New Florence. New Renaissance.

Trick-or-Track

Happy Halloween. This year tracking technology appears to have gone mainstream

“One application developer has created a “Trick or Tracker” app. It uses GPS and links the phones of parent and child. The $5 app also allows parents to create a “geofence,” according to TechNewsDaily. If a child wanders beyond the “fence,” parents get a text message alert.

Another comes from a developer that released “SecureaFone” just in time for the holiday. Makers say that parents can use it to know where their child is at any given moment, promising some nocturnal peace of mind.

Then there’s the maker of a hand-held device that is pitching, “While parents can’t dictate the types of treats given out, they can use trick-or-treating to ensure their children get their daily dose of physical activity.”

MOVband is a wrist-worn monitor that tracks all movement and converts it into mileage. The company suggests that parents snap one on a child’s wrist on the 31st to “inject some fitness into trick-or-treating.”

My children are still too young to need anything other than physical tracking. These gadgets are intended for the slightly older, go-it-alone crowd.”

Washington Post

Google, as usual has an interactive Doodle on its query page – more in video below

 

“Rental Nation”

Time (sub required) has a nice article on a trend sweeping the country and the role on-demand tech and pay as you go business models are accelerating the rental boom

“The transformation of American rental culture in recent years has turned that notion on its head. There are still many Americans for whom renting the basics is about making ends meet. But a shinier, more affluent cadre of renters has also emerged, and they are shifting mainstream thinking about the ideals of ownership and what we want out of the dollars we spend. For these renters, the philosophy is more about having it all--designer dresses, haute tech gadgets, modern art--than it is about hardship or frugality. Why own a BMW when you can rent one for a night out on the town? Why shell out for a diamond necklace when you can rent one for a black-tie event this week and another for the next event? Armed with iPhones and intent on a grander but lighter style of life, this new wave of spenders has come to see renting, rather than owning, as the surest path to achieving their dreams. The trend, still in its infancy, has been termed the "sharing" economy, one that gives us access to the stuff we want without our having to own it. In some ways, rentals offer what we need for a busier, more crowded world: environmentally friendly car-sharing schemes, cloud-based apps and software to maintain and upgrade myriad home gadgets (refrigerators that tell us when we need milk, thermostats that track our energy use, alarm systems that send us video of our home). We save money, and parts of the economy grow as these new sharing-oriented business models are created.”

Photo Credit of Toy Rental site

You’ve got Nobel!

How some of this year’s Nobel Prize winners reacting to winning the prestigious award – courtesy of New Scientist

"I thought it was some friends, initially. But I don't have friends that have a really good Swedish accent, so then I started believing it"
Brian Kobilka, who works on the chemistry of cell receptors

"If you were to ask me what was the application, I would tell you I don't know"
Quantum physicist Serge Haroche explains how his work is driven by the chance to explore fundamental principles

"I'm fortunate, of course, to survive long enough to have this amazing honour"
John Gurdon reflects on the 50-year interval between his award and the work for which he won it

The mother of all salvage operations

What an absolute mess from Hurricane Sandy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the millions affected. The only good news – such challenges bring out the best and most innovative out of us.

In FL, we are used to many of the hurricane aftermath scenarios and I have written about some of the salvage technology before (like the utility FPL’s simulation of a hurricane here) but the massive flooding of the NY subways, the extensive damage to the Jersey shore, the precarious 70 storey crane in NYC, the wide swath of power outages, the restart of the NY trading exchanges will make Sandy’s salvage a "Black Swan" operation.

The first responders, the pumps, the utility trucks, the tree trimmers, the insurance adjusters, the home repair contractors will bring out a wide variety of technology I will showcase over the next few weeks. Readers, if you hear of innovative technology used as part of the salvage/restoration process please send me a note.

Photo Credit of sea water pouring down the Ground Zero construction site

 

EcoATM: Kiosks to recycle your electronics

Using cameras, artificial intelligence, and proprietary algorithms, the five-foot-high kiosks recognize 4,000 phones, MP3 players, and tablets with 97.5 percent accuracy, Bowles says. They assess physical and electrical damage and spit out a cash offer. The average going rate for a slightly damaged iPhone 4 or 4S is $175; a beat-up Samsung Galaxy S generally fetches about $60.

Bloomberg Businessweek

 

A grudging hat tip to O’Hare Field

I am not a big ORD fan. When I go to Chicago, I try to fly into MDW. O’Hare to  me represents American and United, two airlines I generally avoid. O’Hare also brings memories of interminable walks, rental cars and parking lots that are miles away.

On a day like today when most East Coast airports are shut down thanks to Sandy, you have to thank this workhorse of an airport. The image below from FlightStats shows several flights from Europe continuing to arrive. The two on top headed into ORD both originated in Germany.

Of course today in Chicago it is partly cloudy and 50 degrees. My memories of O”Hare are also of too much snow. So, curiously I also checked the status of Miami and Orlando airports on FlightStats and they showed flights arriving from London and Amsterdam, on an usually southern trajectory as they avoid Sandy.

