ATT Triple Play offering (more)

The ACUMAN ChatBot won "best new bot" at the latest Chatter Box Challenge (Turing Test). (more)

piece of Wolfram Engine

Jason Kottke links to a couple reviews of Elizabeth Currid's Warhol Economy ISBN:0691128375 about the importance of the Creative Class (Creative Industries) to New York City's Urban Development. To exaggerate a bit, if New York suddenly disappeared, stock markets could keep functioning, but we would not be able to dress ourselves or find art to put on the wall. Currid suggests that, in the fight among cities for business, being the center of fashion and art constitutes New York's true "CompetitiveAdvantage." She identifies the typical Nyc Challenges, with perhaps a focus on Real Estate costs.

Tim Wu questions the technologists' thoughtless love of Innovation: those who share a faith in the importance of innovation should be sure that what we fight hardest for is not just the abstract beauty of new technologies, but ideals that actually have some connection to human ends. One cool comment - Innovation is a component of Evolution. Evolution and the core of our existence are intertwined. Thus, for people to be who they truly are, the must be allowed to evolve. Otherwise, people will not be allowed to be who they truly are, disharmony and injustice will result and human Happiness will not be achieved. Falls into my Worldview Roadmap.

Kenneth Dickey on and "Extremely Successful" software project. Used Extreme Programming and Common Lisp and CORBA. What gives a best match implementation technology? In our case it was not being up to date. Using the latest technology typically means that engineering effort is spent on tracking technology as it evolves. It also implies a higher learning cost than picking up training materials, well developed practices, and people who already know the technology. It makes sense to do this in areas where the newest technologies give Competitive Advantage in your company's value added area. In our case, we did not see value compelling enough to overcome the costs... You have to be able to update the code on a running server. If you can afford to fail, you can implement the server with any technology. We can't afford to fail... Interestingly, when we checked we found that a number of Fortune 1000 companies were using Lisp in critical applications such as on-line banking and AirLine reservation systems.

Clayton Christensen talk about the Theory Building mature companies need to do to successfully grow through Innovation. Christensen has developed a set of theories to help guide managers as they seek to answer seven critical questions when trying to build new growth businesses, again and again... (more)

Competitive advantage is a business concept describing attributes that allows an organization to outperform its competitors. These attributes may include access to natural resources, such as high grade ores or inexpensive power, highly skilled personnel, geographic location, high entry barriers, etc. New technologies, such as robotics and information technology, can provide competitive advantage, whether as a part of the product itself, as an advantage to the making of the product, or as a competitive aid in the business process (for example, better identification and understanding of customers)... Michael Porter defined the two types of competitive advantage an organization can achieve relative to its rivals: lower cost or differentiation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_advantage

War criminal. (more)

Clayton Christensen believes Apple Computer's IPod needs to break out of the proprietary stage to avoid being wiped out down the road. Look at any industry -- not just computers and MP3 players. You also see it in aircrafts and software, and medical devices, and over and over. During the early stages of an industry, when the functionality and reliability of a product isn't yet adequate to meet customer's needs, a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution -- because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way. But once the technology matures and becomes good enough, industry standards emerge. That leads to the standardization of interfaces, which lets companies specialize on pieces of the overall system, and the product becomes modular (InterOp). At that point, the Competitive Advantage of the early leader dissipates, and the ability to make money migrates to whoever controls the performance-defining subsystem. (more)

Ben Thompson explains why Clayton Christensen's predictions (2006-01-10-ChristensenIpodDisruptionProprietary) about Apple Computer's closed products losing to open/modular alternatives keep failing. The theory of low-end disruption (Disruptive Innovation) is fundamentally flawed... Consumers (B2C) don’t buy aircraft, software, or medical devices. Businesses (B2B) do... Consumers aren't rational... In the case of low-end disruption, the rational buyer considers the superior integrated offering and the inferior (but still good) modular offering, decides the latter is “good enough,” and buys it because it is cheaper... The attribute most valued by consumers, assuming a product is at least in the general vicinity of a need, is Ease Of Use. It’s not the only one – again, doing a Job To Be Done is most important – but all things being equal, consumers prefer a superior user experience. What is interesting about this attribute is that it is impossible to overshoot... The business (Enterprise) buyer, famously, does not care about the user experience.

A variety of people want to use Micro-Payments to save Newspaper Publishing. (more)

Anti-ObesIty Low Carb writer. (more)

term from Jean Russell - going beyond Sustainable/Resilience/Anti-Fragility? (more)

System with flows (of energy) between "inside" and "outside" the system (in either direction) (more)

Moreover, the evolution of the global ecosystem and the emergence of modern industrial society are studded with striking parallels. Briefly stated, information is the essence of both systems. from the Bionomics preface (more)

In comparing the IPhone to the GPhone, Clay Shirky and Alan Patrick note how Apple Computer cycles between opened EcoSystem-s and closed platforms over and over again. This fits right into Clayton Christensen's Innovators Solution work. See 2006-01-10-ChristensenIpodDisruptionProprietary.

We propose a trade group of social software developers and other interested parties who work together to create and promote open standards for the social software community. (more)

one route to InterOp - documented (well-specified so there's a Rule Of Law) data formats (more)

Andrew Stephen ("Andy") Grove (born 2 September 1936), is a Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author. He is a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry. He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 and moved to the United States where he finished his education. He later became CEO of Intel Corporation and helped transform the company into the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove