Computer systems today are often called on to make predictions based on data provided to them. Sales forecasts, power usage, the weather, and even the little lights that come on in posher cars that tell you something is starting to go wonky are all based on software that is in turn based on predictive algorithms. This is how Amazon constantly changes what it thinks you might buy, and Goggle can creep you out by offering to sell you what you are searching about. The crafting of such programs are calls for laborious and highly skilled coding and constant fine tuning of the factors used to make the predictions.  Each system has to be customized for each situation and is very expensive to maintain. We are a long way away from the Star Trek world of telling the computer what you want analysed or having Mr. Spock work it out.

Perhaps we are not that far away after all, OGs (Original Geeks) know that Jeff Hawkins was the mastermind behind the first successful  handheld computer, the Palm Pilot, the grandfather of all Palm PDAs. He then went on to co develop the Treo, the first smartphone. Since 2005, he has been working with Numenta following what was actually his first love, neuroscience. Hawkins has since been seeking a solution that has dogged artificial intelligence developers since day one, how to make computers learn and understand without all the tweaking it takes now.  Grok, a prediction engine, now in private beta seeks to do just that.

Calling the cloud based system “Grok” is both a homage to the late Grand Master of science fiction, Robert A. Heinlein, who coined the phrase as a Martian word in his 1961 classic Stranger in a Strange Land   and as a thumbnail explaination of what Hawkins seeks to do. The Heinlein defines the word thus; ”Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience.”

Grok seeks to meet its ambitious name by use of Cortical Learning Algorithms that allow the system to create models on the fly and modify them based on new data in a process called “online learning” Grok can also flag anomalous and unusual data as well, based on what it is fed. It is also far more generalist in its approach, being able to tailor itself to a specific situation. For example, if you are an engineer tasked to create building climate control systems, instead of custom programming a system for every building,  one instance of Grok can be developed for a building and then deployed to all similar buildings and Grok will learn the quirks of the particular building system its managing.

Its still early days yet, but Grok promises to lead to systems that make Siri developmentally delayed by comparison. And understand you all the time.

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Is Grok Jeff Hawkins Third Act?

The biggest obstacle to purchasing a Kindle Fire for use as an everyday tablet, OTHER THAN YOU CAN”T GET IT FROM AMAZON.CO.UK (apologies, but I feel much better now)  is the fact that the current Fire lacks any way to connect an external keyboard. Amazon had to keep the cost down somehow, and not adding Bluetooth or an external keyboard was apparently part of the process. Put this firmly in the speculation category, but there are some programs out there already that enable handwriting recognition for the Kindle Fire and some evidence that  Amazon may have to either tout handwriting recognition over an expensive accessory or add features to the Fire to match Apple and other Android products.

Accurate handwriting recognition has been one of the Holy Grails of any hand held device. One of the most famous first attempts was the Apple Newton, but it became more well known for its flubs than its accuracy. The late, great Palm brought handwriting recognition mainstream with its easy to learn Graffiti language that made Palm PDAs the geek standard for keeping track of your personal information.

The advent of the Handspring (later Palm) Treo and RIM Blackberry line and smart phones generally pushed handwriting recognition to the background in favor of keypads and texting. However, the Apple iPhone, ushered in capacitive touchscreens and until the advent of Capacitive stylus products the only way to input into recent smart phones and tablets was your finger, your voice or if truly cold and desperate a meat stick.

As smart phones started losing hardware keyboards in favor of more screen real estate, users were finding the onscreen touch keyboards unsatisfying. In other words, we ham handed people who do not have either the hands of a surgeon or a child had a hard time entering information at any reasonable rate. Further, handset makers were discovering that there was a reason that people wear gloves in the wintertime. Even Apple can’t ignore the market where it gets cold. And meat sticks can be so greasy.  Enter the capacitive stylus.

Some have speculated that Apple sees a world where we talk to our phones and tablets as evidenced by Siri on the iPhone and voice dictation on the third generation iPad. Android appears to at least be competing in this arena as well. However, unless you live in the world where you have a private office, a car and driver and the like, the rest of us run the risk of suffering the fate of those who appear to be talking to themselves in the Underground. Or at least brassing off our coworkers.

Right now the Kindle Fire, like other Android products have access to several handwriting recognition programs. Unlike many other Android products,  there is no way at present to mate a Kindle Fire to a hardware keyboard of any stripe and thus Amazon has to either provide a way to do some kind of input or be relegated to a media player on steroids and not a viable tablet option for anyone who sees a tablet as a possible notebook replacement or supplement for serious email or note taking. Pushing handwriting recognition may be the most cost effective way to do it.

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Is Amazon going to tout Handwriting Recognition on the Kindle Fire?

The Internet has been abuzz with rumors that Amazon, fresh off its Kindle announcements is poised to buy the bones of Palm from HP. Those bones would be the web os operating system and the substantial amount of patents Palm obtained during happier days.  This is very unlikely to come to pass for several reasons.  First, Amazon has spent a lot of resources creating the Android variant that the Kindle Fire uses. Second, Amazon has also expended a fair amount of coin in creating the Android App store that directly competes with the Google Android App store.

