InfoCompanions » Google

Technology Made Personal

Himanshu Sharma — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:34:34 +0000

Check out this cool Google search ad. Love how it makes technology feel “personal” and such an integral part of our life.

Google Wave – another masterpiece from Google

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:03:34 +0000

Which one of the following communication mediums do you use the most? Email? Video Conference? Instant Messaging? Blogging? Bulletin Boards? Social Network? And if you said yes to at least 2 of the mediums above, am sure you have wished for a product that helps blur the boundaries between these products.

Wait no more, Google unveils Google Wave, an open source, personal communication and collaboration tool – all within a browser, using HTML 5 (dubbed as the Microsoft killer). Simply defined, Google Wave combines the best of worlds from plain vanilla email, hosted conversations, bulletin boards, combined with the power of instant messaging and social network applications like Orkut. Connect the concept with the possibilities at workplace – shared meeting minutes, with REAL TIME view as content is created (yup, real time – meaning text shows up in your browser as your colleague types), real time deliverables and content creation etc.

Lisa Hoover from “Computer World” defines Google Wave as:

“Wave is an elaborate mashup of collaboration, documentation, and real-time messaging that Google hopes will make people finally sever ties with AOL, Microsoft, and other online services. Its function is similar to what would happen if you linked your team’s computer desktops together, then put a giant virtual whiteboard in front of everyone.
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I think it’s a safe bet Wave will fly in enterprise. If nothing else, the magic words “improved workflow” will entice companies to at least try it. There’s no question that freelancers, telecommuters, and anyone who relies on remote collaboration will jump on Wave the day it’s available, and stick with it if it helps save time and money.”

What’s more – Google Wave comes with a cool set of APIs, opening up a world of possibilities and opportunities to develop extensions. Drooling.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out Ben’s latest blog post on Mashable.com for a deep dive

Kwame Anthony Appiah and Golden Nugget Theory

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:58:20 +0000

Kwame Anthony Appiah was born in London, raised in Kumasi, Ghana, and educated at Bryanston School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy. A world traveler immersed in everything from ethics to racial identity, he has written often about Africans and African-Americans and has set his fiction in England and Italy.

In this video, takes to task the myths of Western culture and civilization, explaining the “Golden Nugget” theory and its five major errors. Get ready for his deconstruction of a monolith.

Also check out his article in “The Washington Post” titles, “If You Think Your Taxes Are Unjust, Just Think Again”. Chris Navin has a cool review from one of his NY Times articles… check it out at “Kwame Anthony Appiah In The NY Times: The New New Philosophy”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tibet – Technology Bridging the Divide

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:30:37 +0000

What are the first few words that come to your mind when you think of Tibet… spiritual and breathtakingly beautiful landscape? Disputed land? Watch Losang Rabgey share a “lesser known” side of Tibet, one where this ancient tribe of people want to participate in the new globalization as much as you or me. Those of you especially interested in stories where technology can act as a “bridge” to connect people and communities – this is a feast for the eyes and ears! Losang gives a brief demo of Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library, the first online gallery of contemporary Tibetan art, launched as part of the Machik, a non-profit organization working to develop new opportunities for education, capacity-building and innovation on the Tibetan plateau.

In Losang’s words, “Technology can flatten the world for local communities in disparate areas. These same people have other aspirations to be fully engaged in a globalized world but on their own terms as much as on the world’s terms. So if you would like to witness a small but ancient tribe of people move successfully past marginalization and into an empowered bright future, then I invite you to participate in a remarkable story that we hope has a sustainable future.”

Raised in Canada, Losang was recognized as an Emerging Explorer by the National Geographic for her innovative work in bridging cultural divides.

Connect with Losang on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Losang-Rabgey/549208134

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mass Career Customization – Cathy Benko

Himanshu Sharma — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:03:36 +0000

Cathy Benko visits Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss her book “Mass Career Customization: Aligning the Workplace with Today’s Nontraditional Workforce.”

Far-reaching changes in attitudes and family structures have been redefining the workforce for more than two decades – yet the workplace has remained much the same. During this time, many companies have learned that personalizing the customer experience is good for business. In Mass Career Customization, the authors argue convincingly to extend this popular and profitable concept to the workplace. As the working population shrinks, maintaining industry advantage will depend largely on keeping employees engaged and connected. Mass Career Customization provides a framework for organisational adaptability that will do just that.

Cathy Benko is the chief talent officer responsible for driving the Deloitte U.S. Firms strategy to attract, develop and advance a highly skilled and increasingly diverse workforce. She is also leading a pioneering approach to employee engagement and career/life integration called Mass Career Customization, a signature initiative of the Deloitte U.S. Firms Talent agenda.

Click here to view the embedded video.

