Exploring virtual worlds for the blind

Like me, you probably cringe at the mention of anything related to virtual worlds–Second Life or otherwise. But there’s a new technology we’ve just published on alphaWorks called Virtual Worlds User Interface for the Blind and it’s undeniably interesting.

As the name suggests, this technology allows blind users to navigate SL. But more importantly, it explores accessibility issues that visually impaired users encounter while navigating the Web, including communication and accessing various forms of content. It’s a niche technology, but the goals of this research project are far reaching.

Automatic indexing of multimedia content

Tackling the problem of dealing with large amounts of image and video data, this new technology on alphaWorks called Feature Extraction Service annotates multimedia content. It applies machine learning techniques across multiple visual features to automatically index visual content. These semantic annotations can then be used by applications for search, filtering, classification and other content management.

Created at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, this service builds on the capabilities of the IBM Multimedia Analysis and Retrieval System, also available on alphaWorks–an automated desktop indexing and multimodal search system for digital image and video collections.

Social Media Strategies Conference

I know the folks at the Silicon Valley Web Guild and they happen to be putting together the Social Media Strategies Conference in San Francisco, October 29-30. They’ve got quite a line up of social media experts from Jive, Beeline Labs, Intuit, Microsoft and Intel participating in the event and it looks like the list is growing. If you’re wondering how to leverage social media, you’re a strategist, a marketer or a Web professional, this may be worth checking out.

Recruiting techs from emerging markets

Like much of the tech industry, alphaWorks looks to emerging and growth markets to source technology. While many of our strategic techs come from primary labs in the U.S. like Almaden and T.J. Watson Research Centers, we’re also seeing many come from international labs in China, India and one that I have a particular interest in — the Haifa Research Lab.

Outside of the U.S., Israel is a hub of venture capital and investment growth, as well as entrepreneurial activity. Local as well as heavy international VC funds are helping to fuel startup development especially in telecom and wireless technology.

Historically, we’ve showcased innovative projects from Israel including one of our top downloads of all time, the IBM Toolkit for MPEG-4, which was a joint development between Haifa and T.J. Watson.

This year, I’m excited about a SaaS offering from Haifa/Almaden called PHIAD, an on-demand system that enables the public health industry to integrate and share data from public health institutions across proprietary systems and political boundaries. If adopted widely, this service has the potential to impact the management of global health information.

And there’s more in the pipeline from Silicon Wadi.

The open innovation marketplace

I know you’re probably tired of hearing about marketplaces — an overused term right up there with ecosystems — but they’re a popular model, especially those that bring together ’seekers’ and ’solvers’ to collaborate on business problems for financial incentives. Apple, American Express and other large companies are already using variations on this model to source development talent and related services.

Innocentive is a good example of an open innovation marketplace with a broad focus on business and not-for-profit goals, allowing individuals and companies to connect on everything from life sciences to business development to game theory. If you’re up for another marketplace, Innocentive is worth a look.

A collaborative approach to Web accessibility

On my last visit to IBM’s Tokyo Research Lab, I had the pleasure of meeting Chieko Asakawa, lead researcher behind many of IBM’s breakthroughs in accessibility technology. She was also inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame a few years ago.

The latest in her string of projects on alphaWorks is the Social Accessibility Project — a service that gathers feedback from the community to make Web pages more accessible to people with disabilities. This project is gaining in popularity and getting a lot of media attention because of its collaborative approach to addressing accessibility using features such as comments, discussions, measurements, and incentives to get the community involved. Definitely worth checking out.

Data on demand — the new Excel?

I recently talked to David Lee, CEO of a Bay area startup called EditGrid, which has products that put a new spin on data access and visualization. David told me about their spreadsheet service which allows on-demand data access online, with added functionality to edit and publish the data as well as collaborate and share spreadsheets. This service is free for end-users to try out.

At the heart of IBM research

I’ve spent the better part of this week trekking between IBM’s Somers office (an interesting building designed by I.M. Pei, the force behind the last addition to the Louvre) and The T.J. Watson Research Center. IBM has research labs scattered around the world, but much of innovation history is housed in the research facilities of Hawthorne and Yorktown, where many significant innovations have occurred, from the relational database to the chess champion Deep Blue.

The net of my meetings were primarily in the services and computer science domains where we find many technologies for alphaWorks. This visit reaffirmed a strong focus on SaaS delivery, and projects in areas such as information analysis, semantics, speech recognition and visualization.

I was most interested in learning about some projects that have the potential for great impact, including the Genographic Project, a collaboration with the National Geographic Society to gather one of the largest collections of DNA samples in order to map how humankind populated the planet, as well as IBM’s collaboration with chocolate giant Mars on the genetic quest for better chocolate. Sadly, there were no free samples to be had.

IBM’s incubator for social software

On the topic of Web 2.0, IBM announced a new initiative today to incubate social technology software. You’ll see some of the same tools available on alphaWorks, as well as additional social/business networking tools like Beehive and Olympus (a virtual worlds technology). Here’s more on the Center for Social Software.

IBM emerging techs at the Web 2.0 Expo

Even if you’re not attending the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC this week, you can learn more about what IBM is doing in the Web 2.0 space. Two key services–also being showcased at the Expo–are available for evaluation on alphaWorks: the popular Many Eyes, a collaborative data visualization tool (recently written about in the New York Times) and Pass It Along, a knowledge sharing peer-to-peer network ideal for non-profits, academics and the business community.