Now, the next-generation video effort that only culminated in RealVideo 11 in 2010, after much of the online world had left Real behind, is being regenerated by Intel. This morning, Intel announced the acquisition of an undisclosed number of RealNetwork patents related to next-generation video. And this afternoon, an Intel spokesperson confirmed to RWW that it will be offering employment to seven of Real's NGV engineers.

A more likely prospect is that Intel wants to get back in the video engineering game with a codec that it can license to others. Real will be granted the rights to continue to use its former codecs for its own products, according to Intel's Lemon, but not perpetually and not without limits. Real's principal product continues to be a media player, although early last year it signaled its intent to offer a kind of media synchronization service - another effort which has gone nowhere since.

With Real stepping back, Intel could conceivably license new and perfected NGV codecs for use in video recording devices, in home video consoles, and for use in certain elements of software that folks tend to use every day. Lemon was very cautious in pointing out that it's too early to say whether NGV could play a role as another embeddable format in Web browsers, both for PC and mobile devices. Although HTML5's original goal was to present a single, open, non-proprietary video codec for use by the <VIDEO> tag, developers have since had to settle for a single, standard methodology to access whatever codec the browser's makers have chosen to support. Microsoft prefers H.264, though Google still leads the initiative to push its open source WebM codec as an alternative.

Lemon stated that NGV may not necessarily compete with H.264 in all of its markets - that may be for product managers to decide later. Yet it is not inconceivable that Intel could add one more bundle of letters to the online codecs mix. This as growing adoption of HTML5 by developers, and in turn by browser makers, is showing the first signs of dissolving the once-impenetrable lock on the online video market held by Adobe Flash.

In its last quarterly Form 10-Q filed last November, RealNetworks stated it earned $8.8 million in its fiscal third quarter through the sale of things such as ringtones, on-demand videos, and "inter-carrier messages" (ways for wireless users on different networks to text one another), and another $1.6 million through the sale of mobile games. It lost about $2 million during the same period from licenses for RealPlayer, which is currently on version 15.

It now comes as no surprise that MasterCard has announced a partnership with Intel on a multi-year strategic partnership that is intended to enhance the security and payment experience for digital commerce. These are two titans in the tech and financial industries and shows one of the first steps of these two industries merging in the future.

Making A Dent In The 85%

According to the joint press release, the initial focus of the MasterCard and Intel partnership will be on MasterCard's PayPass payments hardware and Intel's Identity Protection Technology (IPT). The idea will be to make a faster, more secure transaction with a just a click or a tap of a card or smartphone through the NFC capabilities of PayPass.

There are larger currents in motion here than just creating better transactions hardware. According to MasterCard, 85% of transactions are still done in cash. The company's goal is to make a dent in that number. Even a half a percentage point change towards digital purchases could mean hundreds of millions of extra dollars flowing towards the payment processing industry. This is why MasterCard is repositioning itself not just as a payments firm, but as a technology company.

Convergence Of Tech & Payments

In 2011 there have been a multitude of partnerships made between tech and financial companies. A lot of the movement has to do with the emerging model of mobile payments, especially into the physical (not Web-based) world. The biggest one is probably the Google Wallet initiative, that has a wide group of companies in its early rolls (and more to come), including Google, Citi, MasterCard, Sprint and various NFC makers. There is also the Isis project that brings the other three carriers, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to bear with NFC capabilities. Last week American Express announced a $100 million fund to help fund e-commerce projects. While mobile will be a huge focus for this convergence between tech and financial, it is not the only push.

Square is pushing itself into the mainstream with deals with Wal-Mart, the carriers and Apple while Intuit has made partnerships with both Verizon and AT&T with an eye towards pushing its GoPayment dongle and QuickBooks infrastructure at small businesses. PayPal wants to be two things at once, both a technology leader and a payments company and has been making a lot of horizontal movements in the sector as well.

This is not just about the financial industry moving towards technology, the way MasterCard is trying to do it. The technology industry is equally as fervent to moves towards payments. Jack Dorsey, one the founders of Twitter, is probably the best example of this. He saw earlier than most that mobile was changing the entire tech industry and that payments would be a huge part of that. Hence, he started Square, one of the first pillars of the bridge that is being built between the two industries.

