the image,
receive information about the image. Developed in
Singapore, the system searches a specially-created scene
database to match the user’s image to one it knows.
Images in the database have associated text and audio
descriptions, which are sent to the user. So the user can
learn about the Sir Raffles Statue as he or she gazes up
at it. Today the monuments, tomorrow the assembly
line or battlefield.
This shotcode points to the
LEF Web site when you scan
it with a compatible camera
phone. The shotcode is like
a bar code, and your camera
phone becomes a mouse.
Source: OP3
SIXTH SENSE
Sensors and other technologies are providing real-time
awareness that gives us a sense of what is happening
now or alerts us to conditions of immediate interest or
that may help predict the future. We can develop a keen
sixth sense, or intuition, about the world around us.
Extra Sensor Perception. Networks of super-small
sensors, sometimes called “smart dust” or “motes,” are
emerging. These sensors, each about the size of a grain
of sand, can be deployed in vulnerable or hard-to-reach
places. As they become cheaper, they can replace wired
sensors or monitor new areas where sensors were
previously cost-prohibitive.
Energy company BP is testing 160 motes in an oil
tanker in the North Atlantic to see if they can help
predict equipment failures. The sensors measure such
things as vibrations in the ship’s pumps, compressors
and engines. The company is also testing motes in a
refinery to monitor bearing condition on essential
motors. If the motes can sense and report that a bearing
is starting to overheat, the problem can be fixed during
regular maintenance, thus avoiding an emergency
shutdown. (Lost production is very costly, especially
given the high price of gasoline these days.)
Elsewhere, Oil ID Systems is experimenting with
motes to track oil as it is stored, shipped and sold.
The motes are mixed into the oil and function like
floating RFID tags, essentially “branding” the oil. The
company hopes to use this technology to prevent theft
by being able to physically trace the oil.
Motes are also being tested for use in remote areas like
forests, to detect wild fires much sooner than if detection
were left to a random hiker or distant satellite.
Your camera phone becomes a mouse when you scan a
shotcode on a billboard using a compatible camera phone.
The shotcode takes the phone’s browser to a specific Web
page, in this case one with additional information about the
latest album from the Scandinavian pop group The Cardigans.
You can even order tickets to a Cardigans concert on
the spot.
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Source: OP3
In addition to motes, larger-scale sensor networks
show the broad applicability of sensor networks. Out
at sea, a network of six sensor buoys in the Pacific is
used for early detection of tsunamis. Tragically, no
such network exists for the Indian Ocean, where the
devastating 2004 tsunami struck. The United States
has called for a global ocean sensing system and is
expanding its network of six buoys to 38 to protect its
entire coast line, not just the Pacific.
More broadly, an ocean observation system that spans
the globe uses an array of over 1,500 underwater sensor
instruments – expected to grow to 3,000 – to measure
water pressure, temperature, salinity and other factors.
The data, reported via satellite from the instruments
when they surface, is used for science and weather
research. Some of this data was not available even a
few years ago and is enabling new insights into ocean
processes.
Closer to home, the WeatherBug backyard weather
station monitors the weather at your house and
reports it to you, turning homeowners into amateur
meteorologists. The station’s sensor collects data
about temperature, rainfall, wind speed and other
elements and continually sends it to your PC, which
runs WeatherBug’s software. This data can be shared
with other users and aggregated into WeatherBug’s
community weather channel (much the way Zipdash,
discussed earlier, aggregates individual driving data
into a composite traffic picture).
WeatherBug also provides severe weather alerts and
forecasts via text messages to cell phones. (See more
on real-time alerts below.)
Sensor networks still have a way to go before they are
ubiquitous; researchers are working on how to lower
the costs and power consumption of sensor nodes.
Core technologies and standards are still developing.
However, many believe the tide has turned – that
there is more technology “pull” than “push” these
days for sensor networks as organizations from the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security to lighting
companies explore how to leverage the technology.
Real-time Alerts. Time is of the essence, and data is
usually much more valuable the quicker it is received.
We are moving towards a real-time or certainly an
“Internet time” marketplace, in which we can be
notified instantly of specific events or conditions of
interest based on data received from sensors, data
repositories or messages from people or applications.
Alerts can be used to issue health and safety warnings, to fight crime, and to keep people up-to-date
on breaking news and specific topics of interest.
Say you live in Atlanta and have asthma. You need to
know what the local air quality is all the time. Through
the EPA’s EnviroFlash service, you can be notified every
day via e-mail or pager about the current air quality
in your area, giving you instant information that helps
you decide whether or not to stay inside that day. A
pilot of the service was launched in October 2004, and
a national rollout began in May 2005.
This was information you previously would have
gotten via television or radio, but now you can get
the information reliably without having to search for
it, and you can customize it. The way EnviroFlash is
designed, all subscribers receive Action Day alerts, which
are issued when an Action Day is declared in your
area.6 In addition, you are able to select whether you
want to receive a daily air quality forecast when the
forecast air quality index is at, or worse than, the level
you specify from a pre-defined list (e.g., good, moderate,
unhealthy, hazardous). You control the triggering of
alerts, maximizing or minimizing them as desired.
The EPA worked closely with CSC to design and implement EnviroFlash, a customizable public service alert
system that translates into a healthier and safer population. One woman who used EnviroFlash wrote to the
EPA that the service helped her not only manage her
asthma medications but take better care of her husband:
My husband has stage IV lung/brain cancer. It
never occurred to me that the air quality could
be so dangerous in the winter (I only knew about
the cold and dry). Because of your e-mails we were
able to plan his appointments and time outside
around those bad days.
That’s the goal of EnviroFlash: Reaching the public one
person at a time with timely, relevant information.
Others in the United States are looking at a broad
public safety warning system that would enable states to
warn people about everything from hazardous chemical
spills to chemical attacks. The National Association
of State CIOs (NASCIO) is planning a pilot system
that would send alerts targeted to individual zip codes
if necessary; these alerts could be picked up on mobile
phones, PCs, PDAs, TV and radio. The alerts would be
29
implemented and triggered on a state basis, with the
ultimate goal being a standard nationwide public alert
system called the All Alert System. The system is being
modeled after Amber Alerts for abducted children,
which are disseminated at the state level via TV, radio
and the Internet. The All Alert System would be staterun and state-activated.
Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
is conducting tests for a similar Digital Emergency
System, which uses the digital signals of public TV
stations to transmit warnings to mobile devices, satellite and cable outlets, and others. FEMA and NASCIO
are working to minimize any overlap.
Then there is the type of alert that signals a probable
activity based on a series of events or patterns. Research
by CSC has identified smart alerts as the next step in
business intelligence, for they help a person build and
interpret an evolving situation.7 Smart alerts can be used
to warn of terrorist or drug activity, identify suspect
insurance claims, or track emerging market moves.
Behind smart alerts are new technologies and techniques in Web mining for identifying and analyzing
Web data, both structured and unstructured. (Web
mining is discussed in Meaning.) Smart alert systems
would continuously mine Web-based repositories and
use visualization techniques to illustrate emerging trends
or developments. The resulting intelligence would be not
just a textual alert but a representation of trends and
patterns mined from the Web over time.
For example, a customs agency may be interested in drug
trading patterns. Today, the intelligence staff analyzes,
clips and distributes articles deemed to be of interest.
Tomorrow, with the smart alert, the news articles would
be mined by computers to extract identified key concepts
like drug type, source countries and known traffickers.
Alerts would be dispatched automatically along with
updated trend patterns or emerging relationship developments, also gleaned from Web and other data mining,
providing the intelligence consumer with a high-fidelity
picture of the emerging situation.
Many consumers are hungry to be “in the know” or the
first to know, and there are plenty of Internet-based
30
news alert services for breaking news, sports, market
events, technology updates and topics of interest.
Google, The New York Times and ZDNet are just the
tip of the iceberg of those offering these alerts. Google
Alerts send you e-mail updates of the latest relevant
Google search results for your topic based on keywords
you identify. You might set up an alert to monitor
a competitor, an industry, a breaking story or your
favorite sports team. The Times News Tracker directs
articles to your inbox on up to 20 different topics you
choose via keywords. When articles are published on
nytimes.com that match the alert criteria, an e-mail
alert is sent with a link to the article. Similarly, ZDNet’s email alert for technology news uses keywords and issues
an e-mail with a link to the matching ZDNet article.
News services are poised to deliver alerts, but what
about something mechanical like a car? If your car
crashes, wouldn’t you like it to notify an emergency
center immediately? The ComCARE Alliance (Communications for Coordinated Assistance and Response to
Emergencies) is exploring automatic crash notification
as an important public safety measure. According to
the Alliance, thousands of people in the United States
die every year after being in a car crash and receiving
insufficient or no help in the first “golden hour” after
the crash. The Alliance reports that more than half
of all crashes are on rural roads and over 40 percent of
all fatal crashes occur at night; response time is longer
in both cases.8
Automatic crash notification systems can change these
numbers, providing real-time location data, crash data,
personal medical data and voice contact to an emergency response unit. Some cars are already outfitted
with crash notification systems today (OnStar is
one such system). The Alliance wants to make such
systems standard and nationwide; it is working on a
recommended data set and interoperability among
E911, emergency medical services (EMS), transportation systems and information systems.
Time and place data let us know exactly where someone
or something is, what is happening at a remote location,
or if an event is about to occur. Time and place data give
us powerful digital bearings that make us smarter, safer
and more precise in our business and personal lives.
SOCIAL CONNECTIONS
DATA THAT STRENGTHENS CONNECTIONS
BETWEEN PEOPLE
The world of extreme data has a strong social side to it:
people are interacting with each other at home, in the
office and on the move in dramatically new ways.
From online social networks to wikis to blogging to
“MP3Jing,” technologies are in play that are redefining
how we communicate and work with others.
Many of these technologies are appearing at the edge
of the network initially, in our personal lives, and then
migrating to business. Finding friends online evolves
to finding colleagues and professionals with similar
interests; shared virtual spaces become collaborative
work areas; personal publishing turns into a new way
to reach customers; sharing digital music redefines the
role of the DJ if not the club entertainment business.
Several key technologies are making these social
connections possible, including directory services,
which help you work with people distributed on a
network, and presence detection, which lets you know
if a person is online and available.
Today you can reach people in ways you never could
before – people who share your personal or professional interests, live where you live, or are working on the
same project – and get something done. Extreme social
connections cluster around four areas: finding people,
working together, extreme publishing and leisure.
