TECH BRIEFS

Pittsburgh abuzz with robotic art

Eleven “BigBot” robotic art installations are included in a two-week citywide celebration of robotics, dubbed Robot 250 to coincide with Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary.

“It bends the idea of what robotics is about and who it’s for,” said Illah Nourbakhsh, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and one of the originators of the Robot 250 idea. He hopes the project shows that rather than just being for industrial automation or tinkering engineers, robots can give everyday people a new way to express themselves.

AOL exec aids documentaries
Retired AOL executive Ted Leonsis is turning his passion for documentaries into an Internet service meant to give independent filmmakers broader viewership.

His new Web site, SnagFilms, will take professionally produced documentaries like “Super Size Me” and some from National Geographic and PBS and show them for free at the site — or embed them in profile pages at Facebook, MySpace and other social networking hangouts.

Fifteen-second ads will run every eight to 10 minutes, with revenue split between SnagFilms and the filmmakers.

SAP shutters Oracle competitor
German software maker SAP AG said Monday it will shut down TomorrowNow, a subsidiary that provided support for Oracle Corp. software and was accused of stealing information from Oracle.

TomorrowNow was formed by former engineers at PeopleSoft Inc., with the idea of providing less expensive software support to PeopleSoft customers. SAP bought TomorrowNow in 2005, around the same time Oracle completed its $11.1 billion purchase of PeopleSoft.