Barco, a technology leader in virtual reality and a Core Technology Alliance Partner of Dassault Systèmes, recently installed a world-unique 3D visualization showroom and a 3D auditorium at Dassault Systèmes' new global headquarters, DS Campus. The seven-channel, three-sided 3D stereo system shows the capabilities of Dassault Systèmes' 3D software to its customers and partners, and also promotes both companies' emphasis on the importance of immersive and collaborative visualization.

Dassault Systèmes is a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. It offers a portfolio of software products aimed at accurately rendering high-quality 3D content for designers, engineers and teams of decision-makers. For their showroom and auditorium at their new DS Campus, Dassault Systèmes wanted the most high-end display system available to best showcase its PLM solutions to customers and partners. These customers represent eleven industries, from the world's most prominent automotive and aerospace companies to consumer goods, construction and engineering industries.

Dassault Systèmes has added Barco as a Technology Partner through its alliance program, while Barco's customers have often used Dassault Systèmes' 3DVIA Virtools software on their display systems. Both companies also worked together on the Kheops project, which sought to raise industry awareness on the importance of 3D stereo visualization in collaborative applications for engineering or public purposes. The system Barco created for Dassault Systèmes is the world's first such system with seven native HD projectors, and superflat, high-contrast Barco screens.

Barco's immersive environment at Dassault Systèmes' global headquarters consists of seven three-chip DLP Galaxy NH-12 projectors, and is the first such system of its kind. Four projectors power the wide front screen, while two are used for the side screen, and an additional one for the floor. Barco's Galaxy NH-12 is the world's first active 3D stereo projector that offers Windows desktop integration. It boasts a light output of 12,000 lumens and a native 1080p HD resolution. Furthermore, the Galaxy NH-12 is designed for multi-channel operation, with built-in features that guarantee one seamless composite image free of color, light or geometry disturbances. Through integration with Barco's XDS Control Center software suite, the system's users can select, control and edit a multitude of sources simultaneously in a familiar Windows user environment.

In addition, Dassault Systèmes' 300-seat 3D auditorium is driven by a 9-meters wide Barco CADWall system with two Galaxy NH-12 projectors.

"We are very excited to start using Barco's immersive environment and 3D auditorium," states Barbara Tabb, Director of WW Alliance Operations for Dassault Systèmes, "Not only does this system create the right environment for our design software, it also shows that both we and Barco believe in the importance of 3D as a key building block for collaboration, PLM and innovation. If you are immersed in your design, construction or data, you suddenly get a much clearer insight in correlations between vital pieces of information. You will immediately see if the pieces of your design fit together well, or if some materials you want to use have the right look and feel."

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/48220_thumb.png" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Gmsh is an automatic 3D finite element grid generator with built-in CAD and post-processing facilities. Its design goal is to provide a simple meshing tool for academic problems with parametric input and advanced visualization capabilities. It is built around four modules: geometry, mesh, solver, and post-processing. The specification of any input to these modules is done either interactively using the graphical user interface (based on FLTK and OpenGL) or in ASCII text files using Gmsh's own scripting language. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / This release improves the transfinite algorithm, introduces a new uniform mesh refinement scheme, and fixes the high order meshing crashes observed on Windows and Linux. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/H5-3zfEddstcYkWS0ZKHEaU65DQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/H5-3zfEddstcYkWS0ZKHEaU65DQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-unix/~4/VxVmK7dUwcY" height="1" width="1"/

