Google Autonomous Cars

Monday Note ". . . is a [weekly] newsletter covering the intersection of media and technology." Its principals are Frederic Filloux and Jean-Louis Gassee (a former senior executive of Apple). Some of their writing is too pedantic for my taste, but their perspectives are usually worthwhile (. . . and it's only a weekly).

This week, they tease out the nuances and complexities of Google's autonomous cars and what a multifaceted effort the project is -- involving geographic information and systems (of course), real-time traffic information, immense data and communications infrastructures, and even "automobile OSes." 

Data in the driver’s seat

March 17, 2013 - 8:48 pm | Edited by Frédéric Filloux

Autonomous vehicles — fully or partially — will rely on a large variety of data types. And guess who is best positioned to take advantage of this enormous new business? Yep, Google is. 

The Google driveless car is an extraordinary technical achievement. To grasp the its scope, watch this video featuring a near-blind man sitting behind the wheel of an autonomous Prius as the car does the driving. Or, to get an idea of the complexity of the system, see this presentation by Sebastian Thrun (one of the main architects of Google’s self-driving car project) going through the multiple systems running inside the car.

Spectacular as it is, this public demonstration is merely the tip of the iceberg. For Google, the economics of self-driving cars lie in a vast web of data that will become a must to operate partially or fully self-driving vehicles on a massive scale. This network of data will require immense computational and storage capabilities. Consider the following needs in the context of Google’s current position in related fields.

See the link for full story. 

Quantified Self

"Qauntified self" is the notion that technology -- using aspects of sensors/sensing, wearable computing, ubiquitous computing and networking, and generally the "internet of things" -- can make it possible for you to acquire data to analyze many aspects of your life -- many aspects of your physical health, your mental health, your productivity. (See "Counting every moment: The quantified self" in the March 2012 Technology Quarterly report from The Economist; see also  http://www.william-garrity.com/blog/2013/3/8/wireless-connections-internet-of-things.html in particular and http://www.william-garrity.com/blog/tag/future in general.) 

Mark Wilson, in a piece in Fast Company's Co.Design, writes about a straightforward approach to quantifying self via a simple mobile app.

The level of detail about one's life that is available is staggering. 

Nicholas Felton Unveils His Latest Annual Report (Infographic of the Day) 

Today, you probably know Nicholas Felton best for his most widely seen work, Facebook’s Timeline. But since 2005, he’s been working on a cult-favorite project all his own, the annual Feltron Report. The 2012 version is out now for $28.

As always, the report is a meticulously documented year in review of everything he’s done, presented in a series of rich infographics that push the boundaries on personal data quantification. With a glance, you’ll learn some of Felton’s most intimate details. Each day, he consumes coffee around 10:40am and booze around 8:38pm. He spends about 4x as much time with his girlfriend as his mother. And on June 20, he shot a Glock 22. 

Story continues at linlk. 

SXSW: Themes and Technologies

SXSW -- South by Southwest -- is a set of film, technology, and music festivals/conferences that take place in March, in Austin, Texas. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_By_Southwest) 

This article by the Altimeter Group's Chris Silva and Jeremiah Owyang presents their views of the conference's themes -- 

• Hardware was king this year (SXSW is typically focused on software and services) 
• iPhone users switching to Android 
• Mobility was about supporting the enterprise (i.e., work) 
• Major brand presence -- 

and technologies, including --

• Gesture-based computing 
• 3D printing and replication 
• Proximity-based and near field communications 
• Collaborative economy 
• Android 
• Space exploration 
• Augmented and virtual reality 
• Micromedia (e.g., Vine) 
• Quantified self (personal anaytics -- e.g., Nike FuelBand) -- 

as well as technologies on life support (good riddance, QR codes).

The piece matrices each technology across examples, disruption potential, and import (what it means). 

Altimeter's Take: The Technologies That Matter from SXSW 2013 

Posted on March 13th, 2013 

Technologies are Emerging at an Increased Rate –Making Tracking Harder than Ever
SXSW is no longer about disruptive technologies being launched, instead, it’s a mainstream, it’s a mainsteam festival, actually) and digital leaders at today’s large corporations are already present, and you should be too.  In fact, the amount of data created about the topic had nearly double year over year.   Altimeter Group was well represented with 9 analysts or researchers at SxSWi this year, with a large team in Austin tracking what’s disruptive. Long known for launches of big names such as Twitter and Foursquare, as well as those with more hype that long-term staying power like Highlight – would be past its prime and recycling yesterday’s news.    If you weren’t able to attend, Altimeter has captured the salient highlights to showcase here:

See the link for full content. 

Smartphones: Apple Versus the Rest

There's a lot of fuss about this-smartphone-platform versus that-smartphone-platform; about which is better -- iPhone or Android.

This piece by The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg in his All Things D[igital] blog describes an aspect of the environment -- that there is 

• iPhone: (essentially) one OS (Apple's iOS), apps from a variety of developers, (essentially) one product, made by a single manufacturer (Apple)
• Android: multiple versions and releases of the OS, apps from a number of developers (but not Apple), multiple hardware products, made by a variety of manufacturers 

Even if you take issue* with some of Mossberg's opinions and specific assertions, his piece provides a useful perspective. 

How Apple Gets All the Good Apps 

MARCH 12, 2013 

Apple tightly controls its software and hardware, and is fiercely competitive in battling its rivals, especially in the mobile market. And yet, while the company never creates apps for anyone else’s mobile system or device, each of its major mobile-platform foes — Google, Amazon and Microsoft — make many of their apps available for Apple devices. That makes those devices the sort of Switzerlands of the mobile world.

If you buy an iPhone or iPad, you get Apple-written mobile apps and services like Siri, iMessage, iWork, iPhoto and FaceTime, which aren’t available on other phones and tablets. But you can get first-class versions of competitors’ official apps.

So, iPhone and iPad users who prefer apps from other big mobile-platform makers don’t have to switch to an Android or Windows Phone or an Amazon tablet. They have access right on their Apple devices to major apps from these competing platforms. But people with non-Apple mobile devices can’t get Apple’s mobile apps and services. 

Story continues at link.

*I think a headline like "How Apple Gets All the Good Apps" is more accurately, "Apple Restricts Its Apps and Services." And there's a potentially faulty premise; namely, that people are interested in having these apps available outside Apple's ecosystem. 

*Mossberg understates the comparatively fewer choices inherent in iPhone. "Note that I am only talking about apps that are officially published by Apple’s rivals themselves, not those from OTHER DEVELOPERS that may mimic or provide workarounds for an app from one rival for another’s platform." [Emphasis mine.] 

*It's important to note that "[i]f you want to live in a Google or Microsoft world, with a single sign-on to those companies’ services and all of their apps, an Apple device won’t cut it. " See http://www.william-garrity.com/what-smartphone-should-i-get/ Which ecosystem is yours should be one of your first considerations.

How Search (Google) Works

Google has published at http://www.google.com/insidesearch/ a basic tutorialgraphic on how web search works; it's a good place to start to understand it. (Inside Search also includes a gigantic list of tips & tricks; recommended if you're a regular user of Google!) 

There are agnostic and more advanced tutorials on search out there -- as I can find them I'll post them.