Minerva has two halves – the universal desktop & integrated communications.<br /><br /><font size="4"><b>Universal Desktop</b><b><br /></b></font><br /><ul><li>Pieces (like UFS) may be natively accessible from client platforms, but all must be browser-accessible for portability</li><li>take the best parts of Athena and make them cross-platform, OS-neutral services</li><li>find a customer</li><li>build alliances with others who may develop the apps, while we do the backend</li></ul><br /><b>Universal File System</b><br /><br /><ul><li>Needs to be seamlessly accessible across all client platforms (linux, windows, mac) as a native shared drive</li><li>Needs to be accessible via browser for portability</li><ul><li>browser may offer richer functionality than "native mode" (i.e. versioning, metadata, RDF-based search, etc)</li></ul><li>relevant technologies in this area:</li><ul><li>Al Fresco</li><li>Amazon storage services (used by YouOS)<br /></li><li>Open AFS</li></ul><li>possible applications</li><ul><li>ally w/CSAIL, where we do the infrastructure & they do the app, they have an intrerest in RDF/semantic web</li></ul></ul><b>Universal Printing<br /></b><ul><li>thru browser:</li><ul><li>Find a printer based on name, location, properties (i.e. color, hi-speed, etc) <br /></li><li>print a file from the Universal File System</li></ul><li>what about native platforms? it's been hard so far to get shared protocols</li><li>relevant technologies:</li><ul><li>?</li></ul></ul><b><br />Universal Computing<br /></b><ul><li>accessible via browser</li><li>grab a computing resource from the "cloud" and run the app of your choice <br /></li><ul><li>specify a profile//image</li><li>run app from Universal File System</li></ul><li>how do they do UI w/a user?</li><li>vaguely related technologies:</li><ul><li>amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing service</li><li>HPC</li><li>SIPB</li></ul><li>Possible applications:</li><ul><li>departments using web.mit.edu w/o scripting ability (i.e. Chem E)</li></ul></ul><b><font size="4">Integrated Communications</font></b><br /><ul><li>portable, accessible thru browser</li><li>email (like Google Mail)</li><li>Jabber-based presence</li><li>IM (integrating w/all major clients, like AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google)<br /></li><li>chat</li><li>zephyr-style passive chat</li><li>VOIP (receive & initiate calls)</li><li>pieces detachable from web window (a la Gmail)</li><li>relevant technologies:</li><ul><li>google mail</li><li>Zimbra</li><li>?</li></ul><li>MIT departments are not big IM/chat users, but students are different</li><li>To do:</li><ul><li>understand the student users</li><li>find a customer</li><li>make it visible</li></ul></ul>