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.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
A Tiny Pill Monitors Vital Signs From Deep Inside The Body
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/18/455953304/a-tiny-pill-monitors-vital-signs-from-deep-inside-the-body?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2044
After testing all the pieces of a tiny pill-size device, Albert Swiston sent it on a unique journey: through the guts of six live Yorkshire pigs.
Pig bodies are a lot like human bodies, and Swiston wanted to know whether the device would be able to monitor vital signs from inside a body. It did.
It’s the latest in a small but growing group of devices that soldiers, athletes, astronauts and colonoscopy patients have gulped to collect information from odd recesses of the body. Swiston calls them “ingestibles.”
Other, less complex devices are being used in humans to monitor core body temperature, to photograph innards and to keep track of prescription use. But each one of those can monitor only one measure at a time.
Swiston’s tiny package monitors three at once. It includes a microphone, a thermometer and a battery with a long enough life to pass from mouth to rectum of whatever large mammal it’s traveling through.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 IT leaders share the technologists they’d invite to Thanksgiving dinner
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2015/11/10-it-leaders-share-technologists-theyd-invite-thanksgiving-dinner
For CIOs and IT executives, Thanksgiving is a time to unplug and take a short break from big data, the Internet of Things, cybersecurity, digital innovation, and all the other daily stresses of their job. However, if given the chance to host one of the legendary minds of the technology community – past or present – who wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to collaborate over the cranberry sauce.
For this article, we asked IT executives which techies they would share their Thanksgiving dinner with. Here’s what they said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
So why exactly are IT investors so utterly clueless?
I wash my hands of the whole matter
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/27/so_why_exactly_it_investors_utterly_clueless/
One of the things that used to drive me mad, and helped drive me out, was being surrounded by divs and flakes, with their embarrassingly daft app launches, misconceived proofs-of-concept, childishly incompetent business plans and – despite their frank incompetence – their six-figure salaries.
Unfortunately, this one dubious advantage was bulldozered by the knowledge that I was surrounded by millions of pounds sloshing between dopey investors and every dipshit Bitcoin development wanker to knock on their doors with yet another brain-dead scheme to lose their money.
Jealous? Perhaps. However, it is difficult to hold anything against the entrepreneurs themselves: they’re trying it on, and if it works, good luck to them. What riles me is how thick the investors are.
Someone’s created a website that looks like a cup of tea? Give him £50,000! You’ve invented a wristwatch selfie stick? Have £100,000! What that, you say, you want to develop an app that launches apps for running apps? Sounds cool, take £1m!
Can they not see that they are pouring hard cash into products with all the substance of a dick-swinging hipster’s electronic cigarette exhalation? Don’t they realise they’re investing money into no-hope projects that are simply faking it?
Worse, in today’s crowdfunding climate, we’re all idiots with money to burn. And it’s funnier because private individuals like us don’t even understand the difference between an investment and a loan. We are shocked and get angry when told that the crowdfunding project we invested in has failed after spending all our money.
Well, duh? As the presenter of Kickstarter Crap points out, while genuine commercial products are sold with the safety net of a returns policy, crowdfunding operates with a fuck-you-dumbass policy.
Wise up, that’s what investment means: for every four failed startups, you hope that fifth one will keep going long enough for you to sell it off to an even stupider investor for even more money before they find out the truth.
The thing is, so many of these startups sound so plainly idiotic, I am beginning to suspect that their very idiocy is part of their appeal. It’s as if their utter pointlessness and overwhelming unlikelihood of success is what makes them so attractive.
Consider those nutty stories that pop up from time to time about no-frills airlines: charging money for tap water, making passengers stand up, removing the toilets, dispensing with the wings, etc. None of them is true but they get reported anyway and the net result is always the same: sales for those airlines goes up, not down.
This all comes to mind yet again when my inbox informs me that a British tech startup called imertec (the self-conscious lower-case ‘i’ at the beginning of the name already makes me want to commit an equally self-conscious act of violence) has launched a Crowdcube campaign to develop an app that shows health workers how to wash their hands. It wants £360,000.
Let me run that by you again. How to wash your hands. £360,000.
You certainly do not need £360,000 of development cash to explain how to wash your hands, nor indeed another £520 to purchase the Epson Moverio BT-200 virtual reality glasses that are required to run imertec’s app.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comments from http://hackaday.com/2015/11/26/fail-of-the-week-dave-jones-and-the-case-of-the-terrible-tablet/
snow says:
November 26, 2015 at 2:27 pm
lab equipment indeed is a good business especially if the technician are not too smart. a company tried to sell us a “camera adapter” for 3k it was basically an aluminium tube with no optical element whatsoever… shameless… thankfully we were able to gracefully refuse their “offer”
Fennec says:
November 26, 2015 at 12:15 pm
And people wonder why science might be progressing slower; science has been turned into a business.
Apothus says:
November 27, 2015 at 4:09 am
The biggest problem is the vicious grants cycle. Research grants often go to what is ‘sexy’ or in vogue instead of the more left field interests. Therefore the breakthroughs are rarer. This is compounded by the requirement for researchers to constantly publish because this is the metric they are compared against for promotion, regardless of quality or social relevance. Outside of the grant system there is only business to fund research, because for some reason people with 8+ years of education also want to eat. Business research isn’t always bad, look at what Bell labs produced…..
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intensely creative understanding of corporate strategy, rules of the game
Know-how and experience in data lay the foundation for human action. In general, the effect of the operation is expected to positively: the more knowledge and experience, the more likely it produces the desired results. When you want a transgressor of borders – and the search for radically new, no previous expertise and experience is always, however, is not only unequivocally good things.
- On the contrary, Development Director Risto Linturi says.
- They can act in a completely new way of thinking and insight disincentives; as effective as a firewall searching usual unusual. This can be in many ways harmful for the company’s innovation.
Inexperience efficient creativity threat to our country’s competitiveness
Linturi believes that thinking is too often superficial. One of the reasons he likes the transformation of organizations more stringent for since the 90s.
- As a result, people are given specific roles and tasks according to the roles, in line with the organization’s structure. The structure is understood to be challenged, mainly geographical or task-limits and their movements, not by questioning the paradigms.
This is due to the inexperience of creative thinking.
- A creative person could come up with quite a wealth of radical ideas. Most of them are bad or employers’ organization unsuitable. Furthermore, the analysis of ideas takes time.
Many of the ideas to churn out people have been pushed aside.
- In part this has occurred because of the new ideas is not easily understood, even when they are good and partly because the untrained thinker to churn out the organization’s processes, too many poor-quality ideas, Linturi notes.
Creativity should her husband be effective.
- A creative person should be critical and careful and understand the organizational theory and business strategy, rules of the game. Thus, the world’s improvement ideas should not submit your own organization if your organization the competitive conditions they do not heal, Linturi says.
However, Finland is in dire need big leaps – residues are then bytes dé mindset, or through some other kind of reflection.
- Incremental innovations and the strengthening of the structures seem to lead to more minor improvements in relation to inputs, Linturi claims.
- Our position in the global economy will disappear, if we can not radical changes, as well as in business and the public sector. Manoeuvring Organization of the borders is not the answer to these questions, since it is thought to still traditional terms.
Source: http://www.aaltopro.fi/blog/tehokkaasti-luova-ymmartaa-yritysstrategian-pelisaannot
See more at: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=fi&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.fi&sl=fi&tl=en&u=http://www.aaltopro.fi/blog/tehokkaasti-luova-ymmartaa-yritysstrategian-pelisaannot&usg=ALkJrhiugmBbnAeGNrPxlCw2_ZZRWKQK3w#sthash.RMGpq8WK.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
One limiting factor is the senior management of organizations.
