NewsScan Daily, 18 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 18 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")
***********************************************************
NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization
making significant and sustained contributions to the effective
management and appropriate use of information technology. NSD is
written by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
***********************************************************

"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        New SuperGlue Software Makes Data Sticky
        Rivals Rattle Google With Search Innovations
        New Dealmakers Hook Up Hollywood, Videogame Developers
        Realistically, You Should Plan to Get a 64-Bit Machine
        Rolling Stones Yields to Digital Future
        Computer Life

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: A Sense of Destiny

NEW SUPERGLUE SOFTWARE MAKES DATA STICKY
Informatica's new SuperGlue software is designed to solve the headaches 
involved in tracking corporate data for regulatory compliance and auditing 
purposes. For example, a CFO could use the software to find out how a 
number on a spreadsheet was derived -- something that might come in handy 
under new regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which are aimed at 
better documenting corporate accounting in the wake of scandals at Enron 
and WorldCom, among others. SuperGlue automatically compiles metadata -- 
data about data -- and filters it into a single database. The software also 
includes a tool for visual representation of how that data originated. 
"This is like the FedEx package tracking system for data," says Informatica 
marketing VP Sanjay Poonen. "The challenge with data about data has always 
been tracking the dependencies." (CNet News.com 17 Aug 2003) 
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5064780.html

RIVALS RATTLE GOOGLE WITH SEARCH INNOVATIONS
Google may be king of the hill in the search engine scene, but new 
technologies introduced by competitors are aimed at shaking up the market. 
One of the most technically interesting is Teoma, which was acquired by 
AskJeeves in 2001. Teoma's advantage is that rather than relying on a page 
ranking algorithm to determine how to list search results, it uses an 
algorithm that reveals the Web "communities" around a particular topic and 
what they're currently discussing. So that if you searched on "power 
blackout" on Friday, Teoma's "refinements" section (on the right side of 
the screen) included "electrical surge" and "cost of downtime." "It's a 
great way to learn about a topic, or to find the precise thing for which 
you are looking, without having to actually go to a lot of links," says 
Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes, who adds that AltaVista has 
something similar on its Web site. And while the final outcome of the 
search engine wars is still up in the air, "What's indisputable is that the 
world of search engines is scene to more innovation and competition than 
many folks realize," says Gomes. (Wall Street Journal 18 Aug 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106115787227742500,00.html (sub req'd)

NEW DEALMAKERS HOOK UP HOLLYWOOD, VIDEOGAME DEVELOPERS
A new breed of brokers is emerging to fill a gap between Hollywood 
producers, directors, writers and film stars on the one hand, and videogame 
developers on the other. "We help these two worlds bridge a communication 
gap," says one agent. "They speak different languages. A cut scene in a 
game is a pre-rendered scene inserted between game play to advance the 
story. In film, a cut scene is something that lands on the cutting-room 
floor that nobody sees." Fueling the fusion is the trend toward turning 
megahit movies into popular videogames and vice versa, and the growing 
realization on both sides that working together from the get-go will yield 
higher profits with less hassle. Instead of creating their own game units, 
studios would prefer to pass that work on to their game-industry 
counterparts, but at the same time, they want more input on the process. 
Meanwhile, game companies want more access to movie producers and actors, 
an early look at the scripts and more integrated marketing efforts. 
Exemplifying this collaboration, when "Matrix Reloaded" was filmed, the 
movie directors wrote 244 additional pages of dialogue just for the game, 
shot an extra hour of film footage to use as "cut scenes," and made the 
actors available for voice-over work. "Our clients want to participate in 
the process of game making and bring a Hollywood sensibility into the 
creation of the games," says a broker who focuses on interactive 
entertainment. (Los Angeles Times 18 Aug 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-middle18aug18223418,1,2998469.story?coll=la-headlines-technology

REALISTICALLY, YOU SHOULD PLAN TO GET A 64-BIT MACHINE
Apple already has 100,000 orders for its new $2,000-3,000 64-bit-processor 
G5 machines, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will be launching its 64-bit 
Athlon 64 FX processor next month. Richard Heye of AMD predicts, 
"Sixty-four-bit computing will take off faster than people think." A 64-bit 
processor can theoretically handle 16 quintillion (i.e., 16 billion 
billion) bytes of random access memory (RAM). Computer designer Richard 
Doherty of the consulting firm Envisioneering says that 64-bit computing 
"will put a tremendous amount of power into the hands of scientific 
researchers and engineers first, and to a secondary degree to some artists 
who want to express themselves in three-dimensional design." Even now, 
Hollywood digital animation studios require at least two gigabytes of RAM 
to render a single frame of some movies -- and adding even more realism to 
computer graphics will increase RAM demands exponentially.(New York Times 
18 Aug 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/08/18/technology/18NECO.html

ROLLING STONES YIELDS TO DIGITAL FUTURE
The Rolling Stones band is making its entire catalog of music available to 
online music services, starting with a new arrangement with RealNetworks' 
Rhapsody service and retailer Best Buy. Sean Ryan of RealNetworks boasts: 
"This is the first time you've seen retail take a step forward and bridge 
the gap between offline and online. What you really need to make this an 
utterly mainstream experience is making every bit of content available 
online." Jeanne Meyer of music company EMI concurs:  "You've got one of the 
world's most popular, arguably the greatest, rock 'n' roll bands, bringing 
their works into digital format. You'll be able to get `Brown Sugar' and 
`Satisfaction' or whatever. It's a big step toward mainstreaming legitimate 
digital music services." (San Jose Mercury News 18 Aug 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6558802.htm

