I know I wanted to talk about the economic 'crisis', babajob and orkut among a myriad of other things, but you can't have everything.
Since the popularization of the internet (the mid-1990's, and a little while before) there has been the promise of the internet of machines and of machine learning; a promise of 'smart' devices. We are still waiting for the internet of the devices, a stage where I walk into a meeting and my phone "knows" this, and goes into silent mode and "tells" the computer to load up my presentation and add my name to the attendee list. Coincidentally we are also waiting for the flying car, but that's a whole different blog-post.
We are finally getting to the stage with devices and in turn applications can be context-aware. We now have mobile phone application which for example "know" where you are, and where you are going for a meeting with whom at what time; this application then "detects" if you're going to be late and informs others via an SMS. This is one step closer to the dream, but what is still missing are two things:
1.) Multiple Context Convergence. [MCC]
2.) Device Information Sharing. [DIS]
MCC is critical. Lets go back to the example of me walking into a meeting room and say my phone "knowing" I am in a meeting, but how exactly does it know? Just because it says 'meeting' in my calendar? or because the noise in the room is low? Or is it really smart enough to use all the different contexts available to it, like calendar information, noise level, location, proximity to others invited to the meeting and make a smart decision in the face of incomplete and or conflicting information.
DIC is really what I'd like to see, an internet for the devices. Now that my phone knows I am in a meeting, it can not just itself go silent but also tell my laptop to switch to my "work profile - Meeting mode" which would in turn prompt the computer to turn off the lights in my office and lock the office door (if I forgot to do so). It will also activate a call divert from my office to my cell phone if I so desire. The opportunities for this are endless.
Which brings us back to, well why haven't we done this yet? The simple answer is because the devices were never built to interact with each other in the first place, secondly since MCC hasn't yet been perfected, the results for this just aren't there yet.
Another phenominon which is interesting and somewhat related is the convergence of devices, a stage where my mobile phone is my mp3 player and camera ... and my laptop is my TV. Although this may at first seem like a dream killer, it infact makes it more possible for these device functions to interact and communicate.
We will see context aware applications before the dawn of context aware devices. This is because, code is easy (free) to create and a whole lot more people have access to a computer than the specialized equipment required to make sophisticated devices like cars and phones.
Eventually, the machines will talk to each other ... until then, we'll just have to be content with talk to each-other.
Random things I did this week: I Geo-coded 676 ATMs for a marketing project. The addresses were a bit messed up, but once I figured out the means to get 3 possibly working locations from each one provided, it took only a few hours to go from looking at a list of ATMs spanning 67 pages to having a mock web-site up with a glorious google map flaunting the ATM as placeMarkers ... now I am adding info windows with YouTube videos and mock 'user-generated' content to it. =)
Final Word: Next post will have a video from the author of "the wisdom of the crowds" and we will talk about blogging ... also i can haz cheezeburgar!
Friday, November 7, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Singapore Digital Media Festival ...
Okie, so there are a lot of things I need to talk about ...
- Google DevFest [South East Aaia <- that was the typo on the t-shirts]
- Babajob
- Orkut (and OpenSocial)
- ... the list goes on ...
(Logo by Nicholas Ang, second-year student from Ngee Ann Polytechnic's School of Infocomm Technology.)As it so happens the event is Thursday and Friday and well given classes and meetings I wouldn't be able to attend the event as such. If any of you guys are interested, drop me a line here with the following details:
Name:
Job Title:
Company:
Address:
Email:
HP:
Event details below:
For more details visit :: http://www.dmfest.com
Friday, October 17, 2008
Another post ...
The news of my death are greatly exaggerated ...
I have been "MIA" (well not really, I was busy with loads of other action) so here's a post to make up for all that.
First lets catch up with some of the topics discussed in class:
1) Mini-presentation on Wiki-Essentials:
First there was discussion about what a wiki is (a webpage that multiple people can edit, usually accompanied by a revision control system), cleared us some basics like every group needs to be on the wetpaint wiki (even if the group is working on PodCamp or some topic that has nothing to do with the wiki directly) and what the working pages are for (prof will be looking at either the working pages or the final draft [and not both] so each team needs to decide / pick one and run with it. The main difference being the changes made to the working pages aren't directly reflected on the main wiki and some groups prefer that. Either way the end result should be on the main wiki page).
