Bluel Research

Research is not just an important part of the business plan at Bluel -- it is a passion. We are continually investigating new technologies and searching for opportunities to innovate. In addition to their commercial product potential, research projects frequently produce software that can be leveraged immediately for today's applications. They also provide a useful testbed for evaluating cutting-edge development tools and methodologies.

Current Projects

Genetic Programming for Inner Loop Optimization In its recent partnership with Tarter Econometric Consulting, Bluel has gained access to TEC's Pleiades distributed Linux cluster. In addition to stochastic optimization applications for financial modeling, we have also developed a class of genetic programming techniques for algorithm optimization, with emphasis on numerical applications for embedded systems. Results of these and other collaborative research products conducted on the cluster will be published in upcoming technical reports. >> Introduction to distributed high performance computing

Domain Specific Languages Over the last two years, Bluel researchers have designed and prototyped interpreters and translators for numerous domain-specific scripting languages. Some were built with standard parser-generators such as Yacc and JavaCC, but we have also employed several proprietary parsers, including a dynamically programmable parser for use with reflective languages. Other topics include reversible wizards that enable non-programmers to learn by example, plug-in language modules using Microsoft's ActiveScript technology, and pattern matching across grammar constructs. Because almost every large-scale application requires a scripting facility of some sort, this research has led to important insights for software design. It has also produced some very valuable API's which have been leveraged for a wide variety of commercial applications.

Recently Completed Projects

Bluel is proud to announce that the following research projects have been completed:

 

Bumper is a new "content neutral" classifier technology for server-side filtering of spam inspired by our work with text processing algorithms. We originally approached this problem from the typical Bayesian approach; however, it quickly became apparent that this can always be defeated by a clever adversary. The key insight is that unwanted e-mail should be identified not by the content of the message, but rather by the "envelope". This motivated a new, highly-effective strategy called "bumping", which is similar in spirit to the recently proposed Sender Policy Framework ideas, except that it does not require widespread adoption of new protocols. Bluel recently announced that the Exim-based reference implementation of Bumper will be published under an open source license. For more information on this interesting technology, click here.

SonicScript™ is a Java-based multiplatform standard for audio-enhanced books. Unlike a movie, it leverages the reader's imagination while enhancing the experience with ambient sound effects and music. A working prototype has been completed, with planned extensions for palm systems and a dedicated portable viewer. The next phase will be the development of an authoring tool called SonicScribe™.