First robot astronaut ‘lonely‘ in space

Being an astronaut can be an overwhelming experience, so Japanese researchers created a robot to see if an artificial friend could help lonely spacemen bear the solitude of the cosmos.

Kirobo, the walking, talking robot was blasted into space in August 2013 to accompany Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station (ISS) for a year.

Scientists have been conducting experiments on Kirobo to test his autonomous conversation functions with Captain Wakata, who returned to Earth in May this year.

Fuminori Kataoka, General Manager at Toyota, who developed the robot, observed: "I think it felt lonely with its companion gone."

Kirobo was recorded saying: "I'm a little tired, so I think I'll rest a while, but I hope you'll look up at the sky sometimes and think of me."

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Google tests using drones to deliver goods

 
SAN FRANCISCO: Google has said it is testing using drones to deliver items bought online, putting its own spin on similar efforts by Internet retail titan Amazon.com.

Two years of research into what Google referred to as "Project Wing" was capped this month with test flights delivering candy, water, medicine, dog treats and other items to two farmers in Queensland, Australia.

"Self-flying vehicles could open up entirely new approaches to moving goods," California-based Google yesterday said in a blog post disclosing the project.

"Throughout history, major changes in how we move goods from place to place have led to new opportunities for economic growth and generally made consumers' lives easier."

Project Wing drones were described as having more in common with Google's self-driving car than remote-controlled aircraft used by hobbyists.

Delivery drones and autonomous vehicles are both being worked on in Google X lab devoted to innovative new technologies.

Google expected it to be several years before a delivery drone system is ready.

Last month, Amazon sought permission for drone test flights in the United States, saying it is moving forward on plans for deliveries using unmanned aircraft.

In a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, Amazon said that because of restrictions on drones in US airspace, it has been conducting test flights indoors and in other countries.

Amazon said an exemption to FAA rules would be "in the public interest" and "is a necessary step towards realizing the consumer benefits of Amazon Prime Air," which company founder Jeff Bezos has described as a plan for drone delivery to consumers.

Bezos unveiled his idea for drone deliveries last December, and said the company would be ready to launch Amazon Prime Air as early as 2015 if FAA regulations allowed.

The letter said that over the past five months, "we have made advancements toward the development of highly-automated aerial vehicles for Prime Air," which travel at over 80 kilometers per hour and can carry loads up to 2.2 kilos.

Amazon's plan is to allow for deliveries of some goods within 30 minutes of an order.

Amazon predicted in the letter that "one day, seeing Amazon Prime Air will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today, resulting in enormous benefits for consumers across the nation."

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Google, Linkedin have cool and happy offices

 You go to work in offices that house a Taj Mahal-like setting that changes colours, meeting places built like a railway coach or an Ambassador car, a work area designed like a Las Vegas casino, bright orange or green holes-in-the-wall with comfortable seating… the idea of a workplace is changing rapidly, and moving away from drab, great cubicles and work stations.

Unsurprisingly, global trendsetter in workplace design, Google, is at the forefront of the change in India, too. Its new office in Gurgaon, with a Taj Mahal-like reception area, boasts of a mini golf course, a cricket pitch, napping pods and, yes, a railway coach. Google’s Hyderabad office has the same philosophy of making workplace look like a fun place.

But Google isn’t the only one. India offices of LinkedIn, Expedia, British Telecom, Unilever IT Centre are all extravagant experiments in workplace chic.We takes a tour of offices to get a measure of this ongoing workplace revolution.

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IBM Watson supercomputer gets ready for a new career

WASHINGTON: International Business Machines (IBM) has launched a computer system that can quickly identify patterns in massive amounts of data, an ability that IBM said should hasten breakthroughs in science and medical research. 

The computer system, Watson Discovery Advisor, understands chemical compound interaction and human language and can visually map out connections in data, the company said in a statement. 

IBM will make the service available through the cloud. Some researchers and scientists have already been using Watson Discovery Advisor to sift through the sludge of scientific papers published daily. 

Johnson & Johnson is teaching the system to read and understand trial outcomes published in journals to speed up studies of effectiveness of drugs. 

Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical company is working with Watson to identify alternate uses for existing drugs. 

"On average, a scientist might read between one and five research papers on a good day," said Dr Olivier Lichtarge, investigator and professor of molecular and human genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine. 

He used Watson to automatically analyze 70,000 articles on a particular protein, a process which could have taken him nearly 38 years. 

"Watson has demonstrated the potential to accelerate the rate and the quality of breakthrough discoveries," he said.

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IITs to offer ‘deferred placements’ to students who choose entrepreneurship as career

MUMBAI: Giving in to popular demand from graduating students smitten with entrepreneurship, a clutch of IITs across the country has decided to offer 'deferred placements' to students who would rather float a new business than sit for a job interview now.

As many as 13 students from the Class of 2015 at IIT-Bombay have applied for deferred placements this year to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. Of these, eight are planning for-profit ventures and five are going for social ventures. The institute is likely to choose 10 from among the 13. It had toyed with deferred placements last year when only one student applied, but the idea has found takers only this year.

IIT-Madras, also encouraged by student demand, is rolling out deferred placements for the first time this year. IIT-Kanpur has also been considering the same. IIT Guwahati General Secretary (placement cell) Manish Arora expects at least 7-8 students to opt for deferred placements this year compared with 2-4 last year.

Deferred placements, as the name suggests, enables students to defer placements by a year or two to start their own ventures. They can come back and seek campus placement if their ventures fail.

They are quite popular at top IIMs, but are gaining traction in IITs only this year. Such initiatives help spur the appetite for entrepreneurship and risk-taking among young graduates at the country's premier engineering institutes. 

Students are excited about entrepreneurship even though the job market is picking up once again. This year, companies such as Goldman Sachs, Amazon and eBay are offering salaries that are 20% to 40% higher than last year.

"The number of students interested in pursuing entrepreneurial activities post graduation has gone up tremendously," says Mohak Mehta, placement manager at IIT-Bombay. "By opting for deferred placement, a student is assured of a Plan B which acts as a safety net in case he fails to succeed in his venture."

Malegaon boy Abhijit Patil needed the deferred placement option to convince his parents to let him give entrepreneurship a shot. IITBombay's Patil and his two friends run a 3D printing and scanning business. 

Patil and his partners have been conducting workshops and providing 3D printing services to IIT-B professors and students for the past few months, and have already broken even on their initial investment of about Rs 4 lakh. 

"I come from a small town and both my parents are teachers, so entrepreneurship after engineering college isn't the most common route," he says. "Knowing that I had the option to come back for placements gave me — and my parents — the courage." At least 15-20 students at IIT-Madras are interested in startups, says Vishranth Suresh, academic affairs secretary. 

"We have had 7-8 students whose ventures didn't take off as expected. They had approached us to sit for placements later. We didn't have apolicy in place then, which is why we want one now," he says. At IIT-Bombay, Mahesh Rathore and Greeshma Unnikrishnan, both second-year MTech students, plan to produce novel biomedical devices. Dual-degree student Vaibhav Antil and six friends are working on a modern approach to the traditional Jukebox 

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Google reveals Project Wing

SAN FRANCISCO: Google is developing airborne drones capable of flying on their own and delivering anything from candy to medicine, the internet company said.

The effort, which Google calls Project Wing, marks the company's latest expansion beyond its web-based origins and could help Google break into lucrative markets such as commerce and package delivery, ratcheting up the competition with Amazon.com.

Google, the world's largest internet search engine, said it will take years of development to create a service with multiple vehicles flying multiple deliveries per day.

An early version of the drone, which Google showcased in a video on its website, has a 1.5 metre-(yard-) wide wingspan and is capable of flying pre-programmed routes.


"These planes have much more in common with the Google self-driving car than the remote-controlled airplanes people fly in parks on weekends," Google said on its website, referring to the company's test fleet of automobiles that use sensors and radars to navigate city streets and freeways on their own.

The drone Google showed in the video Thursday was equipped with rotors to allow for vertical takeoff and landing, as well as a fixed wing for plane-like flying. The drone flew about 40 metres above the treeline, Google said, and dropped a package of chocolate bars to a farmer in Queensland, Australia.