RepRap – the self replicating machine

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:26:18 +0000

Ever wished that your new iPod could somehow self-replicate into two iPods every night? Or maybe every other hour? Christmas would be so much more fun… and less expensive Adrian Bowyer is thinking on somewhat similar lines. A senior lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath, Adrian is credited with the invention of the revolutionary RepRap Project – an open-source self-replicating 3D printer. As per The Guardian, “[RepRap] has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment…”.

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. Adrian defines it as a practical self-copying 3D printer that builds the parts up in layers of plastics – in essence, a self-replicating machine. Not counting nuts and bolts RepRap can make 60% of its parts; the other parts are designed to be cheaply available everywhere.

This is an interesting coincidence: we can make 60% of our proteins; the other parts are evolved to be cheaply available everywhere. In this respect, RepRap machines could/would follow Darwin’s theory of evolution. And with the project now available in Open Source domain, natural selection seems all the more logical growth route.

Imagine the potential impact of this “magical wand”! Will this “demonetize money”? Check out the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yes, You Can Innovate Like Google

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:00:00 +0000

The words “Google” and “Innovation” have been used numerous times in the last few years… and all of us undoubtedly admire “The Google Way”, their talent acquisition, management and retention strategies etc. However, we usually shy away from adoting a subset of those ideas, with the usual answer - “we’re different”. In this video, Tom Davenport describes how Google uses chaos to quickly move from prototype to finished product, tolerates a high failure rate in order to ensure bigger success, and gets the most from knowledge workers. He also asserts that more companies can, and should, borrow elements of Google’s innovative approach to business.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Tom Davenport:
Tom Davenport holds the President’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, where he also leads the Process Management and Working Knowledge Research Centers. His books and articles on business process reengineering, knowledge management, attention management, knowledge worker productivity, and analytical competition helped to establish each of those business ideas. His website is tomdavenport.com.

Why we know less than ever about the world

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, talks about why — though we want to know more about the world than ever — the US media is actually showing less. Eye-opening stats and graphs.

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About Alisa Miller:
Alisa Miller is President and CEO of Public Radio International. She oversees the development of some 400 hours of programming a week, bringing challenging radio programs to millions of listeners. She is responsible for making PRI programs such as This American Life accessible through satellite radio, and for spearheading the development of new programs such as the new show The Takeaway. And yes, she is the first woman to take the helm of a public radio network.

Miller is an advocate for a global perspective in news programming. She notes that, even while society becomes more globally interconnected, “Americans seem to know less and less about the world around them.” (Symptoms include the closure of foreign news bureaus — and the increasing share of broadcast time devoted to Britney Spears.) Diversity in reporting, she says, is not just important — it is vital for everyone who seeks to understand and act for good in an interdependent, increasingly complex world.

Innovation at Google

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Innovation for its own sake is useless. Period. And no one knows this better than the company who redefined the rules of information search. In this interesting 50 minute presentation, Google CIO Douglas Merrill tells us about innovation at Google. He highlights the importance of speed, the user experience, machine translation, defining innovation, relevance and more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Douglas Merrill:
Co-founders Larry Page, president of Products, and Sergey Brin, president of Technology, brought Google to life in September 1998. Since then, the company has grown to more than 10,000 employees worldwide, with a management team that represents some of the most experienced technology professionals in the industry. Dr. Eric Schmidt joined Google as chairman and chief executive officer in 2001.

Formerly a senior vice president at Charles Schwab; worked at Price Waterhouse and the RAND Corp.; ran a small consulting company in Southwest Asia; taught at Northwestern; has a doctorate in psychology at Princeton.

Why can’t we “grow” new energy?

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Juan Enriquez offers a glimpse of some ground-breaking research to explore the potential of bioenergy. Our current energy sources — coal, oil, gas — are ultimately derived from ancient plants — they’re “concentrated sunlight.” He asks, Can we learn from that process and accelerate it? Can we get to the point where we grow our own energy as efficiently as we grow wheat? (Less than a month after this talk, his company announced a process to do just that.).

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Juan Enriquez:
A broad thinker who studies the intersection of science, business and society, Juan Enriquez has a talent for bridging disciplines to build a coherent look ahead. The founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, Enriquez has published widely on topics from the technical (global nucleotide data flow) to the sociological (gene research and national competitiveness), and was a member of Celera Genomics founder Craig Venter’s marine-based team to collect genetic data from the world’s oceans.

Formerly CEO of Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation and chief of staff for Mexico’s secretary of state, Enriquez played a role in reforming Mexico’s domestic policy and helped negotiate a cease-fire with Zapatista rebels. He is chair and CEO of Biotechonomy, a research and investment firm helping to fund new genomics firms. The Untied States of America, his latest book, looks at the forces threatening America’s future as a unified country.

Future Mobile Technology

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Younghee Jung leads a multidisciplinary research team at Nokia called “Insight and Innovation” (download PowerPoint slides from Nokia Connection 2007 conference). Jung talks about what to expect next from your mobile phone, the newest ideas in the pipeline, and the questions that Nokia is asking women.

