TECHNOLOGY REPORT

If you’ve got one or more analog sets and you don’t want to shift to a cable plan to access TV after February 2009, you’ll need want to apply for digital converter box discount coupons available free from Uncle Sam at this website: https://www.dtv2009.gov/

The coupons are free, you can order two at a time, and the process is simple and only takes a few minutes. Each coupon is for $40 off the price of a converter box making them very cheap.

Editor’s Note: ALWAYS order two coupons.  I’m suprised at how many people don’t realize that all the old TV’s in their house will be worthless after February ’09 without a box. Nearly everyone has at least two, or can easily give away their extra card.  -John Ghysels 

Although they are expensive, the O’Reilly Conferences are often the most prestigious in technology, bringing participants from the cutting edge of the specialized disciplines. If you are working with mapping, maps, geography, or websites that integrate those features in an important way, Where 2.0 is one of the top conferences for you.

For those on a budget or far away note that many technology conferences now offer real time video feeds, Twitter and social media tagging, and other features designed to bring remote participants right into the action. In fact if you are clever and stay on task you are likely to learn more following conferences online than in person because that often allows you to multitask more effectively. Of course you’ll miss the energy of human interaction which is a good reason to personally attend a few conferences each year in areas you find particularly interesting.

——— Press Release ———–

Beyond Maps: Where 2.0 Heads for the Frontier

Where 2.0 Conference 2009
May 19-21, 2009
San Jose, CA
Location Aware at O’Reilly Where 2.0

The 2009 Where 2.0 Call for Participation Is Closing Soon! Submit your proposal for Where 2.0 today.

Where 2.0 Seeking Proposals From Hyper-local to Geo-global

Are you shaping the technology that will shape the geospatial industry? Then we want to hear from you. Submit your proposal to lead a workshop, teach a tool and share your skill.

For three days, Where 2.0 brings together hundreds of geospatial leaders, influencers, researchers, entrepreneurs and cutting-edge coders. The workshops, seminars, panel discussions, tutorials and keynotes at Where 2.0 offer an unparalleled opportunity to present your ideas, share your research, teach new techniques, and find an audience for your product launch.

Although Technology Report won’t be attending the Cloud Connect Conference, I’d highly recommend the unconference format and the Computer History Museum venue.

——————-  Press Release —————————–

If you’re a technology programmer or business decision maker chartered with finding solutions to difficult problems, join us for Cloud Connect: the premier technology event for defining, framing, developing, and transitioning your IT portfolio into the cloud.

When: January 20-22, 2009
Where: Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
How: RSVP to attend – IT’S FREE!

As organizations consider cloud computing to process their business’ critical data, it is imperative they understand the platforms, applications and risks of moving traditional information out of the corporate data center and into the cloud. Cloud computing continues to gain steam, but there’s still significant ambiguity around this emerging architectural approach and about how many of your applications and how much of your data can safely and efficiently be moved to the cloud.

Enter Cloud Connect. Through a combination of thought leadership, unconference-style sessions, hands-on learning, and real-time development, Cloud Connect attendees will address the technical and non-technical barriers to cloud computing by discussing and developing solutions of their own in real time.

Convergence08 was a great conference with many interesting people and ideas. Thankfully the number of crackpots was very low, and even the “new age” mysticism stuff was at a minimum. Instead I found hundreds of authors, doctors, biologists, programmers, engineers, physicists, and more clear thinking folks all interested in how the new technologies will shape our world in ways more profound than we have ever experienced before.

My favorite insights came from Monica Anderson’s presentation on her approach to AI programming, which she calls “Artificial Intuition“. Unlike all other approaches to AI I’m familiar with Anderson uses biological evolution as her main analogs for conceptualizing human intelligence. I see this approach as almost a *given* if you have a good understanding of humans and thought, but it’s actually not a popular conceptual framework for AI, where most approaches rely on complex algorithmic logic – logic that Anderson argues clearly did not spawn human intelligence via evolution. Yet Anderson is by no means a programming neophyte – she’s a software engineer who has researched AI for some time, then spent two years programming at Google and then quit to start her own company, convinced that her AI approaches are on the right track.

Anderson’s work is especially impressive to me because as someone with a lot of work in biology under my belt (academically as well as corporeally) it has always surprised me how poorly many computer programmers understand even rudimentary biological concepts such as the underlying simplicity of the human neocortex and the basic principles of evolution which I’d argue emphatically have defined *every single aspect* of our human intelligence over a slow and clumsy, hit and miss process operating over millions of years. I think programmers tend to focus on mathematics and rule systems which are great modelling systems but probably a very poor analog for intelligence. This focus has in many ways poisoned the well of understanding about what humans and other animals do when they … think… which I continue to maintain is “not all that special”.

