*michael parekh on IT*

ON CREATING NEW RULES FOR AUTOMATED BLOGS?

DRAWING LINES IN SHIFTING SANDS

(Update below in postscript)

Yesterday, I noticed a trackback on my post regarding "Truer Computers on a Stick" from this site called Gadgetism.  Being a gadget nut, I checked it out and lo and behold, there was a post on my post, with full attribution and links back to my site, but nothing else. 

But this site was very different.  It was obviously and technically a totally "feed" generated, automated blog site on gadgets.  It almost gleefully and openly admits "Feeding all about gadgets, toys, electronics and technology" in it sub-title.

It was very different from the site I complained about a few weeks ago that had plagiarized this post from my site without any attribution (see my posts on that here and here on the subject).  VC Fred Wilson had also had the same thing happen to him by the same site, since closed down.

Gadgetism above, seemed to algorithmically find posts on the web that talk about tech and gadgets, legitimately link to them, give those posts TOTAL, LEGITIMATE, AND COMPLETE ATTRIBUTION with links back to the original posts.

The site also seems to be optimally set up for monetizing through Google Adsense.  It's almost the perfect gentleman, automated "Automated Blog" site. 

Very different than the blog spam site above that plagiarized content without attribution and links back to the original.  Or is it still Blog spam?

What brought all this to mind was this timely post by Stephen Baker over at BusinessWeek's Blogspotting, titled "Google is at the heart of Blog spam"...he notes:

"Here's what spam bloggers do. They program computers to create hundreds or thousands of blogs, many of them on Google's free service, Blogger. Then they engineer them to rise to the top of search engines, principally Google. And they're designed to attract Adsense ads, provided by Google. It's an entire Google universe. Our hope is that the Google gang can come up with magical algorithms to corral this monster running loose in their kingdom."

Kind of like Gadgetism above.

The big question:  is this new, kinder, gentler, "no harm-no foul" kind of blog spam at all? 

Is it any different than a blogger finding a post manually that he/she likes on the web, and then posting it on his/her own site with attribution and links back (also monetized by Google Adsense?). 

And by having more blogs out there linking to each other, automated and/or human increases the chances of readers discovering the content that bloggers work so hard to create, right?

And no one seems to get hurt here, or do they?

In a way, it's almost the age-old plot-line conflict in science fiction stories about robots being good or evil vs. humans.

The classic example of course, is Isaac Asimov's I Robot.  I mean we could almost paraphrase Asimov's three laws of robotics for automated blogs.

Here are the original three laws of robotics (from wikipedia):

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Here are First Draft version of the three laws of Automated, Robotic Blogs:

1. An Automated Blog may not harm a human blog, or, through action or inaction, allow a human blog to come to harm.
2. An Automated must obey the rules of human blogs, including attribution links, trackbacks and tags to the post of origin, except where such linkage would conflict with the First Law.
3. An Automated Blog must protect its own existence and economic well-being, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

There...now is this automated blog objectionable or blog spam?  Or should be they drummed out of existence as certain forces attempted to do to robots in the "I Robot" universe? 

Dilemmas of a new age...

P.S.  If you've never read I Robot, I would most heartily recommend picking up a paperback, even if science fiction is not your regular cup of tea. 

If you saw the movie version and liked it, still pick up the book, because the movie was a total travesty of the original story.

If you didn't see the movie version, don't bother...you didn't miss much, in my humble opinion.

Postscript 2

Mark Cuban (Blog Maverick) has a good post on these automated blogs...he refers to them as Splogs. 

 

ON YAHOO! 360 OPENING UP TO OUTSIDE BLOGS

TRUST THE FORCE...

Got to hand it to Yahoo!  They've implemented an item I've wished for in the blogging services of the major portals.  In a post a few weeks ago titled "On the need for an Outlook for Blogs", I complained that Yahoo!'s beta blogging service called 360, had a walled garden approach, and wished they and others would start opening up to outside blogs that their users may have.

Well, as SiliconBeat reports on their blog,

Is it fair to say that the "walled garden'' concept is finally and officially dead? Yahoo tells us tonight that users of their Yahoo 360 blogging/networking service can now publish content to their personal pages from other blogging or bookmarking services, such as LiveJournal or del.icio.us, using RSS. What is more, 360 users will still be able to alert friends and family members of new content on their 360 pages, even if the content is from somewhere else.

