Bloglines - Yahoo’s ‘Mission Future Media’

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Ramesh Jain's Blog Offical blog of Ramesh Jain

Yahoo’s ‘Mission Future Media’ By Ramesh on Technical Thoughts Yahoo is slowly but certainly transforming itself into a media giant. It has been very active in this space — more active than Google and Microsoft. It recruited several people from media industry and is building a major operation in Santa Monica to be close to Hollywood. Is Yahoo trying to build the interactive studio of the future? Saul Hansell reports The short answer is yes, but Mr. Semel’s ambitions are far bigger and more complex than that. He wants Yahoo to be seen as more akin to Warner’s parent, Time Warner, which mixes content like Warner and CNN with distribution, like its cable systems. Yahoo is both of those and a lot of software, too. Mr. Semel describes a strategy built on four pillars: First, is search, of course, to fend off Google, which has become the fastest-growing Internet company. Next comes community, as he calls the vast growth of content contributed by everyday users and semiprofessionals like bloggers. Third, is the professionally created content that Mr. Braun oversees, made both by Yahoo and other traditional media providers. And last, is personalization technology to help users sort through vast choices to find what interests them. Madison Avenue’s rush online is feeding this activity, both the simple but highly specific-target text ads that flash on Web searches and the Internet versions of TV commercials.

Bloglines - Progress in Search: A Conversational User Interface (CUI) by 2015?

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Future Salon Companion Weblog to the Accelerations Studies Foundation Future Salons

Progress in Search: A Conversational User Interface (CUI) by 2015? By Evelyn Rodriguez on AC2005 Ron Kaplan, Director of Natural Language Research, Palo Alto Research Center  and Marti Hearst, Professor, SIMS, UC Berkeley; Science Advisor for Search, Yahoo! spoke on the state of natural language interfaces for search. Synopsis: Kaplan says we're at the level where where it's like talking to a one-year-old today. What's desired is something more akin to conversing with "an  intelligent research assistant." He adds, "It's not just about search. How do we interact with the world of ubiquitous computing [talking to remotes, your fridge, your car, sensors of all kinds, etc]? They'll be useful to extent we can have natural conversations." His prediction: "We'll be at 8-year-old level in 2010. In the [classic] hockeystick curve, I'm going to claim we're at the inflection point." Marti Hearst claims that a well thought out user interface itself can help guide people and speaks about the role of inference: "What will people want to do next based on other people who had same question?" She's even more optimistic: "Shouldn't online travel agencies be more like a travel agent? Maybe we'll be there in about 4 years. And a pretty good desktop assistant? I'd say 5 years because there is a lot of government research in this area." Progress in Search: A Conversational User Interface (CUI) by 2015? From program: Our debate at AC2005 will consider differing estimates of the difficulty and strategies necessary to achieving a first-generation conversational user interface (CUI, pronounced "cooey") within the coming decade. Achieving a functional CUI would be perhaps the single most important and empowering artificial intelligence/intelligence amplification breakthrough we may witness in our lifetimes. It would give us the ability to talk to, be productive with, and be continually educated by our computers, cellphones, internet, and other complex technologies using simple but natural human conversation. Sibley Verbeck, StreamSage (Moderator): More of an [intelligence] amplification than a technology itself. It's language understanding, it's inference. For instance, control applications - at lunchtime, chatted about getting rid of remotes and talk to devices in our living room. Being at Comcast, I have to think about television. If you are watching the news and something comes on. Any two minute new story generates more questions than it answers. What if we augmented and queued up more in-depth version of story, provide other information. What is under hood? How close are we? Ron Kaplan, Director of Natural Language Research, Palo Alto Research Center Slides titled: Converging on Conversation: Search and Everything Else It's not just about search. How do we interact with the world of ubiquitous computing? They'll be useful to extent we can have natural conversations. Where are we now? It's like talking to a 1-year-old. Can't say what you want, nor get what you need. Adding more words yields no hits (usually). Issue today is precision. Work arounds: order by popularity (based on incoming links, clickthroughs for these hits - assuming you are generic person: "if it's good for everyone else, it's good for you") - it's not individualized. You order cookbook for your mother and now you get cookbook recommendations on Amazon for life. What's desired: A better model is not a 1-year-old, but an  intelligent research assistant. Let's say I want to know... What prevented the Northwest strike? Then you have a conversation for clarifation. Next question: By mechanics or flight attendents? Mimics having a back-and-forth conversation with your assistant to refine the search rather than keywords and documents [model]. Typing is a problem sometimes. IM is anything but Instant. Language is efficient; unsaid but understood in context and based on expectations ("The fish seemed ready to eat"). The speaker and hearer must model each other. Problem is that it's an intricate interactiton of intricate operations. Component technologies: Accurate speech, robust grammatical analysis, ontologies and inference, personalization (how does it figure out "me", context, expectations), dialog models (primitive but useful) Personalization is not very good right now. Needs discussion along with observed behavior ("I'm buying this for my grandmother"). The personal context (speech, interests) can be on client side. Also needed coherent architecture that enables modularity. We need another 2 cycles of Moore's Law. GB + GIPS. We'll be at 8-year-old level in 2010. In the [classic] hockeystick curve, I'm going to claim we're at the inflection point. Marti Hearst, Professor, SIMS, UC Berkeley; Science Advisor for Search, Yahoo! SIMS is interdisciplinary - within School of Information - includes economics, law, IT In short-term a lot of focused, domain specific interfaces. Such as "shortcuts" on search engines like "SFO flights" - but, of course, people don't like memorizing command languages. User interface design itself can often make up for a lack of natural language processing technology itself by limiting choices, suggesting next choices, etc. Compute statistics on data. For instance, factoid questions: "Who is president of Uganda?" (For straight-forward questions with single answers.) Automating dialogue is not that far ahead today. Only a little bit of work in that area [thus far]. Large-scale huge behavior collections, such as spelling corrections. Making inferences: What will people want to do next based on other people who had same question? Spelling example: Dictionaries not enough because many words aren't in standard dictionaries. Use other people's mistakes to map to other misspellings. If horrible misspelling then map to the closet (better) mispelling until you [iteratively] hit on correct spelling. First maps to other misspellings. Number of correct spellings obviously must outnumber the misspellings.  This algorithm wouldn't work other than there are so many queries [to map against]. Shouldn't online travel agencies be more like a travel agent? Maybe we'll be there in about 4 years. And a pretty good desktop assistant? I'd say 5 years because there is a lot of government research in this area. ac2005 search search engine user interface natural language processing

