Years ago, when I was starting my engineering career (at just about the same time as the HP8510 (automatic) Network Analyzer), I worked for M/A-Com's corporate research. My mentor would jot down some ideas he wanted me to pursue, provide a little scientific guidance and then send me to the lab to experiment. Around this time, a lot of research centered around Gallium Arsenide. Distributed circuit designs that had been applied to PCBs and alumina were being adopted for MMIC interconnects and on-chip passive components. Much of my time was spent using the available design software (SuperCompact or Touchstone) and 8510 to design and test matching, bias and coupling structures scaled for use on GaAs. The job was about science and discovery and it was fun. Who would want to do anything other than research? To do anything else was considered The Dark Side.
At a time when government funding supported the R&D efforts I was involved with, even the idea of working in production was considered moving over to the The Dark Side. High volume testing - where's the science in that? I was not alone in this thinking. Does such "purists" thinking still exist today?
As time went by, I was introduced to another specimen in the corporate food chain. This one talked much faster (and louder) and often dressed differently than the "pure" engineers I worked with. I soon found out that this individual was in product marketing. At one point this marketer had been an engineer, but was led astray, over to The Dark Side.
Eventually I made this journey myself. In product marketing, I was almost immediately surrounded by an even faster and louder talking group of individuals. These people were in sales and as I was informed by my colleagues - these were individuals that had truly crossed over to The Dark Side. Some had even been engineers at one point, if you can imagine that fall from grace !!!
I have not crossed the chasm into sales yet, but I have discovered that salespeople are not evil (for the most part) . Like the research or production engineer or the marketeer, they play a vital role in corporate life and the organization's struggle for survival. Our differences are not so great. In fact, I've heard some of them even bemoan another Dark Side - otherwise known as management.
So do we still live in an environment of mistrust over a Dark Side? Be warned, it may be your eventual career path. Like that hair style you had back in the early 90's, perceptions often become dated with time.
Designing SMS apps for mobile Africa
As is well known, our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We aim to do this through technology, and in Africa, that means developing tools for the mobile phone. Africa has the world’s highest mobile growth rate. Mobile phone penetration is six times Internet penetration -- one third of the population owns a mobile phone and many more have access to one. Most of these devices only have voice and SMS capabilities, which is why we have chosen to focus our initial mobile efforts on SMS.
Today, we are releasing Google SMS in Uganda. Google SMS is a suite of mobile applications which provides access, via SMS, to information on a diverse number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather, sports, and more.
The suite also includes Google Trader, a marketplace application that helps buyers and sellers find each other. Users can find, "sell" or "buy" any type of product or service, from used cars and mobile phones to crops, livestock and jobs. Google Trader has been designed to help make markets more transparent. Many people in Africa lack access to information and markets beyond their immediate business and social networks. Google Trader allows sellers to post items for sale via SMS, and for buyers to search for such items.
Google SMS Tips is an SMS-based query-and-answer service. After you text a free-form query, Google algorithms restructure the query to identify keywords, search a database to identify relevant answers, and return the most relevant answer. SMS is a very limited medium: each SMS can be no longer than 160 characters, and, unlike the web, allows for one result to be returned in response to a query. Short or ambiguous queries are particularly challenging. For example: we've received queries as brief as "hiv". What exactly is someone asking for: symptoms? Causes? Prevention? Treatment? We not only have to discern intent in order to identify a relevant answer, but we also have to convey information back to the user within the confines of SMS. The challenge is further complicated by the fact that people must pay for each individual SMS message.
These are the sorts of technical challenges that have surfaced in developing SMS Tips, so please don't view it as a finished product. We need to greatly improve search quality and add to the content that we have in the Health and Ag focus areas. Now that Google SMS is live, we're working on improving search quality and the breadth, and depth, of content. As for Tips, we will work to add more focus areas.
Clearly, we're just beginning; there's still much to be done. If you're curious about what Google is doing in Africa, visit the Google Africa Blog. And here's a video about the broader effort initiated by the Grameen Foundation to introduce mobile applications to under-served communities.
Today, we are releasing Google SMS in Uganda. Google SMS is a suite of mobile applications which provides access, via SMS, to information on a diverse number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather, sports, and more.
The suite also includes Google Trader, a marketplace application that helps buyers and sellers find each other. Users can find, "sell" or "buy" any type of product or service, from used cars and mobile phones to crops, livestock and jobs. Google Trader has been designed to help make markets more transparent. Many people in Africa lack access to information and markets beyond their immediate business and social networks. Google Trader allows sellers to post items for sale via SMS, and for buyers to search for such items.
Google SMS Tips is an SMS-based query-and-answer service. After you text a free-form query, Google algorithms restructure the query to identify keywords, search a database to identify relevant answers, and return the most relevant answer. SMS is a very limited medium: each SMS can be no longer than 160 characters, and, unlike the web, allows for one result to be returned in response to a query. Short or ambiguous queries are particularly challenging. For example: we've received queries as brief as "hiv". What exactly is someone asking for: symptoms? Causes? Prevention? Treatment? We not only have to discern intent in order to identify a relevant answer, but we also have to convey information back to the user within the confines of SMS. The challenge is further complicated by the fact that people must pay for each individual SMS message.
These are the sorts of technical challenges that have surfaced in developing SMS Tips, so please don't view it as a finished product. We need to greatly improve search quality and add to the content that we have in the Health and Ag focus areas. Now that Google SMS is live, we're working on improving search quality and the breadth, and depth, of content. As for Tips, we will work to add more focus areas.
Clearly, we're just beginning; there's still much to be done. If you're curious about what Google is doing in Africa, visit the Google Africa Blog. And here's a video about the broader effort initiated by the Grameen Foundation to introduce mobile applications to under-served communities.
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