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:
Intelligent People All Have One Thing In Common: They Stay Up Later Than You
http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/night-owls-creative-intelligent/686025/
It’s no wonder night owls are more intelligent than those who hit the hay early. It makes sense that those who absorb the energy of the moon are more creative and open-minded than those who like to catch the early worm.
According to ”Psychology Today,” intelligent people are more likely to be nocturnal than people with lower IQ scores. In a study run on young Americans, results showed that intelligent individuals went to bed later on weeknights and weekends than their less intelligent counterparts.
In ”Study Magazine,” Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School Of Economics And Political Science, reported that IQ average and sleeping patterns are most definitely related, proving that those who play under the moon are, indeed, more intelligent human beings.
Tomi Engdahl says:
They Get Time To Daydream
All those dreams you can’t have during the day, when you’re snapped out of them by friends, family and work, are finally given time to run around.
Free to play in the open spaces of your mind, you can swim in all those thoughts you hid under your desk or behind mounds of paper work. It’s the most creative time of day, along with the most liberating.
It’s by the nightfall that your most uninhibited and passionate sides are explored. It’s the time to unleash your innermost desires and allow yourself the freedom that’s masked behind the taunting exposure of sunlight.
The night is for testing your limits and challenging yourself. It’s for discovering those passions you suppress all day and breaking down all those rules your parents made to protect you.
It’s the time to dig into those hidden corners of your mind and unknown trails of your subconscious. It’s a time of self-expression that can only be unlocked at night and evaluated by day.
Staying up late has been, and always will be, an act of rebellion. A defiance of the nine-to-five, the very habit of staying up late is revolutionary. Since ancient times, there is evidence that society condoned the night owls.
Things that happen at night are things you can’t get away with during the day. It’s the time of utter licentiousness, of underhanded transactions and unseemly occupations.
It’s when the bars are opened and the poets write. It’s when musicians pore over instruments, geniuses have their breakthroughs and artists come alive.
Getting up early is most definitely proactive, but staying up late is just as fruitful. Those who stay up get hours ahead, rather than the one or two an early riser gains.
Source: http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/night-owls-creative-intelligent/686025/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sci-Fi Authors and Scientists Predict an Optimistic Future
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/14/09/15/2217236/sci-fi-authors-and-scientists-predict-an-optimistic-future
A few years ago, author Neal Stephenson argued that sci-fi had forgotten how to inspire people to do great things. Indeed, much of recent science fiction has been pessimistic and skeptical, focusing on all the ways our inventions could go wrong, and how hostile the universe is to humankind. Now, a group of scientists, engineers, and authors (including Stephenson himself) is trying to change that. Arizona State University recently launched Project Hieroglyph, a hub for ideas that will influence science fiction to be more optimistic and accurate, and to focus on the great things humanity is capable of doing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Apple Should Open-Source Swift — But Won’t
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/14/09/16/0213228/why-apple-should-open-source-swift—-but-wont
Faster innovation, better security, new markets — the case for opening Swift might be more compelling than Apple will admit.
Apple has never followed the same path as everyone else.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Get rid of the dinosaurs
Conference Room in the armchair in Ruoholahti speaks frustrated man. Estonian IT sector doctor specializing in Madis Tiik came a couple of years ago to work in Sitra older counselor. The biggest surprise for him was how slowly decisions are made in Finland.
“I’m used to it, that even if the wrong decisions are made, even that is better than that of being undecided,” Tiik says.
Projects not progressing in Finland, because no one will take responsibility for the termination. On the other hand the responsibility is decentralized so effectively that no one knows who should make the decision. Energy is consumed in futile ping-pong.
In Estonia, decisions are made quickly, and they also will be implemented immediately. This is the success of the boundary condition.
“If the project is prolonged or system construction will last for more than ten years, no one will believe it. Things must be implemented in a small scale quickly. If all does not go entirely to the pin, needs to be repaired. This is a different way of thinking, “Tiik stresses.
He reminds us that life goes in accordance with the laws of nature all the time in the direction of chaos: “In order to be able to maintain order, must be constantly on the move and develop. Indecision means that there is no development. ”
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/8-2014/82745
Tomi Engdahl says:
7 reasons Apple should open-source Swift — and 7 reasons it won’t
Faster innovation, better security, new markets — the case for opening Swift might be more compelling than Apple will admit
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/7-reasons-apple-should-open-source-swift-and-7-reasons-it-wont-250503
Tomi Engdahl says:
7 reasons Apple should open-source Swift — and 7 reasons it won’t
Faster innovation, better security, new markets — the case for opening Swift might be more compelling than Apple will admit
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/7-reasons-apple-should-open-source-swift-and-7-reasons-it-wont-250503
Why Apple should open-source Swift: Open source fuels innovation
Why Apple won’t open-source Swift: Innovation isn’t what Apple really wants
Why Apple should open-source Swift: The future labor pool is coming of age on open source
Why Apple won’t open-source Swift: Markets define what programmers code
Why Apple should open-source Swift: With open source, “every bug is shallow”
Why Apple won’t open-source Swift: Walled gardens have advantages
Why Apple should open-source Swift: Openness means proliferation and new markets
Why Apple won’t open-source Swift: Sharing leads to fragmentation
Why Apple should open-source Swift: Open source ensures a robust tools ecosystem
Why Apple won’t open-source Swift: Openness is a win for Android
Why Apple should open-source Swift: Apple owes it to open source
Why Apple won’t open-source Swift: Apple doesn’t owe open source anything
Why Apple should open-source Swift: Swift can be cloned
Why Apple won’t open-source Swift: Who wants a clone?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why parents are raising their kids on Minecraft
Microsoft’s latest purchase has remarkable cross-generational appeal
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/15/6152085/why-parents-love-minecraft
Back in June of 2011, David Pakman’s daughter and son, at the time age 10 and eight, asked him for a copy of Minecraft. “At the time I didn’t know what that was, so I checked it out, thought it was kinda like digital Legos, and agreed to get it,” says Pakman, a tech entrepreneur and investor. Pretty soon Pakman’s son joined them a few times, and got hooked. So that the family could play together, Pakman set up his own server, hosting a private community for the three of them. Slowly, his children’s friends began to join, and three years later, there are more than 100 kids and parents from around his neighborhood who log on to Pakman’s server. They built churches, libraries, airports, castles, and farms. “It’s the basis for a huge amount of the interaction that happens between the kids in town.”
