BizTechTalk

BizTechTalk Briefs 11/04/2010

• Happy Hour is 9 to 5 by Alexander Kjerulf

  Now that is some counterintuitive innovation food for thought, eh?

  "Try stuff out

  A ceramics teacher announced on the opening day of the course that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

  His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality,” however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”.

  Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
  - From the book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

  If you always do things the same way, how are you ever going to find a better way? Try new approaches out and see what happens. Yes, you will fail once in a while, but failing is a great way—sometimes the only way—to learn."

  tags: mindset psychology alexander_kjerulf happy_hour_is_9_to_5 innovation mistakes

• YouTube - The iPad DJ: @ranajune

  Prepping a lot of iPad coverage - thought I'd step back to my roots as a Music Synth guy. The business of music and the production of music have certainly changed dramatically over the years.

  "Rana Sobhany, http://twitter.com/ranajune , rocked the house over the weekend at the iPad Dev Camp in Silicon Valley and here we learn how she was DJ'ing there. You can find her DJ site at http://www.destroythesilence.com/ and she's put all the apps she's using here: http://www.destroythesilence.com/apps"

  tags: ipad DJ synthesizer music youtube video robert_scoble

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 11/01/2010

• HOW TO: Build an App for Your Small Business

  TIps for anyone - not just SMBs interested in Mobile Apps

  "So, you’re a small or medium-sized business, and you want to build a Facebook, mobile or web app. You’re undertaking something that’s both simple and ambitious, and you’re probably looking for a bit of help.

  But do you use one of the many do-it-yourself tools online, or do you call in a professional? If you find you need a developer to work with you, do you reach out to a freelancer or do you call an agency? And when — if ever — do you need to hire your own full- or part-time, in-house dev to work on your website and applications?"

  tags: iphone mobile app android DIY mashable

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 09/25/2010

• Repower America | Protect the Clean Air Act

  Thousands of Repower America members around the country took a stand for clean air and submitted their photos and videos in support of the Clean Air Act. This new video is a declaration that we won't stay quiet and lose our last, best line of defense against big polluters.

  tags: repower_a erica sustainability clean_air_act

• Climate change and energy :: Zengestrom

  tags: sustainability energyefficiency energy_intelligence climate_change jyri_engestrom

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 09/12/2010

• Information Requirements for Energy Efficiency Programs

  In May, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change released a very detailed report on the topic of energy efficiency called “From Shop Floor to Top Floor: Best Business Practices in Energy Efficiency.” The report, based on extensive surveys of roughly 50 major companies as well as in-depth studies of six companies from a diverse set of industries, identified the seven habits of highly efficient companies. These are:

  Efficiency is a core strategy.
  Leadership and organizational support is real and sustained.
  The company has smart energy efficiency goals.
  The strategy relies on a robust tracking and measurement system.
  The organization puts substantial resources into efficiency.
  The energy efficiency strategy shows demonstrated results.
  The company effectively communicates efficiency results.
  These habits describe a business’ strategy, sponsorship, organization, processes and communication that are critical to the success of an overall energy efficiency program.  The fourth habit – the “robust tracking and measurement system” – is all about the information requirements that are lifeblood of such a program and enable this all to work.

  tags: energyefficiency energy_intelligence business_intelligence BI sustainability robert_ferris hitachi_consulting

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 09/11/2010

• Technology Forecast download 2010, Issue 2

  Even PwC is seeing the convergence across process, content and collaboration. Meta-layers everywhere, and the new role of modern CIOs (hint: own it all and make it all work together)

  "In this issue of the Technology Forecast, we examine the yin yang of structured or repeatable work processes and versatile or variable human processes. Most large enterprises have spent much of the past 15 years implementing business infrastructures focused on standardized processes supported by modern enterprise applications. The words roll off the tongue so easily that we often forget that for most large enterprises, these highly standardized, repeatable, and automated processes represent a fraction of what really happens in the business. For every "yang" in the business, there are probably two "yins"—the more variable, responsive, creative, analytic, and insightful activities that heavily rely on the versatility of employees’ efforts."

  tags: PwC technology_forecast metalayer BPM ECM process CIO

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 09/09/2010

• TypeWith.me: Live Text Document Collaboration!

