What began as a side project has gone global after a New Zealand student’s software was picked up by Google and NASA.

“I never expected it to take off like this,” said University of Waikato student Paul Hunkin.

“It started off as little afternoon project and it’s gotten reasonably popular.”

Hunkin might downplay his success, but NASA called the software an “innovative solution”.

The computer science doctoral student created ClusterGL to connect multiple screens to form one huge image for the university’s display wall in 2008.

“The problem that you have when you want to make a really big wall of screens is that you need to use lots of computers, but computer programmes are usually written on one computer, so it’s quite difficult to spread them over a multiple of computers,” said Hunkin.

“My system lets you take any normal program and split it up to run across as many screens as you want.”

Hunkin was talking to Google about another project while applying for their Summer of Code internship, but when he mentioned ClusterGL they jumped on the idea.

“It turns out this problem is something a lot of people have.”

Google offered Hunkin the internship and paid him to further develop the software for their own curved display walls called Liquid Galaxy.

The Liquid Galaxy consists of several screens in a circular arrangement which run Google Earth in parallel for an immersive virtual experience.

After catching the eye of Google, the program is now being used globally, including at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre.

Hunkin hit headlines around the world in 2010 after he created a programme called “Bid Bot” which trawled through auction site Trade Me looking for rare items to bid on for just $NZ1.

While the Tauranga-local brushes aside his unexpected success calling it “nice points on my CV”, the future looks bright.

“I’m in the final bit of finishing a PhD and then I’ll look for a real job. Google would be an interesting place to work for, but the industry is evolving so rapidly. I’ve spent a bit of time in Silicon Valley, there’s some very interesting work happening out there.”

Source:http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/kiwis-software-wows-google-nasa-20120111-1pump.html

Software written by a University of Waikato computer science student has found its way to Google and NASA and is being used at the Johnson Space Center.

Computer science doctoral student Paul Hunkin’s software ClusterGL was created for the university’s display wall in 2008 and joins multiple computers together to make one huge display screen.

After catching the eye of Google earlier this year, the program is now is being used around the world.

Hunkin says there are five computers behind the Waikato display wall, with each computer controlling four screens. ClusterGL turns a display wall into one giant screen, by letting a single program on one computer control all monitors.

While the Waikato display wall is relatively small, ClusterGL can scale to let you have a display wall made from a handful to hundreds of monitors.

“I was talking to Google about another project I was working on and happened to mention ClusterGL. They have these curved display walls and thought ‘this will be brilliant for what we want’.”

Google offered Hunkin a Summer of Code internship where they paid him to further develop the software for their own curved display walls.

“ClusterGL was designed to work on a flat wall like the one we have at the university. Google’s involvement was to make ClusterGL better and work on a curved geometry.”

After releasing the software to the public, NASA saw the program and are now using it in the Johnson Space Center.

“NASA saw one of Google’s curved display walls and bought one of them. I was pretty surprised to hear they were using it considering it started out as something that I put together one a rainy Sunday afternoon,” says Hunkin.

Bid Bot, another program created by Hunkin which drew global media attention last year, works by scouring TradeMe every evening looking to bid on and buy newly-listed items for $1. After scouring TradeMe, Bid Bot would pick the rarest item and after a successful auction, tweet what it had bought.

Source:http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1201/S00002/waikato-students-software-picked-up-by-google-and-nasa.htm