FINDING PEOPLE
People are social beings – they like to stay in touch and
they learn from keeping in touch with each other. New
online services and technologies are helping people
find not only long-lost friends and classmates but
business colleagues. In the past, it was impractical if
not impossible to find people with common business
interests without “pressing the flesh,” but today’s
Internet is making it possible to discover business
contacts quickly, effectively and virtually.
Finding Colleagues. Web-based social networks sprang
onto the digital scene a year or more ago, as a neat
way to find friends and classmates. Friendster, Ryze,
Tribe.net and orkut are some of the leading sites. Not
surprisingly, sites have emerged for finding business
contacts, and in some cases the original social networks
are also being used for business contacts. The market
has found that the Internet is a powerful tool for
finding and linking people with common ground – be
it a profession, location, political affiliation, colleague
or friend. The network gains strength as more members
add contacts who are visible to the entire membership.
In the past, the only way to meet people with similar
interests was through a dating site. But today, people
with shared business interests can discover one another
through such business network sites as LinkedIn,
COMMON.net and Jigsaw Data. The power of these
networks comes from linking business people from
different organizations and locations. You can find
expertise outside your company and in another city.
LinkedIn is the leading business network site, with over
2.4 million members worldwide. LinkedIn helps
members find clients, employees, business partners,
sales leads, industry experts, professional services and
jobs. Members find what they need through trusted
colleagues. You can search the entire LinkedIn member
list to find people with the experience or qualifications
you require, and then find a path of introductions to
those people using your existing network of trusted
colleagues.
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People register for free and provide their own contact
information as well contact information about others
that they are willing to share. The same is true of
COMMON.net, a newer site that focuses on one-toone business networking by finding common ground
between “seekers” of people and “advocates” who provide
the link to others.
A more focused service is Jigsaw Data, which targets
sales contacts. Operating on the principle that one man’s
trash is another man’s treasure, members of Jigsaw
provide business contacts and can access each other’s
contacts. Members pay $25 per month for access to 25
contacts, or can contribute 25 contacts in lieu of the
$25 fee.
Finding People at a Conference. Making meaningful
connections at a business event such as a conference
can be difficult if not awkward. How do you find
someone with your interests among a sea of strangers?
Help is on the way from your name tag. An electronic
name tag, the nTAG, beams messages to fellow
conventioneers like, “Hi Jane, I’m Bob. I am interested
in open source software too.” The device uses infrared
sensing and RFID to communicate with other tags
and even lights up in the dark for those who do their
networking at the bar.
Jigsaw positions itself as a cost-effective alternative to
gleaning contacts from large business databases such as
Hoover’s and Dun and Bradstreet, whose fees can run
to thousands of dollars a year. Jigsaw’s data is current
and constantly updated. Further, the service is selfpoliced by members to help ensure that contact names
are valid; any member can challenge a contact name
he or she believes is invalid.
“People want a reason to interact,” explains nTAG
inventor Rick Borovoy. “They need help. This gives
them a powerful nudge in that direction.” Meeting
participants have given the nTAG high marks for
being an icebreaker that helps them circulate beyond
their usual pool of friends or colleagues. Companies
can use the data collected to evaluate attendance,
session popularity, how many clients interacted with
the marketing staff, or connections made within or
between departments. (See Tapping the Power of Social
Networks.)
As one member reports on the company Web site,
“Jigsaw is like having access to 1,000 Rolodexes.”
Jigsaw, Common.net and LinkedIn are the new way to
make business connections and help take the “cold”
out of cold calling.
nTAGs communicate stored data when two wearers
approach one another, and display messages that are
customized for the two people. The badges can also be
used by wearers to exchange electronic business cards
and by companies to collect leads.
People wear an nTAG at a conference to help them interact with others with similar interests. A social network diagram can be
generated in real time that illustrates these interactions. Dots represent people, lines represent the interactions (connections),
and colors represent attributes of the person, indicating the basis for the interaction.
32
Source: nTAG Interactive Corporation
TAPPING THE POWER
OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
How well connected are people in your
As a result of the analysis, the organi-
of the key connectors was a manager
organization? Despite what the organi-
zation would take steps to recognize
lower on the organization chart who
zation chart says, how are people
and support key connectors, eliminate
simply owned access to a key database,
actually working together? How do we
information bottlenecks and over-
and one department was splintered
tap these invisible social networks
burdened employees, pull in peripheral
from the others due to physical
to improve corporate performance?
people who represent untapped
distance. With these inefficiencies
resources, and bridge disconnects
identified, that group found several
between groups or departments.
ways to revise information access
Social network analysis is a burgeoning
branch of management science that
and utilize a more structured decision-
examines how people share and
“You have to look beneath the
making process to reduce time lost.
obtain information in large distributed
organization chart to identify important
These and other seemingly subtle
groups. The focus is on informal
gaps and determine ways to better
changes ultimately shaved several days
organizational networks, where some
interconnect,” explains Rob Cross,
off the drilling process, which resulted
contend the real work gets done.
assistant professor of management at
in millions of dollars of cost reduction
These networks are typically uncharted
the University of Virginia and a leader
simply by identifying inefficiencies in
and unmonitored – literally off the
in the field of social network analysis.
the way work was getting done deep
corporate radar screen. Social network
In the case of a person becoming
in the organization.
analysis uses sophisticated information
a bottleneck, for example, automate
tools to analyze these networks and
some of that person’s information
In another case, social network analysis
provide recommendations for
or decision-making, or transfer it to
was used to invigorate innovation at
leveraging these networks to deliver
other people. Make collaboration and
Mars, the food giant whose products
revenue growth and innovation.
information sharing part of the annual
include the flagship M&M’s candies as
review and a criterion of new hires.
well as Uncle Ben’s rice, Whiskas pet
The outcome of social network
food and beverage vending machines.
analysis is often a change to corporate
In one social network analysis
Mars convened 300 of its top scientists
strategy or policy, as well as change
conducted by Cross, an oil drilling
for a social network analysis workshop
at the individual level. Social network
company wanted to speed its
led by Cross. The company felt its
analysis may uncover that certain
decision-making process to minimize
expertise was not well integrated,
people are “key connectors,” holding
the number of days it spent drilling.
thus stifling innovation. The network
the network together but posing
Each saved day would save the
analysis did indeed show opportunity
potential bottlenecks, while others are
organization $250,000-$300,000.
points for better integration across
loosely connected and underutilized.
functional lines and key technical
Groups chartered to work together
The social network analysis shown
competencies, using network tech-
may not be due to organizational
in the diagrams on the next two pages
niques to identify key areas to improve
boundaries, leader behavior, proximity,
found that key leaders were not as
network connectivity (and not just
cultural differences or other factors.
connected as previously thought, one
networking for networking’s sake).
33
FORMAL STRUCTURE
Exploration & Production
TAPPING THE
POWER OF
SOCIAL NETWORKS
(continued)
Senior Vice President
Jones
Exploration
Williams
Drilling
Taylor
Production
Stock
G&G
Cohen
Petrophysical
Cross
Sen
Production
O'Brien
Smith
Andrews
Moore
Paine
Hughes
Reservoir
Shapiro
Miller
Ramirez
Part of the workshop included having
people wear nTAGs, electronic name
tags, at the reception to help people
Bell
Cole
Hussain
Kelly
Getting things done often depends less on an organization’s
connect on differences and find the
formal structure than on an informal social network of
expertise they needed.
colleagues. Social network analysis teases out the informal
networks and helps companies improve individual and
“The nTAGs totally changed the
group connectivity for better organizational performance.
dynamics of the offsite,” recalls Cross.
“This was now mingling with purpose.”
The nTAGs got people talking and
sitting with others. “Offsites often
CSC is using social network analysis
Preliminary findings from the analysis
entrench existing ways – people hang
to study the relationships of its top
confirm the importance of key
out with those they know – but the
account executives. This work is being
relationships for successful business
nTAG helps get people out of their
done as part of CSC’s involvement
development and suggest areas for
comfort zone,” Cross says.
in the Network Roundtable at the
enhancement. The 70 survey respon-
University of Virginia. The Network
dents in the analysis assigned a value
Each nTAG was encoded with the
Roundtable, led by Cross, trains
to their relationships that totaled in the
person’s existing social network and
managers on various ways to promote
billions of dollars of new business won.
the areas of expertise the person
performance through organizational
needed to better integrate with for
relationships and social network analysis.
the company to be more successful in
34
However, the analysis identified several
areas where CSC’s network of business
certain innovation efforts. So when a
“Industry studies highlighting the value
developers was fragmented, providing
person passed someone in the room
of social networks pointed us in this
some specific and targeted opportuni-
whom he did not know (i.e., was
direction,” explains Beverly Bacon,
ties to enhance business development
outside his social network) and who
senior manager in CSC’s global learning
performance. One of these is leveraging
had expertise in areas he needed to
and development management group.
remotely located CSCers for developing
integrate with (e.g., biochemistry), this
“In our own survey of successful
innovative thinking on key business
commonality would flash on his badge
business development executives at
development initiatives. This is already
and the other person’s badge and help
CSC, the people surveyed consistently
happening to some extent, but there
them start a conversation. This gener-
cited the importance of a good social
is substantial potential for the practice
ated a number of innovative ideas that
network as key to their success. We
to be broadened.
otherwise would not have been devel-
are now undertaking a formal analysis
oped at an offsite like this, where partic-
of the networks these executives
To conduct a social network analysis,
ularly technical people are prone to
employ, in order to help develop
researchers use a 30-minute Web-
interacting only with those they already
other business developers and leaders
based survey to collect information
know and are comfortable with.
across the company.”
from individuals about whom they
SOCIAL NETWORK
O'Brien
Stock
Shapiro
Cohen
Paine
Jones
Cole
Kelly
Andrews
Smith
Miller
Hughes
Williams
Cross
Hussain
Taylor
Moore
Ramirez
Bell
Sen
Source: Rob Cross
consult for information and advice, as
well as who comes to them seeking
Another approach for making contacts at a corporate
event uses special diagrams or maps that identify
people with common business interests. At its annual
technology conference in June 2005, CSC created
buddy maps in advance for each conference participant based on interest profile data gathered during
the registration process. Using social network analysis
tools, CSC identified potential “interest buddies” and
gave each participant a map of whom they should
try to seek out during the conference. The initiative
clearly impacted the networking dynamics of the
conference. For Della Brown, a manager in CSC’s
Newark, Delaware data center, it meant 10 new buddies
as she successfully tracked down the “top 10” on her
map, none of whom she had met before. Brown took
the prize for the conference’s best networker.
