TinEye, an image search engine

November 3, 2009 at 11:47 am · Filed under AppGap Tips

Have you ever looked at an image and thought, I think I’ve seen that somewhere. Problem is, you couldn’t quite place it. Wouldn’t it be great to just grab a picture and run it through a search engine? Google has an image search, but it runs on keywords, not real image comparisons. As we wait for them to develop and polish one, in the meantime, we can use tools such as TinEye.

TinEye, created by Idée Inc, is a reverse image search engine. Upload an image and this tool will tell you where matches can be found on the web, so that you can trace the original source, possibly learn about its history and get a hi-res version. If you are the owner or creator of an image, use TinEye to track how your work is being used by others, and see the modifications they’ve done, if any.

Like most modern search engines, TinEye uses crawlers to look for images around the web. Right now they have over a billion images on their index – quite a small number if you think about the ever-expanding volume of Internet content. Here’s how it works:

“When you submit an image to be searched, TinEye creates a unique and compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it, then compares this fingerprint to every other image in our index to retrieve matches. TinEye can even find a partial fingerprint match. TinEye does not typically find similar images (i.e. a different image with the same subject matter [faces]); it finds exact matches including those that have been cropped, edited or resized [logos, symbols].”

The search engine works with JPEG, PNG and GIF files, with optimum results for images greater than 300×300 pixels and without clear watermarks. Maximum file size accepted is 1MB. For unregistered users, uploaded images are automatically discarded after 72 hours. Registration is free, and allows you to keep the file and retain a permalink to the query.

To see examples of what TinEye is capable of, have a look at their Cool Searches page.

Notable + Quotable: Practical applications of real-time tools, keeping social media habits in check, and a smoother path to task completion

October 22, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under Notable + Quotable

Ten Useful Examples of the Real-Time Web in Action
Highlighting their utility, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb gives several examples of how real-time web is helping companies and services. “The real-time web isn’t just about immediacy, it also offers things like presence information, syncing, efficiency and responsiveness.”

Make social media a business tool, not a distraction
In the Miami Herald, Cindy Krischer Goodman present tactics by different people on maximizing social media while minimizing wasted time. “Niala Boodhoo, who co-writes the Poked blog for MiamiHerald.com, offers another approach for those who intend to take a peek at Twitter and end up spending hours clicking on links or forwarding tweets. She suggests monitoring how much time you spends on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter with a Mozilla Firefox plug-in called Leechblock. “It’s the perfect way to police yourself,” she says. You can specify which sites you want to block, you can set a time limit for a site or block access for a set period of time (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday).”

Done: Reduce Task Friction to Get to Task Completion
Leo Babauta gives advice on keeping task simple in order to finish them faster on Zen Habits. “Small is better when it comes to getting to completion. It’s easier, which is less friction. It’s less intimidating. But more than that, small tasks and projects are victories. You can quickly get to completion and feel great about it. And that compels you to keep going.”

Coming Soon: Internet Apps that Heal Themselves
In ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez features a European research called the SELFMAN project – an effort to make web apps that are self-configuring, self-tuning, self-healing, and self-protecting. “Already the team has had promising results. For example, Scalaris, an open-source scalable transactional storage for Web 2.0 services won first prize in the IEEE International Scalable Computing Challenge 2008. Peer-to-peer video streaming application PeerTV uses SELFMAN to quickly test an evaluate new P2P components. There’s also a demo of a distributed Wikipedia that can handle more queries than the current version and a graphics program that lets multiple users collaborate on a design. Van Roy believes that SELFMAN represents the first step towards an internet filled with “unbreakable” applications. “Right now we’re just scratching the surface,” he says.”

10 Ways to Get Your Staff to Love – And Respect – You
Humor, empathy, honesty and leadership – these are the qualities that makes for a well-respected boss, says Jim Taggart on Brazen Careerist. “Encourage a learning culture within your team. Show leadership by starting with yourself. Lifelong learning is not a 9 to 5 proposition; it’s about how you absorb new experiences at work and through community service, training courses, assignments, reading, travel, etc. It’s a reciprocal process: employers provide opportunities to learn and grow, but employees also need to engage in activities outside of work.”

