“We can take turns guessing the source of that next great thing. One guy to watch is Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer scientist who has a knack for inventing ideas that become highly valued businesses.”
Story here. Read more →
“UW software for blind Web users wins Microsoft prize”
Read the article here.
The Imagine Cup is an annual year-long student software competition with awards in 9 major categories. UW CSE’s WebAnywhere project has been named the worldwide winner of the “Interface Design Accessible Technology” division. WebAnywhere is the project of UW CSE Ph.D. student Jeff Bigham. WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader for the web. It requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and, therefore, enables blind people to access the web from any computer they happen to have access to that has a sound card. WebAnywhere runs on any machine regardless of what operating system it is running and regardless of what browsers are installed. Read more →
UW CSE startup Farecast purchased by Martians (Seattle PI)
Read the article here.
“Farecast‘s sale to an unknown buyer is the latest score for superstar University of Washington computer scientist Oren Etzioni, who has watched several of his Internet companies gobbled up at attractive valuations over the past 15 years.
“Those include comparison shopping service NetBot, which was acquired by Excite in 1997, and MetaCrawler, a search engine that is now part of InfoSpace.”
Farecast, like many other UW CSE startups, included Madrona Venture Group and the WRF Capital as early investors. Read more →
UW’s “Vocal Joystick” named one of “25 leading-edge IT research projects” by Network World
“University of Washington researchers have developed software designed to let those who can’t work a handheld mouse use their voice instead to navigate the Web.” (See #17)
Project webpage here. Article here. Read more →
“To defeat a malicious botnet, build a friendly one” (New Scientist)
Read the article here.
“Beating the ‘botnets’ – armies of infected computers used to attack websites – requires borrowing tactics from the bad guys, say computer security researchers.
“A team at the University of Washington want to marshal swarms of good computers to neutralise the bad ones. They say their plan would be cheap to implement and could cope with botnets of any size.”
Read UW CSE “Phalanx” paper here Read more →
“MobileASL” project on KUOW/NPR (MP3; starts at 43:40)
The Mobile ASL project is described on KUOW/NPR.
See MobileASL project information here. Read more →
“Bill Gates Unplugged: On Software, Innovation, and Giving Back”
Read the article here.
“University of Washington President Mark Emmert and UW Computer Science & Engineering host Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for the final stop of his six-university tour, as Gates transitions from Microsoft to the Bill amp; Melinda Gates Foundation.”
A UWTV web archive of Gates’s UW speech and Q&A session. Read more →
Bill Gates at UW (Seattle PI)
Read the article here.
Bill Gates visits UW CSE and speaks to a packed house of students in the final stop on his 2008 tour of six universities.
“With his father and two sisters watching from the front row, Gates recounted for the overflow crowd the well-known story of roaming the University of Washington campus as a boy with Paul Allen, who would become the Microsoft co-founder, looking for research computers that they could use in off-hours. They were ‘stealing computer time, and now I’m giving it back,’ Gates said, to laughter.”
Seattle PI article (vs. blog) here Read more →
CSE’s Alan Ritter, Tom Lin win National Defense Science & Enginering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowships
Read the article here.
CSE graduate students Alan Ritter and Tom Lin, both working with Professor Oren Etzioni in the Turing Center, have received 2008 National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowships. Read more →
“UW helped nurture computing ideas, Gates says” (Seattle Times)
Read the article here.
“As teenagers, Paul Allen and Bill Gates wandered the University of Washington campus, trying to pilfer free computer time. They let their minds wander to a future when computing power would essentially be free.
“Gates, in the final stop of his last university-speaking circuit as a full-time Microsoft employee, told students and faculty at the UW on Friday about what they imagined then and how much of what they dreamed of is becoming reality …
“A common thread is the UW itself. Gates acknowledged the important relationship he, Microsoft and the Foundation have with the university. It starts with his parents, who met there as students, he said. He took an algebra class there, but the main benefit was finding time to practice his skills on unused mainframe and minicomputers around the campus – before the PC era he helped create … He said the UW has received more Gates Foundation grants than any other university. Microsoft, in a typical year, hires about 100 people from the UW, making it the top source of talent for the company, Gates said … He also highlighted work at the UW on collaboration software and an innovative photo-viewing technology that became a Microsoft product called Photosynth.”