Geek Gestalt

Update, 1:15 p.m. PST, December 24: Santa is currently arriving at Pinsk, Belarus.

Last Christmas Eve, Jeff Martin found himself forced to explain to a Canadian general why, when Santa Claus passed through Toronto that night, Google Maps had placed the city in the United States.

Martin, then a senior marketing manager in Google's Geo group, was part of a huge team of people involved in the joint U.S.-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command's annual NORAD Santa tracker program, a long-running effort to provide children the world over a live view of Santa's progress as he and his reindeer deliver Christmas presents.

In 2007, Google signed onto the project as a technology partner, and since then, has been incorporating NORAD's data on Santa's whereabouts into special 2D Google Maps and 3D Google Earth representations.

And that's where the trouble began.

NORAD is now actively tracking Santa, and will do so until 3 a.m. on Christmas Day.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Inexplicably, as Santa made his way through Toronto that night last year, the mapping software began identifying the city as being in the United States. Instantly, NORAD Santa's dedicated Gmail account "just lit up" with messages from irate Canadians, Martin said, and quickly, the Google team fixed the problem.

But not before Martin's run-in with Canadian Lt. Gen. Marcel Duval. "He said, 'I understand that you have a new American city,'" Martin recalled. "It was a slightly tense moment for me, standing in front of a three-star general explaining to him why one of his cities had been designated as a United States city."

Is this Santa Claus?
All joking aside, NORAD has been taking its Santa tracking project seriously for decades. But it actually began in 1955 with a wrong number.

One morning that December, U.S. Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, the director of operations at CONAD, the Continental Air Defense Command--NORAD's predecessor--got a phone call at his Colorado Springs, Colo., office (see video below). This was no laughing matter. The call had come in on one of the top secret lines inside CONAD that only rang in the case of a crisis.

The ad that started it all.

(Credit: NORAD)

Grabbing the phone, Shoup must have expected the worst. Instead, a tiny voice asked, "Is this Santa Claus?"

"Dad's pretty annoyed," said Terri Van Keuren, Shoup's daughter, recalling the legend of that day in 1955. "He barks into the phone," demanding to know who's calling.

"The little voice is now crying," Van Keuren continued. "'Is this one of Santa's elves, then?'"

The Santa questions were only beginning. That day, the local newspaper had run a Sears Roebuck ad with a big picture of St. Nick and text that urged, "Hey, Kiddies! Call me direct...Call me on my private phone and I will talk to you personally any time day or night."

But the phone number in the ad was off by a digit. Instead of connecting with Santa, callers were dialing in on the line that would ring if the Russians were attacking.

Before long, the phone was ringing off the hook, and softening up, Shoup grabbed a nearby airman and told him to answer the calls and, Van Keuren said, "'just pretend you're Santa.'"

Indeed, rather than having the newspaper pull the Sears ad, Shoup decided to offer the countless kids calling in something useful: information about Santa's progress from the North Pole. To quote the official NORAD Santa site, "a tradition was born."

From that point on, first CONAD and then, in 1958, when NORAD was formed, Shoup's organization offered annual Santa tracking as a service to the global community. A phone number was publicized and anyone was invited to call up, especially on December 24, and find out where Santa was. Manning those phones over the years have been countless numbers of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps personnel and their families, and for many people, turning to NORAD to find out where Santa is became something to look forward to each year.

Phones and e-mail
These days, of course, a single red phone isn't enough to handle the demand for the information. In fact, said Joyce Frankovis, the public affairs specialist who runs the Santa tracking program for NORAD these days, there were fully 1,275 people involved in the project in 2008, and there would have been more had there been more room for them.

Frankovis explained that most of those people are volunteers who come in to NORAD's Colorado Springs headquarters on Christmas Eve to answer phone calls and emails. And it's a good thing there's so many, she said, because "Literally, when a volunteer puts the phone down after they get done with a call, it's ringing again."

All told, she said that each volunteer handles about 39 calls per hour and that in 2008, the team used 100 phones and 25 computers to handle 69,845 calls and 6,086 e-mails from more than 200 countries. Most of those contacts happened during the 25 hours from 2 a.m. on December 24 through 3 a.m. on Christmas that the operations center (see video below) is up and running.

Most people, Frankovis said, just want to know where Santa is. And so the volunteer answering the question will look up at the big screen on the wall at the operations center and see where, on the map that is integrating geographical information from NORAD with Google's mapping service, Santa is at that moment.

"NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa--radar, satellites, Santa Cams and fighter jets," reads the NORAD Santa Web site. "Tracking Santa starts with the NORAD radar system called the North Warning System. This powerful radar system consists of 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America. On Christmas Eve, NORAD monitors the radar systems continuously for indications that Santa Claus has left the North Pole.

"The moment that radar indicates Santa has lifted off, we use our second detection system. Satellites positioned in geo-synchronous orbit at 22,300 miles from the Earth's surface are equipped with infrared sensors, which enable them to detect heat. Amazingly, Rudolph's bright red nose gives off an infrared signature, which allow our satellites to detect Rudolph and Santa.

"The third tracking system is the Santa Cam network. We began using it in 1998, which is the year we put our Santa Tracking program on the Internet. Santa Cams are ultra-cool, high-tech, high-speed digital cameras that are pre-positioned at many locations around the world. NORAD only uses these cameras once a year on Christmas Eve. The cameras capture images and videos of Santa and his reindeer as they make their journey around the world.

"The fourth system is made up of fighter jets. Canadian NORAD fighter pilots flying the CF-18 intercept and welcome Santa to North America. In the United States, American NORAD fighter pilots in either the F-15 or the F-16 get the thrill of flying alongside Santa and his famous reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and, of course, Rudolph."