With its purchase of Mojang, the parent company behind Minecraft for $2 billion, Microsoft is gaining a profitable, fast growing company. Mojang reportedly book over $100 million in profit last year and has just 100 employees. Minecraft offers Microsoft a platform with strong elements of social and mobile usage, two areas where they have struggled so far.
Easy to learn, impossible to lose
In Minecraft, users move around a virtual world, harvesting resources like wood, gold, and iron ore that they can use to build whatever they like. Everything is made of textured 3D cubes. The graphics are extremely low-fi.
Another big reason Minecraft appeals to younger players is that it’s easy to learn and impossible to lose. “There’s no minimum skill level,” says Sorka. “If you die, you respawn. Maybe you dropped some stuff, but that probably doesn’t matter if you just like running around and following your big brother.”
Mods, makers, hacking, and learning
A lot of parents are especially happy to spend time and money on Minecraft for their kids because they see it as a teaching tool. Minecraft teaches kids about architecture, and players can use something called redstone circuits to create simple mechanical devices, even entire computers, out of Minecraft blocks. And while Mojang offers a number of different versions and upgrades of Minecraft to download, the incredible variety of worlds to explore and items you can build comes from “mods”, modified software created by the community that can be installed on a server to reshape that world or the rules that govern it. For many young players, mods become a gateway to the world of computer programming, something parents, and perhaps Microsoft as well, are keen to encourage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers Solve Analog/Digital Problem, Invent Creative Expletives
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=30&doc_id=1323327&
“An analog engineer and a digital engineer join forces, use their respective skills, and pull a few bunnies out of a hat to troubleshoot a system with which they are completely unfamiliar.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Top Tech CEOs Want Employees With Liberal Arts Degrees
As colleges across the country begin revving back up, you might want to reconsider your major.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3034947/the-future-of-work/why-top-tech-ceos-want-employees-with-liberal-arts-degrees
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen once said that the average English degree holder is fated to become a shoe salesman, hawking wares to former classmates who were lucky enough to have majored in math.
Not to be outdone, defenders of the liberal arts are jumping into the fray. Among them are New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, liberal arts consortiums and even a pair of cartoon crusaders called Libby and Art (get it?) who are quick to respond to people besmirching the humanities on Twitter. But joining this chorus are some unexpected voices: CEOs of technology companies.
While the tech boom is partly responsible for the spike in students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math, many tech CEOs still believe employees trained in the liberal arts add value to their companies. In 2010, Steve Jobs famously mused that for technology to be truly brilliant, it must be coupled with artistry.
“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough,” he said. “It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” Other tech CEOs across the country agree that liberal arts training–with its emphasis on creativity and critical thinking–is vital to the success of their business.
So how exactly do the humanities translate into positive results for tech companies? Steve Yi, CEO of web advertising platform MediaAlpha, says that the liberal arts train students to thrive in subjectivity and ambiguity, a necessary skill in the tech world where few things are black and white. “In the dynamic environment of the technology sector, there is not typically one right answer when you make decisions,” he says. “There are just different shades of how correct you might be,” he says.
Tech CEOs are generally keen to hire people trained in the humanities, partly because a large proportion of them have similar backgrounds themselves. (A third of all Fortune 500 CEOs have liberal arts degrees.) But for students coming out of liberal arts colleges, it can still be difficult to find work in the tech sector.
Instead, recruiters and HR managers on the hiring front lines often use systems that pick candidates for tech jobs based on key terms like “coding” and “programming,” which many liberal arts graduates will not have on their resumes.
Nugent is concerned about this trend because she thinks that training students for very specific tasks seems shortsighted when technology and business is evolving at such a fast rate. “It’s a horrible irony that at the very moment the world has become more complex, we’re encouraging our young people to be highly specialized in one task,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
7 Most Audacious Medtech Predictions
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323938&
1. People living until 150
2. The Google executive who thinks immortality Is possible
3. Replacing physicians with computer programs
4. Allowing the blind to see
5. Healthy people will want to have artificial hearts implanted
Tomi Engdahl says:
Try this happiness-enhancing tricks: IMMEDIATELY
Journal of Experimental Psychology A study published to draw the conclusion that people try to avoid mistakenly social contact with strangers. People think wrongly that talking to strangers is unpleasant and that strangers do not want to talk to them.
It turned out that those who were talking to strangers enjoy the most the boring situations like morning traffic on the bus, on the train or subway.
Source: http://www.iltalehti.fi/pinnalla/2014091618667003_iq.shtml?utm_source=etblokki&utm_campaign=etblokki
Tomi Engdahl says:
What TODO with open source: Google, Facebook and Twitter launch collab project
It’s all about making it easier – on their bottom lines
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/17/webgiants_join_todo/
Some of the web’s biggest users of open-source gear have thrown their weight behind a project to make open-source “easier.”
Facebook, Google and Twitter, cloud collaboration services Dropbox and Box, and code site GitHub have joined payment providers Square and Stripe, US retailer’s WalMart Labs and a body called the Khan Academy to announce TODO.
An acronym for “talk openly, develop openly”, the goal of TODO is to iron out lingering and persistent problems for big firms using open source.
The TODO site says the group plans to share experiences, develop best practice and work on common tooling.