Both Apple and Google have been making pushes into payments. Apple has hundreds of millions of credit cards on file to support its iTunes model where as Google Checkouts has been positioned to be the de facto purchasing solution for Android apps.

Nevertheless, these designs look amazing. They have infinite scrolling, dynamic loading of graphics and new posts, easy re-sorting, keyboard shortcuts for navigation and, of course, one-click sharing to Google Plus "and other social sites." There are seven new templates, and they can be gently customized. More customization options will be added "in the coming weeks." The flagship Google blogs for Gmail, LatLong and Docs are getting dynamic makeovers, too.

From the Blogger Buzz blog, here are descriptions and examples of the seven new themes:

• Classic (Gmail): A modern twist on a traditional template, with infinite scrolling and images that load as you go
• Flipcard (M loves M) - Your photos are tiled across the page and flip to reveal the post title
• Magazine (Advanced Style) - A clean, elegant editorial style layout
• Mosaic (Crosby's Kitchen) - A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
• Sidebar (Blogger Buzz Blog) - An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
• Snapshot (Canelle et Vanille) - An interactive pinboard of your posts
• Timeslide (The Bleary-Eyed Father) - A horizontal view of your posts by time period

You can input the URL of any Blogger blog to preview it in Dynamic Views here.

Blogging Gets Complicated

Blogger is bringing the heat with this update. It builds on last month's overhaul of the blogging control panel and analytics dashboard, and its first native iPhone app launched earlier this month. I guess that rebranding effort we heard about in July isn't happening. Right now, the Blogger brand looks about as strong as ever. The move puts Blogger squarely in the camp of the bigger, louder, more intense new wave of publishing tools. These designs are not quite the full-screen blowouts of new ventures like Jux, but they certainly stretch the constraints of the term "blog."

It's a smart move, since competitors are going the other way. Tumblr designs aren't exactly minimal, but the tool is best suited for small posts that get re-shared into all kinds of different venues and layouts, and it pretty much owns that market. Posterous has tried to turn even sharper, rearranging its app around mobile posting and sharing, edging more into the territory of social media tools. And no one can forget WordPress, which is doing just fine, thank you very much, but its ecosystem rests on themes developed by third parties, and these new dynamic Blogger themes are a step or three above, technologically.

What do you think of the new Dynamic Views in Blogger? Tell us in the comments.

Samsung may hold the key. There are multiple routes that Samsung could travel with LiMo. It could passively support MeeGo's development from afar or actively throw resources at it to provide a framework for its own mobile OS Bada. One thing is clear: Intel cannot completely abandon MeeGo.

Intel's Conundrum

MeeGo is really the only hope that Intel has to push out a popular line of mobile devices (including netbooks, tablets and smartphones) that support a chip on an x86 framework. Originally MeeGo was a joint partnership between Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin. But once Nokia abandoned MeeGo in favor of Windows Phone, Intel has been supporting it on its own.

Intel does not have the capability to push out MeeGo on its own. Hence the original partnership with Nokia. Intel needs developer resources and at least one major mobile original equipment manufacturer to give the OS a fighting chance of breaking into the ecosystem.

Financial Times Deutschland was the first to report that the LiMo Foundatin may be interested. A reporter at Geek.com (who goes by the name of Gearlog) apparently asked LiMo executive director Morgan Gillis about partnering with MeeGo at Mobile World Congress in February 2010. "This could be very logical and beneficial to the market," Gillis said according to Gearlog. LiMo is an ARM-based platform but it would not be a stretch for the consortium to provide developers working on an x86 mobile solution.

One thing to look out for though is that the ARM foundation that makes the architecture that most mobile devices are currently built on, is an associate member of LiMo. Either ARM would need to give its consent that MeeGo be involved or the group could just oust ARM entirely, which would be pretty dramatic.

Samsung's Opportunity

What does Samsung do if MeeGo is part of the LiMo consortium? There is almost no way that LiMo would partner with Intel without Samsung's, a founding member of the group, approval. There are several different tracts:

1. Nothing - It can stand by Android, Windows Phone and Bada and continue to pump out high quality devices that look a lot like iPhones and iPads.
2. Develop By Proxy - Samsung could provide cash and resources to developers from the consortium, which also incudes Adobe, Mozilla, Verizon and McAfee as associate members. Think of the Russians supplying the Vietnamese to fight the Americans. This way Samsung does not upset Google or Microsoft while still having an option being developed in the wings.
3. Integrate MeeGo Into Bada - Just because Samsung might give tacit agreement to MeeGo, that does not mean its own OS would go out the window. Bada could easily live on top of MeeGo. Except, what would they call it? MeeLiGoBada?
4. Embrace - Start off slowly, build a couple devices and an app store and then dump Android and Windows Phone entirely. This ... probably won't happen.

