Computing on Clouds

Well, apparently Google invented cloud computing. Or that's what you'll get out of this BusinessWeek article, that profiles the 27-year-old Christophe Bisciglia, chief-cloud-guy, at Google. Have a read, as it gives a good sense of where Google is heading, and why they will take over the world if they're successful. Worse case scenario: Terminator or the Matrix. It will make us wish for the days when Microsoft dominated the computing market. Watch out future, here we come!

Dark is Cool

It's blacker and than black, darker than dark ... it's a material made of the ever versatile carbon nanotube, configured to reflect 0.045% of all light shone on it. The material was created by researchers at Rice University who were never as cool as the kids who wore black when they were younger. The material will be used to make really black jackets.

Electricity from Body Heat

Scientists have developed a more efficient thermoelectric silicon nanowire that could be used in generators to covert heat from various sources, including the human body, to electricity. While the physics of the new nanowires are not fully understood, the results are. Previous nanowire-based converters were not efficient for production, but if the promise of these new nanowires hold through, we could see countless applications hitting the market. The US DOD & DOE would definitely be interested, but so would commercial interests. Think of powering your laptop or other gadgets and toys using your own body heat ... makes power trips to the local fast food trough almost excusable.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car

100% Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are here! They're just a bit small. The H-racer is a toy car from Horizon Fuel Cell, a company that develops fuel cell technology for real-life cars. The H-racer comes with its own hydrogen refueling station that generates hydrogen for the car using solar energy and water. It retails for $115US and can be ordered directly from Horizon. Now how cool is that?

Related:

• The Race to Build the Supergreen Car -- Wired Magazine
• Are the Auto Industry's Arguments Against California's CO₂ Rule Just Hot Air? -- Autopia from Wired.com

The Ignorance of Crowds

Nicholas Carr, ever the optimist, uses Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar [PDF], to sermonize on the limitations of the open source model for innovation, in strategy+business magazine. If you're not familiar with Raymond's paper, Carr summarizes it as follows:

Traditionally, sophisticated programs had always been "built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation." An open source project, in contrast, was the product of a large and informal community of volunteers who in aggregate "seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches." What was amazing, Raymond wrote, was that "the Linux world not only didn't fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from strength to strength at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders."

With the advent of the Internet, an efficient vehicle for information exchange, the bazaar took off. Innovation didn't need to be pursued in isolation. Individuals connected real-time, could share ideas and evolve products. And here's where Carr thinks the limitations lie. The open source model -- the bazaar of the internet -- has only proven itself adept at evolving ideas that already exist. It's an optimization model, whereas new, truly innovative ideas, tend to come from individuals, or small, intimately connected groups.

The approaches of the cathedral and the bazaar really need to be intertwined. The individual wizard is much more capable of begetting original creations, unhindered by limitations. The bazaar, while appearing chaotic and democratic, is really a platform of focus, discipline and autocracy -- best suited to optimize, and squeeze efficiency and value out of the original creations of the wizards. From a business perspective, Carr writes:

So if you're looking to bolster your company's creativity, you should by all means look for opportunities to harness the power of the crowd. Just don't expect the masses to take the place of the lone wizard or the band of mages. The greatest breakthroughs will always begin, to quote Eric Raymond once more, with "one good idea in one person's head," and the greatest products will always reach perfection through the concerted efforts of a highly skilled team.

IT and Innovation

The February 1^st issue of CIO Magazine carries an article on innovation and benefits IT can bring to the process as an enabler. CIO suggests that as product lifecycles continue to shrink, the pressure to bring the innovation cycle down to shorter timeframes will be even greater. Internal R&D departments can no longer afford to do it all on their own –- and innovation as a result, is becoming a distributed process, requiring the collaboration of customers, suppliers, independents and even competitors.

How can IT help? CIO provides these elements that specifically requires IT as an enabler:

Collaboration. Communications is critical among both internal employees and external contractors. Agree on a medium, whether its e-mail, IM or fancy collaboration software, and get everyone using it.

Data access.Easy access to research information is the basis for doing collaborative innovation work with outsiders. Make project data available in a format that is standard, simple and easily viewable –- think PDF and HTML.

Process standardization and automation.Standard templates and automated workflows that don't depend on specialization systems are important to getting multiple outside contributors involved in the process. Such tools also allow you to chunk up workflows so that one group can pick up where another left off. The caveat: Dont let standardization stomp on creativity –- its a delicate balance.

Cross-functional integration. Researchers and engineers dont own innovation anymore. Find ways to connect other functions to the innovation process –- especially those that deal with customers, like sales, marketing and customer service and give them a voice.

