TR's Top 10

MIT's Technological Review just released the the list of top 10 technologies to look forward for this year, which they think are most likely to change the way we live.

Even though energy conservation, miniaturization and data mining seems to form the crux of most of these technologies, but its the ideas which are truly revolutionary. Here's the complete list, and though all of them seem pretty fascinating, the concept of Probabilistic Chips and Modeling Surprise really intrigued me the most.

Adios Stage6

A one stop for most of us, if not all to find a high quality video. Be it the movies or the TV shows, Stage6 has always been there. As expected, it was a shocker when news broke out that these folks are closing it down due to lack of funds. The detailed letter has been put over here,  and sadly it wasn't supposed to be a prank. :( Now that stage6 would be closing down today, I hope it gets reincarnated in some form. Damn, so many movies have been made on this formula, I'd love to see it come true at least once!

Mission: Destroy Earth

Space science has always been one of my favorite pastimes, to an extent that I dreamt of becoming an astrophysicist till a few years back! Well, an eternal optimist that I am, I won't really rule out that possibility, but the probability of that happening are as good as the you being able to destroy earth using any of the ways described here. Its as insane as it can get, but a terrific read. This is probably thinking along the fourth dimension. :D

                    

Micro-hoo! An interesting Perspective

Computer Science at Grad school at times can really beat the hell out of you at times. A similar thing happened last semester and I grew increasingly inconsistent in my blogging life. The tech facet has already been almost non existent here, since I hate talking tech all the time. Grad life already takes care of that! :) But sometimes it gets really interesting as well, such as this article by New York Times on the Micro-hoo! episode. Well, its not the usual 'whether-or-not' thing, but gives an interesting perspective of 'what-if'..

OpenSocial - Social Networking 2.0

Google's plunging yet again into the social networks, this time with a much bigger and serious perspective. Things have been changing in this field since the past 12 years when Classmates.com was launched. Last few years, especially since 2004, this concept has taken a whole new dimension with terms like orkutting and myspaced becoming commonly used jargons.
Last few days have especially been interesting. Microsoft's new found interest in this finally was out when they entered into a whopping $240 million deal for a mere 1.6% stake in Facebook - a move criticized by many by terming it as 'not making sense'.
And now New York Times reports that Google's launching OpenSocial - which gives a whole new perspective on this - a more serious one. In a nutshell, through OpenSocial, Google's will provide 3 common APIs which would allow application developers to build their own applications using an array of hosts which include LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning, along with Google's own social networking service, Orkut. Understandably Facebook and MySpace were not there. The kind of impact it will have will only be clear in the future, but this standardization effort of Google might just result in some interesting sequence of events in the near future.
Update: Some serious momentum for OpenSocial APIs as MySpace and Bebo have too joined now!

iHumor!

iMac, iPod, iPhone - Steve Jobs and Co. have given quite a few i's since the iAge took over. We all know the kind of hysteria that was on display when the iPhone was first revealed. However, humor could sometimes fit so perfectly in certain scenarios. For instance, sample this spoof on the same. Thanks to Kunal for the link.

P.S: In no way do I despise Apple or any of its products. Its just some humor out here!

Trends of a Different Sort

Trends! Beep.. Beep.. Mind says fashion or food or probably even cultural! Welcome to the Google Age and so yet another addition - Google Trends. :) The term is self explanatory but is enough to generate inquisitiveness. Although Google Trends has been there for sometime now, but then one doesn't have time to really infer from the data as such.
According to statistics provided by Google, it definitely shows some interesting patterns. PC World summarizes the same for data from 2004 (Oh c'mon, its like 3 yrs but I guess nothing much would have changed).
Indians hunt for 'sex' and Swedes hunt for 'Kate Moss' while the Americans stay glued to 'Burritos' (damn, I'm sick of Burritos). But the most interesting one would be the Latin Americanos - Mexicans and Venenzuelans lusting for 'Britney Spears'!! Why on earth do they need to hunt for anyone else? ;) Read the article here..