TODO shows the giants feel the open-source tools they have built or the components they are sucking in aren’t developing in the wild as they’d like. And that’s a problem, particularly for listed companies betting their businesses on this stuff.
http://todogroup.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big Data’s being held back by little talent, says Huawei head techie
Solutions? ‘I don’t know – but SIs could help’
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/09/17/big_data_projects_huawei/
Big data projects – seen by some as the tech industry’s latest snake oil and others as a potentially valuable tool to dig up fresh information – is being held back by the lack of data scientists for hire.
This is according to Ron Raffensperger, Huawei’s chief techie for the IT product line that sits within its Data Centre Solutions Sales Department.
“It is clearly an area that is ripe for a lot of innovation, there are a lots of start-ups trying to figure out how to help people do big data things without data scientists, automating the data scientist part of it, but that is not a very easy thing to do,” he tells us.
So what’s the answer? “I don’t know,” he replies candidly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Give new life to old phones and tablets with these tips!
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/give-new-life-old-phones-and-tablets-these-tips
you probably rotate through your cell phones and/or tablets every couple years. These little devices are so convenient and have been consistently dropping in price, while their power continues to go up, so you may have a few older devices sitting in a drawer.
but what can you do with your old devices?
However, there are quite a few uses for old devices aside from just pawning them off on your friends or disposing of them. This article is geared primarily at Android devices
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers Solve Analog/Digital Problem, Invent Creative Expletives
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=30&doc_id=1323327&
An analog engineer and a digital engineer join forces, use their respective skills, and pull a few bunnies out of a hat to troubleshoot a system with which they are completely unfamiliar.
Success was achieved by a pair of engineers, one digital and one analog, each with his own skill set, working together to solve the problem.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Soldering for Engineers
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319658
The course description says that “Soldering is a must skill for all sorts of electrical and electronics work.” That’s certainly true, which is why I wonder if it needs to be offered at all. What am I missing here? Do today’s engineers do all their work using software simulation and don’t build prototypes anymore? Well, I can understand if you’re designing ICs, for they’re kind of hard to breadboard. That same holds true for, say, linecards where the signal bandwidths are too high for breadboards.
I can’t imagine life as an electrical engineer who doesn’t know how to solder. Even after moving off the bench and into an applications engineering position, I always found a need to build a custom test cable or modify a board.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study: Cities with super fast Internet speeds are more productive
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/18/study-cities-with-super-fast-internet-speeds-are-more-productive/
It’s become an article of faith among politicians, investors and entrepreneurs that the Internet — and access to it — is an economic engine. It helps connect Americans to education and government services. It serves as a platform for new ideas and companies that wind up changing the world. And it reduces costs for consumers and businesses everywhere.
With that in mind, a new study finds that access to next-generation Internet speeds may be connected to better economic growth. According to a report by the Boston-based Analysis Group, cities that offer broadband at 1 gigabit per second — roughly 100 times the national average of 10 megabits per second — report higher per-capita GDP compared to cities that lack those Internet speeds. Of course, all the normal caveats apply: It’s hard to draw a causal inference from the study, and it’s possible there’s something else about the 14 gigabit cities that made them better off to begin with. Still, the paper’s methodology seems relatively straightforward
Cities with gigabit connections reported 1.1 percent higher per-capita GDP than their slower counterparts, the study found. That might not sound like much, but consider that per-capita GDP in the entire United States has been growing at a pace of one to two percent a year since the recession, according to the World Bank.
If you add it all up, that amounts to $1.4 billion in extra growth, the study says. The findings are consistent with predictions from economists that Internet access will enhance U.S. productivity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open source and the NHS: Two huge disorganised entities without central control
Nay dragons here, me lad – these be long lost lovers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/19/open_source_nhs/
Last decade, the previous Labour government attempted to press standardised software on every acute NHS trust through the National Programme for IT. This foundered for the reasons already outlined, that trusts and their doctors tend to obstruct central attempts to order them about.
So with open source software, which could jump-start trusts’ IT development, NHS England is wisely offering encouragement rather than pressure.
“This isn’t about 100 per cent open source, even 50 per cent,” Richard Jefferson, head of business systems for NHS England, told that recent conference. “Even if we get to 15-20 per cent, that would be fantastic.” Adding that there is no specific target, he added: “Even if we just challenge normal vendors that will be good.”
NHS England need not have pitched things so low, at least for this audience of open source enthusiasts. When Shane Tickell, the boss of UK healthcare software firm IMS Maxims, stood up to announce that his company was moving its flagship product to open source, he was given rock-star levels of applause at the event. “It’s a big step,”
Senior says IMS Maxims’ new commitment to open source helped, but not for ideological reasons:
“It made it affordable,” according to Senior, recalling a two-hour session being cross-examined on open source software by the trust’s board. “It’s just another option to pursue, and we’re going to give it a go.”
“Despite hospitals all doing the same thing and reporting the same way, we all feel we need to be different. Do we really lads? Come on!”
If NHS acute trusts can overcome their collective belief in their own uniqueness, one of the most promising sources of open source software for the NHS will be other parts of the NHS. Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS foundation trust in London has created an open source electronic patient record system called OpenEyes
The eye-specific parts can be adapted, too: an NHS Hack Day event saw OpenEyes tweaked so it could be used for heart surgery, under the name OpenHeart. Some have suggested it could be used for orthopaedics and dentistry, possibly under the names OpenArms and, yes, OpenWide.
You can go deeper than just apps, and really get into the nitty gritty of document management and workflows. One option is Alfresco, the British open-source venture specialising in content management systems (CMS).
