Dr. Ashok on Technology, Science and Everything else

Is there life after death?

2009-01-05T19:51:00.000-08:00

Is there life after death? Is death one of the most pleasurable experiences in life? At death, do departed souls re-unite? Is this body a mere temporary shell for the soul to reside for a short period?

Well… all these questions could look a bit old fashioned and illogical.

But I recently read a book named ‘On life after death’ by Elizabeth Kubler Ross (EKR). I would have concluded it as ‘pulp fiction’ had I not seen in Wikipedia that EKR is one of the pillars of modern psychology. She was a medical doctor, a psychiatrist who has received honorary doctorates for her work from 23 universities!!!. If that is not enough, she has authored over 20 books and was the creator of the famous Kubler-Ross Model on dying which is well accepted in her field of science.

The questions I mentioned in the first paragraph were discussed with research data in the book and the answer to every one of those questions is a firm YES!!!.

EKR sites numerous episodes where, at Near Death Experiences (NDE) or while dying, patients tell the name of people who are waiting to receive him/her. These are always dead people and never was there an instance of a living person. Often, the information of death of some of them has not even reached the doctor because some of them might have just died in another room. The dying patient always sees only the dead. An example is five family members in a car crash all fighting for life in the hospital. One of them at death correctly meets all those who died before him, even by few minutes!!! How does he know that?

Another case is ‘out of the body experience’ in NDE scenarios. Even blind patients clearly explain who were trying to bring them back from the dead (defibrillator, resuscitation etc.), who was doing what and so on. This happens even when the brain activity is recorded as absolute zero!!! How does that happen? How could the blind see…that too without brain?

Thus, based on a large pile of research data EKR concludes YES to all my questions.

How about you?

-Ashok-

Astrology, Behavioral Genetics and me...

2007-05-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

Do you believe in astrology?...... Gosh No!!!!
OK …Do you believe in behavioral Genetics?.....Well mmm….
What has Behavioral Genetics to do with Astrology? Here is my theory…..and you be the judge….

One of the offshoots of Human Genome project is a field of science called Behavioral Genetics. It is rooted on the assumption that Human Behavior and pre-dispositions are often coded in his/her genes, although environmental factors do help mold some of them. The fallout of this postulate is that looking at a human being’s gene one can predict his behavioral traits and interests to a large extent. These traits range from alcoholism, to sexual inclinations.
Another field of genetics similarly posits that proneness to certain diseases like cancer can be predicted by analyzing genes. Scientists can even say what form of cancer one is susceptible to and when in the life span it can hit him or her. For e.g. looking at a gene, soon scientists would be able to say that the person is likely to be affected by Colon cancer when he/she is about 30. (This gene is yet to be identified)

Now take one step back….It looks like scientists can make all this predictions by taking a cell sample from the embryo of a baby yet to be born. Or in other words scientists can write your ‘Horoscope’ in good detail before you are even born…

That is where my question of Astrology comes in…

Astrology looks at star configurations at birth and predicts your future (or writes your Horoscope). Scientists look at the gene and do the same thing. Palmists do the same by looking at the lines on the palm of your hand…
Here are my connectors…
Do stars at birth (or while in womb) influence your genes?
Do lines on your palm reflects your gene in some way?
For these two questions, I do not have answers?

So let me ask my original question again….Do I believe in Astrology?....Well….mmmm

Do you?

-Ashok-

Dangerous Ideas!!!

2006-02-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

A very interesting site named ‘Edge’ (http://www.edge.org) purportedly brings together people working at the edge of a broad range of scientific and technical fields, and has them ask each other questions they are asking themselves. One of the traditions of this site is to pose a question every year that makes some of the best thinkers in the world to come out with clear unambiguous answers. Considering that the questions are asked by none other than John Brockman (The founder of the site and the author of such books as The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, The New Humanists: Science at the Edge, and What We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty.), the answers tend to be interesting and thought-worthy to say the least.

This year John asked contributors for "dangerous ideas". "The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious," he writes. "What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?"

Now I would suggest you to take a moment or two off and write three ideas you think as belonging to this category before proceeding further. (After all, who does not want to test his/her wits against people who matter?!.)

I have found many of the ideas interesting and some of them really scary; As John puts it, “scary not because it is not like to come true but because they are very likely to come true”.