Google spokesman Ray Gobberg said it was too soon to discuss specific business plans for the delivery drones, but the company said on its website that self-flying vehicles could offer a cheaper, faster and less wasteful way to move goods.

Google rival Amazon.com announced plans last year to use aerial delivery drones for a service called "Prime Air."
"Local delivery of products is the next battlefront," said Sameet Sinha, an analyst with B. Riley & Co. "Google has had its eyes on e-commerce, basically trying to get around Amazon."

Google has partnered with local retailers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York for its Shopping Express service, which allows consumers to order goods online and have them delivered to their doorstep on the same day.

While Google has been quietly developing its aerial drone project since late 2011, the company will now focus on teaching the vehicles to safely navigate around each other, to reduce the noise of the vehicles and to refine the delivery capability such that a package can be delivered to a spot the size of a doorstep.

Google's Gobberg said the company has briefed the Federal Aviation Administration on the project and has been updating the agency. Gobberg said Google has done some "small scale research flights" in the United States but hoped to talk more with the agency to determine specific locations for testing.

In 2012, Congress required the FAA to establish a road map for the broader use of drones. The FAA has allowed limited use of drones in the US for surveillance, law enforcement, atmospheric research and other applications.

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Google Vs. Amazon: The Dawn Of The Great Ad War

Sir Francis Bacon said, "Knowledge is power", but then he lived in 16th century Britain and we are living in digital times, where knowledge has given up its spot to information and dusty scrolls in libraries have given way to servers storing much more information. We give out our personal information voluntarily to entities such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. In exchange, they make us feel advanced, developed and to take that one-step further, they sell us 'connected'. We buy it.

Over the years, Google and Amazon, thanks to their laurels as top search engine and shopping network respectively, have amassed unfathomable amounts of personal information. While Google has been channelling that to target user-specific ads through Google Adwords, Amazon is trying to enter this field.

If you think Amazon is simply the biggest shopping cart in the world, you are grossly mistaken. Over the years, mostly after Google tried to put up a small fight against Amazon's online retail dominance through Google Shopping, the two Internet giants are butting heads against each other. When Google tried to woo buyers through its 'same day delivery' scheme in select markets, Amazon launched a 'mobile wallet' in its Fire Phone for payments in brick-and-mortar shops that is similar to Google services already in the market.

Besides Amazon, other noteworthy names in the game are: Google that knows what people search for online and Facebook that has real-time data on what people like and share. Both offer highly valuable insights to brands who want to target the users.

Now, the question is how much valuable data Amazon has in its grasp? 

Last year, more than 93% of Google's $59.8 billion was earned through ad-selling. In 2013, Facebook made $7.8 billion through ads. Last year, Amazon earned only 5% of it $74.5 billion revenue through ads. With 'Amazon sponsored links', this number will exponentially increase. This is mainly due to the kind of data Amazon has; it knows what people want to buy. From the point of view of brands, that kind of information is more likely to result in sales per click than data about what people search for and what they like.

The troves of 'shopping data' Amazon has, will vastly improve the way ad agencies target consumers with user specific ads. For example, if you have been browsing for phones and have purchased previously from Amazon, it will not only tell sellers to target you with phone ads, but will also tell them which brands are more likely to end up in a transaction. It can do so based on your purchasing history. This is the kind of power Amazon potentially wields and sellers will surely lap it up like candy.

Google is not sitting idle either. It has greatly improved the way its ads work and with the rise of mobile internet and the popularity of Android, which is owned by Google, it is disrupting the shopping culture. Moreover, Android user can be pinged if a product he has searched earlier is around him. Google knows that people would rather check something out before buying it and with Android's help, is changing the way people shop in general.

There was a time when people found products and then made a decision to buy them. Now the table has turned. Products find people. The decision that we have to make is whether we are okay with being 'found'.

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.भारत Domain Name Launched

 The government today launched a new domain .भारत (dot Bharat) in Devanagari script. Initially, the domain will cover eight languages - Hindi, Bodo, Dogri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali and Sindhi. All these languages are from the list of 22 languages registered in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. 

