Killer App Research Articles

What are You Missing Out on? Big Media, Broadcasting, Copyright and Access to Innovation

Copyright is not usually cited as the main reason for the slow development of digital broadcasting services in Australia. Flawed government policy is generally taken to be the main reason. However, copyright is represented as part of the package that helps media empires and the entrepreneurs behind the next killer apps turn the internet into a clunky, permission-driven, grey-box experience-frustrating the delivery of all the new, nifty, portable and empowering consumer electronics which could give us flexible, on-demand access to programs and films. This chapter takes concerns about the negative influence of copyright on innovation and access to new media services seriously. However, my interest is not in proselytising the evils of Big Media, or analysing the evidence of global media's capture of the policy agenda. Further, the discussion of copyright and digital broadcasting is all too present-minded and too focused on current external influences on the law, and especially US influences and comparisons. This chapter addresses the contemporary Australian situation by reconsidering the past of broadcast copyright-its introduction into the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) and jurisprudential development in case law. This jurisprudence is important because, though perhaps too obvious to mention, it is still primarily the development of exclusive rights to copyright subject matter that establishes the means by which media owners effect control over access to their programs in Australia today.

A Battery-Capacitor Hybridfor Hybrids

Lead-acid batteries are relics that haven't changed much since their invention nearly 150 years ago. Heavy and unable to withstand rapid charge-discharge cycles, they are unsuitable for the automotive world's killer app, hybrid-electric vehicles. Hybrids instead use expensive nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries or, experimentally, lithium batteries. But a new, souped-up version of lead-acid batteries could change that, cutting the cost of hybrids and also improving the function of power grids and a range of other applications.

Netscape is Dead: Remedy Lessons from the Microsoft Litigation

On March 1, 2008, AOL officially pulled the plug on the Netscape Browser, killing off the killer app of 1995 whose success had led Microsoft on an exclusionary campaign which eventually triggered the now-famous Microsoft monopolization litigation. Although the government plaintiffs in the United States were eventually successful on the merits in the monopolization litigation, Netscape's death highlights the problem of remedy. Microsoft retains its monopoly position in the desktop PC operating system market; Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser still has nearly 75 percent of the browser market, despite the challenge from the technologically superior Firefox browser. The European Commission's parallel case has fared no better. Microsoft was found to have abused its dominant position by tying its media player to Windows and by refusing to disclose necessary server-system interoperability information. But the Commission's media player unbundling remedy failed completely and its interoperability order has not halted Microsoft's progress toward dominance in the work group server operating system market. In fact, in 2008, after imposing more than $2.3 billion in fines on Microsoft for the initial violations and Microsoft's failure to comply with the Commission's remedy orders, the Commission announced that it was opening two new investigations into Microsoft, one of which involves the tying of Internet Explorer to Windows. This paper explores the problems of remedy in monopolization cases, using the Microsoft litigation as an exemplar. In the paper I argue that we have paid too little attention to remedy issues and that Microsoft teaches us at least three things about remedies: (1) Enforcers need to give more consideration to potential remedies prior to bringing monopolization cases. (2) Enforcers need to consider the full panoply of remedial options, including restructuring and fines. (3) Greater attention needs to be paid to evaluating remedies, including articulating goals and establishing benchmarks for measuring progress. The paper is in three parts. The first reviews the Microsoft litigation in the U.S. and EU, including private damages suits. The second reviews the remedies imposed in the U.S. and EU. The third focuses on the implications for the remedies debate, covering the political economy of remedies, remedial options, the craft of remedies, and multiple enforcement.

Political blogging in the 2007 Australian federal election

Much of the discussion of the emergence, role and significance of the political blogosphere in Australia has been marred by boosterism on one hand and tired and stereotyped dichotomies on the other. As with so much of the discourse that developed from the 1990s onwards surrounding the social and informational roles of the internet, boosterism and a constant search for the new ‘killer app’ have gone hand in hand.

