Web Development Live

YOU’VE probably heard of the term Web 2.0. It was invented by
computer book publisher Tim O’Reilly and refers to the increasingly
large number of internet applications that are collaborative and
interactive.
There are many examples - Wikipedia, Second Life, social
networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, photo sharing site
Flickr and a host of others. These have emerged just in the last
few years and have already changed the way many of us use the
internet.
Indeed, they have changed the way many of us live. This tends to
be especially true of younger people, to whom cyberspace is almost
as big a part of life as the “real” world.
Until now, Web 2.0 applications have mostly affected
individuals. Companies and government organisations have largely
retained more traditional methods of communication. The primary
collaborative technology for most organisations in the modern world
has become email, which is very much a Web 1.0, or first
generation, internet application.
That is now changing. Web 2.0 applications are increasingly
finding their way into the enterprise. This phenomenon has,
inevitably, been dubbed Enterprise 2.0. That term was invented last
year by Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee, who has
emerged as something of an international authority on the subject.
Last week I heard a remarkable presentation by Professor McAfee on
the state of play with Enterprise 2.0 worldwide. His talk was
beamed in via Skype from Orlando, Florida, where he was attending
an enterprise search conference. He spoke to 200 of us assembled in
a conference room in Sydney’s Luna Park to discuss Enterprise 2.0
in Australia.
First, Professor McAfee defined the subject. Fair enough. He
invented the term, after all. “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of
emergent social software platforms within companies, or between
companies and their partners or customers.”
Those “emergent social software platforms” are the Web 2.0
applications we looked at above. Professor McAfee refers to these
as “free and easy” applications, in contrast to something like
email which he describes as “a channel which closes down after each
message”.
Another key point about these “emergent applications” is that
the important thing is how the software is used, not about how it
is delivered, or how it is developed, or how it is integrated. The
key to Enterprise 2.0 is usage - getting more people in the
organisation using software applications that enable them to share
ideas and information.
The event I attended where we heard Professor McAfee’s words of
wisdom was the grandly named “Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum”, run
by Sydney company Future Enterprise Network (FEN). FEN
(futureexploration.net) is run by Ross Dawson, who has become one
of Australia’s leading internet gurus in recent years. He also runs
regular events on the future of media.
We also heard, via the wonders of a Skype videolink, from Euan
Semple, formerly head of knowledge management at the BBC. Mr Semple
reported to us from his sister’s kitchen in Munich, where he was
working as part of his new career as an adviser to European
companies on Enterprise 2.0 issues.
We also heard, from real live individuals within the room, about
a number of Australian companies and their use of Enterprise 2.0
technologies. Westpac is using Second Life for staff training.
Bionic ear company Cochlear uses a wiki for software development.
Pharmaceutical company Janssen-Cilag has developed a blog-like
corporate internet for internal communications. Clearly, Enterprise
2.0 is here.
But there is reluctance to embrace the technology in many
quarters. Mr Semple told of some of the problems he had introducing
the technology at the BBC. “There are significant cultural hurdles.
Many senior managers are not comfortable with the tools. I often
found it was easier to go around barriers rather than confront
them. It is easier to apologise afterwards than to ask permission
up-front.”
He spoke about one manager who could not initially believe that
staff could be trusted with social networking tools in a work
environment. He was worried that they would waste time, or that
material in blogs could be read by people outside the organisation
and give away corporate secrets.
These sorts of issues, as many speakers discussed, are common
barriers to the introduction of Enterprise 2.0 technologies in many
organisations. But the common theme was how these barriers can be
overcome and the many benefits that the technology can bring to the
organisation.
“It’s cheap, it’s easy and it conforms to the way knowledge
workers work,” Professor McAfee says.
“Among strongly tied co-workers, a wiki can function as a kind
of online whiteboard. Among those with looser affiliations, social
networking tools are very important, and can serve as bridges to
other networks, just as they do in the personal sphere.
“And blogs are great ways of coming across serendipitous
information, helping innovation and fostering new ideas.”
We’ve been hearing for years that companies need to be smarter
and more responsive and that they need to find new ways to tap into
employees’ capabilities. Enterprise 2.0 tools would seem to offer
just those capabilities. This may scare some people of my
generation but with the Gen X and Gen Y types coming through, they
will have no choice.
graeme@philipson.info

Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday that it was joining rival Google Inc.’s initiative for creating photo-sharing and other social tools that work across the Web.