COMPUTER LIFE
The biocomputing revolution may have started a decade ago when University 
of Southern California computer science professor Leonard Adleman read 
James Watson's textbook "Molecular Biology of the Gene" and noticed that 
human cells and computers process and store information in much the same 
way. Whereas computers store data in strings of the numerals 0 and 1, 
living things store information with molecules represented the letters A, 
T, C and G. From this realization came numerous worldwide research projects 
to create tiny biology-based computing "machines" and "devices" that take 
the form of test tubes of DNA-laden water, and that can perform algorithms 
and produce results. And the future? Perhaps the creation of DNA-based 
computers that can be used on deep-space or outer-space voyages to monitor 
and maintain the health of humans on board. Also in the future: Ehud 
Shapiro of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science envisions programming 
tiny molecules with medical information and injecting them into people. 
(USA Today 18 Aug 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-08-17-dna-computing_x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "I learned one really sad fact from my career as a columnist: nobody 
changes their mind about anything. Ever. Once we form the opinion, we 
become evidence processors and we just collect all the evidence that 
supports our opinion and reject all the evidence that disputes it." (Bob 
Metcalfe)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: A SENSE OF DESTINY
      In his book "The New New Thing," Michael Lewis explains the enormous 
importance of India-educated engineers in Silicon Valley:
      "The Indian educational system was conceived by [Prime Minister] 
Nehru in reaction to the British colonial experience. Nehru believed that 
India was more likely to remain an independent country if it made itself 
technologically equal to its former rulers. To that end he created a 
ruthlessly efficient mechanism for finding and exploiting Indian technical 
talent. It was called the Indian Institute of Technology. The IITs were 
created in the early 1960s with foreign aid. The first two, at Karagpur and 
Madras, were funded by Germany; the third, in Bombay by the USSR; the 
fourth, at Kanpur, by the United States; the fifth, at Delhi, by the United 
Kingdom.
      "The IITs became the funnel through which young Indians who finished 
high in a national standardized test passed on their way into Nehru's game 
of catch-up ball. The force of their attraction was spectacular. It was as 
if a nation of 900 million people had set out to find the few among them 
most able to program a computer, and leave nothing to chance. By the time 
the Nehru regime finished engineering Indian society, every parent in the 
country wanted his son to become either a doctor or an engineer. By the 
early 1970s hundreds of thousands of Indian seventeen-year-olds were 
sitting for the annual two-day engineering exams. A few weeks after the 
exam the results were posted in the newspapers. The two thousand students 
with the highest scores won admission to the IITs and had their names 
printed in the newspaper. Imagine the thrill of gaining entrance to 
Harvard. Multiply it several times. That gives you some idea of the sense 
of destiny that accompanied admission to an IIT. 'If you could make it into 
an IIT, the rest of your life was guaranteed,' says Pavan Nigam [a 
brilliant India-born Silicon Valley computer scientist]. 'If you don't make 
it into an IIT, there are no guarantees about anything. And I mean 
*anything*.'"
                          ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140296468/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Michael Lewis's "The New New Thing" -- or look for it in your favorite 
library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult 
literacy programs.)

SUBSCRIPTION INFO FOR NEWSSCAN DAILY:
      To subscribe or unsubscribe to the text, html, or handheld versions 
of NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate subscribe or unsubscribe messages 
(i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to 
the addresses shown below:
      Text version: Send message to [email protected]
      HTML version: Send mail to [email protected]
      NewsScan-To-Go: http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT NEWSSCAN DAILY! Send them our little frog: 
http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

***********************************************************
Please visit the site of RLG, the great organization that makes NewsScan 
Daily possible. (RLG has no influence over, nor any responsibility for, our 
editorial content.) Created in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group, RLG is 
a not-for-profit membership corporation of more than 160 universities, 
national libraries, archives, museums -- and other institutions with 
remarkable collections for research and learning. Its major initiatives are 
long-term retention of digital materials, resource sharing among member 
institutions, and improvement of researcher access to primary source 
material. RLG supplies online research resources worldwide. Visit RLG at 
http://www.rlg.org.

*********

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the TEXT version of NewsScan Daily, send an 
e-mail message to [email protected] with 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' 
in the subject line. To subscribe to our HTML version of NewsScan Daily, 
send mail to [email protected], with the word 'subscribe' as the 
subject. (Subscribing to the HTML version won't automatically unsubscribe 
you from the text version; please unsubscribe yourself as explained above.) 
Please note: To unsubscribe from an account to which you no longer have 
access, send mail to at [email protected].

*********

We call our news section "Above The Fold" to honor the tradition of the 
great "broadsheet" newspapers in which editors must decide which news 
stories are of such importance that they should be placed "above the fold" 
on the front page. The NewsScan Credo: Be informative, have fun, and get to 
the point! See http://www.newsscan.com/, and send us mail: John Gehl 
<[email protected]> and Suzanne Douglas <[email protected]>, or call 
770-704-7517.

*********

Get a free 6-week trial subscription to Innovation Weekly, an executive 
summary of trends, strategies and innovations in business and technology. 
Send mail to [email protected] with the word 'subscribe' in the 
subject line.

What customized news and information services do you need for your company? 
Get in touch with us at [email protected] or call 770-704-7517 to talk 
over the possibilities.

Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.
***********************************************************