Google moves Web 3.0, the Semantic Web forward, with the acquisition of Metaweb and Freebase.

On 16/7/2010, In AI, Algorithmic Trading, Google, Hedge Funds, Open Source, Technology, Web 3.0, By Yash
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Google announced their acquisition of Danny Hillis’s Metaweb, owners of Freebase which allows people to store data as entities, together with relationships.

This is a big step in the rise of Web 3.0, also known as the Semantic Web, which will allow machines to compute using human understanding or human knowledge to a certain extent. Google was already overtaken by the awesome WolframAlpha knowledge computation engine and had to close the gap.

Google writes that their acquisition will be used to enhance search for tougher questions which a search on pure keywords is lacking. That kind of search, to quote Google’s example of “colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000″, necessitates additional capabilities. These include the entity being queried, its type, its relationships with other entities, and so on.

Although the initial use will be to enhance search, right after this comes the automation of human understanding. With logical predicates, one will be able to construct a body of knowledge and infer deeper meaning from information available on the web.

For instance, “Google acquires Metaweb” can be broken down into the semantic relationships below (like Thomson-Reuters‘ OpenCalais already does):

Acquirer: Google

Acquired: Metaweb

Relationship: Acquisition

Status: Confirmed.

Within the trading context, such a news headline could be used to automate Merger Arbitrage orders (Provided, of course that Metaweb was publicly traded).

Hence, to some extent at this point, computers will be able to ‘understand’ and interpret the meaning of human language and this information, in turn, could be used for further automation.

But beyond this step, with machine learning, comes the promise of an even wilder web, a web with sufficiently advanced understanding of human language, knowledge and mind, that it is indistinguishable from a sentient form.

Watch this video from Freebase to understand why entities are important:

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GNU, Linux, Free and Open Source Software

On 9/7/2010, In Linux, Open Source, By Yash
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Foreword

This is a text I wrote in 2003, seven years ago, and I thought it important to repeat it here to see how many inroads Open-Source software has made in our lives, in the Enterprise and in Governments. I consider this foundational knowledge (you must also read all the linked information, especially the Microsoft Halloween Documents) and these are things I spent years in a LUG explaining to people interested in open source software. Many discussions revolved around the licenses as far as I can remember. A follow-up post will surely be in order to showcase and analyze how far we have come in just seven years and how pervasive open source is on the Web, in the Enterprise, in Governments worldwide, and generally, in our lives.

1. Introduction

This text introduces the history of GNU/Linux, Free and Open Source Software as well as their advantages in a succinct manner. Strictly speaking, it would be more precise to begin chronologically with GNU and Richard Stallman. However, I have preferred to mention what is more familiar before moving onto less known territory so as to enable the reader to connect the dots himself/herself more easily.

2. Linus Torvalds and Linux

Linux is an Operating System compatible with the Posix standard. Linux is an O.S. that is very secure, very fast, very robust, and above all, it is free and its source code is freely available.

Linux was initially an Operating System kernel, designed and developed originally solely by a young Finnish student, Linus Torvalds. In 1991, then aged 21, and in his second year of Information Systems studies at the University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds began developing the Linux kernel. He started off on his own and on an affordable machine with an Intel 386 processor. Later on, however, he decided to make the kernel, as well as its source code, accessible to other people freely by putting them on FTP sites.

The reasons that motivated Torvalds to develop Linux were:

  • The high cost of the hardware and software necessary at the time to run a UNIX environment
  • The inadequate features and the slow reaction to positive feedback for the MINIX Operating system built by University Professor, Andrew Tanenbaum. MINIX was mostly used within academic circles.
  • The great delays suffered by the project of development of an Operating System for GNU, launched nearly 9 years before by Richard Stallman.

The free availability of the source code to the public had the result that a growing number of people were offering either feedback in the form of verbal descriptions or in the form of enhanced code to Linus. Ever since, the Linux system has always been continuously improved this way by the collaborative work of many people throughout the world. These collaborators usually work voluntarily, often during their spare time, and many do so for free.

More than ten years later, in our days, Linux is a system which is widely used in all fields where these characteristics are needed: dependability, security, robustness, speed, an economical approach, together with the possibility of customising the source code.

Linux can be found within commercial companies like Boeing, Government infrastructures, the Educational sector, and that of Research. N.A.S.A. also uses Linux.

Numerous enterprises have migrated their operations and their software to Linux for its strengths like robustness, security, and its positive economic impact on the bottom line. Many CGI effects in recent Hollywood blockbusters have been produced by software running on Linux. IBM is a great supporter of Linux. Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP have all started migrating their product lines onto Linux.

Links:

3. Richard Stallman, GNU and the FSF

A particular license governs the use of the Linux source code, the GPL. The acronym stands for the GNU Public Licence, which stipulates, among other terms, that whoever modifies the source code has the duty of injecting the new source code back into the user community.

GNU is a project that existed prior to the advent of Linux, and launched by Richard Stallman. Stallman was a Harvard student who also worked for a long time in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the AI Lab. Within the AI Lab environment, there already existed a culture of source code sharing, so that all employees could bring their individual enhancements to benefit the community. These collaborations, together with the approach of code sharing, solved numerous problems with the hardware and the software at the time. In 1983-1984, Richard Stallman built this approach into a project, which became his life project, and in a way his masterpiece. The idea of GNU is to produce and promote a combination of Operating System and Free Software compatible with UNIX, for free if possible, or for a nominal fee to all those who would need such a system.

Within the GNU sphere, the notion of ‘Free’ as in ‘Free Software’ describes the following characteristics for the user, who can:

  • Use it freely,
  • Give it to somebody else freely,
  • Modify it freely,
  • Sell it if he/she wants,
  • Use part of it in another work, even in a commercial one (provided the license allows this)

Richard Stallman went on to found the Free Software Foundation, the FSF, specifically to promote the notions of freedom associated to Free Software. From his own individual effort, and later through the contribution of hundreds of other persons throughout the world, the GNU Project grew into a myriad of freely available software for the masses. For instance, GNU Emacs, the customisable multi-editor, and GCC, the set of GNU compilers, are software initially designed and coded by Richard Stallman, but to which others have contributed afterwards.

However, the Operating System planned by Richard Stallman, the GNU Hurd, remained in development for very long, which rendered his overarching project incomplete. Indeed, even though GNU software were becoming more numerous and freely available, one still needed the costly UNIX environments to use them while Stallman wanted to democratise access to both an Operating System and applications.

Links:

4. GNU/Linux, Internet collaborations and other synergies.

Therefore, it is thanks to the fusion of the concepts and applications of the GNU Project to the Linux Operating System that Richard Stallman’s dream could materialise. In fact, Stallman insists rightly, that what is commonly called a Linux distribution, should be more correctly named a GNU/Linux system.

A Linux distribution is in reality, a collection of GNU Software with the Linux Operating System, generally regrouped and distributed freely (FTP, CDROMS) or commercially (often in a box with CDROMS and printed manuals) by teams or by companies like Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, etc…

The advent of Linux also strongly benefited from the possibilities of distant collaboration offered by the pre-Web Internet core during the 1983-1995 period (e.g. mailing lists, Usenet, FTP, etc…). More recently, the development of open source projects has also relied on web-enabled collaborative frameworks like Sourceforge and Discussion Forums.

