One should track the small world events that happen...for example, the recent ones in my recollection:
- My prof., Dr. Michael Best who does work in ICT4D mentioned Dr. Eric Brewer the other day. Eric Brewer was the CTO (I think) for Inktomi back in the day. I spoke at a conference in which he was a keynote (Digital Hollywood 2001 - http://www.digitalhollywood.com/SJAgenda.html). Odd, especially since now Dr. Best and Dr. Brewer are in talks since Brewer is doing work as a prof at Berkeley in the ICT4D realm. Perhaps even more 'small worldish' is the fact that Rob Guyton, one of the co-founders of Inktomi was on the board of my company at the time, Pathfire (aka Video Networks). Rob, at the time, was a partner at the VC for Monarch Capital Partners in Atlanta.
I believe it was within a couple years of this particular event when things went way south, and Rob had to sell his jet and get a real job...but that's just my fuzzy recollection talking.
Oh, and if that's not a small enough world...
- Buddy of mine, Jim Pitkow, has been running a company Moreover Technologies for a couple of years. Great guy, good company. anyway, they recently were acquired by Verisign (way to go Jim!). We could go down the Verisign path (another buddy of mine recently left there to start an RFID company, go Mealling ((way off the beaten path, but Michael Mealing, Jim Pitkow and I had made a business plan that we sent to the Yuri Rubinsky literally days before his untimely death (http://www.darwinsys.com/history/yuri.html) -- cheers to Yuri)), Mealing had been working within Verisign's R&D for a couple of years -- parallel to that, Mike Cannon, one of my colleagues and co-co-founders of nuBridges -- well his wife worked for HO systems out of Savanah, which was purchased by Verisign a number of years ago). Okay, back to Moreover...yet another buddy of mine went to work for a local 24 hour news company and happened to mention Moreover as an interesting company -- small world.
Tiny, tiny world...
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Small world
In the 'it's a small world' category...
I'm currently digging into the use of location information captured over time. This information can be used for a number of things by discerning patterns, building models, and predicting future activities. Several researchers have used this in the area of ubiquitous computing and assistive technologies to help disabled or just people in general to go about their daily tasks.
The same basic idea, but extended greatly, has been suggested could help with national security (see DARPA) by analyzing such things as maritime vessel location information.
Whilst reading existing literature, I found an author who had done some interesting work in the field. Kentaro Toyama is the fellow. After having several email conversations, he agreed to share his data set which he had used to produce his research. This is a great thing, as having existing experimental results will allow me to do some validation using different approaches.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I discovered that Kentaro is helping lead the new Microsoft Research Center in Bangalore, India. And of all things, he also does work in ICT4D, or as they call it, Technology for Emerging Markets. This lines up nicely with the work I'm doing in international technology development.
Further conversations actually linked my professor, Mike Best, with Kentaro -- they apparently have done some work together in the past on ICT4D. A conference that Kentaro pointed me to () is one in which Mike Best serves on the conference committee, and a co-editor of the proceedings.
Go figure...
I'm currently digging into the use of location information captured over time. This information can be used for a number of things by discerning patterns, building models, and predicting future activities. Several researchers have used this in the area of ubiquitous computing and assistive technologies to help disabled or just people in general to go about their daily tasks.
The same basic idea, but extended greatly, has been suggested could help with national security (see DARPA) by analyzing such things as maritime vessel location information.
Whilst reading existing literature, I found an author who had done some interesting work in the field. Kentaro Toyama is the fellow. After having several email conversations, he agreed to share his data set which he had used to produce his research. This is a great thing, as having existing experimental results will allow me to do some validation using different approaches.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I discovered that Kentaro is helping lead the new Microsoft Research Center in Bangalore, India. And of all things, he also does work in ICT4D, or as they call it, Technology for Emerging Markets. This lines up nicely with the work I'm doing in international technology development.
Further conversations actually linked my professor, Mike Best, with Kentaro -- they apparently have done some work together in the past on ICT4D. A conference that Kentaro pointed me to () is one in which Mike Best serves on the conference committee, and a co-editor of the proceedings.
Go figure...
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Why ICT4D?
