advtrialmonitoring.com

“My goal is to do everything we need to do for computation–logic, storage, information transport–but without moving electrons around at all,” Eigler said.

When IBM researcher Don Eigler picked up and moved the first individual atom 20 years ago today, he paved the way for what arguably was the smallest publicity stunt ever: Big Blue’s logo made from a precise arrangement of 35 Xenon atoms.

Shortly after that, in November 1989, Eigler arranged the 35 atoms to spell IBM. There was, of course, publicity in it for the company, but Eigler had no complaints. For one thing, it demonstrated that IBM really could control atoms with atomic-scale precision and that its work wasn’t just a fluke. For another, Eigler was grateful that IBM let him pursue his work.

But moving tiny atoms had big consequences by making the idea of assembling devices atom by atom very real. And the company has built on that nanotechnology foundation, storing information on specific gold atoms, collecting carbon monoxide molecules into computer logic circuits, and pursuing a vision for vastly more compact computing technology.

“Being able to put atoms together with atomic-scale precision at a level that allows you to deliver a marketable product is something that is largely hope and vision for our future,” Eigler said. “We are not there yet.”

“The knowledge we’re generating in the process of getting there,” Eigler said, “is likely to feed into the industry much sooner than the actual outcome–if we ever get to that outcome.”

One milestone toward this goal was work by Gerhard Meyer of IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory and others to store data in the form of electrical charges on individual atoms of gold, Eigler said.

Don Eigler moved the first individual atom 20 years ago, and shortly afterward, he wrote IBM's name with 35 Xenon atoms.

Spin engineering
The spin of one atom can affect that of its neighbor. The hard part is arranging atoms in order to harness that effect and perform useful computing operations.

“We did the introduction, and we’re in chapter 1,” Eigler said. “This is way off in the future, if it ever comes about. I cannot conceive, under the best circumstances, this is going to happen in 10 or 15 years.”

Building blocks
One possible intermediate step between moving single atoms and mass manufacturing is what Eigler calls nano plug-ins. If physicists and engineers could figure out how to construct individual logic gates out of a complicated molecule, IBM chemists might be able to figure out a way to synthesize such units in quantity. Next would come the assembly process of snapping these units together appropriately.

No mass manufacturing
Eigler and colleagues have been working on the technology since, but so far, the benefits have been indirect. That’s because moving and studying atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope and its offshoot, the atomic-force microscope, is a far cry from assembling computing devices that operate at much larger scales.

(Credit:
IBM)

“We have to learn how to engineer things so they work the way we want them to work. If you have two atoms, each has spin, and those spins are coupled together in usually two, three, or even four different ways,” he said. “You have to place them in the appropriate relationship with one another.”

“It was more than a publicity stunt. Emotionally, for me, it was much more important. This is going to sound hokey, but it’s the truth. IBM picked me up off the scrap heap of science and gave me every opportunity a scientist could hope for to be successful,” Eigler said. “As far as I was concerned, it was payback time.”

Boggled
Eigler, now an IBM fellow, said he was “boggled” that day he moved his first atom with an IBM device called a scanning tunneling microscope. He programmed the system to make the move, then held his breath while his screen went blank during the actual operation.

Despite the progress, Eigler is cautious about when or even if his ideas for computing will bear fruit.

IBM Fellow Don Eigler in his lab.

(Credit:
IBM)

Specifically, he’s interested in using the quantum mechanical property called spin for computing. The conventional conception for this general idea, called spintronics, uses spin to control the flow of electric current, but Eigler wants to use spin alone.

One advantage of the approach is that it avoids electrical current that produces the waste heat that’s a major limiting factor in today’s computers. Another is that it can enable three-dimensional computing designs much more densely packed with processing power than today’s two-dimensional circuitry etched onto silicon wafers.

“You can’t see it while you actually move it. Then you see the picture come in and say, ‘Yes, it’s there,’” Eigler said. He moved the atom back and forth three times to make sure that it really worked: “For us, that’s (a) sort of sacred thing. The key thing and most important thing about science is reproducibility. If you can’t reproduce your own result, you might as well forget it. It’s as if you’d never done it.”

Lutz then found a way to arrange those molecules into basic logical processing units of computers, “and gates” and “or gates” that are foundations of today’s computers. It didn’t use spin, but it’s a step in that direction, Eigler said.

And it may arrive, even if his spin-based computation doesn’t. “It may be (used with) regular conventional electronics, (or) with carbon nanotubes or graphene,” he said. This brings him to the point about why IBM Research invests in such distantly useful technologies.

