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:
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.
4,506 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is There an Arduino Debugger in the House?
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=216&doc_id=1326013&
At ESC Boston 2015, Guido Bonelli will explain how building his Arduino-based Orbis Kinetic Sculpture caused him to design Dr. Duino shield to help debug his projects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The programming and engineering skills with the highest salaries
Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-programming-and-engineering-skills-with-the-highest-salaries-2015-3#ixzz3UHyXmplo
Tomi Engdahl says:
TechCrunch:
How ResearchKit minimizes obstacles to participation, enabling transformative medical research
ResearchKit An “Enormous Opportunity” For Science, Says Breast Cancer Charity
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/14/researchkit-share-the-journey/
This week Apple bundled a big announcement inside it’s long awaited Apple Watch ‘Spring Forward’ event. Namely the launch of ResearchKit: an iOS software framework that lets people, currently U.S.-based only, volunteer to join medical research studies. This is arguably a lot more interesting than expensive, Internet-connected wrist wear.
While the question of what problem the Apple Watch specifically fixes continues to preoccupy commenters, ResearchKit’s raison d’être is clear: medical research needs data, and iPhones offer the promise of a populous pipeline that can get more data flowing to the scientific community.
The first group of apps developed using ResearchKit — and announced on stage at Apple’s event — are for studies on asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.
ResearchKit is open source. Apple says it intends to release the framework next month, allowing researchers to contribute to specific activity modules, such as memory or gait testing within the framework, and share them with the global research community to advance disease research.
The consistency of iOS hardware (when compared to the far more diverse Android ecosystem) is likely to be helpful in a research scenario — certainly to some types of studies that rely on taking measurements from mobile device sensing hardware. ResearchKit apps work on iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and the latest generation of iPod touch devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Max Chafkin / Fast Company:
YC-backed nonprofit DemocracyOS runs a small political party in Argentina that votes based on polling it conducts online
Why Y Combinator Funded a Radical Political Party in Argentina
http://www.fastcompany.com/3043388/the-y-combinator-chronicles/why-y-combinator-funded-a-radical-political-party-in-argentina
Silicon Valley investors are betting that the ideas that turned Airbnb and Dropbox into megahits can work for social enterprises.
DemocracyOS, which Mancini, 32, started with cofounders Santiago Siri and Guido Vilariño in 2012, allows politicians (or groups of any kind) to poll their constituents quickly. “It’s a tool that has promise,”
“Selling to politicians is hard,” she says. “I needed to get that initial pool of customers. Now I can go everywhere else.”
Mancini’s Partido de la Red—”Net Party,” in English—is a wild experiment in direct democracy that seems to take inspiration from both Occupy Wall Street and Reddit (a Y Combinator alum and ongoing investment). Party supporters, mostly young Porteños, as citizens of Buenos Aires are known, weigh in on issues like the possibility of extending late-night hours on city subways and legalizing the sale of small quantities of marijuana seeds. The Net Party promises to vote on bills based exclusively on the feedback it gets online.
That Y Combinator, which is known for helping to turn silly-seeming software ideas into billion-dollar companies, would back a South American political party whose great ambition is not to be the next Silicon Valley unicorn but rather to create, in Mancini’s words, “a better democracy,” might seem surprising. But YC has been broadening its reach in all sorts of ways, expanding into realms like driverless cars, prosthetic limbs, and, yes, nonprofits. Though some investors might have seen DemocracyOS’s forays into politics as a red flag, YC’s partners were impressed by it. Creating a political party showed that they were committed, not just to creating clever software, but to bringing that software out into the world. “We saw they were actually getting stuff done and really passionate about what they are working on,” says Kate Courteau, YC’s director of nonprofits.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientific Study Finds There Are Too Many Scientific Studies
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/03/15/1611231/scientific-study-finds-there-are-too-many-scientific-studies
Chris Matyszczyk reports at Cnet that a new scientific study concludes there are too many scientific studies — scientists simply can’t keep track of all the studies in their field. The paper, titled “Attention Decay in Science,” looked at all publications (articles and reviews) written in English till the end of 2010 within the database of the Thomson Reuters (TR) Web of Science.
“Nowadays papers are forgotten more quickly. Attention, measured by the number and lifetime of citations, is the main currency of the scientific community, and along with other forms of recognition forms the basis for promotions and the reputation of scientists,”
Attention decay in science
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.01881v1.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
People make politics: The Pirate Party on why it’s crowdsourcing its manifesto
Interview Pets win prizes, people make policy
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2399546/people-make-politics-the-pirate-party-on-why-its-crowdsourcing-its-manifesto
THE PIRATE PARTY UK is steadily increasing its position in the political spectrum, aided perhaps by the actions and behaviour of the big three parties.
We spoke to the party’s latest prospect, Sheffield Central candidate Andy Halsall, about the crowdsourcery and its impact on the party and its politics.
Halsall explained that the response to the call for citizen input has been well received and has elicited a range of responses on several issues.
“The reaction has been fantastic and generally positive. Overall, it seems that a lot of people see this open, accessible approach as a good thing and have taken time to participate,” he said.
“The debates have been interesting too, both online and offline, with a lot of information being presented and opinions exchanged, challenged and changed.”
“Running very open policy gathering processes means that we get suggestions from the broadest possible group of people. We end up with good policy in a wide range of areas,” he said.
“It also means that we debate issues that people might not associate with the party in a decentralised and anonymised way to those taking part. I think that has done a lot to promote honesty, and lets people say what they think.
“That’s good when we are talking about finding solutions to the problems we face today, and will face in the future.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digitalization is not only the IT department issue
Companies have in the digital era two options: to be active or to remain a bystander in the role
Digitalization is not only a matter of information management. It affects mainly the product development, highlighting the machine Kati Hagros. Long-term data management pulled Hagros is now responsible for the company’s services business digitalisation.
“It plays an important role in the implementation of digitalisation, but it is dangerous to think that the digitalization would just it’s thing. It will also be the product of the world and affect the vast majority of businesses, “Hagros reminded at Tieke Business Dating event.
All business processes will be one way or another digital.
“Change does not mean that everything goes fully digital.”
“Either takes pleasure out of digitalisation and used for the benefit of the data. Or maybe there is a risk that the City will have a mere component of the ecosystem in which someone else is doing all the fun and value-added. ”
Digitalization requires industrial companies more agile business models. In his opinion, the digital age as a guide fits “Get going and fail fast” – worth a try things quickly and boldly and not be afraid of setbacks.
Digital age must stay awake and smell the new innovations.
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/uutiset/143278
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC announces Micro Bit computer
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-03/12/bbc-micro-bit
The BBC has revealed a new microcomputer as part of its Make It Digital campaign. Currently called the Micro Bit, it’s aimed at getting young students ready to code from an early age.