Open Access: Taking Full Advantage of the Content

This Journal and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) at large are standard bearers of the full potential offered through open access publication, but what of you, the reader? For most of you, open access may imply free access to read the journals, but nothing more. There is a far greater potential, but, up to now, little to point to that highlights its tangible benefits. We would argue that, as yet, the full promise of open access has not been realized. There are few persistent applications that collectively use the full on-line corpus, which for the biosciences at least is maintained in PubMed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/). In short, there are no “killer apps.” Since this readership, beyond any other, would seem to have the ability to change this situation at least in the biosciences, we are issuing a call to action.

Adaptive individualization: the next generation of online education

Purpose – Despite the predictions and expectations that the online education will become a “killer app” and with major impact on education, the first generation of online education has led to more disappointments than success stories. The current – one‐size‐fits‐all static approach is extremely ineffective and leads to increased effort on the part of faculty and instructors teaching online courses. This paper discusses adaptive learning as an alternative transfer of traditional structures from a geographically‐based to an online setting.

Blogs – The New Source of Data Analysis

An international association advancing the multidisciplinary study of informing systems. Founded in 1998, the Informing Science Institute (ISI) is a global community of academics shaping the future of informing science.

Surfing the net for software engineering notes

A good user interface is key to most programs. Designing an intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI) that makes it easy for users to get information in to and out of your application is a hallmark of a killer app. Most software engineers are not graphic designers and most graphic designers are not software engineers and therein lies the problem. In this month's article I hope to provide software engineers with advice on graphic design and introduce graphic designers to some software tools that will help them realize their design in code. If you happen to be a graphic designer and a software engineer, you may find some useful tools and tips at the sites listed below.

More Online Video Rekindles Network Capacity Debate

During the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, Internet traffic growth -often described as doubling every 100 days - was seemingly matched by a corresponding expansion of the network's architecture and infrastructure. The dot-com bubble burst resulted in lost business, bankruptcies, and lots of redundant and unused network resources. Long-distance transport became a low-margin commodity business and operators bided their time for the next emerging "killer app" to stimulate a new round of investment. According to technology analysis firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, that killer app - video -has arrived, and so, perhaps, will a shortage of network capacity. The Deloitte analysts base their prediction on two overriding trends: increases in Internet users and new video technologies and services. The firm predicts that more than one third of all Internet traffic in 2007 will be clandestine peer-to-peer video. Additionally, legal video - user-generated or Internet protocol television (IPTV) from carriers - is expected to increase, as is video chat

Model based computing

For the past year or so, Intel has been talking up RMS, an application software model for terascale computing. RMS, which stands for Recognition, Mining and Synthesis, is the class of software that Intel believes will represent the killer apps of the not-too-distant future -- 2010 and beyond. These applications will require the capabilities of terascale processors -- teraflop performance processing terabytes of data.

What is model-based computing?

For the past year or so, Intel has been talking up RMS, an application software model for terascale computing. RMS, which stands for Recognition, Mining and Synthesis, is the class of software that Intel believes will represent the killer apps of the not-too-distant future -- 2010 and beyond. These applications will require the capabilities of terascale processors -- teraflop performance processing terabytes of data.

Developments in Practice XXVI: Social Networks: Knowledge Management's "Killer App"?

The networks of communication and interpersonal relationships that develop naturally within an organization form channels for the flow of organizational knowledge and can also promote organizational learning. These informal social networks are significant mechanisms for both innovation and change management. However, until recently, very little has been done to try to facilitate or leverage social networks to take advantage of what they can do to deliver organizational value. Today, pressures on modern business to continually innovate and the increasing capability of information technologies to enable broader and more far-flung communication are driving organizations to look for ways to leverage social networks to improve business performance. Social networking concepts combined with a group of new and powerful interactive technologies, known collectively as peer-to-peer (P2P) computing, have the potential to profoundly change how companies work and deliver value. The effective harmonization of knowledge management with P2P technologies could therefore be the "killer app" that makes executives realize the importance of knowledge management (KM) to their organizations. However, their contribution to this partnership in the future will largely be dependent on knowledge managers' ability to demonstrate their skill at leveraging and facilitating social networks today. This paper combines the ideas and experiences of a group of practicing knowledge managers with research from the academic literature on social networks to create an overview of the issues and practices that are critical to facilitating the development of social networks and understanding their value in organizations. It examines the different types of social networks currently operating in organizations and the value of these networks to the enterprise and then looks at ways of developing and facilitating social networks in organizations. Finally, it examines the strategic potential of networks in organizations and how KM might help realize this value.