There are other directions of nanotechnology research; Eigler called out graphene and topological insulators as possibilities. Eigler, though, remains excited to pursue his own long-term vision for computers that process information without today’s reliance on the movement of electrons.

“That strategy for building things that work on a very small scale may well be what we see in the future,” Eigler said.

In another, IBM’s Christopher Lutz found that he could trigger a “molecule cascade,” in which a series of carbon monoxide molecules could transmit information. The metastable molecules could store energy, then release it from one neighbor to another similar to a chain of balanced dominoes falling.

Can you tell me what and where it is? If you’re the first to do so (by e-mail, to daniel–dot–terdiman–at–cnet–dot–com) you’ll win a prize in the Road Trip picture of the day challenge.

Good luck.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Be the first to tell me by e-mail what and where this is, and you will win a prize in the Road Trip picture of the day challenge.

Click here for the entire Road Trip 2009 package.

This one is different than the rest, however. It just looks unique.

DENVER, Colo.–Over the years–and even several times during Road Trip 2009–I’ve seen a number of these kinds of buildings. They’ve been, variously, large, banal, awe-inspiring and, in some cases, worth detouring to see.

Update (Thursday, 11:37 a.m.): The answer is the Montana state capitol building, in Helena, Montana.

There are only two challenges left after today, so your chances at winning a prize are dwindling. Until Road Trip 2010, that is.

So far there are nine incarnations of BEAR–each a little more capable than its predecessor. Improvements to date include explosion- and fire-resistant treads; a ruggedized, high-speed, high-energy drive system; explosion- and fire-resistant battery cells; and enhanced dexterity.

The current prototype features a powerful upper body controlled by hydraulics that can lift 500 pounds, according to the developer. A “mobility platform” featuring two independent sets of tracked “legs” allows it to balance on the balls of its “ankles.”

(Credit:
Vecna Robotics)

The humanoid BEAR (Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot) can locate victims in a mine shaft, battlefield, toxic spill, or earthquake-damaged structure. And then it can lift them up and then carry them over long distances to safety, according to the manufacturer Vecna Robotics. And it does this without risking any more lives (PDF).

But don’t lay those firefighters off just yet. Vecna is still working on the BEAR’s ability to navigate through complex environments and to elevate the level of human-robot interaction.

The challenge was to enhance search and rescue while reducing the time military, police, and emergency response personnel have to risk their lives each day. More than half of the Medals of Honor earned by medics are awarded posthumously, according to Vecna.

While unmanned air vehicles are putting pilots out of business, a new U.S. Army-funded robot could do the same for rescuers and stevedores.

The project is sponsored by the U.S. Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, which is part of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command.

July has been quite a month for space lovers. From the launch of the Endeavour space shuttle and the anniversary of the first moon landing to the death of Walter Cronkite, the “Most Trusted Man in America” and a self-professed student of space exploration, we have seen our fair share of ups and downs this month.

The moon is quite a sight.

After almost five days of traveling to the moon, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped down on the lunar surface as millions watched. It was a spectacular event that is still remembered fondly by those who experienced it.

The Most Trusted Man in America.

The view from the moon.

The 40th anniversary
But perhaps one of the most significant events of July was the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s famous first steps on the lunar surface.

The impact
But July’s space month doesn’t end there. Just last week, astronomers studied an asteroid impact zone on Jupiter. It was originally discovered by an amateur astronomer who was doing some star gazing. The impact zone was eventually captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The mission
While in space, Endeavour’s every move was captured by thousands of media outlets around the world. A Japanese science platform was attached to the ISS. Spare parts from the shuttle were added to the space station. Astronauts even replaced solar-array batteries. Needless to say, it was a busy mission. And the world was watching.

Space really is the next frontier. And although we haven’t seen missions on the same scale as the moon landing in quite some time, the possibilities are endless. Maybe all the events we’ve experienced this month will help us remember that.

The return of space?
July has been a busy month for space lovers. It has seen its share of good and bad, but in the end, it has brought space back into the public discourse. People are more interested. There are more news stories on space exploration. And in some way, I believe that people are getting more excited about the possibilities space offers.

Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite died on July 17. Although he’s remembered for his trustworthiness, he’s also remembered as the country’s steward during the 1960s, at the same time that NASA’s space program got off the ground.

Check out Don’s Facebook profile, Twitter stream, and FriendFeed.

And as the economy and health care continue to weigh heavily on our minds, it’s space that has slowly made its way back to dinner tables across the United States.