As a follow up to my Nigeria post, I had put this piece together to describe my interests in international development, thought it was relevant now as well:
Introduction for Information Technologies and International Development
Kipp Jones
I am interested in leveraging my technology experience and entrepreneurial background
to find creative ways to bring technology to people and places currently lacking it. My
experience in building technology businesses from the ground up provide a basis to help
understand and formulate methods for technology introduction, diffusion, applicability,
financing, and business modeling.
My technology focus has been centered on the Internet (including web specific
technologies), security, information management, wireless networks, and video
distribution. I am familiar with a number of technologies with extensive use of open
source software (including legal obligations and issues).
During the past 10 years, I have been directly involved in 11 early stage companies. As a
member of the executive team and/or a founding member I have helped raise over $100
million in funding. My experience gives me the inside view on what it takes to create a
successful business.
The list of early stage companies that I've been involved with (and role), include:
1. HomeCom Communications (Initial technology creator and adviser) ¬
2. Harbinger Net Services (Sr. Software Engineer and 5th member of the team) †o
3. DirectSight Networks (Founder & CTO) ‡
4. Pathfire Inc. (VP Internet Services) †
5. nuBridges, LLC. (Founder & CTO) †
6. Refactored Networks (Adviser) †
7. Skyhook Wireless (Adviser, R&D) †
8. Appraisers of Georgia (Adviser, Investor) †
9. Capital Builders Group (Investor, adviser) †
10. Motionspeak, LLC. (Adviser) †
11. Universal Advertising (Investor, adviser) †
¬ Company went public in 1997 subsequently went bankrupt in 2001
† Ongoing entities as of April 2005
o DBA Inovis today
‡ DirectSight was purchased by Pathfire (then named Video Networks, Inc.)
During the last several years, I have become increasingly interested in technology beyond
my circle of current influence. This has ranged from public policy and the impact it has
on companies and technology adoption; to technology diffusion related to offshoring
activities; to the role of education in science and technology. My intention is to expand
this interest and my passion for technology adoption to other areas and countries.
While I do not have extensive international experience, I have traveled and presented
academic papers in Paris, France and Darmstadt, Germany. I have also traveled for
pleasure to Mexico and Canada. I have an interest in learning additional languages, but
beyond English, currently have only a very basic comprehension of Spanish.
Key experience:
• ~20 years of experience in software and technology
• BS and MS degrees in computer science
• worked for large, medium and small companies
• extensive startup experience (business plan, technology introduction, business modeling)
• fund raising experience
• operational and management experience
Key areas for growth:
• International experience
• Public policy work
• Fluency in foreign languages
Introduction for Information Technologies and International Development
Kipp Jones
I am interested in leveraging my technology experience and entrepreneurial background
to find creative ways to bring technology to people and places currently lacking it. My
experience in building technology businesses from the ground up provide a basis to help
understand and formulate methods for technology introduction, diffusion, applicability,
financing, and business modeling.
My technology focus has been centered on the Internet (including web specific
technologies), security, information management, wireless networks, and video
distribution. I am familiar with a number of technologies with extensive use of open
source software (including legal obligations and issues).
During the past 10 years, I have been directly involved in 11 early stage companies. As a
member of the executive team and/or a founding member I have helped raise over $100
million in funding. My experience gives me the inside view on what it takes to create a
successful business.
The list of early stage companies that I've been involved with (and role), include:
1. HomeCom Communications (Initial technology creator and adviser) ¬
2. Harbinger Net Services (Sr. Software Engineer and 5th member of the team) †o
3. DirectSight Networks (Founder & CTO) ‡
4. Pathfire Inc. (VP Internet Services) †
5. nuBridges, LLC. (Founder & CTO) †
6. Refactored Networks (Adviser) †
7. Skyhook Wireless (Adviser, R&D) †
8. Appraisers of Georgia (Adviser, Investor) †
9. Capital Builders Group (Investor, adviser) †
10. Motionspeak, LLC. (Adviser) †
11. Universal Advertising (Investor, adviser) †
¬ Company went public in 1997 subsequently went bankrupt in 2001
† Ongoing entities as of April 2005
o DBA Inovis today
‡ DirectSight was purchased by Pathfire (then named Video Networks, Inc.)