Bloglines - Seven Founding Sins

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musings of a social architect

Seven Founding Sins By AJ Being the business of designing cutting-edge games & software, I've worked with a lot of startups. Over time, I've noticed tha certain behaviors seem to be correlated with success. I've tried to articulate some of these patterns, such as in my Lessons Learned post from last year. Today, courtesy of Fred Wilson's excellent blog, I discovered David Beisel's blog and read a post called the Seven Founding Sins that beautifully articulates these issues. David's thoughts resonate deeply with my own experiences - especially the first and last points he makes. This is a GREAT read if you're in the business of running a startup. Inauthenticity. While there are notable exceptions, most successful entrepreneurial endeavors are sprung from a genuine idea born from true experience or direct & tangible observation. A founding team should not only have the relevant experience, but also immediate and authentic understanding of the end-users/customers need. Blank-slate brainstormed white-board ideas rarely even deserve the material that they're written on. Great ideas search for a great entrepreneur; great entrepreneurs don't search for a great idea. Sloth. It may seem obvious, but founding a company is not a full-time job. It's a full-time life. And then some. And then some more. Only those who truly understand this notion have a shot. Extravagance. A startup is just that: a startup. Without the full corporate infrastructure support, and more importantly, without extensive monetary resources, founders and employees must spend wisely. Even if VC financing has been raised, extravagant and wasteful spending by a few founders/leadership sets the tone for the entire organization. Jet-set lifestyles are appropriate after the liquidity event, as employees treat resources with the same respect that those in power do. Taciturnity. Rapid progress and constant adjustment in a new endeavor requires continuous communication of these changes. Founders need to ensure that all of the constituents who are involved in making the company a success: co-founders, (prospective) investors, advisors, (potential) customers, employees, analysts, press, bloggers, professional service providers, etc. are regularly updated with an accurate and realistic assessment of both developments and challenges that affect them specifically. Greed. Holding too tightly to the percentage of ownership figure doesn't allow room for a company to attract the leadership, employees, and investors that will maximize shareholder value -- including the founders'. A flourishing startup endeavor requires investing equity in others to generate substantial return. Arrogance. There is a fine line between a beneficial pride of confidence and a dangerous arrogant hubris. Founders must realize the limits of their abilities and seek help/input about when others on the team are more informed or in a better position to make decisions. Letting others control activities frees founders to contribute where they can best - in whatever role that may be. Nobody, including a founder, is always right. Indecisiveness. The beauty of a startup is that there are endless possibilities. The difficulty is to concentrate on one opportunity, not every opportunity. The sooner that a new company can find its focus and make strides, the better. Of course any new company necessitates flexibility, but there is greater risk in trying to be all things to all people than succumbing to rigidity. In the end, tough choices are indeed tough, founding entrepreneurs need to make them.

Bloglines - Q&A With Ray Kurzweil

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Future Salon Companion Weblog to the Accelerations Studies Foundation Future Salons