5. Eric Raymond and ‘Open Source’ Software.

Eric Raymond is one of the collaborators to the GNU project. Actually, he developed the SendMail software. In addition, he is a fine observer of the collaborative development process that is specific to the GNU/Linux, Free and Open Source Software realm.

In his many texts available online, among which “The Cathedral and The Bazaar”, he describes his view of why Open Source succeed where others fail. In his opinion, the approach of code sharing and open collaboration has enabled the development of the complex ensemble GNU/Linux. This is to be contrasted with many commercial companies that have whole development teams which falter over the rising complexity of software systems.

In other words, Eric Raymond believes that what explains the greater dependability, security and robustness of the software developed with this particular collaborative approach, is precisely the open collaborative development model with the freely available source code. According to him, this is partly explained because there is a growing number of collaborators. Hence, any bug will most probably be trivial and easily solvable to at least one or some of the collaborators. And within traditional software development in commercial endeavours, while the development times can be estimated, the time taken for the discovery and elimination of bugs often remains unknown.

In reality, there are examples whereby some bugs linked to security were eliminated within a one-day period, thanks to one or more collaborators via the Internet. This great reactivity is to be contrasted with a commercial company who will first deny the existence of the bug, and later take a timeframe of about two weeks to solve the problem. In the meantime, the system user finds himself stuck with a vulnerable environment.

In 1998, Netscape announced that the source code of its web browser would be made available freely. Raymond interprets this as the first example of consideration – by a commercial company – of the superiority of the Open Source Development and code-sharing model (as promoted by Stallman, Torvalds and the other numerous collaborators of the GNU/Linux environment).

Furthermore, he realised that it became necessary to better formalise and express the Open Source concepts because he extrapolated that in the future, there would be more close collaborations between commercial companies and the mostly altruistic and non-business oriented collaborators of the GNU/Linux project. He therefore decided to adopt the terms “Open Source”, rather than the “Free Software” championed by Richard Stallman. Apart from certain fine print details, globally, these terms can be interchanged without any problem in many cases. However, it seems the term “Open Source” is more common these days than “Free Software”.

Eric Raymond, therefore, launched “The Open Source Initiative“, an organisation which describes and promotes the advantages of Open Source Software.

Links:

6. GNU/Linux in Mauritius

GNU/Linux is present in Mauritius in various sectors. However, it is probable that GNU/Linux is subject to a weak visibility. It is with the perspective of making people more cognisant with these subjects: the Linux Operating System, the GNU applications, Free Software and Open Source that this text has been written.

The advantages for various sectors of the country, or for specific and strategic projects are numerous. Let’s take the Cybercity initiative as an example: all GNU/Linux products are strongly based on Open Protocols and Open Standards that are at the heart of Internet communication. Better still, studies have shown that some of the implementations of standard protocols and in the GNU/Linux products are the best in the world (e.g. the TCP stack).

This means that GNU/Linux adoption better prepares the country’s integration into the new world-scale economy, of which a great component is e-commerce via Internet, by going through an optimised economic investment. This, especially at a time when commercial companies are known for their monopolistic practices, their goals being to continually raise their software product prices, or lock-in the users within either exploitative licences or non-standard/closed protocols.

It is especially important to do a proper evaluation for specific and strategic projects within the Government because costs are often transmitted onto the citizens. Governments of various foreign countries have either decided to make strong evaluations of the GNU/Linux alternatives or decided to adopt them altogether within their projects or within their infrastructure. Countries which have considered GNU/Linux or are using Open Source software are: Brazil, Peru, France, Germany, USA, China, South Africa, England, Vietnam, India, and others.

If you are within the Government, the Private Sector, the field of Education, or a home user, for more information about GNU/Linux, Free Software and Open Source Software, it is highly advised to regularly visit the MLUG web site (see below).

The local GNU/Linux landscape consists, among others, of:

1. The Mauritius Linux User Group (also known as Linux User Group of Mauritius), for which this text was created.

One can visit the website or subscribe to the mailing list at M.L.U.G.

2. Linux User Group of the University of Mauritius

3. IBL, representing the company Red Hat which sells a well-known GNU/Linux distribution, and partner of IBM, a huge promoter and vendor of Linux products

4. Tuxcafé, a cybercafe entirely built with machines running GNU/Linux

5. Mauritians Using Linux Group or M.U.L.G.

Links:

More resources on Linux in Government:

Linux and Microsoft:

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What to expect at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2010

On 6/6/2010, In Apple, Google, Technology, By Josh
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Hot on the heels of Google’s I/O 2010 aimed at Developers, Apple is set to launch its Worldwide Developer Conference tomorrow.

Here is what to expect or pay special attention to:

1. iPad

The North American and now International launch of the iPad is bound to make an appearance at the WWDC 2010. Expect to hear preliminary numbers on how the iPad is selling on the international markets.

The device paves the way for expectations about User Interface for the decade and beyond, and one day, the mouse and the desktop PC in their current form will feel archaic.

I expect a corporate call for Developers to support HTML5 and the H.264 video codec.

2. iPhone HD

The leaked iPhone 4G device should be unveiled at WWDC 2010, with the following

a. A front-facing video camera, which will help in video-conferencing
b. Swappable micro-SD storage
c. Fast ARM-based processor probably emerging from the it buyout of Intrinsity, which is an ARMH licensee, and who know how to combine ARM cores into low-power, high-speed multi-core system-on-a-chip devices.

3. Apple Gianduja

This is Apple’s replacement to Flash, and has been under development for more than a year already. It will enable Rich Internet Application Development using Apple’s own existing stable of Development Tools.

It is entirely likely that Gianduja will wow developers and end-users worldwide and will also be specially easy to use by developers to implement Web interfaces for transactional websites or applications.

On the other hand, expect the FTC or the DOJ to have a deeper look at Apple’s blockade against Adobe’s Flash technology for the iPhone and the iPad in the wake of this technology being launched because of possible anti-competitive practices.

Apple and Steve Jobs‘ view of what competition means is totally skewed and irrational these days as the CEO accuses Google of entering their turf of the Telephony market while they wouldn’t go into search, thereby conveniently forgetting the turf of so many traditional phone and mobile phone companies that Apple tread upon: Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Research In Motion to name a few.

4. Apple’s TV & Music initiatives

Apple bought out Lala which streamed music to subscribers but shut down the services. As written about previously on YashLabs, I expect the Lala technology to resurface within iTunes in the cloud, and to stream to mobile devices like the iPad, the iPhones/iPod Touches and Apple TV.

With Google’s own announcement of Google TV, backed by a cluster of high-profile suppliers and partners like Sony, Logitech, Adobe and Dish Networks, I expect Apple to retaliate with new offerings of AppleTV, including a new pricing of a $99 device and possibly new partnerships or services from TV/Movie content providers.

