I just finished and submitted the last project of the course for the term! Yes, I'm finally done, and can relax for the Christmas holidays. I really need a break, I've been working really hard, it's been a crazy term with 2 courses, 2 projects, PhD depth oral, and TAing. But, I've made it through all the stress, all the pain, and have sweated it all out. Now, it's time to relax and enjoy the holidays!
On Technorati: Christmas holidays
Friday, December 22, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
One more project to go!
I've finished writing the final exam for the last course of my PhD, yay! I've also finished a project, and I still have to finish one more project, before the holidays start for me. Can't wait for the holidays to start!
I found this new social networking site, called Socialight where you can create sticky notes on a mash-up using Google Maps of places, and create channels and find people to create social networks. I just signed up, to explore what Socialight is all about, and since it's something related to my PhD research, I decided to try it out and create a sticky note of where I work.
On Technorati: social network, Google Maps, Socialight
I found this new social networking site, called Socialight where you can create sticky notes on a mash-up using Google Maps of places, and create channels and find people to create social networks. I just signed up, to explore what Socialight is all about, and since it's something related to my PhD research, I decided to try it out and create a sticky note of where I work.
On Technorati: social network, Google Maps, Socialight
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Satyanarayanan talk
I'm connected on wireless and ready to blog!
Towards Seamless Mobility on Pervasive Hardware
M. Satyanarayanan
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Satya is now talking. Ah yes, Satya is taking back us now 10-15 years ago, I see what he's going to say, it's the dream of mobile computing which we have accomplished. We have arrived at this stage because of the phenomenal hardware progress. The first portable hardware (albeit very large) was the Compaq Luggable. Also, we have had great progress with networking and communications, with Wi-Fi being ubiquitous. What else is going to happen in the world? Computers have gotten really cheap now, the hardware is almost free. How will almost-free hardware change our world? Just like how free software (open source) has significantly changed the software development and software landscape. Satya says that almost-free hardware will lead to seamless mobility. He's now comparing things that are portable and pervasive, the difference between "carry" and "find". Air is pervasive, light is pervasive, water is pervasive (or could be portable if you bring from home). There are many resources that have become part of our daily lives (ie. pervasive). Pre-2000, the phone was pervasive in that you could find public phones everywhere. Now (post-2000), the phone has become portable. Personal computing is now portable. What personal computing will be, it will become pervasive. So, the key observation is that "find" means the resource is available at all visited locations, and "carry" means there is reasonable doubt or risk at least at one location. Can we achieve the same transformation (that ubiquity can substitute for portability) with personal computing? This is a more harder problem, and has interesting research issues.
The observation is that laptops can be suspended and resumed, using the same laptop. For example, I bring my laptop on the GO train and I work on it, then I put it in suspend mode, and when I come back home, I can open the laptop and continue the work where I left off (like for example my depth oral document which I passed! :)). So, the question is that can we mimic this suspend/resume mode of laptops with personal computing, so that I can continue where I left off but using a different device and not the same laptop. This is similar to what my Masters thesis dealt with, which was addressing service invocation and roaming in pervasive-computing environments, being able to continue accessing a service without interruption when moving to a different network or different location. Personal productivity applications have ballooned because customization is what people do to make their computer their own, and make them most productive.
If we go back to the past with timesharing, what is missing in today's world, is that in the past with mainframes, you could use any "dumb" terminal. This is kind of similar to Sun's SunRay product, where all the resources are on the network and you just log in to any SunRay computer using a smart card and login and get access to your resources and data. So, the challenge is that we maintain the good aspects of the personal computing world, and combine that with being able to utilize resources from anywhere and seamless access data. Why does seamless mobility matter? When there is a glut of information, there is a scarcity of attention, this was made by Herb Simon, a former colleague of Satya's. Human attention is finite when talking about cognitive tasks. Seamless means having to be familiar, which has low distraction, which translates to higher productivity. Ah, yes, he finally mentioned Mark Weiser, I was waiting for that. Higher productivity happens when the seamless becomes ubiquitous in the sense that the cognitive aspect is very low. Any technology that is going to be ubiquitous, needs to be resilient and low maintenance.
So, how do we achieve this seamlessness so that it sinks below our cognition, and just comes naturally. One approach is to use a thin client, like SunRay and VNC. The thin client approach is good except it is not resilient to the network. Another approach is distributed file system. It can be very resilient with network failures, but they are imperfect with respect to ubiquity and seamlessness. Process migration can also be used but have low ubiquity. Language-based mobility is high in seamlessness but medium in the rest of the features. What are the features for an ideal solution? We need high seamlessness, solution generality, network resilience, ubiquity, volume of state xfer, and solution complexity.
This is where Satya proposes using internet suspend/resume. So, the vision is suspend anywhere, resume anywhere, and that "any computer is your computer", your entire personal state is centrally managed. Their strategy is to layer a virtual machine on a distributed file system. Virtual machine technology has largely matured over 5 years. The ISR client architecture looks like the following:
--------------------------
| Guest Aps |
| guest os |
| virtual machine |
| virtual machine monitor |
| isr client code |
| linux |
| x86 box |
|
ISR storage and control servers
The client architecture also uses portable storage like a USB key, so you store your state on your USB keychain. How they do it is to use lookaside caching. Using portable storage is more robust, according to him. They have started the ISR project since 2001 and has gone through 3 stages. They are not looking at the testing the deployment of ISR with users. A new version of the system is being created called OpenISR that is agnostic to the virtual machine, use a transient thin client mode (which is being developed together with Eyal de Lara and Andres Lagar-Cavilla at U of T), guest-aware migration, cross-parcel data sharing, and trust sniffers.
He's passed through the performance slides, because he's running out of time.
"The most successful technologies have low usage complexity, in spite of substantial internal complexity" - Alfred Spector, VP of Software Systems and Services, IBM Research, October 2003, ACM SOSP Invited Lecture
He says that ISR fits this description perfectly, and naive users "get it", the look and feel of the PC is preserved. The wallet is a good example in that, we need to think "wallet", and not "swiss army knife" which is what the mobile computing world is going to (eg. cell phone, camera, video into the same device).
An important question is that now we see web-based applications like GMail and Google Spreadsheets and Documents and AJAX application. Does this hurt ISR? Satya's response is that the web-based applications require instant connection to the network, whereas with ISR, you can continue working on your own device because there will be disconnected operations. Isn't that what pervasive and ubiquitous computing is all about, being able to work disconnected like I am right now (with no internet access) or when I'm connected (like I'm returning back to my office)?
On Technorati: Satya, ISR, Internet Suspend/Resume, pervasive computing
Towards Seamless Mobility on Pervasive Hardware
M. Satyanarayanan
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Satya is now talking. Ah yes, Satya is taking back us now 10-15 years ago, I see what he's going to say, it's the dream of mobile computing which we have accomplished. We have arrived at this stage because of the phenomenal hardware progress. The first portable hardware (albeit very large) was the Compaq Luggable. Also, we have had great progress with networking and communications, with Wi-Fi being ubiquitous. What else is going to happen in the world? Computers have gotten really cheap now, the hardware is almost free. How will almost-free hardware change our world? Just like how free software (open source) has significantly changed the software development and software landscape. Satya says that almost-free hardware will lead to seamless mobility. He's now comparing things that are portable and pervasive, the difference between "carry" and "find". Air is pervasive, light is pervasive, water is pervasive (or could be portable if you bring from home). There are many resources that have become part of our daily lives (ie. pervasive). Pre-2000, the phone was pervasive in that you could find public phones everywhere. Now (post-2000), the phone has become portable. Personal computing is now portable. What personal computing will be, it will become pervasive. So, the key observation is that "find" means the resource is available at all visited locations, and "carry" means there is reasonable doubt or risk at least at one location. Can we achieve the same transformation (that ubiquity can substitute for portability) with personal computing? This is a more harder problem, and has interesting research issues.
The observation is that laptops can be suspended and resumed, using the same laptop. For example, I bring my laptop on the GO train and I work on it, then I put it in suspend mode, and when I come back home, I can open the laptop and continue the work where I left off (like for example my depth oral document which I passed! :)). So, the question is that can we mimic this suspend/resume mode of laptops with personal computing, so that I can continue where I left off but using a different device and not the same laptop. This is similar to what my Masters thesis dealt with, which was addressing service invocation and roaming in pervasive-computing environments, being able to continue accessing a service without interruption when moving to a different network or different location. Personal productivity applications have ballooned because customization is what people do to make their computer their own, and make them most productive.
If we go back to the past with timesharing, what is missing in today's world, is that in the past with mainframes, you could use any "dumb" terminal. This is kind of similar to Sun's SunRay product, where all the resources are on the network and you just log in to any SunRay computer using a smart card and login and get access to your resources and data. So, the challenge is that we maintain the good aspects of the personal computing world, and combine that with being able to utilize resources from anywhere and seamless access data. Why does seamless mobility matter? When there is a glut of information, there is a scarcity of attention, this was made by Herb Simon, a former colleague of Satya's. Human attention is finite when talking about cognitive tasks. Seamless means having to be familiar, which has low distraction, which translates to higher productivity. Ah, yes, he finally mentioned Mark Weiser, I was waiting for that. Higher productivity happens when the seamless becomes ubiquitous in the sense that the cognitive aspect is very low. Any technology that is going to be ubiquitous, needs to be resilient and low maintenance.
So, how do we achieve this seamlessness so that it sinks below our cognition, and just comes naturally. One approach is to use a thin client, like SunRay and VNC. The thin client approach is good except it is not resilient to the network. Another approach is distributed file system. It can be very resilient with network failures, but they are imperfect with respect to ubiquity and seamlessness. Process migration can also be used but have low ubiquity. Language-based mobility is high in seamlessness but medium in the rest of the features. What are the features for an ideal solution? We need high seamlessness, solution generality, network resilience, ubiquity, volume of state xfer, and solution complexity.
This is where Satya proposes using internet suspend/resume. So, the vision is suspend anywhere, resume anywhere, and that "any computer is your computer", your entire personal state is centrally managed. Their strategy is to layer a virtual machine on a distributed file system. Virtual machine technology has largely matured over 5 years. The ISR client architecture looks like the following:
--------------------------
| Guest Aps |
| guest os |
| virtual machine |
| virtual machine monitor |
| isr client code |
| linux |
| x86 box |
|
ISR storage and control servers
The client architecture also uses portable storage like a USB key, so you store your state on your USB keychain. How they do it is to use lookaside caching. Using portable storage is more robust, according to him. They have started the ISR project since 2001 and has gone through 3 stages. They are not looking at the testing the deployment of ISR with users. A new version of the system is being created called OpenISR that is agnostic to the virtual machine, use a transient thin client mode (which is being developed together with Eyal de Lara and Andres Lagar-Cavilla at U of T), guest-aware migration, cross-parcel data sharing, and trust sniffers.
He's passed through the performance slides, because he's running out of time.
"The most successful technologies have low usage complexity, in spite of substantial internal complexity" - Alfred Spector, VP of Software Systems and Services, IBM Research, October 2003, ACM SOSP Invited Lecture
He says that ISR fits this description perfectly, and naive users "get it", the look and feel of the PC is preserved. The wallet is a good example in that, we need to think "wallet", and not "swiss army knife" which is what the mobile computing world is going to (eg. cell phone, camera, video into the same device).
An important question is that now we see web-based applications like GMail and Google Spreadsheets and Documents and AJAX application. Does this hurt ISR? Satya's response is that the web-based applications require instant connection to the network, whereas with ISR, you can continue working on your own device because there will be disconnected operations. Isn't that what pervasive and ubiquitous computing is all about, being able to work disconnected like I am right now (with no internet access) or when I'm connected (like I'm returning back to my office)?
On Technorati: Satya, ISR, Internet Suspend/Resume, pervasive computing
Satya comes to town
You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why. Satyanarayanan is coming to town. Yes, that's right, Mahadev Satyanarayanan, the most prominent researcher in pervasive computing, and I would say the #2 man behind Mark Weiser, is coming to U of T this morning at 11 am for a talk. I've read lots of articles from Satya, especially his seminal paper on the issues with pervasive computing, his work with Coda, and Odyssey. He's also the founding editor of IEEE Pervasive Computing. It's finally great to have him hear him, I've always wanted to hear him and admire his work, and dedication to the pervasive computing field.