Newton argues open source is well suited to systems that need to be transparently stable and secure, where a lot of people have an interest in collaborating.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Science Has a Sexual Assault Problem
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/09/19/1548209/science-has-a-sexual-assault-problem
Phys.org reports, “The life sciences have come under fire recently with a study published in PLOS ONE that investigated the level of sexual harassment and sexual assault of trainees in academic fieldwork environments. The study found 71% of women and 41% of men respondents experienced sexual harassment”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does Silicon Valley Have a Contract-Worker Problem?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/silicon-valleys-contract-worker-problem.html
Welcome to the 1099 economy
I first heard the term “1099 economy” at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference, where it was uttered not as a pejorative, but as a way to praise the innovative labor practices of Silicon Valley start-ups. When you order a service from one of these companies, the people who get paid to perform it don’t file W-2 tax forms because they’re not officially employed. Instead, they file the independent contractor form, the 1099-MISC. The most famous examples of 1099 companies are on-demand car providers like Uber and Lyft, but there are dozens of others: Homejoy, Handy, Postmates, Spoonrocket, TaskRabbit, DoorDash, Washio. All of these companies employ similar jargon to describe their labor model — if you hear the words platform, provider network, or Uber for ____, you’re likely talking to one.
For start-ups trying to make it in a competitive tech industry, the benefit of opting for 1099 contractors over W-2 wage-earners is obvious. Doing so lowers your costs dramatically, since you only have to pay contract workers for the time they spend providing services, and not for their lunch breaks, commutes, and vacation time. Contract workers aren’t eligible for health benefits, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, or retirement plans. And contractors don’t have to be fired if they mess up, since they were never employed in the first place. Instead, they’re simply removed from the network, and life goes on.
In other words, the 1099 economy is almost perfectly calibrated to serve the needs of fast-moving start-ups — lower costs, less liability, the ability to grow and shrink the labor pool quickly — but is it good for the people doing the work?
That depends on whom you ask.
“There’s the control-your-hours contractor. That group seems to be very happy with where things are. There’s the full-time employee. And then there’s the middle group — where they’re acting like full-time employees and being paid like contractors. That group is disenfranchised.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Taking the No Out of Innovation
http://mds.ricoh.com/knowledge-center/blog/taking-the-no-out-of-innovation
“The solution to mitigating the risk is not to stop sharing and collaboration, which is essential to a productive workplace. Rather it is putting solutions in place that will keep these documents secure without requiring draconian end-user security measures that will stifle productivity.”
Sounds great, but the question is how?
But this does require IT to step out of its traditional role of support and to be proactive about initiating that dialog, to reach out to Line of Business innovators. It may feel counter-intuitive, but success requires IT security to encourage reorganizing processes around enabling innovation and creating business value.
It is true many enterprises already include IT security as part of the teams that review current document and information processes. But I am advocating that IT security should collaborate with innovative domain experts or departmental managers as early as possible.
This subtle change shifts IT security’s focus, and importantly, perception by others, from gate-keeping to helping teams predict risks, estimating risk-reduction costs, and jointly finding productive and secure solutions.
Success does take time. And as I stated above, this does require new skills on the part of IT security. For example, the ability to communicate with non-security practitioners; and a better understanding of the business drivers and the way others think in different functional areas
Tomi Engdahl says:
At Google, Larry Page’s Dreams Keep Getting Bigger
https://www.theinformation.com/At-Google-CEO-Page-s-Dreams-Keep-Getting-Bigger
A closer look at Google 2.0 and a handful of other big ideas floated by Mr. Page—including the creation of a second major research lab alongside Google X and building a model airport and city—shows the remarkable scope of his ambitions for a company that still makes most of its money on Web-search advertising.
Tomi Engdahl says:
THE DEATH OF ECONOMICS: Aircraft design vs flat-lining financial models
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/21/crawling_from_the_wreckage_essay_the_death_of_economics/
John Watkinson continues his series of essays for El Reg in which he examines failures in society from banking and education to transport and IT. Here, with a critical eye on our economic plight, he looks at the methods employed by those doing the sums and their consequences.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bill passed by U.S. House of Representatives identifies optics and photonics as key focus area
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/2014/09/bill-passed-by-u-s-house-of-representatives-identifies-optics-and-photonics-as-key-focus-area.html?cmpid=EnlVSDSeptember222014
The Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation (RAMI) Act, which was passed on September 15, seeks to establish several Centers for Manufacturing Innovation, uniting public and private partners with the goal of fostering manufacturing innovation in the U.S. and speeding up product commercialization. Within the bill, optics and photonics were specifically named as technology focus areas to consider for manufacturing centers.
In addition, a Center for Manufacturing Innovation “has a predominated focus on a manufacturing process, novel material, enabling technology, supply chain integration methodology, or another relevant aspect of advanced manufacturing, such as nanotechnology applications, advanced ceramics, photonics and optics, composites, bio-based and advanced materials, flexible hybrid technologies, and tool development for microelectronics.”
“The RAMI Act is a win for the optics and photonics industry,” said OSA CEO Elizabeth Rogan in a press release. “Countries like Germany and Japan have had success with similar initiatives. The United States must demonstrate its commitment to innovation and growth by providing the needed resources to advance high-tech business in this country.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Our Botched Understanding of “Science” Ruins Everything
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/09/22/1312251/how-our-botched-understanding-of-science-ruins-everything
“If you ask most people what science is, they will give you an answer that looks a lot like Aristotelian ‘science’ — i.e., the exact opposite of what modern science actually is. Capital-S Science is the pursuit of capital-T Truth.”
“We have plenty of anti-science people, but most of our ‘pro-science’ people are really pro-magic (and therefore anti-science). ”
How our botched understanding of ‘science’ ruins everything
Intellectuals of all persuasions love to claim the banner of science. A vanishing few do so properly.
http://theweek.com/article/index/268360/how-our-botched-understanding-of-science-ruins-everything
Here’s one certain sign that something is very wrong with our collective mind: Everybody uses a word, but no one is clear on what the word actually means.
One of those words is “science.”
Everybody uses it. Science says this, science says that. You must vote for me because science. You must buy this because science. You must hate the folks over there because science.
Look, science is really important. And yet, who among us can easily provide a clear definition of the word “science” that matches the way people employ the term in everyday life?