5. Other devices and services?

Apple has been rather quiet about their new iMac and Macbook products. Maybe they will be talked about, but I have low expectations that they will be in the limelight. Apple does have amazing and new technologies for Developers that the latter should care about like GrandCentralDispatch and OpenCL though.

Their main competitor in the new era is Google and the latter bought out a secretive startup called AgniLux and who probably know how to optimize ARM cores by interconnecting them high-speed (with light I believe). This positions Google is a new space for optimizing high-speed and low cost servers.

I don’t think Apple will announce anything server-related for now although they do have a server version of Snow Leopard, the reason being that the chose iPhone O.S. for the ARM-based iPad instead of Snow Leopard. They will, therefore have to wait till they can optimize the operating system for ARM chips until they announce that type of offering.

There could be new iPod Touches with cameras, but Apple may wait for other conferences to announce them.

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John Perkins, Economic Hit Men and a roundup of Macro, Economic, Finance Posts.

On 3/6/2010, In Finance, Trading, By Josh
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Here is a collection of my Macro/Economic/Finance posts:

1. America’s Collapsing Economy and Finance Woes Part 1

Warren Buffett, predicting the financial crisis, and some fundamental questions.

2. America’s Collapsing Economy and Finance Woes Part 2: Of Minds and Men

Ludwig Von Mises, Peter Schiff, Nouriel Roubini before he became ubiquitous in the media, and the benefits of not watching TV!

3. America’s Collapsing Economy and Finance Woes Part 3: The Wall Street Crash

The edge given by understanding the fundamentals of finance, Behavioral Finance, and Paper-Trading the news. I actually document the reasons I traded. This is probably one of my most important posts for me, as it shaped my trading. All the trades and their timing can be verified on UpDown.com.

What I did was basically short the financials on the news, and then switch the proceeds into investments of the beaten-down stocks like Silver Wheaton, which was trading at around $7 at the time – a 161% return trade. So yes, I was both simultaneously aware of long-term investments opportunities like Buffett does, and very short-term trading opportunities which are short-biased based on: 1. The Fear in the markets, which I knew would happen, and 2. News-based trading on the Financial stocks.

Results: a record beating 53% above the S&P 500 and outperforming many Hedge Fund Managers as you can see below:

Portfolio

Portfolio

4. America’s Collapsing Economy and Finance Woes Part 4: From Local To Global & Inside the Meltdown

From Paper Trading to Real Trading during the Crisis and Hedging intelligently and simply. Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Ludwig Von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, Ron Paul and the Austrian School of Economics. Boldly predicting the crash of the dollar.

5. America’s Collapsing Economy – A Massively Debt-Based Economy Which Can Lead To Bankruptcy

Debt economies and Fiat currencies and the mechanics of how a relatively obscure candidate became President.

6. A Global Economic Crisis – New Models For Investments – Soros, Buffett, Timothy Sykes and Martin Armstrong

A post which had very good reviews, to the extent that an expanded version will be published in another website (as soon as I get to it!). Who helped shaped my views and also gave me the faculty of predicting this crisis – the previously mentioned people, but also Meredith Whitney and Aaron Russo. New ways of thinking about trading and investments.

7. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Manipulation of the Silver Markets

Very serious allegations indeed by a London based Precious Metal Trader, Andrew Maguire.

8. Federal Agents Launch Criminal and Civil Probes into JP Morgan Trading in the Silver Market

Concrete actions undertaken, but there still seemed to be a media blackout. Which websites and blogs actually revealed the information.

9. More Troubled Financials: Bank of New York Mellon sued by the Attorney General & Morgan Stanley Criminal Investigation

Following up on troubled financials stocks and their behavior to the news.

10. War on Wall Street

Preliminary Criminal Probes and investigations of big banks.

Enjoy the reads, and do watch this short, animated video narrated by John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man“:

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Is trading the BP stock ethical?

On 29/5/2010, In Business, Finance, Trading, By Josh
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Yash: Remind us how deep the rabbit hole goes?
Darth_Trader: Lol! Verrrry deeep indeed!

My friend Carl Mercier tweeted me the following question, which came at a perfect time, on Thursday:

Is it ethically wrong to try to profit from BP’s situation on the stock market? One side of me thinks it’s disgusting, but…

This is a deep and interesting question considering the BP oil spill debacle, which they have now themselves denoted an ‘Environmental Catastrophe’ and I’ll approach it from several angles.

1. Trading should be rational

This was my first answer to Carl and I would like to expound on it. I do not mean to say that using ethics is irrational nor emotional.

Trading is hard, really hard, and I have found out that in trading there are two enemies: They & Yourself. Emotions do and will get in the way. So, usually, good traders will have in place a trading system to manage emotions and hence secure profits.

Systematizing trading is a good way to really enhance performance and would therefore, to me, be no different for BP.

The market price for any stock at any time is supposed to reflect an aggregate perception of the share value, and naturally will go up and down based on company fundamentals, news and whether the company is good or bad.

In any trade, therefore, you would have an edge in anticipating others’ perceptions.

In the case of BP, based on the news event itself, it was easy to anticipate that investors or traders would pummel the stock down.

Hence, taking a short position on the stock (or using the options put purchase strategy) is actually trading mass perception of BP’s value, and you could thus distance yourself from any ethics question this way.

However, ethics are supremely important. Together with morals, values and spiritual values, they are civilization-building and civilization-enhancing foundations. The following angles will explore how to trade with ethics more closely in mind.

2. Alternate Energy, Environmental Trading and other ethical plays

Our friend Daniel Haran tweeted the following good suggestion:

Carl might want to also look at green companies that could benefit

This is a good way to be on the right side of the ethical question.

Since BP is responsible for damaging the environment with this oil spill debacle, and since oil-based energy is so polluting at many points in the supply chain, then an ethical trader may want to invest in or trade alternate energy companies.

Some ideas could be:
1. Solar energy
2. Electric energy
3. Wind Energy
4. Geothermal

Another way to trade the event would be to invest or trade in companies which derive their income in environmental cleaning of such a mess.

Beware of scams

This said, I also warned Carl about the opportunistic scams that emerge nearly daily. Some stocks are promoted heavily on the web for very shady companies which, in fact, have no intention or providing any product or service at all. Indeed, their sole existence is to get the share price up so that insiders and promoters can sell them for large profits.

Here, I want to salute the US SEC which has recently seriously improved its service, going after Goldman Sachs and other big financials firms, together with investigating smaller companies.

Case in point to illustrate my warnings:

ACLH – Advanced Clean Technologies

This stock was halted by the SEC following claims that they were contacted by BP to clean up some of the spill. The stock was relentlessly promoted by @StockChaser on Twitter.

Do read the official FINRA / SEC warnings about oil-spill related scams:
Oil Spill Stock Scams—Don’t Get Cleaned Out by False Cleanup Claims

The Wall Street Journal also has an interesting read today:
BP Oil Spill Spawns Slick Stock Scams

There are many, many more scams like these, both in the Pink Sheets/OTCBB and the more ‘normal’ exchanges.