Here are some examples:

Karl Sabbagh (Writer and Television Producer; Author, The Riemann Hypothesis) deals with the capability of human brain in his dangerous idea. He states ‘The human brain and its products are incapable of understanding the truths about the universe’. The hypothesis by itself seems fairly simple though not very pleasant. If you really look at the evolution of theoretical Physics investigating various forces in nature from Newton’s days to String Theory, you might find a sound example of our inability to understand and explain the ways of nature. Every time you think you have covered all aspects in the theory, a new dimension opens up and you realize that you are not even back to square one. But I am not yet ready to give in to Karl’s hypothesis. A controversial book published couple of years ago by the Steven Wolfram named ‘A New Kind of Science’ tries to provide a totally different approach to explaining universal laws (I will write about this book in one of the issues in the near future). Though I am not bought on Wolfram’s approaches, it gives me confidence that some day somebody will conceive a method/approach to comprehend the universe and our brain is pretty much up to it.

Rupert Sheldrake (Biologist, London; Author of The Presence of the Past) hypothesises that humanity might invent a sense of direction involving new scientific principles. At the outset I thought this could be one of those spooky Paranormal Kinetics stuff. But once you read through some of the stuff Rupert has written, you would agree with me that there is meat in the argument. Here are some extracts:

…No one knows how pigeons home, or how swallow migrate, or how green turtles find Ascension Island from thousands of miles away to lay their eggs. These kinds of navigation involve more than following familiar landmarks, or orientating in a particular compass direction; they involve an ability to move towards a goal…
…there is a dangerous possibility that animal navigation may not be explicable in terms of present-day physics. Over and above the known senses, some species of animals may have a sense of direction that depends on their being attracted towards their goals through direct field-like connections…
…cannot explain how racing pigeons return across unfamiliar terrain from six hundred miles away, even flying over the sea, as English pigeons do when they are raced from Spain…

Well doesn’t that sounds like a real idea?

V.S. Ramachandran (Neuroscientist; Director, Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego; Author, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness) expands on Francis Crick’s "astonishing hypothesis" — ‘that even our loftiest thoughts and aspirations are mere by-products of neural activity. We are nothing but a pack of neurons’. Throw in the famous Sherlock Homes assertion ‘I am a brain, my dear Watson, and the rest of me is a mere appendage’, and you have to very well agree with Ramachandran that the whole idea definitely deflates Homosapien’s misplaced confidence on his superior place among living beings.

There are about hundred similar entries on the site, some extremely thought provoking and some not so. If I have succeeded in sufficiently whetting your appetite, please send me your thoughts by writing to ashoktk@gmail.com .

Back to the Future…

2005-12-15T18:41:00.000-08:00

In my last write-up, I had discussed the ‘Technology Timeline’, a report released by British Telecom in August 2005 predicting future technology trends in various areas. In that instance, we had a closer look at BT’s predictions for the ‘Artificial Intelligence’.

As I have explained, BT’s report covers all major areas affecting human life including Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, Biotechnology, Health, Business, Education, Home & Office Infrastructure, Life & Leisure, Materials & Electronic Devices, Processing, Memory & Storage, Robotics, Security, Military, Law, Shopping & Money, Space, Telecommunications, Transport & Travel, and Wearable Technology.

This time let us have a go at the predictions relating to the ‘Retail Market Place’

1. In-store positioning systems enable personalised guides (2008-2012), In-store positioning systems with One Centimetre precision (2008-2012)
I think this is an understatement. We do have the technology today itself to set up in-store positioning systems and enable guidance based on the collected position information. The other day, I had a discussion with the CEO of a company named Firetide (http://www.firetide.com ) based in the Silicon Valley whose mesh network product ‘HotPort’ supports location awareness as a function. You just deploy your wireless mesh network in-store using the product (which uses a proprietary protocol) and connect a bunch of RFID readers to the network; you are kind of operational to locate your loyal customers (through RFID tags) with a few feet accuracy. Then you can provide guidance services (e.g. provide a map to reach some specific shelf), push advertisements on to screens near the person (Narrowcasting and CRM at work) and carry out cross selling and up selling. Is this the best way to do this? Not at all.
If you don’t want to mess with mesh you may use location services from your wireless operator (I am not sure of the accuracy levels though). Even better would be a mesh of detectors which can detect the location by resolving signal strengths at two or more sensors w.r.t something the customer is carrying. I can think of plenty of other technologies as well. To cut the long story short, I can envision this being available with some retailers by the 4th quarter of 2006.

I do agree that the One Centimetre precision would take some more time and 2008 could be just right.

2. Immersive VR shopping booths (2008-2012)
I like this one. I had been an ardent follower of VRML and I believe it did not take off because it was too early to come to the market. The hardware available in circa 2000-2001 just did not have the capability to handle VRML. But today with improvements in graphic processing at the hardware level, virtual reality is probably ready to take centre-stage on common man’s computer. If that is the case what can be better than Virtual Reality malls. I can imagine going through the entire mall sitting in my living room and ordering stuff without stepping out even for a second. (My wife may not be too happy on this). What you would miss is the ‘touch’ and ‘smell’ sensations. For most shopping goods ‘smell’ does not matter and there are plenty where ‘touch’ also does not matter. (A few years down we will have technologies to simulate touch and smell as well, anyway). So get ready to try out all the clothes in Macys on your own body (virtually) before making a purchase decision. This is definitely on and 2008 may be quite in the ballpark.

