Yes!
Yesterday, I was thinking, what if we invent wireless electricity, where you don't to plug any power chords. You just come to the vicinity of a wireless electricity source, and all the devices you are carrying get charged. We won't need any power sockets in the home or office, and we won't need to plug in our phones, computers or PSPs. We won't even need to replace the batteries on the remotes or wall clocks! I say to myself: I don't believe this hasn't been done yet. Nice Dreaming.
Well, voilà! About an hour later, my RSS reader gives me this: MIT Wirelessly Powers a Lightbulb, and my dream comes true. What a coincidence!
They call it WiTricity. "The MIT researchers successfully demonstrated the ability to power a 60 watt light bulb from a power source that was about 2 meters away. The setup powered the bulb on even when the coils were not in line of sight. The researchers plan to miniaturize the setup enough for commercial use in three to five years." I'll wait.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
For technology to really be useful
I expect information and communication technologies to serve me better: faster, easier, more intuitive. Whoever does it first will win my mind and heart.
- I'd rather not wait for something to download, or wait for search to finish, or wait for my CPU to process some tasks.
- I'd rather have all (ALL) my data available all (ALL) the time from anywhere. I don't want to say to myself or to someone else "I don't have it with me now" or "I can't access it from here"
- I am reading an article on my mobile phone in a cafe. When I leave the cafe I want to continue to hear it in my car, starting where I stopped reading. I will call this: 'cross-format cross-media continuous access' for now. I heard that Motorola is doing some 'same-format cross-media' work (listening to something in your home, then continue listening to it in you car then your office).
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
iHorizons in the Press
Here's a developing list of recent press articles, and websites, mentioning iHorizons:
First published: 12/12/06
- QSTP's Case study on iHorizons
- Arabian Business: QSTP, iHorizons
- iHorizons to develop home-grown software at Qatar Science & Technology Park
We are developing our research and development program and looking into new areas like bioinformatics - آفاق تطوِّر حلولاً برمجية في واحة العلوم والتكنولوجيا في قطر
(Arabic) iHorizons develops software solutions at QSTP
First published: 12/12/06
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
When will eBooks fly?
The technology is there. The killer apps? Not quite.
eBooks and eMagazines make my life easeir when it comes to reading. I love them. But not many people do, yet. eBooks have been around in various formats for more than 15 years, but they didn't quite catch up with the general public to become a mainstream medium. They will, but only when their features become too useful to miss. This is when:
We have universal access to our eBooks
I need to reach my ebooks wherever I am, like I reach my photos on Flickr and my favorites on del.icio.us. We are not quite there yet.
Now I have to have a local copy of all of my ebooks, at the office, at home, on my notebook, on my pocket pc. It is a lot of work to keep an updated copy of everything on all devices. And it doesnt always work, as some formats limit the number of 'activated' copies you can have, for copyright protection.
The best attempt at this I have seen is O'Reilly Network's Safari Bookshelf, which gives you an easy way to rent books, put them on your personal bookshelf, and access them from any web browser. Its main drwaback is that it's largely limited to technical books and is mostly focused on books published by O'Reilly.
Part of ubiquitous access is being able to annotate and tag my books and magazines and access those annotations from anywhere. To my knowledge, this is not available yet (Safari let's you just create bookmarks), and it will make a good difference when it happens.
I also want ubiquitous access to all version of my ebooks; see next (except for the paper version, of course :-) , that's the disadvantage of paper!).
We only need to buy a book once
When I own a book, I want to own all versions of it (paper, ebook, audiobook) at no additional cost. This makes a lot of sense, since the medium shouldn't matter. I am buying the content, and I should pay for it once without having to pay for each medium separately!
Amazon has recently announced Amazon Upgrade: digital access to books purchased through Amazon. It is not clear yet how this will work or when it will be available. It's also not clear whether you will have to pay extra for this. I hope they do it right!
Universal search
I want to be able to search all my books and magazines, in different foramts, from different vendors, from one location. That's not too much to ask given todays search state of technology.
Magazines too!
Zinio has done a good job with emagazines. I read all my mags on Zinio, from PC Mag to Business 2.0 to Architectural Digest. It is very convinient, except for lacking universal access.
