New Florence. New Renaissance.

The Korean focus on smart appliances

“Samsung and LG Electronics (066570:KS) aim to parlay their leadership in products such as cell phones, TVs, and personal computers into development of household items that can be remotely turned on and off, connect with repair staff, display recipes, or play music. The market for these connected appliances may expand to $6.2 billion by 2015, up from $40 million last year, according to Pike Research in Boulder, Colo. "The next year or two will determine which company leads," says Mark Ishac, a managing director at Zpryme Research & Consulting in Austin, Tex. "Samsung could take share from the more traditional companies. They could certainly make waves."

Whirlpool has 41.5 percent of U.S. appliance sales, while Samsung holds less than 1 percent of the market and LG has 8.7 percent, according to researcher IBISWorld in Santa Monica, Calif. It and peers including Electrolux (ELUXY) and General Electric (GE) are also developing connected appliances.”

BusinessWeek

Photo of Samsung’s planned refrigerator which features a Wi-Fi-enabled, 8-inch, liquid crystal display screen that provides access to a series of applications such as recipes, weather information, and a calendar.

More book publishing innovation

Larry Dignan at ZDNet has just released a title The Business of Media as a “Kindle Single”. The Washington Post talks about the positioning of these “shorter prose” singles which amazon defines as

“Typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words, each Kindle Single is intended to allow a single killer idea -- well researched, well argued and well illustrated -- to be expressed at its natural length.”

Larry’s book runs 31 pages and is priced at a very affordable $ 2.99

I also read about a new site which is focused on ebook “lending”. ebookfling.com – as in a fling for 2 weeks.

Looks like subway and plane reading is about to get very diversified.

Healthcare Hotspots – So much data, so little analysis

Courtesy of Tim O’Reilly I saw this New Yorker article  - a great example of how with focus and determination, you can turn data into intelligence, often without the need to invest in high-end technology

“Besides looking at assault patterns, he began studying patterns in the way patients flowed into and out of Camden’s hospitals. “I’d just sit there and play with the data for hours,” he says, and the more he played the more he found. For instance, he ran the data on the locations where ambulances picked up patients with fall injuries, and discovered that a single building in central Camden sent more people to the hospital with serious falls—fifty-seven elderly in two years—than any other in the city, resulting in almost three million dollars in health-care bills. “It was just this amazing window into the health-care delivery system,” he says.

So he took what he learned from police reform and tried a Compstat approach to the city’s health-care performance—a Healthstat, so to speak. He made block-by-block maps of the city, color-coded by the hospital costs of its residents, and looked for the hot spots. The two most expensive city blocks were in north Camden, one that had a large nursing home called Abigail House and one that had a low-income housing tower called Northgate II. He found that between January of 2002 and June of 2008 some nine hundred people in the two buildings accounted for more than four thousand hospital visits and about two hundred million dollars in health-care bills. One patient had three hundred and twenty-four admissions in five years. The most expensive patient cost insurers $3.5 million.”

US State of the Union – Innovation,Education, Infrastructure

Who knows in the current political environment and with massive deficits what will get funded but as a technologist you had to like three areas President Obama emphasized in his speech last night.

Here are some excerpts with video of full address below

Innovation

“The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation. None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn't know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do - what America does better than anyone else - is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We're the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices, the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers, of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives. It is how we make our living. “

“Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we would beat them to the moon. The science wasn't even there yet. NASA didn't exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets, we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation's Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven't seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We'll invest in biomedical research, information technology and especially clean energy technology an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet and create countless new jobs for our people. “

Education

“That's why instead of just pouring money into a system that's not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top. To all 50 states, we said, "If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we'll show you the money."

“Race to the Top is the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation. For less than 1 percent of what we spend on education each year, it has led over 40 states to raise their standards for teaching and learning. And these standards were developed, by the way, not by Washington, but by Republican and Democratic governors throughout the country. And Race to the Top should be the approach we follow this year as we replace No Child Left Behind with a law that's more flexible and focused on what's best for our kids.”

“Because people need to be able to train for new jobs and careers in today's fast-changing economy, we're also revitalizing America's community colleges. Last month, I saw the promise of these schools at Forsyth Tech in North Carolina. Many of the students there used to work in the surrounding factories that have since left town. One mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me she's earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams, too. As Kathy said, "I hope it tells them to never give up."

Infrastructure

“Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation's infrastructure, they gave us a "D."

“We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, constructed the Interstate Highway System. The jobs created by these projects didn't just come from laying down track or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town's new train station or the new off-ramp. “

“Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail. This could allow you to go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying - without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already under way. “

“Within the next five years, we'll make it possible for businesses to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of all Americans. This isn't just about this isn't about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls. It's about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It's about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It's about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device, a student who can take classes with a digital textbook, or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor. “

Game On!

There was the Gamification summit last week in San Francisco

New Scientist had a nice article on how games are influencing work and life here (subscription required)

BusinessWeek talks about a new breed of consultants which are adding game elements to websites

H+ has an interview with David Helgason of Unity, a company that produces game development tools for the Web, mobile phones, and the Wii and who says he has noticed an increase in customers using Unity to create employee training programs, among other things.