LiMo's Resources

Take a look at this chart of LiMo's platform.

That is a pretty robust set of functionality right there. A lot of MeeGo's shortcomings could be shored up very quickly with LiMo support. As Gillis stated above, LiMo would probably like to get its hands on MeeGo.

Here is how LiMo describes itself:

LiMo Foundation is an industry consortium dedicated to creating the first truly open, hardware-independent, Linux-based operating system for mobile devices. Backing from major industry leaders puts LiMo at the Heart of the Mobile Industry and makes LiMo the unifying force in Mobile Linux.

So, is this Intel clutching for a life raft? Or was this a perfect match that is long overdue? Let us know in the comments.

It would make sense for Samsung to consider its options, especially in the wake of the Motorola/Google deal and the potential effects on the Android ecosystem. Yet, these rumors are also a classic case of the anatomy of how rumors circle the world of technology on a daily basis.

Anatomy Of A Mobile OS Rumor

Why does every mobile OS that goes by the wayside become associated with Samsung? Let's take a look at the factors:

• Samsung is the largest provider of Android smartphones across the globe and owns nearly 20% of the mobile market period.
• Nobody expects Google's Android partners to be happy with the Motorola deal and are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
• Samsung has a lot of development resources and licenses other mobile technology outside of Android, specifically Windows Phone 7.
• Mobile OSes like webOS and MeeGo are available and need a home.

The rumor equation is clear in the case of Samsung: large OEM plus homeless operating systems plus Google/Motorola. Every time a mobile OS starts circling the drain, reporters are going to wonder who might pick it up. As the big dog, Samsung will get the first run of rumors.

Why Is Samsung Being Tied To webOS and MeeGo?

Part of the webOS/Samsung rumor was that Samsung reportedly recruited HP ex-VP of marketing Raymond Wah to handle Samsung's PC sales. It may be a bit of a stretch to say that because Samsung went fishing for talent that at HP that it is also looking to acquire webOS.

The MeeGo rumors derive from a German wesbite called Netbooknew.de and reported by MeeGoExperts.com. Here is the pertinent quote from Netbooknews translated from German using Google Translate:

This does not mean that the MeeGo community to worry about the continued existence of this operating system need to worry, because apparently Samsung will step into the breach and continues to lead the future development.

This may all come down to hopeful thinking by wistful niche tech bloggers and enthusiasts who want to see a new home for MeeGo. Samsung already has a second-tier mobile operating system in Bada that outsells both webOS and Windows Phone globally. Yet, it is understandable for Samsung to keep its hedge it bets against Android and keep an eye on a potential replacement in MeeGo.

MeeGo was initially a joint project between Intel's Maemo and Nokia's Moblin projects and was designed as a response to mobile devices not supporting Intel's Atom line of mobile processors. The Linux-based OS has been doomed since Nokia shifted its resources away from the project when the company signed on to make Windows Phone 7 devices. In the opinion of one Linux admin, Intel has "been flogging a dead horse."

MeeGo: A New Linux OS to Fight iPhone, iPad and More

Nokia N9 & N950 Revealed: Meego Lives, Even As it Dies

The Benefits of MeeGo - An Ecosystem for Developers

Everything Wrong, From Start to Finish

Our Linux expert, Joe Brockmeier (known in the Linux community as Zonker) said that Intel and Nokia have "done everything entirely wrong, from start to finish" when it came to MeeGo. They put obstacles in the way for developers and innovation was hampered. When Moblin and Maemo were merged, the Linux community was not entirely behind the move and developers were discouraged from making changes that were not under the thumb of either Intel or Nokia.