Wanting to make sure, I went and checked on the Yahoo! 360 site...sure enough, there it was:

For starters, "Feeds" -- the kind that make it easy to share your original web content, regardless of where it lives on the Web. Now you can bring it all onto your Yahoo! 360˚ page to share with family and friends. Display updated posts from your blogs (Live Journal, Typepad, Xanga, and Wordpress), your Netflix movie queue or movie recommendations, and much, much more. You'll find the new "Feeds" module by clicking "My Page."

So, I did just that, and added this blog as a feed onto my Yahoo! 360 blog, and it works.

I admit, not much to see there yet, other than the feed from this blog, but I may end up doing more there, especially if Yahoo! continues to implement some of the other items on my wish list. 

Here are some of the other items on my wish list in my earlier post:

"There are seven key features that this "Outlook for Blogs" should have:

1. It should be web based, not client software based.  This way it's accessible via any PC, mobile device, phone, or other new internet-based gizmo that may come along down the pike.
2. The next key feature, especially if the service is offered by any of the four portal horsemen (YAGM, in no particular order)...MAKE SURE the service is NON-PARTISAN from a portal point of view.  It needs to work and play nice with the major offerings from all the blogging services.
3. The user name to the "uber-blog" should be personalizable, accessible, from anywhere on the web and/or blog directories, if the user chooses. This is likely going to be their identity on the web, and a "personal-portal" for others to connect to them, again, if they so choose.
4. Enable monetization mechanisms a la Adsense and Adwords to be managed on any of the external blogs and the uber-blog, again at the user's discretion.
5. Provide the ability for RSS-type feeds for any sub-blog or the uber-blog.
6. While we're at it, this "Outlook for Blogs" service should also allow the user to deal with user's Comments that the user posts on OTHER, external blogs.  Specifically, the "comments" service should:  (a)  automatically keep track of the comments that the user posts on other blogs, along with the CONTEXT of the original post/s that the user is commenting on...and, (b) allow these comments and context posts to be either POSTED or DISPLAYED on the blog of the user's choice via the "Outlook for Blogs" interface.
7. "Outlook for Blogs" should be search index crawlable...i.e., to facilitate, IF the user chooses, to have any and/or all of their choosing to be indexed on the various search engine index crawlers. This way, the content is accessible to the world, if so desired."

With yesterday's announcement, Yahoo! has provided items 2 and 5, which is more than the other blogging services from Microsoft, Google, etc. have done.

So Kudos to Yahoo! for listening to their customers.  As Yahoo!'s Brody said:

"The change came about from listening to users of the new 360 service, which is still in beta. "Many users have created blogs on LiveJournal or Xanga or elsewhere, and we recognize that,'' Brody said. "We want people to be able to have that on 360 and share it with the connections they made on 360.''

This is cool, non-evil stuff...bravo...keep it up!

P.S.  It's great to see one of the major portals starting to open their site...it'll be interesting to see if some of the non-portals like Amazon might follow suit...I had a hypothetical case on an Amazon blogging service here.

ON HOW LONG TO LOW-COST, NON-MICROSOFT MOBILE PCs?

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?

This post is catalyzed by the new "Pepper Pad", announced by a Northeastern start-up called Pepper.  It's not about the product per se, but what the very existence of the product potentially signifies. 

It may be the starting point of the shrinking value gap between Microsoft and non-Microsoft laden computing products, especially in the arena of mobile computing products: aka laptops, handtops, PDAs etc. 

I've most recently posted on similar product announcements from Nokia and Palm titled, "On Getting to Mobile PC Nirvana".

The Pepper product itself received a luke-warm review by Walter Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal, citing slightly fuzzy resolution, and somewhat slow and limited software.

Here's what grabbed me in terms of the product...it's a pretty darned complete package with wireless capability.  Note that although the product has just been announced, is only available via pre-orders from Amazon, so I'm only going by the product announcements.  But the features that caught my eye were:

1. Has Linux OS, 20MB hard drive (it's a start and not upgradeable),
2. 256MB RAM (also a beginning and not upgradeable),
3. a Mozilla/Firefox based web browser,
4. some basic apps (to be supplemented soon),
5. built-in QWERTY keyboard (this is huge...almost as big as blackberry with chiclet style qwerty keyboard almost killing the stylus-based palm)
6. built-in pointing device,
7. stylus for touch-sensitive screen, fairly large 8.4" color TFT screen with adequate 800x600 resolution (means can look at a web page without moving scroll bar left to right); but NO hand-writing recognition, which is fine, because it's not good enough anyway.
8. Wi-fi B (Ok, not as good as G, which is 3-4x faster, but fine for most applications) AND Bluetooth capable.
9. USB 1.1 slot (shoulda been 2.0 for faster transfers, but next version hopefully.
10. Integrated, rechargeable battery that chugs along up to 3 hours.
11. Light and small at 2.3 lbs, 12.1" x6.6" x.08".
12. Instant-on.

