Searching for innovation

Innovation is about finding a better way of doing something. Like many of the new development buzzwords (which many of them are over-used on many business documents), the concept of innovation originates from the world of business. It refers to the generation of new products through the process of creative entrepreneurship, putting it into production, and diffusing it more widely through increased sales. Innovation can be viewed as t he application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society.

Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation article points out that  there is a form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is exhibited is in the misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation. The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth. The definition of innovation is easy to find but it seems to be hard to understand.  Here is a simple taxonomy of related activities that put innovation in context:

  • Novelty: Something new
  • Creation: Something new and valuable
  • Invention: Something new, having potential value through utility
  • Innovation: Something new and uniquely useful

The taxonomy is illustrated with the following diagram.

The differences are also evident in the mechanisms that exist to protect the works: Novelties are usually not protectable, Creations are protected by copyright or trademark, Inventions can be protected for a limited time through patents (or kept secret) and Innovations can be protected through market competition but are not defensible through legal means.

Innovation is a lot of talked about nowdays as essential to businesses to do. Is innovation essential for development work? article tells that innovation has become central to the way development organisations go about their work. In November 2011, Bill Gates told the G20 that innovation was the key to development. Donors increasingly stress innovation as a key condition for funding, and many civil society organisations emphasise that innovation is central to the work they do.

Some innovation ideas are pretty simple, and some are much more complicated and even sound crazy when heard first. The is place for crazy sounding ideas: venture capitalists are gravely concerned that the tech startups they’re investing in just aren’t crazy enough:

 

Not all development problems require new solutions, sometimes you just need to use old things in a slightly new way. Development innovations may involve devising technology (such as a nanotech water treatment kit), creating a new approach (such as microfinance), finding a better way of delivering public services (such as one-stop egovernment service centres), identifying ways of working with communities (such as participation), or generating a management technique (such as organisation learning).

Theorists of innovation identify innovation itself as a brief moment of creativity, to be followed by the main routine work of producing and selling the innovation. When it comes to development, things are more complicated. Innovation needs to be viewed as tool, not master. Innovation is a process, not a one time event. Genuine innovation is valuable but rare.

There are many views on the innovation and innvation process. I try to collect together there some views I have found on-line. Hopefully they help you more than confuze. Managing complexity and reducing risk article has this drawing which I think pretty well describes innovation as done in product development:

8 essential practices of successful innovation from The Innovator’s Way shows essential practices in innovation process. Those practices are all integrated into a non-sequential, coherent whole and style in the person of the innovator.

In the IT work there is lots of work where a little thinking can be a source of innovation. Automating IT processes can be a huge time saver or it can fail depending on situation. XKCD comic strip Automation as illustrates this:

XKCD Automation

System integration is a critical element in project design article has an interesting project cost influence graphic. The recommendation is to involve a system integrator early in project design to help ensure high-quality projects that satisfy project requirements. Of course this article tries to market system integration services, but has also valid points to consider.

Core Contributor Loop (CTTDC) from Art Journal blog posting Blog Is The New Black tries to link inventing an idea to theory of entrepreneurship. It is essential to tune the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, code, design and operations.

 

 

 

 

4,464 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The End of the World is Here (for Radio Shack)
    http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325598&

    A reporter from Bloomberg BusinessWeek called this a “slow motion bankruptcy” and pointed out that analysts expected it years ago, with some speculating it could — or should — have happened in the 1990s.

    The purpose of this blog is not to say “I told you so,” but rather to look at the forces in play and consider what this means for the electronics community.

    As I’ve pointed out before on EETimes.com, there is no shortage of online places to get all the components you need professionally and personally, with Digi-Key perhaps being the poster site for how the industry has changed. In fact, the wealth of electronic components, software, tools, and data that we can get online is truly staggering. New (relative to Radio Shack and Digi-Key) sites like Adafruit, Sparkfun, MakerShed, Upverter, and Octopart have changed our buying behavior forever, because the web opens up a vastly larger world than any brick and mortar retailer could offer.

    My wider point is that we have so much more access to great hardware than ever before and the human aspect of design isn’t going away. In fact, there are more hardware meet-ups, hackathons, and local Maker Faires than ever before. So it’s “goodbye” to the Shack, but “hello” to new face-to-face events that will inspire more electronic design, especially given the potential of the “Internet of Things.” Just make sure to order your board and hardware a couple of days in advance.

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    A wise man once said that everyone makes mistakes; the real trick is to recover from them without anyone else realizing that you messed up in the first place.

    Source: http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=216&doc_id=1325084&

    Reply
  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How Elementary School Teachers’ Biases Can Discourage Girls From Math and Science
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/upshot/how-elementary-school-teachers-biases-can-discourage-girls-from-math-and-science.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

    We know that women are underrepresented in math and science jobs. What we don’t know is why it happens.

    There are various theories, and many of them focus on childhood. Parents and toy-makers discourage girls from studying math and science. So do their teachers. Girls lack role models in those fields, and grow up believing they wouldn’t do well in them.

    All these factors surely play some role. A new study points to the influence of teachers’ unconscious biases, but it also highlights how powerful a little encouragement can be. Early educational experiences have a quantifiable effect on the math and science courses the students choose later, and eventually the jobs they get and the wages they earn.

    Reply
  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Beth McMurtrie / Chronicle of Higher Education:
    Many original Thiel fellows say they learned more in fellowship than they would’ve in college

    The Rich Man’s Dropout Club
    Whatever happened to the teenage entrepreneurs whom Peter Thiel paid to forgo college?
    http://chronicle.com/article/The-Rich-Mans-Dropout-Club/151703/#

    Mr. Gu is like many other Silicon Valley hopefuls, except in one respect. He is a Thiel fellow, one of a select few who were given $100,000 each to leave college to pursue their start-up dreams. “It has sort of good and bad associated with it,” Mr. Gu says of how people react when they find out that he is a fellow. “It comes with a whole set of assumptions and mixed views. People want to know if you think nobody should go to college.”

    or Mr. Gu and other members of that first class of fellows, their experiences have been neither as dire nor as dramatically successful as observers on both sides predicted. While many fellows say they appreciate what college gave them, they also didn’t feel they needed a credential to pursue their dreams. And while they agree that dropping out isn’t the right choice for many students, they hope they’re proof that there’s not just one path to success.

    Indeed, while higher-education experts debate his philosophy, they agree that Mr. Thiel has succeeded in getting more Americans to ask what college provides that the working world cannot.

