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:

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:

• Leader of the Free World @ Wired Magazine
• Why Linux is Great
• The Greatest OS that (N)Ever Was @ Wired Magazine
• Open Sources

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:

• GNU
• Free as in ‘Freedom’
• Open Sources

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:

• O.S.I.
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar
• Open Sources

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:

• A Timeline of Open Source in Government @ O’Reilly’s linux devcenter.com (covers the period 1995 – 2002)
• Linux in Government
• Use of free software in government agencies (Exposure of Reasons for passing a bill by the Government of Peru)
• Letter from Microsoft to Peru congressman Villanueva Nuñez – English translation 1
• Reply by Congressman Villanueva Nuñez to Microsoft
• Peruvian Congressman refutes Microsoft’s “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt” (F.U.D.) concerning free and open source software @ O.S.I.

More resources on Linux in Government:

• Linux in Government @ Linux Journal
• Linux in Government @ LinuxWorld.com

Linux and Microsoft:

• ‘Halloween’ Documents at OSI
• What’s so bad about Microsoft?
• What alternatives are there to Microsoft?

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.

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

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:

• Bloomberg
  
• Reuters
• The Wall Street Journal
• Barron’s

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

• The Big Picture by Barry Ritholtz
• Henry Blodget
• Felix Salmon
• Matt Taibbi (gives the idea of precious metal market manipulation a passing mention in his latest Rolling Stone article on the Fed & GS)
• Infectious Greed by Paul Kedrosky

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

• King’s World News
• The New York Post
• GATA
• ZeroHedge

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

JP Morgan

Silver ETF

Startup Lessons Learned

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:

• Raymond Luk & Robin Ahn of Flow Ventures
• Embrase
• Barry Paquet – who was also at the very good recent Montreal NewTech organized by Felipe Coimbra with the help of sponsors. David Dufresne was there presenting on how to seduce VCs.
• McGill University

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:

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.

• Eric Ries and Steve Blank were profiled, together with the concept in the New York Times.
• The Simulcast videos are here.
• Slides for the presentations are here.
• Notes about the conference are here.

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?

“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.

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.

Google therefore wants to become your favorite ISP. This will allow a new generation of applications and also enable them to continue to explore Music and Video delivery by broadband but also fits into grander plans.

Back then in November 2007, when they bought Grand Central, I thought they would one day become a Telecommunications company. Owning the fiber, the infrastructure, the shop for the handsets and the apps are so many steps in VOIP Telecommunications domination.

The last one would be proposing some kind of wireless access built on top of their own fibre ultra-high speed network.

See also my prediction about how Google is poised to massively disrupt the Telecommunications Industry here:

http://www.yashlabs.com/wp/2009/12/20/top-9-reasons-why-the-google-nexus-one-phone-beats-apples-iphone/