The main purpose of .भारत domain is to connect people with social media and provide content in Indian languages. It will help provide information to the general public in their own regional languages. 

The domain was launched by Union Communication and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. 

The domain was developed by the joint efforts of National Internet Exchange of India and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. 

The new domain would replace the commonly used domains like .com, .in, .net and others. This would also soon be followed by similar launches in regional languages like Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu, Telugu and Bangala.

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Tech Rock Stars Who Went To Harvard

Harvard University is one of the most prestigious and well-known schools in the world.

Its undergraduate program had an acceptance rate of just 6% last year, while its Business School was ranked No. 1 in the country.

Not surprisingly, Harvard has produced some of today's most successful tech entrepreneurs. From social media to smartphones, Harvard grads (and dropouts) are everywhere in today's tech landscape.

We put together some of the top tech rock stars who went to Harvard, and the list is quite remarkable.

Bill Gates

Gates is the cofounder and former chairman of Microsoft.

He got into Harvard in 1973, and majored in applied mathematics, before deciding to drop out in 1975. That year, he started Microsoft with cofounder Paul Allen.

In 2007, he was able to earn an honorary degree from Harvard, when he delivered the school’s commencement speech.

Gates has been the richest man in the world for 15 out of the last 20 years according to Forbes. He has an estimated net worth of $80.6 billion.

Paul Graham

Graham is one of the most prominent computer programmers/tech investors in the world. He earned his master’s (1988) and doctorate (1990) in philosophy at Harvard.

In 1995, he founded Viaweb, the first software as a service company that allows you to build online stores, and sold it to Yahoo in 1998 for roughly $49 million.

He went on to start Y Combinator in 2005, which has become one of the earliest and biggest startup incubators in the world. So far, Y Combinator has invested in more than 450 startups, including Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, and Justin.tv (which later became Twitch).

Tony Hsieh

Hsieh is best known for his role as CEO of Zappos, the online shoe and clothing store.

After earning his computer science degree at Harvard, Hsieh got a job at Oracle. But only after five months, he quit his job and launched his own ad network startup called LinkExchange.

Hsieh had originally made an early investment in Zappos through his own investment firm, Venture Frogs. But two months after the investment, he became CEO of Zappos.

Amazon acquired Zappos in 2009 for $1.2 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of Facebook.

He majored in computer science and philosophy at Harvard, before dropping out in 2004, the same year he launched Facebook.

Facebook is now the world’s largest social network with more than a billion monthly active users. Backed by his success, Zuckerberg was named the 2010 Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

His current net worth is approximately $33.5 billion, according to Forbes.

Michael Bloomberg

The former New York City mayor is perhaps best known for his business career.

After earning his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1966, Bloomberg went on to work at Salomon Brothers as an investment banker.

Seven years later, he founded his own company called Innovative Market Systems.That company was renamed Bloomberg L.P. in 1987.

Forbes estimates Bloomberg’s net worth to be slightly over $32 billion, which makes him the 16th richest person in the world. He currently owns 88% of Bloomberg L.P.

Meg Whitman

Whitman is the current chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

In 1979, two years after finishing her MBA at Harvard, Whitman began her career as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble.

Since then, she’s had an illustrious career, taking positions at some of the largest companies like eBay, Disney, Bain, and Hasbro.

She was named HP’s CEO in 2011. Bloomberg named her the “Most Underachieving CEO” in 2013.

Steve Ballmer

Ballmer, who was just recently named the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, graduated from Harvard in 1977. He was Microsofts cofounder Bill Gates’ college roommate.

In 1980, while at Stanford’s business school, Gates recruited Ballmer to join Microsoft as its first business manager. In 2000, Ballmer became the CEO of Microsoft and remained in position until February 2014, when he retired.

In August 2014, Ballmer stepped down from the board of Microsoft.

Tim O’Reilly

O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, which is often called the best computer book publisher in the world.

He’s also one of the most influential thinkers in the internet and open software movements.

