google

Can Scientific Data be Free?

Jerry Sheehan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:55:15 -0800

Description

With a good deal of scientific fanfare, Google announced last January a new beta program (Google Research Datasets-GRD) to provide free terabytes worth of storage for scientific data. This service was initiated to address

a scientific need for a robust freely available infrastructure that can be used to share the immense amounts of data being created by modern scientific exploration in disciplines as wide ranging as biology and physics. Initial GRD data sets included the 120 terabyte Hubble Space Telescope data and digital images from the text Archimedes Palimpsest.[1]

Less then a year later, with a weakening economy swinging the ax, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced the company would be cutting back on experimental projects and GRD came to an untimely end. As of December 2008, GRD had over 30 datasets uploaded, all of which now have approximately 1 month to find alternate hosting sites before Google pulls the plug.[2]

The scientific community is deeply disappointed in Google's move. Life scientists have argued that it is another sign that Google isn't interested in helping them on an infrastructure level while Astronomers are hoping they will reconsider their decision as the economic situation improves.[3] But, the bottom line is Google didn't see a business case here and decided to close down the experiment.

Google's decision in in sharp contrast to that taken by one of their up and coming competitors, Amazon. While many may think of Amazon as only the world's largest on-line bookstore, within the last three years they have become a major information infrastructure provider through products such as their Amazon's Web Services (AWS) and Elastic Compute Cloud. Just last Thursday, the company announced that they will be hosting massive amounts of public data including the annotated human genome, US Census data, and 3D renderings of molecules. [4]

The catch? While Amazon is hosting the data for free they will charge users for downloading the data or for any use of it for derivative computation. As they explains, "Previously, large data sets such as the mapping of the Human Genome and the US Census data required hours or days to locate, download, customize, and analyze. Now, anyone can access these data sets from their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and start computing on the data within minutes. Users can also leverage the entire AWS ecosystem and easily collaborate with other AWS users. For example, users can produce or use prebuilt server images with tools and applications to analyze the data sets. By hosting this important and useful data with cost-efficient services such as Amazon EC2, AWS hopes to provide researchers across a variety of disciplines and industries with tools to enable more innovation, more quickly."[5]

The death of GRD and the rise of the Amazon Web Services for public scientific data is important because it yet another signal that Amazon, not Google, may be the major player in experimentation with cloud computing services and data storage for scientific research.

Science in the United States

Source

[1]"Google to Host Terabytes of Open-Source Science Data", Alexis Madrigal, Wired Science, Jan 18, 2008, http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/google-to-provi.html

[2]"Failure to Launch: Google Research Datasets", Clinton Boulton, Google Watch, December 19, 2008, Google Watch - Failure to Launch - Failure to Launch: Google Research Datasets

[3]"Google Shutters Its Science Data Service", Alexis Madrigal, Wired Science, December 18, 2008, http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/googlescienceda.html

[4]"Amazon Hosting, Crunching Massive Public Databases", Aaron Rowe, Wired Science, December 5, 2008, http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/massive-amounts.html?referer=sphere_related_content

[5] "Public Data Sets on AWS Now Available", Amazon Web Services What's New, http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2008/12/03/public-data-sets-on-aws-now-available/

Could This Be the 'Droid Your Looking For?

Jerry Sheehan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:33:43 -0700

Description

Google and T-Mobile will unveil their first smart-phone today powered by the new Android Operating System (AOS). Android was announced by Google as they formed the Open Handset Alliance on November 12, 2007. It is quite impressive that less then one year later there is hardware on the street.

What's so special about Android? From a software standpoint there are a number of things that distinguish the operating system. First, and most importantly, this mobile operating system is open source allowing anyone in the community access to the underlying code for review, additions, extensions, etc. Think of Android as being the Linux of the mobile phone world. Second, unlike the iPhone which limits access given to third party developers to phone hardware AOS allows developers full access to any Android smart-phone hardware.[1] Android is also an important social phenomena. Thus far the focus of the mobile phone ecosystem has been primarily on hardware, with an open source foundation Android allows potentially million of new users to create their own cell phone experience based on their ability to write software. The other critical change in the Android business model is that applications for the phones will not be approved by anyone before being made available to the community. Apple created the App Store approach where users can download applications developed for the iPhone but first these must be approved by the company. Google is taking a hands-off approach regarding review which will allow anyone to post their AOS applications for the world to download on Google's Android Marketplace.[2]