This was followed by a greater discussion on the grading criteria itself and how the wiki would be used to track each group member's performance. Mainly by looking at the contribution history (who and when), content changes (the magnitude of the change, in number of lines) and Top Contributers (more points for contributing across the board to pages from different topics).
The meaning of such a grading mechanism ... this is something the Michael wanted to be emphasized, so it got it's own slide.
This was followed up by ways of making this system work for you, including a demo of 280slides.com which enables collaborative creation of presentations.
This was followed by a broader discussion on wikis themselves with content from wikipatterns and the greater web.
Another topic discussed in class which is of great interest to me, was Emergent Complexity, or just Emergence or Complexity as it is sometimes referred to. Remember the discussion about TED Talks (another awesome resource) from week 1, we also talked about Fractals ... yep, tying the loop, Fractals are an emergent phenomenon. Complexity is a fascinating topic, it is a recurring theme in nature, plant growth, herd formation even the formation and distribution of ant colonies is based on these simple principles.
Ok, so what does emergence have to do with this class? Inspiration from the book "Made to Stick" can help answer the question ... the blogosphere follows a few simple rules when making a story big (sticky, though literally speaking, stickiness isn't really the issue on the internet as it never forgets). Lets accept this as an established fact that if you're the first hit on Google for a generic search term and Digg, you can fairly certain of a high click-through rate. Given this there are certain kind of articles and pages that get dugg a lot and this clicked and picked up by the google-bot giving it a higher and higher page rank. These simple rules that make an article "diggable" and more accessible if understood can be used to easily spread a message like wildfire. A simple example of this can be what was known as Google-bombing (Google it).
This post would be more than incomplete without the mention of the US presidential election. I am usually pretty apolitical and my religious views can be quoted as "Pastafarian", but this time around I have a fairly strong feeling for the US elections. And if we really want to talk about it, let's just say sticking to the context of this course, Obama has an official iPhone App and knows what bubble sort is all about, where as McCain refuses to use email. And don't you get me started on Palin ...
Talking about iPhone apps, Obama's app is pretty nifty and talks about his stance on all the different issues. Also, there is pretty cool WordPress app which is almost full-featured, after trying it out, I wondered why I started this blog on blogger ... just because it's google? =P
Talking about Google, applications period for project 10 to the 100 gets over soon, so if you have an idea, don't sit on it. Also Google Andriod phones are selling like hot cakes on the pre-booking market, they'd better deliver!
Okie, so I can ramble on, let's keep the discussion about the Credit Crunch to the next post.
Tip of the Post: A big shout out to all Firefox users (if you're not using FireFox, now would be a good time to switch) ... here's something awesome just for you: Ubiquity. It's a version 0.1.1 alpha prototype experiment (that's just Aza Raskin's way of say it's too awesome to be true) which blows the socks off of almost any other Firefox extension. Ubiquity enables you to do a whole lot with leaving the current page. You can add maps, comics and reviews from yelp to you emails, you can live translate and annotate text, add events to your calendar and so much more. Go get a copy NOW!
Also watch out for Geode ... this could be big (especially if the come out with mobile firefox).
Random things I did this week: Participated in APEX business IT case challenge, came in 3rd ... finished and submitted my independent study report - that's 36 pages of analysis of data from SIPO PRC (State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China.) ... got myself an iPod touch for iPhone app development ... got paid 4.5k USD from Google for successfully completing the Summer of Code project. ^_^
Final Word: One of the best practises of blogging was said to be having a blogging schedule ... I believe following a blogging schedule might prove more fruitful than just having one =P
I have been "MIA" (well not really, I was busy with loads of other action) so here's a post to make up for all that.
First lets catch up with some of the topics discussed in class:
1) Mini-presentation on Wiki-Essentials:
First there was discussion about what a wiki is (a webpage that multiple people can edit, usually accompanied by a revision control system), cleared us some basics like every group needs to be on the wetpaint wiki (even if the group is working on PodCamp or some topic that has nothing to do with the wiki directly) and what the working pages are for (prof will be looking at either the working pages or the final draft [and not both] so each team needs to decide / pick one and run with it. The main difference being the changes made to the working pages aren't directly reflected on the main wiki and some groups prefer that. Either way the end result should be on the main wiki page).
