Category Silicon Valley & Tech Community

Apr 7 2015

America In Realization [04.07.15]

Economy & Business: Silicon Valley

“Precision Agriculture, Indoor Farming, Food Safety, Alternative Foods and Farm Robots – among the list as possible next big things”

[Courtesy of Wall Street Journal]

[Courtesy of Wall Street Journal]

Foreign Policy: US – Iran Relations

Iranians fly kites during an annual public picnic on the 13th day of the Iranian new year, at the Pardisan Park in Tehran
Iranian President Hasan Rouhani inspecting port facilities of the South Pars Gas field

 

#IranNuclearDeal

“A country of 80 million has been all but cut off from global trade for years.

In a sanctions-free Iran, Western energy companies would likely be the biggest foreign first-movers: Iran has the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves and second-largest natural gas reserves.

Iranians are nostalgic for American products … Many Iranians remember driving Chevys, Cadillacs, Buicks and Mustangs before the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Process is underway .. Iranian companies in Dubai have received draft contracts to be official resellers of Hewlett-Packard laptops in Iran.”

Mar 3 2015

America In Realization [03.03.15]

 

Business & Economics

After 15 long years, the NASDAQ composite crossed back 5000 again.

Silicon Valley & Tech Community

 

International Relations

United States – Israel Relations

Jan 24 2015

America In Realization [01.24.15]

Politics

#Election2016

“Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO, is also looking at a possible 2016 run.”

 

Indian – American Demography

 

Jan 8 2015

Education – Institutions, Platforms, Tools & Leadership: At My Ventures

Youtube Playlist (Compiled By Me): 

Education: Institutions, Platforms, Tools & Leadership

 

Education: Institutions, Platforms, Tools & Leadership

#AtMyVentures

 

Textbooks

[Printed Textbook Plus Digital “Interactive” Versions]

  • Most authoritative and up to date work (continuously updated) on every area and sub-area of Science & Engineering, Humanities and Social Studies, Economics & Business.
  • Me, with Co-Authors.

 

Higher Education Leadership

Articles

 

Platform

Instances of Platforms:

The Instances above are crude versions of what comes next.

Links to Articles:

 

“Problem Solving” Platforms

“Competitive” Platforms

  • Mathematical Olympiads. Science Olympiads. Chess Olympiads.
  • Programming Contests. Engineering Competitions.

 

New DIY Platforms for Schools, Colleges  (and community around that Platform). Example: “Maker” Community.

Examples

3D Printing Platforms for Schools, Colleges

New Builder / “Automata Set” / “Automata Platform” for kids

 

Microsoft

  • Microsoft Book [Device]
  • Games / Programming: Kodu; Minecraft; Spark

 

“Smart Book” & Digital Publishing Platform

Youtube Playlist (Compiled By Me): Smart Book & Digital Publishing : E-Readers & E-Reading Re-Designed From The Ground Up

 

“Creative Expression” Platforms

Examples:

  • Book, Magazine, App Publishing
  • Video
  • App Development (with no coding required).
    • Example: MIT App Inventor.

Programming Platform

Examples:

 

Articles:

Nov 30 2014

Influence & Impact In Silicon Valley: Immigration Reform, Reawakening Of Microsoft & More

  1. “CEO Thinking”
  2. Design of Great Products
  3. Immigration Reform
  4. Microsoft: Reawakening
  5. Physical Digital Computing
  6. Frontiers Of Computer Science
  7. Solving Real World Problems with Technology
  8. Business, Economics & Entrepreneurship Principles
  9. Privacy in the age of Big Data and Physical Digital Computing
 
 
 

“CEO Thinking”

  • Showing how CEOs think and plan.

Links

  1. Plans For Microsoft [1] (TahsinVersion2) 




Design of Great Products

  • Showing how to design great products (Microsoft Band, etc.)
  • Inclusion of high-tech workers (both Entrepreneurs and Engineers) in Immigration Reform Executive Order by President.

 
Significance:  

Establishment as a between Silicon Valley and Washington.


