Away with Applications: The Death of the Desktop
Google engEDU
1 hr 27 min – May 4, 2007

Google Tech Talks
May 4, 2007

ABSTRACT

The computer desktop metaphor is ubiquitous, but how much work do we get done there? None! Time is entirely wasted navigating or shuffling content to the application in which we can finally work. What lessons can we learn from designing interfaces without the desktop and without applications? Is it even possible? And how does this apply to the Web? Currently, Web applications are often more usable than their desktop-based counterparts because each one does one thing and does it well. Desktop applications used to be the same way, but over time — as applications grew to support the the users in the long tail — each became a complex portmanteau of all possible features. If we are not careful, our Web apps will suffer the same conglomerated fate. Mashups and services help to solve the problem on the development end by freeing functionality from any particular application. But, there is currently no way to offer that wealth of possible functionality to users in a scalable way. Would it be nice to embed a dynamic map into your Gmail message? Sure. A Flickr slideshow? Sure. But for Google to offer those in addition to the hundreds of other possible options, would clutter the interface beyond usability. What’s needed is a universal method of accessing functionality: a way of harnessing the power of services without the need for application developers to explicitly support them. I’ll be demonstrating such a method.

The talk demonstrates that a ZUI plus a universal method of accessing functionality spells the death of the application-centric computing model and the desktop-design paradigms. Read the rest of this entry »

Sowing the Seeds for a more Creative Society
Google engEDU
54 min – Oct 26, 2006

Google Tech Talks
October 26, 2006

Mitchel Resnick, Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Laboratory, develops new technologies and activities to engage people (especially children) in creative learning experiences. Resnicks Lifelong Kindergarten research group developed ideas and technologies underlying the LEGO Mindstorms and PicoCricket construction kits. He co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, a network of after-school centers where youth from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. Resnick earned a BA in physics at Princeton University (1978), and MS and PhD degrees in computer science at MIT (1988, 1992). Resnick has consulted throughout the world on the use of computers in education. He is author of Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams (1994), co-editor of Constructionism in Practice (1996), and co-author of Adventures in Modeling (2001).

ABSTRACT
In the 1980s, many people talked about the transition from the "Industrial Society" to the "Information Society." In the 1990s, people began to talk about the "Knowledge Society." But as I see it, we are now in a transition towards the "Creative Society." Success in the future (for individuals, for companies, for nations as a whole) will be based not on what we know or how much we know, but on our ability to think and act creatively. Unfortunately, current educational practices are woefully inadequate. In this talk, I will discuss new technologies and new educational initiatives designed specifically to help children develop as creative thinkers — so that they are prepared for life in the Creative Society. I will focus especially on two projects we are developing at the MIT Media Lab: (1) a new programming language, called Scratch, that makes it easier for kids to create animated stories, games, and interactive art — and share their creations with one another online ( http://scratch.mit.edu), and (2) a new breed of construction kit that combines art and technology, enabling kids to create musical sculptures, interactive jewelry, and other artistic inventions — and learn important math, science, and engineering ideas in the process. For more information, see scratch.mit.edu and www.picocricket.com and llk.media.mit.edu Read the rest of this entry »

New generation of math software from Maplesoft
Google engEDU
52 min – Sep 11, 2007

Google Tech Talks
September 11, 2007

ABSTRACT

The name Maple is synonymous with doing complex math on computers. Best known for its symbolic or algebraic computation abilities, Maple is one of the most important tools for the modern applied mathematician and scientist. Many of you are likely familiar with Maple from college but you’ve probably not kept up to date with latest developments. This presentation will present some of the latest product developments from Maplesoft. Topics include

- developments in high performance numerical computation
- recent advances in symbolic computing
- new Maple libraries including graph theory, statistics, optimization, polynomial operations, and more
- parallel and grid computing
- knowledge capture for mathematical documents
- the Maple programming language and application development
- overview of new add-on products including global optimization, and modeling and simulation

The presenter will be Mohamed Bendame, a senior engineer from Maplesoft. The presentations will include an open Q&A session. Read the rest of this entry »

15 Views of a Node Link Graph: An Information Visualization Portfolio
Google engEDU
1 hr – Jun 28, 2006

Google TechTalks
June 28, 2006

Tamara Munzner received a BS in 1991 and a PhD in 2000 from Stanford. Her current research interests are information visualization, graph drawing, and dimensionality reduction. She was the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization Program/Papers Co-Chair in 2003 and 2004.

ABSTRACT
Information visualization, or infovis, is the interactive computer-based visual representation of abstract datasets. I will use collections of linked nodes as the launching point for a discussion of fifteen different approaches to infovis. Node-link graphs appear in many application domains, and people can perform many tasks faster or more effectively when they can manipulate a well-chosen visual representation of these graphs. A major challenge within infovis is how to handle the large datasets that occur in the real world. Designing algorithms with scalable speed and memory complexity is only part of the solution. The visual representation must also provide an appropriate abstraction, often requiring exploration across multiple levels of detail, to be comprehensible to the human in the loop. The talk will include examples in application domains ranging from web browsing to bioinformatics to computational linguistics, and datasets from thousands to millions of items. Read the rest of this entry »

Advanced Topics in Programming Languages Series: Parametric Polymorphism
Google engEDU
31 min – Apr 18, 2007

Google Tech Talks
April 18, 2007

ABSTRACT

Advanced Topics in Programming Languages Series: Parametric Polymorphism and the Girard-Reynolds Isomorphism. This talk is based on a series of papers by Philip Wadler, a principal designer of the Haskell programming language. Featured are a number of double-barreled names in computer science:

* Hindley-Milner (Strong typing without having to type the types)
* Wadler-Blott (Making ad-hoc polymorphism less ad-hoc with parametricity)
* Curry-Howard (Isomorphism between types and theorems, terms and proofs)
* Girard-Reynolds (Isomorphism between types and terms in the presence of parametricity)

The talk will conclude with a programming technique (using the above) where the Haskell compiler (almost) writes your code for you!

Speaker: Phil Gossett Read the rest of this entry »