Descripción:Google Tech Talks February, 20 2008 ABSTRACT Ruby 1.9 Speaker: Yukihiro Matsumoto Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matsumoto Yukihiro, a.k.a. Matz, born 14 April 1965) is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language. He was born in Osaka Prefecture, in western Honshu. According to an interview conducted by Japan Inc., he was a self-taught programmer until the end of high school. He graduated with an information science degree from Tsukuba University, where he associated himself with research departments dealing with programming languages and compilers. As of 2006, Matsumoto is the head of the research and development department at the Network Applied Communication Laboratory, an open source systems integrator company in Shimane prefecture. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served as a missionary for the church. Matsumoto is married and has four children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukihiro_Matsumoto

Descripción:Google Tech Talks October, 12 2007 ABSTRACT Speaker: Violet Blue Violet Blue is the best-selling, award-winning author and editor of twenty books on sex and sexuality, all currently in print, a number of which have been translated into several languages; she has contributed to a number of nonfiction anthologies. Violet is a sex educator who lectures at UC's and community teaching institutions, and writes about erotica, pornography, sexual pleasure and health for major publications and blogs. She is a professional sex blogger and femmebot; an author at Metroblogging San Francisco (Metblogs); a correspondent for Geek Entertainment Television; she is on the Gawker Media payroll as girl friday contibutor and editor at Fleshbot; in January 2007, Violet was named a Forbes Web Celeb 25. She is a San Francisco native and human blog. Violet is the sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle with a weekly column titled Open Source Sex, and has a podcast of the same name that frequents iTunes' top ten.

Descripción:Google Tech Talks July, 16 2008 ABSTRACT Many of the applications you develop are applications you would use. This makes it easy to know what will work and what won't. At some point, however, you'll find yourself developing something that you would only occasionally use, and suddenly you're treading in dark places. You know user research is important, you know the experience of using the product should be positive, if not delightful. But sometimes the findings you get are pretty difficult to translate into a decision about the software. Mental models are diagrams that represent the underlying philosophies and emotions that drive people's behavior, matched up with the ways you think you can support them with your software. Rather than knowing "I like to go to movies alone," you'll learn the myriad reasons why. (E.g. "I like to give the director the attention and respect he deserves, because when I wrote a play in college, people didn't pay attention very well, they didn't get the point, and I felt frustrated.") Knowing the motivating philosophy opens up different avenues for supporting the behavior. You could, for example, offer additional means for this type of moviegoer to "get the point" of the movie. Mental models are useful as structures for attaching these ideas to sets of philosophies and for generating new ideas in places where there are gaps. In this presentation, author Indi Young will introduce you to mental models and show you one that was developed at Google for the Analytics product. Indi will show you how to use the mental model to expand your perspective and create applications that reach beyond the basic requirements. Speaker: Indi Young Indi's work spans a number of decades, from the mid-80's when the desktop metaphor was replacing command line and menu-based systems, to the mid-90's when the Web first toddled onto the scene, to now, when designers are intent on crafting good experiences. After 10 years of consulting, Indi helped found Adaptive Path with six other partners, all hoping to spread good design around the world, making things easier for people everywhere. Indi's mental models have helped both start-ups and large corporations discover and support customer behaviors they didn't think to explore at first. She has written a book about the mental model method, Mental Models - Aligning design strategy with human behavior, published by Rosenfeld Media.

Descripción:Google Tech Talks May 3, 2007 ABSTRACT DNA is a programming language for living cells. The cell's basic operating system, or genome, directs functions like growth and reproduction, energy utilization, and the production of useful compounds like ethanol or penicillin. With genetic engineering, new functions can be added to cells or broken metabolic pathways repaired. Until recently, genetic engineering has required the DNA molecule itself to be physically manipulated, a tedious and expensive process. Now, automatic DNA synthesis permits virtually any DNA code to be made from scratch, opening up genetic engineering to anyone with a computer and a credit card. The capabilities of this new synthetic...