So let me explain what science actually is. Science is the process through which we derive reliable predictive rules through controlled experimentation. That’s the science that gives us airplanes and flu vaccines and the Internet. But what almost everyone means when he or she says “science” is something different.
Galileo disproved Aristotle’s “demonstration” that heavier objects should fall faster than light ones by creating a subtle controlled experiment (contrary to legend, he did not simply drop two objects from the Tower of Pisa). What was so important about this Galileo Moment was not that Galileo was right and Aristotle wrong; what was so important was how Galileo proved Aristotle wrong: through experiment.
The vast majority of people, including a great many very educated ones, don’t actually know what science is.
Since most people think math and lab coats equal science, people call economics a science, even though almost nothing in economics is actually derived from controlled experiments. Then people get angry at economists when they don’t predict impending financial crises, as if having tenure at a university endowed you with magical powers. Countless academic disciplines have been wrecked by professors’ urges to look “more scientific” by, like a cargo cult, adopting the externals of Baconian science (math, impenetrable jargon, peer-reviewed journals) without the substance and hoping it will produce better knowledge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
World Maker Faire: engineering, creativity, and inspiration
http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/serious-fun/4434984/World-Maker-Faire–engineering–creativity–and-inspiration
If you need evidence that engineering is changing, that new doors to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) are opening to the masses, and that companies that have been the foundation of innovation for decades are revising their approach, go to a Maker Faire.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > The Workbench
Be ready for changes in engineering
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/the-workbench/4434828/Be-ready-for-changes-in-engineering
The events represent an exciting time of transformation for engineering that we at EDN used our last print issue’s cover story in June 2013 to bring to our community’s attention. We called the change “the democratization of engineering” and said: “There’s a growing design trend, some even say there’s a revolution brewing, that’s beginning to have an impact on the world of design and how engineers go about innovating.”
It’s really about the independence of engineering. 3D printing is allowing prototypes and production in the blink of an eye; wearables offer tremendous opportunity for tech expansion in nearly all vertical markets; and IoT is ushering in sensor- and embedded-heavy intelligence to every aspect of life.
With all three areas being promoted by strong community knowledge sharing, feedback, and often open source, the walls are coming down. Engineers will soon find themselves able to quickly, cheaply, and accurately design and build what they’d like, even if what they’d like to build is their own company. And you’ll find the design and business knowledge to do so at Maker Faire and DoT.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Now Hear This!
How to make your hardware idea a reality
http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4429844/How-to-make-your-hardware-idea-a-reality
Hardware start-ups have typically been risky and expensive projects, and even as new resources make the process easier, they require a lot of work and careful planning.
Supalla got into the electronics industry just a few years ago when he made an Internet-connected LED blink with a remote switch using Arduino. From there, he developed a product to bring lights online, the Smart Socket. But when he was beaten to market by the Philips hue and LIFX, the Kickstarter campaign for the project failed.
“When I came up with the idea for the Arduino light, people generally thought that I was nuts,” said Supalla at his EE Live! 2014 session on bringing your product to market. “We went from being crazy to old news. From the moment that you decide to do something to the moment that you actually get to market, that’s a really important period of time.”
His current project involves the Spark Core, a development tool kit that connects to the Internet over Wi-Fi and brings with it whatever it’s connected to, and the Spark Cloud, a cloud service that powers the connected devices the Spark Core connects.
With the Spark Core, Supalla crafted a well-thought-out process to take the product from idea to reality. His steps, in this order, are to make it work, make it pretty, sell it, make friends, make it manufacturable, make it, and ship it. The Spark Core is currently on the next step of making it grow.
“Invest in good lighting and a good camera to make your product look great,” said Supalla.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Accidental engineering: 10 mistakes turned into innovation
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/serious-fun/4412399/Accidental-engineering–10-mistakes-turned-into-innovation
Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “Name the greatest of all inventors: Accident.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sharing Economy Faces Patchwork of Guidelines in European Countries
For Airbnb and Uber, an Uneven Response by Regulators
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/technology/sharing-economy-faces-patchwork-of-guidelines-in-european-countries.html?_r=0
Start-ups like Uber and Airbnb want European consumers to embrace their companies. Yet when it comes to persuading policy makers, these companies have run into regulatory hurdles that have exposed the European Union’s uneven response to technological innovation.
Some cities are clamping down on the companies, like Barcelona, where Airbnb, an apartment-sharing service, was recently fined for breaching regional property rental rules. In other cities, like Amsterdam, politicians have passed legislation to help jump-start the local sharing economy.
Some European countries are sending mixed signals: Uber, the car-sharing service, was banned in Germany until last week, when a court in Frankfurt overturned the ban.
As in the United States, where tech start-ups have also faced legal challenges, the wide-ranging response in Europe often comes down to whether lawmakers view the companies as a threat to local businesses or an opportunity to improve economic growth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“You test your device and it never works the first time,” said Krisna Bhargava, materials science graduate student at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “If you’ve grown up to be an engineer or scientist, you’ve probably been influenced by LEGO at some point in your childhood. I think every scientist has a secret fantasy that whatever they’re building will be as simple to assemble.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-lego-like-modular-components-d-labs-on-a-chip.html#jCp
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers Should Study Finance: 5 Reasons Why
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1323161&
I’m a big proponent of engineers learning financial basics. Why? Because engineers are making decisions all the time, in multiple ways. Having a good financial understanding guides these decisions better.
Even if an engineer remains as an individual contributor as opposed to going into management, experienced engineers often become thought leaders in their organizations, involved in project priorities and strategic direction.
Is it worth it to spend money to engineer a low-cost part?
This is a typical scenario many engineers face. A new part can be created with an NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering) investment that saves X dollars per unit. The math is pretty simple. What is the total savings over the lifetime of the product, and will the savings exceed the investment? If not, forget it. But even if it does, there is more analysis.
Is it worth it to delay a project by a quarter to add a feature to increase sales?
