Seeing the Invisible

Seeing through walls with Wifi.   With concern, " .... Wi-Fi makes all kinds of things possible. We can send and receive messages, make phone calls, browse the Internet, even play games with people who are miles away, all without the cords and wires to tie us down. At UC Santa Barbara, researchers are now using this versatile, everyday signal to do something different and powerful: looking through solid walls and seeing every square inch of what’s on the other side. Built into robots, the technology has far-reaching possibilities.  ... " 

Wolfram Cloud Changes

I see there have been a number of changes to the Wolfram Cloud, in particular the 'free' beta release.  Many more resources.  Worth a close look, link below:

" ...  Wolfram Programming Cloud user! Since the beta release, we now have more than 13,000 users who have created over 3,500 deployments.

In this short time, we’ve already learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Thanks to the feedback we’ve received, we've made some immediate changes, and many more are on the horizon. We’ve also seen that many of you are getting great results from the Wolfram Language, but might not have enough resources with the Free plan to accomplish your goals.

Because of this, we’re giving you and all our early adopters a learning bonus of 10,000 Cloud Credits for you to use this year.

We’ve also made some changes to the Free plan:
Monthly Cloud Credits were increased from 500 to 1,000
The session memory limit was increased from 300 MB to 512 MB
The computation limit was increased from 30 seconds to 60 seconds
Each new user will get an initial learning bonus of 5,000 Cloud Credits

Now that you have more credits to experiment with, we recommend jumping into our Things to Try notebook. We understand that the Wolfram Language is still a new language to many of you, and this notebook gives a hands-on experience with some of what’s possible.   ....  " 

A Vortex of Liking

In Wired: How Facebook alters its interaction based on your Likes.  I don't like any interface that does not provide a predictable result.  I guess you could argue that all advertisement methods do this, but this takes it a step deeper.   What are trust implications for an information based system?

Maps as Science Fiction Delivered

Google reports on a most impressive legacy, the provision of maps online and mobile, over the last ten years.  We now take it for granted that we have constant, interactive, nearly instant access to complex and accurate maps that have many layers of knowledge.   Even views of the streets themselves for better local orientations.

The layers of additional information form a kind of selective 'augmented geography' we could not have imagined just a few decades ago.   Delivered science fiction.   Impressive no matter how you look at it.  Plus the ability to add this knowledge to other systems that need geography.   They say they will be revealing more of the details of map development in future posts.

Strategy for Strategies

So what do we do next?     Although I can see the danger of being too strategic here, the thoughts are good.  In CWorld.

On the Vital Edge of Technology: AI

On artificial intelligence, past and present.  I do get the impression that too little attention is being paid to what we discovered before.  Especially with regard to knowledge gathering and management.   " ... What do we want technology to be when it wakes up? The Vital Edge explores the future of technology and business. It's written by Gideon Rosenblatt .. " 

Tips for a Short Speech

In the HBR:  Nicely done (short) piece on how to prepare for a short talk.  Even a way to prepare just before a longer talk.

" ... Whether you are pitching to investors or networking at a conference, there are many times when you are required to speak without preparation. Giving an unplanned speech is scary for many, but you can make the process easier by being brief, establishing a structure for your comments and starting with a thesis statement, writes John Coleman, co-author of "Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders." ... " 

We are Innumerate

John Batelle on why we love visualization.  My own experiences make me agree.  But truly useful, well designed, interactive visualizations gives us capabilities that plain number stories cannot.  Visualization allows us interact with data and explore the embedded models.    They are more than pictures, they are visuals plus a simulation model of data in context.

Who is Afraid of Data Driven Management?

Late to this but brought to my attention by colleague Andy Boyd.  In the HBR.   Very nice,  simple model, but is it too simple?  I have dealt with many people that were afraid of data, but would rarely admit it. I think this model does a very nice job, using a 2X2 model, to think about the question posed. Is it exactly correct, no, but it is a good place to start.

" ... From a management perspective, making decisions based on data is a clear win. Yet it’s often difficult to adopt a data-informed culture. In every organization, there are teams and employees who embrace this transition, and those who undermine it. To convert your biggest data skeptics, the first step is to understand the psychology of their resistance. .. " 

Standardizing and Optimizing Containers

More work on standardizing shipping containers. A natural progression.  We examined RFID use in many kinds of shipping infrastructure.   Now companies looking at the problem from an IOT perspective, combined with deeper analytics.  Here in particular Cisco:  " ...  The company teamed up with Red Hat Inc. on the following whitepaper about the shortcomings of containers they hope to be able to address together. In it, Cisco talks about “application-optimized containers”, an idea it says addresses the fact that “when a new application is placed in production, a networking team needs to select the appropriate VLAN, open ports, configure load balancing, set up port security through access control lists (ACLs), and apply network policies such as QoS.” ... " 

Toddler Intelligence Learning

The Baby-X Toddler simulation at the Creators Project.    Getting smarter every day, they say.  But I do wonder about what the real measure is.  True deep AI is teaching something to learn from available knowledge and in context.   Then setting it loose.  Using a Baby face lets us read too much of our own intelligence and emotions into the measure.

Bad Data Handbook

I like the book title premise. Having just been involved in a project that included dealing with bad data, however it is defined.    Also to be considered:  Data and metadata that is not or miss-connected to data in use. Or stated as  "From cranky storage to poor representation to misguided policy, there are many paths to bad data. Bottom line? Bad data is data that gets in the way. This book explains effective ways to get around it. ...  ".   Don't have the book, so can't say it delivers.   More about the book in Analyticbridge.

Big Data for Grocery

Comments on grocery and loyalty data:

" ... Today's technology offers supermarkets new ways to use the growing sea of customer loyalty data to their advantage as competition grows. Instant coupons and mobile promotions generated through big data need to be relevant, compelling and above all anticipated, according to Alan Lipson, retail industry marketing manager for SAS. "You have to be expecting this kind of offer. If not, it comes across as stalking, and it's creepy," he said. ... " 

More Corporate Drones

Yet another example of corporations building drone programs.  Here Google's Project Wing.  I guess this is cheaper, and apparently safer than a fleet of aircraft.  Looser regulations for now.  So will the sky soon fill up with devices delivering and tracking?  Are swarm applications far away?  Implications for the supply chain?

Tangible Media Group and Enchanted Objects

David Rose,  Head of the Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Lab and author of the book: "Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things"     Reading.  We followed this work for years.  How can consumer products be enchanted objects?  " ... specializing in how digital information interfaces with the physical environment. A former CEO at Vitality, a company that reinvented medication packaging, he founded Ambient Devices, which pioneered technology to embed Internet information in everyday objects like lamps, mirrors, and umbrellas. Currently Rose is the CEO of Ditto Labs, and his work has been featured at New York Museum of Modern Art and in The New York Times, and parodied on The Colbert Report. ... " 


See also his TedX presentation on Enchanted Objects.    And recent interview on the Daily Show.  Which included a look at Smartstones Startup (at minute 6).

IDEO and Nearables

IDEO worked with us by helping build a Gym for designing consumer products, which connected to our innovation centers.    Now they are promoting the idea of bluetooth 'nearables'.   Read the comments, they have some good complaints.  In FastCodesign:

" ... Last week beacon technology--sensors which can trigger actions in devices that come within range, increasing their spatial intelligence--shrank in size and grew in opportunity with the introduction of Estimote Stickers. Three millimeter-thick adhesives no bigger than an oversize postage stamp, the nearly weightless Stickers--dubbed "nearables"--are an impressive evolution of the egg-sized Beacons that Estimote introduced in 2013.

“Beacons are a little bit like URLs for the physical world,” says Steve Cheney, cofounder and senior vice president. “We don’t know exactly how it’s all going to work out, from the experience level, but I think the apps you use the most will start to integrate beacon technology in a way where you assume it was always that way.” Like the larger Beacons, Estimote's Sticker-sensors, set to ship this fall to curious developers and companies eager to take advantage of the internet of things, help apps “see” their surroundings via motion and temperature sensors that communicate with nearby devices via Bluetooth.  ... " 

We are All Data Scientists Now

Are we all data scientists now?  I think so, and in particular we need to get the owners and experts using the data to understand its analytical potential.   They can then alert the technically adept scientists to do the work.

Computer Science from MIT

Have worked with a number of groups at MIT.  Here  a slide show that covers computing developments that have come from there.

Stephen Few on Big Data Reality

A lengthy and thoughtful piece by visualization expert Stephen Few.  He concludes and makes some excellent points .  People still make most data based decisions in context:

" ... I make my living helping people understand and communicate information derived from data, so Big Data has produced a greater appreciation for my work. Here’s the rub: Big Data, as a term with no clear definition, which serves as a marketing campaign for technology vendors, encourages people to put their faith in technologies without first developing the skills that are needed to use those technologies. As a result, organizations waste their money and time chasing the latest so-called Big Data technologies—some useful, some not—to no effect because technologies can only augment the analytical abilities of humans; they cannot make up for our lack of skills or entirely replace our skills. Data is indeed a valuable resource, but only if we develop the skills to make sense of it and find within the vast and exponentially growing noise those relatively few signals that actually matter. Big Data doesn’t do this, people do—people who have taken the time to learn. ... "

Ensemble Methods

Ensemble methods are means of using multiple approaches to solving an analytical problem.   Different tools can be better for different machine learning problems, or even different data.  Here is a thumbnail history and description.   Also the WP entry.  And a post on Random Forest methods.