Orkut Updates!

Well, we all know Orkut has undergone a "supposedly" phenomenal changeover with respect to their look. As part of the new feature-set, they have included the 'updates' section where one is notified of the updates made by anyone in the friend's list. As a result of the same, your page will invariably be cluttered with updates. Heck, I tried to disable this thing, but apparently its 'not possible' right now..

Is it really called for to make this damn thing mandatory?

Future Trends in Web

A silver convertible Audi zooms past me as I write this post making even a shiny black Mazda Protege and a host of BMWs look pretty ordinary. Damn, its not an illusion while I'm going to school in a bus! Okkkkkkkk am back.. its time for a context switch!
Arun Radhakrishnan points out an article originally published in ReadWriteWeb.com by Richard McManus, where he tries to analyze the 10 future trends of the Web. Read the original post here, and Arun's comments here.
The one thing that really caught me in the entire article was 'Attention Economy'. Well, he says that its been thriving since Web began, but I'd like to differ on this slightly. Attention grabbers were always there, but to generate monetary benefits out of it is something thats perhaps yet to gain momentum. There are several websites that get launched, primarily in the zone of video streaming, social networking, search engines (Ujiko, etc) which have served as attention grabbers but we are yet to see of any prolific site (atleast I can't recall any) which is generating significant revenues through such a model. Citing Google in the super profitable zone is attributed more to the fact that they brought about an entirely new model of generating economics - through advertisements. So the transition from 'Attention Grabbing' to 'Attention Economy' is something which is going to take quite a bit of an effort.
It was surprising but I didn't see Online Advertising in the list, perhaps that's one thing which is 'the' money grabber. What say?
Meanwhile, the 2007 trend is picturized pretty well below, though this pic only takes the brands into account, but still gives a fair bit of an idea. Thanks to BrandCurve for this.

Alas.. I get to see this..

Oh, I forgot to mention this.. How does this looks folks? ;)


This seems to be a radical change from what I experienced sometime back.

Go Gmail!

According to YouTube, this video was added 23 hrs back, and it has already accounted for 45,019 views!! Am just wondering if this was the way mail was sent and recieved.. :D

First Ever Website?

First grad class of my life starts in the afternoon, and right now while sitting at the system, suddenly I was wondering as to which was the first website ever on the internet? Well, in this Google-age, it ain't that difficult to find the answer of any question or for that matter a question to any answer. So I pinged in the query and there were quite a few folks who had wondered about the same before. But there were some hilarious answers such as -
- Microsoft, since they invented the 'first' browser.. IE.. :D I was almost rolling on the floor laughing!
- GameFaqs.com or LordsOfPain.net, since they have been around for more than 10 yrs.

Well, sanity returned when the name of Tim Burners Lee was mentioned and then further pinging and querying I finally had the answer -
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
According to Tim,

It is not now (alas) served but a later (1992) copy of the original pages exists at http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

Well, I was also served with the history of browsers. For the inquisitive, here it is.

Acer bags Gateway.. Englands bags the lead!

Well, during the dot com burst way back in 2000 (damn, it still seems scary), one of the biggest sufferers were Gateway Inc (formerly Gateway 2000). I remember reading about how they just weren't able to get into profitable margins in the aftermath. Their share values kept on slipping and then they decided ultimately that they'll be shutting down their remaining 180 odd stores. But then, somehow they have been surviving through retailers like Circuit City, CompUSA and the likes. A couple of weeks back when I started my research on buying a notebook, I was amazed to see Gateway and for once wondered if they still existed? Well, anyways, Acer has now decided to acquire Gateway for a good $710min a deal which has sent their counterparts, Lenovo searching for some serious shelter. With this acquisition, Gateway + Acer would surpass Lenovo in the number of PCs shipped. Thats some competition breeding up among the South East Asian players!
Well, some people hit the nail on the head. Siddharth Vaidyanathan, one of Cricinfo's editors is an almost perfect example of this small group. Fielding forms an integral part of any cricket team and we all know how a certain man named Jonathan Rhodes exemplified that. I'm not sure though if Indian team agrees with the Protean. Well, I haven't been seeing the matches, but it looks as though they are just not interested in this department of the game. He sums it all up pretty frankly in a bold assessment-