Here's his bio:
Satya is an experimental computer scientist who has pioneered research
in mobile and pervasive computing. One outcome is the open-source Coda
File System, which supports distributed file access in low-bandwidth and
intermittent wireless networks through disconnected and
bandwidth-adaptive operation. The Coda concepts of hoarding,
reintegration and application-specific conflict resolution can be found
in the hotsync capability of PDAs today. Key ideas from Coda have been
incorporated by Microsoft into the IntelliMirror component of Windows
2000 and the Cached Exchange Mode of Outlook 2003. Another outcome of
Satya's work is Odyssey, a set of open-source operating system
extensions that enable mobile applications to adapt to variation in
critical resources such as network bandwidth and energy. Coda and
Odyssey are building blocks in Project Aura, a research initiative at
Carnegie Mellon to explore distraction-free ubiquitous computing. His
most recent work in this space is Internet Suspend/Resume, a hands-free
approach to mobile computing that exploits virtual machine technology to
liberate personal computing state from hardware. Satya is a co-inventor
of many supporting technologies relevant to mobile and pervasive
computing, such as data staging, lookaside caching, translucent caching
and application-aware adaptation. He is also a co-inventor of the
Diamond approach to interactive, non-indexed search of complex and
loosely-organized data such as digital photographs and medical images.
Early in his career, Satya was a principal architect and implementor of
the Andrew File System (AFS) which pioneered the use of scalable file
caching, ACL-based security, and volume-based system administration for
enterprise-scale information sharing. AFS was commercialized by IBM, is
in widespread use today as OpenAFS, and has heavily influenced the NFS
v4 network file system protocol standard that was published in April
2003.
Satya is the Carnegie Group Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie
Mellon University. From May 2001 to May 2004 he served as the founding
director of Intel Research Pittsburgh, one of four university-affiliated
research labs established worldwide by Intel to create disruptive
information technologies through its Open Collaborative Research model.
Satya received the PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon, after
Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Madras. He is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE, and was the founding
Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Pervasive Computing.
A very distinguished and prolific fellow.
Here's his talk abstract:
Speaker: Mahadev Satyanarayanan, CMU
Title: "Towards Seamless Mobility on Pervasive Hardware"
Abstract
Preserving one's uniquely customized computing environment as one
moves to different locations is an enduring challenge in mobile
computing. In this talk, we will examine why this capability is
valued so highly, and what makes it so difficult to achieve for
personal computing applications. We describe a new mechanism called
Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) that overcomes many of the limitations
of previous approaches to realizing this capability. ISR enables a
hands-free approach to mobile computing that appears well suited to
future pervasive computing environments in which commodity hardware
may be widely deployed for transient use. We show that ISR can be
implemented by layering virtual machine technology on distributed file
system technology. We also report on measurements from a prototype
that confirm that ISR is already usable today for some common usage
scenarios.
As always, I'll be blogging the talk.
On Technorati: satya, pervasive computing
Here's his bio:
Satya is an experimental computer scientist who has pioneered research
in mobile and pervasive computing. One outcome is the open-source Coda
File System, which supports distributed file access in low-bandwidth and
intermittent wireless networks through disconnected and
bandwidth-adaptive operation. The Coda concepts of hoarding,
reintegration and application-specific conflict resolution can be found
in the hotsync capability of PDAs today. Key ideas from Coda have been
incorporated by Microsoft into the IntelliMirror component of Windows
2000 and the Cached Exchange Mode of Outlook 2003. Another outcome of
Satya's work is Odyssey, a set of open-source operating system
extensions that enable mobile applications to adapt to variation in
critical resources such as network bandwidth and energy. Coda and
Odyssey are building blocks in Project Aura, a research initiative at
Carnegie Mellon to explore distraction-free ubiquitous computing. His
most recent work in this space is Internet Suspend/Resume, a hands-free
approach to mobile computing that exploits virtual machine technology to
liberate personal computing state from hardware. Satya is a co-inventor
of many supporting technologies relevant to mobile and pervasive
computing, such as data staging, lookaside caching, translucent caching
and application-aware adaptation. He is also a co-inventor of the
Diamond approach to interactive, non-indexed search of complex and
loosely-organized data such as digital photographs and medical images.
Early in his career, Satya was a principal architect and implementor of
the Andrew File System (AFS) which pioneered the use of scalable file
caching, ACL-based security, and volume-based system administration for
enterprise-scale information sharing. AFS was commercialized by IBM, is
in widespread use today as OpenAFS, and has heavily influenced the NFS
v4 network file system protocol standard that was published in April
2003.
Satya is the Carnegie Group Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie
Mellon University. From May 2001 to May 2004 he served as the founding
director of Intel Research Pittsburgh, one of four university-affiliated
research labs established worldwide by Intel to create disruptive
information technologies through its Open Collaborative Research model.
Satya received the PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon, after
Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Madras. He is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE, and was the founding
Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Pervasive Computing.
A very distinguished and prolific fellow.
Here's his talk abstract:
Speaker: Mahadev Satyanarayanan, CMU
Title: "Towards Seamless Mobility on Pervasive Hardware"
Abstract
Preserving one's uniquely customized computing environment as one
moves to different locations is an enduring challenge in mobile
computing. In this talk, we will examine why this capability is
valued so highly, and what makes it so difficult to achieve for
personal computing applications. We describe a new mechanism called
Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) that overcomes many of the limitations
of previous approaches to realizing this capability. ISR enables a
hands-free approach to mobile computing that appears well suited to
future pervasive computing environments in which commodity hardware
may be widely deployed for transient use. We show that ISR can be
implemented by layering virtual machine technology on distributed file
system technology. We also report on measurements from a prototype
that confirm that ISR is already usable today for some common usage
scenarios.
As always, I'll be blogging the talk.
On Technorati: satya, pervasive computing
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
PIN number reversal is a hoax
If you get an e-mail or see this on a blog, it's a rumour, it doesn't work and so treat it as a hoax.
PIN NUMBER REVERSAL (GOOD TO KNOW)
>
>If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM
>machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse.
>
>For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in 4321. The
>ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you
>placed in the machine.
You can view more information on this here.
On Technorati: PIN number reversal, ATM hoax
PIN NUMBER REVERSAL (GOOD TO KNOW)
>
>If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM
>machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse.
>
>For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in 4321. The
>ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you
>placed in the machine.
You can view more information on this here.
On Technorati: PIN number reversal, ATM hoax
Passed the depth oral!
Yes, I just finished my depth oral and I passed! That's a great sign of relief. And I had a great Christmas lunch at the Faculty Club with my IML friends. You can check out the photos from the IML blog. Great, depth oral done, now to finish up 2 projects, mark assignments, study for an exam, and mark exams, all before the Christmas holidays!
On Technorati: PhD depth oral, IML, Christmas lunch
On Technorati: PhD depth oral, IML, Christmas lunch
D-Day today
Today is what I like to call D-Day. No, it's not D-Day from World War II, but Depth oral day. I'm presenting my depth oral today as well as my research paper (which is my Masters thesis). Our lab will also have a nice Christmas buffet lunch, courtesy of a great supervisor. He's helped me so much in my research, proofreading my papers and documents, depth oral and presentations. The Christmas buffet lunch is amazing, I had it last year, and it was delicious! Of course, as a grad student, free (but delicious and high class food) is music to a grad student's ears!
On Technorati: PhD depth oral, Christmas lunch
On Technorati: PhD depth oral, Christmas lunch
Saturday, December 09, 2006
PhD depth oral on Tuesday
I'm presenting my PhD depth oral on Tuesday as well as presenting my research paper. What's a depth oral? Basically, I'm going to present about the background research and the problems with that research, that will lead me to develop a PhD thesis topic. So, I'm going to have a busy weekend finishing this up and practicing the presentation. Then, I have to mark assignments that week, mark a final exam, and write a exam. Oh yes, did I not mention, I will have to finish up 2 projects as well before December 20?
I can't wait for this term to be over, I'm definitely looking forward to the Christmas holidays with my family and friends.
On Technorati: PhD, depth oral
I can't wait for this term to be over, I'm definitely looking forward to the Christmas holidays with my family and friends.
On Technorati: PhD, depth oral
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Prayers with the James Kim family
The Kim family has been rescued, unfortunately James Kim has died. Can't believe this. Prayers go out to the Kim family. I'll certainly miss James Kim's videocasts of gadget news at CNET. May he live in peace with you God.
Here's a wonderful tribute video to James Kim from the people at CNET
On Technorati: James Kim
Here's a wonderful tribute video to James Kim from the people at CNET
On Technorati: James Kim
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Palm Train
I was waiting for the GO train at Union Station on platform 3B, when I saw this train car coming near me. It was an advertisement of Palm on the train car. So, naturally, I had to sit in it. I took a picture of it with my Palm (of course, the Palm and gadget geek that I am), while passengers were boarding the train.
Then, I took a picture of it again after I arrived back in Oakville. Yes, it's these things, that I have to take, it's in my gadget blood!
On Technorati: Palm train,Palm
Saturday, December 02, 2006
CNET editor James Kim and family missing
As an avid GadgetMan, I try to read the gadget news as much as I can, although I admit I haven't been doing so much lately since I have to finish a lot of school work before the Christmas holidays. However, I came across reading this in my e-mail which I felt that I should write about. I read a lot of CNET tech news, especially the stuff on gadgets like handhelds and personal entertainment devices. So, I will try to read the MP3 segment news by CNET editor James Kim. I was surprised to hear about this news, James Kim and his family are missing and search and rescue party has been initiated to find his family. There's been lots of comments about this, so please keep Kim and his family in your prayers, and hope that they will be found safe. I enjoy listening to James Kim's videocasts about the newest devices.
On Technorati: James Kim
On Technorati: James Kim
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
PhD depth oral
I've been busy like crazy finishing off this PhD depth oral which I will present before the end of this term. Plus, I have to finish up 2 projects, TA work, and writing an exam all before the Christmas holidays. I'm going to be extremely busy, so I'm looking forward to the Christmas holidays!
But I'm also finished writing the depth oral which I'll give to my PhD committee and give the depth oral in about 2 weeks. Then I'll complete two of my PhD milestones, which is presenting my research paper (My Masters thesis) and the depth oral (literature review). Next term, I will have to present my PhD thesis proposal and then hopefully I'll finish my PhD in a year. Then I'll be looking for either post-doc positions, research positions, or perhaps a professor positions. We'll see, as the saying goes, one step at a time.
On Technorati: depth oral
But I'm also finished writing the depth oral which I'll give to my PhD committee and give the depth oral in about 2 weeks. Then I'll complete two of my PhD milestones, which is presenting my research paper (My Masters thesis) and the depth oral (literature review). Next term, I will have to present my PhD thesis proposal and then hopefully I'll finish my PhD in a year. Then I'll be looking for either post-doc positions, research positions, or perhaps a professor positions. We'll see, as the saying goes, one step at a time.
On Technorati: depth oral
Friday, November 24, 2006
Lilia Efimova and Jonathan Grudin's blogging paper
Jonathan Grudin, who was here at U of T and from whom I met during the student and faculty meet and greet session (check my blog post here), along with Lilia Efimova (who's prominent in the blogosphere and also with her blogging research), have written a paper at HICSS (Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences). I should have a look at this paper, as it's very relevant to my research and I'm interested in how they were able to conduct the study and what methods they used and how they analyzed that data.
On Technorati: Microsoft blogging, HICSS, Jonathan Grudin, Lilia Efimova
On Technorati: Microsoft blogging, HICSS, Jonathan Grudin, Lilia Efimova
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Jonathan Grudin talk
Jonathan Grudin Talk
Emerging Technologies and Knowledge Management
The wireless does not appear to be working here in BA 1180, so I’m going to blog locally on Microsoft Word and then transfer to Blogger. There will be a meeting with grad students and faculty later this afternoon. I’ve just also noticed that this talk is being recorded by ePresence. Jonathan just mentioned that he’s glad to be back in Toronto. Anyways, I've just realized that this talk is very similar to the video talk that I attended and blogged while at PARC. He’s now talking about irresistible forces in technology, there is an imperceptible change of exponential growth of technology. From psychological studies and effects, even when aware of non-linear growth, we reason poorly about it. Even though we have more data, it doesn’t help. He’s now showing the visualizations of exponential growth, in particular Moore’s Law. The basic curve of Moore’s Law doesn’t change, but you have a long tail which becomes longer and longer in time as you increase in time. There have been professions that have been affected by this change in hardware, like hardware R&D, software R&D, user interface R&D.
OK, the wireless is back on, so I'm going to continue blogging in Blogger beta.
We now see effects in consumer behaviour and in organizational and institutional behaviour. There's a new generation of technologies and students are picking up these skills and behaviours (note: he mentioned that weblogs are a waste of time for students, hehe, well I'm blogging right now but I think it depends what the blogs are talking about, I think blogging can be constructive to find community, hence my research). Jonathan is doing research into these new collaborative technologies. Ah yes, the ever popular emerging technologies hype cycle from Gartner, this is what he is showing. Gartner is optimistic about these technologies like wikis and blogging. The research that he is doing in MS Research include a qualitative study of blogs at MS with Lilia Efimova (who's a PhD research doing similar work to finding communities in blogs like I am). They've found rapid evolution of product blogs, Microsoft employees are heavily into blogging. They found that blogs are good for communicating with businesses and customers if the employees had lots of experience in blogging.
