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om.co » Why connecting the dots is important too
“What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.”
tags: execution dotconnecting
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Google’s Chief Works to Trim a Bloated Ship – NYTimes.com
“Ever since taking over as C.E.O., I have focused much of my energy on increasing Google’s velocity and execution, and we’re beginning to see results,” Mr. Page, 38, told analysts recently.
20 Characteristics of the Transleader. ~ Jennifer Sertl | elephant journal
Jump to the list, under the video. A sample:
1. Transleaders are intelligence officers. They are always looking for the unexpected insight, the unrecognised trends, and the subtle changes in the marketplace. They are information junkies—about the company’s markets, customers and technologies. And they maintain a large network of sources and informants.
2. They are intuitive and creative people. They deeply understand the business environment and naturally have insights about how to operate within and beyond it.
tags: transleader
“The MQTT protocol enables a publish/subscribe messaging model in an extremely lightweight way. It is useful for connections with remote locations where a small code footprint is required and/or network bandwidth is at a premium. For example, it has been used in remote sensors communicating to a broker via satellite link, over occasional dial-up connections with healthcare providers, and in a range of home automation and small sensor device scenarios. It is also ideal for mobile applications because of its small size, low power usage, minimised data packets, and efficient distribution of information to one or many receivers. “
tags: eclipse mqtt internetofthings
IBM Open-Sources Potential “Internet of Things” Protocol
“IBM announced it is joining with Italy-based hardware architecture firm Eurotech in donating a complete draft protocol for asynchronous inter-device communication to the Eclipse Foundation.”
“It is being called Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol, the machine-to-machine counterpart of HTTP.”
tags: MQTT ibm internetofthings
“The Internet is changing the way we work, socialize, create and share information, and organize the flow of people, ideas, and things around the globe. Yet the magnitude of this transformation is still underappreciated. The Internet accounted for 21 percent of the GDP growth in mature economies over the past 5 years. In that time, we went from a few thousand students accessing Facebook to more than 800 million users around the world, including many leading firms, who regularly update their pages and share content. While large enterprises and national economies have reaped major benefits from this technological revolution, individual consumers and small, upstart entrepreneurs have been some of the greatest beneficiaries from the Internet’s empowering influence. If Internet were a sector, it would have a greater weight in GDP than agriculture or utilities. “
Seth’s Blog: There’s nothing wrong with having a plan
Got a mission?
“But missions are better. Missions survive when plans fail, and plans almost always fail.”
tags: seth
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A final thought from The Wisdom of Clouds | The Wisdom of Clouds – CNET News
I completely agree with James. Echoes why I retired from the Top 3 Stories Podcast, and ground to a halt on Elemental Cloud Computing:
“For one, cloud computing itself is no longer an innovative new field, but a growing marketplace of hundreds or even thousands of technology and service options. Covering cloud overall has become a journalist’s job, and I see myself more as an analyst and essayist.”
tags: cloud computing
“What if the Netflix Prize model of solving hard problems about big data sets using contests could be applied to all sorts of other things? In fact, a remarkable start-up called Kaggle is doing exactly that — and already seems to be making it work.
Kaggle has facilitated breakthroughs in NASA’s analysis of dark matter, improved Allstate’s actuarial methods, predicted many of the top finishers of the Eurovision Song Contest, and is currently hosting a $3 million prize to device ways to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations.”
“A system is a set of interrelated entities that perform a function,” said Crawley, the Ford Professor of Engineering in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The function that emerges, he said, is greater than what could come from any single entity — and the overall system’s “emergent properties” are what produce value.
Crawley then explained that systems thinking is a way of looking at problems in context, in order to more successfully predict what will emerge to ensure value. “This is the real art and the real goal of systems thinking — training yourself in the domain in which you work to look at an unprecedented system, predict outcomes and add value,” Crawley said. In essence, using systems thinking helps make complex challenges less complicated.”
Introducing the 5-watt server that runs on cell phone chips — Cloud Computing News
“Can ARM wrestle its way into the server market? Calxeda and Hewlett-Packard think so. On Tuesday Calxeda launched its EnergyCore ARM server-on-a-chip (SoC), which it says consumes as little as 1.5 watts (and idles at half a watt). And HP, the world’s largest server maker, committed to building EnergyCore-based servers that will consume as little as 5 watts when running all out. Compare that to the lowest-power x86 server chips from Intel, which consume about 20 watts but deliver higher performance.
Calxeda, backed in part by ARM Holdings, is banking that the success that ARM chips found in smartphones and mobile devices will carry over into data centers serving large, scale-out workloads. In that arena, it is facing off squarely against chip giant Intel and its x86-based architecture, which dominates the market for chips running in commodity servers.”
tags: cloud computing chips
Giving the F.B.I. What It Wants – NYTimes.com
“Hasan M. Elahi is an associate professor and an interdisciplinary artist at the University of Maryland. This article is adapted from a forthcoming TED Talk.”
