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Isaac Asimov, where are you! IBM has just announced that its Watson computer will play a group of Jeopardy champions. Some of you may remember when IBM programmed Deep Blue and then had it play chess grand master Garry Kasparov. You can link to YouTube and watch a short video on this new effort. This will create buzz! I will be watching Jeopardy that day (date not yet announced).
Mathematica was a huge step forward in computational software ... will Stephan Wolfram finally demonstrate the next generation search engine? Attend the live webcast from Harvard and learn for yourself. Here is the seminar / demo announcement:
Google has released some new services, Google Profiles and Google Similar Image Search. Both services are easy to use, and are worth the effort to learn. Let's first review Google Similar Image Search. Quite often when you are looking for an image, you have an idea of the desired image ... but Google can not read your mind! For instance, let's say you wanted an image that shows brain neurons and waves. Using the new search capability you could query for brain images ... and then when you see something you like, click upon the similar images link. Let's try it ... by running a query on brain, you will find the image shown below. Click upon the similar images link! Neat, but more importantly ... useful!
Let's do the same thing with the query cat ... this time we want orange tabbys ... our similar images results.
And the other new Google service? Profiles. Have you ever Googled your own name? Most of us have looked up our web results. Wouldn't it be nice if Google had a profile that they called in search results? The answer is "yes", and now Google has profiles. To learn how to build your profile, link here. if you would like to see how results are presented, here is the Google query for Richard Hoeg (me). Profiles are listed at the bottom of your result pages. Look for my thumbnail photo.
Ouch ... this is both cool, and embarrassing! My wife and I have jumped upon a special package to fly down to Branson for their first ever airshow, on the first ever commercial airplane flight, two days before their new airport officially opens. As a techie I get a pass for these cool set of "firsts", but Branson! Have I lost or gained in the cool quotient? You tell me? After all, the Branson Air Show Twitters! Now, do we go to the Dick Clark's American Bandstand, or the Lawrence Welk Show!
Post Update: Watch the Airshow!