The early days of July
July started out on a high note. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched back in June, snapped its first pictures of the lunar landscape. Its primary mission is to analyze lunar terrain to find a suitable landing spot for future manned missions to the moon. It will also be used to create a detailed lunar atlas.

The delayed launch
As July wore on, the Endeavour space shuttle sat on the launch pad. NASA’s first five attempts to launch the shuttle were foiled by bad weather. But on the sixth try, the shuttle, now a month behind schedule due to a hydrogen leak and the weather, finally launched.

But after the moon landing in 1969, interest in NASA’s space exploration started to fade. In recent years, some have spent more time calling on the federal government to shutter NASA rather than fund it. In 1969, such a suggestion seemed unfathomable.

(Credit:
CBS News)

Every night, millions of Americans sat at the dinner table, listening to Cronkite’s chronicling of space exploration and goals for the future. They watched as he followed each launch. And they smiled with him as Armstrong etched his name in history.

After inspecting the launch, NASA found that the shuttle had experienced some foam loss. It eventually found that the damage to the shuttle wasn’t significant, and there shouldn’t be any issues when Endeavour attempts to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere Friday.

Let’s recap how it happened.

Back in the 1960s, when Walter Cronkite was on the air almost every night, giving Americans updates on the NASA space program, people both young and old huddled around their televisions waiting to hear when (or if) we would get to the moon. Americans cared about space. They were interested. And they wanted to know as much as possible about it.

(Credit:
NASA)

And yet, just as those of us who still support space exploits thought it would only get worse, July brought on what I believe is the most discussion and enthusiasm about space that we’ve seen in a long time. And maybe (just maybe), it might return to its former place of glory.

Forty years ago, Apollo 11 launched from Earth on a mission to land on the moon. After a few missteps and embarrassments in the early 1960s, NASA finally made some progress toward fulfilling President Kennedy’s desire to get a man to the moon by the end of the decade. By July 1969, the United States was ready, and the world was watching to see if it was possible.

Correction, 12:50 p.m. PDT: This story initially misstated the day of the week that the Endeavour is expected to return to Earth.

Until his death, Cronkite was a strong proponent of space exploration. He believed in it. He thought it was the next frontier.

This year, NASA held several commemorative events. Numerous television shows were produced to remember the events. For the first time in a while, the United States was once again engaged in the lunar landing. And they watched Walter Cronkite, speechless, smiling, as Armstrong took his first steps.

(Credit:
NASA)

I like Screenr a lot. Here’s a sample:

Which leaves the free version of Screenr as a little marketing expense. (A paid version may follow, with options for branding, longer recording times, and so on.) Lest you worry about the company shutting down the non-revenue-generating free product (see “URL shortener Trim gets cut off”), take some comfort in what Schwartz says on the topic: “This is really cheap for us. We’re hosted on the Rackspace cloud, and the cost for doing this is like two orders of magnitude less than it was when we looked at this two years ago. It would cost more as a marketing fiasco to shut this down than it would to keep it running.” Take that as you wish, but at least the company behind this cool free service seems to be on solid footing.

Screenr’s special power is its slick Twitter integration. As with TwitPic and TwitVid, once the service collects your media, it posts it on a page for you and can send a description and a link out directly from your Twitter account. The screencasts can also be embedded on any Web page.

But where’s the business?
Screenr is a production of the New York company Articulate, which makes e-learning tools, primarily for corporations. CEO Adam Schwartz told me Articulate has about 20,000 paying customers for its software and services. Screenr, he said, is a first step in the company’s creation of a new group of e-learning products, which he compares to the popular software-based screencast products from Camtasia. But with Artculate’s focus on education, the tools will be “more about interactivity, branching, learning, and simulation.” His fully developed screencast tools will have the capabilities for grading and quizzing, and will be integrated into more fully formed educational suites.

There’s no editing option or other fancy features like picture-in-picture recording. If you want to go that route, look at apps like Camtasia for Windows, or ScreenFlow on the Mac. However, you can set the size of your image-recording window before you start recording, to make sure you don’t include distracting interface elements in your presentation.

The just-launched Screenr product isn’t the only easy Web-friendly screencast tool out there, but among the competing products I’ve tried, including ScreenJelly and Jing, it is the best option for creating screencasts fast and getting them posted immediately. All you do is let the Java-powered recording app load from the Screenr Web page and hit a button to record a screencast of up to five minutes.

