Link Collection — April 1, 2012

  • Wonkbook: Absolutely everything you need to know about health-reform Supreme Court debut – The Washington Post

    I’m working on a healthcare exchange related project. Well, at least for now…

    “Today’s the day. The Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments as to the constitutionality of various provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Note that phrase: “Various provisions.” The Supreme Court is not looking at the act as a whole. Rather, it’s considering four separate questions related to separate parts of the law. Here’s my colleague Sarah Kliff with a primer of what they are, and why they matter.”

    tags: scotus healthcare

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Related posts:

  1. Link Collection — February 5, 2012
  2. Link Collection — January 8, 2012
  3. Link Collection — January 29, 2012

Link Collection — March 18, 2012

  • Amazon.com: Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value (9781422147610): Richard Hunter, George Westerman: Books

    Referencing in advice to client. Good book.

    tags: cio

  • Give it five minutes – (37signals)

    “Ideas are fragile. They often start powerless. They’re barely there, so easy to ignore or skip or miss.

    There are two things in this world that take no skill: 1. Spending other people’s money and 2. Dismissing an idea.

    Dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. You can scoff at it. You can ignore it. You can puff some smoke at it. That’s easy. The hard thing to do is protect it, think about it, let it marinate, explore it, riff on it, and try it. The right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.

    So next time you hear something, or someone, talk about an idea, pitch an idea, or suggest an idea, give it five minutes.”

    tags: ideas mentoring

  • Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite! | Video on TED.com

    Doodler vindication!

    “Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension — and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we’re caught doodling in a meeting? Sunni Brown says: Doodlers, unite! She makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen.”

    tags: TED creativity doodling

  • Conway’s law – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    “Conway’s law is an adage named after computer programmer Melvin Conway, who introduced the idea in 1968:

    …organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”

    tags: organization systems

  • How Sara Blakely of Spanx Turned $5,000 into $1 billion – Forbes.com

    Good self-made woman entrepreneur story: 

    “Sara Blakely is the youngest self-made woman to join this year’s billionaires’ club–turning $5,000 in savings into a new retail category”

    tags: forbes spanx

  • Self-tracking for health, fun and profit? – Input Output

    My latest on Active Information:

    “About a decade ago, I was working with my favorite co-conspirator on a universal task viewer service, which was an adjunct to our event-driven architecture. In order for something to appear in the task viewer, it had to be “trackable” (include the proper interface).
    Over the course of our design sessions, and throughout the next few months, we kept identifying business and system actions that should be trackable. It became apparent to us that nearly every business and system action could be trackable, following an interface pattern similar to making document objects printable.
    I hadn’t thought of “trackable” — and the running “hey that’s trackable” joke — in years. However, reading Counting Every Moment on self-tracking in the recent Economist Technology Quarterly bounced trackable up my memory stack.”

    tags: active-information self-tracking hpio

  • Kanban development oversimplified: a simple explanation of how Kanban adds to the ever-growing Agile toolkit

    Jump to Kanban in Lean manufacturing distilled section

    tags: kanban agile

  • Kanban is the New Scrum « The Hacker Chick Blog

    “The thing I’ve grown to dislike about Scrum are it’s time-boxed sprints.

    Working with startups, Scrum sprints are almost always way too long. When your sprints are too long then releases are infrequent (deferring revenue) and the team is forced to wait too long before being able to adapt to changing customer needs. This is wasteful because it means you’re continuing to move forward with outdated information.

    On the other hand, if sprints are too short, big features need to be arbitrarily chunked into smaller tasks, which aren’t useful to the customer on their own & can obfuscate what the team is trying to achieve”

    tags: agile scrum kanban

  • 10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy | Brain Pickings

    “People who think well, write well.”

    tags: writing ogilvy

  • Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs – NYTimes.com

    “It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.”

    tags: nytimes goldman leadership

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Related posts:

  1. Link Collection — March 4, 2012
  2. Link Collection — January 29, 2012
  3. Link Collection — February 5, 2012

Link Collection — March 4, 2012

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Link Collection — February 26, 2012

  • Amazon queues up new workflow service — Cloud Computing News

    This is very interesting. Amazon brings cross-border orchestration to cloud(s) and enterprises; and presumably between business partners. Use for scale, flexibility and potentially integration.