Q&A With Ray Kurzweil By Evelyn Rodriguez on AC2005 With moderator: Moira Gunn, of public radio's Tech Nation KEY M: Moira Gunn | A: Ray Kurzweil's response | Q: Audience question A snippet from this afternoon's Q&A: [An AI entity...] Is that a machine like a character in a video game? Is it conscious? Consciousness is at the core of our moral and legal systems. But there is not human agreement on consciousness, for instance, are animals conscious? KEY M: Moira Gunn | A: Ray Kurzweil's response | Q: Audience question [I just stepped in from break and we're talking about sex...] A: Will need virtual reality to affect sexual relations. Would need tactile communication, VR in the nervous system. VR will also enable new art forms. Safe as far as STD, pregnancy, a violent outcome; you can change who you are (you can change who you are); you can project yourself as the other person; accountability matters - wouldn't want people to masquerade as a teenager that is a pedophile Really explore interpersonal relationships M: Is there anything about intimacy? A: Everything I've talked about is communication. Emotional intelligence is the cutting edge of human intelligence - that's the last frontier in AI. Spindle cells - special type of neurons - involved in emotions. We have about 80,000. Chimps have 3-4,000. Humans don't have any spindle cells when they are born. But still, that's only behavior. Is that a machine like a character in a video game? Is it conscious? Consciousness is at the core of our moral and legal systems. But there is not human agreement on consciousness, for instance, are animals conscious? This will be ongoing debate. I think we'll see them as conscious. They'll be mad if we don't believe them, so they'll be influential. M: We build these systems. At that point as technology creators what should we program into those systems? A: That's a good questions. Look at viruses - they're unleashed with unpredictable consequences. We can disallow self-replication but could be easily adverted. Need an immune system. The answer is we have a lot of responsibility. We can create more complexity than we started with - we see that with evolutionary genetic programming. M: The rate of change is skyrocketing. All technology is a product of science and engineering. Peter Schwartz at Global Business Network says 92% of all scientists are alive today; 95% of all engineers are alive today. Doesn't say what kinds of technology will the new technologies create? A: I don't see it as a distinction. We merge the two. Librarians use the tools - integrated into human civilization. All of our jobs routinely use technology.  There must be a wall, people say, because humans can't handle all this. M: Most of us don't know how the car works. But we adapt to use it. My question is idea that technology begets other technology. Will there also be humans [in the loop]. A: I believe technology is part of human civilization. This future civilization is emerging from our civilization. To me the purpose of life is creating knowledge - includes all the expressions including art and music and literature. We create knowledge and pass that from generation to generation - that is distinctly human. M: Paradigm shifts - how we view the world. Humans love to timeshift, for instance when we first got email. TiVo interferes with broadcast TV [business model]. Books on tape worry book publishers. A: These new paradigms don't eclipse others. We still have magazines. We still have plows. These become new business models in and of themselves - bigger pie, and profoundly democratizing. Esther [Dyson in previous session] was right that Internet was there yet. Had fax machines. Now everyone knew what was going on. Information wasn't hidden anymore. That's what undid Soviet Union. We will be able to harness a specific interest - if you are a musician, you can jam with a specific, complex ensemble. M: Religious fundamentalists and even uninformed people are anti-technology. Can you paint dark & light scenarios? A: It isn't just religious fundamentalists. It's also humanist movement: take the anti-GMO movement. Golden rice can save a lot of people; kids from going blind. Stem cells have moved ahead. Biotech is moving ahead quite obstentively. These tend to be stones in the stream and ultimately don't really change exponential trends. M: Will politicians listen better to AI [simulated] models [reference to models and experts that described issues around levees in NOLA]? A: Probably not. There's tremendous power in private hands. In 2020s, we'll have nanobots to clean up industrial revolution's waste. Have/have not divide is huge issue. It's tragic what's been done in AIDS. If only the wealthy can use it, then it's not as useful. The law of accelerating returns [means that these come down in price in accelerated fashion].  In movie The Matrix the cellphone that was whipped out was only available to elite then - not that long ago. Q: on education A: At MIT, 60% of courses are online now. A school in Pakistan is taking its curriculum from MIT; watch the webcasts  (isn't exactly like being there yet; maybe another eight years). That's the case in Africa, China. There are ambitious plans so don't need to have a teacher to teach in every subject in every village. Just about free in many languages. Overcomes time-lapse, geography, etc. Q: See from your slides earlier that our lives are being extended. A: The law supports now that if they're healthy and in good shape, that's just fine. I often get question regarding population problems and issues around resources. Nanotechnology will help us create the material goods we need - so resources won't be issue. I'm asked: Won't boredom set in? But also an expansion in knowledge. Q: Nuclear was supposed to solve all our energy problems. What will prevent nanotechnology going the way of nuclear power? A: Nanotech is very distributed; nuclear power centralized. Q: Semiconductor fabs cost millions of dollars. A: A lot won't require multimillion dollar technology at all. Q: Who will be accountable in this new type of intelligence? A: We're going to have to redefine accountability. M: We started off on the topic of sex. I really like a man with a sense of humor...until you get the humor part down, I'm going to wait out. A: That's going to be last thing we can master. tags ac2005 singularity AI artificial intelligence

Bloglines - Kurweil Keynote: When Humans Transcend Biology

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Future Salon Companion Weblog to the Accelerations Studies Foundation Future Salons

Kurweil Keynote: When Humans Transcend Biology By Evelyn Rodriguez on AC2005 Ray Kurzweil, Kurzweil Technologies and author, The Singularity is Near When Humans Transcend Biology keynotes for third year in a row (if memory serves right). Check out slides at: www.kurzweilAI.net/pps/ACC2005 Synopsis: We have programs in our body we haven't changed in 30,000 years.  The main difference in perspective from people in this conference and much more common view is the historical exponential perspective and a linear perspective. Most people intuitively extrapolate today into the future linearly. As Kurweil maintains, the maxim 'Know thyself' is really the goal of reverse-engineering of the brain. Kurzweil's latest book, makes case the reverse-engineering will happen by 2029. That's when computers pass the Turing test.  And our fixed biological intelligence will merge with nonbiological intelligence. People ask me all the time about existential risk. To biological warfare risks, to pathological nanotechnology, and to pathological AI. The answer: Strong AI. And when that becomes pathological - stronger AI. Sort of like it's turtles all the way down. We plan for it...sort of like we planned for Katrina. [Audience laughs.] We have programs in our body we haven't changed in 30,000 years.  The main difference in perspective from people in this conference and much more common view is this difference in historical exponential versus a linear perspective. People intuitively extrapolate today into the future linearly. What can we say about the future? People say it's unpredictable. Some things hards to predict. Will Google stock be higher in 3 years? The price of MEMS track to simulated models pretty well. A feature of any evolutionary process. Each stage in biological evolution used its creation to build upon. Latest generation of technology used to build next. The paradigm shift rate itself is changing - doubly every decade.  Telephones took decades to be adopted - and look at cell phone subscribers. Shows a logarithmic plot of events from emergence of life, to human ancestors walk upright, spoken language, early cities, printing, industrial evolution, telephone, computer, personal computer... We go through different epochs: (1) atomic structures, (2) biology (DNA), (3) brains, (4) technology - hardware and software, (5) merger of technology and human intelligence, (6) universe wakes up (patterns of matter and energy in the universe become saturated with  intelligent processes and knowledge) Brain uses a very slow chemical-switching process now. In Age of Spiritual Machines, I talked about 3D molecular computing would be the next thing (coming about in nanotubes). Goes beyond Moore's Law - IT of all kinds double their power (price performance, capacity, bandwith) every year. Even his notebook laptop today is more powerful than a $11 million IBM mainframe he used at MIT in 1967. (24 doublings of price-performance in 36 years.) More charts of Moore's Law itself (supercomputer power, power/cost, transistors, MIPS, dynamic RAM in bits/dollar, magnetic data storage, etc.). That's just hardware side of equation.  Similar rates for price/performance for AIDS drugs. We are reverse engineering human biology. Costs of DNA sequencing is halving too (halving time is 1.9 years). RNA interference used to shut down a gene for genetic medicine.  Every speaker at the Future of Life - except myself and Bill Joy - used a model of  progress in the last 50 years for the next 50 years. Every form of communications technology is doubling price-performance, bandwidth,  capacity every 12 months.  Another exponential trend is miniturization. We've been shrinking devices at exponential rate. Animation of a respirocyte releasing oxygen in a capillary - we could run for X minutes without needing to take a breath. Eventually, we can put the intelligence of a cellphone into a nanobot (assumption is nanobot could be within our body). Reverse engineering the brain - the ultimate source of the templates of intelligence. Noninvasive brain scanning - ok, so we get this data but can we make sense of it? There was thought that nature of complexity that we couldn't understand - but that turns out not to be so.  If you compress the data in the genome, it's smaller than Microsoft Word. You'll hear more about evolutionary programs later in conference. Where you can take something compact and expand it in self-organizing way (i.e. cellular automata) to create something more complex. Each repetition adds some randomness in interacting with the world (i.e. a child throwing the ball). Slide showing IT's share of economy. It's still smooth regardless of the 'bust'. On overall trends, we can make predictions.  Computers will "disappear" - they will be so tiny that they'll be in our clothing, environment; images written directly to our retinas. I make the case in book that we will have reverse-engineered the brain by 2029. And computers pass the Turing test.  These devices get very small they can be introduced into our bloodstream. To expand our biological intelligence by this 'merger' of nonbiological and our biological intelligence. Effectively biological intelligence is fixed. In answering a question, Kurzweil says: Software viruses are getting more sophiscated. But it hasn't taken down the Internet. Audience member pipes up: You're talking about going from opposable thumb to opposable mind. The maxim 'Know thyself' is really the goal of reverse-engineering of the brain. tags ac2005 singularity

