labs

If you see a lot of live music in small clubs, you've probably had the experience of being blown away by a band that hardly anybody else knows about. Once in a great while, your instincts are validated by the masses--the band becomes popular and you get to brag about how you knew them back when. But more often than not, the law of averages kicks in, and the band continues to toil in obscurity for a few years before breaking up because the bass player's pregnant or the keyboardist got a high-paying corporate advertising gig. You ask … Read more

Unlike other tech industry chief executives, Scott Kriens of Juniper Networks is refreshingly candid and pragmatic.

Despite the fact that Juniper revenue exceeds $2 billion annually and the company's market cap is nearly $13 billion, Kriens recognizes that Juniper just can't match Cisco Systems' product depth, global sales reach, and resources. Kriens still believes that Juniper can compete by following a simple formula: 1. Pick the technical battles it can win; 2. Stay ahead of the industry on innovation and performance; and 3. Acquire and/or partner to supplement Juniper's value.

Kriens' business strategy will be in … Read more

Open source and SaaS dramatically change the way enterprises consume software. But today I heard this taken to the nth degree, with a shift in a company's revenue model, as well. Bungee Labs helps enterprises (of any size, but with a particular focus on the tens of thousands-strong SMB market) build rich Internet applications (RIAs) in the cloud, for the cloud.

It's one thing to build RIAs using desktop development tools like Adobe's Flex. This is a good model and will persist for a long time. Bungee Labs, however, represents a future that I think we're rapidly approaching: a future in which developers write for the web with the web and deploy "to" the web without skipping a beat. It's very cool.

Even better is how Bungee prices this service.… Read more

At first glance, Re-Mission comes across as a stylishly produced, anime-influenced video game. But the targets in question are cancer cells, which the character Roxxi the nanobot blasts with the Chemoblaster, the Radiation Gun, and the Antibiotic Rocket.

Re-Mission is specifically designed as a health improvement intervention for teens and young adults who have cancer. Game producers at HopeLab start with a desired health outcome, and then reverse engineer a game that encourages positive behaviors, adding motivation and fun into something as scary as a kid's battle against cancer.

HopeLab Vice President Ellen LaPointe spoke at the Sandbox Summit … Read more

On the heels of banking scandals in the virtual world Second Life, its publisher Linden Lab announced Tuesday that it is effectively banning in-world banks.

"As of January 22, 2008, it will be prohibited to offer interest of any direct return on an investment (whether in Linden dollars or other currency) from any object, such as an ATM, located in Second Life, without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter," Linden Lab wrote on its blog Tuesday. "We're implementing this policy after reviewing resident complaints, banking activities and the law, and we'… Read more

The 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show hasn't officially started, but CNET editors are already gathering the latest. Hot topics so far have been Warner Bros. dropping HD DVD; the new all-in-one budget home theater systems from Panasonic; a waterproof, dustproof, and shockproof camcorder; and Samsung's Touch of Color LCDs that depart from the typical glossy-black finish.

Also new for this year, the CNET Car Tech Testing Lab lets manufacturers stop by our lab and show off their goods by installing the latest systems in our test car, a 2008 Scion xD.

Of course, there are loads of other … Read more

At this year's CES, the Car Tech editorial staff members not only cover the show, we are part of it. Along with looking at new and innovative automotive gadgets around the show floor, we are running the Car Tech Testing Lab. We've invited major car stereo manufacturers, such as Eclipse, Alpine, Pioneer, and Blaupunkt, to stop by our Lab and install their latest car stereos in our test car, a 2008 Scion xD, so we can check out the products in a standard environment.

We first got a sense of our new responsibilities as we waited in line … Read more

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm a sucker for pretty-looking things. It helps when they're actually useful, too. In the case of most items in Digg's labs section, the latter can't often be said, but they're certainly fun to look at. Today Digg launched a new visualization called "pics," which is a new way to see what pictures people are digging in real time. The new feature coincides with the enhancement of a pictures section, and recategorization, which took place earlier this month.

Each category on Digg … Read more

There's a major kerfuffle going on at Second Life publisher Linden Lab.

According to the virtual world blog Massively, Linden Lab CTO and employee No. 4 Cory Ondrejka has been asked by CEO Philip Rosedale to leave the company.

And Linden Lab itself has confirmed that Ondrejka is leaving, though it hasn't publicly explained whether he was fired or left on his own.

Either way, this is very big news in the Second Life world because Ondrejka has been there from the beginning, wrote the Linden Scripting Language and has been the engineering lead all along.

But according … Read more