Relations » technology

2006 World Digital Publishing Conference- The guardian gets it ;-)

gkamp — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 09:54:34 +0000

Last week the 1st World Digital Publishing Conference took place in London. Unfortunately only the summaries of the different talks are available. There is also only little resonance in the blogosphere.

As somebody with a technological background i’m especially pleased with the following quote:

“We need to realize that our star software developers are as important to our business as our star journalists. I think if we said this three years ago, it would have been heresy, but I think it is true.”

Carolyn McCall, Chief Executive, Guardian Media Group

Compare this to the absence technical people i noted in my newspaper next article.

Chumby and Greenphone, opening up the embedded device market

gkamp — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 06:14:57 +0000

Recently two hardware announcements caught my interest, not only because cool mobile devices were introduced. More interestingly to me was the fact they brought the openness we all know from the open source software on our PCs and Laptops to the embedded devices market.
First Qtopia, announced the greenphone, a mobile phone that targets developers and geeks by enabling them to reflash the phones memory. This week, chumby.com, goes even a step further. Their device, the chumby, targeted to replace the good old radio clock at your bedsite with something cool is more or less completely open. This means that you not only can download the software powering the device but also the 2D and 3D data files for the boards and the casings as well as a bill of materials etc.

So why is this important ? Let’s have a closer look.

The greenphone — freeing the creativity of developers from the restrictions of the phone manufacturers and mobile operators

Normally flashing a phone’s memory is something that can only be done by the manufacturer of the phone. In addition, Qtopia adds a version of its well known Qtopia SDK to the package.

…

The chumby — a fully open gadget

…

Sony GPS-C1: A photo geocoding accessory done the wrong way

gkamp — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 10:57:53 +0000

Geocoding photos. i.e. adding latitude and longitude to a photos’ metadata gets more popular every day. To my knowledge the following options for geocoding images exist:

“Integrated solution”: Professionals could use the nikon D200 with an attached Garmin (or compatible) gps and a serial cable to directly add the goecode to the EXIF Metadata while shooting the photo. (Does anybody know if there is a similar solution for professional canon cameras ?) But according to some comments the integration the whole package was very clumsy and cumbersome.
“Specialist applications”: The RICOH Caplio Pro G3 camera is mostly used for special applications. But with its integrated Compact Flash Slot it allows for direct integration of the geocode information into exif headers using either GPS CF cards GPS Bluetooth modules and ad Bluetooth CF card or a standard GPS receiver a serial cable and a serial CF card. This is definitely the best integrated solution wrt. useability but the camera does not fulfill the requirements of professional photographers.
“Synchronized data”: This is a solution that until now mostly appeals to geeks. In this scenario the geocode of the photo is not stored directly while taking the shot. Instead, a separate gps tracker is used to premanently track and store the position. Using synchronized clocks on both devices a postprocessing software like WWMX LocationStamper then adds the EXIF headers to the photos.
“Manual Postprocessing”: The bulk of todays geocoded images stems are manually geocoded using internet mapping services and APIS of the G-Y-M “triumvirat” (or should i say oligopoly). In contrast to the other solutions, the metadata is normally not integrated into the headers of the photo but only attached to it wrt. a hosting application (e.g. flickr).

Sony now tries to bring the synchronized data solution to the masses by offering an integrated hard and software package consisting of a small gps tracker and a set of windows only software. But as usual Sony doesn’t get it . The usual walled garden approach, combined with a technical inferior solution: Single purpose gps module, no expandable memory, tracking only every 15 seconds, …).

iRex iLiad: great display, enhanceable design, pre-alpha software and a weird proposed navigation model for news content

gkamp — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:59:44 +0000

I just had the opportunity to test drive an iRex iLiad, the device promoted by its manufacturer iRex Technologies ” as he latest state of technology in mobile electronic reading”. 5 years after the Rocket eBook, the first eBook device i had the chance to test, it surely is a quantum leap ahead. It also is my first encounter with the lon hyped eInk display technology.

It is also a device that i would ask my company to buy me in order to save my shelf from all that reference manuals and that i would like to use for notetaking in meetings.

It could also be a device that a would take to my holiday in order to save weight on all that paperbacks (fiction, crime, science-fiction, …)

But it is nost definitely NOT (YET) a device where i want to read my daily newspaper(s) on. But fortunately one could do better within the given hardware platform

Hardware Software Content

Hardware

Display

Clearly the most stunning feature of the iLiad is its display, which is based on eInk technology.

Basically that means that lots of tiny balls which are white on one side and blck on the other side are rotated in order produce a grayscale (16 grays) display. This resulta in a very high contrast display that needs no lighting and draws no juice from the battery when the display is not changed. It also results in a very high density display that approaches printing quality (1024x768px on a 8.1inch screen, you do the math).

On the downside, changing the display is a fairly slow process (others have measured 900msec). Since there is no other feedback if your click or pageturn was accepted, this leaves you in a constant state of incertainty wrt. interaction state of the device. It would be helpful if the manufacture would give the user some kind of clue if an interaction has been noticed. In some sense the tiny led in the upper left hand corner already serves this purpose. But AFAIK it is flickering proportional to the load on the processor, which is not always directly correlated to user interaction.

Interaction Elements and Design

The iliad has a number of modes to interact with the device.

On the left hand side of the device there is a long “Flipbar” and 5 navigation buttons (two above and 3 below the turn bar).
Below the display are 4 “archive” buttons which are prelabeled “News”, Books”, “Docs”, and “Notes”
Tucked in a slot in the back is a stylus which can be used to select items on the display as well as “write” on the screen while notetaking.
In the upper right hand corner is a connection button

Flipbar and navigation buttons

The flipbar allows you to turn the pages back and forth when your reading content or browsing through directories.