The facts are actually pretty simple. India lack strong arms, can't slide and can't hit the stumps. Often they grass catches. Regularly they concede overthrows and sometimes make a mockery of themselves trying to execute the basic act of stopping a cricket ball. Their running between the wickets is as ponderous as ever. With four matches to go, there's still plenty of fun to be had. In 1948 you packed the stadiums to watch the Invincibles, now you can take a look at the Unstoppables.

And they crack the iGizmo..

Well, it was just a couple of days back when I had the first real feel of an iPhone, but little did I know that there was a certain bunch of geeks who have been working to crack it since the day of its launch. And though hard work doesn't always pay, it has this time. Engadget has claimed that iPhoneSIMfree.com has finally managed to do it and do it with 100% certainty. TechRepublic reports the issue here..More details on the hack here from Engadget themselves.

Vienna or Se7en

100th post and it took a long time coming after the 99th one! Busy busy goin' with all the stuff that goes along when one decides to change path from a professional one to an academic one.. Austin's just a couple of weeks away now!
In the meanwhile, according to CNet News, Microsoft has announced its new version of Windows, even when before the hoopla surrounding Vista is yet to settle down. The new version called Windows 7 sounds simplistic compared to Vienna, which was the supposed codename for the same. Apparently, the delivery time is set to 3 yrs, though we all know how they struggled with the Vista release. Perhaps Bill Gates, Ballmer and team got to this new codename inspired by David Fincher's tagline of the 1995 blockbuster which goes by the same name - Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light!. ;). The way's been exceedingly long and hellish for the folks from Redmond and all they can hope is to get some 'light' with their new launch. Catch the details here..

Ujiko - Theme based Search..

The weekend came and went. All I did was read some stuff here and there and yeah saw Goal 2: Living the Dream, though a part of it is still left. Somehow I enjoy writing a blog whilst in office.. damn, this can get dangerous sometime for me. ;)

It ain't that new, but worth mentioning - I did come across this peculiar search engine called kartoo. Visit it and you'll come to know why I referred to it as peculiar. Further, I found out that the same guys have also come out with another creation of theirs Ujiko - again strange and all I was left wondering if I'll ever use it!

The reason I talk about here is that it just doesn't have the usual search engine look, rather its got more of a gizmo look! Essentially, its trying to establish into a different genre of search engines which are theme based. Enter a search item, and it displays not just the search results but also associates certain themes with them. Clicking on the theme would further narrow your search and so on. As usual they don't charge you a penny, but employs more of a more-features-as-you-work approach; i.e. a new user starts on level 0, and depending on his usage of Ujiko, his level increases and so does the feature-set! More of a game-based approach you can say..
Both Ujiko and Kartoo score well on their rich user interface, especially Kartoo. These metadata engines are definitely different but I'm not really sure if they'll be able to attract users beyond the first time.
And yeah, for the inquisitive bunch, they are powered by Yahoo!

XCavator - Image Search..

Image recognition has been one of the most talked about technologies and quite a few companies have tried to recognize the potential in this genre. I came across Xcavator, which is an image search engine for stock photos working on similar lines. I tried my hands on this and the results were quite interesting. They provide more than just a couple of options to search an image -
- Color Search; select the hue and also the hue intensity and you'll be presented with a lot of images matching the criteria.
- Image Upload; upload any image and similar images will be listed from its database.
- Tag Search; this is a no brainer, just click on the tag and all the potential candidates will be shown.
- Mix and match the above options.
Xcavator also allows to select a part of the upload image - for instance, if an image of a car is uploaded to search for similar images; then the one can select say the wheel of the uploaded image, and the search will follow suit. XCavator is in the beta version and powered by Cognisign. However, I did try the face recognition part as well, but I guess they are still to get that in place.
For naive folks like me, stock photos mean that license needs to be bought on either once-buy-forever-use basis or on a normal royalty basis.
Update: Just saw that Techcrunch has posted their review on the same. Read the same here..

