Random Thoughts

Mushrooms & Fungus with Paul Stamet - Daryl Hannah

2012-01-14T01:15:00.001-05:00

Bio-Diesel Alternative Fuel Cars - Daryl Hannah Love Life

2012-01-14T01:03:00.000-05:00

Windowfarm Art Exhibit, Helsinki, Finland

2011-12-06T15:48:00.001-05:00

The Making of Windowfarms Finland (suomenkielinen tekstitys) from pixelACHE festival on Vimeo.

Britta Riley: A garden in my apartment

2011-11-29T08:11:00.001-05:00

Faber Interview About China, U.S. Economies

2011-05-26T23:13:00.001-04:00

Panoramic View of Japan Tsunami Disaster

2011-04-04T23:50:00.003-04:00

Damage Of Miyako Town 3 in Japan

Damage in Ohfunato, Iwate Pref. (2) in Japan

Watch Incredible Footage Of The Northern Lights In Norway (VIDEO)

2011-03-24T15:43:00.001-04:00

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

NASA Space Shuttle Discovery's Last Launch

2011-02-25T04:24:00.003-05:00

Space shuttle Discovery lifted off at 4:53 p.m. EST Thursday February 24, 2011 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Commander Steve Lindsey was leading the STS-133 crew.

Samsung Galaxy Tablet Review | Adobe Flash Performance

2011-02-19T01:53:00.011-05:00

Samsung Galaxy Tablet comes with Android OS version 2.2 codename FROYO, making it possible to run Adobe Flash applications. This addition makes it a powerful device that can display any flash based website on the Internet. Similar functionality is not available on the Apple iPad, the competing tablet device.

Samsung tablet successfully played flash based videos at CNN website. Here is an example video that it can play located on the CNN Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011 Website.

The Samsung Galaxy tablet plays all the flash based videos flawlessly.

It also loads complicated flash based websites like this one at 360cities showing a large picture of London that is made up of 80 Gigapixels. The flash based application allows to pan and zoom around the picture and shows a panoramic view of London. The following slide show displays some of the screen captured images from the panoramic view of city of London as displayed on the Samsung Galaxy tablet's screen.

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

This is very impressive because something like this is simply not possible on Apple iPad. However, the performance of Flash player on this website was slightly problematic. It crashed many times while trying to pan around the image or when an attempt was made to zoom on a scene. The navigation through the scene was jerky using the touch controls. It is difficult to judge whether it was due to the slow CPU performance of the Tablet or due to the Flash player's performance. Flash has done a good job on desktops using mouse controls but it has not shown the same responsiveness with the touch controls. This definitely needs improvement if Flash wants to be a viable application development platform in the fastest growing segment of Smartphones and Tablets.

Fred Wilson of AVC blog writes

When the tech landscape changes; from web browsers to mobile browsers, from flash to HTML5, from laptops to tablets, from typing on keyboards to typing on screens, from local storage to cloud storage, there are always companies that are started to solve the pain points that crop up from that technology change.

In his opinion in the changing tech landscape Laptops will be replaced by Tablets. It is easy to confirm that the Tablets are the future computing devices. Former Morgan Stanley technology analyst Mary Meeker supports this trend. In her presentation here she predicts phenomenal growth in the use of Internet across the world as shown in this figure below:

Please Click on the picture for an Enlarged view

Source

She also predicts that smartphone+Tablet will overtake the PC shipment as shown below:

Please Click on the picture for an Enlarged view

Source

These trends predict that Samsung Tablets have a bright future.

Fred Wilson also thinks that Flash will be replaced by HTML5 in the future. Flash has done well on the desktop. Flash applications are much more engaging along-with the availability of wide variety of tools to develop flash applications. HTML5 is a promising development as a web based technology but it lacks development tools. Currently, it is competitive at the lower end of the multimedia web development but flash still rules at the higher end of multimedia web development on the desktops like the example of 80 Giga pixels picture of London shown above. So far there is no HTML5 application like that on the web. This example shows that Flash is a much more mature multimedia application development environment as compared to HTML5 that is still in the developmental stage. This is the good part but the next generation of computing environment is migrating to smart phones/Tablets with touch screens and Flash development is not as robust as it is on the desktops.

The flash player on Android 2.2 OS works but its operation is not as smooth as one would like it to be. This raises some doubts about Flash as a robust multimedia development environment on smart phone/Tablets, especially the newer upcoming tablets that will be based upon Android 3.0 OS Honeycomb built. Dan Frommer from BusinessInsider also has similar concerns about Flash Player

Motorola's Xoom tablet, the first serious Google Android rival to Apple's iPad, will ship without Adobe Flash support. Big shocker. (Not really.)
This is surely a disappointment to Motorola, Adobe, and Google. But to anyone who has been watching Adobe fumble with Flash on mobile devices for as long as we have, it's hardly a surprise.
Flash on the desktop expects a mouse, not a touchscreen, so some Flash websites may not even work properly. And forget about using Flash on your Xoom to watch Hulu; the video site historically blocks Flash on mobile devices. Hulu wants you to pay for its Hulu Plus subscription, which has customized that don't rely on Flash.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/adobe-flash-mobile-2011-2#ixzz1El4RpsRq

Adobe needs to come up quickly with a workable Flash player on Android smartphones and Tablets to stay in the game on this fast moving growth area of next generation computing devices.

Also see REVIEW | Samsung Galaxy Tablet | Hardware

Media Critic Douglas Rushkoff | Program or be Programmed

2011-02-13T02:43:00.002-05:00

Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

At PivotCon 2010, Douglas Rushkoff made some extremely cogent arguments about why brands cannot go viral on social networks — even when there’s plenty of activity on companies’ websites and Facebook pages — and why it’s pointless to try to push brand concepts (such as mascots) around as memes in the expectation of driving actual product sales.

Beauty of Math Equations

2011-02-12T23:45:00.005-05:00

Please Click on the image for an enlarged view

Source

REVIEW | Samsung Galaxy Tablet | Hardware

2011-01-22T01:26:00.009-05:00

Samsung Galaxy Tablet is one of the first high quality Android Operating System based tablet that is positioned as a competitor to the Apple iPad. It provides the same openness of applications that is available on Android application platform.

Tablet Pictures

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

A very nice commercial by Samsung showing most of the main features available on the Tablet

The sliding screens Tablet can be populated with favorite applications and android gadgets. The standard Tablet screen and the applications are shown below

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

The first pictures show the screens on the Tablet and the others show the available Android applications. We see the icons for pre-installed applications first followed by the user installed applications.

The Setting application shows the tablet information

From Samsung Galaxy Tablet Miscellaneous pictures

It shows that the Tablet is running the Android Froyo 2.2 version operating system. It also comes pre-installed with Swype virtual keypad. One of the best virtual keypad that makes typing on the Tablet's touch screen extremely easy.

From Samsung Galaxy Tablet Miscellaneous pictures

The Tablet comes with a screen capture utility that works by holding the back button and then pressing the power button. This method works for some of the applications and fails for others where pressing the back button changes the screen. This was a problem therefore, most of the screen captures for this review are done by using the screen capture utility that is part of the Android OS System development kit. It requires some knowledge of Android SDK but is fool proof and works in all the cases. The utility screen looks like this:

From Samsung Galaxy Tablet Miscellaneous pictures

The screen shots of the some of the selected Tablet applications are shown below

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

All the screen layouts are very similar to what is on the Samsung Galaxy Fascinate smart phone. These applications works exactly in the same manner without any difference.

Some details about the Tablets internals are available through the standard "Settings" application. However, more details about Phone's internals can be obtained through another application "Android System Info" that is freely available on the Android market. Looking inside the Samsung Galaxy Tablet through this application provides some very useful information about the Tablets's hardware that includes information about its Battery, CPU, Memory, Camera and Sensor system as shown in these pictures

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

The first picture shows different levels such as battery level, Internal memory, free space on SDcard and free space on RAM. The screen also shows all the hardware and software options for which the data is available through this application. The next screen shows the data about System OS and CPU that is an ARM processor running at 1000MHZ and few other details. There is one complete screen that provides information about the on board CPU.

The tablet did not have the functionality to make phone calls. It connects to Internet over 3G wireless network as well as through WIFI Wireless hot spot. It comes pre-installed with Skype but for some reason I could not make it work.

The camera support provides multiple options; the smallest supported picture size is 600x1024 and the largest supported picture size is 1536x2048 including the support for many different modes of operation including white balance support.

The screen resolution for the Tablet is 1024x600 pixels with 240 dpi. It supports OpenGL graphics. There are details about the available on board sensors.

We can also see the list of running applications. It is possible to monitor the running tasks on the Tablet to track down the bad applications who may behave erratically by consuming lots of memory and CPU cycles. Also, a detailed log file is available for any debugging of the device.