News Corp.’s MySpace earlier pledged support, and the three companies announced Tuesday that they were forming a nonprofit organization, the OpenSocial Foundation, to ensure that the platform remains neutral and viable.
The idea behind the Google-initiated OpenSocial platform is to create a common coding standard for the applications so they work on hundreds of Web sites. The applications could permit chats, games, media sharing and more.
By contrast, sites that haven’t joined OpenSocial typically rely on unique coding that has prevented widgets developed for its sites from working at other places on the Web.
The addition of Yahoo could put pressure on Facebook, the No. 2 social-networking site behind MySpace, to pledge support as well, though Facebook has had tremendous success encouraging developers to write tools specifically for it.
Other participants in OpenSocial include Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Ning, the Google-owned Orkut and Bebo, which Time Warner Inc.’s AOL is planning to buy for $850 million.
In a company blog entry, Yahoo Vice President Wade Chambers said the company was joining OpenSocial now because “it’s no longer a trial balloon _ it’s for real.”
Chambers said Yahoo wanted to make developers feel confident about using OpenSocial as a building block for future social applications.
By creating a nonprofit to oversee OpenSocial, effective July 1, the companies want to ensure that intellectual property assets remain available to everyone. The companies said the foundation also would provide transparency and guidelines around technical and legal issues as the platform evolves.

Ben Crawfords user-generated website, which allows members to create blogs, and post photos, Share My NZ www.sharemynz.co.nz was nominated for the 2007 Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) Internet Awards in the newly created user-generated content category.
However, the website lost out to MTVs Jackass the Game at the awards ceremony last month.
Auckland-based Mr Crawford, who grew up on the family farm in Edendale, said the idea for the website came to him because he was unable to find a blog that could help him with his home renovations.
I was searching for DIY blogs but they were all American or UK based. It was frustrating because they werent relevant to what I was doing here in New Zealand, he said.
I thought wouldnt it be great if there was a website where kiwis could share stuff with each other and celebrate this great country we live in, so I set about creating one. With kiwi lingo and photos of jandals and fish %26amp; chips posted by users, the site is distinctly Kiwi.
All of the content is ranked by the sites members through a process called plugging, indicating to others if its worth reading, Mr Crawford said.
Topics on popular blogs have included investing in the real estate market, student life in Dunedin, accounts from the traditional OE, the 100 day weight loss challenge and of course sport, especially Wayne Barnes, the All Blacks referee in their World Cup quarter-final loss to France.
Bringing his dream to reality had been a family affair, Mr Crawford said.
His sister is responsible for the graphic design while his parents have helped get the project off the ground by becoming financial investors.
Web development company Zenago was contracted to bring the designs and dreams to reality after showing a great deal of professionalism and enthusiasm for the job.

Quick guide to Second Life

What will varsity training look like in the future?
Take a class called Educ 122 from the University of Canterburys Dr Mick Grimley and youll learn about memory, information processing and cognitive learning theory through a series of 50-minute video games. They have a narrative storyline that draws students in, Grimley says. Its novel. Its 3-D. Its fun.
Design students at Victoria University, in Wellington, make films in an internet-based virtual world called Second Life. They build virtual sets and direct virtual actors in front of virtual film crews.
Its about making films with invisible data made visible through virtual experience and alternative narratives, says Marcia Lyons, Vics Digital Media Design programme director. I see it as a Renaissance, a creative cross-pollination of ideas in a networked environment that makes connecting with collaborative partners possible.
Last year, the Texas-based New Media Consortium, which is comprised of 250 international universities, museums and research centres that study media technologies, predicted that educational video games and virtual world classrooms would become mainstream teaching tools in the next two to five years. As the digital natives — kids who grew up with digital technology — enter university, teaching methods will have to keep pace with their interactive world.
Lyons explains that the digital generation was born into experiencing the world through video games, laptops, iPods, mobile phones, the internet (and often several of these at one time).
They are not absorbing web content but creating it by writing blogs, designing websites, building MySpace portfolios and posting YouTube videos.
