Emerging Technologies and Markets - All Comments

search engine dogpile

search engine dogpile — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:06:44 GMT

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Re: Craig Mundie on Personalization

JTOBIAS MUSIC — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:09:00 GMT

CRAIG MUNDIE,WILL NO DOUBT,FILL BILLS SHOES,WITH EASE, JEFFREY

Re: Electricity bill payment and CRM 2.0

Krishnan Ramanathan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:02:00 GMT

Hi Jamie Yes its a headache. All my other bills (credit card, phone, TV ) are paid through automatic payment systems. For some reason, its not working correctly only with the utility company. Maybe the problem is at the boundary of the two IT systems (my bank and the utility company) From an economics perspective, the utility company has increased their costs and reduced their efficiency by making customers switch back to manual systems. If it had been a profit-making company, it would have paid (some) attention to these things. Its a government monopoly and behaves like a government monopoly.BTW, power distribution is privatized in some parts of India (eg. Reliance in Mumbai). Hopefully it will happen in the other metros (including Bangalore) in the near future. Krishnan

Re: Electricity bill payment and CRM 2.0

Jamie Beckett — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:29:00 GMT

hi Krishnan, sounds like a headache! I don't know what I'd do without automatic payment systems. I fear I'd forget all my bills. It's clear that more and better CRM is needed. Customers who pay regularly shouldn't have their electricity turned off. I also wonder if the problem is with the utility company . . .

Re: Life, identity and consciousness

Krishnan Ramanathan — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:57:00 GMT

Hi James Thanks for the links. I was not even aware of Daniel Dennett and his work though I had read Richard Dawkins. The essay on superintelligence is a compelling read. I remember an Archie comic where Dilton creates an exact replica of Jughead (which then created a lot of mischief since it was programmed to behave exactly like Jughead). Perhaps the ipod of the future is a device that is the replica of ones brain. Krishnan

Re: Life, identity and consciousness

JamesLynn — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:29:00 GMT

Krishnan,

This is a very exciting area (actually multiple, distinct areas) of study. 
I have been following this line of research for almost 20
years now and the recent growth in the attention it is
receiving is incredible. 

For anyone looking for other sources of reading enjoyment - 

Daniel Dennett's Home Pag
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettd.htm

HOW LONG BEFORE SUPERINTELLIGENCE?
http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligence.html

Ray Kurzweil's Home Page
http://www.kurzweilai.net

Overview of the field of Neuroethics
http://neuroethics.upenn.edu/overview.html

Re: Attributes of a good ad experience

Krishnan Ramanathan — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:42:00 GMT

Thanks Jamie. Because incoming calls are free in India, mobile companies think it is okay to spam customers. Perhaps there are ways to block it but blocking should be the default. If the mobile company put up a web page where I can input what kinds of ads I would like and how many I am willing to see, I might even give them this input. Problem is most advertisers think consumers dont want to see ads and the only way to get them to see it is to spam (which in turn makes the consumers unwilling to see the ads).

Re: Attributes of a good ad experience

Jamie Beckett — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:02:00 GMT

really interesting post -- I agree with your thoughts about the ideal ad experience. We don't yet have the advertising mobile phone call in the States, thank goodness. I don't think I could stand that, as we also pay for minutes. That would just add insult to injury.

Re: The economic value of a Personal Compute

Krishnan Ramanathan — Sat, 19 May 2007 01:03:00 GMT

Interesting comment, Giordano. The poor in India have television access. Many also have mobile access now thanks to the low cost of handsets and mobile services. Most of the poor dont own a PC because it is unaffordable. That said, I know even well off people in cities who dont own a PC/Internet connection yet. I suspect the main reason is lack of PC literacy, lack of local language content and lack of locally relevant applications. To solve the literacy issue, it would help if some company like HP or Microsoft provided a training video on "How to use the Internet for fun and profit" along with the PC. I think one benefits more from communications infrastructure when one lives in cities (as is the case with the US). A lot of people in India live in small sized villages and hence might not derive the same benefits from communications infrastructure that a city dweller would. - Krishnan

