Can we add context to search? What we are looking for cannot always be translated into keywords and the same keywords have different meaning. Hard problem.

Syed Yasin, my relative, who works in R&D at Sobha Renaissance has been working on this interesting problem. Some time back they had a press release where they announced LMai. Below is the Video.

Underneath it is a Vista OS with a infra-red multi-sensor that allow the system to recognize more than one touch points. It is too expensive to buy for the home yet, but that will surely change in a few years.

While it has very interesting applications, it would be interesting to see how it can change our interaction with the PC?

One of the most difficult things is not to learn new things, but to unlearn what we already know.

My take on the connected world is ubiquitous computing – everything is connected and computing devices are a natural extension of your everyday life. When you use something so naturally, that you do not give it a second thought – that is UI perfection. There was an interesting project called “Aura” from Carnegie Mellon that I came across a few years ago. Not sure what the status of the project is now, but you can find out more at:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aura/

HCI and wireless networking (my area of research) and a lot more will go into realizing the “true” digital world seamless.

Dream On!

While there were may interesting aspects he covered under the GINA (Generalized Internetworking Network Architecture) like

• Seperation of ID and address
• Virtual seperation of control and data
• Packet and Circuit swithing at differnt levels of abstraction for QoS. Best of both worlds – circuit and packet switching.
• Many more, you can see the full talk here.

The most interesting thing was the architecture itself. For most of the issue today we have work around – be it firewalls (port blocking!), shortage of IP (NAT), etc. As he pointed out the foundation should be strong and broad so that implementers and user can then pick and choose what they want to implement or use. The more limited the scope the more we force the network onto the final user. Ideally the network have fundamental concepts that allow users to develop or use any kind of service that they want.. hard problem but solvable. All we need to do is distill the core concepts as building blocks that can then be used any way the user deems fit.

Like many users when I am researching a topic on the Web you want to store urls, clips etc so that you can summarize your findings and then use them to form a more cohesive picture of the area you are investigating. I would do this using Microsoft OneNote or just Notepad or MS Word. It was a work around not a solution.

Futher my requirement changed – I work from 4 -5 different computers and want access to the same set of notes, as I move from one computer to another, so I was looking at how I could do this. Voolla! I found Google Labs – Google Notebook. Very easy to use does what I was expecting it to do.

Google is anticipating its user’s evolution and software needs. No wonder they are able to keep top of mind awareness – anticipate and innovate.

One very interesting problem, that I had mentioned in one of my previous posts was the lack of online geographic data on places outside the US and Europe. So can the mass participation of people on the web help tackle this problem?
Today when I got home, Sabah showed me a cool site, Wikimapia – a play on  wikipedia and maps. It turns out is a mashup using google maps and the concept of open participation of a Wiki.

I marked all the places I know of pretty quickly (talk about being territorial) and was able to find them because of information put up by other users. Soon I hope every inch of the globe is covered with relevant tags.

One up to human processing power .

Now I know the feeling and why I get bored with something that I know has been done already.
You can read the interview here: Link to Article