tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69076152024-03-13T13:58:48.447-07:00Reza BehforoozTHOUGHTS AFTER A RANDOM WALK AROUND THE WORLDRezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.comBlogger126125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-50873343022051865472009-01-27T13:28:00.000-08:002021-03-01T22:30:27.687-08:00Solution to our health care problems<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/26/090126fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all">This NYer article</a> is the best thing I've read about US Health Care in a very long time. Read it.
Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-81046525134479348302008-07-18T19:22:00.000-07:002010-05-03T11:32:06.627-07:00Authors at googleThis lecture about behavioral economics is amazing. You can watch the <a href=" http://youtube.com/watch?v=VZv--sm9XXU">video</a> online. It's the best talk I've attended in a couple of years.<br /><br />I also enjoyed <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=_r0c1sfFebQ">this</a> talk by Johan Bruyneel, retired pro cyclist who was also the director of Lance's team during the 7 Tour de France victories.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-47637551099417332782008-02-20T22:51:00.000-08:002010-09-02T03:09:34.265-07:00Climbing Mount HamiltonToday, I went up Mount Hamilton (4300 ft) for Stage 3 of <a href="www.amgentourofcalifornia.com">Tour of California</a>. Here are some <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/publicrezapictures/TourOfCaliforniaMtHamilton">pictures</a> and videos I took. Here are more pictures taken by others <a href="http://www.svihura.com/albums/TofC2008/Stage%203/slides/CANON_2008.02.20-0077.html">people</a>. It's amazing how fast the riders go. It was very cold on top of the mountain and the descent was freezing. I also have a whole new appreciation for the motorcycle riders who bring the races to TV. They were literally bouncing up and down. <br /><br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" width="288" height="192" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fpublicrezapictures%2Falbumid%2F5169296134145597057%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Drss" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-74255454436964137282008-02-14T11:02:00.000-08:002010-04-14T12:15:05.518-07:00Reputation and DUIWashington state recently passed a bill that requires DUI drivers to have a yellow license plate (<a href="http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_021108POB_dui_yellow_license_TP.b0f57903.html">news article</a>). It's a bit like the Scarlet Letter. I like to see how effective this becomes. I think the bill has a problem. Some people share cars with other drivers. But DUI is a major problem in the US, and I'm happy to see experimentation by local governments. <br /><br />I love reputation based systems like eBay and wikipedia. It's a good way to build trust and fight spam. I personally wish there was an easy way for people to have a publicly visible reputation that was influenced by anyone. Imagine a world where people could easily point their cell phone at you and give you a plus or a minus vote. If you let someone merge in, the other driver can give you a small star. If you stop and help someone with a flat tire, you might get lots of stars. If you cut people off or cheat on the carpool lane, you get bad karma. That's similar to <a href="http://www.google.com/technology/">PageRank</a>. We all look at reviews for movies, restaurants, books, hotels, etc. And we look at the star rating on youtube, netflix, etc. Why not have it for people? There are now web sites that do this for professors and classes at universities. An open reputation based system is so much more effective than the usual student reviews for university faculty. Now imagine we did that in the office for everyone. <br /><br />Why not have a rating on this very blog post?Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com80tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-51855133445439386492007-11-09T15:31:00.000-08:002007-11-09T15:42:28.236-08:00Brazil and a Blog PostRead the <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/crossing-team-and-global-boundaries.html">Google Blog post</a> about my project and how things get done at Google.<br /><br />In other news, I'm going to Brazil in a week. I'm really looking forward it to. And it looks like I'm going to get a chance to watch a football game at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Est%C3%A1dio_do_Maracan%C3%A3">Maracana</a> (largest stadium in the world)!Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-3738650214192897152007-10-31T00:08:00.000-07:002007-10-31T00:17:05.923-07:00Busy week at workI was involved in three independent launches this week:<br /><ul><li>My 20% Farsi keyboard launched on Monday. It's now listed in the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?num=24&url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/farsi_keyboard.xml&output=html">Gadget directory</a>. I've also embedded the gadget below.</li><li>We finished up a project that made some backend changes to Gmail. Nothing user visible, but some invisible things are now better.</li><li><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/details-revealed-google-opensocial-to-be-common-apis-for-building-social-apps/">OpenSocial</a> is finally announced. It's launching on Thursday! <br /></li></ul><script src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/farsi_keyboard.xml&synd=open&w=320&h=220&title=%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%B3%DB%8C+On-Screen+Keyboard&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js"></script>Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-85418340129958145092007-10-29T16:09:00.000-07:002007-10-29T16:20:47.564-07:00Searching Google in Farsi<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.google.com/ig/modules/farsi_keyboard.