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Droid Incredible

Posted on June 19, 2010  Comments (7)

image of Droid Incredible cell phone

The Droid Incredible really is a great gadget. I am too cheap to get it but if I were to use a cell phone much I think this is the one I would get. I personally prefer more open software like Android (which the Droid Incredible uses) to Apple (though Apple’s user experience is great, I admit).

The Droid Incredible by HTC features a body design that measures 4.63 x 2.3 x 0.47 inches (HxWxD), making it easy to slip into your pocket. A large, 3.7-inch HD screen with 480×800 resolution graces the front of the device. The responsive OLED touch screen features rich colors and is easy to use.

With a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 512 MB of RAM, and 8 GB of internal flash memory, the Droid Incredible delivers incredible performance, letting you run multiple applications. It includes an 8-megapixel camera with auto focus and 2x power LED flash, and also Google Maps Navigation, which provides GPS-based turn-by-turn voice guidance to get you where you need to go.

Related: more Curious Cat gadget posts – Apple’s iPad – Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard Using Wii Remote – Very Cool Wearable Computing Gadget from MIT – Cell phone Microscope

Google Prediction API

Posted on May 19, 2010  Comments (1)

This looks very cool.

The Prediction API enables access to Google’s machine learning algorithms to analyze your historic data and predict likely future outcomes. Upload your data to Google Storage for Developers, then use the Prediction API to make real-time decisions in your applications. The Prediction API implements supervised learning algorithms as a RESTful web service to let you leverage patterns in your data, providing more relevant information to your users. Run your predictions on Google’s infrastructure and scale effortlessly as your data grows in size and complexity.

Accessible from many platforms: Google App Engine, Apps Script (Google Spreadsheets), web & desktop apps, and command line.

The Prediction API supports CSV formatted training data, up to 100M in size. Numeric or unstructured text can be sent as input features, and discrete categories (up to a few hundred different ones) can be provided as output labels.

Uses:
Language identification
Customer sentiment analysis
Product recommendations & upsell opportunities
Diagnostics
Document and email classification
…

Related: The Second 5,000 Days of the Web – Robot Independently Applies the Scientific Method – Controlled Experiments for Software Solutions – Statistical Learning as the Ultimate Agile Development Tool by Peter Norvig

Google Social Circle Results

Posted on April 13, 2010  Comments (1)

I haven’t paid much attention to this before: Google showing results based on your social network. In genera,l I think Google is doing great stuff. Their approach to profiles, buzz, search wiki, and social stuff in general however, I find poor (extremely poorly when I see how well they do so much else). They are too borg-like in their insistence you do things exactly as proscribed by them. They opt you in far to often, in the way they want – completely and with few, if any, options. They don’t provide good tools to let you manage your profile and connections. The Google profile itself is extremely lame.

It is very silly that they don’t let you create personas you want to use and let you use them as you want. They force you to use the Google account you are logged in as to access Google services as the profile used in Google searches. I don’t want or need the 2 tied together. And I would much prefer a way to switch between my personas by search (or buzz [though I dropped it because it was so inflexible] or whatever). I know which persona I want for a specific search. This seems like a very obvious thing lots of people would want to do. Google’s whole monolithic, one-very-rigid-size-fits-all social solutions don’t allow this. It is a fundamental flaw. Without fixing the flexibility of social services from Google I see them having trouble succeeding in that area. On the other hand much else of what they do is fantastic.

The way their search wiki stuff works is very similar: inflexible. They seem focused on do it how we want which is not, I think, the way most people want. Their social solutions are very all or nothing. They want people to behave how Google wants. For that reason after short attempts to try Google’s social efforts I give up. I keep hoping they will become more flexible and user friendly but keep being disappointed.

This is the network of connections Google uses to identify relevant social search results. It is based on a combination of the following:

  • Direct connections from your Google chat buddies and contacts (5)
  • Direct connections from links listed on your Google profile (0) such as Twitter and FriendFeed
  • Secondary connections (252) that are publicly associated with your direct connections
  • In addition to web pages from your social circle, posts from your Google Reader subscriptions may also appear in your social search results.

