Web Concepts

Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

And debate whether it even has a future at all

The PostalVision 2020 conference will highlight how social networks and electronic communications continue to reshape the role of mail. Participants include Vint Cerf, Google’s “chief Internet evangelist,” and Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and journalism educator who has asked whether the Postal Service is even necessary anymore. Plenty of postal advocates will also be on hand, including members of a panel who have suggested post offices start selling gift cards and other retail items.

The goal is to discuss how snail mail might be saved, through dramatic structural changes or methods like privatization.

The USPS is on track to lose about $7 billion during the current fiscal year, the Washington Post reports. With that hemorrhaging unlikely to stop anytime soon, it’s unlikely any investors would want to buy it.

John Callan, a mailing industry consultant who is organizing the meeting, told the Washington Post that the USPS is already working to address its current problems, but outsiders might have some useful ideas for its long-term future.

The meeting will also review what foreign postal services are doing — like forgoing stamps for digital codes sent via text, and scanning all mail into PDFs for digital delivery.

Eventually, postal services may be more useful for a much broader purpose than delivering coupons and J. Crew catalogs. The mail’s unparalleled ability to reach everyone, everywhere could be useful for a host of services — delivering drugs in case of a disease outbreak or bioterrorism, for instance. Or monitoring air quality and traffic in neighborhoods. Or playing a role in the delivery and maintenance of nationwide broadband services ... the list goes on. For those reasons, at least, it could be well worth saving.

[Washington Post]

While software may never know what it’s like to roll out of bed with splitting headache and dress quietly in the dark, it can certainly measure the distance between a desired outcome and the actual outcome achieved. And by doing so computers could learn to minimize “regret,” which in this case is measured by that distance.

TAU computer scientists working on learning theory and other thorny computer intelligence issues think that by teaching computers to reduce regret, they would essentially be teaching them to evaluate all the relevant variables surrounding an outcome in advance. This would allow them to do things like more efficiently route Internet traffic, prioritize server resource requests, or predict when traffic to a site might spike and provide the necessary capacity beforehand. And they could do it all based on data coming to them in real-time.

It could also do wonders for Google’s AdWords and Adsense businesses. Algorithms that can learn in real time and produce results with the least “regret” could sharpen ad targeting tools in a big way, turning Google’s desired outcome of higher ad revenues and the further trashing of their competitors into a likely actual outcome.

[American Friends of Tel Aviv University]

Virgin Oceanic is a five-journey proposal, in which they'll hit the Mariana Trench (Pacific), Puerto Rico Trench (Atlantic), Diamantina Trench (Indian), South Sandwich Trench (Southern), and Molloy Deep (Arctic). "They" is Sir Richard Branson (whose cojones can only be measured in cubic miles at this point) and Chris Welsh, an American pilot and explorer. The Puerto Rico Trench is the deepest trench known, and has never been explored.

Their submersible, designed by Graham Hawkes, is one of the more interesting parts of the journey. Shaped more like a dolphin than a traditional submarine, the Virgin Oceanic craft has an operating depth of 37,000 feet--about seven miles--which means it has to be able to withstand outrageous pressure, 1,500 times that of an airplane. Constructed of carbon fiber and titanium (with a quartz dome), the craft is currently undergoing tests--at that depth, the smallest crack would result in certain death for the pilots, both due to the immense pressure (13 million pounds) and the simple fact that there exist no other vehicles capable of a rescue mission. The sub travels at a maximum of three knots, and can dive at 350 feet per minute, so a dive to the bottom of the Mariana trench and back would take around five hours.

The sub is equipped with all the usual sensors and cameras, which should come in handy as this isn't--or at least isn't only--a swashbuckling "let's see if we can do it" mission. Knowledge of the ocean at this depth is, without exaggeration, at 0%--we have no idea what's going on down there, which is why Virgin is working closely with both Google and the renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and with a host of other scientists from some of the best marine studies departments in the country.

Though further tests need to be carried out before the first expedition begins, Virgin Oceanic expects to dive the Mariana Trench sometime this year, with the remaining four dives spaced out throughout the following two years.

