Accenture Labs

Dana Le will demonstrate the Personal Awareness Assistant (PAA): Simple AI and Wireless Networking Combined with Wearable Computing to Supplement the Human Mind.

"What catapults the PAA past a simple recording device is its ability to respond to particular contexts and situations. For example, when a user is introduced to someone new, the Assistant recognizes the phrase, “It’s nice to meet you,” records the name of the person as she introduces herself and takes a low-resolution picture. All this takes place without any specific command from the user.

Once the device captures the data, it automatically categorizes the information into a pre-designated domain—in this case a sophisticated address book complete with audio, digital image, date/time stamp and location. Because the data is stored contextually, information retrieval is straightforward. A simple inquiry, such as “Who was that person I met at lunch last Thursday?” brings up the appropriate information. Using Global Positioning System (GPS), the Assistant also can determine where the user is located, such as the office or visiting clients, to further finetune and categorize a response."

Artificial Development

Artificial Development is building CCortex™, a complete 20-billion neuron simulation of the Human Cortex and peripheral systems, on a cluster of 500 computers - the largest neural network created to date.

Artificial Development plans to deliver a wide range of commercial products based on artificial versions of the human brain that will enhance business relationships globally. Marcos Guillen, CEO, will be on hand to demo this fascinating new platform.

The Croquet Project

A project of Alan Kay, Julian Lombardi, Marc McCahill, Andreas Raab, David P. Reed and David A. Smith, Croquet is creating the post browser Internet. Julian Lombard and David A. Smith will be on hand to demonstrate progress to date. What if we were to create a new operating system and user interface? What kinds of decisions would we make that we might have been unable to even consider 20 or 30 years ago? Knowing what we know today, how far could we go? Come find out...

Electric Sheep

Created by pioneering designer Spot Draves, Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver run by thousands of people all over the world. It can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers "sleep", the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep". The result is a collective "android dream", an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience.

Draves will be on hand to demo and discuss his future plans for this organic product.

Evolution Robotics

Evolution Robotics focuses much of its R&D in the area of computer vision because of the potential it offers for current and future product developments. Vision is a versatile capability useful for many tasks including, but not limited to autonomous navigation, object recognition and human-robot interaction. In addition, camera technologies have become a commodity thanks to the widespread application of webcams, digital cameras, and cell-phone cameras. The main challenge with vision is to develop algorithms that reliably and efficiently solve a problem in realistic settings, with limited computing power.

Evolution Robotics ViPR™ (visual pattern recognition) technology provides a reliable and robust vision solution that truly gives electronic devices the ability to detect and recognize complex visual patterns - in effect, to see.

Google

Members of the Google Earth and Google Desktop teams (including Google Desktop product manager, Nikhil Bhatla) will be at Tech Night to show off these powerful new geographical and personal search applications.

From About Google Earth: Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.
 
•Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in.
•Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.
•Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.
•Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own annotations.

From About Google Desktop: Google Desktop doesn't just help you search your computer; it also helps you gather new information from the web with Sidebar, a new desktop feature that shows you your new email, weather and stock information, personalized news and RSS/Atom feeds, and more. Sidebar is personalized automatically, without any manual configuration required (though you can certainly make your own customizations if you want to)...

Identity Commons

What if...
• you could navigate the Web using one easy-to-remember password?
• you could enter your personal data once and use it on many Web sites?
• you could ensure that your personal information and identity was controlled by one person — you?

At Identity Commons, we are making this possible by creating the framework for trusted electronic communications. These tools make your communications simple and convenient, secure yet verifiable. Individuals are able to decide just how persistent, portable and private their online identity is, relationship by relationship; organizations that support this form of communication will derive greater value from their customer/member relationships while enhancing their reputation with customers. Serving as the backbone for this new technology are data sharing agreements that establish the parameters for the exchange and use of personal information between users.