- Rainmaker study, good, profitable new ideas to recognize people not on the basis of personality progression as managers. CEOs typically are able to keep the plates spinning and organization greased, but for some reason they do not have the ability to imagine a world that does not yet exist; it is not part of the typical CEO’s strengths.
Strengths can always be improved.
- See more at: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=fi&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.fi&sl=fi&tl=en&u=http://www.aaltopro.fi/blog/tehokkaasti-luova-ymmartaa-yritysstrategian-pelisaannot&usg=ALkJrhiugmBbnAeGNrPxlCw2_ZZRWKQK3w#sthash.8BqEsSLZ.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Delayed Roadmap Set for Debut at TSensors Summit
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328358&
The MEMS and Sensors Industry Group has announced that it will release the outline of the TSensors (Trillion Sensors) Roadmap on December 9 at the 2015 TSensors Summit, being held in Celebration, Florida.
Only a roadmap outline is scheduled for disclosure in December but it will be accompanied with a plan for completion of the roadmap in 2016, the trade association said.
The purpose of the roadmap is to highlight ultra-high volume applications for sensors in 2025 and to help develop sensor platforms to meet them and thereby contribute to an acceleration towards a state of “abundance” where the world has neither hunger nor pollution and medical care and clean energy can be provided for all.
The TSensors program was established by Bryzek as a response to the book Abundance authored by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. This book looks at exponentially advancing technologies and their markets and argues that the judicious use of technology will make it possible to meet the basic needs of every man, woman, and child on the planet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technology Tackling Climate Change
Getting industry innovation behind world needs
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328360&
This week EE Times will feature updates on some of the carbon-reducing technologies being developed or already in use that could help companies, countries and citizens reduce their carbon footprint. These are some examples to show the infinite variety and to give credit to engineers and companies working on them.
There is little doubt that the climate is heating up (see NASA GISS chart below) and that it is due to the production of greens-house gases, which have been steadily increasing since the maturation of the industrial revolution circa 1880, according to The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2015) meeting this week in Paris at the Conference of the Parties (COP21, Nov. 30–Dec. 11).
Last year the IPCC declared that scientists were 95 percent certain that global warming is being caused (mostly) by increasing concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide—most of which is being produced by electrical power plants and internal combustion engines.
Carbon-free sustainable electrical power generation has been accomplished with power-generating river dams since the invention of the electrical generator, but in many places the dams are being disassembled because of the negative impact they have had on fish runs. No matter. We now have even cleaner methods of electrical power generation.
Solar cells
The most promising zero-carbon electrical power generators are solar cells, which already come in all sorts of formulations, sizes and capacities.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, every hour, enough energy from the sun reaches Earth to meet the world’s energy usage for an entire year. Of course its impossible to cover the lighted half of the 198 million square miles of the Earth’s surface in solar cells. Even collecting all 365 days of the year with widely distributed solar cell arrays illuminated half the day (12/7) at 20 percent efficiency would take over 225 thousand square miles to satisfy the entire world’s need for energy—a seemingly unachievable goal.
However, that is not stopping the world’s scientists from trying. One of the latest attempts comes from multi-band solar cells
Berkeley Lab’s trick is creating a defect-free atomically thin film of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) to create ultra-high-efficiency solar cells (and bright yet transparent displays for that matter).
“Solar cells are able to provide the highest possibly voltage when the photoluminescence quantum yield (a parameter that is extremely sensitive to defects) is perfect.”
Gasoline forever
With the Saudi’s pumping enough oil to keep prices below $2 a gallon, there is little incentive to pay a premium price for a electric car. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is counting on this, plus the fact that internal combustion still has the highest performance to weight ratio, by continuing to create ever lighter weight powertrain materials. ORNL’s stated target is Obama’s 55 miles per gallon mandate by 2025 and if they meet their goal–with near-zero emissions–the slow adoption of electric vehicles (EV) will be of little consequence.
ORNL claims that by “using higher temperature cast aluminum alloys we can contribute to cutting down green-house gases emissions using two beneficial characteristics; lighter weight and increased temperature capacity. The higher temperature capacity of cylinder head materials enables combustion strategies that result in higher efficiency engines that burn less fuel and generate fewer emissions,” ORNL scientist James Allen Haynes told EE Times.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Green energy: using plants for power
Scientists from Cambridge University are creating electricity using plants
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/11465197/Green-energy-using-plants-for-power.html
Bright sparks at Cambridge University have harvested energy produced by plants to light a “green bus shelter”.
Unveiled on March 10, the prototype Plant to Power hub is now open to the public at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.
With architects MCMM, the team designed specially adapted vertical green walls that harvest electrons, naturally produced by as a by product of photosynthesis.
The walls are made from a synthetic material containing pockets, each holding a litre of soil and several plants. The back of the pockets are made of carbon fibre, which receive the electrons.
The structure of the hub allows different combinations of the photovoltaic and biological systems to be tested. One of the green walls is housed being a semi-transparent solar power so the effect on the plants’ ability to generate current can be monitored.
Bombelli said, “To address the world’s energy needs, we need a portfolio of many different technologies, and it’s even better if these technologies can operate in synergy.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Big Win for Cheap, Clean Energy
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Investing-in-Energy-Innovation?WT.mc_id=11_30_2015_00_EnergyRD_BG-OB_&WT.tsrc=BGOB
I’m in Paris today with several world leaders for a big announcement on energy and climate change. It is deeply moving to be in this city just two weeks after the horrific attacks here, and I am inspired by the way the French people have persevered in such a difficult time.
Two related initiatives are being announced at today’s event. One is Mission Innovation, a commitment by more than ten countries to invest more in research on clean energy. The other is the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a global group of private investors who will support companies that are taking innovative clean-energy ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace. Our primary goal with the Coalition is as much to accelerate progress on clean energy as it is to make a profit.
The world is going to be using 50 percent more energy by mid-century than it does today. That should be good news, especially for the world’s poorest, because right now more than 1 billion people live without access to basic energy services. Affordable and reliable energy makes it easier for them to grow more food, run schools and hospitals and businesses, have refrigerators at home, and take advantage of all the things that make up modern life. Low- and middle-income countries need energy to develop their economies and help more people escape poverty.
But the world’s growing demand for energy is also a big problem, because most of that energy comes from hydrocarbons, which emit greenhouse gases and drive climate change. So we need to move to sources of energy that are affordable and reliable, and don’t produce any carbon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Swallow the Doctor — The Present and Future of Robots Inside Us
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/30/swallow-the-doctor-the-present-and-future-of-robots-inside-us/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world buzzes on “Big Five” pace: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon.
They have huge market shares of the fields and a large impact on the functioning of small businesses and startups.
- For example, Google has a 89 percent share of Internet searches. Almost every one of us merely the first 10 search results list. Search engines look for trends, but their results can already deduce much more
Ekström explained before the finale (Google owned) YouTube competitor whose pieces were considered the most. Google Trends service, and the search engine produced the same answer. Then he went to talk to the German Lena Meyer-Landrut, with and told him: “you win this competition.” The singer did not believe in, but did not drive away at all. On the basis of small talk Ekström wrote the article beforehand and sent it to the newspaper, when the results were announced.
Ekström does not want a consultant, but intends to retain the supplier of their work.