Finding People on the Move. For those who are
constantly traveling and on the move, online social
networks are being adapted for mobile devices,
enabling people to stay in touch with their most
elusive colleagues and friends as well as send them
location-sensitive information.
the same. Based on this information,
network graphs are generated that
depict the connections between
people in the organization. The graphs
are analyzed to identify problem
areas and improve organizational
performance.
Social network analysis is at the
intersection of organizational behavior
and information technology. In a world
of extreme data, where organizational
boundaries are routinely crossed via
electronic networks, it is important
These mobile online social networks (called MoSoSos,
for mobile social software) are ideal for young mobile
professionals who use their mobile phones or laptops
everywhere. Services like Dodgeball, Playtxt, Jambo
and Plazes tell users when their friends or members
of an affinity group are nearby. Another service,
Crunkie, shows where your friends are and enables
location-based blogging. Using their mobile phones,
users submit and view notes and pictures tagged for
specific locations. You could post a restaurant review
tagged to the restaurant’s location, and another Crunkie
user looking for a restaurant in that area could access
your review using Crunkie’s mapping features.
to understand how people are, or
need to be, working together. Behind
every star performer is a well-honed
social network; well-managed social
networks offer a distinct competitive
advantage for the organization as a
whole too.
Another type of mobile social network hails from
Bluetooth wireless technology. “Bluejacking” is the act
of sending unsolicited messages via Bluetooth-enabled
cell phones to random people, even strangers, who also
have Bluetooth-enabled phones. The technology, which
scans for other Bluetooth-enabled devices within a
30-foot radius, lets you send a short message like “who
r u?” to classmates during a lecture, passengers on the
same bus or subway car, or co-workers attending a
35
Jambo, a mobile online social network, helps people in close proximity find others
with similar interests. Jambo uses personal area matching technology to help
people with WiFi-enabled cell phones, PDAs and laptops meet each other. Whom
should you be talking to at the next conference?
Source: Jambo Networks
meeting. It is an unusual (and perhaps unwanted) way
to break the ice, though meeting strangers on the
Internet was met with trepidation at first too.
WORKING TOGETHER
Several technologies are helping people collaborate
and communicate in new ways and get the job done.
Advances in instant messaging, collaboration tools,
Internet phone service, joint Web surfing and bookmark sharing are leading the way.
Integrating the social or “people”
dimension directly into the application
accelerates how people work together.
Online Presence in the Enterprise. Instant messaging,
a staple of teenagers for years, is now a first-class
citizen in the enterprise. The latest generation of IM
tools – including Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, Yahoo
Messenger, America Online’s ICQ 5 and Paltalk – has
extended IM beyond simple text messages to include
audio and video chatting; these advanced features are
36
as easy to use as traditional text
IM. In the past, office workers often
clandestinely installed IM tools on
their computers to enhance communications with co-workers. Now
many organizations, including CSC,
are using secure IM tools such
as Lotus Sametime as part of
the supported toolset for office
communications. These enterprise
IM tools, including Microsoft’s
new Office Communicator 2005,
can integrate tightly with corporate
directory services so users can
easily find and exchange messages
with anybody in their organization. CSC is implementing a nextgeneration portal that will leverage
IM and directory services for its
79,000 employees.
As IM and directory services move into the enterprise,
they are migrating from stand-alone services into specific applications, such as call center software. Office
Communicator 2005 integrates IM and other communication capabilities – presence awareness, notifications,
voice, video and voice over IP – with Microsoft Office
programs and other applications. Workers can immediately see from within the application who is online
and available, call them into an online chat, and resolve
problems more quickly than if they had to telephone
or e-mail a colleague.
“Integrating the social or ‘people’ dimension directly
into the application accelerates how people work
together,” observes LEF Technology Programs director
Paul Gustafson. “In the past, the social dimension has
been ignored in applications, served instead by freestanding IM or an employee address book. Now, by
in effect integrating IM and the address book into the
application, the employee is one step closer to the
person he or she needs.”
This raises an interesting issue around what we call
“signaling” – letting people know how available you
are and the best way to reach you. In the case of your
phone, voice over IP, or IM session, you would want
a signaling system to mediate between you and the
outside world. Perhaps you would charge a fee before
an outsider was put through. Trickier is how to handle
calls within the firm; are you available only if the boss
calls? Even trickier still is what the assumptions are
about your availability if the company gives you a
phone or PDA. Are you always on duty? Failure to make
expectations explicit, and global, leads to frustration
on both sides.
Team Collaboration. Another type of socialization
occurs when teams need to work together and share
information. A wiki can be used as a powerful collaboration tool to unite team members and coordinate
work, especially if team members are in different locations and a high degree of information sharing is
required. A wiki is a shared space on the Web that is
gaining traction in corporations. Anyone can add content to a wiki or edit content already there; users need
not know HTML though they do need to learn a simple
markup language. Users can enter or edit running text,
submit attachments, provide links, make comments,
and create hierarchies to organize topics. Security can
be added as needed to a wiki, limiting access to team
members only, for instance. In addition, wikis can be
configured to track changes with revision control,
keeping order and instilling accountability.
As a writable (editable) space, wikis are an important
step towards Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of a
writable Web. With today’s browser technology, the Web
is primarily a read-only environment. Technologies
like wikis begin to change that.
Where appropriate, CSC uses wikis to help manage
client projects. CSC’s Training Center of Excellence
uses a wiki internally to manage best practices and
lessons learned for general courseware development, as
well as development issues and software documentation. “The wiki changes all the time, as do best practices,” notes David MacLuskie, center scientist at the
Center. “Our developers are excited about being able to
put performance information in the wiki and pull it
out later on when writing proposals.”
Despite its whimsical name, a wiki could become
one of the more useful and easy-to-implement tools
in the IT management arsenal too. The word “wiki
wiki” is Hawaiian for “quick,” and the quickness with
which wiki pages can be edited and searched means it’s
easy for IT staff to record important information, such
as configuration changes and maintenance activities,
and look it up later. This is especially important when
managing a large corporate network that spans many
locations.
Although wikis are great at organizing unstructured
text, they quickly reach their limits when you try to
add structure. For example, many people use wikis for
a shared task list. But can you assign a due date for a
particular item? Can you assign priority? Can you assign
a task to a group, not just a single person? Can you flag
items for discussion?
JotSpot is a tool for adding such structure to wikis,
making it easy to build simple applications using wikis.
JotSpot lets you to go from a free-text wiki to a custom
application with very little additional code. The company offers simple starter applications to help manage
recruiting, help desks, tasks, a company directory and
other collaborative activities.
Collective IQ. Another ambitious effort at getting
people to work together is the Open Directory Project,
which brings together volunteers to catalog the Web.
Styled after open source projects, Open Directory invites
any Web user to apply to become an editor. Editors
evaluate and categorize Web sites in a selected area of
interest. The result is an ongoing organization and
presentation of Web content by Web users. Any Web
user can access Open Directory’s directory structure,
which also powers the major Web search sites.
Bringing together the best minds to solve a problem is a
tenet of the open source movement and is manifest in
the popular Web encyclopedia Wikipedia, itself a wiki.
Any Web user can contribute content to Wikipedia.
The notion of harnessing humanity’s “collective IQ”
using computers dates to the 1950s, when computer
pioneer Doug Engelbart envisioned tapping people’s
collective intelligence to solve complex problems.
Engelbart foresees a “dynamic knowledge repository”
of pooled intelligence from people everywhere, with
all the best thinking on an argument in one place.9
37
In addition to Wikipedia, other examples of harnessing collective IQ began emerging by 2000 as Webbased collaboration started taking hold. One is the
Open Mind Initiative, an open source project that is
compiling common sense knowledge from thousands
of volunteers who provide raw input, in an effort to
create intelligent software that can be used by a range
of applications. Nonspecialists come together, joined
by the Web for a common purpose, to pool their brain
power.
Advances in Communicating. Talking to people is a
basic way to get help for accomplishing a task. The latest
way to talk to others using the Internet – voice over IP
– is creating some very interesting forms of interaction (not to mention challenging traditional phone
service, both land-line and mobile). Skype, the free VoIP
service, has created a community of over 35 million
registered users who can connect to each other in special
ways that set Skype apart from plain vanilla VoIP. Users
can search the database of Skype users by such things
as age, language and nationality. In addition, users can
set their “Skype Me” flag, which invites strangers to call
and chat. Many American Skype users enjoy receiving
calls from Asia and other parts of the world from people
who want to practice their English. The combination
of anonymous random calling and the intimacy of
voice creates a unique environment for communication
and collaboration. People open up in ways they might
not normally.
Engelbart foresees a “dynamic knowledge
repository” of pooled intelligence from
people everywhere, with all the best
thinking on an argument in one place.
The next phase of random calling may be more
formalized Skype-enabled social networks like Jyve,
which connects Skype users with similar interests, and
SomeoneNew, which connects Skype users for romantic
purposes. Only a few English-language social networking sites currently use Skype, but such sites in Asia
have been very successful.
38
Beyond voice, Skype has positioned itself as a platform
for other services; it includes IM, and there are plans
to add videoconferencing to the Skype for Business
offering. In the IM world the reverse has happened,
with PC-to-PC calling added to the IM offerings of
Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online.
“As the lines between IM, voice and video blur, the
emphasis is on ease of communication rather than
discrete applications,” says Bill Koff, vice president and
chief technology officer for CSC’s Office of Innovation.
Other Collaborations. A different form of computerenabled collaboration is the ability to surf a Web site
with someone else. A technology from Advanced
Reality called JYBE (Join Your Browser with Everyone)
allows two or more people in different locations to
look at the same Web page together. JYBE is a free
browser plug-in that works with Microsoft’s Internet
Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, the open source browser.
JYBE will probably not displace industrial-strength Web
conferencing tools but offers a light-weight alternative
for small businesses and consumers to show clients
new products and experience the Web with family
and friends.
Another way to share your Web experience and collaborate with others is through bookmark sharing services.
These services let you share your personal Web bookmarks (favorite sites) with others, see who has linked
to one of your bookmarked sites, and what else they
are linking to. Colleagues can build lists of bookmarks
when working on joint projects. One bookmark sharing
service, del.icio.us, lets users assign keywords to their
bookmarked sites so bookmarks can be easily searched.
Users can view others’ bookmarks and subscribe to the
links of those whose lists are most interesting. Although
favorite sites can always be shared by e-mail, services
like del.icio.us broaden the sharing to a community of
people with like interests.