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/48220_thumb.png" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Gmsh is an automatic 3D finite element grid generator with built-in CAD and post-processing facilities. Its design goal is to provide a simple meshing tool for academic problems with parametric input and advanced visualization capabilities. It is built around four modules: geometry, mesh, solver, and post-processing. The specification of any input to these modules is done either interactively using the graphical user interface (based on FLTK and OpenGL) or in ASCII text files using Gmsh's own scripting language. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / This release improves the transfinite algorithm, introduces a new uniform mesh refinement scheme, and fixes the high order meshing crashes observed on Windows and Linux. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/2Vm5zZ894X5SCs1L-12uhTT5UOc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/2Vm5zZ894X5SCs1L-12uhTT5UOc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/VxVmK7dUwcY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/11/plexlogo.png" width="219" height="94" align="right" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" / Mac OS X only: The latest version of the free Plex Media Center for Mac now includes a href="http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/15/plexseven-introducing-the-all-new-plex-media-server/"iTunes and iPhoto support/a, a href="http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/14/plexseven-itunes-visualizers/"iTunes visualizations/a, a href="http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/14/plexseven-background-music-and-tv-themes/"TV theme music/a, and the ability to play a href="http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/12/plexseven-itunes-drm-audio-playback/"songs you've purchased from the iTunes Store/a. This tight iTunes/iPhoto integration comes in part from the Plex Media Server, which makes your songs and photos show up inside Plex while running in parallel. The Plex developer explains:br / blockquoteThe Plex Media Server is a standalone program that runs alongside Plex (or alone on any machine, it’s a Universal Binary). It serves up media from your iLife applications (iTunes and iPhoto today, Aperture and Lightroom shortly). Plex communicates with the Plex Media Server on the local machine, on your local network, or even across the world over the Internet. This means that you can play your friends’ iTunes playlists or browse their podcasts or photo albums./p/blockquote p The Plex Media Center is a fork of the XBMC project, which also offers a Mac version. In fact, XBMC Atlantis' Mac version also includes iTunes and iPhoto support; compare our a href="http://lifehacker.com/5044004/plex-xbmc-fork-updates-with-new-skin"Plex screenshot tour/a to the a href="http://lifehacker.com/5051874/xbmc-atlantis-beta-1-released-for-all-platforms"Atlantis tour/a to see the differences between the two projects, which share the same code base. Plex is a free download for Intel Macs running Leopard only. div class="related"a href="http://plexapp.com"Plex/a/div/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=3c41d508a13abdf4bb8f0339969fdca7p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=3c41d508a13abdf4bb8f0339969fdca7p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=3c41d508a13abdf4bb8f0339969fdca7" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=cpWRwr9s"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=mnfJbzCV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=j9bqDVC8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=j9bqDVC8" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=soVjcOi8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=soVjcOi8" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/oofXWZIXidY" height="1" width="1"/

Mac OS X only: The latest version of the free Plex Media Center for Mac now includes iTunes and iPhoto support, iTunes visualizations, TV theme music, and the ability to play songs you've purchased...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/11/plexlogo.png" width="219" height="94" align="right" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" / Mac OS X only: The latest version of the free Plex Media Center for Mac now includes a href="http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/15/plexseven-introducing-the-all-new-plex-media-server/"iTunes and iPhoto support/a, a href="http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/14/plexseven-itunes-visualizers/"iTunes visualizations/a, a href="http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/14/plexseven-background-music-and-tv-themes/"TV theme music/a, and the ability to play a href="http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/12/plexseven-itunes-drm-audio-playback/"songs you've purchased from the iTunes Store/a. This tight iTunes/iPhoto integration comes in part from the Plex Media Server, which makes your songs and photos show up inside Plex while running in parallel. The Plex developer explains:br / blockquoteThe Plex Media Server is a standalone program that runs alongside Plex (or alone on any machine, it’s a Universal Binary). It serves up media from your iLife applications (iTunes and iPhoto today, Aperture and Lightroom shortly). Plex communicates with the Plex Media Server on the local machine, on your local network, or even across the world over the Internet. This means that you can play your friends’ iTunes playlists or browse their podcasts or photo albums./p/blockquote p The Plex Media Center is a fork of the XBMC project, which also offers a Mac version. In fact, XBMC Atlantis' Mac version also includes iTunes and iPhoto support; compare our a href="http://lifehacker.com/5044004/plex-xbmc-fork-updates-with-new-skin"Plex screenshot tour/a to the a href="http://lifehacker.com/5051874/xbmc-atlantis-beta-1-released-for-all-platforms"Atlantis tour/a to see the differences between the two projects, which share the same code base. Plex is a free download for Intel Macs running Leopard only. div class="related"a href="http://plexapp.com"Plex/a/div/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=3c41d508a13abdf4bb8f0339969fdca7p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=3c41d508a13abdf4bb8f0339969fdca7p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=3c41d508a13abdf4bb8f0339969fdca7" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=cpWRwr9s"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=mnfJbzCV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=j9bqDVC8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=j9bqDVC8" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=soVjcOi8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=soVjcOi8" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/oofXWZIXidY" height="1" width="1"/