During the last several years, I have become increasingly interested in technology beyond
my circle of current influence. This has ranged from public policy and the impact it has
on companies and technology adoption; to technology diffusion related to offshoring
activities; to the role of education in science and technology. My intention is to expand
this interest and my passion for technology adoption to other areas and countries.
While I do not have extensive international experience, I have traveled and presented
academic papers in Paris, France and Darmstadt, Germany. I have also traveled for
pleasure to Mexico and Canada. I have an interest in learning additional languages, but
beyond English, currently have only a very basic comprehension of Spanish.
Key experience:
• ~20 years of experience in software and technology
• BS and MS degrees in computer science
• worked for large, medium and small companies
• extensive startup experience (business plan, technology introduction, business modeling)
• fund raising experience
• operational and management experience
Key areas for growth:
• International experience
• Public policy work
• Fluency in foreign languages
Monday, September 26, 2005
Nigeria
So, beyond the research on location based information and patterns, I'm involved in some information technology in development (ITD), looking at the impact of ICT on developing countries. In particular, I'll be working on a project that USAID is helping on called NetPost -- attempting to get Internet access to rural Nigeria by deploying cybercafes in postoffices.
I'd like to look at wireless and location based networking while I'm at it. In particular, some interesting things are happening in disruption tolerant networks that may be very applicable to getting some Internet capabilities to the extreme edges.
Some work at Tech is being done by Mustaffa Amar in this area and he mentioned a project in India called DakNet that may be worth exploring further. Basically, using the store-carry-forward paradigm to do message 'ferrying' to locations that don't have a permanent connection. Interesting thoughts...
I'd like to look at wireless and location based networking while I'm at it. In particular, some interesting things are happening in disruption tolerant networks that may be very applicable to getting some Internet capabilities to the extreme edges.
Some work at Tech is being done by Mustaffa Amar in this area and he mentioned a project in India called DakNet that may be worth exploring further. Basically, using the store-carry-forward paradigm to do message 'ferrying' to locations that don't have a permanent connection. Interesting thoughts...
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Location-based patterns reading list
So far, this is my reading list for understanding the state of the art in location-based information pattern discovery.
- Projet Lachesis: Parsing and Modeling Location Histories, Hariharan, Toyama
- Extracting Places from Traces of Locations, Kang, Welbourne, Stewart, Borriello
- Monitoring Top-k Query in Wireless Sensor Networks, Xu, Wu, Tang, Lee
- Geographic Information Science: Defining the Field, Mark
- A Bibliography of Temporal, Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Data Mining Research, Roddick, Spiliopoulou
- Modeling Trasportation Routines using Hybrid Dyanmic Mixed Networks
- Toblers' First Law of Geography: A Big Idea for a Small World?, Sui
- Markovian Models for Sequential Data, Bengio
- Using Geospatial Information in Sensor Networks, Heidemann, Bulusu
- Bulding Personal Maps from GPS Data, Liao, Patterson, Fox, Kautz
- Processing Window Queries in Wireless Sensor Networks, Xu, Lee, Xu, Mitchell
- Location-Based Activity Recognition using Relational Markov Networks, Liao, Fox, Kautz
- Using GPS to Learn Significant Locations and Predict Movement Across Multiple Users, Ashbrook, Starner
- Temporal Data Management, Jensen, Snodgrass
- Learning and Inferring Transporation Routines, Liao, Fox, Kautz
- Inferring High-Level Behavior from Low-Level Sensors, Patterson, Liao, Fox, Kautz
I'm expecting these to lead me to others, but that should be a good start on a survey of the landscape.