The second part of his research is talking about Managing Knowledge: Challenges and Potential Solutions. Digital documents are difficult to find, adding metadata is work. One type of adding metadata is unstructured tagging like Flickr. Almost everyone in the room put up their hand to say they've visited the Flickr site, in contrast to not many people from our survey that we did in the Business of Blogging workshop from CASCON 2005. It's so easy to search for photos in Flickr based on tags, Jonathan mentioned how he had to write a trip report for table top displays, and so just did a search on that in Flickr and found all these photos from the recent CSCW conference in Banff that ended couple of weeks ago. Flickr has an innovative approach, bu the question is how far can bottom-up go? Flickr also has automatic clustering of photos and create structure based on number of visits, the most recent time. You can quickly navigate through the photos space of Flickr. There's also been a recent study of Flickr from Cameron Marlow and his colleagues from Yahoo Research from the Hypertext 2006 conference.
Jonathan is now talking about how blogs are affecting the workplace, we explored this in the Business of Blogging workshop at CASCON 2005. Employees can get up to date information from events, for monitoring comments on products, to put a human face on your enterprise and connect to customers (including Microsoft), and internally-facing to communicate about project visibility and knowledge management. Blogs can then be used to link to document repositories to provide context. In other words blogs can provide documentation to projects. How do blogs provide context? Blog entries briefly describe documents and it's easier to blog a comment than to email it. It doesn't add work.
One of the questions that Jonathan gets is the blog a limited structured format? He thinks that there will be a merger between blogs and document repositories because blogs can add that missing context to document repositories. This also includes wikis which is good for deadline-driven collaborations. Building expertise locators hasn't succeeded so people bypass the system. Why they don't work? It's because it's difficult because the processes are highly social and complex.
In conclusion, he encourages us to look ahead of the curve and how rapidly things can change. There's now a paradigm shift in HCI and its social computing and it's great to know that I'm in the right area for research!
On Technorati: jonathan grudin, knowledge management, emerging technologies, social computing
Emerging Technologies and Knowledge Management
The wireless does not appear to be working here in BA 1180, so I’m going to blog locally on Microsoft Word and then transfer to Blogger. There will be a meeting with grad students and faculty later this afternoon. I’ve just also noticed that this talk is being recorded by ePresence. Jonathan just mentioned that he’s glad to be back in Toronto. Anyways, I've just realized that this talk is very similar to the video talk that I attended and blogged while at PARC. He’s now talking about irresistible forces in technology, there is an imperceptible change of exponential growth of technology. From psychological studies and effects, even when aware of non-linear growth, we reason poorly about it. Even though we have more data, it doesn’t help. He’s now showing the visualizations of exponential growth, in particular Moore’s Law. The basic curve of Moore’s Law doesn’t change, but you have a long tail which becomes longer and longer in time as you increase in time. There have been professions that have been affected by this change in hardware, like hardware R&D, software R&D, user interface R&D.
OK, the wireless is back on, so I'm going to continue blogging in Blogger beta.
We now see effects in consumer behaviour and in organizational and institutional behaviour. There's a new generation of technologies and students are picking up these skills and behaviours (note: he mentioned that weblogs are a waste of time for students, hehe, well I'm blogging right now but I think it depends what the blogs are talking about, I think blogging can be constructive to find community, hence my research). Jonathan is doing research into these new collaborative technologies. Ah yes, the ever popular emerging technologies hype cycle from Gartner, this is what he is showing. Gartner is optimistic about these technologies like wikis and blogging. The research that he is doing in MS Research include a qualitative study of blogs at MS with Lilia Efimova (who's a PhD research doing similar work to finding communities in blogs like I am). They've found rapid evolution of product blogs, Microsoft employees are heavily into blogging. They found that blogs are good for communicating with businesses and customers if the employees had lots of experience in blogging.
The second part of his research is talking about Managing Knowledge: Challenges and Potential Solutions. Digital documents are difficult to find, adding metadata is work. One type of adding metadata is unstructured tagging like Flickr. Almost everyone in the room put up their hand to say they've visited the Flickr site, in contrast to not many people from our survey that we did in the Business of Blogging workshop from CASCON 2005. It's so easy to search for photos in Flickr based on tags, Jonathan mentioned how he had to write a trip report for table top displays, and so just did a search on that in Flickr and found all these photos from the recent CSCW conference in Banff that ended couple of weeks ago. Flickr has an innovative approach, bu the question is how far can bottom-up go? Flickr also has automatic clustering of photos and create structure based on number of visits, the most recent time. You can quickly navigate through the photos space of Flickr. There's also been a recent study of Flickr from Cameron Marlow and his colleagues from Yahoo Research from the Hypertext 2006 conference.
Jonathan is now talking about how blogs are affecting the workplace, we explored this in the Business of Blogging workshop at CASCON 2005. Employees can get up to date information from events, for monitoring comments on products, to put a human face on your enterprise and connect to customers (including Microsoft), and internally-facing to communicate about project visibility and knowledge management. Blogs can then be used to link to document repositories to provide context. In other words blogs can provide documentation to projects. How do blogs provide context? Blog entries briefly describe documents and it's easier to blog a comment than to email it. It doesn't add work.
One of the questions that Jonathan gets is the blog a limited structured format? He thinks that there will be a merger between blogs and document repositories because blogs can add that missing context to document repositories. This also includes wikis which is good for deadline-driven collaborations. Building expertise locators hasn't succeeded so people bypass the system. Why they don't work? It's because it's difficult because the processes are highly social and complex.
In conclusion, he encourages us to look ahead of the curve and how rapidly things can change. There's now a paradigm shift in HCI and its social computing and it's great to know that I'm in the right area for research!
On Technorati: jonathan grudin, knowledge management, emerging technologies, social computing
Saturday, November 18, 2006
It's gonna be a busy hectic couple of weeks
I'm in for a busy hectic couple of weeks (as if I'm never busy). But especially for these coming weeks, because I have to finish up assignments for 2 courses, projects in 2 courses, write an exam, mark assignments for a course I'm TAing, mark final exams in December, and also complete my PhD depth oral and research paper presentation which will be in middle of December as well.
Then I can concentrate on my thesis proposal in January, I will have finished all my courses by end of this year, and hopefully if all goes according to plan, I will finish my PhD by end of next year (hopefully!). So, if you don't hear my blog that often, you'll know why.
On Technorati: busy, PhD depth oral
Then I can concentrate on my thesis proposal in January, I will have finished all my courses by end of this year, and hopefully if all goes according to plan, I will finish my PhD by end of next year (hopefully!). So, if you don't hear my blog that often, you'll know why.
On Technorati: busy, PhD depth oral
Friday, November 17, 2006
When anti-spyware is actually spyware
My laptop got infected with spyware today, the exact same case as my sister's in the post I did here. Fortunately, it did not require me to reinstall Windows! Basically, what was happening was that I had two programs that were installed in the system tray. The first was a red circle with an exclamation which kept constantly giving me a message saying that Warning: you have spyware on your computer and to click this balloon to download all necessary software. However, this program is clever because to the average user, he/she would click and start downloading other anti-spyware programs and anti-virus programs like WinAntivirus Pro. The second item in my system tray was a "Critical system error" message prompting me to download their anti-spyware software to clean it. Actually, these programs are spyware but are cleverly disguised as anti-spyware. Don't download their anti-spyware! (this is examples of what is called rogue spyware, it seems legit but it isn't, so it may fool you). If you actually look at the message, there is a misspelling on balloon, it's spelled "baloon", so I could tell that I had spyware installed. But using your average anti-virus program (Symantec Antivirus in my case) and Windows Defender and Lavasoft Ad-aware could not remove it. Ad-aware did detect malware and removed some of it but not all.
As I start getting fed up and concerned about this, I did a Google search for "Critical system errors system tray windows", and up came a whole bunch of articles on how to remove it. Some were very complex, saying you have to install this and that, and I was like what? Others had to post something called a HijackThis log, and I wasn't in the position to do something like that. I finally found out how to get rid of both of my spyware programs and these are the steps that I did.
1. I came to this article which is a blog post from PC's Ancestor, which was the top search in Google. Thanks to this, I was able to download SmitfraudFix.zip and follow the instructions to remove infected items in the registry in Safe Mode. So, that got me to remove the "Critical system error" message in the system tray.
2. Then I rebooted back into Windows XP and Windows Defender came on and detected a program called Toolbar888 which is called Browser Modifier, this is what happened and modified the browser so that popups are displayed. So, Windows Defender removed that.
3. To make sure I had no other infections, I rebooted back into Safe Mode and ran Ad-aware. I found out that I still had some type of spyware called Virtumonde which is a program that causes popups to happen. Ad-aware couldn't kill it or quarantine it so it said that I need to go and download a Virtumonde removal tool.
4. I'm currently downloading the Virtumonde removal tool from Symantec.
Now, I don't have the "Critical system error" message or the "Security warning" messages in the system tray anymore.
I also just realized that there were two URLs that were installed in my Start menu about online and security troubleshooting but I've removed them (that's the easy part).
I've never seen software this sophisticated before, it just shows that you have to be careful when you're downloading and on the internet, and install a firewall, anti-spyware (a valid one!) and anti-virus programs. Hope these instructions will help others who have the same problem.
On Technorati: spyware, smitfraudfix, browser modifier
As I start getting fed up and concerned about this, I did a Google search for "Critical system errors system tray windows", and up came a whole bunch of articles on how to remove it. Some were very complex, saying you have to install this and that, and I was like what? Others had to post something called a HijackThis log, and I wasn't in the position to do something like that. I finally found out how to get rid of both of my spyware programs and these are the steps that I did.
1. I came to this article which is a blog post from PC's Ancestor, which was the top search in Google. Thanks to this, I was able to download SmitfraudFix.zip and follow the instructions to remove infected items in the registry in Safe Mode. So, that got me to remove the "Critical system error" message in the system tray.
2. Then I rebooted back into Windows XP and Windows Defender came on and detected a program called Toolbar888 which is called Browser Modifier, this is what happened and modified the browser so that popups are displayed. So, Windows Defender removed that.
3. To make sure I had no other infections, I rebooted back into Safe Mode and ran Ad-aware. I found out that I still had some type of spyware called Virtumonde which is a program that causes popups to happen. Ad-aware couldn't kill it or quarantine it so it said that I need to go and download a Virtumonde removal tool.
4. I'm currently downloading the Virtumonde removal tool from Symantec.
Now, I don't have the "Critical system error" message or the "Security warning" messages in the system tray anymore.
I also just realized that there were two URLs that were installed in my Start menu about online and security troubleshooting but I've removed them (that's the easy part).
I've never seen software this sophisticated before, it just shows that you have to be careful when you're downloading and on the internet, and install a firewall, anti-spyware (a valid one!) and anti-virus programs. Hope these instructions will help others who have the same problem.
On Technorati: spyware, smitfraudfix, browser modifier
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Microsoft Zune launch today in US
Microsoft today launched their Zune player, the competitor to Apple's iPod. I blogged about the Zune in an early blogging post. The Zune comes with the following features:
WMA, MP3, AAC, JPEG,WMV, MPEG-4, H.264 media playback
Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) connectivity
30 GB Hard Drive
3 inch video LCD 320x240
White, Black, and Brown Colors
FM Radio
Dedicated song download site zune.net
Podcast playback
Updateable Firmware
Tested 13 hr battery life for audio, 4 hr video
3 day playback of Wi-Fi transfered songs from friends
XBOX streaming
XBOX (Microsoft) points compatability
Preloaded music videos
Over a dozen accessories at launch
5.6 ounces in weight, 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.58 inches size
Metric: 158 g, 112 x 61 x 14.7 mm size
Custom background images
WiFi transfer of photographs
Tag based storage system (Will not appear as drive)
PC Compatability (no Mac client at launch)
Zune tag enabled
Horizontal and vertical video orientation
It's $249.99US, but it's not coming to Canada until next year. Don't expect Microsoft to make a bite out of the Apple iPod. But with Microsoft's muscle into entertainment and the digitally connected home with XBox360, Windows Media Edition, TabletPC, UltraMobilePC, they may be able to carve out a market in this space. As with all Microsoft launches, there's huge media and launch party, some pictures from the event are shown below from the Zune web site.
It's pretty funny, on the Zune web site, there's a Google ad for a free iPod! I guess, there's no context-aware ads yet, context awareness would say, hmm iPod competes with Zune, if the iPod is free, doesn't this go against buying a Microsoft Zune?
This is interesting also, a survey shows that many iPod users will buy a Zune? What kind of a poll is this?
A new survey conducted by ABI Research has shown that many prospective MP3 player buyers—even owners of iPods—would be likely to choose Microsoft's Zune player. 1725 teenage and adult US residents were asked whether they planned to buy an MP3 player in the next 12 months. Of those responding that they were likely to do so, 58% of those identifying themselves as existing iPod owners and 59% of those who owned other brands said they would be "somewhat likely" or "extremely likely" to choose a Microsoft Zune player over an iPod or another brand of MP3 player.