In virtual worlds such as Second Life, they are creating whole new identities for themselves.
Computer-savvy students will require more than diligent note-taking in a beige-coloured lecture theatre to connect with new ideas.
Harvards staff knows this. Swedens Royal Institute of Technology faculty knows this. So do lecturers at Japans University of Aizu. They are all developing and using serious games and Second Life as teaching tools. The University of Wisconsin at Madison and Massachusetts Institute of Technology offer degrees in designing serious games. Technology is a vehicle for education and weve got to move with the times, Grimley says.
In his modified version of Neverwinter Nights, olde worlde flute melodies accompany a questing student dressed in a purple tunic and leggings as he enters a medieval version of the University of Canterburys computer science building and approaches a sage dressed in monks robes.
An ogre, which represents traditional learning theories, appears stage right. Modern pedagogys knight in shining armour glows stage left.
Students are inspired towards the creative when at play. The music switches to trumpets when the sage and the student enter the ogres and knights minds to unravel their secret knowledge. The questing student speaks with them during this journey of discovery, and the sage asks the student what hes learned along the way.
When the student correctly answers the sages questions and solves her puzzles, he gathers totems that propel him from ignorance to wisdom and, twenty-four video games later, the semester ends. The novelty kept my interest and concentration levels at a relatively high intensity right throughout the duration of the course, says Russell Tomes, a computer science major at the University of Canterbury. Traditional lectures sometimes lack that kind of energy, he says.
Victoria University was the first in New Zealand to use Second Life as a teaching tool. When the design school decided to teach virtual film-making, it bought a piece of Second Life real estate — with real money and a real credit card — from Linden Labs, the San Francisco-based company that established Second Life. (An island with 16 virtual acres costs about 1700 real United States dollars — schools pay half — with 300 real US dollars per month in maintenance fees.)
Vic students and staff designed their own virtual personalities, called avatars, then logged onto Second Life at specified dates, times and places for Skype-linked lectures. As everyone interacted through their avatars, which could be human, animal or other, such as gingerbread men, no-one knew the avatars real-life identities.
The avatars split off into focus groups. Scriptwriters collaborated on dialogue. Set-builders rummaged through a virtual SuperShed to find construction materials.
Talent agents recruited other Second Life avatars as actors and actresses. Videographers visited the Second Life library to learn virtual programming skills.
There, the virtual librarian thumbed through her reference catalogue and found a real person with real, virtual programming experience. The librarian dispatched a real email to a real person; a PDF document with programming hints was returned to Vic students in minutes. They received a free camera to boot, and the obliging avatar scored a back-stage pass to watch the filming. Students are inspired towards the creative when at play, Lyons says. They are involved and engaged. They become inventive, less self-conscious.
As far as creating avatars goes, there are no rules that require appearance or personality to match real-life counterparts. Shy people can create extroverted avatars. Men can become women. And vice versa. Heterosexuals can become gay or lesbian. And vice versa. Disabled people can become able-bodied. And vice versa. In a virtual reality, anything is possible. Through their avatars, students can travel internationally and experience different cultures and social structures.
Because there are no boundaries, serious games and virtual classrooms can be adapted to any subject. The University of Minnesota uses its modified version of Neverwinter Nights to teach investigative journalism.
The free online came called Rich Man Game (www. rich mangame. com) pits players against each other to make business deals and increase their wealth. Los Angeles Otis College of Art and Design created a Second Life art gallery and sculpture garden where students and faculty can exhibit their work. An Indiana University telecommunications professor has developed The World of Shakespeare, which allows players to live and interact with other players in 17th century England.
Of course, university life, like all good things, must come to an end.
Graduation parties will give way to job interviews. Lyons says that companies are already approaching students to build commercially-viable Second Life versions of their companies. All jobs will have a virtual component in the next 10 years, she says.

Dressed in jeans and sneakers, Owen Thor Walker, 18, of Whitianga, looked young and scared when he appeared in Thames District Court yesterday to face six charges.
The FBI accused Walker, known online as Akill, of being the ringleader of a group of international programmers that set up a botnet - a network of hacked computers controlled by a single computer on the Internet.
FBI spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said its cyber division had a partnership with New Zealand authorities and had kept an eye on international prosecutions.