The ostensible death of MeeGo will compound Intel's mobile problem. Mobile is an ARM-based world. Intel's Atom processor designed for mobile devices has found no real home in any popular devices. MeeGo was supposed to be Intel's way to tie an operating system to a chip and create a device line that would be entirely Atom. Nokia then fled to Microsoft and the other OEMs primarily use chips made ARM-based chips made from Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

No Dice for Vertical Atom Integration

One of the reasons that Apple has a line of superior devices with iOS is that it designs its A-series ARM chips specifically for the operating system. It is the classic vertical integration scheme of device design. Android, almost by definition, cannot do this because of the nature of the ecosystem. Android runs on ARM but not all chips are the same, from Humming Birds to SnapDragons.

Nokia did release one MeeGo phone earlier with the N9, to good reviews. Yet, that phone is not going to be sold in the U.S. and Nokia is probably not going to be making anymore MeeGo-based phones for the mass market.

The death spiral of MeeGo wipes out the dark horse of the mobile ecosystem. Android, while dominant, is in a precarious position amid patents battles and how OEMs eventually respond to Google's acquisition of Motorola. If Android were to be dragged down by the legal system, MeeGo could have been the open-source alternative that OEMs turned to.

Linux community: what do you think about the final death spasms of MeeGo? Is it worth continuing as an independent project outside of Intel and Nokia's watchful eyes? Let us know in the comments.

That being said, the education technology market is booming, and many schools are seeing the value in equipping their students with their own personal computing devices.

I've had the opportunity to test-drive two of the student-oriented PCs on the market - the Intel-powered Classmate PC and Google's Chromebook - for the past few weeks. In lieu of a traditional "under the hood" review, where I just compare the specs (we don't review hardware often here at ReadWriteWeb), I want to address some of the larger questions at stake schools will weigh when considering which, if any, of these devices they'll adopt for one-to-one programs.

Arguably the most important thing to recognize when it comes to netbooks or tablets or laptops or any technology in the classroom is that the technology itself isn't some silver bullet that magically modernizes teaching and learning. Putting a personal computer in the hands of each student does give that student access to computing power and (hopefully) to the Internet. But the PC itself doesn't necessarily change or improve instruction. That needs to change as well, whether students have iPads, Chromebooks, Classmate PCs, or cellphones, otherwise these devices are simply just a very expensive upgrade to the old pen-and-paper, where the students take notes while the teacher lectures at the front of the classroom.

It's not the device itself that matters, it's how you use it.

Except when you're handing out devices to students, particularly K-12 students, the hardware does matter. It has to be durable. It has to reliable. It has to be affordable. It has to work.

If that sounds like the promise of the One Laptop Per Child movement - designing a low-cost computer that could be used by kids in any environment - then the Classmate PC will look like a familiar device. In terms of hardware then, the Classmate PC seems well-suited for younger students in particular. Its exterior is rubberized. It has rounded corners and a handle. It has a water-resistant keyboard and screen. It's designed to survive bumps and scratches and even drops (from a height of up to 19").

The Classmate PC also has a rotatable screen, allowing the device to be used more like a tablet - either with or without a stylus.

While those elements do set the Classmate PC apart from its netbook cousin Chromebook, the two devices share a lot of similarities when it comes to the rest of what's under the hood: fairly similar cameras, memory, storage, and processor speeds, for example. Some of the early reviews of the Chromebook have pointed out that the device feels underpowered, and no doubt power-users in the under-18 set would be quick to reach their limitations with either of these devices. But as netbooks, both of these options perform adequately and will likely meet the needs of most students.

Next Page: Hardware Specs, Software and Operating System Considerations

Operating Systems, Software, and The Web

The Classmate PCs are loaded with various educational software titles, and some of the big names in educational publishing - Lego, McGraw-Hill, for example - are partners in the endeavor. The Classmate PC also has a Classroom Management and Collaboration Application Suite that allows the computers in a classroom to be networked so that students can easily view their teacher's screen, for example, or work with one another.

That all feels very standard when it comes to a school- and student-focused piece of equipment. The Chromebook, when it comes to both the OS and the software, feels quite different. It is, as Google points out, "nothing but Web," and while that does open a lot of possibilities for taking advantage of online resources from traditional and non-traditional academic sources, it's going to be a big leap for many schools.

Of course, for those that already utilize Google Apps for Education, the Chromebooks make a lot of sense. That same ease by which student accounts (access to Gmail, Docs, and the like) can be managed is now extended to their devices. Updating and upgrading will be far easier for administrators; no longer will every computer have to be rounded up in order to have new software installed.

