Eugene Shteyn's Blog

Sunday biography: Nikola Tesla.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:20:00 +0000

This amazing documentary gives long overdue recognition to a great and misunderstood man of science. The life of Nikola Tesla is an inspiring example of the power of one man to change the world with technology and revolutionary ideas.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was one of the most fascinating scientists of the 20th century. He invented, developed or imagined the technology that brought us electricity, remote control, neon and florescent lighting, radio transmission and much more... all the basic inventions that now connect the world with power and information.

link

tags: lunchtalk, innovation, invention, energy, communications

Lunchtalk: (TED) Creating Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

link

tags: lunchtalk, communications, information,

Joyent vs Amazon

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:29:00 +0000

Joent is a cloud provider that intends to out-innovate Amazon.

Jan 23, 2012. VBeat -- San Francisco-based Joyent was founded in 2004 and has about 150 employees. It also has offices in Vancouver, Singapore and Geneva. The company plans to announce other “exciting” partnerships in the near future that will enable the company’s services in even more countries.

Here's how they see their cloud orchestration services

Note that one of the pillars is Node.js - a JavaScript-based web server technology. It's hard to believe that Java Script, a scripting language designed by Netscape to execute simple logic within their browser, is now at the core of a cloud computing architecture. Who would've thunk!

tags: cloud, technology, evolution

Lunchtalk: Innovation in cooking (@Google)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Ferran Adrià is recognized as the most influential chef in the world. His legendary talent, creativity and gastronomic innovations have inspired chefs and food-lovers around the world for many years, at the helm of the iconic restaurant El Bulli in Spain. He is also the author of A Day at El Bulli.

While Ferran Adrià is better known for his innovative and ground breaking gastronomic creations, this highly anticipated new book reveals, for the first time, his secrets for creating delicious, seasonal, and simple home cooked meals.

link

Snack Talk: Feeling machines that think.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:02:00 +0000

Dr. Antonio Damasio on Self Comes to Mind.

The best of both world: an animal awareness (autopilot) to react to the world and an executive function to reflect on the world.

link

lunchtalk, psychology, mind, dilemma

Invention of the Day: Cereal Bowl.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:45:00 +0000

The cereal bowl with flat bottom is one of my favorite inventions because it combines simplicity and utility. You can hold it comfortably in the cup of your hand AND you can put it down safely on a flat surface. If you don't believe me, try doing it with your plate. The majority of people have hard time believing that this bowl is such a great invention. To them, it looks completely obvious because they are so used to tables, desks, and other everyday furniture of the civilization.

But a few thousand years ago it was not such an easy transition. It took one culture a few hundred years to invent the new shape for household pottery.

I bet today's patent office would not issue a patent for this invention because of its "obviousness." But, as Leonardo da Vinci famously said, Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

The best car to steal ever.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:20:00 +0000

With electric cars less is more.

Jan 25, 2012. CNet -- Spain will begin producing an electric car next year that's about the same size as a Smart, but can collapse itself into an even smaller footprint when parked. The Hiriko, which means "urban car" in Basque, is the brainchild of researchers at the MIT Media Lab, and is designed to meet the needs of increasingly congested and parking challenged urban centers.

To steal the car, all you need to do is fold it and load it onto your Ford Explorer.

tags: transportation, energy, problem

Mobile payments are in trouble (in the US)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:20:00 +0000

Retail shops seem to be further away from adopting new types of mobile payments than we thought. It'll probably take another generation of technology to get them over their technological inertia. By that time, online retailers we'll be in an even stronger position to compete.

Jan 25, 2012. VBeat -- Because today’s retail systems are so inflexible, the integration of any third-party systems will result in a huge IT expense for implementation. The customization required so that all components of the point of sale system (including inventory management and payment processing) interact with a new mobile payment platform without disrupting the operation of the existing systems is cumbersome and expensive due to complex software integration.

The retailer’s cost to add even one type of mobile payment technology (such as Google Wallet) is currently very high, and since the market is so fragmented, adopting just one of the mobile payment platforms will only address a tiny portion of the market.

A possible solution to the problem could be a partnership between online and brick-and-mortar retailers. In many ways, Amazon marketplace is this type of a distributed physical store, where a variety of retailers use Amazon's IT resources to sell their goods. The retail industry as a whole is at the end of their S-curve; therefore, transplanting it to a new payment technology is a big organizational challenge.

Lunchtalk: Building your own human capital (@Google)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:00:00 +0000

The richest billionaire executive on the planet and the lowest-status minimum-wage worker have at least one thing in common when it comes to work: they both have 24 hours in the day. So what distinguishes the high-earning executive from lower-paid workers? It's the amount of capital they are able to combine with that 24 hours each day. Not just capital in the form of money and business systems, but also the amount of intangible "human capital" they bring to their work: knowledge, wisdom gained from experience, mindset, the ability to sell their vision effectively to others, and the "social capital" of their business connections.

tags: lunchtalk, education, social, investment

Quote of the Day: Facts and Distortions

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:57:00 +0000

“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

- Mark Twain.