3. Most books sold on-line (2008-2012)
This is a no-brainer. My extension on this prediction is that by 2009 we would have book like contraptions (with pages which can be turned!!) where the book content can be loaded just like loading a CD in a CD player. Once you finish reading the book insert a different CD (not literally) in and lo and behold! - You have the new book. The instrument will have the same look and feel of a 20th century best seller (in print).

4. Paper and coins largely replaced by electronic cash (2011-2015)
Why so late!!!. Who is using paper and coins anyway for shopping even now? (I am not talking grocery here). If the spread of plastic money in the past and the current growth of mobile phones are indicators, we can safely assume that the ‘Wallet’ software available in most mobile phones would provide the electronic cash support before 2006 end and we will be walking with electronic cash in our phones before 2008 end.

5. Personal taxation at point of sale (2011-2015)
Do you think the tax man will wait till 2011!! Big hope . With the current level of technology it may be available in 18 months time in selected countries in the developed world, I bet!

Forward to future with BT

2005-10-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

A few years back I got an opportunity to work with Mark R. Anderson, CEO of Anderson Consulting Group (http://www.acgroup.org/pages/395707/) based in Montgomery, TX, whose title on the visiting card read Healthcare IT Futurist. I was sort of intrigued by the title at that time. One of my friends then told me that organizations like British Telecom (BT) do hire Technology Futurists by the dozen to do crystal ball gazing. Based on that, the title made perfect sense, but I do not still know whether it is true. If it is true, these futurists are doing some tremendous jobs in BT. “Technology Timeline,” a report released by British Telecom in August 2005, stands testimony to that.

BT’s report covers all major areas affecting human life including Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, Biotechnology, Health, Business, Education, Home & Office Infrastructure, Life & Leisure, Materials & Electronic Devices, Processing, Memory & Storage, Robotics, Security, Military, Law, Shopping & Money, Space, Telecommunications, Transport & Travel, and Wearable Technology.

I will try to discuss some of the predictions here with my own views on implementation approaches, timeframes and value. The BT list contains probably about thousand predictions. Selecting a few for discussion is really tough. So I decided to start with Artificial Intelligence. (I have also decided to limit myself to five predictions being very considerate of the readers.)

Synthetic voices pop band gets in top 20 (2006-2010)
I think today’s technologies themselves are capable of producing songs which can reach top of the charts. Already synthetic voices emulating famous figures are being sold by many TTS product sellers. I have been in a Scansoft presentation where they got its TTS engine to read a paragraph in the voice and style of Bill Clinton. Hence flexibility of synthetic voices, I would say, is beyond question. Marrying it to AI and creating a band may be the only activity which is likely to take time.

First species brought back from extinction (2006-2010)
Here again, with cloning success rates fairly high, I cannot see a major technology bottleneck. But after having read and watched Jurassic Park I am not sure about the need or desirability of doing this.

Mood-sensitive home décor (2008-2012)
This would be fun to have. Some time back I had come across a gadget which if kept in your hand could change color if you are tense or angry. It has been scientifically proved that your moods can generate chemical and electrical signs which can be recognized and measured. What with Bluetooth and other technologies, changing the home décor based on your moods is only an integration and provisioning issue. Ofcourse it could be costly to begin with.

Addiction to on-line games seen as a national problem (2008-2012)
In the second week of August 2005, A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure, minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet café. Apparently, the 28 year old man - Lee -had planted himself in front of a computer monitor to play online games on Aug. 3. He left his seat over the next three days only to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed. The cause of death was presumed to be heart failure stemming from exhaustion
So this is not a prediction anymore. It is a reality. Something especially developing countries (Where the young population is more than the old) should be really worried about.

Computers that write most of their own software (2013-2017)
Most software written by machine (2013-2017)
Well, as per the prediction we IT employees have some more time left before going jobless. But my premonition is that we could be hit as early as 2010. Already many of the MDA (Model Driven Architecture) based products are capable of doing half your work (It is true that most of us have successfully thwarted the introduction of these by refusing to use them on silly objections!). But mind you the day is not far away…

I will be back with more…

An act of conviction

2005-10-07T00:31:00.000-07:00

In a rather dramatic act, the gentleman in his fifties picked up the potion and gulped it down !!!. (The act was very similar in many ways to the one performed by Socrates millenniums back) The potion contained a concoction of Bacteria which many of his peers believed could not survive the digestive acids in his stomach. Most of them also believed that they are not going to do any harm to his digestive system. In such a case this was neither an act of courage nor had any associated risk.