If I was a European who had to get to the US this week or the other way around, that would still be my preferred routing :)

Data encoded in DNA

The vial on left is a book. Seriously.

“DNA contains genetic instructions written in a simple but powerful code made up of four chemicals called bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T).

The Harvard researchers started with the digital version of the book, which is composed of the ones and zeros that computers read. Next, on paper, they translated the zeros into either the A or C of the DNA base pairs, and changed the ones into either the G or T.

Then, using now-standard laboratory techniques, they created short strands of actual DNA that held the coded sequence—almost 55,000 strands in all. Each strand contained a portion of the text and an address that indicated where it occurred in the flow of the book.

In that form—a viscous liquid or solid salt—a billion copies of the book could fit easily into a test tube and, under normal conditions, last for centuries, the researchers said”

WSJ thanks to Frank Scavo for spotting

Customer Experience-as-a-service

Mei Li of NetSuite is a very generous lady. Every time I see her, she offers me dark chocolates for my wife. On a diet, is my usual excuse. Last time I saw her, she gave me a gift card and said my wife would like it even better. As these things often work out, my daughter Rita used it to buy the nice top in the photo. And when I asked where she got it, she said “Ibex”. Where? “Dad, the store you gave Mom the gift card for”.

Ibex Outdoor Clothing  is a wool clothing company. Its site says “We’re a natural fiber company. A thoughtful design company. An excellence-in-product-development company. We’re a hiking-before-dawn company. A dogs-in-the-workplace company. A bike-to-work company. We’re also a community-supported-agriculture company, a cross-country-ski marathon company, a coffee-in-front-of-the-woodstove company.”

Just navigating their site makes you feel warm as the weather cools down.

It was Mei’s subtle way to introduce me to one of NetSuite’s growing commerce-as-a-service customers. Ibex uses NetSuite to manage customer interactions across smartphones, tablets, PCs and brick-and-mortar stores. The consistent customer experience across channels is a holy grail for most companies these days.

Additionally, NetSuite allows Ibex “30 to 40 percent faster order management and fulfillment, and increased visibility of inventory across 30 factories and distribution across all channels, including its flagship retail store in downtown Boston.”

For many fast growing concepts like Ibex, the pay as you grow SaaS model is ideal, and NetSuite’s wide footprint saves them infrastructure, integration, upgrade and other costs. Ibex was previously on an on-premise Sage MAS 200 and a custom-built Web storefront.

So my daughter asks – That was so easy..does NetSuite also power Tiffany? Apple?

I respond - Not yet. But they are always looking for good salespeople. Want to help them sell their software to brands you like? And, by the way, that way you can pay Mom back for the card Mei meant for her :)

Hawaii’s night of tsunami technology and terror

In FL, you often hear “we would rather live in Hurricane country because we get more notice than in Earthquake or Tornado country”

What about living in Tsunami country? See chart below on Hawaii’s vulnerability and how much notice they get. Click on image to enlarge.

The NOAA tsunameters at the floor of the Pacific, the DART (Deep ocean Assessment & Reporting of Tsunamis) buoys on the ocean surface and the Iridium satellites they talk to all get hyperactive when there is a major earthquake like the 7.7 magnitude one in the Queen Charlotte Islands Region last evening.

I reviewed the tsunami advisory and warning traffic. The warning went out at 7.09 pm HST. Estimated arrival of the first Tsunami wave was 10. 28 pm. So about 3 hours to evacuate. The earthquake had taken place two hours earlier but the initial assessment was

BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS
 NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII. REPEAT. A
 DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO
 TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII.

Saturday night 7 pm. Most Hawaiian beachside hotels are starting their luaus and other weekend entertainment. Many tourists are on their sunset cruises. This weekend, the annual Hallowbaloo festival, was in full swing. Sirens blared for residents to seek higher ground. Hotel guests are luckier in some ways as many hotels have vertical evacuation plans. Arriving planes were delayed or diverted. Ships at port and at sea had their own emergency plans. In the darkness at sea, helicopters and planes with floodlights were monitoring the fury of arriving waves.  No wonder there was chaos in Paradise till the warning was downgraded at 1.01 am. And then the chaos of the reverse traffic began.

Some will argue the warning should have gone out 2 hours prior. Living in FL and seeing how panicky (and expensive for civil services and residents) evacuations can be, I would rather have fewer “false positives”. NOAA and other technology is increasingly making it so.

Vail Resorts EpicMax app

“More than 300,000 guests are active members of EpicMix. They can get stats on how many vertical feet they skied and earn digital pins for feats like riding every chairlift on a mountain in a day. Members can access free images taken by Vail Resorts photographers and easily share photos and data on Facebook.

Because the EpicMix app deals directly with customers, it has pushed Vail's IT team to think more like a commercial software company. That means working closely with the chief marketing officer and her team. Urwiler's using outsourcers much more selectively now, and he's adding people with software vendor experience to his team. And Vail is benchmarking EpicMix against the likes of Facebook and Foursquare in terms of design and ease of use.”

InformationWeek