“I met Magnus yesterday at 2 p.m. (Friday),” Pandeya said. “(Bergman) also (spoke) with AktieTorget at around noon…If he resigned, he would have told me and AktieTorget and they would have sent out a press release.”

It should be noted that it is not up to Swedish stock exchange AktieTorget to issue press releases about the movements of board members for individual companies, a Swedish businessman told CNET.

In addition, it was reported in Sweden that Global Gaming’s former chief technology officer and accounting firms had filed claims with a government agency that collects debts and alleged that Global Gaming owed them money. The former CTO, Johan Sellstrom, also claimed that Pandeya personally owed him money.

Bergman, who did not respond to interview requests, filed the papers following a report on Thursday in CNET that revealed Hans Pandeya, Global Gaming’s embattled CEO, had not begun preparing the technology needed to launch a new Pirate Bay site. The news startled many in Sweden’s tech industry because it meant that a week before the acquisition is supposed to be completed, there was no technology platform to support a new Pirate Bay. The old Pirate Bay was the world’s best-known BitTorrent tracking site, a tool that helped millions locate unauthorized movie and music files.

On June 30, Swedish newspaper Di.se interviewed Pandeya and he acknowledged that the company had liquidity problems in the past but cited Sellstrom and Bergman’s strong personal fortunes to bolster his claims that the company was in good financial health.

Show us the money
On Friday, AktieTorget officials halted trading of Global Gaming’s shares after they were unable to obtain proof that the company possessed enough money to complete an acquisition of The Pirate Bay and of Peerialism, a peer-to-peer technology company. Pandeya said in June that Peerialism would create the technology platform that would support a new Pirate Bay.

Pandeya was not immediately available to comment on Gonczi’s version of events but said Saturday he was skeptical that Bergman had left.

Peter Gonczi, vice president and head of market surveillance at Aktietorget, the stock exchange where shares of Global Gaming are traded, told CNET News on Sunday morning that Bergman called him on Friday and told him he was leaving the company.

Magnus Bergman filed documents on Friday with the Bolagsverket, an official registry in Sweden that stores information on companies, such as the names of directors, how many shares they own, and earnings reports. Bergman indicated in the filings that he would no longer be affiliated with Global Gaming, a company that regulators and the Swedish media have begun to scrutinize.

SvD, a Swedish newspaper, has also reported that Sweden’s Economic Crimes Bureau is investigating possible insider trading at Global Gaming. A week before Global Gaming announced its plan to buy The Pirate Bay for about $7.8 million, Global Gaming’s shares rose sharply without any major news driving the increase.

What does it mean that both men have now left the company? And what kind of oversight remains at Global Gaming as it embarks on this risky acquisition?

Gonczi offered more details about what happened on Friday. He said that after he asked Pandeya for proof of his financing, Pandeya put him in touch with a “well-known securities firm” in Sweden. Gonczi said the person he spoke with said the firm has the money but was unsure of whether the deal has been finalized. Pandeya has said for weeks that the money was already in place. Before trading in Global Gaming is allowed to resume, Gonczi said he will have to see more proof.

The chairman of Global Gaming Factory X, the company that announced in June it would acquire The Pirate Bay, is stepping down, according to documents filed with Swedish authorities.

All of bad news has served to undermine Global Gaming’s credibility and raise doubts about the company’s ability to buy The Pirate Bay, which has suffered a series of crushing legal setbacks over the past six months.

Updated at 11:25 a.m.: To include quotes from Swedish stock exchange official.

Thanks to a slight uptick in PC sales, Intel captured 80.6 percent of microprocessor revenue worldwide, growing from 79.1 percent in the first quarter of the year and 79.2 percent in the second quarter of 2008. This is the largest slice of the market Intel’s had since its 82.4 percent share in 2005.

The sluggish economy still took its toll. Overall, CPU sales shrunk for both Intel and AMD, since shipments were down from a year ago.

Intel’s share of the global CPU market hit a four-year high in the second quarter of 2009, says a report released Monday by market researcher iSuppli.

Intel saw gains in its CPU market share across all segments, including desktops, notebooks, and servers. But the notebook sector was the only one to grow, climbing 13 percent over the second quarter of 2008. Both the desktop and server segments declined year over year.

“Intel benefited as the global PC market took a first small step toward recovery in the second quarter,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst of compute platforms for iSuppli. “AMD didn’t benefit from the small sequential rise in PC sales because its average microprocessor pricing was lower than that from the first quarter.”

The gain in Intel’s market share came at the expense of AMD, which saw its share sink to 11.5 percent from 12.8 percent in the first quarter and 11.9 percent in the year-ago quarter.