But the gentleman knew better. He knew that the Bacteria would survive; especially the Helicobacter pylori. He knew he was going to be sick…terribly sick. But he had to do it…to convince others…the doubting Thomases of the world who questioned scientific evidence collected painstakingly over a long period of time. He had a point to prove!!!

The gentleman succeeded…He fell ill…very very ill…

Barry J. Marshall who was driven to perform this act has won Nobel Prize for medicine this year along with his colleague J Robbin Warren.

To paraphrase the Press Release by The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet dated 3rd October 2005..

Robin Warren (born 1937), a pathologist from Perth, Australia, observed small curved bacteria colonizing the lower part of the stomach (antrum) in about 50% of patients from which biopsies had been taken. He made the crucial observation that signs of inflammation were always present in the gastric mucosa close to where the bacteria were seen.

Barry Marshall (born 1951), a young clinical fellow, became interested in Warren's findings and together they initiated a study of biopsies from 100 patients. After several attempts, Marshall succeeded in cultivating a hitherto unknown bacterial species (later denoted Helicobacter pylori) from several of these biopsies. Together they found that the organism was present in almost all patients with gastric inflammation, duodenal ulcer or gastric ulcer. Based on these results, they proposed that Helicobacter pylori is involved in the aetiology of these diseases.

Even though peptic ulcers could be healed by inhibiting gastric acid production, they frequently relapsed, since bacteria and chronic inflammation of the stomach remained. In treatment studies, Marshall and Warren as well as others showed that patients could be cured from their peptic ulcer disease only when the bacteria were eradicated from the stomach. Thanks to the pioneering discovery by Marshall and Warren, peptic ulcer disease is no longer a chronic, frequently disabling condition, but a disease that can be cured by a short regimen of antibiotics and acid secretion inhibitors.

It was to prove this Bacterial connection to the skeptic world that Marshall resorted to the heroic act mentioned in the beginning…

Now you must be wondering why I am talking at length on this particular incident!

I think what Marshall showed through his action was his confidence and conviction with respect to his work. That is probably what makes him great…great much beyond his Nobel Prize!

How many of us can say the same about ourselves and our areas of work???

Palindromes, Ambigrams and Dan Brown

2005-08-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows who Robert Langdon is; well almost everybody does. He is the hero of Dan Brown’s popular novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’. No, I am not about to join the unending theological debate on the claims in the book. (But I do consider Leonardo Da Vinci as one of the best brains to have set foot on planet Earth with or without Da Vinci Code exposures!!!).

What I am interested in here, is a website by the brilliant Graphic Designer John Langdon who wrote the book 'WordPlay'. I think Dan Browns' character owes his second name to John who had helped Dan on his previous work 'Angels & Demons'. You might wonder what is so special about the personal page of a a Graphic Artist. To say the least, John’s page is different. It is dedicated to interesting stuff like Ambigrams, Wordplay, Paintings, Logos etc.

Take the case of Ambigrams. We are all familiar with Palindromes - those words which read the same from either direction. A good example would be the word ‘Madam’. There are famous Palindromes like ‘Able was I ere I saw Elba’ and ‘Madam I’m Adam’. The first one is apparently set in the context of Napoleon’s exile in the Mediterranean island of Elba and the second is said to be the first full sentence man is said to have ever uttered (Adam telling Eve). Though I am not sure whether Napoleon or Adam spoke really in English to be palindromic in expression, some of my friends believe that Adam’s was not only the first but the last one as well! Closer home, my name of mother tongue written in English is also a Palindrome – MALAYALAM.

My idea here is not to talk about Palindromes. Ambigrams are similar to Palindromes. More precisely, symmetrical Ambigrams are similar to Palindromes. They read the same from both sides. This is not due to the peculiarity in spelling as is the case of Palindromes but due to the calligraphy techniques used. (‘Ambi’ means both and ‘Gram’ means word). Assymetrical Ambigrams reads meaningfully but differently in both directions. Due to copyright issues, I am not in a position to display some samples here ( I am not good enough to design one either). You call learn all about it at http://www.johnlangdon.net/New_Pages/Ambigrams.htm. Infact Dan Brown’s website itself talks about a few Ambigrams (http://www.danbrown.com/secrets/ambigram.html).

You can even generate some for yourself at http://www.ambigram.matic.com/ambigram.htm just like the one I generated for'ASHOK' shown at the top right corner.

