New Florence. New Renaissance.

More Innovative CIOs

CIO Magazine has tips and traps from CIOs at Virgin America, Vail Resorts, Genentech and The Dannon Company on adoption of newer technology - and other innovation ideas.

Technology Innovation and New York Times

"But my favorite interview was getting to talk with Architect Derek Gottfrid, who told me about this thing called Time Machine which is an archive of old issues of the New York Times that you will be able to look through — he gave me a good demo of it in the video I filmed. He told me how they used Amazon’s EC2 service to convert all the TIFF images to PDFs for this project. Then he also told me that Times Machine would be released (today)"

Scoble on a tour he got of this and other technologies at the "gray lady"

Also, here is a fascinating description of the signage on its new headquarters

"How do you add a block-long, 15-foot-tall blackletter logo to the front of a minimalist building without obstructing the view of the Times staffers working inside? The answer was to break the sign up into smaller pieces, 959 of them to be exact. Each letter in the Times logo was rasterized, that is, divided into narrow horizontal strips, ranging in number from 26 (the i in “Times”) to 161 (the Y in “York”)."

Innovation at Public Utilities

PG&E, based in the Bay area, has always leveraged its proximity to Silicon Valley and tried out innovative technologies in IT and energy efficiency.

In this video, Pat Lawicki CIO of PG&E talks to ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber about tagging utility poles with RFID, smart meters that will quickly measure customer energy usage and intelligent grids that will allow for better maintenance and service.

While the regulated industry is considered stodgy, number of innovations I have written about before are transforming it.

Here are some other posts:

Localized Blackouts

Internet over Power Lines

Optimization of Grids

Innovation at Xcel Energy

Reacting to Outages in Disaters

More innovation at airports

Dan Farber interviews John Payne, CIO at San Francisco International Airport.

New York Times talks about growing number of blogs which focus on business travel.

My other airport/aviation related posts readers may find interesting:

Technology Innovation and Airport Security
Technology Innovation and Airport Runways
Satellite based Air Traffic Control
Woke up this morning feelin' fine
Building the A 380 in 7 minutes
Technology Innovation and Jetblue
Technology Innovation and Flight Tracking
Wi-Fly
Da Vinci is looking down in awe
The New Plane Smell

and the not so flattering posts on airports

Paris Charles De Gaulle
London Airports
3 or 3.4 oz at TSA?
On shoe forward. one backwards?
TSA's False Positives

"We try harder"

I have previously written about technology innovation at Hertz.

In this video, John Turato, Vice President of Technology for Avis-Budget Group talks to  Dan Farber about managing technology around for a rental fleet of more than 400,000 vehicles worldwide. He also talks about  the OpenTravel Alliance, a group of companies developing web 2.0 standards for the online travel industry.

Technology Innovation and San Francisco Giants

Dan Farber interviews Giants CIO Bill Schlough.

Befitting Silicon Valley is the $ 3 million high-def, giant screen; the WIFI throughout stadium (as he says you could play hooky and still stay connected), the scouting database, the interactive videos and a lot more.

As I have written before, baseball is generally behind American Football when it comes to technology adoption (and cricket in other parts of the world), but CIOs like Bill may help narrow that gap over the next few years.

Update: July 29, 2007  - Bill kindly gave us a nice tour of the stadium and all its technology and toys when I took my son and a cousin to the Bay Area. One of the highlights of the visit.

SAP "related" innovation

Thomas Otter of SAP points to some innovations its customers have developed using its tools.

This is so refreshing - because it is rare. No, not the innovation - but a vendor actually giving customers credit. As I wrote here CIOs/CTOs are unsung heroes. As I wrote in my MAGIC innovation framework "CIOs do not want to be "spoon fed" innovation - they want building blocks they can adapt to their own vision of innovation."

It is good to see SAP encourage "vive la difference" rather than push the message "I have all the best practices you need. Fit within me. Don't dare go outside my perimeter" Wow, may be SAP is innovating its marketing?

12 quick IT productivity wins

Not innovation, but definitely tips from InfoWorld to enhance IT productity including better file management, reduction of endless meetings, more efficient help desks, use of RSS instead of email, dual monitors, WAN acceleration and more.

Technology Innovation and Railroads

You don't always think of iron rails as innovative, but look at all the neat stuff Union Pacific and other commercial networks in the US are investing in

Train monitoring technology and consoles to improve fuel efficiency and operating conditions
End of Train devices - with sensors and GPS to monitor all kinds of external to train data
Wireless broadband technology to improve rail yard operations
Safety technology

and more...

InfoWorld top 100 projects

Lots of technology innovation across verticals and using a variety of technologies from virtualization to VoIP - in this InfoWorld survey.