“Network neutrality” or “network neutering”?
An editorial by Nate Anderson of Ars Technica that answers the accusations of net neutrality opponents. “Net neutrality actually encourages the sort of innovation that we want in our networks—higher speeds, open access to innovative new applications and uses—the FiOS model. And everyone can profit from it, including the ISPs. Removing even the threat of such action encourages not innovation but modest speeds, high prices, and discriminatory throttling of user connections.”

How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team
On Harvard Businness, Amy Gallo cites a study that says being proactive is the best way to counter employee negativity, including some case studies on how to deal with it. “Roderick Kramer, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that it is the role of the leader to understand the underlying cause of the pessimism before acting. Some people are dispositional pessimists whose knee-jerk reaction is to see the negative in everything, while others may be expressing a pessimistic point of viewbased upon informed logic,” Kramer says.”

A Little Privacy, Please
Scientific American’ Chip Walter features computer scientist Latanya of Sweeney Carnegie Mellon University, director of the Laboratory for International Data Privacy. “Several years ago Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, famously quipped, “Privacy is dead. Get over it.” Sweeney couldn’t disagree more. “Privacy is definitely not dead,” she counters; those who believe it is “haven’t actually thought the problem through, or they aren’t willing to accept the solution.”

A Week in the Clouds Without a Notebook
Frequent business traveler Steve Rubel blogs about his teleworking experiment using only a smartphone and cloud-based apps. “The reason is simple: all of these devices are pocketable. A laptop isn’t. I don’t want to carry a laptop because it’s mental baggage. I don’t want to be thinking about where it is. Smartphones and USB keys are like appendages. I always know where they are. Plus, I know that one day soon we won’t need to carry laptops on business trips because these phones – which are really pocket computers – will be able to do it all, including hook up to hotel TVs. I am trying to experience this future now.”

Social networks still frowned upon in offices

October 22, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under Web 2.0, productivity

The pressure to boost productivity in order to keep afloat, a lack of patience in understanding social networks, or just a general distrust of these tools – whatever the reasons, 54% of CIOs said their companies completely prohibit the use of social networks. This is according to a survey commissioned by Robert Half Technology of over 1,400 large US companies.

Almost a fifth (19%) allowed it but solely for business purposes – it’s unclear how compliance was monitored. A shade less (16%) did not mind granting permission for limited personal use, while a tenth of the respondents had even more relaxed rules, permitting personal social network usage inside the office without restrictions.

“Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology. “For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes.”

With this prevailing corporate mindset, employees were advised to keep themselves informed about company policies, get familiar with privacy settings of frequented sites, be aware of time spent networking while at the office (if allowed), avoid negative remarks about the company and maintain a “clean” profile. You never know who could be watching.

I wonder how effective these regulations are, though. For one, there are lots of mobile Facebook and Twitter clients. If these sites are blocked via the office network, employees can always use their phones to access them. Laptops with 3G capability are also becoming popular. In addition, the study was silent on whether blocking applied to all employees or if certain departments or upper managers were given some level of access. Breaking down the responses per industry might’ve yielded interesting results.

Social networks can be a boon for business if employees are trained on how to use them properly. Without access to social networks, undisciplined workers will still probably find other ways to waste their time and avoid actual work.

Tips for Tough Times: Winning small business strategies, proven survival tactics, no-cost motivational tools, and more

October 22, 2009 at 10:06 am · Filed under Tips for Tough Times

How Small Businesses Win Big in Tough Economies
On Harvard Business, Jeff Stibel lists strategies of successful small businesses. “Action. This is an entrepreneur’s best weapon. Things happen fast these days and fluidity favors small businesses — you don’t need to sort through the layers of bureaucracy that can slow down, or even cripple, larger companies. Small businesses can adapt to any circumstance quickly. As every thriving entrepreneur knows, speed breeds success.”

One Year Later: Lessons Learned From the Downturn
Diana Ransom of SmartMoney compiles several tactics of companies who have survived the downturn. “Not every company can play the low-cost leader. For instance, luxury-oriented companies and brands might see a sales gain by providing stellar customer service. Switching focus or recognizing expansion opportunities can also boost business. “The key is, you should put a lot of thought into which strategy to exploit ahead of time,” Cohan says. “Have acquisition, partnerships and product expansion ideas already in mind so that you are ready when the cycle changes.”

