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After three years of research and development on a distributed storage system, Dominik Grolimund and his collaborators are ready to unveil the result: Wuala. Wuala is a new way of storing, sharing, and publishing files on the internet. Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralised and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage. This enables its users to trade parts of their local storage for online storage and it allows us to provide a better service for free. In this Google Tech Talk, Grolimund explains what Wuala is and how it works; he also also show a demo of the application. Be warned though - it really is a tech talk … most of the maths and concept details went right over my head. Nevertheless: I think the video gives a good overall understanding, even for a non-geek like me .

For some strange reason it seems to be difficult lately to sometimes play YouTube videos on this site; if you get an error message saying that “this video is no longer available”, click here to go directly to the YouTube website where - it is available. Very annoying bug …

ZDNet’s Ed Bott reports that almost a year to the day after releasing Windows Vista to manufacturing, Microsoft has finally released a document outlining some of the technical details behind Vista’s product activation. Most of the information merely confirms what Windows experts already knew, but one detail is surprising: For the first time, Microsoft has confirmed that it limits the number of times a system can be reactivated over the Internet. The post also contains and interesting link on how to legally obtain perpetual licenses for pretty much most M$ products for just US$299.

Making sense of the Middle East conflict. An intelligent computer game for PC and Mac.

Global Conflicts: Palestine is a new award-winning 3D role-playing simulation computer game in which the player assumes the role of a freelance journalist who has just arrived in Jerusalem armed with a pen, a notepad and their sharp wits to get them through the challenges ahead.

The goal is to create and get an article published for a newspaper by collecting quotes from the dialogue in the game. The player can either get information by building up trust with each side or take a more confrontational approach to dig out information. In the end, the story with the most news-value will get the best exposure, but players need to be careful what they print, because it will affect their standings with both sides.

No matter the approach or the chosen alignment, during the course of the game the players’ beliefs and ideas about the conflict will be challenged. They will experience situations - taken from real life events - that are more complicated than outsiders may realise.

The game is an ideal teaching resource for secondary schools, but parents and teenagers looking for an alternative to the ubiquitous “shoot-’em-up” and “speed car” games that seemingly monopolize the genre for home use will love it.

Global Conflicts: Palestine is available at the New Internationalist Shop.

[Click the screenshots above to enlarge them]

After a week or so of rumors about an exciting new “Google Phone,” the Web software giant confirmed Monday the details about its venture into the mobile platform, i.e. our mobile phone.

Rather than release one model of a phone, Google is teaming with 33 other participants, including carriers T-Mobile and Sprint, in the Open Handset Alliance to create a unified platform, currently named Google Android, for running software applications on mobile devices.

What’s that all mean? The big motivation for Google is that it will likely have its applications such as Gmail and Google Docs & Spreadsheets automatically built into a major share of new cell phones in the burgeoning market.

What’s interesting and exciting is that the platform–likely based on Linux–will be open to all third-party developers. Now, this is very good news! With any luck, that means that consumers will finally be able to choose exactly which software apps they want to use on their mobile phones.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt claims that “as a result of this platform you’ll be able to do amazing things with your mobile devices that you’ve never thought of.” The public will get a first peek at the possibilities for programmers with an early look at a software development kit for Google Android next week.

[via The Daily Download]

On October 16, Bill Gates proclaimed that the business phone has been stuck in a time warp and that the moment has arrived to bring it into the digital age and revolutionize business communications in the process. This edition of TechRepublic’s  Sanity Check examines Microsoft’s broad ambitions in unified communications and how it could impact IT. Scary vision.