“In an era in which everything is archived and tracked, the best way to maintain privacy may be to give it up. Information agencies operate in an industry that values data. Restricted access to information is what makes it valuable. If I cut out the middleman and flood the market with my information, the intelligence the F.B.I. has on me will be of no value. Making my private information public devalues the currency of the information the intelligence gatherers have collected.
My activities may be more symbolic than not, but if 300 million people started sending private information to federal agents, the government would need to hire as many as another 300 million people, possibly more, to keep up with the information and we’d have to redesign our entire intelligence system.”
tags: privacy
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Linus Torvalds’s Lessons on Software Development M… – Input Output
“If anyone knows the joys and sorrows of managing software development projects, it would be Linus Torvalds, creator of the world’s most popular open-source software program: the Linux operating system. For more than 20 years, Torvalds has been directing thousands of developers to improve the open source OS. He and I sat down to talk about effective techniques in running large-scale distributed programming teams – and the things that don’t work, too.”
tags: LinusTorvalds
Sysco’s Produce Division Makes Room For Local Farmers | Fast Company
Interesting example of systemic constraints and redesign:
“When Michigan State University wanted to serve more locally grown produce, Mike Passorelli’s basil would have been ideal. He grows it in a greenhouse two hours west, and labels it organic gardens. But the school can’t buy directly from tons of farms; that would be an organizational nightmare. So in 2007, it asked its food supplier, Sysco, to provide. That turned into a lesson on just how complex our nation’s food system is: To distribute local food, Sysco had to first spend three years restructuring its produce division in Michigan–a feat it’s now reproducing nationwide.”
The Great Tech War Of 2012 | Fast Company
Terrific piece in Fast Company:
“…To state this as clearly as possible: The four American companies that have come to define 21st-century information technology and entertainment are on the verge of war. Over the next two years, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will increasingly collide in the markets for mobile phones and tablets, mobile apps, social networking, and more. This competition will be intense. Each of the four has shown competitive excellence, strategic genius, and superb execution that have left the rest of the world in the dust.”
tags: Apple amazon Google Facebook fastcompany
Good report. Used a sliver in my Active Information post.
“In June 2011 the Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a global survey of 586 senior executives, sponsored by SAS, to look at the state of big data, along with the organisational characteristics of companies that are adept at extracting value from data. It also explores the most challenging aspects of data management…”
Economist Intelligence Unit: Master data fundament… – Input Output
This week’s Active Information post:
“…And sure, we’ve heard all of this before. All those data management activities that get head nods, lumped into architecture and COEs (read: overhead) and then get resource gutted as soon the economy gets challenging, or a “business critical” project comes along.
But, here’s the thing. According to the EIU research, the organizations that have actively, consistently invested in data management fundamentals are reaping more than business benefits…”
tags: active-information
Zen and the Art of Simplicity at Work – The Source – WSJ
I preach simplicity in architecture everyday, just not so eloquently…
“Tracing the Zen Aesthetic, what sets shibumi apart as a powerful design ideal is the unique combination of surprising impact and uncommon simplicity.
It entails achieving maximum effect through minimum means, which, it turns out, is a universal pursuit that takes many forms: artists and designers use white or ‘negative’ space to convey visual power; scientists and mathematicians and engineers search for theories that explain highly complex phenomena in stunningly simple ways.
What these various forms all have in common, and what shibumi has at its core, is the element of subtraction.
Not only is the thought of subtracting something in order to create value a very different way of thinking (neuroscientists have shown using functional MRI scans that addition and subtraction demand different brain circuitry), it figures centrally in Zen.”
tags: simplicity matthewmay
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There’s Something Happening Here – NYTimes.com
“There are two unified theories out there that intrigue me. One says this is the start of “The Great Disruption.” The other says that this is all part of “The Big Shift.” You decide.”
tags: NYTimes.com friedman
Mechanical Sympathy: Single Writer Principle
Single Writer Principle
When trying to build a highly scalable system the single biggest limitation on scalability is having multiple writers contend for any item of data or resource. Sure, algorithms can be bad, but let’s assume they have a reasonable Big O notation so we’ll focus on the scalability limitations of the systems design.
I keep seeing people just accept having multiple writers as the norm. There is a lot of research in computer science for managing this contention that boils down to 2 basic approaches. One is to provide mutual exclusion to the contended resource while the mutation takes place; the other is to take an optimistic strategy and swap in the changes if the underlying resource has not changed while you created the new copy.
disruptor – Concurrent Programming Framework – Google Project Hosting
What is the Disruptor?
