Ashish Patel

You’ve heard of Google Earth, but have you heard of Google Moon?

1. Why did you do this?

Because we couldn’t think of a better way to commemorate the first lunar landing, which occurred on July 20, 1969, than to give our users an opportunity to surf around the lunar surface themselves.

2. Why can’t I see the surface in more detail?

Google Moon only has as much data as NASA was able to give us, so there are limitations (for now) on how close to the surface we can zoom.

3. What happens if I try to zoom too close?

Well, you’ll have to go and find out, won’t you?

4. Is Google Moon a result of your Copernicus initiative?

Glad you asked, and yes, the development of our lunar hosting and research center continues apace. We usually don’t announce future products in advance, but in this case, yes, we can confirm that on July 20th, 2069, in honor of the 100th anniversary of mankind’s first manned lunar landing, Google will fully integrate Google Local search capabilities into Google Moon, which will allow our users to quickly find lunar business addresses, numbers and hours of operation, among other valuable forms of Moon-oriented local information.

During the time I’ve spent with IBM, every executive I’ve come across has made some reference to how lucky I am to be working at the IBM Toronto Software Lab. I also believe it’s a world class facility.

A recent news article in the York Regional News said:

Millions, if not billions, of on-line shopping transactions across Canada and around the world have been made possible by IBM’s Markham software laboratory.

Straddling the York Region-Toronto border, IBM’s software lab is the largest facility of its kind in the country.

About 2,500 of the brightest computer minds are focused on transforming IBM’s $334-million annual investment in research and development into everyday database and e-commerce solutions.

For the second year in a row, it landed the global computer giant in the top 10 Canadian companies investing in R&D.

IBM Markham finished sixth on the list of Canada’s top 100 R&D spenders last year.

Canada’s top R&D corporations increased spending by 3 per cent. That’s quite an improvement from being down 5 per cent, in 2003.

To remain competitive in a global marketplace, R&D is essential, said Martin Wildberger, director of IBM’s software lab.

“Leadership and technology are the key and that’s why we invest so heavily in R&D,” Mr. Wildberger said.

“We’re producing software for a global marketplace. The software industry in Canada is strong.”

The communication and telecommunications companies accounted for 28 per cent of all R&D spending in Canada last year, followed by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector.

Did you know?
IBM Software is divided into 5 major software brands, Rational, Tivoli, WebSphere, Lotus, and DB2. The IBM Toronto Software Lab is the only IBM lab where all 5 major software brands are worked on simultaneously!

So I’ve added a new category to my blog, called “Did you know?”. I’ll be posting odd and interesting tid bits of information in this section of the blog.

Did you know?
The first item is what I call “Total Recall”. The number one search item on the General Motors website is “Recall”, where the second most searched item is called “Warranty”. This just makes me believe, even further, that their vehicles are truly the best North American garbage you can buy!

Yeah you heard me right! The “geeks” over at Playboy Enterprises Inc. thinks Eclipse (the open-source universal tools platform) is HOT and SEXY!

They say you learn something new everyday, but somethings are too good to be true? Not this time! The software developers who are employed by Playboy apparently love Open Source, and when I say that I mean not just Eclipse but a whole bunch of other projects too. Playboy Enterprises is signing up to add eclipse to its mirror site, which means at work I can legally go over to http://mirrors.playboy.com/ and not have the IT department call me…I’d probably be too chicken to try though! The Eclipse Foundation gave them the go ahead on the idea too.

I got a little curious after I read the article so I went over to the mirror site to see what they actually keep on the mirror site. They source such projects as Apache, FreeBSD, Fedora, mod_ssl, and Mozilla.

In the words of Paris Hilton, thats HOT!

Tomorrow I’ll be doing 3 things at CASCON (in the following order)

1) Free Lunch. They have catering from The Host

2) Checking out the Technology Showcases. There are a few compiler, DB2, WebSphere, and Rational ones I really want to see.

3) I’ll be attending the “The Business of Blogging: Being Social in a Pervasive, Networked World” workshop. Should be an interesting one because of the background of the speakers. They will be featuring: Joey de Villa (Tucows), Dr. Ian Graham (Enterprise IT Strategy, BMO Financial Group), Alvin Chin (University of Toronto), and Veronica Holmes (Bell Canada).

The abstract reads:

Many components of pervasive computing are already in place, including collaborative and communication applications such as instant messaging, e-mail, text messaging, and conferencing. In addition, mobile devices are providing ubiquitous computing and communication capabilities. Improved methods are now needed to support collaboration that goes beyond explicit authoring, messaging and conferencing. Techniques such as collaborative filtering (e.g., in book recommendations by Amazon), social networking (using systems such as Orkut), and blogging, are part of an emerging domain of social computing. We are interested in the impact of blogging and related communication and collaboration activities, and how social aspects such as community building can enhance the performance of business activities.

This workshop will provide a forum for the discussion of issues related to the development and usability of social computing systems and applications. Part of the workshop activity will include requirements analysis for applications of social and pervasive computing. Speakers from academia and industry will describe their experiences in researching and deploying social computing applications.
Topics of interest include: blogs and wikis, semantics, creating and building a community, e-commerce, and information epidemics. Specifically to blogs, the workshop will address bottom-up (grassroots, personal, diary) blogs versus top-down (topic-oriented, corporate sponsored, political party, etc.) blogs. Other topics to be covered will include musicblogs, photoblogs, mobile phone blogs (moblogs), and videoblogs. The syndication and aggregation of blogs using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) will also be discussed.