Solvable problems in enterprise digital rights management

PurposeDigital rights management (DRM) is often promoted as the technical basis for solutions to enterprise security problems requiring persistent protection. Yet to date, DRM has failed to take hold within the enterprise sphere. This paper aims to examine some possible reasons for the slow adoption of enterprise DRM.Design/methodology/approachIt is argued that contrary to the common perception current DRM technology is sufficiently robust for use in enterprise applications. Then three problems that may serve as barriers to enterprise DRM adoption, namely, trustworthy authentication, access policy management and the lack of compelling enterprise applications that require DRM are discussed. Finally, brief examples are presented drawn from the real world that illustrate that the first two barriers can be overcome, and it is argued that regulatory compliance is the “killer app” that will drive enterprise DRM adoption.FindingsFinds, amongst other things, that technical weakness in enterprise DRM systems, especially regarding authentication and authorization, can be addressed with relatively simple mechanisms.Originality/valueThis paper points up the need for more sophisticated enterprise DRM solutions.

Stylistics for text retrieval in practice

Stylistics for Text Retrieval in Practice has met during SIGIR 2006. With participants from both academia and industry, the workshop spurred interesting discussions on the future of stylistics, its practical uses, and "killer app". The papers presented varied from customer feedback evaluation systems to automatic speech generation.

Behavioral Cusps

Cumulative-hierarchical learning (CHL) and behavior, a premise first introduced by Staats in 1975, describes hoW higher-level behavioral patterns and structures can emerge from interactions among a set of loWer-level actions. Proponents of CHL emphasize the importance of pivotal response interventions, behavior repertoires, generative learning, and the development of behavioral cusps, the human equivalent of the computer World's killer application, or “killer app” (Wikipedia, n.d.). Rosales-Ruiz and Baer (1997) defined a behavioral cusp as an entry point for pivotal behavioral change that, once initiated, so profoundly alters, displaces, or transforms one's behavioral repertoire that it renders preexisting behavioral repertoires obsolete. In this article, We demonstrate hoW behavioral cusps can be used to construct CHL behaviors and repertoires of persons With autism and other pervasive developmental disorders Within and across five pivotal behavioral elements. We also describe hoW behavioral cusps could be used to improve the quality of the collaborative conversations during person-centered planning sessions.

Digital libraries for the developing world

Digital libraries (DLs) are the killer app for information technology in developing countries. Priorities here include health, agriculture, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, and safe drinking water. Computers are not a priority, but simple, reliable access to targeted information meeting these basic needs certainly is. DLs can assist human development by providing a non-commercial mechanism for distributing humanitarian information on topics such as health, agriculture, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, and water supply. Many other areas, ranging from disaster relief to medical education, from the preservation and propagation of indigenous culture to educational material that addresses specific community problems, also benefit from new methods of information distribution.

