Red Players

NEW YORK (AP) — It's better to be on the red team than on the blue team in an online multiplayer shooting game, according to researchers.

The scientists studied the outcomes of 1,347 matchups between elite teams playing "Unreal Tournament 2004," a so-called first-person shooter game. The main activity in the game is running around and shooting at the avatars of the opposing team.

As is the case with most team-based online shooting games, players of Unreal Tournament can choose to be on either the red team or the blue team, and their avatars wear those colors. But that choice is not as neutral as it seems: 55 percent of the time, the red team won, according to the study published this week in the journal Cyberpsychology & Behavior.

Neuroscientist Mihai Moldovan of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark said the reason was most likely that the color red may act as a psychological distractor for men, possibly because men flush and turn red when they're angry.

"While this is really an interesting analysis, the notion of red team versus blue team has been ingrained in the Unreal Tournament series for years. We don't anticipate any immediate changes to team colors," said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games, the Cary, N.C.-based developer of the series.

Another study found in 2005 that wearing red is an advantage in real-life sports. British scientists found that athletes wearing red in one-on-one events like wrestling at the 2004 Olympics were more likely to win.

The game results for the Unreal Tournament study were culled from public servers used by players around the world. Moldovan worked with researchers at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Romania, on the study.

— Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer

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Web site offers insiders' look at major employers

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Ever wonder whether you'd be better off working some place else?

A new Web site called Glassdoor.com is trying to make it easier to find out by compiling free snapshots of the current salaries paid by hundreds of major employers, along with reviews anonymously written by current and past workers.

"We think it's super important that people are able to find a job where they can go home happy at the end of the day," said Robert Hohman, Glassdoor's co-founder and chief executive.

The Sausalito-based startup's other founders include Rich Barton, CEO of online home appraisal site Zillow.com.

By providing free access to sensitive salary information and sometimes blunt reviews of companies, Glassdoor is bound to upset some employers, predicted Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr.

"I like the idea, but there is absolutely no question that some CEO is going to see something negative on the site and hit the roof," Parr said. "It just makes me wonder who long it will take before they get sued."

A Glassdoor feature that allows workers to rate their CEOs could be particularly provocative.

In Glassdoor's test phase based on a small sampling of opinions, Microsoft Corp. workers seemed to have a higher opinion of their CEO, Steve Ballmer, than Yahoo Inc. workers had of their CEO, Jerry Yang, who spurned a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Ballmer last month.

Hohman is trying to convince employers that Glassdoor is a great tool for gathering worker feedback. With 12 employees, the startup plans to screen all reviews to identify remarks that seem fabricated or libelous.

Glassdoor has an incentive not to alienate corporate America because it hopes to make money from advertising.

To start, Glassdoor is allowing all visitors to look at the salary information and reviews of four high-tech heavyweights — Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.

To get the skinny on other companies, visitors must be willing to reveal their salaries and feelings about their employers.

About 3,300 people provided information on about 250 companies during Glassdoor's testing phase.

— Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer

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Engineers search for fuel-saving big rigs

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — Tractor trailers lose valuable miles per gallon to the drag that air exerts, but air may also help tame the fuel guzzling forces.

Scientists at Georgia Tech's Research Institute are creating a "circulation control system" that blows a steady current of air around the back of the truck to help boost fuel efficiency.

Trailers are an aerodynamic nightmare, essentially boxes on wheels that can't be rounded off because that would cost valuable cargo space. As they plow down the road, getting 7 miles per gallon when they're lucky, wind funneling over the box creates a suction effect that drags down the vehicle.

Robert Englar, a Georgia Tech researcher, called the vortex an "aerodynamic anchor."

Englar, who helped develop air stabilizers working for Lockheed Martin, decided to apply some of the same principles to big rigs. He connects curved bumpers at a truck's back end to a blower that pushes a steady stream of air through them and out the sides. That air flow reduces drag by replacing it with a positive pressure that helps propel the vehicle.