Remotely controlled brain.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:10:00 +0000

Switching technology from lasers to LEDs lets an MIT startup plant a light-weight controller right into a lab animal brain.

Jan 23, 2012. MTR -- Optogenetics relies on genetically altering certain cells to make them responsive to light, and then selectively stimulating them with a laser to either turn the cells on or off. Instead of a laser light source, Kendall Research uses creatively packaged LEDs and laser diodes, which are incorporated into a small head-borne device that plugs into an implant in the animal's brain. The device, which weighs only three grams, is powered wirelessly by supercapacitors stationed below the animal's cage or testing area.

The wireless capabilities allow researchers to control the optogenetics equipment remotely, or even schedule experiments in advance.

Data collection is also seems to be one of their key applications. Maybe when people agree to genetically modify their brains to emit lights, this technology will be invaluable for a new kind of communications.

tags: control, energy, storage, communications, biology, brain, startup

Fashion shows are coming online

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:44:00 +0000

Everyone wants to watch fashion from the first row. Now, lots of people can, at least with an iPad.

Jan 24, 2012. The Hollywood Reporter -- Unlike livestreamed shows, Digital Fashion Shows is for designers who want to create an experience for press and clients that's as close to a runway show as possible, without having to actually push your way to the coveted front row.

Each runway show will be pretaped without an audience and will be watchable at a specific date and time. Anyone with an official invite can log on to the site at the annointed time for their very own front row seat at the show.

I wonder if fashion shows soon go 3D. It must be a fun experience to see them "live," especially, in a social networking setting.

tags: technology, culture, social, video

A totally unexpected future.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:21:00 +0000

Beginning March 1, Google will begin tracking users across most of its services: Gmail, Youtube, maps, search, and others. Some reactions to the new policy are quite surprising:

Jan 24, 2012. The Washington Post -- “There is no way anyone expected this,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of privacy advocacy group the Center for Digital Democracy. “There is no way a user can comprehend the implication of Google collecting across platforms for information about your health, political opinions and financial concerns."

It's hard to believe people are surprised with this move. Three and a half years ago, when Google introduced its own web browser, the writing was already on the wall. The brave new world with a different type of information asymmetries is emerging before our own eyes.

tags: business, model, domination, control, information,

Modern Marvels: Pacific Coast Highway.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Driving on Hwy 1 from San Francisco to Santa Barbara was one of the best travel experiences of my life. It's amazing how much engineering went into constructing the road.

link

tags: lunchtalk, infrastructure

Youtube is unstoppable.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:57:00 +0000

Jan 23, 2012. VBeat -- The site has boosted its daily page views by 25 percent in the last eight months — and gathering over 4 billion page views per day, reports Reuters.

YouTube has made its video site accessible on more mobile devices, smart televisions, and streaming media set-top boxes (Roku, Apple TV, etc.).

Last week during its quarterly earnings report the company stated that its display ads sales are generating $5 billion in revenue due in large part to YouTube’s success.

Google has already started integrating Youtube with Blogger and Google+. The default video player on your mobile phone is most likely to by hooked to Youtube as well. In a few years, Microsoft's bundling of the Internet Explorer with its Windows OS will look like a child's play, compared to Google's mobile package of search, maps, videos, browser, social media, docs, apps, and much more.

Resistance is futile!

tags: internet, distribution, domination, packaging, business, model, mobile, advertisement

Getting fat just got a whole lot easier!

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:23:00 +0000

Jan 23, 2012. Reuters -- Starbucks is planning to add the alcoholic drinks and food such as savory snacks, cheese plates and hot flatbreads to menus in four to six outlets in each market.

Nutrition-wise, beer is largely carbs. A 12oz glass of a decent beer is worth about 150 calories, which should give you the extra energy to ride a horse for almost an hour. And if you add a cheese plate to your Starbucks order, you'll have to ride this horse for the rest of the evening.

tags: health, energy, distribution, payload

Lunch Talk: (@Google) The Genetic Revolution.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Brandon Colby, MD, is a world leader in the fields of genetic testing and predictive medicine. Dr. Colby will discuss the current and near-future technologies that are fueling the genetic revolution as well as the difference between genetic testing and genetic analysis. Specific focus will be applied to how genetic information is now being used by healthcare professionals to predict and prevent a large number of diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and even Alzheimer's. The talk will also include specific ways in-which you and your family can use the information contained within your genes to protect your health and wellness not in ten or five years, but today.

tags: lunchtalk, biology, innovation, science, health

Quote of the Day: Investing in Globalization.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:49:00 +0000

There’s no way to invest in a world where globalization fails.

The question then becomes what are the best investments that are geared towards good globalization. Facebook is perhaps the purest expression of that I can think of.”

- Peter Thiel. (quoted from The Facebook Effect, by David Kirkpatrick.)

tags: investment, model, business, trend, constraint, startup

Ripping off for fun and profit - 3

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:56:00 +0000

VBeat runs a story on 14 best copycat Internet services/apps in China. Definitely, there's a different understanding of innovation there.

