May 2007

I can think of some great opportunities for scientific tools for data exploration/visualization, collaboration, social networking, etc. Just look at some of the example applications. Amazing stuff.

I am seriously considering buying a motorcyle (touring or dual sport). I’ve been looking around and I think I like the BMWs. Dual sport: F640 GS R1200 GS Touring: F800 ST R1200 ST I think I like the R1200 GS more than the others but I wonder whether I should …

After a long week of visits at Cornell, MIT, and Harvard, I had few days of holidays in New York (I love this city). As always when I am visiting a city (this was my second time in NY), I did lots of exploring and relaxing (no work! :-). It’s …

My colleague Lee Dirks and I are visiting Cornell, MIT, and Harvard over the next few days, before I go to New York for few days of holidays and then an OAI-ORE meeting. While at the meeting with the arXiv folks today, the “Middle Ages Tech Support” video was mentioned, …

Wow! I started using PopFly today and is sooooo cool! The “Create Mashup” tool is effectively dataflow (very much like Yahoo Pipes!) built using Silverlight so you can use it on the Mac too. The “Create Page” is also interesting because of its Ribbon interface and editing capabilities. The possibilities …

/**/ Over the last couple of months, I’ve been organizing the Manycore Computing workshop, sponsored by my group. I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with top people from the industry and academia while putting together the program and list of attendees (the workshop is by-invitation only). We already have >70 …

Woo hoo! He’s back and he’s full of energy! I got to spend some time with Lisa and Pat at Mix07 and had a blast with them. They did try to get me drunk and almost succeeded. I’ll have to return the favor soon :-) I am soooo excited to …

Tony Hey’s slides on “The Social Grid” are now available (6.5MB PDF). This talk focused on the value of using the Web and its existing, stable technologies to deliver value to eScience. It also encouraged the Grid community to consider modern Web usage patterns and technologies, like “software-as-a-service”, social networking, semantics, …

It’s so nice to see Jim here. We are about to embark on some pair-coding. The landscape around the conference’s hotel is just breathtaking.

In few hours I will be flying to Banff for the WWW 2007 conference. Jim is also going to be there. Paul as well. Also, many others from the Web community so I am really looking forward to meeting everyone.

Well, the Vancouver half marathon over. I am not very pleased with my performance. I knew that I wasn’t prepared as well I should have been, so I guess I should have expected this. I finished in around 2h3m (2 mins slower than last time :-( This time I was …

Social networking is truly becoming part of our day-to-day lives. The Web is enabling some amazing scenarios. BBC is running a story on “social lending”, which I found interesting, especially the relation of the approach to microfinancing.

I want one of these. Imagine how useful for scientific computing this would be. I don’t expect to get one but I am going to ask anyway :-) Read more [...]

Cooool. “Researchers at the National University of Ireland, Galway’s (NUIG) Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) have developed a search engine that can answer search queries with more than seven billion RDF statements in mere fractions of a second, which is the highest number recorded to date.” (Super-fast RDF search engine …

Both my previous laptop’s and my current one’s graphic cards were from ATI’s FireGL Mobility range (i.e. tuned for CAD and digital media content management applications). This meant that the drivers were not really targeting games. I was never able to start SecondLife. Until today! I got an update from …

I took the opportunity to watch two shows in Las Vegas, while waiting for Mix 07 to start. ” Love “, a  Cirque du Soleil production. I really enjoyed it. The colors, the music by Beattles, the acrobatics! However, I think I preferred Varekai. The Blue Man Group . Interesting …