Sekiur My Thoughts

E-commerce and The End of Search

Jose Vicente Ortega — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 04:40:09 +0000

With the advent of the Internet and the massive amount of information available, we needed to find a way to make it accessible for consumption. Thus, the World Wide Web was born and gave us the capability to present different types of data including text, images and multimedia to the user through the web browser. As the amount of information increased exponentially, it became apparent the information needed to be categorized and organized.

Yahoo was one of the pioneers in this area, looking to create a directory of the Internet. Unfortunately this model was not scalable; others like Altavista and Lycos took a different approach, the same approach used by Google: Creating algorithms that searched and indexed the content on the Internet, providing consumers of information a central place to search that information. The search engine was born.

Most of us consider the Internet a bucket of miscellaneous tidbits, and the modern search engine our personal assistant. But is that analogy correct? You open your browser, bringing up the Google homepage, then enter whatever term you happen to be looking for at the time and bingo. You get a list of results you then have to “search” through to find what you are looking for. So in fact you are searching through the results of what Google searched for.

Google co-founder Larry Page once described the “perfect search engine” as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want”, far from what Google is today.

Searching is not something that comes natural to people. In fact, people actually hate searching. People like to know where stuff is. Throughout our lives we establish systems to store and retrieve information efficiently.

After running across a picture taken eight years ago, of my three-year-old organizing his loot on Halloween night, I realized that we “organize”so we can find. This is very important–we organize so we can later find.

It’s all around us. Our fridge has a specific drawer where we store our vegetables and another for the cheese and ham, the top shelf for the milk and the door for the juice. Our supermarkets have shelves and products are categorized and organized to make it easy for us to find. Imagine what it would be like to go to a grocery store where products weren’t organized in any way.

The search engine is just not compatible with the way people function, it is just a first step to deal with and filter the amount of information on the Internet. The reality is, it is rudimentary and primitive.

A recent study titled “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips” by researchers at Columbia, Harvard and Wisconsin-Madison universities studied whether the Internet has become our primary transitive memory source–basically an external memory system. These are the conclusions reached by the four controlled experiments in the study:

1) People share information easily because they rapidly think of computers when they find they need knowledge (Expt. 1).

2) The social form of information storage is also reflected in the findings that people forget items they think will be available externally, and remember items they think will not be available (Expts. 2 and 3).

3) Transactive memory is also evident when people seem better able to remember which computer folder an item has been stored in than the identity of the item itself (Expt. 4).

The effect on whether or not we choose to commit certain information to memory when we know the information is readily available on the computer is what is relevant here. We store specific things in specific places, like food in the fridge, but who remembers what is specifically in the fridge?

It is completely natural for people to minimize what needs to be encoded into memory by organizing and then encoding the location of the information, rather than the information itself. This is where search engines fall short of meeting the basic cognitive needs of humans.

The emergence of the mobile device has been remarkable and Apple’s vision in this space has changed the way people access information. There is data to support the notion that people are not mirroring desktop behavior on mobile devices.

People are not searching on smartphones as much as they do on desktops. Steve Jobs attributes this to the availability of mobile apps and the desktop lacking an app store. In reality, the availability of app, or the lack thereof, is not really the central point. What’s important is information is being categorized, compartmentalized and organized for consumption, and delivered more efficiently through mobile devices. This is clearly a step in the right direction in delivering more relevant and timely information to the user.

Artificial Intelligence will play a major role in the next wave of innovation, starting with Evolving and Adaptive Fuzzy Systems as classification algorithms and then matching the wants with the needs of the user. A recent example of this is an application that gives personalized restaurant recommendations called Alfred—it is all recommendations and no direct search.

GiftWoo takes the next step forward in the e-commerce space in a vertical market. Until now going online to find a gift for your better half involves a search, which results in thousands of choices. Currently, e-commerce websites are designed to deliver a high number of choices, rather than the “right choice” for the consumer. GiftWoo will give the buyer the unique and perfect gift they seek without the searching, by initially building a profile for the gift recipient, then utilizing a proprietary algorithm to match the ideal gift to the profile.

How Our Decisions are Shaped

Jose Vicente Ortega — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 07:02:33 +0000

Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, presents examples of cognitive illusions that help illustrate why humans make predictably irrational decisions.

EG is the celebration of the American entertainment industry. Since 1984, Richard Saul Wurman has created extraordinary gatherings about learning and understanding. EG is a rich extension of these ideas – a conference that explores the attitude of understanding in music, film, television, radio, technology, advertising, gaming, interactivity and the web – The Entertainment Gathering

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhjUJTw2i1M

Dan Ariely is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group. He is considered to be one of the leading behavioral economists. Currently, Ariely is serving as a Visiting Professor at the Duke University, Fuqua School of Business where he is teaching a course based upon his findings in Predictably Irrational.

Ariely was an undergraduate at Tel Aviv University and received a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in business from Duke University. His research focuses on discovering and measuring how people make decisions. He models the human decision making process and in particular the irrational decisions that we all make every day.