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://www.google.com/ig/modules/farsi_keyboard.png" alt="" border="0" /></a>I sometimes need to do searches in Farsi, but I don't know the keyboard bindings. I built out an iGoogle Gadget that is an on-screen Farsi keyboard (see the screen shot). It launched today. <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=farsi_keyboard.xml&source=imag%60">Click</a> here to use it. A lot of credit to Googlers in India who <a href="http://labs.google.co.in/indic.html">built</a> this out for several other Indic languages. I only extended it for Farsi.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-34798864093883610152007-10-15T20:38:00.000-07:002007-10-15T20:44:47.327-07:00Do you have a racial bias?Here is a site that tells you about your biases against people. Go to <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">https://implicit.harvard.edu</a> (just click on demo and it takes about 10 minutes). <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/355514/unconscious_racial_bias_leads_to_different.html">Here</a> is an article about this.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-3353933979588395532007-10-03T11:50:00.000-07:002010-08-13T17:01:04.085-07:00Further ReadingI'm visiting Cornell for a few days. I'm giving four talks here. Here are some additional reading for those who are interested.<br /><br />Google Talk Servers - CS 212<br /><ul><li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6202268628085731280&q=reza+behforooz&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0">Video of my talk</a></li><li><a href="http://code.google.com/apis/talk/open_communications.html">Developer Info for Google Talk</a></li><li><a href="http://www.xmpp.org/rfcs/">XMPP Specs</a></li><li><a href="http://code.google.com/edu/parallel/dsd-tutorial.html">Introduction to Distributed Systems</a><br /></li></ul>Google Search - CS 211<br /><ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank">PageRank</a></li><li><a href="http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html">Original paper</a> by Larry & Sergey<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html">PigeonRank</a><br /></li></ul>Google's computing infrastructure - ACSU Talk<br /><ul><li><a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/googlecluster.html">Google's cluster architecture</a></li><li><a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/priceofperformance.html"> The Price of Performance</a></li><li><a href="http://services.google.com/blog_resources/PSU_white_paper.pdf">Power supply optimization</a></li></ul>Links to papers on some of our distributed systems infrastructure:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html">BigTable</a></li><li><a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs.html">GFS</a></li><li><a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/chubby.html">Chubby</a></li></ul>Links for info about resumes and interviews - SHPE Talk<br /><ul><li><a href="http://niniane.org/resume_howto.html">How to write a Killer Resume?</a></li><li><a href="http://niniane.org/interview_howto.html">Preparing for a Software Engineering Interview</a><br /></li></ul><br />More <a href="http://code.google.com/edu/videolectures.html">videos</a> from other Googlers.<br /><p><br />Lessons in building scalable systems<br /><p><br />Since launching Google Talk in the summer of 2005, we have integrated the service with two large existing products: Gmail and orkut. Each of these integrations provided unique scalability challenges as we had to handle a sudden big increase in the number of users. Today, Google Talk supports millions of users and handles billions of packets per day. I will discuss several practical lessons and key insights from our experience that can be used for any project. These lessons will cover both engineering and operational areas.<br /><p><br />Reza Behforooz is a Senior Staff Engineer at Google and is currently the technical lead for the Google Talk servers. He's passionate about building large systems and working on communication products in an attempt to make the world a smaller place. While at Google, he has primarily worked on Google Talk, Gmail, orkut, Google Groups, and shared infrastructure used by several Google applications. Reza holds a BS from Cornell and a MS from Stanford in Computer Science. Prior to Google, he held various engineering and management positions at Microsoft and two startups, Zaplet and Epiphany.<br /><ul> </ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#888888;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: -webkit-xxx-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:130%;color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-30549572695078907792007-06-18T22:17:00.000-07:002007-06-18T22:48:52.774-07:00Cycling VideosI really enjoyed watching <a href="http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Hell_on_Wheels/70039429">this</a> documentary from Netflix on the Tour. A few clips are on youtube: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCdvq9JfQsM&mode=related&search=">trailer</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvERKz5bUnc">clip 1</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly5IkBxvYL0">clip 2</a>. Although <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypGlreJYFWM">this</a> IMAX clip looks even better.