Similar to a Raspberry Pi and about half the size of a credit card, the device will be made available to secondary schools across the country, with enough for every Year 7 student to have one.
Micro Bit will allow kids to learn the basics of coding as a fundamental part of their education, placing it on par with other “basics” such as maths and literacy.
BBC launches flagship UK-wide initiative to inspire a new generation with digital technology
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/makeitdigital/micro-bit
A major BBC project, developed in pioneering partnership with over 25 organisations, will give a personal coding device free to every child in year 7 across the country – 1 million devices in total.
The Micro Bit will be a small, wearable device with an LED display that children can programme in a number of ways. It will be a standalone, entry-level coding device that allows children to pick it up, plug it into a computer and start creating with it immediately.
And the Micro Bit can even connect and communicate with these other devices, including Arduino, Galileo, Kano and Raspberry Pi, as well as other Micro Bits. This helps a child’s natural learning progression and gives them even more ways of expressing their creativity.
BBC and its partners recognised that a hands-on learning experience could help children grasp the new Computing curriculum in ways that other software and traditional classroom learning couldn’t.
*The project is still in development and the final name, appearance and specification is likely to change
In Bid To Get British Kids Coding, BBC To Give Away 1 Million ‘Micro Bit’ Computers
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/12/chuckie-egg/
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 Micro Bit will be a small, wearable device with an LED display that children can programme in a number of ways. It will be a standalone, entry-level coding device that allows children to pick it up, plug it into a computer and start creating with it immediately.”
The BBC News (yes, the BBC reporting on itself) also notes that the production of the Micro Bit will be a one-off. Once those 1 million units have been produced and distributed to 11 year-old British school children this autumn, there will be no more.
BBC gives children mini-computers in Make it Digital scheme
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31834927
“With a dedicated season of programming on the BBC, 5,000 digital trainees, one million children who take their first steps with a Micro Bit, and a host of educational activity, we hope to inspire a new generation to get creative with digital,” said Jessica Cecil, controller of Make it Digital.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forked Android: Sign of Trouble or Creativity?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326057&
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC Plugs Kids into Programming
Micro Bit aims to inspire UK’s 11-year olds
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1326049&
The BBC will give a new development board for budding Makers to every 11-year-old in the UK next fall, echoing its BBC Micro initiative a generation ago, and raising similar hopes and controversies.
The British Broadcasting Corporation plans to give to every 11-year old starting secondary school in the U.K. this autumn a tiny, programmable device called the Micro Bit as part of its Make it Digital initiative aimed at improving technology skills in the country.
The company suggests it will need a million of the stripped down embedded software platforms to enthuse a new generation about coding, programming and new technology. The device is basically a PCB with some LEDs and a single micro-USB connector, powered by a watch battery – somewhat similar to the amazingly successful Raspberry Pi, a single board computer.
The exact details of the device are still under wraps, with the current hardware officially termed a prototype until it starts shipping in August.
Tomi Engdahl says:
XPRIZE’s Latest Challenge to Innovators is to Save the Ocean
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1326051&
Speaking at SXSW 2015, XPRIZE’s Paul Bunje laid out the foundation’s latest challenge — using technology to solve the problems plaguing our oceans.
“We know more about the dark side of the moon than we do about our own oceans,”
Bunje outlined his and XPRIZE’s belief that the oceans, which cover 70% of our planet, are a key not only to our own health and well-being, but to advances across a multitude of fields from engineering to pharmaceuticals. But our oceans and the many diverse species within them are also suffering from crises brought on not only by pollution but by a general lack of comprehensive understanding.
To that end XPRIZE’s Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health challenge is currently underway. This year the foundation is seeking an innovative solution to the oceans’ rising levels of acidity. Emissions from climate change have made the ocean 30% more acidic than it has been in the past.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vince Cable opens hipster-friendly London tech creche
The Urban Innovation Centre: No, it’s not for graffiti vandals
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/18/vince_cable_launches_urban_innovation_centre/
Business Secretary Vince Cable has launched the new Urban Innovation Centre, funded by his Department of Business, Innovation and Skills’ Innovate UK.
The Urban Innovation Centre is intended as a space for “greater innovation and greater synthesis” for organisations operating in urban environments, according to Keith Clarke, vice chairman of the Future Cities Catapult Board.
“Supporting the pioneering technology behind future cities will help make our cities more clean and efficient,” said Cable in a canned statement. “The government-backed Catapult Centres are hubs for British businesses and academics to work together, helping bring their research to market.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Astro Teller / Backchannel:
Google X head Astro Teller on origin of Google X, Project Loon, Glass, self-driving cars, Project Wing, and failure
How to Make Moonshots
Astro Teller says that at Google[x], failure is indeed an option. So is changing the world.
https://medium.com/backchannel/how-to-make-moonshots-65845011a277
Google has long declared itself an unconventional company. But its division that takes on long-term, risky projects, Google[x], makes the rest of the company look pretty staid. Now led by Astro Teller (born Eric before he adopted a first name that really suited him), Google[x] deliberately takes on challenges that seem to fit more comfortably in the pages of pulp science fiction than on the balance sheet of a public company. Its first project was the self-driving car, and subsequent ones include Google Glass, the smart contact lens, the Google Brain neural network, the Loon Project that delivers Internet service via balloon, and a project that hopes to release nanoparticles in the bloodstream to detect early disease.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
FiftyThree raises $30M to push its Paper and Pencil creativity tools in enterprise and education
http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/17/fiftythree-raises-30m-to-push-its-paper-and-pencil-creativity-tools-in-enterprise-and-education/
FiftyThree, the company behind popular drawing app Paper and a smart stylus called Pencil, has raised $30 million to help push its presence in the enterprise and education realm.
The New York-based company has made a big name for itself in the digital creativity sphere since it was founded in 2011, primarily for its virtual sketchpad app (Paper) — which Apple named as iPad app of the year in 2012 — and the accompanying stylus.
Up until last month, Paper was free to download, with users able to buy extra drawing tools for $0.99 in-app. But the company made the app entirely free, with FiftyThree betting entirely on its Stylus hardware.
FiftyThree has previously confirmed its plans to push its hardware/software package into the education realm, where the company has already seen significant uptake.
“We’re excited about the amount of teachers and students who already use Paper and Pencil to give lectures or take notes. Making the tools free will also allow us to offer easier access to classrooms across the world.”
FiftyThree’s Paper has had north of 13 million downloads to date
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet Under Fire Gets New Manifesto
“Personal is Human. Personalized isn’t.”