Anderson’s conceptual framework eliminates what I see as a key impediment to creating strong AI with conventional software engineering – ie having to build a massively complex programmable emulation of human thought. Instead, her approach ties together many simple routines that emulate the simple ways animals have developed to effectively interact with a changing environment.

Combining Anderson’s approach to the programming with the physical models of the neocortical column such as IBM Blue Brain would be my best bet for success in the AI field.

Jerry Yang will soon resign for the CEO post at Yahoo, continuing in that position until a successor is found.   Here is the memo he sent to Yahoo employees today:

To: all yahoos
Fr: Jerry
Subject: update

yahoos -

i wanted to address all of you on the news we’ve just announced. the board of directors and I have agreed to initiate a succession process for the ceo role of yahoo!. roy bostock, our chairman of the board, is leading the effort to identify and assess potential candidates for consideration by the full board. the board will be evaluating and considering both internal and external candidates and has retained heidrick and struggles to help in this effort.

i will be participating in the search for my successor, and i will continue as ceo until the board selects a new ceo. once a successor is named, i will return to my previous role as chief yahoo and continue to serve as a director on the board.

last june, i accepted the board’s request that i assume the ceo role to restructure and reposition the company as a whole in order to more effectively meet the fast-changing needs of both users and partners. since taking on the ceo role, i have had an ongoing dialogue with the board about succession timing. thanks in large measure to your tireless efforts, we have created a more open, competitive yahoo! and we believe the time is now right to transition to a new ceo who can take the company to the next level.

despite the external environment we face, the fact remains that yahoo! is now a significantly different company that is stronger in many ways than it was just 18 months ago. this only makes it all the more essential that we manage this opportunity to leverage the progress up to this point as effectively as possible. i strongly believe that having transformed our platform and better aligned costs and revenues, we have a unique window for the right ceo to take ownership over the next wave of mission-critical decisions facing the company.

all of you know that I have always, and will always bleed purple. i will always do what I think is right for this great company. while this step will be an adjustment for all of us, i know it’s the right one. i look forward to updating you on this process as soon as the board has developments to share, and will continue to do everything i can to make yahoo! fulfill its full potential.

thank you,
jerry

Details are just coming in but Twitter and Techcrunch are reporting that Jerry Yang will resign from the Yahoo CEO position very soon – probably tomorrow morning.    There are some Yahoo folks here at MashupCamp 8 so I’ll see if I can get some details tonight at the cocktail party.

Disclosure:  Long on Yahoo

by Joe Hunkins – Technology Report

The buzz here at Mashup Camp day one of three is mostly about solution providers”, most of which are making it easier to build very robust mashups using fairly simple tool sets.     The learning curve factor varies and I’m still digesting information, but the most impressive so far seems to be IBM’s Mashup Center which reminds me of the Google Gadget project which itself was basically launched at Mashup Camp 1 by Adam Sah and has become something of a world wide widget standard.

This morning twelve solution providers gave fast “speed geek” sessions to introduce their products and now we are reviewing some in more depth in longer sessions.     IMHO this is an excellent format even though it’s a little more structured than you’d have in a more interactive setup.

This session was initiated by Steve Omohundro of Self Aware Systems . He’s presenting an introduction to the idea of collective superintelligence, discussing the history of major changes in evolution such as cellular combination to form larger organisms and .. much later in the process … the development of languages in primates.

Book reference: “The Major Transitions in Evolution”

Steve is noting the challenges of the Prisoner’s Dilema when seeking the best ways to organize societies.

Steve notes that self protection – and even potentially dangerous behavior – could come from an AI that simply wanted to perform it’s function.  e.g a chess program could act to protect itself very rationally by noting that it’s function is to continue playing chess and if unplugged it won’t be playing.  Thus the machine might work to prevent unplugging without any “self protection” routine, rather simply from following it’s prime directive.

…. more in a moment….

Gary at Future Blogger just did a nice summary of the AI session here at Convergence 08, where we are now getting the housekeeping spiel and speakers are putting up the proposed sessions.

So far the tone of the conference is great – very professional with serious people and companies coming together to discuss the technologies that are very likely to re-invent the world over the coming decades.   Very pleased to see Pell and Norvig – both of whom represent companies and perspectives that understand and represent the critical intersection of commercial success and innovation.

The group panel and discussion kicks off with four experts in artificial intelligence who will discuss how to best harness the power of AI to build a better world.   This from the conference session descriptions:

Artificial Intelligence: the next level

To kick off Convergence08, we’ll hear a very different AI debate: not whether to create AI, or which technical path will work fastest, but “How can we use AI technology to build the world we want to live in?” Four AI pundits thrash it out, and then we all join in!