ABBA

Image via Wikipedia

Wish You All a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year

Visual Illusions

Image by cangaroojack via FlickrVision is our most dominant sense among the five other senses. In some estimate it accounts for approximately eighty percent of sensory experience. In other words we are highly dependent upon it for finding our orientation through our surroundings including spotting for dangers. It is one of the most trusted organ and we tend to believe things that we see without verifying them by other means.

In many ways vision although one of the highly reliable senses is not totally foolproof. The adage that "Seeing is Believing" should be used carefully because we tend to accept what we see. The perception through vision is instantaneous and it may create automatic response without the benefit of evaluative process.

Considering the importance of vision in the scheme of thing Scientist have created an entire field of study that deals with visual illusions.

Visual Illusions are used used to study visual processes. They highlight how our vision works and how it creates the visual objects we perceive. It also shows how easy it is to create a visual illusion that fools our sense of vision.

Here is an Example that two rotating and how a subtle changes in objects can lead to different perceptions.

Two rings demonstration

One ring demonstration

Source

More on this topic is at IllusionScience web site.

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Behavioral vs. Standard Economists

Chaos Theory and Economy

Image via WikipediaNassim Nicholas Tayeb, author of "The Black Swan: The Impact of Highly Imoprobable" and Benoit Dr. Benoit Mendelbrot pioneer of Chaos theory and fractals, discuss the state of economy. Both thinks that current economic situation is worse then the other known cases of Economic depression.



The Chaos modeling is providing insights in complex system behavior not to our liking all the time.

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Nokia N97 Mobile Phone

The dream phone Nokia N97

Mac User vs. PC Users

The Dutch Coffeeshop Experience with Big D

British High Commission, New Delhi: Visa Video

A hip hop video by British High Commission to explain the visa procedures to prospective Indian students.

Flip Camcorder HD

Mark Zuckerberg at Web 2.0

Mark Zuckerberg's laws

At this week's Web 2.0 Summit, the Facebook founder mused, according to Saul Hansell of the New York Times, "I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and [the] next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before."

Hansell dubs this Zuckerberg's Law. But I believe it's actually Zuckerberg's Second Law. Zuckerberg's First Law, enunciated on another fall day almost precisely one year ago, took this elemental form: "Once every hundred years media changes."

Zuckerberg's Second Law is certainly superior to Zuckerberg's First Law, if only because it is not quite so obviously false. If you're going to make up big laws, it's always best to make them up about the future rather than the past.

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog

Obama's Presidential Win Acceptance Speech

Location: Chicago

This speech will be one of the historic speech.

Lost Key

Image via WikipediaOne night, Nasrudin was on his hands and knees searching for his key in a well-lit area in the centre of the street. Some of his neighbors came to see why Nasrudin was on his hands and knees.

“What are you looking for, Nasrudin?” enquired one of his neighbors.

“My door key,” Nasrudin replied.

The helpful neighbors dropped to their hands and knees and joined Nasrudin in his search for the lost key.

After a long unsuccessful search, one of the neighbors asked: “We’ve looked everywhere. Are you sure you dropped it here?”

Nasrudin answers: “Of course I didn’t drop it here, I dropped it outside my door.”

“Then, why are you looking for it here!”

“Because there is more light here!” responded Nasrudin.

Source: Teaching Stories - Tales of the Dervishes and Mulla Nasrudin

Shift Happens

Image by The Flooz via Flickr

A Shared Cuture

Image via WikipediaA video about Creative Commons

 

Source: Via Joi Ito's Web

74 Year-Old Japanese Porn Star Still Going

Image via WikipediaCNN news reporting that a 74 year old Japanese not only still going strong but a popular porn star.

His own words:

“I mentioned before that I like films that are set up like TV dramas. This is partly because I’ve always had the desire to turn into all sorts of different people. So personally, I don’t get off just having sex with somebody. I continue working in this industry not because I like starring in adult films, but because I am given the opportunity to act in various roles. The appeal for me is in the fact that I can play different people, not that I can boast about my acting skills. Consequently, most of the films that I’m in have a proper plot and narrative.”

Original Source: http://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/10/26/74-yearold-japanese-porn-star/#

Japanese seems to have cracked the code on "Health, Wealth and Happiness"

A Conversation about Leadership at Harvard Business School

A conversation about leadership at the Harvard Business School centennial celebration with Charlie Rose.

