Pantha Corporation

The former really only shows the consequences of a non-user centered design approach or a shameful lack of tact and diplomacy from the Microsoft crew in charge of the localization of Windows in the Mapuche language. They could have at least tried to include the actual ultimate stakeholders in their otherwise honorable initiative to translate windows in Mapuzugun .
Looks like Microsoft is a little bit too much in a hurry to move down the path of a 100% internationalized windows, including all dialects (sic!).

The latter sounds to me like an interesting bit of information, maybe even a real milestone on the road of global standards and on our way to a truly universal / multi-cultural rich web. Even though as a programmer I feel a little shiver running down my spine, I still like to hear that there is movement towards greater standardization on the level of language and exotic character set integration in the digital world . Is this going to start as a new nightmare on the internationalization front ? I do not fully see the impact yet.

Here is more about the technical bits:
( source)

After a decade of painstaking work and negotiations, however, Internet engineering groups have solved the problem of internationalized domain names. A widely accepted standard is in place, and Web browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox, Apple Computer's Safari, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (released last month) support non-English-language characters in domains.

"Regarding the technical implementation for the World Wide Web, we are done, except for maybe some corner cases," said Patrik Fältström, a senior engineer with Cisco Systems who is the co-author of an internationalized domain name specification inside the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Internationalized domain names work something like this: Nonstandard characters are translated into ASCII through algorithms called "Nameprep" and "Punycode," with a special "xn--" prefix attached that signals that it's an encoded domain name.

Posted by the only a at 11:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We are starting to see coverage of transLucid - our publishing-system geared for primarily users of knowledge-management software - in good, strategic places. We were added to opensourcecms for example, who provide everyone with a demo account to the majority of the CMS they cover.

We also launched our splash-page for the transLucid_hosted solution this week. You have to start somewhere, right? We think translucdonline.com is a good URL that we caught.

There are stat-counters running on both pantha.net - the website for Pantha Software Ltd., which will be the entity behind the transLucid_hosted solution - and translucdonline.com. And the visitors - even though the last hundred were mostly from Europe - span the globe, a wonderfully practical showcase that we are going to be a global business. The snapshot can be found here.

Much more on transLucid in the next few weeks, we aim to create a sign-up pipeline before the end of this year.

Posted by bjoern at 11:41 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Haptic simulation of virtual textiles

" ...It is easy to choose colors and sizes of clothes on many websites, but it's impossible to touch the material. So, European scientists are using a virtual reality technology, haptic simulation, to reproduce the sense of touch when interacting with virtual textiles. In 'Getting a feel for the fabric -- virtually,' IST Results describes the HAPTEX project (HAPtic sensing of virtual TEXtiles) which will end in November 2007 and is funded by the European Union with 1.66 million euros..." 

 After the "Virtual try-on" or "Virtual fit" challenge here come the "Virtual touch" ! And what's next ... virtual smell and virtual taste?

 About the virutal-try-on , My Virtual Model  proposes interesting solutions for the apparel shops online.

Posted by the only a at 11:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I am starting to be almost obsessed with SecondLife, wishing I could already upload my brain somewhere and create multiple instantiations of myself to go after all that I have in my visor. But of course, for the time being I can not.

So instead of actively participating in SecondLife I am rather pursuing projects such as the further development of transLucid, our publishing-system geared towards users of knowledge-management applications that can be also used as a lightweight CMS.

SecondLife really offers us a glimpse of what the future for (hopefully) everyone on the planet might look like. Wired has great articles to dive into this new reality. I can only recommend to anyone faintly interested in SL the Wired Travel Guide to SecondLife. And yes, you may also have virtual sex in there, thanks for bringing that up.

Think that the Babylon tower of languages has to be overcome? With the Translator HUD, you can. It offers a real-time translation system. While you chat with people in languages other than... well, English... it translates to you their typings as fast and as best as it can.

Don't think you ought to consider reserving your spot in SecondLife yet? Think again, when organisations such as the BBC or Nature have already done so.

Nature recently opened up an island what they call Second Nature.

I have absolutely no doubt that SecondLife is here to stay. They might even open-source their underlying protocol which would open up a whole new world, literally. There are other good reasons why Google Earth will survive. It takes a different angle at creating and living in virtual environments in that it uses our actual, physical earth as the template. My hunch is that both virtual empires will have their role and say in defining the future of our lives.

Posted by bjoern at 01:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"Unifies Modern Scripting Across Firefox and Flash and Advances Innovation on the Web

Adobe Systems Incorporated and the Mozilla Foundation, announced that Adobe has contributed source code for the ActionScript™ Virtual Machine, the powerful standards-based scripting language engine in Adobe® Flash® Player, to the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla will host a new open source project, called Tamarin, to accelerate the development of this standards-based approach for creating rich and engaging Web applications.
The Tamarin project will implement the final version of the ECMAScript Edition 4 standard language, which Mozilla will use within the next generation of SpiderMonkey, the core JavaScript engine embedded in Firefox®, Mozilla’s free Web browser. As of today, developers working on SpiderMonkey will have access to the Tamarin code in the Mozilla CVS repository via the project page located at www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/ . Contributions to the code will be managed by a governing body of developers from both Adobe and Mozilla. "

Such a great news:

• a major contribution of a commercial corporation to the open-source community
• a step towards unity and standard compliance for the dynamic/behavior layer of the web : javascript .

I remember a competitive analysis done in 2004 by Macromedia to assess the Backbase framework in regards to Macromedia Flex. In the intro of the document the following was stated:
"There are a number of downsides. First and foremost, since the code relies on the web browser, developers extending the Backbase framework are at risk of “death by a thousand cuts” development needing to work around various browser incompatibility issues. As browsers move towards standards compliance, this becomes less of an issue, but it will always remain.
Another drawback of this solution is that it’s limited by the capabilities of the browser. Applications based on Backbase can do what a browser can do, but cannot go beyond that (like runtime drawing of cornered interfaces). If customer feedback indicates that specific functionality should be added to the runtime because there is a real need for it, there is no way for Backbase to do so, since they rely on joint initiatives taken by the browser industry. At this time, there are no joint initiatives, which leaves the roadmap of next generation Backbase applications unclear."

Well things evolved. Backbase is still there, an important player in the AJAX community. They learned to grow a developper community and open up their codebase. And their initial strategy (reliance on open standards) appears quite right on spot, especially after today's announcement (sic!).
No doubt that good old competition continues although taking a new dimension, more in the open :-)
Let's stay tuned !

Posted by the only a at 11:41 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)