    “Amazon Web Services says its new Simple Workflow Service (SWS) will run applications that are distributed between customer sites and Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, further blurring the line between the customer’s data center and their chosen cloud.”

    tags: amazon workflow cloud computing SWS SQS

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Link Collection — February 19, 2012

  • What’s Your Mental Model Of Innovation? – Forbes

    “Achieving continuous innovation, Hamel stresses, “lies outside the performance envelope of today’s bureaucracy-infused management practices.” It will require major changes in mind and heart. It will need, Hamel writes, new values, new processes for innovation, a greater adaptability, the infusion of passion in the workplace and a new belief system or ideology.”

    tags: Innovation Hamel

  • Big Data’s Impact in the World – NYTimes.com

    An excellent piece in the NYT on all things big data.

    “GOOD with numbers? Fascinated by data? The sound you hear is opportunity knocking…”

    tags: bigdata nytimes

  • The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: February 2012 – tecosystems

    “For years now, it has been self-evident to us at RedMonk that programming language usage and adoption has been fragmenting at an accelerating rate [coverage]. As traditional barriers to technology procurement have eroded [coverage], developers have been empowered to leverage the runtimes they chose rather than those that were chosen for them. This has led to a sea change in the programming language landscape, with traditional language choices increasingly competing for attention with newer, more dynamic competitors.

    The natural consequence of this tectonic shift has been uncertainty. Vendors for whom supporting Java and Microsoft based stacks was once sufficient are being forced to evaluate the array of alternatives in an effort to maximize their addressable audience. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) stacks like Cloud Foundry and OpenShift are perhaps the best example of this; the differentiation for each at launch was in part their support for multiple independent runtimes from JavaScript to Ruby.

    While the question is obvious – which languages should I support? – the answer, and mechanisms for determining an answer, have been considerably less so….”

    tags: programming language sogrady redmonk

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Link Collection — February 12, 2012

  • It’s Time to Kill the Elephant | cloudeventprocessing.com

    Colin on the need to break free of batch based MapReduce: “All of these recent shifts from companies like Google, Yahoo, and others no longer see a competitive advantage in batch based MapReduce. The future has arrived, let’s look at some evidence…”

    tags: continuousquery mapreduce hadoop realtime

  • Suffering-oriented programming – thoughts from the red planet – thoughts from the red planet

    Excellent post / advice:

    “I follow a style of development that greatly reduces the risk of big projects like Storm. I call this style “suffering-oriented programming.” Suffering-oriented programming can be summarized like so: don’t build technology unless you feel the pain of not having it. It applies to the big, architectural decisions as well as the smaller everyday programming decisions. Suffering-oriented programming greatly reduces risk by ensuring that you’re always working on something important, and it ensures that you are well-versed in a problem space before attempting a large investment.

    I have a mantra for suffering-oriented programming: “First make it possible. Then make it beautiful. Then make it fast.””

    tags: development storm pragmatism iteration

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Link Collection — February 5, 2012

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Link Collection — January 29, 2012

  • The Rise of the New Groupthink – NYTimes.com

    “Mr. Wozniak offers this guidance to aspiring inventors:

    “Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

    tags: creativity woz nytimes groupthink

  • The Synergist | Matthew E. May

    “Sounds like a Marvel Comics action hero, right? But having launched countless creative teams, I know from experience that when they’re in the throes of team hell, they in fact need a hero: someone with a special talent for being at once the glue and the grease that keeps the machine working at peak effectiveness. Someone who can lead them to predictable success.

    That’s where the “Synergist” comes in.”

    tags: synergy synergist matthewmay

  • The Creative Personality: Ten paradoxical traits of the

    The Creative Personality: Ten paradoxical traits of the creative personality By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

    tags: creativity

  • Enterprise Hadoop: Big data processing made easier | Business Intelligence – InfoWorld

    Review of test drive: Amazon, Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM and MapR

    tags: hadoop

  • AggregateOrientedDatabase

    Martin Fowler on need to mix and match db persistence models and programming models. Follow the link for PolyglotPersistence.