My favorite feature here is the split QWERTY keyboard on either side of the 8.4" screen.  I don't know how well it works, but it's a clever design.

I've long felt that tablet PCs of all types should have the mini keyboards pioneered by Blackberry and later emulated by Palm/Handspring's Treo 600/650.

All this for $850 list, or $799 at Amazon pre-order.  Yes, a pretty robust desktop PC for that WITH Microsoft Windows and other goodies, or a relatively basic laptop.

Compare this with the closest (in size and weight) Windows Tablet PC based product, the LS 800 by Motion Computing, which starts at $1900 and easily goes up to over $4000 when you finish adding additional options. I posted on Motion's LS800 a few days ago.

So although the Pepper Pad is not an inexpensive option, it very well may be over time, especially if bundled with online subscription services.  Other vendors, either in the US, or likely overseas will be coming out with similar products in rapid fashion over the next couple of years.

The current "holy grail" for low-cost computers is highlighted today by both philanthropic efforts like MIT Lab Nicholas Negroponte's drive for the sub $100 laptop for developing countries, and commercial efforts by entrepreneurs in developing countries like China, India and Brazil. 

The screen is the chief impediment here, as are some other components, not the least of which is the cost represented by Microsoft Windows operating system, and applications.  Those software products are typically priced as developed world prices even in the developing world.  This article in PC Sympathy clarifies the point:

The cost of Windows has remained fairly constant since 1995. During this period, the average cost of PCs plummeted. In February 2002, the average PC sold at retail in the United States cost around $720, according to NPDTechworld. In 1996, the average price of a PC was $2,000, according to IDC.

Depending on volume and discounts, PC manufacturers pay an estimated $65 to $90 per copy of Windows XP, which appears to have changed little since the release of Windows 95.

During that same period of time, the cost of other components decreased significantly, contributing to the reduction of PC prices. It's funny how sometimes percentages aren't needed to make a point; it takes no math whiz to see that $90 is a much higher percentage of $720 than it is of $2,000. So looked at this way, the cost of Windows has risen since 1995, since the operating system's cost as a percentage of the total PC cost has gone up.

An examination of Microsoft Office, which according to analysts estimates commands more than 90-percent share in its market, shows a similar trend.

Microsoft has lowered the price of Microsoft Office to as low as $125, but that's for a special "Students and Teachers" Bundle.  The regular versions still cost $200 and above depending on the version at retail. 

So with $65 minimum on OS and $125 minimum on the applications software, I get $190 vs. a $500+ PC.

The lowest cost PC with a monitor I can find on Dell today (and I know there are cheaper bundles), is the Dimension 2400 at $299, which includes ethernet connectivity, no wireless, Windows XP Home OS, no Microsoft applications, but a Corel Wordperfect bundle.  A similarly equipped entry-point Dell laptop, with a ethernet networking card starts at $545 after rebates.

But these prices with Microsoft software are still too high for much of the developing world, where per capita incomes are far lower than the $30,000 plus in the US.

Let's look at the rough math in all this. There are approximately 6 billion people on the planet, of which roughly 4 billion are either  in the "Developed" and/or "Rapidly Developing World".  Of that 4 billion, a little over 2 billion are represented by India and China, which obviously have huge economic promise over the next 2-3 decades; BUT those two countries still have collectively almost a billion and half folks today that are NOT on the economic development train and are clamoring to get on.  They can't YET afford $500-700 computers, but will give their eye-teeth to get their kids one, for their future.

If you add that billion and a half to the two billion that is left out of the "lucky" 4 billion, you get 3.5 billion, or over half the world's population that is likely want to get on into the digital age pretty pronto over the next few years.

Let's look at it another way...there are only a little under 700 million PC users globally today out of the 6 billion population.  That is expected to grow to a billion in five years.  Entrepreneurs in China and India recognize this.  China's Lenovo just bought IBM's PC business.  India's entrepreneurs are also focused on computers that cost under $300 with a monitor.

Microsoft recognizes that these countries and folks can't afford industrialized world pricing and is trying to do something about it,with an inexpensive, but restricted version of Windows , although it's half-hearted.  For instance, the start Windows does NOT include networking, in a world where networking is ALL the bang.

