Google has a new beta service* (…lol). It is called TiSP!
“The nanobots travel with exhilarating nano-speed through the sewer system and into your home to perform the installation service, which should be complete within 15 minutes. Note: For your own physical safety and emotional well-being and in consideration of the nanobots’ working conditions, please make absolutely certain that your toilet is unoccupied at the scheduled appointment time.” – Google TiSP
* don’t laugh, good sense of humor does wonders for the outlook of a company! Just follow the link
I recently enjoyed listening to Guy Kawasaki in person at the Cleveland TechSync, which is trying to foster regional economic growth and tech innovation. His talk was good, he is a good speaker and has a wealth of experience (as he put it – ” I know too much”!).
I love the efforts going on in this region – helping young and upcoming entrepreneurs with resources that would make it condusive to start a company in this region. But as Guy highlighted in the talk, the main focus should be on education and specifically engineering which will drive innovation. Everything else will follow.
Case in point: Ford vs Toyota, the latter has great products and very little in “employee discounts”. This month it overtook Ford as the No.2 in terms of sales volumes. If you look around there are several such examples – iPod, BMW, Sony, etc that stand true to this test. Great products “that have depth – Guy” will shine and emerge victors (as look as they do not really really mess up other aspects of the business).
I think the sure way to improve the region is to invest in school and university. Start from ground up..teach kids math and science and let them think freely. Honestly I have taught some freshmen classes, the students are totally ill equipped when it comes to simple mathematic. Not their fault really, in a culture where geeks are projected as freaks or looser (ridiculous)
Once they are nurtured, their quest for knowledge will drive them to find ways to acquire it – be it college or real life. The next best thing is to make the local universities worth aspiring for and not having to loose these smart kids to the Yales and Harvards.
Easier said than done, however it begins with leadership and the aspiration to challenge the status quo, which I think is present in North East Ohio. So what are we waiting for?
I was surfing and found this interesting presentation - How to finish your damn PhD.
Funny yet very true.
Every web application that comes out these days has a “Beta” next to it. This does make people more tolerant to errors or bugs they come across the site. However, with Google keeping many of it apps in “perpetual beta”, the term has some how been eroded of its value.
Just to point out, Google News, some time back quietly droped the “beta” meaning the application was stable and relatively bug free. However here is a screen shot of “Mini Me” with the Kraft business news. 
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So it it out of Beta?
I love Google maps and virtual earth. But they have a limitation of only showing maps of US, Canada and a few European countries (for now atleast). But I just stumbled across Microsoft Research India. Finally the map of India is online using Virtual earth technology. Take a look:
http://virtualindia.msresearch.in/
It would be cool to develop a mash up of your travel itenary that your travel agent provides with a detailed map from Virtual earth. Soon, very soon.. I can almost see how it is going to work.
I use about 4-5 computers between all the places I am at. I have always wanted to have my folders in sync between the machines to get a unified view of the way data my data and files are organized. There are many tools like I have tried (E. g.Sync Toys from Microsoft), but they are very limited.
While I have Goole Desktop on one of my computers (not the new version), I do not have it configured to not send any data back to google and have a few firewalls to verify internet activity, though it is hard at time to guess.
While searching across computers using the technique proposed by Google, works. I would think that it is technically the least feasible. I would better install some peer-to-peer software that exchanges meta data between the known peers and keep the files in sync. If you have Cygwin, even rsync could do the job with a little workaround with your NAT routers.
However the approach taken by Google will require tremendous amount of storage capacity and and other networking and computing resources to enable cross computer searching. Now given that the tool is “free”, why would a for profit company want to take this approach? Bear in mind that they have some of the brightest minds working for them, so lack of technical competence is ruled out.
My take is, better information all all aspects of a person using their services.
Well they can index everything from your surfing habits to your personal documents. Then they can mine the data that can be very (did I say very) valuable for marketers and targeted advertisers. But with so much data on a indivisual, it is like the apple in the Garden of Eden, too hard to resist the temptation. No matter what Google says about privacy, it is not something I would do and will proactively advocate other people not to use it.
Google has been holding up against the Feds for giving out its search log data. While I am sure most Google users appreciate this, including me there is something which makes me uneasy in the gut. For one, how much information do they have? Then how long can they hold up. Eventually they will have to give in.
For one thing it has somehow changed my behavior in using online search engines. For one thing I clear my cache and cookies more often. Then at every opportunity I switch search engines. Sometime..though rare I even reboot my router for a few minutes to get a new IP from my ISP. Privacy concerns? who really cares? I would any way give away information for a chance to win a fee lunch.
But when I am logged into Google for personalization and do searches they can easily build a profile of what I do. While targeted ads are ok and in some cases good, what happens when the nosey BB wants access to everything? Can Google defend itself against entities that are really out to get access to its data? Privacy laws are so loose and do not translate borders.
Not everyone says “do no evil”.
We do what we do mostly with good intentions and the limited knowledge we possess. If one were to sit back and think about the course of events it would be fun to see how seemingly random decision form an intricate and well connect story of our life.
Had it not been for the Commodore 64 and my generous friend Alok (Balwin’s, in a past life), I would have not every though of programming. Had it not been for the interest in programming I would not being in Computer Science…and eventually writing this blog post. Could I see it back then? Of course not! Will I be able to see it from this point forward? I want to say yes, but the truth is no.
If one looks beyond himself, the same applies to things at a much grander scale. Take our planet for example. Today we do what we do knowing very well that we are pushing the planet to the edge. Had we known this, would our course of action been any different? Knowing this are we doing anything different? Are we not like kids with match sticks, not knowing the consequences…
In one of the famous Networking books, the author compares transferring information with a wagon full of data tapes being hauled from one location to another. Surprisingly the bandwidth of the wagon comes out to be much higher.
Clearly, it is not convenient but it is done today in the Movie Rental business. We have Netflix and Block Buster Online, both of which are equivalent to the wagon. While they make it easier to rent, they are not very convenient to use. I have tried them first hand and have ended up with “Long Delay” as the status of the movies.
We all know it makes sense to just “download” the movie and watch it instantaneously, but bandwidth and technology has been a major problem, not to mention the paranoid movie industry with their copyrights.
Today www.vongo.com caught my eyes. Really cool, at least from what they claim. What it does is allows you to download up to 1000 movies for just 9.95/month and start watching them in under 30 seconds. That is instant gratification and one more step towards the power of the Network and its creative use.
Using the network to transfer data (songs, movies, text, etc) is so much more effecient once the infrastructure is in place. Loose copyright can open up such huge market and not to mention revenues, that can lead to the Interent becoming the one stop shop for all your information and communication needs. It is so close..
Shopping, musk, lavender, rose, reading, cooking, travelling, etc etc.
And did I mention chocolates?