Cable no more?

Read this to see how our viewing habits are changing and will change in the new year or two.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/personaltech/10basics.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

As the digital and the physical worlds blur . . .

This is an amazing clip into how the physical world is becoming integrated with the digital world.

http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

Google Wave

If you haven't seen this yet, you need to. This is a glimpse of how we'll all be communicating soon, I think. It is amazing to me how fast the world is changing. Think about the ramifications of this leap in communications and if something occurs to you, please comment here. How will this change the ways we work with and talk to each other?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw&feature=player_embedded#

The Living Proof Project

I was lucky enough to get invited to hear Bill and Melinda Gates talk about their Living Proof Project on Tuesday night. They did a fantastic job of being Impatient Optimists--addressing the "living proof" that government and nonprofit aid programs had helped lesser developed countries to make enormous strides in global health, while remaining anxious to quickly see that more is done. Their data presentation was flawless; they even used the audience to create a living pie chart. And their video was as realistic as any I've ever seen--conveyed via a "Star Wars" type projector arm beaming pictures against a semicircular screen that made you feel as if you were in the village or marketplace portrayed. In terms of philanthropy, Gates is the Andrew Carnegie of our times, but unlike Carnegie never passed through a "robber baron" stage and seems like he has always been the "nice guy" he is today.

Tim Westergren, Founder of Pandora, visits the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

Hear the story of how Tim Westergren, a former Political Science major and nanny, took his interest in music and build the online radio, Pandora.

Pandora from Richard Mitchell on Vimeo.

Think first before posting certain facts on Facebook

This is an excellent article about some of the facts you should probably be careful about posting on Facebook. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/28/dcot.socialmedia.privacy/index.html

Think twice about posting:

--your birthdate (can be used for identity theft)

--your mother as a friend (hackers can use her maiden name to answer security questions)

--your vacation plans (burglars can be tipped off)

One way to make your site more secure is to create "lists" that allow complete information to only close friends and family (so maybe you can friend mom after all).

Check out Tim O'Shaughnessy's quotes in Wired, Aug. 09

Tim O'Shaughnessy, from the first OPIM class to graduate from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, is quoted in the Aug. 09 issue of Wired (I know I'm late, but August was not the relaxing month it should have been.) Be sure and check it out: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/17-08/st_hotseat

Tim's had quite a career, starting with the undergraduate project he did for AOL, while taking an e-commerce class. His innovative project ended up in his being hired by AOL in 2004. After a few years with AOL, he went with Steve Case to start Revolution Health. A couple of years ago, he and some colleagues started hungrymachine.com, which rapidly turned into livingsocial.com, when they realized that their facebook applications were going to be where they had the most success.

Read this article to see how the newest microchips are going to be designed. IBM is definitely an interesting company to watch.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.749b76a59aeda926a4a3848bef046ea2.2c1&show_article=1

Amazon vs. Ebay

I thought this article was very interesting: http://seekingalpha.com/article/153585-amazon-vs-ebay-2-charts-say-it-all
Shows how a picture can quickly convey a lot of information. Amazon is continually proving how they are the "gold standard" when it comes to e-commerce methods.

This should be encouraging to many.

As Technology Needs Grow, One Sector Has No Shortage of Jobs ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/12/AR2009071202016.html?referrer=emailarticle
)
By Kim Hart
Platinum Solutions, a Reston information technology firm that serves the government, needs to find new employees so fast that it hired four full-time recruiters. At any given time, the company has 20 to 40 job openings, and it recently opened an office in West Virginia that has 65 employees.

Check out Bing.com

Check out bing.com when you get a chance. While Microsoft has a history of copyvcatting others, this actually seems to be more useful than google.com for search in some ways. I just tested it once in a search on a vacation spot we're headed to, and it gave far better results. Please post your successes/failures with this new entry to the search market. I'll be curious to see what you find.

Detroit bailout, put in IT terms

I loved this quote from Tom Friedman (of "The World is Flat" fame), which describes the way we will look back on the Detroit bailout some day, in IT terminology.

". . .our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet."

Howard Dresner's New Book

Howard Dresner, who is the chief guru of Business Intelligence, is coming out with a new book soon, called "Profiles in Performance: Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change." Although he had originally thought it would be an implementation guide to Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), after looking in detail at the way four companies from different sectors implemented BI, he learned "that "culture", and not technology, was the deciding factor for success or failure. By culture I mean people and groups of people - their beliefs, motives, attitudes, organization, customs, processes, etc." Once again, people and the ways they interact seem to be more important than ever in the success or failure of systems. Based on Howard's earlier works, I expect this will be a fascinating read.

The Growing Importance of BI

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc2009032_101762.htm

This is an interesting article on the growing importance of Business Intelligence (BI) software in this economy. BI software was ranked at the top of the list of technology spending priorities for 2009, according to Gartner. It is used in the restaurant industry for making decisions on optimal staffing levels and what should continue to appear on the menu. Large vendors, such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM see this trend and have responded by taking over smaller BI vendors.

Interesting article about E-Commerce Decision-Making Using Data

See this article in the NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/business/media/31ad.html?em

Basically, this article says how important the analysis of all the clickstream data that is collected is for advertising decision-making.

Wolfram Alpha

An interesting development in search engines is WolframAlpha. If you're interested in signing up for this go to www.wolframalpha.com. They are only going to give it out carefully in the beginning I guess, but it doesn't hurt to sign up. Apparently it is going to use a lot of data mining techniques to bring up more accurate search results.

10 Ways to Design a Web Site (NYT)

Here is a NYT article about web site design. It's got some good reminders, for those of you thinking of creating a site. http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/10-ways-to-design-a-good-web-site/?em

The Petabyte Age

This was written a year ago, but is still one of the best articles out there on information overload in our age.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_intro

An amazing video

This is a mind-jarring video that is worth viewing. I'm not sure all the stats represented have been verified, so view it with caution. What a changing world we live in.

Betsy Sigman's Blog

I've been thinking about starting a blog for some time. Here I go. I'll try to keep up with it as much as possible, but I'm in the exam period right now, so I'll probably not be able to do too much with it until exams are graded and grades are out.