Netizen

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Bronx Zoo

Facebook Photo Albums: Bronx Zoo (1), Bronx Zoo (2), Bronx Zoo (3)

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

I greatly appreciated the Google lunch part of my Google tour earlier in the day. Not much about my tour surprised me. I had read about much of it. But the lunch part has to be taken note of. The idea is so simple. And yet it has been revolutionary. You provide lunch for your workers right at the workplace. That raises productivity. The company makes more additional money than it spends on that lunch.

Google NYC: Lunch And Tour

I asked my host about child care. He said the Mountain View office had it, but Google NYC did not. And I mean to suggest child care falls in the lunch category. In a knowledge economy, if your workplace is not pregnancy neutral, you are saying bye bye to half the brains out there. That is like trying to win a race with one hand tied. Not a good idea.

The size of a business matters. A corner store might be able to provide lunch, but not child care. That is where child care pooling might come into play. The public sector has to kick in at some point.

The workplace of today continues to be a holdover from the industrial era, as does the education sector, as the health care sector. These things need to be redesigned for the knowledge economy.

Earthquake

Google NYC: Lunch And Tour

Sunday, August 21, 2011

The Bronx (2)

The Bronx (1)

Facebook Photo Albums: The Bronx (2), The Bronx (3), The Bronx (4)

Saturday, August 20, 2011

The Bronx (1)

Facebook Photo Album: The Bronx (1)

FeedBurner Messing Up

Image via CrunchBaseThese numbers were close to 3,000 on my three blogs not long back. Such "dips" have taken place before. But each previous time the numbers have bounced right back up within a day or two. This time it has been over a week and the numbers have still not bounced back. What's happening, FeedBurner?

Seven Screens

Movie screen. TV screen. Desktop screen. Laptop screen. Tablet screen. Smartphone screen. Wristwatch screen.

Post PC Or PC Plus

Screen size is the primary way to classify, really. Each screen could come with a keyboard. A virtual keyboard is as good as a physical one. And there is no limit to how much intelligence you can add to any particular screen. (Supercomputing + Neuroscience + Nanotechnology, Adding Intelligence To The Biggest Screen: TV)

Imagine a scenario where there is ubiquitous, wireless, global one gigabit per second broadband. We as humanity basically live in this sea called the Internet. That is the first country anyone belongs to. (Tim Berners-Lee: The Internet Is Not A Country)

In such a reality the browser is your interface on all screens. And it likely would be build for one, build for all. This is post HTML5 reality you are talking about. (HTML 5 And The Small Screen)

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

Winrumors: Microsoft slams post-PC idea, claims “PC isn’t even middle aged yet”: even their most ardent admirers will not assert that they are as good as PCs at the first two verbs, create and collaborate. And that’s why one should take any reports of the death of the PC with a rather large grain of salt. Because creating and collaborating are two of the most basic human drives, and are central to the idea of the PC. They move our culture, economy and world forward. You see their fingerprints in every laboratory, startup, classroom, and community.

I am in agreement with Microsoft on this one. But let me clarify. A laptop is PC. The Macbook Air is PC. The Chromebook is PC.

In my case instead of me migrating my computing to the smartphone I have migrated most of my phone calls to the free Google/Gmail/Google Voice phone on my laptop. If you have been getting many text messages from me and have been impressed with how fast I can type on the small screen, be warned. I am not typing on a small screen. I am typing on a proper keyboard on my big laptop. I am sending text messages to people from my laptop. Thank you Google Voice.

Being on the move is important. But if you already know you are going to be online for so many hours per day, there the laptop rules. The laptop is mobile.

Steve Jobs' home office features a huge screen desktop. That dude be driving a 18 wheeler.

The smartphone is a great addition to the family and is on its way to becoming the center of the known universe, and for good reason.

Supercomputing + Neuroscience + Nanotechnology

This thing is looking to be pretty badass.