The Next Killer App

Like so many 1950s sci-fi movies, predictions about the future of radiology informatics are likely to miss the mark entirely. People do not visit Mars in private spaceships or command humanoid-looking robots to perform our work. However, innumerable technological advances have completely changed the way that information is generated, processed, interfaced, and applied. Informatics as a whole is punctuated by progressive rather than revolutionary changes. The best way to understand the future is often to have a clear perspective of the past. I transitioned to medical school from a fast-track career at Cisco Systems where I worked as an internetwork engineer supporting network operations for customers ranging from NASDAQ to local ISPs. When I entered medical school, I was shocked at how far medicine lagged behind Silicon Valley in the use of information technology. At Cisco, I could accomplish nearly every facet of my work without touching a piece of paper or leaving my cubicle. In contrast, the hospital seemed to be the land that information technology forgot. Ironically, my work at Cisco is very comparable to the practice of medicine. Both are information-based. There is no technical reason why the same efficiency and quality-enabling technologies in place at Cisco cannot be implemented throughout medicine, let alone radiology. The impact technology has had on radiology is nothing short of radical. In fact, it is the ongoing freescale adoption of technology within radiology that attracted me to this field. Many of the advancements such as PACS, 3-D reconstruction, electronic teaching files, and fusion imaging are seen as being today's “killer apps.” In reality, these have existed, at least conceptually, for well over a decade. Available computing power and supporting technologies have allowed for the continual refinement of these tools. This refinement has brought about the incredible advances we see today. These tools will continue to mature as new applications are developed. So what does the future hold? Medicine, like the Cisco world of networking, is about the derivation, processing, continual flow, and application of information. The quality of information at any point is dependent on the previous steps and the availability, quality, and utilization of preexisting data. The “killer app” is the ever-moving target of information acquisition, management, and delivery that ties the patient to the radiologist and clinician. Even within the most bleeding-edge radiology department, there is fracturing of available information. This limits the maximum potential utilization of the available data. While a fully cohesive information system could take many forms, imagine the power of a system where every detail about a patient is accessible and manageable from a single console. Similar to Internet browser technology such as RSS (real simple syndication) that provides real-time news headlines, imagine if your PACS system actively retrieved and populated dynamic patient information. This would not only include a more complete patient medical record, but also actively updated real-time information. These could include items such as real-time patient location, current treating physician location (clinic, OR, office) and contact information, and real-time medication administration data. Imagine clicking a single button to convey results on a study. Rather than simply displaying the ordering clinician's name (who might happen to be unavailable), the system automatically displays the covering physician's contact information and pages that clinician to the phone closest to your workstation. When the covering clinician calls, his clinical workstation is immediately synchronized with your display thus allowing findings to be discussed in detail. Does this scenario sound far-fetched? Years ago, when I left Cisco, it was possible to pack your desk phone in a suitcase and use it at a field office anywhere in the world (i.e., China). If the local number was called in the United States, the phone would ring in China. Application of current technology pieces like this would help bring the goal of an all-inclusive, cohesive, adaptive, and active information management “killer app” closer to reality (but only until the next improvement). Radiology is an exciting field with limitless potential. As stewards of technology, it is our responsibility to assist medicine as a whole with tools to increase, improve, and better utilize the information available to us. I look forward to this pursuit.

3G to Web 2.0? Can Mobile Telephony Become an Architecture of Participation?

Telecommunications companies (telcos) paid too much for European 3G licences on the basis that they would be able to reach mobile consumers directly with web content. The subsequent reluctance of consumers to pay for commercial content and the debts and devaluations afflicting the post-tech-boom telcos has had several consequences. Besides an undercapitalized 3G infrastructure, there has been increasing consternation about the absence of a must-have service ‘killer app’ that would lead to the uptake of 3G products, and determined efforts to find one, as evidenced at events like ‘Mobile Content World’, an industry conference and trade fair held in London in October 2005. But the efforts to sell 3G spectrum (and the entire 3G experiment) may be based on a misapprehension of the nature of users’ relationships with ICTs and web content. This article presents an overview and commentary on the progress of the 3G mobile content industry. In part it is based on a review of presentations at ‘Mobile Content World’, and in part on a review and synthesis of the most recent literature covering 3G and mobile content from the fields of media studies, cultural studies, economics and business.

Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (review)

Reviewed by: Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software Michael Truscello (bio) Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software by Matthew FullerAutonomedia, 2003 Matthew Fuller's Behind The Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software is essential reading for anyone interested in the application of cultural theory to the study of software. At times uneven, and occasionally with object texts that are somewhat dated, Behind The Blip still manages to condense a surprising number of insights into 165 pages. Fuller plies his trade in the emerging field of "software studies," an unaffiliated, interdisciplinary cadre of academics, net artists, and activists. The focus of Fuller's text, like the focus of much cultural theory concerned with software, is the conglomeration of people and artifacts around software, that is, not the way software is received by users, based on its functionality, but the reciprocal relationship between the production of software and its reception, and the modes of becoming that intersect therein. Software is more than just a programmable tool: it is a materialization of disparate modalities, a conjunction of multiple and heterogeneous processes and discourses, an "assemblage," to use the term Fuller borrows from Deleuze and Guattari. Much as Howard Rheingold suggests in Smart Mobs the next "killer app" might not be a technical innovation but social practices, the next flashpoint for cultural studies may be the culture of software. Characterized by the work of Fuller, Geert Lovink, and Lev Manovich, software studies is an evolving interdisciplinary field with antecedents in human-computer interaction (Donald A. Norman), sociology (Manuel Castells, Steve Woolgar), law (Lawrence Lessig), literary theory (N. Katherine Hayles), literature (Neal Stephenson, Ellen Ullman), and media theory (Friedrich Kittler). Software studies theorizes the "turn to computer science" in everyday life by examining [End Page 182] the "new terms, categories, and operations that characterize media that became programmable" (Manovich, 48). Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, assistant professor of English and digital studies at the University of Maryland, blogs: Software studies is what media theory becomes after the bubble bursts. . . . Software studies is, or can be, the work of fashioning documentary methods for recognizing and recovering digital histories, and the cultivation of the critical discipline to parse those histories against the material matrix of the present. Kirschenbaum's sense that the historicization of digital objects begins with the bursting of the "bubble" in media theory—that is, with the concomitant divestiture of naive media-theory utopianism and overvalued technology stocks—shares an affinity with Lovink's call to "liberate the Internet from its engineering history" (10). Both Kirschenbaum and Lovink, among others, want to inject history and culture into the debate over the production of software and its materiality, a debate that thus far has focused on reception. And both theorists express a feeling of critical sobriety in the wake of dotcom mania: "What happens," asks Lovink, "when the party is over, when you run up against the borders of commonly used software standards and group dynamics, when the cyber-spectacle fades away and the everyday, with its dirty politics, takes command?" (29). The dotbomb crash may symbolize the growing familiarity of digital objects: no longer objects of fetish, they are becoming invisible and routine. This transitional moment, from unknown to unnoticed, marks the emergence of software studies. Manovich, Lovink, and Fuller have produced accounts of the culture of software with widely varying methodologies: Manovich's formalist approach in The Language of New Media identifies the principles of a culture that has become programmable through decades of "transcoding" and attempts to create a media archaeology that posits the origins of the contemporary computer interface in the visual culture of modernism; Lovink's project in My First Recession is driven by a post-Marxist notion of "the political" and investigates "possibilities for advancing the social 'settings' within software and network architectures in order to experiment with a pluriform and agonistic 'post-geek' form of hegemony" (24); and Fuller's exploration of software [End Page 183] culture employs Deleuze and Guattari to imagine a "digital subjectivity" (28) that interrogates a "dimension of relationality rather than of territoriality" in the "implicit politics" of software (31). To interrogate the "implicit politics" of software, Fuller proposes...

In search of the next "killer app"

In both the commercial and academic realms, there is a tendency to adopt existing industries as frames of reference for new technologies rather than envisioning new industries or new forms for existing industries. There is also a tendency to think in terms of a single killer app even though the next big thing is likely to be a combination of applications. There are two practices vital to overcoming these and other limiting tendencies in the pursuit of new technology-enabled businesses: simply try things out and focus on the information context.