Free Information

I have this communal blog, OutsidersInside , a collective effort between some friends and me to document cool travel experiences that we have. One of my buddies is in China. It just so happens that he cannot access blogspot. In fact, he says that China has largely banned access to Google apps. I was a bit skeptic at first, but I’ve read that a number of people have had this problem.

I guess it should not have come as such a shock, but it did.
For anyone who is having this problem, there are a number of sites that will bypass this problem. I have added a little “Slap the Block” banner for easy access. Free information!

Maglev Windmills

While at university I attended an hour-and-a-half seminar on innovation and entrepreneurship. It wasn’t part of a class or anything – simply for kicks.

I remember the event very well; the speaker’s main point was that innovation (and inventions in general) came in two flavors:

- The transferring of an old technology into a new application, and
- The improvement an old application with new technology

He was much more eloquent in making the distinction. Basically he meant that you could take existing practices to places where they had not been used before, or you could use new technology to improve current practices.

Hey may actually have characterized it as follows:

- New Widget for an old problem, vs.
- Old widget for a new problem

At the time I was a little disappointed with this simplification. After all, it is kind of a tautology isn’t it? I think, however, it has grown on me.

In any case, this brings me to an Inhabitat article that I read today that reminded me of this dichotomy and is a great example of the latter. (old widget for a new problem)

The project involves taking the existing maglev technology (used in the famous elevated trains in Japan and China, and in some high-tech elevators) and applying it to wind turbines to nearly eliminate friction and boost energy production.

I had never considered the possibility of maglev turbines; it just goes to show the creativity and innovation of the project. Can’t wait to see one.

E8

I’m posting twice tonight because I was extremely lazy over this Thanksgiving holyday. Like Peter Gibbons in Office Space: “I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I thought it would be.”

In any case, I’m making up for it now. I’ve updated my twitter and now I’m writing about something I found utterly flabbergasting last week. I am talking, ofcourse, (or maybe not of course) about the supposedly unified theory of everything, or E8 as it is being called.

A number of people have blogged about this, but apparently a guy called Garett Lisi, a lone physicist, has unified the two theories of physics – the holy grail of science.

Apparently he did so using geometry… very very complicated geometry. Now, I don’t quite understand anything in his research paper – “The fermions fit together perfectly in chiral representations under graviweak so(7; 1), and the frame-Higgs has all the correct interactions” – you can see why.

I’ve saved the research document, “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” to my google groups, which you can find here. Its really not that simple. At least I think so.

I wonder what this will do to science. First of all, the theory needs to be tested and verified, but if it does prove to be accurate then we are looking at history in the making. I imagine it would have significant consequences in academia and eventually, as it almost always happens, what starts as theory and lab work results in practical applications. I can’t wait for commercial nanomaterials and a functioning space elevator.

If anyone can explain what this document says please let me know! Same goes if you have any idea as to the implications of the theory, practical or otherwise.

By the way, according to this document and Lisi’s theory, this is the shape of the universe, and it is the geometric formula that unifies all physical forces:

A review of Jacob's Creek 2004 Reserve Cab

Had a bottle of Jacob’s Creek Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 Sunday evening. Great bottle! Definitely tagged their website.

I bought this wine mainly because it was fairly cheep ($15) and it was marketed as a winner of several awards. I didn’t know how many until I checked out their website. Its fairly impressive; a dozen or so medals in total.

My girlfriend wasn’t that fond of it—not sure why.
It’s a smooth wine, and for a Cabernate Souvignon its light in tannins; not too much of that dry mouth feeling. The back label says it’s got “intense berry and cassis characters.” I can’t always detect the “characters” that wineries claim their wines are imbued with, but in this case they were spot on.

The price was right!

Stuff I'd like to see my Avatar do

I do wish we could begin to see interactive avatars. You might notice how I’ve included my girlfriend’s avatar onto my page. It would be a lot better if I could just host both avatars under one background.

Taking this idea further yet: It would be even cooler if I could have a virtual background to host my blog visitors. As visitors came, if they had an avatar of their own, it would be hosted temporarily there and guests would have a visual of all the other visitors that are currently on the page.

Clearly the background could get crowded, but we can get over this easily by just having the background zoom out as traffic grows.

I emailed the people at Meez regarding this. No response yet.

Thoughts on the potential of a Google Wireless

I’ve been using the last couple of hours to catch up with the news and I must say, I am very excited about the upcoming spectrum auction. I do hope that Google gets it, if only for the sake of change.

