Pressroom

Recent releases:

Xerox's Erasable Paper at WIRED NextFest, Xerox news release (September 26, 2008)

ContentGuard Licenses Digital Rights Management Patents to Nokia Corporation [.pdf], ContentGuard press release (July 17, 2008)

Microsoft to Acquire Powerset, Powerset blog post (July 1, 2008)

Recent news:

SolFocus Completes Spanish Project, Eyes California
It's a milestone for the company...Pedro Banda, ISFOC's director general, confirmed the initial results are promising. "While we are just now beginning to evaluate performance results from the installed systems, initial results look excellent and validate our belief that the high-efficiency capability of [concentrating] PV technology is going to provide high energy yields," he said in a written statement. "SolFocus has done an excellent job of progressing its technology from [research and development] into commercially ready product." Related case study...

Online gamers are fit: physically if not mentally -- New Scientist
Pale, overweight couch potatoes. That's the stereotype of avid online computer gamers, but these joystick junkies are actually in better than average physical condition, a new US survey [conducted by PARC, UCLA, and University of Delaware] suggests, although they may be less healthy mentally. Related research...

Innovation Summit -- SPIE release
Solar, biophotonics, and next-generation lighting technology experts with success in leveraging invention and intellectual property into profit will provide insights at the SPIE Photonics Innovation Summit [November 6, San Francisco]. PARC and the UCB Haas Business School and Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation are participating as cooperating organizations. Keynote speakers include Henry Chesbrough (author of Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology and Executive Director of the Center of Open Innovation at the Institute of Management) and John Kao (author of Innovation Nation, chosen by Business Week as one of the ten best books in 2007). PARC is one of three cooperating organizations in this event, where Director of Business Development Jennifer Ernst will discuss perspectives on working with multinational corporations in converting advanced research into high-value business opportunities.

Human Hardware: Foraging for Information -- Search Engine Land
[Research Fellow] Pirolli, working at the Palo Alto Research Center, was trying to predict with some mathematical accuracy the behavior of humans when searching for information [on the web] but was having challenges finding models that accommodated “messy” data in an unstructured environment...Pirolli was breaking new ground here, drawing from several academic areas to try to explain human behavior....Later, together with Stuart Card, Pirolli published the often cited paper that laid the foundations for Information Foraging Theory. Related research...

'Forgot Your Password?' May Be Weakest Link -- MSNBC
Markus Jakobsson, principal scientist at the famed Palo Alto Research Center in California, said answers to password reset questions have become so valuable that a black market has developed for personal information like dog's names...But he’s seen demonstrations of far more sophisticated tools designed to “scrape” information off blogs and social networking pages for later use by hackers. Related research...

Bringing Sports Psychology to the Realm of Video Games -- Kotaku
“The gamer generation tends to be less risk averse and more willing to try things, even in the face of overfailure,” said Nicholas Yee, a research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center, whose Daedalus Project studies behavior in MMORPG players. “It’s not the main focus of the field, yet, but there is a little data we can extrapolate from it.” Related research...

Wikimedia pegs future on education, not profit -- SF Chronicle
PARC is the creator of WikiDashboard, a social dynamic analysis tool created independently of the foundation that allows readers to analyze all of the edits made by their peers. In October, [PARC Scientist Ed] Chi discovered a huge drop-off in the number of edits, to the point that 1 percent of editors were editing 50 percent of the content. Related research...

What is worse than reusing passwords? -- ITWorld
PARC Principal Scientist Markus Jakobsson discusses the problems with password reset in this guest post. Related research...

Get Design Help from Internet Dwellers -- Kiplinger
User reaction is crucial to designing and tweaking new products and services, but getting solid feedback can be expensive. Will "crowdsourcing" help? Includes accompanying article by PARC scientists. Related research...

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