Delaying a project introduction is one of the costliest changes an organization can make. But sometimes you have no choice, or the reason is compelling. If you delay by a quarter, how much is it costing you? A lot.
In general a one quarter delay means a loss of all the gross profit (gross margin × revenue) of mature sales for an entire quarter. Even though the delay occurs at the beginning of product availability, it is actually a quarter of peak sales that is lost, since the death of the product is defined by the marketplace, and is fixed.
A competitor has introduced a product that is expected to reduce a new project’s sales by half. Should I continue or cancel the project? I’ve already sunk a big investment into it, but there is more to complete the project. With such a big investment already, should I continue?
Here’s the rule. Ignore sunk costs. Look at only future costs and future returns, but look at them honestly. Anything you already spent is money spent in all scenarios, and can be ignored when comparing the two choices you now have: to keep going or to cancel the project.
I’m in a startup business where the investors are anxious that we achieve break-even as soon as possible. What is the optimum pricing strategy?
Pricing is one of the greatest levers a company has on profit. While many people believe gross margin reflects manufacturing efficiency (it does), it is equally driven by price of the product. After all, one dollar of increased price is one dollar of increased gross margin (actually, gross profit), and with fixed expenses, one dollar of increased operating profit.
If you increase the price, the sales will drop. That is the sales elasticity. You will also increase the amount of gross profit per unit. If you can estimate the elasticity and you know the actual manufacturing cost, you can derive a price that maximizes gross profit dollars and helps achieve break-even for the investors the quickest.
We are doing a strategic review, and have ten great product ideas. Some are small projects, some are large. We can’t fund them all. Finance has calculated NPV (Net Present Value) and ROI (Return on Investment) for each. Which should we use as our prime factor for prioritizing which projects we pursue and which we don’t?
NPV essentially measures return minus cost, while ROI measures return divided by cost. I’ve simplified this a lot, as both discount the time value of money. Essentially, NPV is the absolute value of a project, while ROI is a ratio.
Warning: I’ve even seen finance people get these things wrong.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printers Pursue High Fashion
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324050&
“3D printed clothing will take 5-20 years to mature, but it’s not about being perfect,” said Mary Huang, who has created 3D printed bikinis and sandals. “It’s so much better than what’s been done for 100 years.”
She sketched out some of the opportunities and challenges ahead as the fashion industry lumbers into the digital age in a talk at the Designers of Things conference here.
“We live in the age of software, so why shouldn’t fashion be digital?” said Huang, founder of the R&D company Continuum Fashion. “Clothes have been made by hand, a process that is representative of the last century.” The chief hurdles today are in manufacturing.
Huang helped develop a program that lets consumers create dresses using their own patterns. In a crowdfunded pilot program,
“A plastic dress is not that great, but a nylon bikini was OK,”
Today’s clothes industry still relies on manual processes and high-volume production methods
“3D printing is really cheap for mechanical engineering prototypes and really expensive for making consumer products. All the manufacturing behind this totally sucks.”
For example, an EOS Formiga P-100 laser scintering machine creates great products, but it costs more than $100,000 and uses powder that costs $200 per kilo, compared to $2 per kilo for fabrics. The result “would be a 3D printed shoe that costs $1,000 or more,”
Current machines take 8-10 hours to print a single shoe. However, farms of small 3D printers — like the Ultimaker machines Huang uses in her studio — will be viable in the future. “We are not that far from this working.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Out in the Open: The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/exercism/
Wanna be a programmer? That shouldn’t be too hard. You can sign-up for an iterative online tutorial at a site like Codecademy or Treehouse. You can check yourself into a “coding bootcamp” for a face-to-face crash course in the ways of programming. Or you could do the old fashioned thing: buy a book or take a class at your local community college.
But if want to be a serious programmer, that’s another matter. You’ll need hundreds of hours of practice—and countless mistakes—to learn the trade. It’s often more of an art than a skill—where the best way of doing something isn’t the most obvious way. You can’t really learn to craft code that’s both clear and efficient without some serious trial and error, not to mention an awful lot of feedback on what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.
That’s where a site called Exercism.io is trying to help. Exercism is updated every day with programming exercises in a variety of different languages. First, you download these exercises using a special software client, and once you’ve completed one, you upload it back to the site, where other coders from around the world will give you feedback. Then you can take what you’ve learned and try the exercise again.
Exercism
http://exercism.io/
Exercism is your place to engage in thoughtful conversations about code. Explore simplicity, idiomatic language features, and expressive readable code.
Exercises are currently available in Clojure, CoffeeScript, C#, C++, Elixir, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, JavaScript, Lua, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl5, Python, Ruby, Scala, and Swift. Coming Up: Java, Rust, Erlang, PHP, and Common Lisp.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How businesses can solve the quality freelance problem
http://www.digitaljournal.com/business/small+business/how-businesses-can-solve-the-quality-freelance-problem/article/404799#ixzz3EEZEs5C0
Companies spend vast amounts of time and considerable resources in attempting to locate the best person for the job, only to be met with frequent disappointment and less-than-stellar results. A platform called Toptal aims to overcome those challenges by connecting carefully-screened freelance tech workers and engineers with clients who are struggling to find the perfect candidate.
The problem isn’t so much the quantity as it is quality. While numerous reports have indicated that qualified workers in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (“STEM”) fields are not in short supply, there are varying degrees of competency and expertise within the respective fields, making the hiring of employees for short or long-term projects daunting at best, and overwhelming at worst.
Toptal allows tech companies to connect with qualified workers all over the world.
What the many reports on the issue have failed to address is the proper match of talent with company and project, a notion that takes into account a more macro (if not altogether refreshing) idea of emphasizing quality over quantity. Du Val emphasizes that his company screens candidates “at a really high calibre. We look for both hard and soft skills by having in-person interviews with every person who comes into our platform. When we do that, you have engineers screening other engineers, so they have that understanding of not only technical aspects, but the tangential qualities that make for a great engineer.”
