Is Wolfram Alpha The Next Big Thing in Web Search?

Stephen Wolfram is a well-known figure in the sciences thanks to genius inventions like the math problem-solving software Mathematica. Now he’s in the news again for a very different reason: He’s trying to reinvent web search by making a smart “fact computer” engine.  (http://www.wolframalpha.com/) Launching in May 09 

It’s called Wolfram Alpha, and it’s pretty much what you’re thinking about right now: A computer program that, like the computers from a science-fiction movie, answers with the right facts when you ask it–think Hal 9000, or even KITT from Knight Rider. Wolfram is calling the technology a “computational knowledge engine” and it’s designed to answer questions like “What’s the 200th number in Pi?” and “What phase is the moon in right now?” But apparently the system’s not like previous efforts at this technology (ahem, Ask Jeeves), which use natural language parsing to determine your question and then simply present the web-search results. Instead Alpha is supposedly revolutionary since it actually computes the answer for you. Inside it has built-in models of how the world works in terms of science, geography, business, people and so on, and it interprets your question and uses its models to calculate an answer.

In fact what Wolfram and his team have done is, after a lot of research, broken down the problem (answering a fact-based question) into a series of small steps, each of which is reproducible and can be used for interpreting different types of question and finding the corresponding answers. And these steps have been programmed into the Mathematica computing engine, along with a natural language program and the “real world” database.

Google solves the problem in the opposite way, by simply searching (with some nifty algorithms, admittedly) the vast sea of websites and delivering a list of “matches.” Alpha tries to understand what you mean, and then calculates the answer.

If that sounds weird, it is–at least a little. We’re very used to our current way of interacting with web-based data, even though it’s still very novel for us. The idea that a search engine needs to be wired to an electronic brain that tries to understand what you’re asking before it goes and calculates the answer is strange. Particularly since Alpha seems like it’s mainly designed to perform the missing task at the end of a Google search: taking all the matched web pages and compiling the data into a meaningful single answer.

And that, in fact, is probably the reason Alpha’s won’t be the “next big thing” in web searching for the average user when it’s fully revealed in May. Although we obviously haven’t used the service yet, the factual results it’s designed to deliver seem like they’re fairly easy to find with just a few clicks using current search technology. Unless you’re talking about very very specific fact requests like “Is the Moon Io in transit across Jupiter’s face when looking from Earth?” and you’d have to be a subject matter expert to have to care about that: Hence Alpha could end up with a following in the math and science fields, if it turns out to be a reliable and authoritative information source that accurately and succinctly returns information from its “curated” data.

The real revolution would be if Wolfram could expand the technology to compute the answers to “fuzzier” questions like “Do people like Robert Mugabe?” or “Is it warm in southern France this month?” But that’s a far far trickier problem to solve.

I went to their site to try some of the products they offer and found an interesting one: webMathematica

Buying and Selling Among Friends

Gone are the days when giving away your old stuff involved getting in the car and hauling bags to the local Salvation Army. Now, with a little Web know-how, you can find a number of ways to turn your trash into someone else’s treasure — from companies that send you prepaid shipping materials to people who will pick up the items from your house.

But even though you can use these services without leaving home, many of them still require you to go to a specific Web site — one you wouldn’t necessarily visit regularly. Sites like Gazelle.com and Venjuvo.com that pay cash for old electronics (or just recycle them) aren’t exactly online destinations.

Now one of those ways to unload your stuff involves a Web site you might visit many times a day. A site that has considerable sway in the social-networking world, where over 175 million active users go to share personal stories, photos and videos with hundreds of “friends.”

That’s right, I’m talking about Facebook. Tuesday, the social-networking giant announced its new Facebook Marketplace, Facebook.com/marketplace, an integrated application powered by Oodle, known for its work with online classified ads. Marketplace uses colorful icons to represent four actions you can take in its app: Sell It; Sell for a Cause; Give it Away; and Ask for It.

Oodle granted me early access to the Marketplace app before it became available Tuesday. A friend of mine and I were both set up with test accounts so that we could see one another’s fake Marketplace items and interact with one another within Marketplace; hundreds of Oodle employees also were testing this. (It was fun to see what people offer for sale when they’re just pretending, like one person who offered to sell everything on a colleague’s desk when he was out.)

Facebook’s original iteration of Marketplace started back in 2007, but was geared toward services like housing and jobs. The Oodle-powered Marketplace is merchandise-centric and includes more detailed organization, deeper integration with Facebook, and ways to buy or sell things to raise money for 1.7 million causes.