What's next?
We are moving there, slowly but surely. I beleive that within 10 years paper books will be going out, and convinient, instant, global access and search will be in.
Many people are emotional about paper books. They say "books cannot be replaced", and they mean paper books. However, I remind them that the medium (stone, papyrus, paper, electronic) is not the book, and I do agree that books will never disappear from our lives, but not necessarily on paper! The shift that's happening right now from physical to digital books has far greater impact than when we shofted from stone to papyrus to paper!
eBooks and eMagazines make my life easeir when it comes to reading. I love them. But not many people do, yet. eBooks have been around in various formats for more than 15 years, but they didn't quite catch up with the general public to become a mainstream medium. They will, but only when their features become too useful to miss. This is when:
We have universal access to our eBooks
I need to reach my ebooks wherever I am, like I reach my photos on Flickr and my favorites on del.icio.us. We are not quite there yet.
Now I have to have a local copy of all of my ebooks, at the office, at home, on my notebook, on my pocket pc. It is a lot of work to keep an updated copy of everything on all devices. And it doesnt always work, as some formats limit the number of 'activated' copies you can have, for copyright protection.
The best attempt at this I have seen is O'Reilly Network's Safari Bookshelf, which gives you an easy way to rent books, put them on your personal bookshelf, and access them from any web browser. Its main drwaback is that it's largely limited to technical books and is mostly focused on books published by O'Reilly.
Part of ubiquitous access is being able to annotate and tag my books and magazines and access those annotations from anywhere. To my knowledge, this is not available yet (Safari let's you just create bookmarks), and it will make a good difference when it happens.
I also want ubiquitous access to all version of my ebooks; see next (except for the paper version, of course :-) , that's the disadvantage of paper!).
We only need to buy a book once
When I own a book, I want to own all versions of it (paper, ebook, audiobook) at no additional cost. This makes a lot of sense, since the medium shouldn't matter. I am buying the content, and I should pay for it once without having to pay for each medium separately!
Amazon has recently announced Amazon Upgrade: digital access to books purchased through Amazon. It is not clear yet how this will work or when it will be available. It's also not clear whether you will have to pay extra for this. I hope they do it right!
Universal search
I want to be able to search all my books and magazines, in different foramts, from different vendors, from one location. That's not too much to ask given todays search state of technology.
Magazines too!
Zinio has done a good job with emagazines. I read all my mags on Zinio, from PC Mag to Business 2.0 to Architectural Digest. It is very convinient, except for lacking universal access.
What's next?
We are moving there, slowly but surely. I beleive that within 10 years paper books will be going out, and convinient, instant, global access and search will be in.
Many people are emotional about paper books. They say "books cannot be replaced", and they mean paper books. However, I remind them that the medium (stone, papyrus, paper, electronic) is not the book, and I do agree that books will never disappear from our lives, but not necessarily on paper! The shift that's happening right now from physical to digital books has far greater impact than when we shofted from stone to papyrus to paper!
Monday, November 14, 2005
Al Jazeera Interview
I was hosted by Al Jazeera Arabic Channel tonight for a 30-minute program, Beyond the News, to discuss the coming World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunis from 16-18 November 2005. The host was Mohamad Kraishan and the other guest from Cairo was Dr. Abdel Monem Saeed, head of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
This is the second time I was invited to talk about this issue on Al Jazeera. The first was in December 2003 during the first summit in Geneva, on Minbar Al Jazeera program.
The discussion revolved around America's control of the Internet, what it means, and what the various parties have to say on this issue. I will elaborate more on this program and the summit later on, including:
This is the second time I was invited to talk about this issue on Al Jazeera. The first was in December 2003 during the first summit in Geneva, on Minbar Al Jazeera program.
The discussion revolved around America's control of the Internet, what it means, and what the various parties have to say on this issue. I will elaborate more on this program and the summit later on, including:
- Internet governance
- Human rights and freedom of expression; Internet prisoners
- Freedom on knowing; Internet censorship
- The economic factors
- The Digital Divide
My other live contributions on Al Jazeera include the reality of Muslims in Science and Technology in November 1997 and the Role of the Internet as a Means to Communicate Islam in October 1999.