Cyber crime is third on the list of priority for the head of FBI, behind counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence.
FBI director Robert Mueller said botnets were the weapon of choice of cyber criminals.
Walker - who has no formal computer training - pleaded guilty to two charges of accessing a computer for dishonest purpose, damaging or interfering with computer systems, possessing software for committing crime, and two charges of accessing computer systems without authorisation. All charges were laid under computer provisions of the Crimes Act.
Though some of the charges carry sentences of up to five years imprisonment, Judge Arthur Tompkins indicated he was not considering jailing Walker, who has Aspergers syndrome - a form of autism.
He was reportedly bullied at school and left in Year 9 to study by correspondence. He started experimenting with bot programmes and created his own code, continually developing, redesigning and adding to it.
International cyber crime investigators considered Walkers to be among the most advanced bot programming they had seen, the prosecution summary says.
His bot code contained a number of special features that protected it from discovery, allowing it to spread automatically and identify and destroy rival bot code.
One feature automatically disabled any anti-virus software on an infected computer and prevented the software from being updated.
Walker, also identified online as Snow Whyte and Snow Walker, set up the command and control of his botnet using computer servers outside New Zealand, mainly in Malaysia. He either leased server space or accessed servers illegally.
Prosecutors say the exact number of computers affected by his bot code may never be known, but it was tens of thousands.
Dutch authorities established that Walker was responsible for 1.3million illegal installations of adware - software which an Internet user unwittingly downloads that causes disruptive and unwanted advertising to appear in various programs.
His total income from this activity has been assessed at $36,174.65.
A statement read in court said Walkers parents knew he was making money from the Internet from their home in Whitianga. He had told them he was contracted to do computer programming and they didnt realise he was engaged in illegal activity.
It is believed Walker received 40 cents for every computer infected.
He was arrested in November after an 18-month investigation by New Zealand police, in collaboration with the FBI, secret service and Dutch authorities.
In bailing him to May 28 for reports, Judge Tompkins said the pre-sentence report would cover home detention, community detention, community work and a fine. He said he would not specify the sentencing outcome.
DEFINITIONS
*Adware: Software that causes disruptive and unwanted advertising to appear on users computer screen. Often downloaded unwittingly when user clicks on advert, downloads program or opens attachment.
* Bot: Malicious software with ability to log keystrokes and capture data %26ndash; for example copying bank account passwords %26ndash; or relay spam.
*Botnet: Collection of computers, also known as zombies or robots, that can be controlled remotely through bots by a bot-herder.
*Spam: Unsolicited or junk e-mail, often sent out in massive quantities and through zombie computers. E-mail users without anti- spam protection can find their inbox choked with unwanted adverts.
A spammer who has command and control over a botnet can send messages from thousands of computers.

Its magic, audio historian David Giovannoni said on Thursday. Its like a ghost singing to you.
Lasting 10 seconds, the recording is of a person singing Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit (By the light of the moon, Pierrot replied) — part of a French song, according to First Sounds, a group of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists and others dedicated to preserving humankinds earliest sound recordings.
It was made on April 9, 1860, by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville on a device called the phonautograph that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp, Giovannoni said.
Giovannoni said he learned on March 1 of its existence in an archive in Paris and travelled to the French capital a week later. Experts working with the First Sounds group then transformed the paper tracings into sound.
Its important on so many levels, Giovannoni said in a telephone interview. It doesnt take anything away from Thomas Edison, in my opinion. Thomas Edison is generally credited as the first person to have recorded sound.
But actually the truth is he was the first person to have recorded (sound) and played it back. There were several people working along the lines of Scott, including Alexander Graham Bell, in experimenting — trying to write the visual representation of sound before Edison invented the idea of playing it back, Giovannoni said.
The recording will be presented on Friday at a conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections at Stanford University in California, Giovannoni said. It is also posted on the web here.
The US experts made very high-resolution digital scans of the paper. First Sounds said that scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California converted these scans into sound using technology developed to preserve and create access to a wide variety of early recordings.
Its like discovering the worlds oldest photograph and learning that the photograph was taken 17 years before the invention of the camera, Giovannoni said. In this case, the oldest sound that we can generally hear, up until today, has been from 1888. This predates it by 28 years.