Re: The economic value of a Personal Compute

Giordano Beretta — Thu, 17 May 2007 20:49:00 GMT

There is one value as a business tool and one value as a personal tool. The most important feature as a personal tool is that it is a highly efficient asynchronous communications tool. Historically, over the past several thousand years, humanity has always been willing to make large investments in new communication technologies, because the benefits have always come very fast. For example, here in the US even poor people who have a hard time putting food on the table typically have a phone, cable TV, and Internet access. The only anomaly here in the US is that unlike in other countries, the Government itself does not invest in the infrastructure necessary to make the PC even more efficient.

Re: The economic value of a Personal Compute

Krishnan Ramanathan — Wed, 16 May 2007 02:55:00 GMT

Thanks for the comment Jamie. You are right that the PC can be sometimes hard to use especially for someone without a computer education. I also agree that an "instant on" mobile device would be ideal for many productivity applications. As you mention, a separate bigger display on a mobile (or allowing to connect to a bigger display) would help. However, Internet consumption on the mobile hasnt yet taken off for some reason in many parts of the world (even in India where many people have GPRS capable handsets). Whatever the reasons for this, it is limiting the mobile from cannabilizing economic value which the PC enables as a data access device - Krishnan

Re: The economic value of a Personal Compute

Jamie Beckett — Fri, 11 May 2007 23:11:00 GMT

Krishnan, I think of my computer mainly as a tool. I guess you could say it has economic value, but all PCs are still too slow, too hard to use and too prone to problems. I think what we need is an "instant on" device, maybe even one that can be customized for the user. With regard to screen size -- I use my PC mainly for web search, email, web authoring and writing -- so size isn't as big an issue as clarity is. I can't figure out why no one has yet come up with a device with a foldable or portable display. Size, in fact, is one reason why I would welcome a fast, usable mobile device like k_purushottam suggests. I can't be the only one tired of lugging my laptop around.

Re: The economic value of a Personal Compute

Krishnan Ramanathan — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:28:00 GMT

Thanks for the comments Puru. It is quite possible that once the web navigation and data input problems for mobiles is solved, the mobile phone might be the computing device of the future. My feeling is it is still a few years away. In India though, the mobile is already the first computing device for many people. I agree with your premise; having an always on and available computing device would be of huge economic value. That said, a lot of applications are going to require a bigger screen, faster processors and lots of storage. Until faster processors and storage (this is happening already) get into mobiles, it looks likely that the PC in its current form will stay on for some time to come.

Re: The economic value of a Personal Compute

k_purushottam — Wed, 09 May 2007 10:58:00 GMT

Hi , The Pc has been a boon for the last 20 years+. Now the time may have come to think of its new form. Will it be a handheld device which will have functionality of a pc.which is always connected to the net....needless to say wirelessly. which will also double up as a mobile phone. Like an ipaq . what do u think will prevent this from becoming the personal computing,entertaining device etc etc of the future? It will surpass the economic value of the PC as we know it today! Puru

Re: Learning mathematics

Krishnan Ramanathan — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:13:00 GMT

Thanks Giordano. The thing I like about Wikipedia is that one can take in short chunks at a time and the descriptions are human readable and not just mathematician readable. The hyperlinked nature allows a broader exploration of topics. I had read about both the Borel-Cantelli lemma and the infinite monkeys theorem before but had never connected them, the wiki page on the Borel-Cantelli lemma links to the infinite monkeys theorem. It is this kind of discovery that makes Wikipedia a joy (I never saw this connection made in a real analysis text). I remember reading somewhere that even Math Ph.D students read the Wiki math pages and learn something new. But a systematic study would require a textbook, so Wikipedia cannot substitute a book (atleast for now). But some day in the future, it might be possible to stitch a textbook from Wikipedia content.