Today NICTA is showcasing its latest ICT research and development at Techfest 2009 — and I’ll be liveblogging it right here.
NICTA is Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Centre of Excellence. It focuses on research which can then be commercialised in areas including biomedical and life sciences; intelligent transport systems; safety and security; environmental management; mobile systems and services; and software infrastructure.
The keynote is being given by Dr Ya-Qin Zhang, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft and Chairman of the Microsoft China R&D Group. I’ll be covering that if nothing else.
I’m not sure if the rest of the day is formal presentations (which I’ll liveblog) or a series of meet-and-greets and show-and-tells (which I’ll cover as best I can).
Bookmark this page and come back. We’ll start at about 11am Sydney time live from Australian Technology Park in Sydney.
If you can’t see the CoveritLive tool immediately below, then you’re not using a compatible browser.
Anything written without attribution will be from me. Anything not in quote marks is probably my paraphrase is what someone said, not their exact words.
Feel free to add questions and comments. The Twitter hashtag for the event is #techfest.
Hi – come visit us as the HR stand!
@Kate: Alas, I had to leave the event unexpectedly. But I’ll be doing some writing-up of the bits I did catch, and more interviews etc later.
7 second video of opening address by Microsoft
http://12seconds.tv/channel/bobbain/223989
some interesting stuff
– the bionic eye to connect light sensitive eye glasses to the human nervous system so those who can’t see can recognise faces and read (in Black and White). I was told that this will only be used on those who have seen in the past and that it applies at present to only one eye. It was admitted there are lots of “paperwork” and ethical considerations
– attempts to provide privacy interface to Twitter, Facebook and (my oh my) Centrelink. I asked if Centrelink would “come to the party” on this. I was told “we can but try”. Also features “sentiment indicators” testing how a person is perceived on the net. There were two projects involving sentiment indicators. I told of how at SLUG (Sydney Linux User Group) 10 years ago one Linux project was to gather data from every broadcast in Sydney and collate it so that those who might be interested could purchase broadcast data about themselves. Projec SPIN Stand 15
Techfest interviews on Vimeo include
Dr. Renato Ianella on Spin
http://vimeo.com/6065623
and of course “professional geek and new media reporter Stilgherrian”
http://vimeo.com/6065063
Here’s a picture regarding the Bionic Eye
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/hardware/soa/NICTA-Techfest-09-Photos/0,130061702,339297895-1s,00.htm
“The headgear that demonstrates NICTA’s bionic eye — the output of which can be seen on the screen on the top right corner. The output is a 32×32 grid with the intensity of each pixel giving depth, ie, closer is brighter.”
My question was regarding how difficult it would be for a person to read a book given the somewhat less than perfect display image.
I guess Reader’s Digest “Large Print” editions might do the job.
https://www.rd.com/offer/rdlp/giftown06/index.jsp?trkid=rdlp_rdcommini
Available in the USA only ! This was a point of contention with some Australian subscribers during my stint at the Digest.
@Bob Bain: Thanks for that extra linkage. There was a lot of good research showcased at Techfest, as I’m sure you’ll agree. I’ll revisit some of it over the coming weeks.