The Tablet came with Android OS Froyo 2.2 version. This should lead to improve performance in comparison to older Android OS versions, a claim by Google team. However, that us not the case with the Samsung Galaxy Tablet on the MIPS performance test. The figure below shows the comparison with Google Nexus One running the same version of Android OS

From Samsung Galaxy Tablet Miscellaneous pictures

The linpack benchmark for the Samsung Tablet is 14.113MFLOPS. For Google Nexus One mobile phone it is 33.426MFLOPs. The Tablet under performs considerably in comparison to Nexus one on this test. These results are rather puzzling because both, the Tablet and Nexus One are running exactly the same ARM processor at 1000MHZ. Samsung Tablet needs some work to improve the performance on this important benchmark performance test. The good news is that having FROYO 2.2 it is possible to watch Flash based content on the Tablet that can not be watched on an Apple iPad.

The use of Galaxy Tablet feels like using a Galaxy Fascinate mobile phone with one major difference: the Tablet has larger screen size. Its seven inch screen is big enough to be a nice e-book reader but small enough to slide into a coat pocket. Smaller size makes it convenient to carry it and use it everywhere as a portable camera and video camcorder. I think this is an ideal size for a Tablet.

The Samsung Galaxy Tablet has all the options available on Android OS but it is missing the call making option. That in my opinion is a major handicap. Why should some one carry a four inch phone and a seven inch tablet while both have just about the same functionality? In this particular situation the smaller size phone has more functionality then its larger size cousin. I think this will be the problem with all the Tablets who have small form factor because of the direct competition from the mobile phones who offer more functionality at cheaper price.

The wireless connection was provided by Verizon. It worked flawlessly at every place I visited with the Tablet. The Tablet also gets connected very easily to a WIFI network.

Overall Samsung Galaxy Tablet Provides a nice user experience. For me it was a perfect e-book reader once I added the Kindle app, Google Book App and few others that allow to read the free e-books in Epub format.

1929 Wall Street Stock Market Crash

2011-01-16T07:33:00.000-05:00

The Crash of 1929

2011-01-16T07:29:00.001-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

How Bottled Water Gained Its Popularity and Helps Us in Trashing the Planet

2011-01-15T20:39:00.006-05:00

Original Source "Story of Stuff"

Deconstruction of "Sarah Palin Responds to Tuscon Shooting" Speech Video

2011-01-13T23:09:00.010-05:00

Sarah Palin is a potential 2012 presidential candidate. He responded to the tragic event in Tuscon Arizona with this Video

Here is an attempt to de-construct the speech with the technology tools.

The text of the speech is created using the speech to text program and provided at end of the post. It is a very moving speech. However if one looks at the wordle of the text of the speech.

The wordle shows the predominance of political words.

Click on the image for an enlarged view

Also a quick sentimentality analysis of speech shows it to be neutral. That is obviously not true because speech is highly sentimental

Click on the image for an enlarged view

If one looks at the background picture it is surrounded by flag to evoke patriotic feelings.

Click on the image for an enlarged view

I think overall it is a good speech it connects and communicates well except the reflection of teleprompter showing up on the glasses.

The complete text of the speech is below

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Like millions of Americans I went to the tragic events in Arizona on Saturday and my heart broke for the innocent victims no words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent but we do mourn for victims families as we express our sympathy I agree with the sentiment shared yesterday that beautiful Mass held in honor of the victims that will hopefully help begin the healing process for the families touched by this tragedy and for our country for exceptional country so vibrates with ideas and passionate exchange and debate of ideas along to the rest of the world Congresswoman Giffords and her constituents were exercising their right to exchange ideas that date to celebrate a republics core values and peacefully assemble to petition our government inexcusable incomprehensible why a single evil man took the lives of peaceful citizens that day and the bittersweet irony that the strength of the American spirit shines brightest in times of tragedy we saw that in Arizona without the tenacity of those clinging to life the compassion of those who kept the victims alive and the heroism of those who overpowered a deranged gunman like many I spent the last few days reflecting on what happened praying for guidance after the shocking tragedy it was at first puzzled them with concern and now with sadness to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportioned blame for this terrible event president Reagan said we must reject the idea that every time the laws broken societies guilty rather than the lawbreaker it is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions accept monstrous criminality stand on their own begin and end with the criminals who commit them collectively with all the citizens of his state not those who listen to talk radio in swing districts use by both sides of the aisle now the law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies now with those who proudly voted in the last election the last election was all about taking responsibility for our country's future president of mom and I may not agree on everything that I know you join me in affirming the health of our democratic process to years ago his party was victorious last November the other party one in both elections the will of the American people was hurt and the peaceful transition of power proved yet again the enduring strength of our republic putrescence spirited public debate during elections are among our most cherished traditions and after the election we shaking and then we get back to work and often both sides find common ground back in DC and elsewhere you like a person's vision for the country are free to make that vision if you like your ideas are free to propose better ideas that especially within hours of the tragedy unfolding journalists and pundits should not manufacture of blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn that is reprehensible. Those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged apparently a political criminal and a claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently but when I see bacchanal calm days when political figures literally settle their differences with dueling pistols in an ideal world all discourse would be civil when all disagreements cordial but our founding fathers knew they were designing a system for perfect men and women mainly men were angels there would be no need for government are founders of genius was to design a system to help settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect actions in several ways so we must condemn violence if our republic is to endure as I said while campaigning for others last March in Arizona during the very heated primary race-we don't violence isn't the answer when we take up our arms were talking about our vote yes for debates are full of passion but we settle our political differences respectfully at the ballot box as we did just two months ago and has a republic enables us to do again next election and asked and that's who we are as Americans and how we were meant to be public discourse and debate in a sign of crisis much of our enduring strength is part of why America is exceptional no one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent and we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good and we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults just days before she was shot Congresswoman Giffords read the first amendment on the floor of the house and it was a beautiful moment and more than simply symbolic as some claim to our Constitution granted by our Congress and confidentiality reading our sacred charter of liberty was more than just symbolic of a week after Congresswoman Giffords reaffirmed our protected freedoms another member of Congress announced that he would propose a law that would criminalize speech he found offensive in any hour when our values are challenged that we must remain resolve to protect those values recall how the events of 9/11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to treat our freedoms for perceived security and so it is today let us honor those precious lives cut short in Tucson by praying for them and their families and make cherishing their memories less pray for the full recovery of the wounded is pray for our country in times like these we need God's guidance in the PC provides we need strength to not let the random acts of criminal turn us against ourselves or weaken our solid foundation or provide a pretext to stifle debate in America must be stronger than the evil we thought displayed last week we are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy we will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner and teammates in the knowledge that your ideas may be different and we must all strive for a better future for our country yes may God bless America

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Fertility Rate vs Life Expectancy Chart over Time for different Countries | Bubble Chart Data Visualization

2011-01-12T20:45:00.003-05:00

Use the play button to see animated display and move mouse over the circles to see the name of the country

Overall trend is the falling fertility rates and higher life expectancy.

Original Source

Eleven Digital Trends to Watch in 2011

2011-01-06T21:40:00.001-05:00

Eleven Digital Trends to Watch in 2011

View more presentations from Edelman Digital.

Don't Take Life Too Seriously in 2011

2011-01-02T11:22:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year

2010-12-30T20:29:00.004-05:00

Job Prospects in Social Media and Civil Engineering

2010-12-29T18:16:00.005-05:00

http://www.indeed.com is a job search engine that has a fairly good traffic as shown by the following chart

Social Media is an emerging area and many jobs are opening in this area. A comparison of job openings in the area of "Social Media" and "Civil Engineering" is done using the indeed search engine and shown in the picture below

Click on the image for a larger view

What is interesting is that there are more jobs in the area of "Social Media" as compared to the jobs in Civil Engineering even though it is a fairly new area that did not exists few years ago. The lower end jobs pay better in Civil Engineering but there are fewer high paying jobs.

Also the two key words "Civil Engineering" and "Civil Engineer" leads to different search results as shown by column 2 and column 3 of the figure. This shows that the search results are sensitive to the choice of key words even though the two keywords are nearly identical.

Social Networking : Current Limitations and Future Possibilities

2010-12-23T06:47:00.011-05:00

The Real Life Social Network" presentation by Paul Adams The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

Paul Adams, a senior user experience researcher at Google (NSDQ: GOOG), is leaving the company to join Facebook starting next year, according to Inside Facebook and one ofhis tweets. He may be best known for his deep analysis of Facebook and its privacy issues in a lengthy presentation five months ago. In particular, “The Real Life Social Network” pointed out how the site doesn’t enable users to manage the various kinds of relationships within their greater network of friends.
Source

The presentation highlights the limitations of the current social networking software in mapping the real life relationships. The key assumption here is that the social networking software should accurately map the real life relationships. The presentation suggests to use the work of anthropologist Robin Dunbar as a guideline in designing the social networking software.

Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.^[1] Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number. It lies between 100 and 230, but a commonly used value is 150.^[2]

^Source

The idea is that there is a cognitive limit and on the average we can maintain and manage around 150 relationships.

Every new technology starts out as copying some human capability. In this case social networking software is mimicking the human relationships. However, as the new technology matures it takes a new form and extends the existing human capability. The example would be a car. It extends our ability to move faster but it uses wheels to do it not something similar to legs. In the case of social networking software the possible scenario would be that it extends our cognitive limit to manage relationships that will allow us to manage relationships beyond the average number of 150 set as a limit by the research work of Robin Dunbar.

The author has down played the role of weak ties. It is true that we spend most of our time managing strong ties but the research work of Granovetter shows the usefulness of weak ties in getting a job and diffusion of information through the a populace.

Source

The last line of this abstract shows the importance of the weak ties. These are the ties that allow the information dissemination between groups that are locked within themselves. In some instances they are more important than the strong ties.

Granovetter’s work (1973) proved to be crucial in the individualistic approach of the social network theory as seen by the amount of references in other papers. His argument asserts that weak ties (acquaintances, according to Granovetter, 1973; 1983) are less likely to be involved within the social network than strong ties (close friends and family). By not going further in the strong ties, but focusing on the weak ties, Granovetter highlights the importance of acquaintances in social networks. He argues, that the only thing that can connect two social networks with strong ties is a weak tie: “… these clumps / [strong ties networks] would not, in fact, be connected to one another at all were it not for the existence of weak ties. (Granovetter, 1973 pp 1363; 1983 pp 202).

It follows that in an all-covering social network individuals are disadvantageous with a few weak links compared to individuals with multiple weak links as they are disconnected with the other parts of the network. Another interesting observation that Granovetter makes in his work is the fact of forth going specialization of individuals creates the necessity for weak ties as all the other specialist information and knowledge is present in other social networks (Granovetter, 1973).
source

Although the current policies of facebook, a popular social networking site favors friending based upon strong ties. However, in the future the social networking will be a software platform that extends our cognitive limit beyond the manageable relationships of 150 and places more emphasis on weak ties that allow us to escape our current group and let us explore new kinds of relationships that enriches our life experiences.

Google Books Ngram Viewer on Men vs. Women, Media , and STEM

2010-12-21T21:41:00.013-05:00

Google labs recently released a Books Ngram Viewer. It is available here. The ngram allows to serach for words and phrases that could be five word long within books data base dating back to 1800. The data base contains 12 percent of all published books but it is substantial and can be used to investigate cultural trends.

More details about the methodology are published in the research paper titled "Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books"

The Abstract

We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of “culturomics”, focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. “Culturomics” extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.

The paper can be accessed here

Men vs Women

The first trend was to see how the words men and women faired over the year. The plot is shown below

Please click on the image for an enlarged view

The plot starts from 1800 and is fairly constant for men till 1880. After that it start losing and the plot for women start gaining. It picks up steam around 1970 and crosses over around 1990 and takes over.

It shows steady ascendancy of women in the last century and finally taking over. This period also roughly coincides with the start of feminist movement and a decline in patriarchal value system.

It shows that the grass root efforts of feminist movement with lots of organizing and field work paid off in the end.

The next plot was created for the trend in different media such as print, radio, movie, TV and Internet. The plot is shown below

Please click on the image for an enlarged view

No surprises here. Print was dominant media type and pretty stays the same through 1800-2000. Radio had a phenomenal rise and still dominates that is surprising. The possibility is that Radio is identified with wireless communication and even though Radio is not as big as TV but wireless communication is still a big part of communication landscape. Movies enjoyed a steady rise but over shadowed by TV around 1950. TV took over print media around 1980. Since then TV has been on an upward trajectory. What is surprising is that Internet as a media is just a short blip showing at the bottom right of this plot. It really is not part of mainstream media and still have long way to go. Other possibility is that Internet is not a single media type and one has to add contribution of words like "New Media", "Interactive Media" and "social Media" etc. I mean it is clear that Internet according to chart has to acquire an identity that is competitive with other four media type.

The last trend chart was created to see the trend for Science, Mathematics, Engineerings and Technology. There is a big push in academic circles these days to integrate Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology ( STEM) in a single unit to achieve synergistic effect of these four disciplines with the support from National Science Foundation. On the surface they all appear to be same and seems to work on the same type of problems. However, these four discipline have different historical origins and have different professional practices that emphasizes different aspects of the same problems occurring in nature.

The chart is shown below

Please click on the image for an enlarged view

Looking at the plot it is obvious that Science has been on a steady rise since 1800. Mathematics has been around and has a steady trend. Engineering took off around 1890 and steadily gained since then. However Technology that is older then Science historically started gaining around 1960 and took over Engineering around 1970.

These trends are approximate but corroborate well with the existing knowledge of the trends about the topics.

Additional resources

Culturomics http://www.culturomics.org/Resources/A-users-guide-to-culturomics

In 500 Billion Words, New Window on Culture http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html

Summary of Science article http://dericbownds.net/uploaded_images/Science-2010-Bohannon.pdf

Supplemental Information http://dericbownds.net/uploaded_images/Michel.SOM.pdf

Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/15/science.1199644.full.pdf

Everything is a Media

2010-12-21T04:04:00.000-05:00

Everything is Media

View more presentations from nbrier.

Fun, Happiness, Science and Technology | Google Books Ngram Viewer

2010-12-18T03:41:00.006-05:00

Google labs released "Google Books Ngram Viewer". It is build using the data from 15 million scanned books.

"The datasets we're making available today to further humanities research are based on a subset of that corpus, weighing in at 500 billion words from 5.2 million books in Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. The datasets contain phrases of up to five words with counts of how often they occurred in each year. (...) The Ngram Viewer lets you graph and compare phrases from these datasets over time, showing how their usage has waxed and waned over the years," says Jon Orwant, from the Google Books team. Source

Here is a simple experiment using four words Fun, Happiness, Science and Technology

Click on the image for an enlarged view

A very interesting pattern emerges. Between years 1700-1800 word Fun appears a lot in the books. It dominates heavily the other three words. After 1800 the use of word Happiness takes off while fun drops offs sharply. At the same time the use of word science starts taking off. Around 1850 a cross over occurs where Happiness start tapering off while Science start moving up. While all this is happening Technology is nowhere on the radar. Between 1900 and 2000 fun and happiness takes a back seat to Science and Technology. Technology picks up around 1950 while Science keeps moving in an upward trend.

These trends are very interesting. They point towards the fact that Science and Technology are antithesis of Fun and Happiness. Emergence of these two has followed by a decrease in Fun and Happiness. This trend is contrary to the accepted wisdom that more Science and Technology will improve the quality of life leading to more fun and happiness. It also raises a question: Are we really happier than our ancestors?

If interested do your own investigation using Ngram here

Indian Institute of Technology | Premier Engineering Education Institutions in India | IIT | Revised Version

2010-12-17T23:44:00.014-05:00

India is a large diverse country with world's second largest population over one billion people. It is also home to some of the best Engineering schools. These schools have very hard admission requirement and a very rigorous Engineering curriculum.

They were established as independent institution of higher learning for Science and Engineering

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are a group of fifteen autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Parliament of India. The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence in 1947. The students and alumni of IITs are colloquially referred to as IITians.
Source

These schools are listed below in the table in order they were established.

	Name	Address	Date Established	Web Site	Contact
1	Indian Institute of Technology	Kharagpur, West Bengal	1950	www.iitkgp.ernet.in	http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/topfiles/contact_us.php
2	Indian Institute of Technology	Powai, Maharashtra	1958	http://www.iitb.ac.in/	http://www.iitb.ac.in/about/contact_iitb.html#nogo
3	Indian Institute of Technology	Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh	1959	http://www.iitk.ac.in/	http://www.iitk.ac.in/infocell/iitk/newhtml/contactus.htm
4	Indian Institute of Technology	Chennai, Tamil Nadu	1959	http://www.iitm.ac.in/	Website inaccessible: Database Error
5	Indian Institute of Technology	New Delhi, India	1961	http://www.iitd.ac.in/	http://www.iitd.ac.in/contact/
6	Indian Institute of Technology	Guwahati, Assam	1994	http://www.iitg.ac.in/index	http://www.iitg.ac.in/contactus
7	Indian Institute of Technology	Roorkee, Uttarakhand	2001	http://www.iitr.ac.in/	http://www.iitr.ac.in/Main/pages/Contact_Us.html
8	Indian Institute of Technology	Bhubaneswar, Orissa	2008	http://www.iitbbs.ac.in/	http://www.iitbbs.ac.in/contact.php
9	Indian Institute of Technology	Rupnagar, Punjab	2008	http://www.iitrpr.ac.in/	http://www.iitrpr.ac.in/html/contact.shtml
10	Indian Institute of Technology	Jodhpur, Rajasthan	2008	http://www.iitk.ac.in/iitj/	http://www.iitk.ac.in/infocell/iitk/newhtml/contactus.htm
11	Indian Institute of Technology	Gandghinagar, Gujarat	2008	http://www.iitgn.ac.in/	http://www.iitgn.ac.in/contact.htm
12	Indian Institute of Technology	Yeddumailaram, Andhra Pradesh	2008	http://www.iith.ac.in/	http://www.iith.ac.in/contact_us.html
13	Indian Institute of Technology	Patna, Bihar	2008	http://www.iitp.ac.in/	http://www.iitp.ac.in/iit_contact_us.htm
14	Indian Institute of Technology	Mandi, Himanchal pradesh	2009	http://www.iitmandi.ac.in/	http://www.iitmandi.ac.in/pages/contacts.html
15	Indian Institute of Technology	Indore, Madhya Pradesh	2009	http://www.iiti.ac.in/	Web site inaccessible

Two websites failed to open.

