Incremental Blogger

After several weeks of a blogging hiatus, I’m back.

I’ve been bursting at the seems the last couple weeks, thinking I should blog this or that, but for a bunch of reasons I never got to it. One thing struck me though as I contemplated posting more words to the Internet: The fun is only beginning.

Take TwitterVision. Although I don’t run it, if someone is that’s sitting next to me, I can’t help but look over their shoulder and…..stare.

Take what Google is doing with Ad Words. No sitting still here. Don Dodge’s right about this one.

And on the development side, it’s going to be interesting to see if Apollo knocks out the no name contender WPF/e. I haven’t played with Apollo yet, but my gut is talking to me bigtime and it keeps gurggling WPF/e. I trust my gut. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that WPF/e is going to be bigger than WPF itself in terms of the exposure it gets on the Internet over the next year. We’ll see if the development community gives Apollo a Java-scaled round of acceptance. Could be. Things are going to get very interesting, indeed.

Maybe it’s my time off to read and reflect on things, but I’m filled with engineering-grade enthusiasm for a bunch of creative technologies right now. I’ve been stacking ideas up in my mind, tinkering with little projects, and finishing up some big ones. Exciting times ahead.

At the International Solid State Circuits Conference, Intel is demoing a prototype 80-core processor.

The multi-core processor doesn’t run an x86 instruction set or support any of today’s classic operating systems, but both of these points miss the more immediate value of a multi-core system such as this. There are a whole class of problems where a processor such as this–whether the main processing unit in a system or a complementary component–would be a significant boost to developers and end users. Just a few of these areas are in vision systems, synthesizing video, speech recognition, handwriting/shape recognition and search.

The graphics industry has already stepped in this direction for good reason and maybe with a more generic set of processors we’ll see not only better looking images on our computers, but we’ll see, hear, experience, and interact with our computers in ways that have not been practical to date. That’s the key.

Yes, CPUs from Intel, AMD and others are already going in the multi-core direction. It won’t be too many years before 8 or 16-core processor systems populate our retail shelves. These systems will evolve from our current crop of hardware and software. However, I imagine the larger core systems will target specific problems, at least at first, with specialized hardware and software. The two may eventually merge or may stay separate, much like the graphics processors and main CPU have gone their separate ways. I’m guessing the latter is more likely for the next decade or so, but then again we’ll just have to see.

Which leads to some silly speculation: Which mainstream operating system do you think would be the first to capitalize on a large, multi-core processor–let’s say at least 80 processors? Unix? Windows? or Apple’s Mac? or a Google OS? Hmmm. My vote would be a Unix-derived OS first with maybe Apple providing an early off-the-shelf video/graphics/music editing system using the processor.

On CNet (new.com) a wonderfully funny “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” commercial has been playing. This time around an IT person is added to the mix and is taping a webcam to the top of the PC’s head. Makes me laugh every time I see it.

TechCrunch points to a new web-based face-recognition service called Polar Rose. With similar goals to those of Riya, Polar Rose wants to help you recognize or locate faces in online images. Riya didn’t have much success at this and has changed their business model and my guess is that Polar Rose won’t be far behind.

Why?

This is a hard problem. Recognizing faces in a handful of images with a couple hundred faces is one thing–doing so with the myriad of online images is another. Polar Rose is going to take advantage of people tagging images in order to help train their engine, which makes sense, but this still doesn’t change the fundamental problems of the quality of the training set. It’ll be interesting to see how it all works out or if they can find a sweet spot in how to use the technology. I’m skeptical though. They may be able to leverage a patent or two later along the way, however.

To me, if people want to change the world when it comes to face recognition they’d focus on image streams, such as those from webcams, (possibly) cellphones, conference systems, and other digital cameras. A webcam on your laptop, that watches you day in and day out has a better chance of building up quality recognition vectors when shared across systems–whether they are the computers in your house, office, belong to a group of friends, or people scattered across the Internet.

Unfortunately, few of these devices as well as the firmware or software that comes with them are set up for developers to push this type of technology. For instance, given a webcam, what’s the best way to share the image stream so that additional analysis can be performed without impacting any other apps? Over the years, there have been ways to do this, but most are a kludge. The technology scape hasn’t been focused on helping recognition grow. Trying to leverage discontinuous images on the Internet seems like a tough way to go–outside of leveraging humans tagging most of the images for you.