It’s that combination of high quality experience and the personal touch
Tomi Engdahl says:
For Control Systems, Put the Focus on Innovation, Not Integration
http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/103691
Rather than try to create control systems by integrating disparate parts, which then must be configured, tested and separately programmed, engineers would do better to start with an integrated high-performance platform and then concentrate on creating innovative solutions in software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > From the Edge
Internet of Things: Innovation Contests
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/from-the-edge-/4434854/Internet-of-Things–Innovation-Contests?elq=8bc799508dd641cd837a06f1651da8c6&elqCampaignId=19294
As you may have noticed, one of the hottest topics in technology, and a sector ripe with innovation, is the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is the growing web of interconnected physical objects and machines – refrigerators, cars, medical devices, thermostats, even toothbrushes – capable of delivering real time intelligence and updates that improve and simplify daily life. Business Insider estimates 1.9 billion IoT connections today, and 9 billion by 2018 – roughly the current number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearables, computers, and PCs combined.
Until recently, developing and deploying IoT solutions was a time consuming and challenging endeavor due to the complexity of machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, the engine behind the IoT. A diverse ecosystem of solution providers and wireless network technologies required complex integration engineering and long development timelines that often stalled projects before they even got off the ground.
Thankfully, a new breed of consolidated M2M solutions and services are speeding development and transforming today’s marketplace.
For example, development kits, such as the Java™-based Gemalto Cinterion® Concept Board (see Figure) enable professional developers and hobbyists to transform ideas into prototypes
To motivate solutions and ideas that can help improve our daily lives, Gemalto is sponsoring two separate competitions this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study: Multimedia Multitasking May Be Shrinking Human Brains
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/09/25/224249/study-multimedia-multitasking-may-be-shrinking-human-brains
It seems that switching between laptop, smart phone and tablet may be shrinking our brains and leaving us prone to higher levels of anxiety and stress reports new research from the University of Sussex in the UK. The researchers point out that the link is currently a correlation rather than a proof of causation
Brain scans reveal ‘grey matter’ differences in media multitaskers
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/newsandevents/?id=26540
Simultaneously using mobile phones, laptops and other media devices could be changing the structure of our brains, according to new University of Sussex research.
A study published today (24 September) in PLOS ONE reveals that people who frequently use several media devices at the same time have lower grey-matter density in one particular region of the brain compared to those who use just one device occasionally.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hollywood’s made an INTELLIGENT science vs religion film?!
I Origins: the incredible tale of a scientist with an open mind and feelings
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/27/i_origins_review/
There’s nothing like the power of love to screw up a good movie about science. Whether it’s miracle medical cures for the mentally ill who just needed to find “the one” (Silver Linings Playbook) or the old chestnut that feelings about people and nature are just better than science and progress (Avatar), there’s nothing Hollywood likes more than to set a scientist up and then tumble him or her into faith with a big old dose of the feels.
What’s amazing about I Origins in a nutshell is that it takes that whole idea and actually examines it intelligently.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How the NYT innovation report came to be
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/271717/how-the-nyt-innovation-report-came-to-be/
O’Leary somehow tweeted her presentation as she gave it, recapping the report’s five main recommendations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Schmidt’s “How Google Works” encourages managers to think big, fail fast, rely on data, but these principles may not apply to the average company — Don’t be modest — AS A service, Google has become indispensable to people’s interactions online.
Decrypting Google
Don’t be modest
The search giant shares some of its business methods
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21620056-search-giant-shares-some-its-business-methods-dont-be-modest
How Google Works. By Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg. Grand Central Publishing; 286 pages; $30. John Murray; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
AS A service, Google has become indispensable to people’s interactions online. As a business worth $400 billion after 16 years, its success has been breathtaking. Yet in terms of management, it has set up radically different ways of organising itself from those of traditional businesses. Few people have focused on this.
Most important is thinking extremely big—the “moonshot”, as it is called in Silicon Valley. Google’s leaders often have to wrest employees away from seeking a 10% improvement and towards finding one that is “10X” (that is, ten times better)—something that requires them to do things in an entirely new way, not just optimise what already exists. Most 10X attempts will fail, but that is accepted.
The second insight of the Google method is to “fail fast”. That way, people can learn from failure and move on, perhaps turning some aspect of the setback into the seedling of a new success. In this respect, “learning” trumps “knowing”, since nobody can foresee the future. “Iteration is the most important part of the strategy,” the authors advise.
The third element is the primacy of data over experience, intuition or hierarchy in the making of decisions.
The core of Google’s method is the empowering of employees. Bosses at all firms talk of this, but the search giant takes it to heart. It has devised systems to enable good ideas from any quarter to get an airing. Many of Google’s biggest products and features (like Gmail) have emerged from this, and also from a policy that lets staff work on pet projects for 20% of their time.
Such a culture places huge emphasis on the quality of employees.
Though it is not discussed in the book, Google’s management philosophy doubtless springs from the careers of the founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Their youth, vision and technical genius, together with Google’s vast wealth, enabled the company to take risks that others would never contemplate. This is why it vies to photograph every street in the world and scan every book ever published, to say nothing of building self-driving cars and glasses that record almost everything.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: Multimedia-Based Wiki For Learning and Business Procedures?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/14/09/28/1921219/ask-slashdot-multimedia-based-wiki-for-learning-and-business-procedures
I’m scratching my head at how to develop a decent wiki for a large organization I work in. We support multiple technologies, across multiple locations, and have ways of doing things that become exponentially convoluted. I give IT training to many of these users for a particular technology, and other people do for other stuff as well. Now, I hate wikis because everyone who did one before failed and gave them a bad name. If it starts wrong, it is doomed to failure and irrelevance.
What I’m looking for would be something like a Wiki with YouTube built in — make a playlist of videos with embedded links for certain job based tasks. And reuse and recycle those videos in other playlists of other tasks as they may be applicable.