It is clear from this table that original five were established between year 1950 and 1961. There was a major expansion in the last ten years and the last nine of them were established between years 2000-2009. There is one more in making that will be located at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

Each IIT is an autonomous university, linked to the others through a common IIT Council, which oversees their administration. They have a common admission process for undergraduate admissions, using the Joint Entrance Examination (popularly known as IIT-JEE) to select around 4,000 undergraduate candidates a year. Postgraduate Admissions are done on the basis of the GATE, JMET, JAM and CEED. About 15,500 undergraduate and 12,000 graduate students study in the IITs, in addition to research scholars. Source

These institutions are geographically distributed all across India with some what higher concentration in the north. The following interactive map that allows different overlays, pan and zoom options shows their locations on the map.

You can move around the map or change the view of the map by using the control bar on the top left side of the map and by using the satellite and hybrid option to add more information to the map. Also more information is available by clicking on the marker shown in the map.

Click here to View This Map in a full screen mode

The graduates from these sister institutions in general have done well locally in India as well as internationally with US as being one of the main destination.

IIT alumni have achieved success in a variety of professions.[2] Owing to the autonomy of the IITs, these institutes are among those few institutes (the other institutes being National Institutes of Technology or the NITs) in India that offer degrees in technology (B. Tech.) at the undergraduate level as opposed to the Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degrees awarded by most other Indian universities. Most of the IITs were created in early 1950s and 1960s as the Institutes of National Importance through special acts of Indian Parliament. The success of the IITs led to the creation of the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT) in the late 1990s and in the 2000s. Source

The two videos tell many interesting facts and stories about these institutions of Engineering learning.

Video One

Video Two

IIT graduates were noticed by Scott Adams, who himself is an Engineering graduate for their mental prowess. He uses a cartoon character "Asok", an IIT graduate in his very popular satirical cartoon strip DILBERT

In the strip below Asok has been promoted to project manager from the lowly intern position. He boasts about his mental prowess simultaneously displaying a low emotional intelligence quotient.

Septemebr 15,2003

The next day's strip builds on the same theme

and it is now February 1,2009 Asok has survived in his job and has mellowed considerably. He has learned how not to boast about his superior mental abilities to function within corporate culture while the company is going down hill financially under severe recession.

Recently he fell for a management trick from his pointy hair boss

Asok providing his brief bio

A Talk on Technology and Society by Neil Postman

2010-12-17T02:34:00.002-05:00

Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 - October 5, 2003) was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than forty years, he was associated with New York University. Postman was a humanist, who believed that "new technology can never substitute for human values." ^[1]

source

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Rare Old English Film Footage |A Game of Cricket Between England and Australia 1948

2010-12-16T21:35:00.004-05:00

Cricket (1948) from British Council Film Archive on Vimeo.

More films are here http://www.timeimage.org.uk/

Which is Harder and Get Paid More? Management or Engineering | You Decide..

2010-12-15T18:50:00.001-05:00

A Class in Management

via youtube.com

An Example of One of the First class in Engineering

via youtube.com

Poll Which One is Harder

Now Guess who gets Paid More in the long run

Misery | Why people Hate Work

2010-12-14T18:33:00.001-05:00

View more presentations from enjoywork.org.

Scary Russian Side

2010-12-13T15:30:00.002-05:00

Video of Metrodome Roof collapse | Roof of Metrodome, football stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapses under Heavy Snow. December 12, 2010

2010-12-12T15:35:00.006-05:00

Roof of Metrodome, football stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapses under Heavy Snow. December 12, 2010

Aftermath of the collapse of the roof. Please use the play button located at the bootom left to play the video.

Dolphins Hunting in Denmark Дельфины

2010-12-07T19:32:00.004-05:00

Some pictures are too graphic

Structures | Stadiums around the world | Futuristic Structures around the world | Structural Engineering

2010-12-05T10:02:00.006-05:00

The following presentation uses prezi a new type of presentation software.

Please watch an introduction here http://prezi.com/index/ to learn how to naviagte a prezi presentatioon and use this software to create presentations. Also best viewed by switching to full screen mode by using the icon located at the bottom left of the presentation.

Structural Engineering on Prezi

Harvard’s Must-Have Guide To Social Media

2010-12-02T06:33:00.002-05:00

Social Media

Nicholas Lamphere of the @HarvardSocial (as seen on Edudemic many moons ago!) group at Harvard University is teaching a course on social media and has just made his first presentation slideshow available to the public. It’s embedded below and well worth scrolling through. Nicholas knows what he’s talking about and has touched on all the important aspects of social media.

Source

Introduction to Social Media on Prezi

Grand Challenges for Engineers

2010-11-25T20:03:00.000-05:00

Old Bridges | Images from Library of Congress

2010-11-21T22:17:00.002-05:00

Click on the play icon to start the Slide Show

The Future of Social Analytics

2010-11-21T05:14:00.001-05:00

The Future of Social Analytics - Defrag 2010

View more presentations from Dion Hinchcliffe.

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways video games engage the brain

2010-11-21T05:01:00.004-05:00

Tom Chatfield talks about use of video games for engagement and how it can be used to improve learning.

Here are his seven strategy that improves engagement and possibly will help in learning.

Experience bars measuring progress
Multiple long and short-term aims
Rewards for efforts
Rapid, frequent, clear feedback
An element of Uncertainty
Windows of Enhanced attention
Other people

Huaxi: Secrets of China's richest village

2010-11-19T01:37:00.000-05:00

Stunning Landscape Pictures

2010-11-16T19:47:00.004-05:00

For better viewing experience please switch to full screen mode by clicking on the icon located at the bottom and use the arrow keys to advance the picture slides

Majestic Nature Calls

2010-11-14T08:13:00.004-05:00

Video shows beauty of nature

For better viewing experience please switch to high definition 1080P full screen video play back mode by clicking at the icons located at the bottom right of the tool bar when video start playing

Video From "Planet Earth" series DVD collection! Buy it at
http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Earth-Co...

Music title "Breathe" by Tyrad

Download link: http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/26737

Holograph Idols Dance in a Sold out Music Concert in Japan

2010-11-13T02:52:00.009-05:00

Holographic idol "Hatsune Miku" is the created by the group Crypton Future Media. The musical performance of the holograph idols to a wild screaming audience on stage is straight out of a science fiction novel.

Here is a single holograph idol performing on the stage

Switch to high resolution ( 1080P) full screen display mode by clicking at the bottom right icons

and another video showing two of them performing together here

Switch to high resolution ( 1080P) full screen display mode by clicking at the bottom right icons

The complete playlist is here

Kabaah A Muslim Holy Shrine , Makkah , Saudi Arabia

2010-11-10T11:20:00.001-05:00

President Obama on CBS 60 Minutes Discusses Post Election Politics

2010-11-08T02:52:00.002-05:00

UNESCO REPORT | Engineering Issues, Challenges and Opportunities for Development

2010-11-07T20:07:00.001-05:00

Look at My Twitter Follower's Location on Google Map

2010-11-06T05:35:00.009-04:00

Use the control keys located on the top left corner of the map to zoom and pan around the map

Here is the direct link for the map above

Make you own Twitter Followers location Map here

Google Wave Platform. Exploring the Settings for Personalized Learning

2010-11-03T18:02:00.001-04:00

via slideshare.net

Shanghai World Expo 2010 Opening Ceremony | The Best Display of Fireworks

2010-11-02T20:00:00.005-04:00

The last three video show one of the best fireworks display I have seen ever.

Also to get the full effect please switch to HD full screen display mode by clicking at the icons located at the bottom of the video window.

