A Happy New Year!

My best wishes to all my friends and colleges! Thank you a lot for being so patient to me.

Nurnberg 1945-2010

I’ve just listened to the speech of Benjamin B. Ferencz, a former prosecutor in Nurnberg process against Nazis leaders. It put a great impression upon me.

I just feel the continuity of history, the role each person can play in the world. I wish the world is better than now.

http://www.benferencz.org/

JaZz iN KyiV

This weekend I’ve been enjoying jazz music at Kyiv Jazz Fest 2010. The most fascinating thing is that you can find that trend you like.

On Saturday Oregon and Lee Ritenour made a great show. In all cases it is better to see and to listen rather than to read. In short: Oregon is style, improvisation. Lee Ritenour is splash of blues. Just look at them:

Oregon–USA

Lee Ritenour–USA

Is Java Still WORA?

According to James Gosling interview on Hadoop summit Oracle will definitely concentrate on server side platform enhancements to bring more safety and efficiency to J2EE world. Sounds good. http://www.osp.ru/news/articles/2010/27/13002964/

At the same time focus of mobile vendors is moving to developing their application platforms by their own. In this area the future of Java is not clear.

I see the reasons for that since there is no a five star solution that will satisfy everyone. Still it could be not efficient and will definitely split up technologies.

Nevertheless sooner or later technologists will come up with an idea of having a common runtime. The world moves spiral.  

Genius or Hoaxer?

I believe it is better to understand http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html 

Tour de France Soon

What Knowledge Do You Need?

Having a dilemma where to move further in my professional development I investigated Stanford resources and found an interesting lecture video from my point of view.

Medvedev in Cafe about Skolkovo and Innovations

Obvious Incredible Series

Today I eventually watched “Obvious Incredible” that is the eldest scientific TV program in USSR and Russia.

http://www.rutv.ru/video.html?d=0&cid=4&tvpreg_id=111402

In the series the TV presenter and guests discussed the problems of strategic planning and its role for the world today. It was very informative to know peculiarities of planning/foreseeing in Japan and Finland. Well, and of course listening to conversationalist is always fascinating.

Tiger Becoming Scientist

http://www.cbio.ru/modules/news/print.php?storyid=842
http://www.hkstp.org/HKSTPC/en_html/en_index.jsp

Providing an unprecedented conditions for attracting capital, China is making the next step - the export of technology. This takes industrial parks, which are developed in two forms: in Hong Kong, where the work can be any, including foreign companies and Zhong-Huan-Chun, created by the Academy of Sciences. The project cost is $ 1.5 billion. The aim is to create a platform for the development of innovative products targeting huge production and consumption potential in China. The main challenge is to make a technology park as attractive to the leaders of high-tech industries as to young developers of future technologies.

“Every, even a foreign company, can come here” - said Joseph Liu, marketing manager at Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation . “We have already half of our workforce come abroad. The main condition - the company must have an interesting research project. We accept those who have not less than 60% of the budget for research”.

Although the park is already populated, construction will be completed in 2011. By this time here to build research centers for the four main areas: electronics, biotech, precision mechanics, IT and telecommunications.

The body of scientific research park is built equipment, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The unique complex offers residents of the Science park based on the hourly rental fees. Therefore, the smallest company, just a group of enthusiasts can take advantage of them.

The scheme is as follows: an initiative group with the idea, records in Hong Kong, creates venture, finds an “angel”, who provides funding for initial development. Then the project is accepted in the “family” and gets access to all amenities.

“Engineers are working very hard”, - said the marketing manager of the park, Joseph Liu. Apparently, the “angels” as always have not enough money, and need to achieve results as soon as possible.

To such enthusiasts the technopark provides everything from rest rooms to dorms and hostel, a room in which stands a third of the rental cost of a city apartment. Private apartment in the park will cost already $2 thousand per month. “Soon we will build another 330 thousand square meters, meters of housing, which is planning to take on $10 per square meter” - commented Liu .- “When the construction is completed, the Science Park will run 23 thousand people”.

To support companies in the Technology Park, it offers several types of financial aid: government grants, business incubator program and funded technology parks.