Giovannoni said that phonautograph recordings were never intended to be played.
What Scott was trying to do was to write down some sort of image of the sound so that he could study it visually. That was his only intent, Giovannoni said.

The western province of Qinghai was the latest area to report anti-government activities, with hundreds of civilians staging a sit-down protest after paramilitary police stopped them from marching, a Beijing-based source who spoke to residents said.
They were beating up monks, which will only infuriate ordinary people, the source said of the protest on Tuesday in Qinghais Xinghai county.
A resident in the area confirmed the demonstration, saying paramilitaries dispersed the 200 to 300 protesters after half and hour, that the area was crawling with armed security forces and that workers were kept inside their offices.
The Tibet unrest — and Chinas response to it — has also become a lightning rod for criticism of its Communist authorities ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
The head of the European Parliament has questioned whether European leaders should attend the opening of the Games and invited the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism, to address the EU legislature on events in Tibet.
The unrest began with a series of peaceful marches in Lhasa earlier this month that soon led to a deadly riot. China says 19 people died in the violence, while representatives of the Tibetan government-in-exile say 140 died in clashes.
Protests later spread to parts of provinces bordering Tibet with large Tibetan populations.
The Beijing-based source said authorities were questioning people who had witnessed the Lhasa protests.
Its very harsh. They are taking in and questioning anyone who saw the protests, the source said. The prisons are full. Detainees are being held at prisons in counties outside Lhasa.
China has pinned the blame for the protests on the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India. He fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, and denies he masterminded the demonstrations.
DEBATE OVER OLYMPICS
Speaking to President George W. Bush by telephone today, President Hu Jintao defended Beijings handling of the demonstrations and asserted that the Dalai Lama was behind violence and efforts to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, which Hu said prevented the government from conducting talks with him.
Any responsible government, faced with such violent criminal acts that are a serious violation of human rights, that seriously disrupt social order and seriously jeopardize peoples lives, property and safety, would not just sit there and watch, a statement on the ministrys web site paraphrased Hu as saying.
Despite international calls for Beijing to use restraint in its response to the unrest, the United States and Britain have reiterated their support for the Beijing Games.
Earlier, the speaker of the Himalayan regions parliament in exile said the Games should go ahead but be used to pressurize Beijing to conform with international rules.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday refused to rule out a possible boycott of the Olympics.
Chinas Foreign Ministry criticized French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Wednesday for saying he could not tolerate the crackdown and French Junior Minister for Human Rights, Rama Yade, for saying she would meet the Dalai Lama if he visited France.
Echoing Chinas public security minister, Chinese scholars vowed to press ahead with patriotic education in Tibets monasteries, accusing monks there of being duped by the Dalai Lama into supporting separatism.
The purpose of patriotic education is because the Dalai clique has been trying hard to disrupt development in Tibet and disrupt the normal practices of Tibetan Buddhism, Dramdul, who heads the Religious Studies Institute at the China Tibetology Research Centre, told a news conference.
RESENTMENT
Protests continued elsewhere. A Tibetan man tried to set himself on fire in eastern India, as security forces stopped him and hundreds of other marchers from entering Sikkim state, which borders China, according to a local police officer.
A small group of foreign and Chinese reporters have arrived in Lhasa on a tightly supervised trip organised by the Chinese government. The Dalai Lama expressed surprise when told about the visit.
Really? Then very good, but it should be with complete freedom — only then you can assess the real situation, he told reporters in New Delhi.
In a letter circulated by the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, a Lhasa resident described tight controls on religion and resentment over an influx of Han Chinese residents since a rail link was built to the remote, mountain region.
But, illustrating the gulf in views about the cause of unrest between Beijing and Lhasa, Lhagpa Phuntshogs, who directs the China Tibetology Research Centre, said the Dalai Lama had instigated marches among monks, who wanted to restore serfdom.
What do they want? I think its very clear that they want to try to restore the old theocracy in Tibet. The separatist elements are not happy with the end of theocracy in Tibet … and they are not happy with the end of backwardness in Tibet.

Swimmers wearing Speedos new LZR Racer have smashed 12 world records in the past fortnight, leading to calls for a debate about their use.
The swimsuit was tested at Otago University, using a special flume, like a wind tunnel with water.
