Thursday, November 20, 2008

Linxter

This week I decided to switch it up a little and blog about a rapidly growing Middleware software named Linxter. If you don't know what Middleware is, it's software that consists of numerous enabling services that allow applications and software components to be connected. It works as a middle-man, working between the operating system and applications.

Linxter is a new solution to many developers. Once launched it will allow programs to send messages across no matter where, or what platform it is on. Linxter's focus in addition to being reliable and secure is ease of use. According to their website "Linxter has been designed so that developers with only one to two years of experience can master the technology in less than a day."

Linxter will help companies of all sizes. Seperate from saving precious man-hours that could go into other activites, the cost of implementing Linxter is minor when compared to creating and maintaining their own basic infrastructure. Linxter is the future of data distribution, anything connected to the internet will be able to connect to any other device running linxter.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Now You See It and Now You Don't

Ever since the days of Houdini, the master magician, people have been trying to emulate ways of becoming invisible and disappearing out of thin air. This quest for finding a way to appear invisible to the human eye has been going on for years, in which scientists have tried to develop invisibility cloaks that project the images around them. However, it seems most, if not all, of these developments have failed in some way until now.

Since last November there has been announcements of an "invisibility shield", created by David R. Smith of Duke University and colleagues. The researches have managed to divert microwaves around what they are calling a "hole in space". What is unique about these structures is that it can manipulate electromagnetic radiation, which includes light, in certain ways so that it will not be visible in nature. How is this possible? Through the usage of metamaterials. Metamaterials can have the unique ability to affect electromagnetic waves which it interacts with, as long as the structural features are smaller than the wavelenght of the electromagnetic radiation it interacts with. For visible light, the structures are generally half or less than half the size of visible light (less than 280 nanometers). So in effect light waves are transmitted around the area, creating a hole, in which an object can be placed and become invisible.

The research groups has been able to successfully experiment at microwave frequencies, due to the already established techniques. Now the only question becomes whether it will be able to eliminate the reflection of visible light. Only time will tell as David R. Smith and his colleagues continue their research in this innovative method to "shield" objects from visible light.