Webware

Wikimedia CTO Brion Vibber

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

What is the significance of Sun Microsystems' announcement Wednesday that Wikimedia is buying truckloads of Sun servers? It's that the Wikimedia team, which runs Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikibooks, and other sites, is gearing up to change the nature of the reference services. Wikipedia, in particular, is going to get a lot more visual. Limits on the size of upload files will be increased to 100MB. Video--hosted by Wikimedia--will soon be part of the mix.

With the more aggressive support for media files will come, eventually, new ways to edit those media. Kaltura has been working with Wikimedia to create an online video editor that supports wikipedia concepts: users will be able to edit others' videos, and everyone will be able to see the edit history.

Wikimedia is also considering building an online photo editor into the service, so users will be able to do the same things with photos that they do with text--enhance, clarify, and revert the last user's edits. Failing that, Wikimedia CTO Brion Vibber told me Wednesday, Wikipedia users may soon get a way to view the revisions that people make offline to photos by flipping through previous versions of the images.

The one holdup I can see with Wikimedia's newish love of media files is its fetish for open-source technologies. Vibber told me the new video support is being designed first to run in Firefox 3.1, because this open-source browser has native support for the open-source Ogg Theora codec. I'm sure that will make for a good experience in Firefox, but philosophy aside, I'd like to see even support for all browsers, not just Firefox.

Currently, all of Wikipedia, including the photos and audio, fits in less than 5 terabytes of storage. The text alone is less 500 MB compressed. With the new servers and the new media editing services, Vibber expects Wikipedia to be using 10 TB to 15 TB by the end of 2009.

Visual search engine Searchme has a sexy new iPhone app that brings its signature Coverflow-like interface to the phone's 3.5-inch display. Search results come in the form of large thumbnails with short content summaries underneath. To browse through them you simply flick your finger across the screen, just like you would with album covers in the phone's iPod application.

The app also supports pinch gestures for zooming in on thumbnails. This lets you see the the details of a page before visiting it in Safari--something that can be done with a simple double tap on any result. This may seem like a trivial feature, but it can be immensely helpful, and in some cases even prevent you from having to visit the site at all. In my case I was able to pull up a restaurant's address just by zooming in, saving me some time and data.

Searchme knows when you've flipped it on its side and will display the search results in gorgeous Coveflow-style.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The application makes use of the iPhone's accelerometer, and can tell when you've got it in landscape mode. When flipped, you get an additional two thumbnails on the screen, and it does away with the summaries entirely. It's also marvelously fun to zoom back and forth.

This app is definitely more than eye candy. Over a 3G connection it took just three seconds to bring up search results that I was able to flip through, and another 15 to stream in the thumbnails. During that loading time I was able to browse through the titles and summaries with zero lag which is really impressive.

Searchme is free and can be found in the app store (iTunes link).

Previous Searchme coverage:
Searchme tries music streaming to attract users
Search interfaces of tomorrow you can try today
Searchme nabs $31 million from Google backer, others

Google says it aims Gmail at the technological elite, knowing that the information overload problems they have today will be the problems mainstream users have tomorrow. But apparently the company isn't above appealing to those who are willing to judge a book by its cover as well as its content.

On Wednesday, Google launched themes for Gmail, a feature that lets people customize the appearance of the Webmail application with a variety of new looks. Google is gradually rolling out the new feature to Gmail members "over the next couple of days," said Gmail team member Annie Chen.

It's something of a departure for a site that prides itself on its utilitarian nature--even the addition of graphical smileys to Gmail can be justified as improving a message's emotional nuance. But given Google's move toward the mainstream, it's smart. People like to personalize their frequently-used computing tools.

Perhaps more interesting from a brand perspective, Google is even willing to give up the Gmail logo in some of the skins. That suits me fine--I find the logo an eye-trippingly ugly hodgepodge of the Google G, a graphical envelope for the "m", and three sans-serif letters for "ail."