Newly released today



features
Introducing true-to-life styles of play for every Division I team, including authentic team ratings and scouting reports from the creators of the annual Blue Ribbon™ College Basketball Yearbook
Choose pre-game strategies that reinforce your style of play and then keep an eye on the all-new Game Tempo Meter to make adjustments on the fly
Use all 94 feet to push the ball or apply full court pressure to force turnovers to speed the game up, walk the ball up the floor and initiate a half-court set or use a balanced attack to take advantage of what your opponent gives you. Set the tempo and play your game to put yourself in a position to come out on top
Over 1,000 new animation sequences deliver a more responsive, intelligent experience. Apply pressure defense with new full-court presses and traps. Plus, quicker players now get up and down the floor faster and make better decisions running lanes and driving to the rim
Your school's coach is with you every step of the way. Listen to real NCAA® Coaches on the sidelines providing real time feedback, helping you play at your ideal tempo
Force your defender to step up and guess what you'll do next. Trigger the turbo button and use the right analog stick for bold, responsive ball-handling moves to fake out your defender and create scoring opportunities
New risk reward system to lock in your check on defense. Get in tight on a strong shooting guard to take away his shot, or play back to keep a quick point guard from blowing by you
Introducing an accessible in game play-calling system that pushes on-court visualization to guide you through the play.
New two-man game mechanic enables you to control both the ball handler and screener simultaneously. Set screens and run two man plays, with on-screen instructions to guide you
Dramatically more authentic with classic and alternate team uniforms, Dick Vitale and Brad Nessler calling the action, and Erin Andrews reporting from the sidelines. Choose from new arenas, including Ford Field, home of the 2009 NCAA Final Four®
Wait and watch for rival users to log on and then challenge them to a spirited match-up in new Rival Challenge Mode. Plus, edit and share roster files through EA Locker 3.0
Participate in major tournaments like the Pre and Post season NIT, EA SPORTS Maui Invitational or new ones like the Puerto Rico Tip-Off, Anaheim Classic and Old Spice Classic
Featuring a new recruiting database, a Dynasty Yearbook to review previous seasons and create-a-coach that enables you to set the playing style of your school
College basketball pops to life with lively crowds, loud bands, mascots, cheerleaders, and student sections

description
Replicate your school's style of play, set the tempo and win with NCAA® Basketball 09. Whether your school pushes the ball in transition, runs a half-court offense that utilizes the clock and limits possessions or features a balanced attack that combines transition offense with set plays, NCAA Basketball 09 rewards the strategic player by emphasizing team specific styles of play.

College basketball springs to life in NCAA Basketball 09 with frenzied crowds, authentic commentary from Dick Vitale, Brad Nessler and Erin Andrews and now featuring NCAA Division I coaches in-game for the first time. Each coach will provide real time instruction and feedback, helping players control the tempo by executing their team's offense and defense to perfection.