Another way to ethically trade this situation would be to consider stocks of companies having to do with safety regulations, fraud prevention, whistleblowers, anything that forces companies to be more transparent and ethical themselves actually.

Why I don’t believe in BP nor its stock

  • BP is out of touch with safety, risks, and ethics.
  • The CEO and the company lie and distort fact or are out-of-touch with the gravity of the situation (“small spill in a huge ocean” and they lied about the extent of the spill).
  • It takes years to change Enterprise Culture and based on the facts emerging from this major issue as reported, the current one cannot be backed logically. They would rather cut costs than invest in safety.
  • Because of this Enterprise Culture more focused on profits than sustainability, BP will have more ‘engineering’ accidents just like the Alaskan pipe which recently blew up. Note here that I do not think the engineers are the issue: the real issue is poor leadership and management. I would go so far as to say that Engineers should never be lead nor managed by somebody without an Engineering degree.
  • BP will face a string of class-action lawsuits which will shave off hundreds of millions from its coffers. The extent could even be in the $10 Billion to $60 Billion range depending on sources like The Guardian and Reuters
  • BP does not have any idea of how to either drill correctly at this depth nor solve the leak, as the numerous failed attempts clearly and irrevocably demonstrate.
  • The gravity of the spill will conscientise people to the necessity of weaning ourselves off of oil.
  • The BP brand is irretrievably damaged and no amount of logo photoshopping or re-branding will help
  • This BP issue has the signs of a network of corruption or of deceptive practices of which we will certainly hear more and more in the coming weeks or months

Therefore, I would not be long the stock or invest in it for the long run.

How about a short-term bounce long?

This is risky in my opinion. I have seen some people calling this play as a profitable trade overnight based on BP valuations.

However, if you take into account my analysis above, there is no end yet for the number of collateral damage BP will face in the future.

I would not do this myself.

A short position on BP as an ethical duty?

In fact, knowing how BP functions based on what this issue has revealed, it would seem to be a duty to educate people about it. Having a short position on the stock would even seem the ethical thing to do in this particular instance. However, is the time right to do this now?

I do not know for sure although my belief is there could be more downside, but what I do know is that the moment the news was out would have been the best moment to initiate such a position.

The rabbit hole runs deep indeed, but that’s probably for a future post.

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Google’s Strategy: Web meets TV, Core APIs, Tablet Computing & Mobile Ads.

On 24/5/2010, In AI, Algorithmic Trading, Finance, Open Source, By Josh
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Google + Apple = Gapple
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Following the Google I/O developer conference, it is good to make an update on Google’s sprawling offerings and business explorations and conclude as to what their strategy long-term is, which I do at the end of this post.

Google’s AdMob acquisition goes through

Last Friday, the FTC actually allowed the deal to go through and Omar Hamoui’s AdMob is now part of the Google stable. Apple’s foray into mobile advertising with Quattro Wireless must have helped the FTC make its decision.

I expect an additional lucrative revenue stream from Mobile Adverts for Google, as mobiles (smart phones, tablets) take over.

Google TV

At Google IO, during the Day 2 Keynote, Eric Schmidt unveiled Google TV. What I grasp from the keynote presentation and Google’s partners is that they will heavily back Adobe, especially Flash.

In fact, Vic Gundotra did send a jab toward Apple, using the latter’s own past words “It is a future we don’t want”, referring to access being controlled by one man, one company, one platform, just as Apple jabbed IBM in 1984 at the launch of the Mackintosh.

Google TV’s partners

On stage with Schmidt, featured Google’s partners:

  • Intel
  • Sony
  • Adobe
  • Logitech
  • Dish Networks

Augmented TV

What Google envisions is a social way of watching TV, or a melding of the web and television platforms. In this respect, it is ‘Augmented Television’.

Google’s strides with online video

The following events are very significant in my opinion, in semantics and timing, especially when taken in light of Apple’s own projects:

  • Google open-sources the VP8 codec

    • They open-sourced the VP8 codec which they obtained following the acquisition of On2. They are giving it away as a new format called WebM, which is in fact a version of the Matroska container, and which supports Ogg Vorbis Audio. Ogg Vorbis is open-source.

  • Google funds the Ogg Theora optimization on ARM platform

    • Google decided to finance the optimization of the open-source video codec for the ARM platform. This can mean only one or two things:
    - It’s about mobile video, as ARM has the best platform for mobiles & tablets computing, platform heavily relied upon by many licensees like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, Marvell, and several others.

  • Google acquires Global IP Solutions

    • This acquisition appears to me to be more about the actual Intellectual Property than the technology itself, but it does give Google access to interesting things, including, but not limited to:

    - Web-based, real-time, high-quality audio and video streaming
    - Web-based audio-conferencing and video-conferencing

  • Google acquires Episodic

    • This gives Google access to marketing data, but also a monetization platform for videos as well as great user experience experience (yes, you read that well).

  • Google acquires BumpTop

    • You may think that this is not related to online video, but in reality it is, albeit in an indirect way.

    As I mentioned in my post in 2007, BumpTop was more suited to touch-screens. This acquisition, therefore, can only mean that Google is making a big push for their tablet computing platforms, since BumpTop as is needs a bigger screen than that of smartphones and is not suited to the Desktop and mouse.

    Add this fact to the race of online video/video-conferencing acquisitions that Google is running and you can see that the Tablet platform, running Android or Chrome O.S. should ideally support video-conferencing, something that Apple forgot to include built-in in the iPad.

Google makes Core APIs accessible – Google Prediction API

Machine Learning, to me, is one of Google’s core strengths. It is therefore amazing to see them open up access to its Google Prediction API. Some critics will say that it’s a black box because you can’t choose the internal algorithm. I say that it is rather a blessing, because startups will be able to leverage Google’s algorithms and infrastructure to build their own technology for free or nearly free (some costs will apply when using Google Storage, which is necessary):

Google Prediction API

Another API Google offers is Google Latitude API, which will help with all those location-based services.

Conclusion on Google’s Strategy

  • It’s obvious that Google is focusing on mobile connectivity, ‘mobile’ here, being smart phones and tablet computers as well as probable laptops which will run Android or Chrome O.S.

    The new mobile tablets should feature video-conferencing heavily.

  • The fact that audio-conferencing technologies has also been acquired shows that Google may ramp up their VOIP services into full-fledged Business Telephony services. Look for Google Voice & Google talk integration with new audio and video-conferencing solutions going forward.
  • Google is removing risk in their online video offerings by funding the Ogg Theora video optimization and open-sourcing the VP8 codec.

    The risks are:

    1. The need to pay license fees for the H.264 codec favoured by Apple, which would impact their bottom line. Currently, they do support this codec, but they will, in the future, have the possibility of switching to their own. Open-Source, long-term is the better strategy.

    2. The possibility that Adobe’s Flash does not advance as well as Adobe has promised

  • The Core APIs opening means that Google is also poising as an alternate cloud platform for online startups to launch and scale easily. In this space, Google is trading on Amazon’s EC2 and S3 platforms, especially with Google App Engine too.
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    War on Wall Street

    On 13/5/2010, In Business, Finance, Trading, By Josh
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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission he...
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    Investigations in banks were reported by the Wall Street Journal to extend to a total of 8 or 9 banks:

    JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch (now Bank of America), UBS.

