Whitenoise

The past week was quite hectic and the weekend was even more hectic .I had my exams for my current semester in the weekend.

The week was dominated by one big number $700 bn !! Much has been predicted about the repercussions of this historic crisis in the US. Some considered it the biggest since the depression. I think the crisis is much bigger this time than the dot-com one. No one know whats it store next. Lets hope things turn best for the good of all.

I was browsing through the finalists of TechCrunch50 . OpenTrace appeared quite innovative and do-able.

OpenTrace aims to show where your products come from and what the environmental impact is.The idea is to build a massive database on the supply chain details of each and every product developed. Once the data is available, the service could give you an index on the environmental impact due to the product. A new take on bringing an environmental aspect of a product.    The site is not yet up (the team is looking for VC’s ).

For now ,it has a nice presentation on their idea .

BOSS GNU/Linux :Version 3.0 of BOSS GNU/Linux () was released by CDAC this month. BOSS Linux will be India’s own Linux with support for the major languages of India. ELCOT, the IT wing of Tamil Nadu government is showing the way by deploying BOSS Linux across all government departments in the State .

Semantic search:Where is it now? Semantic search was largely touted to be the ‘next big thing’ in web search and many called it as one of the defining aspects of   Web3.0 ,an evolution from the now prevalent Web2.0. But the idea has not yet reached prevalence.
For the uninitiated,Semantic Search involves analyzing the semantics (meaning) of the search string and provides better results.
Its a  powerful tool compared to present syntax based web searches . For eg: if you search for ‘melancholy songs with birds’ the search can give you sad songs written based on birds. In other words,the mapping can ‘understand’ that melancholy means sadness and give the correct results.(source AFP)

A major building block for the technology is a  vast database of words and phrases and a mapping of their meaning. Now a company called Cognition has released one such database. Cognition’s database  is the result of 20 years of research on the semantics of the English language,  and the founders claim that the database has mapped 99.9 % of the English language!  Here is a nice article on popular web2.0 site readwriteweb.com

But why no search engine based on this?  Semantic search is not for normal consumer usage. Its power can be felt when the search is more focused and in-depth. Potential clients are from the fields of Medical research and criminal analysis where users need to sift through reams of  research papers/ evidence data  where meanings of words are also important. Cognition’s database could be an important building block for similair technologies and could be the beginning of the Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web era.

Esquire and the 21st century: Men’s magazine Esquire commemorated its 75th anniversary with a   collectors edition book ,that’s worth mentioning here.  The cover of the magazine had something revolutionary . Here is a video on how it looks on the bookshelves across the world.

The cover had text that keeps scrolling text just like adds on TV. The dynamic display of text was based on what they call ‘e-ink’ technology. Here is a rip off of what went inside  to create the blinking news .

OpenOffice 3.0 rc2:  Like many I  had a gripe that the previous edition of Open Office was not so appealing. The team seems to have listened and come up with the rc version of their next major release. Let us see if OpenOffice3 breaks into Microsoft’s Office domain. Here is first look on the various features with this new edition.

Public beta of StackOverflow.com :  Jeff Atwood’s new site is now open for  public beta. Stackoverflow.com is question/answer site for programmers. It combines the  ideas from forums ,user groups ,blogs and wiki .

For e.g, users who have gained some ‘points’ could edit answers from fellow users much in the same way as a wiki.The UI seems decently made. Give it a try or have a casual look on the various ‘interesting questions there. Here is an in depth review from another blogger
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Kernel Summit 2008 : Finally ,here is a group photo from the recently concluded Linux Kernel Summit 2008. The kernel summit is an annual meetup of the who’s who of the Linux Kernel team. Its heartening to see quite a few Indians working on this great project

I was very happy for all the response I got for this thread.So ,here is the next edition of this digest Let me know your thoughts .

JS wars – V8 vs Trace Monkey : One of the initial feedback on the new browser Chrome was the very fast JavaScript performance,as compared to other browsers. An article on Dobbs explains a somewhat ‘esoteric technique’ thats used by the V8. The V8 could generate assembly code on the fly!!

Dynamic code generation is not a new technology .But whats new is adopting this for a language like Javascript.

The Mozilla camp is also getting ready with another JS interpretor called the TraceMonkey. Initial reports have shown this to be much faster to the current SpiderMonkey engine in Firefox 3.Like V8, tracemonkey also uses some new ideas (Tracetrees) as described here.

What would be the effect of such fast interpreters for JavaScript? :  With such fast engines possible, we will have more and more (time intensive) code done by Javascripts rather than relying on some plug in support.  One more effect on the programing fraternity would be the importance of languages like JavaScripts.

I’m just waiting for a day when JS becomes  the lingua-franca and browser becomes  the new OS of computers.