It still lacks a built-in electronic payment system, such as PayPal or Discover card, for exchanges between users or donations to causes. Instead, Marketplace encourages its users to exchange money however they choose, like traditional classified ads. And that could cause some obvious problems. For instance, if an item were sold for a cause, the seller could later donate the amount via credit card after closing a listing. But there’s no guarantee that the seller will actually do this. Oodle says it will listen to feedback from the Facebook audience and will try to integrate e-payments, if preferred.

Every posted item can include a location, description, category, photo and an explanation of why it’s in the Marketplace. Each item is reviewed by Oodle’s fraud-detection program, which looks for inappropriate content and suspicious activity, and a post could take up to 30 minutes to appear online after you submit it. My posts displayed almost instantly in the Marketplace newsfeed. Users also can opt to publish their posts to their Facebook profiles.

One example of Marketplace’s newly detailed organization comes in its browsing options. The old version of Marketplace had options to browse through jobs and housing, but not specific categories of items for sale. Now, users can browse through 12 categories of specific items including “Home & Garden,” “Baby & Kid Stuff,” “Tickets” and “Musical Instruments.” Items that don’t fit into these 12 categories are put into an “Everything Else” category.

Each item in Marketplace integrates with Facebook’s familiar format, like having its own online “wall” where questions and comments appear. If you’re looking for something in Marketplace by using the “Ask for It” option, you can recruit people to help you find the item by selecting from your list of friends, which works the same way people can suggest Facebook people to friends who might know them. Glancing at an item shows the seller’s profile photo, a link to all of the person’s listings and a brief history of his or her overall Marketplace activity, such as “3 listings in the last month.”

The integration of charitable causes into Marketplace gives supporters new ways to raise money for a favorite group like the World Wildlife Fund or Habitat for Humanity International. On the Marketplace home page, causes are displayed in a right-hand panel with a daily featured cause. This Featured Cause shows who else supports it and how many items you can buy or sell to support it.

Privacy is a natural concern in online marketplaces. By default, your posted listings are visible to any Facebook member in Marketplace. Users can opt to remain anonymous — they’re listed as “Facebook user is selling a bike,” for example. In that case, the only way someone can contact that person is by posting a comment and waiting for the seller to respond.

People who aren’t members of Facebook can see your listings by browsing and searching Marketplace, but they can’t post, comment or contact users. Unlike online marketplaces or services that can be used by anyone, Marketplace requires that users be members of the site to interact with sellers, which can be a downside. Plenty of people who aren’t on Facebook might not want to join the social-networking phenomenon just to offload the old couch gathering dust in the garage.

All user notifications — messages indicated in red at the bottom right of a Facebook page — will reflect friends’ activities in the Marketplace, unless you reset the notifications of the Facebook Marketplace app to not notify you. I suggest doing this, unless you really want to know about all your friends’ activities in Marketplace.

Four color-coded icons represent activities in Marketplace and are useful when reading lists of items at a glance: A green dollar sign represents Sell It and a red heart represents Sell for a Cause, for example. And details about each cause are integrated within Marketplace.

The Oodle-powered Facebook Marketplace is straightforward and well organized, and if you’re a Facebook user, its format will be familiar. If you’re not, and you’re looking for a way to sell or give items away for a charity or otherwise, Marketplace might encourage you to join the giant social network. But its payment program could be made a lot easier with electronic options.

Is this the end of eBay???

Enterprise 2.0….Jive, Zoho, 37Signals…Is this the future of enterprise?

 

With its new product, AlignSpace, Software AG has announced plans to create the largest social network of BPM professionals. The new product is a platform offering collaboration between all project participants in a Business Process environment. Data, documents and services produced within this environment are made available and reusable within or across company borders. Leading social networks can also be easily plugged-in.

“The advantage of AlignSpace is in Business to Business and Business to IT alignment. True collaboration among virtual teams of experts will lead to smooth cooperation on BPM projects across Enterprise borders,” said Dr. Peter Kuerpick, Chief Product Officer and Member of the Executive Board, Software AG.

By launching AlignSpace, Software AG is reportedly establishing the largest cross-company, process-centric community of professionals. The new product exploits proven web-based social networking technologies and provides a platform within enterprises to drive collaboration for accelerated business process discovery, modeling and management. AlignSpace will be offered as a fully hosted, Software-as-a-Service offering. All functionality will be accessible via the browser.

