Startup Life
Technology. Startups. Venture Capital. My Life.
Posts tagged Google
World Innovation Forum
Mar 23rd
I’m planning a trip to California to do some business development and go to the World Innovation Forum amongst other things. The conference is from April 17-18, so if you want to join me, fire me an email because I would love a wingman on this mission! Seriously. (Oh, and there’s an unwritten student rate if you ask nicely …)
I ripped off a bit of content here from the HSM website for the World Innovation Forum, but I want to show you some of the people that are going to be speaking at this event:
CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN Disruptive Innovation
Author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, the business bestseller that outlines Christensen’s revolutionary theory of disruptive innovation
RENÉE MAUBORGNE Blue Ocean Strategy
“Blue Ocean Strategy challenges everything you thought you knew about strategy” (Business Strategy Review)
RAY KURZWEIL A Look into the Future
“The restless genius” (Wall Street Journal), “the ultimate thinking machine” (Forbes), “the rightful heir to Thomas Edison” (Inc. Magazine), and one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America” (PBS)
LYN HEWARD Creativity & Innovation at Cirque du Soleil
Lyn Heward is the creative fire behind Cirque du Soleil–one of the most innovative and creative companies in the world today–helping it grow to distinct 13 troupes that perform on a global stage
VINTON G. CERF Internet: An Engine of Innovation
Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist and widely considered to be the “Father of the Internet”
MICHAEL THIENEMAN A Model of Innovation: Whirlpool
Thieneman’s global position ensures innovative products and features across all of Whirlpool’s brands, reflected in an annual sales total of more than $19 billion
RICK RASHID Microsoft: Research, Product Development, and Future Technologies
As Senior Vice President, Research, Rick Rashid oversees Microsoft Research’s worldwide operations.
In November 2006 I attended the World Science Forum, which is another conference put on by HSM in New York. It was a great conference, where I had the opportunity to meet Francis Collins, Marvin Minsky, and listen to presentations made by some of the worlds greatest minds. I highly suggest getting the chance to get out to at least one of there.
innovation, 
business, 
business ideas, 
conference, 
forum, 
disruptive, 
creative, 
strategy, 
internet, 
research, 
Google, 
Microsoft
New Video 2.0 Website to come from NBC and News Corp
Mar 22nd
I’m not sure who would really want to go head to head with Google, but apparently the answer to that question is NBC and News Corp. who are launching a competitor to YouTube.com in Summer 2007.
The company, which has “yet to be given a name, or a managment team” already has distribution deals with AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, and MySpace and are planning on featuring TV shows and full-length films. Hmm … pretty good job considering there is no management team! More details on the venture can be seen in this NY Times article.
The unnamed company plans to generate revenue by making the video feeds free to watch, but subjecting the users to advertisements. How will they structure these ads?
My Thoughts
I’m not sure how the company plans to work advertising into the streaming video, if its alongside the video, or if there are interruptions within the streaming videos themselves. I can say right now that people are NOT going to like interruptions in their programs being streamed from this website; so, if that’s the plan, many people will surely be disappointed.
I wonder how long it will take before some 15-year old tech-geek programs a method of “PVR-ing” the streaming video, and either (1) cuts out the commercials and saves the video commercial-free on the computer for later playback when its convenient for them; or (2) saves the video allowing for playback with a fast-forwarding option.
I guess we’ll see what happens … either way, it could be an interesting service to check out.
Web 2.0internet
streamingGoogle
YouTube
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advertising
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Scientists Rejoice as Google Solves Data Management Crisis
Mar 21st
Okay … so maybe “rejoice” is going a little too far, but scientists in the astronomy world are quite happy with Google’s innovative solution to managing their massive amounts of data received from imaging done in space, whether its infrared, gamma-ray, x-ray, etc…
The processes has been coined “FedExNet” by scientists who have already adopted and are using the new service. So what is this new service? I have highlighted some of the main points from the originating Wired article below:
- Google acts as both a repository and courier for large data sets
- Google ships both the PC and array to teams of scientists at various research institutions, which then connect their local servers to the array via an eSATA connection. Once the data transfer is complete, the drives get sent straight back to Mountain View, where the data is copied to Google’s servers for archival purposes. The idea then is that if other scientists around the world needed access to such a large quantity of data, Google would simply reverse the process.
- Chris DiBona, the open-source program manager at Google, says “We make a copy of [the data], and then we can use the hard drives for something else. They’ll get banged around a little bit too much (to store the data directly on the drives). They’re not intended to be a long-term storage medium — they’re like envelopes to us.”
- With a set of Google drives, Gorelick (who came up with the FedExNet moniker) can copy his team’s data in about 24 hours or less, something that can make a big difference when the time comes to collaborate with other research groups.
See full article at Wired: Google’s Next-Gen of Sneakernet
Think of all the separate databases out there that manage genetic information. There are many independently operated bioinformatic databases and if they can all be centralized and indexed in a way that only Google can do, think of the potential implications for the scientific community working to progress the knowledge of DNA, RNA and protein interactions. This might be an essential step working towards the completion of the proteome and transcriptome …