But just as the Web-based system can be greatly liberatory here, the requirement that students have Internet access for a Chromebook could pose a problem, particularly for those without Internet connections at home. Google does say it plans to roll out support for offline Gmail and Google Docs over the summer, which seems like a baseline requirement for making Chromebooks viable.

And there are still many tools that students and teachers utilize that don't yet have a Web app. Take Skype, for example, which has seen great adoption by teachers for linking their classrooms with others. Or take Google's own popular Google Earth or Sketchup tools, neither of which can, as of yet, work in the Chrome OS.

These are the sorts of details that make the Chromebook feel not-quite-ready for primetime. But for schools that are weighing one-to-one laptop programs, there are really no perfect tools yet, as costs (for hardware, software, and IT support) still make the idea largely prohibitive for most schools.

Google has a lot of things right here: a Web-based, rental program, for example. Of course, the Classmate does too, as an heir to the idea of cheap and durable laptops of the One Laptop per Child movement (but, at the end of the day, still quite an expensive piece of equipment).

Looking at these two netbooks side-by-side, it's clear that the costs of putting computers in every child's hands is still quite an expensive proposition. But of course, the costs of not doing so are high as well.

Education has been the key theme as the President has travelled the country this week, following the release of his 2012 budget on Monday. The proposed budget calls for a $2 billion increase in education spending -- $77.4 billion total, including $90 million to create ARPA-ED, an education technology agency modeled on DARPA, the Defense Department research agency responsible for, among other things, ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

The visit to Intel's chip manufacturing plant here in Oregon coincides with Obama's naming of Intel CEO Paul Otellini to the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Otellini has long been a critic of the President's economic policies stating in the past that he doesn't think the administration understands "what it takes to create jobs." But jobs creation, particularly those in the high tech sector, is something that the President is pushing.

Intel is also a key stop as part of the President's budget and agenda because the company has long been a strong supporter of STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math). The President's visit reiterates his support for these sorts of efforts that will help create a high-tech workforce. The President met with several student groups during the tour of the Intel facility, including seventh grade girls who are learning to program with LEGO Mindstorms.

The President praised Intel for its commitment to American manufacturing, technology and innovation and he said that the company was a model for its STEM education efforts.

"We can't win the future if we lose the race to educate our children," said the President, but he reassured the crowd of Intel employees that "America will win."

"Video on the iPad," says Sam Blackman, CEO of video transcoding company Elemental, "has become a game changer for interest in video delivery to mobile devices." Did you know that almost every video broadcast online now needs to have 20 different copies of it made? Faster, cheaper transcoding technology could change that, too; some day, multiple personalized versions of every video could made for every individual who wants to watch it.

Elemental announced this week that its software now runs on Intel machines, in addition to the support for Nvidia chips it has offered for several years. Specifically, Elemental now leverages Intel's new Sandy Bridge chips, which were widely criticized in reports yesterday for including baked-in Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.

While that's a real buzz-kill to the consumer markets Sandy Bridge is aimed at, the technology at issue will hopefully remain interesting and will certainly be applied in interesting ways in contexts where DRM is taken for granted. If you don't buy that, then consider this a discussion of all the cool power that Intel's application of DRM will put a damper on for consumers.

Here's what Elemental's video transcoding looks like today.

Elemental can today create a newly formatted copy of any video in 20X real-time, something essential in a world where Apple, Google and Adobe all require 5 to 7 different copies of every video to serve up depending on a consumer's bandwidth.

The company does this by using a multi-core GPU, the chip originally intended to process graphics in our computers, instead of simply the single-process serial computation of the CPU. That's an increasingly common tactic among many different companies, but Blackman says Elemental's unique IP lies largely in "deciding what parts of the image processing algorithm to do on GPU and what part to do serially on the CPU."

Below: Elemental's consumer product, Badaboom, runs circles around iTunes transcoding, the company says.

The Future of Real Time Video Transcoding

Today, video providers make 20 copies of each video just once - because the cost of transcoding is higher than the cost of storing those videos.

Imagine what might change in the world of video, as Moore's Law and other factors drive the price down and the speed up for video transcoding.

