Did You Know?

We are living in a time when information is being created at an exponential growth rate.  This means, to be successful, you must change the way you process, assimilate and utilize information.  Below I have attached to awesome videos that descibe the massive amounts of change that we are seeing. Watch the shorter version if you are time constrained.  The longer version contains more technology facts than the first.

Short Version (5 min)

Longer Version (1o min)

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Okay, what about a photo based startup?

(no real relevance for the picture, I just created it the other day and thought it looked cool)

Read the following:

R.J.Pittman, Google’s director of product management for consumer search properties, in his interview with Beet.TV said that around 100 billion images are captured and uploaded every year. He expects an  abrupt growth of around trillion uploaded images in the future.

I started thinking in different direction yesterday.  I love photography so I thought I would look into it.  I wonder if there would be any promise, as more and more people have access to smartphones with cameras on them, to create a photo search engine to search for pics based on their exif data.  Exif data is the info that all digital cameras capture and store for later review.  Here is an example:

Tag	Value
Manufacturer	CASIO
Model	QV-4000
Orientation	top – left
Software	Ver1.01
Date and Time	2003:08:11 16:45:32
YCbCr Positioning	centered
Compression	JPEG compression
x-Resolution	72.00
y-Resolution	72.00
Resolution Unit	Inch
Exposure Time	1/659 sec.
FNumber	f/4.0
ExposureProgram	Normal program
Exif Version	Exif Version 2.1
Date and Time (original)	2003:08:11 16:45:32
Date and Time (digitized)	2003:08:11 16:45:32
ComponentsConfiguration	Y Cb Cr –
Compressed Bits per Pixel	4.01
Exposure Bias	0.0
MaxApertureValue	2.00
Metering Mode	Pattern
Flash	Flash did not fire.
Focal Length	20.1 mm
MakerNote	432 bytes unknown data
FlashPixVersion	FlashPix Version 1.0
Color Space	sRGB
PixelXDimension	2240
PixelYDimension	1680
File Source	DSC
InteroperabilityIndex	R98
InteroperabilityVersion	(null)

 

In my opinion geotagging will become a typical part of exif data as more and more photos will be taken from GPS enabled smart phones and camera.

Heres an example of its use:  Im at a party downtown in a bar between 9pm and 12am.  Everyone was drunk and having a blast and taking pics on their phones and cameras.  Later on I want to see these pics.  So instead of having to contact all these people (I may not know all of them), or search on a ton of different social network platforms, I can search for pics uploaded to public social networks and sites like flickr that were taken in a defined geography, and time. 

 I’m just free-flowing here but I wonder if there is any potential to create a search engine or similar function for the sheer vast amount of pictures that will be uploaded based on location taken, time taken, type of camera, etc.

It could help police as well.  Lets say there was a murder that happened in Pacific beach at 2pm on garnett and cass ave (one actually happened yesterday but it was at 5am and on Agate Street near La Jolla Mesa Drive) .  The police have a vague description of the perpetrator (clothing color and height but thats it).  In searching for clues/evidence they might be able to do a search of photos taken from 10-2pm that day in that general area to see if he happened to show up in anyone elses photos.

Or I was at an event (Ozzfest 2008) and wanted to look back at pics later on since I didn’t take many.  I could enter a search for pics taken at the Cricket Amphitheater between 12pm and 8pm.

Perhaps intead of searching for a particular image like on google image search, people would be searching for a certain event.  Whole different market homeboy.  As social networks reign king and grow at astonishing rates, there needs to be a organized way to search through all of that data; thus opening up opportunities for search engines just for social networks.

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Dream vs Iphone?

So the word on the street is the new HTHC dream (1st android powered phone) will be released October 20th.  Looks kind of funny huh?  I was surprised there was a fold out keypad instead of all touch, but I guess people who are hooked on sidekicks would love it.  I wonder if it still has a touch interface for messaging, texting, etc.

 

What do you think, is it worth holding off on getting a new phone until I see what this ones like?

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plaYce – Hello Cloud Computing! Goodbye SaaS?

In a previous post, I blogged about how Cloud Computing is the future, and the latest release of Google’s Chrome will speed up this process.  Companies such as NetSuite, NETtime Solutions and EnterpriseWizard publicly announced they will support Chrome last week.  This year’s TechCrunch 50 had several good examples of utilizing Cloud Computing to begin the next wave of computing.  A great example of this is the start up plaYce. While I am not yet convinced that this will be THE platform that will revolutionize worldwide, streaming, high quality gaming; I believe they are heading in the right direction and paving the way for similar companies and platforms to step in.

plaYce’s proprietary technology automatically and accurately reconstructs the entire world in 3D and streams it with high frame rate from within the browser. Consequently, this unique, immersive, “Mirror World” gaming experience does not rely on a heavy client download. plaYce is designed such that every pixel has a world co-ordinate, enabling integration with user generated content and other forms of geo-tagged data.

plaYce connects gamers with their social graph through quick engagement, synchronous, social games. At the same time, plaYce provides Game-Infrastructure-as-a-Service, enabling independent developers to design games situated anywhere in the world: car races in Hong Kong, first-person shooters in the Amazon, treasure hunts in Manhattan, etc. Aside from the technological benefits, plaYce saves game designers 50-75% of development costs and significant time to market.

What a great example of Cloud Computing.  After seeing their demo, I was curious whether this is technially considered SaaS or just falls under the general category of Cloud Computing.  It seems it fits more into the latter category.  While plaYce is not the first to roll out this concept, their platform may be the one the ultimately brings it to the masses.  RuneScape was the first and probably still is the most poplular MMORPG.

RuneScape is a Java-based MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) operated by Jagex Ltd. It has approximately ten million active free accounts and is a browser-based game with some degree of 3D rendering. RuneScape was created by Andrew Gower, the creator of DeviousMUD, the forerunner to RuneScape, in 1998. Rewritten and renamed, the first version of RuneScape was released to the public on 4 January 2001 in beta form. It has a free-to-play option, and a simple interface that is accessible on most web browsers.

According to an article on ZDNews, Harry Derbes, CEO of Lawson, seems to think that SaaS is on its way out over the next two years and will be making way for Cloud Computing to step in.  While I don’t necessarily believe it will be gone in two years, I think Cloud Computing will become much more prevalent than SaaS in the marketpalce over the next decade.

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Sources:
http://www.playce.com
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/playce
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210500320
http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/612033
http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-218408.html
http://www.runescape.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape

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