Still, despite all that, "Santa is hard to track," said Frankovis. "We actually never know which route Santa's going to take. So it's just a matter of using that high-tech equipment to track him."

Technology is also playing an increasing role in how NORAD publicizes the program. Frankovis said that after taking over the project earlier this year when her predecessor retired, she decided to begin using a much wider collection of social and online media for promotion. As a result, the NORAD Santa tracker now has presences on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and TroopTube.

Google's Martin said that his company--which, like all the corporate partners in the program, offers its assistance at no cost to taxpayers--has dozens of people working on helping to track Santa. Those people provide technical consulting and server provisioning for the NORAD Santa Web site, as well as helping put together YouTube videos, information for Google Maps and Google Earth and, soon, a new service that will allow people to use their mobile phones to track Santa on Christmas Eve.

All told, Martin said, the Web site had 8 million unique users in 2008, who visited the site 15 million times, accumulating tens of millions of page views and more than 10 million map views. Those numbers were up about 45 percent from 2007, he added.

Martin also said Google helps out by providing and monitoring a Gmail account for the program. And it was there that one of the best messages he can remember came in just a few days ago.

"I have been good," a girl named Stephanie wrote to Santa. "But my brother Christopher is mean to me. Take him and leave the presents, please!"

Martin said that, clearly, many of the kids who send emails think they're reaching out directly to Santa. "We'll write back and say we've forwarded their message to Santa at the North Pole, who's preparing for Christmas Eve."

Of course, not everyone believes in Santa. Frankovis said that some callers--especially towards the later part of Christmas Eve when maybe a little bit too much egg nog or a Canadian grog called Moose Milk has been drunk--dial in to have a little bit of fun.

But for those who question whether there really is a Santa at all, Frankovis said the volunteers answering the phone have a simple answer: "'We believe, based on historical data and 51 years of NORAD tracking information, that Santa Claus is alive and well in the hearts of people throughout the world."

Col. Shoup and the e-mails
Last March, Shoup died, said Van Keuren. But in the years before his death, she and her family would take the retired colonel back to Colorado Springs each year for the Santa tracker training. "They would introduce him and he would say a few words," Van Keuren said. "So that was a big thrill for him."

In his later years, Shoup "was not as sharp as he used to be," she said. But his days overseeing the Santa tracker program were still near and dear to his heart. She said the NORAD folks had printed out a sheaf of emails kids had written in and gave them to Shoup as a reminder of what he'd started back in 1955.

"For the last weeks of his life, he carried them around in his briefcase like they were top secret papers," Van Keuren said. "Those were just precious to him. I'd read them to him over and over."

ILM was called in late in the 'Avatar' development process to help finish a series of the movie's shots.

(Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)

Update (11:49 a.m.): Weta Digital has been contacted for comment, and this story will be updated when and if the company responds.

SAN FRANCISCO--About a year ago, with James Cameron's science-fiction epic "Avatar" well under way, it became clear that Weta Digital, the visual effects studio doing much of the computer generated imagery, or CGI, on the project, was a bit in over its head.

At that point, the movie, which opened Friday, was about 40 minutes longer than it ended up being, and what was needed to finish the project was another company that could come in and lend a helping hand--and do so at the same, very high level, that Weta was working at.

And that's where Industrial Light & Magic came in, recalled John Knoll, the Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor tasked with parachuting in to help finish what was, more than on most films, the crucial job of crafting the "Avatar" CGI work.

What followed was months of coordination between ILM, Weta, and Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, with a primary goal of ensuring that the two visual effects teams, one in San Francisco and the other in New Zealand, avoided any unnecessary duplication of effort, even as both sometimes found themselves working on effects for the same movie sequences.

For ILM, this wasn't the first time it had been called in to help aid another effects house, but it may well have been the first time it did so for one as big and as accomplished as Weta. To be sure, ILM's overall contribution to the finished film was minor compared to Weta's, but nonetheless critical in helping get the film to its final, finished state, Knoll suggested.

For Knoll, the challenge of working alongside Weta was about identifying a body of work that limited the number of assets the ILM team had to develop and which would allow them to be the most helpful. Ultimately, they were handed the keys to creating the visual effects for many of the specialized vehicles in the film, including the Valkyrie, a large shuttle used to move people and equipment, and several different types of helicopters, as well as the landscapes those vehicles lived in.

ILM was mostly given responsibility for doing the visual effects on the film's aircraft, notably its helicopters and the Valkyrie, a large-scale shuttle.

(Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)

ILM also did the effects work on the film's final battle scene, taking responsibility for the shots of all the vehicles taking off, as well as the sequence's cockpit interior shots.

Working together on a scene
For the most part, the teams at ILM and Weta worked on different scenes, but Knoll said there were some in which the two companies handles different parts of the same sequence. An example, he said, was a scene in the film where a group of helicopters attack the giant "home tree," where the Navi, the humanoid alien race in the film, live. Knoll said that the effects in the scene were mainly put together by Weta, but ILM handled all the shots in which the camera looks back toward the choppers.

In the scenes where the two effects houses both were charged with creating shots, the challenge was figuring out how to "checkerboard" the shots, Knoll said, especially because in some cases, ILM didn't know what Weta's work looked like.

"You keep cutting back between ILM shots and Weta shots," Knoll said. "They're really intermixed. I was worried, because we had to get going and go pretty far down the line before we had any Weta shots to refer to. We were both doing development in parallel."

This might have been a serious problem on many film projects, but with "Avatar," both ILM and Weta were working from extremely detailed templates given to them by Cameron. Knoll said that the templates gave his team very specific direction on how they should construct their shots, down to rough indications of the lighting in the scenes.