All this being said, there are a few cases where I can see people wanting to look up others or themselves online using a face recognition service.

For instance, bloggers might want to subscribe to an RSS feed that gives a link to every new (or existing) picture of themselves on Flickr.

Or someone might ask: Did my ex-boyfriend/girlfriend post a video or pictures of me online? A potential list of hits might be of interest to someone to go through.

Or you want to build up a photo-album for a friend or relative and you go online to collect up images you might not otherwise have.

I’m sure there are others. But to me, there’s still much ground work to be done at the device level, whether its through additional sensory data, additional processing, or additional human interaction.

This post by Robert Scoble about Seagate has me thinking: What might Seagate or some other storage manufacturer do–right now–that would capture my attention and inspire my imagination?

Two things:

First, I’m ready for an affordable (or do I mean cheap :-)? ) terabyte storage. Yes, there are ever increasing hard drives already, but crossing the terabyte line is a physiological one that I’ll pay attention to. Yeah, I have no idea how I personally will fill up a terabyte media, but I know I will. And however I fill up the drive, I know it’ll add to how I use my computer today. That’s what I’m looking forward to.

Second, I want much larger, much less expensive Flash drives. Why? I’m becoming more and more mobile. I want fewer moving parts. More long term reliability. Less power consumption. Faster load times. Flash is one solution that appears ready for prime time. I’m ready.

My brother just IMed me: “I’m sitting under a tree.”

Why did he share this? Because he just got his new Sprint broadband wireless service working on his Tablet PC (running Vista RC2).

Yep, EVDO gives you more freedom, to do what’s important, like sitting under a tree.

When Intel finally fills the market with WiMAX-enabled notebooks, I imagine that the adoption rate will be stunning. There are two trends going on here that will very likely take many by surprise. First, there’s the migration towards more portable computers, such as Tablet PCs. Second, there’s the increasing daily addiction that many of us share to broadband services, such as YouTube, Netcasts (aka Podcasts), iTunes, and the like.

Broadband wireless will do more than simply give us more freedom to move about and still stay connected to our favorite online services. It will allow us to be more connected with our family, friends, co-workers, and such–during those times when we want to sit under a tree or work during a Taxi ride to the airport or while sitting at the Mall eating a snack.

Yes, the world is going to become more connected as it disconnects.

AP is reporting that Toshiba and Fujitsu are joining Lenovo, Dell, Panasonic, and Apple is recalling batteries for some of their notebooks.

According to the article the recall “involves Dynabook, Qosmio, Satellite Portege and Tecra models” although we’re still waiting for a further details.

More and more I’ve been wanting to listen to blogs rather than read them. Why? Because often I’m busy programming and whereas I don’t mind listening to the radio while I work, I do have a tough time working and reading blogs simultaneously. Similarly, sometime I want to take these text-to-podcast posts with me as I travel about or get some exercise.

I checked out a program called TextAloud with the AT&T Natural Voices (which are very nice), however, I’m crazy enough to want more.

This is what I’d like to see:

I want to hear the blog posts not as one speaker, but “in the voice of the author.” I’d like to hear Robert Scoble—-or at least the synthesized voice that he recommends–read his posts. And if Robert has an extended excerpt of Don Dodge in one of his blog posts, I want to hear the section in Don’s voice. Same goes for the posted comments. If Christopher Coulter posts a response to Robert, I want to hear it in Christopher’s voice (or the one he recommends).

I have no idea if synthesized voices can be created ad hoc. I can imagine it’s non trivial–especially if high quality is the goal. I don’t know if companies extract human-recorded word snippets creating a large dictionary or are able to do more. Likewise I don’t know if it’s possible to start with a handful of voices and morph them to approximate someone else’s voice. I’m guessing either way is not too practical today, but it would be nice.

Short of everyone creating their own Net voice, another possibility would be to have people pick their own “avatar” voices from a public pool and publish it somewhere on their “blog.” Then when a blog reader happens upon a post by Robert Scoble, let’s say, the program can do a lookup via his URL to see which voice to use. I imagine I could maintain my own list too–I could use AT&T’s Mike voice for Robert and Charles for Christopher. Sounds like too much work. Maybe we could have a voting system where people collectively decide which voice to use for each :-).

