Nasa, Google line up for Katikati software

A Katikati man's Sunday afternoon invention has attracted attention all over the world and is being used in the Johnson Space Center in the US.

Waikato University computer science doctoral student Paul Hunkin developed a computer software programme that's been picked up by Nasa and Google.

Mr Hunkin's software ClusterGL was created for the university's display wall in 2008 and joined multiple computers together to make one huge display screen.

After catching the eye of Google earlier this year, the programme is now being used internationally.

Mr Hunkin said there were five computers behind the Waikato display wall, with each computer controlling four screens. ClusterGL turned a display wall into one giant screen, by letting a single programme on one computer control all monitors.

He said the Waikato display wall was relatively small and ClusterGL could allow you to create 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 Mr Hunkin a Summer of Code internship and 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," he said.

"Google's involvement was to make ClusterGL better and work on a curved geometry."

After the software was released to the public, Nasa saw the programme and is 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 on a rainy Sunday afternoon," Mr Hunkin said.

Just over a year ago he developed another computer software programme that drew global media attention from Iran to Sweden, China and Russia.

The Bid Bot allowed a person to make automatic bids on Trade Me items when they weren't physically sitting at a computer.

The software worked by scouring Trade Me every evening and bidding on any newly-listed items for $1.

The Bid Bot would pick the rarest item on the site and, after a successful auction, Tweet what it had bought.