By Vasudev Ram
Hi readers,
My biz web site www.dancingbison.com is online again.
Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
My biz web site dancingbison.com will be down ...
By Vasudev Ram
Hi readers,
My biz web site www.dancingbison.com will be down for 2 to 3 days from today - 16 June 2009 - for maintenance.
- Vasudev
Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises
Hi readers,
My biz web site www.dancingbison.com will be down for 2 to 3 days from today - 16 June 2009 - for maintenance.
- Vasudev
Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Google to sell e-books, compete with Amazon
By Vasudev Ram
Saw this via a tweet by @timoreilly:
Excerpts:
[ In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device. ]
[ Google has discussed such plans with publishers before, but it has now committed the company to going live with the project by the end of 2009. In a presentation at BookExpo, Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, added the phrase: “This time we mean it.” ]
[ Publishers briefed on the plans at BookExpo said they were not sure yet how the technology would work, but were optimistic about the new program.
Mr. Turvey said Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. “We don’t believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go,” he said. ]
Here is the post (from the New York Times):
Preparing to Sell E-Books, Google Takes on Amazon
- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
3 very cool Radar posts about Google
By Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises.
3 very cool Radar posts - #1:
This one is from Brady Forrest:
New Geo For Devs From Google I/O
Excerpts from above post:
***:
[
Brady: Android Developer Challenge V2 - Google has announced V2 of its Android Developer Contest. They'll be awarding prizes across multiple categories including geo-friendly ones like Travel and Productivity. The winners will be chosen mid-November.
]
[
Brady: Of these announcements I find the Qualified Developer program to be the most significant. By certifying developers Google will be enabling developer to get more Google more API customers. The program started last year with Gadgets Ads. Once they work the kinks out I am sure that this program will extend to every API that Google has and will be quite the moneymaker for the participating devs.
]
Comment: I think Google is making a great move with all the API's they're creating. I've said before, as in this post about Twitter's hockey stick growth, I think almost all software developed should be wrapped in an API - if nothing else, it facilitates testing and reuse. And at best, it can enable more growth and profits.
3 very cool Radar posts - #2:
This one is from Tim O'Reilly:
Google Web Elements and Google's Iceberg Strategy (Google I/O)
[
Tim: Vic pointed out that the rate of browser innovation is accelerating, with new browser releases nearly every other month. The slide below, from early in Vic's talk, shows the progress towards the level of UI functionality found in desktop apps through adoption of HTML 5 features in browsers. This looks like one of Clayton Christensen's classic "disruptive innovation vs sustaining innovation" graphs.
]
[
But to see the real power of the Canvas element, take a look at Mozilla's BeSpin. Bespin is an extensible code editor with an interface so rich that it's hard to believe it was written entirely in Javascript and HTML.
]
3 very cool Radar posts - #3:
This one is also from Tim O'Reilly:
Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O
Excerpts:
***:
[
Tim: "Never underestimate the web," says Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra in his keynote at Google I/O this morning. He goes on to tell the story of a meeting he remembers when he was VP of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft five years ago. "We believed that web apps would never rival desktop apps. There was this small company called Keyhole, which made this most fantastic geo-visualization software for Windows. This was the kind of software we always used to prove to ourselves that there were things that could never be done on the web." A few months later, Google acquired Keyhole, and shortly thereafter released Google Maps with satellite view.
"We knew then that the web had won," he said. "What was once thought impossible is now commonplace."
Google doesn't want to repeat that mistake, and as a result, he said, "we're betting big on HTML 5."
]
[
Tim: During his keynote, Vic was joined on stage by Jay Sullivan, VP of Mobile at Mozilla and Michael Abbot, the SVP in charge of application software and services at Palm. Both showed their own commitment to working with HTML 5. Jay expressed Mozilla's commitment to keeping the web open: "Anything should be hackable; anything should be scriptable. We need to get out of plugin prison." Javascript rendering in Firefox 3.5 is 10x faster than in Firefox 2, with support for video, offline storage, web workers, and geolocation.
]
[
Tim: If you're like me, you had no idea there was so much HTML 5 already in play.
When I checked in with my editors at O'Reilly, the general consensus was that HTML 5 isn't going to be ready till 2010. Sitepoint, another leading publisher on web technology, recently sent out a poll to their experts and came to the same conclusion. Yet Google, Mozilla, and Palm gave us all a big whack upside the head this morning. As Shakespeare said, "The hot blood leaps over the cold decree." The technology is here even if the standards committees haven't caught up. Developers are taking notice of these new features, and aren't waiting for formal approval. That's as it should be. As Dave Clark described the philosophy of the IETF with regard to internet standardization, "We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code."
Support by four major browsers adds up to "rough consensus" in my book. We're seeing running code at Google I/O, and I'd imagine the 4000 developers in attendance will soon be producing a lot more. So I think we're off to the races. As Vic said to me in an interview yesterday morning, "The web has not seen this level of transformation, this level of acceleration, in the past ten years."
]
[
Vic ends the HTML 5 portion of his keynote with hints of an announcement tomorrow: "Don't be late for the keynote tomorrow morning."
]
Whew !!! :-)
3 very cool Radar posts - #1:
This one is from Brady Forrest:
New Geo For Devs From Google I/O
Excerpts from above post:
***:
[
Brady: Android Developer Challenge V2 - Google has announced V2 of its Android Developer Contest. They'll be awarding prizes across multiple categories including geo-friendly ones like Travel and Productivity. The winners will be chosen mid-November.