China, India, Brazil, and other developing countries are not going to wait long for full featured AND low-cost computers that are network capable, and already manufacture and assemble most of the "innovative", cool tech products we see here like the iPod et al. 

Companies like Pepper get most if not ALL their hardware components manufactured and assembled in Asia anyway. 

The only components missing until recently, were the software bits, and open source versions of all that are getting good enough with Linux-based initiatives.  Even Microsoft Office has an open source version of Office, compatible with Office documents, called OpenOffice (of course) that is pretty highly rated by folks like PC Magazine.

Microsoft and Intel created something pretty remarkable over the last 25 years.  An entire industry that was able to churn out RELATIVELY open computers and laptops that were ever cheaper in price and ever more powerful in performance, features and peripherals.

But it happened in some part because IBM slipped up and gave Microsoft the opportunity to own the software platform.  And while Microsoft created a near-monopoly around it, they also created a tremendous eco-system of application vendors, and hardware partners who all made some money off this new horizontally organized computer industry.  Companies like Dell ran with the ball and created wondrous manufacturing and distribution systems with a turbo-charged financial model. 

But it may all have been an aberration.  No one in their right mind is going to make the mistake of giving away another software monopoly, whether it's in the world of networked computers, handtops, PDAs, cell phones, TV cable boxes, personal digital video recorders and so on.  The IBM/Microsoft lesson has been too well learned.

We're more apt to see mistakes of companies giving away the store in areas other than software.  In fact, in the last decade, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo! collectively gave away the search store to a start up called Google, by using Google's search engine for their search services, while ALLOWING Google to build-up a separately branded, relatively open platform of their own.  The rest is history with Google's market cap being almost $90 billion to Yahoo!'s $46 billion, Time Warner (AOL) parent)'s $78 billion, and Microsoft-still-the-champ's $285 billion.

Regardless, companies like Google, Yahoo! et al, are increasingly providing network based and optimized versions of most of the applications that matter.

Apple has already taught us that leading market share can be built in new markets, but the game isn't as simple as just building the right piece of hardware anymore.  The iPod's market dominance from zero to 70% plus in less than five years comes from executing right on the hardware (iPod), software (iTunes) and networking win/win bargain created for music publishers and music buyers.

The winning sub-$500 mobile computing device may also require that kind of complicated platform building, probably more.

I've posted on Microsoft's interest in this market before.  But it's only a matter of time these non-Microsoft forces come together formally or by accident, with a Pepper Pad that does bring tears to Microsoft's eyes.

Whether they're tears of joy or sorrow depends on how they execute in building the more complicated and inexpensive mobile platform driven by Microsoft assets.

ON BLUETOOTH "ULTRASWARM FLOCKS" IN THE SKIES

COME FLY WITH ME...

One of the most popular posts on this site since its inception was a piece titled "On Google Taking to the Skies".  It talked about the mapping race being engaged in by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo! et al, gathering momentum. 

It's in that context that this article by David Pescovitz in thefeature.com (courtesy of Boing Boing), caught my eye...with a title like "Flocks of flying bluetooth robots may soon take to the skies for a distributed bird's eye view", how could it not?  An excerpt:

A typical flock of 2,000 starlings contains as much brain tissue as a single human being. Of course, you can't link together bird brains. Not real birds, anyway. But a small group of roboticists at the University of Essex are designing a system to wirelessly network a swarm of tiny, Bluetooth-enabled unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) into a cluster of flying computers acting as one processor more powerful than the sum of its bots.

Someday, flocks of shoebox-sized UAVs called UltraSwarms could act as a distributed eye in the sky, monitoring highway traffic, aiding in crowd control or even entertainment at massive sports arenas or, of course, embarking on military surveillance missions. Much of the data they gather -- video from onboard cameras, for example -- will be dealt with in the sky, delivering only "news you can use" to a central command.

For any of these applications to fly though, the researchers must weave together two threads in computer science research: cluster computing and swarm intelligence. They're presenting a scientific paper (PDF) about the project at the 2005 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Conference this week in Pasadena, California.

Google is already raising the ante according to SiliconValleyWatcher.com in the 3D mapping race:

Google plans to use trucks equipped with lasers and digital photographic equipment to create a realistic 3D online version of San Francisco, and eventually other major US cities.

The move would trump Amazon's A9 service, which offers two-dimensional photos of buildings on US city streets.

The trucks would drive along every San Francisco street using the lasers to measure the dimensions of buildings, to create a 3D framework onto which digital photos can be mapped. This would complement the mostly top-down view of San Francisco available through Google's Keyhole satellite photo application.