"As we can drive the cost of the computational piece of transcoding down," says Blackman, "it really opens up what you can do."

Right now, Youtube or whoever has to store all those copies of a video and they have to replicate all those videos throughout the [Content Delivery] network for fast starting. Right now that's because the cost of storage is lower than the cost of transcoding. As we get faster and faster and drop the cost around transcoding, instead of storing 30 copies around the world, you could store 1 copy and transcode in a custom way for a customer, perhaps specific advertisements and product placement. We have a long way to go before we can get to that scenario.

"Right now there's no way to customize ads on video, imagine if ESPN could target those ads directly to me as a viewer. If you were doing video formatting in real time, you could do customization in real time and make it much more valuable for advertisers. We're just in the very beginning of the monetization process, it's going to have to happen because there is a lot of content."

Blackman says he sees possibilities like product placements and changing billboards in videos beginning to arise in 2012 or 2012. I hope that real-time personalized transcoding will be used to do far more than just personalize advertisements, but ads are what pay content producers' bills - and online video needs help figuring out how to sustain itself.

"We use off the shelf CPUs and GPUs and nowhere else is Moore's law more powerful," Blackman says.

More power to video transcoding equals more real-time, more personalized and more as yet unexpected possibilities. That's why video transcoding technology is so interesting.

Disclosure: Intel is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.

The language, also known as Akkadian, was reconstructed by a group of scholars from Cambridge University headed by Dr. Martin Worthington. In order to uncover the secrets of the language's sounds, the group studied letter combinations and patterns internal to the written language and compared it to transcriptions into other, better known ancient languages.

Why does it matter that we can now have a reasonably accurate idea of how the Babylonian language sounded? Aside from possibly shedding light on the past in ways we can't anticipate, it ties us to our own past. Just Hammurabi's laws and the Gilgamesh story alone are high points in human response to a chaotic world. Not to mention that one might easily make a case for the transfer of information from an aural to a written speech system and back at will is the genesis of computer science.

And also, come on. How cool is it? It is very cool!

Seal photo from Wikimedia Commons | tip via A Blog About History

Similarly, Zoho CRM customers can search for customer accounts, create new accounts and add notes and details directly from within their email inbox. All of this is made possible by Google's announcement of contextual gadgets API for Gmail from earlier this year. Third party app developers can embed their services directly within Gmail, healping to streamline business operations.

"Instead of hopping from browser tab to browser tab as they move through a workflow, everything needed to get the job done is presented in a single browser tab," said Zoho's Raju Vegesna. "The contextual integrations for Gmail are our first cross-vendor efforts and open the doors to similar integrations with other third-party applications."

It's wise for Zoho to attempt to reach customers on multiple platforms, especially with the popularity of Gmail and Google Apps. It's likely that many small businesses use a combination of Google, Zoho and other suites to satisfy their operations needs. Zoho says this is "just the beginning" for its Google offerings, so expect further integration in the future.

Hulu Plus requires a $10/month subscription in order access content across a wide variety of portals, including iOS devices, connected TVs, gaming consoles and now the Roku. Apple TV will let users rent TV shows for $.99 a pop, but avid TV watchers may prefer an unlimited monthly plan from Hulu.

The other area the Roku is beating the $99 Apple TV is its price. Roku's new line of boxes starts at $59 for built-in WiFi and 720p HD playback via HDMI. For $79, customers can access 1080p streaming, and at $99, a USB port for local file playback is added. The Apple TV, on the other hand, is only capable of 720p streaming. The new Roku boxes also feature a 7-second rewind feature, helping to cut down on stream buffer times when trying to quickly rewind a program.

Any little feature is certainly going to help, but the partnership with Hulu has propelled the Roku into the center of the fight for our living room entertainment. There's no word yet on the stream quality, but so far Hulu Plus has only offered 720p to other devices. Regardless of this, however, Roku's deal with Hulu is a big win for the company and makes the set-top box conversation much more interesting.

The social element has always been one of the weakest links in security. In other words, no matter the technological protections, human behaviors can be terribly insecure, as an experiment at Defcon this summer demonstrated (every company participating in a security contest had one of their employees hand over security data). So arguably, this social piece - the encouragement and expectations that we all "share" - may create even more vulnerabilities as social networks grow.