This was followed by a greater discussion on the grading criteria itself and how the wiki would be used to track each group member's performance. Mainly by looking at the contribution history (who and when), content changes (the magnitude of the change, in number of lines) and Top Contributers (more points for contributing across the board to pages from different topics).
The meaning of such a grading mechanism ... this is something the Michael wanted to be emphasized, so it got it's own slide.
This was followed up by ways of making this system work for you, including a demo of 280slides.com which enables collaborative creation of presentations.
This was followed by a broader discussion on wikis themselves with content from wikipatterns and the greater web.
Another topic discussed in class which is of great interest to me, was Emergent Complexity, or just Emergence or Complexity as it is sometimes referred to. Remember the discussion about TED Talks (another awesome resource) from week 1, we also talked about Fractals ... yep, tying the loop, Fractals are an emergent phenomenon. Complexity is a fascinating topic, it is a recurring theme in nature, plant growth, herd formation even the formation and distribution of ant colonies is based on these simple principles.
Ok, so what does emergence have to do with this class? Inspiration from the book "Made to Stick" can help answer the question ... the blogosphere follows a few simple rules when making a story big (sticky, though literally speaking, stickiness isn't really the issue on the internet as it never forgets). Lets accept this as an established fact that if you're the first hit on Google for a generic search term and Digg, you can fairly certain of a high click-through rate. Given this there are certain kind of articles and pages that get dugg a lot and this clicked and picked up by the google-bot giving it a higher and higher page rank. These simple rules that make an article "diggable" and more accessible if understood can be used to easily spread a message like wildfire. A simple example of this can be what was known as Google-bombing (Google it).
This post would be more than incomplete without the mention of the US presidential election. I am usually pretty apolitical and my religious views can be quoted as "Pastafarian", but this time around I have a fairly strong feeling for the US elections. And if we really want to talk about it, let's just say sticking to the context of this course, Obama has an official iPhone App and knows what bubble sort is all about, where as McCain refuses to use email. And don't you get me started on Palin ...
Talking about iPhone apps, Obama's app is pretty nifty and talks about his stance on all the different issues. Also, there is pretty cool WordPress app which is almost full-featured, after trying it out, I wondered why I started this blog on blogger ... just because it's google? =P
Talking about Google, applications period for project 10 to the 100 gets over soon, so if you have an idea, don't sit on it. Also Google Andriod phones are selling like hot cakes on the pre-booking market, they'd better deliver!
Okie, so I can ramble on, let's keep the discussion about the Credit Crunch to the next post.
Tip of the Post: A big shout out to all Firefox users (if you're not using FireFox, now would be a good time to switch) ... here's something awesome just for you: Ubiquity. It's a version 0.1.1 alpha prototype experiment (that's just Aza Raskin's way of say it's too awesome to be true) which blows the socks off of almost any other Firefox extension. Ubiquity enables you to do a whole lot with leaving the current page. You can add maps, comics and reviews from yelp to you emails, you can live translate and annotate text, add events to your calendar and so much more. Go get a copy NOW!
Also watch out for Geode ... this could be big (especially if the come out with mobile firefox).
Random things I did this week: Participated in APEX business IT case challenge, came in 3rd ... finished and submitted my independent study report - that's 36 pages of analysis of data from SIPO PRC (State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China.) ... got myself an iPod touch for iPhone app development ... got paid 4.5k USD from Google for successfully completing the Summer of Code project. ^_^
Final Word: One of the best practises of blogging was said to be having a blogging schedule ... I believe following a blogging schedule might prove more fruitful than just having one =P
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Start-up Exercise
So a week flies by and we return to class with 5 minutes presentations about our "start up" exercises. Well we just had one functional slide and it's here:
(GeekTalk / Techno-Babble :: Yes I know what slideshare is and how it works etc. Firstly, this is from a keynote presentation and secondly, just one slide, why bring flash into the picture?)
So what's that all about?
Our target for the start-up exercise was to generate some traffic for our page (Mobile markets across Asia) on the wet-paint wiki. Lets quickly go through left to right:
We decided posting a link in the 'external links' section of a relevant Wikipedia page might be a good place to start (Apparently getting it up there is easy, making it stay is a different story.)
We also sought the opinions of experts in the mobile realm (the little red dude in the image). Sashi contacted some of her profs. from school. hmmm, maybe I should get in touch with Ajay and bully him to contribute something ... working on the Sahana project does in some sense qualify him as an expert. Anyways, I digress.