Product functionality is in four main areas:

• Social Networking – Social networking techniques have been applied throughout the product. Members can easily invite and connect with colleagues involved in process projects throughout their organization and beyond. Once connected, members can keep tabs on process projects and colleagues by monitoring a tune-able event stream that highlights significant activities.
• Collaborative process design – Members of AlignSpace can interactively and collaboratively discover, document and create process models that can be exported and run within BPM engines. Once any stage of a process has been documented it can be modeled by dragging the stage to a process canvas. Members can simultaneously work on virtually every part of a process project.
• Universal translation of BPM models – AlignSpace allows members to import and export BPM formats so they can import a process, work on it and then export it in other formats for execution.

Marketplace – Software AG supports a marketplace where members can share, or offer for sale, value added expertise and products that support individual and shared project goals. This includes a search for expertise in specific disciplines, in specific geographical regions and in specific products.

 

I’ve been working on Jive quite a well. Interesting to see what features this software will exhibit in upcoming years!!!

Are Plug Computers The Next Big Thing For Your Media?

 

Marvell electronics is all set to push what it thinks will be the next big thing in household computing: plug computers. Since we’re all generating and storing so much digital content in the form of words, video, and photos from our digital cameras, netbooks and cellphones, traditional storage and management systems are becoming old-hat–and that’s where Marvell’s plan fits in.

The company is promoting what it’s dubbed “plug computers” as a perfect solution. The idea is that you’ll have an ultra-small computer plugged into an electrical socket: It’ll be about the size of the socket itself, and yet pack in enough processing power and network connectivity to manage and serve media stored on an attached thumb-drive or hard drive. By accessing the plug computer over your home network, you’d be able to get at your files from wherever you needed in your house, or over a Internet connection when you’re out and about. 

Marvell’s contends that we’re all storing our personal media in a dispersed style–files on cellphones, desktop PCs, and notebook computers, and this is both inefficient and risky. Losing a laptop PC or phone carries the risk of permanently losing a precious photo, or perhaps a sensitive one.

It’s not a new idea–Apple’s Time Capsule acts a little like a central repository for data by wirelessly backing up all your connected Macs, HP’s MediaSmart Servers are designed to do what it sounds like, and there are a host of “smart” external hard drives that connect to a PC via USB and both store your media longterm, and serve it to connected TVs and audio systems without needing the PC’s intervention.

But Marvell’s idea is to miniaturize all this tech, and make it small and convenient. And it’s also pushing the eco-friendliness of the plan. Plug computers will apparently draw less than 5W of power, that is significantly lower than leaving a PC running to act as a media server.

Marvell, a company that makes communication chipsets for a host of devices, thinks the technology is now achievable on a small and economic-enough scale, and it’ll be sourcing the chips while partner companies make the hardware and software. The company’s targeting a $50 price point. And that’s actually what makes this idea interesting, and differentiates it from other tech solutions. I have a similar set-up at home, using a router and connected hard drives via an iMac which acts as the server–and though it works well, this is an expensive solution. If I could use a suite of $50 plug-in devices instead, I probably would. The tricky part will be selling the idea in an accessible manner to the average home PC consumer.

Gartner’s prediction about top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009

Gartner, Inc. analysts today highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.

Virtualization. Much of the current buzz is focused on server virtualization, but virtualization in storage and client devices is also moving rapidly. Virtualization to eliminate duplicate copies of data on the real storage devices while maintaining the illusion to the accessing systems that the files are as originally stored (data deduplication) can significantly decrease the cost of storage devices and media to hold information. Hosted virtual images deliver a near-identical result to blade-based PCs. But, instead of the motherboard function being located in the data center as hardware, it is located there as a virtual machine bubble. However, despite ambitious deployment plans from many organizations, deployments of hosted virtual desktop capabilities will be adopted by fewer than 40 percent of target users by 2010.

Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. They key characteristics of cloud computing are 1) delivery of capabilities “as a service,” 2) delivery of services in a highly scalable and elastic fashion, 3) using Internet technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and 4) designing for delivery to external customers. Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.

Servers — Beyond Blades. Servers are evolving beyond the blade server stage that exists today. This evolution will simplify the provisioning of capacity to meet growing needs. The organization tracks the various resource types, for example, memory, separately and replenishes only the type that is in short supply. This eliminates the need to pay for all three resource types to upgrade capacity. It also simplifies the inventory of systems, eliminating the need to track and purchase various sizes and configurations. The result will be higher utilization because of lessened “waste” of resources that are in the wrong configuration or that come along with the needed processors and memory in a fixed bundle.

Web-Oriented Architectures. The Internet is arguably the best example of an agile, interoperable and scalable service-oriented environment in existence. This level of flexibility is achieved because of key design principles inherent in the Internet/Web approach, as well as the emergence of Web-centric technologies and standards that promote these principles. The use of Web-centric models to build global-class solutions cannot address the full breadth of enterprise computing needs. However, Gartner expects that continued evolution of the Web-centric approach will enable its use in an ever-broadening set of enterprise solutions during the next five years.