"It did help that the templates were so specific," Knoll said. "They were very detailed and Jim [Cameron] was very insistent: 'I've put a lot of time into making sure these are exactly what I want them to be, so you need to do a good job of matching that.'"

Still, with both houses working in parallel, there was certainly a bit of a race to finish a shot, Knoll said, because the team that was fastest would be able to more or less set the tone for the whole scene. "Whoever gets there first is who drives it," he said.

ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll hopes that audiences won't be able to tell the difference between shots created by Industrial Light & Magic and those created by the film's original visual effects house, Weta Digital.

(Credit: Weta)

"For example, in the home tree sequence, we have to fire a bunch of missiles," Knoll recalled. "[There wasn't] anything established for what the missile trails look like. We did our own version of the what [they] would look like and Jim liked it, so that's what Weta had to match."

Of course, in other cases, Weta would finish first, and ILM would have to match what the New Zealanders came up with. And in some cases, it was a bit of "splitting the difference," Knoll said. Ultimately, he added, he hopes that audience members won't be able to tell that two separate visual effects teams shared the work.

All-CGI explosions
One benefit for the entire film industry of having ILM step in to help out on "Avatar" may be that in working on the project, Knoll and his team came up with a new way to completely computer-generate large-scale, close-up explosions.

Until now, big fiery explosions in CGI-heavy films have been shot with live camera and then had visual effects added to them. But Knoll said that because of some of the limitation of matching Cameron's templates for "Avatar," there was no practical way to meet the movie's explosive needs with live-action.

"We've done CG explosions in the past," Knoll said, "but never with this level of realism, and never this close up."

Fortunately, ILM had pioneered the rendering of the visual movement of fluids in films like "Poseidon" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," and Knoll knew that the shape and movement dynamics of an explosion were similar to that of water.

"The same underlying engine is being used on this," Knoll said. "The motion of the underlying gas is similar to the motion of fluids. The medium is relatively uncompressable. So when there's movement of the medium, it can't change volume real dramatically. So if you push on one side, something has to push on the other side."

That meant that ILM could take the graphics engine it had created for fluid shots in the previous films and apply the same basic technology for the explosions in "Avatar." Though there are clearly some major differences between fluid and big fire--notably that as fuel burns, fire expands, and then retracts when the fuel goes away, the technique was similar enough that the technology could be adapted to the needs of "Avatar."

"I think this is going to be an important technique (for the industry) in the future," Knoll said, "to tailor-make an explosion that looks good close up."

The fifth paragraph in this story was updated on December 22 to better reflect Knoll's statements of how and when ILM came to be involved in "Avatar" and what the company's impact on it was.

The entrance to Cheyenne Mountain, the former home of NORAD. Today, NORAD is based at Peterson Air Force Base, like Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado Springs, Colo.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

This is not your "War Games" fan's NORAD.

If the picture in your head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command's operations center is straight out of that 1983 Matthew Broderick movie, you may need to replace it.

That real-life command center, where personnel from the militaries of the United States and Canada keep a watchful eye out for threats from the sky, is no longer buried deep under Cheyenne Mountain. It is, however, still in Colorado Springs, Colo. Today, it is housed at Peterson Air Force Base, and it is a joint venture with the U.S. Northern Command known as the NORAD Integrated Command Center.

And befitting the sensitive nature of that facility, the public does not often get a look inside.

But earlier this week, NORAD changed that equation when it posted a video (see below) showing nearly three minutes of B-roll shot inside the Integrated Command Center. It's not the most exciting three minutes that ever happened in there, to be sure, but then again, it is NORAD.

NORAD, of course, is gearing up for its annual Christmas Eve Santa Claus tracking marathon. Starting Dec. 1, the NORAD Santa tracking Web site has been live, and has been offering up a series of games for kids, as well as some historical information about that program. Come back to this blog on Monday for a look behind the scenes of the NORAD Santa tracker.

Photos: Inside Cheyenne Mountain, America's Fortress

Boeing's first 787 Dreamliner touches down at Boeing Field in Seattle, about three hours after taking off for its first-ever flight from Paine Field in Everett, Washington.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

SEATTLE--It turns out that Boeing's 787 Dreamliner can land too.

Just three hours after taking off from Paine Field in Everett, Wash., for its first-ever flight, the 787 made a gentle landing in a pouring rain at Boeing Field here. It marked the completion of an extremely vital step for this long-delayed and keenly watched $10 billion project.

As has been well-chronicled, the 787 project has been delayed for more than two years. Boeing rolled out the plane to great fanfare on July 8, 2007--07/08/07--and promised that its first flight was just months away at that point. But structural problems, a machinists' strike, supply chain shortages and cost overruns have forced Boeing into one public delay after another.

But after the aerospace giant got the plane through an essential test last week--the so-called taxi test, in which the plane is sent rocketing down a runway at high speed in order to lift its landing gear off the ground--all systems appeared to be ready to go for the first flight.

And indeed, on Tuesday morning, at 10:28, in front of thousands of company employees and an impressive phalanx of press, the plane took off. And quickly disappeared into a very cloudy sky. That flight was originally expected to last for as much as five-and-a-half hours but was cut short by poor weather throughout the northern Washington state region.

At 1:33 p.m. Pacific time, the plane landed, just minutes after having appeared miles away in the completely overcast sky.

