Wolfram answers to organize information

Since college, passion for mathematics has transformed into daily Product Engineering solutions. Certainly, I miss that Math world, but staying happy with parallel world of Engineering. Yes, I think, both help in solving a problem-space by computational; engineering its about solving practical problem and math its about proving theorems.

Yesterday, stumbled upon YouTube presentation by known scientist Stephen Wolfram who has been involved in huge project of  Mathematica and written a book. Recently, he has has gone ahead to answer the problem of organizing/computing world’s information.

Wolfram|Alpha is very fascinating project to create first computational knowledge engine to do sophisticated computations, both pure computations involving numbers or formulas, and computations applied automatically to data called up from its data sources.  This answers very computational requirement to turn generic information into specific answers where present search engine has been struggling.

When we develop software, we also deal with this info but these IT data is very structure as it is directly meant for that targeted system. There is still no system which can read and comprehend any data and make sense out of it.

I was more interested in the internal organization of his answer to semantic search. In this presentation, he describes his system in four major components.

First building block is “Curated Data”, a data set which is derived from  different data sources and mapped into structures like XML/RDF.  Second is “Algorithm Computing”, a set of methods based on mathematical formulas to drive a scene out of this Curated Data. Third is “Linguistic Analysis” which interprets the human inputted question/queries and map it into one of the appropriate Algorithm to compute. And Final one, “Automatic Presentation” to judge the user interface required for a given query.

Wolfram gave his previous experience with Mathematica to answer open source. In past, he has made huge effort to put the code of Mathematica but he sadly admits there was hardly any interest due to its complexity.  I think he is right, this work may not be easily comprehensible at this stage, but may be in future, a better language will represent these scientist code in simpler fashion.

Wolfram way of monetization is very similar to Google propagated Adverts, relevant Ad per query. He also pointed out that he has been successful to bring collaborations with lots of major industry players. He accepts there is still lot of work to be done in machine’s Cognitive Reasoning to normalize data issues like juxtaposition and anthology queries.

As a whole, I still believe,  Wolfram can’t be a Google Killer but it can augument “expert answring” space where Google has not impacted yet. At the end, Google should either catch up to it, or least, gulp & burp on it.

OnLive – a Halo of Future

I have always been suspicious on game console because I felt it is still the old style. Just like, my father’s time TV, my time of PC and today time of Mobile, you just can’t buy and stay-happy-ever-after, instead you live in constant worry to compete with your neighbor upgraded and newer box/station/stick. Can you imagine who enjoy this vicious social circle, yes, its console vendors like MS, Sony and Nintendo. It is very well happening in my game life, I don’t wanna even dust off my 3 year “new” XBox as it does not sex me up anymore.

Anyways, what is more depressing from creative game industry point of view that game developers have to either stick to a walled garden or spend all life porting its electronic art. The end result, cant play Halo my PC or PS3 Or Cult of War on XBox. That is BAD!!!

Stumbled upon OnLive, that is a game changer idea. I found its On Demand game and no-platform features most exciting. This is the future of the game, an open world of gaming.

But, how the hell it works???  Gold jargon “Its Cloud Computing baby”!!! Term has been tossed around in every nook and corner of computing industry today. So here it is in your game too.

OnLive brings one of major differentiator that I can state: Actual game runs on server instead of expensive console.

Result: Makes  coordinate/action response come from server not from console.

Benefits:

• Console independence
• No hard disk limitation
• Resume game from anywhere (Home PC or Office PC;)
• Multiplayer game will be better coordinated with lesser lag time

Above observation came from my past attempt of writing my first network based multi-player game in 1996  using Java 1.0. Did make success, but could not build career out of it.

Coming back to point, all you need to go OnLive is a great broadband connection and you are free from the fortress of walled garden of consoles. All the more, with 4G phones, hope OnLive will bring the experience there too. These disruptive ideas revolutionize the way we think.

Game Shopping, I am sure it will be cost effective as it is catering to everyone on Net compared to just handful who can afford a shining expensive console (unless you are fortune CEO to buy all).

This is missing bow in Google arsenals, I think Google should take it.

Can you beat it, Box/Station/Stick!!! No, because they believe in keeping you dearly in a cage.

Mobile App to Mobile Web

Just got rid-off Gmail Application by uninstalling it from my N82 …. reason …. Gmail mobile web interface got GREATER. There is a big shout around “Nokia shopped Symbian” news. I want to shun all the discussions about “Platform War” with a comment that platform will be mere base to install a mobile browser and my ecosystem of applications will be a set of Web Pointers, we call them “Bookmarks”.

Although I am in agreement with the analogy between PC and mobile platforms war, but end of day, I think better mobile browser will finish this battle of developing applications for multiple platforms. Web applications will do efficient transition into mobile web with assistance with Cloud computing on back-end.

Tell me who would like to download, install and uninstall applications on a mobile. Personally, I don’t have time to do this. I like to visit a mobile web site, have a experience and if I like it, I will bookmark it, otherwise forget it. It is very simple principal which these big corps can’t seems to understand. They love to react to what others are talking instead of feeling the street.

