Stories by Steven Max Patterson

Inside Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group

"Epic" was the word Regina Dugan used to describe her team's research and development projects that included enlisting "Fast and Furious" movie franchise director Justin Lin to help create the next-generation movie experience. Dugan, vice president of Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group, delighted thousands of developers in May at Google's annual I/O conference as she orchestrated demonstrations of applied technologies that seemed to originate from just over the horizon of most humans' imaginations.

Written by Steven Max Patterson01 July 15 02:32

Cloud tech can make a Supreme Court decision against Obamacare irrelevant

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules for the plaintiff later this month in the case of King v. Burwell, 7.5 million Americans stand to lose their Obamacare tax credits. Such a ruling would make it illegal to sell subsidized Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage on the federal healthcare.gov insurance exchange website that runs on an Amazon EC2 cluster. But it will still be legal (read: ACA-compliant) to sell subsidized Obamacare insurance on a state run exchange using the same SaaS exchange application on a separate EC2 cluster.

Written by Steven Max Patterson11 June 15 04:17

Google's Polymer 1.0 brings reuse and better branding to Web development

Signaling Polymer's production readiness, Google announced release 1.0 at its annual I/O developer conference. A core library used to build and style Web components, Polymer transitioned rapidly from concept to production release in less than two years.

Written by Steven Max Patterson30 May 15 04:51

Why Google bought Songza: The music industry's third revolution

Pandora and Spotify sparked a music revolution of sorts when they began convincing consumers that they did not need to own their music to enjoy it. Mobile analytics firm Flurry's CEO Simon Khalaf noted in a talk he gave at Source 14 that MP3 purchases were declining while streamed consumption was exploding.

Written by Steven Max Patterson03 July 14 05:12

A Supreme Court win for Aereo would take the fight out of broadcasters

If Aereo prevails in its Supreme Court case, Fox executive Chase Carey threatened to end over-the-air OTA broadcasts. It's all bark and no bite. Aereo streams television programming over broadband that household users would otherwise receive free with an antenna, but don't because they can't pick up the signal. What has upset the television industry is Aereo's claim that its specialized antenna exempts it from paying broadcasters for their programming.

Written by Steven Max Patterson24 June 14 07:16

How the 'Internet of Thing' will become the Internet of Things

Qualcomm's Liat Ben Zur spoke of the "Internet of Thing," in the singular case rather than the plural, at the recent MIT Technology Review Digital Summit. She made the point using Google's Nest thermostat that is connected to the cloud, and the cloud to an app to control it. Add another IoT device, add another cloud, and another app and so on. She brought into question IoT device interoperability and the rationale for sending all IoT data through the cloud when the purpose of much of the data is communicating between local devices on a proximal network. Proximal means local, like a LAN. If IoT devices from different brands are to work together in the proximal network independent of the cloud, the industry will need to agree to standards.

Written by Steven Max Patterson19 June 14 04:17
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