Now showing: Gmail themes.

(Credit: Google)

Real estate search site Trulia announced Wednesday that it has inked a deal with 1020 Placecast, an advertising company that uses location-based information to target audiences, that will see the site's advertising become location-specific.

Once users input a location they want to learn more about on Trulia, Placecast will access that data and apply it as a key component along with common demographic data points like psychographic information to provide more targeted ads.

"Once we know the place a user is interested in, we can derive a lot of useful insights about what kind of consumer they are, and then serve them a very targeted ad," Alistair Goodman, CEO of Placecast, said in a statement.

In order to deliver that ad, Placecast works with publishers in categories such as travel, events, real estate, and weather to offer advertisements that not only try to appeal to visitors, but make their location a key factor in targeting them.

The partnership with Placecast is extremely important for Trulia. The company is naturally affected by the downturn in the real estate market, and it relies on home ownership for success. Realizing that, Trulia executives needed to act and increase revenue as quickly as possible during these suspect times, and they evidently believe Placecast is their best bet.

Eariler this month, I spoke with Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript. We discussed the development process for the open-source Firefox browser, the status of Firefox mobile, and new competition.

Eich maintained that increasing competition from Google and Apple, as well as Microsoft, is good for developers and users. It also helps that the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation garnered $75 million in revenue, mostly from its search partnership with Google, which ironically just launched Chrome, a competitor to Firefox. With $33 million in expenses last year, it appears the Mozilla team is well funded to continue development at a rapid pace and attract top talent.

Regarding competition with Google's Chrome and other browsers, Eich said:

It's really a neck and neck race. There is a contest going on not only between Google and Mozilla but also Apple to have the fastest JavaScript engine, to have the best performance on various benchmarks. This is great. Competition is good for users and for Web developers. Another focus for us, especially for me is the Web developers...We are right in there, we are slugging it out. On the Google benchmarks their JavaScript engine is faster, on Apple's benchmarks we're faster than Google currently. It is going to vary, you are going to see it go back and forth, so it is only going to go up, which is the best thing for developers and that is what we are focused on.

Watch the video

Google has released a new application for Mac users called "Vocito" that puts GrandCentral calling right on your desktop. It integrates with OS X's address book, Automater app, and third-party applications like Blacktree's QuickSilver to let you start a GrandCentral-powered call no matter what you're doing on your machine.

Similar to JaJah and Jaxtr, Vocito's system for setting up calls involves you first picking who you want to call, then choosing which one of your GrandCentral-connected phones you want it to be connected from. You then hit dial and GrandCentral does the rest. It's basically the same exact thing you've been able to do with GrandCentral's Web interface for years, but now you can have a deeper level of integration across your entire system.

This deeper integration centers around a slick and simple Mac taskbar drop-down application that's directly integrated with the Address Book app. It lets you start a call almost as fast as doing a Spotlight search. This is made a little easier if you're a Quicksilver user, since you can search for contacts and call them via Vocito with the included plug-in. In most cases, this worked for me with about six keyboard strokes, which I found faster than picking up my phone to dial a contact.

Vocito's simple taskbar application lets you hunt through your address book and make a call no matter what you're doing on your computer.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

If you don't have time for six keystrokes, the application lets you save a customized phone call preset as an AppleScript command. Clicking it begins the call immediately. You can leave these laying around your desktop, or put them into a folder to keep in a stack on your dock for handy "speed dialing" later on.

Vocito is free to use and will run on both PPC and Intel Macs. You will, however, need a GrandCentral account, which Google continues to keep in a highly limited beta--that is, unless you're homeless.

Netflix's streaming movie service is finding itself on more and more devices, and recently the company's blog featured a detailed account of exactly how movies are encoded. While many companies hide behind misleading resolution figures like "720p video," video geeks know that bit rate is a much better indicator of how good a video will look. Netflix gets pretty in-depth with the specifications of the new encodes:

"The VC1 encoders are more efficient than the WMV3 encoders, so we are currently encoding VC1AP at slightly lower birates: 375, 500, 1000, and 1500kbps, all square pixel. At some point we are likely to add a couple more resolutions of non-square pixel encodes capturing the original pixel-aspect-ratio of the source."