In my opinion, a Google-centric mobile infrastructure is full of promise. I began thinking about this after reading Technology and De-Skilling, where the author describes how technology – and specifically our electronic contact lists – provides disincentives to memorize data ourselves. Personally, I have no objections against this; hopefully I can put my mind to better use. A Google-centric mobile infrastructure (both their new mobile OS and this spectrum play) would provide simple solutions to much of this. For instance, by synching up gmail contacts with phone contacts a big step could be made towards centralizing data that is currently hosted in different and isolated places. Who inputs phone numbers into gmail nowadays? That could all change. I know that phone numbers can be backed up electronically, but backup is not exactly the same thing synchronization. Indeed, this could be an example of Fred Wilson's progressive evolution of the messaging market and how it is unfolding onto the mobile and voice sector. My hope is to see more data centralization and more flexibility in choices for communication and messaging. I want to be able to host my data in one location, and then determine how much, and which, information different communication tools (and websites) can pull from this central spot.

Now, I know this is only the very tip of the iceberg as far as what this mobile network could achieve. Indeed, we could be looking at free mobile service – fully paid for by ads. Who knows what else could happen.

Any ideas or comments?

Biometrics in Cameras

Now I know I’m on to something! Go back two days to my prior post on Biometrics, now check out this article. Very briefly, it mentions that Fotonation is developing cameras which can automatically detect the people you are taking pictures of in a process they are calling autotagging.

While I do think that they have gotten the general gist of the biometric potential, the article is a bit weak in it’s foreshadow. The article mentions that one problem with the technology is that scanning and recognizing faces is a difficult process that requires substantial processing power. They go on to say that this issue is automatically sidestepped because people usually are photographing the same people – friends and family, their social network.

This comment, I find, is a bit short sighted. Let’s take a look at the big picture.

Firstly cameras will, at one point, cease to exist as stand alone devices. This convergence is pretty well accepted. The fact that we have cameras on our phones is fairly compelling trend evidence. Just give this time.

Secondly, hard drives will cease to exist on cameras, and phones for that matter. As mobile broadband matures it makes more sense to store everything remotely. As such, it will make no sense to have the facial recognition software embedded in your camera. The biometric programs will be hosted centrally, and therefore the problem of not having sufficient processing power to run these programs goes away. In fact, people who opt in will be recognized in all pictures, including those of strangers.

People might find this spooky, or a violation of their privacy, similarly to how they reacted when the news of the 3-D Google truck came out. My belief is that, as more data is acquired in the internet, identities (and private information) actually become more diluted – they become part of the background, so to speak. Information proliferation is not something we should be worried about. Let me know if you disagree.

Faces and the Genographic Project

This week I plan to purchase two of the Genographic Project kits. Its a fairly famous ongoing study being undertaken by National Geographic and IBM. As they put it, it is a "five-year effort to understand the human journey—where we came from and how we got to where we live today." By providing a sample of your DNA you can get a report that shows the migrations your ancestors undertook over the last 200,000 years.

I wanted to write this down as a personal record -- to check the validity of what I know about my ancient ancestors. Males, having an X and Y chromosome, can investigate the migratory history of both their paternal and maternal lineage using their own DNA. Unfortunately, this also means I have to dish out two $100 dollar payments to National Geographic. Why can't they use a single sample on two analyses?

In any case, I am told that my mother's lineage is Purepecha, a Mesoamerican tribe contemporary to the Aztecs. As such, my mother's descendants probably migrated from Africa, into the Middle East, Asia, over the bearing straight to eventually find themselves in what is now Mexico.

My father's line is probably Viking. If this is correct these descendants had a somewhat shorter journey. Reaching the Middle East from Africa, they set off towards Northern Europe.

What I am wondering is whether I might have had ancestors who reached the Middle East together and then parted ways. Stranger still would be to think that I had one ancestor who reached the Middle East, but whose offspring parted ways in opposite directions. DNA that parted ways over 100,000 years ago reunites, albeit scrambled and mutated. I guess you can say the same thing about each generation.

Well, once I get the results we'll see how right, or wrong, I was.

While we are on the subject, I came across an interesting site that involves another study. This time its regarding faces. It seems that when you take multiple people, irrespective of how attractive they are, and blend their images together into an "average" you get an attractive person. Try it out, its compelling evidence. This time, this got me thinking about genes in the future. How will people look in the future? Will there be more phenotype variability or less? Will everyone eventually begin to converge at some average? The law of averages would suggest this, wouldn't it? I hope not. Any thoughts?

Biometrics

I came across this interesting article, 3-D Cityscapes Made From Flickr Pics (accompanied by the video below), it has gotten me thinking about similar projects which could also be undertaken.

I am confident that as the technology matures, we are all going to see a lot more biometrics, everywhere. Biometric technologies have been talked about for a long time and some might say that the smart money has been made already. I, however, do not think the technology’s potential has been achieved. And, as such, I see a huge opportunity for VCs going forward.

Clearly, biometrics would be very useful, for security purposes and as an additional means of password-protecting consumer devices. I can definitely see facial recognition technology being imbedded into laptops, mobile phones, etc. Although, unlike the engineer in the video, I don’t think laptops will exist in the future. The future, in my opinion, will be dominated by central-hosting technologies and as such there will be no need for laptops. I may write more about this at another time.