Three, we target forums by posting articles and questions to engage the crowds. Well fairly straight-forward and self-explainatory.
Finally we sought to put up links on the other (country specific) pages to our page, only to find the data was already distributed across the sections effectively achieving the same goal.
Although not represented on the slide(s), we also have a facebook group, ut we quickly realised that would take more time (love and care) to reap results, and since we were planning on changing the direction of content on the wiki, we didn't work on it too much.
This brings us to the golden clock, keeper of time. Which is to represent that we realise that it takes some time for "ground to swell" if you aren't giving them something ground-breaking.
The images towards the right represent who we envisioned we would be quantitatively and qualitatively be measuring our progress. Do go check out statcounter.
Tip of the post [Mac Only]: RSS feed readers work well for most part for most feeds. But sometime you don't really need to read the whole feed (eg. Twitter updates, Facebook friend feed etc) and all you need is to be updated about the event, and if you miss it, puppies don't die. This is pretty much like different levels of importance one may assign to her/his emails. In which case these feeds might fal under the BACN category. Here's an alternative way to peruse the RSS feeds.
Get growl (system-wide notification application) and something like proxi to check the feeds and you can setup non-intrusive updates from whichever feed you like with your choice of frequency. You even get to choose the notification image if you so desire. Examples:
So these small blue boxes with updates from facebook, twitter, lifehacker etc popup in the upper right corner of the screen and go away after a while non-intrusively giving me an update. If I find the update interesting (eg.: the LifeHacker article on sleep) I can just click on it to take me to the article. If I realy just want to dismiss the box, I can mouse-over to get an 'X', clicking on which will close the box.
This has lots of advantages like filtering of the feeds based on content etc and when used in conjunction with Yahoo pipes, it can be an extremely useful setup.
I realize that both the tips have been for macs, but hey! What can I do? I am a mac-head! =)
Random thing I did this week: I ended up voulenteering my services for converting the legal text of the Creative Commons Singapore licenses into the xhtml deed pages you see on the CC website. I also setup DDM1, but more on that later.
Final words: 8:30 classes are a crime against humanity.
(GeekTalk / Techno-Babble :: Yes I know what slideshare is and how it works etc. Firstly, this is from a keynote presentation and secondly, just one slide, why bring flash into the picture?)
So what's that all about?
Our target for the start-up exercise was to generate some traffic for our page (Mobile markets across Asia) on the wet-paint wiki. Lets quickly go through left to right:
We decided posting a link in the 'external links' section of a relevant Wikipedia page might be a good place to start (Apparently getting it up there is easy, making it stay is a different story.)
We also sought the opinions of experts in the mobile realm (the little red dude in the image). Sashi contacted some of her profs. from school. hmmm, maybe I should get in touch with Ajay and bully him to contribute something ... working on the Sahana project does in some sense qualify him as an expert. Anyways, I digress.
Three, we target forums by posting articles and questions to engage the crowds. Well fairly straight-forward and self-explainatory.
Finally we sought to put up links on the other (country specific) pages to our page, only to find the data was already distributed across the sections effectively achieving the same goal.
Although not represented on the slide(s), we also have a facebook group, ut we quickly realised that would take more time (love and care) to reap results, and since we were planning on changing the direction of content on the wiki, we didn't work on it too much.
This brings us to the golden clock, keeper of time. Which is to represent that we realise that it takes some time for "ground to swell" if you aren't giving them something ground-breaking.
The images towards the right represent who we envisioned we would be quantitatively and qualitatively be measuring our progress. Do go check out statcounter.
Tip of the post [Mac Only]: RSS feed readers work well for most part for most feeds. But sometime you don't really need to read the whole feed (eg. Twitter updates, Facebook friend feed etc) and all you need is to be updated about the event, and if you miss it, puppies don't die. This is pretty much like different levels of importance one may assign to her/his emails. In which case these feeds might fal under the BACN category. Here's an alternative way to peruse the RSS feeds.
Get growl (system-wide notification application) and something like proxi to check the feeds and you can setup non-intrusive updates from whichever feed you like with your choice of frequency. You even get to choose the notification image if you so desire. Examples:
So these small blue boxes with updates from facebook, twitter, lifehacker etc popup in the upper right corner of the screen and go away after a while non-intrusively giving me an update. If I find the update interesting (eg.: the LifeHacker article on sleep) I can just click on it to take me to the article. If I realy just want to dismiss the box, I can mouse-over to get an 'X', clicking on which will close the box.