Mike Carriker, Boeing's chief 787 pilot, signals his feelings about the planes long-awaited first flight.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Befitting the public relations nature of Tuesday's developments--and the obvious opportunity for Boeing to pat itself on the back for finally crossing this important milestone--it came as no surprise when, minutes after the maiden 787 was pulled up directly in front of a giant tent where the press corps and countless Boeing employees were waiting, Scott Fancher, the 787 Dreamliner program's vice president and general manager said, "This is a day that changed the history of aviation" and that the 787 has become the "first truly all-new airplane in the 21st century."

Those statements had to do with the fact that the 787 is made from carbon fiber, becoming the first major commercial airliner to be made from composite materials.

Fancher also took the opportunity to claim that the successful flight was a "statement of our nation's competitiveness," a clear poke at Boeing's European arch-rival, Airbus.

787 Dreamliner lands for first time (photos)

During its three-hour-and five-minute flight, the 787 reached a height of about 15,000 feet and a top speed of 207 miles an hour. The pilots had to scuttle their original plan of flying out over eastern Washington state. Chief pilot Mike Carriker said that a scout plane had flown ahead of the 787 in order to check out the intended route but had determined the conditions there were too rough for the tests that Boeing had hoped to execute during the flight.

After the 787 was towed back in and parked in front of the tent, Carriker and co-pilot Randy Neville emerged, beaming. Carriker pumped his arms high above his head and the crowd cheered.

Back on the ground during a question-and-answer session, Carriker joked that, "I thought the landing was pretty good, I don't know about you." And Neville said that the flight had presented the two pilots with no surprises. "The airplane did exactly as we were expecting," Neville said.

Carriker explained that just the act of getting the 787 in the air had gone a long way toward answering diagnostic questions about the plane. "We figured out more things about this airplane in ten minutes of flying," he said, "than we have in probably the last 100 days."

The 787 as it pulled up in front of a tent full of Boeing employees and reporters.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

And amplifying that point, Carriker said that once he and Neville were airborne, they had set out to execute a "very, very, very aggressive plan. In spite of the continuously descending cloud cover that forced the shortening of the flight time, they were able to complete about half of their intended tasks he said.

Still, the bad weather gave the pilots a chance to put the plane through some paces they had not intended until later in a testing program that could last as long as nine months before the planned delivery of the first 787 to All Nippon Airways in late 2010. Neville said that included flying in icy conditions and in strong turbulence.

And there were some very small victories, too.

"We even got to do a functional test of the windshield wipers," Carriker joked.

Asked when the second 787 test flight will be, Carriker said that today's plane--the first of six Dreamliners that have been built--was ready to head back up for another go. But he suggested it would be at least after the new year before the second flight.

At 10:28 a.m. PST on December 15, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner finally took air. It was the plane's first flight, more than two years after it was officially rolled out on July 8, 2007 (7/8/07).

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

EVERETT, Wash.--At long, long last, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner is aloft.

On July 8, 2007 (7/8/07), in front of thousands of enthusiastic onlookers, Boeing rolled out the 787 at its mammoth assembly plant here. The aerospace giant promised to change the nature of long-haul flight, making it significantly more efficient than ever before, and promised to showcase the new plane with its first flight just a few months later.

But one delay after another has substantially slowed the 787 program, and even though the plane was brought to the flight line last May, and it was expected that the first flight would take place sometime in the second quarter, that didn't happen. Until Tuesday, when at 10:28 a.m. PST, the maiden voyage of the first Dreamliner finally lifted off from Boeing's Paine Field here, quickly disappearing into a thick cloud cover. The plane is scheduled to land in a few hours at Boeing Field, near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, about 29 miles south.

For Boeing, Tuesday's development is one of its most significant in years. The 787 Dreamliner, which is built from carbon fiber composite materials and has new-style curved wings--allowing it to fly 20 percent more efficiently per passenger than other planes of its size--was meant to be the company's best chance to dominate the next generation of super planes. Originally, said Boeing spokesperson Russ Young, the idea was to build a plane that was 20 percent faster. But eventually, the company decided, after discussions with potential customers, to go for more fuel efficiency.

But the delays--a machinists strike, a problem with the joint between the wing and the fuselage, shortages of parts and supplies, and more--cost Boeing that advantage. And in the interim, archrival Airbus got its much-heralded A380 plane off the ground and into the hands of several carriers. Today, the A380 is flying regularly scheduled service on airlines like Qantas, Emirates, Singapore Airlines, and others.

Still, with the kind of time and money Boeing has invested in the 787, it was hardly going to drop the program because of some delays. Instead, it fought through the problems and continued forward. Last week, the company completed the last tests necessary to get the green light for the first flight, and today, the plane took to the skies in front of a large audience, some of whom were said to have paid $250 for the privilege of watching. Also on hand were thousands of Boeing employees who had front-row seats alongside the runway.

At long last, Boeing's 787 takes flight (photos)

Of course, while all eyes were on today's flight, there is a great deal more work to do before Boeing can deliver its first 787 to a customer--expected to be All Nippon Airways in 2010 assuming no more major delays--or see the plane carry its first paying passengers.

For one, there are six 787s that will be part of the test fleet, with 34 total test pilots. The planes will be put through a battery of in-air stress tests to determine if the model is ready for prime time. All told, said Young, the six already-built 787s will be put through more than 3,000 hours of test flights. In addition, there will be more than 4,000 of ground tests. Young said either the fourth or the fifth 787--in terms assembly order--will be flying tests with a fully fleshed out interior.

Just seconds after the plane took air, a trail plane flew by, much to the delight of the thousands of people on hand.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Among those tests are:

• A maximum energy refused takeoff, in which the plane is loaded to its maximum weight and its brakes ground down to the minimum level allowed, and then taxi at full speed down a runway before hitting the brakes. One aspect is to make sure there is no fire.