Android is clearly a challenge to Apple, but not only in the mobile handset arena but also interestingly in their music service, iTunes. Amazon released their MP3 music download service in September 2007, while it has been moderately successful (7.3% of the music download market) it doesn't have nearly the market share of iTunes (sold more albums online in Jan/Feb of last year than any other U.S retailer). [3][4]

The first Android phone, the HTC G1, will come pre-loaded with the Amazon music service. With millions of new HTC G1 phones and Amazon's MP3 service offering slightly cheaper prices then iTunes and no digital rights management (DRM) handicap the mobile phone music battle should certainly heat up.[5] There are also interesting rumors that Android may grow beyond just the mobile phone marketplace and become the underlying foundation for a number of Internet aware devices. John Bruggerman, the Chief Marketing Officer at Wind River who has helped Google develop Android for the phone noted, ""We're starting to see Android get designed in on devices that extend way beyond the phone--things that might go in the automobile or things that might go in the home..."[6]

Computer & Information Science

Source

[1]"Android", Open Handset Alliance, Open Handset Alliance
[2] "Google Android: Can it Take on the Iphone?", The U.K. Telegraph, September 23, 2008, Google Android: Can it take on the iPhone? - Telegraph
[3] "Another Amazon MPS3 Sales Estimate: 8-10% of Download Market", Peter Kafka, Silicon Valley Insider, July 21, 2008, Another Amazon MP3 Sales Estimate: 8-10% Of Digital Download Market*
[4]"Top Music Seller's Store Has no Door", Michelle Quinn and Dawn Chmielewski, Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/04/business/fi-itunes4
[5]"AndroidTunes? Amazon launching a mobile music/movie store for Google’s platform"MG Siegler, VentureBeat, September 22, 2008, http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/22/androidtunes-amazon-launching-a-mobile-musicmovie-store-for-googles-platform/
[6]"Google's Android: It's Not Just for Phones", Stephen Shankland, CNET, September 22, 2008.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10047551-1.html

Chrome and Gears: The Web Gets a New Engine

Jerry Sheehan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:09:45 -0700

Description

The primary technology used by individuals to access the Web, the Web Browser, has not undergone substantial transformation since the creation of the first browser (Mosaic) by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in 1992. At that time, the web was primarily a document repository without the rich media types, interactivity, or proliferation of social information that is the foundation of our Web 2.0 ecosystem. While browsers have certainly improved in speed and features, the underlying document-centric mindset has dominated the browser paradigm.

Last week Google announced the release of their first browser, code named Chrome. Chrome takes a very different approach to the Web, one that is built not only on the current foundation of web technologies, but is built in recognition of the importance of javascript to the modern web experience and the emergence of web applications as a way of working. In this sense, one of the most important components of Chrome may well be the extension of Google Gears and an embrace of cloud computing. Google has a great illustrated "comic book" that explains some of the underlying philosophy and technologies used in Chrome.[1]

The first version of Chrome is a windows-only application but ports to other operating systems are under active development. Importantly, all of the underlying source code for the browser has been made open source and is available for the worldwide network of software developers to hack, improve, and test. Within the first day of its availability on the Web, Chrome had risen to being 1.7% of the global browser market.

What might be the underlying impact of Chrome:

1) A Substantial New Software Project for Google: Clearly Chrome is a cornerstone of the web experience that Google wants to develop and exploit. The highest levels of Google have publicly stated that this is a major project and Google's creators being on hand for the software announcement and confirm this fact.

2) Wither Mozilla? Google has been a primary supporter of Mozilla and was a critical ally in the fight to keep the browser viable when its market share was being attacked by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. While Google still talks the Mozilla talk, it is clear to most analyst that Chrome poses a threat to Mozilla. This will come about in likely one of two ways: 1) Google will likely explicitly decrease their support of Mozilla as they make a greater resource investment in Chrome. It is questionable who will step into the void left. 2) Since the Chrome code base is open source the legions of mozilla developers may begin to invest their time on Chrome as opposed to continued work on the Mozilla code-base. This attention deficit could decrease new releases effectively killing the browser in the uber-comeptitive mindshare battle.[4]

[3] The Mobile Browser Battle Will Heat Up: Chrome is likely part of a multi-platform campaign by Google with an increasing emphasis on the mobile device needs. The Google investment in Android provides a hardware platform on which Chrome may be optimized, and from the discussion of the motivation for Chrome by Google, they both use the same underlying software architecture (webkit). This common starting point will allow Google to place significant pressure, if they choose, on other mobile software providers. [5] This is a critical battleground. Remember that while today's Web is built around desktop personal computers the future is a billion mobile devices accessing global information.

