Month: August 2001

wireless transaction servers

occasionally, there is still a gem to be found in the slashdot crowd. in response to the announcement of an apache port to windows ce, len produced this nugget:

The WinCE apache thing, but then it hit me. It isn’t about the general type of web server that we know and love. It’s about a portable transaction platform!

Imagine that you are a salesman, contractor or other individual who travels and does business with many different people in many different places. If you had a 802.11 (I don’t think bluetooth will make it) enabled Jornada or iPaq, then you could carry a web-based transaction server with you, wherever you go. You wouldn’t need a fixed IP, nor a constant broadband link to the internet.

You could hop on to your client’s wireless LAN, or establish a peer-to-peer link to make your transaction server (e-business whatever) appear local to your clients. They could do business with you, and you take your web-site and data with you when you leave. In this way, you could use a near universal interface (web browser) to handle customer interactions, without having to scrawl all of the information in by a flaky pen-based interface.

This would be a very cheap way of doing business, with less threat of being cracked by some script kiddie.

The Thai Banking System

Well, yesterday was one of these days where I seriously doubted that Thailand has made it beyond being a developing country. For the second time in 4 days, my visa card was suckered into an ATM, claiming an invalid pin code. While I got my card back the first time around, this time they tell me it will be destroyed by visa? This left me cash-strapped and somewhat worried. Since Oliver was in a similar position (ie having no money), we had a somewhat funny situation where we were financed by Oliver’s Thai girlfriend (usually it’s the other way around.)

Apparently, Thailand does not have a world-class ATM backbone, despite silly stickers on ATMs claiming to be e-commerce outlets?! Anyways, when I reverted to the old fashioned way of withdrawing money at the counter, it magically worked. Thais love paperwork and clerks are being subsidized in massive numbers. For instance, Thai companies in Bangkok do not use public post despite its good and timely service. Instead, they employ some fool whose job is to run errands all day. Some days, one of these guys shows up every 30 minutes, usually to bring in a single check for sign-off? A network analogy would be if the Internet consisted only of point-to-point links. Imagine the number of links needed, and the horrendous inefficiency. No wonder Bangkok traffic is so bad if it is clogged by all these jerks.

Cambodia

Just back from the awe-inspiring kingdom of the khmer. This is the most impressive historic site I have seen in my lifetime. 3 days chock full with the most amazing temples, partly overgrown by the jungle, partly towering proudly over an immense temple area (several km2 for the bigger temples). I took 500 pictures. It will take some time to sift through them, but they can’t all be bad.

The cambodians are a clever bunch. They speak english a lot better than the thais across the board. While they live in primitive conditions, they will go far if they can keep up this determination.

Angkor Wat

well, i heard today that by paying 15k baht (600 SFr), you can rent 2 police officers with motorbikes that will keep traffic clear for you. sounds like a bargain, and could only happen here.

on a different note, i will likely spend the weekend in cambodia, to visit the great ruins at angkor wat i hope the trip won’t be too rough, one has heard tales of harassed tourists lately.

Foresight Institute

Reading Vernor Vinge’s A fire upon the deep has raised my interest in hard science fiction a lot. Vinge raises so many questions in his book that one wonders how the world well prepare for what is to come. Vinge, the mind behind the Vinge singularity (describing a process of self improvement that is exponential, going off-scale rather quickly) also talks about nanotechnology. That is when I came across the Foresight Institute, a charity after my liking. Instead of fiddling around with the present human condition (which is worthwhile, but maybe not the best use of resources), its goal is

to guide emerging technologies to improve the human condition. Foresight focuses its efforts upon nano technology, the coming ability to build materials and products with atomic precision, and upon systems that will enhance knowledge exchange and critical discussion, thus improving public and private policy decisions.

There is so much to write about and so little time. Next time I shall mention the concept of future shock, extropians and so on.

Agents and the Semantic Web

I hope that I have convinced the reader several strands of research in the fields of AI, World Wide Web languages, and multi-agent systems can be brought together in exciting and interesting ways. Many of the challenges inherent in bringing communicating multi-agent systems to the web require ontologies of the type being developed in DARPA’s DAML program and other efforts. More importantly, the integration of agent technology and ontologies may make significant impact on the use of web services and the ability to extend programs to more efficiently perform tasks for users with less human intervention. Unifying these research areas and bringing to fruition a web teeming with complex, “intelligent” agents is both possible and practical, although a number of research challenges still remain. The pieces are coming together, and thus, the semantic web of agents is no longer a science fiction future. It is a practical application on which to focus current efforts.

My Bangkok Apartment

it’s been like 5 days since i moved into my new apartment. while its not in any way up to european standards re: cleanliness etc, i don’t mind.

its situated in a building full of thais, so i get to experience the thai way of life up close. first night i slept there, my roommate came back from a party at 5:00, quite drunk.. i was somewhat surprised 🙂

the following night, someone in the building thought it a good idea to do some home improvement at 3:00 one morning, no water in the shower.. so i applied a renaissance level of perfume to cover the sweat stench. 🙂

the other night, the owner of the building had his birthday. he is running a spa just opposite the apartment. naturally, all his employees were there partying with him. that meant an enormously loud sound system on the street in front of the building, and some 30 thais dancing all night like crazy. it was great fun, or sanook as they say around here. (yes, i finally got around to buying an english-thai dictionary which helps me to make major inroads into the thai language)

Apple is losing the technology edge

mark gonzales (former apple chief for sw) makes a good point why apple has not really been that innovative lately.

But I think the market share discussion is missing the primary calculation that must go on in the exec staff of Apple (and I know if did through the 80s and 90s.) It takes development $ to keep an OS on the cutting edge, and marketing $ to explain the differences and advantages. These costs must be recovered, in the end, by sales (thus from customers.)

Market share comes into play when you divide these costs by units. To put some numbers on it, if Apple has 5% share, and Microsoft 90% share, Microsoft can spend 17x more on R&D than Apple can, and maintain price parity.

Weblogs & jabber

jogger is a new service by jabber.org that lets you update a weblog from within a jabber client. it will be interesting to watch as they release their XML-RPC API. with some work, it could probably be adapted to my favorite weblog system, postnuke it would be great if the different weblogs would align their API.