- I find it hard to see a larger journalistic topics than this. Large open-ended questions are many. For example, who can grant a digital identity certificate. In Sweden, it is the task of the banks, but could it be in the future such as Facebook?
Source: http://haloo.atea.fi/pinnalla/maailma-sykkii-big-fiven-tahtiin/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Innovative art project:
A Chinese artist vacuumed up Beijing’s smog for 100 days and made a brick from what he collected
http://qz.com/562319/a-chinese-artist-vacuumed-up-beijings-smog-for-100-days-and-made-a-brick-from-what-he-collected/
While many Beijing residents are staying indoors to escape the cloud of heavy pollution hanging over the city, one man with a vacuum cleaner has been exposing himself to the toxic air four hours a day, for 100 days in a row.
Nor, he isn’t hoping the Air Quality Index will improve thanks to his industrial-strength vacuum. Instead, he’s making a public point about the capital’s notoriously heavy smog, by turning the dust he collects into a brick.
“Nut Brother,” a 34-year-old performance artist from Shenzhen, first announced his plan to vacuum the dust from Beijing’s air in late July.
On Nov. 30, the 100th day of his project, he mixed the dust he collected with clay and took it to a brick factory to make a semi-finished brick. The final brick will be finished in a few days, after it is dried and fired.
“Air in Beijing is bad all over,” Nut Brother told Quartz. “There’s no special supply of air.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Makers, Robots Drive STEM
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328377&
A combination of the maker movement and robotics is preparing children for a future in which innovation and creativity will be more important than ever.
Research from the DevTech group at Tufts University shows that robotics is an effective way for children as young as four years old to get experience in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics as well as programming and computer science. The maker movement is inspiring children to tinker-to-learn. It encourages them to be creators of technology rather than just consumers of it.
There are many robotics platforms that children can get started with for their inventions and playful learning of fundamental STEM concepts. Examples of robotics and DIY electronics platforms include Arduino, Lego Mindstorms, Raspberry Pi, Phiro and LittleBits.
For instance, we have helped students learn practical applications of physics by designing and building hovercraft, using child-friendly materials and cheap electronics. They test their creations in a small pool of water to visualize the working of a hovercraft in real-time.
By building miniature hydrogen fuel cell cars, older students learned about clean energy, physics, electrochemistry, electrical circuits and engineering. They learned about aerodynamics by designing and building cars using 3D design software, renewable materials and 3D printed models.
Students also worked on home-automation projects to learn about energy conservation. They worked with low-cost Bluetooth beacons connected to smartphones, developing programs that display personal energy use levels.
Such hands-on education programs have instilled in children a passion for STEM subjects and careers.
The maker movement is inspiring the creation of robotic platforms that are simple, open source and affordable. Such platforms can help millions of students globally express themselves and solve real-world problems. Simplified robotics learning tools will lower barriers for educators, allowing children to teach themselves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Microsoft’s HoloLens May Change Everything For Industrial And Mechanical Designers
http://www.fastcompany.com/3053986/how-microsofts-hololens-may-change-everything-for-industrial-and-mechanical-designers?partner=rss&utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
By integrating Microsoft’s “mixed reality” system and Autodesk’s Fusion 360 design software, designers can see 3-D holograms of their work.
Soon, product designers will be able to get up close and personal with their creations while they’re still planning them. Rather than just look at digital models on their computer screens, they could walk around a 3-D hologram of the design.
That could soon become a reality in design studios, thanks to Microsoft and design software giant Autodesk. Today, the two companies showed off an early stage integration of Microsoft’s HoloLens “mixed reality” system with Autodesk’s Fusion 360 design software that they hope could make product development much easier and more intuitive.
Often lumped in with virtual reality and augmented reality systems, HoloLens is different, Microsoft argues, because it creates mixed reality holographic experiences that can be manipulated.
With the integration of HoloLens and Fusion 360, everyday industrial designers and mechanical engineers will have a tool that enables “much more effective collaboration [in which they] can see and really interact” with their work, says Ben Sugden, the studio manager for HoloLens.
But by using HoloLens with Fusion 360, people working together on a design can make changes that are instantly reflected.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why people think total nonsense is really deep
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/01/the-kinds-of-people-who-confuse-total-nonsense-for-something-really-deep/
Words can be inspiring, even when they’re arranged into vague, fancy-sounding sequences that seem deep but say nothing.
Take the sentence “wholeness quiets infinite phenomena.” It’s complete and utter nonsense. In fact, it was randomly generated by a Web site. And many might have seen this immediately, or realized it after thinking it through.
But the truth is that a surprising number of people would likely have called the bogus statement profound.
“A lot of people are prone to what I call pseudo-profound bulls***,” said Gordon Pennycook, a doctorate student at the University of Waterloo who studies why some people are more easily duped than others.
The precise reasons that people see profundity in vague buzzwords or syntactic but completely random sentences are unknown. Some people might not realize the reason they don’t understand something is simply because there is nothing to understand. Or they might just approach things they hear and read less skeptically.
There are also a few characteristics that seem to correlate with those who are more prone to pseudo-profound language.
“I would say that a lot of people are just far too open to everything,” said Pennycook. “They aren’t skeptical or critical enough of what they hear and read.”
In other words, if you want to figure out how easily taken a friend is, you might want to start by asking them to look total nonsense in the face and tell you what they see.
Tomi Engdahl says:
#CodeTrip
Forget the tech stereotypes. To create innovations the world has never seen, the industry needs people from all different backgrounds contributing their talents.
That’s why we’re sending three young people who come from underrepresented backgrounds in the tech industry on a road trip to discover the vast—and growing—possibilities in computer science. They’ll travel the country on a mission to find the people who’ve dispelled the stereotypes, chased their aspirations—and proven you don’t have to fit a mold to make it in tech.
Source: http://roadtripnation.com/roadtrip/code-trip
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Brains of Men and Women Aren’t Really That Different, Study Finds
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/12/01/209200/the-brains-of-men-and-women-arent-really-that-different-study-finds
In the mid-19th century, researchers claimed they could tell the sex of an individual just by looking at their disembodied brain. But a new study (abstract) finds that human brains do not fit neatly into “male” and “female” categories.
The brains of men and women aren’t really that different, study finds
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-aren-t-really-different-study-finds
Indeed, all of our brains seem to share a patchwork of forms; some that are more common in males, others that are more common in females, and some that are common to both. The findings could change how scientists study the brain and even how society defines gender.
“Nobody has had a way of quantifying this before,” says Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist at Chicago Medical School in Illinois who was not involved in the study. “Everything they’ve done here is new.”
So in the new study, researchers led by Daphna Joel, a behavioral neuroscientist at Tel Aviv University in Israel, tried to be as comprehensive as possible. Using existing sets of MRI brain images, they measured the volume of gray matter (the dark, knobby tissue that contains the core of nerve cells) and white matter (the bundles of nerve fibers that transmit signals around the nervous system) in the brains of more than 1400 individuals.
The team found a few structural differences between men and women. The left hippocampus, for example, an area of the brain associated with memory, was usually larger in men than in women. In each region, however, there was significant overlap between males and females
The majority of the brains were a mosaic of male and female structures, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
So how to explain the idea that males and females seem to behave differently? That too may be a myth, Joel says. Her team analyzed two large datasets that evaluated highly gender stereotypical behaviors, such as playing video games, scrapbooking, or taking a bath. Individuals were just as variable for these measures: Only 0.1% of subjects displayed only stereotypically-male or only stereotypically-female behaviors.