 
Links

  1. America In Realization [11.21.14] (Tahsinversion2)
  2. Workers in Silicon Valley Weigh In on Obama’s Immigration Order (New York Times)
  3. America In Realization [11.24.14] (Tahsinversion2)

My post on Immigration Reform

“More “Brains”: bright foreign born students with American Education and Smart Entrepreneurs joining the American economy (rather than leaving for his / her emerging country). We surely don’t want foreign born students to leave our country once they are done with their Engineering or PhD degrees. 

As is evident from FWD.US, high tech companies enthusiastically support the immigration reform. They want to turn more of smart foreign Engineers into American Engineers.Statistics reflect the motivation that is driving the high tech companies.  

In 2010, Asian Americans became the majority of tech workforce in the valley for the first time, making up 50.1 percent [1].One third of the startups in Silicon Valley are founded by Indian Americans [1].Moreover, immigrants bring new views, new perspectives from which to look at things we got used to. “



Microsoft: Reawakening

  • Reawakening of Microsoft.

Links

    1. Microsoft leapfrogs Exxon to become second largest firm (BBC) 
“Energy giant Exxon has ceded its position as the world’s second-largest public company to tech firm Microsoft, after concerns about the falling price of oil drove its shares down.

Exxon’s shares traded at $94.90 midday on Friday, reducing the total value of all its shares, or market capitalisation, to $401.9bn (£256.7bn). Shares in Microsoft – which have been rising after a strong October earnings report – hit $49.81.
That gives it a value of $410.5bn.

  1. Latest From Science, Technology And Medicine [11.14.14] (Tahsinversion2)
  2. Latest From Science, Technology And Medicine [11.20.14] (Tahsinversion2)


CEO

Physical Digital Computing

  • Pioneering Physical Digital Computing
Links
 
Frontiers Of Computer Science
  • Computer Science at its breadth (Read by everyone from Engineers to University Computer Science Professors around the world to keep up with the latest developments in Computer Science and find out where the field is headed next)
Links



Solving Real World Problems with Technology
  • Showing how to solve real world problems with Computers and Technology (not just hacking the next great messaging app!).

Links

  1. Notes On Microsoft, Microsoft Band and How “‘Wearables” Might Revolutionize US Healthcare [Updated]
  2. Notes On Products
  3. On Physical Digital Computing And Beyond
  4. Latest From Science, Technology & Medicine [11.03.14] (Economics of Physical Digital Computing) 





Business, Economics & Entrepreneurship Principles

  • Teaching principles of Business, Economics, Marketing (“brand appeal” of Microsoft, etc.), Entrepreneurship (Uber, Airbnb, etc.).
Links



Privacy in the age of Big Data and Physical Digital Computing

  • Emphasizing the value of privacy in the age of Big Data and Physical Digital Computing.
Links
Sep 22 2014

An Insider Look At Google

Google is really an Engineering company.
Approach: We’ll build great useful hardcore engineering products.
Like some of the employees coming up with G-Mail (in “20% of their time” [9] or so they say!).


Not a consumer-centric company. Not much thought on design, UI-UX, human interactions.
“Design? Well, use Big Data, A/B testing and other “Engineering” approaches to find out what users want.”

It is so much Engineering focused (“We are an Engineering company [10] “) that – even Researchers work alongside Engineers [11] [12] – working on tough problems.
In fact, that’s how “Mapreduce” [1] was born – to solve distributed processing challenges that Google face. 
[Google didn’t built an expensive supercomputer when it got stared back in 1998/99. It was too expensive to build one. 
Rather, connected hundreds, and later thousands of computers to form a cluster.]
No separate research division like Microsoft Research [4].
That means very little long term work (but that was before GoogleX).