EnterpriseMashups. Enterprises are now investigating taking mashups from cool Web hobby to enterprise-class systems to augment their models for delivering and managing applications. Through 2010, the enterprise mashup product environment will experience significant flux and consolidation, and application architects and IT leaders should investigate this growing space for the significant and transformational potential it may offer their enterprises.

Specialized Systems. Appliances have been used to accomplish IT purposes, but only with a few classes of function have appliances prevailed. Heterogeneous systems are an emerging trend in high-performance computing to address the requirements of the most demanding workloads, and this approach will eventually reach the general-purpose computing market. Heterogeneous systems are also specialized systems with the same single-purpose imitations of appliances, but the heterogeneous system is a server system into which the owner installs software to accomplish its function.

Social Software and Social Networking. Social software includes a broad range of technologies, such as social networking, social collaboration, social media and social validation. Organizations should consider adding a social dimension to a conventional Web site or application and should adopt a social platform sooner, rather than later, because the greatest risk lies in failure to engage and thereby, being left mute in a dialogue where your voice must be heard.

Unified Communications. During the next five years, the number of different communications vendors with which a typical organization works with will be reduced by at least 50 percent. This change is driven by increases in the capability of application servers and the general shift of communications applications to common off-the-shelf server and operating systems. As this occurs, formerly distinct markets, each with distinct vendors, converge, resulting in massive consolidation in the communications industry. Organizations must build careful, detailed plans for when each category of communications function is replaced or converged, coupling this step with the prior completion of appropriate administrative team convergence.

Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence (BI), the top technology priority in Gartner’s 2008 CIO survey, can have a direct positive impact on a company’s business performance, dramatically improving its ability to accomplish its mission by making smarter decisions at every level of the business from corporate strategy to operational processes. BI is particularly strategic because it is directed toward business managers and knowledge workers who make up the pool of thinkers and decision makers that are tasked with running, growing and transforming the business. Tools that let these users make faster, better and more-informed decisions are particularly valuable in a difficult business environment.

Green IT. Shifting to more efficient products and approaches can allow for more equipment to fit within an energy footprint, or to fit into a previously filled center. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the effect of power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny. Organizations should consider regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth.

Powering Google Search using Green IT????

In response to Harvard’s article regarding searching Google generates around 0.2 g of CO2 , Google official posted following in their official blog:

Not long ago, answering a query meant traveling to the reference desk of your local library. Today, search engines enable us to access immense quantities of useful information in an instant, without leaving home. Tools like email, online books and photos, and video chat all increase productivity while decreasing our reliance on car trips, pulp and paper.

But as computers become a bigger part of more people’s lives, information technology consumes an increasing amount of energy, and Google takes this impact seriously. That’s why we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal. In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query.

Recently, though, others have used much higher estimates, claiming that a typical search uses “half the energy as boiling a kettle of water” and produces 7 grams of CO2. We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high. Google is fast — a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.

In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don’t reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches.

We’ve made great strides to reduce the energy used by our data centers, but we still want clean and affordable sources of electricity for the power that we do use. In 2008 our philanthropic arm, Google.org, invested $45 million in breakthrough clean energy technologies. And last summer, as part of our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative (RE<C), we created an internal engineering group dedicated to exploring clean energy.

We’re also working with other members of the IT community to improve efficiency on a broader scale. In 2007 we co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a group which champions more efficient computing. This non-profit consortium is committed to cutting the energy consumed by computers in half by 2010 — reducing global CO2 emissions by 54 million tons per year. That’s a lot of kettles of tea.

I couldnt agree more about the attempts made by companies in Silicon valley to provide “Green IT”

My recent visit to Monterey Bay Aquarium

After taking graduation walk from University and having fully fledged Gujarati thali(plate served with different traditional items) from Kokila’s kitchen in Cupertino, we decided to visit Monterey Aquarium for fun this weekend just before Christmas holidays. Here is the video where I am touching different sea animals such as Starfish and Crabs.

Capture web traffic on iPhone using Sitecatalyst- Omniture Product

I have worked on Sitecatalyst for sometime and found it very interesting and accurate. It captures real time web traffic hence enabling web marketing team to analyze user interactions through out the site. They have come up with their iPhone App which provides real time analytics for marketing initiatives. According to their official blogs:

 I am excited to share some of the recent innovation we’ve been cooking up in the Omniture labs. For those avid SiteCatalyst and iPhone users, we have just released theSiteCatalyst for iPhone now available on the iTunes app store. This enables online marketers who are on-the-go to take SiteCatalyst with them anywhere they’re traveling-at the airport, at home, in the car (pulled aside to the shoulder of course), or wherever their iPhone receives a signal. 

