Our feet are firmly on the ground, so you can keep thinking in the clouds.

The New York Times reported (amongst many others) that Big Blue (IBM) has a Super Computer named "Watson" that is going to challenge former Jeopardy! champions on the television show in the coming months. This is huge news (for geeks like me). Why is this a big deal?

Computers are fantastic at answering questions, when questions are posed in a direct fashion, and the computer database being queried has data to formulate a response. We all know that, and many of us make a living off developing computer programs and databases based on this paradigm. Take for example the below:

Display all orders for customer number 1000

A computer database may have tables called "Orders" and "Customers". A simple table in between "Orders" and "Customers" would be "Customer Orders". This last table simply contains information about the customer number and the order number, so you can ask the database something like this:

SELECT OrderDetails from Orders WHERE OrderNumber in (SELECT OrderNumber from CustomerOrders WHERE CustomerNumber = 1000)

It's not rocket science by no means. This is a simple Transact SQL statement that asks a database to return some information. It starts by getting all OrderNumbers for a given CustomerNumber, and then displays the OrderDetails for all of those OrderNumbers. Ok, enough, I know.

Compare this rigid logic to what "Watson" can do...

First off, "Watson" is a Super Computer from the IBM BlueGene line. This line of Super Computers are the fastest in the world when put together in certain ways. The Apple television ad for the iPad says the iPad is "Crazy Powerful", not so much when you compare to Watson... Watson really is CRAZY POWERFUL.

Watson can answer questions that Alex Trebek asks on Jeopardy! Watson can answer them very quickly. Watson can beat some Jeopardy! champions. Why is that such a big deal?

Think about the questions on Jeopardy! It isn't a simple logical question. There are puns, inferences, "Potent Potables", twisted phrases, etc. I love the example on page 2 of the New York Times article (reference and link below), which uses Sherlock Holmes fittingly. Here is the question (or answer for you Jeopardy! purists)...

The name of this hat is elementary, my dear contestant

How does a computer even begin to answer this kind of question? The answer (or question for you Jeopardy! zealots) is

What is a Deerstalker hat

This is a crazy thing for a computer to answer. It's simply incredible. It's also kind of creepy, but in a Super Computer cool kind of way.

Please read the entire New Your Times article, it's great --> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?pagewanted=1

Kieron

In a previous post (see article here) I blogged about how Google acquired a great company named On2 Technologies. On2 developed a set of CODECs that produce high quality video for playback on the web (On2 developed VP3, which was released open source and lives on today within the Theora space and developed the wildly popular VP6 video CODEC that ruled the Flash video streams for some time). I speculated that Google will take the technology that On2 was developing as a new generation web video CODEC (aptly named VP8 at that time) and release it as open source (credit to many others prior to me on this speculation). This happened, and Google calls it WebM.

WebM is an "Open, royalty-free, media file format for the web" according to the WebM Project Page (see here for more details). WebM is kind of a project name at the moment. Within WebM are the details of video, audio and a container file specification (a container file is a single binary file that contains the synchronized video and audio components).

Video: The WebM project uses the now open-source VP8 video CODEC as the high quality, web-ready video format. VP8 was under development at On2 prior to Google acquiring the company and all their technology. Qualitatively speaking, VP8 seems equal to H.264 (the overwhelming majority of web video content is H.264 these days). Most tests conclude that VP8 is equal to H.264 for all video requirements, except where the video content being encoded is fast motion (see here for more details). In summary, VP8 looks to be equal to H.264 for most applications.

Audio: The WebM project uses the open-source Vorbis audio CODEC as the high quality audio format. Vorbis has been around for a long time. Vorbis produces high quality audio suitable for transport on the web, comparable to AAC (another popular audio CODEC) and higher quality than MP3 (see this page for more details on Vorbis). Audio is a critical part of a quality video experience, and the quality of Vorbis encoded audio delivers a good experience.

