Rex Chen » technology

Virtual Machine Computers

rexchen — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:35:43 +0000

The word “virtual machines” has been around in the computing text for quite some time. In software, it allows the same firmware to be execute on multiple computing platforms. In hardware, virtual machines essentially allows one to customize a computer such as RAM, disk storage, processing power. There is limitations based on physical available hardware resources, but virtual machines in hardware has numerous advantages over conventional computers. For example, it allows more efficiency in resource usage and resource management. It is true that simply having a virtual machine emulator installed takes computing power but as computing power continues to rise, moving from dual-core to quad-core, to…eighty-core, partitioning computing capacity into multiple, separate virtual machines provide a different perspective of using computers. Computers might no longer be the traditional general purpose device, although it still can operate that way, but rather used for specific tasks for better reliability and security concerns. For example, a computer for basic day-to-day activities such as email and word processors, a computer for gaming and graphics design, and a computer for running web and file servers for information access 24/7. Of course, all of these “computing tasks” can be performed by a single hardware (e.g. laptop, desktop) with the possibility of virtual machines.

Emerging Greentech

rexchen — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:39:11 +0000

Many of us has probably heard from news media and other forms of communication about conserving resources on Earth and making environmentally responsible decisions. However, I found this topic to be even more interesting upon watching this video from the website TED when John Doerr talks about profits in Greentech. John Doerr is a very respectful and renown venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.
Here is the link to the video: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/128

A variety of factors can impact Greentech including efforts from companies, policy makers, and people. However, the message seems to be a long tedious process to catch on, especially in a country like the United States where we have abundant amount of resources than other places around the world. Over time, I do think that Greentech will be important in our lives and that we do need to fix it, especially in the United States. Some futurists even predict that greentech may be the next big thing such as the Internet during theY2K era. I hope that the beginning efforts to think in Greentech terms will continue to evolve. The benefits of Greentech will be seen not only from an environmental perspective, but from an economical point-of-view as well.

Internet Television (IPTV)

rexchen — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:42:39 +0000

Back in the 1990s, people surf the Internet using their phone lines with dial-up modem. Things have changed quite a bit now. These days, we make phone calls over the Internet either through DSL, cable, WLAN, or other medium of connections. This trend seems to take another step further with not only having voice communicate over the Internet, but for video as well. The Internet will be a disruptive technology on the future of video delivery and rich media contents. Traditional television broadcast, in particular, may see a huge shift of users using their Internet connection to watch tv shows, movies, and daily news. In Computer Science, topic areas in distributed systems and peer-to-peer networks will be important on the future of IPTV.

The Future of Display

rexchen — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:43:28 +0000

In recent years, we are starting to see more and more displays around us, starting with our computer monitors to flat panel TVs in the living room, and more recently, digital photo frames. Outside the home, similar trends is happening as the digital signage industry continues to gain ground. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. People are fascinated with pictures and this will have an important impact on the future of the display industry.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to try a little experiment with my roommate. Using a large online picture album in Flickr, we stream targeted pictures to a computer monitor as screensaver. We used a simple freeware package called Slickr and it worked beautifully on the first try. Here is the link to download Slickr: http://cellardoorsw.com/?page_id=4

Soon thereafter, contents in the display will be dynamic, customized, and streamed on-the-fly. The display experience in the future will be exciting to watch.

The Google Story – Strategic Use of Information Technology

rexchen — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:45:31 +0000

A few months ago, I took a graduate course from the UCI Paul Merage Business School. First, I should say that it was a great honor to have taken Professor Kenneth Kraemer’s class, especially since it was his last time teaching a class at UC Irvine after 40 years. Professor Kraemer is a great educator, and a very friendly and approachable person.

From this class, I had the opportunity to write a case study on a high-tech company where Information Technology played a critical role on the company’s success. And it so happens that I was interested in digging deeper into Google, one of the most admirable companies in the world. Few months later now, the paper has matured through several makings and I am honored to have the chance in publishing this paper in UC Irvine’s own Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO), one of the world’s leading think tanks on the impact of information technology on organizations and society.
Here is the link to the Google paper published on February 2007.

I hope the materials written in the paper are accurate to the best of my knowledge. I welcome anyone who may have comments on this work. My email address is: rex@uci.edu

Ubiquitous 802.11 Wireless Access Points

rexchen — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:47:03 +0000

During this past week, I gave a presentation in my Ubiquitous Computing course on the topic of Indoor Communications. The intent was to introduce and describe a number of communication technologies for applications for indoor communications. In my presentation, I touched on a number of communication technologies including Bluetooth, Powerline, and Infrared.
Here is the slides to my powerpoint presentation on February 6th, 2007.