Bloglines - The Extinct Indian Entrepreneur

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Shrikant's Blog Technology and Social Trends for a Better Life

The Extinct Indian Entrepreneur By Administrator on Uncategorized Red Herring released a list of 20 entrepreneurs under the age of 35. There was one Indian Anurag Dikshit but not a single Indian from India. My take on this issue is the explosion in the job market with Multi-nationals and Indian companies on a hiring spree. You have to be in some sense a radical to ignore the comfort of getting a job and jump into starting a company. Another personal observation, even though there are a lot of VCs in India there is an acute shortage of angel investors in India. VCs pretend to be angel investors and waste the precious time of many budding entrepreneurs asking questions and documentation to be provided that is actually required in the first round of fund raising. Many who pursue a business in India are the ones who get funded by family or informal channels. Many of the businesses are just filling up for infrastructure bottlenecks rather than building new products or services. Banks also provide loans only if you can provide collateral, so the ones that can borrow money are ones that have some property or have money. So our nationalized and private banks will only lend money to those that have money not innovative ideas. I really call upon high networth individuals with good management experience to allocate some money to pure angel investing and mentoring young entrepreneurs. Instead of putting all their money in fixed deposits or pushing up the valuation of established businesses in the stock market or fuelling the irrational real estate boom. In Pune lot of the social discussions are around real estate just like Silicon Valley was abuzz with tech stacks in 97-99 boom. So if you are young, with a good idea, no high networth relative, no personal collateral you might as well take up a job and make the Indian entrepreneur a rare species possibly extinct. Comments

'The Man Behind the Microchip': The Next Small Thing - New York Times

'The Man Behind the Microchip': The Next Small Thing - New York Times: "''If nearly any invention is examined closely enough, it almost immediately becomes apparent that the innovation was not the product of a single mind, even if it is attributed to one,'' Leslie Berlin writes. ''Invention is best understood as a team effort.''

In America, we're conditioned to valorize the individual genius. To some extent we owe this caricature to biographies of famous inventors, because they play to the lone-gunman theory of brilliance. But many increasingly complex pieces of high-tech engineering -- the Apple computer, the mobile phone, the Web browser -- were the collaborative products of large teams, each person doing a small piece of work: less ''eureka'' than barn-raising. "

Early Look at Research Project to Re-engineer the Internet - New York Times

Early Look at Research Project to Re-engineer the Internet - New York Times: "When the Internet was designed in the 1970's, its engineers did not expect that the project would have to be scaled to cover much of the world's population, and security was not an important consideration.
'The culture of the original Internet was one of trust,' Mr. Kleinrock said.
Faster transmission speeds are not one of the design goals of the new network.
'Making a network faster has never made it more secure or easier to use,' Mr. Clark said."

Early Look at Research Project to Re-engineer the Internet - New York Times

Early Look at Research Project to Re-engineer the Internet - New York Times: "As described in documents circulated by National Science Foundation officials, the network will focus on security, 'pervasive computing' environments populated by mobile, wireless and sensor networks, control of critical infrastructure and the ability to handle new services that can be used by millions of people."

Bloglines | My Feeds

Bloglines | My Feeds
A book has 3 ways to browse it: table of contents (think of this as a directory or outline), index (the equivalent of search), or jumping to a page (typing a specific URL or finding it, quite literally, via a bookmark). On the Web, the index/search option has become the primary mechanism.

Information obesity ?!!

Hi Rajesh, 

Writing after a long gap....

 

I have been aggregating a lot of blogs on bloglines....

Currently it's 478 feeds on my bloglines...

 

It has become a herculean task to organise and read through the blogs....

Whatever time i can find during my office...I try to clear off the unread items.

 

But going has become tougher....

I just seem to skim through the blogs and does not seem to assimilate the content....

Information obesity ?!!