New Clues
https://medium.com/backchannel/internet-under-fire-gets-new-manifests-207a922b459e
From two Cluetrain authors, Doc Searls and David Weinberger
Tomi Engdahl says:
Speaking a second language may change how you see the world
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2015/03/speaking-second-language-may-change-how-you-see-world
Speakers of the two languages put different emphasis on actions and their consequences, influencing the way they think about the world, according to a new study. The work also finds that bilinguals may get the best of both worldviews, as their thinking can be more flexible.
Cognitive scientists have debated whether your native language shapes how you think since the 1940s. The idea has seen a revival in recent decades, as a growing number of studies suggested that language can prompt speakers to pay attention to certain features of the world.
“we ask, ‘Can two different minds exist within one person?’ ”
This linguistic difference seems to influence how speakers of the two languages view events, according to the new study.
German speakers matched ambiguous scenes with goal-oriented scenes about 40% of the time on average, compared with 25% among English speakers. This difference implies that German speakers are more likely to focus on possible outcomes of people’s actions, but English speakers pay more attention to the action itself.
Bilingual speakers, meanwhile, seemed to switch between these perspectives based on the language most active in their minds.
The results suggest that a second language can play an important unconscious role in framing perception, the authors conclude online this month in Psychological Science. “By having another language, you have an alternative vision of the world,” Athanasopoulos says. “You can listen to music from only one speaker, or you can listen in stereo … It’s the same with language.”
“This is an important advance,” says cognitive scientist Phillip Wolff of Emory University in Atlanta who wasn’t connected to the study. “If you’re a bilingual speaker, you’re able to entertain different perspectives and go back and forth,” he says. “That really hasn’t been shown before.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
We must die
What is common to diskette or a USB memory stick and the cloud service?
The correct answer is death. Storage media all have been killed by their predecessors to extinction, and at the same time changed the whole world.
The old technology of death has always been present in the rapidly developing IT sector.
It-old techniques in the field of death is commonplace, and the whole industry has over the last few decades, a thoroughly revamped several times. Right now we live in a huge mobility takeover, which has shaken the industry and companies from the roots.
Huge brake on development are people and attitudes. Habits change much more slowly than technology-enabled tools for us. Total renewal is far from an easy task. It requires questioning, safe practices, and to forget the tremendous effort.
In a globalized world will succeed best by those who work most effectively. Efficiency does not necessarily mean long hours, but the better the end result that we can get by doing things smarter.
Tighter competition should take a lesson from your USB drive and give the old attitudes die to make way for the new.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/blogit/2015-03-19/Meid%C3%A4n-pit%C3%A4%C3%A4-kuolla-3217668.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/526111/how-the-internet-is-taking-away-americas-religion/
Using the Internet can destroy your faith. That’s the conclusion of a study showing that the dramatic drop in religious affiliation in the U.S. since 1990 is closely mirrored by the increase in Internet use.
Back in 1990, about 8 percent of the U.S. population had no religious preference. By 2010, this percentage had more than doubled to 18 percent.
That raises an obvious question: how come? Why are Americans losing their faith?
But that does not mean that it is impossible to draw conclusions from correlations, only that they must be properly guarded. “Correlation does provide evidence in favor of causation, especially when we can eliminate alternative explanations or have reason to believe that they are less likely,” says Downey.
So that leaves us with a mystery. The drop in religious upbringing and the increase in Internet use seem to be causing people to lose their faith. But something else about modern life that is not captured in this data is having an even bigger impact.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SXSW Create: Sparkfun Gives Kids Awesome Badges to Hack
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/19/sxsw-create-sparkfun-gives-kids-awesome-badges-to-hack/
The USB stick PCB is, as you guessed it, an Arduino compatible loaded up with an FTDI chip and an ATmega328p which they call the BadgerStick. Accompanying this is a multiplexed 8×7 LED matrix board. Solder the three pin headers and the battery holder leads, connect to the plastic badge using the supplied double-stick tape, and you have a badge that scrolls a message in LEDs.
What an awesome giveaway.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP:
What’s Next for China? The Chinese Telecom Industry’s Effect on its Economy — With China’s scale and ceaseless drive to innovate, telecom tech could be key to the nation’s continued growth as the world’s leading financial market.
What’s Next for China? The Chinese Telecom Industry’s Effect on its Economy
https://ssl.www8.hp.com/hpmatter/issue-no-4-spring-2015/whats-next-china-chinese-telecom-industrys-effect-its-economy
With China’s scale and ceaseless drive to innovate, telecom tech could be key to the nation’s continued growth as the world’s leading financial market.
Depending on how you crunch the numbers, China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest economy, or is very close to doing so. Now it faces the so-called middle-income trap—the precarious step that separates economies based on cheap labor from those fueled by added value. That’s why the telecom industry, one of the country’s fastest-growing sectors, could play a key role in China’s larger economic future.
China’s Mobile Market
With close to 1.3 billion mobile-phone owners and 700 million Internet users, China is the most populous digital-telecom market in the world. But scale alone is only part of the story. In per capita terms, telecommunications spending is relatively low in China. Despite all those Internet users, for example, China only narrowly surpassed the U.S. market of 277 million users in electronic retail spending in 2013 ($295 billion to $270 billion, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute). And China’s total Internet economy, worth some $407 billion, was just over half the size of the U.S.’s, valued at $721 billion.
The Growth Cycle
Take, for example, China’s smartphone and tablet markets. In 2015, the number of operational devices in China is expected to exceed 900 million—an impressive step up from 700 million in 2014 and a quantum leap from 380 million in 2013, according to the McKinsey report.
The growth rate may be slowing, but it has triggered a boom for mobile apps and advertising. This market will double in size by 2018 (from $7.1 billion in 2014 to $15.7 billion), according to research by the London-based analysis firm IHS.
New Thinking
Traditionally, Chinese tech firms are famous for imitating foreign technology. There are independent Chinese versions of Facebook (Renren) and Twitter (Weibo). Even the Chinese tech firm Xiaomi has been dubbed, fairly or unfairly, “China’s Apple.” But in recent years, Chinese consumers are setting their own trends and Chinese firms are introducing their own innovations.
Challenges
Scale and ambition can move economic mountains. But China’s climb toward continued, sustainable tech growth is not without friction. The two biggest obstacles in telecom may prove to be online censorship and data security.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Content Barons, Smart Dust & SkyNet: 6 Telecommunications Disruptions for 2020
Technical innovation will be critical to the telecom industry over the next five years.
https://ssl.www8.hp.com/hpmatter/issue-no-4-spring-2015/content-barons-smart-dust-skynet-6-telecommunications-disruptions-2020
The six major disruptions that will drive the most change in Telecommunications by 2020 are:
Integration
Thingification
Mobility
Saturation
Security
Ascension
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s ResearchKit: Is open source good for your and Apple’s health?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/apple-teardown-and-analysis-collection/4438964/Will-Apple-s-ResearchKit-help-you-stay-fit-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150319&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150319&elq=8537e6a5171348dd8daa78354e03b5ab&elqCampaignId=22171&elqaid=24905&elqat=1&elqTrackId=60154b0afc6c4da8ba05d00173709428
Apple’s website defines it as “an open source software framework that makes it easy for researchers and developers to create apps that could revolutionize medical studies, potentially transforming medicine forever.” As I heard the pitch, I was reminded of SETI@home, a distributed-computing volunteer project that those of you old enough (like me) and geeky enough (ditto) might also remember.