• In-flight stalls, where pilots will make the plane stall at heights of between 10,000 feet and 15,000 feet to ensure it is capable of regaining control and stability and that it doesn't go into a spin.

• Engine out on takeoff, where pilots will cut off power to one engine, and make the plane take off in spite of the powerful asymmetrical thrust twists that result.

• Tail-strike takeoff, in which the pilots will get the plane in the air despite striking the tail on the ground on takeoff, causing flying sparks. A wood panel will be attached to the tail to make sure the fuselage isn't damaged.

• Landings in severe conditions, including strong headwinds, crosswinds, and tailwinds.

• Being put through severe temperature extremes.

• Lightning tests, in which the fuselage will be hit with simulated lightning at a lab at Boeing field.

The importance of Boeing's ability to complete these tests and get the 787 into the hands of its customers can't be overstated. Back in 2007, the company touted the fact that it had received 677 preorders from 47 carriers, making it the most preordered airplane in commercial aviation history.

Surprisingly, Boeing said the delays have not forced customers to back out and that today, there are more than 840 preorders. Young said any carriers who backed out did so for financial reasons. "It's a tough time in the industry," he said.

Beth Noveck is deputy chief technology officer for the Obama administration. Her path to that role began with putting together the first academic conference on virtual worlds and led her to create what may be the first open social networking project in American government history, a re-working of the U.S. patent review process known as peer-to-patent.

(Credit: Flickr user Joi Ito)

Editor's note: This is the second in a series of articles discussing how people in the tech industry are working with or around federal and state governments.

Can you chart a logical path from a 2003 academic conference on the legal issues surrounding virtual worlds and online games to Barack Obama's first executive action as president?

Beth Noveck can.

If you're not familiar with her--and few outside her specific professional and social circles would be--Noveck, a 38-year-old lawyer originally from Toms River, N.J., is Obama's deputy chief technology officer for open government.

Precisely what "open government" means probably depends on whom you ask. But in her official role in the current presidential administration, Noveck framed it as an attempt to make our federal institutions embrace technology in a bid to share information with the public.

"Open government is the effort to create government institutions that are more transparent," Noveck explained, "that work more in the open and that provide information more readily online and in real time--and that are also more participatory."

On January 21, as many in Washington, D.C. were still shaking off hangovers from the inaugural parties the night before, Obama, in his first official action as president, signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open government, a short document that declared, "We shall work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government."

Noveck (see video below) was a principal contributor to the memorandum, and the first member of the Obama-Biden transition's Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform team, which advised the president-elect on ways to incorporate technology into his larger reform goals. So one could say that the new president's adoption of these concepts was a very high-profile validation of years of Noveck's work on a wide range of issues revolving around technology policy and using technology to help craft policy.

Indeed, her work over the years has won her not just an office in the White House, but the professional admiration and praise of some of the biggest names in technology.

"With a compelling blend of high theory and practical know-how," Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote in a back-cover review of her 2009 book, "Wiki Government," "Beth Noveck explains how political institutions can directly engage the public to solve complex problems and create a better democracy."

Or, as former Xerox chief scientist John Seely Brown put it in talking about the "constitution" of new technological systems, Noveck "has a very long history of being one of the most advanced thinkers on how...you change institutions to make a big difference."

State of Play
Noveck earned a bachelor's degree at Harvard University and then both a law degree from Yale Law School and a doctoral degree from the University of Innsbruck. Throw in a fellowship at Oxford and it's easy to see that she was headed toward a career in academia. While she worked for a time as a telecommunications and Internet attorney, she eventually settled into a position on the faculty of New York Law School.

It was there that Noveck first began attracting public attention. In 2003, not long after the virtual worlds Second Life and There.com launched, and as massively multiplayer online games like Everquest were becoming established in the mainstream, Noveck put together the first State of Play conference as a place to talk about whether these relatively new digital fun houses might actually be used to help change the world.

"My supposition is that virtual worlds are going to be the best training ground for teaching the practices of democracy, not simply simulations that passively demonstrate something," Noveck said at the time. "They offer a playground for complex social interactions and collaborative decision making, according to a set of rules defined by the game space."

It might have been tempting to laugh, but Noveck's brainchild attracted lawyers and academics from some of the best schools in the country, eager to talk about what they saw as one of the newest and most exciting fields of study.

After all, outside of a few research papers and articles, almost no one had ever bothered to put any real thought into the idea that virtual worlds could foster real society, and all the legal, financial, intellectual, and social opportunities and problems that come along with that.

"It was the first conference that took virtual worlds seriously," said Dan Hunter, today a New York Law School legal studies professor, but back then at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "It felt like the Woodstock moment for all these people and...a catalyst for people to start writing about it and for people like me to start looking at the legal and governance side of it."

Added Hunter, Noveck "managed to realize what no one else had (understood) all that clearly, that there was an opportunity to bring people together, and that there was a nascent movement there....(That) was kind of characteristic of her. She's really fast at picking up on movements and ideas people can come together around."

Peer to patent
For Noveck, being the prime instigator of a burgeoning intellectual field of study was a career boost. But it was likely another big move of hers that got her to the big time.

In 2005, still at New York Law School and still running State of Play, she began thinking about a different, though related, set of issues.

In her Introduction to Intellectual Property course, she put students through a grueling look at the American patent law process. One glaring hole, she knew, was that while the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office employs thousands of trained examiners, few are versed in the cutting edge of technology and scientific research.

"(An examiner) does not necessarily have a Ph.D. in science, and there is little opportunity on the job for continuing education," Noveck wrote in "Wiki Government." "As an expert in patent examination, she is not and is not expected to be a master of all areas of innovation."