New features like Pick and Roll Control, Defensive Lockdown Control, Signature Playcalling and Quickstrike Ankle-Breakers provide ultimate control on the court

NCAA Basketball 09 features a new gameplay engine with over 1,000 new animation sequences that deliver a more responsive, intelligent experience. The new animation system and improved AI enable gamers to apply pressure defense with new full-court presses and traps. Plus, quicker players get up and down the floor faster and make better decisions running lanes and driving to the rim.

http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-34iy.html

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/color_blocks.jpg"Does Adobe think they can out-Google Google? Perhaps. The company is involved with Zoetrope, a joint project with a href="http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=45255"researchers at the University of Washington/a. What they're building is a tool that allows for manipulating the web over time. Instead of the snapshot of the web you see today when googling, Zoetrope will let anyone use keyword searches to discover archived web information and look for patterns in the data found. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12673amp;cb=12673' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12673amp;n=12673' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p h2About Zoetrope/h2 pAs with a href="http://www.archive.org"the Internet Archive/a, the data in Zoetrope's database is a backup of the entire web, including those pages which have changed over time. But this archive won't be limited to the somewhat inconsistent periodic snapshots of the web's content like the Internet Archive offers. It will encompass everything./p pUsing the intuitive Zoetrope interface, a user could compare historical changes of various data through time by comparing snapshots of different pages on the web. Analyzing different, changing elements on web pages, side-by-side and over a period of time is downright difficult today - if not impossible. But Zoetrope makes it happen./p pThe process is done using Zoetrope "lenses" to draw boxes around elements, connect data from one site to another, and pull up charts of relevant data, all while manipulating a slider to scroll back and forth through time. That may sound hard, but if you watch a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1449756"this video/a, you'll see that it looks surprisingly easy. /p pobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7C-B7qdClakhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7C-B7qdClakhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/p h2For Everyone, Not Just The Computer Savvy/h2 pIn a way, this project is similar to Google's a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_opens_visualization_api.php"new visualization API/a, which lets developers use historical web data to build charts, graphs, gadgets, and the like. However, where Google's tool is aimed at the technically savvy programmer, Zoetrope, on the other hand, is for the average user. Says Dan Weld, a UW computer science and engineering professor who worked on the project, quot;Zoetrope is aimed at the casual researcher. It's really for anyone who has a question.quot;/p pAs noted in the a href="http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=45255"Washington University article on the project/a, example uses of Zoetrope could range from the basic: checking historical rankings of favorite players on a sports team, to the advanced: comparing daily air pollution levels in Beijing to number of world's records broken each day in the 2008 Olympics.#160; /p pquot;Your browser is really just a window into the Web as it exists today,quot; said Eytan Adar, University of Washington computer science and engineering doctoral student who's also a co-author of a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1449756"the research paper/a on the project. /p pquot;When you search for something online, you're only getting today's results...This is really a new way to think about storing information on the Web.quot; /p pThe researchers hope to offer Zoetrope for free as early as next summer. /p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/zoetrope1.jpg"/p p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/zoetrope2.jpg"/p pemImage credits: Color, /ema href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/2406178025/"emTorley/em/aem; Others, /ema href="http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=45255"emUniversity of Washington/em/a/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zoetrope_new_web_crawler_searches_analyzes_ever_changing_web.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/7UHI1YiTsK9O2xeXknhb7alwAjs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/7UHI1YiTsK9O2xeXknhb7alwAjs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=gGOe3TpO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=rMXN7xIR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=jTgV8sSD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=jTgV8sSD" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=dOloGiUb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=dOloGiUb" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=z1udEQsG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=z1udEQsG" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Mb7TxoHl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Bx945L0M"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/VpIe0pvsSZ4" height="1" width="1"/

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/69392_thumb.jpg" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Visifire is a set of data visualization components powered by Microsoft Silverlight. It lets you create and embed visually stunning animated Silverlight Charts within minutes. Visifire is easy to use and independent of the server side technology. It can be used with ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails, or just simple HTML. Visifire's unique features are visually stunning animated charts, the ability to be embedded into any Web page in minutes, a tiny footprint (140 KB), and enterprise grade features. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / This release adds Silverlight and WPF support, blend compatibility, styling, realtime updates, and scrollable charts. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/S5V_np1NX0cFwC0zlLZ1uLcEGx8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/S5V_np1NX0cFwC0zlLZ1uLcEGx8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/6wYQND5ptPc" height="1" width="1"/

Color me impressed with this one: Prague-based 360 Cities, a network of ‘Virtual Reality’ photographers promoting high-resolution spherical imagery, has integrated its portfolio of stunning 360° panorama shots into the Featured Preview Layer for Google Earth.