In any case, sponsorship of companies undertaking your typical biometric projects unfortunately involves a substantial technology risk. But not all biometric projects have to be this way.

I’m thinking of a project involving facial recognition software that is embedded into social networks. A mashup of the The Flickr Project with software like that of My Heritage.com; this would be a great add on to any social network! Friends could potentially be identified automatically as one posts new pictures onto social network picture albums. This way we could completely sidestep the tedious task of manually identifying and tagging friends on one’s pictures.

One of the nice things about such a project would be the fact that the application would get progressively better as it is used. As more pictures are scanned and more friends are identified the application would be acquiring facial data from multiple angles which in turn would increase the likelihood of correctly identifying people in any future scans (not to mention any technological advances that may be achieved along the way). Many social networks have so many pictures dumped into them already that it would take very little additional time for an application like this to acquire the critical scale needed to achieve a high correct-identification rate.

I’m no marketing guru, but I imagine that this kind of processed data would prove quite valuable to advertisers (your business model). The application could, certainly with a degree of error, identify different ethnicities, body types, etc.

Projects like these could provide biometrics strong impetus for further development. I messaged Zuckerberg about this… still no response though.


3-D Cityscapes Made From Flickr Pics

A Review of two Wine Bottles

I’m in the process of finishing a bottle of Rizzi Barbaresco 2001 Riserva with my girlfriend. She does not think this wine is worth writing about, but here it goes anyway.

Not particularly fond of this bottle. It’s light in tannins, dry, and lingers in your mouth. It’s easy enough to drink, but not very complex. It has an orange-ish rim, but other than that it simply does not stand out much. It’s made of 100% Nebbiolo grapes, a variety that I was ignorant about until yesterday when I found the bottle. At the time the purchase seemed like a steal – listed at $17 and regularly sold for $65 – now I think the price was right.

More information at the Rizzi website: Rizzi.com

While I’m at it I’ll also write about the Louis Jadot Pinot Noir Bourgogne 2005 that I had last night. Unfortunately this bottle was a real let down. I remember I really liked their Beaujolais Villages (forget which vintage) which I had about a month ago. This bottle, on the other hand, was quite watery and tasteless and had almost no fragrance. The $16 price tag was definitely not a steal!

Interestingly enough, Louis Jadot has no information about this wine on their website but here is their website anyway: LouisJadot.com

Meez.com

I've just created this blog and this is my first post. I've been populating my virtual space with widgets, badges, chicklets, etc. My favorite addition thus far is my Meez.com avatar. To commemorate his birthday this Saturday 10th of November 2007 I decided to dedicate this post to Meez.com and avatars in general.

I'm not sure how our virtual selves came to be known as avatars. This may not be a widely known fact, but Avatars are in fact mortal incarnations of deities. I confirmed this with the dictionary but I actually knew the general definition beforehand; just one example of the snippets of knowledge that are acquired by playing and/or reading fantasy games/books. In this case, Magic the Gathering. I used to play, and can remember "Creature" playing cards titled, for example, "Avatar of Hope." Typically the card illustrations involved a form of mythical creature — the Avatar of Hope, for example, is a winged centaur.

Christ may very well be the most famous Avatar if you believe in the gospel.

The evolution of the definition of the word Avatar may have to do with the underlying concept of an entity traveling to a different (lower) realm. In its original meaning Avatars descended onto the earth from a celestial (or infernal) realm. It could be argued that modern avatars, as online representations of a "real" entity, also traverse from the realm of reality to the Internet.

Meez is great, even in its beta it provides significant avatar building flexibility. Perhaps their most appealing quality is the ability to animate your avatar. The one thing they currently lack, relative to their competitors, is voice recording to provide your avatar with a message.

As I browsed avatar applications and pondered on their current, and future, utility I began to appreciate their potential — avatars it seems are at their infancy. They are currently used for decoration more than anything, something which I think will change. Eventually they could be an integral part of the way we present ourselves in virtual spaces—almost like a business card.

Some future utilities that I hope Meez (or other avatar applications) will develop include:

- Facial recognition software. To sidestep much of the avatar customization (this technology already exists actually).
- Avatar interaction. To be used when two avatars meet in a single virtual space. It would be very interesting if, for example, an avatar’s background at a blog became populated with the avatars of readers as they visited the page.
- Dynamic backgrounds. This ties back to the previous bullet. Wireless triangulation already exists, and can be used to determine the location of a mobile phone user. It would be interesting if this information could be pulled to change an avatar’s background as his/her owner traveled between (or within) cities.
- It might also be interesting if we could, for instance, visualize products and services of interest through our avatar. I’m imagining an avatar application that would pull click-through information or del.icio.us tag information to populate an avatar’s space with products that a user may be have, want, or be interested in.

It will be interesting to see where this all goes.