We saw innovations in real-time search, streaming video, and an operating system for the cloud.

This year will be remembered for cloud computing, real-time search, and the appearance of Google’s Web-based operating system.

Real-Time Search

The Web’s dominant search company, Google, got some serious competition in 2009. Thanks to a long-awaited technology-sharing deal with Yahoo and a focus on product-related searches, Microsoft’s revamped search engine, Bing, began nipping at Google’s heels (“What’s Microsoft’s Bing Strategy?”).

The physicist Stephen Wolfram also shook up the search-engine scene by developing a “computational knowledge engine” designed to provide all sorts of useful information via a search-like interface (“Search Me,” “Alpha and Google Face Off,” and “Wolfram Alpha Braces for Overload“). The arrival of Wolfram Alpha also forced Google to explore a more sophisticated approach to presenting meaningful information from online databases (“Google Unveils Google Squared“).

In the battle to gain an edge, both Google and Microsoft turned their attention to the “real-time Web” and this year’s hottest Web company, Twitter. Keen to tap into the freshest online information, these search engines began delivering seconds-old snippets from Twitter, as well as other sites in their results (“Google Takes Search Real-Time“). Several startups also hope to tap into real-time online activity (“In Search of What Everyone’s Clicking“). But collecting real-time information and presenting it in meaningful ways remains a tricky challenge, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt explained during recent a visit to Cambridge, MA (“Searching for Real-Time Search“).

Faster search is just one sign of a general increase in the speed of information flow across the Web. This year Internet experts revealed new protocols for collecting bits of related information no matter where they appear online (“Who’s Talking About Me?“). Others focused on analyzing the huge quantities of data being produced at any given moment (“Startups Mine the Real-Time Web“).

In Search of Context

With so much interest in mining Twitter posts, the trustworthiness of online information was another hot issue. Several research projects and startups have revealed ways to automatically determine who can be trusted to provide accurate information on a particular topic (“A Smarter Way to Dig Up Experts” and “Computers Can’t Answer Everything“). Researchers have also developed ways to add context to information posted online. In this area, Wikipedia has come under particular scrutiny (“Who’s Messing With Wikipedia?” and “Adding Trust to Wikipedia, and Beyond“).

A Web OS

Even as Microsoft encroached on Google’s turf, the search giant took a bold step into Microsoft’s backyard. Google’s browser, Chrome, evolved into a complete operating system, as the search giant continued to press into ever-broader areas of computing technology (“An Operating System for the Cloud“). The Chrome OS isn’t yet available to the public, but there have been some early indications of the radical approach that Google has taken (“Hints of How Google’s OS Will Work” and “Google Gives a First Look at the Chrome OS“).

Google’s vision relies on the power of Web applications and sophisticated browser technology. New browser features will make it easier to work both online and off, to handle heavier processing tasks, and to incorporate multimedia into the browser without plug-ins (“An Upgrade for the Web“).

Cloud Computing

Businesses everywhere were still fascinated by the promised convenience and cost savings of cloud computing (“Technology Overview: Conjuring Clouds“). But as companies began adopting the technology this year, kinks that still need to be worked out revealed themselves (“Industry Challenges: The Standards Question“). Companies have found it difficult to move data between different cloud services, even though some startups are now offering solutions (“Virtual Apps Drift Into the Cloud” and “Moving Data around the Clouds“). Security has been another worry (“Vulnerability Seen in Amazon’s Cloud Computing“). And some companies turned to different kinds of cloud computing that offer greater security and control (“A More Secure, Trustworthy Cloud” and “Big Blue Sees Clouds on the Horizon“).

Content Transformed

Another of the year’s big trends was the growth of online streaming media. This is one reason that downloading copyrighted material over file-sharing networks seems to be on the way out (“Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Usurped by Streaming Video“). Much excitement was also generated over a streaming media project called OnLive, which promises to bring high-end video games to users whose devices don’t have the processing power to handle the advanced graphics (“Moving Video Games to the Clouds“).

Companies in a variety of media industries have also looked for ways to use piracy to make money off content (“Embracing Piracy“). And the music industry sought entirely new ways to sell music online (“Can Video Games Be the New MTV?” and “What Will Happen to Lala’s Music Plans?”).

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/web/24230/page2/

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Researchers are working on ways to make encrypted data easier to find.

Recent advances in cryptography could mean that future cloud computing services will not only be able to encrypt documents to keep them safe in the cloud–but also make it possible to search and retrieve this information without first decrypting it, researchers say.

Credit: Technology Review

“This will be a challenging endeavor,” says Dawn Song, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has made fundamental research contributions to using encrypted search strings to find encrypted documents. “However, some of these recent advances are very powerful and, if cleverly engineered and deployed, could lead to significant advances,” in adding security and privacy to cloud computing over the next few years.

At the ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop in Chicago tomorrow, Microsoft Research will propose a theoretical architecture that would stitch together several cryptographic technologies in various stages of development to make the encrypted cloud more searchable. The basic idea is that cloud users could download software that would encrypt their data before it’s sent into the cloud. In addition, the software would issue encrypted strings, called tokens, which can be used to check that documents are intact and–crucially–to search their contents without first having to decrypt them.

While the underlying technologies weren’t developed by Microsoft, “we want to show how existing and emerging cryptographic techniques can be combined to make data in the cloud more secure,” says Kristin Lauter, head of the Cryptography Group at Microsoft Research, who will describe the proposal tomorrow.

While cloud computing has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the potential efficiency and cost savings of outsourcing the management of data and applications, a few high-profile glitches and hacks have left many potential users worried, and prompted experts to suggest that new technologies may be needed.

For example, early this year, a hacker who guessed the correct answer to a Twitter employee’s security question was able to extract all of the documents stored in Twitter’s “Google Apps” account. And, in March this year, a software bug led to a foul-up in the sharing privileges of Google Docs. As a result, for a small number of users (a fraction of 1 percent), choosing to share a single document instantly gave that contact access to all other shared documents, too.

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