jorge.cortell.net

Friday May 17th I took the day to meet some of the interesting tech companies present in New York. There are over 1,200 tech companies in NY (including CodeAcademy, KickStarter, Foursquare, MakerBot, ZocDoc, Guilt, AppNexus, Tumblr, Etsy, KickStarter, Automatic… and mine!), most between the Flat Iron and SoHo areas of Manhattan (Silicon ALley). So I chose a few that, for one reason or another, I was interested in meeting and talk to their founders.

• First I went to Harvest. Had a sandwich and some water while Danny Wen told me how they are a self-funded company (finally someone who is not living out of “raised capital” while diluting their ownership). Interesting and successful, if one-product, company. Nice loft office, piano included. Not “too cool”, not “too cold”.
• Since I had a bit of extra time, I walked to Animoto. Talk about “too cool for school”. Some very nice touches, but, really 6 guitars, 2 keyboards, fussball, XBox… (then again, at our NY office we have ping-pong, basketball, and hammocks; and at our Spain office we have ping-pong, and a PlayStation). I use their very nice service, and their “themed meeting rooms” (particularly MarioLand) are great. But the need to prove goofiness, and indie, and gamify, and storify, and… you get the point. Too much. Forced. Not believable. Trying too hard (the PR story about this guy and his wedding was just unnecessary, absurd and unrelated).
• On my way to the next meeting I had to do a teleconference with Uruguay, and another one with Peru, so I walked again (when will we have cell coverage in the subway?).
• Second Market was next. Nice design for a financial services company. Strange the number of desks and computers without anyone using them. And a surprisingly high number of young Jewish males wearing their kipa working there. I thought it might be interesting but I realized neither the service nor the technology was of too much interest to me.
• Then I went to one I really wanted to see: Artsy (formerly Art.sy, now Artsy.net). The best views of all of the offices I visited. Such amazing views that somebody wrote in FourSquare “If I had those views I would not get any work done” and somebody else replied “I have those views and I don’t get any work done!”. I liked their office, their attitude, and their technology (Open Source). 
• My last stop (actually, I went back to Harvest to ask a question to their tech support director, but his answer is definitely not worth blogging about) was HookLoop, the $500 million Ny bet of Infor on app refresh. Huge company. Really huge. Awesome mentality (eyecandy like I like it). Had a nice conversation with Dan (PR Director) at the CEO’s desk. Found some synergies. Will continue the talk with one of their VPs hopefully next week.

26,605 steps later (according to the app in my phone that tracks my movements), I got back home. Exhausted, but exhilarated. I love Silicon Alley.

Carna botnet offers us this amazing 24 hour visualization of relative IPv4 utilization observed using ICMP Ping requests.

Look at the data, just look at it! Don’t you see people’s sleeping patterns, internet usage patterns, eating schedule habit, cultural differences, urban influence, regional inequalities…?

After playing with it for a while, beyond it limitations (light, format, movement…) here are the two biggest pitfalls with the Lytro camera:

1) It is still for Mac OSX only. They NEED to come out with Open Source / Free Software (both their software AND platform support for GNU/Linux).

2) Picture library size and location. BIG unresolved issue.

As I mentioned in my previous post, at IBM Innovation Center in Chicago they have a Watson (more info here) interactive kiosk with which to play an interactive game of Jeopardy. In case you have been living in a cave for the past few months, Watson beat Jeopardy human champions on live TV, the significance of which can not be overstated.

Now, remember: this is a “small version” of Watson, and a “self-contained” version of Jeopardy. So, no, I did not beat the full Watson at the full Jeopardy game. As a matter of fact, I only had time for a few questions, and I am absolutely certain that give enough time, Watson would have crushed me. I have only deep admiration at the incredible job IBM has made with Watson. They are making history in a way we con not even begin to understand yet. They are definitely changing the world, and for the better.

Having said that, let the glory glow bathe me for a minute. After all, how many people can show a picture of their score ahead of Watson’s at Jeopardy? Take that, Dr. Cooper… Bazinga!

Although I can not embed it (the author has disabled the option) this video by Japanese performer and CGI artist Kagemu is really worth looking at. Enjoy. (Via Nebula).

A couple of weeks ago I received my new Lytro camera. Although it is an incredible technology, and allows things that were unthinkable until now, so far I am mixed.

Pros:

• Compact and discreet
• Extremely easy to use
• New ways of taking pictures
• Novelty
• Supercool “focus later”

Cons:

• You have to get used to a different way of thinking and framing a shot (square! and distance)
• Low performance under low light (although better than my crappy Samsung Galaxy IIS camera)

Check out this online gallery. Click on different areas of the image, and see how it re-focus. Note: the “magic” happens in some pictures, while it does not in others, because it depends on the depth and elements in the shot. I do definitely need more practice.

I guess my old DSL can relax for a while. Big and heavy, but it is still the king when it comes to quality photographs.

On Tuesday I went to New York University for a nice conversation in the Inside the Internet Garage series, with journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher (AllThingsDigital, Wall Street Journal, etc).

Besides the very interesting bio/background overview of them that the interviewer did, here are some quotes that caught my attention.

Walt Mossberg:

IT departments are the most regressive force in tech, blocking new tech adoption

The story goes that Larry Page asked Steve Jobs for advice, he said “Find the 5 things you do best, and focus on it”, which it’s what he’s doing

(Talking about Mark Zuckerberg) “you need some megalomania in order to execute your idea better than others”

Kara Swisher:

Sergei Brin has always been the goofy one, but Larry Page = Bill Gates. Walt Mossberg adds: … or like Thomas Jefferson

Q: Has Google lost its edge? Both answer: No.

After the event, I talked a bit with Mr. Mossberg (quite a character, very determined and smart). The funny/sad anecdote came when I told him: “I’ve been reading you for decades” and he replied: “You don’t look that old”. 2 decades and 1 year to be exact. I guess I’m old. My impression of Mrs. Swisher is someone very smart, direct, tough… but humane at the same time.

The beauty of the day? This glitter covered bike I saw walking by SoHo.

After posting graphs and cold data (quite ilustrative, I believe), and the discussion it has generated (people, why don’t you use the “comment” instead all the other unstructured methods you are using?), please let me write a caveat about graphs and cold data.

In my high-tech gym, you have the option to have a lot of data collected, for your own, private and personal use. It seems like a great idea at first. For example, I can access via a secure web site real time stats of my workouts, such as the “fitness balance” (which shows my emphasis in weight lifting, and then swimming -some data greyed out for privacy purposes-):

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Not that fast.

The following graph (Workout Log) allows me to see how many times I have worked out. Since I tend to go to the gym everyday (but it is not always possible), an average of 4 times per week sounds reasonable, but what is that max. 8 times per week number? Why is there such a dip in mid February?

Data often needs to be contextualized, otherwise we might end up with the wrong conclussion (those 8 workouts per week happened to be visits to the gym to do a personal assesment and training routine design, added to my regular workouts; and the dip… just a long trip!).

But even worse things can happen:

In this case, an obviously strange abherration is showing in the graph. Somehting to be concerned about? Not at all: the scale of the axis make a slight variation (less than 1%, less than a pound) seem like a huge shift. And variables such as measurement thresholds, electronic glitches, etc must be taken into account when considering the validity and presentation of that data.

Let’s just keep in mind: however great quantification and visualization tools are (and I do like them a lot, and believe they can be very beneficial to the way we make decissions and understand the world and ourselves) they must be used with care. After all, this following map might show all the places I have traveled to… but it can not tell you about the experiences lived there…

Map + Newspapers + Translations = Simple and AWESOME!!

Newspapermap.com

Lego web design, anyone?