    The WSJ excerpt mentions preliminary criminal probes for the following institutions:

    JPM, DB, UBS, C

    The banks under early-stage criminal scrutiny—J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG and UBS AG—have also received civil subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a sweeping investigation of banks’ selling and trading of mortgage-related deals

    More Links:

    May 13 (Bloomberg) — U.S. prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are cooperating in a preliminary criminal probe into whether banks misled investors about their participation in mortgage-bond deals, the Wall Street Journal said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

    Still nothing about the probable criminal investigation into JPM’s alleged manipulation of the silver markets. In the meantime, SLV is promptly rising and GLD too.

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    More troubled financials: Bank of New York Mellon sued by the Attorney General & Morgan Stanley criminal investigation.

    On 12/5/2010, In Business, Finance, Trading, By Yash
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    Contrary to what I expected, the New York post article on JPM undergoing civil and criminal investigations for manipulating the silver markets hasn’t had much effect on either the public or the stock. The media blackout appears to have worked.

    In this light, it is ironical to see that the much much less serious Morgan Stanley allegations leading to a criminal probe features in the Wall Street Journal since last night, and also on Bloomberg, CNBC and Reuters.

    In addition, the suit against Bank of New York Mellon yesterday about investments tied to Bernard Madoff doesn’t seem to have had a huge effect on its stock.

    Things, could be different for MS as from today though, seeing there is a big head and shoulders pattern on the weekly chart, and a break below the neckline of 26 could easily bring it down to the 15-17 range over some time:

    Morgan Stanley

    Morgan Stanley

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    Federal Agents Launch Criminal and Civil Probes into JP Morgan trading in the Silver market

    On 9/5/2010, In Business, Finance, Technology, Trading, By Josh
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    Silver
    Image via Wikipedia

    Is one of the greatest frauds in human history, as described in my previous blog post, on the verge to be uncovered to the masses?

    As I tweeted yesterday, based on a personal blog post by The New York Post’s Business Editor Michael Gray, the CFTC and the US DOJ are simultaneously launching civil and criminal probes against JP Morgan.

    The investigation is tied to an ongoing, alleged manipulation of the silver markets, whereby JP Morgan influences the price of silver to the downside artificially by manipulating the futures market, as revealed by whistleblower Andrew Maguire to the CFTC.

    JP Morgan is supposedly engaging in these actions because of the huge short position they accumulated since taking over Bear Stearns.

    The risks to the firm if a criminal suit is filed and won against it is that it will go down completely. The two simultaneous probes mirror the current crisis that Goldman Sachs is facing.

    In addition, once the artificially depressed price of silver is stopped, the physical precious metal value should explode.

    Media Blackout & Authoritative Blogging

    None of the big financial media outfits have reported a word on this up to now and I suspect there could have been a media blackout. You’ll find no information on the following:

    In addition, none of the following high-profile Financial bloggers have written anything about it either:

    Instead, you would have heard of it from the following (apart from Yashlabs):

    I expect JPM to take another big hit come monday morning as well as other financials and the markets overall.

    JP Morgan

    JP Morgan

    Silver ETF

    Silver ETF

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    Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and manipulation of the silver markets.

    On 3/5/2010, In Business, Finance, Trading, By Josh
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    A Roman denarius, a standardized silver coin.
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    There seems to be mostly a media blackout or even cyberattacks in the form of Denials of Service (so read this quickly) at the moment about a very serious issue, probably one of the greatest frauds in human history, regarding the silver market. First there was a hearing involving regulators where it was revealed that many banks have indulged in fractional trading of paper representing physical metals beyond the physical capacity.

    Actually, you won’t find any mention of it in either Bloomberg, Reuters and other mainstream financial media. But first, some background with the ongoing story and Goldman Sachs (GS).

    The effect, if this breaks out, is to send the price of physical Gold and Silver to the moon as they are currently artificially kept down in the markets which are highly leveraged.

    Goldman Sachs – Civil Lawsuit by the SEC & Federal Criminal Probe

    On April 16th, the SEC announced that it was filing a civil lawsuit against Goldman Sachs regarding CDOs that the SEC says the firm misrepresented to its clients. GS might not be the only bank to have indulged in such things. GS stock duly tanked that very same day, spurred by the harsh interrogation in Congress, followed in the afternoon by that of Deutsche Bank. Although this day was said by GS CEO Lloyd Blankfein to be the worst in his professional life, it wasn’t to be:

    On April 29th, the Wall Street Journal wrote that the Manhattan Attorney’s Office was effecting a criminal probe into GS.

    A civil lawsuit may have meant only a tarnished reputation, together with a hefty fine, but a lost criminal lawsuit (still to happen, it’s just a probe for now) would probably mean closure of the firm.

    Goldman Sachs

    Goldman Sachs

    Morgan Stanley, the CFTC, Moore Capital & manipulation of the Palladium and Platinum markets

    The GS case is so much up front in the mainstream financial media that this news has gone nearly unnoticed, but bear with me, it will show just how important the third part of this post is.

    On April 29th, the same day that the information about an ongoing federal criminal probe against GS existed, the CFTC fined both Morgan Stanley (MS) and a Hedge Fund called Moore Capital.

    MS was fined for failing to disclose a block trade regarding oil and Moore Capital was fined for manipulating the Palladium and Platinum futures, which is a serious issue as we are supposed to be in a free market.

    While the CFTC is seen here as playing its role of regulator, this makes the following all the more serious as it has, up to now, failed to act on what is, allegedly, an ongoing crime.

    Andrew Maguire, JP Morgan, Manipulation of the silver markets, the CFTC and the DOJ

    In brief, Andrew Maguire, an independent trader, has given extensive information to the CFTC about how the Silver market is manipulated by a concentrated short position from a single entity, allegedly JP Morgan. The latter would have had an increased short position since they took over Bear Stearns. The evidence would be visible in the Market Depth information and would have been visible to the CFTC as it is to traders.

    Note that right after this, Andrew Maguire was the victim of a hit and run, sending him and his wife to hospital. They appear to be better now.

    Since that time, the CFTC has failed to do anything about it, and this exposes the CFTC and the people there who received the email to very serious charges, probably including those of Misprision of Treason.

    However, this Saturday, a letter from the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust division acknowledged that if there is such a thing ongoing, then they would not hesitate to investigate JP Morgan and act on it.

    To give you an idea of how serious this is, it is much bigger than the current problem facing GS.

    Here is the supposed contents from the DOJ letter:

    The DOJ will carefully consider the issue you raise, and you can be assured that if we conclude that silver traders have engaged in anti-competitive conduct, we will take appropriate enforcement action.

    Going more or less anti-chronologically,

    Here’s an interview with Ted Butler on the metal markets.

    ZeroHedge’s original article.

    And here’s Andrew Maguire email exchange with the CFTC, walking them step-by-step through the manipulation.