 

Do you have some tips...?!

 

Thanks

Aravind

 

 

Bloglines - Should We Like Chinese and Indian R&D?

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BusinessWeek Online - Economics Unbound The Pursuit of Prosperity

Should We Like Chinese and Indian R&D? By michael_mandel on Trade There's been an awful lot of stories about how the U.S. advantage in innovation is eroding, especially as more R&D is being done in India, China, and other Asian countries. Just recently a Korean lab announced the first dog clone. Pros and cons. On the plus side, ideas travel easily across national borders, so research done elsewhere quickly spreads back to the U.S. On the minus side, the innovators often get a lead, which translates into more innovation and faster economic growth. A new paper from economists Laura Bottazzi and Giovanni Peri estimates the size of these two effects (though they don't quite put it this way). They write: A 1% positive shock to the log of R&D in US increases the knowledge creation in other countries by an average of 0.35% within ten years. The same shock generates a maximum 6% effect on the US stock of knowledge after five to ten years and then declines slightly. Let's translate this into English. An increase in U.S. R&D does have a substantial positive effect on other countries, but the eventual benefit to the U.S. is perhaps 20 times larger. Whoa! I know that this result depends on lots of assumptions, but this really takes me aback. Presumably the results from investment in R&D in Asia would be similar...that the innovating country would benefit a lot more than the U.S. I've been a big optimist about the U.S. gain from innovation in China, India, and Asia more broadly...but maybe I've been too optimistic. I've got to think about this.

Bloglines - Retro: Human Changing

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WorldChanging: Another World Is Here

Retro: Human Changing By Jamais Cascio on WorldChanging Retro A growing number of very smart people argue that we are on the edge of a massive transformation of what it means to be human. Three excellent books about this transformation came out in the past year, James Hughes' Citizen Cyborg, Ramez Naam's More Than Human, and journalist Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution. The three authors have varied but complementary ideas about what human augmentation might entail, and (much to my pleasure) all three agreed to a collective interview. Human Changing is the result of that interview, and it remains the longest article we've ever published. It's so long that it actually exceeded the maximum length for the software, so be sure to read the "part II" linked at the bottom of the article. I think we're going to see that path with any enhancement and I think what freaks people out is the idea that it's going to be used by people who simply want to have advantage over their competitors. If you buy that path, then you're looking in the very near term at a potential division of the species between the Enhanced, the Naturals, and the Rest. The Enhanced are the people who have the interest and the money to embrace all of these enhancements. The Naturals are the ones who could do it if they wanted to, but they're like today's vegetarians or today's fundamentalists, and they eschew these enhancements for either aesthetic or political or religious reasons. The third group is the Rest and either for reasons of geography or money, they don't have access to these enhancements and they hate and envy the people who do. That division could get pretty exciting pretty fast in terms of conflict. (Posted by Jamais Cascio in WorldChanging Retro at 02:00 AM) Comments

Bloglines - Radio Economics

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Atanu Dey on India's Development Deeshaa

Radio Economics By Atanu Dey on Random Draws Dr James Reese, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina Upstate, is the producer of Radio Economics: An Economics Podcast - Telephone Interviews with Economists Worldwide. Here you will be able to listen to podcasts of some excellent interviews. There are so many doctors interviewed there that you would think that you were in a hospital. Seriously though, you should go there and as a side benefit you will learn all about podcasting and next thing you know you would have your own podcast ready to go. Groucho Marx claimed that he would never be a member of a club that would have him for a member. I could take a similar perverse stance and say that I would never agree to be interviewed by anyone whose standards are so low as to interview me. But I am not Groucho and Dr Reese has interviewed honest to goodness great economists. So with a great deal of trepidation, I point you to an interview of yours truly on Radio Economics. Comments

Bloglines - Technology Battles

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Emergic Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

Technology Battles [via Sadagopan] InfoWorld writes about seven tech battles: Windows vs. Linux: Is this battle really the fight of the new century? Or should these old warhorses shake hands and just get along? Behemoth vs. blade: A farm of blades seems like the best way to scale to meet application demands, but only when the software will cooperate Conventional software vs. software as a service: Hosted apps may hold a tiny slice of the market right now, but over the long haul, does conventional software stand a chance? Consolidation vs. federation: Should you standardize on one database platform or connect existing databases together where they reside? NAC vs. NAP: Network access management locks out untrusted end points; Cisco and Microsoft are duking it out over who gets the keys Vista vs. Tiger: Finally, now that OS X is in its fourth version, the beta release of Vista shows that Microsoft realizes it needs to catch up Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI: The price and performance of these two rivals may be closer than you think. Much depends on what -- and who -- is already in place

Bloglines - Google Hires …

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Ramesh Jain's Blog Offical blog of Ramesh Jain

Google Hires … By Ramesh on General Updates The news that Google hired Vint Cerf has resulted in lots of speculations about what they are upto. Now a days every announcement by Google does that — they are the most watched company. I am not surprised about the trajectory that Google is following — interestingly this is very similar to Microsoft. Once a company is flush with money and has the leadership position in INdustry, they start building a strong research lab. This was happening at in the last century — AT&T, GM, IBM, Microsoft — and continues happening in this century. In most cases, people like Vint Cerf are brought on board not because there is a specific plan but because these people can shape long term agenda. It is nice that Google has started building that. USA needs strong research labs and hopefully Google will build one of the best — they have resources and seem to have the ambition.

five universal truths about how we learn

five universal truths about how we learn:

* We all learn differently, so no one way of conveying knowledge can ever be effective for most or all learners
* We learn more from being shown than from being told (and we almost universally dislike pedagogical, classroom-type teaching -- we learn from and within the real world)
* We learn (a) from observing someone else learning something, (b) from being shown something directly ourselves, and (c) from thinking and practicing further on our own (most animals prefer to try hard new things while no one is watching them) -- and all three types of learning are essential for a complete learning experienced
* Rivalry, shyness, impatience, urgency, attention, and the desires for freedom, independence and control all influence our learning capacity as much as mental ability
* In encouraging learning, rewards are important, but motivation is much more important -- that's why we learn much better just-in-time (when we're motivated) than just-in-case
* We learn best from role models -- those we trust, respect and consider to be successful in the field we are learning about -- and role models are self-selected, they cannot be imposed

Bloglines - Clarify Your Story

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Emergic Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

Clarify Your Story Sramana Mitra writes: The Strategy has not worked. Some $20 Million in venture money has already been burnt in the trial and error process over the last 3 years. A few rounds of hiring and firing of CEOs and executives have already taken place. But the company has still not hit its stride. Hundreds of pieces of data elements lie scattered in the brains, computers and desks of the employees, current and former. Yet no process exists to assimilate, synthesize, and collapse the existing institutional knowledge collected over years of experiments, mistakes, and hopefully, some occassional, even if accidental, successes, into a digestable set of nuggets that lead to good, solid decisions. Have you ever wondered what to do with this problem child? I am sure you have. In fact, scenes from Board Meetings and Partners Meetings emerge through your subconscious on otherwise soothing summer nights ... even when you may be consciously in denial. In the carnage of the last 5 years, the above has been the story in every VC's life. Here are a few simple questions that I suggest you ask...

never actually realised where my interest was.

Well...being associated with biggies of telecom, never actually realised where my interest was.
Very lately this is what I have discovered.
Science at large.Technology in general. Communications in particular. And Wireless to be precise :)

Have opened my contacts. Where is your office ?!
What do you do at work ?!
WORK ?! :))

arvindtm.gmail.com


Jitesh PG writes:
> gr8 to meet some1 sharing the same interest...
>being a bit more specific.. my real interest lies in wireless. Not exactly mobile computing.. but some work requirement generated an interest in this field..
>what abt u?

Feld Thoughts: Term Sheet Series Wrap Up

Feld Thoughts: Term Sheet Series Wrap Up

Bloglines - Higher Education

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Emergic Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

Higher Education The Economist has a survey on higher education. It starts by identifying four fundamental changes: The first is the democratisation of higher education-"massification", in the language of the educational profession....The second reason is the rise of the knowledge economy. The world is in the grips of a "soft revolution" in which knowledge is replacing physical resources as the main driver of economic growth....The third factor is globalisation. The death of distance is transforming academia just as radically as it is transforming business....The fourth is competition. Traditional universities are being forced to compete for students and research grants, and private companies are trying to break into a sector which they regard as "the new health care".

Bloglines - US, still the bandwidth daddy

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Om Malik's Broadband Blog All about digital lifestyles, VoIP, and broadband.

US, still the bandwidth daddy By Om Malik on Wired US consumers maynot have ample bandwidth, but from the looks of it, when it comes to sheer capacity, US is still the bandwidth big-daddy. This data collected by Telegeography says it all. Of course, it doesn’t mean anything to consumers who are thirsty for bandwidth! That’s the irony, isn’t it! Top Internet Hub City: London, 1.1 Tbps bandwidth, 439 Gbps peak traffic. Top Internet Hub Country: United States, 1.4 Tbps bandwidth, 704 Gbps peak traffic. Top Internet Route: London - New York, 320 Gbps bandwidth, 153 Gbps peak traffic. Top Region for Traffic Growth: Latin America, 70% average growth. Top ISP by Autonomous System Connectivity: MCI, 3,102 connections. Top ISP by Number of Countries Connected: AT&T, 52 countries. Cheapest Place to Buy GigE Backbone Access: United States, $13 per Mbps per month Highest International Bandwidth per Capita: Denmark, 38 Kbps per person. Comments

Bloglines - TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: Google's Intent (Part 4)

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TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: Google's Intent (Part 4) Forbes wrote about the potential importance of Google Talk: "By distributing the program, Google could also cash in on its core business of helping Internet users find information, selling advertising space on those search results. Ultimately, Google could charge advertisers extra for a "call me" button, providing consumers with a direct link to call a business they find in a search. Imagine searching on Google for details about a local restaurant and calling for reservations without leaving your search results page... The true promise of Google Talk --and the company's likely goal--is to eventually provide full telephone capabilities, and to make a user's Gmail address their primary point of contact, on or offline...By using the same identifying name for several different kinds of communication, Google hopes to put itself at the center of all of its customer's communications." Phil Windley builds on the concept of Identity: "Google's strategy is based on becoming the Internet OS and integrating commodity components (i.e. Linux, OS X, and Windows). Google can't build an integration point without an identity strategy and their identity strategy has to include synchronous messaging and presence-things they get in spades and on the cheap from a IM system built on XMPP." The Pondering Primate wrote about Google's decision to link a Gmail ID with the user's mobile number: Looking closer at Google's Talk, I realize they are in the process of dominating the mobile space as well. One of the ways to get GoogleTalk is is if you have Gmail (or are invited for a Gmail account). Now you can get a Gmail account AND GoogleTalk if you just give Google your mobile number. What a smart way to not only to get people to sign up, but to get a mobile phone number database. ... Things I see Google does with this if they create a mobile messenger. Google would have a permanent search window on your mobile for search, IM, or VOIP. Google SMS would be incorporated into this search window. Google would keep track of all of your mobile search requests in your Gmail that you could review later on the big screen. See an interesting product and want more info? Type in the barcode or take a picture and send to Google SMS. Get info back on the product and that info is stored in your Gmail account under "Things I Mobile Googled Today". The Pondering Primate had this to say about Google's purchase of Android: Would you download a Google toolbar for your mobile? Instead of going to www.google.com, you had a little search box that you could type a search query in. What if that search window incorporated GPS into your search query? What would Google have to offer you, to make this part of your mobile screen? Do you see where this is going? When you agree to download this mobile toolbar, you have given Google (and their clients) permission to advertise to you. Think of taking Google's keyword revenue model and DOUBLING IT by offering a mobile version. Tomorrow: Google's Intent (continued)

Bloglines - Knock Knock Sequel

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Emergic Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

Knock Knock Sequel Seth Godin offers a sequel to his ebook, aptly titled: "Who's There?" Who's There is not an ebook about how to write better or how to follow the traditional conventions about formatting and building a blog. It's not designed to sell you one service instead of another, either. Instead, I divide the blog world into three groups and turn my attention to one. And in particular, I try to sell you hard on how building a blog asset can have a spectacular impact on you, your career, your organization and your ideas.