The goal is to create similar 3D online versions of other cities in the US and overseas.

Given this interest, the portals could soon be creating their own ultraswarms around these scientists across the pond.  And then, we could see these search swarms crawling the skies much like the search crawlers swarm the web today...

 

 

ON POPPING VIRTUAL BUBBLE WRAP

POP GOES THE WEASEL!

My mom can't get enough of popping Bubble Wrap whenever she comes stateside...it's one of her favorite things to do...

Thus my eyes popped when I clicked this link courtesy of Feld Thoughts (thanks, Brad).  I especially like the "Manic Mode", where all you have to do is run the cursor across the bubbles. 

The more official version, with more options, and bells and whistles, can be found here at this second site, courtesy of Sealed Air, the makers of the original stuff.  It's going to be a great, second, post-mother's day present.  And my three-ish year old nephew Neal here will also likely volunteer to help pop the bubbles in his own version of "manic mode".

He'll likely do it singing his favorite song referenced in the sub-title above.

There's also this third site that's also trying to make itself and Google some money through Adsense; they have some additional fun options around virtual bubble wrap like virtual bubble e-cards that can be sent to friends and family...

Finally, if you're too lazy to pop the bubbles yourself, here's a fourth site that offers "perpetual, virtual bubble wrap", for your infinite popping pleasure...
also worth a peek if you're really into this silliness.

Yes, all very silly, but effective against minor, daily stress...just turn the speakers down low if you're sharing your PC space...highly recommended.

p.s. if you're addicted enough to want this on the go, here's a freeware version for your Palm and/or Treo.

ON STEM CELL CLONING RESEARCH, U.S. vs. THEM

WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY

It's a startling coincidence to see two headlines on an insanely important subject for human-kind, on the same day, representing the opposite ends of a scientific and ethical tug-of-war in this country and abroad. 

From the New York Times (subscription required), we have this headline and introduction by Gina Kolata:

South Koreans Streamline Cloning of Human Embryos

In what scientists say is a stunning leap forward, a team of South Korean researchers has developed a highly efficient recipe for producing human embryos by cloning and then extracting their stem cells.

Writing today in the journal Science, they report that they used their method to produce 11 human stem cells lines that are genetic matches of patients aged 2 to 56.

Previously, the same group, led by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, produced a single stem cell line from a cloned embryo, but the process was so onerous that scientists said it was not worth trying to repeat it, and some doubted the South Koreans' report was even correct.

Now things have changed.

"It is a tremendous advance," said Dr. Leonard Zon, a stem cell researcher at Harvard Medical School and president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, who was not involved in the research.

Then, you have this other story in Slate, titled "Clone of Silence, Stem cells, loaded words and the New York Times", by William Saletan.  It's focus is on the interpretation and semantics of "cloning stem cell research" by politicians and various US newspapers that are covering this important story, trying to dance around knotted constituencies, and discussed in mind-numbing and banal detail...e.g., the article starts:

Last week, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney proposed four amendments to a bill supporting stem cell research. The Boston Globe headlined the story, "Romney urges changes to stem cell bill—Adds amendment to prohibit cloning." The Globe's fourth paragraph explained, "The governor has echoed the hopes of many that stem cell research may one day find treatments for diseases, and he shares the conviction that the research is important to the state … But the governor has split with a large majority in the Legislature over cloning human cells." If you read the Globe, you get the impression Romney supports stem cell research but opposes cloning.

That isn't the impression you get if you read the New York Times. The Times' report on the same proposal never mentioned cloning. "New Limits Are Proposed for Research on Stem Cells," said the headline. The lede paragraph explained only that Romney proposed "excluding a type of embryonic stem cell research" (ESCR). The story never mentioned that Romney supported ESCR apart from cloning.

It's a story that would make Bill Clinton of the definition of "is" fame, proud.

If there ever was an illustration of the action speaking louder than words, this story of two stories in two parts of the world is it.

ON OPEN MEDIA NETWORKS, APPLE, AND INTERNET VIDEO

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME?

In a post titled "On emergent Internet Pulp Fiction and Distribution Networks", May 1 2005, I highlighted non-profit Open Media Networks (OMN) as one of the new and many distribution networks that emerging to provide viable, efficient, and economical video distribution over the Internet.  One of the founders of that organization is Mike Homer (formerly of Apple, Go, Netscape and AOL), who is also the chairman of Kontiki, a provider of platforms for peer to peer internet content delivery.