Jan 22, 2012. VBeat -- People outside of China often wonder why the Chinese love to copy things. The answer is that it’s the way they’re taught to learn. Follow the teacher, recite books, and don’t challenge authority.

Not copying would almost represent a missed opportunity.

One trend we noticed is that the best clones are often created by very large Chinese tech companies with existing resources and money. It shows how tough the environment is for grassroots startups trying to compete against the big guys. It is also telling of the health of China’s startup eco-system — big companies can and will simply crush anything they see as a threat.

How is it possible to compete with this business model? Keeping technology secret seems to be the only way to succeed. In other words, globally we are back to the 17th century intellectual property system.

tags: business, model, patents, internet, service, intellectual, property

Counting without numbers.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:08:00 +0000

A paper in Nature Neuroscience shows that a neural network can learn how to count without any knowledge of numbers. Internally, it forms neuron firing patterns that are closer to the set theory than to arithmetic. This research is a step toward an explanation for Approximate Number Sense (ANS), which is present in many animals, including humans (take a simple test to get a feeling for your own ANS).

08 January 2012. Nature Neuroscience (2012). doi:10.1038/nn.2996 ---
Here we show that visual numerosity emerges as a statistical property of images through unsupervised learning. We used deep networks, multilayer neural networks that contain top-down connections and learn to generate sensory data rather than to classify it^{8, 9}. Stochastic hierarchical generative models are appealing because they develop increasingly more complex distributed nonlinear representations of the sensory input across layers⁹. These features make deep networks particularly attractive for the purpose of neuro-cognitive modeling.

The ability to approximate (estimate), rather than calculate, can be critical in complex situations. It might also explain why invention of number Zero was so controversial. We have a hard time "seeing", i.e. creating an internal neural network representation, a non-existing pattern.

tags: pattern, approximation, science, network, biology

Using social networking for business intelligence.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:33:00 +0000

Jan 6, 2012. CNN -- After locating all their employees' LinkedIn connections to two companies they were targeting as clients, they divided the contacts into three groups: Information providers, Influencers and Decision Makers. Working their way up the chain from information providers, they then asked their employees to gather as much information as they could about their target companies.

Service that started as a way to stay in touch with friends and colleagues is increasingly becoming an influence tool. Either through direct peer targeting or through 3rd party advertising.

"Relationships between people are invisible," says Hansgaard. "By making them visible you can make them controllable. You can illuminate gaps in collaboration, you can build them and you can strengthen them."

tags: social, networking, detection, control, innovation, problem, solution, business, model

Lunch Talk: Modern Marvels - Railroads

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:59:00 +0000

Direct link.

tags: lunchtalk, transportation, payload

A database to store the cloud.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:25:00 +0000

Amazon continues to push hard into cloud services with a database designed to handle disjoint information.

Jan 19, 2012. Wired -- NoSQL is a widespread effort to build a new kind of database for “unstructured” information — the sort of information that comes spilling off the internet with each passing second. Five years ago, Amazon introduced a NoSQL database service called SimpleDB, and now, it’s offering what you might think of as Amazon NoSQL Mark II. It’s called DynamoDB.

Like SimpleDB, DynamoDB is one of many Amazon Web Services (AWS), a set of tools offering online access to various computing resources, from virtual servers to virtual storage to databases and other software.

This is an important technology transition. Until fairly recently, internet applications were re-using (and are still using) database designs created for the previous generations of IT applications. Now, we see internet-specific architectures becoming available as a 24/7 service. Should be really good for mobile apps, games, ads, and connected devices.

tags: source, system, evolution, information, infrastructure

A burst of creativity?

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:58:00 +0000

Source: Patent Failure, by J. Bessen and M.J.Meurer.

What happened in the US in 1855-60? Was it the railroads that triggered the burst of patent activity?

On the road to driverless cars.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Shteyn) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:54:00 +0000

Leading automakers, including certain European luxury brands, are working to create a different driving experience. They seem to be taking an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary approach.

January 20, 2012. MTR -- Lasers, cameras, and other sensors are the most expensive part of autonomous driving systems. Some experimental self-driving cars are estimated to carry more than $200,000 worth of cameras and other gear. Those costs are also leading automakers toward a gradual approach that starts with sensor technologies and then extends capabilities to control driving tasks as well.

Several automakers already sell cars with so-called adaptive cruise control that automatically applies the brakes during highway driving if traffic slows. Next, BMW plans to extend that idea in its upcoming i3 series of electric cars, whose traffic-jam feature will let the car accelerate, decelerate, and steer by itself at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour—as long as the driver leaves a hand on the wheel.

Making cars and elements of road infrastructure easily detectable by simple sensors will solve the problem of the high costs mentioned above. For the car to become truly driverless, the road itself has to change.

tags: transportation, control, distribution, detection, infrastructure