Motivation in the downturn – what’s working now
Carol Katarsky shares a few tips on how to boost morale without being overbearing and at little to no cost on Business Brief. “If business is slower, employees may pad the amount of time it takes to do a task simply to make themselves look busier. It’s a basic ploy to make them feel their job is more secure. Taking a little extra time to ensure work is top-notch is one thing. But some employees may fall victim to do-just-enough-itis. Be sure to set specific deadlines for each task or project — and always have a future or stretch goal for them to shoot for.”

Doing More With Less: Using the Down Economy as a Design Brief
For the design industry, Dan Harden argues that the slow economy can be a catalyst for creativity in his article on Fast Company. “It’s harder to design simple inexpensive products than complex expensive ones. One needs to focus more on the essential user needs and less on the endless feature possibilities or extraneous embellishments. It requires more purity, so that no matter how much they take away from it, it’s more likely to survive intact through its development. Simple inexpensive products are also better for the environment. They consume less material, have fewer parts, and use less energy to manufacture and ship.”

Snapshots From Global Economy
From Britain to China, Wall Street Journal reporters give us a glimpse of the worldwide challenges and recovery. “Still, China’s stimulus now seems to be more than strong enough to meet the official target of an 8% expansion for 2009. Officials are still publicly cautious about the world economy, with exports still down 22% from last year, and have repeatedly said the policy to support growth hasn’t changed. But government statements in recent weeks have focused more on longer-term issues like funding for small businesses and controlling excess capacity. That’s where economists are looking for new measures that would help keep the recovery going into 2010.”

Google Economist Sees Good Signs in Searches
Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang writes about the economic assessments of Google’s Hal Varian. “In March, the number of Google users searching for information about unemployment benefits or employment centers began to drop, Varian said. Overall unemployment has continued to climb, of course, but new jobless claims have declined since peaking earlier this year.”

David Hoover’s Top 5 Tips for Apprentices
On O’Reilly Radar, James Turner features a book on apprenticeship, telling new college grads that finding a good mentor is key. “For Hoover, one strategy that pays off is to not try and be the most experienced person in a group, but the least. “For me, I didn’t really get good solid mentorship until I was able to leave that company and get to another company where I could basically try to be the worst. I wanted to get onto a team where I wasn’t the three-year programmer who was suddenly senior application developer. I wanted to be on a team where as a three-year programmer, I was junior. And then I got to pair with people that had written books about test-driven development and people that were authors of successful open source projects.”

Should Entrepreneurs Sell in Today’s Economy?
Reed Phillips and Jessica Luterman Naeve say that selling your business could be profitable even in a recession, provided you don’t make certain costly mistakes on Harvard Business. “Mistake 3: Not realizing it may be in your best interest to sell now — even if you don’t have to. A popular misconception is that no one would sell their company during a downturn if they did not have to. Exit multiples (the ratio of a company’s value to its earnings) are lower now and there are fewer buyers willing to be aggressive with their bidding. But, that doesn’t mean that your company will sell for more next year or two years from now. Many companies and some industries are still winning premium pricing, including technological innovators and strong cash-flow performers.”

The long road to mainstream videoconferencing

October 8, 2009 at 6:51 am · Filed under Collaboration, Videoconferencing

Nowadays, companies are eager to try a wide range of cost-cutting measures to help them weather the storm. Among these is the use of videoconferencing tools to minimize business travel expenses. In the past, implementations were costly and not very reliable, with low quality videos, frequent disconnections and long lag times – factors that certainly contributed to slow adoption. Fortunately, much progress have been made over the years which make it a more viable option.

Using the Internet instead of dedicated lines helped minimize lag, free internal network resources, and bring costs down. The leading players now charge a small fraction of what they once did, and more importantly for small businesses, free and inexpensive solutions such as Skype, iChat, and Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro are widely available. For frequent fliers, airline travel savings eclipse any bump in broadband charges to ensure a fast connection.

While it’s not going to replace travel all the time, it makes doing some tasks faster and easier. Doctors can receive patients from remote areas, court hearings are brought closer to people, and professors can give lectures to students anywhere in the world. Congressional work that don’t require physical presence can be done via videoconferencing to reduce travel from their home state to Washington DC, resulting in less tax money spent. In disaster situations where roads are impassable, emergency meetings can be done via video to assess the damage and determine the next move.