She spends the first half of the video describing how important mobile phones have become to us and that they have become so ubiquitous that a third of the global population owns one. The second half is spent on the challenges facing cellphones today and how new usage models will solve social problems that we as humans have always had to deal with.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Younghee Jung:
Younghee Jung is senior interaction designer in Nokia’s User Experience unit. In Nokia, Younghee specializes in developing future product concepts, incubating the product concepts before they are ‘adopted’ in the productization line, and creating evolutionary roadmaps of core applications of mobile phones. Her past endeavours include the incubation research for Nokia Lifeblog and she is currently working on creating the vision for mobile phonebook application. Her passion is to learn and understand various cultures of humanity and make contribution to enrich them via design. She studied interaction design at Carnegie Mellon University as a Fulbright scholar, and industrial design at KAIST, South Korea.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s Virtual Earth!

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Microsoft’s Stephen Lawler gives a whirlwind tour of Virtual Earth, moving up, down and through its hyperreal cityscapes with dazzlingly fluidity, a remarkable feat that requires staggering amounts of data to bring into focus. Google might still be ahead of the game, but even in beta, Virtual Earth shows incredible promise. Microsoft’s visions for the product — as a provider of real-time weather and traffic data, or a realistic backdrop for game developers and IM conversations, or virtual ad space — all seem well within the limits of possibility.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Stephen Lawler:
Microsoft’s Stephen Lawler offers a tour of Virtual Earth that not only reveals the power and potential of the software itself, but also gives a global glimpse of the new virtual frontier of digital globes, the 3D Web and the metaverse.

Lawler also explores the enormous effort it takes to create the fluid blending and shifting between the multiple views and resolutions of Virtual Earth. From the satellites and airplanes that gather photo data for a top-down view to the ground vehicles and headgear-wearing pedestrians who canvas the ground for an eye-level perspective — all of it represents a monumental effort of logistics and mechanics.

Inside the Google Machine

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin offer a peek inside the Google machine, sharing tidbits about international search patterns and the philanthropic Google Foundation project (which soon became Google.org). They talk about how their shared Montessori background led to the company’s “20 Percent Time” policy, which is directly responsible for success stories such as Google News and AdSense. Google’s dedication to innovative thinking and employee happiness is behind everything from the offices’ specially soundproofed projectors (which make it much easier to follow what’s being said in meetings) to the company’s thematically rotating logo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Sergey Brin and Larry Page:
Sergey Brin and Larry Page invented Google: the technology, the company, the verb. How did their search business, relatively late to the game, come to rule the Web?

The answer might be found in the personalities of the Google founders. Brin and Page met in grad school at Stanford in the mid-’90s, and in 1996 started working on a search technology based on a new idea: that relevant results come from context. Their technology analyzed the number of times a given website was linked to by other sites — assuming that the more links, the more relevant the site — and ranked sites accordingly. In 1998, they opened Google in a garage-office in Menlo Park. In 1999 their software left beta and started its steady rise to web domination.

But technology alone doesn’t account for Google’s breakaway success. In fact, Google’s approach to site design and advertising may have been more radical than the technology itself: In an era when search engines were super-saturated with sponsor messages, Google broke the mold with their famously friendly and simple interface. Paid links were clearly identfied; no pop-windows or banner ads were used; the homepage offered little more than their whimsical logo and a single search box. Customers loved it.

Brin and Page’s innovation-friendly office culture (beyond the famous free food, there’s the company’s “20 Percent Time,” which encourages engineers to spend a fifth of their time pursuing whatever projects ignite their interest) has created fertile ground for spectacular successes beyond search, including AdSense/AdWords, Google News, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Gmail. The company’s belief in clean design and ethical ad sales, and its corporate philosophy — often simply stated as “Don’t be evil” — continue to set the company apart.

In 2004, Brin and Page launched the company’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, focused on solving worldwide problems relating to poverty, energy and the environment.

Sliced Bread-Marketing Delights

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000

In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. And early adopters, not the mainstream’s bell curve, are the new sweet spot of the market.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Seth Godin:
“Seth Godin may be the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age,” Mary Kuntz wrote in Business Week nearly a decade ago. “Instead of widgets or car parts, he specializes in ideas — usually, but not always, his own.” In fact, he’s as focused on spreading ideas as he is on the ideas themselves.

After working as a software brand manager in the mid-1980s, Godin started Yoyodyne, one of the first Internet-based direct-marketing firms, with the notion that companies needed to rethink how they reached customers. His efforts caught the attention of Yahoo!, which bought the company in 1998 and kept Godin on as a vice president of permission marketing. Godin has produced several critically acclaimed and attention-grabbing books, including Permission Marketing, All Marketers Are Liars, and Purple Cow (which was distributed in a milk carton). In 2005, Godin founded Squidoo.com, a Web site where users can share links and information about an idea or topic important to them.

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