A collection of the panoramas just became visible automatically to every user of the free 3D earth visualization software, and the rest of the 360cities database, which is nearly 10,000 spherical images strong, has been added to the Gallery in Google Earth as well. Some of these are breathtakingly beautiful: check out this shot of the Berlin holocaust memorial, or the inside of this Iranian mosque, or this market place in Gambia, or the Cuban corner bar I embedded below.

I love seeing people outside of Google doing their utmost to enhance the Google Earth experience, although it must be said that the company is doing their part too. Recently, they made it possible to visit Ancient Rome in 3D.

Note: this only works with the latest version of Google Earth (4.2), which features the new PhotoOverlay format. You can download the KMZ file here.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/launchpad-heading.png alt= pa href=https://launchpad.net/~barryimg src=https://help.launchpad.net/BlogImages?action=AttachFile#038;do=get#038;target=baw.jpg alt=Barry Warsaw mugshot //aOur previous emMeet the developers/em a href=http://news.launchpad.net/meet-the-devs/meet-paul-hummerinterview/a was with a man known by his irc nick coderockstar/code./p pOn the Launchpad team we have another rock star, the a href=http://barry.warsaw.us/bass/index.htmlbass/a playing Mr a href=https://launchpad.net/~barryBarry Warsaw/a!/p pstrongMatthew: What do you do on the Launchpad team?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong In general, it is my life#8217;s work to see a href=http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.htmlZawinski#8217;s Law/a fully realized in everything I touch. To that end, most of my Launchpad work has been to add spam vectors, er, I mean mailing lists to Launchpad. I don#8217;t know why anybody would think a href=http://barry.warsaw.us/software/index.htmlI know something about mailing lists/a, but there you have it./p pThese days, the basic mailing list features are working pretty well, so I#8217;ve been concentrating on other things, though often email related, such as the recent #8220;Contact this user#8221; feature./p pstrongMatthew: Can we see something in Launchpad that you#8217;ve worked on?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong If you#8217;ve used the Launchpad mailing lists, you#8217;ve used stuff I#8217;ve worked on. If you try out the new #8220;Contact this user#8221; feature in Launchpad 2.1.11, you will be using my stuff. Well, that#8217;s only if you like those features. If you hate them, someone else did it./p pstrongMatthew: Where do you work?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong I work out of my home in Silver Spring, Maryland USA. Well, I emdid/em up until about a week ago, when I moved into a temporary rental house while we#8217;re doing some work on our real house. I live about a mile walking distance from Washington DC./p pstrongMatthew: What can you see from your office window?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Right now, not much other than the side of my neighbor#8217;s house, but when I#8217;m back in my real home, I have a somewhat less boring view of the neighborhood. I can see all the way up the street leading to my house, so I#8217;m always prepared when the Fedex truck drops off the latest awesome mugs and hoodies from the a href=http://shop.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu store/a (/me waits for his endorsement bonus check)./p pstrongMatthew: What did you do before working at Canonical?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Directly before coming to Canonical I worked at a company called Secure Software, incidentally with Mailman#8217;s original inventor John Viega, though we were not working on Mailman. Secure built products around static analysis of C, C++, and Java code for security vulnerabilities. It was very cool software and allowed me to do a lot of C, C++ and Java hacking as well as the usual big pile of Python. I also did more Windows development than I#8217;d ever done before, and let#8217;s just say it#8217;s nice to be working for the makers of Ubuntu now! Unfortunately mdash; or maybe strongfortunately/strong mdash; Secure did not overwhelm in the market and, here I am!/p pI#8217;ve been pretty lucky to work at some great places, though my career has been pretty eclectic. I#8217;ve been able to do a lot of open source and free software, both officially and incidentally in my career. I won#8217;t bore you with the ten page resume though./p pstrongMatthew: How did you get into free software?