I finally got around to writing [[http://floatingsun.net/articles/why-latex-beamer.html|another article]] in my “Why?� series—in this one, I talk about why I make all my presentations using [[http://latex-beamer.sourceforge.net/|LaTeX Beamer]].
There’s been so much news about Google lately that its all been a blur. Ironically, searning for actual information regarding on Google using Google is quite painful. Inevitably the first few pages are link on Google’s website or affiliate pages, none of them give any new insights or information. But I digress.
So I was talking about Google. Hell, everyone’s talking about Google. Just look at them: first the search engine, then desktop search, then blogging, then photo management, then gmail, then google maps, then google scholar, then local search, then sattelites, then video searches. Using innovative user interfaces built using existing technology, Google has taken web applications to an entirely new level. Google maps and gmail are just as interactive and perhaps more responsive than most of our desktop applications. Combine that with the fact that in the near future, a signifant fraction of Internet users will be connected using broadband and we’ve potentially got the next **big** thing happening.
No wonder a lot of people are worried. Grapevine has it that Google might be working on a whole slew of web based applications. If Google can do for desktop publishing and home office what it did for maps and mail, it could revolutionize the desktop market. Consider this scenario (this idea is not original, I read it somewhere, but can’t locate the source now. Please let me know if you find it): you have just one software on your desktop: a web browser. The rest of the stuff is hosted on Google: Google Mail, Google Photos, Google Maps, Google Office, Google Telephony. The cost of your desktop goes down tremendously! all you need is a thin client able to run a browser, and a good Internet connection. You don’t even need a hard drive, Google stores everything for you. Best of all, you’ve got instant accesibility from all over the world for free. Would you even need a laptop now?
Here are some interesting recent reads on Google:
* [[http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,1050065,00.html|Search and Destroy (on Fortune.com)]]
* [[http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050322.gtflgooglemar22/BNStory/Technology/|The God Good Google]]
* [[http://adamjh.blogspot.com/2005/05/graduation.html | Graduation speech]]
* [[http://www.betanews.com/article/Google_Preps_Video_Distribution_Service/1113441557|Video distribution platform]]
On a reader’s suggestion, I read [[http://research.microsoft.com/~Gray/|Jim Gray’s]] report (based on his Turing award talk) called [[http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?msr_tr_id=MSR-TR-99-50|What Next? A Dozen Information-Technology Research Goals]].
It does make for a very good reading. When people say that experience makes you wiser, they’re not joking. The kind of depth and breadth you need to understand the “big picture� in any area, and then make insightful comments on the same is near-impossible without experience. Needless to add, Jim Gray does a great job (he did win the Turing award, after all!)
He does a very high level, but neat analysis of IT research and proposes 12 research goals that he thinks will drive the research in the coming decades. Of the dozen, I think that the Turing test related goals (AI complete, and human interface design) are going to be the most visibly important. Under the covers, the systems related goals (dependable, highly-available and secure systems) are vital—they will become the fabric of our society in the coming years; the infrastructure will be invisible to end-users, but only insofar as it doesn’t fail or malfunction.
Googls is already on its way to becoming the World Memex! Those who follow Google would have heard about the new video service that Google is planning to launch. Google already indexes most of the available online text and images, and I’m sure very soon they will add features like content-based image research, and audio search.
On the whole, a very good read for anyone who is interested in IT research. Thanks, anonymous!
{{ http://members.iquest.net/~jswartz/jks/humor/command/cryptonomicon.jpg?200×150|Cryptonomicon}}
I have finished the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon|legendary]] [[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380973464/102-0182508-4635362|Cryptonomicon]]. Enough has been said about it by a lot of really smart people, so I won’t waste my time writing yet another review. But I would like to list some of the things I really liked about the book:
* Truly engaging plot. I couldn’t put all of the pieces together until almost at the end.
* Neal Stephenson knows what he’s talking about. Unlike many other authors, when he writes something about crypto or email or laptops or Unix, it feels real.
* The best business plan template EVER written!
* Loooooooooong. Its fun :)
* Visionary. I’m sure this book inspired a lot of entrepreneurs out there!
Highly recommended! And now I have to start on the the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_Cycle|Baroque Cycle]]
I just got back from a talk by [[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/|Eric Brewer]], professor at UC Berkeley and co-founder of [[http://inktomi.com/|Inktomi]] on “Technologies for Emerging Regions”. Mostly non-technical, the talk’s focus was on technologies for the developing nations and the third-world countries. In the first half of the talk, Eric made arguments to convince the audience that this was a legitimate pursuit and offered many challenges for research on both technical as well as socio-economic issues. It was an interesting talk, and a couple of things that particularly caught my attention:
* One of the observations Eric made was that charity or donation was not a feasible model for injecting technology into a country like India. For the simple reason that this model is not sustainable — once the charity runs out, there is no one to maintain the service. He noted that almost 99.99% of the donated infrastructure (machines, network equipment and appliances) doesn’t work anymore due to lack of spare parts and maintenance. Basically, it just falls apart. It follows then, that any practical model has to be self-sustaining, and therefore, profitable (even marginally so). Some of the audience were worried about this since they understood this as “making money off the poor people”. However, as Eric pointed out, and I’m sure those who have spent some time in India will have observed, even people dwelling in slums have “disposable incomes” — they will have TV for instance, even though they don’t have proper living conditions for instance. And I agree that there is nothing wrong in setting up a profitable business — infact thats the only sustainable model that has enough incentive to make it last.
* The other thing that struck me was that Eric had these odd bits and pieces of information that even I didn’t know about. For instance, a UN study concluded that **none** of India’s dams are safe. Not even the great Hirakud or the Bhakra Nangal. I was shocked to say the least. Of course, one can always question the UN study itself, but I think thats going overboard.
* The talk went on to give other examples (environmental improvements, health care etc) where technology could be put to use. The key is to fit the technology to suit the requirements. As it turns out, the biggest challenges are socio-economic and pratical engineering rather than technical. Issues like dealing with the government, corruption become relevant all of a sudden. It seems that the [[http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/|TIER]] project had to spend a lot of time in building trust and relationships with various NGOs in India and Bangladesh.
All in all, I thought the talk was interesting. I hope I’m able to contribute in some way to these efforts over the next few years and beyond.