Fireworks 1

Fireworks 2

Fireworks 3

Elections: Anger In The Land - 60 Minutes - CBS News

2010-11-02T03:43:00.000-04:00

October 31, 2010 5:15 PM

On the eve of the midterm elections, Scott Pelley reports from Newton, Iowa, where the closing of an appliance factory is causing a negative effect on the community's economy.

The Recession and Elections: Anger In The Land

via cbsnews.com

How People Use Facebook and YouTube

2010-11-01T00:59:00.006-04:00

Click on the play button to start the slideshow and click on the slides to advance to the next slide

original Source via Web Source

World's Fastest Bullet Train

2010-10-28T23:22:00.014-04:00

Details about the train

"We are now much faster," Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said at Tuesday's inauguration of the super-fast line from Shanghai's western suburb of Hongqiao to the resort city of Hangzhou. "Now other countries are hoping to cooperate with us."

The train will cruise at a top speed of 220 mph (350 kph), making the 125-mile (200-kilometer) trip in 45 minutes.

China already has the world's longest high-speed rail network and aims to more than double its length to 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) by 2020.

The high-speed bullet train in China can actually reach speeds of up to 260 mph.

Source

A Short Video about the train

Here is a video of another older Bullet train between Guangzhou and Wuhan. The train travels at an average speed of 350 kilometers (217 miles) an hour.

Source

These two Videos provide some additional details related to riding experience and Engineering about these super fast trains

For Non-Chinese speakers both videos contain English subtitles and instructions to display them are given in this Video

Part 1

part 2

Amazing Pictures of Penguins in Antarctica | Google Street View

2010-10-25T00:22:00.010-04:00

Please use the controls located at the top left to zoom in and out of the picture. Use - symbol at the top left to zoom out and then the arrow keys to walk around. Also switch to full screen mode by clicking on the top right of the image.

View Larger Map

Another view of Penguins in Antarctica is here

REVIEW | Samsung Fascinate Mobile Phone Sound and Camcorder Application

2010-10-19T03:11:00.005-04:00

Android "Voice recorder" application could be used to record sound on the phone.The screen capture of voice recorder app and Pandora app for music on the phone is shown below

A sound recording was made using the voice recorder of the music playing on the Pandora application.

Mp3 Player Widgetgreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

Another slightly longer recording example is here

Mp3 Player Widgetgreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

Samsung Fascinate allows good quality sound recording by using simple "Voice Recording" application.

Samsung Fascinate also includes an excellent Camcorder function as part of Camera application that allows video recording at multiple resolutions with several useful settings to improve the video quality.

The complete video recording application's menu details are shown in the picture below

From SAmsung Fascinate Miscellaneous Pictures

The videos can be recorded in five different resolutions as shown in the image above. Other useful adjustments to the video recording can be made by selecting some of the menu items shown in the picture.

Some of the sample videos of the local park at different resolutions and at different locations during the day time

Video Recording Using Samsung Fascinate 720x480 | Mill Creek Park Youngstown, Ohio

Change to higher resolution video playback by clicking at the bottom bar showing resolution while video is playing and choosing the higher value

Video Recording Using Samsung Fascinate 1280x720 | Mill Creek Park, Youngstown, Ohio

Change to higher resolution video playback by clicking at the bottom bar showing resolution while video is playing and choosing the higher value

The video quality is very good. In fact for the nature videos there is not much gain in the picture quality when shooting in higher resolution mode except it creates large file sizes that may create problem while sharing through mobile wireless connection.

Video recording during night time

Change to higher resolution video playback by clicking at the bottom bar showing resolution while video is playing and choosing the higher value

Same recording at 720P

Change to higher resolution video playback by clicking at the bottom bar showing resolution while video is playing and choosing the higher value

Both videos are of very good quality.

A video recording of computer screen

Video recording of computer screen at 720x480

Change to higher resolution video playback by clicking at the bottom bar showing resolution while video is playing and choosing the higher value

Video recording of computer screen at 1280x 720

Change to higher resolution video playback by clicking at the bottom bar showing resolution while video is playing and choosing the higher value

Higher resolution recording improves the readability of the screen test.

These recordings show a good quality video recording. They show that Samsung Fascinate can be used make decent computer screen copies. As expected computer screen text is more readable in higher resolution video.

Here is another example where an advertisement for jeans showing Megan Fox was played on the computer screen and it was recorded in two different resolutions

Video recording at 720x480

Change to higher resolution video playback by clicking at the bottom bar showing resolution while video is playing and choosing the higher value

Video recording at 1280x720

Change to higher resolution video playback by clicking at the bottom bar showing resolution while video is playing and choosing the higher value

Again both videos show good quality recording with higher resolution video having a slight edge. What however is interesting is that it allows to create copies of videos directly from computer display saving some complicated steps to screen capture a video.

The above examples show that Samsung Fascinate mobile phone can create high quality audio and video content. Just for this reason alone the phone is highly recommended.

For complete review of the Phone please also read "Review :Samsung Fascinate Mobile Phone" Part One

Panoramic Pictures from Samsung Fascinate Mobile Phone

2010-10-16T05:52:00.014-04:00

Samsung Fascinate mobile phone comes equipped with a nice Camera application. It has many options including the option to shoot pictures in Panoramic mode.

Some of those pictures are here

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

Butler Arts Museum at Youngstown State University Campus

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

STEM college Building at Youngstown State University Campus

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

Youngstown State University Campus

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

The following Panorama is created by taking multiple overlapping pictures and then using Photoshop CS4 to stitch all those pictures.

STEM college Building at Youngstown State University Campus

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

Samsung Fascinate mobile phone offers an easier and better option for creating Panoramic pictures.

Test Mp3 Player Widget

2010-10-16T05:24:00.017-04:00

Mp3 Player Widgetgreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/mp3/?id=c0e25717-6890-4695-88eb-fb3d64d0acdb

REVIEW | Samsung Fascinate Mobile Phone

2010-10-16T00:23:00.045-04:00

Samsung Fascinate is a mobile phone that belongs to the Samsung Galaxy series of mobile phones released on all major carriers in US. Samsung Fascinate was released on Verizon wireless. The phone is sleek looking light weight in all black color.

Pictures of the phone are shown below

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

The phone looks great with super amoled sharp and crisp screen display at 480x854.

Extra details are shown in the video

The phone comes preloaded with many standard Android applications and some enhanced application from Samsung. Additional applications can be installed through the Android application market. For some reason the applications are not arranged in alphabetic order. Pre-installed applications show up in alphabetical order in the beginning and the newly installed application appear at the end of the original applications.

Here are some of the Phone screen captures showing the installed applications on the phone

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

A typical application screen for example for Latitude application looks like this

From SAmsung Fascinate Miscellaneous Pictures

The phone comes with standard "Setting" application. It allows to set wireless networks, Call options and other Android OS specific settings that are available on the phone.

From SAmsung Fascinate Miscellaneous Pictures

This screen layout is same as in other Android OS based phones such as Google Nexus One and Droid X.

Some details about the Phone's internals are available through the standard "Settings" application. However, more details about Phone's hardware can be obtained through another application "Android System Info" that is freely available on the Android market. Looking inside the Samsung Fascinate through this application provides some very useful information about the Phone's hardware that includes information about its Battery, CPU, Memory, Camera and Sensor system as shown in the pictures

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

It shows that the Phone comes with an ARMv7 Processor that runs at a clock speed of 1000 MHZ, a total RAM of 325MB and Android 2.1 Eclair operating system. It also provides camera details and lists many of the supported picture sizes e.g. 1920x2560, 1200x1600 and 480x800. Another screen shows the details about the available sensors within the Camera.

The Camera/Camcorder application on Samsung Fascinate mobile phone is one of the best I have used on Android based cell Phones. It provides options to take single snapshot pictures, Panoramic pictures and multiple shots in quick succession with one single snap. The internal menu system for this application takes some time to learn because it includes sixteen screens with many options that may be confusing at first but allow to practically set everything about a picture.

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

These pictures were taken at different locations at different times to test the picture quality of Samsung Fascinate mobile phone.

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

Overall picture quality is great and competes very well with current crop of stand alone digital cameras.

The Camera also allows Panoramic shots and here are some sample shots

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

The Panoramic shots are large images with size around 2000x400 Pixels. This creates a problem in embedding them in a blog post due to limited space. To avoid this a possible work around is to use a standalone Pan and Zoom display widget.

Here are some examples using the Zoomify display widget

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

Butler Arts Museum at Youngstown State University Campus

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

STEM college Building at Youngstown State University Campus

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

Powered by Zoomify

Samsung Fascinate also allows multiple shots, a maximum of nine shots with a single snap. This is a convenient feature to capture pictures of moving objects. It can also be used to create a Panoramic view by stitching several pictures together that have over lapping scenes. Here are a series of pictures that were shot using this options

Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures

The following Panorama is created by using pictures shown above with the help of Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Please use + button to Zoom and other control buttons at the bottom of the pictures to move around the pictures.