- Projet Lachesis: Parsing and Modeling Location Histories, Hariharan, Toyama
- Extracting Places from Traces of Locations, Kang, Welbourne, Stewart, Borriello
- Monitoring Top-k Query in Wireless Sensor Networks, Xu, Wu, Tang, Lee
- Geographic Information Science: Defining the Field, Mark
- A Bibliography of Temporal, Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Data Mining Research, Roddick, Spiliopoulou
- Modeling Trasportation Routines using Hybrid Dyanmic Mixed Networks
- Toblers' First Law of Geography: A Big Idea for a Small World?, Sui
- Markovian Models for Sequential Data, Bengio
- Using Geospatial Information in Sensor Networks, Heidemann, Bulusu
- Bulding Personal Maps from GPS Data, Liao, Patterson, Fox, Kautz
- Processing Window Queries in Wireless Sensor Networks, Xu, Lee, Xu, Mitchell
- Location-Based Activity Recognition using Relational Markov Networks, Liao, Fox, Kautz
- Using GPS to Learn Significant Locations and Predict Movement Across Multiple Users, Ashbrook, Starner
- Temporal Data Management, Jensen, Snodgrass
- Learning and Inferring Transporation Routines, Liao, Fox, Kautz
- Inferring High-Level Behavior from Low-Level Sensors, Patterson, Liao, Fox, Kautz
I'm expecting these to lead me to others, but that should be a good start on a survey of the landscape.
PhD
Okay, it's been awhile since I've been here, sorry me.
I'm back at Georgia Tech working on my PhD at the College of Computing. I have 3 main thrusts of research right now that I'm weaving together as best I can, clustered around mobile, location-based information management:
1) Location-based pattern discovery
2) Location-based information and its impact on enterprises
3) Mobile/location-aware systems in developing countries
Why such a diverse set? Well, I've been working on wireless positioning services for a bit of time now with Skyhook Wireless. This led me into the world and I think I'm here to stay. I have a background in enterprise computing and I'm being funded by the Tennenbaum Institute to work on enterprise transformation. And lastly, I'm interested in the deployment of technology world wide and have been amazed by the uptake of mobile computing in the developing world. All of this may be a loose weave, but nonetheless, it is my current strategy.
I'm back at Georgia Tech working on my PhD at the College of Computing. I have 3 main thrusts of research right now that I'm weaving together as best I can, clustered around mobile, location-based information management:
1) Location-based pattern discovery
2) Location-based information and its impact on enterprises
3) Mobile/location-aware systems in developing countries
Why such a diverse set? Well, I've been working on wireless positioning services for a bit of time now with Skyhook Wireless. This led me into the world and I think I'm here to stay. I have a background in enterprise computing and I'm being funded by the Tennenbaum Institute to work on enterprise transformation. And lastly, I'm interested in the deployment of technology world wide and have been amazed by the uptake of mobile computing in the developing world. All of this may be a loose weave, but nonetheless, it is my current strategy.
Monday, August 15, 2005
NSF: Information and Intelligent Systems
According to NSF's Program Solicitation, this looks to be an area that my research could fit within:
Collaborative Systems topics include, but are not limited to:
Especially3, 5, 9 and 10.
Collaborative Systems topics include, but are not limited to:
- Data, text, speech, and multimedia storage, organization retrieval, and mining. Extraction of structured information from unstructured sources. Information discovery, fusion, summarization, and visualization.
- Algorithms for personalizing, organizing, navigating, searching, interpreting, and presenting information of different types, using various modalities.
- Designing, managing, and governing information infrastructures.
- Knowledge environments for science and engineering.
- Physical and cognitive interaction between a person and a robotics system and robots to project and extend human capabilities into unknown and hazardous environments.
- Policy and technical issues, including security and privacy issues, that relate to sharing information across boundaries.l Innovation and learning in distributed systems.
- Multimedia and multi-modal interfaces in which combinations of speech, text, graphics, gesture, movement, touch, sound, etc. are used by people and machines to communicate with one another.
- Intelligent interfaces and user modeling. Information visualization. Adaptation of content to accommodate different display capabilities, modalities, bandwidth and latency.
- Information privacy research that explores policies and technologies that permit collaboration across organization boundaries, and the ability to draw conclusions from data while still maintaining the privacy of individuals, including definitions of privacy other than confidentiality-security, for example conceiving of privacy as the reciprocal of intimacy in online contexts.
- Problem solving in distributed environments, ranging across Internet-based information systems, grids, sensor-based information networks, and mobile and wearable information appliances.
- Models for effective mediated human-human interactions under a variety of constraints, (e.g., video conferences, collaboration across high and low bandwidth networks, etc.).
Especially3, 5, 9 and 10.
Georgia Tech
I'll be taking my cyberinfostructure efforts to Georgia Tech this fall as I enter the PhD program within the College of Computing.