Researchers sure seem enthused; check out, for example, this recent quote from Alan Yeung, medical director of Stanford Cardiovascular Health, after having received 11,000 signups for MyHeart Counts in the first 24 hours of the application’s availability:
To get 10,000 people enrolled in a medical study normally, it would take a year and 50 medical centers around the country.
With that all said, however, I do have a few concerns:
iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and the like appeal to a demographic that skews younger and more affluent than the norm. As such, it’s not clear to me to what degree the data generated by iOS-based ResearchKit apps will be indicative of the population at large.
Speaking of data, its associated demographics are highly dependent on the honesty (and more general willingness to divulge personal information) of its users. Age, gender, ethnicity, income level, height, weight, and other similar attributes are both important to researchers and feasible to be fudged by participants.
Tomi Engdahl says:
At Kodak, Clinging to a Future Beyond Film
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/business/at-kodak-clinging-to-a-future-beyond-film.html?_r=0
Of the roughly 200 buildings that once stood on the 1,300-acre campus of Eastman Kodak’s business park in Rochester, 80 have been demolished and 59 others sold off. Terry Taber, bespectacled, 60, and a loyal Kodak employee of 34 years, still works in one of the remaining Kodak structures, rubble from demolition not far from its doors.
Mr. Taber oversees research and development at Kodak. Many people might be surprised to know that Kodak is still in business at all, much less employing someone in the hopeful-sounding enterprise of developing new technology ideas. But if the film company, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2013, has any light in its future, Mr. Taber is likely to have something to do with it.
In a warren of basement labs, some of the 300 scientists and engineers who work for Mr. Taber are studying nanoparticle wonder inks, cheap sensors that can be embedded in packaging to indicate whether meats or medicines have spoiled, and touch screens that could make smartphones cheaper.
Much of this is old stuff, left over from the company’s glory days. But Mr. Taber’s boss hopes that somewhere in those projects there might be a nugget of gold.
“I’m mining the history of this company for its underlying technologies,”
What happens after a tech company is left for dead but the people left behind refuse to give up the fight? At Kodak the answer is to dig deep into a legacy of innovation in the photography business and see if its remaining talent in optics and chemistry can be turned into new money in other industries.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mothers of innovation: 12 women engineers and scientists to know
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/serious-fun/4438969/Mothers-of-innovation–12-women-engineers-and-scientists-to-know?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150320&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150320&elq=bc8d101d34d64663893df91a947c6e77&elqCampaignId=22186&elqaid=24922&elqat=1&elqTrackId=714c8ac30fc44ea39f354291ecf66e78
a list of 12 women who have made significant contributions to engineering, science, technology, and mathematics.
These women are mothers of innovation and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) exploration, whose work has influenced the course of humanity and who have pioneered new fields like Tesla, Moore, and other engineers, whom history also often forgets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s ResearchKit: Is open source good for your and Apple’s health?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/apple-teardown-and-analysis-collection/4438964/Will-Apple-s-ResearchKit-help-you-stay-fit-
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Manifesto for Makers
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1326083&
The maker ethos is not unlike that of the athlete and can be found in faraway Russia or the local Maker Faire, says veteran engineer Lee Felsenstein.
It has been said that humanity can be separated into two basic personality types — the Apollonian, whose existential statement is “I think, therefore I am” and the Dionysian, who says “I feel, therefore I am.” This, of course, is simplistic – there are many other types. One that I identify with is the Hephaestian, whose statement is: “I make, therefore I am.”
Hephaestians are the makers, those who ask, “How can you solve a problem if you don’t have one?” We take delight in the process of conceptualization continually tied to realization. We are continuously drawn to the realization of physical structures, or of non-physical structures that have a life in the physical universe more than in the abstract intellect.
Last year I lectured in Russia and heard a presentation by a Russian sociologist who had studied the culture of the Hephestians in the Soviet Union where entire “academic cities” were built to nurture them. These young elite programmers and engineers, as it turned out, were enthusiastic physical sportsmen, confirming the thesis that I was explaining in my lectures – that the phenomenon of hacking was in fact another manifestation of sport.
Why does one go through years of development, consisting mostly of failure, pursuing the elusive goal of performance beyond one’s personal best, when it would mostly be misunderstood by those who had never been there, and when the reward would be only the opportunity to try again to do better? Material reward is tied to such success only loosely — both types of athletes must adapt their economic life to this pursuit of virtuosity.
We do it because we love to, and we do not yet have an answer to the question of the source of this love. Everywhere on Earth people pursue this same quest, one that will never end, and find fulfillment in the process. This is a mystery.
Go to the Maker Faire and you will see not only the high-tech gizmos that young technologists are developing. Look further into the corners of the exhibition halls and you will find table after table of crafters working in fabric, string, plastic, cardboard and wood. They have always been there, a majority being women. Walk among them, handle their products, and talk with them – and see the world being continuously reborn.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers? (Infographic)
http://blog.startupcompass.co/how-much-should-you-pay-your-engineers
With the world’s ever-expanding appetite for great engineering talent, hiring is becoming a larger and larger challenge for tech companies. Never has it been more critical to know just how much you should pay that promising candidate.
If you’re a startup — How do your salaries compete with more traditional IT firms? Where in the world is the cheapest place to source talent? And if you’re bootstrapping development, which are the least expensive programming languages to work with?
If you’re an IT firm — Are freelance or in-house resources more cost effective? What is a benchmark career path for an engineer?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will technology help us escape urban commuting hell?
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30981226?utm_source=eCampaign&utm_medium=E_mail&utm_campaign=201503-iA-IoTMart-eNews-AEU-C000005804_1-0&CampId=ca14d332b5&UID=vKYPLp
Fed up of endless traffic jams and overcrowded trains? Then how about commuting to work in your own jetpack?
New Zealand firm Martin Aircraft Company is building a one-person jetpack scheduled to go on sale in 2016. And it actually seems to work.
Although currently slated for use by emergency services, it is only a small leap to imagine it in the hands of commuters.
Meanwhile cities’ populations are expanding rapidly, and congestion, pollution and travel stress look likely to rise in tandem, unless we seriously reform our creaking urban transport systems.