On a test track, Englar's system reduced drag by 32 percent and increased fuel efficiency by 12 percent. That means a truck that once would get 5 miles per gallon gets 5.6 miles per gallon. That marginal increase could save thousands of dollars a year in fuel for a single truck.

"If you look at the poor guy putting $1,200 of diesel fuel in his gas tank, some would give their right arm for a 12 percent increase (in efficiency)," Englar said.

He hopes to bring the gadget's cost below $1,000 over the next few years and some day to include safety features, such as sensors to trigger the air flow to reverse when a driver starts to brake or push against threatening wind gusts.

It's one of few efforts to help trailers as well as tractors reduce wind drag.

"The tractors got smart," said Englar. "The trailers didn't."

With Englar's work, that could soon change.

— Greg Bluestein, AP Writer

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On the Net:

http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/

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Sea-Tac airport uses video to ease parking rage

SEATTLE (AP) — A project to enable the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport garage to direct travelers to open spaces yielded an unusual solution — at least as far as parking garage technology goes.

Facing a tight budget, the Sea-Tac team found that the two most popular systems for counting vacant spaces were too expensive. At Portland International, for example, each parking space is equipped with an ultrasonic detector that knows if the space is occupied.

Albert Shen, the consultant who managed the technology retrofit for Sea-Tac, said Portland's system would cost $1,100 per space, or $9.5 million for Sea-Tac's 8,500 long-term parking spots.

The other widely used system relies on copper wires embedded in the floor to sense and count cars as they enter and leave. That system, used at Dallas-Fort Worth, was also too pricey, though Shen did not provide a figure.

So Sea-Tac, which is operated by the Port of Seattle, decided to design its own system based on software the port already used for surveillance and security. In less than 18 months, a software engineer and a small army of IT workers built what Shen says is the first video analysis-based space count system.

Shen said it's possible that Sea-Tac would license its system, which the airport hopes will cut down on parking-garage rage and carbon emissions.

It uses 88 cameras throughout the garage. Software analyzes the video feeds, detects moving cars and keeps track of how many cars are parked in each section. Signs at entrances that tell drivers how many spaces are available in each section on each floor are updated frequently.

The cameras aren't positioned to capture license plate numbers or serve any security purpose, and the airport doesn't keep the footage, said Sea-Tac spokesman Perry Cooper.

Sea-Tac's approach isn't as precise as a space-by-space tally, and its accuracy still depends on a great deal of human intervention because garage workers must count the cars parked in each section each night and update the system.

But the price was right — $400 per space, or $3.4 million, Shen estimated.

The Seattle area airport garage was built in chunks over 30 years. Other airports with older garages are keeping an eye on how well this system works, as they, too, face high costs to update their facilities.

— Jessica Mintz, AP Technology Writer

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New specialty search engine dispenses how-to advice

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A new specialty search engine is trying to become the Internet's go-to spot for finding how-to advice.

Founded by Rhode Island entrepreneur Ted Ives, FindHow Corp. has assembled an index spanning nearly about 30,000 Web pages with written, photographic and video instructions on a wide variety topics ranging from prosaic tasks like tying a tie to more exotic missions like inviting the Queen of England to a Super Bowl party.

Relying on a team of human editors, FindHow has sifted the information to discrete categories like "food and drink," ''careers and work" and "wild and wacky" and emphasizes tips from well-established government and business sources. Ives also is trying to market FindHow as a "family-friendly" site in hopes of attracting a loyal following among librarians and students.

Ives believes FindHow's more organized format and emphasis on brands will help separate it from the horde of other Web sites that provide how-to information. The competition includes specialty services like eHow, Helpfulvideo, WonderHowTo, as well as all-purpose destinations like Internet search leader Google Inc. and its video-sharing subsidiary YouTube.

FindHow is starting out with about a $300,000 investment from Ives and a handful of other backers.

— Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer