New Florence. New Renaissance.

Laser Scans of Notre Dame

Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral has for centuries inspired artists, photographers and others who sought to replicate its form. Among those was the late Andrew Tallon, a professor at Vassar who used laser scanning to create massive digital files that captured the cathedral down to its precise measurements.

"Can it help us rebuild? Yes, it can,"  Columbia art history Prof. Stephen Murray told ZDNet with respect to Tallon's work. "I think it's terribly important."

 

 

 

 

Amazon's flock of sateliites

Amazon has plans to establish a constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to patch up areas with poor or no internet connectivity.

Amazon's planned push into satellite-delivered broadband is taking shape under Project Kuiper, details of which appear in three documents filed with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) last month

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the existence of Amazon's satellite broadband ambitions, noting that it was a "long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet

ZDNet

 

 

 

The Workday Innovation Summit - raising the bar even after a decade

"Like a marathon tennis match with plenty of volleys and lobs and aces, the back and forth was something to watch." 

I wrote that in August 2010 when Workday hosted its first Technology Summit for analysts. "Rarely though 20 of us are we in a room for a whole day - many of us have competitive business models, others honestly cannot stand each other. So, it is even more unusual we would (mostly) agree about - and even admire what was on display."

A decade later, Workday could easily invite over a hundred analysts interested in its rocket ship progress. It now tops the Fortune Future 50 list. It's cloud handles 12+ billion transactions a month. But it keeps the invitee list small, and instead varies the content to keep up with its growing product mix and market trends. The "faculty to staff" ratio keeps improving.

CEO Anil Bhusri and his team remain remarkably open. One of the slides summarized his changing role (and changing market emphasis on machine learning). He had no reason to say so, but he apologized for not spending enough time with analysts. He has had family issues including the passing of his father so it was especially gracious of him.

Workday's pioneering format has led other vendors to follow suit. They realize user conferences are intended for customers and a separate forum works better for analysts.  Plex combines them with plant tours and customer advisory board meetings. SAP recently used its summit to introduce us to its Qualtrics acquisition.

Of course, some vendors avoid the summit format - too much executive time in front of pesky analysts:)

A setting on the water in Marin County gave this one a unusual advantage over others. A decade later Workday continues to raise the bar.

Mission 66 - reinventing the National Parks

Thanks to the foresight of our ancestors, our descendants should continue to enjoy our many National Parks for generations.

USA Today on Mission 66

However, the parks were in terrible shape in the years leading up to 1956, when Mission 66 was implemented. It became a national scandal of sort, with op-eds, editorials and essays being published with regularity lamenting the lack of parking space, neglected visitor amenities and outdated facilities. Bathroom lines were long, traffic jams were a necessary evil and many could not find overnight accommodations. NPS Director Newton Drury noted that “Facilities and services to the public during 1945-46 were not – and could not be – up to the usual park standards.”

How to solve these problems created a conundrum for the NPS until 1954, when three years into his tenure as NPS director, Conrad L. Wirth proposed a 10-year capital campaign to bring the national parks into the modern era by 1966, the 50th anniversary of the NPS. The name, Mission 66, evoked a sense of immediacy felt during World War II and encouraged urgent action.

The hour long video below has lot more detail on Mission 66

 

 

Mirrorworld

The Mirrorworld doesn't yet fully exist, but it is coming. Someday soon, every place and thing in the real world—every street, lamppost, building, and room—will have its full-size digital twin in the mirrorworld. For now, only tiny patches of the mirrorworld are visible through AR headsets. Piece by piece, these virtual fragments are being stitched together to form a shared, persistent place that will parallel the real world. The author Jorge Luis Borges imagined a map exactly the same size as the territory it represented. “In time,” Borges wrote, “the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.” We are now building such a 1:1 map of almost unimaginable scope, and this world will become the next great digital platform.

Wired

Here is a architect related concept film from Leap Motion

The future at Delta airlines

For example, as Hauenstein proposes, your "journey" would include not just the flight, but airport transfers and even luggage delivery--so that you could seamlessly book a trip from your home in Atlanta to your hotel in Los Angeles--and have your luggage delivered to you, so you never even have to go to the baggage claim.

"[We want] your luggage to find its way to your mode of transportation, and show up at your hotel or place of residence," Hausenstein said. "If you use Lyft for ride-sharing, if you use Hilton or Marriott as your preferred hotel vendor, we need to know that. Then, we can provide you a curated experience from start to finish. That's where we're headed."

Inc

video of CEO Ed Bastian with another look at the future at Delta

 

SAP Nation 3.0 excerpts: a celebration of customers and new products

As with my earlier books, I am excerpting roughly 10% of the 400 page book in a series of posts on my two blogs.

SAP has been in the news quite a bit lately with layoffs and activist investors. There is tons of speculation - positive and negative. With SapphireNow coming up in a week, the buzz should continue.  

To me, the calm, collected reality check usually comes from customers and I am pleased I included over 250 pages in the case studies across industries and countries and the wide range of SAP products customers talk about.  

Here are excerpts from 4 pages which provides a glimpse at customer strategies and new SAP products. The book is available to purchase here.

 

 

Cities of the Future

Cities are thought to have first formed 6,000 years ago in what is now Iraq. By 2050, two-thirds of us will live in them. What does the future hold for our cities? Should we live in dense urban areas with public transit and walkable amenities? In sprawling suburbs created by our infatuation with the car? In high-rises, like those dotting urban districts across China? Is there room for all of it? For this special issue, we sent photographers across the globe to document how cities work – and don’t.

National Geographic

 

 

Railroad revolution

Freight rail­roads gen­er­ally have op­er­ated the same way for more than a cen­tury: They wait for cargo and leave when cus­tomers are ready. Now rail­roads want to run more like com­mer­cial air­lines, where de­par­ture times are set. Fac­to­ries, farms, mines or mills need to be ready or miss their trips. Called “precision-scheduled railroading,” or PSR, this new con­cept is cas­cad­ing through the in­dus­try. Un­der pres­sure from Wall Street to im­prove per­for­mance, Nor­folk South­ern and other large U.S. freight car­ri­ers, in­clud­ing Union Pa­cific Corp. and Kan­sas City South­ern, are try­ing to re­vamp their net­works to use fewer trains and hold them to tighter sched­ules. The moves have sparked a stock rally that has added tens of bil­lions of dol­lars to rail­road val­ues in the past six months as in­vestors an­tic­i­pate lower costs and higher prof­its.

WSJ 

The initial implementations have not been that smooth

 

HoloLens in the U.S. Army

The military calls its special version of the HoloLens 2 “IVAS,” which stands for Integrated Visual Augmentation System.

It’s an augmented-reality headset, which means it places digital objects, such as maps or video displays, on top of the real world in front of you.

When I first put it on, I saw a map in front of me that showed exactly where I was. It gave me a birds-eye view of the building I was standing in and also showed a nearby building. It’s like any satellite image you can find online.

But as I turned my head, a small arrow icon representing my location also turned. I could also see several other dots representing my other “squad members” who were also wearing the headsets.

But IVAS goes even further. It can also be used for thermal imaging. Night vision goggles currently used in the field emit a green glow, which the enemy can see. IVAS doesn’t glow as much, and still allows soldiers to see other people in the dark.

CNBC