Upon comparing the two approaches to create panoramic pictures, it becomes obvious that Samsung Fascinate mobile phone offers an easier and better option for creating Panoramic pictures.

The Samsung Fascinate's default search engine is Bing from Microsoft as shown in the picture below

From SAmsung Fascinate Miscellaneous Pictures

This option can not be altered. Bing is a decent option but it is not a match for Google search engine. This default search option will not allow users of Samsung Fascinate cell phone to get full Android OS experience.

Samsung Fascinate at the time of testing was still running Android OS Eclair version 2.1. The linpack benchmark in MFLOPS for Samsung Fascinate is 8.123 while for Google Nexus One running Android 2.2 Froyo is 33.426 as shown in the picture below

From SAmsung Fascinate Miscellaneous Pictures

That is considerably higher for Google Nexus one even though both phones are running the same ARM processor at 1000 MHZ. Android Eclair 2.1 OS leads to slow performing Samsung Fascinate Phone. The big difference in performance shows up when playing Youtube videos on these phones. The videos can not be played in high quality mode on Fascinate as they are on the Google Nexus one.

There were some inconsistencies noted while sharing the pictures between Picasaweb and Samsung Fascinate. It simply failed. Also there were times when the Phone simply hung up and had to be rebooted. Considering this the phone needs the Android OS 2.2 upgrade to improve its performance and also to get the promised option to use Google search on the phone.

The phone has excellent call quality. It worked great everywhere because of solid wireless network performance from Verizon. In the final conclusion it is a great phone that performed well in every department on the Verizon wireless network. It will only improve with the coming upgrade of Android OS to version 2.2

I will highly recommend this phone it will only get better after the OS upgrade that is coming soon.

For additional information please also read "Review : Samsung Fascinate Mobile Phone Sound and Camcorder Application "

Global Wealth Distribution | Credit-Suisse Research Report

2010-10-11T11:21:00.007-04:00

Credit Suisse Research Institute published a comprehensive study of world wealth distribution.

The picture below shows the global distribution of wealth. Click on the image for an enlarged view.

The picture below shows the distribution of wealth in a pyrmidal form. Click on the image for an enlarged view.

The complete free report in pdf format is available here.

Pictures of Amazing Chinese Mini Stone Carvings

2010-10-02T21:45:00.007-04:00

Use the rectangular icon at the bottom to switch to full screen view and arrow to advance the slides.

Look Where the Top 200 World Class Universities Are?

2010-09-21T02:16:00.017-04:00

The Top University Locations in North America

Click on the image for an enlarged view

The Top University Locations in Europe

Click on the image for an enlarged view

The Top University Location in East Asia

Click on the image for an enlarged view

The Top University Location in Australia and New Zealand

Click on the image for an enlarged view

The Top University Location in Middle East and South Asia

Click on the image for an enlarged view

More detailed information about 200 top world class Universities is shown on the interactive Map below

Explore the interactive map by using the Keys located on the left side of the map to pan and zoom through the map. Also, Click on the marker to see the information about the University located at that Geo-location. A double click on the map will zoom in while holding the left mouse button and dragging will allow moving around the map.

Click here for full screen view of the Map

The source of the data for the map is The Times Higher Education world university ranking.

Other world university ranking are QS World University Rankings and Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities These ranking differ in their method of evaluating universities and their ranking do not produce the same university world ranking. However, some general conclusion can be drawn based on these rankings.

1. US Universities are doing very well on these rankings

2. In general English speaking countries are well represented on these rankings

3. Following that European Universities are also doing well
4. There are no Universities on this list from South America, South Asia and only one University in Egypt from African Continent.

One can also search the map for nearest University by typing a city in the following input box

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

2010-09-11T23:04:00.005-04:00

One of the longest bridge on the water

Lake Pontchartrain Causeway longest bridge over water	38,442 m (126,122 ft)	46 m (151 ft)	1956 (SB) 1969 (NB)	Road	United States

Location of the bridge

View Larger Map

Perform a Virtual Walk on the Bridge.

Use the top right icon to switch to full screen view and use keyboard arrow keys to move around the bridge.

View Larger Map

Internet Speed and Costs around the World and US

2010-09-06T00:54:00.007-04:00

Internet Speed and Cost Around the world

Click on the image for enlarged view

Source

Map of Average Internet Data Download Speeds Across US

Use the controls at the top left of the map to zoom and pan across the map below

When Geeks Attack, Shanghai, China

2010-09-02T20:15:00.003-04:00

Review of Droid X Mobile Smartphone from Motorola/Verizon

2010-08-24T19:17:00.032-04:00

I had an opportunity to review Droid X a smartphone available through Verizon wireless. Few pictures of the phone are shown below
Move your mouse over the image below and use arrows to advance through the slide show

and a description of the phone is shown in the video below

One thing that is immediately stands out about this phone is its size. It is by far the biggest phone with dimensions 5.02x2.58x0.39 inches. This is bigger than Google Nexus One and Apple IPHONE 4. A Comparison table between these three phones is shown below

Click on the image below for an enlarged view

source

It compares very well with the other two phones. Some people may not like to carry a larger phone but a larger screen size is very helpful in browsing the web, especially web pages that are highly text oriented. It can be used as a dual purpose device where it doubles up as an e-book reader because of sharp TFT display.

Droid X and Google Nexus one support Android operating system from Google and have many similar functions. Both lose out to iPhone 4 on the battery talk time.

It has a 8 mega pixel camera that is capable of taking sharp pictures. Here is a gallery of pictures that were taken under different light conditions to test its camera's capabilities.

Move your mouse over the image below and use arrows to advance through the slide show

The Camera takes nice pictures that are comparable to standalone digital cameras. The Camera also has digital effects. One of the capability was to take multiple shots while camera was clicked only once. Here is a sample of Camera generated multiple shots. Each picture shows the same view with a slight variation in angle.
Move your mouse over the image below and use arrows to advance through the slide show

This is a very nice feature to have to take pictures of live performances or a game where multiple shots provide sort of a running commentary. Overall I found the performance of the Camera very solid better then the Camera application available on the Google Nexus One.

Droid X also captures videos at 720p resolution. Here is a sample video taken at night inside McDonald

another video that shows a live performance during summer commencement ceremony

The video below shows the ending of commencement ceremony

Overall, both the picture quality and sound quality are excellent for videos taken using a phone camcorder.

Droid X also comes with an improved keyboard in the form of Swype that uses a unique technique to input text using the touch screen. The video below shows a comparison between input using swype on Drod X and iPhone that uses touch but inputs one letter at a time

again Droid X wins hands down on keyboard input. Also, Swype is not available for download from the Android application market. It is available only on few phones such as Droid X because of the way the OEM licensing works for Swype virtual keyboard.

Droid X also comes with better microphones and records very good voice memos using Voice Recorder applications when compared with Google Nexus One. It has better noise correction leading to good sound quality during calls.

It also comes preloaded with Skype application that allows calling worldwide free if the call is between Skype-to-Skype or very inexpensively if the call is between Skype app and a regular phone over cellular and WIFI network. This application is only available on Verizon phones due to a licensing arrangement between Skype, inc and Verizon that allows Skype calls over wireless cellular network.

Droid X also includes many Motorola enhanced Android apps. Like file manager, Contact manager etc. that seamlessly integrates contacts from Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. It allows USB tethering. It can be configured to act as a secure/unsecure WiFi hotspot. It was very easy to configure the WiFi hotspot. I was able to connect my laptop and Google Nexus One to Droid X's WiFi hotspot without any problems.

Overall Droid X is a very solid phone and performs flawlessly. Only drawback was that it was running Android 2.1 and that creates a low number of 9 mips on Linpack for Android as compared to 33 mips for Google Nexus one that is running Android 2.2. This is a performance hit even though the two phones are running the processor at 1 MHZ. Android 2.2 can play flash files while Droid X can not do that because of older version of Android OS. However, Droid X will be getting the Android 2.2 FROYO update very soon and these issues will end with that update. Once that happens Droid X will compete head on with iPhone 4 and beat it on the main feature listed here.

The mobile phones need good solid wireless cellular network to function satisfactorily. In this regard Verizon provides a consistent reliable wireless network. Verizon wireless network performs flawlessly inside and outside buildings. It maintains satisfactory 3G connectivity as promised at different locations within Youngstown, Ohio

Droid X is a solid high performing new generation smart phone. It outshines on an equally impressive wireless cellular network from Verizon that maintains a consistent performance within every location in the city as well as inside and outside buildings.

Additional comparison between Droid X and HTC Incredible here.