In short, there are numerous ways for people to work
and communicate together today, aided by a shared
Internet and mobile computing and communications
devices. Cyberspace social scientist Howard Rheingold
has recognized the enormous social power of such an
information environment, which can unleash what he
calls “smart mobs.” Smart mobs protested at the World
Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999 using
dynamically updated Web sites, cell phones and
“swarming” tactics. In the Philippines, a million people
overthrew the president by organizing peaceful public
demonstrations through swarms of text messages. Being
pervasively connected in real time gives the body politic
new potential for collective action.
EXTREME PUBLISHING
The Web has long been a publishing paradise, enabling
individuals to publish like professionals, and technology
advances are taking this to new extremes. Blogging
hit its stride in 2004, giving voice to the individual-asjournalist outside the mainstream (“citizen journalists”).
Blogging, which began as text, has evolved to podcasting
and video blogging. And with this has come a whole
new social milieu.
The Blogosphere. Blogging has enabled people to voice
their opinions on any subject, from politics to news to
books to shopping. Now just about anyone, not merely
the tech-savvy, can create a blog or Web log.
Established blogging tools such as Google Blogger
have made writing a blog easy – formatting and layout
are done automatically. Thus anyone inclined to speak
his mind and get feedback is heartily encouraged,
because the tools of the trade make it easier than writing an article in HTML and designing the Web page
it goes on.
New services such as Yahoo 360 and Microsoft’s MSN
Spaces integrate blogging into multi-purpose personal
communication services, underscoring the importance
of blogging as a way to connect with others. These
services let users publish blogs, share content and post
pictures for family and friends in a secure environment.
Blogging is also being incorporated into instant messaging, so that you can be immediately notified when
there is a new blog entry. The MSN Spaces blogging tool
is integrated with MSN Messenger so that contacts in
your Messenger window “gleam” when they have added
an entry to their blog, signaling that there is a new blog
article for you to read. This is an excellent prompt for
people who need to know what’s new right away.
New Avenues of Expression. Podcasting (discussed in
Data Everywhere) has been likened to audio blogging
for people who are mobile. People create audio broadcasts that can be downloaded to an MP3 player or
computer and listened by anyone. The technology has
given birth to a new breed of publisher, the podcaster,
who sets up shop and creates running commentary
on a variety of subjects. Today there are thousands of
podcasters, from people recording in their basements
to National Public Radio affiliates recording in professional studios. Podcasting puts those two classes of
publishers, and everyone in between, on equal footing.
Everyone can reach an audience on the Web.
A newer form of publishing is the video blog or vlog,
a blog published in video format. The vlog, while still
up and coming, is being used for works that vary from
citizen reporting to avant-garde film clips. Like blogging
and podcasting, vlogging levels the playing field for
publishers and provides a new avenue of expression.
AT YOUR LEISURE
New ways to share music, photos, games and even a
hug are transforming how we socialize with family
and friends.
Consider how clubbing is changing with the advent
of iPod nights, when the DJ’s role is taken over by
amateurs boasting – that is to say, playing – the contents
of their iPods over the club’s audio system. Variously
called iPod DJ parties, “no wax” nights (for no vinyl)
and MP3Jing, iPod nights have sprung up in New York
City, Washington, Chicago, London, Tokyo and Hong
Kong, promoting a culture of music diversity in the
context of a highly personal shared experience. Think
of it as karaoke for playlists – a popular new form of
entertainment with a subculture of MP3 enthusiasts
all its own.
Sharing photos online has become a springboard to
a much richer social experience. Services like Flickr
(part of Yahoo) and HeyPix (part of CNET Networks’
Webshots) enable viewers to add comments and notes
to your photos, so unknown people or locations can be
identified, for instance. The services integrate blogging,
enabling you to post photos to your blogs, and RSS
39
feeds (discussed in Meaning), making it easy for friends
using RSS aggregators to know when you have added
new photos. Flickr also allows you to tag your photos
with keywords so you can search your photos as well
as others (that you are permitted to view) on the site.
These services are attracting hundreds of thousands of
users, who can elect to share their photos with the world,
with friends and family, or with a single confidant.
to develop a massively multiplayer training simulation
called AWE (Asymmetric Warfare Environment) to help
train soldiers for urban warfare. Forterra previously
developed “There,” a highly successful MMO in which
players socialize and express themselves with avatars
that boast dozens of different emotional expressions
and gestures. Forterra used “There” as the basis for the
simulated world of AWE.
Integrating multiple forms of interaction – photo sharing, blogs, RSS, tagging and others – is an approach that
all successful social connection sites will likely adopt.
Beyond the social whirl of online games, photos and
music, there is a more intimate social connection: a
hug. Robotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University
have designed a soft, huggable pillow called the “Hug”
that uses sensors and wireless technology to enable
family members to remotely communicate affection
during phone calls. The device, which is used by the
sender and the receiver, emits vibrations based on
squeezes from the sender, along with heat. The Hug
provides social and emotional support for distant
grandparents and other family members, and could
have potential for boosting the well-being of medical
patients. If the technology takes off, being able to convey
the intimate feelings and emotions of a hug remotely
will be an extreme new way of connecting with others.
On the gaming front, what was once a solitary experience – playing a computer game – has morphed into
a highly connected experience. Massively multiplayer
online games (MMOs) such as “Everquest” and “World
of Warcraft” attract over 200,000 concurrent players,
a mind-boggling number. There may be no other time
in human history when so many people are actively
engaged in playing a common game.
“More people are connected than ever before,” observes
Doug Neal, LEF Research Fellow, noting that some
5,000 people traveled to Dallas in 2004 for QuakeCon,
the preeminent annual computer gaming convention
where fans flock to play games for four days. With this
has come a shift from top-down hierarchies to flatter
social networks, where players lead by persuading
others (e.g., come follow my character), not by force
of authority. The leadership model of the social network
can be seen in the business world as well. (See Tapping
the Power of Social Networks.)
With this has come a shift from top-down
hierarchies to flatter social networks,
where players lead by persuading others,
not by force of authority.
Online games have long had an impact on the military
for simulated war game exercises. In 2004, the U.S. Army
was sufficiently impressed with the potential of MMO
technology that it contracted with Forterra Systems
40
MEANING
DATA THAT HELPS MAKE SENSE OF IT ALL
A swell of digital data begs the question: How can I
make use of all this data? What does it all mean?
As data increases in sheer volume and new data types
have entered into the mix, data is also advancing on
another front: meaning. We are learning to better
leverage the meaning behind the data to deliver value.
Search is no longer just about text but includes image,
video, audio, location-based information and even
entire books. In addition, there are places to search
beyond the Web: your hard drive and the enterprise’s
hard drives. As data has moved to the edge, search has
had to follow suit.
There are ways to make the meaning of data – the
semantics – explicit. This makes it easier for software
to automatically manipulate the data for searching,
integrating or interpreting across a variety of applications. Processes can be more efficient, and more can be
done on behalf of the user. Having data with semantics
– the Semantic Web and other metadata approaches
for providing new levels of data definition – enables
computers and people to work together better.
Methods that help us detect patterns in data, including
data mining techniques and new ways to aggregate and
visualize data, improve our understanding of complex
data and facilitate more informed decision-making.
There may be data everywhere, but it is important to be
able to use that data well, aided by advances in search,
semantics and pattern detection.
THE NEW SEARCH
An organization’s digital assets are no longer confined
to text but encompass images, video, audio and more.
Organizations need to be able to make the most of
all their digital assets through comprehensive search
techniques that can comb through image libraries
of products and parts, video and audio libraries of
conference proceedings and courses, and other multimedia information.
Much of this search activity is initially appearing on
the Web, itself transforming into a vast multimedia
repository of text, images, video, audio and full-text
books. The Web searcher wants to find all these things,
and search experts are rushing to add capabilities.
If a picture is worth a thousand words,
then the business value of image search
will increase significantly for retailing,
communications, real estate, marketing
and other fields.
Image Search. Google, Yahoo and other leading search
companies have expanded to provide image search
capabilities. In addition, specialized image search tools
are appearing, such as Webmap PropertyView, which
searches for images of real estate properties. If a
picture is worth a thousand words, then the business
value of image search will increase significantly for
retailing, communications, real estate, marketing and
other fields.
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New search engines can find not only snapshot
photos but also map images taken from spacecraft
(NASA World Wind, discussed in Time and Place),
aerial photographs (TerraServer) and topographic maps
(TopoZone).
CSC is working with the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration on a novel system that
searches environmental satellite images by two new
dimensions: location and time. CLASS, the Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System, is an
enormous archive designed to handle a petabyte
(1015) of environmental data that can be searched
by both scientists and the public through a simple
portal interface.
People can search CLASS by type of data, location
on the planet, and time. This is important for climate
research and for analyzing cloud cover, sea surface
temperatures, land usage and other aspects of the
Earth’s surface and atmosphere. Users can select data
by a predefined region, such as the Gulf of Mexico,
or a region they define. CLASS brings together many
elements for a comprehensive search: people can find
data for a geographic area and time of interest, in a
massive image archive that is updated daily.
Advanced image search tools, such as those from
piXlogic, find images by understanding the objects
in the image – for instance, that it is a baby or a ball.
IBM and European researches are developing similar
tools that search for images based on the objects
they contain and the meaning of the images. These
approaches are intended to be more accurate than
search methods that rely on text descriptions and
keywords of the image.
Research is underway at Purdue University to search
for 3D shapes in computer aided design parts databases.
The tools being developed are intended to save money
by enabling designs for products with multiple complex
parts, such as aircraft, to reuse existing parts rather than
create costly new ones. Purdue’s shape-based search
is being extended into the biological domain for
comparing protein structures and the similarity and
functioning of binding sites, for drug discovery.
42
Video Search. Fast on the heels of image search is
the rapidly evolving video search – being able to find
a news cast, TV show, movie or other video clip.
Google, Yahoo, blinkx TV and AOL Singingfish have
all recently released new or enhanced video search
capabilities for the Web. People can find video clips
using the same familiar search interfaces they have
been using to search for Web pages. Each of these
video search services has different strengths. For
example, Yahoo wants to promote the use of metadata
in video content, to describe the content and thus make
it easier to find and index by search engines. In addition
to standard keyword and Boolean queries, blinkx
provides a conceptual search, enabling users to enter
regular text for which blinkx returns results whose
content is conceptually similar to the search text.
While blinkx searches TV programming (news, sports,
entertainment), Singingfish searches TV, movies,
radio and music.