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Well, I#8217;m an old timer so I#8217;ve actually been into free software probably before the term was even invented! My first real software job was as a summer intern at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST), a US Federal research lab in suburban Maryland. I was hacking on homebrew graphics systems for robotic real time control and visualization, and most of the work was in FORTH. There was a pretty vibrant FORTH community and we shared lots of code, often by 8#8243; floppy disks, 9 track tapes and over the original ARPAnet and uucp. I continued with NBS/NIST after I graduated college and our lab eventually migrated to early SunOS systems. By that time I was learning C and hacking Unix, Emacs, window systems, etc. Back then at least, the software that US federal employees wrote was not subject to copyright (because it was taxpayer funded), so it was easy to give away, and it#8217;s always seemed very natural for me to share code./p pA few years ago I searched some of the various Usenet archives for early postings of mine. I think my first public post was of some Emacs trinket I wrote in 1985. It was probably what eventually became Supercite. In any case, tapping into that culture and its social interactions really got me hooked. I made a lot of friends online and I#8217;ve been very luck to keep many of them and even meet some of them in the real world./p pstrongMatthew: What#8217;s more important? Principle or pragmatism?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong a href=http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/The Zen of Python/a says #8220;Practicality beats purity#8221;./p pstrongMatthew: Do you/have you contribute(d) to any free software projects?/strong/p pYes, quite a few actually./p pThese days I#8217;m most active in a href=http://python.org/Python/a and a href=http://www.list.org/GNU Mailman/a, though there are probably a dozen or so FLOSS projects I contribute to in various ways. I used to contribute a lot to Emacs and XEmacs, but these days I prefer to just be a (l)user. I also tend to scratch my own itch, and hosting projects on Launchpad and using Bazaar makes that just incredibly easy. For example, I needed an email robot on some of my public email addresses, so I wrote #8216;a href=https://launchpad.net/replybotreplybot/a#8216; which tries to do that totally anti-social job in the most standards-compliant way possible. Even though the package is published on the a href=http://pypi.python.org/pypiPython Cheeseshop/a, all the project management happens on Launchpad. In fact a href=https://launchpad.net/mailmanGNU Mailman itself is hosted on Launchpad/a now too./p pstrongMatthew: Tell us something really cool about Launchpad that not enough people know about?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong a href=https://help.launchpad.net/Code/ReviewMerge proposals/a are my latest kick. We use them a lot on the Launchpad project, and I think they#8217;re a great way to manage branches, review code, and link them to bugs, milestones and releases. I#8217;m not yet sure how useful all that stuff is for smaller projects, but for a large complicated beast like Launchpad, merge proposals are really great./p pstrongMatthew: Four string, six string or fretless?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Ah, what a great question, but those are not either/ors! img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / I firmly believe that if you can#8217;t play a 4, you have no business with more strings. Guitar players would be wise to heed that advice. img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / I played bass for almost 25 years before I got my first 5 string, and it#8217;ll probably be another 25 before I get a 6. My grandkids will have to slap and pop that hi C string for me though./p pFretlesses are very cool, and I played a 4 fretless (with a hipshot) almost exclusively for many years, though I am no Jaco. A good #8220;mwaahh#8221; just makes me so happy. My main axe these days though is a fretted MTD American 535. Having that gut rumbling low B string is just too much fun, though you have to use it tastefully. I#8217;m still saving up for a fretless 535 to match my main axe, but it#8217;s much harder to sneak those things past my wife these days. img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / /p pstrongMatthew: a href=https://launchpad.net/~kikoKiko/a#8217;s special question! You#8217;re at your computer, you reach for your wallet: what are you most likely to be doing?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Okay, this is a family show, right?/p pI do purchase a lot of stuff online. I hate going to the malls and I really hate shopping so if I can get through the holidays without getting in my car, it#8217;s a success. One of our favorite places is Zappos because you can just order like $10,000 worth of shoes, keep the one pair you like and send them all back for free. I do buy the occasional software, but not too much ongoing services, though I#8217;m currently looking at encrypted, secure online backups. I do tend to like to roll my own though, since hacking is so much fun./p pThanks for listening!/p

