Home Networking by Radar

Interesting.   Security?  Might this kind location could be combined with other kind of location and movement information?  

Home networking by radar

OmniConnect project: Radar beams for networking and localizing everyday objects

Research News / July 01, 2021

In the OmniConnect project, Fraunhofer researchers are working with other partners on networking objects in indoor areas. They are doing this using radar beams and passive tags that are attached to moving objects, but also to people. This technology effectively detects the positions of the tags and therefore of the objects as well. It can also be used in the care sector, to avert dangers to people who are prone to falling.

For many of us, the term “radar” conjures up scenarios from the aviation or shipping industries. Radar technology is also deployed to search for space debris. This always involves localizing and measuring the velocity of flying objects. In recent years, however, scientists have been seeking to scale up the use of radar beams for applications inside closed rooms. The Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM in Berlin is focusing on a most promising project in this area.

In the OmniConnect project, a radar is used to detect the motion and position of objects inside rooms. The researchers are using what we refer to as a secondary radar. A conventional radar detects objects and their movements, but does not provide any other data. A secondary radar combines radar beams with tags that are attached to objects. These passive tags not only reveal to the system position and movements inside a room, they can transmit information about the object as well.

Energy-efficient, compact, harmless

Thanks to the high frequency in the 60 GHz band, the systems can be developed for a high degree of integration. Each send and receive module is just 25 square centimeters in size. Conflicts with mobile radio networks, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth are impossible. The radiation this technology emits is completely harmless to human beings.

The system developed in OmniConnect is the ideal solution for networking any objects or everyday items with one another or integrating them into a home network. Because the passive tags do not need a separate power supply, there’s no inconvenience of having to replace batteries. ... ' 

Idea Networking

Simple thought.  Via Columbia B School.

Get Ahead with "Idea Networking"

When opportunity takes too long to arrive, it's time to go out and find it. ...  by William Duggan

Excerpted from The Seventh Sense by William Duggan. Copyright (c) 2015 William Duggan.  ...

Microsoft and Linkedin

I had wondered how the proposed acquisition of Linkedin by Microsoft would influence how the Skills and Resume Social giant would change.  They are very skilled in building architectures for storing, managing and delivering large HR oriented databases.  We talked to them about reapplying some of these capabilities internal to the enterprise.   How will Linkedin be connected to other MS services?  I had never thought of Linkedin as open source oriented  .... but in eWeek article this week this is discussed.  Worth a complete read if you are interested.   Was surprised by it.

Q&A: Will Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn slow down the social networking company’s cadence of open-sourcing core technology for developers?

In June, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking service, for $26 billion. LinkedIn, which boasts a stable of talented engineers across a spectrum of disciplines—including cloud infrastructure, mobile and web technologies, has had a history of open-sourcing some of its core technology to the benefit of the community. LinkedIn's Kafka message broker, for instance, helped launch a successful software company and spawned related projects. However, as the company becomes a part of Microsoft, some folks have wondered whether LinkedIn's focus on open-sourcing technology for developers would continue unabated. In this eWEEK Q&A, Igor Perisic, vice president of engineering at LinkedIn, explains that the company will not only continue to open-source technology, but will try to teach Microsoft a lesson or two about working with the community.  .... " 

Fog Computing for Distributed IoT Analytics

I like the emergence of new ways to address the complexity and volume of data.

How IoT Can Benefit from Fog Computing  By Ben Dickson. ...

What I’m mentioning a lot these days (and hearing about it as well) is the chaotic propagation and growth of the Internet of Things. With billions of devices slated to connect to the internet every year, we’re going to be facing some serious challenges. I’ve already discussed how blockchain technology might address connectivity issues for huge IoT ecosystems.

But connectivity accounts for a small part of the problems we’ll be facing. Another challenge will be processing and making sense of the huge reams of data that IoT devices are generating. Close on its heels will be the issue of latency or how fast an IoT system can react to events. And as always, security and privacy issues will remain one of the top items in the IoT challenge list.

Fog computing (aka edge computing) can help mitigate – if not overcome – these challenges. As opposed to the cloud, where all the computation takes place in a central location, fog computing pushes the computation of tasks toward the edge of the network and distributes it among smart routers or gateways. The term and concept was coined by networking giant Cisco even before the IoT became a buzzword, but it was the advent of the Internet of Things that provided it with true, legitimate use cases.  .... " 

Microsoft and LinkedIn

Twit podcast on the motivations of Microsoft acquiring Linkedin.  Useful thought piece.  Mention of Office Graph.  Privacy implications.   Continuing to follow.  Emphasis on a social channel with much less noise.   Value of real networking connections.    Also they get skill delivery group Lynda.com with the purchase.

(Update)  The three journalists that did this podcast provided good insight.  Implications with connections to Skype.   But I note that of the three, none of them were active users of LinkedIn.   Also mention of  Internal company functionality we had looked at.    Will this encourage those efforts?