[Virgin Oceanic]

A group of developers at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies hacked the Kinect (what else?) using software they already had from other projects and built a fully-functional Gmail Motion, which they call the Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving (SLOOW). “No offense to the geniuses at Google, but we weren’t able to get their application running on our computers,” one hacker says in the video. He then goes on to demonstrate that the silly motions Google came up with – licking a stamp and sticking it to your leg to send a message, for instance – really work in this program.

You can download the program here. Looks like the joke's on Google after all.

[New York Times]

For its part, Google is trying to get in front of the privacy argument that is undoubtedly coming (Google is getting pretty good at this by now) by assuring users that they will have to opt into such a service by checking a box. And the search giant is working on added layers of security and privacy to ensure that only those who want to be photographically found will be.

The idea is that Google’s massive search resources could be used to trawl social networks, online photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa, and the like to associate an individual’s face with his or her online presence. This, of course, could also include contact info like email addresses and phone numbers. It would at the very least identify a person by name, with which any reasonably tech-savvy person could track down contact information anyhow.

The technology, a Google engineer says, already exists and has for some time (though we really already knew that, since Google is not the first to come up with such an app). But the company is sensitive to privacy issues--if not out of genuine concern for its users then for avoiding public backlash--and wants to make sure that when it launches, it launches the right way. As such, Google has not said when it will release the product, or even so much as offered a rough production timeline. But don’t worry about being left out of the loop; when the app does launch, the stranger sitting across the coffee shop will surely email you to to let you know.

Update: A Google rep. dropped us a call to let us know that the news story upon which this blog post is based is "extremely speculative," and that the company has no such application in the pipeline, nor does it have plans to introduce such a facial recognition app to its development pipeline. According to Google, the engineer--director of engineering Hartmut Neven--was speaking to CNN's reporter about hypothetical uses for some of Google's technology, not about existing applications or applications under development.

[CNN]

The natural color, high-resolution images show entire neighborhoods swept away by the waves. Airports and farmland are inundated, cargo depots have been turned into piles of rubble, and damaged nuclear facilities appear as apocalyptic shells.

DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-1 and WorldView-2 satellites have 20-inch and 18-inch resolutions, respectively. GeoEye’s GeoEye-1 satellite, to which Google has exclusive mapping rights, provides 16-inch resolution.

The New York Times combined the photos into interactive before-and-after slides. Google Earth also has a Japan earthquake image file available for download or viewable in Google Maps.

One of the ten largest earthquakes ever recorded in the world

Google’s Person Finder, also used in the recent New Zealand earthquake, is only as effective as the numbers of people using it — but it’s catching on quickly, with about 6,900 records as of 10:30 a.m. EST. Users can enter a name in English or Japanese and search for missing persons, or post updates about people who you know are safe. It also aggregates other disaster bulletin boards erected by Japanese companies.

Similarly, a local developer in Tokyo put up an Ushahidi crisis platform, which is collecting information about the locations of trapped people and unsafe buildings. People can find out where to find help or a pop-up hospital, according to GOOD. The platform was used to help relief workers in Haiti.

Though Japan is by far the hardest hit, 20 countries including the U.S., Canada, Russia, the Philippines and several Pacific island nations are under tsunami warnings. Hawaii’s Pacific Disaster Center is posting updated tsunami warnings and a map showing the dangers facing each of the state’s islands.

The Hawaii chapter of the Red Cross is using Twitter to post tsunami warnings and potential evacuation efforts.

And a United Nations satellite-monitoring group might also be activated, reports Fast Company.

The earthquake is among the top 10 largest ever recorded, according to U.S. Geological Survey seismologists. The devastation is still unfolding, with fires raging, widespread blackouts and a devastating tsunami. Workers at a nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture are having trouble cooling off the reactor, and the area is being evacuated; hundreds of people are confirmed dead in the wake of the tsunami; waves of mud inundated farmland; and transportation has ground to a halt.

Meanwhile, disaster-relief agencies are starting to mobilize and accept donations. The Defense Department is readying American forces in the Pacific to help, AP reported.