This problem clearly bothered Noveck, and it was partly responsible for a huge backlog causing lengthy delays in the patent review process.

Inspired, Noveck crafted a blog post, Peer- to-Patent: A Modest Proposal, in which she argued forcefully that the patent review system was woefully broken and that if social software--a fairly new concept in 2005--was applied to the process, it could make the system work better. Wouldn't it be better for countless experts to weigh in on applications rather than a single examiner, she argued?

The idea, like so many others born in blog posts, might have died there. But, alerted to her groundbreaking idea, a top IBM intellectual property attorney contacted her and asked to talk. This was no small development. IBM is the Patent Office's single biggest client, receiving more than 3,000 patents a year. If Big Blue thought there was something to her idea, she had found the right partner.

A little IBM grant money later, Noveck found herself pursuing the project and, she wrote in her book, "running the government's first open social networking project."

Other corporate titans followed IBM's lead: First Microsoft, then Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, and others. Each offered to submit their patents applications through Peer-to-Patent, and to provide funding. On June 15, 2007, Peer-to-Patent went live as an official U.S. Patent Office pilot project.

Now, the Patent Office is studying the pilot's results. And while it's not clear what the outcome will be, it is certain that Noveck continues to have friends in the right places, in this case, the new director of the Patent Office, David Kappos, who had served as the chair of the steering committee for Peer-to-Patent.

Open Government
As someone with a core belief--and the record to prove it--that technology can help re-shape government, Noveck decided to get involved in the 2008 presidential election as a very early volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign. Through a friend, Seth Harris, who was helping the campaign on labor and employment and disabilities issues--and who is now the deputy secretary of labor--Noveck found herself in a position, and with the access, to apply her unique set of skills.

"He knew that I knew a lot about technology and technology in government, in particular," Noveck recalled, "and helped to make the introduction so that I could share (that) expertise both on the issue of how to use technology in the campaign...and also how we think about technology and governance and the open government work that we are doing now to help shape that agenda."

Noveck speaking with Tim O'Reilly at the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo in New York.

(Credit: O'Reilly Conferences)

Clearly, her efforts were appreciated--and rewarded. And the rest is history.

On December 8, 2009, the Obama administration's chief information officer, Vivek Kundra and chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, held a live Web cast to formally announce out the Open Government directive. Stemming from the president's January 21 executive action, the directive spelled out the administration's philosophy on achieving openness, transparency and collaboration.

It called for, among other things, each federal agency making publicly available, within 45 days, three "high-value" data sets; that within 60 days, the White House will launch an online dashboard intended to hold each agency accountable for the contents of the directive; and that within 120 days, each agency will create its own open government plan geared toward meeting the directive's philosophies.

Examples of projects the administration hopes for that are already in the works are an Army program under which its personnel can use wikis to collaboratively recraft the service's field manuals, and a Federal Aviation Administration program which made flight departure data publicly available, enabling a member of the public to build an iPhone app that lets people see the most accurate departure and arrival information.

Though many people worked on the directive, Kundra and Chopra named, and praised, only one: Noveck. To observers of the administration's open government efforts, this doubtless came as no surprise.

"It's clear that they have very firm intentions and that the administration does have a commitment to making very fundamental changes," said John Wonderlich, the policy director at the watchdog organization the Sunlight Foundation. "One of the ways we can see their commitment is that they have brought on someone like Beth to serve as a central point of contact for transparency issues."

Wonderlich also pointed to Noveck's Peer-to-Patent work as proof of her understanding of how to incorporate technology and wide public involvement in at least attempting to make government work better for the people at large.

Out-of-the-Beltway thinking to the Beltway
One reason she may be succeeding in government is that she's seen to be bringing new thinking to stodgy Washington.

"The deal is that she's bringing this...out-of-the-Beltway thinking to the Beltway," said Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who has worked with Noveck since Obama took office on open government issues involving the federal Veterans Administration. "She's one of the hubs of this, people who see how things work in Washington and see how things work in Silicon Valley, and bringing the best of both."

So how does all her work tie together? For Noveck, it begins with the evolution of three-dimensional visual technologies and the question of how to apply technological innovations for the greater public good.

"State of Play was always intended to be a look at whatever the latest tools are that help us to understand how we can collaborate and work together in a peaceful fashion," Noveck said. "And that's really the essence of what our political institutions do: create vehicles for us to work together to solve collective public problems....And for me, it's a very direct path from that set of ideas, that informed the creation of those conferences, to the development of the Peer-to-Patent platform for getting people involved in the patent process, to now, creating a national agenda on open government, and trying to bring together the technology worlds and the world of government institutions to improve the way we make decisions for all of our benefit."

Since its launch three years ago, Sony's PlayStation 3 has always been more expensive than its rivals, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii, in large part because the components in the PS3 cost so much to assemble.

At launch, for example, the console cost Sony about $805 to build, according to technology research firm iSuppli, with the highest-priced version selling for $599.

According to a report, the component costs of the Sony PlayStation 3 may finally mean the company is closing in on break-even for the console.

(Credit: Sony Computer Entertainment of America)

But now, a new iSuppli report issued Friday suggests that Sony may finally be nearing the break-even point with the PS3. It said that its teardown analysis service estimated that the design cost of the new 120-gigabyte PS3 Slim comes in around $336, while it sells for $299 in the U.S.

That means that while Sony is still losing about $37 per unit--plus somewhat more for marketing, royalties, box contents, and other expenses--it is for the first time closing in on breaking even with the console itself.

A Sony representative said Friday the company has a policy never to comment on the cost structure and breakdown of its hardware.