Unfortunately, at least for me,it has the wrong direction. In order to turn to the next page, you have to move the flipbar to the left. As the manual suggests, this direction was derived from the movement of your hand if you turn the page on a physical book. But as a long-time computer user I automatically expected it to be the other way around. There should be the possibility to select the way the user likes it in the device settings.

The two navigation buttons above the flipbar are used for backing up one level in the directory structure and to enter into the main menu. The three navigation buttons below the flipbar are used to navigate within the displayed page.

Although i’m a right hander, i would love the turn bar and the other navigation keys to be on the right side of the device when i’m only reading. This is due to the fact that i would like to operate the device with one-hand (my right one) while reading. This is in contrast to the two-handed mode i would like to use when i’m taking notes. Hence ideally one would be able to select left or right handedness in the device settings and to easily switch from one-handed to two-handed mode by pressing a button.

In other design notes,replacing the navigation keys by a 5-way-navigation key known from mobile phones. This would be also instrumental to enable panning within documents that are bigger than screen size.

Archive Buttons

The for archive buttons are hardlinked to the directories newspaper, books, documents and notes of the internal memory of the iLiad. When pressed they open the directory browser for the respective directory. Another click opens the last opened document within that directory.

In order to enhace the general design and useability I think it would be good to remove the labels from the buttons and turn them into programmable softkeys known from mobile phones.

Stylus

The stylus is an active stylus based on Wacom technology. Hence it is not possible to operate the touch screen with anything else but. Especially it is NOT possible to operate the touchpad with your fingers. The manual also says that if you leave the stylus longer than 3 minutes out of its place in the bach the device will go into sleep mode, but i could’nt experience that.

Extension Slots

The iLiad features three extension slots for digital media. An USB port (that only accepts USB sticks), an CompactFlash slot and an SD Card slot. Unfortunately connecting an USB Stick caused a number of problems. Especially removing the stick caused a freeze of the system that only could be fixed by a indertiminate number of resets.

Connectivity

Connectivity is provided either via the enclosed travel hub (that also is used for charging the iLiad) or via an wireless connection. There are three connection options.

USB Cable (via Travel Hub)
Wired Ethernet (Via travel hub)
WLAN

USB Cable

The USB Cable ist used to directly connect to a PC or a printer (for printing). I was able to connect to a Windows based PC as well as a MacOSX system. In both cases the iLiad showed up as a drive, and i was able to copy files etc. Disconnecting only worked on a windows PC, with MacOSX disconnecting the drive did to cause the iLiad to return to the non-disk mode and i had to reset the iLiad. Additionally the files prefixed with ._. also showed up on the iLiad which was a bit cumbersome cause i was not able to delete them on the iLiad. Review to be continued …

Technorati Tags: microsoft, newsaggregator, newsbot

Orion, an algorithm for a revolutionary search engine?

gkamp — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 04:37:53 +0000

In the last days the news were abuzz with headlines like: Search for secret millions + Google , Google kauft Suchalgorithmus von israelischem Studenten (Google buys search algorithm from israeli student)

Most often they more or less recited the original press release (dated from Sept. 2005) and stated the fact that the inventor, Ori Allon, now works for google and the rumours that microsoft and yahoo also were interested

Especially the media focused on the following two passages of the press release:

“The results to the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving you the relevant information without having to go to the website – although you still have that option if you wish,”

and

“By displaying results to other associated key words directly related to your search topic, you gain additional pertinent information that you might not have originally conceived, thus offering an expert search without having an expert’s knowledge.”

So let’s have a look at these two claims.

Inline display of text extracts

This first claim clearly gets the media going, screaming IPR violation, IPR violation all over the place. Especially when it is enhanced by quotes from Ori Allon like:

I don’t envision that Orion will completely eliminate the need for going to actual web pages. (Sidney Morning Herald Interview)

Just in case nobody has noted: Google is already displaying text extracts as part of the search result. And IMHO there is good reason they are not displaying longer passages of the search result page, namely IPR issues.

Looking at some self-proclaimed Orion look-alikes like Qtsaver one can easily see that something like this can easily done via some frontend mashup using the Google API

So if that claim was the reason that Google bought the algorithm (and hence the patent) than only for one reason: To save them from legal hassles, definitely not for the technical merit of that invention.

Displaying results to other associated key words directly related to your search topic

The second claim could be the one where it gets interesting. Funny enough, this is the one that didn’t get quite that bit of media attention. What is claimed normally falls into the research problems labeled query expansion, thesaurus generation, concept learning etc. typically
If Mr. Allon has found a well working algorithm for one of the above problems, that is scalable and performant, and this means google-like scale and performance, this algorithm definitely should draw the interest of Google and the other search giants.

Query expansion etc. are normally fields coverd by the research discipline of artificial intelligence. Since Mr. Allon is, even after Google hired him, still a Ph.D. student of Eric Martin who is working in that field.

Mr. Martins homepage cites the following research interests:

My main interests are in the logical foundations of Artificial intelligence. The theoretical part of my research is mainly devoted to developing a unified framework, Parametric logic, that investigates the relationships between:

a notion of logical complexity, that accounts for various kinds of logical inferences, encompassing deductive, inductive and nonmonotonic inferences;

a notion of complexity from the perspective of Formal learning theory, encompassing learnability in the limit, with or without (ordinal) mind change bounds;

a notion of syntactic complexity, for formulas in infinitary modal languages;

a notion of topological complexity.

I am also involved in projects on knowledge acquisition based on ripple down rules, as well as projects on query answering systems, logic programming, and discovery from the web.

Since i worked also in the field of AI and logics (description logics, not parametric logics) i would love to learn more about this algorithm.