Stories about: VISION SYSTEMS

The Western Australian government today launched the blueprint for the country's biggest technology precinct exclusively dedicated to the ICT industry.

Imagine a robot that hands you a beer and then cleans your kitchen and living room. That's what a start-up called Willow Garage in California is busy developing. But the company isn't going it alone: Willow Garage is an open source project that wants as much outside participation as possible.

Gamers probably thought they died and went to heaven at CES. Here are a few cool things we saw at the show.

Relational database management systems have become all but ubiquitous in enterprise computing since 1970, when they were first devised by E.F. Codd. But as powerful and flexible as those databases are, they've proved inadequate for a handful of ultrademanding applications that have to process hundreds or thousands of transactions per second and never go down. Now, the very-high-performance database technologies that sprang up to serve these niche markets, such as options trading and telephone call processing, are poised to move into mainstream computing.

When he joined Cisco the local operation wasn't swimming all that well. At Microsoft, he refused to kiss rear ends. Giving people autonomy and building a team play a major role for Jackson. He never mentioned golf. Before he left Australia, John Costello caught up with him. Ian Sharp, Computerworld's staff photographer, was also there. In this edited transcript of the interview, Jackson reflects on his 25 years in the Australian IT industry and his future.