Friday, July 08, 2005

Google Again

I might as well rename this the Google blog. Where do they keep coming up with these new ideas? I think it is that all their worker bees are required to spend a day a week thinking up new ideas. Maybe that is the trick not emulated elsewhere. Like their click through text ads. It is turning the ad industry upside down.

Now Google is in news investing into a broadband over power lines company. Once something like that happens, Google stands to conquer the world. With universal broadband, the entire humanity is one mind. One big mind. One huge mind. Each particular human mind is but a neuron then.

You can't have internet access without electric power. And so marry the two. The electric power and broadband. Now that is revolution, it was not Lenin's 1917.

Plus, broadband is not one thing. It is a spectrum. There is really slow broadband like in the US, and a really fast one like in Korea. The electric line broaband is much faster than even the one in Korea. Now that would be broadband.



Google's got the vision. Kudos. Looks great from the angle of the end user.

Okay Google, now integrate MathML to Blogger. That is one gaping hole. And it is not even difficult. The know-how is already there. It just has not emerged a priority.

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Sunday, July 03, 2005

The $100 Computer

Wow, it is happening.

My current business involvement is at the level of group dynamics, which I fancy to be at a whole different level from things like software, even biotech. Those are down there!

A few years back I was trying to launch a series of companies, which was at the level of software. I must admit I have toyed with the idea of an Internet Computer. IC. Like the PC succeeded the mainframes, the ICs would succeed the PC.

But it is already happening. And I am happy for it. The Indian $100 computer.

This is a big deal. One difference is it is not totally tied with the internet. It still does a bunch of offline stuff. Which is good. For the Indian context.



My vision was more of like a computer that is always online, and there is nothing to be done offline. You have Linux that supports Firefox, and that is all there is to it. And then you scale back to the hardware level and get rid of all the extra bells and whistles.

I am surprised Larry Ellison is not jumping on the idea bandwagon. The guy was trying to push something called a Network Computer back in 1995. It did not take off, but I think his vision, slightly modified, has oomph.

If you have ICs, all the data crunching happens on servers. And that is the only way Oracle could fathom taking over Microsoft.

But the thing about the computer industry is, it is a great marketplace. It is truly hard to predict winners. The situation stays fluid and rightly so.

I mean, if you are a dot com company, your competition is only a quick click or a quick Google search away. You sink and swim fast. But then you can also come back fast when you sink. If you keep working, and keep offering the very best you might have to offer.

I don't think the IC vision is going to be anything dramatic. The PC itself will likely morph beyond recognition.

There was Steve Jobs with his bells and whistles recently. He was boasting you can get weather reports on your PC with Apple's new operating system, and I am thinking, why would I want to do that? I already have been doing that online. Well, maybe not me, because I am not much of a weather person, but I mean, that option has been online for ages now. That is when I realized the PC is not going too far from here.

The online world is the new western frontier, and worldwide too.

No, it is not outsourcing. That term is so racist. People who realize Indians are no longer just subsistence farmers, they get thrown off balance. What is happening is new jobs are being created in India. Trade is a good thing. Just because that trade happens online and is worldwide does not make it suddenly bad.

Go India!

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Google Video Has Hit The Docks

I am aware of how often the Google name has cropped up at this blog, but there is a method to the madness. Google stock price is now where the Microsoft stock price was in the late 1980s: you ain't seen nothing yet. Gates himself has said Google is the first company to be directly challenging Microsoft. It is almost a generational change. Microsoft in Eisenhower or Bush Sr., Google is Kennedy or Clinton. Something of that sort. And now Google has been in news for its video display and 3D maps. In the previous generation, there was a lot of vaporware. Google on the other hand surprises you. They don't tell you what they are working on, and boom, they have something new to offer. They are a software company like Microsoft. Yahoo is more a content and aggregate company. But Yahoo is pretty cool too. At the least it will keep Google on its toes.

My recommendation on Google stocks: buy and stick to it for a decade. It will keep splitting. They are going to keep innovating until the PC as we know it is a goner.

The split thing, that is what happened to Microsoft.