A little Friday fun here from Jacob Seidelin. He has added FlickrBrot to his other fun fractal examples of the past.

FlickrBrot commemorates the birthday of Mandelbrot himself:

Today is the birthday of Benoit Mandelbrot. About 30 years ago he pulled a bit of mathematical beauty out of his head that would make him father of what is called fractal geometry. Today, at 84, he’s a retired Sterling Professor from Yale but is still getting awards thrown his way and even planets named after him. I thought I’d make something to mark his birthday since I’ve been playing a bit with fractals and JavaScript lately and because he’s just damn cool.

What I’ve spent my morning doing is hacking together my fractal renderer with some of the Flickr stuff I’ve also been doing. Instead of drawing colored pixels, it now pulls in a (limited) number of Flickr images and uses those to paint a visualization of the Mandelbrot set.

DeltaWalker 1.8.5DeltaWalker is a file and folder comparison application by Deltopia Inc. DeltaWalker lets you compare, edit and merge files, and synchronize folders. DeltaWalker is a compelling choice for software, web, and legal professionals, as well as scientists, engineers and anyone who works with text, documents, and folders that change over time.

Highlights:

• Finely tuned and optimized file and folder comparison engine
• Structure comparison and visualization of XML files
• Two and three-way file and folder comparison
• Manual and automatic merging of differences
• Extensive in-place text editing capabilities
• File and folder comparison over (S)FTP and HTTP(S)
• Visualization and comparison of BZ2, EAR, GZ, JAR, TAR, TBZ2, TGZ and ZIP archives
• Unicode support with automatic detection of character encoding
• Ergonomic, flexible, side-by-side file and folder comparison integration
• Unlimited undo/redo
• Color highlighted differences and changes (QuickDiffs)
• Text and Design views of HTML files
• Birds-eye difference view and navigation
• Customizable print/print-preview
• File and folder comparison reports
• Integration with 3rd party applications, incl. Dreamweaver, version control and configuration management systems.
• Capable of comparing folder hierarchies with thousands of files
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Publication Date: 2008 Nov 18 PMID: 19017655br/Authors: Xie, X. - Rigor, P. - Baldi, P.br/Journal: Bioinformaticsbr/br/MOTIVATION: Achieving a comprehensive map of all the regulatory elements encoded in the human genome is a fundamental challenge of biomedical research. So far, only a small fraction of the regulatory elements have been characterized, and there is great interest in applying computational techniques to systematically discover these elements. Such efforts, however, have been significantly hindered by the overwhelming size of non-coding DNA regions and the statistical variability and complex spatial organizations of mammalian regulatory elements. RESULTS: Here we combine information from multiple mammalian genomes to derive a first fairly comprehensive map of regulatory elements in the human genome. We develop a procedure for identifying regulatory sites, with high levels of conservation across different species, using a new scoring scheme, the Bayesian branch length score (BBLS). Using BBLS, we predict 1.5 million regulatory sites, corresponding to 380 known regulatory motifs, with an estimated false discovery rate (FDR) of less than 50%. We demonstrate that the method is particularly effective for 155 motifs, for which 121,056 sites can be mapped with an estimated FDR of less than 10%. Over 28K SNPs are located in regions overlapping the 1.5 million predicted motif sites, suggesting potential functional implications for these SNPs. We have deposited these elements in a database and created a user-friendly Web server for the retrieval, analysis, and visualization of these elements. The initial map provides a systematic view of gene regulation in the genome, which will be refined as additional motifs become available. AVAILABILITY: http://motifmap.ics.uci.edu CONTACT: xhx@ics.uci.edu or pfbaldi@ics.uci.edu.br/br/post to: a href = http://www.citeulike.org/posturl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3DPubMed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26list_uids%3D19017655title=Entrez+PubmedCiteULike/a