]
[
Brady: Of these announcements I find the Qualified Developer program to be the most significant. By certifying developers Google will be enabling developer to get more Google more API customers. The program started last year with Gadgets Ads. Once they work the kinks out I am sure that this program will extend to every API that Google has and will be quite the moneymaker for the participating devs.
]
Comment: I think Google is making a great move with all the API's they're creating. I've said before, as in this post about Twitter's hockey stick growth, I think almost all software developed should be wrapped in an API - if nothing else, it facilitates testing and reuse. And at best, it can enable more growth and profits.
3 very cool Radar posts - #2:
This one is from Tim O'Reilly:
Google Web Elements and Google's Iceberg Strategy (Google I/O)
[
Tim: Vic pointed out that the rate of browser innovation is accelerating, with new browser releases nearly every other month. The slide below, from early in Vic's talk, shows the progress towards the level of UI functionality found in desktop apps through adoption of HTML 5 features in browsers. This looks like one of Clayton Christensen's classic "disruptive innovation vs sustaining innovation" graphs.
]
[
But to see the real power of the Canvas element, take a look at Mozilla's BeSpin. Bespin is an extensible code editor with an interface so rich that it's hard to believe it was written entirely in Javascript and HTML.
]
3 very cool Radar posts - #3:
This one is also from Tim O'Reilly:
Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O
Excerpts:
***:
[
Tim: "Never underestimate the web," says Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra in his keynote at Google I/O this morning. He goes on to tell the story of a meeting he remembers when he was VP of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft five years ago. "We believed that web apps would never rival desktop apps. There was this small company called Keyhole, which made this most fantastic geo-visualization software for Windows. This was the kind of software we always used to prove to ourselves that there were things that could never be done on the web." A few months later, Google acquired Keyhole, and shortly thereafter released Google Maps with satellite view.
"We knew then that the web had won," he said. "What was once thought impossible is now commonplace."
Google doesn't want to repeat that mistake, and as a result, he said, "we're betting big on HTML 5."
]
[
Tim: During his keynote, Vic was joined on stage by Jay Sullivan, VP of Mobile at Mozilla and Michael Abbot, the SVP in charge of application software and services at Palm. Both showed their own commitment to working with HTML 5. Jay expressed Mozilla's commitment to keeping the web open: "Anything should be hackable; anything should be scriptable. We need to get out of plugin prison." Javascript rendering in Firefox 3.5 is 10x faster than in Firefox 2, with support for video, offline storage, web workers, and geolocation.
]
[
Tim: If you're like me, you had no idea there was so much HTML 5 already in play.
When I checked in with my editors at O'Reilly, the general consensus was that HTML 5 isn't going to be ready till 2010. Sitepoint, another leading publisher on web technology, recently sent out a poll to their experts and came to the same conclusion. Yet Google, Mozilla, and Palm gave us all a big whack upside the head this morning. As Shakespeare said, "The hot blood leaps over the cold decree." The technology is here even if the standards committees haven't caught up. Developers are taking notice of these new features, and aren't waiting for formal approval. That's as it should be. As Dave Clark described the philosophy of the IETF with regard to internet standardization, "We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code."
Support by four major browsers adds up to "rough consensus" in my book. We're seeing running code at Google I/O, and I'd imagine the 4000 developers in attendance will soon be producing a lot more. So I think we're off to the races. As Vic said to me in an interview yesterday morning, "The web has not seen this level of transformation, this level of acceleration, in the past ten years."
]
[
Vic ends the HTML 5 portion of his keynote with hints of an announcement tomorrow: "Don't be late for the keynote tomorrow morning."
]
Whew !!! :-)
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Infosys India Prize
Infosys Technologies, where I worked earlier, has recently created the Infosys India Prize. This is a prize for researchers, in five categories:
The annual award for each category is Rs. 50 lakh.
(That's roughly $100,000 at today's exchange rates.)
The categories are:
Physical Sciences – Physics and Chemistry
Mathematical Sciences – Mathematics and Statistics
Engineering Sciences – All branches of Engineering
Life Sciences – Biology and Medicine
Social Sciences and Economics – Economics, History, Sociology, Political Sciences and other Social Sciences
Announcing the award, Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chief Mentor and Chairman of the Board, Infosys Technologies Ltd. said, “India needs bright minds across all areas of academics, government, business and society to strive for global excellence. We need to encourage research in India to address our developmental problems. This award will honor outstanding researchers who will make a difference to India’s future.”
- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises.
The annual award for each category is Rs. 50 lakh.
(That's roughly $100,000 at today's exchange rates.)
The categories are:
Physical Sciences – Physics and Chemistry
Mathematical Sciences – Mathematics and Statistics
Engineering Sciences – All branches of Engineering
Life Sciences – Biology and Medicine
Social Sciences and Economics – Economics, History, Sociology, Political Sciences and other Social Sciences
Announcing the award, Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chief Mentor and Chairman of the Board, Infosys Technologies Ltd. said, “India needs bright minds across all areas of academics, government, business and society to strive for global excellence. We need to encourage research in India to address our developmental problems. This award will honor outstanding researchers who will make a difference to India’s future.”
- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises.
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