Some cities are investing in big infrastructure projects, such as London’s Crossrail, while others see the future lying with greener transport alternatives, like electric buses or bike-sharing schemes.
Copenhagen’s e-bikes have tablet computers installed between the handlebars with onboard GPS navigation. Users can book and pay for the bikes via their smartphones.
In other cities around the world, authorities are rolling out fleets of electric buses and trialling wireless charging, where buses drive onto special platforms to be charged when in the depot.
In the UK, the Carbon Trust believes that by 2050 up to half of the country’s light duty vehicles could be powered by hydrogen fuel cells, with water as the only waste product.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finland’s Education System Supersedes “Subjects” With “Topics”
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/03/22/2059235/finlands-education-system-supersedes-subjects-with-topics
Finland is about to embark on one of the most radical education reform programs ever undertaken by a nation state – scrapping traditional “teaching by subject” in favor of “teaching by topic”. The motivation to do this is to prepare people better for working life.
Finland schools: Subjects scrapped and replaced with ‘topics’ as country reforms its education system
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/finland-schools-subjects-are-out-and-topics-are-in-as-country-reforms-its-education-system-10123911.html
For years, Finland has been the by-word for a successful education system, perched at the top of international league tables for literacy and numeracy.
Only far eastern countries such as Singapore and China outperform the Nordic nation in the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Politicians and education experts from around the world – including the UK – have made pilgrimages to Helsinki in the hope of identifying and replicating the secret of its success.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that Finland is about to embark on one of the most radical education reform programmes ever undertaken by a nation state – scrapping traditional “teaching by subject” in favour of “teaching by topic”.
“This is going to be a big change in education in Finland that we’re just beginning,”
“What we need now is a different kind of education to prepare people for working life.”
“We therefore have to make the changes in education that are necessary for industry and modern society.”
Subject-specific lessons – an hour of history in the morning, an hour of geography in the afternoon – are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course might take “cafeteria services” lessons, which would include elements of maths, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and communication skills.
More academic pupils would be taught cross-subject topics such as the European Union – which would merge elements of economics, history (of the countries involved), languages and geography.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slideshow
Mothers of Innovation: 12 Women Engineers and Scientists to Know
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326100&
Tomi Engdahl says:
First Prototype of a Working Tricorder Unveiled At SXSW
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/03/23/1954242/first-prototype-of-a-working-tricorder-unveiled-at-sxsw
The $10 million Tricorder X-prize is getting to the “put up or shut up” stage: The 10 finalists must turn in their working devices on June 1st for consumer testing. At SXSW last week, the finalist team Cloud DX showed off its prototype, which includes a wearable collar, a base station, a blood-testing stick, and a scanning wand.
http://tricorder.xprize.org/
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/biomedical/devices/first-prototype-of-a-working-tricorder-unveiled-at-sxsw
Tomi Engdahl says:
The AI Resurgence: Why Now?
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/ai-resurgence-now/
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been enjoying a major resurgence in recent months and for some seasoned professionals, who have been in the AI industry since the 1980s, it feels like déjà vu all over again.
AI, being a loosely defined collection of techniques inspired by natural intelligence, does have a mystic aspect to it. After all, we do culturally assign positive value to all things smart, and so we naturally expect any system imbued with AI to be good, or it is not AI. When AI works, it is only doing what it is supposed to do, no matter how complex an algorithm being used to enable it, but when it fails to work–even if what was asked of it is impractical or out of scope—it is often not considered intelligent anymore. Just think of your personal assistant.
For these reasons, AI has typically gone through cycles of promise, leading to investment, and then under-delivery, due to the expectation problem noted above, which has inevitably led to a tapering off of the funding.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TOP500 Supers make boffins more prolific
Universities with big iron become bigger publishers, better PhD factories
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/25/does_your_university_need_hpc_it_depends_on_disciplines/
A comparative analysis of supercomputer ownership by US universities seems to suggest that TOP500-class iron gives institutions a quantifiable edge in physics, chemistry, civil engineering and evolutionary biology.
In the kind of rational decision-making that will upset HPC sales teams
Supers double the efficiency of chemistry research, the study found; in civil engineering the payoff was about 35 per cent greater efficiency, while evolutionary biology got an 11 per cent boost and physics was nine per cent more efficient.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Manufacturing Industry Short on Tech Talent
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1326120&
Manufacturing in the US is trying to rebound, but a shortage of technical talent may impede progress.
America’s aging manufacturing base may finally be on the rebound, but it still faces an unexpected dilemma — lack of trained technical people to carry out the work.
The problem is so acute that many OEMs openly recruit trained technical workers from suppliers, in some cases paying penalties for doing so.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chromebook promotes digital learning for the classroom
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438987/Chromebook-promotes-digital-learning-for-the-classroom?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150325&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150325&elq=df36024f3ffa4bef9daad50266cf4234&elqCampaignId=22222&elqaid=24959&elqat=1&elqTrackId=05a70846288244c0a59c46dae1f6c4b2
RGS, a business unit of Avnet, has launched the RGS Education Chromebook, a purpose-built, ruggedized laptop aimed at school districts looking to deploy digital learning in the classroom with a platform that leverages a Google Chrome OS and Google Apps. The computer is the result of collaboration between RGS, Google, and Intel to provide school districts with a simple, secure, and always up-to-date vehicle to advance and develop students’ digital literacy skills.
A snap-on magnification lens supplied with each unit enables it to function as a microscope. Educators can combine the microscope with popular STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) applications and calculators available in the Google Chrome Web store.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digitalization there is no through technology, but through culture
Digitalization – the word which he highlighted in media. The word can be found today in every degree of certainty of future promotional e-mail messages, newsletter and training specials, social media feeds.
Almost all of these messages spoken progress of technology, which enables the digitization.
I maintain that digitalisation is more about the culture and practices change, as well as the development of the technology.
I maintain that the development of technology itself does not make digitization breakthrough.
When a new technology introduced into existing practice and culture in the middle, the result is likely to change, which can improve efficiency.
However, it is unlikely that the case would a new model to do business or provide services. We are habitual ways of thinking models prisoners.
Buckminster Fuller (architect and visionary) put it: “You never change things by fighting the existing in reality. To change something, build a new model That makes the existing in the model obsolete.”
The advancement of technology and the amount of data can be extracted from the fruit, the culture and behavior are changed first, because cultural change will give us better equipped to break the barriers to their way of thinking.
I think the customary behaviors are the biggest obstacle to the digitalisation would best benefit out of it. The best thing we can do is to create opportunities for cultural and operational change.
Create a team which is involved in a variety of experts. A good team of people with different backgrounds and ways of thinking will help to create new models and allows the old ways of operating models get out of it.
The team must also know-how to implement their ideas.