Container: Usually glossed over by most, the WebM container file is based on the Matroska specification (more here). The Matroska Media Container specification has been around for some time, with best indicators placing the format in the wild around the summer 2003 timeframe. You may already be familiar with this file format if you have used VLC Player before (see the VideoLAN homepage for a download). The file extension for Matroska format files are MKV (video) and MKA (audio).

Is WebM a Big Deal or not? We here at Statusfirm think it is. There is no doubt that introducing an open source, royalty free multimedia technology for implementors to build into their products is a good thing. The main challenge is to get big adoption. This is where Google can put the hurt on competitors by moving YouTube content to WebM format. How many of you have been to YouTube? I hear this video thing is catching on ;)

I went out and got myself a swanky new iPad (16GB, WiFi) and would like to share some thoughts - full disclosure: I am an Apple fanboy.

The first thing to note is yes, it is a big iPod Touch. It runs iPhone OS 3.2 (edit: iPhone OS is now iOS) which has the regular flow and feel of the iPod Touch and iPhone operating systems. It's extremely easy to use (especially for an experienced iOS'er).

The iPad is very quick and responsive, with smooth graphics and animations and the screen is fantastic thanks to IPS technology (In Plane Switching, see here for more information). Reading and watching video from off-angle is easy and doesn't cause strain or a unsatisfactory experience. It works as advertised. I do have an anti-glare screen protector on my iPad, which degrades the edge detail of on-screen text/graphics, but nothing I can't live with, and the benefits of anti-glare for me are worth it.

Browsing get's a solid 8 out of 10. The Safari browser loads pages quickly, renders them accurately and is extremely fluid when zooming and panning around a web page. I can honestly say I prefer the tablet format for general web surfing than a laptop or desktop computer. It feels more natural to me, like looking through a magazine.

What did you say, it doesn't support Flash!!!??? That's right, you heard it here, the iPad does not support Adobe Flash, and that means you are missing out on 80% of the web, right? Not so fast grasshopper, there seems to be something going on, and they call it HTML5.

For me, Flash is Video on the Web. Before you flame me, I know Flash is MUCH more than just video. For me, it's mostly about Video on the Web. I like Web Video, and our company loves Web Video (so much in fact, we best our business on it!). Flash is immensely popular and provides an excellent video experience, with support for H.264 video and AAC audio.

What I found since my iPad surfest started here in Canada (May 28th, 2010) is that many (and I mean lots) of sites are directly supporting video on the iPad (and hence, the iPod Touch and iPhone) by using the HTML5 Video element when the site detects the visitor is using an iPad. The video experience on these iPad friendly sites is as good as it is on the Flash side (and better in some cases, as the iPad has hardware decode support for H.264 video). So really, video on the web is working on the iPad, today - maybe not all the crazy sites you visit, but a lot of mainstream sites support it today, and more coming out everyday.

iPad native apps are increasing in numbers quickly. As of today (2010-06-08), there are over 20,000 iPad apps available. Some of the apps I like and use are Kindle (no iBookstore in Canada yet), Sketchbook Pro, Virtuoso, Pinball HD, FeeddlerRSS, IMDb, GoodReader, IM+ Lite and Pocket Pond. I have more (I am addicted to iPad apps, there, I said it) but those are my current favs. There are so many to choose from, leave me a comment on apps you like and I can install them!

I have one major gripe with the iPad (more precisely, mobile Safari). The browser does not support the HTML feature "contentEditable". This feature allows a supported element (like a DIV element for example) to be edited directly within a browser. For example, a WYSIWYG web page editor that relies on this feature will NOT work on your iPad (sigh). This will be resolved however, and early indications are that iOS 4 supports this requirement (iPhone OS4 Beta 2 anyway). I hope so - that means our software works in iPad without major rework!

Overall, I am impressed with the iPad. The software will only get better from here, and by looking back at the advancements of the iOS platform, the next few years will be enlightening to say the least.