In contrast to the search sites, Videora is a search tool
you download and use to find video files on the Web.
Called the Napster of video, Videora is a peer-to-peer
system that makes it easy for people to automatically
locate video files and download them to their computers. The system, which combines BitTorrent and RSS
technologies, is designed to handle large files with
ease and is primarily used to find movies.
Local Search. Another type of search is location-based
search, which lets you search for items in a specific
geographic area, like businesses and restaurants.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other search engines
have added such local search capabilities. Google Local,
in pilot, lets you search for business establishments
by zip code and returns results plotted on a map,
including driving directions. You can switch back and
forth between maps and satellite data for the same
location. Yahoo lets you transmit the results of a local
search, such as the name, address and phone number
of a business, directly to your mobile phones as a text
message. In this way, search results are pushed to the
edge of the network where they are needed most.
Microsoft’s Virtual Earth (mentioned in Time and Place)
couples local directory listings with satellite imagery
so you can find places of interest.
Another combination of local search plus images
is offered by A9.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.com.
A9 provides a yellow-pages listing augmented with
street-level photos of the listing and shops on either
side of it, letting users in effect walk up and down the
street and base their decision to go to a store on the
other businesses in the immediate neighborhood.
“Local search is more than just tools,” comments
Bill Koff, vice president and chief technology officer
for CSC’s Office of Innovation. “Each company has
a different strategy for its information and models.
Google is compute-based, Yahoo uses people to define
meta models and tagging, and Microsoft uses both, with
an emphasis on manual tagging of local content.”
In the future we can expect to see online services
that combine local search, blogging, podcasting and
vlogging. People will create blogs, podcasts and vlogs
that are tagged with a location, such as the Museum
of Modern Art in New York City. Users will be able to
search for entries by location. So if you are planning a
walk up Fifth Avenue near the MOMA, you can find
text, podcasts and vlogs about sites along your walk.
An early sign of this is podcasts done by a professor
and some students for art on display at the MOMA;
you can bring these podcasts to the museum and listen
to them while looking at the art (instead of, or in
addition to, listening to the museum’s audio guide).
Though the podcasts are not tagged with location data
per se, it is easy to see the technology evolving to that.
Omni Search. Advances in search encompass not just
tools but content. In its quest to expand the Web
beyond its current body of material, Google is collaborating with several research institutions to digitize and
make searchable books, scholarly papers and special
collections that have not been previously available on
the Web. The effort, involving Harvard, the University
of Michigan, Stanford, the New York Public Library
and others, is a step towards the vision of the Internet
Archive, an initiative to provide universal digital access
to the world’s books and other media.
Desktop and Enterprise Search. And yet, it comes
as no surprise that not all of the world’s information
is intended to reside on the Web; a sizeable amount
of data resides on PCs or in the enterprise, posing a
different set of challenges than Web-based search.
Recognizing this, the search companies have extended
their technology to the desktop and the enterprise.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask Jeeves and AOL have
all announced free desktop search tools, in a flurry of
competition for this emerging search space. Google’s
free downloadable beta tool searches e-mail, files,
Web history, instant messages, and Word, Excel
and PowerPoint documents on your hard drive. The
tools from Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask Jeeves and AOL are
similar. With these tools, people can search for the
public and private data they need.
One of the first comprehensive desktop search tools
was X1 Desktop Search from X1 Technologies. The
company has extended its core offering to include
support for IBM Lotus Notes e-mail messages,
attachments and local databases, and also offers an
Enterprise Edition with additional capabilities for
businesses and work groups.
Other tools have also been refined to search for data
in small and mid-size businesses. Google Mini can
search up to 50,000 documents in an organization,
applying the same technology as its flagship search
engine. As well, enterprises are evaluating the desktop
search tools to enable their employees to quickly mine
their own collections of documents for needed information. In business, time is money, so a faster and
more accurate search is like money in the bank.
SMARTER THROUGH SEMANTICS
With so much data in digital form, it makes sense
to automate wherever possible to exploit that data.
To this end, organizations are recognizing the value of
metadata – data about data – for encoding meaning
into data, making the data more machine-readable
and thus rendering the software that manipulates the
data more capable. Organizations are using metadata
to describe documents, databases, files, Web pages and
other information in order to help organize, browse
and search for information.
43
Mighty Metadata. Organizations are beginning to
organize their metadata into structures, such as a
thesaurus or taxonomy, that define categories and
subcategories of topics. These structures help people
understand how topics are organized and thus better
select terms to describe or search for documents.
ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Center, is
a new library of education materials on the Web that is
searchable using a sophisticated thesaurus. Sponsored
by the U.S. Department of Education, ERIC provides
public access to a premier bibliographic database of
journal and non-journal education literature, containing over 1.1 million citations. CSC helped design and
build ERIC, which is said to be the largest database of
education materials in the world.
ERIC’s thesaurus uses semi-automated indexing,
which will become fully automated over time; then,
human lexicographers will only have to check samples
of results for quality – a vast improvement over
manually indexing every document.
The indexing uses linguistic technology to categorize
ERIC documents; the indexer recognizes words or
groups of words in a particular context, makes some
inferences, and assigns a thesaurus term. For instance,
upon encountering “Head Start,” it might assign the
thesaurus term “early childhood education.”
The Semantic Web is a global effort
to explicitly encode meaning with
Web data to enable software agents
and applications to find, integrate and
work with Web data in smart ways.
The linguistic technology understands the thesaurus
through training sets, whereby a set of documents associated with a thesaurus term is fed to ERIC’s software, to
train it to understand that the contents of documents
like these are associated with this particular thesaurus
term. If the indexer encounters similar documents, they
should be assigned the same thesaurus term.
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The linguistic technology can also extract concepts
and entities (people, places, things) from documents
and build an index of related documents based on
these attributes.
All this metadata helps make the ERIC search more
accurate and easier for both novice and expert searchers.
Another powerful use of metadata is for indexing
video and audio material. Through its Digital Asset
Management Systems architecture, CSC’s Multimedia
Center of Excellence uses commercial tools such as
Virage VideoLogger and ControlCenter, plus customdeveloped tools, to automatically create an index of
data that describes video and audio content over time.
The index can be used to search and retrieve desired
segments of a video or audio stream, and correlate
them with other content. The metadata describes scene
changes, locations, who is speaking, what they are saying, where they are speaking, and when. The capability
to search and retrieve video and audio is especially
handy when reusing the segments – assuming the right
segments can be found.
Intelligence agencies and media companies can use the
metadata to search for words of interest in thousands
of television and radio broadcasts and phone conversations. The indexed video and audio can be packaged
and forwarded to an analyst or editor for focused
scrutiny. This new form of metadata opens up the
“black hole” of video and audio files, which in the past
have been accessible only by filename or keyword,
not by actual content inside the file. Now workers can
review surveillance tapes, news broadcasts, music
videos, phone conversations and more, looking for
particular words and phrases.
Semantic Web. On a broader scale, movement is
underway to endow the entire Web with meaning so
people and computers can work together better to
make the most of the Web’s information. That is the
vision of the Semantic Web, a global effort to explicitly
encode meaning with Web data to enable software
agents and applications to find, integrate and work
with Web data in smart ways.
As envisioned, the Semantic Web will be much more
powerful than today’s Web because its data will be read
and consumed by computer programs, not just people.
CSC has conducted a study of the Semantic Web,
examining current tools, existing applications, key
players in the field, and how the Semantic Web will
likely be used.10 Software agents will be able to access
the Semantic Web and perform some of the tasks
people do manually today, such as searching, querying and integrating information. A person might use
his personal software agent to search the Web to find
and schedule physical therapy sessions. The agent finds
a therapist who provides the required treatment, is
located nearby, and is covered by the person’s insurance
carrier by retrieving and integrating information from
several Web sites.
Photo based on concept by Miguel Salmeron and Scientific American
The vision of the Semantic Web is that people and
computers can work together better to make the most
of the Web’s information. Semantic data is encoded
with Web data, giving the Web data meaning that can be
understood by software agents and computer applications,
which can then automate more activities for the user.
Business processes might also be automated using
Web software agents. Messages delivered via the Web
might trigger software agents that collect and integrate information from multiple Web locations, make
decisions based on the integrated information, and then
take appropriate actions. The actions might include
notifying people, updating databases, or sending
control signals to physical devices that are connected
to the Web.
Although robust commercial applications have yet to
emerge because the Semantic Web is still in a formative
stage, many believe that, as with the Web itself, the true
value of the Semantic Web will materialize in ways that
are difficult to foresee today. In the meantime, a group
of universities and organizations in Europe has issued
the Semantic Web Challenge, an annual contest designed
to stimulate good examples of how the Semantic Web
will be used. The group suggests natural disaster
management and personal information management
as fertile areas for Semantic Web applications.
The vision of the Semantic Web is generating interest
in related semantic technologies, including topic
maps.11 Topic maps have been standardized in the
information science community as a way to categorize
and describe the content of documents. A topic map
is like a smart index: it describes a set of subjects (or
topics) and the relationships between them. Documents in a library can then be linked to one or more
subjects in the topic map. Users can search a document
library to find what they want by navigating through
the topic map, selecting the subjects of interest, and
then retrieving the documents linked to the subjects.
Topic maps provide a context for search terms; the
maps give more information than a taxonomy but are
less formal than an ontology.
The Semantic Web has been architected to describe
resources on the Web, whereas topic maps have arisen
to help search document libraries. Despite this difference in purpose, the two technologies have many similarities. Both are based on graph data structures and
are represented in XML. Proponents of topic maps
point to available tools and argue that document
search can be strengthened by implementing topic
map searches today. Some organizations, such as the
U.S. Internal Revenue Service, are piloting the use of
topic maps to define terms that are used in search. But
proponents of the Semantic Web suggest that the powerful ontologies that can be specified with the W3C’s
Web Ontology Language (OWL), a key standard for
the Semantic Web, will be more useful in the long run.
Semantic Information Integration. Many Semantic Web
applications will fall into the category of semantic information integration. These applications will use software
45
agents or server-based application programs to retrieve
semantic markup from multiple sources on the Web,
integrate and analyze the information, and take some
actions.
A simple example of semantic information integration is RSS, a headline syndication mechanism used
primarily for news feeds and blogs – sites that update
their entries frequently. RSS feeds are designed to
deliver what’s new on a periodic basis. With RSS feeds
you get a steady stream of updates without having
to check Web sites or wait for e-mail updates. You can
select the news you want using categories set up by
the content provider, such as top stories, world news,
technology and entertainment.