If the rumor does happen to be true, the reason would be little comfort to the web os faithful as such a move would probably be made to obtain he intellectual property and be able to cannibalize web os features for the forked Amazon version of Android. While Jeff Bezos, has proven time and again that he is willing to make unusual moves, Amazon seems to be pretty well invested in their customized version of Android with the App Store and Silk, although there might be some merit in using web os in a European only version of the Fire to get around privacy problems that seem to be preventing the Flame being deployed in the UK

On HP’s side, if Amazon offered say, $1.6BN USD for everything and took over legacy web os support. HP would more than likely jump on that. Its quick money to bolster theirQ4 earnings, and further lets them save having to write off some of the wind down costs.

If Amazon did buy web os, don’t be surprised to see Todd Bradley exit HP, quite possibly for Amazon. Frankly, since HP is likely to not spin off the personal computer division at this point and Mr. Bradley, who has been courted by the likes of Intel for their CEO sport, but twice passed over for the top job at HP, he is getting ready to go elsewhere anyway.

Time will tell, but I would not bet the rent money on it coming to pass.

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Amazon buying web os?

The most one can say for Leo Apotheker at this point is that he lasted longer at HP than he did at his prior gig at SAP. After less than eleven months on the job, the HP board sacked Mr. Apotheker stating that HP needed an executive who could execute on the details.  The fact of the matter the Apotheker reign, brief as it was saw several executions:

-the Web OS hardware and smart phone business, while making vague statements about doing something with the web os operating system.

- business confidence in the Personal Systems Groups’ ability to sell and support  personal computers and printers was executed by the pronouncement that HP was looking at either spinning off or selling the PSG.  Businesses put a hold on, or canceled outright, purchasing decisions and opened the door to inroads by Dell and Lenovo to take lucrative purchases from HP.

-the execution of the purchase of Autonomy, a UK software company for well over its market value. In fact this purchase was the cornerstone of Apothekers’ stated vision of turning HP away from hardware into a software and services group, much as IBM did in late 2004. However, IBM did not telegraph its intentions before a buyer was found and certainly did not tell industry analysis’s that they wanted to dump the business because it was not making the kind of profits HP wanted to see.

-finally, Mr. Apotheker  presided over the execution of over forty percent of HP’s share value.  When a publically traded company’s share value tumbles like that, shareholders want either a human sacrifice or new leadership.

Lest anyone accuse the HP Board of slipshod incompetence, the board quickly threw Leo out of the sled and to the wolves. Or so it appears. More on that later. The HP board them embarked on an exhaustive search for a new CEO. Provided that taking a quick look around the boardroom and noticing that board member Meg Whitman was not going to be governor of the US state of California after all and was at loose ends was exhausting.  In addition, ex-Oracle COO and non-executive chairman of the HP board, Ray Lane became the Executive Chairman of HP. In plain English, that means that Mr. Lane would become involved in day to day corporate decision making, rather than the broad oversight that most corporate boards exercise.

In subsequent interviews, it has quickly become apparent that Mr. Lane may well share at least equal power with Ms. Whitman.  Interviews and communications to HP staff have for the most part been of a joint nature and Ms. Whitman seems to be adopting more of a communicator role, while Mr. Lane does the heavy lifting as it were.  There may well be very good reasons for this. Ms. Whitman, former CEO of Ebay is widely seen as having little tech experience but a lot of consumer expertise.  HP desperately needs to develop a consistent message and execute on it.  This may be the board’s answer.

As for the timing of the termination of Mr. Apotheker, apparently Mr. Lane has admitted in interviews that the wheels for that decision started turning over eight months ago. Which raises the question, which has been asked quite often, what kind of vetting process was used to hire Leo in the first place? According to the New York Times, not much as it was reported that most of the board voted to hire Mr. Apotheker without ac tually meeting him. Since the gentleman in question was terminated after a bare seven months as CEO of SAP, reasonable people would think that a personal meeting was in order. Of course, Mr. Lane is quick to point out that this is not the same board that hired Apotheker, that there have been eight board members replaced since that decision was taken, including Mr. Lane and Ms. Whitman to name two.

What does all this mean for HP? First, innovation is going to suffer, as anyone who can is going to be looking for more stable pastures. Second, it is by no means certain that HP’s personal hardware business will be able to recover from the doubt and uncertainty.   Finally, there is an excellent chance that if things do not turn around fairly quickly at HP, Ms. Whitman may be the next one to walk the plank.

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More drama at Hewlett-Packard

After HP took over the Palm brand of mobile phones in it’s attempt to get into the smartphone market we’ve been waiting to see what will come out of the PC giants stable. Well first we’ve got the HP Veer. A small smartphone more than capable of delivering the goods that a large smartphone could do much like the Xperia X10 Mini. Obviously HP are opting to drop the Palm branding opting to just go to with HP but still keeping that Palm styling.