Comments:
The problem with any system is content. You said all Wikis have failed so far, have you figured out why? The answer may not be in the format itself but rather the content it provides. If you can’t get the content right, and most importantly relevant, then it doesn’t matter what technology you will use.
My suggestion is before you even consider doing this you need buyin from the various departments you support to help create content. If you launch with little you will be irrelevant. If you put it off long enough to fill it and make it useful then you may have a chance of surviving.
“Build it and they will come” does not apply here.
I’m not sure using a wiki is really the answer but if you insist then try Dokuwiki. It doesn’t get much simpler on the end user side when it comes to using a Wiki.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to fix 90% of problems at work
http://www.samihonkonen.com/how-to-fix-90-of-problems-at-work/
Applying the first three core practices of Kanban will fix 90% of issues we have in knowledge work. Kanban is an approach to incremental, evolutionary process change for organizations.
The practices are
Visualize,
Limit work in progress,
Manage flow.
Visualize
As knowledge workers, our work is intangible and abstract. We receive abstract items from our customers (e.g. a need for a feature), we use our organization’s collective brains to process them, and we produce abstract products (e.g. software). That’s the nature of knowledge work.
This is why we need to visualize. We visualize to regain an overview. With a better overview we make better decisions, we have better discussions, we focus on the important stuff and we fret less about the irrelevant.
Limit work in progress
When driving to work we all hate traffic jams. Yet at work we seem to love them. Why else would we be swamped with so much work?
With limits in place we’re not allowed to start new work before finishing something first. We even start co-operating in order to finish work. We limit work in progress to finish things faster.
Manage flow
A customer request starts a process within our company that produces an end result which is of value to the customer. What should happen in between is flow. Work should flow through the organization, everyone pitching in when needed, to finish the work as quickly as possible, but without skipping on quality.
However, instead of managing the flow of value to the customer we tend to do quite the opposite. We divide our organizations into departments that focus on one part of the flow and then we manage them. We make sure everyone in every department is working at full capacity. We start optimizing the parts and not the whole. And we forget about the customer.
Fixing work
The Pareto principle says that by focusing on key areas we can fix the majority of problems.
Even though, in this case, the 90% estimate was produced with the Stetson-Harrison method, focusing on flow will help you solve a large majority of issues knowledge workers struggle with at work.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Find the Right Open Source Project To Get Involved With
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/09/29/1617204/how-to-find-the-right-open-source-project-to-get-involved-with
Writing on Opensource.com, Matt Micene shares his thoughts on getting started with an open source project.
On the hunt for the right open source project?
https://opensource.com/business/14/9/jump-into-open-source-project
Tomi Engdahl says:
The most excellent school for Africa? How tech is transforming teaching in a township
http://www.htxt.co.za/2014/09/29/the-most-excellent-school-for-africa-how-tech-is-transforming-teaching-in-a-township/
With his hand thrust inside the 3D printed prosthetic, Gerald Speelman is trying to work out how a Robohand functions. The grade 7 student from Tsakane township near Brakpan is, like his classmates, enthralled by the curious design for an artificial hand – and he’s being challenged by one of his teachers to not just admire the prosthetic limb, but to understand the mechanics of it too.
I’m standing with Speelman underneath a marquee in the dusty township school, surrounded by 3D printers, remote control cars and gliders, quadcopters and a never-ending supply of breadboards, components and arduino boards. Behind me, a group of kids are gathered around a small projector screen which is streaming live video from a quadcopter hovering overhead. It’s Software Freedom Day, but it’s the hardware on show that’s proving most intriguing for the young minds.
For older minds, however, it’s the school itself that’s quite remarkable. This is the African School for Excellence (ASE), an 18 month old academy with a mission: to produce world class schools for South African townships that are both affordable and scalable to the country as a whole. Right now, Tsakane is the only school the organisation operates, and the entire school is based in a handful of portable classrooms at the end of a dusty drive. But ground is being broken for a permanent home for the institution later this week because so far, it’s a huge success.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Research Casts Doubt On the “10,000 Hour Rule” of Expertise
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/09/29/2016251/new-research-casts-doubt-on-the-10000-hour-rule-of-expertise
What makes someone rise to the top in music, games, sports, business, or science? This question is the subject of one of psychology’s oldest debates. Malcolm Gladwell’s ’10,000 hours’ rule probably isn’t the answer.
Practice Does Not Make Perfect
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes.html
We are not all created equal where our genes and abilities are concerned.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If It Ain’t Automated, You’re Doing It Wrong
http://www.thenewip.net/author.asp?section_id=289&doc_id=710937&cid=oubtrain&wc=4
In all the excitement over virtualization and the impact that NFV and SDN will have on telecom networks, one stark reality remains for every IP network operator: However you are evolving your network, if you aren’t automating the back-end processes, you’re doing it wrong.
As those engaged in this process know all too well, introducing automation means extracting people, reducing the human error factor in the process, and enabling flow-through processes that start with the customer input.
“There are a lot of processes we have had in place for the last 50 years that we need to get rid of,” he said. “This is how our companies have run — with an enormous workforce.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Value proposition of PaaS
It’s simple: Bring your own code. What makes it so special then?
http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2014/09/value-proposition-of-paas_29.html
Have you ever had a new business idea but hesitate to try it out due to the risk related to the initial investment? If your business is related to internet services, maybe PaaS can help you.
Perhaps the biggest promise of the Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the user’s ability to try new things out with minimum risk. Just take an instance, deploy your code, and pay per use. If it’s aint working as a business, then just quit it, and you didn’t lost much.
Tomi Engdahl says:
20 years of false business intelligence promises
Where enterprises are going wrong in the age of big data
- See more at: http://www.information-age.com/technology/information-management/123458490/20-years-false-business-intelligence-promises#sthash.FMTazvcP.dpuf