    “This is part of the argument for PolyglotPersistence – use aggregate-oriented databases when you are manipulating clear aggregates (especially if you are running on a cluster) and use relational databases (or a graph database) when you want to manipulate that data in different ways.”

    tags: nosql martinfowler

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Link Collection — January 8, 2012

  • Event Processing at the Large Hadron Collider | Complex Event Processing (CEP) Blog

    Paul Vincent on events and Higgs boson:

    “Earlier this month Dr Neil Geddes gave a fascinating presentation at the BCS on “Data Processing at the Large Hadron Collider”, describing how LHC experiments create 1 Billion events per sec of which they can record in detail 100 events per sec.”

    tags: event_processing tibco higgs-boson

  • Predicts 2012: Information Infrastructure and Big Data

    I would edit this to be: “Make event-driven architecture and complex event processing first-class citizens”, but I can live with the following from Gartner:

    “Make event-driven architecture and complex event processing first-class citizens in data modeling work and metadata repositories.”

    tags: 2012 gartner event_processing

  • Disruptions: Resolved in 2012: To Enjoy the View Without Help From an iPhone – NYTimes.com

    I get my best ideas during dog walks… not to mention, some really out there ideas as well.

    “Jonah Lehrer, a neuroscientist and the author of the soon-to-be-released book, “Imagine: How Creativity Works,” said in a phone interview that our brains often needed to become inattentive to figure out complex issues. He said his book discussed an area of the brain scientists call “the default network” that was active only when the rest of the brain was inactive — in other words, when we were daydreaming.

    Letting the mind wander activates the default network, he said, and allows our brains to solve problems that most likely can’t be solved during a game of Angry Birds.”

    tags: problem-solving

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Related posts:

  1. Link Collection (weekly)
  2. Link Collection — December 18, 2011
  3. Link Collection- July 17, 2011

Link Collection — December 18, 2011

  • Five big data predictions for 2012 – O’Reilly Radar

    FINALLY! –> Streaming data processing: “Over the next few years we’ll see the adoption of scalable frameworks and platforms for handling streaming, or near real-time, analysis and processing. In the same way that Hadoop has been borne out of large-scale web applications, these platforms will be driven by the needs of large-scale location-aware mobile, social and sensor use.

    For some applications, there just isn’t enough storage in the world to store every piece of data your business might receive: at some point you need to make a decision to throw things away. Having streaming computation abilities enables you to analyze data or make decisions about discarding it without having to go through the store-compute loop of map/reduce.

    Emerging contenders in the real-time framework category include Storm, from Twitter, and S4, from Yahoo.”

    tags: bigdata streaming realtime

  • Smart Innovators Value Smaller Teams Over Better Processes – Michael Schrage – Harvard Business Review

    “They work very hard to stay very small. Even top-tier talent is turned aside or denied. The emphasis has shifted from “how do we successfully scale the team?” to “how do we successfully scale the team’s influence and deliverables?” Instead of seeing an explosion of virtual teams, what’s emerged are teams cleverly using digital and social media to extend their reach both inside the enterprise and out. Key suppliers and channels are contacted on an “as needed” basis”

    tags: innovation teams hbr

  • Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can’t Search | Magazine

    “Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?

    Who’s to blame? Not the students. If they’re naive at Googling, it’s because the ability to judge information is almost never taught in school. Under 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act, elementary and high schools focus on prepping their pupils for reading and math exams. And by the time kids get to college, professors assume they already have this skill. The buck stops nowhere. This situation is surpassingly ironic, because not only is intelligent search a key to everyday problem-solving, it also offers a golden opportunity to train kids in critical thinking.”

    tags: information literacy criticalthinking

  • Don’t Let What You Know Limit What You Imagine – Bill Taylor – Harvard Business Review

    “Many organizations, she argues, struggle with a “paradox of expertise” in which deep knowledge of what exists in a marketplace or a product category makes it harder to consider what-if strategies that challenge long-held assumptions. “When it comes to innovation,” she writes, “the same hard-won experience, best practice, and processes that are the cornerstones of an organization’s success may be more like millstones that threaten to sink it.” “

    tags: innovation hbr

  • Scott Aaronson – Quantum Computing Promises New Insights – NYTimes.com

    The goal in quantum computing is to choreograph a computation so that the amplitudes leading to wrong answers cancel each other out, while the amplitudes leading to right answers reinforce.

    tags: quantum computing

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Related posts:

  1. Link Collection — December 4, 2011
  2. Link Collection — December 11, 2011
  3. Link Collection- July 17, 2011

Link Collection — December 11, 2011

  • The Technologies in I.B.M.’s Watson Used for Drug Research – NYTimes.com

    “I.B.M.’s Strategic Intellectual Property Insight Platform. Clearly, the Watson branding team didn’t work on this name.