So what have we got :

• 2.57” screen
• 800MHz Qualcomm processor (Fast multitasking)
• 54.5 x 84 x 15.1mm ultra slim/small smartphone
• Slide-Out keyboard
• webOS 2.2
• Flash 10.1 support
• Wi-Fi
• 8GB storage
• 5MP camera
• Bluetooth 2.1

Couple all these specs with the updated operating system and you can look at all your texts, MMS and instant messages for one contact onto one page. There’s also HP Synergy which allows the user to sign in once yet read all your Yahoo mail, Facebook messages, Linkedln messages and Exchange mail. There’s also mobile hotspot support.

No release or price details are around yet.

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HP Veer : New Palm/webOS phone

French carrier SFR has recently leaked the details about the up and coming Palm Pre 2. In general it just seems to be a bit of a spec bump, though quite a decent one.

• 1GHz processor probably the TI OMAP3630
• 512MB RAM
• Same design as the current Pre series, but with a “flatter screen” (thank god, the bulging screen of my pre was a magnet to scratches)
• The phone will most likely come with webOS 2.0

Hopefully if the build quality is improved it will mature to be a really good phone, however I suspect it will be hard to compete with the quickly growing smartphone market, especially with the launch of all the Windows Mobile 7 phones soon

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Palm Pre 2 details leaked.

Business gurus Bloomberg announced that electronics company Palm, makers of the Palm Pre has gone up for sale and early reports suggest that Taiwanese mobile company HTC are interesting in buying the company in an attempt to strengthen its foothold in the mobile market and then hopefully challenge Apple as top dog.

HTC has shown itself to be a great inventor and designer in the new mobile market with top sellers such as the Hero, the Tattoo, the Touch HD and now with the superb HTC Desire and Legend. Now picture them taking over Palm. Palm’s Pre phone and WebOs platform although not met with total success by the public but are great, plus the knowledge they have in the field already after being in it for so long could propel HTC as a frontrunner in the market.

Other advantages is that Palm employs a lot of former Apple employees, their SEO Jon Rubenstein was one of the original developers of the iPod and we all know the success that has seen. Chinese computer firm Lenovo is also believed to be interested in a takeover too, but to be honest I’d rather HTC took the plunge and grabbed it and further produced some cracking phones to take away the dominance of Apple.

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Could HTC be buying Palm

We spoke a while back about the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi appearing to get a US release and ot on in the UK and our Yankee cousins have been benefitting from having the two Palm webOS smartphones on sale for a while now. Well it appears the UK might actually be getting them as per usual too long after we should.

Website the :: UNWIRED had seen that the Global Certification Forum had approved two new but unknown Palm made models which would be usable on our 3G networks. However the two model names aren’t 100% going to be the Pre Plus and Pixi however it is strongly believed to be these phones as the model numbers bear a striking resemblance to the model numbers used before they were released stateside, even if it isn’t the Pre Plus or the Pixi then Palm have two new phones coming out.

However if they don’t appaear over here if they support the 3G network as its suggested, there’s nothing stopping you now grabbing one of these 3G enabled versions SIM free and slapping your own SIM in it, but it looks hopeful that no importing will be required.

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Palm Pre Plus and Pixi : UK Models Spotted

Palm has announced at CES this weekend gone that it is upgrading it’s Pre/Pixi range of smartphones (by adding a “Plus” at the end). Although the Palm Pre seemed to have come out in America a lifetime ago, it has only just arrived in the UK so I’m pretty sure those who waited and waited to get one, will be a little disappointed to hear this news.

Aesthetically speaking the phones wont be changing too much and will just be losing the navigation button on the front, but it’s inside where they’re ringing the changes. On board memory will be doubled to 16GB(but still no expansion slot). Palm have also said they will be giving a conductor for the Touchstone wireless charger in with every purchase. Palm also announced that the webOS will soon be able to pump out some 3d gaming action to which EA Mobile and Gameloft will be developing for.

The Palm Pixi Plus on the other hand(the original Pixi is still not available here in Blighty) will now be sporting WiFi which is an obvious must have on today’s smartphones.

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Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus : Coming Soon

Palm announced the follow up to the massively popular Palm Pre last week, named the Palm Pixi we previously blogged about it when it was codenamed Eos.

Not much has changed since then it is still a full qwerty candybar running Web Os but now we have some more specific details on it.

It should arrive in the states for Christmas and will not include Wi-Fi, it is EV-DO Rev. A 9(won’t work in the UK) with 8GB of storage onboard, 2 megapixel camera (with flash), and 2.63-inch, 320 x 400 capacitive display.

In terms of the processor etc it will include 2 Arm cores on 1 chips with one being a 600MHz applications processor, and a separate 400MHz modem processor to offload some of the heavy lifting.

The gaming capabilities will be handled by a 200MHz, OpenGL 2.0-supporting GPU and then a 320MHz application DSP to handle multimedia on the device.

So some quite impressive specifications for a smallish phone.

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Palm Pixi Specifications