The participants on the panel 

John Doerr - venture capitalist, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Jeffrey Immelt - chairman and CEO, General Electric

Anand Mahindra - vice-chairman and managing director, Mahindra & Mahindra

Meg Whitman - former CEO, Ebay 

James Wolfensohn - former president of the World Bank

J.K. Rowling, Author of Harry Potter's Book Series, Speaks at Harvard

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. (via harvardmagazine.com)


J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo

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How Rich are Surviving

Failing A Test

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Education Small talk

For a better view please click on the image.

Source: Phd Comics

Future of Economy and Survivability

Image via WikipediaSequoia Capital is a venture capitalist firm that has financed some of the notable high tech companies such as Yahoo. The list of compaines financed and supported by them can be found at this web address.

Here is an interesting presentation by them on the economic downturn and advice to startup technology companies on how to survive it.

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession)

• Please use full screen mode to watch the presentation by clicking at full screen icon at the bottom of the presentation frame to have a better view of the Economic Charts.

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Vote for Obama

Image by christhedunn via Flickr













Barack Obama "The One"


Sarah Silverman

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

More of Obama

John McCain on Obama



LeeCounty Sheriff at Governor Sarah Palin's rally

Beauty is Nothing Without Brains

On Bullshit: A Philosophical Exposition

H.G. Frankfurt

published by Princeton University Press

Winner of the 2005 Bestseller Awards, Philosophy Category, The Book Standard

Quotes from the book revuiew:

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory.

Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

Dilbert

Indian Marriage System

Communication Style

PhD Comics

Click on the picture for a better view

Bill Maher and Jon Stewart

Nusrat is lost in qawwali

Image via WikipediaNusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Urdu: نصرت فتح على خاں, born October 13, 1948, died August 16, 1997), was a Pakistani musician, primarily a singer of Qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis (a mystical tradition within Islam). He featured in Time magazine's 2006 list of 'Asian Heroes'.[1]

Traditionally, Qawwali has been a family affair, passed down through the generations. Nusrat's family has an unbroken tradition of performing qawwali for the last 600 years. Among other honorary titles bestowed upon him, Nusrat was called Shahenshah-e-Qawwali, meaning The Emperor of Qawwali.

Source





Two Great Comes together: Nusrat and Lata

Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Jab We Meet - mauja mauja Song

Image via WikipediaShahid Kapur and Kareena Kapur in "Jab We Met"

T-mobile G1 Android Google

I was eagerly waiting to acquire Google's Android OS based based phone released by T-mobile.

Here is the commercial for the phone created by some marketing droid to promote the phone.

They keep emphasizing that phone has keyboard. It has Google map. Great. What about video? I think it does not have it. My old S60 symbian OS based Nokia phone has video. It even has slow crappy Internet connection. All from T-mobile. So basically they are releasing a half baked phone that will improve as time goes along as other Google products do. They are all in perpetual beta mode. To top it all they want two year contract to get the phone. I have been their loyal customer for at least for the last 5 years.

I am terribly disappointed with the lack luster features phone offers and the two year contract.

I have a feeling that Google's viral marketing will not work this time. They do have to match and excel the quality that Nokia and I-phone offer including the feature list.

My guess is that this phone will be more like a Linux OS. Extremely popular in the UNIX loving crowd but some of us who just want a true 3G phone that can take decent pictures and shoot some videos and do some neat things like I-phone have to look for alternatives. I mean it will be a niche product not a contender to displace I-phone from its throne. It lacks charm.

I guess time to start looking into getting a higher end Nokia phone and if t-mobile does not have 3G coverage in my area then to look for different carrier who has it.

One word "Disppointed" after so much pre publicity and hype and wait. I hope some other company releases a better Android phone then this one in the future.

Leonardo Dalessandri

The Beans' Place - PRO LOCO SARCONI from Leonardo Dalessandri on Vimeo


Lip Dub - Tambureddu HD from Leonardo Dalessandri on Vimeo

Never trust women - Mai fidarsi delle donne

Never trust women - Mai fidarsi delle donne HD from Leonardo Dalessandri on Vimeo.

Stephen Colbert on O'Reilley Show

Most Fearless Animal on Earth

Google's CEO Eric Scmidt on Web 3.0

Image via Wikipedia

His vision of the future of web applications is very different from what we have now for the web applications. Especially the distribution model where he is endorsing viral distribution of these application as opposed to current shrink wrap model of distribution.