VentureBeat: IBM produces first working chips modeled on the human brain: so-called cognitive computing chips could one day simulate and emulate the brain’s ability to sense, perceive, interact and recognize ..... Dharmendra Modha .... is the principal investigator of the DARPA project, called Synapse (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNAPSE). He is also a researcher at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. ...... “This is the seed for a new generation of computers, using a combination of supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology,” Modha said in an interview with VentureBeat. ”The computers we have today are more like calculators. We want to make something like the brain. It is a sharp departure from the past.” ...... the project could turn computing on its head, overturning the conventional style of computing that has ruled since the dawn of the information age and replacing it with something that is much more like a thinking artificial brain. The eventual applications could have a huge impact on business, science and government. The idea is to create computers that are better at handling real-world sensory problems than today’s computers can. ...... It has “neurons,” or digital processors that compute information. It has “synapses” which are the foundation of learning and memory. And it has “axons,” or data pathways that connect the tissue of the computer. ....... In von Neumann machines, memory and processor are separated and linked via a data pathway known as a bus. ....... With the human brain, the memory is located with the processor ...... The brain-like processors with integrated memory don’t operate fast at all, sending data at a mere 10 hertz, or far slower than the 5 gigahertz computer processors of today. But the human brain does an awful lot of work in parallel, sending signals out in all directions and getting the brain’s neurons to work simultaneously. Because the brain has more than 10 billion neuron and 10 trillion connections (synapses) between those neurons, that amounts to an enormous amount of computing power. ......... “We are now doing a new architecture,” Modha said. “It departs from von Neumann in variety of ways.” ...... Modha said that this new kind of computing will likely complement, rather than replace, von Neumann machines, which have become good at solving problems involving math, serial processing, and business computations. The disadvantage is that those machines aren’t scaling up to handle big problems well any more. They are using too much power and are harder to program. ........ These new chips won’t be programmed in the traditional way. Cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, remember, and learn from the outcomes. They mimic the brain’s “structural and synaptic plasticity.” The processing is distributed and parallel, not centralized and serial. ....... can mimic the event-driven brain, which wakes up to perform a task. ...... The goal is to create a computer that not only analyzes complex information from multiple senses at once, but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with the environment, learning from what happens around it. ...... neurobiology ...... IBM wants to build a computer with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses ...... will consume one kilowatt of power and will occupy less than two liters of volume ..... a cognitive computer could monitor the world’s water supply via a network of sensors and tiny motors that constantly record and report data such as temperature, pressure, wave height, acoustics, and ocean tide. It could then issue tsunami warnings in case of an earthquake. Or, a grocer stocking shelves could use an instrumented glove that monitors sights, smells, texture and temperature to flag contaminated produce. Or a computer could absorb data and flag unsafe intersections that are prone to traffic accidents. Those tasks are too hard for traditional computers.

GroupMe Anniversary Party

Just met the other GroupMe cofounder as well. This one did not recognize me!less than a minute ago via txt Favorite Retweet ReplyParamendra Bhagat
paramendra

@paramendra I recognize you now!!less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhone Favorite Retweet ReplyJared Hecht
jaredhecht

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Supercharging Android: 19,000 Is A Lot Of People

Image via CrunchBaseSupercharging Android

The Google workforce nearly doubles in size with this acquisition, and Google has been a pioneer of sorts in terms of corporate culture. I wonder how Google will eat and digest the Motorola workforce. It better do it with style if this acquisition is to prove magical.

This acquisition is also looking good on Apple and Steve Jobs. The idea that software and hardware has to happen in house is Steve Jobs' idea. Google just bought into that. That makes the iPhone more not less attractive. The iPhone remains the flagship smartphone. But I hope Google does one better. I believe in Android.

The Google thing to do would be to make the hardware much, much cheaper and go global in a big way. Search ads on Android should subsidize hardware costs. Cheaper will sell more. Make money on volume. Or, hey, make money from search.

Motorola on its own is too small a presence in the handset space for this move to be a major threat to the other Android handset players. I believe Larry Page when he says this move is primarily to bolster the entire Android ecosystem.

Pages

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Bronx Zoo

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Google, Lunch And Child Care

Earthquake

Google NYC: Lunch And Tour

Sunday, August 21, 2011

The Bronx (2)

Saturday, August 20, 2011

The Bronx (1)

FeedBurner Messing Up

Seven Screens

Post PC Or PC Plus

Friday, August 19, 2011

A Brett Martin Brisket

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Supercomputing + Neuroscience + Nanotechnology

GroupMe Anniversary Party

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Supercharging Android: 19,000 Is A Lot Of People

Pages

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Saturday, August 20, 2011

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Friday, August 19, 2011

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Tuesday, August 16, 2011