Wall Street Journal had an article today about Telepresence. Traditional video conferencing systems are slowly morphing into telepresence systems.

Traditional videoconferencing setups are essentially a monitor, camera and microphone, placed in a conventional conference room. Telepresence systems, by contrast, require specially designed rooms with multiple cameras, sound-damping equipment and high-definition video screens. They simulate the sensation of two groups of people at identical tables facing each other through windows.

In our research group, we are developing Environment-to-Environment (E2E) communication environment. These environments, we believe, will provide better functionality that telepresence and will be much cheaper. Moreover they will have graceful degradation — meaning one can use simple one camera — maybe even your mobile phone set up to a sophisticated immersive environment. That research is progressing very well. We recently wrote a techincal paper on that topic and submitted that for potential publication. Following standard procedure, I will not put the manuscipt for open circulation, but will be happy to share on limited basis with interested people.

Experiential Computing | No Comments »

In academic research discussions, it is very common that when thinking of solving a problem people start wondering whether it has scientific merit. Andf in many cases the discussions stop becuse people think that the problem may be solved using one of the standard techniques and hence there may be no scientific rewards in pursuing the problem.

In many cases one may find this intuition to be right, but I have experienced and seen in other cases that worrying too early about scientific merit is not very scientific. Science is getting in depth to understand nature of things. Many great research paradigms get established because somebody looks at an old problem from a new perspective and this new perspective leads to entirely new solutions.

I find it rewarding to focus more on solving a real problem without worrying whether there is a scientific merit only after I find a solution. Even if the solution is old, I am pleased that we have solved a problem. And if we discover that there is scientific merit in the soltion, then I publish it. It is also interesting to see that if you solve a real problem, then you are helping lots of people and you may even be rewarded in terms of publications in some very good journals that are read by lots of people. Many times there is ‘prestige’ associated in publishing in conferences and journals which are only read by ’scientific experts’. These experts only places worry more about scientific merit and novelty rather than a real problem that needs to be solved.

As a researcher, you have to decide who is your audience and depending on that you can decide which problem to address and how you want to develop the solution. And this decision is one of the most important decision to be made in your scienitific career.

Technical Thoughts | No Comments »

On Friday I had a chance to spend 2 hours discussing Web with Tim Berners-Lee. Tim is the founder and father of the WWW. The most important aspect of WWW is not only the technology but the social aspects of its evolution. And Tim is a key factor behind both.

Wendy Hall from Southampton had told me about him and I had spend some time discussing with him in a dinner meeting in Beijing. Of course one can read a lot about him on the WWW. But this meeting gave me a better glimse of why WWW is what it is and who Tim is. Even after all this success, he is still a hacker who wants to be able to do interesting thing using this toy called computer and the network. He is a true believer in the web or in the network. And he believes that this could help solve many knowledge and societal problems.

Two main topics of our discussion were experiemtial computing based on events and the Web doe Masses. I loved our discussion — learnt some new things and acquired a deeper belief in the web effect. My belief that events are a strong mechanism for creating deeper web also became stronger.

It will be great to work with Tim, Wendy, and others in exploring event related aspects of Web Science, creating EventWeb, and applying this among others to really create the Web that is World Wide by increasing its reach even to wider segment of humans in deeloping countries in remote areas.

Incidentally, my presentation for the Web Science Workshop in Beijing is available here.

Experiential Computing | 1 Comment »

After trying to delay it for sometime, finally I decided that I need to get a new knee. Will get surgery done by Dr Bill Warden on May 15th. This will mean that most of May and June (after May 15th) I will be in Irvine.

Personal | 1 Comment »

Since many of my friends ask me about my yearly medical check-up due to my health problem of a few years ago, here is the first part of the repot. Everything is going OK with respect to Cancer — no problems there. They will still want me to put through CAT and PET scans in about a month. Of course, my knee is a different matter. I do need to get it fixed.

I heard a very bad News, however, during my meeting with my Oncologist — Dr. Bill Miller. He told me that Dr. Matt Brunson who performed surgery on me and was the lead doctor in my treatment is having some serious health problems. Sudha and I were shocked by this. He used to be a great surgeon and an inspiration. We liked him so much. And he is a young person — definitely much younger than me. It used to be so much fun to talk to him. This was a terrible news for us. This only reminds us that diseases can hit any one of us at any time. We are all fragile — we don’t know when something can hit us. All that we can do is to be careful.

Our best wishes and prayers are with Dr. Brunson.

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