OReilly Emerging Technology Conference

Monday mornings Digital Democracy Teach-In packed the room for discussions like Effective Political Blogging and presentations like Electronic Voting and Transparency. Warned blogger Halley Suitt (third from left), The

Concurrent with Mondays teach-in were half-day tutorials like Reverse Engineering: Basic Hardware and Software Techniques, presented by Andrew Huang — author of Hacking the Xbox,?an eye-opening account of hacker ingenuity. <a

Another Monday tutorial, UI for Alien Cowboys, engaged participants in a collaborative design workshop for an imagined home information appliance.

Tuesdays main conference opening session began with convener Tim OReillys keynote, OReilly Radar, in which he highlighted the collaborative component thats driving the future of Web initiatives such as interactive mapping. Read about <a

OReilly was followed by keynoter Helen Greiner, president and co-founder of iRobot Corp., whose Roomba automated vacuum cleaner combines state-of-the-art robotics with consumer-market economies of components. Read <a href=http://www.

Greiner also showed military applications of iRobot technology, including the PackBot units that have aided in searching through the wreckage at Ground Zero and are also being deployed in Iraq. Audience Q&A quickly drilled into the ethical implications of