RSS is a family of XML file formats that includes Really
Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary and RDF Site
Summary. The formats hail from a key Semantic Web
technology, the Resource Description Framework
(RDF), which is a standard for representing the metadata about a piece of Web content. Because it is a
common format, RDF written for one application,
such as an RSS feed, can be easily used by other applications in the future.
People access RSS feeds via an RSS aggregator (also
called a reader), which can be a desktop application,
a plug-in to a browser or an e-mail enhancement.
The content provider updates its RSS feed (the XML
file) on a regular basis, and the aggregator periodically
retrieves what’s new in the file. The aggregator organizes this content, which typically includes the headline
of the article, the source, a link to the full story, and
other data items. Aggregators can handle multiple RSS
feeds as specified by the user. RSS is like finding what
you want from a river of information – and it’s all
automatic.
DETECTING PAT TERNS
In the case of search and semantics, we know the
meaning of the data and apply that meaning to make
the data more useful. But when we don’t know the
data’s meaning, we need techniques for detecting
patterns and presenting the data in understandable
ways. Some of the newer techniques for exploring
46
and understanding data involve intuitive visualization,
pattern analysis, Web mining and discovery, and other
advanced techniques.
Intuitive Visualization. People are visual creatures by
nature, learning from what they see and watch, such as
pictures, diagrams, videos and faces. New techniques
for visualization present data in more intuitive,
understandable ways, such as when selecting from
alternatives, understanding events over time, and understanding complex data and statistics.
Many business and personal decisions involve evaluating alternatives or items in a group. Amplifying this,
the trend in the retail and services industries continues
toward more alternatives and increased customization.
Knowledge workers and people in general need help
in weighing an ever-expanding array of choices. New
tools are becoming available that provide intuitive
visualization of sets of items, like a group of stocks or
sales force performance data.
One such tool is the Hive Group’s Honeycomb software,
which creates colorful maps that let you understand
complex data quickly. The software displays data as
rectangles in a larger rectangle or map; the size, color
and grouping of each individual rectangle provides
information about the corresponding data item. The
poster child for Honeycomb is SmartMoney.com’s
Map of the Market, which portrays data from over
500 publicly traded companies grouped by sector or
industry. Data is updated every 15 minutes.
The size of each company (rectangle) in the map corresponds to the company’s market capitalization, and the
color of the rectangle indicates whether the company’s
stock has gone down (red) or up (green), with color
intensity (dark to light) corresponding to the degree of
change (small to large). Black indicates no change.
A quick glance at the map tells you if the market is up
or down, and where the extremes are. By holding the
cursor over a rectangle, you can get the company name
and percentage change in the stock price; with another
click you get a drop-down menu of additional company
information.
SmartMoney.com’s Map of the Market (www.smartmoney.com/marketmap) portrays a wealth of stock and financial information from over 500 publicly traded companies, grouped by sector or industry. People know at a glance whether the market
is up (green) or down (red) and can drill down for more specific information on individual companies.
Maps can also be used as a product selection tool, as
has been done by Peet’s Coffees and Teas online store.
The map replaces long lists of products and prices, or
having to go back and forth between multiple Web
pages to compare products.
Visualization techniques with camera data are being
used to understand events and patterns over time. In
the past, this was difficult to do because of the large
amounts of camera data, both video and still pictures,
that had to be examined. But today’s faster processors
can get the job done.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology
are developing techniques to succinctly display key
information that is embedded in large amounts of
video. For example, by extracting single images from
a traffic camera and displaying them periodically in a
Source: SmartMoney.com
matrix, highway traffic patterns can be easily detected
and analyzed.
Also presenting information in a matrix of images is
10x10, a Web site that uses images to summarize news.
Each hour, 10x10 automatically determines the 100
most important words used by major news outlets like
BBC World Edition and New York Times International
News. It then selects photos from the news articles to
illustrate the 100 words, and creates a 10x10 matrix
of the photos. The matrix provides a unique visualization of the hour’s news, creating a visual record of
a constantly evolving picture of the world.
Often, the data and statistics needed for decisionmaking are available, but the data is so voluminous
that people have a difficult time grasping its meaning.
The effort invested in collecting the data is squandered
47
A unique summary of world news, by the hour, is provided by 10x10 (www.tenbyten.org/now.html), which uses pictures
to portray the most important 100 words in the news every hour. This snapshot of world events is completely generated
by computer.
Source: 10x10
if it does not enable enlightened analysis and decisionmaking. New software tools are being developed that
illustrate complex data and statistics using innovative
animated visualizations and 3D displays that help decision-makers more quickly grasp the meaning of the data.
Gapminder is a non-profit initiative whose software
visualizes trends in global human development, including health, income and education trends. World statistics
are costly to buy, vast and difficult to understand.
Gapminder’s mission is to make this data understandable, enjoyable and free (Gapminder’s reports and
visualization tools are freely available from its Web
site). Gapminder’s software, Trendanalyzer, turns dull
time series data into attractive moving graphics on the
screen. Trends are instantly graspable, and the interactive
animations are fun to explore.
48
Vizible Corporation’s software is a platform for creating
intuitive and interactive views of voluminous and
disparate data that is assembled in context for the
person using it. Vizible sources information from any
system and presents it in state-of-the-art interactive
2D or 3D views. The result is an easy to navigate, even
artistic rendering of data that is instantly meaningful to
the person using it. The view is also actionable, as the
source of any information element is a click away.
In one project, Vizible created a virtual operations center
for a California municipality, integrating and displaying
data from GIS systems; traffic videos; police, fire and
emergency management systems; public utilities and the
media. This visual system gave officials an integrated
and contextual view of what was happening in the city,
enabling people to work from a common platform
when responding to an emergency situation. Vizible
has done interfaces for managing other information
resources, such as news sources and media files, and
for organizing your day.
Another powerful visualization of complex data is the
GeoWall, a system for visualizing earth science data
in 3D. The GeoWall, in use at over 400 schools, colleges
and other institutions, is a relatively affordable system
(under $10,000) and can be used to teach dozens or
even hundreds of people simultaneously. Earlier 3D
technology used an expensive “CAVE,” an entire room
designed for immersive 3D visualization that was used
by five to 10 people at a time and cost anywhere from
$150,000 to over $1,000,000. The GeoWall uses stereo
projection, a fast graphics card and an inexpensive
computer to project images on a large screen that are
viewed wearing glasses with polarizing filters, which
create the stereoscopic effect. The technology, which
can be loaded on a cart and moved from room to room,
can be used to explore canyons, volcanoes, plate
tectonics, surface geology and other spatial relationships of the Earth.
The GeoWall is a cheaper, more flexible way to understand complex data about our planet. The next generation, GeoWall2, designed for researchers rather than
students, uses an array of 15 flat panel liquid-crystal
displays mounted on a wall, with an associated cluster
of computers. GeoWall2 gives researchers higher
resolution (about 30 million pixels, versus 780,000
to 1.3 million pixels for the GeoWall) to study images
of rock cores and other geoscience data.
This virtual operations center for a California municipality is a powerful visual system integrating data from GIS systems;
traffic videos; police, fire and emergency management systems; public utilities and the media. The system enables people
to quickly assess and respond to emergency situations. It can be viewed on a laptop or desktop or projected onto a screen.
Source: Vizible Corporation
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Students examine a stereoscopic 3D model of earthquake hypocenters on a GeoWall at the Electronic Visualization
Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The stereoscopic capability of the GeoWall makes it easy to see
the plate boundaries from the hypocenters (represented as points). The technology, once expensive and the size of a
room, has become cheaper and portable, making it available to many more people than in the past.
Source: Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago
Pattern Analysis. New tools and techniques are enabling
people to analyze large data sets and discover previously
unrecognized patterns and relationships.
Financial transactions are a treasure trove of information that can be mined for potential fraud. CSC’s
FraudVision is an automated pattern recognition
system that combats check fraud in high-volume,
image-based payment processing operations. Every individual has a unique set of check writing traits that
includes signatures, handwriting patterns, unique document types and other characteristics. FraudVision detects
fraudulent checks by accurately detecting variations to
these known characteristics. FraudVision integrates
multiple pattern recognition capabilities with check
imaging to detect forged, altered and counterfeit checks.
50
Since image-based pattern recognition is compute
intensive, it has traditionally been used in applications
that return significant value relative to the amount of
processing required, such as identifying a criminal from
matching a set of fingerprints against a national crime
database. In check processing, however, the return is
relatively smaller – for example, identifying a fraudulent
check for $500 – so FraudVision had to be very efficient
in its design.
“Roughly $675 million of check fraud goes undetected
in the United States each year, against an annual
volume of 30 to 40 billion check images,” points out
Bill Cunningham, general manager of CSC’s Integrated
Payments organization. “To make FraudVision viable,
we had to not only create the technology but make
it economical to use. You are looking through millions
of good checks to find the few bad ones.”
People’s personal information is another treasure trove
of information, which can be mined for marketing
and other business purposes – security issues notwithstanding. An entire industry of data aggregators
has formed in the last 10 years as computing and
network capabilities have improved, more data has
become digitized, and companies have been able to
gather and make sense of volumes of data concerning
people’s public records, criminal histories and other
electronic details. There has been a heightened sense
of public awareness about data aggregators as identity
theft has become more prominent and as data
from several aggregators, including ChoicePoint,
LexisNexis and Bank One, has fallen into the wrong
hands.
The traditional aggregators include ChoicePoint,
LexisNexis, Acxiom and the three major U.S. credit
bureaus. The aggregators assemble and mine data
in surprising detail, and sell it to government and
corporate clients for things like background checks for
employee hiring and approving people for loans and
insurance policies. Being able to tap and understand
a wealth of data about individuals boosts security,
speeds transactions and improves overall efficiency.
Most of the data that is collected is publicly available
but not under one roof. The aggregation and subsequent analysis of the data – finding the patterns and
relationships – is extremely valuable.
But there is a dark side too, as evidenced in 2005 when
it was reported that ChoicePoint unknowingly sold
information on 145,000 people to fraudulent business
clients who were actually identity thieves. ChoicePoint,
with over 19 billion data records, collects details about
American’s homes, cars, relatives, criminal records and
other aspects of their lives. Having the data in one place
is a godsend for business but a target for criminals. As
with all information, its power can be good or bad
depending on who uses it. (See They’re Watching You
on the next page.)