Every now and then a product or technology comes along that has a huge impact on how I use a computer or how effective I am with them.

From let’s say 1999 or so, here are the top ten products and technologies that have had the greatest impact on my computer world:

1. WiFi
2. Skype
3. SlingBox.
4. EVDO
5. Blogs
6. Google
7. Tablet PC
8. IM, particularly MSN Messenger with its ink support
9. Browser-based email
10. Cable modem/broadband Internet connection

Products not making the list, but are oh so close, include:

* iPod.
* Online airline and hotel reservations
* Online banking
* Digital camera(s), including camera phones

Once again California is hit with power outages. This time though the power outage takes down one of the more popular sites on the Internet–MySpace.

But that’s not the only place in California that went dark.

George Ou blogs that his power went out in Silicon Valley. And a friend of mine in San Diego told me power went out there for awhile too.

Evidently authorities are blaming the blackouts on the excessive heat. Could be.

Our power went out here (Scottsdale) yesterday for about 45 minutes in the early evening, during one of our summer monsoon storms. Brief power outages aren’t that unusual here, although they are getting less frequent. We don’t have a generator, but the flashlight and spare batteries are always around. It’s one more reason I like my Tablet and EVDO. If the power goes out or there is a big electrical storm, I can run unplugged yet still connected to the Internet.

Three years from now we’ll look back and wonder how we could have done without.

WiMax.

If all works out, WiMax is going to give a huge shot in the arm to mobility. Every Tablet PC OEM should get in line.

Wondering where Microsoft might go in the future? Alexander Gounares might have a say in it. For the last couple years he has been Bill Gates’ technical assistant. He wades through various technologies and provides his insights on how Microsoft might fit into them. Robert Scoble has this excellent Channel9 interview with him.

On a Tablet PC side of the story, it’s interesting to note that Alexander came from the Tablet PC team and among several roles was also involved in the handwriting recognition research team.

Yes, Alexander has a Tablet in his office, which is good, although it looks like he uses a desktop with three monitors as his primary daytime system.

A couple things he said resonated strongly with me. First, that communication and collaboration are already important but are becoming even more important in “computing.” And, second, that we’re only at the beginning of what the Internet will become. I wholeheartedly agree with both.

Marc Orchant and Warner Crocker over at GottaBeMobile join the discussion about thick installs.

Marc sums it up well: “The support consequences are becoming unacceptable for those of us who are sought out for recommendations about software and then have to deal with the aftermath of questions and problems that arise when additional (and usually unwanted and unnecessary) software is installed.”

Hopefully, software publishers are listening.

If not, I predict we’re going to start seeing a growing collection of “install blockers.” Is that what we really need?

I’m getting more and more reluctant to pass along links to family and friends to download certain rich-client apps, no matter how good the apps are. Why? Increasingly these demo or free apps are bundled with other “stuff.” In some cases, the “other” stuff is innocuous. However, sometimes it can lead to another mess and a panicked phone call helping the person restore their system to the way it was before. For instance, browsers are so important to the way that many of my friends and family work and connect with the world, that if an app makes any change to their browser that isn’t absolutely necessary, the program goes on my don’t-recommend-list. (By the way, a mess is growing around apps that launch on start-up too. So my black list may be growing even larger.)

Yes, many times I can warn them of the issues that lie ahead and give them instructions on which checkboxes to uncheck or dialogs to double-check, however, at about this time, they begin to wonder if this new great app is really worth it. If I’m not right there, sitting next to them, it may not be.

One easy fix is to voluntarily not enable unnecessary, bundled apps in an install program. Require the user to check a box if they want a bundled app. If this approach can’t make it past the marketing folks, an alternative is to offer a “thin” install somewhere on the company site that people like us can find and provide links to. Go ahead and leave the thick installs in prominent positions, but give us others a link to a “thin” install which we can recommend.

Seems to me that the top-tier, rich-client apps are giving users one more reason to stay in or migrate to the browser. Is this really what they want?

First Robert Scoble. Now Bill Gates. What a week.

The traditional press has tons of more info on this. Here’s a webcast of the press conference.

Over the next two years Bill Gates will transition over his energies to his foundation–where he has been doing amazing work.

I’m turning on Slingbox to see what’s being said on CNBC. I’m glad I have this with me while travelling.
What does this mean for Microsoft? Tablet PCs? We’ll have to see.