The Netherlands

2010-08-23T21:30:00.001-04:00

Mobile Real Time News Production

2010-08-23T12:36:00.002-04:00

Please use the arrows at the bottom to advance the slides

Your browser does not support iframes.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand | Aerial Photos of Europe

2010-08-21T15:52:00.005-04:00

Please use the arrows at the bottom left to advance the slides
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Sight Seeing Istanbul

2010-08-21T15:39:00.001-04:00

Please Use the arrow keys at the bottom left to advance the slides

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Panoramic view of Shanghai World Exposition Buildings and pictures of Swedish pavilion construction

2010-06-26T14:43:00.000-04:00

Shanghai Expo Europe 03 in Shanghai

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Use of Mobile Phones in Education

2010-06-24T15:49:00.000-04:00

Watch the Steve Jobs Apple Keynote's Address Experiencing Network Meltdown

2010-06-07T21:56:00.002-04:00

via gizmodo.com

Old Style Registration forms

2010-05-31T22:59:00.006-04:00

Here is a registration form I am supposed to complete to register at this website http://edas.info/newPerson.php

Click on the image for bigger view

Luckily they do not require to complete all the fields and that makes filling this form tolerable. However, they will not accept gmail address as a valid e-mail address as shown in this picture below

Click on the image for enlarged view

Very interesting.

However, this is the registration for a state of the art conference in e-learning.

T-Mobile 3G wireless Data Coverage in Youngstown Ohio

2010-05-30T06:38:00.012-04:00

Few days ago I upgraded my mobile phone to Android OS based unlocked Google Nexus One mobile phone.

Once the initial euphoria subsided I realized that I will not get 3G wireless data speed in my office and in my apartment, the two places I need it the most. These two places the network data speed is closer to a slower Edge network speed and the data speed ranges from 100kbps - 245kbps. Inside office building it is slightly better and it ranges from 250kbps -500kpbs, depending upon time and network connection.

Outside the buildings, on the major roads like Glenwood Ave, Market Street and Belmont
Avenue it is patchy. Sometimes it is full 3G and sometimes it falls back to G/Edge coverage. The speed ranges from 300kbps -1.3Mbs. What is interesting is that coverage could change within few feet as it occurs behind my apartment complex where within few feet the coverage can change from G/Edge to 3G.

Most of these test were done using Mobile Speed Test.com

http://www.mobilespeedtest.com

Some of the images showing the data transfer rate using Google Nexus one phone on T-mobile network are shown below

I found a wireless speed test app on the Android market. The test is same as the test available the web site http://speedtest.net/

I collected the data at three locations and the results are shown in the table below:

The last two column show the download and upload speed for the T-mobile wireless network

Also some of the results in picture form are shown below

The data speeds vary widely based upon the locations.

The first location of the data collection is shown in the map below

Click on the image for enlarged view

The second location of the data collection is shown in the map below:

Click on the image for enlarged view

The third location of the data collection is shown in the map below:

Click on the image for enlarged view

Although T-mobile wireless data coverage map shows a 3G data speed but these map show that that is not the case. Even where the phone indicator shows a 3G speed the data rates are considerably slower. It however dramatically increses in the southern part of the town most notably in the Boardman area.

The promised data rates for wireless 3G data network according to Wikipedia article are

Data rates

ITU has not provided a clear definition of the data rate users can expect from 3G equipment or providers. Thus users sold 3G service may not be able to point to a standard and say that the rates it specifies are not being met. While stating in commentary that "it is expected that IMT-2000 will provide higher transmission rates: a minimum data rate of 2 Mbit/s for stationary or walking users, and 384 kbit/s in a moving vehicle, the ITU does not actually clearly specify minimum or average rates or what modes of the interfaces qualify as 3G, so various rates are sold as 3G intended to meet customers expectations of broadband data.

What becomes obvious is that it is difficult to get full strength network connection using wireless data connections. Some fault can be placed on the wireless network providers but mostly it is the limits of the technology at this time.

However, for some one like me it is a big improvement over the old GPRS wireless connection that I had for the last eight years. It delivered data at 14.4kbps. Hopefully with the introduction of 4G the field will become more competitive and we may get better wirelss data internet connectivity.

kbps: kilo bits per second Mbps: Mega bits per second

Use of Google Docs as a Collaboration Tool in Teaching and Learning Process

2010-05-20T00:03:00.005-04:00

I used Google Docs; mainly Google Writer and Spreadsheet as a tool to support student group collaboration, sharing and problem solving activities.

At the end of the course I did a survey to collect student responses about their experiences in using these tools. The Google docs received a rating of 4.75 on a scale of 5 by twenty students in the class.

Nineteen out of twenty students said that they will use Google Docs in their future work. This is a very strong endorsement of Google Docs by their users.

The complete text of student responses are shown below along with the summary of the results

Nature and Lifestyle advice

2010-05-19T02:05:00.000-04:00

360 Panoramic View of Taj Mahal

2010-05-18T17:00:00.005-04:00

Please use the controls located at the top left corner of the image to walk around the surroundings of Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal Sunset - Classic view in India

More panoramic views are here

Facebook and Privacy Conundrum

2010-05-18T03:35:00.006-04:00

There is a lot of noise about privacy issue plagueing facebook's recent changes to facebook platform.

The founder gets named as "an amoral, Asperger’s-like entrepreneur" by the founder of Mahalo.com

The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand | The Jason Calacanis

Last year, when I realized that Zuckerberg was an amoral,
Asperger’s-like entrepreneur, I told Zynga CEO Mark Pincus that
Zuckerberg would try and slit his throat. I knew this because I
watched Zuckerberg screw over his users again and again in terms of
privacy, and I heard about the stories of him screwing over his former
employers at ConnectU and his early partners at Facebook.

The money quote from Business Insider’s scoop comes from Zuckerberg
himself: “they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them.
So I’m like delaying it so it won’t be ready until after the facebook
thing comes out.” He stalled and sandbagged ConnectU–then
Zuckerpunched them! Of course, the person he said this to was his
partner–Eduardo Saverin–who he reportedly screwed as well.

via calacanis.com

Another author Kim_Mai Cutler at venturebeat writes about facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg:

He believes that people should have a single identity

He’s a proponent of ‘radical transparency’ or that transparency will overtake modern life:

But he is deeply conscious of the fact that most people don’t ascribe to that idea:

He believes that transparency has the power to create more empathy and tolerance:

He’s afraid that if the company doesn’t gradually open up, it will fail:

He believes that Facebook’s approach to privacy, in which users explicitly share their interests, is more ethically sound than Google’s data collection approach:

All very strong beliefs and in some ways odd with the mainstream idea of privacy.

Finally does this confrontation is going to hurt facebook? Not in the short term. The recently released data shows that Facebook is heading towards 500 milllion monthly active users. It has gained 10 million users since its F8 meeting.

ComScore reported that Facebook had 484 million users in March. The advertising tool showed 436 million users in its advertising tool a couple weeks ago, which we think reflects its numbers from sometime around that time frame. From here, the monthly worldwide growth rate gets harder to determine. ComScore showed 472 million uniques in January, then a drop 463 million in February before rising by 21 million in March. We tracked 373 million at the end of January, then 394 million at the end of February before going up by 42 million in March.

Source

The facebook keeps on growing. May be some people will leave, some will be angry but they will stay on Facebook.

Google Wave User's Perspective II | GOOD and BAD

2010-05-16T23:35:00.007-04:00

Continued from the previous post titled "Google Wave User's Perspective I"

I also created a Google wave that lists the googd and the bad experiences student's had while using it. The Wave is embedded below

Please use the slider located on the right to move up and down within the wave. Something like this

Overall as I said earlier people had a positive experience with using Wave.

Google Wave is still a preview version and will undergo several changes before it even becomes a beta version program. Considering this Google Wave is very usable and extremely promising.

It is very hard to characterize Google wave. It is an e-mail and IM at the same time. It could hold threaded discussions while allowing to create very sophisticated live documents that can be extended with the help of extensions, gadgets and robots.

At first Google Wave is very confusing and takes some time to get adjusted becasue of so many available options.

In the hands of power users it will emerge as a very useful small group communication & Collaboration tool.

Google Wave User's Perspective I

2010-05-16T22:36:00.020-04:00

I just completed teaching a course on Computing tools in which I covered use of many software tools including tools for computing, communication & collaborations such as Google docs and Google Wave etc. I did a survey to get the opinion of students on their experience in the use of different software tools.

The spreadsheet below shows written responses from students about Google wave as a Tool for Communication & Collaboration. The spreadsheet contains the summary of the results at the end

Overall, their experience was positive with the Google Wave. Wave recieved a rating of 4.05/5 and 65 percent said that they will use Google Wave again.

