Readers are invited to comment and engage in discussion. Abusive remarks may be deleted. Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Analysts International or New Equities.
Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for the year 1997. We're going to pay a visit to a young Stanford University graduate student named Sergey Brin and take a look at his pet project, a new search engine called Google.
Hat tip: Freakonomics and Pajamas Media.
No, says Steve Rubel, the market is just thinning the herd.
Lots of buzz at MacWorld over Apple's new iPhone though somewhat less at CES. The general consensus is that it's pretty damn cool, even as some question whether it's ready for enterprise use.
Meanwhile, Cisco is suing Apple for copyright infringement over its use of the iPhone name.
Wired Magazine boldly gives its predictions for 2007.
In his now-classic 1981 short story True Names, author Vernor Vinge imagined a worlldwide virtual reality network in which users could assume alter egos and manipulate data with techniques similar to wizardry and magic. Many computer users, particularly gamers, embraced those concepts wholeheartedly, as attested to by the success of Second Life and other online environments (including World of Warcraft and similar MMORPGs). Now a non-profit group is building a new type of internet specifically for VR games and applications:
Neuronet, which is separate from the Internet, "will evolve into the world's first public network capable of meeting the data transmission requirements of emerging cinematic and immersive virtual-reality technologies," according to a Wednesday announcement from the Vancouver-based International Association of Virtual Reality Technologies.
The first-generation Neuronet is scheduled to go live in 2007, the group said. Consumer applications are expected as early as 2009.
Virtual reality generally refers to environments with visual and audio information that makes a person feel immersed in a computer-generated realm. The growth of environments such as Second Life has spotlighted such efforts, and IBM believes that virtual worlds will open new doors to e-commerce as well.
The group promises that Neuronet will have high-speed communication, a key constraint for virtual reality, which requires transmission of large quantities of graphics and other data, as well as fast responses to give users a better illusion of realism.
Although the full impact is still years off, it's not much of a stretch to imagine the impact of such a VR network on project management and collaboration among remote team members. Online meetings and webinars, once a novelty, are now a staple in the business world. In 10 years, will it be commonplace for project teams to collaborate in simulated meeting rooms, solving problems by manipulating shared data models in 3D? IBM's endorsement of Second Life, and now Neuronet, is an indication that it may be.
Read/WriteWeb weighs in with predictions of the important Web technologies and trends of 2007. Topics include, Microsoft vs. Google, enterprise collaboration, the proliferation of Amazon-like Web services and the rise of rich internet and mobile apps.
Technology futurist and author Ray Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking vision of the not-so-distant-future:
Kurzweil told a keynote audience at last week's SCO6 supercomputing conference that nanobots will roam our blood streams fixing diseased or aging organs, while computers will back up our human memories and rejuvenate our bodies by keeping us young in appearance and health.
The author of the book The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil says within a quarter of a century, non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. He predicts that it will then soar past human ability because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge.
In an interview with InformationWeek, Kurzweil said people and computers will intermix with nanobots, blood cell-sized robots, that will be integrated into everything from our clothing to our bodies and brains. People simply need to live long enough—another 15 to 30 years—to live forever. Think of it as replacing everyone's "human body version 1.0" with nanotechnology that will repair or replace ailing or aging tissue, he says. Parts will become easily replaceable.
"A $1,000 worth of computation in the 2020s will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain," says Kurzweil, adding that in 25 years we'll have multiplied our computational power by a billion. "Fifteen years from now, it'll be a very different world. We'll have cured cancer and heart disease, or at least rendered them to manageable chronic conditions that aren't life threatening. We'll get to the point where we can stop the aging process and stave off death."
Kurzweil even goes out on a limb and predicts that nanotechnology will yield a cure for the common cold.
With Sun finally announcing that Open Source Java will be here in 2007, ZDNet's Dana Blankenburg asks the relevant question, "Should you care?" He considers Sun's move to be purely defensive in the face of the rising star of .NET.
What do you think? Is Sun's announcement too little too late? Does .NET have the momentum? Weigh in with your thoughts in the comments below.
Miguel Carrasco's Real World has compiled an amazing (and amusing) top 10 list of computer industry losers, some of them beautiful losers, some just plain dogs. Among the case studies in this walk down memory lane are the the Xerox Alto, the Apple Lisa, IBM's OS/2, and Steve Jobs' NeXT machine. And don't forget that old classic, CP/M:
In 1980, IBM finally realized they needed to put a home computer out on the market extremely fast. However they could not find the time to wait around to build their own operating system. They wanted to buy one, and the best one at the time, Gary Kildall's CP/M operating system. Where was Gary Kildall on this fateful day that the IBM suits came knocking? Out of office flying a private plane. IBM went back to the office's and looked up Microsoft, which they thought had a broad license to sell CP/M. Microsoft came in and negotiated a per licenses model to sell the operating system at 50 dollars per machine. Bill Gates had created the Software Licensing Industry!
Carrasco notes out that many of these mistakes (whether of technology or business judgment) paved the way for later successes. For example, the Xerox Alto and the Lisa led to the Mac, which popularized the notion of a GUI-based OS. The NeXT machine was a flop, but went on to become the basis for OSX, and in the hands of Tim Berners-Lee, it played midwife to the World Wide Web.
On the other hand, the less said about Windows ME and Microsoft BOB, the better.
For those of you in the Charlotte metro, New Equities is once again hosting the Charlotte Java User Group's (CharJUG) monthly meeting. The presentation topic will be:
Enterprise Content Discovery with SOA
The presenter will be Gavin Sutcliffe, whose most recent activity has been to migrate Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence community information systems from proprietary systems to service oriented architectures. He will cover the following topics:
Date and Time:
Tuesday, Sept. 19, 6:30 to 8:30 PM
Location:
New Equities Offices
200 South College Street
Suite 1630
Charlotte , NC 28202
704.373.6373
(Map)
Space will be limited, so RSVP now at the CharJUG Meetup site.