In a way he is endorsing the distribution of digital content and web applications through widgets that will conform to the open social api supported by Google and endorsed by major players in the area of social networking platform developers. Even the fastest growing social networking platform Facebook supports this model. It is just that they have a Facebook application program development interface to develop these applications. Facebook applications already use viral distribution mechanism for its propagation. This puts Facebook ahead in the platform race because Google supported Open social is still in beta while facebook is actively using it and gaining experience on how to actively manage these type of web applications on their application development platform. Also, Microsoft has an stake in Facebook. They can increase it even more.

There is a big talk about Web 3.0 being Semantic web. Most of the web pundits endorse this line of thinking including the web founder Sir Tim Berners Lee. But the way things are shaping up it looks to me that Web 3.0 will be what we call "Social Web" something resembling to Facebook.



After watching this video it is quite obvious that Web 3.0 will be "Social Web" and dreams of semantic web and personal agents running around on the web to do peoples bidding will have to wait for future Web 4.0.

Google's Marissa Mayer on Google Chrome Browser

HiVision Shows Off Sub-$100 Linux Mini Laptop

Source

Why Does College cost so much

Chronicle of higher education video

Microsoft Commercial with Jerry Sienfeld

Very interesting use of symbols. Two famous icons.



If the association with humor does not work they can always fall back to this.


Image by Getty Images via Daylife











Make MS product sexy. They will have to fight Apple to win this image.

Compared to this here is what Nicholas Carr has to say about Google, the Microsoft competitor on its 10th anniversary.

But while Google has an odd business model, it's not an unprecedented one. The company it most resembles is, ironically, its archrival, Microsoft. Just as Google controls the central money-making engine of the Internet economy (the search engine), Microsoft controlled the central money-making engine of the personal computer economy (the PC operating system). In the PC world, Microsoft had nearly as many complements as Google now has in the Internet world, and Microsoft, too, expanded into a vast number of software and other PC-related businesses - not necessarily to make money directly but to expand PC usage. Microsoft didn't take a cut of every dollar spent in the PC economy, but it took a cut of a lot of them. In the same way, Google takes a cut of many of the dollars that flow through the Net economy. The goal, then, is to keep expanding the economy.

and finally the contrast between the two

Google differs from Microsoft in at least one very important way. The ends that Microsoft has pursued are commercial ends. It's been in it for the money. Google, by contrast, has a strong messianic bent. The Omnigoogle is not just out to make oodles of money; it's on a crusade - to liberate information for the masses - and is convinced of its righteousness in pursuing its cause. Depending on your point of view as you look forward to the next ten years, you'll find that either comforting or not.

It is a interesting contrast in mission between the two big companies and that allows Google to do this to help build the Internet ecosystem and profit from it.

It routinely introduces half-finished products and services as online “betas” because it knows that, even if the offerings fail to win a big share of the market, they will still tend to produce attractive returns by generating advertising revenue and producing valuable data on customer behavior. For most companies, a failed launch of a new product is very costly. For Google, in general, it’s not. Failure is cheap.

That would explain how they can release an open source browser Google Chrome in an over crowded browser market and do not worry about the financial losses they will suffer in supporting this activity.

Lenovo's Love Story for Netbook S9/S10 and e-learning

Image by CaptPiper via Flickr The form factor of the new generation sub compact notebook PC's also known as Netbooks lies somewhere in between a laptop and a smart mobile phone. Their product dimensions are approximately 8.0 x 7 x 1.2 inches ; weighing around 2.2 pounds. This makes them an ideal thin client for cloud computing.







They are about the size of a text book. They are lighter, easier to carry and have the processing capability to effectively run interactive multimedia e-learning content along with complete connectivity to the Internet. These advances in connected devices and Internet infrastructure will provide the necessary boost we need to promote and utilize effective e-learning once the wireless connectivity to the Internet becomes affordable and ubiquitous through seamless integration of WiFi and cellular networking infrastructure.

In other words the current computing and networking infrastructure can support e-learning but it is not an ideal one. The future of e-learning content creation and delivery lies with netbook+wireless networking+Servers supported by cloud computing. Some people will argue that we can use mobile phone to deliver effective e-learning. It is quite possible but the screen on mobile phone is small that restricts the kind of e-learning content that can be delivered through mobile phones.

Only thing missing from Netbooks is tablet PC capabilities. Addition of tablet with write,save and share capabilities will make Netbooks an ideal platform for learning because it will allow student to interact and share their learning with other learners.