“There is no sense in talking about male nature and female nature,” Joel says. “There is no one person that has all the male characteristics and another person that has all the female characteristics. Or if they exist they are really, really rare to find.”
The findings have broad implications, Joel says. For one, she contends, researchers studying the brain may not need to compare males and females when analyzing their data.
Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/24/1509654112
Sex/gender differences in the brain are of high social interest because their presence is typically assumed to prove that humans belong to two distinct categories not only in terms of their genitalia, and thus justify differential treatment of males and females. Here we show that, although there are sex/gender differences in brain and behavior, humans and human brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple and Google are two of the world’s most innovative companies. Third, has risen Elon Musks founded by the electric car company Tesla. This is shown by the Boston Consulting Group The Most Innovative Companies 2015 report.
The report said the world’s top innovative companies combine four things: speed, agile development processes, utilization of technological platforms, as well as the systematic exploration of new markets.
These criteria research directors of large companies have listed the best innovators. It should be noted that the tip of the cell phone business in addition to car manufacturers. The car is now clear from the beginning that can innovate much.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3688:apple-google-ja-tesla-innovatiivisimpia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Girls Can Code Even If Mattel Doesn’t Think So
http://www.mannlymama.com/2014/11/why-girls-can-code-even-if-mattel-doesnt-think-so/
Someone Who Has Done It Right
::pulls out soapbox, steps right up:: Did you know that Dec 8-14th is the Hour of Code challenge? I wrote about it last year and now I feel like this is even more a reason to join. Take an hour and pick a tutorial of how to write some code. Make a Flappy bird game. Make an Angry birds game. You can even “code” offline on paper. It’s all about fundamentals of how to think like a programmer. Then any language is your oyster
BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE!
Does your little girl LOVE Frozen? Do you want her to enjoy analytical thinking and learn more about computer science? Does this seem an impossible collision of worlds?
WRONG!
BEHOLD!
Announcing an Hour of Code with Anna and Elsa from Disney’s “Frozen”
http://blog.code.org/post/103042812198/frozen
Tomi Engdahl says:
No device or internet? Try ‘unplugged’ computer science
Thinkersmith’s Unplugged Hour of Code Activity
https://csedweek.org/unplugged/thinkersmith
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech Tackles Climate Change: Wind & Will Power
“future of our planet in your hands,” U.N. Secretary-General
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328392&
This week EE Times will feature updates on some of the carbon-reducing technologies being developed or already in use that could help companies, countries and citizens reduce their carbon footprint. These are some examples to show the infinite variety and to give credit to engineers and companies working on them.
Yesterday in Paris at the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties (COP21 where the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2015) pronounces the progress of greenhouse warming, 151 heads of state and government expressed their opinions on the urgency of the problem.
“We’ll work to mobilize support to help the most vulnerable countries expand clean energy and adapt to the effects of climate change we can no longer avoid,” President Barack Obama wrote on his Facebook page.
“The future of the people of the world, the future of our planet, is in your hands,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a speech to negotiators in Paris. “We cannot afford indecision, half measures or merely gradual approaches. Our goal must be transformational.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are you old-fashioned, do you think progress as wrong way?
Mechanical solidarity appreciate the similarity. The organic solidarity to appreciate the changing structures for facilitating and expertise. Mechanical solidarity is a broad-based primitive economic structures and is often associated with a strong moral indignation. Increasing specialization of mechanical solidarity in the area narrows and organic solidarity prevails.
Values thus becomes the development of societies. Young people adapt old faster. Young people have less ballast. It is often called a generation, so that new inventions have been effective use. Older people are the brakes working life.
For example, students living in a virtual aquarium life on Facebook and genus of everyday life for all elective for all data streams. Parents believe in the young people later repentant this openness. “All the bugs can be found online later.” Young people do get these warnings just do not care.
The growing specialization generated by the network economy requires confidence in the things that actually can not understand. Confidence arises from the fact that nothing seems to be hidden. My own experience is that I can rely on much better on Facebook, multiplied by the matter, which can be seen co-workers, relatives and hobby to friends as e-mail, which was sent only to me.
The economic development of the value of the world’s progressive direction, with specialization and exchange of continuously easier. Mechanical solidarity to give space to organic solidarity.
Source: http://www.foresight.fi/2009/06/11/oletko-kalkkis-luuletko-edistysta-hakotieksi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why are we stuck fumbling?
The people are wonderful and organizations still wonder. Joiner does not use a screwdriver as a hammer, but a layman can easily hack his screw wrench. Organizations commission more and more often, for example, information technology works by laymen who actually use the machines, like the sweat of mopeds stagnant hölmöläisen. Instead, automation routines can be automated, and the likelihood of the emergence of stress. Why is this?
Organization Theory great innovators of Herbert Simon and James March understood half a century ago, that the organization is not even seek to optimize their operations. According to them, the organization does not even have a clear objective. Decision-makers have their own goals and organization of the work of the cross pressure. People are also limited and rational decision situations come against one at a time. Finding the optimum solution, therefore, is normally impossible. After each hand the problem of finding even a satisfactory solution, it often pays to choose from.
The organization of an individual employee is difficult to use their time, one that others do not value. If your fumbling is encrypted and that the best automation possibilities are not known, not at all understood the need for learning.
What to do? There are problems both individuals and the whole organization level. It is of course clear that each need to know everything. It is equally clear that the two-column text, no rational person make the tabs or tab or the spreadsheet using, if any, to understand what information technology is all about. Information technology expertise rough problems are related to the installation, fault clearing, programming and the use of experts. Many opportunities are osaajiltakin unused because no one design The independent whole. Unfortunately, IT is just an example, not the biggest skills gap in the cradle.
At the individual level skill gaps should be mapped. Hassle during concealment should end as a result of the learning is inhibited. This is detrimental to both the employer and the employee, but especially for society as a whole. Organisations should look at in terms of whether to use the tools and opportunities to increase synergies. Too often, all aiming to partial optimization, interest in single-phase or entity, when reforming the packages would produce a lot more.
Source: http://www.foresight.fi/2010/04/15/miksi-tyydymme-sahlaamiseen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Risto_Linturi
Is the information society?
The Information Society projects is questioned by arguing that we do not live in the information society. Words are, of course, only ideas, names, and names worth a very long time to argue. It seems, however, that the information society the basic idea would be missing many of those that speak of the information society.
We reject the first of Plato. Information is not justified true belief, because human knowledge is always incomplete, and we do not know anything about the world, the argument whether it is true. Witch-doctors knowledge of evil spirits was more useful than the Enlightenment doctors the knowledge that evil spirits do not exist. We know that the appeal of reality is no, but we teach it in school as truth. The formulas still work in special cases, but so also serve as witch-doctors instructions.
Information society is not the same as the sum of the individual information.
Adam Smith noted the added value resulting from specialization and exchange the correct increased. Society thus learns the specialization and exchange developed in the right way. Individuals do not need to learn, it is not just välineellistyneestä doctrine, the knowledge necessary to individuals with narrowing of the specialization is therefore an integral part of the development of the structures of society.
Supported by specialization and trade in values, norms, rituals and various other artifacts of human environment are accumulated know-how of the information society structures. Specialization has progressed enormously hunter-gatherer stage. People are not wiser, but society is organized in a more efficient entity.
So we live in the information society. The social structure is a huge deal, as well as the specialization of the exchanges and their proper coordination of the supporting information. This information is not between people, between the ears, but people, their functional relations, used by their media and other cultural artefacts. This is the most important information society content and, accordingly, the importance of learning and structures would be best to parse.