"..iPod users don't display the same passionate loyalty to iPods that Macintosh users have historically shown for their Apple products."
source ABI
So, the ultimate question, will GadgetMan buy one? I still haven't replaced my Palm Zire 71 yet, in fact, I've found out I don't use much of my Palm that I used to 2 years ago, just use it mostly for making appointments, for synchronizing contacts, and reading the Bible. And also, the occasional camera shot if I feel like it. So, I don't see myself buying one anytime soon.
On Technorati: Zune
Monday, November 13, 2006
U of T CS is #1 at ACM programming competition!
On Saturday, the U of T CS teams competed in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition regionals, and we won!
Our two teams took first and seventh places, beating Waterloo and over 100 other teams from Ontario, and 3 US states.
The final scoreboard is here.
Toronto 1 will go to the finals in Tokyo in March.
Congrats to the team!
On Technorati: ACM Programming Competition, U of T
Our two teams took first and seventh places, beating Waterloo and over 100 other teams from Ontario, and 3 US states.
The final scoreboard is here.
Toronto 1 will go to the finals in Tokyo in March.
Congrats to the team!
On Technorati: ACM Programming Competition, U of T
From Web 2.0 to Web 3.0
I'm sure people have heard about this Web 2.0 phenomenon that's all over, about AJAX and mashups, blogging, podcasts, tagging, basically making the web usable for humans. Now, we're getting to the next upgrade to the web, or maybe a leap, called Web 3.0. It's the first time I've heard of this term, coming from this article from the New York Times.
Note: a Google search already shows that Web 3.0 has already been used a lot now, I just never knew about it!
Thanks to my supervisor for sending this to me. It's basically talking about when web sites begin to understand each other and when you make a request, then the results you get are relevant to what you're looking for. What do I mean? For example, right now, if you want to book a conference trip, you need to find a web site for the conference and do registration. Then, you need to book your flights so you go to a travel web site to find the lowest fares that suit your dates of travel. Then, you have to find the accommodations to stay at in the conference (if you don't want to stay at the conference hotel). On top of that, if you want to do some sightseeing, you have to go the city's web sites or Google or find other travellers who have gone to those places like TripAdvisor. Basically, this is all time consuming, I know for me it is! I spend so much time, trying to find the best bang for the buck and for the experience.
So, what if instead, I enter in the query that I want to book a conference and give the conference name and want the travel itinerary. I log in, it knows my profile and finds that my favorite airline is Air Canada, it also knows that I've stayed at many Best Western hotels so I have a discount for Best Western. Furthermore, it knows the dates that I'm travelling because it consults the conference web site and finds out the dates of the conference. It then also consults with my calendar to know what my schedule is, and then decides the best dates for me to travel with Air Canada, with the lowest cost (since I'm a grad student and I'm poor). Then, it knows how many days I'm staying at the city of the conference, and how much money I have from my bank account, so it recommends a schedule of places to go that will suit my budget and my time. That's what I want, and that's what the vision of what Web 3.0 will be like, it's the Semantic Web, touted for a long time by Tim Berners-Lee.
Basically, the web becomes an exchange of data and meaning associated behind that data, as well as translating the human queries into machine level web service transactions divided into mini transactions and rules that execute the query of "Booking a conference". What are the technologies that Web 3.0 will involve? Right now, the ground work is ontologies, or creating categorizations of data. We need to have classifications so that web sites are able to talk to each other. The Semantic Web effort at the W3C is dealing with RDF and OWL-S, and there's lots of research being done in academia and research labs on semantic web. For example, MIT has something called the Simile project, and you can easily Google to find more people working on Semantic Web.
There also will be a need of inference and AI type of work. I'm a big fan of this kind of stuff, I did a little bit of semantic web research as part of my Masters thesis when I was investigating disconnections and crashes in mobile pervasive environments, and how web services can be used to stitch this together as service-oriented computing where computing is not about dealing with data but it's about finding and interacting with services.
When will we see patches to Web 2.0 or incremental releases like Web 2.0a or Web 2.1 , will there even be a Web 4.0 or will the numbering change to like Web 2007 just like software releases? Maybe there maybe alphas and betas and RTWs (Release to Web, just like RTMs like Release To Manufacturing in Microsoft speak).
On Technorati: Web 3.0, Semantic Web
Note: a Google search already shows that Web 3.0 has already been used a lot now, I just never knew about it!
Thanks to my supervisor for sending this to me. It's basically talking about when web sites begin to understand each other and when you make a request, then the results you get are relevant to what you're looking for. What do I mean? For example, right now, if you want to book a conference trip, you need to find a web site for the conference and do registration. Then, you need to book your flights so you go to a travel web site to find the lowest fares that suit your dates of travel. Then, you have to find the accommodations to stay at in the conference (if you don't want to stay at the conference hotel). On top of that, if you want to do some sightseeing, you have to go the city's web sites or Google or find other travellers who have gone to those places like TripAdvisor. Basically, this is all time consuming, I know for me it is! I spend so much time, trying to find the best bang for the buck and for the experience.
So, what if instead, I enter in the query that I want to book a conference and give the conference name and want the travel itinerary. I log in, it knows my profile and finds that my favorite airline is Air Canada, it also knows that I've stayed at many Best Western hotels so I have a discount for Best Western. Furthermore, it knows the dates that I'm travelling because it consults the conference web site and finds out the dates of the conference. It then also consults with my calendar to know what my schedule is, and then decides the best dates for me to travel with Air Canada, with the lowest cost (since I'm a grad student and I'm poor). Then, it knows how many days I'm staying at the city of the conference, and how much money I have from my bank account, so it recommends a schedule of places to go that will suit my budget and my time. That's what I want, and that's what the vision of what Web 3.0 will be like, it's the Semantic Web, touted for a long time by Tim Berners-Lee.
Basically, the web becomes an exchange of data and meaning associated behind that data, as well as translating the human queries into machine level web service transactions divided into mini transactions and rules that execute the query of "Booking a conference". What are the technologies that Web 3.0 will involve? Right now, the ground work is ontologies, or creating categorizations of data. We need to have classifications so that web sites are able to talk to each other. The Semantic Web effort at the W3C is dealing with RDF and OWL-S, and there's lots of research being done in academia and research labs on semantic web. For example, MIT has something called the Simile project, and you can easily Google to find more people working on Semantic Web.
There also will be a need of inference and AI type of work. I'm a big fan of this kind of stuff, I did a little bit of semantic web research as part of my Masters thesis when I was investigating disconnections and crashes in mobile pervasive environments, and how web services can be used to stitch this together as service-oriented computing where computing is not about dealing with data but it's about finding and interacting with services.
When will we see patches to Web 2.0 or incremental releases like Web 2.0a or Web 2.1 , will there even be a Web 4.0 or will the numbering change to like Web 2007 just like software releases? Maybe there maybe alphas and betas and RTWs (Release to Web, just like RTMs like Release To Manufacturing in Microsoft speak).
On Technorati: Web 3.0, Semantic Web
Saturday, November 11, 2006
New feature on my blog: get notified by email!
I've just added a new feature on my blog which is e-mail notification. Instead of having to check or subscribe to my feed and having to read the feed, you can subscribe via e-mail. Whenever my blog gets updated, you'll be the first to know! Thanks to blogarithm for providing this feature. I'm using blogarithm right now for tracking when blogs that I read get updated. As you know, it's a chore having to read blogs when you're so busy. But having a notification via e-mail is great, I can see which blogs get updated and decide whether I want to read them or not.
You'll see this feature on the sidebar of my blog which looks like this:
Also, I've added another feature to see what my blog readers are also reading.
Try it out!
On Technorati: Blogarithm
You'll see this feature on the sidebar of my blog which looks like this:
Also, I've added another feature to see what my blog readers are also reading.
Try it out!
On Technorati: Blogarithm
Friday, November 10, 2006
IT housekeeping today!
Today, I had to be the computer tech guy in fixing a computer for my sister, she had all these pop-ups and spyware. I tried removing them with Ad-aware and Windows Defender, and SpyBot Search and Destroy, but apparently it didn't quite clean them all. So, I just got fed up and decided to reinstall her machine. I finally was able to install remote control software to control her machine so I can fix it remotely. I've been wanting to do this, but never really found the time to really complete the job. I tried to use Windows Remote Desktop which is included in Windows XP Professional (the host has to be running Windows XP but the client to remote control the host can be any Win95/98/2000/XP client), but it works on the LAN but not from outside, I have to either VPN or enter an external IP address. So, the solution that I finally got working was the following. Here are the steps, so if anybody else needs to do this, follow these steps.
1. Set an external hostname on the internet for your host computer
First, the host computer needs to be recognizable on the internet. It needs an external IP address and hostname. You can get an external hostname from DNS providers for free, I got one at Dyndns.org. You set up an account and add your host machine to the account. From the web browser, it will be able to detect the external IP address (which is the one sent to by your ISP, this is the IP address that is assigned to you when you have your DSL or cable modem connected to your router). You select the external hostname that you want.
2. Install client to manage your external hostname
Then you install a client on your host computer that manages the external IP address, ie. if your IP address changes, then you can still connect because your external hostname will automatically synchronize to it. Since I went with Dyndns.org, then I just downloaded their client.
3. Install remote control software on host
I decided to choose RealVNC which they have a version that is free. I installed it on the host machine as the server and configured it with authentication.
4. Forward ports on your router
Next, you need to take the port numbers that is selected for outgoing and for Java version of RealVNC from the server and put those in the port forwarding page on your router. In this way, when packets get sent to your hostname, they go to the router which then forwards it to your host computer.
5. Install remote control software on client
You then install the remote control software client portion on the machine that you want to use to connect to the host. In my case, I installed RealVNC client.
6. Test the remote connection
I then tested the remote connection with the RealVNC client to make sure that I could connect to the host machine.
So, that's it!
1. Set an external hostname on the internet for your host computer
First, the host computer needs to be recognizable on the internet. It needs an external IP address and hostname. You can get an external hostname from DNS providers for free, I got one at Dyndns.org. You set up an account and add your host machine to the account. From the web browser, it will be able to detect the external IP address (which is the one sent to by your ISP, this is the IP address that is assigned to you when you have your DSL or cable modem connected to your router). You select the external hostname that you want.
2. Install client to manage your external hostname
Then you install a client on your host computer that manages the external IP address, ie. if your IP address changes, then you can still connect because your external hostname will automatically synchronize to it. Since I went with Dyndns.org, then I just downloaded their client.
3. Install remote control software on host
I decided to choose RealVNC which they have a version that is free. I installed it on the host machine as the server and configured it with authentication.
4. Forward ports on your router
Next, you need to take the port numbers that is selected for outgoing and for Java version of RealVNC from the server and put those in the port forwarding page on your router. In this way, when packets get sent to your hostname, they go to the router which then forwards it to your host computer.
5. Install remote control software on client
You then install the remote control software client portion on the machine that you want to use to connect to the host. In my case, I installed RealVNC client.
6. Test the remote connection
I then tested the remote connection with the RealVNC client to make sure that I could connect to the host machine.
So, that's it!
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Migrated to Blogger Beta
I just finished migrating my Blogger blog to the new Blogger beta. According to Blogger beta, it provides more robustness and new features. The old Blogger was from when Google acquired Blogger around 3 years ago or so. That explains why there were those Blogger woes that I couldn't publish. So, I'm trying out the new Blogger beta.
What I found out from the new Blogger beta is that I can see all the comments. I didn't know that I had comments from people and since I enabled moderation then I have to approve them. But from the old Blogger, I had no clue how to approve them. In WordPress, it's easy there's a section on Comments and Moderation, but I couldn't find the equivalent in Blogger. So, I just finished spending some time to approve comments and respond to people, so apologies for that. And guess what? Finally, Blogger beta has that capability of adding tags or labels, I've been waiting for that! So far, I've been tagging using Technorati.
I'm going to keep trying out this new Blogger beta. Another new thing, I've found out is word verification for your posts and allowing of reader comments or not. If you haven't migrated, when you login to Blogger, you will see a message that says you can migrate to Blogger beta. It will preserve your existing format and blog entries, however they do mention that if you have third-party services, then you may need to update the links as it may not work. Also, this is important, you can't switch back to the old Blogger once you've migrated. You have to then login using your Google account, and you'll get an e-mail to say when Blogger beta has successfully migrated your blog.
On Technorati: Blogger beta, blog migration
What I found out from the new Blogger beta is that I can see all the comments. I didn't know that I had comments from people and since I enabled moderation then I have to approve them. But from the old Blogger, I had no clue how to approve them. In WordPress, it's easy there's a section on Comments and Moderation, but I couldn't find the equivalent in Blogger. So, I just finished spending some time to approve comments and respond to people, so apologies for that. And guess what? Finally, Blogger beta has that capability of adding tags or labels, I've been waiting for that! So far, I've been tagging using Technorati.
