powdermonkey

French Riots

Seeing all the coverage of the French riots and how the various groups are coordinating their actions (cell phone texting, blogs) shows the power of Smart Mobs , err specifically evil smart mobs.

Open Source and the US Government

Great paper by Justin C. Justin Deiferth on how open source can change the US Governement and Military. Highly, highly recommend: Open Source and These United States.

Great story, robotics on the cheap and fast

Story about the 2nd DARPA Grand Challenge Robot Race through the desert in WSJ. Team of Amateurs Cuts Ahead of Experts in Computer-Car Race, by Lee Gomes. Basically in 10 months and $600k and no experience, an IT shop of an insurance company was able to hack together a solution AND place 4th.

"In an unheralded fourth place, though -- just 37 minutes behind the winner -- was an entrant from Gray Insurance, a small, family-owned casualty company in Metairie. Fourth place may not sound like any big whoop until you realize that the Gray Team finished ahead of cars from some of America's most elite technical universities, as well as from a number of big defense contractors. In fact, theirs was one of only five vehicles that managed to even cross the finish line.

The Gray Team (darpa.grayinsco.com²) had no prior experience in elite fields like robotics or artificial intelligence, spending their days instead in humdrum corporate data-processing tasks. They didn't decide to get involved in the race until 10 months ago, and didn't take delivery of the car they used until April."

- need more of this...

Crooked Corp Gets Nuke Controls

From Defense Tech. Story:

"Companies found to be crooked one day are given giant contracts the next. Sometimes this is unavoidable -- like when there's only one firm with has the expertise to tackle a particular task. But more often, it seems, the Pentagon goes out of its way to reward business that screw them over.

Take this story from Defense Industry Daily, for example: In April 2005, L-3 Communications subsidiary Interstate Electronics Corp. in Anaheim, CA was placed under criminal investigation for providing faulty parts to the CSEL [Combat Survivor/Evader Locator] search and rescue GPS/ beacon/ communicators used by US aviators, special forces teams, et. al. - and concealing test failures. So, naturally, they've just been awarded a contract to support the test; instrumentation hardware for most of America's nuclear missile fleet; and all of Britain's."

Now why is the procurement system not broken? There is no real concept of a reputation system (and no impact or effect if you screw somethign up) mainly a fine and 'time-out'. Transparency doesn't exist. What is needed is a rated reputation system that impacts a company if they do wrong otherwise it's just business as usual and the soldier (and taxpayer) gets the short end.

See Link

Del.icio.us Tags: military, reputation, procurement

Body Monitoring

Very interesting company, BodyMedia. They build monitoring devices for the body. Pretty cool, now if someone could just hack my Shuffle to it...

Del.icio.us Tags: body monitoring technology wearable

Business Ecosystems

I recently finished reading John Hagel's/John Seely Brown's new book,The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization , and was reading Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond) at the same time. Very interesting the same patterns (of course) overlap in the two, one about business ecosystems, the other about human survival, growth and dominance. Iit would be interesting if Amazon had 'duet' ranking for books that should be read together, when they intersect and reinforce concepts).

[Technorati tags: Competition, Edge]

Ipod Nano & Flexible Screens

I was presenting at a conference recently and one presenter was talking about a University/DOD/US Army research program about making flexible screens. Screens that could be attached to a soldiers arm, etc. Also read the same day about a problem with the iPod Nano (see Apple responds to iPod nano screen concerns) and the screens breaking when they are dropped.

Screens don't need to be hugely flexible, just flexible enough so that if dropped they bend rather than break. After all what would you do if you could wrap a screen around your finger?

[Technorati tags: iPodNano, Screen]

O'Reilly Article, Katrina and Maps

Great article about soem friends of mine who have been able to pull off some great stuff using open-source GIS for Katrina relief effort:
Katrina maps and photos via open source tools

by Tyler Mitchel @ O'Reilly Net

NASA Remix to the Moon

The one very cool thing about the proposed new NASA program is that they are not trying to invent much new. Instead, they are remixing existing and older technology. For example the shuttle launch rockets combined with an updated mission capsule. And of course with updated electronics. If this keeps us NASA may have a winner

Link to NASA website: NASA

Link to WashPo article: NASA Back to the Moon

[Technorati tags: NASA, Moon, Remix,]