Google Social Search is a feature designed to help you discover relevant publicly-accessible content from your social circle, a set of online friends and contacts. The idea is that content from your friends and social contacts is often more relevant to you than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from your best friend can be even better.

Related: Ideas for Improving Google (2006) – Web search improvement (2005) – Google Wave Developer Preview Webcast – Gmail Failure – Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices – post about Google, focused on management practices

See video on Google social search:
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Next steps for Google’s Experimental Fiber Network

Posted on March 26, 2010  Comments (2)

Think big with a gig: Google’s experimental fiber

Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible. We’ve urged the FCC to look at new and creative ways to get there in its National Broadband Plan – and today we’re announcing an experiment of our own.
…
We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

Next steps for our experimental fiber network

So what’s next? Over the coming months, we’ll be reviewing the responses to determine where to build. As we narrow down our choices, we’ll be conducting site visits, meeting with local officials and consulting with third-party organizations. Based on a rigorous review of the data, we will announce our target community or communities by the end of the year.

Of course, we’re not going to be able to build in every interested community — our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people with this experiment. Wherever we decide to build, we hope to learn lessons that will help improve Internet access everywhere.

This is another great idea from Google. Not only to push forward the much poorer internet connectivity those in the USA have than other countries but it will hopefully lead to some real engineering breakthroughs. And it is a smart move to increase Google’s potential income – a better internet experience (for users) will likely help Google quite a bit.

Related: Google’s Underwater Cables – Google Server Hardware Design – China’s Next Generation Internet – Net Neutrality: This is serious

Energy Secretary Steve Chu Speaks On Funding Science Research

Posted on November 11, 2009  Comments (2)

Energy Secretary Steve Chu (and Nobel Laureate) speaks with Google CEO Eric Schmidt about science research. One of the things Steve Chu is doing is funding high risk experiments that have great potential. This is something that is often said should be done but then people resort to safe investments in research. Taking these risks is a very good idea.

This is another example the remarkable way Google operates. The CEO actually understands science and the public good. Google also provides a huge amount of great material online in the form of webcasts of those speaking at Google. Google behaves like a company run by engineers. Other companies have engineers in positions of power but behave like companies run by any MBAs (whether they are lawyers, accountants, marketers or engineers).

Related: President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology – Scientists and Engineers in Congress – Eric Schmidt on Google, Education and Economics – Larry Page on How to Change the World – Diplomacy and Science Research – Google Investing Huge Sums in Renewable Energy and is Hiring

Google Uses Only Outside Air to Cool Data Center in Belgium

Posted on August 3, 2009  Comments (0)

Another example of what makes Google such a good engineering company. They do some spectacular things but as importantly they take many, many, many, many individual steps which when taken together make a big difference. Google’s Chiller-less Data Center

Rather than using chillers part-time, the company has eliminated them entirely in its data center near Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, which began operating in late 2008 and also features an on-site water purification facility that allows it to use water from a nearby industrial canal rather than a municipal water utility.

Year-Round Free Cooling
The climate in Belgium will support free cooling almost year-round, according to Google engineers, with temperatures rising above the acceptable range for free cooling about seven days per year on average. The average temperature in Brussels during summer reaches 66 to 71 degrees, while Google maintains its data centers at temperatures above 80 degrees.

So what happens if the weather gets hot? On those days, Google says it will turn off equipment as needed in Belgium and shift computing load to other data centers. This approach is made possible by the scope of the company’s global network of data centers, which provide the ability to shift an entire data center’s workload to other facilities.

Related: Data Center Energy Needs – engineering for a better environment – Google Aids Green Action

Google Wave Developer Preview Webcast

Posted on May 31, 2009  Comments (7)

Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. The presentation was given at Google I/O 2009. The demo shows what is possible in a HTML 5 browser. They are developing this as an open access project. The creative team is lead by the creators for Google Maps (brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen) and product manager Stephanie Hannon.

