Watson takes a sabbatical
When it first appeared, Watson from IBM was touted as one of the earliest advancements in AI.
For everything from cancer diagnosis to scenario planning from companies, Watson was the next big thing.
Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.
IBM is selling off the assets to private equity to prevent further losses.
While AI is seen as the future, the business models that work are neither easy to evolve or guaranteed to succeed.
IBM may simply have been too early to market, or the connecting links for market traction are still to evolve.
If telemedicine makes headway over the next few years, remote doctors may look for help on a quick diagnosis with a database like the one Watson built.
There are several instances where a technology remained in limbo before it got to prime time use
Including mRNA, which was one of the reasons a vaccine could be developed in months rather than years.
But the origin of the idea goes back a few decades.
There's a tendency to make this about failure rather than advancement. Recognising that the idea needs more time and someone in the future with a new perspective.
The world loves instant solutions and breakthroughs. But the scene on inventions is nuanced and incremental.
It's stop, start, regress, advance and then forward again.
But that's not a great media narrative. That has to be in black and white. Success or failure.
Nothing in between.
Watson is not done by any means. The work will make a comeback at the appropriate juncture.
But that's a tale for a different time.
Google to slow web crawls?
The largest search company is testing limits.
Given the resources required to crawl over a billion websites, it's planning to cut down the frequency.
The crawl rates are likely to change. They will be targeted and layered in future.
News websites are the ones with the most frequent changes in content. They update practically every few minutes, given the speed with which news rolls in.
However, for a large proportion of websites, who update once a week or even less, there's no point in frequent crawling.
Even on regularly updated sites, there are sections which stay the same for a long time - the Investor and contact page, for instance.
And company sites using the web more as a business card rather than true interaction and business generation points don't need to be frequently crawled.
It's a bit like the watchman going on the rounds in warehouses. Nothing changes 99.99% of the time.
Refresh crawls, which is the jargon used to describe repeat Googlebot visits could slow down - both in periodicity and depth.
That brings up new dynamics for SEO. If Google crawls websites less frequently, will rankings down the line stay steady for longer?
And will it get harder to get to the top? How will this affect ranking overall over time? Questions to which answers will only emerge in future.
When web crawl patterns change, other subtle changes are sure to follow. And the ripples could affect content generation, marketing and SEO strategies.
It's a clear sign that virtual speed lanes are not infinite highways!
The keys to family kingdoms
On the face of it, keys open locks.
But go a little deeper and you'll see how they operate at several levels.
Whoever keeps the keys to the family's treasures holds the power.
It may be something as trivial as clothes or as weighty as family heirlooms locked away beyond the prying eyes of domestic help.
No wonder it is fodder for so much prime time TV in India. A genre all by itself. The mother-in-law, daughter-in-law wars.
Some of these scripts are as hackneyed as they come, and the same ones have been recycled for decades with only the actors in the roles changing.
Even the scheming and the dialogues could overlap - but they still keep generations glued to it for hours.
At the core is control over a bunch of keys. Though in situations where nuclear families have taken over, old equations change.
There can be only one custodian. In households where there is a division of power, this becomes a bitterly contested space.
It's a reflection of the way issues persist. And while a certain section of urban dwellers may think this is ancient history, it is present tense in small towns where the transition is underway in halting phases.
All one has to do is flip the remote at prime time to any entertainment channel in multiple languages. It won't take more than a couple of minutes to figure out what the plot lines revolve around.
The costumes, decor and the language in the homes will change. But a bunch of keys is still the bone of contention.
It's not the Lord of the Rings. It's the Lady with the Keys!