Let, therefore, the power and the opportunity for the team to decide for themselves matters, whether in practice, the progress of, or actions.
Without the power to decide their own affairs completely change does not arise. Give permission to fail, but also the responsibility to learn from each failure.
If the team’s activities will be monitored too closely and too much, there is a risk that the results and activities are examined in the light of habitual ways of meters. This can paralyze the team’s ability to think about things in a new way.
Team must be aware of their responsibilities. Team’s mission is to implement and to get at things. Not to think about what could occur, and to try things just to try for joy.
Ambition must be sufficiently high.
Continuous feedback to the team is important. How does the new product or service has been introduced, how it is used.
Digital services are developing rapidly, and they take a bigger and bigger role in consumers’ everyday life.
Change in the customer base is continuous and sometimes surprisingly quick.
For that reason, the most important investment is an investment in the performance and culture – agility, transparency, openness and responsiveness. It investing in independent teams play an important role.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/CIO/cio_100/2015-03-26/Digitalisaatio-ei-synny-teknologian-vaan-kulttuurin-kautta-3218056.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
European Commission Proposes “Digital Single Market” and End To Geoblocking
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/03/25/2227227/european-commission-proposes-digital-single-market-and-end-to-geoblocking
A new initiative from the European Commission proposes a reformed “single digital market”, addressing a number of issues that it sees as obstructions to EU growth, including geoblocking — where services such as BBC’s iPlayer are only available to IP addresses within the host country — and the high cost of parcel delivery and administration of disparate VAT rates across the member states.
European Commission – Press release
Digital Single Market Strategy: European Commission agrees areas for action
Brussels, 25 March 2015
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-4653_en.htm
Vice-President for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip said: “Let us do away with all those fences and walls that block us online. People must be able to freely go across borders online just as they do offline. Innovative businesses must be helped to grow across the EU, not remain locked into their home market. This will be an uphill struggle all the way, but we need an ambitious start. Europe should benefit fully from the digital age: better services, more participation and new jobs”.
Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society Günther H. Oettinger said: “Europe cannot be at the forefront of the digital revolution with a patchwork of 28 different rules for telecommunications services, copyright, IT security and data protection. We need a European market, which allows new business models to flourish, start-ups to grow and the industry to take advantage of the internet of things. And people have to invest too – in their IT-skills, be it in their job or their leisure time”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Free Is Not the Future of Digital Content in Education
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/free-not-future-digital-content-education/
As Chief Content Officer of a learning company, people frequently ask me: “Won’t all of your content eventually be free? After all, when technology enters the market, free is right behind it.”
Primary and secondary education presents another case where technology fundamentally changes the way content is experienced.
There are 30 different learning styles in my classroom and I have to reach them all.
Technology helps me do this. As students engage with the content, the content learns more about the students and it also becomes “smarter”.
In doing so, technology helps solves a big problem that has always confronted teachers: students learn at different paces.
You get the picture. In this case, technology is making educational content better. It is increasing its value. It is now able to solve a long-existing challenge. It is enabling content to do things that it could not do before. And the stakes could not be higher.
The quality of educational content has a marked impact on student achievement.
Digital-age technology is showing up in classrooms across the United States. But that doesn’t mean that “free is right behind it.” High-quality content, delivered through smart digital platforms, makes it possible for teachers to work with their students in ways they never could have imagined before. And given what’s at stake, that’s something worth investing in.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How PARC Saved Xerox
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2015/03/21/how-parc-saved-xerox/
Xerox invented the core technology that made personal computing easy and fun—the mouse, the graphical user interface and the ethernet—but it was Steve Jobs who built the Macintosh and profited. By now, the story has become so well known that it’s almost a cliche.
The story resonates because it ties into two recurring themes: The wily entrepreneur outmaneuvering the bloated corporate behemoth and the primacy of business acumen over the development of core technology. Yet there’s a lot more to it than that.
PARC—Xerox’s legendary Palo Alto Research Center—was vastly more than a mere collection of tinkering eggheads. In fact, it was an investment that paid handsome returns and generated profits long after the decline of the core copier business. To see why, you only have to know the story of Gary Starkweather and the invention of the laser printer.
In the early sixties, Xerox was working on a new technology called “long distance xerography,” which was basically like a big industrial version of a fax machine.
Starkweather, who had recently gotten his Masters degree in Optics at the University of Rochester, was assigned to improve the technology and had an idea about how to do it. Instead of using a cathode ray tube (the same technology used in old fashioned TV’s), it seemed obvious to him that lasers were just the right tool for the job.
He met with some resistance—lasers were a new, mostly untested technology at the time—but he persevered and eventually succeeded. He was able to make a machine that could print out 60 pages a minute, which eventually led to one that printed at 120 pages a minute. For the time, it was an engineering marvel.
Yet, the fax system never became a great business. So Starkweather started thinking about other applications for his system and that’s what landed him in hot water.
He did, however, see that his technology could make a great printer for computers. The only problem was that his division wasn’t working on computers. His boss, perhaps not surprisingly, wanted Starkweather to improve his business, not someone elses. He was, in fact, so hostile to the idea that he threatened to fire anyone who worked on the project.
Eventually, things came to a head and Starkweather went over his boss’s head. He walked into the Senior Vice President’s office and threatened, “Do you want me to do this for you or for someone else?” In the stuffy corporate culture of Xerox, it was almost unheard of behavior, but he was so convinced in the potential of his idea that he was willing to lose his job over it.
Fate, however, soon intervened. Word of Starkweather’s apostasy and his idea had travelled across the country, to PARC, Xerox’s research center in California, and they were excited by the concept. Unlike the corporate types back east, they were very much interested in computers and invited Starkweather out for a presentation.
Starkweather was transferred to PARC and got to work making a functional version of his printer. At first, they just attached his invention to an old Xerox 7000 copier and used it internally. Amazingly, that year PARC itself printed out more than 4 million copies that year on his first laser printer coupled with an image generator built by Dr. Ron Rider.
Knowing they had a winner, they created a commercial version based on the Xerox 9200 copier and dubbed it the Xerox 9700 Laser Printer, which could print out two pages page per second at 300 dpi
Within a few years it became a multi-billion dollar product and soon outgrew the copier business.
The laser printer was not, by a longshot, the only revolutionary technology platform to arise out of PARC. I already mentioned the transformative user interface technologies that ended up in the Macintosh (and Microsoft Windows too, for that matter). The ethernet, the technology that allows computers in our office to work together, was also a PARC invention.
So while it’s tempting to see PARC as a technological success, but a business failure, that’s not quite right. The breakthrough in laser printing alone would probably justify the investment. The important lesson to learn from Xerox and PARC is that technology does not succeed or fail in a vacuum. Every platform needs an ecosystem to survive.