Source: http://www.foresight.fi/2009/10/28/onko-yhteiskunnalla-tietoa/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Three ways of Innovation:
New
Saving money
Maintaining existing
Transparency brings lots of good
Data brings changes to busines
Sales: From devices to selling of results
CMR: Supplier understands customer business better than customer itself
Sales: From selling products to partner
Marketing: Segmenting
R&D: From quessing to knowing
R&D: Software business clock frequency
Most valuable companies look like this:
Asset builders: build, develop and lease physical assets to make, distribute and sell physical things
Service providers: hire employees who provide services to customer or produce billable hours
Technology creators: develop and sell intellectual property such as software, analytics, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology
Network orchestors: create network of peers which the participants interact and share in the value creation; sell products or services, build relationships, share advice, give reviews, collaborate, co-create and more
New innovation is HARD:
1. Customer forecasting
2. Market timing
3. How to make accurate ROI and other calculations
4. Often start looks small
5. New offer cannibalizes the current busines
6. (Too) many have opinion
7. Getting things forward quickly
8. HR and other processes do not support
9. It is stressful to be unsure
10…
“Predication is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” –Niels Bohr
Right kinf of enviroment:
1. Dedicated, committed and all-around team
2. Autonomity to make decisions
3. Leadership through visions and not by details
4. Funding – make it venture and not project
5. 3-5 years time frame
6. Small steps and quickly
7. Culture that supports experimenting
8. Patience
9…
Best approach from three schools:
Lean Startup
Agile Development
Design Thinking
Get out of the building
Find a problem worth solving
Build measure learn, buld measure learn, build measure learn
It is not reality until it is shared
Source: http://ties.fi/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Tuomas_Syrj%C3%A4nen_ECT-Forum-20151008.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
When creativity and logic spark that ‘aha’ moment for young people — During this week’s Hour of Code, millions of students from around the globe will take their first steps into the world of coding and computer science.
Hour of Code: When creativity and logic spark that ‘aha’ moment for young people
http://news.microsoft.com/features/hour-of-code-when-creativity-and-logic-spark-that-aha-moment-for-young-people/
Tomi Engdahl says:
After Zuckerberg’s big bet, big names in science see hope and reason for caution
By Dylan Scott and Ike Swetlitz
December 2, 2015
http://www.statnews.com/2015/12/02/mark-zuckerberg-chan-big-bet/
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When Mark Zuckerberg announced in a letter to his newborn daughter that he and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, would use 99 percent of their Facebook wealth for philanthropy, he wrote of funding medical research that could lead to “a world without suffering from disease.”
Many researchers were predictably thrilled that one of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world is making a public commitment to medicine. But others sounded a note of caution.
“I think it makes people feel good, and has some value there. Certainly I think we’re glad that people are giving this money rather than not giving,” Maryann Feldman, a University of North Carolina economist who has researched philanthropic organizations, said in an interview. “But then the question remains: If they paid it in taxes, then in a democracy, we would decide how it would be spent. That’s sort of missing in this model.”
Moonshot miss?
Zuckerberg and Chan pledged to invest over their lifetime 99 percent of their Facebook shares, equal to $45 billion in today’s dollars. Rather than spending the money through a charity, they’ll be setting up a limited liability company, which will allow them to engage in activities traditionally off-limits to nonprofits, such as making a profit, and spending a lot of money on lobbying.
Some analysts worry that model will be less transparent and harder to hold accountable.
And then there’s the bottom line: How much could they actually do for health?
For starters, the size of the investment into medical research isn’t clear: Zuckerberg also named Internet access, education, and community building as some of the couple’s other goals.
Moonshot goals can be appealing, but many experts in the field say less ambitious, more incremental advancements are what really make a tangible improvement to people’s lives.
Philanthropy is no guarantee of medical breakthrough, and there are pitfalls.
Zuckerberg has experienced some of these obstacles before.
Those involved in medical research will be watching closely to see how Zuckerberg has learned from that history and how he and Chan navigate their new endeavor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does the Internet Make You Stupid?
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/08/does-the-internet-make-you-stupid/
A recent post by [Christian Heilmann] is one of several I’ve read lately talking about how Web sites–Stack Overflow, in particular–are breeding a new kind of developer. The kind of developer that simply copies and pastes example code or schematics with no real understanding of what’s going on. His conclusion is that developers who don’t fully understand what they are doing will become disinterested and burn out. He’s talking about software developers, but I think you could extend the argument to developers of all kinds, including hardware hackers. He concluded that–at least while learning–you stick to the old ways of doing things.
There’s two things that are slightly different today: First, everyone has easy access to lots of examples. You don’t have to go find a book (possibly at a library), search through it, and find one or two examples. A quick Google will find dozens or hundreds of examples.
The second thing that is different is that there are places exist like Stack Overflow where you don’t even have to go looking. You can simply ask, “How do I do X?” and you will get answers from someone. It might be wrong. You might not understand it. But you’ll probably get some kind of answer.
I suspect the hacker community does this less than the general population. We want to build our own things, even when it sometimes doesn’t make a lot of sense. But even so, most of us draw the line somewhere. Do you really want to develop a BSP and port Linux to every board you build, or do you buy a Raspberry PI or BeagleBone?
However, if you don’t have that hacker mentality–and not everyone doing hardware and software development today does–grabbing something off the shelf is a big win. In the workplace, in particular, this is encouraged even though it isn’t always the best idea. I think the problem is we are in a period of transition. The Internet has fundamentally changed how we work, but how we teach people hasn’t fully caught up.
Being an engineer or designer or creator years ago meant you had to know how to solve tough problems. Sometimes that took research and part of that skill was knowing where you had a high likelihood of finding information on a particular topic. Being a research savvy problem solver (and a hacker, by our definition of the word, nearly always fits that description) still has value, of course. But it isn’t as valuable as it used to be. We need to learn (and teach) a new skill: using Internet research. Off hand, I’d say this has several key components:
Formulating a relevant query
Asking relevant, complete, and reasonable questions
Evaluating the relative merit of what you find
Adapting what you find to suit your exact problem
Adapting Answers
No answer is likely to meet your requirements completely. In fact, I often see people badly struggle badly to make something fit when it would have been easier to do new development (or use a different tool). Reuse is often a good thing, but it isn’t always. Ideally, you will fully understand something before you use it so you can fit it to your exact situation.
Ban the Internet?
I like to think most of us are smart enough not to cheat ourselves. You know that if you cheat your way through a class, you aren’t really getting benefit out of it, and I would imagine that anyone motivated enough to build projects on their own are going to take time to understand what they reuse, and that’s great. It gets more complicated when you have an external entity (like a boss or a teacher) pressuring you.
However, I think reusing things from the Internet is part of the new landscape and it won’t go away.
So when [Christian] talks about the “full Stack Overflow Developer,” I think he’s missing the point. The developer that can effectively mine the Internet for possible solutions, evaluate them, and adapt them is going to win. We just need to get people in that mindset and tp stop blindly reusing things we don’t understand. We should teach handling Internet-based reuse as yet another tool that you need to master.
The full stackoverflow developer
https://www.christianheilmann.com/2015/07/17/the-full-stackoverflow-developer/
Full Stack Overflow developers work almost entirely by copying and pasting code from Stack Overflow instead of understanding what they are doing. Instead of researching a topic, they go there first to ask a question hoping people will just give them the result.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Austin Frakt / New York Times:
Computers, which excel at big data analysis, can help doctors deliver more personalized care
Your New Medical Team: Algorithms and Physicians
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/upshot/your-new-medical-team-algorithms-and-physicians.html?_r=0
Can machines outperform doctors? Not yet. But in some areas of medicine, they can make the care doctors deliver better.
