Live Matrix aims to schedule the Web

A new service called Live Matrix, which comes out of private beta Monday morning, is attempting to solve the very large problem of organizing live events from all around the Web into one place.
These are not just Web events though--things like Apple event live blogs, online sales, or streamed concerts--but TV programs, auctions, and sporting events too.
In the same way TV listings work, users can cycle through upcoming events by "channel." These are broken down by genres like sports, entertainment, news, and shopping. Users are also able to create their own channels by "following" particular programming items.

The mechanism for finding new events is displaying how many users have saved any particular one; each event gets a little counter that looks similar to Digg's voting box, and some of the most popular events--both live and upcoming--get some limelight on the site's front page. Once you've found an event you like, you can then save it to your listings, schedule a reminder, or share to a social network:

To actually view content, the service jumps you off-site, which in my testing worked well for some things and not so well with others. For scheduled Web shows like CNET's live podcasts, it takes you straight to the program page, but other things like sports games did not always go to the right event. I also ran into problems with sites that required registration or a pay wall to view content, something that would have been nice to get the heads-up on, or filter out of the listings.

Fans of Clicker will no doubt be drawn to the site for some of its scheduling similarities, though Live Matrix has much broader ambitions at bringing together video content along with just about anything that's got a time and URL. While I think video is what most people are going to be angling for, the site has some serious potential for organizing just about everything else.

  

Josh Lowensohn

How to measure a website's IQ?

The creator of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, has made an odd request: for a kind of rating system to help people distinguish sites that can be trusted to tell the truth, and those that can't.

Berners-Lee was speaking at the launch of the World Wide Web Foundation, which aims to ensure that everyone in the world benefits as the web evolves.

In his speech he referred to the way fears that the LHC could destroy the worldspread like wildfire online. As the BBC puts it, he explained that "there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources."

He went on to say that he didn't think "a simple number like an IQ rating" is a good idea: "I'd be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways". Whatever process is used to hand out the labels, it sounds like a bad idea to me.

Berners-Lee himself directed us towards some of the its biggest problems:

"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable...A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."

There are plenty of arguments online already about whether Scientology is a cult. I find it unlikely anyone will be keen to step in and label sites on either side as not to be trusted. Others might reasonably argue that all religions - whether established or not - should come with a warning message.
As for wading in to put a stop to conspiracy theories, I can't image anything their proponents could benefit from more.

Berners-Lee also mentioned the system would help people find out the real science behind, for example, the LHC's risks. You might think handing out rating for sites about science would be easier, with publishers of peer-reviewed science, for example, receiving a top rating without problems.

But there will be papers in the archives of any journal that have been entirely superseded. And a whole lot more that present results that are valid, but can be misleading to some readers. Web licences to ensure that people only read sites they can handle are the next logical step.

Fortunately it's much more likely that the whole idea will quietly be forgotten, which will at least prevent Berners-Lee receiving one of the first "potentially misleading" badges for thinking it up in the first place.

Let's hope the World Wide Web Foundation and its laudable goals have a rosier future.

Echelon pitches smart grid apps platform

Echelon's Ecos software and ECN network control is designed to collect data from smart meters and sensors and to automate tasks at the edge of the network.

(Credit: Echelon)

Smart-grid companies are the latest to copy the mobile phone apps model in a bid to get traction for their technology.

Echelon on Wednesday introduced a software platform and hardware device designed to collect and process information coming from smart meters and other devices at the edge of the power grid. The company also announced that utility Duke Energy has signed on as a customer.

To modernize the grid, utilities are installing sensors along the grid network and two-way meters at customer premises. These hardware devices gather information that help utilities run the grid more efficiently and reliably. For example, smart meters can tell utilities how much electricity customers' are drawing in real time and sensors can help spot problems when a transformer serving a neighborhood is getting overheated.

Echelon, which makes smart meters and control systems for buildings, introduced a system that can process the large amounts of data generated by edge grid hardware and automate certain tasks, such as reporting a problem to utilities or redirecting the flow of electricity. The software is called the Echelon Control System (Ecos) and a hardware device, designed to be hung on a utility pole in a local distribution point, is called the Edge Control Node (ECN) 7000.

The hardware system is open enough that other hardware companies can build networking cards for it, explained Jeff Lund, the vice president of development at Echelon. Those hardware companies, such as meter makers, can write software applications for utilities, such as demand response--where electricity customers shift their energy consumption to off-peak times. Echelon hopes that eventually, software-only companies will write applications for its software control system.

"What we're enabling is a control layer so you're connecting devices and making decisions close to the point of action, which is more reliable, more scalable, and less expensive," Lund said.

Right now, a lot of data is sent over proprietary networking protocols and processed back at utilities' data centers. But bandwidth can be limited and making sense of the huge amounts of data generated by devices can be easier when done at the edge of the network, Lund said.

As two-way meters and sensors get installed, a number of companies are focusing on the networking portion of the grid. SmartSynch, for example, makes a "grid router" designed to talk multiple protocols and Cisco last week announced a deal with Itron to develop IP-based communications technology.