    Reply
  5. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Kim Yoo-chul / The Korea Times:
    Samsung creates independent team to work on VR, drones, robots, 3D printing, unmanned vehicles
    http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2015/02/133_173274.html

    Reply
  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Interviewing for Female Friendliness: Tips from an Engineer
    http://www.thumbtack.com/engineering/interviewing-for-female-friendliness/

    There have been countless articles written recently about “Women in Tech”.

    Ask This: How often do people ask questions? How do people ask questions?

    The right answer to this question should be “all the time.”

    Ask This: What practices do you have in place to ensure high quality code and continued learning?

    Processes for reviewing code and a culture of continued learning can be additional indicators of humility.

    Specifically, look for engineering teams that:

    Pair program: It doesn’t have to be required or happen all the time, but teams whose engineers pair with each other even a couple of times a week are likely to be teams who value collaboration. Because engineering can sometimes be an isolating profession for women, this type of collaborative environment can be great for female engineers.
    Participate in code review: A great follow-up question here is “Why are code reviews valuable to you?” Bonus points go to the company whose engineer responds that not only do code reviews help ensure high quality code in the codebase, but they also create more opportunities for engineers to learn from each other and learn about different parts of the codebase.
    Take online classes together, read, provide an education stipend: A culture where engineers are continually learning can help women rid themselves of imposter syndrome by reminding us that everyone is still learning and no one knows everything.

    Additionally, pay attention to the tone with which your interviewer speaks about these topics. If a company encourages pair programming, but your interviewer doesn’t recognize the benefits, this is a red flag.

    Ask This: Are there any women on the team? If so, what positions do they hold?

    Ask This: Are any engineers involved in programs aimed at supporting women in the industry? (e.g. PyLadies, Women Who Code, Hackbright, etc.)

    Ask This: What kinds of things do team members do together besides work? How central is drinking to social events?

    In Conclusion

    I feel very grateful to have found a workplace that has such a fantastic culture and lacks many of the issues female developers face

    Reply
  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Embedded Engineers: 10 Skills You Need Now
    http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325557&

    From getting familiar with open source software to developing apps, industry professionals are urging embedded engineers to get out of their comfort zone and acquire new skills to stay relevant.

    Then, as embedded systems became bigger and more complex—millions of lines of code now ship with devices–embedded skill sets became partitioned by discipline: hardware developer, firmware developer, software developer.

    In many big companies that is still the case. But the pendulum appears to be swinging back, as more and more companies are consolidating engineering roles, looking for developers who are fluent in both hardware and software, and trying to accomplish more with less. Certainly a bigger percent of engineers say they work on both hardware software, as compared to the group that only does one or the other.

    Given that it’s not possible to keep up with everything embedded, how do you make sure that the new skills you acquire are the most relevant?

    1. Learn the technologies that make the Internet possible.
    2. You’ve got a search engine. Know how to use it.
    3. Learn something new outside of your comfort zone.
    4. Become experienced with a real time operating system.
    5. Diversify your skills and move up the stack.
    6. Know your software well but always tinker with the newest processors.
    7. Get comfortable with open source software.
    8. Develop a systems engineering mindset.
    9. Become skilled at expressing yourself (both in words and graphics).
    10. Learn wireless connectivity.

    Reply
  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    A Perfect Match: Uniting Mobile Security With Your Employees’ Use of Online Dating Apps
    http://securityintelligence.com/datingapps/#.VNxmWy53B-s

    IBM Report Details Potential Vulnerabilities That Could Compromise Mobile Security

    New technology has completely revolutionized the dating process. Many people are using mobile dating applications to find their “special someones.” In fact, a recent Pew Research study found that 1 in 10 Americans have used a dating site or application, and the number of people who have dated someone they met online has grown to 66 percent over the past eight years. Even though many dating applications are relatively new to the market, Pew Research also found that an astonishing 5 percent of Americans who are in a marriage or committed relationship met their significant other online.

    Reply
  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Where do ideas come from?
    Ask some basic questions to generate new ideas.
    http://www.csemag.com/single-article/where-do-ideas-come-from/9ae428853d9727270a4e44df4e28be0c.html?OCVALIDATE&ocid=101781&[email protected]

    All consulting and specifying engineers know that the solution to every problem starts with an idea. So how can these great starting ideas be generated? Obviously, some process must manufacture them in the mind. But from what? For each person the brain is a storehouse of lifetime experiences, both good and bad. By drawing upon and rearranging such, new concepts emerge. This is why it is impossible to find a totally noncreative person; each mind is already packed with previous observations that can be used.

    However, not all of these stored items are readily accessible. Clearly, some engineers are able to retrieve new combinations more fluently than others and are therefore regarded as being more creative. Nonetheless, even those engineers routinely viewed as being less creative must have a large storage of bits and pieces of stuff accumulated over the years.

    Using the mnemonic W5H for questions will help activate this process in the creative part of the mind. W5H stands for “Who What Why Where When and How” and is a very powerful tool. By posing and answering these questions, the cereal box will become a totally new and different entity. Who named the cereal in the box? What else could be on the box? Why is the shape of the cereal so often flakes? Where is the cereal going marketwise? When will the design be changed? How can the box, or the cereal within, be improved?

    Asking these six questions means that the box is now being looked at from six different viewpoints. When each perspective is considered separately, a host of new ideas will emerge from interaction with the collection of past personal experiences stored in the mind.

    It is not practical to spend the whole day analyzing the creativity locked up in every object encountered. But it is vital to realize that by simple routine observations, creativity and idea production are being practiced. It is like learning the piano. It takes daily practice to enhance fluency. The appreciation of the accomplishments of others is also helpful.

    Unfortunately, ideas can vanish as fast as they come. To avoid this very real problem, the employment of a creativity diary is strongly recommended. It can be an old-fashioned paper notebook or a modern electronic file. But it must be updated every day. It only takes a minute or so each night to write a note on the creativity you observed during the day. This is a wonderfully effective way to stimulate your own creativity. The creative ideas noted can be about anything

    When you’ve recorded creativity notes for a year, you’ll have at least 300 entries in the diary. If only 1% have any potential long-range value, there will be two or three ideas to merit serious professional attention in the following year.

    Reply
  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Why I Love Being An Engineer
    http://www.brandonsavage.net/why-i-love-being-an-engineer/

    The greatest inventors of the past were creative, intelligent thinkers who imagined solutions. This to me embodies engineering today. As a software engineer, I’m called upon to answer difficult technical problems that involve creating solutions that require innovation and invention. Engineers are modern-day inventors.