Descripción:Google Tech Talks May 25, 2007 ABSTRACT The Semantic Web is a field aiming a the creation, deployment, and interoperation of machine readable data on the Internet. In the talk we present some projects in DERI on Semantic Web technologies - notably Semantic Interlinking of Online Community sites, Social Semantic Collaborative Filtering, and ActiveRDF, a library for Browsing, programming and navigating Semantic Web data. The SIOC (Semantic Interlinking of Online Communities) project [1] is an effort aiming at establishing and deploying a metadata vocabulary for interlinking and connecting distributed conversation on blogs, bulletin boards, and mailing lists. The vocabulary has been implemented...

Descripción:Google Tech Talks October, 30 2007 ABSTRACT After three years of research and development on a distributed storage system, we are ready to unveil the result: Wuala. Wuala is a new way of storing, sharing, and publishing files on the internet. Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage. This enables its users to trade parts of their local storage for online storage and it allows us to provide a better service for free. In the talk, I will explain what Wuala is and how it works, and I will also show a demo. All attendees will also get an invitation code to join the early alpha version. Speaker: Dominik Grolimund I am 26 years old and have studied computer science at ETH Zurich. In 1998, I founded my software company Caleido, and developed the Caleido Address-Book, a professional contact management software, of which over 35'000 licenses have been sold so far in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. In 2003, I did an exchange semester at the TU Delft, the Netherlands, as part of the Unitech exchange program, focusing on business and management. In 2004, a six-month internship followed with Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, New Jersey in the US, where I worked in the 'Intelligent Vision & Reasoning' department, developing a prod...

Descripción:Google Tech Talks March, 3 2008 ABSTRACT Introduction Project mission statement, history, internal organization, partners, CGAL in numbers. What's in CGAL A survey on available data structures and algorithms, as well as examples how and by whom they are used. Topics include Triangulations, Voronoi diagrams, Boolean operations on polygons and polyhedra, arrangements of curves and their applications, Mesh generation, Geometry processing, Alpha shapes, Convex hull algorithms, Operations on polygons, Search structures, Interpolation, Shape analysis, fitting, and distances, Kinetic data structures... Generic Programming Paradigm CGAL data structures are C++ template classes and functions, usually taking several template parameters (with default values for ease of use). This gives developers an incredible flexibility to adapt the data structures to their needs, which is important internally for code reuse, and important for end users, as they typically integrate CGAL in already existing applications. Parts of CGAL are also interfaced with languages and software like Python, Java, Scilab, Qt and the Ipe drawing editor. Exact Geometric Computing Paradigm We present how to make geometric algorithms correct, robust, and nevertheless fast, by combining floating point arithmetic with exact arithmetic, and clever filtering mechanisms to switch between these two modes. These mechanisms can be used for geometric predicates, as well as for geometric constructions, which instead of a discrete return value generate new geometric entities. Conclusion and Outlook A wrapup, and a sneak preview on algorithms that might make it into future releases of CGAL. Speaker: Andreas Fabri, PhD, GeometryFactory As member of the initial development team of the CGAL project, Andreas is one of the architects of the CGAL software. For several years he chaired the CGAL Editorial Board. In 2003, Andreas founded the GeometryFactory as spin-off of the CGAL project, offering licenses, service and support to commercial users. Andreas received his PhD in 1994 from the Ecole des Mines de Paris, while working on geometric algorithms for parallel machines at INRIA. Speaker: Sylvain Pion, PhD, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis Sylvain got involved in the CGAL project during his PhD, which he received in 1999 at INRIA. He worked then on providing generic solutions to numerical robustness issues arising in geometric algorithms. Later on he worked on the efficiency of some fundamental geometric algorithms such as 3D Delaunay triangulations. He is now also involved in C++ standardization, and is working on parallel geometric algorithms. He is employed as researcher at INRIA, and is the current chair of the CGAL Editorial Board.