Business 2.0 (subscription required) has an interesting interview with Mike regarding both efforts.  One thing that becomes clear reading the piece is that much of the technology and economics around video distribution have almost been worked out to be doable and affordable by mainstream consumers.  Mike notes:

Say you have a TV show that's 500 megabytes, which is typical. It costs anywhere from 20 to 50 cents to deliver that from a traditional website. Well, if you want to charge $1.99 for that show, the delivery cost represents a significant part of what's left after the producer's royalty. OMN can deliver that 500MB package for around 2 cents. The cost of delivery is just radically lower.

The enabler for the OMN service is Kontiki's "grid network" technology as Mike describes it:

I call it peer-to-peer plus. In a peer-to-peer system, one PC delivers content to another PC. In newer systems like BitTorrent, multiple PCs deliver the content -- but it's still only PCs. The main "plus" of grid delivery is dedicated servers. That collection of PCs and servers gives you a network -- a grid -- that ensures reliability.

The major gating factor now seems to be, surprise, surprise, the availability of lots of affordable, and LEGAL video content.  As Mike says:

The thing that gates it is the availability of popular content. It's exactly what happened in the music industry: No one really wants to be first out on the Internet. It's time either for Steve Jobs to show up with an iTunes for video or for somebody else who has major popular content to make it available. I think once that happens, the floodgates are open. When iTunes came out, after that there were 20 music stores in 20 months.

Well, if the industry is waiting for Apple and Steve Jobs to do something on the video front besides Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft's MSN and many, many others, it may not be too long a wait.  Anticipation is high after the most recent upgrade to iTunes, version 4.8 now allows video files to be displayed and played via the iTunes store (click for larger image).

The date to watch is June 6th, when Steve Jobs kicks off Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco at 10am.  We may get an announcement on iTunes for video, and perhaps even the long-awaited Apple Motorola iPod cellphone to watch videos on...gee, I'd better set my alarm clock now on my soon-to-be eBayed iPod Photo...

ON MAKING YOUR MOM CRY ON MOTHER'S DAY

MOM'S THE WORD...

I remember when my sister and I first introduced our mom to the western notion of "Mother's Day" a few years ago, she was confused and flustered at all the sudden attention.  Being from India, her notion of being a mother was as fundamental as breathing.  It puzzled her to no end that somehow what she's done all her adult life in raising the two of us, meant that we should recognize her for it on her own "special day" in the year.

As this excerpt from "The Hindu" columnist Tishani Doshi eloquently explains:

Central to the concept of the mother in India is the idea of sacrifice...

The nation itself has always been mother. The entire topography of the country is dominated by the feminine; every tree, river, mountain, stream, language, claims a feminine descent.

We have an ongoing love affair with the word mother. The very word mother, uttered in any Indian language, comes packed with such powerful intonations, that if used in the right circumstances, could make the grizzliest of men sink to his knees and weep. 

The word for mother in Hindi, "Ma", is the favorite word for every male Indian actor in Bollywood movies, a sure-fire opportunity to draw a tear or two from the audience, and to demonstrate their thespian chops.

So, when my sister and I first "made a fuss", on that first Mother's Day celebration, and explained the western origins and tradition of Mother's Day, she looked at both of us a few seconds, and burst into tears.

Of course, we were flabbergasted...thinking maybe we hadn't explained it correctly.  I thought maybe I'd committed some Hindu faux pas.  Growing up abroad all my life, and having left our home in the middle east for the US at the age of 17, I admit I'm a little rusty on many Indian traditions and customs.

We were relieved a second or two later, to see her smile, and then laugh...and proceed to give us both hugs.  The rest of the day flew by with less drama and lots of laughter, stories, and some more happy tears.

So, for your mom and mine, I'd like to introduce you to Devi Mata, the Hindu Goddess of Existence, and the manifestations of all forms of Mother.  As this excellent web-site on  "the discovery of God in the feminine form - the Goddess; the Divine Mother" explains in detail,

"In India the Great Goddess in general is often referred to as Devi. Devi is the sum of all manifestations or forms of the Mother. All forms be they Lakshmi, Kali, or Durga are forms of Devi. As Jaganmata, or Mother of the universe, she assumes cosmic proportions, destroying evil and ever creating and dissolving universes. She is One and she is many. In some forms she is benign and gentle and in other forms she is dynamic and ferocious."

(In the spirit of full disclosure, and since my sister will point it out anyway,  I acknowledge I'm posting this picture of DeviMata in order to win points with my mom, who thinks I don't pay as much attention to Hindu culture, history, and religion as I should.)