                             This new application builds upon the mobile analytics capabilities we announced in July as part of the latest Omniture SiteCatalyst release, which also enables marketers to access their SiteCatalyst bookmarks and dashboards through their mobile device HTML browser. The mobile analytics capabilities in SiteCatalyst helps online marketers to better understand their mobile audience, such as the specific devices hitting their site, the type of video & audio support with these devices, as well as cookie and javascript support. These reports are critical to understanding the makeup of the mobile audience as the lack of industry standards has traditionally made it more difficult to accurately analyze mobile traffic. These innovations in SiteCatalyst now provide web and mobile marketers the ability to effectively measure key metrics such as revenue per mobile device (How much is the Blackberry contributing to direct ecommerce sales?), shopping cart adds (Are iPhone users converting at higher rates than T-Mobile Sidekick users?), as well as develop content strategies such as video formats to include on the site (Which video codecs are most supported across all mobile devices hitting our site?) and audio content (Which ringtones formats should we offer for download?).

Try it out guys….I am rushing to download this application as long as it remains free!!!

Share a cab ride using GPS on Android

In response to the recent post in Tech Crunch saying that MIT students develop projects in 13 days, we students at SJSU have a lot of potential to create some exciting next generation Mobile Apps. I along with my project partners Naing and Htay took one mobile course(Cmpe 277) under Dr Shan to develop one promising concept. Unfortunately we couldn’t convert it into commercial project but developers can take fresh ideas from it and make a revenue out of it.

The app is called Share a Taxi Ride. Generally in metro cities like San Francisco, New York where many business executives travel a lot can find this application useful especially everybody is using iPhone for their prime business communication. This Mobile application allows users to share a cab ride based on their current locations. It is about finding people to share a taxi based on source and destination points. Along with that, it can also be applied to many other cases such as going to and from special events, conventions, ball games etc. The typical functions of this portal are listed as follows:

•  Registration: It allows a first time user to register so that they can log in with their username and password during their next visit.
• Login: This allows registered users to access the mobile application along with the validation of their credentials
• User Profile Management: This allows registered users to create and manage their profiles access the mobile application. It also allows users to manage their preferences like Sex, Smoke or Contact (By Chat or Call)
• Sign Out: Allows user to log off the application session

These are some “Nice to have” features:

• User Account Management
• Manage Preferences (who you are and what type of people you want to share with)
• Save Destinations on phone
• Search people based on current location your destination and other criteria such as destination proximity, time, number of persons, etc.
• Prearrange the ride beforehand
• Display search result and communicate or exchange information with selected person(s) by email or phone
• Show people on the map (sometimes they could be a couple blocks away from you)
• Rating system (Rate, Comment, Filter search based on rating)

Application Snapshots

 1] Title Page: It is being displayed when the application is loaded for the first time

 

2] Registration: It is being displayed when user comes to the site for the first time

3] Login: It asks for the user credentials

 4] Based on the correct username and password, the system will navigate user to the Main User panel.

5] The cab request form is displayed when user requests to find the riders within defined proximity. Generally, the system will calculate user’s source address from GPS but for the simplicity we allow user to enter the address

6] Search Result

7] Give user ratings

 Here are the configuration details:

GUI: Android Development Tools Plugin for the Eclipse IDE, Android Debug Bridge (adb)  

Web Server: Tomcat Apache Server

Database: MySQL, SQlite

 

We were not able to create complete application within provided time limit but we explored power of Android as a Dev Platform…We found development of similar app on net called GCab

This could be a potential project but I am not sure whether this idea is already been practiced commercially…

Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa-of-mona-lisa

Silicon valley is full of potential web 2.0 start ups. My previos work colleague suggested me Internet Radio called Pandora based on Music Genote Project. Digging in more about Genome programming, I encountered interesting program which creates picture replica of Mona Lisa on .Net platform.

Algorithm is described as follows:

0) Setup a random DNA string  (application start)

1) Copy the current DNA sequence and mutate it slightly

2) Use the new DNA to render polygons onto a canvas

3) Compare the canvas to the source image

4) If the new painting looks more like the source image than the previous painting did, then overwrite the current DNA with the new DNA

5) repeat from 1

It is depicted below:

You can download the source code from here: http://code.google.com/p/alsing/downloads/list

How did yu like it?