Descripción:Google Tech Talks December, 5 2007 ABSTRACT Cost-effective space solar power (SSP) -- the beaming abundant high-intensity solar power from space though atmospheric windows at laser or microwave frequencies for electric power at the surface -- could be a breakthrough technology for large-scale power generation, highly flexible power distribution and sustainable carbon-neutral base load for Earth; a goal comparable, but much closer to engineering maturity, to that of controlled thermonuclear fusion. Apart from much higher than the surface mean solar flux, continuous sunlight in space avoids otherwise cost-pacing massive storage and transmission of intermittent terrestrial solar and windpower to match electric demand curves. Access to space cost reductions will likely be driven by economies of scale from commercialization. But SSP would be markedly accelerated by experiments feasible now, some employing ISS, including orbital mirrors and microwave and and laser beaming in space. The just-released report on SSP by the National Security Space Office (available at http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/nsso.htm) concludes that "it would be in the US Government's and the nation's interest to sponsor an immediate proof-of-concept demonstration project and a formally funded, follow-on architecture study conducted in full collaboration with industry and willing international partners." For example, I will describe our proposed demo of wireless power transmission from geosynchronous orbit (GEO) using diode laser transmitters in space and surface PV module receivers employing a self-deploying single launch one metric tonne satellite payload. Because diffractive beam spreading requires large antennas at microwave frequencies, it would be virtually impossible to launch microwave beamers large enough for efficient space-to-Earth power transfer without expensive multiple launches and in-space assembly. This limitation is overcome with the laser-based system proposed here although commercial SSP power stations might well utilize microwave beaming down the road. This experiment would demonstrate continuous electric power transfer from orbit orders of magnitude greater than anything done before, perhaps powering a remote village off the grid in the developing world. With near term and "on the shelf" components and early launch opportunities like NASA's Geo QuickRide, piggybacks on communication satellite launches, and the ISS as testbed, near term experiments could accelerate SSP from paper studies to a real alternate energy option in as little as a three to five year time frame at relatively modest cost. Speaker: Marty Hoffert Martin I. Hoffert is Professor Emeritus of Physics and former Chair of the Department of Applied Science at New York University. His academic background includes a B.S. (1960) in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; M.S. (1964) and Ph.D. (1967) from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now the Polytechnic Institute of New York) in Astronautics; and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, M.A.L.S. (1969) from the New School for Social Research where he did graduate work in sociology and economics. He has been on the research staff of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, General Applied Science Laboratories, Advanced Technology Laboratories, Riverside Research Institute and National Academy of Sciences Senior Resident Research Associate at the NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Prof. Hoffert has published broadly in fluid mechanics, plasma physics, atmospheric science, oceanography, planetary atmospheres, environmental science, solar and winds energy conversion and space solar power. His work in geophysics aimed at development of theoretical models of atmospheres and oceans to address environmental issues, including the ocean/climate model first employed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess global warming from different scenarios of fossil fuel use. His early model of the evolving CO2 greenhouse in Mars' atmosphere is also of interest today -- providing both an explanation of Mars' riverbed-like channels f...