What Google needs to work on is MathML for Blogger. As it is, you can do text, audio, and now video. Soon there will be money transfer. That leaves one big gaping hole: MathML. Or its equivalent. One should have the option to insert mathematical equations at Blogger. That is one big amiss. I emailed them about it. I am sure some others are having the same thoughts. But I have not seen the idea discussed publicly at any Google forum.



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Saturday, February 05, 2005

Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano

Say if a city like New York is bathed in Wi-Max, wireless broadband, do we end up with mobile phones that are internet based that are very cheap, like $10 a month, or maybe even free, because imagine the boost to a city's productivity! Already Vonage offers unlimited calls to US and Canada for $25 a month. A nice reason to ditch your traditional landline altogether. And because of its features like being able to check voice mail over email from anywhere, and your ability to take the phone anywhere with you that has broadband internet, it can give some serious competition to the traditional cellphone.

For me, I like the regular size keyboard of my laptop. That is why I am not big on comupters that are the size of cellphones. Plus, being offline and away from phone rings is also important: for solitude and reflection, for study time, reading paper books, time to listen and watch uninterrupted, thinking, for face time and socializing, bonding. Always-on is not good. On-whenever-you-want, but not always-on.

I can't wait for video blogging to become an option, like text and audio are now with Google's Blogger. Perhaps Google will take its Blogger to that level. You want to be able to upload and not have to worry about hosting, kind of like digital photos at Yahoo Photos. At that point, everyone anywhere becomes a media house in his or her own right. Ah, communication.

And, I just found a bunch of articles on Nano at the BusinessWeek site, a few also 0n BioTech.



Come to the think of it, Newton was an alchemist. The nano people join his ranks. I guess the idea is to set up industries at the level of atoms. Some possibilities: "superefficient fuel cells," so you don't have to keep recharging your batteries that often, your laptop can stay unplugged for days and still perform, talk about mobile; "golf balls designed to fly straight," "carry computing beyond today's silicon and transistors," "pint size laboratories" for doctors and nurses, "nano sensors" to detect "anthrax and sarin," and so on.

What really makes my day - I am not a golfer, it is not physical enough for me - is this: "Toward the end of the decade ... new computer memories composed of nanoparticles could conceivably pack the digital contents of the Library of Congress into a machine the size of a yo-yo." Every human thought that ever came into any human mind and got recorded could be stored away forver. Every scientific writing, every painting, every piece of music, every book, article. Ever written, produced, composed, painted. To be written, produced, composed, painted. Everyone will have access to everything. For free. To be supported by the ad model. Food, water, and internet access for everyone on the planet.

You can't even begin to imagine the synergies.

Economic growth can be limitless because it is not to do with natural resources, it is to do with the human mind. And the mind knows no limits to its creative power. This generation's greatest achievement is the next's virgin territory.

The human mind is the least tapped natural resource. And much of the hindrance comes from our primitive arrangements in group dynamics, where we tolerate people getting in each other's way. The scarcities are truly "artificial," man-made.

It is possible to imagine the per capita global income hit $20,000. Within decades.


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Monday, January 24, 2005

Google And Browsers And More

I just read news, Google Snaps Up Top Firefox Programmer. The guy, Ben Googler, I mean Goodger, (how did his parents know, or rather ancestors), announced the news on his blog. That tells you where he belongs.

In one of Larry Ellison's biographies, the earlier ill-written one, there is talk of how the guy - his lifestory reads like fascinating - would promise of software that half the time never got delivered, but he hogged marketshare anyway! Google is the opposite of that. It delivers and surprises. Noone saw the digitizing libraries project coming.

But there is such noise Google is angling for a browser. That would be a major step. You have a slim machine running on Linux, you download a Google browser, you do your word procesing online - the technology is already there, just look at all the features with Blogger, Gmail meets all your email needs, personal as well as work, and so on, and where is Microsoft now! You handle all your text, audio, video, data processing stuff online. There is no Desktop, so to speak of. Wow. I mean, with Internet2, you have 10 gigabytes per second kind of speed. You are always on. With that kind of reliability, you won't need a desktop.