    But then again, this isn’t for television, where Watson performed. It is for major corporate customers, seeking competitive advantage. The technology, sold as a cloud-based service, is the result of several years of joint development between IBM Research and four companies — AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont and Pfizer.

    The insight platform uses data mining, natural-language processing and analytics to pore through millions of patent filings and biomedical journals to look for chemical compounds used in drug discovery.”

    tags: ibm watson pharma bigdata

  • Gapingvoid: Flowers vs Elephants

    So true… Click to see cartoon

    tags: gapingvoid

  • Bre Pettis | I Make Things – Bre Pettis Blog – The Cult of Done Manifesto

    Good one—> “#13 Done is the engine of more.”

    tags: productivity done manifesto

  • Monitor: More than just digital quilting | The Economist

    “The maker movement is both a response to and an outgrowth of digital culture, made possible by the convergence of several trends. New tools and electronic components let people integrate the physical and digital worlds simply and cheaply. Online services and design software make it easy to develop and share digital blueprints. And many people who spend all day manipulating bits on computer screens are rediscovering the pleasure of making physical objects and interacting with other enthusiasts in person, rather than online. Currently the preserve of hobbyists, the maker movement’s impact may be felt much farther afield.”

    tags: makerfaire innovation diy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Related posts:

  1. Link Collection — December 4, 2011
  2. Link Collection — October 23, 2011
  3. Link Collection — October 9, 2011

Link Collection — December 4, 2011

  • What Would Ben Franklin Do? Influences of America’s First Environmentalist | ThinkProgress

    “Everywhere Franklin went, his feisty personality preceded him, and it was this reputation in Europe that played a key role in securing the foreign aid the revolutionaries needed to triumph over the British. Many consider the celebrated polymath to be the first “American” in numerous regards—in entrepreneurialism, in political discourse, and, of course, in partying. As it turns out, Franklin was also the first American environmentalist, and his inventions influenced the scientific community for decades.”

    tags: benjaminfranklin

  • How To Be More Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps) – Forbes

    Words for us geek types to live by:

    “4. Embrace your innate weirdness. No one is normal. Everyone has quirks and insights unique to themselves. Don’t hide these things—they are what make you interesting.”

    tags: talent

  • Cloud Computing – Bessemer Venture Partners Cloudscape

    Infographic on players in Cloud Space, broken out in standard manner: SaaS, PaaS, & IaaS

    tags: cloud computing bessemer

  • Fresh Copy: How Ursula Burns Reinvented Xerox | Fast Company

    Interesting article on Ursula Burns and the ups, downs and strategic changes for Xerox. Plus, she told President Obama “that he owed her $3 billion.”

    tags: burns xerox

  • Martin Scorsese On Vision In Hollywood | Fast Company

    I just enjoyed this article. Scorsese’s creative influences, rules to live by; as well as parallels of the film creation process with software development — takes, composition, and editing.

    We should do more editing in software development.

    tags: creativity scorsese

  • Let them eat data | FT Tech Hub | FTtechhub – Industry analysis – FT.com

    Open data and #snark from the FT. What could be better?

    “Whether this measure spawns many new enterprises like PLACR remains to be seen, but it’s the perfect austerity plan. If there isn’t the money to improve the rail infrastructure, get some apps developed instead that will tell people just how long their train is likely to be delayed.”

    tags: opendata

  • Napster: Lessons for The Enemies of Shadow IT – tecosystems

    “Given that developers have an increasing portfolio of accessible open source software and cloud services available to them, it’s unlikely that an enterprise crackdown on so-called shadow IT will be materially more effective. And then there’s question of whether throttling the constituency within your business that wants to move fastest is generally a good idea.

    Why not enable them, then? Instead of firewalling the services Shadow IT wants, provide them centrally. Turn the tools that you are wasting your time fighting into an enticement to come out of the shadows. You’ll have better, if still imperfect, visibility into consumption and usage patterns as well as shorter development cycles. What’s not to like?”

    tags: sogrady shadowIT

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Related posts:

  1. Link Collection – August 13, 2011
  2. Link Collection — October 9, 2011
  3. Link Collection – September 11, 2011