Bloglines - Seven Challenges to our Shared Mobile Future

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Seven Challenges to our Shared Mobile Future Marko Ahtisaari of Nokia writes about the seven challenges: 1. Reach 2. Sometimess Off vs. Always On 3. Hackability 4. Social Primitives 5. Openness 6. Simplicity 7. Justice

Bloglines - Battelle's Book on Search

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Battelle's Book on Search MercuryNews talks to John Battelle as his book releases. Battelle's highly anticipated book, ``The Search,'' will hit bookstores Sept. 12. He chronicles the history of Internet searching, documents the rise of Google and ruminates on the future of searching and its implications for society. Battelle concludes in his book that the growth of Internet searching has profound implications, as search engines amass ever-expanding and permanent records of society's mouse-clicks -- our ``desires, needs, wants and preferences.'' Unexpectedly for him, Battelle's book ended up being mostly about Google, the Mountain View company that has enthralled the tech and financial worlds and is expanding into seemingly every aspect of online life. He reveals the company's internal hand-wringing over doing business in China, and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt's realization -- after years in the valley -- that winning is often more important than being nice. n his book on Internet searching, he envisions the day when most things of value will carry electronic chips tied to a searchable index of some kind. You'll be able to use Google (or the equivalent) to locate just about anything you want, he says, ``your dog, your kid, your purse, your cell phone, your car.'' ``We are going to get to the point where, if it can be found, it will be found through this infrastructure of search,'' Battelle says. ``The search infrastructure allows for the connection to be made between the physical object and the question in your mind.''

Bloglines - Schwartz Talk

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Schwartz Talk [via Sadagopan] Fast Company has quotes from the Sun President and COO: You are not about to send fewer email messages, watch fewer movies, or download fewer songs. Demand is unceasing. It is up to us to meet it. The majority of the world will first experience the Internet through their mobile phones. In round numbers, there were a billion wireless devices sold last year and around 100 million PCs. The odds are much higher that you'll watch broadcast-broadband content on your phone than on your PC. Simplicity changes the world. Convenience is a force multiplier.

Bloglines - Free Services

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Free Services Fred Wilson writes: "...free is a great way to make money. You just have to know how you are going to get paid for being free."

IMS Q

IMS Q&A with Greg Papadapolous, CTO and Executive VP for Sun

Consider the difference between the two worlds I just mentioned – one centered around voice, the other centered around data. Since the birth of the telephone, we've been communicating over circuit-switched technology. The current trend is to replace it with the more efficient packet-switched technology. Yet both provide the ability to connect to the Internet, send video or instant messages. So that begs the question: why do we need IMS if I can already do these things today? There are really three main reasons: QoS, billing and integration of different services. The packet-switched domain has an interesting problem in delivering real-time multimedia services in that it can't guarantee quality level – it's like rolling the dice. As a result, the quality of a VoIP conversation can vary quite a bit throughout its duration. IMS takes care of synchronizing session establishment with a QoS provision so that users have a consistent experience.

Billing is the second big issue. In today's network, all bits sent over the wire look the same. So how can an operator tell whether you're downloading a file, streaming a video or having a VoIP call? IMS provides the necessary information about the service being delivered to the end-user so they can appropriately bill you for it.

Finally, and in my view most significantly, IMS is based on Internet technologies and Internet protocols so that all services provided by the Internet are possible on an IMS network. This means that a multimedia session between two IMS users, between an IMS user and an Internet user, and between two Internet users is established using exactly the same protocol. This makes it trivial to do interesting things like setup a conference call with a video stream while sending a snapshot of a beautiful sunset to my wife on her computer. This is why I said that IMS is network convergence at its best; it uses the circuit-switched world to provide ubiquitous access and Internet technologies to provide compelling new services.

Bloglines - TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: Google's Intent (Part 2)

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Emergic Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: Google's Intent (Part 2) News.com thinks that Google has joined the battle to woo developers: "Google is taking a page from Microsoft's well-worn playbook for tech industry domination: Rather than just rolling out new products and features, the search giant is trying to win the hearts and minds of Web developers...Longtime Microsoft watchers believe it wasn't just the OS that made Microsoft the most profitable company on the planet. The software titan's vaunted developer-outreach network created a rich "ecosystem" of applications that run on Windows and Office, its desktop application suite, driving adoption of the company's core products...Some say that's exactly what Google is now trying to re-create on the Web." Om Malik had, earlier in August, speculated about GoogleNet: "What if Google wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user's precise location? The gatekeeper of the world's information could become one of the globe's biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. Sounds crazy, but how might Google go about it?" Jason Kottke expanded on a meme he has discussed earlier - that Google is effectively building a WebOS. This is my best guess as to how an "operating system" based on the Web (which I will refer to as "WebOS") will work. There are three main parts to the system: The Web browser (along with other browser-ish applications like Konfabulator) becomes the primary application interface through which the user views content, performs services, and manages data on their local machine and on the Web, often without even knowing the difference. Something like Firefox, Safari, or IE...ideally browser agnostic. Web applications of the sort we're all familiar with: Gmail, Flickr, and Bloglines, as well as other applications that are making the Web an ever richer environment for getting stuff done. (And ideally all Ajaxed up to provide an experience closer to that of traditional desktop apps.) A local Web server to handle the data delivery and content display from the local machine to the browser. This local server will likely be highly optimized for its task, but would be capable of running locally installed Web applications (e.g. a local copy of Gmail and all its associated data). That's it. Aside from the browser and the Web server, applications will be written for the WebOS and won't be specific to Windows, OS X, or Linux. This is also completely feasible, I think, for organizations like Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, or the Mozilla Foundation to make happen. Jason Kottke's post was the subject of a lot of comment and discussion around the blogosphere. John Battelle added: "Jason ties together the Google Desktop (which he reminds us was launched as "Desktop Search" but is now just, well, your "Desktop....."), local web servers, and next generation web apps and browsers. In short, he is saying, the Web OS is nearly here. It's why Yahoo bought Konfabulator, and why MSFT is integrating the web into Vista, it's Apple's strategy too." Tomorrow: Google's Intent (continued)