What's that old saying " all work and no play make Jack...."?

Davos and WEF “Technology Pioneers”

As the WEF convenes in Switzerland this week, timely to recognize its 2011 list of technology pioneers

CLEAN TECH

• Digital Lumens, USA
• Ecovative Design, USA
• Ferrate Treatment Technologies, USA
• Flexoresearch Group, Thailand
• Novacem, United Kingdom
• On-Ramp Wireless, USA
• OPOWER, USA
• Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, Canada
• Quintas Renewable Energy Solutions, Nigeria
• TaKaDu, Israel
• Tendril, USA
• Topell Energy, Netherlands
• Transonic Combustion, USA

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND NEW MEDIA

• Aster Data, USA
• Atlassian, Australia
• foursquare, USA
• GetJar, Lithuania/USA
• Knewton, USA
• Layar, Netherlands
• NetQuin Mobile, People's Republic of China
• OpenDNS, USA
• ReputationDefender, USA
• Scribd, USA
• SecondMarket, USA
• Spotify, United Kingdom
• Vortex Engineering, India

LIFE SCIENCES AND HEALTH

• Adimab, USA
• Ion Torrent, USA
• Medicine in Need (MEND), South Africa
• Molecular Partners, Switzerland
• Neuronetics, USA

Photo credit Blink

Rethinking the MBA

“The quest for the golden idea that would improve management education began last summer, when the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) launched a contest it hoped would shake up the status quo at business schools. The Ideas to Innovation Challenge asked people all over the world to answer the question "What one idea would improve graduate management education?" The contest was organized by GMAC's Management Education for Tomorrow (MET) Fund, a $10 million fund established in 2008 to help improve management education. The MET Fund set aside more than $260,000 for the contest, with the winner of the top prize receiving $50,000. It was the first time that GMAC, which administers the Graduate Management Admission Test, organized such a challenge and organizers said they hoped to get perhaps 100 entries.

Their expectations were met and then some. GMAC was deluged with 600 entries from people in 60 countries. Professors, students, recent MBA graduates, and executives were among those who entered the contest, each of whom had their own unique take on how to improve management education. This fall, GMAC started taking a closer look at the entries, eventually narrowing the pool down to 20 finalists and, today, announcing the winners. Ideas range from alternate-reality game training for MBA students to new ideas for creating more specialized management programs and curriculums. Now that the winners have been announced, GMAC plans to move onto the next stage of the project: implementation. Over the next year, GMAC will be accepting proposals from business schools on how they can put some of these ideas into practice and will be awarding grants that will allow them to begin that process, GMAC says.”

BusinessWeek has a gallery of the winning 20 ideas.

Medical Rehab 2.0

“Just a couple of decades ago, rehab was little more than physical therapy for shuffling stroke victims and wheelchair-bound quadriplegics, a last resort after doctors had done all they could.

Now it's a sophisticated science at the forefront of treating people like Giffords, who was shot in the forehead two weeks ago while meeting constituents in Tucson. An early start on rehab is key to limiting permanent damage, and the Houston hospital where she will be treated uses high-tech tools to push the brain to rewire itself.”

Associated Press

Photo of TIRRR Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston where the Congresswoman will undergo her rehab

The “Dream Chaser”

“Once the space-shuttle program ends this year, the only way to get people into orbit and to the International Space Station will be to buy seats on Russia's three-person Soyuz capsules. So NASA, through its Commercial Crew Development program, has given $50 million in grants to companies developing new spacecraft capable of carrying people and supplies into orbit and to the space station.

The recipient of the biggest chunk of this money was the Sierra Nevada Corporation, which received $20 million to develop the Dream Chaser. This spacecraft, the size of a business jet, will take cargo and up to eight people into low Earth orbit, where the space station is located, and then return and land on commercial airport runways. “

MIT Technology Review

Photo credit via NASA

Advanced Visualization Lab

“Constructing the cosmos isn’t easy. There are a lot of moving parts to keep in mind, ranging from the astronomically large to the infinitesimally small. But in a plain campus building on the northern fringe of the University of Illinois, Robert Patterson hurtles through a galaxy he and his colleagues created, checking and re-checking his path to account for both physics and physiology. After all, he wants to create an authentic voyage through the universe, but he doesn’t want to make anyone's stomach turn.

Patterson handles film direction and camera choreography at the Advanced Visualization Lab, where he and his colleagues have been constructing super high-quality, high-resolution, data-driven 3-D visualizations since 1985. While you may not have heard of the AVL, you likely know their work; they specialize in those large- format productions that are the bread and butter of museum dome cinemas. They played an instrumental role in creating some of the stunning data visualizations for the recent IMAX feature “Hubble 3D,” and they currently have work showing at New York’s American Natural History Museum and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, among other places.

Those productions aren’t born simply of creativity but of complex computational science, and at that intersection the AVL has found a comfortable role. Tapping the supercomputing power at its disposal at the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications (the mythical birthplace of HAL 9000), the AVL can make sense of massive data sets that others cannot, making it among the best in the world at turning complex data into science-driven cinematic art. “

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