    Engineers simply think differently than many other professions. This ostensibly creates differences in mindset and opinion between engineers and managers who do not think similarly; it’s that difference in thought process at work that creates strife. Successful managers, or managers who were or are developers, learn to understand the whimsical (in the playful and imaginative sense) and creative nature of engineering and empower engineers to imagine, innovate and invent.

    Reply
  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    5 Reasons Why You Need to Love Your Job
    http://www.engineeringandleadership.com/5-reasons-why-you-need-to-love-your-job/

    Why you need to love what you do

    So why should this be such a big deal? Work is work, after all. Do you really need to love what you do?

    Yes. You do.

    There are 5 important reasons to love your job:

    1. At least a half of your waking hours spent at work. If you’re upset about being at work because you don’t love what you do, you’re on average a sad person. That’s no way to live.
    2. It will be very difficult for you to invest in your career. If you’re not into what you do, what would possess you to seek out extra training, certifications, conferences and the like? It’s hard to imagine spending extra time outside of work investing in something you don’t like.
    3. You’ll never be truly great at what you do. If you don’t have any passion for your work, and you’re not spending time and energy upgrading your skills, how will you ever improve in your field?
    4. You won’t get promotions. This ties into points 2 and 3. It’s tough to imagine promoting someone who isn’t great at what they do, and doesn’t really show an interest in what they do.
    5. You’ll lack fulfillment. If you spend your time doing something other that what you love to do, you’ll always have that feeling like you’re missing out on something. You’ll spend your days watching the clock, waiting until you can leave the office to do what you really want to be doing. Bad times.

    What to do if you don’t love your work

    The first thing to do is to resolve to DO something about it. Take action. Doing something is better than wishing things would just change.

    You can earn a living with just about any skill. Luckily for engineers, there are opportunities abound. There’s a huge spectrum of industries and companies that put engineers to work in hundreds of different roles.

    An education in engineering affords people huge opportunities, even outside of engineering. Be creative.

    Reply
  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Top 10 crowd-funded PCs: How Steve Jobs’ heirs are building the next great computer
    http://www.zdnet.com/article/top-10-crowd-funded-pcs-how-steve-jobs-heirs-are-building-the-next-great-computerreat-computer/

    Summary:The crowd-funding revolution has led to a number of fascinating desktop, laptop, and tablet PC projects. Here are some of the most noteworthy — and successful.

    Reply
  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The world is ours to make: The impact of the maker movement
    http://www.edn.com/design/diy/4438686/The-world-is-ours-to-make–The-impact-of-the-maker-movement?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150219&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150219&elq=eb12e6edd18d487a943e60b3482926e3&elqCampaignId=21718

    The maker movement is bringing engineering into the mainstream. Makers around the world are inspiring each other to create (or “make”) smart gadgets, robotic gizmos, autonomous drones, and wearable devices. These innovations are no longer monopolized by multimillion dollar companies. Instead, makers work in home garages and collaborative workspaces with their peers. More importantly, they openly share their inventions online to inspire new innovations from other makers. This type of grassroots “viral innovation” is disrupting the status quo. Is this the beginning of the next industrial revolution?

    The Homebrew Computing Club was founded in the 1970s by a small group of hobbyists building personal computers in their garages. They met regularly in Silicon Valley to share inventions and discuss new ideas. None of the members understood the historical implications of the meeting when two members of the club, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, presented their new computer. It was the Apple I, and it helped deliver PCs to the masses and propel us into the information age.

    Modern-day makers are the same as the hobbyists of the 1970s, just on a much larger scale. Nearly 200,000 of them attended the two flagship Maker Faire events, also known as the “Greatest Show and Tell on Earth,” last year in San Francisco and New York. The Internet is fueling a maker community orders of magnitude larger than what was possible in the 1970s. As the maker movement continues to grow and garner worldwide attention, it is important to assess the impact it will have on innovation, economic growth, and our future generations.

    Reply
  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Joe Hudy: ‘Making’ an engineering career
    http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/engineering-the-next-generation/4438655/Joe-Hudy—Making–an-engineering-career?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20150220&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20150220&elq=13046a04ed09481bbfbbe17950cce9ee&elqCampaignId=21741

    video interview to discuss what it means to be building a career in 2015, what it is to be a maker, and where he hopes technology will take us.

    Reply
  15. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How One Developer Got the Internet To Watch People Code
    http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/02/24/0114241/how-one-developer-got-the-internet-to-watch-people-code

    While Twitch TV is generally used for livestreaming gameplay, Alexander Putilin has other plans for the platform. Putilin and his girlfriend are using Twitch to build a community of software developers and students who broadcast complex floating point operations and algorithm design to the rest of the world.

    WatchPeopleCode is now facilitating live hackathons
    http://www.watchpeoplecode.com/

    Reply
  16. Tomi Engdahl says:

    ‘Utterly unusable’ MS Word dumped by SciFi author Charles Stross
    LibreOffice on MacOSX is now Laundry Files man’s preferred change-tracking tool
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/24/utterly_unusable_ms_word_dumped_by_scifi_author_charles_stross/

    British SciFi author Charles Stross

    Stross is welcome in these pages for that inclusion alone, but in the past we’ve also featured his declaration that Microsoft Word is ”a tyrant of the imagination” . And that was just for starters. He went on to call it “a petty, unimaginative, inconsistent dictator that is ill-suited to any creative writer’s use.”

    Reply
  17. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Alberto Savoia, formerly of Google and originator of the brilliant theory of “pretotyping,” has created a product builder’s philosophy that encourages a healthy, objective, and best of all, productive analysis of failure that takes the pain out of failure and improves ideas, the work, the people and processes behind the collective effort, and the results.

    FAILURE: ANALYZE IT, DON’T HUMANIZE IT
    How taking the speculation, emotion and anecdotal evidence out of failure improves
    product ideas, development, delivery and marketplace results.
    http://www.jamasoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/documents/jama-failure-analyze-it-dont-humanize-it.pdf

    Alberto is an original thinker and a dynamic presenter, and he makes a compelling case for pretotyping as a best practice for all makers.

    80% of products fail!

    Staggering, isn’t it? Nielsen’s “historical
    new product performance” analysis
    found that around 80% will fail, no
    matter how lenient the definitions of
    failure, or how accepting and open-
    minded the markets. But beyond
    the finger pointing, what’s the
    explanation for all these failures?
    Unfortunately, the causes behind
    market failures—bad design, poor
    reliability, subpar performance,
    unlucky timing, etc.—can’t be
    quantified or categorized as neatly
    as the number of market failures,
    but the odds for failure still trump
    (and trample) previous records of
    success and competent execution.

