Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

According to the data published by the US National Oceanic and Atomspheric Administration (NOAA), the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high.

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

The worst part of the news, though is expected, is that the situation is worse than scientists have previously predicated. The Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up CO2 each year.

Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be re-absorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

Source: World CO2 levels at record high, scientists warn, guardian.co.uk

I attended the SocialDevCamp East today. It was a lot of fun and very rewarding. The event was kind of like a conference, but unlike a typical research conference it didn’t have any specific agenda or planned breakout sessions. I have attended many planned research conferences in the past, but this bar camp (bec it has free beer after 4pm) was definitely a unique experience. I would recommend future bar camps to anyone who is interested in technology.

My lessons learned from this event are as follows. First, the start-up culture on the East Coast is very different from which of the West Coast. On the East Coast, it’s difficult to find either VCs or angel investors to fund start-ups that don’t a sustainable revenue stream. Second, there is a large pool of talents on the East Coast (in the DC/MD/VA area) that is not currently being utilized to create social web and social media innovations. Third, it’s possible to get non-AI developers to be excited about the Semantic Web.

By chance, I hosted a session on the Social Web + the Semantic Web. My original intent was to get people to talk about Semantic Web technologies and businesses that are crucial to the success of Social Web applications. But, it turned out that the audiences were very interested to explore the possibility of using Semantic Web technologies as differentiators to help them to stand out in the fast-change social media world. If you missed the discussion, you can find our discussion topics in this Twitter stream. Also you can find materials covered in my Social Web + Semantic Web slides.

I’m convinced that Twitter is useful (sometimes). While I was attending the conference, I sent my wife the Twitter stream of the SocialDevCamp (#SocialDevCamp). She was able to follow my session and see photos of me in an almost real-time experience.

Some people are crazy about Twitter. I don’t. I joined Twitter when it first came out. After few weeks, my enthusiasm for micro-blogging has gone to nil.

Recently I saw Twitter discussions in few different blog posts. I wonder if I should start using Twitter again? After some thinking, my conclusion that is that it’s better for me to stay away from Twitter.

Why I gave up on Twitter:

1. Don’t want to tell the world what’s on my mind too often.
2. Posting too much Twitter messages can gave people (esp. my boss) a false impression about me being a slacker.
3. Posting Twitter messages can’t advance my writing skill.
4. Don’t feel comfortable with strangers following me on Twitter.
5. I’m already too occupied with other social media (Facebook, my blogs and gnizr etc.)

Do you share my experience? Or are you a Twitter lover and have a different perspective?

Let me know.

We can teach students geography using Nintendo Wii — at least that’s what Mr. David Brantley at the Cumberland Elementary School believes.

Gathered in front of the white board in David Brantley’s class, his first-graders vie to show off geography skills using the Nintendo Wii.

“We’ve seen North America, South America, Africa and Asia,” Brantley says, as he flips the wand controller and spins the projected weather globe to an unknown location. “How about Europe or Australia?”

Though they have individual maps of the U.S. and the world at hand, the students are not waving their arms to point at the map with their fingers the way children have traditionally learned geography. They want a chance to wield the controller to find and click on U.S. states and continents.

It gets better…

From making math problems out of bowling scores to playing Scrabble-like Flash games, available free on the Internet, he sees unlimited potential for educational use.

Source: Game system lowers learning curve at Cumberland

BusinessWeek reports Microsoft research scientists are using technology similar to spam blockers to attack HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. This approach came about when Microsoft scientist David Heckerman discovered similarities exist between spam messages and HIV.

From Heckerman’s perspective, HIV is like a cagey spammer. After attacking a cell, it injects its own genetic material and proceeds (much like a spam jockey who has commandeered an unprotected computer) to manufacture thousands of copies of the virus. It’s a notoriously sloppy copier, but that adds to its vigor. Each mistake launches mutant viruses into the system. Many fail. Some, though, survive–and resist the drugs.

… the connections between spam and HIV boil down to mathematics. He analyzes both scourges by studying statistical relationships among their ever-changing features. Consider the word “Viagra.” Sometimes it shows up in legitimate e-mails. Often it appears in spam. If researchers study thousands of e-mails, they can calculate the percentage of e-mails with that word that are spam. That’s one clue. But the spam-filtering machine needs to know more than that. What other features in an e-mail signal that it’s spam? Are certain fonts particularly spammy? What about e-mail addresses or types of punctuation? The trick is to figure out which combinations of these features identify an e-mail as spam. Each decision can involve thousands of variables and millions of different calculations.

When he brought his plan to Bill Gates, the company chairman “got really excited,” Heckerman says. Well versed on HIV from his philanthropy work, Gates lined up Heckerman with AIDS researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Washington, and elsewhere.

This is a classic example of technology cross-fertilization. Many hard to solve natural science problems involve statistical analysis. Since computers are extremely capable of performing this type of tasks, advanced computer science technology like spam blockers can be exploited to solve non-technology problems like detecting HIV. I think we see more of this kind of innovations in the near future.

Original Story: Using Spam Blocker To Target HIV, Too

A Texas family recently sued Virgin Mobile phone company for using a Flickr photo of their teenage daughter Alison in a billboard ad. This photo was taken by Alison’s youth counselor Justin and posted onto Flickr under the Creative Commons (CC) license. Because CC permits for-profit commercial usage of this photo, Virgin Mobile took this photo and used it in one of its bus-stop billboard advertisement. Alison’s family sues Virgin Mobile claiming that Alison never agreed to the use of this photo for commercial advertisement.

This is an interesting legal case for social media on the Flickr web. When a photo is posted onto Flickr under the CC license, does it automatically give companies the full right to use to it? According to my research (here and here), the answer is no. Companies can only use a CC-licensed photo if the model in the photo has signed a release form. This rule applies in both the United States and Australia.

Read the rest of this entry »

On September 18th, 2007, the New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site called TimesSelect and its archives from 1987 to present.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

Source: Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

The NYT is among a few old-school media companies that continue to operate profitability in the booming Internet age. Many others simply died because their paid-subscription business model failed to bring in profits. I think the NYT’s latest move is within expectation. In today’s world, news change in a lightening speed, people are often reluctant to pay for information if they can get it somewhere else for free.

Remember CNN was charging people for their online news videos. Soon after the rise of YouTube and other video sharing sites, in order to attract more viewers, CNN opens up its online video service free of charge. I think the NYT is in a similar shoe today. Yahoo! and Google continue to push for more news contents to be published on their own sites. The NYT needs to find ways to keep their readers.

The media war in the Internet age continues…

GrandCentral is a new web-based service that helps people to manage their phone calls. Users get one phone number for life. This phone number can be linked to other phone numbers (e.g., work, home, cell and office).

GrandCentral offers several interesting services:

• Screen Callers: Knows who’s calling and screen unknown callers
• ListenIn: Hear why someone is calling before taking the call
• Call Record: Record calls on the fly and access recordings online
• Block Callers: Unwanted callers won’t be able to reach you anymore
• Notifications: Receive voicemail notifications via email or SMS

Check out GrandCentral demo video.

Over the weekend, I received an invitation to try out GrandCentral beta. So far I like it. The service is very easy to use. If you want to try out GrandCentral, I still have few invitations left. Send me an email, and I will put you on the list.