Go have a look and enjoy…

No More Nail-Biting Experiences!!!

2005-07-19T01:56:00.000-07:00

This is one interesting information one of my colleagues – Hiri – sent me. Apparently Japanese have achieved data storage on human finger nail. Not small amount!! . We are talking reasonable volume here – about 5 mega bits. If you use the technique developed by Yoshio Hayasaki and colleagues at Tokushima University, you can store dat for up to six months on your nail (by which time your body would have anyway more or less replaced your finger nails).

I have some odd thoughts on the whole idea. Does the 5 megabits figure correspond to only one nail? Can my wife, who grows her nail really long (apparently long nails add to the beauty to feminine gender in this parts of the world!) store more data on her nails than me? Would people who have the habit of biting nails be disadvantaged in this scenario (No more nail biting experiences Tim!)? How are you going to plug in your data disk (or more precisely your nail) into the computer for data read and write?

Well, lucky me, some of the above questions already have clear answers available. To understand this data storage technique, you need to look at the technology involved. The team uses a femtosecond (10-15 seconds) laser system to write the data into the nail. The nail's fluorescence increases at the point irradiated by the femtosecond pulses. You just have to use a fluorescence microscope to read the data. Sounds fairly simple?!! Cross-talk between data stored at different depths is prevented by appropriately setting distance between the planes.
The bad news is that so far the experiments were limited to small pieces of (detached) nail. We need to wait and watch some more time before this technology enables us to use our nails (while being attached to our very own fingers) in place of the USB drive!!

Curtains for PSTN?..

2005-07-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

I have been using a small VOIP application called Skype (http://www.skype.com) for the last few months to talk to my niece in USA. It is another comp-to-comp phone application to begin with. But it is not just another one by any standards. It gives me better clarity than the PSTN lines!!! I am serious!!! It is a lot better than ‘just picking the phone and calling my niece’. On top of it, it is free. Mind you, it has provisions for calling a US telephone number directly (that means comp-to-phone) as well. But that costs you a little money.

What is interesting about Skype is that it is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) application. Further, it uses Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). (You can read about SIP at http://www.sipforum.org/ ). Skype supports voice mail, call in, call out and conferencing features. It is probably the product with the fastest adoption rate in last year.

Recently, I came across VOIP buster (http://www.voipbuster.com/en/index.html), a similar application which provides virtually free calls to telephone numbers in US and selected European Countries. Here too the call quality is as good if not better than PSTN lines.

There is another application on the same lines which caught my attention recently. This one- Ineen (http://www.ineen.com/) - not only supports voice conversations but is actually a video phone. It provides excellent voice quality and fairly good video clarity. The only limitation is, it is com-to-comp.

vSkype (http://www.vskype.com) is a free add-on to Skype which adds pretty much the same functionality to Skype. I am yet to test this one.

The way VOIP is going (though I have serious doubts about the revenue models associated with many of the applications listed above), I can hear the death knell of telephony and PSTN loud and clear. Do you also feel the same?

Where is RFID going?

2005-07-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

In December 2004, Larstan Business Reports conducted a survey among 669 supply chain IT executives to understand the pattern of adoption of RFID technology in various segments. In the retail industry vertical, as high as 77% percent of the executives judged an advanced RFID infrastructure as either ‘Very Important’ or ‘Important’. Infact 88% of them felt that their business would benefit if suppliers and business partners implemented RFID. Now contrast this with the state of RFID implementation in Retail today. The survey found that only 35% claims to have some form of the technology implemented in their organization. There seems to be a clear gap between the aspiration and realization. Despite the promise and the value proposition, there seems to have been precluding factors in the diffusion of this technology.

To understand the reasons behind this, one has to look at its inception and growth. Radio Frequency based identification cannot be considered as new by any standards. Right from World War II, this technology had been in use. But it was only in the last few years that it got the prominence it deserved, especially in business circles. RFID’s appearance on the business front could not have been more dramatic and forceful. Initially, media has, based on predictions by technical analysts, gone ahead to position RFID technology as the harbinger of next technical revolution through out supply chain. By the middle of 2003, the hype had given way to pragmatism. In 2004 Gartner has predicted RFID hitting the ‘trough of disillusionment’ of their ‘Hype Cycle’ by 2006. The industry started discussing ‘to do’s with respect to this technology to make it deliver the perceived value.