Twitter vs Facebook

In Knowledge@Wharton:

" ... Twitter’s effort to find a new CEO is the latest struggle in a long list of challenges that the micro-blogging site has faced over the years. When the company launched its IPO in late 2013, Wall Street held out expectations that Twitter would one day rival social networking behemoth Facebook, which went public just 18 months earlier. But Twitter has stumbled and has yet to come close to rivaling Facebook on a number of key metrics and, more importantly, it appears increasingly unlikely that it ever will. ... " 

Cisco and Ericsson Hook Up for IoT

This looks of interest, experts in the network space.

Cisco and Ericsson Hook Up for IoT Networks
 Cisco and Ericsson on ...  announced a partnership to build out a next-generation network for smart things and the carriers and enterprises that want to support such devices.
The deal plays to the companies' strengths in cloud, data center, mobility, management and control, networking, routing and global services, they said. ... "     By Quinten Plummer

And more in TechCrunch.

HP Splits in Two

Worked with them for a long time, since they ran our plant systems:
Afterwards with HP Labs.

" ... When HP splits in two on Sunday after a year of planning, what is left will bear little resemblance to the engineering-driven company founded more than 75 years ago in a garage not far from Stanford University. 

On one side will be HP Inc., which will largely consist of personal computers and printers. On the other, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, which will sell the computer servers, data storage, networking, software and consulting services that run a modern company. Each company is expected to have annual revenue of about $50 billion and will be among America’s 500 largest public companies.  ... " 

Computing: The Human Experience

Brought to my attention by Myra Snyder, nice idea.  Will connect further.   Agree with the point below that this has not been attempted before.   It is much more than just another film about Steve Jobs.  So many have contributed.

" .... Computing: The Human Experience is a transmedia project engaging audiences of all ages in the story of the technology that has changed our civilization. The story of computing is the story of humanity. This is a story of ambition, invention, creativity, vision, avarice, and serendipity, powered by a refusal to accept the limits of our bodies and our minds. Delivered as a five part series of one-hour episodes for broadcast, Computing will teach the essential science of computing, present the stories of the people, events, and inventions in the history of computing, examine the connections among computing, science, and society, and contemplate the future. No documentary project has yet covered this subject in such a scope or style. In the spirit of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Computing will inform, inspire, and entertain.

Computing has been in development for the past five years by IBM Fellow Grady Booch and his wife Jan, in collaboration with John Hollar, CEO of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. To guide our work, we have assembled an advisory board of luminaries including Vint Cerf, Tim O’Reilly, Dr. Mary Shaw, Dag Spicer and Martin Campbell-Kelly – the world’s leading historians on computing, and several others. We expect to deliver the broadcast series in the fall of 2015 or 2016. In addition, this project will deliver a series of books and ebooks, a set of apps, associated informational and social networking web sites, and educational materials. ..... ? 

See their site. 

Cisco Managing Video

I reported on this some time ago, as it related to Video Content Analysis. (VCA) and its use for ad management in store.

Cisco introduces ‘videoscape unity’ to manage the future of video everywhere
Cisco is the world’s networking giant, and today it showed what it is doing to make sure that it can provide the plumbing for the explosion of video on live TV, paid services, and the wide-open Internet.  ... 

For the consumer, this means that Cisco will make it easier to manage video content, regardless of where it is coming from. Cisco is creating apps that allow a user to search through videos in a visual way, organized based on the user’s own tastes. You can login and your own profile will come up. The user interface will show you the videos that are relevant to you. Cisco refers to its unified approaching to managing content as Videoscape Unity.

Cisco Announces Six Pillars of IOT

Cisco unveils 15 products, six pillars to address the growing complexity of the internet of things deployments

In ComputerWeekly: 

" .....Networking kingpin Cisco has moved to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the internet of things (IoT) by launching 15 products under the banner of the Cisco IoT System.

Cisco’s own forecasts claim that despite being on course to see 50 billion devices and objects connected to the internet of things by 2020, at present 99% of “things” are not connected.
It said the wave of digitisation set to take place over the next five years would introduce unprecedented levels of complexity, and enterprises would struggle to realise the value of the IoT without the application of advanced data analytics and the introduction of ever more intelligent applications.

Cisco said its IoT System would address this complexity with an infrastructure that was designed to “manage large-scale systems of diverse endpoints and platforms, and the data deluge they create”.

Six pillars: 

IoT System is based around six technology elements, or pillars, which Cisco sees as critical to the success of the IoT. .... " 

Cisco Press Release.

Networking Intelligently

Networking Intelligently in an Over-connected World

Erica Dhawan discusses her new book and what she and coauthor Saj-nicole Joni call “the power of connectional intelligence.”  ... '

Vora Ventures Demo Day

Have worked with components of Vora Ventures a number of times.  They write:

Vora Ventures was named Cincinnati’s 2015 Tech Company of the Year at the Business Courier Innovation and Technology Awards!  http://www.vinimaya.com/news/vora-ventures-wins-tech-company-year-2015-innovation-technology-awards/

To celebrate, we invite you to a fun and informative social event to learn more about the innovations of our portfolio companies and to connect with leaders from the vibrant Cincinnati tech community. You are invited to join us for a casual and social after-work party filled with innovative technologies, networking, music, food, drinks and new opportunities! Visit Vora Group Demo Day www.VoraVentures.com to learn more about the Vora Group and our portfolio of companies. ... 