CIO also profiled P&Gs use of IT as an enabler to their R&D process, and cites the requirements that IT needed to meet in order to get into the game: flexibility, scalability, cross-functional integration and collaboration.

What a concept! Collaboration, flexibility, information access, and, the delicate balance of process standardization and integration –- think of your IT organization, and ask how well they do any of those. More likely than not, your IT organization is stuck in time about decade ago, and see those suggestions as dangerous –- if not downright crazy.

Beyond Virtual Reality

The April 2^nd issue of BusinessWeek carries a cover story on the coming virtualization of the world that's an eyeopener on future of human-computer interface. Lets face it, the keyboard is not natural -- neither is the mouse, the remote control or 2D simulations of 3D worlds. What is natural for humans have long been a challenge for computers to accept as input, interpret and execute. A glimpse of the future however is here, and its showing up in the unlikely place of business.

Sure the entertainment industry has been at the forefront of exploiting new technologies such as motion capture, rendering and virtualization of the real world -- but how about sensor technology that detects movements and expressions, allowing the natural interaction with presentations? Or technology that tracks the motion, allowing advertisers to interact with their audience? Others are also bringing 3D modeling to life, allowing prototypes to be interacted with -- designed, tested and virtually constructed and used before ever becoming real.

Systems that track motion and emotions are also being developed, with a varied landscape of applications waiting in the wings. Imagine if Google ads could from eye movements and facial expressions being captured by webcams, whether ads being served up are registering –- or even effective. Imagine if security systems could tell from movements and facial expressions, whether an individual is up to no-good. Or think of the possibilities, if the health industry could interpret a gait and associate it with medical conditions. The education industry could reach a higher dimension if movements and expressions could be captured and rendered virtually to bring geographically displaced individuals together.

BusinessWeek closed off the article with some words from clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle of MIT: Motion tracking is about the mirroring of body motion, and of course the subtle things like hand gestures, or the way someone characteristically cocks his head before speaking. With the widespread use of these systems in business and entertainment, these motions will give us a much greater sense of connection with our online selves. The virtual will seem much closer to the real. The possibilities are nothing short of the Matrix.

Google Voice Search Local

Out of Google's Labs comes another search solution -- voice search.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone. Using this service, you can:

• search for a local business by name or category.
  You can say "Giovanni's Pizzeria" or just "pizza".
• get connected to the business, free of charge.
• get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone.
  Just say "text message".

How cool is that?!

Designing Change

Limited thinking would view the poor as a burden to society, but if you buy C.K. Prahalad's bottom-of-the-pyramid theory, the 4-plus billion impoverished people in the world are a vast untapped market. If you're motivated solely by profits, you may limit your understanding of Prahalad's theory to bringing consumerism to the poor -- but if your aspirations are to close the inequalities that exist between those that have, and those that have don't, then this vast untapped market represents an opportunity to make a difference, even while eking out profits. The poster child for tapping into those at the bottom is Grameen Bank, with their micro-financing to aid those in developing nations towards self-sustainment.

Helping the poor help themselves is a novel idea that is taking off in philanthropy. It's not just about throwing endless sums of money at the vacuum of need -- but about wisely investing in the poor, so they can create an economic environment where the cycle of poverty can be slowed and even stopped. I've just found out about an organization, like Grameen Bank, that is investing in the poor, for a profit. Jacqueline Novogratz's Acumen Fund takes the micro-financing approach with venture funds, looking for businesses, business models and designing solutions to tap into the unmet needs of the poor -- and along the way, sometimes bringing home a small profit for their efforts that is then reinvested. What a virtuous cycle.

Acumen's $20 million investment portfolio is focused on health, water and housing, with seed money coming from some well known philanthropic organizations. Its website boasts some great success stories, such as a $325,000 loan to A to Z Textile in Tanzania, in which it lost $32,500, but got 5,000,000 Tanzanians mosquito nets to protect against malaria infection. A to Z Textile expects production to ramp up to 7 million nets. That impact, for a $325,000 investment. BusinessWeek tells the story of Acumen's equity investment in Drishtee, a startup in India, that rolls out information kiosks in rural India, complete with a computer, internet access, digital camera and fax machine. Drishtee offers the kiosks as franchise operations, allowing locals to own the kiosks that provide village access to health information, government resources and other necessities of modern India. Women it turned out made better franchise owners than men, as they open earlier and close later, but lacked skills and most banks in India do not lend to women. Acumen has invested in training village women in the basics of business and is working with an Indian bank to offer a guarantee to the bank's loans to women franchise owners -- aiming to prove to the bank that women are safe investment bets.

Jacqueline Novogratz, an American woman, making a difference to the lives of the poor women of India -- I like the female symmetry in this story -- noteworthy, since today is International Women's Day.