Some of the major shortcomings identified with respect to this technology which resulted in low adoption rates were:

Ø Privacy issues – imagine walking around with RFID tags all around you (on your dress, bags, wallet, loyalty card etc.) broadcasting who you are, what your tastes are and where you normally shop etc., to the whole world!!
Ø Radio waves do not travel well through metal and liquids
Ø Unit cost of tags
Ø Reading accuracy issues

These point to two important aspects. On the one hand, it emphasize that, with the current state of technology, RFID is not suitable for every business scenario where it can be applied. As a corollary the technology can work wonders and exceed expected ROI if it is applied diligently in suitable environments. This demands enterprises to enlist organizations with sound business background to work on identifying and implementing RFID solutions for them. In other words RFID is no longer a technical solution to a business problem but a business solution using one of the emerging technologies.

In 2004, organizations with expertise in industry practices, like ADEA solutions, entered the RFID arena providing sound business solutions to various clients addressing many of the concerns raised earlier. This was a welcome change from the initial domination by pure technology players in this segment. ADEA for example, concentrates purely on the Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods segment with well designed frameworks and tools to solve business problems in that sector.

RFID technology’s impending spread is evident from the growth it has shown in the first quarter of 2005. By March 1, Walmart is stated to have RFID implemented in 104 Wal-Mart stores, 36 Sam's Club stores and three distribution centers. The enormity of this is evident when we consider that it involved installation of 14,000 pieces of hardware, 230 miles of cable and is live with more than 100 suppliers. Walmart is now looking forward to implementation at 600 stores and 12 distribution centers by year's end.

From a retailing perspective, Walmart’s success has convinced the industry that RFID could help them track goods throughout the supply chain. It could ultimately lead to fulfilling every retailer’s dream: ‘right products in the right stores at the right time’. It'll also help locate specific products anywhere in the supply chain, rendering recalls easier to manage. Actually this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Appropriate adoption of this technology could not only contribute immensely to the supply side but can also revolutionize the demand side leading to improved customer satisfaction. A customer loyalty solution ADEA developed for a large retailer in Europe stands testimony to this.

Next generation UHF Gen 2 tags, expected to be available by the end of the year could further hasten the industry adoption of RFID.Specification for UHF Gen 2 tags is already finalized by EPCglobal Inc., the nonprofit organization spearheading RFID adoption, in December 2004 enabling this. We are also seeing newer and newer uses for the technology coming to the forefront. Finally RFID has grown beyond the shadows of barcode tags. Considering the increased acceptance of the technology after Walmart success, we are confident that the gap between aspiration and actual implementation seen in Larstan Report would reduce to single digit levels by the end of 2006. The key to this success would be involvement of technology vendors with domain expertise in driving the RFID juggernaut.

Amazing – The gadget, the Technology, the Business Model and the development Process!!!

2005-07-05T21:03:00.000-07:00

There is a site I had visited almost a year back. It looked interesting that time. It had a small application which would try to identify any object you imagine by asking 20 questions. It was an application with a learning engine. I tried it…tested with some uncommon objects and was fascinated by the accuracy by which it deduced them. As I said, this was quite some time back.

Recently while discussing with Rakesh Ravuri (You can visit his BLOG at http://www.eternalillusions.com/blog ) some new ideas for applications using AI and learning engines and I all of a sudden remembered that old little app. I did some googling and found that the application has gone places already.

Before we get into what its new avatar is, let us look up a little history. Apparently the brain behind the app, Robin Burgener programmed a simple neural net on a DOS machine way back in 1988. All that he taught the engine was 20 questions about a cat. He then passed the program around to friends on a floppy and had them challenge the app with their yes/no answers to the object they had in mind. The application (unlike we humans) kept learning from mistakes (and correct guesses as well.) So the more people tested it, the more it learnt. In 1995 Burgener hosted the application on the web for public to play with. As Kevin Kelly correctly pointed out, Burgener’s genius was to turn the hard tedious work of training a neural net into a fun game for humans. (Imagine the millions of Dollars it would have cost him otherwise!)
Last year, after a million rounds of 20 questions online, Burgener compressed the 20Q code to run on a chip, and with a select 2,000 of the most popular 10,000 objects it then knew about. In other words, he created a gadget (a toy which looks like a small sphere) which is a handheld version of his Twenty Questions web site.
So the new avatar is a $14 toy named ‘Radica 20Q’!!. You can buy it from Amazon. Before that, you might want to try out ’20 Questions’ application at http://www.20q.net/ and get fascinated while teaching the engine probably about new objects or new attributes of objects.

Voice Applications – A revolution in waiting.

2005-06-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

Consider these interesting statistics: PC shipments in 2005 are expected to reach (just) 199 million as compared to 625 million mobile phones for the same period. In 2009 according to Gartner, there would be 2.5 billion mobile users in the world which will far out perform the personal computer reach. Interestingly enough a mobile phone is a tool whose primary interface is voice as against text in a PC. Hence it is quite natural to deduct that the man-machine interface of the future would be voice. (I do believe that the final destination would be ‘thoughts’ but that would take another 7-10 years probably.).