Humans repeatedly fail where computers — or humans behaving a little bit more like computers — can help. Even doctors, some of the smartest and best-trained professionals, can be forgetful, fallible and prone to distraction. These statistics might be disquieting for anyone scheduled for surgery: One in about 100,000 operations is on the wrong body part. In one in 10,000, a foreign object — like a surgical tool — is accidentally left inside the body.
Something as simple as a checklist — a very low tech-type of automation — can reduce such errors. For example, in a wide range of settings, surgical complications and mortality fell after implementation of a basic checklist including verification of patient identity and body part for surgery, confirmation of sterility of the surgical environment and equipment, and post-surgical accounting for all medical tools.
Limits on how much information we can process and manipulate make it hard or impossible for even the smartest and most adept doctors to keep up with new evidence. In 2014 alone, more than 750,000 additional medical studies were published. Granted, a physician might need to keep up only with the evidence in her specialty, but even at a fraction of this rate, it is unrealistic to expect even the best physicians to assimilate every new development in their fields. In cancer alone, 150,000 studies are published annually.
Computers, on the other hand, excel at searching and combining vastly more data than a human. I.B.M.’s Watson — the computer that won Jeopardy! — is among the best at doing so.
At Boston Children’s Hospital, Watson will help diagnose and treat a type of kidney disease. It will team up with Apple to collect health care data; with Johnson & Johnson to improve care for knee and hip replacements; with medical equipment manufacturer Medtronic to detect when diabetes patients require adjustments to insulin doses; and with CVS to improve services for patients with chronic conditions. Another computer-assisted approach to cancer treatment is already in place in the vast majority of oncology practices. Other automated systems check for medication prescribing errors.
To many patients, the very idea of receiving a medical diagnosis or treatment from a machine is probably off-putting.
If the only thing between your illness and its diagnosis and cure is the manipulation of evidence, then, in principle, a computer should one day be able to deliver care as well or better than a human.
But healing may rely on more than the mere processing of data. In some cases, we may lack data, and a physician’s judgment might be the best available guide.
Patients also may be skeptical that a computer can deliver the best care. A 2010 study published in Health Affairs found that consumers didn’t believe doctors could deliver substandard care. In contrast, they thought that care strictly based on evidence and guidelines — as any system for automating medical care would be — was tailored to the lowest common denominator, meeting only the minimum quality standards.
But algorithms can be put to good use in certain areas of medicine, as complements to, not substitutes for, clinicians.
Just because algorithms can assist in making decisions doesn’t mean humans should check out and play no role. It is important not to over-rely on data and automation. Bob Wachter, a physician, relates a story about how automated aspects of an electronic medical system contributed to the overdose of a child at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mentor or be mentored at speed networking
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440946/Mentor-or-be-mentored-at-speed-networking?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_pcbdesigncenter_20151214&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_pcbdesigncenter_20151214&elq=44347227743c45eba368726bfcf91d10&elqCampaignId=26136&elqaid=29891&elqat=1&elqTrackId=33fa885314ce4726b4c3f23a87bc8269
The best gifts I believe you can ever give or receive are skills and time.
UBM’s annual Mentor Meet-Up at DesignCon
It’s a simple event: We gather 10-15 young engineers who are in school or new to the workforce and sit them across from 10-15 established engineers who have been in the industry for years. Each young engineer gets 5 minutes to discuss careers in engineering with an established engineer before shifting seats to the next established engineer. It’s a “speed networking” approach that ensures all of the engineers, new and established, have a chance to chat. That speed networking will be followed by an open breakfast where more casual networking can take place.
The top folks out there understand how valuable it is to mentor and to be mentored.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thomas Midgley, GM, and the Dark Side of Progress
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/14/thomas-midgley-gm-and-the-dark-side-of-progress/
Scientific improvements that create industries and save millions of lives often come at a price that isn’t revealed until much later. Leaded gasoline helped the automobile industry take off and synthesized Freon extended the lifespan of lifesaving vaccines, but they took an incredible toll on the environment.
Both were invented in the early 20th century by Thomas Midgley, Jr. After graduating from Cornell in 1911 with a degree in mechanical engineering
In 1916, Midgley started working for Kettering at Dayton Metal Products Company, which soon became the research division of General Motors.
In 1921, Kettering set Midgley on the task of eliminating engine knock.
he discovered that some of the fuel was exploding too early, causing the pinging sound.
He tried adding iodine, which worked well. However, iodine was far too cost prohibitive. Midgley continued his research and found several additives that eliminated knock, but for one reason or another were not good solutions.
He found that all the known antiknock agents were made of heavy elements and decided that the heaviest ones must be the most promising. He and his team came up with a compound called tetraethyl lead (TEL). This eliminated engine knock completely by raising the octane of the gasoline
The neurotoxic effects of lead have been known for many years. Prolonged exposure to lead has been proven to lower IQ and cause loss of coordination.
In 1924, General Motors was headed for a scandal. Although reports of sickness had been coming out of all three tetraethyl refineries
Midgley stopped at nothing in trying to convince the public that his antiknock additive was safe.
In the 1920s, Kettering assigned him to a team tasked with finding a better cooling compound for air-conditioners and refrigerators.
Once again, Midgley turned to his periodic table and came up with the first of the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which was sold as R-12 (refrigerant-12). Midgley’s contribution to refrigeration revolutionized vaccine storage and saved countless people from food poisoning.
It’s easy to vilify Midgley in hindsight. He created toxic solutions to common problems and denied the dangers of tetraethyl lead even though he’d experienced them firsthand. But Thomas Midgley was not just a villain. He was a curious, hardworking man whose inventions had an enormous affect on history, and he never stopped blazing scientific trails.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Competition: MathWorks & NOAA Team To Save Right Whales
Using deep learning & artificial neural networks
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328403&
No one really knows how close we came to loosing right whales forever. Fortunately, things are starting to look a little less bleak.
Recently, I’ve become aware of a tremendous increase in the use of deep learning and artificial neural networks (ANNs). (See CEVA Accelerates Deep Neural Networks and Biometric fusion-based security meets deep learning for smartphones & tablets.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
23-Year-Old’s Design Collaboration Tool Figma Launches With $14M To Fight Adobe
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/03/figma-vs-goliath/#.ojwuxm:JHfa
“Which version of this design are we on? Did you make the suggested edits? Why is it taking so long to export?” Today, interface design collaboration tool Figma arrives to eliminate these questions with its browser-based alternative to Adobe’s desktop software.
Figma constantly saves projects in the cloud with version control so teammates can always review, go back and modify, or comment on designs in real-time. Its free preview program begins admitting teams off its new wait list today.
Field tells me his big competitor “doesn’t understand collaboration”, and the Adobe Creative Cloud is “really cloud in name only”. He insists that “Design is undergoing a monumental shift — going from when design was at the very end of the product cycle where people would just make things prettier to now where it runs through the entire process.” Figma wants to do for interface design what Google Docs did for text editing.
Currently, collaborating to build a UI is more work about work than actual work. If one team member wants to change an icon, they have to find and download the latest design, check email or Slack for commentary, make an edit, save it, export it, upload or email it, and then wait for everyone else to jump through these hoops. Making the actual design change took only a fraction of that time.
That’s because despite advances elsewhere in the collaborative web, design industry juggernaut Adobe was developed as a solo desktop software experience.