So while Starkweather’s idea landed on fallow ground in the corporate ecosystem back east, it thrived in the Northern California, home to many defense contractors working on computer technology. Spin-offs like Adobe and 3Com, untethered to Xerox’s particular ecosystem, were free to find more fertile ground and succeeded fabulously.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Re-purposing Old Electronics to Inspire New Designs
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/27/re-purposing-old-electronics-to-inspire-new-designs/
We love seeing how things work. Exploded views are like mechanical eye-candy to most engineers, so when [Chris’] Kindle Touch died, he decided to give it new life… on his wall.
Inspired by others, he decided to mount all the components of his Kindle onto a piece of plastic that he could hang up on his wall. As an electronics design engineer, he’s always looking for new ideas and ways to design and build circuits — what better way to inspire creativity than to see a real product blown apart?
Making Broken Electronics Into Wall Art
http://happyrobotlabs.com/uncategorized/making-broken-electronics-into-wall-art/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software developer shortage hits Eastern Europe: Romania’s plan to stay ahead in the game
http://www.zdnet.com/article/software-developer-shortage-hits-eastern-europe-romanias-plan-to-stay-ahead-in-the-game/
Summary:With more and more IT companies expanding or opening offices in the country, Romania has to come up with solutions.
Romania needs to increase its number of IT professionals in order to maintainits advantage as an outsourcing location and to nurture its startup environment. A shortage of skilled developers, a trend that hit the US before moving to Western Europe, is now beginning to extend to the Eastern border of the European Union. Companies currently require up to two months to hire a developer, and many of the more niche job offers posted online barely get a handful of applications.
The country is addressing the developer shortage issue on a number of levels: universities are being encouraged to educate more students in the field; software companies are joining forces to create their own academies; and a few startups are organising crash courses that promise jobs to those who join. In addition, some companies look for IT personnel in neighbouring countries
Educating a developer requires years of hard work, and importing one with the right skills from abroad is sometimes easier. Some devs are lured with money
The education system doesn’t have all the answers, however. “The academic environment cannot provide a largely increased number of ICT specialists in a reasonable time interval by opening new study programs or new faculties,”
He said that bureaucracy, conservatism, and even academia getting too comfortable are among the factors that prevent the wheels from being set in motion. “The viable solution is alternative education systems. We already have companies that created their own academies, for instance Cisco,” he told ZDNet.
Retraining could be part of the solution to the software developer shortage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ellen Pao Disrupts How Silicon Valley Does Business
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/technology/ellen-pao-disrupts-how-silicon-valley-does-business.html?_r=0
Silicon Valley is enamored of “disrupters,” those shrewd, brave men — it is almost always men — who are hailed for enduring years of ridicule and risking everything to shake up the conventional order.
Often, Silicon Valley’s disrupters do not succeed on the terms they initially envision.
“Many men in the Valley genuinely believe that their company is a meritocracy,” said Karen Catlin, a former software engineer and a former vice president of Adobe Systems. “They think that the gender problem is something that happens somewhere else.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lauren Smiley / Matter:
The on-demand world isn’t about sharing; it’s about being served and self-isolation
The Shut-In Economy
https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816
In the new world of on-demand everything, you’re either pampered, isolated royalty — or you’re a 21st century servant.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matthew S Carroll / Medium:
MediaShift’s Mark Glaser talks innovation, news apps, and the future of investigative reporting
https://medium.com/@matthewscarroll/mediashift-s-mark-glaser-talks-innovation-news-apps-and-the-future-of-investigative-reporting-b5a6991a5c82
The Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab spoke with Mark Glaser, who started MediaShift in 2006 as a small, one-person blog, with a focus on the changes revolutionizing media and media technology. He quickly realized what a massive topic it was and now his organization gets about 150,000 unique visitors per month at MediaShift and IdeaLab, the two main sites, while about 15,000 users download podcasts and another 15,000 get five newsletters. “We go where the subject takes us,” says Glaser. Its audience is a mix of people in the media industry, freelancers, people who run their own web sites or create podcasts, and journalism educators and students. MediaShift is an independent producer for PBS.org.
Q: Mark, you focus on innovation a lot. Where would you like to see more innovation?
A: Some of the legacy organizations are kind of stuck, especially in leadership roles. If there’s one area where news organizations could change, it’s first, to bring in more diversity, more women, more people of color. And number two, bring in people with a lot more experience in the digital realm. A lot of people come in and lead these organizations and talk a lot about digital and how it’s so important, but when their background is very much legacy, the changes don’t really come. I think there needs to be more change within the leadership before some of these organizations will change. It’s the same situation in journalism education. Some schools are really pushing for innovation. But 90–95 percent are doing the same things they always did, teaching people to write for newspapers, teaching people to broadcast. They are not really understanding that we must train people for the real world now, which is multi-skilled, multi-platform skilled, understanding web, SEO, promoting themselves, entrepreneurial skills. All the things that journalists need now, they need to start training them for. If they don’t, they are not going to survive. Innovations really needs to be from the beginning, with training all the way up to leadership. That’s where I’d like to see more innovation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How much sleep do engineers need?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/voice-of-the-engineer/4311784/How-much-sleep-do-engineers-need-
Rumor has it that Leonardo Da Vinci, an engineer in his own right, followed a polyphasic sleep schedule to make more time in the day to work on his projects. Fans of Seinfeld will remember the episode where Kramer tried to copy Da Vinci by only sleeping 20 minutes every three hours.
So the results of such sleep patterns, at least according to sitcoms, can be disastrous
This brings us to this week’s question: How much sleep do you need per day to be at the top of your game as an engineer and why?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Do You Know How to Engineer, Modify, and Use Emergency Preparedness Systems?
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=277040&
If a major catastrophe strikes your area, will you be prepared? Do you have the right kind of technology in place for disasters typical in your region
natural disasters are on the rise, said Gabay, and many people assume they’re prepared until something happens and they realize they’re not.
You also need technology that actually works. Gabay has seen some products marketed for emergency preparedness that have insufficient power; don’t work; or are actually designed to fail, such as shaker flashlights with a short-circuited coil. He wants to help course attendees shift their thinking into more of a MacGyver process versus a purchase process. “We have to be prepared for unknown situations with the right tools, supplies, resources, and knowhow, and imagination is a big part of it,” he said. “Also, in a crisis non-engineers will come to the engineers for help.”
Engineers designing emergency preparedness products that can save people’s lives need to know how to do it right, said Gabay. “You don’t want to use fancy enclosures and clips that need fancy mechanical tools. If you have to replace a fuse, you don’t want to struggle in the cold and the dark trying to figure out someone else’s logic.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lauren Smiley / Matter:
The on-demand world isn’t about sharing; it’s about being served and self-isolation
The Shut-In Economy
https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816
In the new world of on-demand everything, you’re either pampered, isolated royalty — or you’re a 21st century servant.