If ‘voice’ is the next wave, then why it is taking so much time to be pervasive? To me the reasons are both technological as well as social. On the technological side the accuracy growth in ‘Speech Recognition’ engines were slower than expected. You might think that 99% accuracy was achieved by many products a few years back itself, but considering the variety and variations among people speaking a specific language, these accuracies were limited to a small percentage of people who speak perfect version of the language (if anything like that exists). Essentially the accuracy claims by vendors were no different from the fuel efficiencies promised by automobile vendors in ideal conditions.

On the social front, the personal computers did not provide enough privacy for one to interact with ones system/network using voice technologies. Ofcourse you do not want to talk to your banking application with the whole world hearing it. Neither did you want to disturb all around you when you attempt browsing the web. It is in this social context that the privacy friendly telephonic instruments (mobile and land line) assumes greater significance in enabling voice to be the primary man-machine interface. The growth of speech technologies like Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Speech converters (TTS) and Voice XML (VXML) and telephony technologies like Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)and Voice over IP (VoIP) aids this transformation in a big way.

Take the case of a typical IVR solution. You want to find the balance in your savings account. You call your bank’s tele-banking number and the voice on the other side gives you root menu options like ‘press zero for Savings Account, press one for checking account…’and so on and so forth. You would have to go through a series of linear menus before you arrive at the required information. (Incidentally this is not much different from the typical linear menus in your Windows operating system, except that with voice interface you do not have the entire menu presented in one shot and you would have to stretch your grey cells to really remember your menu options.) You make a mistake in one selection, and boy, you need to go through the whole rigmarole again!!

Now consider the alternative scenario. You call your tele-banking number and the voice on the other side prompts ‘Hello, How may I help you today?’. You may not even realize that this is the server armed with the TTS technology answering your call. You make your requirement clear by answering ‘I want to know the balance in my Savings account’. ‘Would you please give me your savings account no.’, pat comes the next prompt. After an authentication step you get your balance read out to you. In essence you get a typical manual help- desk experience from this automated help desk. This is one of the new genres of applications spawned by the voice technologies.
Adea (http://www.adeasolutions.com/) recently migrated the ordering and customer self help functions of a very large Telecom company in North America to a voice enabled system using some of the technologies discussed above. This enables its customers to interact with the company (Ordering, recording issues etc.) through voice interfaces without going through elaborate menus saving precious time and improving overall experience.

One of the core technologies used in this solution was the VoiceXML (VXML). VXML is an open standards approach to voice applications using a combination of Internet and speech technologies. It is derived from XML. In functionality, a web browser and a VXML interpreter are similar. A web browser renders HTML documents visually while a VXML interpreter renders VXML documents audibly. This is the major difference. A VXML interpreter can be considered as a telephone-based voice browser. VXML documents have web URIs and can be located on any web server. But there is a major difference here. A web browser runs locally on your machine, whereas the VXML interpreter is run remotely—at the VXML hosting site. Basically you use your telephone to access the VXML interpreter.

VXML is very different from IVR. While not mandatory, VXML applications support speech recognition by default. And as I have stated earlier, VXML user interfaces are not limited to a series of numerical answers from 1 to 10. Further, The VXML specification is maintained by the W3C, not any specific vendor and is not tied to any proprietary telephony hardware. It can support multiple speech recognition and text to speech engines from different vendors.

A complementary standard to VXML is SALT-Speech Application Language Tags (Many experts consider it as competing). They have different technical goals. VXML focuses on the development of telephony-based speech applications. SALT focuses on adding speech/telephony to web-based applications and turning them into multimodal applications and its primary goal is to support multi-modal interactions that becomes possible with the new converged devices (for e.g. speaking to a device might generate a list of information on its display). SALT currently lacks the broad support and maturity level of VXML, but is rapidly acquiring popularity

After VoiceXML, the next important component of the solution is the Speech Engine which comprises of a Speech Recognition Engine and a Text-To-Speech (TTS) Engine. The Speech Recognition Engine enables the system to understand what a person is saying and TTS enables the system to speak information fed to it.

From a user’s perspective what is critical is the Voice User Interface (VUI) akin to the Graphical User Interface in your day-to-day applications. VUI design is a very involved process covering the designing of dialogs (What the systems speaks as prompts), designing of application (including ‘Grammars’, the sets of words or phrases that the voice recognition engine 'listens' for in each part of the voice application) and designing of information presentation (for e.g. voice of the prompts or TTS converter).