    From: Andrew Maguire
    Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 12:51 PM
    To: Ramirez, Eliud [CFTC]
    Cc: Chilton, Bart [CFTC]
    Subject: Silver today

    Dear Mr. Ramirez:

    I thought you might be interested in looking into the silver trading today. It was a good example of how a single seller, when they hold such a concentrated position in the very small silver market, can instigate a selloff at will.

    These events trade to a regular pattern and we see orchestrated selling occur 100% of the time at options expiry, contract rollover, non-farm payrolls (no matter if the news is bullish or bearish), and in a lesser way at the daily silver fix. I have attached a small presentation to illustrate some of these events. I have included gold, as the same traders to a lesser extent hold a controlling position there too.

    Please ignore the last few slides as they were part of a training session I was holding for new traders.

    I brought to your attention during our meeting how we traders look for the “signals” they (JPMorgan) send just prior to a big move. I saw the first signals early in Asia in thin volume. As traders we profited from this information but that is not the point as I do not like to operate in a rigged market and what is in reality a crime in progress.

    As an example, if you look at the trades just before the pit open today you will see around 1,500 contracts sell all at once where the bids were tiny by comparison in the fives and tens. This has the immediate effect of gaining $2,500 per contract on the short positions against the long holders, who lost that in moments and likely were stopped out. Perhaps look for yourselves into who was behind the trades at that time and note that within that 10-minute period 2,800 contracts hit all the bids to overcome them. This is hardly how a normal trader gets the best price when selling a commodity. Note silver instigated a rapid move lower in both precious metals.

    This kind of trading can occur only when a market is being controlled by a single trading entity.

    I have a lot of captured data illustrating just about every price takedown since JPMorgan took over the Bear Stearns short silver position.

    I am sure you are in a better position to look into the exact details.

    It is my wish just to bring more information to your attention to assist you in putting a stop to this criminal activity.

    Kind regards,
    Andrew Maguire

    * * *

    From: Ramirez, Eliud [CFTC]
    To: Andrew Maguire
    Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 4:04 PM
    Subject: RE: Silver today

    Mr. Maguire,

    Thank you for this communication, and for taking the time to furnish the slides.

    * * *

    From: Andrew Maguire
    To: Ramirez, Eliud [CFTC]
    Cc: BChilton [CFTC]
    Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 3:18 PM
    Subject: Re: Silver today

    Dear Mr. Ramirez,

    Thanks for your response.

    Thought it may be helpful to your investigation if I gave you the heads up for a manipulative event signaled for Friday, 5th Feb. The non-farm payrolls number will be announced at 8.30 ET. There will be one of two scenarios occurring, and both will result in silver (and gold) being taken down with a wave of short selling designed to take out obvious support levels and trip stops below. While I will no doubt be able to profit from this upcoming trade, it is an example of just how easy it is to manipulate a market if a concentrated position is allowed by a very small group of traders.

    I sent you a slide of a couple of past examples of just how this will play out.

    Scenario 1. The news is bad (employment is worse). This will have a bullish effect on gold and silver as the U.S. dollar weakens and the precious metals draw bids, spiking them higher. This will be sold into within a very short time (1-5 mins) with thousands of new short contracts being added, overcoming any new bids and spiking the precious metals down hard, targeting key technical support levels.

    Scenario 2. The news is good (employment is better than expected). This will result in a massive short position being instigated almost immediately with no move up. This will not initially be liquidation of long positions but will result in stops being triggered, again targeting key support levels.

    Both scenarios will spell an attempt by the two main short holders to illegally drive the market down and reap very large profits. Locals such as myself will be “invited” on board, which will further add downward pressure.

    The question I would expect you might ask is: Who is behind the sudden selling and is it the entity/entities holding a concentrated position? How is it possible for me to know what will occur days before it will happen?

    Only if a market is manipulated could this possibly occur.

    I would ask you watch the “market depth” live as this event occurs and tag who instigates the move. This would surly help you to pose questions to the parties involved.

    This kind of “not-for-profit selling” will end badly and risks the integrity of the COMEX and OTC markets.

    I am aware that physical buyers in large size are awaiting this event to scoop up as much “discounted” gold and silver as possible. These are sophisticated entities, mainly foreign, who know how to play the short sellers and turn this paper gold into real delivered physical.

    Given that the OTC market (where a lot of the selling occurs) runs on a fractional reserve basis and is not backed up by 1-1 physical gold, this leveraged short selling, where ownership of each ounce of gold has multi claims, poses a very large risk.

    I leave this with you, but if you need anything from me that might help you in your investigation I would be pleased to help.

    Kind regards,
    Andrew T. Maguire

    * * *

    From: Andrew Maguire
    To: Ramirez, Eliud [CFTC]
    Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 2:11 PM
    Subject: Fw: Silver today

    If you get this in a timely manner, with silver at 15.330 post data, I would suggest you look at who is adding short contracts in the silver contract while gold still rises after NFP data. It is undoubtedly the concentrated short who has “walked silver down” since Wednesday, putting large blocks in the way of bids. This is clear manipulation as the long holders who have been liquidated are matched by new short selling as open interest is rising during the decline.

    There should be no reason for this to be occurring other than controlling silver’s rise. There is an intent to drive silver through the 15 level stops before buying them back after flushing out the long holders.

    Regards,
    Andrew

    * * *

    From: Andrew Maguire
    To: Ramirez, Eliud [CFTC]
    Cc: BChilton [CFTC]; GGensler [CFTC]
    Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 3:37 PM
    Subject: Fw: Silver today

    A final e-mail to confirm that the silver manipulation was a great success and played out EXACTLY to plan as predicted yesterday. How would this be possible if the silver market was not in the full control of the parties we discussed in our phone interview? I have honored my commitment not to publicize our discussions.

    I hope you took note of how and who added the short sales (I certainly have a copy) and I am certain you will find it is the same concentrated shorts who have been in full control since JPM took over the Bear Stearns position.

    It is common knowledge here in London among the metals traders that it is JPM’s intent to flush out and cover as many shorts as possible prior to any discussion in March about position limits. I feel sorry for all those not in this loop. A serious amount of money was made and lost today and in my opinion as a result of the CFTC’s allowing by your own definition an illegal concentrated and manipulative position to continue.

    Bart, you made reference to it at the energy meeting. Even if the level is in dispute, what is not disputed is that it exists. Surely some discussions should have taken place between the parties by now. Obviously they feel they can act with impunity.

    If I can compile the data, then the CFTC should be able to too.

    I would think this is an embarrassment to you as regulators.

    Hoping to get your acknowledgement.

    Kind regards,
    Andrew T. Maguire

    * * *

    From: Andrew Maguire
    To: Ramirez, Eliud [CFTC]
    Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 7:47 PM
    Subject: Fw: Silver today

    Just logging off here in London. Final note.

    Now that gold is undergoing short covering, please look at market depth right now in silver and evidence the large selling blocks in a thin market being put in the way of silver regaining the technical 15 level, which would cause a short covering rally and new longs being instigated. This is resulting in the gold-silver ratio being stretched to ridiculous levels.