The skintight swimsuit - a far cry from Speedos traditional budgie smugglers - was introduced last month amid a blaze of publicity.
It was developed in partnership with Nasa and has no stitching, using bonded joints based on technology from the space shuttle.
Clad in an LZR Racer at the European swimming championships in Holland at the weekend, Frenchman Alain Bernard broke the 100metre freestyle world record twice in two days.
World swimming governing body Fina has called for a meeting with Speedo over the LZR Racer, while French swimming officials have demanded a debate on them.
Otago University biometrics specialist David Pease, who conducted the testing, said he knew the swimsuits would perform well.
Its not that surprising, just because we know the technology is pretty unbelievable. But theyve probably gone a little bit better than we expected, to be honest.
The swimsuits secrets were a seamless design and a compression zone around the torso that helped swimmers to hold their form when they got tired.
They did not aid buoyancy or propulsion and were approved by Fina, he said.
Cornel Marculescu, executive director of Lausanne-based FINA, said there were two main issues: the thickness of the suit and availability.
Marculescu told SwimNews Web site (www.swimnews.com) there were concerns about buoyancy issues.
We have to review this. But there is no scientific test to say if a suit supports performance, he said.
The number one priority is that all suits are made available to everyone at the moment of launch. Any innovation should be available to everybody.
Under Fina rules, the swimsuits must be available to all competitors at the Olympics.
Bodysuits caused controversy from their genesis about a decade ago, with arguments over whether they broke rules outlawing buoyancy. FINA gave the green light in 2000.
Massive sums are poured into the technology of suit development.
Other manufacturers offer suits with special properties of their own and they too have had their successes, including victories at these championships.
Arena, with world and Olympic champion Laure Manaudou in their line-up, launched their new R-Evolution suit in Eindhoven, and adidas, the brand once worn by the mighty Ian Thorpe, will unveil their new suit shortly.
Swimming NZ has a sponsorship deal with Arena, but chief executive Mike Byrne said that did not mean its swimmers would be locked out of using the hi-tech suits for the Beijing Olympics in August.
Under the deal, theyre able to choose any technical equipment they want, and that includes swimming suits.
He said Arena had just introduced its new Powerskin swimsuit, which could prove just as good as the Speedo.
-with Reuters

Swimmers wearing Speedos new LZR Racer have smashed 11 world records in the past fortnight, leading to calls for a debate about their use.
The swimsuit was tested at Otago University, using a special flume, like a wind tunnel with water.
The skintight swimsuit - a far cry from Speedos traditional budgie smugglers - was introduced last month amid a blaze of publicity.
It was developed in partnership with Nasa and has no stitching, using bonded joints based on technology from the space shuttle.
Clad in an LZR Racer at the European swimming championships in Holland at the weekend, Frenchman Alain Bernard broke the 100metre freestyle world record twice in two days.
World swimming governing body Fina has called for a meeting with Speedo over the LZR Racer, while French swimming officials have demanded a debate on them.
Otago University biometrics specialist David Pease, who conducted the testing, said he knew the swimsuits would perform well.
Its not that surprising, just because we know the technology is pretty unbelievable. But theyve probably gone a little bit better than we expected, to be honest.
The swimsuits secrets were a seamless design and a compression zone around the torso that helped swimmers to hold their form when they got tired.
They did not aid buoyancy or propulsion and were approved by Fina, he said.
Cornel Marculescu, executive director of Lausanne-based FINA, said there were two main issues: the thickness of the suit and availability.
Marculescu told SwimNews Web site (www.swimnews.com) there were concerns about buoyancy issues.
We have to review this. But there is no scientific test to say if a suit supports performance, he said.
The number one priority is that all suits are made available to everyone at the moment of launch. Any innovation should be available to everybody.
Under Fina rules, the swimsuits must be available to all competitors at the Olympics.
Bodysuits caused controversy from their genesis about a decade ago, with arguments over whether they broke rules outlawing buoyancy. FINA gave the green light in 2000.
Massive sums are poured into the technology of suit development.
Other manufacturers offer suits with special properties of their own and they too have had their successes, including victories at these championships.
Arena, with world and Olympic champion Laure Manaudou in their line-up, launched their new R-Evolution suit in Eindhoven, and adidas, the brand once worn by the mighty Ian Thorpe, will unveil their new suit shortly.