However, it seems to me that none other than 802.11 Local Area Network is the clear winner for indoor communications. In many residential and even some metropolitan areas today, we already detect multiple wireless access points nearby. Furthermore, besides having 802.11 wireless access points in the typical household with multiplePCs and laptops for sharing Internet connection, there are now a number of consumer products that are already or soon-to-be wi-fi enabled (e.g. cell phones, Skype phones, cameras, and digital photo frames) AlthoughWi-Fi is known to have interference issues in the open spectrum, over time I think there will be technological solutions to this problem such as cognitive radios.

The FONera Movement is an interesting business case of using wireless access points as a mechanism to share network connection with every consumer being also a service provider. Currently, the target rate for FON routers is to reach a critical mass of having 1 in 10,000 FON routers to human population per country around the world.

The Emergence of Voice over IP

rexchen — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:49:15 +0000

VoIP technology has been around for quite some time. However, it is now emerging as a mainstream form of communication. First, many traditional telephony companies are having difficult times competing withVoIP firms such as Vonage, SunRocket, ViaTalk due to competitive pricing while offering comparable voice quality. In addition, applications such as Skype is becoming pervasive and allowing people around the world to connect.

However, there are now many other web applications offering similar services such as Skype, the difference being that they do not have millions of online subscribers. And they too are getting very competitive. For example, I recently found theseVoIP applications to allow “free” international calls either directly from your PC or mobile device. The technology is not completely mature as there are limitations such as the countries it can reach and some countries are limited to dial land-line calls only. However, the services will get better in time, and the days of expensive international calling rates will disappear. This is a very exciting time for communication and the movement is going towards simplicity, free services and common technology.

Check out these VoIP sites:

Sharing Cools Links

rexchen — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:54:05 +0000

Recently, I have been playing around with lots of interesting technologies. I will use this writing to describe some interesting concepts, and also share with the world my favorite bookmarks and my web files.

The best of all, they are all FREE. Here is the list:

1) http://www.loki.com GPS locator: My favorite Firefox plug-in, a virtual-GPS locator using nearby wireless access point to triangulate and identify one’s location.

2) http://del.icio.us Online Social Bookmark: Ever wonder what the world is bookmarking? This utility shows that by leveraging social network and also allows one to tag and create online bookmarks to share with others.

3) http://www.frucall.com Smart Shopper. While shopping in the store, ever wonder what price the same product costs online? Now one can call this phone number 1-888-DO-FRUCALL (1-888-363-7822), enter the product bar code number, and hear an automated voice response of the same product’s online price comparison.

The Open Source Movement

rexchen — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:52:05 +0000

Everyday, I am more and more impressed with the open source community and what it offers to the world. Open source is a place for computer hobbyists or “geeks” to showcase their project to the world with complete transparency. In addition, I am big believer that open source will change software developments in the future and for the good. Rather than taking a pessimistic view-point that open source may hinder hired software engineers from losing job or value, I think it actually makes them more worthy with the ability to quickly get exposed to new projects, view source code for free, and try new things without worrying about intellectual rights and protection.

The debatable issue between open source versus proprietary software is not only about whether software should be free, but more importantly what is the best methodology that software should be written. From the software life cycle standpoint, in my opinion, open source developments create understandable requirements and specifications, more robust software, and better software releases. After all, developers of the open source community are doing this on their own spare time (with dedication) and these programmers span across the globe and collaborate without any “face-to-face” interactions or fixed weekly meetings. I think Friedman is right that the world is transforming into a “flat playing field” and in time, this will only be more prevalent. And this, I think, is good news for the open source community.

I hope to become a contributor to the open source community as well in the near future.

The Power of Social Networks

rexchen — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 00:55:37 +0000

In the past, I was not a big fan of social networks. I thought it was just another medium to meet people over the Internet. And we all hear those good, bad, and ugly stories of what happens when the two strangers actually meet in person. However, I now have a different perspective on social networks. Indeed, I think it is a very powerful tool to quickly find and spread information. We’ve seen what happened with YouTube, FaceBook, and MySpace . Social networks can rapidly build a large community base that span globally. Social network is not only becoming a favorite for the young generation, but is starting to scratch the surface in other group orientations such as businesses and alumni associations.

As Social Networks continue to grow and become viral, it will change the transparency of society. The term “six degrees of separation” might actually become five or four instead. Furthermore, social network will create more Small World Networks. One’s reputation will become very important as people become closer with one another. Hiring investigators or using credit history provides a synthetic identity of the person. Rather, social networks can be a powerful tool to decipher the real person behind the face, who we really are, how we behave, and what we do. More than ever before, we need to be responsible for our behaviors because every second of our lives might actually be captured using social networks. It’s not far from the future when this happens…