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Very cool stuff. The super easy blog interaction is great. And the user experience with notification and collaborative editing seems excellent. The playback feature to view changes seems good though that is still an area I worry about on heavily collaborative work. Hopefully they let you see like all change x person made, search changes…

They also have a very cool context sensitive spell checker that can highlight mis-spelled words that are another dictionary word but not right in the context used (about 44:30 in the webcast).

For software developer readers they also highly recommended the Google Web Development Kit, which they used heavily on this project.

Related: Joel Spolsky Webcast on Creating Social Web Resources – Read the Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog in 35 Languages – Larry Page and Sergey Brin Interview Webcast – Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.
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President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Posted on April 28, 2009  Comments (1)

Today, during remarks at the National Academy of Sciences, President Barack Obama announced the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

PCAST is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers who will advise the President and Vice President and formulate policy in the many areas where understanding of science, technology, and innovation is key to strengthening our economy and forming policy that works for the American people.

President Barack Obama said, “This council represents leaders from many scientific disciplines who will bring a diversity of experience and views. I will charge PCAST with advising me about national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation.”

PCAST will be co-chaired by John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Eric Lander, Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project; and Harold Varmus, President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, former head of the National Institutes of Health and a Nobel laureate.

Members of the council include: Shirley Ann Jackson, Craig Mundie, Eric Schmidt and Ahmed Zewail.

Related: Science and Engineering in Politics – Scientists and Engineers in Congress – John Conyers Against Open Science – China’s Technology Savvy Leadership

What is on the Other Side of Earth?

Posted on April 7, 2009  Comments (3)

Do you ever wonder what is on the exact opposite side of Earth? This website uses Google Maps to let you see: Antipodes Map. It also makes clear how much of the earth is covered in oceans. The entire continental USA is opposite ocean. Hawaii is opposite Botswana and Namibia. Hong Kong is opposite Argentina. Singapore opposite Ecuador. India, Ireland, Turkey, France and Egypt are among the many countries that opposite oceans. Madrid is opposite New Zealand.

Related: science facts – Microbes Beneath the Sea Floor – Cool Mechanical Simulation System

Google Server Hardware Design

Posted on April 4, 2009  Comments (5)

Ben Jai, Google Server Platform Architect, discusses the Google server hardware design. Google has designed their own servers since the beginning and shared details this week on that design. As we have written previously Google has focused a great deal on improving power efficiency.

Google uncloaks once-secret server

Google’s big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there’s a problem with the main source of electricity. The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers–each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts.
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Efficiency is another financial factor. Large UPSs can reach 92 to 95 percent efficiency, meaning that a large amount of power is squandered. The server-mounted batteries do better, Jai said: “We were able to measure our actual usage to greater than 99.9 percent efficiency.”

Related: Data Center Energy Needs – Reduce Computer Waste – Cost of Powering Your PC – Curious Cat Science and Engineering Search

Google Summer of Code 2009

Posted on March 22, 2009  Comments (1)

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. Google funds the program with $4,500 for each student (and pays the mentor organization $500). Google works with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects over a three month period.

Since its inception in 2005, the program has provided opportunities for nearly 2500 students, from nearly 100 countries. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

Google funded approximately 400 student projects in 2005, 600 in 2006, 900 in 2007 and 1125 in 2008 and will be funding approximately 1,000 student projects in 2009.

Applying for the program is only allowed from March 23rd through April 3rd. Still a short period of time but in previous years they have only taken them for one week. Organizations hosting students include: Creative Commons, MySQL, Debian, The Electronic Frontier Foundation/The Tor Project, haskell.org, Grameen Foundation USA, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Ruby on Rails, Wikimedia Foundation and WordPress. See the full list of organizations and link to descriptions of the projects each organization offers.

See the externs.com internship directory (another curiouscat.com ltd. site) for more opportunities including those in science and engineering.

Related: Google Summer of Code Projects 2008 – posts on fellowships and scholarships – Larry Page on How to Change the World – comic on programmers – Interview of Steve Wozniak

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