I think Netbooks will be very popular if nothing else but for their low cost Internet connecting devices once cloud computing gains some traction.

This is a major shift in computing platform. In fact about the same proportion when computing shifted from mainframes/mini computers to desktop PC's. A fast browser like Google Chrome or something similar will be a major component of this newly emerging computing and communication platform.

Here is a nice commercial from Lenovo, the Chinese company who is responsible for manufacturing IBM laptops:

While we've been dealing with short-form ad fare in the States, China's gone all artsy on us, with Lenovo releasing a short film to promote its S9 / S10 netbook. We won't ruin the plot for you -- the dialogue is all in Chinese, so it's not like we could -- but suffice it to say that the Lenovo S10 and unrequited love play major roles.

Source

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDE2MjU4MDQ=.html?full=true#full

The Embedded video shows just fine in the preview of the post but fails to show up in the blog post. A bug somewhere in Blogger code or in the code for embedding video.

Here is the original URL for the video http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDE2MjU4MDQ=.html?full=true#full

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Movie Sicko Michael Moore

Image via Wikipedia SiCKO- Michael Moore Interview on "Real Time with Bill Maher



Here is the entire movie. It will make good entertainment for weekend watching.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=sicko&emb=0&aq=f#

Also, to judge the two presidential candidates on this issue.

Google Chrome Future of Browsing and Applications

Image by jimpg2 via FlickrThe technology press is full of news about the Google's release of Chrome. Most of it seems to be about how Chrome effects the landscape of already over crowded space of many existing Browsers despite the fact that Google has done a good job of explaining why they are releasing a new browser that is more than a browser.

On the surface Google's Chrome appears to be a no frills fast browser but it is much more then that. It has a fast rendering engine "webkit" the same one that powers Safari Browser from Apple. It also has a very fast Javascript rendering engine V8 that will improve the performance of web application such as Google docs and many new web based applications that are competing with desk top applications with the added advantage of user data being available every where on demand. It really is a web application development platform that developers can use to develop future interesting web applications or improve the performance of existing web applications. Once this fact sinks in it will make Chrome a very popular application among developer community. The whole platform is open source so there is no vendor lock in either.

Here is a Google video that provides details about the browser including the improvements in the user experience through improvements in the user interface.



Also, Google released a comic book to introduce Chrome

Google Chrome - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Google Chrome

After going through the video and the comic book it is very clear that there is no hidden agenda here. Chrome's main thrust is to improve the user web experience and move them beyond web browsing and to actually start using the web based applications. This also nicely ties into the mobile computing and web applications running on the mobile platform using cloud computing.

Google is a major proponent and supporter of cloud computing. Chrome is one of the components to support that kind of computing. Here is a Cnet article where Google's Matthew Glotzbach at the Office 2.0 conference explains how cloud computing is good for business.

Google: 10 ways the cloud is good for business

It seems that future of computing,communication and collaboration is moving away desktops PC's and heading towards smart mobile phones and sub compact laptops such as netbooks.

This shift in computing is good for the users. It brings down the cost of hardware and software, making computing more affordable. However, We will achieve ubiquitous computing only if the mobile tel-communication companies will provide the wireless data transfer cheap enough so that every body can use it.

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Judy Estrin: Running out of Innovation Capital

Former CTO of Cisco systems and a serial entrepreneur talk about the lack of innovation and investment in future.



She has written a new book titled "Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy" that provides detailed overview of the issues involved.

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Barack Obama's acceptance Speech

The YouTube video of the talk



The Wordle representation of the talk

Source

also, a visualization analysis of Obama's speech at Neoformix.

There is a lot of interest today in the speech delivered last night by Barack Obama where he accepted the Democratic Party nomination as their candidate. I'll leave the political analysis to others more qualified than I but I thought it might be interesting to have a look at it through the lense of some of my text analysis tools. I've decided to compare it with the 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address delivered by Obama.

The speech visualization













Please visit Neoformix web site to see the entire article and visualizations that includes a interactive document comparison..

Istanbul Turkey

Brand Marketing in networked world

David Cushman

Adapting Brands To The Networked World

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: internet network)

Wordle Representation

Community Revival Through Wind Power

Video showing how wind power can be used to revitalize a rural community

A Figure showing projected growth in Wind Power utilization over the coming years

Please click on the image for a bigger view

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Barack Obama

One of the best examples of digital video