Other programs that were in the running included the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Maryland at College Park. Both schools were impressive and I'm hoping to be able to collaborate with professors in the future.
As part of my warm up for the program, I'll begin creating a valid reading list and start focusing my reseaerch on a couple of areas.
The key components of the research will include:
I call this the "Where's my stuff" problem...
Other programs that were in the running included the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Maryland at College Park. Both schools were impressive and I'm hoping to be able to collaborate with professors in the future.
As part of my warm up for the program, I'll begin creating a valid reading list and start focusing my reseaerch on a couple of areas.
The key components of the research will include:
- information security, privacy and policy
- information access/retriveal
- wireless/rfid/sensor networks
- ubiquitous computing
- human access and visualization
I call this the "Where's my stuff" problem...
Disappearing computer
Beyond the ubiquitous computing scene in the UK and the various projects/labs in the US, there appears to be a large effort afoot in the EU around what they are calling the Disappearing Computer with project such as Ambient Agoras.
Still trying to find out if there is some national US initiative that could/should be acting as the umberella for the various efforts around the states.
Still trying to find out if there is some national US initiative that could/should be acting as the umberella for the various efforts around the states.
Grand Challenges
Inspired by the Grand Challenges that various organizations have issued, I've been taking a look at how 'Ubiquitous Computing' fits into the idea of the Cyberinfostructure.
In particular, the Grand Challenges identified by The British Computer Society struck a chord with me. They combined two of their original GCs (2 & 4) into a single challenge on ubiquitous computing agenda.
Professor Morris Slomon chairs this particular challenge. He has pointed me at a couple of things, including the latest on "Global Ubiquitous Computing: Design and Science" which can be found at UbiNet.
Also, the Computing Research Association issued a report on the "Grand Research Challenges in Information Systems" which has a bit different take than the UK report. Elements of the Ubiquitous Systems can be seen in several of the CRA grand challenges
While most of the push for Cyberinfrastructure is around 'bigger is better' the push for ubiquitous computing is in the opposite direction. Smaller and more is the mantra for this, and it means a lot of different problems have to be solved.
I'm especially interested in the implications regarding the data/information, in particular:
Kipp
In particular, the Grand Challenges identified by The British Computer Society struck a chord with me. They combined two of their original GCs (2 & 4) into a single challenge on ubiquitous computing agenda.
Professor Morris Slomon chairs this particular challenge. He has pointed me at a couple of things, including the latest on "Global Ubiquitous Computing: Design and Science" which can be found at UbiNet.
Also, the Computing Research Association issued a report on the "Grand Research Challenges in Information Systems" which has a bit different take than the UK report. Elements of the Ubiquitous Systems can be seen in several of the CRA grand challenges
- Create a Ubiquitous Safety.Net
- Build Systems You Can Count On
- Conquer System Complexity
While most of the push for Cyberinfrastructure is around 'bigger is better' the push for ubiquitous computing is in the opposite direction. Smaller and more is the mantra for this, and it means a lot of different problems have to be solved.
I'm especially interested in the implications regarding the data/information, in particular:
- security
- privacy
- provenance
- filtering/overload
- context
- relevance
- storage and archival
Kipp
Consolidation
I'ts been awhile, I've taken the summer off from writing in my blog, bad Kipp!
As part of getting back into shape (writing shape that is), I'm consolidating my blogs and eliminating my cyberinfostructure blog. The next few posts will be regurgitated from that blog so I have a full listing in one site.
I'm so much looking forward to going back to school! More to come shortly on this topic.
Kipp
As part of getting back into shape (writing shape that is), I'm consolidating my blogs and eliminating my cyberinfostructure blog. The next few posts will be regurgitated from that blog so I have a full listing in one site.
I'm so much looking forward to going back to school! More to come shortly on this topic.
Kipp
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Tunable Wireless
An article on tunable radios for wireless [1] reminded me of disccussions I had with Doug Sicker at Boulder [2]. Had to dig through my wet archives to come up with the term, but it is called Software Defined Radio (SDR [3]) and has a lot to do with moving the protocols and associated tasks into software so the systems can morph and use spectrum/protocols on a more ad hoc basis rather than by a defined 'card' or chipset.