Descripción:Google Tech Talks October 30, 2008 ABSTRACT In 18 months full human genome sequences will be available under $100 - and in minutes. The $5,000 full human genome was announced to come in 9 months. Is "Big IT" ready for the avalanche of data, to be obtained and processed e.g. while the patient is still on the operating table, to be diagnosed, and how the genomics glitch, that caused a benign or malign tumor, could be compensated for? Algorithmic approaches are needed to better understand genome regulation, even for the simple reason to deploy most effective data retrieval, data storage and computational means, via both parallel hardware and software, but more importantly for opening entirely new perspectives. In the 100+ year old Genomics, for over half a Century had us to resign to the fatalistic gloom that we are stuck with any glitches in our inherited genome. Is it true that genomic glitches doom one to "incurable" hereditary diseases? No longer. Genomics now considers the DNA-RNA-Protein chain not as a thermodynamically closed system, where entropy increases, but as an open system that can be interfered with. There is theoretically sound hope that you are not stuck with your genomic glitches. After half a Century of sticking to two mistaken axioms of Genomics, the paradigm of recursive genome function must quickly make up for lost time for those (potentially) inflicted with formerly "incurable" diseases. "The Genome baby is left on the doorsteps of Information Technology". Doctors sent those inflicted with fleece for "debugging". Debugging genome information (by Genome Computers) would be much harder without understanding the algorithms that our natural genome computing operates with. Speaker: Dr. Andras Pellionisz Ph.D. in Biology Ph.D. in Computer Engineering Director of Genome Informatics, Mitrionics, Inc., Los Gatos, California European Union visiting Professor for Hungary (for "European Inaugural of IPGS") Founder of International PostGenetics Society (IPGS,PostModern era of Genetics "beyond Genes") Founder of FractoSoft (Software for PostGenetics, Silicon Valley, with Central European outsourcing) Founder of Helixometry (IP portfolio holding, Silicon Valley) Inventor and Founder of FractoGene (Fractal approach to DNA) Chief Software Architect and Chief Intelligence Officer of several Silicon Valley Internet Companies in the dot.com boom Founder of International Neural Networks Society (INNS) Founding Editor of Neural Networks (publication organ of INNS) Section Editor for Neural Networks of The Cerebellum (Springer, New York & Heidelberg) Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, New York University Medical Center Visiting Professor of Marburg University, Germany (Humboldt Prize for Senior Distinguished Amercian Scientists) Visiting Professor of UMR/CNRS, College de France, Paris Senior Research Council Associate of the National Academy of Science, USA, to NASA PostDoctoral Fellow, University of Iowa PostDoctoral Fellow, Stanford University Tenured Senior Research Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Descripción:Google Tech Talks September, 21 2007 ABSTRACT Brain and computer were wed mid-twentieth century by the McCulloch-Pitts model neuron and Hodgkin-Huxley equations for digital firing in biological neurons. Since then, brain neurons, synapses, firings and networks have been considered analogous to electronic switches, states and circuits in classical computers. But despite extraordinary advances and bold predictions, consciousness seems ever more elusive. On this, and other divisive issues like EEG gamma synchrony, deviations from Hodgkin-Huxley, gap junctions, dendritic webs/hyper-neurons, anesthesia, quantum computers and clear demonstration of functional quantum coherence in warm protein...

Descripción:Google Tech Talks April, 3 2008 ABSTRACT jQuery is a JavaScript library that stands out among its competitors because it is faster, focuses on writing less code, and is very extensible. In this talk, I will explore jQuery and how to use it. I will start off talking about the basics of using jQuery. Then, I will talk about building plugins. Finally, time permitting, I will take apart some plugins and talk about how they work, and I will show the nitty gritty details of the library. Speaker: Dmitri Gaskin Dmitri Gaskin drinks code with his cereal for breakfast every morning. He's a jQuery whiz and a Drupal know-it-all. He contributes patches for both Open Source projects. In the Drupal world, he maintains many modules, is on the security team, and is involved in the upcoming Summer of Code as a mentor and administrator. Dmitri has given many talks on Drupal and jQuery, in such places as Logitech, Drupalcon and live on a radio show out of L.A. When Dmitri isn't coding, a very rare occurrence, he is playing and composing contemporary music. And attending classes in the 6th grade. (He's only 12.)

Descripción:Google Tech Talks October 27, 2008 ABSTRACT Source code versioning is an invaluable tool for software development: - users can easily track the newest versions, - maintainers can easily track down which commit introduced a bug (often making it easier to come up with a fix), - new developers get more documentation than just a big chunk of source code, - etc In my talk I want to stress the importance of source code versioning in a related context: when contributing changes to an Open Source project, which is typically a moving target, it can take a few revisions of the patches until they are accepted. I present several scenarios and workflows, and describe how Git can help with them. Speaker: Johannes Schindelin Johannes studied mathematics with a strong bias to number theory, trying to stay away from applied science as far as possible. Failing, he went on to a software company, where he gave up after finding that code quality played a lower role than pure politics. So he went back to university (Wuerzburg, Germany) to get a PhD in neurogenetics, and after a brief stint at psychology (St Andrews, UK) he now works on image processing (MPI Dresden, Germany).

