It was in summer of 1985, I had just completed my M.Stat, and was following Wimbledon.

Out of the blue comes a 17 year old Boris Becker who goes on to win the cup as first unseeded player,  and bring glory to himself and his country.

I was 22 years then, and had absolutely no impact. It got me thinking – how amazing is a  human being. Boris would have worked really hard, must have had terrific willpower, tremendous skill set to courageously perform. He had  an extreme desire and achieved it. Just at the age of 17 years.

There are many more people like Boris, before and after 1985! but Boris I will never forget, for putting my life in perspective then and there.

Human beings can train themselves to do many activities.

They can become proficient enough to make a decent living by doing what they are most proficient about, and in many cases reach world-class in their fields.

As Malcolm Galdwell says in his book Outliers, it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become world class in any field.  About 1,250 days (~ four years) of 8 hours/day of concentrated effort.

This is also true for academicians and scientists – most of the Nobel prize (or equivalent) winning scientists have toiled for long hours, spent lot of think time to make breakthroughs that brought in new understanding for human kind.

Can everyone do it – yes! but there is a big mountain to cross -

you need to work hard to work harder,

the harder you work the easier it gets!

Most people lose out on “working hard to work harder”, and cannot reach the next step!

But once you reach the next step -

Your field becomes your life!

MIT researchers have come up with a microship that can be embedded within the eye to provide signals to brain. These signals can be interpreted by the brain to get visual comprehension of the surrounding.  The person wears spectacles that has a tiny camera which transmits signals to the microchip in the eye.

This is one of the 50 best innovations in 2009.

Check:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1934027,00.html

for more details.

There has been tremendous motivation to figure out ‘persona’ of users of Internet through information gathered from the web. This information can be from their blogs, comments on other’s articles, home pages, purchase patterns, etc. One recent work has been discussed here.
Unless one is careful, one can reveal traits that can be exploited by others. On the other hand, knowing that such profiling is being done, one can create a ‘virtual aura’ that is beneficial to us.

Check out this article about how Corporates are going to stiffle Internet for general public and make huge profits. 

Also check Save The Internet site to fight for network neutrality. 

Dijkstra started as a first ever programmer of a computer from 1952-1962.
This kindled his interest in computer science and one of the most important and still a very open problem that he tackled is — will this computer program do exactly what I intend it to do.

He was the inventor of shortest path algorithm carrying his name, semaphores and many other core computer science ideas that we take for granted.

He advocated structured programming and promulgated the need for 'Discipline of prgramming'. This changed the move from 'ad-hoc' programming languages such as Fortran to very structured languages such as, Algol, C, C++ and Java.

One of my favorite Dijkstra's quotes is one to a promising researcher, who asked how to select topic for research:

Do only what only you can do!!!!

The more I think about this quote the more pertinent it is, and in a way defines what 'doing research' is all about, and what makes you a researcher.

———–

A comment from one of the readers -

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? – Albert Einstein

—–

This where the 'profound' nature of Dijkstra's quote becomes apparant — knowing – 'what only you can do is the key' – what are your strengths – weaknesses, what kind of problems do you like to solve, etc. 

Like Google advertises — 'we have a problem with your name on it". It is like stating these are the problems you are most comfortable, happy, and interested in addressing.

Mayabazar is the all time favorite telugu movie. This movie – from first scene to last scene is nearly perfect. The acting is phenomenol — with Savitri being absolutely outstanding while switching from Sasirekha to Gathokatcha almost seamlessly.

The picturization of 'Lahiri, Lahiri' song on a full moon day in black & white is fantastic in terms of clarity. The music, songs and the pure humor makes it a complete family entertainer.

I have known people who have seen this movie more than few thousand times.

Plog allows you to organize photos taken through cameraphones, create a storyline, and share these with others.

With a cameraphone one can shoot movies and recently there was an award given to the best cameraphone movie. It was two minute duration movie .

This is where – anyone, anywhere can get realistic visual perception of what others are seeing. It is not unlikely for a person to go to a shop click few images, send it to spouse for suggestions (through sms) and proceed with purchase of items.

One can also have cameraphone photos/video clips to be automatically posted in blogs for others to see. So, in your next vacation, others can see the photos as and when you capture them in your blog.

This year AAAI is celebrating 50 years of AI.

AI has seen its premature glory days, an era of feeling lost, and now is again on upswing with lots of pragmatic research underway.

AAAI hosts various conferences of which annual AAAI conference is among the best, and the pragmatic nature of AI is most visible in IAAI conference. AAAI also holds fall and spring symposiums which are lively events to participate in.

AI courses have seen a change over the last five years, and this modern approach is best expounded by this course offered at University of Waterloo.

I am personally looking forward to IJCAI-2007@Hyderabad.India

Note the following project from MSR photo2search.

We ain't seen anything in the context how mobile phones and technology will change our lives.

With more proactive 'agents' in mobiles with appropriate learning and suitable configuration, along with corresponding value propositions very many opportunities are hidden.

First time, I heard about these possibilities (not all of them have led to commercial solutions, as yet) was from papers by Pattie Maes, software agents group between 1996-1998.

It has been about 10 years since she and others have proposed these ideas, now the time is ripe to take them into commercial products.

More than the commercial viability it is the social acceptance that is going to be crucial and challenging.