Has a lot of interesting applications and implications -- including security, spectrum management, certification, verification, power, group switching behaviors, etc. Neat stuff.
Also, somewhat related to my research in RFID, wi-fi positioning, and other wireless technologies.
[1] http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=36586
[2] Douglas.Sicker@Colorado.EDU, http://spot.colorado.edu/~sicker/main.html
[3] http://www.sdrforum.org/
Has a lot of interesting applications and implications -- including security, spectrum management, certification, verification, power, group switching behaviors, etc. Neat stuff.
Also, somewhat related to my research in RFID, wi-fi positioning, and other wireless technologies.
[1] http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=36586
[2] Douglas.Sicker@Colorado.EDU, http://spot.colorado.edu/~sicker/main.html
[3] http://www.sdrforum.org/
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Google Acquisitions
A cool little article on Google acquisitions and some future possibilities. Notice Outride, Jim Pitkow's previous company on the list!
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/6/12/143721/743
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/6/12/143721/743
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Software as a service
So, a recent article came out from Ray Lane of Kliener Perkins on "The Coming Service Revolution", and brought to mind a couple of thoughts.
As with many 'paradigm shifts', the service revolution is one that has been going on for some time and will continue to proceed, perhaps at an accelerated rate compared to historicals. Being of the mind that 'the cup is both half full and half empty', I tend to view these as additional modes of operation rather than replacement modes.
Let me explain what I mean. It is very rare that a particular way of doing business or selling things or system architecutre or you name it, is exclusively the way. What you generally find is many different models are required to fit into the many different models of doing business and living life. Sure, for the software-as-service market to grow faster, it will need to displace the software-as-license model as the market itself continues to grow. Additionally, new capabilities and ways of doing business will be born because of this new model--things we could only concieve of previously may now become feasible whether due to cost model changes, or simply the fact that the network is there and available in a 24/7 connected/dicsonnected, wired/wireless way. But does this fundamentally shift all software away from a license model?
My hypothesis is that there are some things that are better as a service and some things that are not so appropriate. This may be naive and old fashioned and you may claim that I'm not thinking far enough ahead and I'm missing the point. TBD.
It would also be interesting to find out how much software-as-service software and technology companies use. Those on the leading edge of pushing this modus operandi -- are they embracing it themselves? Are they using Salesforce.com -- are they using, for example, Sun's $1/cpu-hr and $1/GB-mo service? Are they chosing to use a platform like GrandCentral's to create business interactions?
My guess is yes, but for specific things and as a portion of overall spending. To what extent this ratio changes is indeed the bigger question.
I also like the model that Sun has for licensing -- $50/Employee/Year With Infinite Right-to-Use -- I can buy into that model as being more likely to replace 'one-time with 18% support fees and required upgrade cycles' model.
So, going forward, I see a healthy mix of the software-as-service and the rent-a-license models gradually replacing the one-time software license model. This will be augmented and supported by the use and adoption of open source licensing which will become the backbone and the infrastructure for many operations in the future. People will still pay for the service, support, expertise and differentiation that they require.
Kipp
As with many 'paradigm shifts', the service revolution is one that has been going on for some time and will continue to proceed, perhaps at an accelerated rate compared to historicals. Being of the mind that 'the cup is both half full and half empty', I tend to view these as additional modes of operation rather than replacement modes.
Let me explain what I mean. It is very rare that a particular way of doing business or selling things or system architecutre or you name it, is exclusively the way. What you generally find is many different models are required to fit into the many different models of doing business and living life. Sure, for the software-as-service market to grow faster, it will need to displace the software-as-license model as the market itself continues to grow. Additionally, new capabilities and ways of doing business will be born because of this new model--things we could only concieve of previously may now become feasible whether due to cost model changes, or simply the fact that the network is there and available in a 24/7 connected/dicsonnected, wired/wireless way. But does this fundamentally shift all software away from a license model?
My hypothesis is that there are some things that are better as a service and some things that are not so appropriate. This may be naive and old fashioned and you may claim that I'm not thinking far enough ahead and I'm missing the point. TBD.