IM Smarter

IM Smarter® is a new kind of service; it works with whatever instant messenger you use today and gives you one place to safely search your chat history, get reminders for important events, and even update or start a web blog.

We're a very small company out to try and do some good by making novel, ethical, and genuinely useful improvements to the state of the art in IM infrastructure. We hope that we can benefit users and service providers alike by opening up messaging as an easily extensible platform for relationships between people and services. We hope to serve hobbyists and big businesses alike, all the while acting as stalwart defenders of users' privacy.

iRobot Robotics Contest
iRobot is dedicated to creating realistic robotic solutions to real-world problems.

[For AC2005 Attendees Only]. Jot down on a 3x5" index card (100 words or less) your answer to the question "What's Next in Commercial or Consumer Robotics?" at Tech Night and at Accelerating Change 2005. The five best new robotics ideas (subjectively selected by our panel) will each win a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner on Sunday afternoon! All responses are freely given to the public domain and will be sent to iRobot for consideration after our event. Include your email address if you would like the option of being contacted later.

Liquid Information

A London-based project of Frode Hegland in collaboration with Doug Engelbart, Liquid Information seeks to augment human intellect, providing a new capability infrastructure by enhancing what you can do with textual information. "By "augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a person to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit their particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. ... man's problem-solving capability represents possibly the most important resource possessed by a society." "Augmenting Human Intellect," Doug Engelbart, 1962.

PB Wiki

Make a free, password protected wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich.

Reactrix

Reatrix Media is a cool new interactive advertising medium—the projected display responds to people's movements with realistic ripples or flames, morphing objects, games to play and more.

Matt Bell, Chief Scientist and Founder of Reactrix, will be on hand to demo and discuss the future of this engrossing new medium.

Second Life

Second Life is a 3D digital online world imagined, created, and owned by its residents—over 43,000 subscribers and growing.

Note: there will also be a free full-day Second Life Building the Dream Tutorial earlier in the day at Stanford University. Only a few of the 40 spaces are still available (RSVP to Jerry Paffendorf). No previous Second Life experience needed, just an interest in exploring the growing business, social, and creative opportunities around open-ended 3D online worlds.

SAP

SAP Research will demonstrate innovative combinations of RFID, mobile and location-aware technology with the SAP Netweaver platform.

1. 7% of world trade is in counterfeit goods. Pharmaceutical and Aerospace & Defense are among the impacted industries. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology on mobile devices can localize counterfeited products in the field in real-time and improve decision making. SAP Research aims to create a secure chain of custody for critical supplies. The demo will show the multiple uses of this technology in the supply chain and beyond.

2. A fire doubles in size every minute. Every second saved in a fire engine's response time can make the difference between life and death. The SAP Emergency Vehicle Location tracking prototype is built using off-the-shelf SAP technology and is designed to make fire, police and emergency medical teams more responsive and efficient. It is one of the first SAP applications that take advantage of the WiFi/WiMax networks coming up in various cities around the world. A test system is currently being tested in 'Digital Community' Corpus Christi, Texas.

Tactical Iraqi

Tactical Iraqi is a computer-based, self-paced, learning program that in about 80 hours teaches English-speaking people totally unfamiliar with Iraqi Arabic how to speak enough to accomplish tasks and missions in Arabic.

Tactical Iraqi is ideal for military and civilian personnel who must rapidly train to accomplish missions that involve interacting with Iraqis but who are not linguists, don’t already speak Arabic and don’t have time to take immersive language training courses.

W. Lewis Johnson, Director of Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) at the Information Sciences Institute at USC, developers of Tactical Iraqi, will be on hand to explain the history and future of this educational project.

Troyworks/Intrio

Technologist Troy Gardner will demonstrate several of his applications including the Graphion extension of the popular Lucene search engine, the TouchGraph LiveJournal Browser (allowing users to visualize and explore LiveJournal social networks), and the LiveJournal Viewlet (a Flash client for viewing LJ networks as networks instead of tabs).