And the new high-definition encodes:

"We experimented with first-generation WMV3 encodes at 4000kbps and 5500kbps, but settled on second-generation HD encodes with VC1AP at 2600kbps and 3800kbps, which extends their accessibility down to lower home broadband connections. As with SD, encodes of film material are at 24fps, and encodes of shot-to-video material are at 30fps (or 25fps for PAL), rather than the 60fps that would come from a Blu-ray disc - we judged the 60fps content as too expensive of bandwidth for now. In general, these encodes are definitively better than SD, but won't challenge well-executed Blu-ray encodes - that would require a bitrate out of reach for most domestic broadband today. We believe Moore's law will drive home broadband higher and higher enabling full 1080p60 encodes in a few years."

It's definitely worth checking out the full blog, as even more details are revealed, including why only stereo audio is included and how video quality is adjusted to match your connection speed. We haven't done a full evaluation of Netflix's new HD video streams yet, but we're hoping they're close to Vudu's HDX content, which does a very good job of approaching Blu-ray levels even with current bandwidth limitations.

Blinkx, a British video search compan that already tried to acquire online advertising firm Miva, announced Wednesday that it is placing another bid to acquire the company.

Only this time around, Blinkx's offer is just $0.55 per share for Miva--less than half its original offer of $1.20 per share.

"Blinkx believes the proposal is highly attractive for Miva shareholders, particularly in light of issues in the Miva business and current market conditions," a release from Blinkx reads. "Blinkx's proposal represents a 108 percent premium above the closing price of Miva common stock of $0.2643 on November 18, 2008, and a 39 percent premium over the average closing price for the 30 days prior to November 18, 2008."

Miva has faced some serious issues over the past few months. Its stock price has been negatively affected by the economic downturn and reports of online advertising slowing haven't helped. To make matters worse, the company experienced a GAAP net loss of $10.5 million during its last quarter on just $28 million in revenue, making the possible acquisition bid appealing to some shareholders who fear an even greater decline in value.

For its part, Blinkx didn't go easy on Miva's performance or its inability to fix its problems. In a statement, Blinkx executives claim "Miva has reported a decline in cash for the past four quarters, and Blinkx is concerned that valuable time has been wasted whilst Miva's resources dwindled, resulting in constraints on capital to facilitate growth. Moreover, Miva has resorted to an expensive line of credit to fund future operations, which is also likely to impact future growth prospects in exchange for short-term working capital benefits."

For all of Miva's problems, Blinkx still believes the company is worth acquiring. Blinkx executives claim that its own "matching technology" would immediately improve Miva's platform and that more search traffic from the company's ad network could be monetized at higher rates through Blinkx's technology.

Miva has yet to respond to the acquisition bid. But if Miva does accept it, Blinkx would use cash to complete the acquisition.

The interplanetary network that Vint Cerf envisioned years ago got its first real test recently. The EPOXI spacecraft, which carried the Deep Impact probe to Comet Talent 1 in 2005, had its software reconfigured after delivering the payload to work as a test bed for NASA's new Disruption-Tolerant Networking protocol. As the craft dropped back toward Earth for one of the gravity assists that will ultimately sling it back toward the comet in 2010, it transmitted simulated images of the Martian moon Phobos using the new protocol.

The trial turned EPOXI into one of 10 nodes in a test network (the other nine were on Earth), to verify the reliability and robustness of the new networking architecture.

This new networking system, an outgrowth of Cerf's Interplanetary Net project, can be layered on top of TCP/IP, the protocol that today's Internet uses. But although DTN is designed for a different environment than Earth, ultimately the technology may find its way back here, to improve communication back home.