It would also be interesting to find out how much software-as-service software and technology companies use. Those on the leading edge of pushing this modus operandi -- are they embracing it themselves? Are they using Salesforce.com -- are they using, for example, Sun's $1/cpu-hr and $1/GB-mo service? Are they chosing to use a platform like GrandCentral's to create business interactions?
My guess is yes, but for specific things and as a portion of overall spending. To what extent this ratio changes is indeed the bigger question.
I also like the model that Sun has for licensing -- $50/Employee/Year With Infinite Right-to-Use -- I can buy into that model as being more likely to replace 'one-time with 18% support fees and required upgrade cycles' model.
So, going forward, I see a healthy mix of the software-as-service and the rent-a-license models gradually replacing the one-time software license model. This will be augmented and supported by the use and adoption of open source licensing which will become the backbone and the infrastructure for many operations in the future. People will still pay for the service, support, expertise and differentiation that they require.
Kipp
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
TAG and the world
Somewhat off my normal topic, I recently attended a Technology Association of Georgia event (Georgia Technology Summit – in which my current company made top 10 Georgia innovative companies, and my previous company was in the top 40) – but I digress – anyway, hear Jeffrey Rosensweig (Associate Dean for Corporate Relations at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University) speak. His site is www.globalguru.com and he has a number of interesting presentations available for download.
He has an interesting global perspective on things and does a lot of demographics, aging, fertility, etc. analysis factored against global trend in dollar strength, gdp (national and global), trade deficits, and many others, which shed some light on a couple things for me. First, based on his projections,
Also got to witness Ted Turner (as he received the Captain of Innovation award). It was inspiring to hear him talk about the early days of CNN and how he persevered through many challenges. Beyond what he has already done, he has now taken on several global causes:
1) Environment and our ability to sustain our world
2) Alternative fuel (related to #1, but other cause/effects as well)
3) Nuclear armament destruction – why do we need these weapons?
There were some other items, but these were the key things that came out for me.
Kipp
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
What's on a CTO's top book shelf?
Thanks to my friend and colleague, Mitchell Friedman, I have what I consider a top shelf top shelf at work. The list of books includes:
- A. K. Dewdney, The Turing Omnibus
- Terrence W. Pratt & Marving V. Zelkowitz, Programming Languages – Design and Implementation (Third Edition)
- Edward A. Feigenbaum & Julian Feldman, Computers and Thought
- Alec Sharp & Patrick McDermott, Workflow Modeling
- Wil van der Aalst & Kees van Hee, Workflow Management – Models, Methods, and Systems
- Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
- Christopher Alexander, et al., The
- Christopher Alexander, et al., A Pattern Language
- Harvard Business Review, Managing the Value Chain
- Tom Mochal & Jeff Mochal, Lessons in Project Management
- Claus Heinrich with Bob Betts, Adapt or Die – Transforming your Supply Chain into an Adaptive Business Network
- DiBona, Ockman & Stone, Open Sources Voices from the Open Source Revolution
- Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral & The Bazaar
- Frank Rose, West of Eden – the end of innocence at Apple Computer
- David A. Schmaltz – The Blind Men and the Elephant
- Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View
- Eric Raymond, The New Hacker’s Dictionary
- Douglas R. Hofstadter & Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I
- Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas: Questing for Essence of Mind and Pattern
- Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach (actually, this is on my shelf by my bed…but it would look good here!)
- Christiane Fellbaum, WordNet – An Electronic Lexical Database
- Philip N. Johnson-Laird, The Computer and the Mind – An Introduction to Cognitive Science
- Douglas E. Comer & David L Stevens, Internetworking with TCP/IP – Volumes I, II, and III
- Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information
- Edward Tufte, Visual Explanations
My second shelf is not nearly as lively, consisting primarily of linux, java, algorithm and compiler books…
Feel free to suggest additional books that should be on my list…I may have them elsewhere!
Kipp
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Aspect Oriented Information?
My last post was on languages for handling information. As I considered further, perhaps we can lean on some work in the computer languages with respect to aspect oriented programming…
AOP provides facilities for what are called crosscutting concerns – these are concerns that cross more than one ‘module’. Things such as security, transaction integrity, and logging generally fall into this camp. Are there similar concerns in information management that can be extracted from the information itself and handled as aspects of the information?