Ariely is the author of the book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, which was published on February 21, 2008 by HarperCollins.

The Paradox of Choice

Jose Vicente Ortega — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 06:52:53 +0000

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz’s estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM

Danger of a single story

Jose Vicente Ortega — Sun, 08 May 2011 19:56:49 +0000

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

Railway Bridge Health Monitoring System

Jose Vicente Ortega — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:05:17 +0000

In my last post I put forth the idea of using the unique capabilities and UX of the iPhone to help track defects in railways, which came about after my initial conversations with a friend from the railroad industry.

Hours into our conversation I was perplexed at the lack of proactive monitoring of the today’s bridges used by trains for transport.

Should a uniquely located bridge collapse, an energy crisis could ensue as a result of the coal fields in the northeast/midwest being severed from the southwest.

I looked at several existing methods and solutions used today to address this issue and drew from each to conclude in a refined approach to monitoring the health of railway bridges.

There were basically 3 design considerations which needed to be met:

Easy to deploy
Low Maintenance
Long Term

The system had to be easily deploy-able were an electrician in the field could install the components of the solution. Obviously low maintenance is also key, reducing the total cost of ownership and Long Term reducing the need for personnel to visit these bridges.

Application Requirements:

In order to monitor the health of a structure, vibrations of the structure need to be gathered and analyzed to develop a baseline under normal conditions. Subsequent measurements of vibrations can then be compared to the baseline to determine if an anomaly exists.

To accomplish this requirement sensors (3-axis accelerometers) are placed throughout the span of the bridge collecting data. The frequency components of interest range between 0.25-20Hz, the measurements would need to take place 40 secs before and after the passage of the train and time synchronization between the sensors would also be a factor to take into account.

Existing approaches use technology such as Solar panels to supply power in remote areas, GSM for data transmission, GPS for time synchronization and a star topology for the sensors to communicate to a head node which would collect and transmit the data for analysis.

There are multiple problems here since solar panels are expensive, prone to theft, vandalism and damage; GSM data transmission isn’t always viable when there isn’t network coverage in remoter areas and relying on a head node to collect and transmit the data would be like putting all your eggs in one basket. If the head node failed, the system would stop working.

The techniques I came across with basically fell into 2 categories: Existing bridges and new bridges.

I focused on existing bridges since there are very sophisticated things being done with new bridges. Today engineers are embedding sensors and fiber in the concrete while the bridges are being built in order to take measurements, but this approach is obviously not viable for existing bridges.

The methods in use for existing bridges included visual inspection, wired solutions which were bulky, expensive and time consuming to setup and a few wireless solutions some of which were proprietary, not scalable and interesting work from India.

In summary there are several challenges in deploying such a solution at sometimes remote and hostile locations. A lack of power which calls for alternate sources of energy, a way to effectively and reliably collect and transmit the data for analysis and keeping installation and maintenance costs low.

Since the train comes and goes, so can the data collected by the sensors. The train would activate the standby sensors as it approaches the bridge and then collect the data buffered by the sensors after passing the bridge. This approach would deal with the transmission of data limitations while at the same time eliminating the need of power for this component of the system. The train would carry the data and uploaded it to a collection station.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVH1K1Eocz0

To deal with reliability and power requirements the linear path Star Topology would be dropped in favor of a Mesh Network which provides TRUE self-organizing and self-healing properties. On top of the Mesh Network, TSMP (Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol) would be used providing more than 99.9% reliability and the lowest power consumption per delivered packet.

The key for achieving maximum reliability is to use channel hopping, in which each packet is sent on a different channel. In this case, transient failures in links on a given channel are handled gracefully, and persistent link failures that develop after the site survey do not destabilize the network.

Sensors of this type using this approach can last 7-10 years on a small battery meeting the application requirements.

Now to raise some money, build a working prototype and demo it to the Railway companies.

TrackInspector – Using the iPhone to track railroad defects

Jose Vicente Ortega — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 23:01:51 +0000

Over a glass of wine and cigar with a friend who works in the railroad industry, we began to talk about the technology in use to monitor the health of railways and bridges. I was truly amazed at the politics on maintaining these bridges, how fragile these communication channels are and how critical they are in maintaining the energy supply to major cities within the US. (more on this in a later post)

According to a recent Reuters article here, almost half of the electricity generated in the United States is supplied by coal-fired plants. These coal fields are found in specific coal regions within the US. Once the coal is mined the facility can negotiate a transport rate if there are competing railroad they can use.

Enter the FRA (Federal Railway Administration):

The purpose of FRA is to promulgate and enforce rail safety regulations, administer railroad assistance programs, conduct research and development in support of improved railroad safety and national rail transportation policy, provide for the rehabilitation of Northeast Corridor rail passenger service, and consolidate government support of rail transportation activities.^[2]

Currently railroads are in their majority inspected manually on a fixed schedule, meaning that someone actually goes out and either inspects with the assistance of equipment or visually.