LMAX aims to be the fastest trading platform in the world. Clearly, in order to achieve this we needed to do something special to achieve very low-latency and high-throughput with our Java platform. Performance testing showed that using queues to pass data between stages of the system was introducing latency, so we focused on optimising this area.
The Disruptor is the result of our research and testing. We found that cache misses at the CPU-level, and locks requiring kernel arbitration are both extremely costly, so we created a framework which has “mechanical sympathy” for the hardware it’s running on, and that’s lock-free.
This is not a specialist solution, it’s not designed to work only for a financial application. The Disruptor is a general-purpose mechanism for solving a difficult problem in concurrent programming.
tags: disruptor concurrency java
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I’ve been remiss in sharing my active information posts. The latest:
Data Scientists: Heavy Lifting Required
“Good data scientists understand, in a deep way, that the heavy lifting of cleanup and preparation isn’t something that gets in the way of solving the problem: it is the problem.” – DJ Patil
On Davenport on Moneyball: Swing or ride the pine
Companies looking to compete on analytics, or for that matter, just stay competitive, need leaders who realize that having tunnel vision on singular, staid metrics, will lead to singular, staid businesses.
Taking the right path to Competitive Analytics
The evolution from experienced to transformed analytics takes one of two paths, which depends on the nature and goals of the organization.
Big Data definitions will be Big Data problem
It seems that the definitions and opinions on what is, and isn’t, big data, could fill a terabyte or two on their own.
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What Visual Designers Can Learn From Biggie Smalls | Blog | design mind
“I often think of Biggie’s process when we discuss the visual design process in the studio and within the company. What can we as designers learn from it? To me, there are a few strong themes we can embrace from it when facing difficulties in our daily work or when we assess our working methods, regardless of what discipline we work in or the context of our everyday projects.”
tags: design
Thoughtful Programmer: Visible Business
“You may be writing software to detect or determine that “Something has happened”, or you may be writing software to deal with the fact that “Something has happened”.
Either way, visibility is the key… your software is either making “something that has happened” visible, or your software is making “something that needs to happen” visible. Your software may be making “something” visible to people, or your software may be making “something” visible to another system.”
tags: visibility events programming
Charles Eames on Design: Rare Q&A from 1972 | Brain Pickings
Q: “What are the boundaries of design?” Eames: “What are the boundaries of problems?”
tags: design
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Zachman Framework 3.0 Announced Tues, Aug. 23 … Quick Notes — Ron Ross on Business Rules
“Here’s a zipped pdf of the new 3.0 version of the Zachman Framework (with permission): ZF3.0.zip [approx 1.5M]…
…Our Editor for BRCommunity.com, Keri Anderson Healy, attended the announcement event – she reports an excellent turnout. The following are some quick first-look notes from Keri (my own comments appear in brackets)…”
tags: zachman
Change This – The Art of Hassle Map Thinking
“Yet we’ve found that organizations that excel at demand creation do exactly that. They examine the lives of customers through the lens of what we call a Hassle Map-a detailed study of the problems, large and small, that people experience whenever they use their products.”
tags: hassle map thinking innovation
Change This – The Six Rules Women Must Break in Order to Succeed
I like: “Proceed until apprehended”
—
“We all have thoughts that limit our potential. Some of these beliefs come from our individual experiences; they take hold over the years. “I’m not good at taking credit. I’m much better working behind the scenes. I’m lucky to have this job.” Other beliefs are a result of the gender stereotypes that are all around us. They creep into our heads over time. “It’s my job to nurture everyone else before I take care of my own needs. I am selfish and self-centered if I choose to indulge my ambition.” Still others are simply erroneous conventional wisdom. “I can have it all without compromise. I’m a failure if I can’t make it look easy.”
We get in our own way when we buy-into these limiting beliefs. But it does not have to be that way. We can nurture the beliefs that will sustain us and help us grow. To rise to the highest ranks in business, women need to unwind some of the traditional thinking that holds us back. We need to rethink the conversations we are having in our heads and tell ourselves a new story. We need to break our own rules.”
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It’s official: ‘Cloud computing’ is now meaningless | Cloud Computing – InfoWorld
Dave was inspired by our recent podcast:
“…yet another Gartner hype cycle report is now out. You can expect to see its accompanying graphic (below) used in every vendor’s presentation from now on. (There must be a law or something.)”
tags: linthicum cloudcomputing
CloudCamp Boston @ OpenStack, Oct 6, 2011
CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas.
tags: boston cloudcomputing
Schumpeter: Think different | The Economist
“Mr Christensen and his colleagues list five habits of mind that characterise disruptive innovators: associating, questioning, observing, networking and experimenting. Innovators excel at connecting seemingly unconnected things…”
Twitter to open source Hadoop-like tool — Cloud Computing News
Twitter retains BackType’s plan to open source Storm. “Twitter says it is planning to open source Storm, its Hadoop-like real-time data processing tool.”
tags: Twitter storm streamprocessing cep
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This week on Active Information, I highlighted a piece by Houston Rockets GM, Daryl Morey, on the value of data over hot-shot analysts. Check it out.