Motivation: The recent advances in metabolomics have created the potential to measure the levels of hundreds of metabolites which are the end products of cellular regulatory processes. The automation of the sample acquisition and subsequent analysis in high-throughput instruments that are capable of measuring metabolites is posing a challenge on the necessary systematic storage and computational processing of the experimental datasets. Whereas a multitude of specialized software systems for individual instruments and preprocessing methods exists, there is clearly a need for a free and platform-independent system that allows the standardized and integrated storage and analysis of data obtained from metabolomics experiments. Currently there exists no such system that on the one hand supports preprocessing of raw datasets but also allows to visualize and integrate the results of higher level statistical analyses within a functional genomics context.

Results: To facilitate the systematic storage, analysis and integration of metabolomics experiments, we have implemented MeltDB, a web-based software platform for the analysis and annotation of datasets from metabolomics experiments. MeltDB supports open file formats (netCDF, mzXML, mzDATA) and facilitates the integration and evaluation of existing preprocessing methods. The system provides researchers with means to consistently describe and store their experimental datasets. Comprehensive analysis and visualization features of metabolomics datasets are offered to the community through a web-based user interface. The system covers the process from raw data to the visualization of results in a knowledge-based background and is integrated into the context of existing software platforms of genomics and transcriptomics at Bielefeld University. We demonstrate the potential of MeltDB by means of a sample experiment where we dissect the influence of three different carbon sources on the gram-negative bacterium Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris on the level of measured metabolites. Experimental data are stored, analyzed and annotated within MeltDB and accessible via the public MeltDB web server.

Availability: The system is publicly available at http://meltdb.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de.

Contact: hneuwege@cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Motivation: The technique of chemical cross-linking followed by mass spectrometry has proven to bring valuable information about the protein structure and interactions between proteic subunits. It is an effective and efficient way to experimentally investigate some aspects of a protein structure when NMR and X-ray crystallography data are lacking.

Results: We introduce MSX-3D, a tool specifically geared to validate protein models using mass spectrometry. In addition to classical peptides identifications, it allows an interactive 3D visualization of the distance constraints derived from a cross-linking experiment.

Availability: Freely available at http://proteomics-pbil.ibcp.fr

Contact: g.deleage@ibcp.fr

pTim Harrington wants to help you. In stronga href="http://www.pitchfork.tv/beardo/episode-2-part-1-of-2" target="_blank"last week's installment/a/strong of "BEARDO", the Les Savy Fav frontman showed us how to make a quick buck off music festival-goers by offering low-cost haircuts and massages. In episode three, he hypnotically guides us into "Deep Relaxation", with breathing exercises (exhale... exhale some more...) and trippy visualizations to lure the viewer into soporific submission, in order to...well, what are you waiting for? Go watch! Tim Harrington needs your help.br /br / object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="514" height="405" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" / param name="flashvars" value="file=http://www.pitchfork.tv/node/2515/embed.xml" / param name="src" value="http://video.pitchfork.tv/mediaplayer.swf" /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="514" height="405" src="http://video.pitchfork.tv/mediaplayer.swf" flashvars="file=http://www.pitchfork.tv/node/2515/embed.xml" allowfullscreen="true"/embed /object br /br /Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is stronga href="http://www.pitchfork.tv/beardo/episode-4" target="_blank"here/a/strong./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/dpXxOOlEzQWxHgJnE9KKrw5cum4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/dpXxOOlEzQWxHgJnE9KKrw5cum4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/c5r9s0aHf6I" height="1" width="1"/