Incubation Program is designed to help technology startups in the beginning. In addition to funding, and participants receive scientific expertise (universities), training and education (forums and seminars), as well as marketing support (product launches, exhibitions, etc.).

The typical recipient of an incubator - a team of three or four engineers with an ingenious idea. If their technology is really promising, in the first year they will be exempt from rent, and for the second year it will be 50%.

In addition, from $150 million industrial park that annually allocates the purchase of new equipment and the costs associated with research they can count on a certain budget to be offset bills for rent and research equipment.

“Since we produce most talented company to the point where it can be shown venture investor” - said Joseph Liu . “In this note, we are not asking for a share in its capital”.

The second contender for the title of Silicon Valley - Zhong-Huan-Chun Street in Beijing. Here are the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Pekin University, Polytechnic Institute of Zhong-Huan University and other famous universities. Here is the most vibrant economy in China. Several new concepts - the economy of knowledge, the Internet economy authoritatively explained there. The average age is younger than 30 years!

Over the years of reforms and openness in the economic development in China were different hot spots: in the 80 years ahead was Shenzhen. In the 21 century, Zhong-Huan-Chun, as the representative of the new businesses and high technology, is becoming the leading force in the development of Chinese economy.

As an American "Silicone Valley of Zhong-Huan-Chun passed his way. Initial development and increase capacity is dependent on the market economy. More than 20 years ago, China decided to deploy the wheel of economic development, since the country began the current reform.

October 23, 1980 Researcher of the Academy of Sciences of China Chen Chunsyan first opened on the street Zhong-Huan-Chun private item of equipment at the Beijing Society of plasma.By the end of 1986 in the Zhong-Huan-Chun were discovered about 100 companies develop, gradually formed “electronic street”, where the private company is developing electronic equipment and markets.

Based on 20 years of development with the popularization of computer and Internet technology Zhong-Huan-Chunbegan to take a new technical effect. In June 1999, under the slogan “to develop science and technology in nation-building” was officially opened by district development of science and technology, Zhong-Huan-Chun, China's first area of development of science and technology of national importance.

Currently, the “Silicon Valley of China” is attracting more and more young professionals who have received higher education abroad. Each working day they are creating an average of 1-2 companies.

Performance Matters

The idea is one of the most valuable things in the world, especially when it comes to the business world. Capitalist are looking for new ideas but hardly can find many.

Competitors are struggling to gain one another inch of the market. Probably the business will rush into the way how to exploit high performance systems. Who knows although startups have appeared already: http://www.technologyreview.com/web/25275/

And an interesting change in rating algorithm from Google:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/25026/?a=f

Daylight Train

It’s incredible the film is 34 years old. It might seem everything has changed. But there is something everlasting that will make us watching this masterpiece again and again.

Google Wave Hacked?

I have just read  China's Internet Paradox at MIT Technology Review and thought the topic can be referred to the situation happened with me this morning.

Today I’ve visited the CodeCamp conference in Kyiv. After the greeting words I  had a couple of minutes. I checked my mailbox and found a suspicious letter from my college who was sitting nearby.

The content was:

 

The message was sent on Saturday at 6.30 a.m.! Furthermore the content was definitely a spam. And finally my college didn't know my private email address (gmail account) as well as private addresses of other recipients of the letter. But!!! All the recipients are subscribed to the same google wave.

The only place how this information could be disclosed is the google address book. And what is the worst the message was found in the sent messages queue of gmail client.

Looks like google had not learned yet it has become a pawn of a big game.

Singing: M@ney, m@ney, m@ney…

ActiveX Version Registration

On Friday I spent some time for investigation of ActiveX versioning issue when it is installed using msi package. This msi package registers the ActiveX control as a COM server using regasm tool.

The problem was the version part of the codebase attribute did not work properly. I have found some similar complaints at different sites.

As a result there is a need to create a registry key:

HKCR/CLSID/{GUID}/InstalledVersion/(Default)

where default value is the version referenced in the Html (decimals replaced by commas).

Per-user, this value is at:

HKCU/Software/Classes/{GUID}/InstalledVersion/(Default).

NOTE: You have to create this key, regasm does not create it.