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-39159662072194071752007-06-11T22:51:00.000-07:002007-06-11T22:59:06.531-07:00Square Cake PuzzleLast week, we started doing puzzles in the office. Bruce asked one that I enjoyed. There is a square cake. And there is a square shaped hole in the cake. The hole is in a random place (and at a random angle). You want to evenly divide the cake with only a single cut. Where do you cut?Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-56897467520992460502007-05-18T15:17:00.001-07:002007-05-18T15:23:44.885-07:00Life at the Googleplex<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/massage-interviews.html">Here</a> is an interesting story about doing massage interviews.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-84882999716598150972007-03-10T12:06:00.000-08:002007-03-10T12:40:18.052-08:00Science Fridays and rapper at GoogleWe have a lot of amazing people at Google. At one extreme we have Turing Award winners like Ken Thompson (co-inventor of UNIX) and Vint Cerf (co-inventor of TCP/IP). At other extremes we have people with other amazing attributes. For example, take our summer intern <a href="http://www.monzy.com">Monzy</a> who is a <a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerdcore_hip_hop">nerdcore</a> rapper straight from the hills of Stanford (listen to his major hits: <a href="http://www.monzy.com/intro/drama_lyrics.html">So Much Drama in the PhD</a> and <a href="http://www.monzy.com/intro/killdashnine_lyrics.html">kill -9</a>).<br /><br />His blogs also describe a cool tradition in our NY office: <a href="http://www.monzy.com/?p=255">Science Fridays</a>. It looks like a lot of fun. I love the microwave experiment. It also reminds me of <a href="http://www.hollenback.net/index.php/LifterExperiment">antigravity experiments</a> done by a friend (and fellow Googler) JJ Furman.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-82890161531467755422007-02-28T00:00:00.000-08:002007-02-28T00:01:01.201-08:00Working togetherOpen source software is great. Anyone can improve the source code, add features, or just access the source code to better understand the software. The Internet revolution has been fueled by various open source technologies. <br><br>Wikipedia is the open source software model applied to a writing a collaborative encyclopedia. It works well.<br><br>The Oxford English Dictionary had a similar start. From 1857 to 1928, thousands of people sent examples of word usage not in their dictionaries. A few editors complied this into a dictionary. Sounds pretty similar to wikipedia to me, but with more primitive tools. <br><br>Was this the first example of this model? Do you know of other examples? Why is it that we don't see this in more artistic fields, i.e. composing music?<br> Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-63848106341201601162007-02-19T14:21:00.000-08:002007-02-19T15:40:49.993-08:00Great BookThanks to JP for recommending this great book -- <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0465081452&id=ax6dsqMdPHQC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=gR9maG8nvV&dq=sowell+economics&sig=fAHCW4IglZ3aJkQjzVBGalSGafA">Basic Economics</a>. I highly recommend it. A lot of the content is things I already knew, but it's full of small examples and his writing style is very engaging.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-51173740177820232692007-02-11T15:28:00.001-08:002007-02-10T15:30:18.386-08:00Funny book reviewI so agree with this review. I think authors are running out of ideas for books and just fill them up with countless examples of the same thing.<br><br><a href="http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/13725.aspx" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/13725.aspx</a> Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-10748484103431437522007-02-05T22:53:00.000-08:002007-02-05T23:08:40.361-08:00A fun puzzleLet's say there are 10 cars, each numbered 1 to 10. Each car travels at a speed equal to its index * 10mph. For example, car number 3 goes 30mph, and car 10 goes 100mph. Now, assume they are traveling in a single lane road and no passing is allowed. Each car still prefers to go at the speeds described above unless a slower car is ahead and forces the faster car to go at the speed of the slower car. So if car 3 is behind car 1, then they both travel at 10mph since car 3 cannot pass 1.<br /><br />For any random distribution of cars, if someone looks at the road from above they will see different pockets of cars going together. For example, assume the cars are going in order: 5 (back), 3, 1, 7, 8, 10, 4, 2, 6, 9 (front). We have 4 pockets. 5, 3, 1 travel at 10mph. 7, 8, 10, 4, 2 travel at 20mph. 6 travels at 60mph and 9 is speeding ahead of everyone at 90mph.<br /><br />Now, assume we have N cars and consider all random distributions.<br /><br />Question 1) On average, how many pockets are formed? <br /><br />Question 2) What's the average size of pocket? <br /> In the example above, it's (3 + 5 + 1 + 1)/4 = 2.5<br /><br />I'll reply with possible answers and also a funny story about this puzzle.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-30294250117280001582007-01-28T23:38:00.000-08:002007-01-28T23:41:01.124-08:00Beautiful mountainsThis is from a few weeks ago while x-country skiing. It snowed the entire day and made it a fun adventure!<br /><br /><embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=283836901443949224&hl=en" flashvars=""> </embed>Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-8581181036613207672007-01-28T20:50:00.000-08:002007-01-28T20:54:28.257-08:00Pictures from cross country or snow shoeingThese are some pictures from my few cross country or snow shoeing trips this winter.