PARC eases communications
between devices
Researchers develop common
language to improve compatibility.
Richard Shim, MSNBC/CNET
News.com, March 2, 2004
The Palo Alto Research
Center, a subsidiary of Xerox, announced Obje,
a software architecture meant to establish
a common language to tackle one of the biggest
hurdles that content and device makers face
as they try to make playback of digital media
easy on all devices: compatibility.
Obje essentially allows
devices to teach each other how to communicate
with one another. Code is sent to the devices
over a connection, either a network or a direct
connection. Establishing the language is nearly
instantaneous but depends on what is being
transferred, Calabria said.
The software is meant
to be device-, OS- and network-agnostic but
does need some sort of virtual machine. So
far, PARC researchers have gotten Obje to
work on a Hewlett-Packard iPaq device with
32MB of memory. Obje is also compatible with
other networking technologies and does not
need to be loaded on every device in the network
to work.
PARC researchers also announced
a wireless networking technology meant to
make it easier to establish secure connections.
The technology calls for client devices, such
as notebook PCs, to request a key clearing
the client to use the network. One example
researchers discussed was requiring a notebook
owner to have a key transmitted over an infrared
connection from a wireless network access
point. Once the key is accepted, the notebook
could access the wireless network.
The technology, which has
not yet been named, addresses one of the major
issues of wireless networking, easy implementation
of security standards.
"User studies show that
one of the biggest problems with security
is that people misconfigure settings or they
don't bother with it at all because it's too
hard," said Dirk Balfanz, a researcher at
PARC. "This is a way to enable it easily."
PARC is also looking for
licensees for Balfanz's project.
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