Ubuntu Jaunty: While the Ubuntu community is eagerly waiting for the Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex ) release , the code name for the April 2009 (Ubuntu 9.04)  release of Ubuntu was announced by Mark Shuttleworth this week.

Ubuntu 9.04 will be called Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope and the focus of this distribution  would be  improvement in boot time and general performance as such (hence the name Jackalope) .It would also bring in ‘tighter integration with web‘.I dont know  what this line means. It could become clear with the blueprint discussion happens later this year where people decide on what components should be integrated onto this release.

On a lighter note, the Jackalope is a mythical cross between a Jack Rabbit and an Antelope.It can run very fast and can imitate human sounds. You find more about this peculiar creature here.

OpenBTS : There was an announcement last week on the launch of OpenBTS . An open source GSM base station project . The project uses a USRP (a $700 device that can be attached to a Unix/Windows box to convert it to a Transmitter/Software Radio ) to provide the air interface (Layer 1 of the GSM standard) and Asterisk PBX to connect calls.

The OpenBTS is a new take at this otherwise proprietary industry. The vision is to provide low cost GSM connectivity in the developing countries in Africa.  The company has managed to get a temporary FCC license and have conducted their field tests at the BurningMan 2008 event.

TechCrunch50: TechCrunch50 is the startup equivalent of AmericanIdol .This event is hosted by the popular blog Techcrunch . Budding software companies showcase their products to a motley of entrepreneurs,A-list bloggers VC’s etc. This is the second year in running and it has created lot of buzz ($2000- $3000 for a ticket !!).

This year’s winner was Yammer. A tool that takes twitter into the corporates. I too believe the tool will be interesting to corporates like the scuttle framework that is  used by corporates to setup their own social book marking system(like del.ic.ious) in their intranet. You can find other entries that won prizes here.

The Microsoft show circus commercial: Towards the end of the week, there was this new ad from Microsoft with Bill Gates and Seinfield. I think this is the first of a series of ads from them.Lets wait to see what want to say

Sony’s Capuchin: On the embedded front,this week saw the announcement of one more application environment.This time from the Sony Ericsson camp. Capuchin is a J2ME + Adobe FlashLite runtime. A detailed analysis is published here.

This is a serious movie on the personal costs that the soldiers in Iraq have to pay for their duty there.  Unlike movies like ‘Thin Red Line‘ and ‘Saving Private Ryan‘ ,this movie is not about the gore and blood shed during war.  It shows a very different aspect of war .It is about the  effects that the war on Iraq has on the various soldiers and their families in the US.

Hank Deerfield (Tommy L Jones)  is a retired police officer, whose son has gone missing soon after he returns his Iraq war duty.  Hank goes to the military base in search of his son..The search reveals disturbing facts about the lives of   soldiers there.

The movie conveys a very strong message on the ongoing war in Iraq. The title is an allusion to a mythical battle field where David fights against Goliath. I was not sure if   David (who wins the battle) represents the US or it was Goliath (who despite being mighty ,loses in the end).  Maybe the director wanted to keep that unanswered.

Verdict : The movie  moves very slowly and the mood is quite gloomy. Not something to watch on a pleasant afternoon.  If you like serious/sad movies,you could watch it once and muse about how bad things could be.

This is a weekly summary on what caught my attention in technology this week. That said, it may not be events that happened this week. Lets hope I continue this thread going on for some more time

Mozilla Ubiquity:  Mozilla announced an alpha release of Ubiquity, a firefox plugin that adds a command-line language to the browser. I am a big fan of the keyword search   feature in FireFox and this tool looks to add more to this. A cursory look at the Ubiquity tutorial shows the power of this new tool plugin  The user can do most options that he would be interested upon from this tool.  Apart from vast options, what I like most is support for Natural Language commands like ‘email this to sujai‘ etc. Where the tool understands what is meant by this and acts accordingly.  I’m yet to test my hands on this tool (some commands may not work with linux ) Hope the support is enabled soon.

Lenny’s sucessor named:  Though I dont use Debian , I am fan of the code names they use for each release. After Sarge Etch and Lenny, the code name for the next release was announced as Squeeze this week. For the uninitiated, these are character of the Pixar’s ToyStory

Yeah.. the Chrome: Google Chrome is everywhere and I am waiting for the Linux version to try it out . Some of the pros seem to be wider screen area and less memory consumption (than Firefox) .A major bummer is that it  does not support FireFox addons . I dont know if  my default browser would become Chrome anytime soon. Considering my addiction to several FireFox add ons.

Other news :On the embedded devices  front, there was  news on Intel’s acquisition on OpenHand.The company that maintains the MatchBox windowmanager. You can find an insightful analysis on this here