I'm going for double points by also introducing you to her favorite Indian Goddess, Lakshmi, the Goddess of Prosperity and Wealth. 

This mother's day is especially special for my mom since it's the first since I got married last year.  In Hindu tradition, the son's wife is considered the "Lakshmi" of the family.  So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the first words from  my mom when I called her to wish her a Happy Mother's Day, were, "Thank you...can I talk to Jennifer now?"  My wife of course won't let me forget that all day today.  I guess it's my turn to cry...

P.S.  The role of mother goddesses is universal across all cultures through history.  The site above has a comprehensive and fascinating list of these various incarnations.  Highly recommended on this special day.

"Jai Mata!"  (Praise be to Mother)

ON SOFTWARE GRADING ESSAYS

"OPEN THE FACULTY ROOM DOOR PLEASE, PROFESSOR DAVE"...

Over the past few years, most of us are used to taking computerized tests that involve multiple choice, and/or yes/no answers.  From the BBC comes this article titled " Essays marked by computer program"...it goes on:

Computers are being used to mark American university students' essays in a project which could radically alter the teaching role of academics.

It continues:

Qualrus, a program developed at the University of Missouri, offers instant feedback on even complex subjects.

It picks up word patterns, from which it can tell whether students' arguments are sound, and gives the essay a score.

Its developer, Professor Edward Brent, says Qualrus will save staff hundreds of hours of marking time.

The article goes on to provide the positives of Halrus, I mean Qualrus, by Professor Brent, including comments like:

"We rarely disagree with what the program has said."...and...

"It makes our job more interesting because we don't have to deal so much with the facts and can concentrate more on thinking."

With obvious implications for traditional education and distance learning, there are also near-term implications for teaching assistants, who in US institutions of higher learning historically have relied on foreign students from countries like China, India and others.  Hm mm...work being outsourced from Indians to computers...quick, call Lou Dobbs!

However, as has been mentioned in other posts on this site ("Give us your Educated" and "For better or worse") and as seen in this article from indiadaily.com, the US is increasingly less attractive place for foreign students anyway.  In that context, technology like Qualrus, couldn't be more timely, to help alleviate the "foreign brain drain" for US colleges and universities.

 

 

ON TODAY'S BROADBAND LIMITATIONS

WALK BEFORE WE RUN...

A few days ago, my wife's laptop drive crashed while on a business trip to London.  Having secured another PC, she called asking me to send her backup files as quickly as possible for some meetings in the morning.  No problem, I said, with my state of the art PC, and premium broadband service from Verizon, I should be able to send the 8 gigabyte set of files in short order.   

Five hours later, after having explored and subscribed to a range of third party services, that cumulatively cost over $200, I was able to send the necessary files to her.  She then took another three hours downloading the zipped files over her hotel "broadband" connection.  Essentially an all-nighter for her and an all-evening for me.   (The picture is of a British Telecom "Broadband" phone booth by Davido from Flickr...click the link for a larger image).

The experience hammered home a critical fact about today's broadband...although we're so better off from the days of dial-up, and can download music off the internet pretty easily, we've got a long way to go in sending digital data to other people; the bottlenecks include:

1.  upload limits put on by broadband providers,
2.  attachment limits put on by email providers,
3.  storage limits and charges by online hosting services,
4.  the limits of some of the prevalently used software, and
5.  the latencies driven by multi-node nature of the Internet itself. 

If you're curious about your broadband speed, both up and down, test it here at DSLreports. 

So, the broadband picture is murkier than it looks on the surface.  First, let's look at the broader broadband surface.

From Tom's Hardware, here is a good snapshot of the current status of wired broadband deployment in the US and abroad.  We've come a long way from dial-up over the last decade, crawling before we could walk.

Not many surprises overall in the report, but some observations that may be interest:

1.  Although the US is not in the top ten broadband countries, it still leads in absolute number of lines, although China is a rapidly closing second.
2.  As expected, South Korea and Japan rank up there in both density and absolute numbers.
3.  Europe is still lagging in relative terms.
4.  Not surprisingly, due to relative strength of telco monopolies/oligopolies and the relative under-penetration by cable overseas, DSL leads cable modems in most markets.

The report is excerpted below for those interested in the specific data:

Broadband continues its rapid growth: 26.5 million new lines were installed in the second have of 2004 alone, bringing the total number to 150.5 million. By the end of this year, there will be more than 215 million active broadband accounts, market researchers said.