Related posts:Recent Active Information Writing: Crash-proof code, data lessons & infographi…
“Enterprise architects need to work with the enterprise as if it were a family. If you look at a family, especially one with kids, they have their moments, but over time, they all start to embody a set of shared values.”
Couchbase Goes 2.0, Pushes SQL for NoSQL – NYTimes.com
“The bigger news for the industry most likely is UnQL, which Couchbase Co-Founder and SVP of Products James Phillips hopes will become the equivalent of SQL for unstructured databases. A standard query language could be very beneficial to the NoSQL space, which is characterized by many different products with different functions and different syntaxes.
Created by CouchDB creator Damien Katz and SQLite creator Richard Hipp, UnQL extends aspects of SQL to NoSQL databases. According to Phillips, it’s an expressive language that, like SQL, lets the database do “heavy lifting” instead of putting the burden on application developers to write certain functionalities into the application.”
MoMA’s ‘Talk to Me’ Focuses on Interface – Review – NYTimes.com
“The Museum of Modern Art’s “Talk to Me: Design and the Communication Between People and Objects” is one of the smartest design shows in years — by which I mean that it’s intelligent but also that it’s made for the texting, tweeting, social-networking, app-downloading, smartphone-wielding museumgoer.”
The Fertile Unknown: 77 Awesome Creativity Books
“The following are some of the books (both the classics and some newer ones) that have informed, inspired and/or resonated with me along my journey over the years. I’ve chosen each based on philosophy, context, concepts, principles, practices, or applicability. Some are more reflective and other more active. Since most would fit into more than one catagory it felt too reductive to break them down that way. I’m just listing them in no particular order for you to explore whichever calls to you.”
tags: creativity books
Jeff Bezos on innovation: Amazon ‘willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time’ – GeekWire
“If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company. AWS also started about six or seven years ago. We are planting more seeds right now, and it is too early to talk about them, but we are going to continue to plant seeds. And I can guarantee you that everything we do will not work. And, I am never concerned about that…. We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. We don’t give up on things easily. Our third-party seller business is an example of that. It took us three tries to get the third-party seller business to work. We didn’t give up.
But. if you get to a point where you look at it and you say look, we are continuing invest a lot of money in this, and it’s not working and we have a bunch of other good businesses, and this is a hypothetical scenario, and we are going to give up on this. On the day you decide to give up on it, what happens? Your operating margins go up because you stopped investing in something that wasn’t working. Is that really such a bad day?
So, my mind never lets me get in a place where I think we can’t afford to take these bets, because the bad case never seems that bad to me.”
tags: amazon innovation
Why the shortage of cloud architects will lead to bad clouds | Cloud Computing – InfoWorld
“I’ve worked on cloud-based systems for years now, and the common thread to cloud architecture is that there are no common threads to cloud architecture. Although you would think that common architectural patterns would emerge, the fact is clouds do different things and must use very different architectural approaches and technologies. In the world of cloud computing, that means those who are smart, creative, and resourceful seem to win out over those who are just smart.”
tags: architects cloudcomputing
Behind the Youthful Sales Surge for IBM Mainframes – Digits – WSJ
I’ll always have COBOL… “Just how hot is IBM’s most venerable computer line? Well, revenue from the high-end machines known as mainframes surged 61% in the second quarter, capping the best four quarters of growth for the segment in five years.”
tags: ibm
Gartner Releases Their Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing, 2011 | A Passion for Research
“Bottom line: The greater the hype, the more the analyst inquiries, and the faster a given technology ascends to the Peak of Inflated Expectations. After reading this analysis it becomes clear that vendors who strive to be accurate, precise, real and relevant are winning deals right now and transcending the hype cycle to close sales. They may not being getting a lot of attention, but they are selling more because enterprises clearly understand their value.”
tags: Gartner cloudcomputing
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Big data vs. traditional databases: Can you reproduce YouTube on Oracle’s Exadata? | ZDNet
“…Cowen & Co. analyst Peter Goldmacher. In a 75-page report, Goldmacher walks through the database landscape and concludes that the consensus view that the growth of data will boost traditional database vendors is dead wrong. Goldmacher said:
We believe the vast majority of data growth is coming in the form of data sets that are not well suited for traditional relational database vendors like Oracle. Not only is the data too unstructured and/or too voluminous for a traditional RDBMS, the software and hardware costs required to crunch through these new data sets using traditional RDBMS technology are prohibitive…”
tags: bigdata
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