Swimming NZ has a sponsorship deal with Arena, but chief executive Mike Byrne said that did not mean its swimmers would be locked out of using the hi-tech suits for the Beijing Olympics in August.
Under the deal, theyre able to choose any technical equipment they want, and that includes swimming suits.
He said Arena had just introduced its new Powerskin swimsuit, which could prove just as good as the Speedo.
-with Reuters

His name is Eric Schmidt and hes the chairman and CEO of Google, the search engine and advertising goliath thats building a thriving business based on giving away services and applications for nothing or next to nothing.
The editor and author Chris Anderson calls this effect feeconomics: where the technologies which power the web are driving down the cost of doing business online to the point where they are so cheap, they can be handed out at zero cost.
Its the same philosophy adopted by Google when it came into being a decade ago and which it has pursued ever since through giveaway services such as email, photo editing and storage, video sharing and of course its eponymous search engine.
And most of it for nix, as long as youre happy to accept a smattering of the text-based contextual advertisements served up alongside the freebies, which in turn encourage more time spent on the internet.
The more things that people and companies do online, the more ads they see and the more money Google makes, writes the author Nicholas Carr in strategy+business magazine.
While search continues to be Googles main money spinner, Dr Schmidt took the opportunity yesterday during a visit to Sydney to outline some of the other trends he believes could be among the next big things.
While search continues to be Googles main money spinner, Dr Schmidt took the opportunity yesterday during a visit to Sydney to outline some of the other trends he believes could be among the next big things.
He called one of these in-the-pipeline developments information understanding.
The eventual goal is for Google to make a suggestion as to what you should do tomorrow, he explained during an extended interview with smh.com.au.
Dismissing suggestions that it smacked of Big Brother and or that it encouraged mental laziness, he said such a service could only work with the explicit permission of the user.
Computers are better at remembering things and people are better at reasoning, said Dr Schmidt, 52, a soft-spoken computer scientist who joined Google in 2001 as the grown-up who was supposed to keep an eye on the youthful co-founders and their inexperienced team.
Youre going to have a more interesting life if you have the computer do the stuff the computer is good at and you do the stuff youre good at.
The two other trends are already works in progress. One is the shift from desk-based computing to mobile computing. Later this year, a number of mobile phone makers will launch devices based on Googles new Android mobile operating system.
Just as the PC became this extremely powerful platform and really did change our world, the same phenomenon should occur on mobile phones, he said.
Another big change in the works had to do with what he described as the ubiquity of location-based data - in other words, the kind of information that can placed on a map.
That could include traffic information, flight details, bus routes and schedules - all able to be called up on your computer or phone.
Earlier, at a press conference, he spoke about the coming shift to cloud computing where users will store their files and applications online instead of on their local computers and hard drives.
Dr Schmidt has described the cloud concept as akin to having banks manage your money rather than you manage your money.
What were going to do is were just going to put the intelligence and the data and so forth on servers run by professionals - also known as us - so that you dont need to spend the weekend debugging your computers at home, he said yesterday.
Dr Schmidt admitted, however, that his predictions have not always been on the money.
In October 2000, he made a bad really bad call that could have cost him dearly.
Nobody really gives a sh– about search, he told John Doerr, a venture capitalist who was trying to talk him in to taking a management position at Google.
Dr Schmidt, who was then head of software company Novell, later changed his mind and the following year was appointed chairman then CEO of the fledgling internet search company.
He went on receive stock options that made him a billionaire after Google floated in 2004.
Last month, Forbes magazine listed him as the 48th richest person in the US with a net worth of $US6.6 billion ($NZ8.1 billion).
For the past seven years Dr Schmidt, along with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, has been part of the triumvirate running an operation that has developed a reputation for being one the worlds most admired companies.
These days he has no such misgivings about search.
Last year, between 97 to 98 per cent of the companys revenues of $US16.6 billion were derived from little text advertisements that are largely served up in searches.
Ive made many mistakes, Dr Schmidt said yesterday when reminded about the anecdote from eight years ago and recounted in David Vises book The Google Story.
That was a big one. You learn from your mistakes. Im more careful now to get my facts straight.