We all forget who killed desktop application market, no… it was neither platform war, nor application war, but it is malicious application developer who wants to hijack your PC(of past) and mobile of today. Even today,  having best virus checker running on my laptop, my heart still beats at 150 when I am about to install a new software.

Lets forget my problems and wear developer’s hat, two big issues pop up here.

1. Porting application to all the platforms, “available” and “Android”.
2. DRM rights for each platform.

Simple answer and solution is to develop a mobile friendly Web interface and let user browser through it.

Then there are other questions like applications interface with special hardware capabilities like GPS, Accelrometer, Camera etc. I still hope that a capable browser can still intergrate all these hardware interfaces through a new browser. Like a location based browser.  I hope Mozilla is listenning.

Now it’s Moto wooing developers

Finally, Motorola also realized the power of open source. Moto MAGX is next generation of platform based on Linux. “Moto MAGX will be part of its 61% of handset in next few years” says Christy Wyatt, Vice President, Software Platforms & Ecosystem, Motorola. All this showdown is to make Motorola a primal choice of mobile content developers and get Motorola in center of the mobile space battle. No wonder, they are heavily invested all variants of Unix based mobile OS development around the world, from Linux Mobile, Symbian to Androide.

May 14th 2008, Motodev Summit, held in Bangalore, was by far a great conference attendance. Sheer glitzy stage, music and Hollywood like launch were certainly the inspiration from Apple’s showcase events.

The summit also offered tutorials on everything a developer aspire to know on design, develop, debug, deploy and distribute compelling enterprise, vertical business or consumer applications with Motorola. This summit was seeking to generate new ideas and enthusiasm for their main audience, Indian Content Developers.

I personally felt that the business model shake-down and open community adoption would really assist Motorola, being a viable option for global entrepreneurs in Mobile space. Certainly, their cheering support for Java was a sweetspot in this bustling era of Mobile OS vendors.

During the panel discussions, two major challenges were highlighted namely fragmentation and discovery. Fragmentation of choice amongst platforms and discovery of new and useful applications. Motorola attempted to give both the answers, one by declaring support for Open OS like Linux and second by providing the a Catalog service for mobile applications.

Motorola has introduced Motorola Solutions Catalog to provide a launch vehicle for content developers. Moto Catalog will help users to choose among applications as well as developers to market their products. Motorola is also offering preloading feature for winner applications for their future mobiles. This step certainly encourages small budget team to innovate and compete on world wide mobile. All this for one “E + I” formula, “Encouraging Innovation”. As Cristy rightly puts, “Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity not as a threat”.

They also attempted to tune with techno entrepreneur to focus on business and end users first, followed by choice of application development platforms. Also pointed out, the simple and sound success factor could be just user interface of “Three clicks to Glory”. Mobile market is on crossroad with three major components (Device, Network and Application) of ecosystem fighting out for dominance. But all have to work together to get it going.

During entire summit, Motorola was very much attempting to get on to another missed band wagon, GPS mobile. Early impactful entry of Nokia in GPS market has once again thrown Moto to chase another one. It is for all of us to see, how last known innovation MOTO RAZR will stimulate next big bang “Geo + Media + Socials” in Moto world. God bless, Moto.

At end, welcoming the Linux on Motorola devices is a greeted step for all. It provides enough reasoning to call upon open world and play in their backyard.

It was one of the finest conference held in Bangalore.

JAX India: CodeGear Vision

David Intersimone is true evangelist for CodeGear. He has spoken at JAX India 2008 on “How to Apply Software Archeology to Your Development Process” and a great ballroom session on his vision of software industry. Here I would summerise about these sessions.

Vision for Software Industry:

Robotic Code Writing:

In present, tools are already starting generating and migrating the code. The future will not be too far when Business Man, Project Manager or Architect would draw a visual diagrams of system using some modeling language and the tool will generate all the code without even touching a single file. I think that future, we developers may not have to switch profession to something else.

Other important thing:

He repetedly mentioned that developer job is a highly creative one and we should take its responsibility. If you think it is work, you can as well work at McDonald’s, where scope of creativity is negligible. If you really hell bent on considering it as a job, better ask for really fat pay.

Location Based Browser for Mobile

I am dreaming …. I am concerned …. I am a server side application developer.

Everyone is talking about LBS (Location Based Services) for mobile and they are developing applications for the same. Google with Andriod, Nokia buying NavTeq and Yahoo going for “Go”.

Why everybody is developing their Location Aware Applications? If I have to install 10 software on my mobile, I am sure all of them will be reading my GPS info constantly from mobile and sending to their respective servers. First of all, it is sheer wastage of processing power of my tiny mobile and also the bandwidth (because applications may use their own protocol to transmit Location Coordinate) . It can be easily done if HTTP request has this parameter for Location Coordinate.

If I would change the scenarios a little bit. Instead of developing applications which send Location Coordinates to server applications, develop only server side application which work with Location Based Browser (LBB).