  EtherPad still exists - hosted by Atlas Networks in this case. Preferred the simplicity of EtherPad over Wave, personally.

  tags: collaboration etherpad document typewith

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 09/08/2010

• 5 Ways iPad's Pulse App Creators Applied Design Thinking to Their Business | Fast Company

  "When engineering and computer science grad students Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta were struggling to come up with a new software product for the iPad, they turned to the Institute of Design at Stanford for some direction. Six weeks later, they had set up a company, Alphonso Labs, and successfully launched their product—a popular news aggregator app for the iPad called Pulse. Less than a month after it hit market, Pulse made headlines when Steve Jobs showed it off at an Apple keynote and was at one point the most popular iPad app in the iTunes store (even after it ran into a bit of controversy). "We're a great example of how truly analytical types got to explore our creative sides," Kothari says. "All we needed was some guidance." Design-speak can be fluffy and conceptual, and practical-minded types can have problems soaking it in. But if you can get it past your left brain, Kothari and Gupta say, the basic blueprint that designers use to propose projects for clients can be useful in helping you think outside the box in a business setting."

  tags: ipad pulse alphonso_labs d_school stanford design_thinking

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 09/03/2010

• WAND Pre-built Taxonomies

  Don't recommend buy and simply use any old taxonomy, but it's been a while since I last ran across WAND. Good to see this area of the taxonomy world continues to expand and survive. ---- "WAND specializes in developing precise and best in class taxonomies covering a wide variety of domains. WAND Taxonomies are available for licensing for use in third party applications that have a need to better organize data and content with structured vocabularies.

  Our methodologies include leveraging taxonomy development experts with domain research and customer feedback to develop vocabularies that offer a clear knowledge representation for any given domain. We analyze user behavior whenever possible to augment vocabularies with new concepts or terminology that should be included. Finally, we leverage proprietary software and computational linguistic techniques to assist our human editors in creating the best taxonomies possible."

  tags: taxonomies prebuilt_taxonomies licensed_taxonomies WAND

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 08/28/2010

• Stewart Brand proclaims 4 environmental 'heresies' | Video on TED.com

  The man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book, sure to provoke widespread debate.

  tags: stewart_brand whole_earth_discipline sustainability sustainable_energy nuclear_power hydro_power TED

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

BizTechTalk Briefs 08/26/2010

• The Simplicity Shift: Innovative Design in a Corporate World

  Amazon reviews mark this as well worth it. Definitely relates to a very complex project we're working on that needs a whole lot of re-thinking towards simplicity. Have not yet read the PDF. Full version available here, free. Book is out of print.

  "High-tech products have historically had notoriously poor design. Fortunately, companies have recently started to embrace user-centered design practices. This transition hasn't been smooth; many companies have difficulty transferring good design into final, shippable product. There is a political/cultural disconnect between the outward corporate desire for good design and the internal corporate culture that implements it. The Simplicity Shift is about moving the company culture to value, discover and implement simplicity, and to create a well-designed product.

  This is the entire book as a large PDF (approximately 2MB), it was published 2002 by Cambridge University Press but is no longer in print."

  tags: design scott_jenson usability simplicity design_thinking

• Skytap Blog » Blog Archive » “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” – Dr. Suess

  Software development and test engineers often argue about “that’s not really a bug” or “that’s not a blocker to ship”. But they all agree on one thing for sure: shipping the next cool, new release to market faster and doing it with style and quality is fun and exciting. Yet, the reality of crummy old hardware, limited storage and deadlines often makes shipping quality software on-time a stressful exercise.

  Can there be no end to this status quo?
  Can developing, testing and shipping software be made fun again?
  Can that be done for lesser cost and in far less time than before?

  We asked Dr. Becky Hammons, a renowned quality expert these questions. Her simple answer is, “Yes! Use the cloud”. Having worked in the software industry for 30 years and having built many cool new products, Dr. Hammons is no stranger to this stressful cycle. But she has broken out of the status quo. She shared her experience on Aug 19 with 70 other industry peers.

  When asked to describe the typical challenges her team faced, she identified a few key ones:

  Availability of client, server and network configurations for complex test scenarios
  Baseline test configuration growth over time, with limited capital budget for new servers
  Cycle time needed to configure test environments, including localized operating systems
  Troubleshooting defect scenarios with offshore testers
  Sharing test resources with remote development teams
  Dr. Hammons wanted to eliminate these challenges for her team. She looked at Cloud computing as a solution.  She felt the cloud model offered several distinct benefits:

  Cloud resources enable fast deployment of new test configurations upon demand
  Usage is scalable to meet virtual machine and storage needs
  Local physical test network can be integrated with cloud network via VPN
  Able to expand client and server test load beyond capabilities of our physical equipment
  Large variety of client and server operating systems in cloud enable teams to run more concurrent tests without additional capital investment
  Reduce cycle time

  tags: cloud_computing testing deployment skytap cost_cutting agile_development

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