Point-Topic, a British market research firm that tracks the worldwide development of broadband connections, reported high-speed Internet connections to gain popularity at an increasing speed. For 2004, more than 50 million new lines were installed on a worldwide basis, breaking the 150-million mark by the end of last year. Between July and December, 26.5 million new accounts were activated, representing the biggest half-year worldwide increase to date, according to Point-Topic.

The United States remain the world's largest broadband country with 33.9 million lines. China and Japan however are closing. China added more than 6.6 million new lines in the second half of 2004, bringing the total to 25.8 million. Japan reported 18.1 million lines and South Korea 11.9 million. Germany leads total broadband installations in Europe with 6.9 million lines, but showed slower growth than France and the UK, which now have 6.8 million and 6.1 million lines, respectively.

DSL has a majority 62 percent of world broadband market share compared to a 38 percent share made up of cable modem and other technologies. DSL outpaced cable also in US with 20.1 percent compared to 13.8 percent growth in installations in the second half of 2004. However, cable modems are still the dominant broadband type in the US with 20.2 million lines (DSL: 13.7 million).

In terms of market penetration, the US did not make it into the top-10 broadband nations. South Korea leads the ranking with 24.8 broadband lines per 100 people, followed by Hong Kong with 21.9 and the Netherlands with 19.

Point-Topic analysts said they expect growth of broadband to decline in percentage terms, but increase in the absolute number of lines added for the foreseeable time. By the end of this year, total broadband installations will have reached 215 million (140 million DSL lines), according to Point-Topic.

Although these types of reports are helpful, it'd be more useful to see additional, practical data points measured in future surveys.  Specifically:

1.  What are the average speeds (downstream and up) prevalent in each country at the average mass market pricing?

2.  How do the various countries and regions rank on the average speed metric?

3.  What is the ranking on the upstream metric? This can indicate higher prevalence of consumer driven content traffic.

4.  What is the ranking globally on monthly price of broadband?

Second, although the world has come a long way from dial-up, we still have a long way to go on broadband deployment.  Today's speeds already feel like dial-up speeds did a decade ago, when it comes to uploading and sharing large files.   Xdrive, a provider of online storage and backup services, has a good explanation on the limits of uploading in today's broadband environment.  This then makes you feel a little bit better rationalizing how much you'll have to pay for their services...to be fair, their prices though high, are representative of the industry at the current time.  These costs for moving your files around are likely to come down once you apply Google's server farm economics, and paid-search based revenues to the equation, much as they have for email storage.  This is even more imminent since Google hinted at providing personal video services a few days ago...and competitors will likely follow.

Increasingly, these files have less to do with illegal file-sharing and more to do with legitimate, consumer originated content like photos, movies, general data,  and "fair use" music sharing.  A lot of data traffic will be generated just to keep back ups and for convenience purposes.  Examples of this would include consumers wanting to back up their music collections in multiple locations, consume that music on various types of cell phones, PDAs, and other devices in different locations.  Other examples include sharing photos and videos with friends and family around the world.

These files are increasingly taking on multi-gigabyte proportions.  Even at a time, when web-based email services like Google and Yahoo! are providing up to 2 gigabytes of storage free, it's increasingly taking hours just to upload that much data to the servers due to upstream restrictions on today's broadband.  And it's not just about how much broadband you've got...most Internet (Yahoo!, Google, MSN, AOL and the like) and corporate email systems limit attachments to 10 megabytes or less.  You have to revert to new, third party services like Streamload to send bigger attachments and pay extra to store bigger amounts of data online for downloads by friends and families.  This consumer machine to machine (M2M) traffic is going to be different than enterprise and governmental M2M traffic; it will have high redundancy, will often be less efficiently routed, and will be a constant challenge to cost and price accurately given the myriad carriers, portals, service, device, storage, software, and content providers involved.

Download speeds also have to increase substantially to achieve the true promise of video over the Internet.  And of course, we've said nothing here about wireless broadband, which has it own sets of issues and opportunities. 

Finally, wireless could be an even better solution longer term under a changed regulatory environment of open spectrum, explained eloquently here.  Potentially, software-defined radios(SDRs)  have meaningful cost and performance advantages vs. today's electronic radios for consumer and commercial applications. 

But making regulatory changes, especially curtailing or dissolving federal programs and entities like the FCC are more likely to happen when hell freezes over, or more likely, when technology and consumer forces make it massively, politically  obvious that the need for spectrum allocation has come and gone.   

Until then, wired and/or wireless, it'll be another long decade trudging to broadband nirvana...