Saturday, July 28, 2007

TechCrunch 9

This years TechCrunch party was blast. Its my first year attending, and thanks for Enoch for inviting me. Demos, geeks, mini hambugers ... everything you'd expect at a Silicon Valley party for the web2.0 crowd. Just want to go over a couple of demos that I liked: CoComment V2 and and profil.es.

CoComment is the well-known site for tracking comments on blogs and webpages. With V2, there is slicker easier to use interface and the ability to invite your friends to join any conversation. Profil.es lets you create a graphical profile that you can link to by including their javascript. The profile can be customized for each site to give the proper impression.

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Sunday, July 22, 2007

Stanford E-Day

Yesterday, I went back to my alma mater for 'E-Day', its an open house with Stanford Engineering professors doing cutting edge research. This year's focus was on advances in Bio and Medical engineering. There were many excellent sessions ranging from medical procedures in zero gravity to one on how to boost the creatvitiy of entrepreneurs. The head of Stanford Technology Ventures Program, challenged attendees to think creatively about how one can start a business with only 5 dollars and make money! Undergrads at the university were able to do it and turn a nice profit of a few hundred dollars.

One of the most interesting talks was on brain engineering done with pinpoint precision by using lasers to target individual neurons. The key lies in apply genetic engineering to control a neuron's recepitivity to different wavelengths of light, and then using laser to deliver the stimulus. This breakthrough could lead to new ways of understanding depression or Parkinson's diseases. Hereis a link to New Scientist article that talks about the same discovery which was jointly done at Stanford and the University of Frankfurt.

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