[4] It's About the Gears, Stupid: It would be a mistake to look at the Google effort as being primarily about an effort to win the browser wars dominated by Internet Explorer (72.15% of global use).6 Instead, Chrome is likely focused in large part on trying to spread the adoption of Google Gears. Gears is Google's approach to distributed "cloud based" applications. Imagine a world in which Google provides not your browser, but your mail, your word processor, your spreadsheet, your contacts, and your slides.[4]

Computer & Information Science

Source

[1]http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html
[2]"A week of Chrome: Google's browser gets 7% share at Ars", Ryan Paul, Published: September 10, 2008, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080910-aweek-of-chrome-googles-browser-gets-7-share-at-ars.html
[3]"Google brings out big guns in support of Chrome",Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, MacWorld, September 2, 2008, http://www.macworld.com/article/135341/2008/09/chrome.html
[4] "The Importance of Chrome", Alex Russel, September 1, 2008, http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/2008/09/the-importance-of-chrome/
[5] "How Chrome Puts the Skids under Nokia", Twm Davies, The Register, September 5, 2008, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/05/chrome_mobile_analysis/
[6]Market Share by Net Applications, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0

Google Contributes Funding to NASA Space Science Technology + Mission

Matt Daniels — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:21:21 -0700

Description

Google has contributed funding to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a NASA spacecraft (smallsat) in cooperation with MIT and the Harvard Smithsonian Center that could potentially be launched in 2012.

Google, the Internet search powerhouse that in recent years has expanded to include mapping of the stars as well as the surfaces of the moon and Mars and which has an ongoing collaboration with NASA's Ames Research Center, provided a small seed grant to fund development of the wide-field digital cameras needed for the satellite. Because of the huge amount of data that will be generated by the satellite, Google has an interest in working on the development of ways of sifting through that data to find useful information.

It's interesting that private companies seem to be increasingly funding large science projects.... (N.B., I've noticed this mostly in the physical sciences...)

Engineering & Design

Source

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/google-planets-tt0319.html

Google Health: transportable & computable health data

Attila Csordas — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:26:20 -0700

Description

Insider and inspiring summary on what's new in Google Health compared to the competitors HealthVault and Dossia by David Kibbe.

"Much of the discussion about Google Health beta's recent launch as an online PHR or healthURL seems to me to miss the point about what is really new and different.

1) Computability. What Google Health does that no other platform is yet capable of doing is to make personal health data both transportable AND computable. Right now, this is the news. By supporting a subset of the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) standard for both inbound and outbound clinical messages, Google Health beta makes it possible for machines to accept, read, and interpret one's health data. It is one thing to store health data on the Web as a pdf or Word text file, for example one's immunizations or lab results, where they can be viewed. It is a giant leap forward to make the data both human and machine readable, so that they can be acted upon in some intelligent way by a remote server, kept up-to-date, and improved upon in terms of accuracy and relevance. That is what the CCR xml subset supported within Google Health beta achieves for the consumer that is really new and different; this is what HealthVault and Dossia are to date missing.

Right now, those web services are only mildly useful and sort of "toyish" -- allowing the user to create a meds calendar and get email reminders (ePillBox), or setting up preferences for health and medical news searches (MyDailyApple), or suggesting alternative medications to the ones you now take (SafeMed).

But disruptive innovations are often considered simplistic and compared to toys when they first emerge (remember the first Apple computer?) and there is no stopping these developers and these partner companies from making their services more intelligent, more useful, and more convenient to the consumer."

Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology

Source

Google Health beta -- What's really new and different?
http://www.health2blog.com/2008/05/google-health-b.html?cid=116208038

The Google Lunar X Prize | The next space race

Matt Daniels — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:26:27 -0800

Description

Wealth is accumulating in the hands of ambitious and visionary individuals, many of whom view space simultaneously as an adventure and a place to make money.

Recently, the X Prize Foundation joined with Google to announce a $30m Google Lunar X Prize, to be paid out to the first teams able to land on the lunar surface, rove for 500 metres and send back two video/photographic moon-casts. Within the first two weeks following the announcement, the X Prize Foundation received over 190 requests from 25 countries from prospective teams looking for registration materials.

