Video: A Day Made of Corning Glass

Corning have the future all sorted out. We will eat, sleep and dream glass surfaces as interactive information displays.

While very interesting, the video of our Corning future has a distinctly sweet cheeriness to it. It also lacks monorails and flying cars, and people in bright orange jumpsuits. Not that I really mind about the jumpsuits.

Ross

Link: QUT Game Students Media Article

A tad late, but here is a link to a newspaper article about our successful QUT Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment students. Article highlights some of the great work our graduates are doing on the world stage.

Well done!

Ross

Tech Demo: Fractal Lab - WebGL

A web-based 3D Fractal generator using WebGL is available at http://fractal.io/. You will need Google Chrome or Firefox 4 Beta to run this application.

We have been waiting years (since VRML) for a suitable web-based 3D platform for apps. to be delivered as a web service. This WebGL technology looks impressive, as the fractals generated are formed using GPU Shaders that implement a form of real-time ray tracing. If we can get this sort of efficiency with a web-based delivery, we may not be too far off viable native web-apps. for 3D Virtual Worlds and Games.

BTW, the Mandelbulb (pictured) is amazing, and runs perfectly well on my tiny GeForce 9400M powered Mac.

Ross

Boast: QUT ERA Results - IS Discipline best in Australia

Been meaning to get to this one for a while (content from an internal QUT email).

Australian Universities have recently been through an Excellence in Research Assessment program by the government. The ERA Ranking has been published here (http://arc.gov.au/era/outcomes_2010.htm).

Only six Australian universities were able to submit under the 0806 FOR Code (Information Systems). Our very own group is the only university that achieved a ranking of 5!

An ERA rating of 5 is defined as: "The Unit of Evaluation profile is characterised by evidence of outstanding performance well above world standard presented by the suite of indicators used for evaluation." http://arc.gov.au/era/outcomes_2010/FoR/MIC0806

In addition, QUT has been ranked overall as 10th in Australia on research record. This is an amazing achievement, as QUT has only recently been focussing on research in addition to its teaching.

In addition:

The top journals in the global field of Information Systems are bundled in the widely accepted 'Basket of Six'. Sometimes two further journals (JSIS, JIT) are added and make up the 'Basket of Eight', ie. the highest regarded journals in the IS research world. The Association of Information Systems (AIS) endorses an online ranking base that allows to compare the performance of universities and authors over the last years.

In the most recent ranking (incl. 2010 data), QUT's Information Systems Discipline

* is ranked 14th worldwide in terms of publications in the 'Basket of Eight' over the last three years (highest in Australia, higher than any European university)

* is ranked 23rd worldwide in terms of publications in the 'Basket of Six' over the last three years (highest in Australia, higher than any European university)

In addition, Jan Recker (a colleague I have written a number of papers with) is ranked 37th in the Basket of Six list of authors over the last three years.

This is very satisfying and encouraging evidence for our standing in the global Information Systems community.

For these and further details see: http://vvenkatesh.com/ISRanking/index.asp

Makes it a little hard for me to keep up with, but good to be on a winning team. :-)

Ross