Delivering Client Application Using ActiveX

Recently at work I investigated the possibility of delivering our rich client application as an ActiveX control. I was surprised to know there is no good support of ActiveX CAB delivering in Visual Studio 2008. What I had to do is to learn a little the syntax of cab inf file. Strange format as for me:

[Setup Hooks]
hook1=hook1

[hook1]
run=msiexec.exe /i "%EXTRACT_DIR%\setup1.msi" /qn

[Version]
signature="$CHICAGO$" AdvancedINF=2.0

I've 'rambled' many sites, some of them can be useful for you:
http://www.osronline.com/ddkx/install/create-inf_4l47.htm
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa751974(VS.85).aspx

Fellows of IBM and Microsoft at Enterprise Developers Conference

Yesterday I participated in the Enterprise Developers Conference.

I particularly enjoyed the speech of Walker Royce, a vice president and chief software economist at IBM. His talk had a definite structure and goal.

Grigory Melnik from the patterns&practices division at Microsoft made a quite another impression. I believe he had looked through the presentation just before his public appearance. At the same time his enormous pride of being a Microsoft fellow made me laugh. This is a pathetic imitation of Steve Balmer.

Tchaikovsky Ballet

Yesterday I watched the Tchaikovsky ballet by Boris Eifman. I believe this is the first time Eifman comes to Kiev.

The choreography is quite unusual for me since it is not classical. Furthermore libreto is not easy to understand, the language is rather complex.

Turning Social into Cash

Almost two years ago I had a talk to a friend of mine about online communities and mechanisms that can be used to analyze relationships between them and their preferences to products and services. The principal idea was based on the fact that social communities consist of people who has common preferences, points of view on some facts, etc. This gives a field for market analysts how to find out the most effective advertisement for the target audience.

Today I looked through some research papers searching for a comprehensive description of sales opportunity estimation. I found a site of Claudia Perlich, a former IBM researcher at Watson Research Center, who has become a chief researcher at Media6Degrees recently. The company makes a bridge between social networks with tons of private information and ads providers. The company holds a number of patents allowing them to make decisions without direct access to user data.

Didn’t you know what social networks are needed for?

http://www.us-venture-partners.us/usvp/news/releases/20090626.pdf

Going Smarter

One of the most interesting articles I’ve read today is “Turning Math into Cash” by W.Bulkeley in MIT TechReview.

“The mathematicians collected several years' worth of data about every sale IBM made around the world. They compared the results with the sales quotas set at the beginning of the year, most of which were developed by district sales managers who negotiated them with sales teams on the basis of past experience. To spot opportunities the sales teams didn't recognize, the researchers collected external data on IT spending patterns by industry and combined that information with the internal sales data. Then they used a technique called high-quantile modeling--which tries to predict, say, the 90th percentile of a distribution rather than the mean--to estimate potential spending by each customer and calculate how much of that demand IBM could fulfill.”

I’ve already found articles regarding the High-Quantile method application.

No Comments

Vladislav Galkin 1972-2010

Troubles with Venture Capital

Probably you’ve already noticed that startups are not what they were. For the last decade there were few if any successful stories. According to editorial article in MIT TechReview: “Funds launched in 1996 and 1997 have seen returns of 80 to 100 percent on average, according to Cambridge Associates; those launched in 1999 and 2000 have lost money. Since then, many have returned less than zero, and only recently has the industry showed signs of life.”

You’ll ask what’s wrong with it? I don’t know, probably the market is waiting for the next “big jump” or the world’s fed up with all the @innovations that are actually not. I believe startups should be smarter than facebook and twitter clones.

Another Point of View

In 2006 Vladimir Pozner together with a famous show man Ivan Urgant made remarkable journalist series abut States. I believe it is still the most thorough overview of contemporary life in US. For those who had no chance to watch all series the following videos might be  comprehensive.

Going Cloud

Looking through the latest issue of MIT Technological Review magazine I found an interesting statistics regarding the cloud market. Obviously it is growing. Nowadays cloud is much more realistic than SaaS, S+S and etc were two years ago.

Tweeter Account

I have create a tweeter account at last, you can follow my tweets there http://twitter.com/infotech_live