You might mistake it as naive arrogance, but his youthful confidence is what it takes to battle the design Goliath.
How did the collaboration idea start? Field tells me “I grew up online. I started using productivity tools when Google Docs came out almost 10 years ago.” That would be when Field was just a teenager “I was such a huge fan and used it for all my school projects”. He dreamed of a similar tool for interface design while interning at Flipboard and LinkedIn. Then at Brown University Field met the guy who could build it, WebGL prodigy Evan Wallace, who’d engineered at Pixar and Microsoft. Together, two started Figma, as in, figment of your imagination made real.
The two knew building something that could stand up against Adobe’s products would be no light endeavor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner clients report that poor requirements definition and management is a major cause of rework and friction between business and IT. Broad market adoption of software requirements solutions is low, exacerbating this situation. The strongest adoption has come in highly complex or regulated systems.
Focus on tools is changing to better support collaboration and fast time to market to better address mass market needs. However, tools tend to align either toward large-scale system approaches or toward lean/agile techniques…
Source: http://go.jamasoftware.com/gartner-rm-solution-market-guide.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=gartner+rm+solution+market+guide&utm_source=emedia
Tomi Engdahl says:
Critical and Creative Thinking in a Hacker’s Work
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/15/critical-and-creative-thinking-in-a-hackers-work/
Imagine yourself in a labyrinth, vast – endless for all you know. You wander the corridors, stumbling upon a closed door. You could invest some effort into unlocking it to find out what’s inside. Pretty soon you realize there are many more doors in the maze and you wish you had some sort of tool to help you see what’s behind them, and whether they are worth the effort.
If the labyrinth is a metaphor for your life or your work, then you should know that there is such a tool, and its name is Critical Thinking. It can save you a lot of time and money, sometimes your health and even your life. It can help you optimize or debug your projects, and even boost your creativity.
Why Should We Think Critically?
Even though many equate it with criticism, critical thinking is not a negative process. It keeps you open to new ideas, and at the same time it acts as a firewall against harmful ideological, political, or marketing delusions and scams, and especially against your own self-delusions. It suggests how to think, not what to think.
You can find a lot of definitions of critical thinking on the internet, and most of them are worth reading. I like the definition which [Richard Paul] gave in an informal presentation: “Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking, while you’re thinking, in order to make your thinking better”.
How to Think in a Creative Way
Critical thinking is a learned skill, that can be reinforced by habit. The same is valid for logical thinking, but we shall not discuss it here, as most hackers have already practiced logic over many years, and they surely know how to apply it in their activity. You can say that the logic is a necessary part of critical thinking.
It is hard to imagine debugging, servicing or any other form of problem solving without critical thinking, but if you are creating a project from scratch, you also have to think creatively. Creative thinking is different from critical thinking, but they share a strong bond. The creative process needs to have a critical check of ideas, and on the other hand, creative thinking can help you imagine all the possibilities when you need to pinpoint a problem.
Creative thinking is more motivating and generally brings more pleasure than critical thinking, and you can use it even when you are relaxed.
How to Become a Critical and Creative Thinker
So, how do you think we should evaluate new ideas? However appealing they might seem, they should be treated as 50/50, good/bad ab initio. Some people will tell you that’s being optimistic, as 9 out of 10 initially bright ideas turn out to be worthless. It would be prudent to expose your idea to scrutiny. Consult with someone or publish it online and read the comments, but remember to always take public commentary with a grain of salt.
Critical thinking is an unnatural act. We evolved to survive in a cruel world, not to play around with our hacks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Calculus is Not as Hard as you Think
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/15/calculus-is-not-as-hard-as-you-think/
The regular readers of Hackaday might see things a bit differently than our [John Doe]. They would know that the electric motor that moves the elevator is very similar to the alternator in his car. They would know that the PLC that controls the electric motor that moves the elevator is very similar to the computer he logs in to. They would know that on a fundamental level, the PLC, alarm clock and computer are all based on relatively simple transistor theory. What is a vast complicated mess to [John Doe] and the average person is nothing but the use of simple mechanical and electrical principles to the hacker. The complication resides in how those principles are applied. Abstracting the fundamental principles from complicated ideas allows us to simplify and understand them in a way that pays homage to Einstein’s off-the-cuff advice
Many of you look at The Calculus the same way [John Doe] looks at machines. You see the same vast, complicated mess that would require a great deal of time and effort to understand.
The average calculus course book is a thousand pages long. The [John Does] of the world will see a thousand difficult things to learn. The hacker, however, will see two basic principles and 998 examples of those principles
these two principles – the derivative and the integral
Tomi Engdahl says:
Geneticists Push For Databases Over Journals As Main Source of Information
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/12/16/2131231/geneticists-push-for-databases-over-journals-as-main-source-of-information
The issues of reproducibility in journals continues to present problems. This time in the world of clinical geneticists where a misleading or incorrect journal on the effect of a gene variant can affect the decisions made by doctors and patients alike; from heart monitoring implants to abortions.
Clinical Genetics Has a Big Problem That’s Affecting People’s Lives
Unreliable research can lead families to make health decisions they might regret.
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/12/why-human-genetics-research-is-full-of-costly-mistakes/420693/
Many geneticists have similar tales where mistakes in the scientific literature have led to wrong—and sometimes harmful—diagnoses.
Daniel MacArthur at Massachusetts General Hospital found a similar trend in a study of over 60,000 people, the results of which have been uploaded to a pre-print server. On average, each of these volunteers is walking around with 53 gene variants that are classified as “pathogenic” in two widely-used databases. When the team took a closer look at 200 of these variants, they found enough evidence to classify just nine of them as pathogenic.
This is an absurd situation, especially given the stakes. Over the last decade, there’s been a lot of talk about reproducibility problems in science—about published results that turn out to be false alarms.
People get abortions on the basis of mutations that are linked to severe congenital diseases. They get mastectomies on the basis of mutations in breast-cancer genes. They get monitoring devices surgically implanted in their chests on the basis of mutations in heart-disease genes. “This is absolutely an issue, and it’s led to all sorts of problematic decision-making,” says Rehm.
How did things get so bad? Everyone I spoke to said that studies used to hew to lower standards.
“I think none of us really appreciated just how many rare, nasty-looking genetic variants exist in everyone’s genome,” admits MacArthur. That only became clear once geneticists acquired enough money, technological power, and collaborative will to do really big sequencing projects, like the 1,000 Genomes Project. Then, “it became abundantly clear that every single one of us is walking around with hundreds of genetic changes that look like they should cause disease, but actually don’t. This means that every genome has ‘narrative potential’—material that you could use to tell a story about diseases.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft announces a whole department dedicated to fighting evil
Should have called it Project Batman. Didn’t. Oh well
By Chris Merriman
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2439524/microsoft-announces-a-whole-department-dedicated-to-fighting-evil
MICROSOFT HAS announced an intention to counter its Doctor Evil routine concerning Windows 10 with a dedicated philanthropic venture.
The initiative will contribute in “new and more impactful ways” to bring the benefits of technology by bridging the gaps where there’s no tech and providing access where there is none adding its insights.