Two schools emerged within Microsoft in the mid-1990s, one Windows, but the other one wanted a new universe entirely around a browser. MSFT would be the gorilla dot com. But Gates squashed that effort. To Gates' credit, he gave some valid reasons, like, how do you make money if you give everything away! (Google's answer: you sell ads, stupid!)

Windows made Microsoft what it is, but it also might be the albatross around its neck.


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Sunday, January 16, 2005

Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity

There is plenty left to be desired on the hardware and software fronts, but the real bottleneck in getting all 6 billion potential surfers online is neither, but connectivity. What business models could emerge to bridge up the digital divide?

Two technology models that hold promise: (1) broadband over power lines: zip, fast too, and (2) wireless broadband.

Internet access is fast becoming a basic need. What do you need to survive? Food and water are obvious. After that free internet access might be pretty close. I am serious.

The word "free" is important there. You don't pay for television shows. You don't pay to search on Google. The ad-model works just fine. The same could apply to internet access.



Say a company (or two, or three) comes forth, and they beam internet access to all corners of the planet. The catch being, when you go online with them, they, not you decide what the homepage will look like. And for that first webpage, they bring you online for "free." Heck, they might even get you to use only their browser, in which case, they could keep a toolbar that will always be with you no matter where you go online.

A click is a click is a click. I am sure a company like Coke/Pepsi does not care who the human being is. They will want people everywhere to see their ads.

And such a democratizing force that universal internet access will be too. Nothing like that to empower the individual. How will autocracies - those that remain - sustain themselves in the aftermath? They plain can't. Social transformation will be quickened. Universal education will become a reality, and it will be seamless from one level to another. A student in Bhutan could be following lectures at MIT.


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Thursday, January 13, 2005

Google: Poised To Be The Number One Software Company In The World

I am a die-hard fan of Google, have been since its inception. It keeps lifting you up. The most recent two lift-ups for me were, well three: (1) Gmail, (2) Google Scholar, and (3) Google Print and the news about Google digitizing some major libraries.

Google is like Wal-Mart; you walk into a Wal-Mart and you have seen their entire business model.

The idea behind Google print is monumental. It is going to transform the web. The web otherwise has been whistling along like a near empty vessel.

But Google has barely scratched the Google surface.

Let's extend the Google Print vision such that authors the world over, new and accomplished, could entirely skip the publishing industry. You are an author. You sign up and open an account with Google Print for free. You publish what and when you want to publish. All money you make is entirely through Google text-ad-click-throughs. Entire new books in all categories. There is no print version. And the complete text is online for readers for "free," kind of like shows on TV. The "price" on "books" will drop astronomically: they will be gone! No paper. No publishing company. No traditional marketing. This is nothing less than transforming the whole idea of what a book is.

Readers will also have the option to open free accounts. So they can bookmark books. And place bookmarks inside books, or take notes.

Extend that to articles. And desktop word processing becomes irrelevant, especially when people will have the option to have search-engine-protected documents also, or documents with limited circulation. You decide which Google IDs may view it.

The internet is but a fancy telephone: it is a communication tool that makes geography and more irrelevant. Makes socio-economic schisms less of a hassle. Heck, it lets you communicate with dead people through their books. You communicate with people who will be born after you are gone.

The Google Print idea extends to audio and video. For that you are talking new, bold hardware infrastructure just round the corner. An internet computer that you can buy for less than $100 that you could change like underwear if you wanted to. The point being to crack open the 6 billion mass: the more the total number of web surfers, the more money Google makes. The only thing the machine does is it takes you online, preferably at super fast speeds. Memory is a total non-issue for text-audio-video due to nano.

Text-audio-video-photo. Photos get "downloaded" straight from your camera to your online storage where you do all the editing. And all content generates revenue the same way.

See?

At that point Google becomes the number one software company in the world and keeps the throne for a few decades. IBM was a hardware company, that is why Microsoft came along as sexier. But MSFT is a desktop company, it is no dot com. Whereas Google is the sexiest dot com there is. That is why it will take over the lead.

Google is a freaking revolution!





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