Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Interview
Sun SPOTs Go Open Source
An interview with Arshan Poursohi
2/13/2008
Fleet tracking, for example, is pretty regular. That's putting a GPS and a cellular modem inside of a truck that's driving around the United States. Now you can imagine, if you had sensors on those devices and they could talk to each other and pass information around, that would become sort of an instant infrastructure. You could see where the trucks are going and how fast they're traveling, but if you added an accelerometer, then you'd know about road conditions such as where all the potholes are. If you added a temperature and humidity sensor, you could get a pretty credible weather map of the US refreshed at a rate that's not even thought about now.
So, all these embedded computers are going to start talking to each other. You'll walk into rooms that already know how you like the temperature, you'll get into a brand new car that you've never been in before and it will know how you like your seat adjusted. We're talking about the Internet of things and machine-to-machine communications.
I imagine Sun is very interested in seeing what other kinds of ideas might come out of colleges and universities.
Yes. It's just amazing. You put some of these devices out there, and every person has different ideas, based on their own interests. And I'll say that Sun is also interested, from a commercial point of view, given all those trillions of devices, to see that all the developers are using Java. That's the case we're making -- that the wireless sensor networking environment is ready for a higher-level language that is easier to use, and that Java is the right choice.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Sun, Stanford Working To Archive History
In May in San Francisco, experts from leading universities, libraries, and research institutions around the world met as part of an ongoing effort to address a pressing issue: archiving the world's history, right up to today.
- The Quilt Coalition Rolls Out XO Communications for High-Capacity Network Services
The Quilt, a coalition of 28 regional network organizations, has added XO Communications Services to its authorized vendor list. The Quilt represents 200 universities and thousands of other educational institutions across the United States. With this new relationship, Quilt members can purchase XO's high-speed IP transit and network transport services at competitive rates.
- Wimba Classroom 5.2 Expands Classroom Capture Support, Adds MP3 Downloads
At the NECC 2008 conference in Texas this week, Wimba launched a new version of Wimba Classroom, the virtual classroom component of the company's Collaboration Suite. The new 5.2 release expands options for classroom capture and adds a variety of other functional and ease of use features.
- Automation Chimera: Education Is Not Management
The lure of automating workflow online so human intervention is minimized is continually reinforced in the minds of higher education administrators by examples of automated campus systems such as financials, student information systems, and other enterprise systems. But what's good for management is not always good for learning.
- Cognos Releases BI Software for Linux-based IBM System z Mainframe
Cognos, which IBM acquired in January, has released an update to its business intelligence software that will run on the Linux operating system on IBM System z mainframes. IBM Cognos 8 BI was being developed by the two companies prior to the acquisition, but assimilation of Cognos into IBM accelerated development.
- Facebook and Collegiality: A Serendipitous Social Niche
Facebook is a way to greet a colleague as if she or he is on your own campus: a wave at a distance, a hello at the corner burrito place, a honk as you both leave the campus parking lot. Informal collegiality has been extended over the miles.