<br /><br /><div style="text-align:center;width:194px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:83%"><div style="height:194px;background:url(http://picasaweb.google.com/f/img/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/publicrezapictures/CrossCountrySnowShoeing"><img src="http://lh5.google.com/image/publicrezapictures/Rb17gqYGBvE/AAAAAAAAFMU/ocwwuxpBNNc/s160-c/CrossCountrySnowShowing.jpg" width="160" height="160" style="border:none;padding:0px;margin-top:16px;"></a></div><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/publicrezapictures/CrossCountrySnowShoeing"><div style="color:#4D4D4D;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none;"></div></a><div style="color:#808080"></div></div>Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-73452156191477434522007-01-24T21:22:00.000-08:002007-01-27T13:13:53.666-08:00Stop, and think of a better wayPeople usually underestimate the applications of learning mathematics or computer science in real life. Most math/science people understand the importance of framing a problem. Every problem can be solved in many different ways. Some ways of thinking about a problem make it much easier. Computer Scientists in particular understand that brute force approaches are bad. If something repeatedly fails, we try to re-frame the problem to get unstuck. Let me give a few examples to show what I mean by framing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Example 1</span><br />Let's look at sorting. Most people know how to sort cards they receive when playing cards. Most people use "insertion sort": starting with nothing, they pick (or insert) one card at a time in its right place. It works well when you have 10 cards to sort. But it really doesn't work when you have a hundred or so. One of the things that we learn a lot in CS is how to quantitatively evaluate and compare different ways of solving a problem. In insertion sort, at each step, one has to compare the new card with all the cards currently being held. For example, the last card is compared with every single card that was previously picked. The math is a little tedious (or obvious depending on your background), but given n cards you end up with n x n or n^2 comparisons. So sorting 100 cards this way requires 10,000 comparisons. And sorting 1,000 cards takes 1,000,000 comparisons. Wow, that grows quickly. <br /><br />Now, most people don't actually compare the card with all the cards they are holding. At each step, they quickly find the spot for the new card by guessing where it should be and adjusting a little. We all do this when we look up something in Yellow Pages or a dictionary. If we're looking for an attorney in the Yellow Pages, we open up the front. And we quickly adjust our guess by guessing again. A more general version of this is called binary search where you cut the problem in half in every step. Binary search is must faster than linear scan. Again, the math is hard or obvious depending on your background, but binary search takes about log(n). So looking through 1000 sorted things for an item only requires only 10 comparisons (because you reduce the problem to 500 items, and then 250, then 125, 63, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, and finally 1 -- that's 10 steps), as compared to 1000 for a linear scan. Extending the insertion idea above to use binary search instead of linear scan reduces the complexity from n x n to n log (n). For 1,000 cards, we go down from 1,000,000 to 10,000 comparisons. So these are two different and correct ways of doing the same thing. But one is a lot faster. What's needed is having a way to quickly compare different ways of solving the problem.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Example 2</span><br />Here is another problem that shows framing. I like this puzzle. Imagine two trains, 100 miles apart, moving towards each other on the same train track. One is traveling 10mph and the other is going at 15mph. Eventually, the trains will crash. There is a super bee traveling at 20mph going back and forth between the trains trying to get the attention of the train drivers. Let's ignore the time it takes for the bee to turn and speed up again. How many miles does the bee travel in its futile attempt to save the trains? A bad way to frame this problem is start adding up all the distances the bee travels. It's hard to count because the trains are moving and the distance the bee travels keeping getting smaller. I'll let you try to do this on your own time. An easy way to frame the problem is to compute how long it takes the trains to crash: 100/(15+10) = 4 hours. Since we know the bee is moving at 20mph, it's easy to figure out that the bee will need to travel 80 miles in 4 hours.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Example 3</span><br />Here is my favorite example. Let's say you're on a boat in a river. You are traveling 20mph up stream. The river itself is moving 5mph. Let's say your hat falls in the river at noon and you only realize that this happened at 12:15. How far is your hat and how long will it take you to go back and fetch it? Your hat is now further up stream than where you dropped it since it's been moving at 5mph. [Stop reading here if you want to solve this.] Again, there is a hard way and an easy way. The hard way is pretty tedious since the river is moving. Knock yourself out if you want to do the arithmetic. The easy way is to change your point of reference. Does it really matter that the river is moving in respect to the trees and the land? The only things that matter here is that the boat is moving 20mph away from the hat for 15 minutes. So the answer is obvious. The speed of the river does not matter at all. Thank you Einstein for relativity.