Descripción:Google Tech Talks November, 1 2007 ABSTRACT Web search has generated the need and economic support for a new class of data-intensive supercomputing applications. Several computing platforms have been created to support this need: the first described in the literature is Google's MapReduce. I will describe the architecture of the Dryad system developed at Microsoft Research, and explain some of our design choices. Dryad allows more general computations than MapReduce, and has consequently been used as a middleware abstraction on which higher-level programming models can be implemented. I will also briefly discuss some of these. Speaker: Michael Isard Michael Isard started out as a computer vision researcher, but has gradually been lured into systems research by his colleagues, first at DEC/Compaq SRC and now at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley. He was closely involved in the design and implementation of the first version of Microsoft's in-house search engine, and his systems research subsequently has concentrated on programming models for parallel and distributed computing.

Descripción:Google Tech Talks October, 23 2007 ABSTRACT For most of us who work on the Internet, the Web is all we have ever really known. It's almost impossible to imagine a world without browsers, URLs and HTTP. But in the years leading up to Tim Berners-Lee's world-changing invention, a few visionary information scientists were exploring alternative systems that often bore little resemblance to the Web as we know it today. In this presentation, author and information architect Alex Wright will explore the heritage of these almost-forgotten systems in search of promising ideas left by the historical wayside. The presentation will focus on the pioneering work of Paul Otlet, Vannevar Bush, and Doug Engelbart, forebears of the 1960s and 1970s like Ted Nelson, Andries van Dam, and the Xerox PARC team, and more recent forays like Brown's Intermedia system. We'll trace the heritage of these systems and the solutions they suggest to present day Web quandaries, in hopes of finding clues to the future in the recent technological past. Speaker: Alex Wright Alex Wright is an information architect at the New York Times and the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. Previously, Alex has led projects for The Long Now Foundation, California Digital Library, Harvard University, IBM, Microsoft, Rollyo and Sun Microsystems, among others. He maintains a personal Web site at http://www.alexwright.org/

Descripción:Google Tech Talks April, 15 2008 ABSTRACT The recent increase in demand for 3D content, for a wide variety of purposes, has led to a corresponding increase in the number and diversity of people using 3D modeling software. It has also amplified the pressure to deliver 3D models on tight budgets, and at pace. These combined pressures have driven an increase in the sophistication of 3D modelling software, but also a new focus on its usability. VideoTrace represents a significant change in the way 3D models are made, and exemplifies a new kind of interface design. The VideoTrace user sketches the shape they require over a frame of a video sequence, and automated image analysis techniques generate the model. The interface is thus intuitive, and easy to use, but supported by strong mathematical analysis. It allows unskilled users to achieve models that would be impossible using more conventional modelling software, and skilled users to dramatically improve their accuracy and productivity. Speaker: Anton van den Hengel Anton van den Hengel is the Director of the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies, a Director of PunchCard Visual Technologies Pty Ltd, and an Associate Professor in Computer Vision at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. Dr van den Hengel's primary research interests are in interactive 3D modeling from image sets and large-scale video surveillance.

Descripción:Google Tech Talks February 13, 2007 ABSTRACT This is an introduction to Haiku, an open source operating system designed from the ground up for the desktop, inspired in the concepts and technologies of BeOS. The presentation will cover the concepts and features that make Haiku unique, as well as a hands on demo. Credits: Speaker:Bruno Albuquerque, Speaker:Axel Dörfler, Speaker:Jorge Mare, Speaker:Michael Phipps