According to iSuppli, its 2008 analysis of the PS3's component costs showed that the then-$399 console was losing at least $50 per unit. So it's notable that even at the lower price, Sony is losing less money. Further, the analysis firm suggested that with component costs dropping rapidly, Sony could soon find itself making money on the PS3.

To be sure, companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are willing to subsidize the cost of their video game consoles because they make their real money on sales--and royalties--of games. The more consoles they can put in consumers' living rooms, even if they take losses on them, the more they can make on the games.

But Sony took a beating in the media in the early days of the PS3 because it was losing so much on each PS3, not to mention that the high cost of the console made it an unattractive buy.

Now, with the August release of the PS3 Slim, and its reduced price, the console is finally coming close to matching its rivals' sales numbers. In September, the PS3 even won its first-ever month, as measured by total console sales. In November, however, the benefits of a great deal of pent-up demand for a lower-priced PS3 seemed to have been played out, and once again, the PS3 came in third, trailing the Wii and the Xbox.

Still, the PS3 was only marginally behind the Xbox in units sold in November, and there certainly seems to be renewed enthusiasm for the console at the lower price.

And when Sony finally sees a profit on each PS3 sale, there will no doubt even be smiles in the company's board room. Stay tuned to see when that actually happens.

Updated at 1:05 p.m. PST with a response from Sony.

The video game industry just keeps on seeing its sales numbers decline, in spite of a huge month for Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and the crucial holiday month of November was no different than the last nine months of 2009. For the month, according to industry analyst The NPD Group, sales across the entire video game business were $2.7 billion, down 7.6 percent from $2.92 billion a year earlier.

Yet, NPD added, industry-wide sales were so high in 2008 that even despite this November's significant drop, the month was still the second-best November on record. "I think we all have to realize the incredible year that was 2008," wrote NPD analyst Anita Frazier, in a research report.

Winning the month, yet again, at least in console sales, was Nintendo's Wii, with 1.26 million units sold. That's significantly more than the 1.1 million units that Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter predicted late last month, in the wake of Black Friday, that Nintendo would sell. Microsoft saw its Xbox 360 take a solid second place with 819,500 units sold, and Sony's PlayStation 3 brought up the rear with 710,400 consoles moved.

Despite a big year-over-year jump in PS3 sales, those numbers had to be disappointing for Sony. The PS3 had finished ahead of the Xbox in October and September, mainly as a result of the pent-up demand for the machine in the wake of its mid-August price cut to $299.

For the Wii, first place is nothing new, and it's clear that consumers had a bigger hunger for that console than its competitors' offerings. But while 1.26 million units sold is impressive, it's quite a bit lower than the 2.04 million Wiis that sold last November, even given the fact that Nintendo lowered the price of the Wii from $249 to $199 in September.

"Nintendo products top Amazon.com's most wished for and most gifted lists for video games, and Wii remains at or near the top of the most-searched for video game terms on Yahoo," Nintendo said in a statement. "As families and friends gather for the holidays, Nintendo games offer the best shared experiences."

Microsoft saw sales of the Xbox drop 2 percent, from 836,000 last year to 819,500 this year. But Xbox spokesperson David Dennis said overall, last month was the best November in the Xbox 360's history, in terms of dollars spent across the board.

Though it did finish in third place, the PS3's sales were through the roof compared to last year, almost certainly due to the price cut. Sony's sales of 710,400 PS3s was up 87.9 percent from last November's poor showing of just 378,000 units.

Indeed, Sony touted that big jump, though without mentioning the recent price decrease of the PS3. "In November, PS3 was the only hardware console to see any growth when compared to last November," the company wrote in a press release, "experiencing an (87.9) percent lift and a 122 percent increase from the previous month."

On the software side, it was pretty clear that the Xbox--with four of the top 10 best-selling games on that platform, compared to two for the PS3 and four for the Wii--was November's big winner. That was no more clear than in sales of the biggest game title of the year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which broke the single-day record for sales for any entertainment product when it launched November 10, and was expected to make up a fifth of all games sales in November. The Xbox dominated sales of the game, with 4.2 million units sold, while just 1.87 million were sold for the PS3.

Dennis said the reason for that was clear: "It's Xbox Live," Dennis said. "People's friends are on Xbox Live, and you buy the version of the game where your friends are."

On Tuesday morning, the Obama administration formally unveiled its Open Government directive, an effort aimed at weaving the philosophies of openness, transparency and participation into the DNA of the federal government and its agencies.

That directive comes as a direct result of President Barack Obama's first executive action, on January 21, only hours after the hoopla from his inaugural parade and parties had died down, when the new chief executive issued the so-called Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government.

Beth Noveck, director of the Obama administration's open-government efforts

(Credit: New York Law School)

That document, which began, "My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government," was a forceful opening move by the new president, and one intended to make good on his campaign call for reform and openness.

For Beth Noveck, Obama's deputy chief technology officer for open government and a principal contributor to both the original Open Government memo and Tuesday's formal directive, this is more than just a chance to watch the new administration attempt to reverse decades of ingrained government reticence at letting the public get too close to policy discussions. It is also a chance to take a stab at changing the world.

Noveck, who for years has been a faculty member at New York Law School, had begun volunteering for the Obama campaign in early 2007, offering up her expertise in technology policy and in how to use technology to make policy. And when Obama won the 2008 presidential election, she quickly became the first member of what was known as the Technology, Innovation and Government Reform team, which was focused on thinking about how to actually bring about open government.