How to network in space
JPL's Adrian Hooke, team lead and manager of space-networking architecture for NASA, explained the limitations of TCP/IP-based Internet to me. Although we tend to think of the Internet as routing around faults, he said, it is "not actually tolerant of disconnection between two machines." If you lose a link between relay stations (routers), he explained, "the routers start dumping packets on the floor after a few milliseconds."

Out in the solar system, where distance means that point-to-point communication time of a single bit can take minutes or hours, and where there is no system of interconnected routers, relay stations need to be smarter and more robust. Dropping packets doesn't work. "In space, it's very rare that you have an end-to-end path," Hooke said.

Disruption-Tolerant Networking devices don't just send off packets to the next device in the communications chain, as routers do. Instead, they hold on to packets until they expect that they will be received, and after they send them, they keep holding on to them until they receive an acknowledgment. Only once the packets are acknowledged do they release "custody" of the data to the next link in the communications chain.

It's a network. In space.

(Credit: NASA/JPL)

DTN networks need more smarts and storage than typical routers. They need to know which devices they can send to, and when, since planets and space vehicles don't stay put. And they need enough storage to hang on to packets that are coming in even when there may not be a receiver onto which they can offload them.

These concepts are not new. E-mail routers use store-and-forward architectures to transfer information, and mesh networks are opportunistic with their connections. But getting the DTN protocols certified for space operations requires a lengthy development cycle. Hooke told me that NASA hopes to have DTN ready to be built into spacecraft and ground-based radios in 2011, but that it will be four or five years after that before the technology will then make it into space. In 2015 or 2016, he said, "an interesting cluster of missions to the moon" will be launching, and he hopes to see DTN on them.

He also expects DTN to be part of the communications protocol for the Mars Sample Return mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2020 (but will probably be more like 2025). In that mission, a "full fleet of spacecraft" from several countries will all need to interoperate, and DTN should make the communications more reliable, and easier to build, than a patchwork of point-to-point radios. But first NASA and other space agencies need to know it works.

Meanwhile, back on Earth
DTN concepts are being applied to similarly flaky networks back home. Not surprisingly for a DARPA-funded project, the US military (the Marine Corps, to be specific) is experimenting with DTN for "stressed tactical military communications." On a battlefield, as in space, there's rarely an existing communications infrastructure a device can drop in to, so data radios need to be more tolerant of poor networks and opportunistically take advantage of communications links when they are available. Likewise, the Navy is looking at DTN to help submarines send and receive data in bursts when they surface or come close to a relay buoy.

DTN can integrate with existing TCP/IP networks, Hooke told me. "Bundle agents" can sit on the Internet and handle the store-and-forward protocols as well as the transfer of data from occasionally-connected devices to the main Internet.

And not all applications are military. A team in Sweden is using DTN to track reindeer movement (via geolocators tagged to animals), for example. Intel is looking at DTN to build out networks in developing countries with no communications grid. And in our own backyard, cellular equipment manufacturers are thinking about DTN for devices at the edges of expanding networks.

Apptera, a company that delivers visual and voice advertising, announced on Wednesday that it has secured $10.5 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Alloy Ventures, and Walden International. The company also announced that former Yahoo senior executive David Karnstedt joined its board of directors.

According to the company, the new investment will be used to expand its mobile-advertising network and improve its MobileAd Xchange program, which allows advertisers to reach mobile-phone users.

Apptera has partnered with AT&T, AOL, and other technology platforms to deliver its ads, and it claims that it currently serves millions of advertisements each month. Most of those ads come in the form of commercials heard through free 411 services and AOL's Moviefone.

Funding and ad placement aside, Apptera still has one major issue to overcome: competition. Google and Microsoft have made it abundantly clear that mobile advertising is the next frontier, and both companies are exploring ways to corner the market. And although that probably won't happen for a few years, Apptera needs to ensure that it's ready when major companies enter the market.