<br /><br />Now, here is a version of the same problem that's easier for people to understand. Let's say you drop your hat on an escalator while you're walking up the escalator. Assume you drop your hat, climb 5 steps, and realize you need to go back to get your hat. It's easy to see that the hat is only 5 steps below. For some reason, we can <span style="font-style:italic;">abstract away</span> the relative moving of the escalator. It doesn't matter how fast the escalator is going or that it's even moving at all. This is easier for people to understand than the previous problem.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ok, enough examples! Now get to the point</span><br /><br />These examples show a few things. First, it's important to frame the problem correctly, to ask the right question, to look at the minimum amount of facts needed to solve a problem. Second, it's important to be able to quickly compare different ways of solving a problem with each other. It's good to experiment and see what works. If you ever have to make 100 peanut butter sandwiches, it's good to take some time and think of a good way. It can save you a lot of time.<br /><br />Most importantly, I don't understand how people can repeatedly try a brute force approach at solving a problem. When one is stuck or when things are not working as smoothly as expected, it's important to stop and think about a different way instead of trying the old way. Often, trying random new things is better than persistence and banging your head on the wall. In fact, there is a whole field of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_algorithm">Randomized Algorithms</a> based on this idea.<br /><br />I think in the past couple of decades, businesses understood the importance of these things and that's why we started seeing people with PhDs in science and math in board rooms and on trading floors. Maybe in the next few decades, we'll see a similar trend and emphasis in more social disciplines that so far have focused on the soft skills.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-43906848820687177152007-01-15T12:52:00.000-08:002007-01-15T13:05:49.586-08:00Climbing Walls<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uUksaD-JJgI"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uUksaD-JJgI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><br />The big chase scene in 007 is based on an actual discipline called Parkour. It makes skateboarding look like a sissy sport.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour">Read more</a><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=Parkour&search_sort=video_avg_rating&search_category=0">More videos</a>Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-1163059049613889352006-11-08T23:39:00.000-08:002006-11-08T23:57:29.633-08:00Getting people to talkSometimes you have to spark the right conversation in a party to get people to talk. And sometimes you have to build a social application to get millions to talk. I'm glad I had a chance to do both this week.<br /><br />We just launched <a href="http://www.orkut.com">orkut</a> + Google Talk. I wrote up about it on the <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/talking-with-orkut.html">Google Blog</a> and the <a href="http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2006/11/teaching-orkut-to-talk.html">Google Talk Blog</a>. It was a fun project.<br /><br />Here is a personal story about orkut. I grew up in four different countries so it was usually hard for me to keep in touch with childhood friends. A couple of years ago I found an orkut community for my elementry school and found an old friend from 3rd grade!<br /><br />My name is Reza and I approve this blog post.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-1161848354825254662006-10-26T00:30:00.000-07:002006-10-26T00:39:14.846-07:00Longer version of the cell videoHere is a <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><a href="http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_innerlife_hi.html">longer</a> version of the cell video from its <a href="http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/">source</a> at Harvard. My friend David Bau has <a href="http://davidbau.com/archives/2006/10/22/the_inner_life_of_a_cell.html">more</a> details on his blog.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-1161326189349291732006-10-19T23:29:00.000-07:002006-10-19T23:36:29.366-07:00Animations from inside a cell!This <a href="http://aimediaserver.com/studiodaily/videoplayer/?src=harvard/harvard.swf&width=640&height=520">video</a> made by the <a href="http://www.mcb.harvard.edu/Faculty/Gallery.asp">BioVisions</a> project at Harvard is amazing (<a href="http://science.easternblot.net/?p=219">learn more</a>).Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907615.post-1160383554145191222006-10-09T01:32:00.000-07:002006-10-09T01:45:54.186-07:00Fun puzzleThanks to Ario for sending this to me. It's a cute puzzle. And the rest of the ones on this site are also pretty good.<br /><a href="http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/BrightSparks/frogs.asp?applet"><br />http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/BrightSparks/frogs.asp?applet</a><br /><br />For the geeks, why did applets lose to flash? Is it just the ability to create pretty UI? I couldn't find a flash version of this game.Rezahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05149195400597133699noreply@blogger.com3