This has lots of advantages like filtering of the feeds based on content etc and when used in conjunction with Yahoo pipes, it can be an extremely useful setup.
I realize that both the tips have been for macs, but hey! What can I do? I am a mac-head! =)
Random thing I did this week: I ended up voulenteering my services for converting the legal text of the Creative Commons Singapore licenses into the xhtml deed pages you see on the CC website. I also setup DDM1, but more on that later.
Final words: 8:30 classes are a crime against humanity.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Introduction and Definitions ...
So it begins ... this blog follows (will follow) the comm 215 course (Social Media Across Asia) taught at Singapore Management University (from here on forth referred to as SMU) by Prof. Michael Netzley. Well, that and other things =)
Before we dive right in, a quick introduction; I am a final year IS student at SMU and go by the name of Ankit. I am presently working as a research assistant on 3 different projects and just glad to find enough time to contribute to this blog as one of half dozen or so I started at some point in time.
Lets wrap up some of the discussions we had in class last time, here are a few of the definitions that make sense to me in the context of this class:
GroundSwell is the ability of the crowds to use the tools and garner the collective power to voice their opinion and be heard.
Web 2.0 (for the purpose of this course) may be defined as: The interactive web; [anything (which is a part of the web) that enables conversations / provides a feedback mechanism through opinions, options and/or behavior]
A blog (in the context of this class) is a medium to express personal opinion (through text, images, videos, interactive applets etc) and usually provides for a means to gather feedback on these opinions from the masses.
Do you think I got that right or do you have very varying opinions? Either way, I'd like to hear from you, so comment away!
Ok and now for the others stuff:
Tip of the post: If you're on a mac and using blogger, you can get yourself the blo3gger dashboard widget and blog right from your dashboard. Where you ask may you find this mythical widget, why right here :: http://www.google.com/macwidgets/
Just click the Download now button and you're good to go for those quick posts, without the hassle of launching a web browser or logging in with you user name and password!
Random thing I did this week: I wrote a shell script from scratch that checks if my external Hard Disk is connected and depending on that queries IMDB for ratings and comments for all the movies in my unseen movies folder. Finally it displays the results on my desktop.
Ping me if you want a copy ^_^ ... Stilling looking for ideas for other things to show on the desktop, suggestions welcomed. (I already have uptime, ram usage, process activity, internet configurations and calendar).
Final word: Google, Summer of Code was fun!
Before we dive right in, a quick introduction; I am a final year IS student at SMU and go by the name of Ankit. I am presently working as a research assistant on 3 different projects and just glad to find enough time to contribute to this blog as one of half dozen or so I started at some point in time.
Lets wrap up some of the discussions we had in class last time, here are a few of the definitions that make sense to me in the context of this class:
GroundSwell is the ability of the crowds to use the tools and garner the collective power to voice their opinion and be heard.
Web 2.0 (for the purpose of this course) may be defined as: The interactive web; [anything (which is a part of the web) that enables conversations / provides a feedback mechanism through opinions, options and/or behavior]
A blog (in the context of this class) is a medium to express personal opinion (through text, images, videos, interactive applets etc) and usually provides for a means to gather feedback on these opinions from the masses.
Do you think I got that right or do you have very varying opinions? Either way, I'd like to hear from you, so comment away!
Ok and now for the others stuff:
Tip of the post: If you're on a mac and using blogger, you can get yourself the blo3gger dashboard widget and blog right from your dashboard. Where you ask may you find this mythical widget, why right here :: http://www.google.com/macwidgets/
Just click the Download now button and you're good to go for those quick posts, without the hassle of launching a web browser or logging in with you user name and password!Random thing I did this week: I wrote a shell script from scratch that checks if my external Hard Disk is connected and depending on that queries IMDB for ratings and comments for all the movies in my unseen movies folder. Finally it displays the results on my desktop.
Ping me if you want a copy ^_^ ... Stilling looking for ideas for other things to show on the desktop, suggestions welcomed. (I already have uptime, ram usage, process activity, internet configurations and calendar).
Final word: Google, Summer of Code was fun!
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