With all its advantages, videoconferencing should be a no-brainer, right? Not exactly. We need to be aware that while it’s good for some things, it can be bad for others. Jim Ware pointed to a NY Times article about its ineffectiveness in certain situations, wherein simpler means like the written word may be more appropriate. Kinks have to be ironed out, definitely, but we must also be mindful that different media are good for different things, and it’s up to us to utilize their strengths. I know a lot of people who prefer to send text messages rather than call for sensitive subjects. It’s all about context.

Right now, a lot of things still need to be overcome for the technology to go mainstream. Interoperability is a key factor, as well as complexity and bandwidth constraints. While visual cues can add a lot to communication, some studies have shown that our sensitivity to being in front of the camera can actually be a hindrance. More than any the technological barriers, our greatest problem might be our comfort level. In time, we’ll surely get used to it, and as the younger generations embrace it as the normal way of doing things, videoconferencing will pick up. By then, maybe we’ll wonder how we ever got on without it for so long.

Our tools must keep up with the way we define work

October 6, 2009 at 2:34 pm · Filed under Culture

I chanced upon some people discussing the changing nature of work and how we seem to lag in addressing it, even with the little things. For example, in Outlook 2007, we can mark our status throughout the day so that other people would be aware of our availability for meetings and other tasks. Right now the only options are Busy, Tentative, Out of Office, Free or Outside of Working Hours. For the common office worker, this system is sufficient. However, as more and more people are working in their homes, on the road, and other off-site locations either part-time or full-time, this creates a few problems.

It’s all a matter of perception and expectations. “Out of Office” becomes misleading when teleworking is part of the equation. You could still be working even if you’re not in the office, perhaps accessible via phone, Skype or instant messenger during office hours. This confusing status may cause colleagues to think twice on asking you their urgent inquiries, set meetings or work with your on collaborative projects.

If you say you’re “Busy”, meaning you’re working, will they assume that you’re at the office and stop by your cubicle to find you’re not there? Is telling them you’re “Free” for a certain period inviting complications? If you’re scheduled to attend a meeting, you might be expected to talk to the boss face-to-face. Questions could be asked requiring data inaccesible to you off-site, or you may be asked to perform a task using a resource-intensive program that’s impractical unless you’re using the powerful office workstations and connected to a fast broadband line. All these could be avoided if expectations have been set correctly with clear status labels.

At first glance, the problem seems trivial, but we’ve already seen that it’s not. Technology is changing the way we work, and we need to adjust our tools to reflect this. Suggestions were made to create a new category “Working from Home” or “Working Off-site”, the latter probably with an additional text field to indicate location. Do you have other ideas? Please write them on the comments section below.

Focus and distractions

October 6, 2009 at 9:06 am · Filed under Management, productivity

Beeping, ringing, flashing – it seems our tech tools distract us at every opportunity (or rather, we let them distract us). David McCandless attempted to find a method to the madness by observing how each of them capture his attention, and sorting them according to his priorities. That is, assuming they all occur simultaneously, which ones will he be more likely to attend to? The results were presented in a triangular graphic on his blog which he called The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions.

He noticed that receiving messages from Facebook and other social networking sites would quickly make him stop working just to read them. However, if he gets a Skype or landline call, Facebook takes a backseat. In the middle of a call, Twitter messages, important emails (mass redundancies?), and text messages were likely divert his attention. If anything is happening on his iPhone, he can’t stop himself from checking it. Of course, all these grind to a screeching halt when any of his devices fail, consuming most of his energies trying to fix it.

Not everyone will behave in the same way. For some, their guilty pleasures are Youtube, Wikipedia, RSS, StumbleUpon, or Digg. Others are hooked on their portable media players or gaming consoles (I’ve seen many bring theirs to the office). Whatever your favorite distractions are, if you’re serious about taming them, being aware of how they affect you is paramount. Someone pointed out the difference between urgent vs important. Time-sensitive tasks like answering a phone call is urgent, but it’s not always important. If you have caller ID, you can check who’s calling at a glance and return to work if it’s not anyone you know (or someone you’re avoiding). The trick is to stay calm when the beeps and rings start. Stand by your real priorities.

Managers deal with distracted employees everyday. Studying why some things are more distracting than others could give them an insight to what can be done to minimize their effects and increase office productivity.