Africa.. Virtual Goods.. and Terry Semel..

New software tools keep getting released, the startups keep getting funded, though I must admit the CEOs don't get fired e'day! ;) Well, Terry Semel finally amidst increasing hoopla laid down his CEO badge at Yahoo, and allowing co-founder Jerry Yang to take his position. Anyways, I just came across a couple of interesting reads, courtesy Techcrunch and NY Times.
- Techcrunch or rather Susan Wu writes a guest article for them, citing a new market thats coming up, and coming up at some acceleration - the market for Virtual Goods! Damn, I never realized that "People spend over $1.5 billion on virtual items every year!".. Read on the complete article here..
- Jason Pontin on the other hand writes on a radically different subject for NY Times. Africa - A subject that people talk about only on the email forwards or on social awareness channels. But this time, he poses a different question, "What Does Africa Need Most: Technology or Aid?" Well, he does not conclude on a definite note in this one, but then I guess he's shed enough light. Read on the same here..

Apple Safari 3 Beta..

Apple has released its web browser, Safari 3 as a beta download for Windows. Jazzy as Apple is, I was really interested to to get the look and feel of this browser and I must say that it is a mixed bag of goodies and some lousy stuff as well. This 28.2 Mb download is available here. I haven't really checked out on statistics myself, but Apple folks say this about Safari -

The iPod users will relate the look and feel to the iTunes software. It gives a simple grey panel look without over cluttering it with too many things in the toolbar. The notable features -
- Tabbed Browsing; though I couldn't find a shortcut to switch between the tabs while browsing
- Snapback: which lets you instantly snap back to your original search results or to the top level of any website, even after you’ve browsed down a few levels.
- Autofill forms
- Google Search at almost every possible text; I didn't know that Apple folks have developed this kind of affinity for the former!

- Neat Interface: Yeah, with the decreased width of the browser panel, it indeed gives more screen space for the web page to the user.

- Incredible Inline Search: I say its incredible, try out for yourself. A subtle change from what other browsers provide, but then it really is helpful.
But then there are certain other issues, which eclipses its features pretty badly-
- Font, font..font; just can't believe that Apple has screwed up with this. Not adopting the ClearType used by Windows, the jagged edges are so visible when web pages are viewed with this browser, that it really hits it pretty hard. Nopes, they have to completel revamp this ASAP. Jeff Atwood has also mentioned this in his post here.
- Memory Usage; whoa.. unbelievable again - while minimized Safari behaves fine. Maximize it and you'll come to know. Check out this snap I managed to capture from my task manager, its unacceptable..

I'll still go with Opera, probably coz I still love the font they use and probably coz when I hit the back button, I don't want the latency associated with fetching the page again from the server. Cache it folks! Apple could have really done better with Safari, its smooth, no doubt, but with the font factor it really doesn't suit my eyes too well.

The Powerset Hype..

I have always maintained that since Google has entered the web scenario, more than anything else, it has ignited the innovation fire among the geeks around the world. And at times even when the innovation factor isn't so pertinent, the hype factor that is generated with every new product release is pretty exciting.
A couple of months back, I had came across Powerset, but didn't write about it since it was due to be launched in September this year. The punch line for them is that they will be a Natural Language Processing (NLP) Search engine, which will revolutionize the way users search on the web.
In essence, the results produced by a query here will not just list the pages containing the keywords, but will take into account the linguistic meaning of your query and return results appropriately. Powerset is not open yet, but going through their blog, I found this. A similar query on Google yields -

Sometimes, I wonder whats the point of showing 1,620,000 results for the same?
NLP is a tricky domain, the linguistics as we all know can get really complicated. Meanwhile, Powerset has released a video, giving a small glimpse of their world, and inviting folklore to feel like product managers by testing their product and posting suggestions.. Hmm.. but whats the compensation? ;)