 http://ascendum.com/news-event/join-vora-ventures-for-an-evening-of-innovation-networking-and-celebration/

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." ... " 

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.” ... " 

Intelligent Light, Efficient Lighting and Sensors

Using light as a means of network construction has existed for some time.  It has interesting advantages and constraints.   We tested it for very specialized retail conditions.  From Radar OReilly:   A good overview of players in the space, which takes the idea beyond networking into energy efficiency:   " .... Consider the electric light: it’s ubiquitous and, well, boring. But meld it with some modern technology and you get intelligent lighting — wirelessly networked LED lights augmented by software and sensors. ... Early adopters have included creators of Las Vegas shows and productions, but in the big picture, entertainment is a mere sideshow. Intelligent lighting’s greatest impacts will be in the commercial and industrial sectors: warehouses, office buildings, factories, cold storage plants, hospitals — any place that encompasses large spaces and employs a lot of lights. ,,, That’s because smart lighting is highly efficient lighting. .... " 

Digital Asset Management

In the enterprise we were involved some of the earliest forms of what were to be called Digital Asset Management systems.    Although the assets at the time were not necessarily at least originally digital.  One of the first was called the OWL system,  which stored retrieved and re-purposed cataloged advertising images and copy historically.  Also turned out to be very useful for training.  It remains an interesting problem ... have talked to some companies on the potential analytics involved.  I am rethinking that aspect now.   I see there is an online of such systems being given by the AMA on March 18, 2014  11 AM ET More about it and registration here:

Bring Your Product Catalog to Life with Rich Media
According to Nielsen Norman Group, the average web page visit lasts less than a minute, driving marketers to seek new ways to capture their audience’s attention by increasing their use of rich media. As one example, according to Cisco Visual Networking Index, video content accounts for nearly half of internet traffic each month.

To handle the explosion of rich media assets, leading organizations are adopting enterprise Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems. DAM solutions help you monetize your product information and ensure consistent branding in all supporting marketing campaigns and efforts, across a multitude of channels and customer experiences. DAM works through the entire creation-to-consumption workflow, centrally managing media objects and product data. The result is an enriched, media-intensive product catalog that allows workers to easily find the right content, automatically transforms media to the best format for print and web catalogs, and reaches consumers with the right content and experiences on any platform and devices they choose. ... " 

Data Mining Day

I am planning to attend:

The Center for Business Analytics in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati is pleased to announce

Data Mining Day
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tangeman University Center
University of Cincinnati

The day will kick off with a networking breakfast where attendees will get to meet fellow analytics professionals as well as master's students from the University of Cincinnati programs in Information Systems and Business Analytics.

Our ​keynote ​speaker ​ will ​be ​John ​Elder,  ​PhD, ​of ​Elder ​Research, ​Inc. ​Dr. ​Elder ​is ​an ​international ​ expert ​and author on ​data ​mining ​as well as ​a ​well-known ​speaker ​on ​this ​subject. In addition to our keynote speaker, we will also have presentations from other leading experts on data mining. Nick Street, PhD, Professor and Department Executive Officer of the Management Sciences Department at the University of Iowa, will discuss data mining applications in healthcare. Randy Collica, Sr. Solutions Architect at SAS, will present on using text analytics to determine customers' future monetary values and future risk.

You may choose to attend only the morning sessions (including breakfast, keynote and other presentations plus lunch) or the morning plus afternoon sessions which also gives you access to the data mining software demonstrations where you will be able to choose two of three sessions offered by SAS Enterprise Miner, RapidMiner and Frontline System's XLMiner (limited number of seats available in each session).

For more information and to register, please visit: https://www.regonline.com/DataMiningDay

For more information on the Center for Business Analytics at the University of Cincinnati:
 http://business.uc.edu/centers/analytics-center.html
___________________________________________________________
Michael J. Fry, PhD
Associate Professor and Lindner Research Fellow
Assistant Director, Center for Business Analytics
Department of Operations, Business Analytics
      & Information Systems
Carl H. Lindner College of Business
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH
mike.fry@uc.edu
(513) 556 0404

Software Defined Servers

Sent to me through a Vertica/Big Data connection.  I don't typically talk about standard software. Don't claim to understand it completely, but the integration of hardware to specific key software and workloads is intriguing.  So what then when the needs change?  By then the hardware is ready already on a change list ...

HP Moonshot
Speed, Scale and Specialization
The HP Moonshot System is like nothing else that exists today. It’s a huge leap forward in infrastructure design that addresses the speed, scale, and specialization needed for a "New Style of IT."

HP Moonshot web servers are designed and tailored for specific workloads to deliver optimum performance. These low power servers share management, power, cooling, networking, and storage. This architecture is key to achieving 8x efficiency at scale*, and enabling 3x faster innovation cycle. ..  "

Ants and Networking

What ants know.   And what complex networks of things can be made to 'know'.   Known as Agent Based Models.  We studies this a decade ago in the enterprise.  Though fascinating, it never did produce big value,  say beyond standard industrial simulation.   Though a local startup uses it successfully for promotion allocation models.  And this does not sound like new news.  Anyone have more recent examples?