Saturday, August 30, 2014

Back to the Future – Universitetsavisa

Internet gave us all the world’s knowledge at the touch of a button. Now the former NTNU students give you access to the offline.

Published: 8/30/2014 at. 8:00

– Where have you all as well as all text from the English Wikipedia, says CEO Amund Tveit Memkite and put in place the last lego block.

Wikipedia field counts twelve tags. Thus, the 1012 fields in the green lego board that represent a single square centimeter large memory chip of RRAM – future data memory.

Add to rad publications from the last ten years, and anyone who is quoted throughout history, half a million textbooks, the largest question-and-answer services, descriptions of all the apps offered by the three major suppliers and Twitter messages from the last ten days, and you will still not have reached half board.



woodpecker book on a square centimeter

In 1954 appeared Woodchuck book for the first time in the Donald Duck universe. A book that, even in the pocket edition, containing all the world’s knowledge. In 1978 appeared The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on radio in the science fiction series of the same name. “Travel Guide” had not only all the world’s knowledge, but all knowledge in the universe and a search tool that made it easy to find.

The basic idea is to Memkite to do the same, only in real life.

– I’ve always liked mobile stuff, so it is difficult to pinpoint when the idea was born, but by the end of 2013, things began to be more specific. Technological all our idea about two things: Databases with seamless offline and online search and a new combination of image recognition and search, said Tveit.



– Online flops

Yeah, wait a minute: Is not the idea woodpecker book already solved through what we call the Internet?

Yes and no, according to the founders. If the tank is fast and secure access to knowledge, there are some limitations and challenges of the Internet may never overcome. Leif Osvold legendary chronicle “Internet a flop” stirring feebly in memory. Is there a web skepticism to bottom in Memkites project?

– It is rather an absence of nettnaivitet, answer Amund Tveit.

And not to be naive, there are at least four reasons, according Memkite:

1. Response time

– If you look historically at it, thin clients always had a poorer user experience than thick clients, said Tveit.

A thin client is a computer program or something similar that is largely dependent on being connected with another computer, a server, to perform essential tasks. A good example of a thin client will be a web browser. A tykklient perform, however their tasks independently.

– If you use the mobile network, it is very difficult to get response times below 100 milliseconds (ms). It sounds fast, but you go over it, it feels fast slow. A mobile that this has a SSD disk with a seek time of 100 microseconds (ĩS), a thousand times faster, Tveit said, holding up his iPhone.

In addition to that computer power has increased, mathematics also helped.

– developments in both technology and algorithms allows mobile phones today can do things in image recognition you need large data centers to a few years ago, says Thorbjørn Morland is responsible for technology development company.



apps as an example

In just five years, the search time on hard disks decreased dramatically, and the trend accelerated faster than the development of the network speed.

A term that we prefer tykklienter is that apps displaces Internet use on the mobile phone, said Tveit.

our time spent on the mobile phone is dominated increasingly by apps. The split between time spent on apps and the mobile web has gone from 80 percent of the apps in 2013 to 86 percent this year, according to Flurry Analytics

2. Access

4G and 3G network covers increasingly larger parts of the country and you get wifi in every cafe in Norwegian cities.

– Although network access is being developed more and more in the western countries, it is not certain that the capacity automatically goes up. And although you might think that you get more and better coverage as well as faster networks, it is in practice not that way for everyone, said Tveit.

At sea, the mountains and other places far from the beaten track. And what happens when natural disasters occur and sets the base stations out of operation as generators run out?

– Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning has said that it is only a matter of time before we are nut to be able to cope with a crisis without power, said Morland.

To offer solutions for the crisis management as well as businesses that are dependent searchable database technology that works seamlessly between offline and online because they operate in areas without network access, is Memkites first goal.



Developing countries not online

Another potential target could be parts of the world where the majority still do not use the internet.

– If you offer a product with Wikipedia installed in developing countries, it could be a selling point, said Morland.

39 percent of the world’s population used the Internet in 2013 for developed countries the figure is 77 percent, while in developing countries is 31 percent.

The argument is, however, not long-term, then use the same time just goes on and on. But it is also an interesting question whether access our online grows fast enough to keep up with the growth in the extent to which we make ourselves dependent on the internet.

– There are more and more situations where you need technology that had not before, but do not have access to it, argues Thorbjørn Morland.

3. Capacity development

If you store all information and knowledge available on the internet, it would still have been cramped for space. But the part that you will need throughout life, is far less. Thus, one can shave off a large part of the data.

– In information theory, there are some laws exponential degrees of information needs. Have 20 percent of the data, have you ever 95 percent of the information you need, says Morland.

Nine years ago, a sd memory cards have 128 megabytes of storage. Today has a similar card 128 gigabytes of storage, 1,000 times as much. The storage technology is some years away, one can begin to sense a measure that relatively small areas can be enough to hold all the essentials.

– As of today, we will not necessarily make a distribution of the world’s information, so it is not an interesting target for us, but says nothing about what is technically possible, says Morland.



Cramped for space

Lego board to gang Memkite represents one memory chip on one terabyte, or a thousand gigabytes. For things that take more space than text, it is still scarce on whether to hold the entire part of the internet we use.

If, for example, saved all Netflix would be needed six such minnechipper, according Memkites calculations. But there can change quickly. In June this year, Hewlett pacard out and said that with future memory technologies aimed at smartphones with 100 terabytes of storage.



New compression technology

An important part of the work has also focused on making data as compressed as possible, without compromising speed to retrieve them.

– Search technology is all about finding the best compression algorithms and to use them in the best possible way, so it is very small and at the same time is very fast, says Morland.

The development work has focused on investing a lot of time in speed and komprimitering. Tveit also serves on four patents on new search technologies.

4. Security

– Should we take the sci-fi hat, which I like to do, so this is about privacy, says Tveit.

The fourth argument to Memkite about that we find ourselves in a world where algorithms now make it possible for companies like Facebook to put together increasingly valuable information about each of us in what already has been a impenetrable sea of ​​big data.

In addition we get the technology increasingly on the body, sometimes almost under the skin when earphones, heart rate monitors and glasses will start to record our vital signs. A backlash that others do know more about us through the data we send more or less voluntary online, you can be sure offline solutions are attractive.

– Have things offline, and only seeks offline, no one can see what you are looking for, said Tveit.



Crisis step one

Although the initial business idea is to aim at market crisis, tells entrepreneurs that if they find an opportunity to target the general consumer market, has they wanted to try a miniature.

– Should we deliver woodpecker book, make it into a product that is prefabricated, said Tveit.

The first year has agreed to develop the technology that lies at the bottom, now they’re looking for a market for its product.

– Now we are in a phase where we try to get prospects on the hook. Initially, all of which have a critical need for information when they are offline. When we talk for example about delivering applications to maintenance, shipping industry, oil and gas industry and the like, said Morland.

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