Blogger does not like two Iframes in the same post so the post continues in the next post here http://randomthougts101.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-wave-users-perspective-ii-good.html

The Descent of Power by Robert Greene

2010-05-08T19:45:00.004-04:00

Thoughts on The Great Transformation and How to Master It by Robert Greene

The Descent of Power—Thoughts on The Great Transformation and How to Master It by Robert Greene (an ebook)

Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?

2010-05-04T02:01:00.002-04:00

What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?

View more presentations from Haewoon Kwak.

Twitter, a microblogging service less than three years old, commands more than 41 million users as of July 2009 and is growing fast. Twitter users tweet about any topic within the 140-character limit and follow others to receive their tweets. The goal of this paper is to study the topological characteristics of Twitter and its power as a new medium of information sharing.

We have crawled the entire Twitter site and obtained 41.7 million user profiles, 1.47 billion social relations, 4,262 trending topics, and 106 million tweets. In its follower-following topology analysis we have found a non-power-law follower distribution, a short effective diameter, and low reciprocity, which all mark a deviation from known characteristics of human social networks~\cite{Newman03}. In order to identify influentials on Twitter, we have ranked users by the number of followers and by PageRank and found two rankings to be similar. Ranking by retweets differs from the previous two rankings, indicating a gap in influence inferred from the number of followers and that from the popularity of one's tweets. We have analyzed the tweets of top trending topics and reported on their temporal behavior and user participation. We have classified the trending topics based on the active period and the tweets and show that the majority (over 85%) of topics are headline news or persistent news in nature. A closer look at retweets reveals that any retweeted tweet is to reach an average of 1,000 users no matter what the number of followers is of the original tweet. Once retweeted, a tweet gets retweeted almost instantly on next hops, signifying fast diffusion of information after the 1st retweet.

To the best of our knowledge this work is the first quantitative study on the entire Twittersphere and information diffusion on it.

[PDF (4.8MB)]

The Search Engine Landscape: 2010

2010-05-03T23:23:00.000-04:00

Web20 Fishkin Search Landscape

Google Chrome and Firefox | User experience | Implications for the Open Web

2010-05-02T15:38:00.015-04:00

Google Chrome has been branded as the Browser of the future.

It runs each web page in a separate tab to avoid Browser crashes. It uses javascript interpreter RHINO that is fast. It uses Webkit as its rendering engine the same one used by Apple browser Safari. It is open source. All very good additions to solve issues that have plagued Firefox for a while.

It even allows only one tab for web pages that use Adobe supported file formats such as PDF and Swf, restricting them from using all the memory and computing resources. Another smart choice. However, this causes problems for user like me who receive all the official communication in the form of PDF files and I have no choice except to open Firefox browser to see multiple PDF files.

Chrome developers claim that it has an improved User interface. In some ways it is true because this is how my top part of the two Browser look

Chrome Top Tool Bar

Please click on image for enlarged view

and here is how the Firefox tool bar looks

Please click on image for enlarged view

It is obvious that Chrome allows more area for web page display by not allowing to place toolbars. Which is good and bad at the same time. Like I can live without Google and Stumble upon tool bars but I use Compete tool bar to check web site statistics I am visiting. It shows up at the bottom right corner of my Firefox window like this: showing people count and compete.com rank of the website :

I guess I will have to wait for Compete to develop a Chrome extension to encapsulate the functioning of their Firefox toolbar.

Chrome Javascript interpreter is fast but lacks accuracy. Here is the Gmail tool bar in Firefox

Please click on image for enlarged view

Showing the icon to insert image in the body of the e-mail created using Google Gmail, a feature that has been around in other e-mail clients for ages.

And here is Gmail toolbar in Google Chrome completely missing the "image insert" icon.

Please click on image for enlarged view

The lack of image insert icon cripples a useful feature of inserting images within the body of e-mail. User of Google Chrome have to sent images as an attachment to the e-mail which people may open or may not or simply miss the attached images. It also interrupts the flow of reading the e-mail content and spoils the experience of the user.

It also shows that Google Chrome's Javascript engine lacks consistency and its designer have cut corners to gain speed while losing accuracy.

Another minor annoyance is the way "find" function works in Google Chrome. There are times when a search function is performed for the same term on multiple web pages . In case of Firefox you can open a find box as shown here

and then you can keep searching for whatever you are looking for within the web page and once done one can easily kill the "Find Box"

In case of chrome the "Find in the page" menu item shown below has to be opened for every web page again and again from the top right drop down menu bar. It does not stay open as it does in Firefox

These are some of the examples that show that web based application are good enough and mostly work but are inconsistent causing aggravation to their users.

I think we are heading towards multiple browsers where each browser will work the best with the Browser's creators products and will work good enough with other web applications. In the past there were two browsers: Internet Explorer and Netscape/Firefox with opera having a minuscule share of Browser's market. Expect to see many different Browsers branded by each company and running the applications from that company. Each having little hooks to improve the performance of html, CSS and Javascript rendering for its applications. This has been the case all along but at least in the past most of the companies paid the lip service to web standards. That may not be the case in the future.

Google is promoting open source development and open standards in the form of html5, CSS and new and improved Javascript engine to keep the Web open. However, the problem is that Javascript has been an unreliable language to develop web based applications. It lacks the performance of native applications and cross browser compatibility as seen above. Google's own web application Gmail tool bar appears different in two different browsers and both are open source browsers and directly supported by Google financially.

This is where Flash had an edge and still does but now being pushed out from the vendors of the platform owner. Apple has banned Flash on its application development platform. Google is playing nice with Flash but only so much. As you can see that Google Chrome will allow only one tab for Adobe application per Google Chrome window and it throws error window for any Adobe application that is not functioning nicely within the Chrome tab sandbox. That does not bode well for the future Adobe products those create files in PDF and SWF format.

While people were busy watching Browser war between Microsoft and Ntescape, Apple has quietly developed a complete computing stack and devices that perform better than the open development stack. Iphone applications perform better than equivalent application developed using browser based applications that use HTML5/CSS/JAVASCRIPT

This is precisely what is Google's Achille's heel. They have many web application who perform well enough but inconsistent, suffer performance penalty and can easily be replaced by applications that are better performing on computing and mobile devices.

People thought that Google was competing with Microsoft but that really is not true. Going forward they will be competing with Apple for applications, software development environment and mobile computing devices and Facebook/Twitter for people's attention. There is a very narrow window of opportunity to improve the HTML5/CSS/JAVASCRIPT stack for front end application development because that is the user facing end. User does not care how elegant the back end is. If they failed they will be the Unix of the future that every power user loves but Apple gets all the users who do not care about the elegance of the software but do care about how it helps them in getting their job done quickly without showing its quirks.

I remember distinctly Apple releasing Web Objets standard/enterprise way back in 1996. I used it back then and it had all the functionality of developing web applications. It even had Objective C as part of the development environment. They have been at the web development for the long time and their efforts are finally bearing the fruits.

I would love to see Google succeed because they are supporting open web development but at the same time they do have to get serious about developing products that are competitive and do perform. The coolness factor can take them only so far after some time its effects wears off especially when user struggle with sluggish performance, inconsistencies within there offerings.

Data Visualization Example Using Tablau Software

2010-05-01T15:20:00.003-04:00

Find information about Tavlau software here "Data in, Brilliance Out | Tableau Public" http://bit.ly/9yZIHG

Philosophy For Old Age | George Carlin

2010-05-01T13:56:00.004-04:00

Use the fullscreen option at the bottom to swith to full screen viewing

Where are World's Fat People?

2010-05-01T02:51:00.013-04:00

Percentage of overweight adults aged 15 and over

Move your mouse over the image to display the country name and numbers

For more details please read the article here

Meet The Average American Family

2010-04-30T22:46:00.001-04:00

USe of Web Element for Google Wave to Embed a Wave

2010-04-30T21:48:00.001-04:00

Here is my second attempt. Nothing Shows here

a smaller version

Embedding a Wave in a Blogger Post

2010-04-30T21:04:00.009-04:00

Google today released Webelement for wave that allows embedding a wave into a web page here

http://www.google.com/webelements/wave

The webelement generates Javascript code. However, Google's own web publishing programs do not allow inserting Javascript developed by its own programs,therefore, webelement for wave will not work in blogger or for that matter your Google Web site. There is always a way around every problem.

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A work around this will be to go here

http://everybodywave.appspot.com/index/embedwiz.html
and create a web address for the Wave to be emvbedded and then put an iframe through it like this:

Even here Wave shows just fine within preview and then some times disappears in the actual post. If the Wave does not show up Try using Firefox because Google Chrome got so problem with this.

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Anther method using Embeddy is described here http://randomthougts101.blogspot.com/2009/12/example-of-embedding-public-wave-in.html

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I think Google need to start looking in the reliability of its product as well as how well they fit with other products they have. They all just seems to work but not always or reliably.

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