The digital inclusion programmes will include investment of cash and technology in non-profit partnerships that benefit the wider community, from access to the public cloud through to equipping educational establishments. The company has already committed $75m towards the provision of computer science education over the next three years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why President Obama Was Held Back a Year Before Starting Code School
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/12/16/232224/why-president-obama-was-held-back-a-year-before-starting-code-school
Microsoft is boasting that UK Prime Minister David Cameron learned to code during this year’s Hour of Code thanks to its Minecraft-themed tutorial, much like US President Barack Obama learned to code during 2014′s Hour of Code thanks to Disney’s Frozen Princess-themed tutorial. Interestingly, according to a recent Quora post by Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, plans to have President Obama ‘learn to code’ a year earlier were torpedoed by the Healthcare.gov debacle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Song Exploder: Björk Breaks Down Her Creative Process
http://www.wired.com/2015/12/song-exploder-bjork/
n the Song Exploder podcast, host Hrishikesh Hirway talks to musicians who take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the stories of how they were made.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flip, Jewelbots and GlossGenius grab spotlight at Techstars demo day
http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/12/17/flip-jewelbots-and-glossgenius-grab-spotlight-at.html?page=all
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Most Brilliant Use of Crowdfunding Yet: Medical Research
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/17/the-most-brilliant-use-of-crowdfunding-yet-medical-research/
Since the rise of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, the world has been blessed with $100 resin-based 3D printers, Video game consoles built on Android, quadcopters that follow you around, and thousands of other projects that either haven’t lived up to expectations or simply disappeared into the ether. The idea of crowdfunding is a very powerful one: it’s the ability for thousands of people to chip in a few bucks for something they think is valuable. It’s a direct democracy for scientific funding. It’s the potential for people to pool their money, give it to someone capable, and create something really great. The reality of crowdfunding isn’t producing the best humanity has to offer. Right now, the top five crowdfunding campaigns ever are two video games, a beer cooler, a wristwatch with an e-ink screen, and something to do with Bitcoin. You will never go broke underestimating people.
[Dr. Todd Rider] wants to change this. He might have developed a way to cure nearly all viral diseases in humans, but he can’t find the funding for the research to back up his claims. He’s turned to IndieGoGo with an audacious plan: get normal people, and not NIH grants, to pay for the research.
DRACOs May Be Effective Against All Viruses
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dracos-may-be-effective-against-all-viruses#/
DRACOs have been effective against all viruses tested so far. Join the movement to #EndTheVirus
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers can be attractive. Shocker.
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440092/Engineers-can-be-attractive–Shocker–?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151218&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151218&elq=352c0cbb57664392b0337bf6b93a085e&elqCampaignId=26252&elqaid=29993&elqat=1&elqTrackId=8af68c8b2fe3459186addc4b204ad467
Somewhere, Hedy Lammar is proud of a young engineer in San Francisco.
Here’s the deal: Back in Hedy’s day, circa 1940, she became a famous Hollywood actress. But what Hedy really wanted to be was an engineer. In fact, she had a workbench in her Hollywood home where she tinkered on a regular basis.
The beauty with brains
Adafruit Industries’ founder Limor Fried, an engineer through and through.
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_funfriday_20151218&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151218&elq=352c0cbb57664392b0337bf6b93a085e&elqCampaignId=26252&elqaid=29993&elqat=1&elqTrackId=7c9f45ecd7344a358cd2a7929aefb29c
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.
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_20151218&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151218&elq=352c0cbb57664392b0337bf6b93a085e&elqCampaignId=26252&elqaid=29993&elqat=1&elqTrackId=eac99410e03941d7852eb698f5687271
Grace Murray Hopper: Mother of COBOL
Betty Holberton: From ENIAC to minicomputers
Ada Lovelace: First computer programmer
Katherine Johnson: NASA ‘computers in skirts’
Margaret Hamilton: Apollo 11 savior
Jocelyn Bell Burnell: Radio pulsars
Lise Meitner: Nuclear fission
Emmy Noether: Noether’s theorem
Henrietta Swan Leavitt: Galaxy distance
Hedy Lamar: Wireless pioneer
Vera Rubin: Cluster galaxies
Valentina Tereshkova: First woman in space
Tomi Engdahl says:
Guerrilla Grafters Grow Great Gifts for Greater Good
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/19/guerrilla-grafters-grow-great-gifts-for-greater-good/
If you’ve been to downtown San Francisco lately, you might have noticed something odd about the decorative trees in the city: they’re now growing fruit. This is thanks to a group of people called the Guerrilla Grafters who are covertly grafting fruit-bearing twigs to city tress which would otherwise be fruitless. Their goal is to create a delicious, free source of food for those living in urban environments.
Biology-related hacks aren’t something we see every day, but they’re out there. For those unfamiliar with grafting, it’s a process that involves taking the flowering, fruiting, or otherwise leafy section of one plant (a “scion”) and attaching them to the vascular structure of another plant that has an already-established root system (the “stock”). The Guerrilla Grafters are performing this process semi-covertly
The [Guerrilla Grafters] graft fruit bearing branches onto non-fruit bearing, ornamental fruit trees. Over time, delicious, nutritious fruit is made available to urban residents through these grafts. We aim to prove that a culture of care can be cultivated from the ground up. We aim to turn city streets into food forests, and unravel civilization one branch at a time.
http://www.guerrillagrafters.org/
The [Guerrilla Grafters] graft fruit bearing branches onto non-fruit bearing, ornamental fruit trees. Over time, delicious, nutritious fruit is made available to urban residents through these grafts. We aim to prove that a culture of care can be cultivated from the ground up. We aim to turn city streets into food forests, and unravel civilization one branch at a time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Hydraulics
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/20/3d-printed-hydraulics/
[Robert MacCurdy] at MIT wants to change how people think about hydraulics. Using fluid can be very useful in systems like robots, but it is often the case that the tubing that carries hydraulic fluid is not an integrated part of the overall design. [MacCurdy] and his colleagues have modified a 3D printer to allow it directly include hydraulic components as it prints.
The idea is simple. The team started with a printer that uses a liquid ink that is UV cured to produce solid layers. The printer has the ability to use multiple liquids, and [MacCurdy] uses hydraulic fluid (that does not UV cure) as one of the print materials.
The group has printed several structures including a gear pump.
How to 3-D-Print a Hydraulic-Powered Robot
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/544766/how-to-3-d-print-a-hydraulic-powered-robot/
A new way to 3-D-print hydraulic systems at the same time as the rest of a device significantly simplifies the process of making functional robots.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet the Scientist Who Injected Himself with 3.5 Million-Year-Old Bacteria
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/meet-the-scientist-who-injected-himself-with-35-million-year-old-bacteria
Anatoli Brouchkov is a soft-spoken guy with silver hair, and when he lets out a reserved chuckle, his eyes light up like he was belly laughing. If you met him on the street, you’d never guess that he once injected himself with a 3.5 million-year-old strain of bacteria, just to see what would happen.
The bacteria in question is known as Bacillus F, which Brouchkov pulled out of a permafrost sample from Mammoth Mountain in the northern Siberian region of Yakutsk in 2009.
According to Brouchkov, Bacillus F has a mechanism that has enabled it to survive for so long beneath the ice, and that the same mechanism could be used to extend human life, too—perhaps, one day, forever. In tests, Brouchkov says the bacteria allowed female mice to reproduce at ages far older than typical mice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: Resources For Explaining Statistics For the Very First Time?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/12/21/1323204/ask-slashdot-resources-for-explaining-statistics-for-the-very-first-time
Teaching multivariate statistics to college students, writes AnnMaria De Mars, was a piece of cake compared to her current project — making a game to teach statistics to middle school students who have never been exposed to the idea.
Explaining Statistics for the Very First Time
Filed Under computer games, statistics
http://www.thejuliagroup.com/blog/?p=4908
Statistics is the practice or science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large quantities, especially for the purpose of making inferences.