(Credit: iSuppli)

Amid a litany of advice about what information should and should not be divulged under varying circumstances, the guide also reminds people to have a little fun, saying “Enjoy yourself. You have a great story to tell, and are the best person to tell it.”

As professional organizations become increasingly guarded about employees’ use of social networks, British troops are actually being encouraged to use social media to talk about what they do–within limits, of course.

The announcement comes as the U.S. Marine Corps, and organizations including ESPN and some professional sports teams have put limits on how employees can use social media networks–if not banned the sites altogether.

The Ministry of Defence has issued its Online Engagement Guidelines (PDF), 13 pages of recommendations for keeping in touch with friends and family via blogs, social networks, virtual worlds, and multiplayer games without endangering military personnel and activities.

The statement says, “Current and emerging Internet technologies, such as simple self-publishing, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking, are of growing importance to Service and MOD civilian personnel in their personal and professional lives.” And the guidelines say service and MOD civilian personnel are free to talk about what they do for a living, so long as the content regards “factual, unclassified, uncontroversial non-operational matters.” They must gain authorization from their chain of command if they wish to publish anything that relates to military operations, gives opinions about Armed Forces’ activities, speaks on behalf of the service, or discusses “controversial, sensitive, or political matters.” The guidelines even suggest that some employees should consider creating officially sponsored online presences to help communicate their work to the public.

Jailed SF network administrator faces fewer charges

Apple sheds light on App Store approval process

Ellison’s salary drops to $1

Responses to the FCC’s request for comment on how and why apps are approved (or not) for the Apple iTunes App Store came in at the end of last week. Today, we look at the responses from Apple, AT&T, and Google. Also: good and bad news for Pirate Bay founders; Snow Leopard ships early; Nokia enters the Netbook game, and more.

Listen now:

Apple to ship Mac OS X Snow Leopard Aug. 28

Facebook’s hiring like crazy again

Download today’s podcast

Today’s stories:

Swedish court orders shutdown of The Pirate Bay

Pirate Bay founders win debt-collection decision

Rhapsody trys subscription music iPhone app

Nokia gets into the Netbook game

Google has gone on an advertising blitz to knock off Microsoft Office, as CNET reports, but it faces an uphill battle because the heart of enterprise computing is security. Security is boring, yes, but as ZDNet’s Larry Dignan writes, “If you’re in a heavily regulated industry you’re not going to be e-mailing Google’s help desk trying to track a 2006 e-mail to satisfy a Sarbanes-Oxley requirement.”

Data security.

Regardless, in the short term, no matter how much the media and Google sell the cloud, it remains an add-on to corporate computing, not a replacement strategy.

And while cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in technology media, the vast majority of IT decisions center on which on-premise software solution to buy.

The money is still in on-premise software for Microsoft and others.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

So, the media talks about PHP and other Web-scripting languages, but stodgy chief information officers continue to buy Java and .Net.

I’m a believer in the cloud, as there’s plenty of evidence that it’s growing. But I think Microsoft has near-term threats like open source, and longer-term threats, like Google’s cloud strategy.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the San Jose Mercury News that Google has not traditionally had much collaboration with Microsoft, but perhaps it would do well to figure out how to tie Google cloud offerings into Microsoft on-premise solutions, as it’s starting to do with its Gmail service that ties into an Outlook front end.

The reality is that Google and Microsoft may have more to gain from stasis in the near term than disrupting each other’s businesses.

There’s a big disconnect between what the media likes to write about and what the enterprise likes to buy. I suspect this is largely because the future is a much more interesting topic. Enterprise software might be a great topic for advertisers for Lunesta or Ambien, but it’s woefully dull for everyone else.

It’s possible that this is just a transitory issue that will dissipate with time as the benefits of cloud computing (fungibility of the computing experience with data following users from device to device) overcome its perceived shortcomings.

Google is a threat. But Microsoft has time to improve its Azure story (cloud plus on-premise computing) before it hits the panic button.

Microsoft is now getting squeezed by open source, but I suspect it would rather compete against Google Apps than open-source software, because Microsoft has one huge advantage over Google, one that Microsoft doesn’t have over open source:

This is Microsoft’s big problem (”We’re not sexy! We’re addicted to on-premises software!”), as well as its opportunity (”We’re not sexy! We’re safe!”). Microsoft makes great enterprise software. No, it’s not perfect. But Microsoft more than any other company has made great strides to lower the cost of computing for enterprises.