O’Reilly graduated from Harvard in 1975 with a B.A. in Classics. He’s also made some investments in startups, including Medium, Odeo, and delicious.

Scott McNealy

McNealy is one of the cofounders of Sun Microsystems, the giant tech company that was acquired by Oracle in 2010 for more than $7 billion.

After getting his B.A. in economics at Harvard, McNealy went to Stanford’s business school. There, he met Vinod Khosla and later joined Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim to cofound Sun.

He served as Sun’s CEO for 22 years, before resigning in 2006. He is currently on the board of Wayin, a social media marketing company.

Sheryl Sandberg

Sandberg is the current COO of Facebook. She served as the VP of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google prior to that.

She graduated from Harvard with an economics degree in 1991. In 1995, she finished her MBA at Harvard with highest distinction.

Sandberg’s first job out of business school was at consulting firm, McKinsey & Company. She was also Chief of Staff for the U.S. Treasury Department for five years under President Bill Clinton.

Tom Perkins

Perkins is one of the cofounders of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the prominent venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.

He finished his MBA at Harvard in 1957, and was the first General Manager of HP’s computer divisions.

He’s served on the board of many tech companies, including HP, Compaq, and Genentech. As of 2012, his net worth was estimated to be around $8 billion.

Trip Hawkins

Hawkins is the founder of gaming companies Electronic Arts and The 3DO Company.

He graduated from Harvard in 1976, after convincing the school to let him have his own self-designed major called, “Strategy and Applied Game Theory.”

Before founding EA in 1982, Hawkins worked at Apple as a marketing director. EA currently has more than 9,000 employees and had more than $3.7 billion in revenue last year.

Salman Khan

Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, the nonprofit online education site.

Shortly after completing his MBA degree at Harvard in 2003, Khan found the inspiration to launch Khan Academy, when his tutoring videos on YouTube started going viral.

More than 10 million students take courses on Khan Academy now, with over 440 million videos saved in its archive. Khan is often called Bill Gates’ “favorite teacher.”

Scott Cook

Cook is the founder and chairman of Intuit, the financial/tax software company best known for products like Quicken and TurboTax.

He earned his MBA degree from Harvard Business School, and currently also serves on the board of Procter & Gamble and eBay.

As of 2013, his net worth was estimated to be around $1.5 billion.

Jay Y. Lee

Often called the "Crown Prince of Samsung," Lee is the current COO of Samsung Electronics.

He’s the only son of Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, so he’s the leading candidate to take the top spot of Samsung Group once the older Lee decides to step down.

Lee has a Ph.D in business administration from Harvard. But he’s rarely seen in public so not much is known about him. Some say he lacks the charisma of his father, but others say his quiet personality disguises his "strong determination to get things done."

With a net worth in excess of $5 billion, the 46-year-old Lee is the third richest man in South Korea.

Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp

Barna and Beauchamp met at Harvard Business School, and later launched Birchbox together in 2010.

Birchbox is one of the biggest subscription commerce services out there. It recentl yraised $60 million at a valuation of $485 million.

Its business model of mailing monthly beauty product boxes has attracted over 800,000 subscribers so far. It now has its own retail store in New York City as well.

Jeremy Stoppelman

Stoppelman is the founder and CEO of Yelp, the online review site launched in 2004.

Before founding Yelp, Stoppelman was an MBA student at Harvard Business School. But he dropped out after just one year to work on Yelp.

Yelp went public in 2012. Before it went public, Google tried to acquire it for more than half a billion dollars. Around that time, Apple’s Steve Jobs called Stoppelman to convince him not to sell out to Google.

Stoppelman was also VP of engineering at PayPal before going to Harvard, and is considered part of the "Paypal Mafia," the group of tech entrepreneurs/engineers who cofounded Paypal.

Gideon Yu

Yu is co-owner and former president of the San Francisco 49ers. He completed his MBA at Harvard.

Before getting into the football business, Yu served as CFO of both YouTube and Facebook. He was also treasurer and senior VP of finance at Yahoo, and a partner at Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

Yu currently serves as special adviser and founding member of Foundation 8, one of the hottest new VC firms in Silicon Valley these days.

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