Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Microsoft soon will sell multi-touch surface computing devices — like the one demonstrated in this video…

Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization. It depends on people donations and contracts to operate it’s daily business — pay for developers, marketings etc. Since 2004, with the success of its Firefox browser, Mozilla has grown into a very successful open source organization, and a very profitable one.

The revenue of Mozilla Foundation increased from $6 million in 2004 to $52 million in 2005. A large portion of this increase is due to a special agreement with Google. The company pays Mozilla more than $100 million to have Firefox’s default page to display the Google search page.

In 2005, a new for-profit Mozilla organization is created, which is called Mozilla Corp. A key task of the new organization is to manage tax and other issues related to the Google contract.

Here are couple interesting questions to think about:

1. When the survival of an open source organization (e.g., Mozilla) is depended on special arrangements and agreements with a for-profit company (e.g., Google), can it continue to function independently without being influenced by any business objectives of the for-profit company?
2. Should Mozilla share wealth with thousands of people who have contributed to its open source projects? If so, how?

Source: Firefox faces the costs of success

Corel announced a new word processing product called WordPerfect Lightning. It a light-weight word processing application (~20MB) with a web-centric design.

Key features include:

• Quick notes: users can WP Lighting as a scratch pad to edit and organize short notes.
• Supports WordPress API: users can use WP Lighting as an editor to publish posts to their WordPress blogs.
• Online collaboration: mulitple WP Lighting users can share documents via the Web (a valid WP online account is required)
• Supports multiple document formats: you can use WP Lighting to view PDF, MS Word, text, HTML etc.

This blog is written using this new application. So far I like it.

Spotted on: Read/WriteWeb

Wii is not only good for entertainment and physical exercise but also for brain rehabilitation. According to Edmonton Journal, doctors are experimenting the use of Wii to treat patient with movement and balance issues.

Dr. Grigore Burdea, a world leader in computer-based virtual reality techniques in rehabilitation therapies, said in five years, he believes every hospital and rehab clinic will have embraced the gaming technology for their patients.

Burdea said some hospitals have used the Wii gaming system to help boost and entertain patients during their hospital stay. But he said the Glenrose is the first hospital he knows of where occupational therapists are guiding patients through golf swings, tennis serves and baseball strikes to help them not only gain lost movement, but to teach their brains to respond quickly to fly balls or swinging fists.

Spotted on Nintendo Scene

These days investors of the stock market are happy because the Dow is at its all time high. However, US consumers are not very happy because of rising energy costs, grim housing markets and possible inflation and stagflation crisis.

This situation looks odd to many people. If the US economy is doing well, shouldn’t it benefit both investors and consumers (remember the age of dot-com)? If the US economy is not doing well, how is it possible for many companies to report record earnings?

Answers to these questions can be found in Robert Reich’s podcast — Wall Street’s up, Main Street’s down.

Read the rest of this entry »

AAAI announced a video competition that is aimed to promote and document exciting research and applications of artificial intelligence. Winners could receive prizes up to $3000 US. This competition is running in part with AAAI-07.

For more information: http://aivideo.org

AI videos from YouTube:

• Robot doing dishes
• Android woman giving a presentation
• Honda Asimo
• AIBO vs. Lizard

Critical thinking concerns the problems inherent in human thinking. My first formal introduction to the subject was in an undergraduate philosophy course. It was one of the most valuable course that I have ever taken.

Critical thinking is a skill that I think every human being is obligated to learn. You can learn about this important skill from this comprehensive list of online resources.

In addition, I recommend this podcast called LogicallyCritical. Every episode revolves around a critical thinking topic — e.g., was the United States Constitution created with a Christian-value in core? How to think about the current illegal immigrates issue in the United States? Are your thoughts really yours?

I found the podcasts to be both educational and entertaining. Those discussed topics are also great talking-points for happy hours and cocktail parties.