semanticvoid » Misc

Bad bad Steve Ballmer. No donut for you.

Anand Kishore — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:31:07 +0000

Powerset recently put up this contest on their blog. Here is my *interesting* Factz find:

Q. What did Steve Ballmer do? [Try it on Powerset - you will need to expand using "more"]

UPDATE: Thanks for the mention on your blog, Powerset

Feed Yourself Me

Anand Kishore — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:07:37 +0000

Discover new music, things I find interesting (my bookmarks) and my twitter-ing all via one feed. Point your favorite feed reader to http://friendfeed.com/anandkishore and stay connected.

PS: Don’t forget to stay connected and add me to your friends list.

Happy Birthday DARPA!

Anand Kishore — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 05:32:41 +0000

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) celebrated its 50th anniversary today. Who knew 50 years ago that contributions by this defense research agency would evolve into the present Internet. Hadn’t it been for their research you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog post today. Most of us know of DARPA because of the ARPANET or the DARPA Urban Challenge (ai geeks mostly). Its time we knew why and under what circumstances DARPA was created.

Read the original DOD DARPA directive

President Eisenhower established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) 50 years ago in response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik launch, which surprised and embarrassed the United States as the Soviets became the first nation to successfully launch a satellite into space. DARPA’s 1958 charter charged the Agency to perform certain advanced research and development projects, with the primary mission of ensuring that the United States would never again be surprised by another nation’s technological advancement. The list of DARPA’s contributions includes the Saturn V rocket, the ARPANET (which laid foundations for the Internet).

On this very day 50 years ago, Feburary 7th 1958, the following short and concise document started it all: the original DOD directive.

Logging My Life

Anand Kishore — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 14:29:26 +0000

Gordon Bell has been recording every bit of his life for the past seven years. His custom-designed software, “MyLifeBits” saves everything it can, from every email he sends and receives, every document he types, every chat session he engages in, every Web page he surfs. The advantages of such a software are obvious: total recall. It gives one the ability to search ones life for any reference of a person/thing.

Inspired by it I have decided to start logging my life as well. As of now its restricted to only my online life as I do not have resources like the SenseCam. The data collected in this process could be used in numerous ways: total recall, recommendations, predictions, and so on. As Peter Norvig says, “Its about the data and not the algorithm”.

Head over to the Life Logger project page, where I am documenting how I have been logging my life along with tools and algorithms for aggregating and analyzing such data.

Happy logging :-)

Click here for the Life Logger Project homepage

De Bono’s Interpretation Of Google

Anand Kishore — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 16:05:48 +0000

Edward De Bono, author of the book titled ‘Six Thinking Hats‘, theorized the Six Hat Thinking methodology. As stated in his book:

It is not possible to be presensitized in different directions at the same time just as it would not be possible to design a golf club that was the best club for driving and at the same time the best club for putting. That is why the Six Hats method is essential. It allows the brain to maximize its sensitivity in different directions at different times….The essence of parallel thinking is that at any moment everyone is looking in the same direction — but the direction can be changed. An explorer might be asked to look north or to look east. Those are standard direction labels. So we need some direction labels for thinking. What are the different directions in which thinkers can be invited to look?

This is were the hats come in. Each hat symbolizes a thinking direction. De Bono’s six hats are:

White Hat: is neutral and objective, concerned with objective facts and figures.
Red Hat: relates to intuition, emotions & opinion.
Black Hat: is gloomy, and covers the negative – why things can’t be done.
Yellow Hat: symbolizes brightness and optimism, indicating hope and positive thinking.
Green Hat: focuses on creativity: the possibilities, alternatives and new ideas.
Blue Hat: is concerned with the control and organization of the thinking process.

Thats all about the Six Hats. But where does Google fit in?

Lets take a look at the Google logo:

If we apply the Six Hat approach to interpret the logo, we get:

2 blues: signifying the unified and organized thinking process at Google.
2 reds: signifies that they value intuition, emotions, opinions of the users. Outputting innovative products by not just their brains but their hearts as well. This is evident from the simplistic and intuitive UI designs of Google Search and Gmail.
1 yellow: symbolizes their optimistic outlook, hoping that every new product would bring them one step closer to their ultimate aim and that is to organize the worlds information.
1 green: new ideas, alternatives, innovation…Well, thats Google :)

Conclusion

The above interpretation of the logo actually seems to be in sync with the current image of Google and the prevalent mindset of the average googler. Did I just unearth Google’s success formula?

Hope so :)

Larry Or Sergey, Who Is More Popular?

Anand Kishore — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:28:36 +0000

I’ll let the statistics speak for themselves.

Larry Page Sergey Brin

Ah! And how can I forget Bill Gates. Lets see how he fairs in front of the whiz kids.

Larry Page Bill Gates

Sergey Brin Bill Gates

Memcached: Understanding The Super Cool Cache

Anand Kishore — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:32:21 +0000

Read the Memcached Documentation here.

Memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.

I have been exploring Memcached as a prospective cache for my project. It seems to be the panacea for all my caching problems. What is missing though is a detailed explanation or HowTo’s. I have been scouring the mailing list and the web for getting a detailed explanation on its working. I have aggregated all such information into a document which could be used by others like me in understanding Memcached.

I will be updating this document as and when I find something that would aid in understanding Memcahed better.

Read the Memcached Documentation here.

Understanding Tacit Knowledge

Anand Kishore — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 07:11:55 +0000

I chanced upon an article by Jon Udell titled ‘The tacit dimension of tech support‘ which gave me an insight on tacit knowledge, knowledge that people use implicitly without even realizing it. Understanding this so called tacit knowledge will aid us in designing systems that are more intuitive and user friendly. Tacit knowledge is of two kinds, the first kind is knowing how to do things and the second, knowing how to find out how to do things.

Knowing How To Do Things

If I want to refine my search I know I can find the feature in something called the Advanced Search.

Knowing How To Find Out How To Do Things

If I want to refine my search at a particular site I can always Google about it.

Change Your Perspective

Determining the above knowledge for the target audience of your product could determine how sticky the users stay to your product. Usually while designing systems, the developers rely on their tacit knowledge which is not quite the same as that of the non-techie users. This particularly holds true to User Interface design. I have been part of many discussions on UI design for one of my projects. I have often argued on things like ‘we should have that link there and not here‘ because that seemed more reasonable to me. What I didn’t realize was that these arguments were based on my tacit knowledge and not that of a typical user.

Developers need to change their outlook and keep the above in mind the next time they go around designing systems.

The Trojan Room Coffee Pot

Anand Kishore — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 05:58:43 +0000

Ever wondered how the ubiquitous webcam came into existence. Well, it all started in the Trojan Room at the University of Cambridge way back in 1991. There were a couple of guys working in the room on ATM networks and all they had for refreshment was a coffee filter machine placed outside in the corridor. And then there were a couple of other guys, members of the coffee club, who worked in different parts of the building. These guys had to navigate several flights of stairs to get to the coffee pot only to find it emptied by the all-night hackers of the Trojan Room. This is why the XCoffee was born.

Paul Jardetzky and Quentin Stafford-Fraser setup up a video frame-grabber and hacked up a client-server program that would display an icon-sized image of the coffee pot, which refreshed at the rate of about three times every minute. This helped them to decide when the time was right to get a cup of coffee.

This image above is that of the actual coffee pot. The coffee machine was finally switched off at 0954 UTC on Wednesday 22nd August 2001.

It sometimes makes me wonder how small ideas/needs revolutionize the world.

Unix Humor

Anand Kishore — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 19:34:34 +0000

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