What the hell is LBB?

LBB is a normal browser with extended capability to send Location Coordinates in HTTP request itself.

What will it change?

It will change the world, the way people are developing and thinking about mobile applications. Instead of putting effort in development, installation, upgrades and porting application to differnt platform, stick to server side and rely on Location Based Browser and do the rest. I don’t see any difference when I compare between today’s Application revolution and evolution of desktop application maturing into Web Application. Do you remember how many software installations we used to do with Windows 95.

I will be awake and happy if browser companies can think and develop this feature into their browser. It will be similar transformation what we saw in desktop with browser presence.

Loki is a solution but it is still not for any other mobile web application development.

Mozilla, Apple, Google, are you listening?

These days, there is too much hoopla around LBS services. Actually, it needs only one dose of innovation to trigger consolidation just like Internet Browser did for desktop applications. Before HTTP era, every PC application used to maintain its user context for its own network, and then browser came and all the desktop applications flew to servers.

On mobile, there is same story where every application is trying to maintain user location for server to do some mobile magic. If a browser can do this job more uniformly, all the mobile applications will again start fly back to server. Yes, it is LBB (Location Based Browser)

My LBS Wishlist

I have started to think on what my wish list for Location Based Service well before I could buy my first GPS enabled mobile phone. Here, I go… please add on if you wish….

LBS Follow Me:

• Tracking my footsteps and of my friends.
• Tracking my friends in near by location.
• Tracking my POI near my location.
• According to user route, you can send special offer. Frequent Local Visitor.
  

LBS Advisements:

• Send advertisement according to my location.
• Filtering the advertisement based on my preference.
• Spam guard against advertisement

News:

• Local Area News

Here, I have big technical question.

• Will the browser be changed to add Location info sent to server as a part of every HTTP request?

Syncing Desire

My biggest challenge, after having my laptop hard disk crashed, was to look for a better service which can backup my data files and sametime, makes them available on my office laptop as well as on my mobile. I have tried FolderShare, GSpace, Box.net and Funambol. But till date, none of the service could win my heart. Also that my hope of having Google solution into this space sulked as Gdrive came crashing as mare a speculative news.

GigaOM reference to SugarSync file sync service also falls short of my requirement of data-on-my-finger-tip around-the-clock. Definitely SugerSync is a good service. But I have few thoughts with my hats.

• As a developer, I would like to know more about technology used in it. Is it SyncML based?
• As a user, I would like to go only with one service which can fill all my need of syncing everything from bookmark, contact, calender to files on all the devices. Will they expand into it?
• As blogger, I would say Funambol is a closer solution, but they lack of File Syncing service. Will these two solutions (Funambol and SugarSync) ever come together under one umbrella?

Coincidently, I have been working on SyncML related technologies and solutions like Funambol. I am thinking of either

• developing a full-fledge service to fill this GAP or
• integrating these discreate entites into “Follow Me Data Sync System”. Any takers???

Will Google ever fill in Social Map?

It has been a struggle to put my Net iidentity and service usage at one place. Actually, I am great follower of Google Eco-System but while competing this list, there were many important items which fell outside the Google Zone. Following are few which I could jot down.

• Google Social Graph:
  • Message – Email
  • Chat – Google Talk
  • Calendar – Calendar
  • Photo – Picaca
  • Notes – Notebook
  • Blog Feed – Feedburner
  • RSS – Reader
  • Social Network – Orkut
  • Video – YouTube
  • Blogs – Blogger
  • Website Infrastructure – Apps
• Non-Google graph:
  • Professional Network: Linkedin and Xing
  • Social Network – Facebook
  • OpenID – Verising, OpenID,
  • Agregator – Mybloglog
  • Network File System – Box net
  • Bookmark – Foxmarks
• Preferred over Google:
  
  • Blogs – WordPress
  • Photo – Flikr

Ideally, anyuser would like to keep all his important belonging at one place where trust and faith stays. This is against the philosophy of elders “never keep all the eggs in one basket”, but today when experimentation is the way of life. What if basket can be tightly protected … what is the harm?

My trust in Google services has been nothing less than existence of Sun and Stars in universe. But a million Euro question … Can Google ever fill in the space… and in time?

Kill Wikipedia : Google Knol

Yes, “knol project” is Wikipedia by Google. But it has better features for author to monetize on written page, related search box and Peer review widget.

Knol, according to Google, means ‘a unit of knowledge’. I think it is great to have a better version of wikipedia and I am sure Google will do greater job in this area.

I am firm admirer for Google way of doing business. But I would certainly not advocate the monopoly. To overpower Google or Microsoft, you got to be smarter and quicker to kill the beast, otherwise the story repeats itself.

Yes, I have heard that Chief of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales was talking about creating Search Engine to beat GooG and see … what Google has replied with!!! A beta and running service of Knol.

I think in business, you got to stay ahead, not just by talking and letting your opponent know your thinking patterns rather strike them when they least expect you and materialize on the gain from their on. Google did same to Yahoo and Microsoft. Wikipedia just lost it.