Equipment assisted inspections are performed by a variety of methods:

A list of methods used to detect flaws in rails:

Ultrasound – the most popular method

Eddy current inspection – great for surface flaws & near surface flaws

Magnetic Particle Inspection (MPI) – used for detailed manual inspection

Radiography – used on specific locations (often predetermined) such as bolt holes and where thermite welding was used

Magnetic induction or Magnetic flux leakage – earliest method used to locate unseen flaws in the railway industry

EMAT Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducer

These techniques can be used in a variety of different ways:

The probes and transducers can be utilized on a “walking stick”, on a hand pushed trolley, or in a hand held setup. These devices are used when small sections of track are to be inspected or when a precise location is desired. Many times these detail oriented inspection devices follow up on indications made by a rail inspection cars or HiRail trucks. Handheld inspection devices are very useful for this when the track is used heavily, because they can be removed relatively easy. However, they are considered very slow and tedious, when there are thousands of miles of track that need inspection.

My interest level rose when we talked about the current handheld inspection devices being used and how the iPhone could add an enormous amount of value to this market.

Today a handheld device is used to record the fault and subsequently docked with a Windows PC, in order to sync the data recorded with a centralized system where photographic evidence can be later attached.

The Federal Railway Administration Track Safety Standards determine how and what data needs to be collected to perform inspections, which got me thinking on the iPhone hardware capabilities and getting a proof-of-concept out. Later came the design and architecture of the TrackInspector iPhone app.

The iPhone application allows the inspector to enter GPS-assisted track location being inspected, defects found during the inspection including a photograph and any remedial action taken. The inspection is immediately time-stamped and transmitted over the cellular network (GSM) or Wi-Fi, to a database server where the data can be retrieved securely and on-demand from anywhere in the world using a browser like any other website. The secure server allows centrally archiving, analyzing and reviewing all inspections as well as visualizing trends in the infrastructure.

Something I am sure Railway companies like BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) or Union Pacific would be interested in.

More Details: http://www.lonehorn.com/portfolio/trackinspector/

Healthcare Electronic Clipboard iPad Application

Jose Vicente Ortega — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 20:24:15 +0000

Just after finishing up my first iPhone application I got involved in the Healthcare industry with the implementation of an Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) system for a 3 location practice. Additionally I came across the video below on a Doctor from Croatia putting the iPhone to use in the field including remote diagnostic procedures and CPR with his own invention.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-E-B3Pc8mk

This brought about the idea of building applications for the healthcare industry for the iPhone platform. The iPhone though did not present the ideal device for doctors to use because of its size and difficulty in entering information.

After the release of the Apple iPad on January 27, 2010 the idea of an electronic clipboard didn’t seem too far fetched, so I put together a mock-up of what the app on the iPad would look like and can be seen below.

Electronic Health Records and the Cloud

Jose Vicente Ortega — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:52:03 +0000

Last year I was recruited to find an Electronic Healthcare Records System (EHR) for a doctor who had just gone through a foiled implementation. I am always intrigued by being exposed to new sectors of technology and learning systems inside out.

The existing EHR system had a hardware failure and the vendor was asking for over $10,000 to recover the patient data. This combined with high maintenance and licensing fees proved to be too much for the doctor.

A consultant came in and sold the doctor on a hosted EHR system he had developed, unfortunately expectations were not set and the doctor was expecting his patient data to be available on this new system. Once it became apparent that there would be an additional cost in the thousands to recover and import this data into the new system the relationship went south.

This particular project was not only a technical but also a customer service challenge. Right from the start I made sure that the expectations were set and began looking at the possible solutions.

Amongst the many options available including traditional vendors, open source, home-grown systems, etc. (Tolven Healthcare, PatientOS, OpenEMR, Clearhealth, Abraxas, Medworks & Pulse)

I was looking to implement something that not only met the requirements (demographics, Medical history, Medications & allergies, Immunization status, Laboratory test results, Radiology images and Billing) of the client but was also scalable as a potential business. I ruled out the traditional EHR systems because of their high capital expenditure, ongoing costs, and approved VAR requirements. The open source solutions seemed very attractive but I was looking for something that did not require an on-site server thus it had to be hosted and using the cloud made it scalable.

So it came down to hosting an open-source package or using someone who had already done the legwork and I didn’t want to support this long term so the search turned 2 or 3 new cloud service providers of which only one I found to be mature enough to recommend; Practice Fusion.

Practice Fusion provides a free, web-based Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system to physicians. With charting, scheduling, e-prescribing, billing, lab integrations, referral letters, unlimited support and a Personal Health Record for patients, Practice Fusion’s EMR addresses the complex needs of today’s healthcare providers and disrupts the health IT status quo.

Although this did not turn out to be a passive income generator which I always have as a goal, it turned out to be a very educational and the platform for other ideas and projects.