This is the new generation of entrepreneurs who will reinvent space exploration the same way that Apple and Dell reinvented the computer industry...

Peter Diamandis observes:

NASA. ESA. JAXA. RKA. These are the world’s major national space agencies. They are the names that have dominated the past 50 years of space exploration. But over the next 50 years new names will emerge. The names that history will remember from the next five decades will be those of entrepreneurs, members of the private sector who saw in space an opportunity for expansion and vast wealth creation.

Physics & Space Science

Source

http://www.economist.com/theworldin/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10105031&d=2008

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

Xooglers becoming today's independent scientists

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:12:53 -0800

Description

CNet profiles a few early Google employees (or Xooglers, as ex-Google employees are caled) who are now doing other interesting things, including starting their own labs:

[Georges] Harik is investing in small companies like Wi-Fi company Meraki, and he's helping to develop a Web-based video conferencing company called Imo.im with his brother. Harkening back to his college studies of mathematical models of genetic algorithms, he's also opening a yet-to-be-named research lab in Palo Alto to develop artificial-intelligence software for the fields of biotech and medicine. He plans to invest about $100,000 in the lab this year.

[Scott Hassan's] Willow Garage, based in Menlo Park, Calif., stands out in Silicon Valley because it has no immediate ambition to make money. Rather, the mission is to make Willow Garage a hub for robotics development in the areas of personal assistants, autonomous boats, and driverless cars--with the hopes of attracting talent and partnerships across the country. The company is collaborating with Stanford in the robotics field, having donated $850,000 to its computer science lab. With Hassan's fortune, Willow Garage has plenty of time to develop new markets for robots.

This is another data-point in the emergence of the wealthy amateur as a force in science-- or at least in sciences closely allied to industries that are doing well.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

http://www.news.com/Life-after-Google%2C-with-millions---page-2/2100-1030_3-6226900-2.html?tag=st.next
http://pimm.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/xoogler-goes-biotech/

Web companies race to social and open information streams

Mike Love — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:05:30 -0700

Description

Many large web companies are racing towards a similar goal: owning people's online attention streams by providing the most benefit to those that use their services. For an example of this direction of new products, a San Francisco company, Radar Networks, recently unveiled a new service at the Web 2.0 Summit, Twine, which will assimilate and make sense of the information in users' lives if they feed it with bookmarks and the content of emails.

At the same time, we can see a push towards letting users choose if they want to open their digital identity and network. A new initiative from Google will add a social component to more of their services. Similar to Facebook, it looks like Google will open up a new set of APIs to let developers access the services.

Some details about Maka-Maka have already leaked out, particularly how Google plans to use the feed engine that powers Google Reader (known internally as Reactor) to create “activity streams” for other applications akin to Facebook’s news and mini feeds.

Google is planning to “out open” Facebook with a new set of APIs that developers can use to build apps for its social network Orkut, iGoogle, and eventually other applications as well.

A New York Times article describes Google, Myspace, LinkedIn and some of the most popular social networking sites convening on a commons standard for social network developers, OpenSocial:

MySpace and Bebo, two of the world’s largest social networking sites, on Thursday joined a Google-led alliance that is promoting a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks....

The open standards could create a boom of innovation around social networks as applications reach more users than ever and encourage developers to create more Internet tools.

Data mining on a large scale has been common practice for companies and the government for years now, but these new ambitious data aggregation and data mining projects will potentially open their results to the public. At the least, each individual user will be benefitted with better recommendations by the addition of data by others.

Radar Networks: Twine http://www.twine.com/
Google's Response to Facebook http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/29/googles-response-to-facebook-maka-maka/
MySpace Joins Google Alliance
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/technology/02google.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Plaxo: More on social network portability http://blog.plaxo.com/archives/2007/08/more_on_social.html
Twine, Freebase and Powerset http://mikelove.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/twine-freebase-and-powerset/

google

Can Scientific Data be Free?

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Could This Be the 'Droid Your Looking For?

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Chrome and Gears: The Web Gets a New Engine

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Google Contributes Funding to NASA Space Science Technology + Mission

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Google Health: transportable & computable health data

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The Google Lunar X Prize | The next space race

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Xooglers becoming today's independent scientists

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Web companies race to social and open information streams

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Signals