@LARGE

Fast track

By Scott Kirsner

The events of Sept. 11 redefined the term ''urgent project'' for Anna Sabasteanski of Asset Management Network, a Web development firm in Belmont.

Earlier this year, she'd embarked on a contract with the International Center for Terrorism Studies, part of the nonpartisan Potomac Institute, to publish online a 40-year archive of documents related to terrorism. The site, TerrorismCentral.com, was scheduled to launch next January.

That schedule has since been accelerated, Sabasteanski has been pulling all-nighters, and the site will debut in preview form this week.

The institute, a network of academics and researchers in 30 countries, had ''tried a couple of times to do some kind of electronic dissemination project,'' Sabasteanski says, ''but it just never worked.''

The new site will offer a combination of free and paid content, including reports on cyber-terrorism and profiles of terrorist groups around the world.

Among the fee-based offerings is a downloadable version of the book ''Usama Bin Laden's Al-Qaida: Profile of a Terrorist Network,'' co-authored by Yonah Alexander, the institute's director. On Amazon.com, the book has become a surprise bestseller (it was at number 61 on Amazon's list, last I checked), but getting a copy takes as long as four weeks. An instantly available Adobe PDF file from TerrorismCenter.com will sell for about $5, Sabasteanski says.

Next year, she hopes to add ''a peer-to-peer collaboration community for all these researchers [who are] contributing content to the Institute. It'll be a huge online information network.''

Anti-terror tech

Several Massachusetts tech companies generated substantial buzz at last week's American Society for Industrial Security conference in San Antonio, Texas. The show caters to the $16 billion security industry, and local companies like Viisage Inc. of Littleton, Ion Track Instruments of Wilmington, and PerkinElmer Instruments of Woburn all attracted large crowds.

Viisage, a biometric identification company, was showing an access control system developed with Rapor Inc. that only opens a door when it recognizes the face of the person awaiting entry. You'll need to add a new ID photo to the database, though, if you start wearing glasses or decide to shave your mustache.

A sales manager for Ion Track, Paul Morlock, told me that the company has had so much interest in its walk-through EntryScan system, which can detect traces of explosives or narcotics on a person, that it would take eight to 10 weeks for a new customer to get hold of one of the $125,000 devices.

Users stand inside what looks like an oversize metal detector for 10 seconds as vapors and particles given off by the individual's body heat are analyzed. EntryScan can detect substances like cocaine, heroin, dynamite, and TNT, but false alarms will likely occur if a person takes nitroglycerine tablets for a heart problem, or has recently been gardening with fertilizer containing ammonium nitrate (an ingredient in bombs like the one that destroyed the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.)

PerkinElmer's Linescan series of X-ray machines can help operators spot possible explosives by outlining them in red, and also can display nonexistent weapons on the screen to keep operators alert.

''You have not detected a fictional threat,'' is the error message that appears when the operator misses a knife that's not really there. The sales rep giving the demo used a very realistic-looking fake revolver. Apparently, it had arrived at the show via truck, not on a commercial airplane.

What struck me as unusual was that the technology vendors at the show were talking about their products with a real sense of context. Technology wasn't the silver-bullet solution to the problem of terrorism. What was needed, they said, was a solid foundation of vigilance, dedication to eliminating attractive opportunities for terrorist activities, and the formulation of appropriate responses that would ensure public safety - not just whizzy technologies.

That kind of balance between the merits of upgrading hardware and the need for new approaches is extraordinary for the high-tech industry, and it's encouraging to see.

Powerful friends

Most biz-tech titles published this year have fallen victim to bad timing, and the management advice genre is suffering through a moment when managers don't want any more advice - they just want to figure out how to survive.

Donald Laurie's new book, ''Venture Catalyst: The Five Strategies for Explosive Corporate Growth,'' may not escape from that black hole, but it deserves to. It focuses on how large companies can achieve dramatic growth by spinning out new ventures based on their own intellectual property, or investing in start-ups that align with their corporate strategies.

I asked Laurie for his advice for entrepreneurs trying to get technology companies financed in the current environment. He acknowledged that corporate venture capital investments are down this year - even more sharply than investments by traditional venture firms. But Laurie said that relationships with big companies are still worth chasing, even if it's tough to get them to shell out money right now.

''A distribution agreement with an established company can be very important to a start-up,'' Laurie said. ''So can having an established company beta-test your product, or having them as a customer once the product is ready.''

Laurie pointed out that ''two-thirds of the companies that GE Equity invests in count divisions of General Electric as customers.''

Tight relationships with well-known companies are difficult to forge, Laurie admits, but they can often mean the difference between success and failure.

''When you work with a blue-chip company, some of their credibility will rub off on you,'' Laurie said.

Man vs. machine

One high point of the current ''Game Show'' exhibit at Mass MoCA in North Adams is a piece by Perry Hoberman called ''Cathartic User Interface.''

The work is a wall of computer keyboards onto which are projected taunting variations on familiar computer messages, like ''Warning: You can try to complete this operation. But if you do, your computer will probably burst into flames.''

Museum visitors are invited to throw rubber Koosh balls at the wall of keyboards, in a twist on a carnival game. The system responds when you hit your target, sometimes with sounds, and sometimes by taking its trash-talking up a notch. ''Not enough RAM in the known universe,'' was one of my favorites.

Hoberman, a Cambridge native, has a Web site at www.hoberman.com/perry, and the museum is at www.massmoca.org.

Scott Kirsner is a Boston freelance writer and a contributing editor at Wired and Fast Company magazines.