Japan's NICT Signs Croquet Development Contract with University of Wisconsin

In December 2004, The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT) of Japan signed a $200,000 contract with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop new educational uses for Croquet. "Private developers and now government agencies are beginning to take note of Croquet's possibilities," says Julian Lombardi, director of the project at the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) at UW-Madison. "Our Japanese colleagues are interested in working with Alan Kay and our team to develop new ways for all of us to interact with network-deliverable information." Alan Kay presently serves as Senior Scientist at UW's Division of Information Technology.