Semantic Wikipedia

New Scientist reports,
"Computer scientists at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany have developed modifications to Wikipedia's underlying software that would let editors add extra meaning to the links between pages of the encyclopaedia. The team's Semantic MediaWiki system lets authors add "annotations" - or tags conferring meaning - to articles and the hypertext links between them."

"Adding annotations could lead to smarter ways to search sites like Wikipedia, the researchers claim. Project member Markus Krötzsch, says the first adopters could be niche communities who maintain their own wiki sites on specialised topics."

"Some web experts call for similar annotations to be added to all websites. This vision for a "semantic web" is driven by scientists including web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee."

Top 10 reasons for Apple to quit India

Why did Apple quit India? We don't have any official reasons yet. So here we put together what we think are the top 10 reasons..

1. Apple moving away from OS/big online application/products which requires lots of support at low cost.
2. Apple moving more into gadgets. Where the software support is at minimal. It makes more sense to partner with Chinese/Taiwan manufacturers.
3. Apple products are priced at premium. Customers buying these premium products require premium support service.
4. Apple realizes that in premium products category , there is no point in cutting costs for R&D.
5. Apple does not have a revolutionary R&D product. What they have is better interfaces/look and feel. No need of a India center for this.
6. Apple moving away from software and getting into entertainment/music /Games business. India development center can't provide that, because Indians culture is so different (music/films etc).
7. Copyrights law very lenient. IP protection very bad in India.
   
8. Steve Jobs is known for demanding full control. No leaks tolerated by Jobs. he wants to announce new products at the keynote. Before that no leaks are tolerated.. He may not have liked the 'indian culture'
   
9. Apple requires premium talent to design its hi-design stuff, the skills for which are not there. This is since, in India, Senior Developers turn into a managerial role or else is considered a dead duck.
10. India operations is getting too risky to manage because of salary pressure and frequent job hoppings. It makes more sense for apple to partner with local outsourcing vendor than directly managing a india center.

Well, this list analysis is right out of the top of our head. Do comment on how you feel about these top-10 reasons or any others which you feel, we missed .

Technorati Tags: apple, india, bangalore, outsourcing, software, support, MNC, steve jobs, asia, culture, analysis

Ubuntu and India

Ubuntu is growing and the next version is coming out. The new version Dapper Drake will be released this week. This new version "is ready for enterprise use."

Interestingly, Ubuntu has an advocacy and help group for Indian users. You can visit the Ubuntu India site at ubuntu-in.org. IMO, people in India are still recommending Fedora/Redhat to the newcomers to Linux. If the group is able to give more publicity to Ubuntu, India may be able to win more converts to Linux.

Greatest Engineering Marvel: Space elevator, in trouble

"The idea of a space elevator was popularized in science fiction, where writers envisioned a 100,000-kilometre-long cable stretching straight up from the Earth's surface and fixed in a geosynchronous orbit. Payloads, or tourists, would simply ascend the cable into low-Earth orbit, eliminating the need for rocket launches."

For different design concepts for space elevator refer here

"The cable must be made of a material with an extremely high tensile strength/density ratio (the stress a material can be subjected to without breaking divided by its density). A space elevator can be made relatively economically feasible if a cable with a density similar to graphite and a tensile strength of ~65–120 Gpa can be produced in bulk at a reasonable price."

"Carbon Nanotubes appear to have a theoretical tensile strength and density that is well above the desired minimum for space elevator structures."

In Feb 2006 Liftport( space elevator company) made a announcement "According to their Web site the Space Elevator company Lifport recently managed to get their platform and climbing robot to the mile high mark over the Arizona desert."
This was widely discussed and debated.

Today came bad news on carbon-nanotubes, most preferred material for cable construction.

"Pugno argues that atomic-scale defects in the nanotubes would reduce the strength of such a giant cable by at least 70%."

"Pugno adds that even if flawless nanotubes could be made for the space elevator, damage from micrometeorites and even erosion by oxygen atoms would render them weak. So can a space elevator be made? 'With the technology available today? Never,' he says. "

Not Today, but a solution will be found.