    THE LAW OF MARKET FAILURE:
    Most new products will fail in the market,
    even if they are competently executed

    Once we acknowledge and accept The Law
    of Market Failure we can stop reacting
    to it emotionally and can start studying
    it and developing ways to deal with it.
    PART II: F.L.O.P. Analysis —
    Why Most New Products Fail In the Market

    FAILURE IN LAUNCH
    Recap: We built the right product. We built it right. But we launched it wrong.

    FAILURE IN OPERATIONS
    Recap: We built the right product. We launched it right. But we built it wrong.

    FAILURE IN PREMISE
    Recap: We built the wrong product to start with.

    Scenarios 1 and 2 can be remedied, and they probably should be.

    Scenario 3. If the launch was successful and
    the product worked well, the most likely
    conclusion is that we built the wrong product.

    Make sure you are building The Right It before you build It right

    2014 © Jama Software, Inc
    You need something more substantial
    and objective than opinions—especially
    opinions from people with no skin
    in the game.

    You need objective evidence. You can get it by building
    a costly, time-consuming proper prototype of The Last
    Stand with sensors, motors and software. Working
    prototypes are great for determining the feasibility of
    a new product, but they’re insufficient for determining
    if there is a viable market for a potential product.

    Part IV: Pretotype Before You Prototype

    THE PRETOTYPING EFFECT
    You can’t escape The Law of Market Failure, but not all failures are created equal. If you
    fail fast, you can make a few changes, re-test your assumptions or move on to the next
    idea. By allowing you to validate core hypotheses about new products quickly and cheaply,
    pretotyping lets you evaluate more ideas which, in turn, helps you increase your success rate
    and minimize the number of missed opportunities. I call this
    The Pretotyping Effect

    Reply
  18. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Watch out hipster nerds – Granny Beskind’s behind you!
    91-year-old Jony Ive wannabe helps out design firm Ideo
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/01/watch_out_hipster_nerds_here_comes_granny_beskind/

    In a push back against the twenty-something, misogynistic Silicon Valley culture – along comes nonagenarian Barbara Beskind.

    Well, Barbara always wanted to be a designer but when she tried back in the 1940s she was told only men were allowed to do the relevant courses.

    Now, at the ripe age of 91, she works at legendary design firm Ideo in Palo Alto (the people that made the first Apple mouse, Palm V and many other things), popping in once a week to give them insights into what it’s like to be old.

    With people living longer, often with more cash, products for the elderly are a growing market.

    “People who design for the elderly think they need jewelled pill boxes, or pink canes. But we need functional equipment,”

    Today asked her to come up with a few words of wisdom, which she then obliging provided.

    “Get rid of your devices: ‘I’m one of the wealthiest people in the world. I’m as wealthy as Warren Buffett, because I measure my wealth by having uninterrupted time. I have no cell phone except one to use for emergency. I have no laptop. I have no smartphone, no iPod …”

    Reply
  19. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Leonard Nimoy, We’ll Miss you
    eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325867&

    EE Times bids farewell to the actor who inspired many to become engineers and scientists.

    Like many of you, I was saddened to hear the news of Leonard Nimoy’s death. His Star Trek character Mr. Spock was an inspiration to many of us who entered technical fields.

    Although Spock was the science officer on the USS Enterprise, not the chief engineer, he was often the one who solved problems and was often called in to help Mr. Scott out of a jam. Even so, Spock was, in many ways, an electrical engineer. How often did we see him use electronic technology that was not only primitive to him, but is now primitive to us?

    http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/rowe-s-and-columns/4438765/Farewell–Leonard-Nimoy

    Reply
  20. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Spock and the Legacy of Star Trek
    http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/15/03/02/0110256/spock-and-the-legacy-of-star-trek

    While the nerd/geek world mourns the death of Leonard Nimoy in its own way, it’s important to remember the legacy that Star Trek — and that Spock and alien characters like him — left on our world.

    Weekend Diversion: Spock and the legacy of Star Trek
    Whether you loved the original series or never saw it, it changed our world.
    https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/weekend-diversion-spock-and-the-legacy-of-star-trek-e07c95117e5b

    “An ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” -Mr. Spock, Star Trek

    The power and beauty of fiction is that it allows us to speak about the best and worst of humanity — including our hopes and fears — that we couldn’t talk about otherwise.

    While many people out there simply don’t enjoy (or “get”) sci-fi, as our understanding of the fundamental laws and history of the Universe have improved, so has our ability to harness that understanding to bring about new technologies. Classic authors like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs used the genre to look at how humanity might respond amidst the adversities we’d face when confronted with the exploration of new frontiers, while Godzilla — and today, Black Mirror — bring to life our fears about technology creating a dystopian world that takes away important aspects of being human itself.

    But Star Trek was something different and entirely new when it came along. A combination of factors gave us a new vision for what our future might be like, and simultaneously brought us, if not a utopia, a vastly improved future where we not only retained our humanity, but where the very best aspects of what it means to be human enabled us to create a fictional civilization that gave us every reason to hope for something grander than we’d ever be able to achieve in a single lifetime.

    Star Trek, unlike any of the other science-fiction Universes out there that had come before, was rooted in the idea that bringing a diversity of living beings together 

    Reply
  21. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Bloody TECH GIANTS… all they do is WASTE investors’ MONEY
    … and thank heavens they do
    http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2015/02/25/the_tech_giants_are_wasting_investors_cash/

    The idea that the tech giants are simply going to waste the pots of cash with which they have been entrusted is certainly counter-intuitive, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they did. For that’s pretty much the fate of all investment: to be wasted.’

    The claim about the tech giants can be found here:

    Yet the reality is completely different – and far more interesting. What is actually happening is that the tech giants have started blowing money on an epic scale. From challenging the car industry, to virtual reality glasses and watches that double up as computers, or TV series that don’t even have a script, the tech barons have embarked on a colossal spending spree from which the returns are likely to be meagre.

    For consumers, that’s great. We’ll get a lot of cool new stuff paid for by the likes of Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Much of it will even be free. But for shareholders, and the founders themselves, that will be terrible – and it may well end up costing them their dominance of the industry.