Monday, November 07, 2005
I just love del.icio.us!
it is really liberating to be able to save, tag and comment any webpage from anywhere, knowing that u'll be able to go back to it any time easily from anywhere. the lack of it was holding me back for years, unnecessarily worrying more about how to synchronise my contacts from home, office, notebook, mobile, etc., rather than actually focusing on the contents of those pages and enjoying them.
not any more! and it is easier to find a link than in IE.
despite the low rating it got recently from PC Mag, i love del.icio.us! it is liberating!
and the concept of read-once tag that i came up with today is nice. i can go back later to items that i wnated to read, then i'll remove the link once i read it.
update: oct 5, 2006: the tobuy tag is also helpful for marking items you plan to buy online at some point.
not any more! and it is easier to find a link than in IE.
despite the low rating it got recently from PC Mag, i love del.icio.us! it is liberating!
and the concept of read-once tag that i came up with today is nice. i can go back later to items that i wnated to read, then i'll remove the link once i read it.
update: oct 5, 2006: the tobuy tag is also helpful for marking items you plan to buy online at some point.
Friday, October 21, 2005
The social web
(this entry is still being developed)
The social web (or web 2.0 as some call it) is nothing less than a paradigm shift in computing, communication, media and life. When someone says this, he or she is sometimes accused of being too futuristic and too excited about cutting edge technology. But I am more excited about the social, cultural, and economic implications of technology than technology itself. Mind you, many of the technologies involved in the social web aren't cutting edge at all!
As a way of showing that, see how researchers were working hard at making machines smart enough so we can talk to them and they would understand us. But that failed. Because we don't want to talk to machines. We want technologies to help us talk to each other quickly and easily, and that's what worked. Skype worked. Blogging and Podcasts and Wikis worked. The 'social' applications of technology worked.
There are now browsers, like Flock, that focus on enabling you to take advantage of new web contribution technologies, providing practical, built-in support for blogging, shared favorites, shared photos, and RSS.
Media is one of the areas affected most by this shift. 'Citizen reporting' is rapidly becoming part of mass media. Anyone can report anything on his or her own blog. True, it is fairly unlikely that many people will read your blog (there are about 15 million blogs now, increasing by 2 million a month), but good citizen reporters will stand out.
Check the 'Social Machines' feature in the August issue of MIT Technology Review. It gives a very good look at what people are doing and the smart application that are coming out to help us become more social using technology. Also, while at it, check their very interesting blogs at trblogs.com.
The social web (or web 2.0 as some call it) is nothing less than a paradigm shift in computing, communication, media and life. When someone says this, he or she is sometimes accused of being too futuristic and too excited about cutting edge technology. But I am more excited about the social, cultural, and economic implications of technology than technology itself. Mind you, many of the technologies involved in the social web aren't cutting edge at all!
As a way of showing that, see how researchers were working hard at making machines smart enough so we can talk to them and they would understand us. But that failed. Because we don't want to talk to machines. We want technologies to help us talk to each other quickly and easily, and that's what worked. Skype worked. Blogging and Podcasts and Wikis worked. The 'social' applications of technology worked.
| Web 1.0 | Web 2.0 |
| People consume content | People generate content |
| dominant platform: desktop | dominant platform: the web |
| directories (taxonomy) | tagging ("folksonomy"): spontaneous organization through the actions of the group |
| stickiness | syndication |
| publishing | participation |
| personal websites | blogging |
| Britannica Online | Wikipedia |
There are now browsers, like Flock, that focus on enabling you to take advantage of new web contribution technologies, providing practical, built-in support for blogging, shared favorites, shared photos, and RSS.
Media is one of the areas affected most by this shift. 'Citizen reporting' is rapidly becoming part of mass media. Anyone can report anything on his or her own blog. True, it is fairly unlikely that many people will read your blog (there are about 15 million blogs now, increasing by 2 million a month), but good citizen reporters will stand out.
Check the 'Social Machines' feature in the August issue of MIT Technology Review. It gives a very good look at what people are doing and the smart application that are coming out to help us become more social using technology. Also, while at it, check their very interesting blogs at trblogs.com.
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