Perhaps…some examples might be:
- access control
- creation time
- author
- reliability
- recency
As such, the information can be treated as a stream and the ‘aspects’ can be injected/tested/verified/etc. as an aspect of the information rather than muddying up the information stream itself. Would this help? I think in some cases it would…as part of my query, I offer up my ‘aspect parameters’ as well as my ‘information parameters’. Or, this could be done as a second level filter on the returned information (except for the access control part of the query).
To some extent, existing search engines do this on our behalf – they sort by recency, relevancy, etc. and some base their results on your own personal track record. Can I have more control over this? Would it make sense? How would you implement it, or does this truly reside in the information gatherer/disseminators such as Google? Can the information providers/producers provide better indications of the information that can be leveraged by other tools downstream?
To this last, I believe the answer is yes – there is a lot of information lossage along the way from producer to consumer, and we can do better.
Kipp
Monday, January 03, 2005
Information Annotation
Just spent some time catching up on (well, at least made a dent) on my backlog of magazines. A Queue mag had a series of articles on computer languages. New languages they said, come about for a couple of reasons, and I paraphrase:
1) Better performance (generally order of magnitude in order to displace an old one)
2) Better abstraction/programmer efficiency
3) New application/usage (web)
4) Specialized usage (parallel)
There are also incremental improvements that have been and continue to be made on existing languages as we learn how to do things better.
Anyway, this set of articles got me to thinking about the language of information and how we handle, manipulate and specify information. I'm not really familiar with this area, but what are the available languages for information specification? I can think of several, loosely:
1) Databases - in these the meta information is stored implicitly and explicitly in the database system itself
2) HTML - information embedded in structure, some implicit information can be retrieved
3) SGML/XML - more information stored in the markup including some semantics
4) RDF et al. - additional relationships and semantic information included with the information itself
I'm sure I'm missing a lot so I'll keep digging. Nonetheless, these all seem woefully inadequate and insufficient to enable real reuse of information. There are so many attributes of the information that are perhaps orthogonal to the actual information and yet are required to truly scale and make a usable infostructure.
Is a new language of information needed? Or can we use existing systems to facilitate these needs? Things like access, ownership, authorship, timeliness, expiration, accuracy, etc. It seems that we need additional mechanisms to create and maintain this meta information beyond what currently exists.
Kipp
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1) Better performance (generally order of magnitude in order to displace an old one)
2) Better abstraction/programmer efficiency
3) New application/usage (web)
4) Specialized usage (parallel)
There are also incremental improvements that have been and continue to be made on existing languages as we learn how to do things better.
Anyway, this set of articles got me to thinking about the language of information and how we handle, manipulate and specify information. I'm not really familiar with this area, but what are the available languages for information specification? I can think of several, loosely:
1) Databases - in these the meta information is stored implicitly and explicitly in the database system itself
2) HTML - information embedded in structure, some implicit information can be retrieved
3) SGML/XML - more information stored in the markup including some semantics
4) RDF et al. - additional relationships and semantic information included with the information itself
I'm sure I'm missing a lot so I'll keep digging. Nonetheless, these all seem woefully inadequate and insufficient to enable real reuse of information. There are so many attributes of the information that are perhaps orthogonal to the actual information and yet are required to truly scale and make a usable infostructure.
Is a new language of information needed? Or can we use existing systems to facilitate these needs? Things like access, ownership, authorship, timeliness, expiration, accuracy, etc. It seems that we need additional mechanisms to create and maintain this meta information beyond what currently exists.
Kipp
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good.
http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Unstructered Information Management
UIM is something that IBM has been doing a lot of research and development on. I caught this reference from an article in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/business/yourmoney/26techno.html) entitled “At I.B.M., That Google Thing Is So Yesterday”. This article refers to some work being done under the direction of Arthur Ciccolo within IBM Research (http://www.research.ibm.com/UIMA/index.htm) at the
Their goal is to create an infrastructure that provides the ability to combine the various information extraction and knowledge discovery techniques in an effective fashion – rather than each one having to re-process the information, is there a way to leverage each of these using some infrastructure and get better throughput and results? I’ve only begun to dig through their publications, but they recently had an entire IBM Systems Journal issue dedicated to this area of research (http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj43-3.html).
Kipp Jones
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