Bloglines - Microsoft and Google

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Emergic Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

Microsoft and Google Phil Wainewright writes why Microsoft cannot win: Google's turf is the Internet. It's not interested in devices that don't connect to it - Microsoft is welcome to that market. It simply wants to extend its reach to any device that does go online. Meanwhile, Microsoft's focus on desktop capability is the crux of why it can't possibly succeed against Google (or any future Google equivalent). It's focusing on yesterday's market. Microsoft's dominance of the desktop is as relevant to the future of computing as Union Pacific's dominance of the railroads was to the future of transportation in the twentieth century. Here's a sampling of reasons why Microsoft is history: * Microsoft wants everyone to have a rich desktop experience, Google wants everyone to have a rich Internet experience. * Microsoft's business model depends on everyone upgrading their computing environment every two to three years. Google's depends on everyone exploring what's new in their computing environment every day. * Microsoft looks at the world from a perspective of desktop+Internet. Google looks at the world from a perspective of Internet+any device. * Microsoft wants computers to help individuals do more unaided. Google wants computers to help individuals do more in collaboration. In the Internet age, who wants to work alone any more, when all the unexplored opportunity is in collaborative endeavor? * In a few year's time, who's going to still be working at a desk anyway?

Bloglines - Tomorrow's World

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Interesting

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Emergic Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

Tomorrow's World Jon Udell took a vacation and reflected on some changes in recent times. One telling comment: "Computers and access to the network were fungible commodities that existed everywhere. When you visited friends you'd just use their terminal interchangeably with your own at home. It seems like we're nearly there."

Bloglines - Internet Decade

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Internet Decade The New York Times has a column by Henry Blodget who writes: "The growth of the Internet has paralleled that of most industries based on revolutionary technology. Canals, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, cars, radios, personal computers - all progressed (or are progressing) through four phases of development: boom, bust, mature growth and decay."

Bloglines - Dodgeball and Social Life

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Dodgeball and Social Life Steven Johnson writes in Discover about Dodgeball, which was bought by Google a few months ago: If you've ever lived in a big city, chances are you know the feeling: You're walking around downtown with a few hours to spare at the end of the day, and you know that somewhere nearby-perhaps only a few blocks away-there's a great bar or café that's packed with interesting people. If it's your hometown, you might even suspect that a few of your friends, or friends of your friends, are hanging out there. But there's no easy way to find it, other than by roaming the streets and peering into windows. This is what economists would call an inefficient market. You have, on the one hand, a service that the city provides: bars and cafés filled with cool people. And you have a buyer willing to pay for that service. Yet most of the time, the buyer ends up schlepping home unsatisfied because there's no way to connect with the service he seeks. A pair of tech-savvy twentysomethings named Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert created a solution to this problem. They call it Dodgeball. The service is a mix of social network tools (à la Friendster), simple cell phone messaging, and mapping software. Dodgeball has a playful, hipster veneer, but the underlying premise behind the service gives a fascinating glimpse of the way mobile wireless computing promises to transform city life.

Bloglines - Most Important Trends in Business

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Most Important Trends in Business Dave Pollard picks his 10: 1. Open-Source Business 2. Disruptive Innovation 3. Complexity 4. Corporate Reform 5. Innovation Incubation 6. Social Networking and Personal Productivity Improvement 7. Wisdom of Crowds 8. Channel Customization 9. Customer Relationship Management 10. Execution

Bloglines - Impact of Wireless technologies in Africa

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:::M-Internet360::: Mobile Internet/WiFi business models and technologies

Impact of Wireless technologies in Africa By Jay Gohil on Africa Interesting piece from Timbuktu Chronicles on the impact of wireless technologies on African lifestyles: The advent of wireless technologies in Africa has liberalized access to communication,the ripples of which are impacting areas as diverse as banking, product pricing and medicine. The utmost enablers however will be true modular redundant wireless networks that exclude any dependency on centralised systems as is the case with existing wireless networks. Mesh Networks built on open source platforms with open source hardware will ultimately be part of the puzzle. DIY wireless Broadband as demonstrated by Mike Mckay of Hactivate in Malawi could prove to be critical, the objective"... is to bring bandwidth to Malawi especially its villages. By selling VOIP and relying heavily on Open Source innovations and communities as well as used equipment from Ebay to keep prices low..." Outlining the steps in greater detail, "...Take a bunch of Freifunked WRT54Gs and disperse them around the neighborhood, preferable on rooftops with antennas. Some of these would be connected to VSAT systems and therefore provide a route to the web. Then whoever wants to jump on the mesh, just turns on their machine and connects with normal DHCP to the ad-hoc network supplied by the mesh..."