    The point is also made that Google is “investing” $10bn a year in R&D and doesn’t really have all that much to show for it. But then we almost certainly shouldn’t really be thinking of Google as an economic entity anyway. In a business sense it’s an ad business and nothing else

    The capitalists just don’t make all that much from the deployment of their capital. The VC industry has of course long acknowledged this in their internal thinking. Nine out of 10 investments will go kablooie in some manner, but it’s the tenth that becomes a 20-bagger and makes the entire process worthwhile. That is what I mean about why capitalism succeeds.

    Reply
  22. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How a HPC array helps humanity destroy the Ebola virus
    Big Iron makes everyone’s lives better
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/03/ringfencing_ebola_with_hpc/

    Agencies fighting the outbreak have had to understand where the outbreak is spreading, where communities in its path are most vulnerable and where to focus their treatment and containment efforts to ring-fence the affected areas.

    With such a fast-moving virus it’s been necessary to use computer simulations to model how the virus infects populations and assess how effective different actions, such as treatment station location, isolation measures, contact levels, hospital upgrades and hygiene education programs can be.

    In other words, to assess where’s best to concentrate resources in order to limit the numbers of people who will die from the Ebola epidemic.

    What’s done is to use IT to simulate a human population in areas such as Liberia, Mali, Guinea and elsewhere, along with characteristics that encourage – and inhibit – Ebola’s spread. The aim is to create a disease spread model that is as close as possible to the actual West African outbreak’s history.

    Reply
  23. Tomi Engdahl says:

    News & Analysis
    Embedded Job Market Expands, But Boomers Feel the Squeeze
    http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325881&

    “Urgent Need…Principal Embedded Software Engineer Job Details … 10-15% Bonus, 401k Match, Tuition, 3 Weeks PTO.”

    By almost any measure, the job market appears to be looking very good right now for embedded engineers.

    The economy is getting stronger. In February, the U.S. Labor Department touted news of a net employment gain in 2014 of 2.9 million jobs. Moreover, some recruiters say that demand for embedded engineers is up around 15% compared to 2013, possibly a reason for the panicky wording in some job postings like the online listing above.

    “As the economy stabilizes, companies are feeling an urgency to hire engineers to jump-start projects that were previously postponed,” said Henry Wintz, Solutions Manager for the Embedded Industry Practice at Randstad Technologies, an engineering and employment hiring services firm.

    Reply
  24. Tomi Engdahl says:

    World’s Greatest in Semiconductor
    http://www.eeweb.com/company-blog/zmdi/worlds-greatest-in-semiconductor

    We are truly living in the golden age. Innovations in communication, consumer, medical, industrial, and automotive products, that are considered commonplace today, would be viewed as miracles just a few short years ago and semiconductors are the birthplace of the innovation.

    Reply
  25. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Mark Zuckerberg reveals his one rule for hiring at Facebook
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mark-zuckerberg/11450900/Mark-Zuckerberg-reveals-his-one-rule-for-hiring.html

    ‘It’s a pretty good test and it has served me well,’ Facebook founder tells captive audience at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

    As the founder of one of the most success companies on the planet, when Mark Zuckerberg gives job advice it’s a good idea to listen.

    Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, the 30-year-old Facebook CEO revealed the main thing he looks for in a prospective employee. And the answer is simple.

    “I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person,” Mr Zuckerberg told the audience. “It’s a pretty good test and I think this rule has served me well.”’

    “Facebook is not a company for everyone in the world,”

    Facebook’s staff is relatively small compared to other tech giants in Silicon Valley

    “The most important thing is to keep your team as small as possible,” he went on. “[Facebook] serves more than a billion people around the world but our team has fewer than 10,000 people.

    “It’s only possible because of modern technology. Big companies get bloated.”

    He said the most important thing is to “just have faith in yourself and trust yourself.

    “When you’re young you hear that you don’t have experience to do things, that there are people that have more experience than you. I started Facebook when I was 19.”

    “Don’t discount yourself, no matter what you’re doing,” he added. “Everyone has a unique perspective that they can bring to the world.”

    Reply
  26. Tomi Engdahl says:

    EMPOWERING INNOVATION TOGETHER™
    with Grant Imahara
    http://www.mouser.ph/empoweringinnovation/

    Twitter Party with Grant Imahara – March 5th – 7pm CST

    For almost a decade, Grant Imahara was one of the hosts of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters. Using a blend of science and fun, he put urban legends to the test sometimes with explosive results.

    Reply
  27. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Engineers are more important than everyone else
    http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/serious-fun/4438757/Engineers-are-more-important-than-everyone-else?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150305&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150305&elq=d7c65291367b42788fdf3d64ef3858f5&elqCampaignId=21948&elqaid=24642&elqat=1&elqTrackId=fc5f1cf2659a414da6c5d1901353158e

    You’ve heard the question: If you were in the ocean and saw two people drowning, who would you save?

    Here at EDN, we value engineers the most. If an engineer and someone else were drowning, we’d save the engineer no matter who the other person was. We’d save an engineer over a celebrity, a politician, an athlete, or many people society holds in high regard. Not only because we think engineers are very important but because we know that the engineer would quickly design something to save the other drowning person.

    National Engineers Week kicked off here in the United States on February 22, and it is hands down one of EDN’s favorite weeks of the year. The week gives us a chance to cheer about what makes an engineer an engineer and why they are so great.

    But we don’t just think engineers are great. We think they are the important, super important, in fact they are perhaps the most important group that there is.

    Reply
  28. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Engineers Can Solve Great Problems
    http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325918&

    Today’s engineering students get to see what it’s like to work in teams to solve problems. The university experience is no longer rigid.

    Engineers love to solve big problems. They get turned on by engineering challenges to world issues, not just technological issues.

    “How do we provide clean water to large population groups on a sustainable basis?”

    “Can we provide natural methods to remove toxic pollutants in many of the world’s harbors without harming fish stocks?”

    “Can we find sustainable sources of energy to replace fossil fuels?”

    Reply
  29. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Is Tech Heading to a Recession?
    http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325964&

    28nm is still the last node of Moore’s Law, says Zvi Or-Bach of MonolithiC 3D Inc., who beats the drum for monolithic 3D.

    “Samsung and smartphones in general look to be in trouble and that’s bad news for the electronics industry” wrote Rick Merritt in his Smartphone, Samsung in Trouble recent report from MWC15 in Barcelona. Rick clearly points to 14nm FinFET as the source of the problem and continues “[i]f smartphone growth slows for lack of a driver, as tablet growth is already doing, the electronics industry could be in trouble … it’s beginning to feel like another big bubble building up.”