I'm going to keep trying out this new Blogger beta. Another new thing, I've found out is word verification for your posts and allowing of reader comments or not. If you haven't migrated, when you login to Blogger, you will see a message that says you can migrate to Blogger beta. It will preserve your existing format and blog entries, however they do mention that if you have third-party services, then you may need to update the links as it may not work. Also, this is important, you can't switch back to the old Blogger once you've migrated. You have to then login using your Google account, and you'll get an e-mail to say when Blogger beta has successfully migrated your blog.
On Technorati: Blogger beta, blog migration
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Happy 35th Birthday, Intel 4004
I read this post that says that November is the 35th birthday of Intel's 4004 chip that started Intel's road to CPU dominance. It was November of 1971 that Intel started its birth to becoming a major semiconductor and chip company. I was at the Intel museum when I was doing a summer internship at PARC this year, and I took pictures from my trip to the Santa Clara facility. Check out my blog post here.
On Technorati: Intel
On Technorati: Intel
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
When Google works better than the publication web search
For getting scholarly articles such as conference and journal publications, my university and all universities provide free access to the conference and journal e-indexes of publications. Most of the time, when I'm looking for a paper, I'll naturally go and search for it in there, because not all papers are widely available for free on the web. However (and I'm sure others can attest to this), the publication search sucks! Big time. I enter the exact name of an article, but either the article I'm looking for comes up way down the list of returned results, or the article is not located. However, if I do another different type of search (like modifying the title a bit by deleting some words), then it sometimes works. When I get fed up of not finding the article, I enter the same search in Google, and lone and behold, the pdf link to the article comes up usually in the first 5 results (or I may have to go to Google Scholar).
Don't the publication web sites like IEEE and ACM use Google search to power their results? Apparently not. I just find it a waste of my time having to look through the e-index, when I can just find it in 2 seconds on Google. There are many things that Google publicly cannot index, because they don't have the rights to those publications like IEEE or ACM (unless other people download those articles and then publicly post them on the web). The publishers should make a conscious effort to vastly improve their search to tailor towards the publication domain by using search technology from Google or Yahoo.
What do other academics and researchers do when searching for articles? Do you primarily use Google, Yahoo, Citeulike, publication web sites, Citeseer, or a combination of these?
On Technorati: publication search
Don't the publication web sites like IEEE and ACM use Google search to power their results? Apparently not. I just find it a waste of my time having to look through the e-index, when I can just find it in 2 seconds on Google. There are many things that Google publicly cannot index, because they don't have the rights to those publications like IEEE or ACM (unless other people download those articles and then publicly post them on the web). The publishers should make a conscious effort to vastly improve their search to tailor towards the publication domain by using search technology from Google or Yahoo.
What do other academics and researchers do when searching for articles? Do you primarily use Google, Yahoo, Citeulike, publication web sites, Citeseer, or a combination of these?
On Technorati: publication search
Friday, November 03, 2006
Blogger woes
Aha, no wonder I've been having Blogger problems publishing my posts on my blog this week. It was because of some outages at the Blogger site. One of the Blogger engineers explained the outages on his blog. Apparently, it has to deal with the infrastructure of the older Blogger and how it wasn't handled to deal with so many new features and changes, and scalability. Google has a new Blogger beta to replace that ailing infrastructure, I want to try the new Blogger Beta, but is there a way to keep my existing data and transfer over to the new Blogger Beta, without having to start from scratch? I tried but I couldn't seem to figure out. If someone knows, send me a comment.
On Technorati: Blogger
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Markets, Products and US U of T talk
Markets, Products and US talk
Having problems connecting to Blogger, so I’m making notes instead of putting it on the blog.
Dr. Dennis Tsichritzis
Fraunhofer Institute
Abstract
The commercial world is witnessing many shifts. While this situation does
not affect Universities immediately, eventually it forces some rethinking
of plans, programs and student career possibilities. We will outline the
new trends and try to point out some necessary changes. The legacy issues
and the cultural aspects who may be an obstacle to such changes will be
openly discussed.
Brief Biography
Dennis Tsichritzis obtained his PhD at Princeton (1968) in Computational
complexity. He then joined as a faculty member the CS department at
University of Toronto (1968-1985) where he worked in different areas,
eventually concentrating in the area of Database Systems. During that
period he helped set up the CS department and the Research Institute on
Informatics at the University of Crete, Greece. He returned to Europe as
professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland (1985-2001) where he
mainly worked on Object oriented Systems. He then became the president and
chief scientist of GMD the German National Research Center on IT
(1991-2001) where he undertook a major restructuring. In 2001 GMD was
merged with Fraunhofer, a major European Research Center, where until
recently he was senior VP and member of the Executive Board.
Talk
Dennis was a professor at University of Toronto and was hired by Kelly Gotlieb, and now he’s back at U of T, so he's coming full circle. His talk is on Markets, Products and US, nobody understands the consumer market and how it relates to corporations. Graduate students come out of university with all this knowledge, but they don’t know how to apply them in the corporate world. If we look at what the big companies are doing, they are hiring in Asia and Europe. We now see a transition in companies from building boxes to building systems. There is an emphasis from technology to business solutions, and business models are changing from selling products to selling services. This is where IBM is going where IBM has initiated a services business and IBM Research is involved with services research.
OK, Blogger is working now, so I'll continue blogging on Blogger.
OK, here's the interesting part of the talk. What happens to the research value chain? How does research fit into the company, and how can grad students get jobs in corporations with the research that they have. Hmm, something that definitely I need to know, as I will graduate hopefully within a year and a half from now. Dennis is now addressing this through curiosity-based research. Humbolt's model is based that high-quality education is based on research. You're doing your own research, you're in this balloon and you pump papers based on the research. What is the pool of the results? The pull effect is zero, nobody is knocking on your door to find out what you are doing (marketing plug: if you're reading this and reading my research, and would like to discuss about my research and want to know more about what I'm doing, contact me). The pull effect is minimal. The basic innovation model is research to applied to research to R&D in corporations. Now, we are going to a fast innovation model where research goes to prototype to start up then to a new product. The pull effect is considerable and the pump effect is strong. The financial pull model is different, it is research to patents to start up to trade sale, the pull effect is extreme and the pump effect is drastic. The next model he is showing is a financial turbo model where you have research to startup to IPO, the pull effect is unbearable and the pump effect is strategic.
Things are changing now. IPOs are getting difficult to get, trade sales are under financial scrutiny (witness all the scandals like HP, Enron, Nortel), venture capitalists are keeping companies to stay afloat longer, venture and private capital is chasing other opportunities, and there is a global economy effect. Therefore, there is no pull and no pump.
So how does this affect us? We need to look at the trends in media, investment choices, employment opportunities, in students' plans and in research programs' emphasis. We basically have to look at the big picture, which is getting more and more complex than before. There are many various factors, which create push and pull forces. Now, info/bio/nanotechnologies are losing ground but energy/health/aging/water/materials are gaining ground in attention and popularity. Customers are looking for solutions and not technologies. Well, that's not really new. We need to listen before we talk, we have to think before we do.
We now see that almost everything in our world is revolving around IT. He suggests that we should enter into new alliances like bioinformatics, geoinformatics, etc. We are now beginning to see this interdisciplinary programs where computer science is being used in different applications. In U of T, we now have a bioinformatics program that is a collaboration between Biology and Computer Science. Computer science algorithms can be used to solve biological problems like for example genetic algorithms and genetic programming for sequencing DNA and for deciphering the human genome. To develop new tools, we need to understand the area.
Where are the obstacles to this line of thinking? It's a result of our culture which encompasses our arrogance, we are worried about pumping publications/visibility/promotion, the research that we are doing is narrow so we need to broaden our horizons, there is an overhead of switching interests and understanding problems, universities are unwilling to change their traditional line of education, etc. There is also a loss of cosy relationships. Basically, we need to have open culture, we need to open ourselves, not close them.
The conclusion of the talk is that if we are not there, then the alliances will come to us.
On Technorati: markets, products, research
Having problems connecting to Blogger, so I’m making notes instead of putting it on the blog.
Dr. Dennis Tsichritzis
Fraunhofer Institute
Abstract
The commercial world is witnessing many shifts. While this situation does
not affect Universities immediately, eventually it forces some rethinking
of plans, programs and student career possibilities. We will outline the
new trends and try to point out some necessary changes. The legacy issues
and the cultural aspects who may be an obstacle to such changes will be
openly discussed.
Brief Biography
Dennis Tsichritzis obtained his PhD at Princeton (1968) in Computational
complexity. He then joined as a faculty member the CS department at
University of Toronto (1968-1985) where he worked in different areas,
eventually concentrating in the area of Database Systems. During that
period he helped set up the CS department and the Research Institute on
Informatics at the University of Crete, Greece. He returned to Europe as
professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland (1985-2001) where he
mainly worked on Object oriented Systems. He then became the president and
chief scientist of GMD the German National Research Center on IT
(1991-2001) where he undertook a major restructuring. In 2001 GMD was
merged with Fraunhofer, a major European Research Center, where until
recently he was senior VP and member of the Executive Board.
Talk
Dennis was a professor at University of Toronto and was hired by Kelly Gotlieb, and now he’s back at U of T, so he's coming full circle. His talk is on Markets, Products and US, nobody understands the consumer market and how it relates to corporations. Graduate students come out of university with all this knowledge, but they don’t know how to apply them in the corporate world. If we look at what the big companies are doing, they are hiring in Asia and Europe. We now see a transition in companies from building boxes to building systems. There is an emphasis from technology to business solutions, and business models are changing from selling products to selling services. This is where IBM is going where IBM has initiated a services business and IBM Research is involved with services research.
OK, Blogger is working now, so I'll continue blogging on Blogger.
OK, here's the interesting part of the talk. What happens to the research value chain? How does research fit into the company, and how can grad students get jobs in corporations with the research that they have. Hmm, something that definitely I need to know, as I will graduate hopefully within a year and a half from now. Dennis is now addressing this through curiosity-based research. Humbolt's model is based that high-quality education is based on research. You're doing your own research, you're in this balloon and you pump papers based on the research. What is the pool of the results? The pull effect is zero, nobody is knocking on your door to find out what you are doing (marketing plug: if you're reading this and reading my research, and would like to discuss about my research and want to know more about what I'm doing, contact me). The pull effect is minimal. The basic innovation model is research to applied to research to R&D in corporations. Now, we are going to a fast innovation model where research goes to prototype to start up then to a new product. The pull effect is considerable and the pump effect is strong. The financial pull model is different, it is research to patents to start up to trade sale, the pull effect is extreme and the pump effect is drastic. The next model he is showing is a financial turbo model where you have research to startup to IPO, the pull effect is unbearable and the pump effect is strategic.
Things are changing now. IPOs are getting difficult to get, trade sales are under financial scrutiny (witness all the scandals like HP, Enron, Nortel), venture capitalists are keeping companies to stay afloat longer, venture and private capital is chasing other opportunities, and there is a global economy effect. Therefore, there is no pull and no pump.
So how does this affect us? We need to look at the trends in media, investment choices, employment opportunities, in students' plans and in research programs' emphasis. We basically have to look at the big picture, which is getting more and more complex than before. There are many various factors, which create push and pull forces. Now, info/bio/nanotechnologies are losing ground but energy/health/aging/water/materials are gaining ground in attention and popularity. Customers are looking for solutions and not technologies. Well, that's not really new. We need to listen before we talk, we have to think before we do.
We now see that almost everything in our world is revolving around IT. He suggests that we should enter into new alliances like bioinformatics, geoinformatics, etc. We are now beginning to see this interdisciplinary programs where computer science is being used in different applications. In U of T, we now have a bioinformatics program that is a collaboration between Biology and Computer Science. Computer science algorithms can be used to solve biological problems like for example genetic algorithms and genetic programming for sequencing DNA and for deciphering the human genome. To develop new tools, we need to understand the area.
Where are the obstacles to this line of thinking? It's a result of our culture which encompasses our arrogance, we are worried about pumping publications/visibility/promotion, the research that we are doing is narrow so we need to broaden our horizons, there is an overhead of switching interests and understanding problems, universities are unwilling to change their traditional line of education, etc. There is also a loss of cosy relationships. Basically, we need to have open culture, we need to open ourselves, not close them.
The conclusion of the talk is that if we are not there, then the alliances will come to us.
On Technorati: markets, products, research
Monday, October 30, 2006
Happy Halloween
To all the kids and people celebrating Halloween, have fun, but stay safe. Remember to check the food you have to make sure that it is safe to eat, be careful of not going to dark places without a flashlight, wear a costume that makes sure you are easily seen by cars, and don't walk alone (especially for the kids). Did you know that Halloween actually has a Christian background to it? The day is actually called All Hallows Eve, the evening before the next day November 1 which is All Saints Day.
You can read about the origins of Halloween from this article. Well, anyways, have a Happy Halloween! Here's a great video of a Haunted Mansion Fireworks Display.
