Site: IBM
Tokyo Research Laboratory (TRL)
1623-14 Shimotsuruma
Yamato, Kanagawa, 242-8502 Japan
http://www.trl.ibm.co.jp

Date Visited: 24 March 1998

WTEC Attendess: T. Ager (report author), B. Croft, L. Goldberg, R.D. Shelton

Hosts:

• Dr. Hong Jung-Kook, Manager, Solution Research Center, TRL
• Dr. Kazuo Iwano, Director, IBM Research, TRL
• Dr. Hiroshi Maruyama, Manager, Network Applications, TRL
• Mr. Masayuki Morohashi, Associate Consultant Researcher, TRL
• Mr. Kunihiko Tejima, Program Manager, Asia Pacific Solution Development IBM Japan Ltd.

BACKGROUND

Tokyo Research Laboratory is one of eight IBM research labs (New York, California, Texas, Japan, China, India, Israel, and Switzerland). It was established in 1982, and currently has 165 employees. The lab's focus includes mobile computing, graphics, object-oriented technologies, user interface, computer science theory, compilers, storage, and LCDs. The lab also does research on digital libraries, collaborative computing, and electronic commerce.

The lab collaborates closely in these areas with IBM Laboratories in the other sites, product development, manufacturing and marketing groups, and its work has resulted in the adoption of many TRL ideas and technologies in IBM products and customer solutions. TRL also conducts joint work with universities, other research institutes, and customers through joint studies, workshops and visiting scientist programs. Lab research activities are made public through presentations to academic societies and publications in technical journals.

PRESENTATIONS AND DEMONSTRATIONS

Dr. Hong Jung-Kook gave an overview of the lab's mission and functions in IBM's worldwide research division. He described the following TRL technologies that are closely related to organizing and managing digital information. Where further information is available from the TRL Web site, URLs have been provided. A high performance "just in time" Java compiler gives 1.3-25 times increase in speed over interpreted Java, and for some programs up to a 50x increase in execution speed.

A System for Creating Mobile Java Agents Called "Aglets"

An aglet is a Java object that can move from one host on the Internet to another. That is, an aglet that executes on one host can suddenly halt execution, dispatch to a remote host, and resume execution there. When the aglet moves, it takes along its program code as well as its state (data). A built-in security mechanism makes it safe for a computer to host untrusted aglets.

A Speaking Web Page

A speaking Web page, designed to support Internet access for the blind, uses text to voice and voice synthesis technologies.

A Personal Translator

The Japanese translation capabilities of Web homepages are achieved as top-level technology in the Japanese marketplace. IBM has capability of Web homepage translation in the different language pairs, such as G-J, G-K, G-C, E-F, E-S.

Video Mosaics

Video mosaics (creating a panoramic view from individual video frames based on object segmentation) and video indexing were shown.

TECHNOLOGIES PRESENTED IN GREATER DETAIL BY TRL PROJECT LEADERS

Information Outlining

Mr. Masayuki Morohashi presented "information outlining." This is an information retrieval technique that combines metadata extractors with visualization tools. For a corpus, classifying functions extract values for predefined categories such as dates, city names, personal names, brand names, countries, etc. Viewers are developed that can map attributes, distributions and frequencies to visualizations such as maps (for city or country names), time lines (for dates), and business charts for distributions. Because content is both keyword-indexed and classified, a keyword search result can be organized in several complementary visualizable modes, and these modes can interactively manipulated. Time lines can be compressed or expanded, for example, having the effect of refining a search with respect to date of publication or dates mentioned in the articles. Or, it is possible to represent the times and/or places associated with the mention of a public figure, such as President Clinton. The technology has been demonstrated, and has been incorporated in an IR system IBM is delivering to a major newspaper in Japan. Further information about information outlining is on the Web. The technique is discussed in several papers (Morohashi and Takeda 1997, Morohashi and Uramota 1996, Morohashi et al. 1995).