    I hope this day has given you an example of how silver is “managed” and gives you something more to work with.

    If this was long manipulation in, say, the energy market, the shoe would be on the other foot, I suspect.

    Have a good weekend.

    Andrew

    * * *

    From: Andrew Maguire
    Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 8:24 AM
    To: Ramirez, Eliud [CFTC]
    Cc: Gensler, Gary; Chilton, Bart [CFTC]
    Subject: Fw: Silver today

    Dear Mr. Ramirez,

    I hadn’t received any acknowledgement from you regarding the series of e-mails sent by me last week warning you of the planned market manipulation that would occur in silver and gold a full two days prior to the non-farm payrolls data release.

    My objective was to give you something in advance to watch, log, and follow up in your market manipulation investigation.

    You will note that the huge footprints left by the two concentrated large shorts were obvious and easily identifiable. You have the data.

    The signals I identified ahead of the intended short selling event were clear.

    The “live” action I sent you 41 minutes after the trigger event predicting the next imminent move also played out within minutes and exactly as I outlined.

    Surely you must at least be somewhat mystified that a market move could be forecast with such accuracy if it was free trading.

    All you have to do is identify the large seller and if it is the concentrated short shown in the bank participation report, bring them to task for market manipulation.

    I have honored my commitment to assist you and keep any information we discuss private,however if you are going to ignore my information I will deem that commitment to have expired.

    All I ask is that you acknowledge receipt of my information. The rest I leave in your good hands.

    Respectfully yours,

    Andrew T. Maguire

    * * *

    From: Ramirez, Eliud
    To: Andrew Maguire
    Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 1:29 PM
    Subject: RE: Silver today

    Good afternoon, Mr. Maguire,

    I have received and reviewed your email communications. Thank you so very much for your observations.

    Here are some extracts from the CFTC hearing (during which it was admitted that there are more paper contracts than actual physical precious metal in the world).

    The OTC markets is a Ponzi scheme:

    Rolling Stone has a passing mention of metal market manipulation by the excellent Matt Taibbi in “The Feds vs Goldman”

    The only mainstream media to have broken the media blackout appears to be the New York Post in “Metal$ are in the Pit”

    Conclusion

    Is the timing of the SEC announcement against GS just too close to the following to be purely coincidental?
    1. The lambasting of the SEC because of its woes (employees watching porn, failing to act on Madoff after Markopolos’s information, failing to go rapidly after Stanford)
    2. The push for financial reform which needs to be passed through Congress.

    Are the very public pursuits against these major financial institutions the last steps in creating a much more concentrated regulatory body with international bearings?

    Also, if and when the DOJ’s intentions of following criminal investigation against JP Morgan’s alleged manipulation of the silver market is publicized throughout the new and old media world, where will its stock go?

    JP Morgan

    JP Morgan

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    Eric Ries, Lean Startups & Startup Lessons Learned

    On 27/4/2010, In Business, Technology, By Josh
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    Startup Lessons Learned

    Startup Lessons Learned

    Last Friday I attended the Startup Lessons Learned conference from San Francisco, which was simultaneously webcast in many other cities throughout the world.

    In Montreal, we were one of the cities with the biggest audience. It was an opportunity to connect with a lot of the Montreal Technology, VC & Business community, catching up with some old and new connections (Carl Mercier, Chris Scott, George Favvas, Daniel Haran, Felipe Coimbra, Daniel Drouet, Michael Lenczner, Alain Theriaut), and also… play with the iPad (thanks to Carl and Raymond for lending me their machines to tinker with).

    The event was made possible thanks to:

    Lean Startups – Concept and Methodology

    Lean Startups is both a concept and a crowd-sourced evolving methodology.

    As a concept, the gist of it is being adaptable and having the ability to optimize the lean startup iteration cycle, which is very different from an established company’s business cycle. What draws me to that school of thinking is the optimization. As a Software Engineer myself, that’s the essence of how I approach business, and practically anything I do in fact.

    As a methodology, it is quite rich and focused on integrating learning as an important goal for a startup.

    Raymond Luk and I talked about how it is analogous to the Toyota lean manufacturing concept and Gemba Kaizen.

    There is much, much more to it than what I wrote above, so I recommend you have a good look at the resources at the end of this post. For instance, the concepts of:

    • Minimum Viable Product
    • Business Model Discovery
    • Customer Discovery & Customer Development
    • Pivot
    • Build Cycle
    • Agile

    The People behind the Lean Startups community

    I first heard about Lean Startups/Startup Lessons learned through following the very excellent Hiten Shah on Twitter and his Startup Chat and through Eric Ries.

    Eric Ries, a Software Engineer is a driving force behind the concept of lean startup, and the instigator of it all.

    There’s a whole community and community feel around it too:

  • Dave McClure has a big involvement. You should check out his AARRR! presentation, very focused on using metrics intelligently.
  • Kent Beck made an interesting presentation, as did the people behind Aardvark, now part of the Google stable.
  • Steve Blank probably had one of the best presentations of the day, contrasting Enterprises and Startups.

    • All in all, a very interesting of presentations, panels and interviews.

    Some resources about the Startup Lessons Learned simulcast

    If you like startups, I recommend you watch the whole of it.

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    Apple KO’s Google on mobile ads (with the help of the FTC)

    On 8/4/2010, In Business, Google, Open Source, Technology, Web O.S., By Josh
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    Apple Inc.
    Image via Wikipedia

    Total war continues to brew between these two behemoths this year as I predicted in ‘Clash of the Titans – Apple vs Google in 2010 and beyond‘ at the close of 2009.

    On January 5th, just as Google stepped onto Apple’s Smartphone & Telecommunication turf by launching the Google Nexus One, Apple retaliated by acquiring Quattro Wireless, a small mobile ad company. Actually, Apple initially wanted to buy AdMob, but Google stepped in with a better offer, thus thwarting Apple.

    iPhone O.S. 4.0 and a mobile Ad revolution

    With the Quattro Wireless acquisition, Apple announced a new Ad platform for iPhone O.S. 4.0 today.

    Moreover, with the insight that people spend time within apps on the iPhone rather than on searching the web like on the Desktop, Steve Jobs demonstrated a new way for mobile ads to engage users. The ads are shown in a small banner, which when clicked, opens up as an overlay on the screen, with interactive content within this new window, like a game, a video, etc…. Nothing else exists like this on mobiles yet.

    Apple will provide %60 of revenues back to developers, so the incentive to use Ads is quite good.

    That’s Punch number 1 to Google.

    The FTC follows up Apple’s punch by one of its own

    This is Murphy’s Law at Enterprise level: on the same day that Apple announces its revolutionary iAd platform, the FTC also announces that it is blocking Google’s acquisition of AdMob (update: the post linked to seems misleading – the title says the FTC has blocked the deal, but the content mentions the FTC is still gathering information. The article looks like it’s promoting a small OTC.BB stock within the context, so perhaps Google is not knocked out yet).