On Technorati: Halloween
You can read about the origins of Halloween from this article. Well, anyways, have a Happy Halloween! Here's a great video of a Haunted Mansion Fireworks Display.
On Technorati: Halloween
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Get your free Wi-Fi routers!
But only in San Francisco! Spanish company, FON, is giving away free Wi-Fi routers in San Francisco to build up a free city-wide Wi-Fi network. There's already free Wi-Fi in Mountain View courtesy of Google (although I never had a chance to try when I was there over the summer, it was just when I left in mid August).
Toronto is supposed to have Wi-Fi courtesy of Toronto HydroOne and it's supposed to be starting right now, but I haven't been able to connect to one. It's apparently free right now, but there will be a charge since different companies will be charging for Wi-Fi access. Why can't Toronto be like San Francisco, and have free Wi-Fi!
On Technorati: Wi-Fi
Toronto is supposed to have Wi-Fi courtesy of Toronto HydroOne and it's supposed to be starting right now, but I haven't been able to connect to one. It's apparently free right now, but there will be a charge since different companies will be charging for Wi-Fi access. Why can't Toronto be like San Francisco, and have free Wi-Fi!
On Technorati: Wi-Fi
Friday, October 27, 2006
Browser wars revisited: Firefox 2 vs. IE 7
VS. 
Remember the browser wars of Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer? Well, it's back again, this time Mozilla Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7. I've been using both but I genuinely feel Firefox outhandedly beats Internet Explorer and I use Firefox all the time (except that with 1.5, Firefox would very often consume all my resources and my laptop would become hot because it took up 100% CPU utilization). I've just installed Firefox 2, and I'll see if Firefox 2 resolves my problem. With Internet Explorer, look at all the spyware and viruses you can get from ActiveX controls and popups. Reminds me of someone who I had to fix his computer because of the spyware and popups.
Anyways, CNET has this article where they put Firefox 2 against Internet Explorer 7 to see which browser is better? And their result, well I think you know the answer, but for the details, check here.
On Technorati: Firefox, Internet Explorer
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Barry Wellman S.D. Clark lecture at U of T
Live from the George Ignatieff theatre at U of T, it's the Barry Wellman talk about the Internet in Everyday Life. I couldn't find it, it was located around the corner. Of course, I've never been to this part of U of T, I'm located in the Bahen Centre. The room is getting packed. I see a whole bunch of cameras so maybe this lecture is going to be recorded by ePresence. Everyone is getting a copy of the slides from the lecture. This lecture is a long version of the talk that Barry presented at my CASCON workshop on Social Computing Best Practices.
Barry Wellman is the S.D. Clark Chair in Sociology. The first S.D. Clark chair is giving an introduction to the S.D. Clark lectures in the Faculty of Arts and Science at U of T. He is talking about Barry's accomplishments and achievements. He is being broadcast by video since he is not at U of T but travelling. This is the 8th S.D. Clark lecture, and Barry is the new incumbent as S.D. Clark chair.
Barry is starting the talk. The Internet is not killing community but adding ways to communicate, the talk will be a breadth talk rather than a depth talk. The videocast will be put on ePresence as well as on TVOntario is also recording this as well. The American Sociological Review published an article saying that there is social isolation in America due to the internet. The Globe and Mail and Macleans talked about how the internet sucks and social isolation. Community has been falling apart because of industrialization, bureaucratization, urbanization, capitalism and technology change.
Before the internet, Toronto communities were sizeable, this is based on his NetLab studies in East York. There has been lots of false attribution in the media due to the internet. Now, Barry is addressing whether online community is dominating "real" community. For example, are 5000 "friendsters" replacing 50 friends? Is it drawing us away from real life? Barry just mentioned that this talk will be podcast, great! Dystopians say that internet will kill community, but utopians say that internet will change societies. For example, Wikipedia is replacing the encyclopedia on the 'net. S.D. Clark has an entry on Wikipedia. What they found it is that the internet is NOT taking over everyday life. Virtual communities are atypical, a low percentage belong to them. There is a lot of hype in the activity numbers on the internet, for example, a lot of MySpace accounts are mythical meaning that a lot of people create accounts but they never go online after.
So, the question is are real relationships withering because of the internet? What is the internet doing to us and what are we doing to the internet? Barry's research group NetLab has done lots of community studies, and he is showing results of some of those studies. Some of the results show that people that e-mail the most, also spend a lot of time in face-to-face interaction. So, it seems to be that heavy users still spend a lot of time using physical real interaction. E-mail links a wide range of diversified ties. Some of the research questions that they have are what do personal networks look like. They're also doing a community study in Chapleau, Northern Ontario. Email is still very high even though when people are close to each other and are local.
On Technorati: social networks, connected lives
Barry Wellman is the S.D. Clark Chair in Sociology. The first S.D. Clark chair is giving an introduction to the S.D. Clark lectures in the Faculty of Arts and Science at U of T. He is talking about Barry's accomplishments and achievements. He is being broadcast by video since he is not at U of T but travelling. This is the 8th S.D. Clark lecture, and Barry is the new incumbent as S.D. Clark chair.
Barry is starting the talk. The Internet is not killing community but adding ways to communicate, the talk will be a breadth talk rather than a depth talk. The videocast will be put on ePresence as well as on TVOntario is also recording this as well. The American Sociological Review published an article saying that there is social isolation in America due to the internet. The Globe and Mail and Macleans talked about how the internet sucks and social isolation. Community has been falling apart because of industrialization, bureaucratization, urbanization, capitalism and technology change.
Before the internet, Toronto communities were sizeable, this is based on his NetLab studies in East York. There has been lots of false attribution in the media due to the internet. Now, Barry is addressing whether online community is dominating "real" community. For example, are 5000 "friendsters" replacing 50 friends? Is it drawing us away from real life? Barry just mentioned that this talk will be podcast, great! Dystopians say that internet will kill community, but utopians say that internet will change societies. For example, Wikipedia is replacing the encyclopedia on the 'net. S.D. Clark has an entry on Wikipedia. What they found it is that the internet is NOT taking over everyday life. Virtual communities are atypical, a low percentage belong to them. There is a lot of hype in the activity numbers on the internet, for example, a lot of MySpace accounts are mythical meaning that a lot of people create accounts but they never go online after.
So, the question is are real relationships withering because of the internet? What is the internet doing to us and what are we doing to the internet? Barry's research group NetLab has done lots of community studies, and he is showing results of some of those studies. Some of the results show that people that e-mail the most, also spend a lot of time in face-to-face interaction. So, it seems to be that heavy users still spend a lot of time using physical real interaction. E-mail links a wide range of diversified ties. Some of the research questions that they have are what do personal networks look like. They're also doing a community study in Chapleau, Northern Ontario. Email is still very high even though when people are close to each other and are local.
On Technorati: social networks, connected lives
Jim Glass MIT talk at U of T
Jim Glass from MIT is giving a talk now which I am blogging about. His talk is about Speech as Interface and Content: Advances and Challenges. Conversation systems use a mixture of human and computer interfaces. He just showed a funny clip from Saturday Night Live where a guy is going out on a blind date and his date works in customer service and answers him just like a customer service automated attendant would, which was pretty funny!
Here's the abstract of his talk.
Spoken interaction between humans and machines has long been a goal of
scientists and engineers. As computational devices continue to shrink in size,
speech-based interfaces are more relevant than ever. At the same time, audio
and video media are fast becoming significant data types themselves. Without
additional processing however, searching these materials can be tedious.
Spoken language technology offers the opportunity to provide structure for
more effective browsing, summarization, and even translation.
In this talk I describe ongoing research in our group to enable
accessible, multimodal, customizable, and context-aware speech-based
interfaces. I will also present our recent activities in spoken lecture
processing which attempt to transcribe and index academic lecture recordings.
I will also discuss our related efforts to address the long-term challenge of
unsupervised word acquisition. Barring Murphy's Law, the talk will include
web-based demonstrations of recently developed interface and content
processing prototypes.
Bio:
James R. Glass obtained his S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1985, and 1988, respectively. Currently, he is a Principal
Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory where he heads the Spoken Language Systems Group. He is also a
Lecturer in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His
primary research interests are in the area of speech communication and
human-computer interaction, centered on automatic speech recognition and
spoken language understanding.
Speech-based interfaces are good methods for interacting with devices where in certain environments make it difficult to use keyboards. Speech-based interfaces are being extended to the web. Right now, he is showing a demo of City Browser where you can talk to the system and find restaurants on a geographic map. It's using a Java applet, he's trying to show it on the web browser but the Internet is slow in the room, it's taking a while to load. Oh, now it is coming up. You ask a question about what type of restaurants you want to get in a particular city, and then the system returns the location of the restaurants on a Google map. If the question you ask is wrong, then you can correct it with a visual interface and allow users to edit the query rather than speak it. Another thing that you can specify is finding restaurants along a particular street or find more information about restaurants when you circle a particular area. So the system combines audio and visual feedback and returns visual results along with corresponding audio.
It makes me think how a lot of research now is not strictly computationally based, it also involves the user as well. And it's nice to see that, because there are certain things that humans do much better and tasks that humans can do easier than computers. This is part of context-aware computing and definitely part of ubiquitous computing. You can take a performance enhancement by restricting the vocabulary to the specific domain, eg. vocabulary for Boston will be different than vocabulary for San Francisco. Given the original query, you can dynamically alter the vocabulary based on partial understanding.
Multimodal interaction is interesting because multimodality enables more natural, flexible, efficient and robust human-computer interaction. This may reduce the complexity of the system and the interface. There are multiple research problems that are involved in achieving this which is explained more here. Another interesting multimodal interaction application is person verification using a combination of face recognition and speaker identification.
The next part of his talk is about speech as content. There are lots of media content such as video and audio, which is difficult and tedious to search on. The motivation is whether spoken language technology can be used to structure speech content. Another interesting area of application is how to use speech technology to disseminate and understand lecture recordings, and they've created one called Lecture Browser. Some hard problems include analyzing lectures because spoken word has different vocabulary than the text. Another neat thing is to provide lecture structure induction of certain segments and parts of a lecture and summarization. They have a lecture processing prototype where people can submit videos of lectures and then it can be integrated into their Lecture Browser.
Overall, this is a very interesting talk, with relevant applications.
On Technorati: speech, multimodal interface
Here's the abstract of his talk.
Spoken interaction between humans and machines has long been a goal of
scientists and engineers. As computational devices continue to shrink in size,
speech-based interfaces are more relevant than ever. At the same time, audio
and video media are fast becoming significant data types themselves. Without
additional processing however, searching these materials can be tedious.
Spoken language technology offers the opportunity to provide structure for
more effective browsing, summarization, and even translation.
In this talk I describe ongoing research in our group to enable
accessible, multimodal, customizable, and context-aware speech-based
interfaces. I will also present our recent activities in spoken lecture
processing which attempt to transcribe and index academic lecture recordings.
I will also discuss our related efforts to address the long-term challenge of
unsupervised word acquisition. Barring Murphy's Law, the talk will include
web-based demonstrations of recently developed interface and content
processing prototypes.
Bio:
James R. Glass obtained his S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1985, and 1988, respectively. Currently, he is a Principal
Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory where he heads the Spoken Language Systems Group. He is also a
Lecturer in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His
primary research interests are in the area of speech communication and
human-computer interaction, centered on automatic speech recognition and
spoken language understanding.
Speech-based interfaces are good methods for interacting with devices where in certain environments make it difficult to use keyboards. Speech-based interfaces are being extended to the web. Right now, he is showing a demo of City Browser where you can talk to the system and find restaurants on a geographic map. It's using a Java applet, he's trying to show it on the web browser but the Internet is slow in the room, it's taking a while to load. Oh, now it is coming up. You ask a question about what type of restaurants you want to get in a particular city, and then the system returns the location of the restaurants on a Google map. If the question you ask is wrong, then you can correct it with a visual interface and allow users to edit the query rather than speak it. Another thing that you can specify is finding restaurants along a particular street or find more information about restaurants when you circle a particular area. So the system combines audio and visual feedback and returns visual results along with corresponding audio.
It makes me think how a lot of research now is not strictly computationally based, it also involves the user as well. And it's nice to see that, because there are certain things that humans do much better and tasks that humans can do easier than computers. This is part of context-aware computing and definitely part of ubiquitous computing. You can take a performance enhancement by restricting the vocabulary to the specific domain, eg. vocabulary for Boston will be different than vocabulary for San Francisco. Given the original query, you can dynamically alter the vocabulary based on partial understanding.
Multimodal interaction is interesting because multimodality enables more natural, flexible, efficient and robust human-computer interaction. This may reduce the complexity of the system and the interface. There are multiple research problems that are involved in achieving this which is explained more here. Another interesting multimodal interaction application is person verification using a combination of face recognition and speaker identification.