Reliable Multicast Transport Protocol (RMTP)

Mr. Kunihiko Tejima discussed and demonstrated RMTP. RMTP enables content providers to reliably deliver content to 5 to 10 thousand recipients at once. It requires RMTP software on client (recipient) systems. The RMTP protocol runs on existing Internet enabled for multicast. RMTP clients track packet arrival, and after the original dispatch is completed, contact the server to request missing packets. In this way, multicast is made more reliable, so that RMTP-based multicast can achieve assured synchronization of data, scheduled delivery of information, while also saving server and network costs. From the server standpoint, a 2 MB payload can be delivered to 5,000 clients in three minutes. Using consecutive FTP would take 3 hours. Conventional IP multicast does not provide the client-side capabilities of RMTP, which add the assured delivery characteristics.

RMTP is being proposed as an Internet standard by the TRL.

Security and Electronic Commerce

Dr. Hiroshi Maruyama explained the many projects at TRL relating to the protection of information in digital library and electronic commerce applications. Security technologies exist at all levels of modern layered systems, from chip-level encryption, storage device protection, through middleware security methods such as secure servers, firewalls, key management, and secure desktop applications or clients. TRL is actively involved with technologies at all levels including the following:

• Key Delivery Protocol. In multiparty encrypted sessions, such as secure collaborative work, the overhead of redistributing keys when a party leaves the session is reduced if the keys are distributed along paths described by a binary tree instead of each party receiving a key directly from the sender. In the binary tree distribution technique, key updates need only occur along the chain leading to a party that leaves the session.
• Security Hardware. TRL has developed a hardware RSA decoder that can be embedded in devices such as a personal digital assistant or smart card. It can decode a 1K key in 27 ms (63 ms in PDA when embedded). Software decoding on a current palm pilot takes 4 minutes.
• Key Management Framework. Using a protocol called Time Release Key, information is encrypted in such a way that it is only releasable at a predetermined time. This can be used for electronic delivery of sealed bids, thus protecting the bid amount until the announced opening time.
• Code Security. Issues in the security of network distributed code were discussed. Examples of insecure Java applets and Active X controls were presented. These examples illustrated weaknesses in the current practice of co-designing, where developers attest to the safety of their applet or control
• .

GLOBAL DIGITAL MUSEUM

In addition to the specific technologies for organizing and managing digital information, TRL has been working with Japan's National Museum of Ethnology since 1986 on a digital museum project. Currently the project includes additional collaboration with the British Museum and Cornell University. The project focus is online, interactive material development for museum education at the K-12 level. It includes capabilities for search, navigation, browsing and annotation and personal exhibit construction. The participating museums provide curatorial, collections, and cataloging expertise. Cornell adds evaluation and curriculum development skills, and TRL provides technologies for the project. In its overall structure, the project is very much like many computer-based education projects in the United States. Funding is mainly derived from IBM. Architecture and implementation of the Global Digital Museum are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4. A current report on the Global Digital Museum appeared in June 1998 (Takahashi et al. 1998).

CONCLUSIONS

The team was impressed by the breadth and depth of research being done at TRL. The IBM Tokyo Laboratory is both a solution provider and a creator of new technologies. It works directly with customers, and its contributions to IBM are complemented by other research laboratories and product development labs worldwide. Thus only a partial picture of IBM's total approach to digital libraries was represented in the TRL visit. Nevertheless, it was apparent that there are many unresolved issues of policy, standards, and accepted practices, and that the TRL is investigating many different approaches to information organization and content management.

The Global Digital Museum addresses architecture and systems for a solution to worldwide access to museum information for K-12 instructional purposes. In other areas affecting digital libraries, particularly protocols and security, the TRL has an international focus.

REFERENCES

Morohashi, M. and K. Takeda. 1997. Information outlining and site outlining. Intl. Symp. on Research, Development, and Practice in Digital Libraries: 99-105.

Morohashi, M. and N. Uramoto. 1996. Information outlining for government-issued data. International Symposium on Multimedia Systems.

Morohashi, M., K. Takeda, H. Nomiyama, and H. Maruyama. 1995. Information outlining-Filling the gap between visualization and navigation in digital libraries. Intl. Symp. on Digital Libraries: 151-158.

Takahashi, J., T. Kushida, J-K. Hong, S. Sugita, Y. Kurita, J. Reeve, R. Loverance, G. Gay and R. Rieger. 1998. Multimedia information access on the Internet: An approach in global digital museum. ACM Digital Libraries '98. Pittsburgh, PA.