Descripción:Google Tech Talks October 8, 2008 ABSTRACT Ever notice that you seem to spend 80% of your time on 20% of your tasks? Or that 80% of the decisions in a meeting seem to occur in 20% of the meeting time? Welcome to the world of the 80:20 rule. When we design, build and test software, we have to determine where to start and what we should do next. The 80:20 rule helps provide an answer to these questions, while helping to increase our productivity and effectiveness. As well as being an agile principle, it's a common thread in other disciplines, and there's a special variation that applies to software defects. We'll explore the different ways testers and developers are using the 80:20 rule. This rule could be a secret ingredient to help you build software smarter! Speaker: Erik Petersen Erik Petersen has been involved in custom software development since the 1980s, now focusing on testing and quality. He has presented at more than twenty Australian and international conferences, winning several awards. He mixes industry experience with powerful ideas and a passion for quality, and has influenced the work habits of hundreds of testers and developers across the world. Erik's been heavily involved in the Exploratory Testing community since before he even knew what it was called, proposing the idea of paired ET independently of Kaner and Bach in 2001. He is pushing forward with research on ET and other agile methods. He has reviewed many agile and testing books, and accidentally named the Master Test Report In the IEEE 829 Test Documentation 2008 standard. Check out Erik's link site at www.testingspot.net

Descripción:Google Tech Talks October, 12 2007 ABSTRACT When you have hundreds of people simultaneously patching 25000 files of the Linux Kernel in sometimes conflicting ways, you might need some scheme or plan to sort all that out before you can build your next kernel and reboot. The Linux team uses "git" for their source code repository management, a homegrown solution that is optimized for highly distributed development, working with huge sets of files, merging independent work at multiple levels, and seeing who broke what. (Git has also since been notably adopted by the Cairo, x.org, and Wine teams, and is being transitioned to by the Mozilla codebase.) In my talk, I describe what "git"; is and isn't, and why you should use it instead of CVS, Subversion, SVK, Arch, Darcs, Mercurial, Monotone, Bazaar, and just about every other repository manager. I'll also walk though the basic concepts so that the manpages might start making sense. If I have time, I'll even do a live walkthrough, where you can watch how fast I make typos. Speaker: Randal Schwartz

Descripción:Google Tech Talks December, 12 2007 ABSTRACT Shawn Frayne, a 28 year old inventor based in Mountain View, will talk about his wind belt. This is a power generation device, that is low cost and consists of a membrane that resonates like a guitar string, with a pair of magnets that oscillate between coils. There was a story recently in Popular Mechanics - watch the video at: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4224763.html?series=37 Speaker: Shawn Frayne Shawn is the inventor of the core wind generator technology on which Humdinger is founded. Previous to his involvement with Humdinger, Shawn successfully matured two technologies, in the fields of "green" packaging and water disinfection, from concepts into developed products in pre-production. He established a strong intellectual property base surrounding those technologies and in early 2006 sold substantial rights to a Fortune 500 company. He is presently involved with refining the manufacturing processes of those products in facilities that have been built overseas. He is also part of an on-going effort established four years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop low-cost technologies by which entrepreneurs in Haiti can transform agricultural wastes into saleable cooking fuel. Shawn has six pending U.S. patents. He has his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Descripción:Google Tech Talks December, 6 2007 ABSTRACT This tech talk series explores the enormous opportunities afforded by the emerging field of quantum computing. The exploitation of quantum phenomena not only offers tremendous speed-ups for important algorithms but may also prove key to achieving genuine synthetic intelligence. We argue that understanding higher brain function requires references to quantum mechanics as well. These talks look at the topic of quantum computing from mathematical, engineering and neurobiological perspectives, and we attempt to present the material so that the base concepts can be understood by listeners with no background in quantum physics. This first talk of the series introduces the basic concepts of quantum computing. We start by looking at the difference in describing a classical and a quantum mechanical system. The talk discusses the Turing machine in quantum mechanical terms and introduces the notion of a qubit. We study the gate model of quantum computing and look at the famous quantum algorithms of Deutsch, Grover and Shor. Finally we talk about decoherence and how it destroys superposition states which is the main obstacle to building large scale quantum computers. We clarify widely held misconceptions about decoherence and explain that environmental interaction tends to choose a basis in state space in which the system decoheres while leaving coherences in other coordinate systems intact. Speaker: Hartmut Neven