The application not only resulted in better customer experience but also in reduced costs and improved productivity. I will say this is just the tip of the iceberg. Voice Technologies can provide much more. For e.g. imagine a day when an application similar to Microsoft Money® runs on your mobile phone and you update, say your expenses by talking to the phone while making a purchase. That is what you can call as instantaneous data capture (at the time of a business event) with almost no effort…and mind you, that happens on a device which you always carry with you. That day is almost here…. There are a number of visionary companies worldwide like ADEA, designing and developing unique voice based applications today. Some of these could totally change our lives soon.

To me voice technologies are still at a nascent phase. But the major difference is that the stage is set.
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The year this will be (2005)... from a tech perspective

2005-03-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

I have some predictions for 2005 (half of these are not predictions. They are facts, but you know, it feels great to play the foresighted, once in a while..)

We would see a start in the movement of core PDA functionality, centered on personal information management, to other devices such as cell phones. Mobility solutions would start encompassing cell phone based solutions as well in addition to handhelds and tablets.
Increased use of voice interfaces to personal information management applications hosted on PDAs and cell phones. With improved voice recognition engines (Latest version of Dragon Naturally speaking claims 99% accuracy) and technologies like VXML, this is only a matter of time.
Computer chips continue to fail in following the ‘doubling power in 18 months’ kind of growth (Moore’s law). The interesting connotation here for solution developers is that we need to mend our ways and start optimizing our code and addressing concurrent processing. There is an interesting article a friend had sent me, which every one of us should read. Try http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm )
EJB 3.0 could improve EJB’s lost ground in software market All you java brethren, get hold of EJB 3.0 specs and start trying out various appserver implementations of the same.
Release of Visual Studio 2005 could revolutionize the way we develop software solutions Beta is already available. If you are a Dot Net engineer and you haven’t tried it out by now, God help you!!
VOIP will capture a large chunk of the Telephony Market
Wireless broadband to continue growth…more cities to get fully Wi-fi enabled. Hopefully security concerns get addressed this year. Wi-Fi or otherwise, application developers need to get our knowledge and understanding of security of the ground; what with 21 CFR Part 11 etc.!!!

This list is in no way exhaustive. But it shows us that technology is changing by the minute and we probably have some insight into what is cooking. The question here is, what we are doing about it?

The year that was (2004)...from a tech perspective

2005-03-10T19:33:00.000-08:00

The year 2004 was quite significant from the Information Technology front. Some of the achievements/trends (small and large) we saw last year are:

Internet 2 reaching a speed of 6.63 GBPS between CERN in Europe and Caltech in USA transferring 859 GB in less than 17 minutes
You know what that means? Some time into the future we need to think about applications, which make use of such speeds. Otherwise, our solutions would look like a black and white 2D movies running in color 3D theatres!
Intel funded ISR (internet Suspend/Resume) project achieved some milestones.
Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) is a new approach to mobile computing in which a user's computing environment follows the user through the Internet as he or she travels. Today, when a laptop computer is closed/hibernated, the user's execution state is suspended to disk. When the user moves the laptop to a new physical location, the user may re-open the laptop, and resume working in the same environment that was active at the time of suspend. The goal of the ISR project is to achieve the same effect without requiring the user to transport physical hardware. (Intel)
RFID technology gained significant ground
Infact newer and newer uses of this technology are being thought out every day. The success in the RFID area seems to be in identifying niche areas and providing solutions. Infact Gartner thinks RFID is one of the ten technologies to watch in 2005. Frankly I do not seeraction this year despite efforts especially by leading retailers
XQuery got final touches at W3C and is likely to replace SQL for XML databases
This is one technology area none of us can claim to be oblivious of. If you do not know more about this already, use Google today itself.
Search became personal with Google Desktop
Be aware of the security issues before using it. I do not think it is enterprise class yet. Mind you, Microsoft is catching up fast on this.
Digital Music became cool with iPOD
A great lesson on identifying the right business model. MP3 and music downloads were actually bad news for the music industry with Napster clones around. But iPOD business model has changed some of these technologies to a boon.

I have some predictions for 2005 but let that be in the next post....

The Big Bang

2005-03-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

No that is not true...This is not meant to be a big bang. This is to be expected to be a painful process of building brick by brick...creating my own blog. I have named it 'Dr. Ashok on Technology'. That is not really true if you are a purist in defining the term 'technology'. Because I intend to put my ideas and thoughts on anything under the sun here. So pardon me if you fell for the 'Technology' part. Let me tell you, most of it will be anyway relating to technology.

Then the question arise..'What do I know of Technology?'. To tell the truth, I do not know much. But I have an open mind and I can appreciate it. In other words, if I see somebody standing on the road shouting 'Beam me up', I will not consider him bonkers.

That is pretty much it...let me start blogging

Ashok