    About a year ago McKinsey published a report Moore’s law: Repeal or renewal? subtitled “Economic conditions could invalidate Moore’s law after decades as the semiconductor industry’s innovation touchstone. The impact on chipmakers and others could be dramatic.” It goes on to say:

    As a result, Moore’s law has swept much of the modern world along with it. Some estimates ascribe up to 40 percent of the global productivity growth achieved during the last two decades to the expansion of information and communication technologies made possible by semiconductor performance and cost improvements… The law retains its predictive power because of constant improvements in production technology, which are driven by the industry’s “global semiconductor road maps.” These describe the progress required for the continuation of Moore’s law.

    The report concludes with this: “We believe that interesting years lay ahead for the semiconductor industry because the steady evolution the industry historically counted on might be coming to an end.”

    And it does seem that this is ahead of us as we presented in our well-read blog 28nm: The Last Node of Moore’s Law.

    Since the publication of that blog more information has been released, mostly supporting the conclusion that 28nm was the last node. This includes the following finding from a survey conducted by KPMG “Only a fourth of semiconductor business leaders believe Moore’s Law will continue for the foreseeable future … More than half said Moore’s Law will no longer apply at various nodes less than 22 nanometers, while 16 percent said it already has ended.”

    “The reason for increasing transistor cost is the complexity of the devices, and the cost of the equipment required to produce them. … these costs are going up exponentially,”

    Reply
  30. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Engineers on Creating Better Technical Documentation
    http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325930&

    Everyone benefits from good documentation. So why does so much of it suck, and how can companies do better?

    “We all understand that good documentation is important and we would all like it to be better, but unfortunately it’s very easy to convince yourself you can put off doing a better job — or even doing it at all — since it’s not a hair-on-fire situation,” said Svec.

    The fact that documentation is important but not urgent, makes it an all-to-easy thing to kick down the road with the sincerest of intentions to get back to it later. But when that doesn’t happen, it becomes the next guy’s (or girl’s) problem.

    And next time that person just might be the “future you.”

    The thing is, everyone knows good documentation when they see it.

    “They either got burned by something in the past or are really good at asking questions, because Spark clearly designed it for engineers like me,” noted Svec, who particularly likes the pinouts with circles on the diagram.

    “It may seem surprising, but I don’t think that we invest a lot of time and energy into documentation and how it should be done,” said Zach Supalla, Spark’s CEO. “We are a bunch of web folks and I would say that rather than inventing anything new, we are taking a lot of best practices out there in the web world and applying them to the embedded world.”

    With most hardware documentation, a user is typically forced to dig through a static datasheet or a pdf for information.

    Because Spark makes hardware, the design team set out to create visual documentation that helped users understand what was actually happening in the real world. In addition to elaborate pinout diagrams, Spark’s documentation includes highly useful elements like tiny, five-second video files that show what a blinking LED (designating status of the board) looks like.

    “We realized that we could make it even better over time, by making the documentation dynamic and editable by users,”

    No matter how good your product is, Supalla pointed out that there will always be people who are going to be frustrated and confused about how it works, particularly with an international community. “Dynamic documentation empowers people to make contributions and suggest changes,” he stressed.

    How can internal teams become better at documentation when the customer is a colleague who might not even look at it for months or years?

    “At iRobot we created a set of best practices for the software group,” Svec said. “After presenting the six-page document to the company, I realized that while it was good, there were too many things in it to keep in your head all at one time.”

    He wondered if there were a way he could distill those six pages into two or three guiding principles. The “a-ha” moment struck during a cross-country road trip with his dog. “I realized that it all comes down to empathy, in looking out for each other and our future selves to ensure that the code or hardware is understandable, maintainable, and approachable five or ten years down the road.”

    That’s hard to argue with, but it’s not necessarily easy to see your design through a-yet-unknown-someone else’s eyes.

    “Explain to them what you think you’re doing,” said Svec. “In the process, you will learn quickly what assumptions you’ve made that you are not even aware of, what’s confusing to a potential user, and also get great ideas on how you can make changes to the document or code or schematic that will help someone else understand it more easily.”

    And there is one other, lesser-known benefit to creating good documentation, something an engineer at iRobot who is known for creating remarkable documentation figured out early on:

    “I’m an introvert who doesn’t want to be bothered, I don’t like strangers or talking to people, and I find that the better my documentation, the more I’m left alone. I also find I tend to write a lot better than other engineers so I want to keep my abilities and showcase them, even if other people don’t realize it’s me.”

    Reply
  31. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linux kernel devs adopt Bill and Ted’s excellent code of conduct
    Penguin dude Torvalds issues guide to being nice to each other when coding kernels
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/10/linux_kernel_devs_adopt_bill_and_teds_excellent_code_of_conduct/

    The Linux kernel development community and its leader Linus Torvalds are both famously feisty: strong words are often exchanged on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, while Linux Lord Linus Torvalds is seldom shy of speaking his mind.

    Of late, however, Torvalds has copped some criticism for being a little too strident, perhaps counter-productively so as he’s though to have scared off a few developers with his blunt commentaries on their contributions to the kernel.

    Into that climate comes a new ”Code of Conflict” posted on Torvalds’ personal git.kernel.org pag

    https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/CodeOfConflict?id=ddbd2b7ad99a418c60397901a0f3c997d030c65e

    Reply
  32. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Why Natural Selection Hasn’t Trashed Mental Illness
    http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-natural-selection-hasnt-trashed-mental-illness?trk_source=popular

    In a new paper published in t​he journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, Mount Sinai researcher Joel Dudley offers the start of an explanation: schizophrenia isn’t so much the cost of being human, but is instead directly tied into the exact genes that make us human (and not some other species) in the very first place. In a sense, this is what we are.

    The genes that allow for human intelligence are very closely tied to those implicated in schizophrenia

    “It has been theorized that mutations beneficial to human cognitive abilities might have been favored by natural selection but also predispose the risk of schizophrenia.”

    Finally, Dudley and co. write, “it would be interesting and valuable to examine the roles of HARs in other psychiatric diseases such as bipolar disorder and autism spectrum disorders as well as other complex diseases.”

    Reply
  33. Tomi Engdahl says:

    After 3 Years And $64M In Seed Funding, Onshape Launches The Mother Of All Products
    http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/09/onshape-launches-mother-of-all-products/

    That’s why a number of veterans of Solidworks, including its original founder Jon Hirschtick, have come together to completely reimagine how product design can happen in the age of the cloud. In the process, they have built an online software product that is nothing short of a technological marvel.

    Onshape, which launched in public beta today, is an eye-popping product. Product designers can now edit and share their CAD designs across computers, and even more amazingly, across devices. All in the browser. All in real-time.