Web Mining and Discovery. Another treasure trove of
information, still relatively untapped, is the Web. CSC
has conducted research into Web mining to explore how
to leverage the world’s greatest information resource.12
The research found that fully 80-90 percent of the
information people use in their daily work exists in
unstructured, mainly textual repositories. Many of these
repositories are now accessible through Web technologies, be they internal intranets or the Internet.
Eventually, nearly all the information people work with
will be Web accessible.
Through Web mining technologies, people can discover
valuable business insights locked inside the vast information repositories that are Web accessible. Applications
have been demonstrated in marketing and business
intelligence, customer relationship management,
biotechnical design applications, product design and
positioning, and knowledge management.
CSC’s research identified smart alerts and market intelligence as two promising areas for Web mining. Smart
alerts (discussed in Time and Place) use Web mining to
monitor patterns of activity over time and help users
interpret the evolving situation. Smart alerts provide a
high-fidelity picture of emerging situations by visualizing concepts as they develop from textual repositories.
Smart alerts could be created to monitor insurance claim
activities, illegal trade and emerging market moves.
Market intelligence can be enhanced through Web
mining that assesses an industry sector by identifying
networks of experts; assists with new product opportunities by analyzing product descriptions; and finds
sales opportunities by identifying potential clients
via behavior patterns. Text mining technology can
be used to characterize a marketplace by discovering
key concepts adopted by competing firms. Armed with
this information, organizations can position their
products for maximum advantage.
Beyond the prospects of Web mining lies the notion of
“reality mining.” In the future, what we browse on the
Web will be a rich compilation of data streamed from
sensors, including images, experiences and patterns,
about such things as temperature and speed. If Web
mining is about making sense of unstructured data,
51
THEY’RE WATCHING YOU…
Geoffrey R. Stone reviews the book
details in No Place to Hide, it is worse
How do they get this information?
No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes
than we could ever have imagined.
For the most part, we give it to
of Our Emerging Surveillance Society,
In this revealing book, O’Harrow
them, though usually unwittingly,
by Robert O’Harrow Jr. This article
makes clear that Americans need to
with almost every step we take. Over
appeared in The Washington Post on
think seriously about these issues
the past several years, with the help
February 20, 2005 and is reprinted
now – before it is too late for us to
of increasingly sophisticated computing
with Mr. Stone’s permission.
decide that we care.
systems and advances in artificial
intelligence, these institutions and
O’Harrow unveils a modern world
organizations have accumulated
riddled with seemingly innocuous
billions of data points about American
We live in an ever more convenient
private businesses, government
citizens, which they then share with
society. We use credit cards, buy
agencies and software programs with
or sell to one another and to the
books on Amazon, reserve plane
such obscure names as ChoicePoint,
government. As O’Harrow notes,
tickets on Expedia, bid for antiques
Acxiom, Matrix, DARPA, Seisint,
“personal data has become a
on eBay, get cash at ATMs and find
HOLe and NORA. Unbeknownst
commodity that is bought and sold
jobs on Monster. We use key cards
to most of us, these institutions
essentially like sow bellies.”
to open hotel rooms, EZ-Pass to pay
and technologies are relentlessly
tolls and GPS to get directions. We
compiling information about our
Why do these companies and agencies
send e-mail, fill prescriptions and
names, addresses, license plates,
do this? For you, of course. By gather-
sexual needs on the Internet, and pay
Social Security numbers, religions,
ing and sharing such data, they protect
bills electronically.
incomes, family members, sexual
you from identify theft and credit card
orientations, friends, purchases,
fraud, enable marketers to offer you
These conveniences generate data.
mortgages, bank accounts, credit card
precisely the right products to satisfy
In the “old” days, we did not leave
transactions, credit standing, parking
your tastes and needs, ensure that
behind a readily accessible, electronic
tickets, criminal arrests and convictions,
your fellow passengers are not
trail of our purchases, conversations,
Web browsing, e-mail correspon-
terrorists, locate missing children
whereabouts and transactions. We
dence, newspaper and magazine
and deadbeat dads, help police catch
took for granted the anonymity and
preferences, cell phone activity,
smugglers and murderers, and
privacy of our ordinary, day-to-day
vacations, fingerprints, insurance
generally provide a safer society. And,
lives. No more. Today, we are
coverage, facial images, DNA, drug
in fact, they really do these things.
constantly tagged, monitored, studied,
prescriptions and beer of choice.
sorted and tracked by a vast array of
Computers have made possible
So what’s the problem? Should we
institutions and organizations – private
what was barely science fiction 20
care that there’s no place to hide?
and public. As Robert O’Harrow Jr.
years ago.
What dangers are posed by this more
convenient, more secure society? In this
52
chilling narrative, O’Harrow identifies
In the 1990s, this technology was
Is this the long awaited coming of
the risks and vividly illustrates them
developed primarily by private
1984, the Brave New World of
with powerful real-life stories.
companies to enable marketers to
the 21st century, or will we somehow
target and profile consumers. After
continue business, and life, as usual?
First, there is the simple risk of mistake.
Sept. 11, however, the FBI, CIA, NSA,
The data in these systems, according to
Justice Department and Department
Ole Poulsen, one of HOLe’s creators,
of Homeland Security aggressively
are “full of errors and noise and wrong
sought access to these business
Geoffrey R. Stone is the Harry
information.” As a result, individuals are
databases, creating a vast private-
Kalven Jr. Distinguished Service
denied insurance, credit, employment,
public partnership in the exchange
Professor of Law at the University
the right to board an airplane, and
of such information. Moreover, the
of Chicago and the author of
even the right to vote when the system
USA Patriot Act took full advantage
Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime
spins out inaccurate information.
of the post-9/11 crisis mentality and
from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the
And, as O’Harrow persuasively
authorized a wide range of previously
War on Terrorism.
demonstrates, correcting the record
restricted government surveillance
can be a nightmare.
and data-gathering activities. Although
© Copyright 2005 The Washington Post
the stated goal of these activities is
Second, there is the risk of public
to ensure our security, history teaches
disclosure. We regard much of this
that once government has such
information as private. But hackers can
information, it will inevitably use it
all too easily capture it and use it to
to harass and silence those who
humiliate, blackmail and impersonate
question its policies.
us. The Federal Trade Commission
reports that in a typical year, 10 million
Finally, O’Harrow warns that such
Americans were the victims of identity
massive invasion of privacy and
theft, resulting in bounced checks,
intrusion into our ordinary anonymity
loan denials, harassment from debt
may well alter the very fabric of our
collectors, cancelled insurance and
society. Once we understand that
false accusations of criminal conduct.
our every move is being tracked,
monitored, recorded and collated,
Third, there is the risk that government
will we retain our essential sense
will use this information not only to
of individual autonomy and personal
ferret out terrorists, but also to sup-
dignity? Can freedom flourish in such
press dissent and impose conformity.
a society?
53
reality mining is about making sense of sensor data –
how should I change this process or allocate resources
differently to respond to current conditions? The focus
is on mining operations-relevant sensor data to make
smart business decisions.
Other Advanced Techniques. Other advanced techniques
emerging from the lab in real-world settings are text
parsing and applying scene analysis to image data.
These techniques figure out what the data means, but
at a much deeper level than traditional pattern analysis.
In the parsing example, the computer acts like a person
who is reading, breaking down sentences into subject,
verb, object and other parts of speech in order to
better understand the meaning of the sentence. This
enables more accurate searching, by avoiding the ambiguity that arises from searching just on keywords, as
well as automated detection of relationships between
the persons, places and things mentioned in the text –
something difficult to do in unstructured text.
California-based Attensity, which has been partially
funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, has
developed such a parsing tool. It can help determine,
for example, whether “bonds” refers to a financial
instrument, baseball player or glue-like substance.
Intelligence agencies are interested in automatically
gleaning meaning from large collections of e-mail and
instant messages, while companies like Whirlpool are
automatically analyzing records of customer service calls
to quickly detect trends. For example, knowing whether
“smoke” refers to the caller’s Whirlpool microwave or
the food in it makes a big difference.
Other organizations such as John Deere, General Motors
and U.S. intelligence agencies are analyzing unstructured
text using Attensity’s technology. According to one
account, if “purchase” is identified as a verb, the subject
is identified as a possible customer. If “plastic explosive”
is used as an object, the subject is tagged as a potential
enemy.
Although considerable progress has been made in
attempting to understand the meaning behind text, the
world of imagery is a tougher nut to crack. Computer
54
understanding of still images is difficult, and little work
has been done on analysis of video – until recently.
Practical tools are emerging that enable computer
systems to analyze digital video in real time.
One such system is a computer-aided drowning detection system by Paris-based Vision IQ. The system,
called Poseidon, acts like a lifeguard to spot troubled
swimmers and sound an alert. In one case, Poseidon
spotted an unconscious swimmer at the bottom of a
Paris public pool and alerted lifeguards, who rescued
the swimmer. He fully recovered.
Poseidon, which the company reports has been
installed in 120 pools in Europe and North America,
uses underwater and overhead digital cameras and
several patented technologies to effectively “see” what
is happening underwater. The system combines stereo
vision techniques (it receives images from at least two
cameras simultaneously) with volume and texture
analysis of the pool to distinguish between, say, a
body and a shadow. The system is considered a breakthrough in computer vision technology, providing
real-time scene analysis that was previously thought
to be possible only by humans.
All these technologies underscore the importance of
addressing the age-old problem of how to get meaning
from data. As data expands from text to multimedia
and mobile formats, and the volume of data increases
overall, the bar is raised to extract meaning, and
companies are stepping up to the challenge.
We live in a world of extreme data, marked
demands fresh ways of thinking about the
by innovation and opportunity – data going
“I” in IT such that data at the edge of the
where it has never gone before. This world
network, along with consumer devices, are
of extreme data is both exhilarating and scary.
recognized as first-class citizens and sup-
It provides new products, services and ways
ported in the IT infrastructure, which in
to communicate. It provides unimagined levels
turn means they can be leveraged by the
of precision, convenience and speed.
organization for business results.