1. The emphasis will be on protecting information, not just systems: As consumers and businesses alike move to store more and more of their important information online, the requirements for security will go beyond simply managing systems to protecting the data these systems house. Rather than focusing on developing processes for protecting the systems that house information, more granular control will be demanded - by users and by companies - to protect the data stored therein.
2. Tackling myths about security and the cloud: One of the reasons consistently given for not moving to the cloud is fears about security. As cloud computing continues its adoption, both vendors and customers will have to better understand the questions to ask and the services to provide in order to maintain security.
3. New platforms and new devices will create new opportunities for cybercriminals. Security threats have long been associated with personal computers running Windows. But the proliferation of new platforms and new devices - the iPhone, the iPad, Android, for example - will likely create new threats. The Android phone saw its first Trojan this summer, and reports continue with malicious apps and spyware, and not just on Android.
4. Malware will appear on "reputable" sites. No longer is it simply "sketchy" website that are poised to infect users' computers, as sites like the New York Times find themselves hosting malware. As computer users have become more savvy about email scams, some scammers are starting to purchase advertising on reputable sites instead.
5. "Old" threats still pose a risk. Although SQL-injections, cross-site-scripting, and vulnerabilities in various applications are not new, they continue to be one of the main entry points for attackers gaining access to networks and data.

The pressure will be on for companies to move quickly to respond to these vulnerabilities. Although new techniques are constantly being developed, many organizations still have much to do in order to secure themselves from older threats to their networks. And as always, the human element - the people who click on strange links, via Direct Message, via email, or via web advertising - will be the biggest hurdle for organizations to overcome.

Photo credits: Flickr user Scott Davidson

The app makes it easy to connect via mobile to a StatusNet site, and it supports posting from an iPhone, sending attachments, as well as following public, profile and friends' timelines. Users can connect to accounts on multiple StatusNet sites from within the app.

Outages with Twitter earlier this year helped increase interest in alternatives. But the appeal of StatusNet isn't simply that it's an alternative to Twitter - it's that it offers an open source, distributed alternative. As former Twitter developer Alex Payne noted in a blog post just last month - the last thing he will ever write about Twitter - that's a path that Twitter expressly chose not to take.

But it's one that StatusNet has taken to great success, securing another round of funding earlier this summer in order to expand its enterprise offerings. StatusNet offers a hosted version. But one of the benefits of StatusNet is that organizations can also create their own private networks that function behind company firewalls, important as more people turn to social networking for communications, in addition to or perhaps even replacing email.

Bringing Location Indoors

Attendees could scan these markers to access information about the conference and to view localized information about events, booths and rooms around them. Imagine entering a crowded area full of demonstrators and booths. Wouldn't it be easier to find the one you are looking for by seeing it appear in your field of vision? The same outdoor convenience that comes from locating the nearest Starbucks, or the spot where you parked your car can now be used indoors with the help of LLA markers.

The experiment seemed to garner decent participation from attendees, says metaio. The numbers aren't astronomical, but they do bode well for the potential of indoor augmented reality solutions. It's certainly not bad for what metaio calls "the first large scale indoor navigation use case for augmented reality."

This implementation used 30 large black-and-white LLA markers, and that was probably a wise decision. There's no reason that LLA technology couldn't be used with image-recognition beyond 2D barcodes. In this case, however, large black-and-white markers probably did a better job attracting curious attendees to trying out the technology. Indoor location-based AR experiences could have a bright future, but what will that future look like?

A Hypothetical Future for Indoor AR

Here's a few "what ifs." What if an AR app was trained not to recognize 2D barcodes or images, but instead a 3D landscape? A 3D model of a permanent establishment, like a mall or a stadium, could be used to train an image recognition engine to recognize the specific location of a user holding up a smartphone. That kind of sophistication, however, might require more computing power than is currently available on the smartphones of today.

Or what if at an event like a conference, stationery objects (like overhanging signage) were used as markers that would determine a user's exact location? Image markers today can display 3D content in perspective based on the what angle and distance from which the camera views it. Why not reverse this calculation to determine the cameras location in 3D space in relation to the marker based on these same variables?

Purely hypothetical, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility for augmented reality. Until GPS chips in smartphones are strong enough to determine accurate location indoors, these are the types of solutions are what indoor AR will need to rely on going forward.