Semantic Web and Web2.0

Scientific American on semantic web (2001)
"Pete and Lucy could use their agents to carry out all these tasks thanks not to the World Wide Web of today but rather the Semantic Web that it will evolve into tomorrow. Most of the Web's content today is designed for humans to read, not for computer programs to manipulate meaningfully. Computers can adeptly parse Web pages for layout and routine processing—here a header, there a link to another page—but in general, computers have no reliable way to process the semantics: this is the home page of the Hartman and Strauss Physio Clinic, this link goes to Dr. Hartman's curriculum vitae"

From the O'Reilly Original Web2.0 Article
"RSS is the most significant advance in the fundamental architecture of the web since early hackers realized that CGI could be used to create database-backed websites. RSS allows someone to link not just to a page, but to subscribe to it, with notification every time that page changes. Skrenta calls this "the incremental web." Others call it the "live web"."

"Google's lightweight programming model (eg Google Maps) has led to the creation of numerous value-added services in the form of mashups that link Google Maps with other internet-accessible data sources. Paul Rademacher's housingmaps.com, which combines Google Maps with Craigslist apartment rental and home purchase data to create an interactive housing search tool, is the pre-eminent example of such a mashup."

And,
"On the surface, tagging seems to make sense—allow people to annotate saved web pages with additional information and this information can be used to help improve the relevance of search."

From the 2001 scientific American article
"The semantic web is not "merely" the tool for conducting individual tasks. Semantic Web can assist the evolution of human knowledge as a whole.

Human endeavor is caught in an eternal tension between the effectiveness of small groups acting independently and the need to mesh with the wider community. A small group can innovate rapidly and efficiently, but this produces a subculture whose concepts are not understood by others. Coordinating actions across a large group, however, is painfully slow and takes an enormous amount of communication. The world works across the spectrum between these extremes, with a tendency to start small—from the personal idea—and move toward a wider understanding over time."

And O'Reilly Web2.0,
"If an essential part of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence, turning the web into a kind of global brain, the blogosphere is the equivalent of constant mental chatter in the forebrain, the voice we hear in all of our heads. It may not reflect the deep structure of the brain, which is often unconscious, but is instead the equivalent of conscious thought. And as a reflection of conscious thought and attention, the blogosphere has begun to have a powerful effect.

First, because search engines use link structure to help predict useful pages, bloggers, as the most prolific and timely linkers, have a disproportionate role in shaping search engine results. Second, because the blogging community is so highly self-referential, bloggers paying attention to other bloggers magnifies their visibility and power. The "echo chamber" that critics decry is also an amplifier."

And Wikipedia Web2.0 says,
"Although the technologies and services that comprise Web 2.0 are less powerful than an internet in which the machines can understand and extract meaning, as proponents of the semantic web envision, Web 2.0 represents a step in its direction."

Robots: Do you feel scared ?

Last week stanford hosted the singularity summit.
"Sometime in the next few years or decades, humanity will become capable of surpassing the upper limit on intelligence that has held since the rise of the human species. We will become capable of technologically creating smarter-than-human intelligence, perhaps through enhancement of the human brain, direct links between computers and the brain, or Artificial Intelligence. This event is called the "Singularity" by analogy with the singularity at the center of a black hole - just as our current model of physics breaks down when it attempts to describe the center of a black hole, our model of the future breaks down once the future contains smarter-than-human minds. Since technology is the product of cognition, the Singularity is an effect that snowballs once it occurs - the first smart minds can create smarter minds, and smarter minds can produce still smarter minds"

While the conference concluded, today there was a breakthrough in medical technology
Robots did a heart surgery without human intervention
"The operation was initiated and monitored on a PC in Boston, USA, by Carlo Pappone, head of Arrhythmia and Cardiac Electrophysiology at Milan's San Raffaele university. Also watching the operation - a world first - were dozens of heart specialists attending an international congress on arrhythmia in the American city...

The Italian expert has used the robot surgeon for at least 40 previous operations, some of which have been described in detail in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The novelty of this latest experience is that the robot was able to conduct the entire procedure by itself. In the past it needed specific orders from its operator along the way."

This is one small step towards smart-robots. Though, the negative consequences of all this are scaring many others.

Daniel H. Wilson the author of "How to survive a robot uprising " in interview says:

"Clearly, the majority of robotics researchers aren't threatened by their creations.
Other people, the majority of whom do not actually build robots, are VERY threatened"

But the friendly AI is still a distant dream.