Google is not and cannot enjoy the luxury of being a traditional product development company, because its products are built upon cutting edge research. It’s like : you research and you implement your invention in a product. 
  • Larry Page and Sergey Brin were working on Data Mining & Web Search for their PhD and came up with “PageRank” algorithm [17] and implemented it as the Search Engine.
  • Google Research invented “Mapreduce” [1] and implemented it in their system.
  • When Google started putting Ads in search results (as a way to monetize) results in the beginning weren’t satisfactory. [Reference: How Google works] But Page and Brin couldn’t afford to say, well, we have this and that problem in our ad results and we should have a product that should be “this”.  
    • No. Because no one knew how to show ads in the best possible way. So you could not have a definite product development plan from the start. You had to “research” (“re-search” means “searching” continuously until you found a better solution) to find an algorithm that optimizes your revenue respecting the goals of businesses who are paying money for those ads.

  

So Google gives a lot of freedom to its Engineers to come up with great ideas. According to Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, these Engineers are called “Smart Creatives”. [Reference: How Google works] 
No initial, “must-be-followed” plans; rather come up with great solutions yourselves. 
Google is built on and lives on talented Engineers.

GoogleX Approach: 
“So here is a futuristic technology that looks promising and conforms to our Moonshot thinking [3]” (like DARPA Autonomus Car challenge [5]) 
=> “Lets develop it at GoogleX”.
Brainchild of GoogleX include 

  • Google Self Driving Car
  • Google Glass 
  • Project Ara [2] (modular phone).



Almost completely depended on Ad revenues (95% revenue) [6].

“Google TV didn’t succeeded” -> “Doesn’t matter” -> “Lots of revenue from Search Ads (+ Now, Youtube, Mobile Ads)”.


Google should focus more on “products”. 

Focusing on “Products” means user-centric approach: “What does the user want in a Smart TV?” 

What Apple (Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive [7]) does: 
“Lets make a Phone (product) that users would love” -> iPhone was born.

[The classic story of Jonny [7] coming up with a great design and
the “intuitive”, “creative (creativity induced by LSD)” Jobs [14] declaring “This is the future!” [13]
whether the “analytic” “Software-focused” Gates likes it or not! (who, according to Jobs, never understood how to turn great products combining both hardware and software into a single whole)]

  • Google started off with Search. 
  • Next: 
    • Platforms (Chrome and Android) and 
    • Services (G-Mail, Google+, Google Apps). 
  • Now: 
    • Diversified (including Autonomous Cars, Smart Home and $250 Million investments in drug research – “Calico”).


Google products
Search and Web Apps

  • Search Engine 
  • Youtube 
  • GMail 
  • Google+ 
  • Google Maps 
  • Google Adsense, Analytics 
  • Google Apps 
  • Google App Engine



Chrome

  • Chrome Browser 
  • ChromeOS




Android

  • Android Wear 
  • Google Now 
  • Google Play Store



“Moonshot Thinking”
GoogleX, ATAP

  • Google Glass 
  • Project Ara 
  • Google Self Driving Car
  • Project Loon [8]


Others:

  • Google Ventures 
  • Google TV – Android TV 
  • Google Wallet 
  • Shopping Express




Recent acquisitions and diversification:

  • Calico 
  • Nest 
  • Boston Dynamics & Other Robotics Companies (8 in total) 
  • Titan Aerospace 
  • Skybox Imaging




Imagine: Tahsin starting his own company. It won’t take too many years to turn my company into the World’s first Trllion Dollar company. 



 
Reference

  1. The Paper that introduced “Mapreduce” 
  2. Project Ara 
  3. Thinking big: Larry Page talks moon shots 
  4. Microsoft Research 
  5. DARPA Grand Challenge 
  6. Google Inc. Announces First Quarter 2014 Results 
  7. Jonathan Ive
  8. Project Loon 
  9. Google’s “20 percent time” in action – Google’s Official Blog 
  10. Google Mountain View (Global HQ) 
  11. Research At Google 
  12. Google’s Hybrid Approach to Research : Alfred Spector, Peter Norvig and Slav Petrov 
  13. Steve Jobs Unveils The Original iPhone – Macworld San Francisco 2007 
  14. Steve Jobs [Hardcover] by Walter Isaacson
  15. How Facebook Got Big 
  16. How Web Search Engines Work 
  17. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine : Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page 

Followups

  1. How Google Works Hardcover – (September 23, 2014) by Eric Schmidt , Jonathan Rosenberg