    The team’s secret is to take a hybrid approach to calculating the surfaces and motion of a product. In addition to using the processor of the user’s device, Onshape also connects to a cloud infrastructure to immediately render complex products, regardless of the technical capabilities of the device.

    Building a CAD system from scratch does not come cheap. Hirschtick said that “building a new CAD company is like starting a new car company.”

    Onshape provides what is essentially a GitHub for CAD interface to its users. Users can now easily branch a product in different directions, and later merge their edits back together.

    In addition to the ability to safely work on models, the team has also created a real-time collaboration system for engineers working together.

    While some companies may be concerned about leaving all of their data in the cloud, Hirschtick believes this approach is the future of the industry. “People say they are worried about my data in the cloud,” he explained, “The response is that you should worry about your data not being in the cloud.”

    The internet may be maturing, but there remain whole industries that still look like they have never left the era of Windows 95.

    http://www.onshape.com/

    Reply
  34. Tomi Engdahl says:

    NEW PRODUCTS
    http://xkcd.com/1497/

    Predicting success or failure based on what engineers and programmers say on it…

    Reply
  35. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Creative Commons logo acquired for MoMA exhibition
    http://www.cnet.com/news/creative-commons-logo-acquired-for-moma-exhibition/

    “This is for Everyone” showcases how the internet has grown into a place of sharing, learning and discovering.

    Following its acquisition of the symbol @ in 2010, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has now also acquired the Creative Commons logo for its permanent collections, and has put it on display as part of its exhibition, This is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good.

    This doesn’t mean the museum now owns the logo — or @ for that matter — rather, it now has permission to reproduce it. It would be difficult to keep the logo in its permanent collection without that permission and this serves as a perfect example of what the exhibition is all about.

    Creative Commons was created in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson and Eric Eldred as a solution to retaining copyright on something as enormous as the internet. The licenses provided by Creative Commons allow creators to retain copyright over and receive attribution for their work, while allowing others to make use of it.

    In addition to the main logo, the museum also acquired the Creative Commons logos for Attribution, ShareAlike, Noncommercial and NoDerivatives

    Reply
  36. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Turkish Ministry Recommends Banning Super-Violent Minecraft
    from the not-too-crafty dept
    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150310/11240330272/turkish-ministry-recommends-banning-super-violent-minecraft.shtml

    Insanely popular game Minecraft is known for a lot of things. It’s a fantastic creative outlet and the digital sandbox of youngsters’ dreams, for instance. The game has also been known to raise the ire of unrelated companies who somehow think all that creativity by gamers is something that can be sued over. It’s known for amazing user-generated content, including games within games and replicas of entire cities. The nation of Turkey is known for very different things. It’s a country that absolutely loves to censor stuff, for instance.

    Reply
  37. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Creative empathy — What children on the Autism can teach us | Clifford D. Saron | TEDxBayArea
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKEN2d5l7B8

    In this talk, UC Davis neuroscientist Clifford Saron links his experience as a parent of a young child on the autism spectrum with scientific understanding of differences in perception and sensory integration in autism. He describes how these differences may contribute to problems in social communication and other challenges for these children. Dr. Saron stresses the need to develop a close understanding of their lived experience to foster connection and create welcoming bridges to the greater world throughout development.

    Reply
  38. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Find your colleagues’ noisy eating annoying? Then you could be a genius, research shows
    Why being unable to stand noisy eaters might make you a genius
    A new study suggests the most creative of us are unable to filter out irrelevant noise

    Northwestern University’s new research claims that the inability not to filter the information conveyed by the sense of something occurring creatively talented people.

    The study cites creative geniuses such as Charles Darwin, Anton Chekhov and novelist Marcel Proust, who notoriously wore ear-stoppers and lined his bedroom with cork to block out noise whilst he worked.

    Lead author of the study Darya Zabelina said: “The propensity to filter out ‘irrelevant’ sensory information….happens early and involuntarily in brain processing and may help people integrate ideas that are outside the focus of attention, leading to creativity in the real world.”

    The researchers found that the tests on the basis of the most creative people were also those who were bothered by, very sensitive to background noise while working.

    According to the researchers, the fact that can not be quoted without irrelevant sounds, can lead to the fact that the mind is able to focus on a wide range of issues at the same time. This helps people to combine things in a creative way that would not otherwise happen.

    There seems to be a strong link between those with the most creative answers and achievements and those sensitive to background noise whilst working. It was revealed that there was a strong link between creativity and being bad at filtering out irrelevant sound.

    Darya Zabelina, a PhD psychology student at Northwestern University in Illinois said: ‘If funnelled in the right direction, these sensitivities can make life more rich and meaningful, giving experiences more subtlety.’

    Sources:
    http://www.iltalehti.fi/terveys/2015031219344800_tr.shtml
    http://metro.co.uk/2015/03/08/find-your-colleagues-noisy-eating-annoying-then-you-could-be-a-genius-research-shows-5094168/
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/11458570/Why-being-unable-to-stand-noisy-eaters-might-make-you-a-genius.html

    Reply
  39. Tomi Engdahl says:

    In Bid To Get British Kids Coding, BBC To Give Away 1 Million ‘Micro Bit’ Computers
    http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/12/chuckie-egg/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity_1462_-6029332012656035016

    In a move that will bring a nostalgic smile to some British kids (and teachers) of the 80s, the BBC has annunced that it is to produce a new educational mini-computer — codenamed the ‘Micro Bit’, a play on the broadcasters original ‘BBC Micro‘ computer — and will give way 1 million devices to British school kids aged 11. It will be distributed nationwide from autumn 2015.

    The new hardware project is part of the BBC’s wider ‘Make it Digital’ initiative to inspire “a new generation to get creative with coding, programming and digital technology,” as the UK attempts to fill an anticipated ‘skills gap’ in the country’s growing digital economy.

    The move, which sees the BBC partner with over 25 organisations to develop the Micro Bit, including chip-makers ARM and Nordic Semiconductor, Microsoft, and Samsung, is also interesting in that it seems determined to address issues that caused controversy when the original BBC Micro was released.

    At first glance, the same could be said of the Micro Bit. However, the PR related to the device is keen to pitch the hardware as a ‘gateway drug’ to more sophisticated educational and hobby computing, such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi. The latter has sold over 5 million units after all.

    I can’t help feeling it will be a waste of money to can the hardware side of the project after just one year.