If we reflect on the four dimensions of
extreme data – data everywhere, time and
place, social connections and meaning – we
see that extreme data is mobile and pervasive;
A world of extreme data demands
extreme responsibility and extreme
accountability to manage and protect
that data.
it is moving towards real-time scenarios; it is
linking people in new ways, enhancing
knowledge; and it is meaningful, showing
Today’s organizations are challenged to put
patterns and understanding despite appear-
their data at the edge of the network, closer to
ing chaotic and overwhelming at first.
customers and where work gets done. They
are challenged to take advantage of new forms
However, all this data – new data types, aggre-
of data and to leverage new technologies for
gated in new ways, and in unprecedented
gleaning meaning from data. Extreme data
amounts – is vulnerable to unauthorized sur-
raises questions for the organization and IT,
veillance and misuse if it falls into the wrong
which can be addressed by experimenting
hands. A world of extreme data demands
with extreme data technologies first-hand
extreme responsibility and extreme accounta-
in targeted operations.
bility to manage and protect that data. It
The time for getting started is now, because
what is extreme today will be commonplace
tomorrow.
55
N OT E S
APPENDIX:
H A N DY W E B S I T E S
1
DATA EVERYWHERE
This data includes Internet, TV, telephone and radio.
For more information, see UC Berkeley’s School of Information
Management and Systems report, “How Much Information? 2003,”
Pocket PC Magazine
at http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/
www.pocketpcmag.com
how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm#summary.
VCAST Services
2
CSC’s Leading Edge Forum is studying this consumerization effect
on the corporate IT agenda.
3
David Dossett, “Disconnected Wireless Database – Working
Outside the Bubble,” CSC LEF Technology Grant Paper, 2004.
4
5
6
www.getvcast.com
Archos
www.archos.com
Pew Internet & American Life Project, Podcasting, April 2005.
Apple iPod and iTunes
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/154/report_display.asp
www.apple.com/itunes
Peter Rehäußer, “RFID Security,” CSC LEF Technology Grant Paper,
MSN Music
March 7, 2005.
www.music.msn.com
An Action Day is when citizens are encouraged to take some action
FnacMusic
that day due to poor air quality, such as ride the bus instead of drive.
www.fnacmusic.com
Each locality defines an Action Day differently according to its needs.
Podcasting News
7
Laurence Lock Lee, “Web Mining,” CSC LEF Technology Grant
Paper, April 2004. http://www.csc.com/aboutus/lef/mds67_off/
index.shtml#grants
8
“Telematics and Automatic Crash Notification (ACN): Delivering
emergency data to public safety,” presentation, August 2002.
9
www.podcastingnews.com
MythTV
www.mythtv.org
www.comcare.org/take_action/presentations/
BitTorrent
APCO%202002%20ACN%20Panel.ppt
www.bittorrent.com
K. Oanh Ha, “He Paved the Way for the PC Revolution,” San Jose
Belgian eID Card
Mercury News, February 21, 2005.
www.eid.belgium.be
10 Ed Luczak, “Adding Meaning to the Web: A Guide to the
Semantic Web,” CSC LEF Technology Grant paper, April 2004.
MedicAlert
www.medicalert.org
http://www.csc.com/aboutus/lef/mds67_off/index.shtml#grants
VeriChip
11 Paul Lerke, “Mapping the Information Landscape: Topic Map
Technology,” CSC LEF Technology Grant paper, April 2005.
12 Lawrence Lock Lee, “Web Mining,” April 2004.
www.4verichip.com
Road Safety International
www.roadsafety.com
Davis Instruments
www.davisnet.com
56
Progressive Insurance
AirVideo
tripsense.progressive.com
www.trafficland.com/tl-airvideo-signup.html
Norwich Union
InTouch Health
www.norwichunion.com
www.intouch-health.com
Google Earth
TIME AND PLACE
earth.google.com
DeLorme Portable GPS Devices
DigitalGlobe
www.delorme.com/bluelogger
www.digitalglobe.com
Zipdash
ORBIMAGE
www.zipdash.com
www.orbimage.com
Rand McNally Traffic
NASA World Wind
www.randmcnally.com/rmc/company/
worldwind.arc.nasa.gov
cmpProducts.jsp?oid=-1073753515
Open Geospatial Consortium
Pioneer Navigation Receiver
www.opengeospatial.org
www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/product/detail/
0,,2076_3151_192089333,00.html
ShotCodes
www.shotcode.com
Origin blue i
www.originbluei.com
SnapToTell (white paper)
www-mrim.imag.fr/publications/2005/CHE05/
NextBus
chevallet05a_ECIR05_SnapToTell.pdf
www.nextbus.com
Argo Ocean Observation Floats
Xora
www.argo.ucsd.edu
www.xora.com
EnviroFlash
EPA EnviroFacts
www.epa.gov/airnow/enviroflash.html
www.epa.gov/enviro
ComCARE Alliance
EPA Window to My Environment
www.comcare.org
www.epa.gov/enviro/wme
AeroScout
SOCIAL CONNECTIONS
www.aeroscout.com
Friendster
CAMNET Realtime Air Pollution and
Visibility Monitoring
www.friendster.com
www.hazecam.net
Ryze
www.ryze.com
57
LinkedIn
SomeoneNew
www.linkedin.com
www.someonenew.com
COMMON.net
JYBE
www.common.net
www.jybe.com
Jigsaw Data
del.icio.us
www.jigsaw.com
del.icio.us
nTAG Interactive
Google Blogger
www.ntag.com
www.blogger.com/start
Dodgeball
Yahoo 360
www.dodgeball.com
360.yahoo.com
Playtxt
MSN Spaces
www.playtxt.net
spaces.msn.com
Jambo Networks
Flickr
www.jambonetworks.com
www.flickr.com
Plazes
HeyPix
www.plazes.com
www.heypix.com
Crunkie
QuakeCon
www.crunkie.com
www.quakecon.org
bluejack Q: Mobile Phone Bluejacking
There
www.bluejackq.com
www.there.com
Tikiwiki Community Portal
58
tikiwiki.org
MEANING
JotSpot
Webmap PropertyView
www.jotspot.com
www.webmap.com.au
Open Directory Project
TerraServer.com
dmoz.org
www.terraserver.com
Skype
TopoZone
www.skype.com
www.topozone.com
Jyve
NOAA CLASS
www.jyve.com
www.class.noaa.gov
piXlogic
Semantic Web Challenge
www.pixlogic.com
challenge.semanticweb.org
Purdue University’s Shape Search
Feedster (RSS Search Engine)
engineering.purdue.edu/PRECISE/dess.html
www.feedster.com
Google Video Search
Rojo (RSS Web service)
video.google.com
www.rojo.com
Yahoo! Video Search
Hive Group
video.search.yahoo.com
www.hivegroup.com
blinkx TV
SmartMoney.com’s Map of the Market
www.blinkx.com
www.smartmoney.com/marketmap
Singingfish
Peet’s Coffees and Teas
search.singingfish.com
www.peets.com/selector_coffee/coffee_selector.asp
Videora
10x10
www.videora.com
www.tenbyten.org/now.html
A9.com
Gapminder
www.a9.com
www.gapminder.org
Internet Archive
Vizible Corporation
www.archive.org
www.vizible.com
Google Desktop
GeoWall Consortium
desktop.google.com
geowall.org
X1 Technologies
Web Mining
(CSC LEF Technology Grant paper)
www.x1.com
www.csc.com/aboutus/lef/mds67_off/index.shtml#grants
ERIC – Education Resources Information Center
www.eric.ed.gov
Attensity
www.attensity.com
Virage
www.virage.com
Vision IQ
www.vision-iq.com
Adding Meaning to the Web
(CSC LEF Technology Grant paper)
www.csc.com/aboutus/lef/mds67_off/index.shtml#grants
59
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
LEF Associate Ed Luczak conducted the research for this report. A threetime recipient of the prestigious CSC Award for Technical Excellence,
Ed is one of CSC’s premier technologists. He has served in many strategic
roles in his 28-year career at CSC in the U.S. federal sector; among
the most noteworthy are roles with the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Ed’s specialties
include expert systems, complex data sharing and data semantics.
Working on Extreme Data has expanded how Ed thinks about information
technology, giving him a broad view of IT across numerous industries.
He now spends more time using Skype, a Pocket PC, GPS receivers, digital
audio devices, a Web-enabled camera phone, blogs, wikis and social
networking software – and exploring the role that these and other extreme
data technologies will play in innovation for corporations, governments
and consumers. Ed is based in New Carrollton, Maryland.
[email protected]
The LEF would like to thank the many others who contributed to this report:
Beverly Bacon, CSC
Dennis Franklin, CSC
David Moschella, CSC
Mike Benasutti, CSC
Lawrence Henry, CSC
Doug Neal, CSC
Jerry Blodgett, CSC
Dennis Hettema, OP3
Jeff Rushton, Vizible Corporation
Lisa Braun, CSC
Jim Kelly, Intel
Don Smith, CSC
Johan Bygden, CSC
Cai Kjaer, CSC
Carl Stålhandske, CSC
Peter Cochrane, ConceptLabs
Richard Kramer, CSC
Marc Stern, CSC
Tino Cremidis, CSC
Gilles Le Caro, CSC
Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago
Jerry Cronin, CSC
Jason Leigh,
Dennis Timmermans, OP3
Rob Cross, University of Virginia
University of Illinois at Chicago
Stéphanie Tostivint, CSC
Bill Cunningham, CSC
Vic Leonard, DigitalGlobe
Yulun Wang, InTouch Health
David Dossett, CSC
Laurence Lock Lee, CSC
Jason Westra, CSC
Phillip Ehlen, CSC
David MacLuskie, CSC
Alex Fox, ORBIMAGE
Christine Matthews, CSC
60
Computer Sciences Corporation
Worldwide CSC Headquarters
The Americas
2100 East Grand Avenue
El Segundo, California 90245
United States
+1.310.615.0311
European Group
The Royal Pavilion
Wellesley Road
Aldershot
Hampshire GU11 1PZ
United Kingdom
+44(0)1252.534000
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26 Talavera Road
Macquarie Park NSW 2113
Australia
+61(0)2.9034.3000
Asia
139 Cecil Street
#08-00 Cecil House
Singapore 069539
Republic of Singapore
+65.6221.9095
About CSC
Computer Sciences Corporation helps clients achieve strategic goals and profit
from the use of information technology.
With the broadest range of capabilities, CSC offers clients the solutions they need to
manage complexity, focus on core businesses, collaborate with partners and clients,
and improve operations.
CSC makes a special point of understanding its clients and provides experts with
real-world experience to with work them. CSC is vendor-independent, delivering
solutions that best meet each client’s unique requirements.
For more than 40 years, clients in industries and governments worldwide have
trusted CSC with their business process and information systems outsourcing, systems
integration and consulting needs.
The company trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “CSC.”
© 2005 Computer Sciences Corporation. All rights reserved.
Printed in USA 4M 8/05 AP WH712

I had not

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