She's an accomplished law professor, and someone who gained some notoriety as the organizer of the State of Play conferences, which examined the legal, social, and intellectual issues surrounding virtual worlds and online games. But Noveck may have best secured her place in the Obama campaign and, later, the administration, with her groundbreaking work on the Peer to Patent project. That effort--which began in 2005 and became the subject of Noveck's 2009 book, "Wiki Government"--was aimed at applying the expertise of individual members of the public to the vastly overworked U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Today, Noveck is the director of the administration's open-government efforts, and was the one person that the administration's Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra called out by name during their Tuesday event to unveil the directive. Last week, she spoke with CNET about that role, about what her major goals are while in Washington, and about why transparency, collaboration and participation are so important to government working better for the American people.

Q: Describe, in your own words, what Open Government is, and what the administration's goals are for it?
Beth Noveck: Open Government is the effort to create government institutions that are more transparent--that work more in the open and that provide information more readily online and in real time--and that are also more participatory, engaging people in how government makes decisions and policies, earlier in the process, and with the benefit of input from more and more widespread stakeholders, not just people in Washington. And the role of government becomes more collaborative, working together across government institutions, and then across levels of government.

This is something that is pretty much possible today because of the Internet, correct?
Noveck: Absolutely. There have been efforts in every generation to bring about government reform, to create government that works better and more efficiently. But what's really a sea change today is that technology is making available this kind of open collaboration that we've never had before. Now we can get more information up as close to real time as possible and make it available not just on the Internet, but make it available so people can download it, look at that data, mash up that data, and derive greater meaning from it, and hopefully also, hold government more accountable as a result.

What makes you think that the public is ready for this kind of opportunity?
Noveck: Previously, you had only a few ways in which you could engage with government. You could vote in an election. Maybe you could write a comment in response to a rule that a federal agency might put out, like what's the appropriate fuel efficiency for trucks. You could write a letter to your Congressman. Now what we see is the opportunity to do things like get involved in a policy forum, not just by writing a comment that you have to mail to a federal agency in Washington, but by much more easily and quickly responding to a discussion about information technology in health care, and electronic health care records on a Health and Human Services Department blog. You may, for example, have technical skills and take some of the data that's being made available on Data.gov, like the flight record data that the FAA is putting out, and make an iPhone app that allows consumers to track when flights are on time. Which someone did.

The process you're in is not finished yet. What have you achieved so far with the Open Government initiative?
Noveck: We're by no means finished. And what we've been able to achieve is to transition from something that was the work of a handful of White House offices to something that is really the work of every single official across the government. Now, we are moving towards an open-government directive, which will instruct every government agency to be more transparent, participatory, and collaborative according to these specific milestones and instructions. And what we're seeing is that across the government, every department and agency has begun already to undertake initiatives to put more data up online, to begin to consult the public in new ways and to get the public engaged in policymaking in new ways, to use new technology to undertake collaboration, and competitions, and initiatives like, for example, Health and Human Services running a competition to design the best public-safety announcement in connection with the H1N1 flu vaccine.

Do you think that this culture shift will become permanent?
Noveck: This is really core to the president's vision of government. This points to the ability to use new technology to hard-wire this kind of reform and accountability into the culture of government so that it can't be undone in the next administration, so that we're not simply asking for data transparency now and then we're going to go back eight years from now. Really, the idea is when you're using technology to put information up online, it becomes very hard to take it offline without people noticing it.

Your work was pretty evident in the president's memorandum, correct?
Noveck: We had something called the Technology Innovation Reform Team--which was focused on how do we actually think about bringing innovation into government--as one of the core planning groups that was created during the transition in order to focus on such issues as open government. I was the initial member of that team, and that helped to produce a lot of the early work that we've done, including the creation of the role of a chief technology officer, the creation of a whole set of policies and projects that we've been undertaking over the course of the early stage of the administration. We all worked as a team.

On a personal level, can you talk about what it's been like to work in the White House?
Noveck: This is without a doubt the greatest honor and the greatest challenge of my professional career. Even for someone who likes to be busy and likes to multitask, working in the White House is an unbelievable challenge because of the range of issues that we deal with on a daily basis. It means that I'm working on a Health and Human Services issue at 9 o'clock and at 10 o'clock, talking to the Department of Labor, at 11 o'clock, I'm talking to the Department of Education. The advantage to that kind of breadth is the ability to help foster collaboration and knowledge exchange across department and agencies, so we can say to the Department of Education, this is what Health and Human Services is doing to bring innovation to the way they work. Or, Department of Labor, here's what's going on in some other area of government. So that ability to be at kind of the intersection of information exchange is incredibly valuable.

What is the status today of Peer to Patent?
Noveck: The Peer to Patent team did its own assessment after a two-year pilot, and now the Patent Office is studying it. The chair of the steering committee for Peer to Patent, is now the new undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and the director of the Patent Office, David Kappos, so he is very much a friend of the concept of citizen engagement and participation in Patent Office practice, and so now the office just has to assess for itself how they are going to institutionalize the concept of citizen engagement and participation in the work that they do.

Stepping back to earlier in your career, can you talk about the connective tissue between your work with the State of Play conferences and what you're doing now?
Noveck: Over the last decade, we've seen the evolution of three-dimensional visual technologies and the question is how do we take the latest technological innovations and apply them to the betterment and strengthening of our democracy? State of Play was always intended to be a look at whatever the latest tools are that help us to understand how we can collaborate and work together in a peaceful fashion. And that's really the essence of what our political institutions do: Create vehicles for us to work together to solve collective public problems and to do so in peaceful ways and ways informed by the best quality information. And for me, it's a very direct path from that set of ideas, that informed the creation of those conferences, to the development of the Peer to Patent platform for getting people involved in the patent process, to now, creating a national agenda on open government, and trying to bring together the technology worlds and the world of government institutions to improve the way we make decisions for all of our benefit.