    Reply
  40. Tomi Engdahl says:

    10 Ways Rich People Think Differently
    http://www.businessinsider.com/ways-rich-people-think-differently-2014-5?IR=T

    If you ask Thomas Corley, being rich has very little to do with luck and everything to do with habits.

    Corley, who spent five years monitoring and analyzing the daily activities and habits of people both wealthy and living in poverty (233 wealthy and 128 poor, specifically), isolated what he calls “rich habits” — and many of them are simply patterns of thought.

    “I found in my research that wealthy people are by and large optimists,” he says. “They practice gratitude and look at happiness like a habit.”

    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ways-rich-people-think-differently-2014-5#ixzz3UEvNWj2w

    Reply
  41. Tomi Engdahl says:

    What Employers Think Of Online Degrees?
    http://www.universities.academy/?categoryId=42496&itemId=77092

    Some employers have negative perception about the online degrees but this perception is changing rapidly. In 2013 a report found that many of the human resource managers and other company executives thought of online degrees as unaccredited programs which offered a degree to anyone who had sufficient money to pay. They called the online degree programs as diploma mills.

    In the recent years the number of job applicants having online degrees has increased significantly and at the same time the acceptance of the online degrees by the employers has also increased.

    Soon their will be no difference between an on-campus degree and an online degree.

    Reply
  42. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Kyle Russell / TechCrunch:
    Algorithm marketplace Algorithmia exits private beta with over 800 algorithms available, charging developers per-use

    Algorithmia Launches With More Than 800 Algorithms On Its Marketplace
    http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/12/algorithmia-launches-with-more-than-800-algorithms-on-its-marketplace/

    Algorithmia, the startup that raised $2.4 million last August to connect academics building powerful algorithms and the app developers who could put them to use, just brought its marketplace out of private beta.

    More than 800 algorithms are available on the marketplace, providing the smarts needed to do various tasks in the fields of machine learning, audio and visual processing, and even computer vision.

    Algorithm developers can host their work on the site and charge a fee per-use to developers who integrate the algorithm into their own work. The platform encourages further additions to its library through a bounty system

    Reply
  43. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Free Sirius One-Ups Siri
    Open-source Sirius bests Cortana, Now
    http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326014&

    Apple’s Siri started the trend, followed by Google’s Now and Microsoft’s Cortana, but they all are just copy-cats of a flawed original, according to the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). Yes, they all answer verbal questions about things you can look up on the Internet, but the the University of Michigan’s free open-source Sirius one-ups all three by doing the things that they can’t, plus allows users to customize it to do things that none have ever done before.

    “We’ve put together the best of the best open-source algorithms — in many cases from the same sources as the others — plus added capabilities that Siri, Now and Cortana will have to add to keep up with Sirius,” Jason Mars, U-M assistant professor of computer science and engineering and co-director of Clarity Lab where Sirius was developed, told EE Times.

    For example, with Sirius you can take a snapshot of a building, monument, animal — almost anything — and then ask questions about it

    Mars — together with professor Lingjia Tang and co-director of Clarity Lab, along with doctoral candidates Johann Hauswald and Yiping Kang — have worked hard to one-up Siri, Now and Cortana, but not to go into competition with them. Actually, their original motivation was to investigate what types of resources will be required of cloud services in the future.

    “The project has been so successful, that now we are not only still investigating what resources the servers of the future will need — since most of Siri’s, Now’s and Cortana’s services are performed in cloud servers — but we are also investigating how the quad- and octal-core processors in handhelds can help off-load some of the workload from the servers.”

    Reply
  44. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Marvell CEO: The Tinkerer at The Top
    http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326017&

    How many CEOs in the semiconductor industry today are so possessed with their inner technology questions that they actually spend weekends looking for answers?

    Given their engineering backgrounds, many CEOs at chip companies can probably be found in the basement tinkering on weekends. Rarely, however, do we encounter an executive who not only discusses his personal obsession with technologies, but also reveals a solution he’s found after countless sessions of quiet experimentation — all alone at home.

    Meet Sehat Sutardja, CEO of the Marvell Technology Group.

    In a recent interview in Barcelona during the Mobile World Congress, Sutardja said, “For the last 30 to 40 years, the computer system architecture has remained the same. The advancements of computers have always depended on the bigger and faster CPU and more memory.”

    “We are going to fix it for once and all,” In a recent interview in Barcelona during the Mobile World Congress, Sutardja said, “For the last 30 to 40 years, the computer system architecture has remained the same. The advancements of computers have always depended on the bigger and faster CPU and more memory.”

    “We are going to fix it for once and all,” he said, with Marvell’s newly proposed system architecture which uses only a fraction of DRAM and puts DRAM in deep sleep. Marvell plans to launch prototype chips — based on the MoChi interconnect and FLC memories — at the end of this year.

    Sutardja, however, made it clear in the interview: “No, developing this [new system architecture] is not my job. My day job is running the company. This was my hobby.”

    But he acknowledged, “I’ve been thinking about this for decades: why a computer system has to be designed this way.”

    Obsessing about unresolved technical problems has been a lifelong habit. “I’ve been that way since I was 12 years old.” He started his career as an analog circuit engineer, so, he said, “I still think about how to build a better A-to-D converter. I work on my new ideas at night, sometimes call a professor, and discuss the issue.”

    Typically, Sutardja prefers working on his crazier ideas alone.

    Although he isn’t against teamwork, keeping harmony within a big group gets more problematic when the idea of changing system architecture is as radical as this. He said, “You don’t want to offend anyone” who might have a vested interest in keeping a certain structure the way it is. He said he’s also wary of compromising the solution for the sake of keeping everyone happy.

    Thus, the Marvell CEO kept working on his idea on his own during weekends. It wasn’t until two years ago when Sutardja finally introduced it to the Marvell team. At that time, he said he knew he had a solution, but “I couldn’t explain it properly.”

    How the world is reacting
    The initial reaction from the engineering staff was as deeply skeptical as Sutardja expected. Nobody in the team was willing to believe it without hard data. At Marvell, “We built a simulator,” he said, and 100 Marvell engineers now have the technologies running in simulation. “I think we simulated all of the ‘gotcha’ last year,” he said. “It’s unlikely anything would trip us up when we implement this on a chip. We see implementation quite simple.”

    The Marvell CEO said, “They all asked why nobody came up with this before, because it’s such a simple idea. And their own inevitable answer was they must have tried this before, but this never came to see the day of light because it never worked.”

    “SSD’s have a wear out mechanism while DRAMs do not. The scheme is similar to multi-level caching used in servers “

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