The next part of his talk is about speech as content. There are lots of media content such as video and audio, which is difficult and tedious to search on. The motivation is whether spoken language technology can be used to structure speech content. Another interesting area of application is how to use speech technology to disseminate and understand lecture recordings, and they've created one called Lecture Browser. Some hard problems include analyzing lectures because spoken word has different vocabulary than the text. Another neat thing is to provide lecture structure induction of certain segments and parts of a lecture and summarization. They have a lecture processing prototype where people can submit videos of lectures and then it can be integrated into their Lecture Browser.
Overall, this is a very interesting talk, with relevant applications.
On Technorati: speech, multimodal interface
Saturday, October 21, 2006
So many blogs, how to keep track?
I had that same question. Even though I track and read the blogs that I subscribe to in Bloglines, I sometimes don't check every day especially when I'm busy. I have to consciously decide to go to Bloglines and then I decide which updated blogs I want to read. But I never read them all. However, I always read my e-mail. However, some blogs allow a subscription to e-mail feature (example, the CASCON blog). I've heard of several sites that allow you to receive notifications via e-mail of new posts on blogs that you have subscribed, but I never really had the chance to investigate. Today, I decided I'm going to take control, I've been waiting way too long for not doing this. So, using wonderful Google search, I found this site called RSS Readers-e-mail. There are so many out there, but I decided to try Blogarithm. Why? It sounds cool and it's a CS'y term.
Well, it's cool! You can import an OPML file or any file that has a list of the blogs' RSS feeds, or you can manually enter them in, and then when you upload, then you select from the list of feeds. Then you'll receive them in your e-mail! Sweet! And Bloglines allows you to export your RSS subscriptions to OPML, amazing!
I'm going to try this Blogarithm out, sounds like something that I need to manage my busy busy day!
On Technorati: Blogarithm, RSS Email readers
Well, it's cool! You can import an OPML file or any file that has a list of the blogs' RSS feeds, or you can manually enter them in, and then when you upload, then you select from the list of feeds. Then you'll receive them in your e-mail! Sweet! And Bloglines allows you to export your RSS subscriptions to OPML, amazing!
I'm going to try this Blogarithm out, sounds like something that I need to manage my busy busy day!
On Technorati: Blogarithm, RSS Email readers
Another patent for Friendster?
Well it seems like Friendster got another patent. They got their first patent in June which I blogged about. This second patent is about a "Method of inducing content uploads in a social network". I think this is getting a bit ridiculous, when I read the actual patent, it's like nothing new or ground breaking. It's just a bunch of ideas that are coherently explained together to achieve something, it's like a methodology or a system. Does that constitute a patent? I think (and I'm not the only one) that the US Patent Office needs to be overhauled, because many ideas become patented and then others can't use those ideas, since they get infringed upon and then you have all these legal disputes.
What's next, a patent for MySpace?
On Technorati: Friendster, patent
What's next, a patent for MySpace?
On Technorati: Friendster, patent
Barry Wellman lectures at U of T on Tuesday
For those who were at my Social Computing Best Practices workshop at CASCON on Wednesday, Prof. Barry Wellman of U of T was one of the speakers at that workshop where he talked about the Connected Lives: The Internet in Everyday Life. He will give a more detailed lecture of that talk at the George Ignatieff Theatre at U of T. And yes, George Ignatieff is the father of Michael Ignatieff, his son who is running for the Liberal leadership. More information here along with map, and flyer.
On Technorati: barry wellman, cascon2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
My Social computing workshop at CASCON 2006 conference
I chaired a workshop at the CASCON 2006 conference yesterday called Social Computing: Best Practices. The workshop featured 4 speakers, Joey de Villa, Sadek Ali, Bryn Harris and Barry Wellman. I first gave an introduction to the workshop mentioning the rise in social computing, social networking, Web 2.0, blogs, and RSS and how they fit on the Gartner hype cycle. Next, I proceeded to give a brief summary of the CASCON 2005 workshop last year on the Business of Blogging, mentioning how there were not many people that knew about tagging, but certainly that has changed this year. Then we proceeded to the talks.
The first talk was from Joey de Villa of Tucows. Joey is a great speaker, I wish I could learn to be a speaker just like him. Anyways, Joey did his talk democamp style, meaning no slides just pure voice, which actually worked really well I think. His talk was about Failure 2.0, how your company cannot succeed using Web 2.0. I think that is a very important topic that many people ignore, people always talk about the successes of companies using Web 2.0, but you also need to consider the mistakes and how not to make those mistakes.
The second talk was from Sadek Ali of the University of Toronto. Sadek talked about the use of blogs within companies and how one can do data mining of blogs to extract relevant information. The third talk was Bryn Harris from IBM who talked about how to write on the web. One thing that striked me from her talk was her recommendation of using a table of contents for blog posts to put some kind of structure so it would be easier to read. One of the attendees mentioned that usually blog posts are not linear, many people will start on a particular topic and then it will lead into another topic. However, she responded that the table of contents would probably help in long posts to help navigate around in the blog, which I kind of have to agree.
The last talk was from Barry Wellman from the University of Toronto. Barry talked about the Internet in Everyday life, and he talked about his Connected Lives project and his studies with net usage from a community in Toronto called Netville. Barry always gives inspiring and entertaining talks, he's giving a more detailed talk of yesterday's talk at U of T next week.
After the talks, we had a panel discussion which discussed the following questions:
1) How can companies begin to see social computing as a viable business tool and not just a teenage or youth fad?
2) Is YouTube worth $1.67 billion and why?
3)
I recorded the discussion which I will upload later, so stay tuned!
Then we had a break, followed by a breakout session. We broke into 3 groups with each group discussing 3 questions which were circulated among 3 facilitators of which I was one of the facilitators. The 3 breakout questions were the following:
1) What can businesses learn from successes of social networking sites and tools such as Ryze, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook? How can businesses leverage these successes in their own companies?
2)
3) Are there any Web 2.0 tools that are ready for business applications? Which ones are good ones? Why are they good for business?
There was great discussion and talk especially on Google's acquisition of YouTube and what this means for the industry in general. Each group designated one person to give a summary of their discussion to the rest of the audience.
So, I think the workshop went extremely well and I enjoyed listening and engaging with the attendees on the breakout questions. I think the discussion is by far the most interesting of the workshop, how to engage your participants, the workshop is not just listening but also interacting.
On Technorati: cascon2006, social computing
The first talk was from Joey de Villa of Tucows. Joey is a great speaker, I wish I could learn to be a speaker just like him. Anyways, Joey did his talk democamp style, meaning no slides just pure voice, which actually worked really well I think. His talk was about Failure 2.0, how your company cannot succeed using Web 2.0. I think that is a very important topic that many people ignore, people always talk about the successes of companies using Web 2.0, but you also need to consider the mistakes and how not to make those mistakes.
The second talk was from Sadek Ali of the University of Toronto. Sadek talked about the use of blogs within companies and how one can do data mining of blogs to extract relevant information. The third talk was Bryn Harris from IBM who talked about how to write on the web. One thing that striked me from her talk was her recommendation of using a table of contents for blog posts to put some kind of structure so it would be easier to read. One of the attendees mentioned that usually blog posts are not linear, many people will start on a particular topic and then it will lead into another topic. However, she responded that the table of contents would probably help in long posts to help navigate around in the blog, which I kind of have to agree.
The last talk was from Barry Wellman from the University of Toronto. Barry talked about the Internet in Everyday life, and he talked about his Connected Lives project and his studies with net usage from a community in Toronto called Netville. Barry always gives inspiring and entertaining talks, he's giving a more detailed talk of yesterday's talk at U of T next week.
After the talks, we had a panel discussion which discussed the following questions:
1) How can companies begin to see social computing as a viable business tool and not just a teenage or youth fad?
2) Is YouTube worth $1.67 billion and why?
3)
I recorded the discussion which I will upload later, so stay tuned!
Then we had a break, followed by a breakout session. We broke into 3 groups with each group discussing 3 questions which were circulated among 3 facilitators of which I was one of the facilitators. The 3 breakout questions were the following:
1) What can businesses learn from successes of social networking sites and tools such as Ryze, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook? How can businesses leverage these successes in their own companies?
2)
3) Are there any Web 2.0 tools that are ready for business applications? Which ones are good ones? Why are they good for business?
There was great discussion and talk especially on Google's acquisition of YouTube and what this means for the industry in general. Each group designated one person to give a summary of their discussion to the rest of the audience.
So, I think the workshop went extremely well and I enjoyed listening and engaging with the attendees on the breakout questions. I think the discussion is by far the most interesting of the workshop, how to engage your participants, the workshop is not just listening but also interacting.
On Technorati: cascon2006, social computing
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Vint Cerf talk at U of T
Today is the talk with Vint Cerf from Google. Vint is considered the 'father of the Internet', he is the one that helped to create the TCP/IP protocol, which without, there would be no Internet. Vint talked with graduate students this morning of which I was gladly a part of. Vint asked each of the grad students to talk about their research, and I talked about my work, which he seemed very interested in with the social networking and community. So that was very reassuring. He asked questions to each grad student about each of his research and made suggestions, so that was really great. He's very technical and sharp, especially at his stage in his career. He also mentioned about how if he could go back to the 70s, he would want to change the design of the TCP/IP protocol and decouple the TCP layer from the IP layer, but couldn't at the time because that would increase the header size and it would be hard to sell. So, this is an example of tradeoffs for flexibility.
Vint in his talk right now, gave admiration to Prof. Kelly Gotlieb about his active research, so that was nice. I've realized this talk is being recorded by ePresence of KMDI so I'll be able to see this talk again, as I'll have to leave early to head to the CASCON conference. The title of his talk is Unravelling the Science in Computer Science. There are certain things that we can't predict and that we don't have theories for, and can't answer certain questions like how long will it take to complete a program, is this message spam, etc. He says that this is a serious challenge for the CS community.
When Vint and his colleague Bob Kahn designed the internet protocol, they separated into layers so that each layer is independent of the other, and if the layer changes, other layers will not be affected. Enterprise VPNs and firewalls were not embedded in the network design, but were added on top. Mobile devices were also not included in the IP design.
On Technorati: vint cerf
Vint in his talk right now, gave admiration to Prof. Kelly Gotlieb about his active research, so that was nice. I've realized this talk is being recorded by ePresence of KMDI so I'll be able to see this talk again, as I'll have to leave early to head to the CASCON conference. The title of his talk is Unravelling the Science in Computer Science. There are certain things that we can't predict and that we don't have theories for, and can't answer certain questions like how long will it take to complete a program, is this message spam, etc. He says that this is a serious challenge for the CS community.
When Vint and his colleague Bob Kahn designed the internet protocol, they separated into layers so that each layer is independent of the other, and if the layer changes, other layers will not be affected. Enterprise VPNs and firewalls were not embedded in the network design, but were added on top. Mobile devices were also not included in the IP design.
On Technorati: vint cerf
Monday, October 16, 2006
Vint Cerf comes to U of T tomorrow!
Yes, the father of the Internet, um, TCP/IP protocol, Vint Cerf, who's the Chief Internet Evangelist at Google is coming to U of T. He will meet with graduate students in the morning and then give a talk at 3:00 pm in BA1170. Here's his bio and abstract.
Abstract
Internet continues to grow around the world and expand its modes of operation and access most recently to include mobile operation. Geographically based information is becoming a valuable commodity in the Internet environment. Digital information poses a variety of challenges:
Old business models colliding with voice over IP Digital information formats colliding with intellectual property conventions Preservation of information colliding with changing software for interpreting the bits Privacy and the seemingly boundless memory of the Internet IPv4 and IPv6 and the side-effects of running out of address space Expanding the Internet to operate across the solar system poses its own interesting problems.
Please prepare for an interactive session!
Bio
Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. In this role, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced, Internet-based products and services from Google. He will also be an active public face for Google in the Internet world.
Cerf is the former senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI. In this role, Cerf was responsible for helping to guide corporate strategy development from the technical perspective. Previously, Cerf served as MCI’s senior vice president of Architecture and Technology, leading a team of architects and engineers to design advanced networking frameworks including Internet-based solutions for delivering a combination of data, information, voice and video services for business and consumer use.
Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. Kahn and Cerf were named the recipients of the ACM Alan M. Turing award in 2004 for their work on the Internet protocols. The Turing award is sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science.” In November 2005, President George Bush awarded Cerf and Kahn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their work. The medal is the highest civilian award given by the United States to its citizens.
Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, Cerf was vice president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.
During his tenure from 1976-1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related packet data and security technologies.
Vint Cerf serves as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Cerf served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995 and in 1999 served a term as chairman of the Board. In addition, Cerf is honorary chairman of the IPv6 Forum, dedicated to raising awareness and speeding introduction of the new Internet protocol. Cerf served as a member of the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and serves on several national, state and industry committees focused on cyber-security. Cerf sits on the Board of Directors for the Endowment for Excellence in Education, Avanex Corporation and the ClearSight Systems Corporation. He also serves as 1st Vice President and Treasurer of the National Science & Technology Medals Foundation. Cerf is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum, the Annenberg Center for Communications at USC and the National Academy of Engineering.
Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet. These include the Marconi Fellowship, Charles Stark Draper award of the National Academy of Engineering, the Prince of Asturias award for science and technology, the National Medal of Science from Tunisia, the St. Cyril and St. Methodius Order (Grand Cross) of Bulgaria, the Alexander Graham Bell Award presented by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, the NEC Computer and Communications Prize, the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunications Union, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the ACM Software and Systems Award, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, the Computer and Communications Industries Association Industry Legend Award, installation in the Inventors Hall of Fame, the Yuri Rubinsky Web Award, the Kilby Award , the Yankee Group/Interop/Network World Lifetime Achievement Award, the George R. Stibitz Award, the Werner Wolter Award, the Andrew Saks Engineering Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Computerworld/Smithsonian Leadership Award, the J.D. Edwards Leadership Award for Collaboration, World Institute on Disability Annual award and the Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend medal. Cerf was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006.
Interesting to see what he talks about for a planetary internet and what type of protocols will be required. Certainly TCP/IP is not going to work due to delay and retransmission time, which is much more than here on earth, so there's going to have to be some changes to the protocol. This kind of problem reminds me of the last problem in the ECE628 exam on Computer Networks that was taught by Prof. Gordon Agnew at the University of Waterloo. The question was about how we were going to be hired as an engineer to design the internet and deploy it on Mars. We were supposed to use all the networking concepts that we learned in the course such as transmission protocols, access control protocols, discuss reliability, why we chose a particular protocol, and channel medium, etc. It was a totally free question, which there was really no wrong answer, if you justified it properly. I remember that question being 20 marks out of the total final exam. At the time, I was like, that's a crazy question. But now, it's not really so crazy, now that the next evolution of the internet is going to be the solar system.
On Technorati: vint cerf, planetary internet
Abstract
Internet continues to grow around the world and expand its modes of operation and access most recently to include mobile operation. Geographically based information is becoming a valuable commodity in the Internet environment. Digital information poses a variety of challenges:
Old business models colliding with voice over IP Digital information formats colliding with intellectual property conventions Preservation of information colliding with changing software for interpreting the bits Privacy and the seemingly boundless memory of the Internet IPv4 and IPv6 and the side-effects of running out of address space Expanding the Internet to operate across the solar system poses its own interesting problems.
Please prepare for an interactive session!
Bio
Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. In this role, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced, Internet-based products and services from Google. He will also be an active public face for Google in the Internet world.
Cerf is the former senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI. In this role, Cerf was responsible for helping to guide corporate strategy development from the technical perspective. Previously, Cerf served as MCI’s senior vice president of Architecture and Technology, leading a team of architects and engineers to design advanced networking frameworks including Internet-based solutions for delivering a combination of data, information, voice and video services for business and consumer use.
Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. Kahn and Cerf were named the recipients of the ACM Alan M. Turing award in 2004 for their work on the Internet protocols. The Turing award is sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science.” In November 2005, President George Bush awarded Cerf and Kahn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their work. The medal is the highest civilian award given by the United States to its citizens.
Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, Cerf was vice president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.
During his tenure from 1976-1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related packet data and security technologies.
Vint Cerf serves as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Cerf served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995 and in 1999 served a term as chairman of the Board. In addition, Cerf is honorary chairman of the IPv6 Forum, dedicated to raising awareness and speeding introduction of the new Internet protocol. Cerf served as a member of the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and serves on several national, state and industry committees focused on cyber-security. Cerf sits on the Board of Directors for the Endowment for Excellence in Education, Avanex Corporation and the ClearSight Systems Corporation. He also serves as 1st Vice President and Treasurer of the National Science & Technology Medals Foundation. Cerf is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum, the Annenberg Center for Communications at USC and the National Academy of Engineering.
Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet. These include the Marconi Fellowship, Charles Stark Draper award of the National Academy of Engineering, the Prince of Asturias award for science and technology, the National Medal of Science from Tunisia, the St. Cyril and St. Methodius Order (Grand Cross) of Bulgaria, the Alexander Graham Bell Award presented by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, the NEC Computer and Communications Prize, the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunications Union, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the ACM Software and Systems Award, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, the Computer and Communications Industries Association Industry Legend Award, installation in the Inventors Hall of Fame, the Yuri Rubinsky Web Award, the Kilby Award , the Yankee Group/Interop/Network World Lifetime Achievement Award, the George R. Stibitz Award, the Werner Wolter Award, the Andrew Saks Engineering Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Computerworld/Smithsonian Leadership Award, the J.D. Edwards Leadership Award for Collaboration, World Institute on Disability Annual award and the Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend medal. Cerf was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006.
Interesting to see what he talks about for a planetary internet and what type of protocols will be required. Certainly TCP/IP is not going to work due to delay and retransmission time, which is much more than here on earth, so there's going to have to be some changes to the protocol. This kind of problem reminds me of the last problem in the ECE628 exam on Computer Networks that was taught by Prof. Gordon Agnew at the University of Waterloo. The question was about how we were going to be hired as an engineer to design the internet and deploy it on Mars. We were supposed to use all the networking concepts that we learned in the course such as transmission protocols, access control protocols, discuss reliability, why we chose a particular protocol, and channel medium, etc. It was a totally free question, which there was really no wrong answer, if you justified it properly. I remember that question being 20 marks out of the total final exam. At the time, I was like, that's a crazy question. But now, it's not really so crazy, now that the next evolution of the internet is going to be the solar system.
On Technorati: vint cerf, planetary internet
Eudora to be set free
Remember, Eudora? What, the e-mail client? I used to use that eons of years ago, my evolution of e-mail clients has gone from Eudora, Netscape Mail, Pine, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, web mail (Yahoo and Hotmail), Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, and Gmail. Anyways, it looks like Qualcomm which bought the Eudora mail client (which doesn't really fit in much with their wireless CDMA/1X/Brew cellular business) is open sourcing it and basing it on the Mozilla Thunderbird code-base. That sounds great!
Personally, I have sticked with either Pine or Gmail because they're fast and I like Gmail for its folders and threaded messages. I used to be a folderer (well actually I still am somewhat), but in Gmail, I love the tagging feature, it's so easy, and it makes sense. It also makes it so much easier to search, than placing it in folders. I find out if I leave things in folders, when I'm searching, it's difficult to find where it is. With Gmail, I can search a particular word, and boom, there pops up the list of e-mail messages that correspond to what I'm looking for. I'd say about 80% of the time, it works really well, much better than browsing. Although, there is the occasional 20% that I do browse, because the search doesn't return the e-mail that I'm looking for. But that's because the search is fuzzy, I'm not sure what the exact term is, but I know the topic of the e-mail.
On Technorati: eudora
Personally, I have sticked with either Pine or Gmail because they're fast and I like Gmail for its folders and threaded messages. I used to be a folderer (well actually I still am somewhat), but in Gmail, I love the tagging feature, it's so easy, and it makes sense. It also makes it so much easier to search, than placing it in folders. I find out if I leave things in folders, when I'm searching, it's difficult to find where it is. With Gmail, I can search a particular word, and boom, there pops up the list of e-mail messages that correspond to what I'm looking for. I'd say about 80% of the time, it works really well, much better than browsing. Although, there is the occasional 20% that I do browse, because the search doesn't return the e-mail that I'm looking for. But that's because the search is fuzzy, I'm not sure what the exact term is, but I know the topic of the e-mail.
On Technorati: eudora
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Blogging from Erin Mills Park Toyota
While I'm waiting for my car to get serviced, I brought my laptop to do some work, and long and behold, there's wireless internet access in here. Cool! Something to do while I wait for my car. OK, I need to go back to creating some slides for the CASCON workshop on Social Computing: Best Practices which I'm a chair of. If you haven't already, please sign up for my workshop and subscribe to the CASCON blog!
On Technorati: cascon2006, Toyota
On Technorati: cascon2006, Toyota
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Clustrmaps
I just came across this site to visualize the location of your visitors to your web site, so I'm going to try it out on my blog. Neat stuff!
Ben Schneiderman talk tomorrow!
Ben Schneiderman is giving a talk tomorrow at U of T, he's one of the big wigs in HCI. I actually met him at MobiSys 2004 conference in Boston where I was working on content adaptation on mobile devices with another student. Here's the abstract of his talk.
Interactive information visualization provide researchers with remarkable tools for discovery. By combining powerful data mining methods with user-controlled interfaces, users are beginning to benefit from these potent telescopes for high-dimensional spaces. They can begin with an overview, zoom in on areas of interest, filter out unwanted items, and then click for details-on-demand. With careful design and efficient algorithms, the dynamic queries approach to data exploration can provide 100msec updates even for million-record databases. This talk will start by reviewing the growing commercial success stories such as www.spotfire.com, www.smartmoney.com/marketmap and www.hivegroup.com . Then it will cover recent research progress for visual exploration of large time series data applied to financial, Ebay auction, and genomic data www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/timesearcher . Our next step was to combine these key ideas to produce the Hierarchical Clustering Explorer 3.0 that now includes the rank-by-feature framework www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/hce . By judiciously choosing from appropriate ranking criteria for low-dimensional axis-parallel projections, users can locate desired features of higher dimensional spaces. Demonstrations will be shown.
On Technorati: HCI, ben schneiderman
Interactive information visualization provide researchers with remarkable tools for discovery. By combining powerful data mining methods with user-controlled interfaces, users are beginning to benefit from these potent telescopes for high-dimensional spaces. They can begin with an overview, zoom in on areas of interest, filter out unwanted items, and then click for details-on-demand. With careful design and efficient algorithms, the dynamic queries approach to data exploration can provide 100msec updates even for million-record databases. This talk will start by reviewing the growing commercial success stories such as www.spotfire.com, www.smartmoney.com/marketmap and www.hivegroup.com . Then it will cover recent research progress for visual exploration of large time series data applied to financial, Ebay auction, and genomic data www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/timesearcher . Our next step was to combine these key ideas to produce the Hierarchical Clustering Explorer 3.0 that now includes the rank-by-feature framework www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/hce . By judiciously choosing from appropriate ranking criteria for low-dimensional axis-parallel projections, users can locate desired features of higher dimensional spaces. Demonstrations will be shown.
On Technorati: HCI, ben schneiderman
CASCON is coming next week!
The CASCON conference is happening next week. If you haven't registered, tomorrow is the last day for online registration, otherwise you have to register on site next week. There are lots of exciting things this year at CASCON, there's posters on research, there's workshops, keynotes, hack night, and free food! If you haven't signed up for hack night, then please do so, there are still spots available. I'm pretty busy this year for CASCON, once again helping with the CASCON blog (which you should read and sign up for!), and chairing the Social Computing: Best Practices workshop (which by the way, please sign up for!).
See you there at CASCON, and spread the word, mouth, e-mail, blog!
On Technorati: cascon2006
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Busy with assignments, just got one done today!
Apologies for not writing on my blog daily, I've just been so busy this term. I'm taking 2 courses, CSC2302 Numerical Methods on Initial Value Problems of Ordinary Differential Equations and CSC2508 Advanced Databases. I just finished an assignment today for the numerical methods course that had to deal with Fortran and Matlab and finding attractors and graphing them. Ugh! Reminds me why I'm not in that area. So am I taking that course? It's to satisfy a breadth area in the CS department. I can't believe I'm learning Fortran, and now I realize why we don't program in Fortran, the olden days of programming with go tos and spaghetti like code! I hope after this course is done, I'll never have to see Fortran again!
Monday, October 02, 2006
Hack Night at CASCON
CASCON is having a Hack Night, a combination of demoCamp and hacking. If you're interested, sign up at the CASCON blog.
First 50 people that sign up get a Hack Night t-shirt!
On Technorati: cascon2006, hacking
First 50 people that sign up get a Hack Night t-shirt!
On Technorati: cascon2006, hacking
Thursday, September 28, 2006
TorCHI meeting tonight!
While I was working at PARC in Palo Alto, I went to the monthly BayCHI meetings where they invite speakers from industry and academia to talk about their work. Now, that I'm back in Toronto, there is a TorCHI group. Tonight, Khai Truong who is Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Toronto is going to talk about Designing & Evaluating a Short-Term Audio-Based Reminder Application.
For those who don't know Khai, he was a PhD student under Gregory Abowd at Georgia Tech, who is one of the leading people that I know in the ubiquitous computing research area. University of Toronto is really lucky to have Khai to add to the Computer Science department! Also, Khai is on my PhD committee! Khai is a really great guy, and he's teaching a course this term in Topics in Ubiquitous Computing.
On Technorati: TorCHI
For those who don't know Khai, he was a PhD student under Gregory Abowd at Georgia Tech, who is one of the leading people that I know in the ubiquitous computing research area. University of Toronto is really lucky to have Khai to add to the Computer Science department! Also, Khai is on my PhD committee! Khai is a really great guy, and he's teaching a course this term in Topics in Ubiquitous Computing.
On Technorati: TorCHI
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