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Attention Economy

by on Jan 11, 2009 (2) Comments

The internet has transformed into a superfluous repository of information in the present era. Consequently, this information overload is causing a deficit or a scarcity of attention. Now if you are not quite familiar with the usage of the word “attention” in the context of this discussion, it simply refers to consumption of information.
Herbert Simon has quite elegantly pointed out that, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Thus, a need arises out of obvious causes to mine and efficiently allocate this information to its intended audience.

Attention and Economy may be two diverse terms but in the modern times is naturally amalgamating, with one becoming highly interdependent on the other. Let us consider an example to show you exactly how attention affects economy.

Should Google Earth be censored?

by on Dec 16, 2008 (0) Comments

Should Google earth be censored? This question has been going around for quite a few years and now after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month, a petition has been submitted in the country’s high court by legal advocates to blur sensitive areas such as Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Google Earth.

According to the TIMES report, the petition says that Google Earth “aids terrorists in plotting attacks” and offers “absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access” of the services. Investigation to Mumbai terror attacks and interrogation of the only live terrorist reveal that the terrorists used GPS and other high tech tools to plot, execute and then monitor the attacks with ease.

This is not the first time when Google Earth has been asked to blur the satellite images of the sensitive areas. In 2005, Australian officials asked to remove the pictures of their only nuclear reactor Lucas Heights from Google Earth. In 2006, Bahrain officials barred Google Earth, and China too banned websites that sold unapproved images. Some countries like Holland have gone into an agreement to block or censor the sensitive areas especially their military bases. Some countries have even concealed their sensitive military bases by putting them underground. According to a USA Today report, some countries like India can detect when a satellite passes overhead and conduct sensitive military activities accordingly so that the satellites do not capture the images of these activities. Even in USA, google mappers and google street view photographers were banned from accessing Pentagon and other military bases.

Websites as Web Services

by on Dec 15, 2008 (1) Comments

As we step forward into the next generation of computing, the internet is experiencing a major revolution in its domain. The web is slowly morphing from a Web 2.0 to a whole new Web 3.0. However, web 3.0 has still, a long way to go before it can be implemented for real.

“So what is the big deal?”

Web 2.0 had revolutionized the way in which websites present their content to users. Structured layouts, the use of layers in presenting information, the buzzwords that replaced flashy banners, sleazy elements, pop up(s) and so on. The message was loud and clear: if you wanted to increase your website traffic and do business, your design had to be “user friendly”.

Today, Web2.0 has achieved whatever it had set out to achieve. The user now see terabytes of information, laid out on a palate in a precise, structured and presentable manner. Well today, more or less this is what your perspective of the internet is. However, what does this information convey to its machine counterparts?

CLOUD COMPUTING: The Next Big Thing

by on Nov 13, 2008 (0) Comments

Cloud computing or computing in the cloud is now one of the latest happening trends in the business world and the “next big thing” after Web 2.0. According to a 2008 paper published by IEEE Internet Computing “Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, sensors, monitors, etc.” In other words, we can say that this is about increasing an organization’s or user’s capability by using different applications from some external servers without investing much on its own infrastructure and maintenance of local servers. Rather the organization/user pays for raw computing power. Here the word “cloud” is used as a metaphor for internet.

The basic architecture of this cloud computing is a massive network of interconnected servers where the web applications reside. The user accessing these applications need not be aware of the physical location of the application’s computer. This not only reduces the cost of installing licensed software at the end user’s computer but also saves the cost associated with deploying, maintaining and upgrading of different business technologies.

Intro to Umbraco

by on Oct 28, 2008 (1) Comments

With a plethora of Content Management Systems available today, it becomes very difficult to choose form one of them. As a matter of fact, the CMS that you would choose would also depend on the architecture or the platform where you would deploy your project. Having discussed on the Joomla CMS which is based on PHP and MySql, it is now time to review the Umbraco CMS that is based on Microsoft’s ASP.NET technology. Well, this one is for the .NET fans. The entire source of the CMS has been written in C# and is available for the developers to download and modify for free. Yes, Umbraco is open source.

You do not require beforehand knowledge of Microsoft’s .NET framework or C# in particular, to get started with the Umbraco CMS. All you would need is Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) server, where you would host and deploy your website.

The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

by on Oct 21, 2008 (0) Comments

On the information superhighway or what is most commonly known as the “internet”, there is a superfluity of data that is constantly being produced or consumed. Information exchange seems to be the buzzword of most modern web services under development and your service should be able to “talk” to other services in order to produce desired results. Architecture is no more standalone with respect to the fact that a particular web service may require data that is produced by another web service and this idea may be extended across web services.

The moment you talk about information exchange across different web services, the first thought that probably strikes you is compatibility. For example, consider two web services, where one web service is running on a Microsoft IIS Server and the other on an Apache Tomcat Server with ASP.NET and JSP scripting respectively. How do these services communicate with each other?

Earlier, before the advent of the use of SOAP, such mechanisms were achieved by the XML-RPC, which was not a very safe and secure mode of communication. SOAP provides an optimal solution to this problem.

Semantic Search Engine Hakia Now Says It Can Filter Results By How Credible They Are

by on Oct 06, 2008 (0) Comments

On the Internet, nobody knows your site is a dog (to paraphrase the famous New Yorker cartoon). At least not yet. Semantic search engine Hakia wants to change that. Ask.com is not the only search engine rolling out a redesign today. So is Hakia, which is introducing tabs to its search interface. One of the tabs is “credible sites.” These are results from sites that have been vetted by librarians and information specialists (although anyone can suggest sites). So far, Hakia has built out a directory of credible sites around health, medical, and environmental issues.

The “credible” results tend to come from government, university, medical, and news sites. For instance, here are the credible results for “green buildings” and “common cold.”