    Conclusion

    Apple seems to have an overwhelming lead over Google in the mobile space, especially with the following:
    1. Excellent, precise, intuitive multi-touch implementation
    2. Very wide user-base and lots of developers and existing apps
    3. Mobile Ad lead
    4. Superb gaming platform
    5. Relentless continuous improvement of its devices and platform: launch of the iPad and iPhone OS 4 (with multitasking)
    6. Superb App Store for distribution

    Google’s advantages are the following:
    1. Open platform and Open-source implementation
    2. Better search, cloud-computing, machine learning algorithms
    3. No agenda against Adobe Flash

    I expect Apple to continue to lead this space well into 2010 and beyond unless Google does something radical with the launch of Chrome OS and perhaps, as I wish, that they overturn the usual Telecom Industry with free/very low cost VOIP calls worldwide.

    What’s new with the Gizmo5 acquisition, Google?

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    How to create ebooks of webpages to read later on your smartphone or iPad

    On 7/4/2010, In General, Productivity, By Josh
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    Image representing Instapaper as depicted in C...
    Image via CrunchBase

    I have been using this trick to get all the webpages I want to read bundled in an eBook that I can carry offline and read on my Nexus One. You can also use any ePub compatible reader, e.g. on your iPad too.

    Requirements

    1. Google Nexus One (or any other smartphone or mobile device which has an ePub eBook reader)

    2. Aldiko on Google Nexus One (or your preferred ePub eBook reader on your device)

    3. Instapaper account

    Method

    1. Add the Instapaper Read Later Bookmarklet to your browser bookmark bar.

    To do that, on your account, click on Add+, then drag the “Read Later” bookmarket into your browser’s bookmark bar

    2. On any webpage that you want to read later, click the Read Later bookmarklet to save it to Instapaper. When you’re done saving several webpages of different sites, that will constitute your eBook, proceed to step 3:

    3. On Instapaper, Add a new folder and name it.

    4. On Instapaper, in Unread, move all the pages you want to read into the folder you just created. Once done, proceed to 5.

    5. On your Nexus One (or other device), browse to Instapaper.com.

    6. Select the folder you want to create an eBook out of.

    7. Click the ePub icon underneath the Download (Beta) section

    8. The eBook will download. Once downloaded, Click on it and it will be imported in your Aldiko bookshelf and you can read it offline.

    Troubleshooting

    Sometimes, step 8 doesn’t work. In that case, just download the .ePub file from a desktop or laptop and transfer it to your device manually.

    Aldiko settings

    My preferred settings for Aldiko are:
    - Disabled screen rotation: I want to be able to read resting on my side when in bed
    - Use Volume buttons to flip pages (and disable touching the screen to flip pages)
    - Page flip time at minimum
    - Readable font size

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    New Apple iPad videos show a glimpse of future usability issues on multi-touch touchscreens.

    On 29/3/2010, In Business, Hardware, Technology, Web O.S., By Josh
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    Revolutionary Computing

    “Magical, Revolutionary” – these are the words on Apple’s website regarding the iPad.

    Although tablet computers have been around for long, these words are not too far-fetched. In fact, they are truly well-deserved as Apple is the first company which has succeeded in conceiving a combination of Operating System, Graphic User Interface and multi-touch screen whose use becomes intuitive and second-nature as we naturally interact with objects with our fingers in real life this way. They did this with the iPhone, the iPod Touch and are leveraging this technology in the iPad, which is a good form factor to enjoy this technology.

    Yes, I believe the iPad is going to be absolutely revolutionary in the way it allows for human-computer interaction and for mobility.

    Multi-touch implementation of Nexus One and iPhone compared

    Actually, I have a Google Nexus One phone, but the multi-touch screen implementation on a iPod Touch or iPhone is much more precise, I have used both extensively. Time and time again, you will have to press several times on the Nexus One, or it will lose its calibration and the precision will go haywire. The workaround is to lock it by maintaining the Power button pressed and then unlocking it as usual. This usually does the trick, but still, it is an annoyance that hopefully can be fixed in software soon.

    Usability and User Interface

    Apple has posted a whole new set of videos showing its upcoming iPad default applications as well as a few which can be bought from the iPad App Store when it’s launched. Beyond the already familiar iTunes, YouTube, Videos, Photos, etc…, it is interesting to see how they reworked the interface of Pages, Keynote and Numbers to incorporate multi-touch. Watch how Keynote allows multi-touch selection and re-ordering of the slides for instance.

    Mashable also shows a few iPad application videos, and watching Kobo’s reader brought some User Interface thoughts to me immediately. Watch the video of Kobo as well as Apple’s own iBooks and you will see that there is a lot of “let’s do it exactly as if it were a real book” occurring, like modeling the page actually turning in 3D like real paper would, and Kobo’s reader also has various bookmarks just like you would have one on a real book.

    Kobo on iPad from Kobo on Vimeo.

    This is a collection of rather unnecessary gimmicks in my view. Do you really want the ebook page to turn like a real paper, with all the delay that it entails? Do you really want to see badly-designed pseudo bookmarks hanging on top of the book covers and on the paper when you resume reading?

    I don’t. I have a very good e-reader software on the Nexus One called Aldiko, which looks a lot like Apple’s poached design for iBooks. On it, I have just set the page flipping to the lowest setting so that when I do want to change the page, it is almost instantaneous. The last thing I want when e-reading is to have the same delays and impracticalities of a real book. I’s rather use the computing platform to its fullest. Yes, I do like the features of bookmarks so that I can resume e-reading, but let it be a well-formatted list of links I saved and named, and not a 3D animation of a string-like bookmark going away before I can set my eyes on the content.

    Thus, this brave new world will have a whole arena for people and companies who will know how to find ingenious ways of leveraging the platform for what it is – a computer with a fantastically organi and intuitive human-computer interface – and not plague it with unnecessary gimmicks or features.

    How magazines of the future may look

    See also Wired’s demonstration of a prototype magazine for a tablet, which they showed st SXSW 2010:

    Wired rocks audience at SXSW with iPad demo from Mangrove on Vimeo.

    Intuitive interface. So easy a baby can use it

    Watch this toddler play with an iPhone:

    All babies, including the iPad, belong to their respective parents.

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    Google Nexus one is finally available in Canada.

    On 16/3/2010, In Google, Linux, Open Source, Web O.S., By Josh
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    Google Nexus one for Canada Google’s Nexus one smartphone, built by HTC in close collaboration with Google is finally available in Canada since today.

    On Google’s website, you can order the phone and have it shipped to Canada. This version will work with 3G on Rogers wireless.

    This is one step is removing the link between carriers and handset manufacturers and as a commenter mentions in the Globe’s article, opens the door for greater competition and lower prices.

    Combine this with the recent announcement that Google wants to offer broadband as an ISP and even the FCC is pushing for a national broadband plan and my winning Deloitte MyTMT 2010 prediction that one day Google is going to ad-subsidize Telecom services is one step closer.

    The last mile in this is through the air: Free Wi-Fi or a Data plan.

    Google still has to reveal how it is going to integrate its Gizmo 5 acquisition with Google Voice and Android.

    Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

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