Want to know the latest in hitech? Go to alphaWorks

By Zatni Arbi

SILICON VALLEY (JP): "I come here almost everyday, I don't see anything special with these buildings," our bus driver said, smiling broadly. He was patiently waiting for some IT journalists from Asia Pacific who were still busy taking pictures of the building compound of the IBM Java Development Center in Cupertino, California. We were about to head back to San Jose after a one-day visit to this facility.

I was not surprised by the driver's comment. To him, it might have been just another high-tech complex built in the middle of the very scenic Silicon Valley. But to most of us, it was quite extraordinary. First of all, it was Nov. 30 and the air was quite cold for us who had come a long way from India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Hong Kong. So we took some time immersing ourselves in the beauty of the place plus the clean, cool air.

The buildings themselves had very simple architecture. None of them had an IBM logo on the walls or glass windows. The only place you would see the logo was on a black pole at the entrance to the complex. Yet the surroundings were beautiful and still largely undeveloped. We were told that cattle were still grazing in the surrounding areas. It was also a quiet afternoon, and it felt like it had been several years since the last time I was in such a tranquil environment. So I breathed deeply, trying to capture the panorama with my eyes and keep the moment forever in my mind.

AlphaWorks

Inside the buildings, quite a lot of things were going on, as one would readily guess. However, one of the most interesting topics during the presentations was the alphaWorks program. I should admit that, when I heard the name for the first time, I could not help wondering why in the world IBM would have anything to do with the Alpha computers now owned by Compaq. It turned out that alpha here refers to the very early stage in any technology development, be it hardware, software or a specific application. Those who have been playing around with computers for some time will know the term "beta version". It is the version that software vendors distribute to selected customers and partners for testing. The alpha version is the one that comes even before the beta version is released for testing by external testers.

So what is alphaWorks (www.aphaworks.ibm.com)? IBM's researchers and programmers work on a very broad range of technologies and applications in their labs. Big Blue pours US$6 billion per year into research activities, and they continually invent new technologies and combine them to create more powerful ones. However, the company also has the reputation of having had invented a large number of interesting and commercially viable technologies that never saw the light outside their labs. The alphaWorks team housed in this Cupertino center is supposed to change this image.

What kinds of technology are created in those IBM labs? Here is an example, which was demonstrated during their presentation: they attached a video camera to a PC. Each time the camera detected a human face using the face recognition technology, the PC would say "Light on" and a digitally-controlled switch would automatically turn on a light. This may seem a mundane technology at first, but if you have installed a motion sensor outside your house and have been woken up at 2:30 a.m. by your security alarm, and it turns out the false-alarm was triggered by a cat or dog, you will appreciate what this piece of technology can do. The face recognition system look for human faces based on the location of the eyes in relation to the shape of the face. If this technology were used to replace the motion sensor, all you would have to do is hide the camera right where thieves are likely to stare before they break in, and you would get a more accurate sensor to protect yourself against intruders.

Text Translation

The face recognition application is just one of the technologies currently available at alphaWorks. If you visit the Web site, you will see dozens of other technologies and applications that are still in the early stages of development. These technologies can be evaluated for free, and sometimes software can be downloaded free of charge, too. The objective is to let early adopters and developers test the viability of these emerging technologies and give their feedback. All the comments found in the evaluation forms and in the discussion forums on the Web site can give IBM's researchers and developers clear direction on how they should continue developing the technologies. Business cases can then be made on those technologies that really seem to have potential, and this will speed up the time it takes to get them to market. In the meantime, interested parties can also license some of these technologies and build them into their own products.

Another very interesting application that I found in alphaWorks was Machine Translation. It is a Java-based Web service that can translate a string of text from the source language into the target language. I was surprised to see how fast it worked. I typed in a paragraph from a press release that I had just received, and the Web-based application translated it into German in just a few seconds. The same was true with the French translation. My German is a little better than my French, so I cannot say much about the French translation, but the German translation seemed to be acceptable. The application is intelligent enough to recognize that, for example, PT Suryamandiri Buana was a name and therefore was not translated.

Unfortunately, the demo site went out of service just before I had the chance to capture its screen. If you have an interest in text translation, you should absolutely try this one out. Go to www.ibm.com/developer/mt/. The demo site only allows English as the source language, but it can translate to seven different languages, including Italian, Japanese, Spanish, simplified Chinese and even traditional Chinese. Be forewarned, though, that no computer translator can replace a human translator, and IBM wants you to keep that in mind before you try it out. Still, just imagine what this application can do for you if it is integrated into your e-mail client application. You can more easily communicate with your business partners in Shanghai without having to really learn Chinese.

The alphaWorks team also has interesting technologies in the areas of collaboration, C++, commerce, database management, multimedia, networking, voice synthesizing, voice recognition, security, XML and many other things.

The visit to this center was the first part of my very recent trip to the United States. Next week we are going to peep into IBM's Almaden Research Lab and see what they have done with an eye-tracking technology called Blue Eyes. (zatni@cbn.net.id)