GrubHub’s advertising banks on us secretly never wanting to talk to a human again: “Everything great about eating, combined with everything great about not talking to people.” DoorDash, another food delivery service, goes for the all-caps, batshit extreme:
“NEVER LEAVE HOME AGAIN.”
Katherine van Ekert isn’t a shut-in, exactly, but there are only two things she ever has to run errands for any more: trash bags and saline solution. For those, she must leave her San Francisco apartment and walk two blocks to the drug store, “so woe is my life,” she tells me.
Basically, people a lot like herself. That’s the common wisdom: the apps are created by the urban young for the needs of urban young. The potential of delivery with a swipe of the finger is exciting for van Ekert, who grew up without such services in Sydney and recently arrived in wired San Francisco. “I’m just milking this city for all it’s worth,” she says. “I was talking to my father on Skype the other day. He asked, ‘Don’t you miss a casual stroll to the shop?’ Everything we do now is time-limited, and you do everything with intention. There’s not time to stroll anywhere.”
So here’s the big question. What does she, or you, or any of us do with all this time we’re buying? Binge on Netflix shows? Go for a run? Van Ekert’s answer: “It’s more to dedicate more time to working.”
Alfred, maybe, is the inevitable end point of this system. It’s an on-demand assistant that coordinates all the other on-demand apps for you, and it’s aimed at two groups: people who want the benefits of various apps but don’t want to bother setting them all up, and the “air traffic controllers,” who already have so many services coming to relieve their burden that coordinating them has become a new burden all of its own.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon launches Home Services to sell everything from an oil change to piano lessons
The e-commerce giant wants to bring you that new hammock and the handyman to install it
http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/30/8309573/amazon-launches-home-services
Amazon started out as an online bookstore, but has since expanded into selling almost any physical goods you can think of. But the company believes a lot of the stuff people buy on Amazon are things they could actually use help assembling, installing, or learning to enjoy.
Today, the company is launching a new section in the US, Home Services, where customers can shop for professional help. It’s launching with 700 different services, from the ordinary to the esoteric
A big part of the sales pitch from Amazon is that they are doing the hard work of figuring out who you can trust.
Amazon says it accepts an average of three out of every 100 service professionals in each metro area. It makes sure each business is licensed, insured, and passes a five-point background check, with a further six-point background check for each technician.
The second half of Amazon’s promise is speed and transparency. The marketing materials claim it takes 60 seconds to buy a service, regardless of whether that is deck repair, house cleaning, or hedge trimming. “We really make something transparent for customers which is difficult today,” says Faricy. “We have standardized and prepackaged all of our service offerings. So you know exactly what is going to be done and how much it’s going to cost you, up front, no surprises.”
That sounds nice, although it seems likely that many of these services won’t be so easy to fit into just a few multiple choice questions.
Faricy says that the majority of the labor available on the market will be small, local providers, but Home Services is also integrating with startups
Tomi Engdahl says:
No Film At 11: the Case For the Less-Video-Is-More MOOC
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/03/31/0227247/no-film-at-11-the-case-for-the-less-video-is-more-mooc
In Why My MOOC is Not Built on Video, GWU’s Lorena Barba explains why the Practical Numerical Methods with Python course she and colleagues put together has but one video: “Why didn’t we have more video? The short answer is budget and time: making good-quality videos is expensive & making simple yet effective educational videos is time consuming, if not necessarily costly.
Why My MOOC is Not Built on Video
https://www.class-central.com/report/why-my-mooc-is-not-built-on-video/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why You Should Choose Boring Technology
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/03/30/2245223/why-you-should-choose-boring-technology
Dan McKinley, a long-time Etsy engineer who now works at online payment processor Stripe, argues that the boring technology option is usually your best choice for a new project. He says, “Let’s say every company gets about three innovation tokens. You can spend these however you want, but the supply is fixed for a long while. You might get a few more after you achieve a certain level of stability and maturity, but the general tendency is to overestimate the contents of your wallet.”
“The nice thing about boringness (so constrained) is that the capabilities of these things are well understood. But more importantly, their failure modes are well understood.”
Choose Boring Technology
http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
What counts as boring? That’s a little tricky. “Boring” should not be conflated with “bad.” There is technology out there that is both boring and bad [2]. You should not use any of that. But there are many choices of technology that are boring and good, or at least good enough. MySQL is boring. Postgres is boring. PHP is boring. Python is boring. Memcached is boring. Squid is boring. Cron is boring.
The nice thing about boringness (so constrained) is that the capabilities of these things are well understood. But more importantly, their failure modes are well understood. Anyone who knows me well will understand that it’s only with a overwhelming sense of malaise that I now invoke the spectre of Don Rumsfeld, but I must.
When choosing technology, you have both known unknowns and unknown unknowns [3].
A known unknown is something like: we don’t know what happens when this database hits 100% CPU.
An unknown unknown is something like: geez it didn’t even occur to us that writing stats would cause GC pauses.
Both sets are typically non-empty, even for tech that’s existed for decades. But for shiny new technology the magnitude of unknown unknowns is significantly larger, and this is important.
Adding technology to your company comes with a cost.
The problem with “best tool for the job” thinking is that it takes a myopic view of the words “best” and “job.” Your job is keeping the company in business, god damn it. And the “best” tool is the one that occupies the “least worst” position for as many of your problems as possible.
It is basically always the case that the long-term costs of keeping a system working reliably vastly exceed any inconveniences you encounter while building it. Mature and productive developers understand this.
Choose New Technology, Sometimes.
One of the most worthwhile exercises I recommend here is to consider how you would solve your immediate problem without adding anything new.
It can be amazing how far a small set of technology choices can go. The answer to this question in practice is almost never “we can’t do it,” it’s usually just somewhere on the spectrum of “well, we could do it, but it would be too hard” [4]. If you think you can’t accomplish your goals with what you’ve got now, you are probably just not thinking creatively enough.
It’s helpful to write down exactly what it is about the current stack that makes solving the problem prohibitively expensive and difficult.
New technology choices might be purely additive (for example: “we don’t have caching yet, so let’s add memcached”). But they might also overlap or replace things you are already using. If that’s the case, you should set clear expectations about migrating old functionality to the new system.
Just Ship.
Polyglot programming is sold with the promise that letting developers choose their own tools with complete freedom will make them more effective at solving problems. This is a naive definition of the problems at best, and motivated reasoning at worst. The weight of day-to-day operational toil this creates crushes you to death.
Mindful choice of technology gives engineering minds real freedom: the freedom to contemplate bigger questions. Technology for its own sake is snake oil.