Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

Recent Items
 
ACM News Service: Fresh Mesh - A New Route to Smaller 3D Files
 
Exceeding Customer Requirements: Bad for Business
 
Your Cyber Servants
 
Emergent Semantics
 
Maximizing Workspace Utilization
 
RFID Privacy Being Ignored
 
Community Source Development: The Higher-Education Road
 
Arphids: Swarming Near You?
 
Our Kids Are in Big Trouble
 
From Blogging to Publishing

ACM News Service: Fresh Mesh - A New Route to Smaller 3D Files

ACM News Service: Fresh Mesh - A New Route to Smaller 3D Files.  From 2004-06-23: I'm rolling up my sleeves for an 8-week class in Security Engineering that starts Thursday, 2004-06-24, and I am in clipping mode today.

This article describes a breakthrough in compression of 3D image files. (The blurb defines "NP hard" incorrectly: It is not quite as hard as all that).  The technique will be an interesting one to keep in mind for image-processing experimentation.

USC Viterbi School of Engineering made the original press release and announcement.  Hmm, I notice that more and more of the news service coverage is to this kind of material.

OK, this is the farthest back that I go.  I went out to the tail so I could tell Blogger to stop showing me the last 100 drafts and I could get to something reasonable like, maybe, 50.

posted by orcmid at 11/10/2004 10:10:54 PM

Exceeding Customer Requirements: Bad for Business

ACM News Service: Surpassing Customers' Needs - When Technology is Too Good.  From 2004-09-25: This blurb makes a great contrast between early adopters and a developed market consisting predominately of late adopters "who crave reliable, simple, and affordable products" according to Don Norman.  There is also the point that products can be too good, with the price of excess quality being unacceptable to the target market.

Jeff Karoub's 2004-09-20 Small Times feature includes a great lesson that Hubert Kostal and NanoOpto Corp learned.  Kostal reminds us that "There is a tendency for startups to solve all problems with technology.”  The realities have the company now place plain-old business sense as the area of greatest effort, with technology maybe accounting for one-third of the business effort.

There's more from Don Norman too:

It doesn’t matter if your technology is superior, Norman argues; it only matters if what you offer is good enough for the purpose. And that’s tough for emerging fields fueled by science and research.

“Mainstream companies are not about technology, they’re about user benefits. Price is critical. Reliability is critical,” he said.

“The customer doesn’t care what technology they’re using. They care about getting their jobs done.” The customer’s always right.

posted by orcmid at 11/8/2004 09:45:25 PM

Your Cyber Servants

The Web is Dead, Long Live the Web

ACM News Service.  From 2004-10-05: The world Internet, with connectivity into all communicative devices, promises services that work where we are and coherently with what we are up to at the time.  I am reminded of the car/space-ship AI that Robert Heinlein portrayed in his The Number of the Beast. This blurb emphasizes the importance of place and awareness of place and having that situate the behavior of agents and other networked processses that are operating on our behalf, such as letting us know when to leave for the airport to arrive in time for departure, with adjustment for current traffic and weather conditions on the route.  The idea is for services situated in our world and the solution pieces are envisioned as coming together.

Kevin Maney's 2004-10-01 USA Today cover story talks about the web being over and this being the next big thing.  There is an expanded look at the concepts and the convergence of economic, technological, and social structures that will make it possible.

I think this one is going to take more than Moore's Law to accomplish.

posted by orcmid at 11/8/2004 09:40:44 PM

Emergent Semantics

ACM News Service: Sony Lab Tips 'Emergent Semantics' to Make Sense of Web.  This is an interesting development that derives ontologies from usage patterns and observed/inferred relationships rather than some top-down taxonomical enforcement.  It is going to be a patented technology (sigh).

posted by orcmid at 11/7/2004 10:32:28 PM

Maximizing Workspace Utilization

ACM News Service: Office Space Gets New Meaning at NEC in Japan.  Visitors to Japan, and observers of Japanese offices (watch the Japanese version of "Shall We Dance?") are often surprised by the cramped, open-floor designs.  What we forget is that not only are the Japanese accustomed to a more communal arrangement, a major contextual factor is the cost of furnished spaces.

I always thought that the Japanese market would provide the ultimate test for groupware and collaborative technologies, as well as pen- and tablet-based computing because of the heavy use of caligraphy and fax and paper required by the Japanese language and writing.  My thinking was that if you couldn't sell the Crosspad in Japan, you couldn't sell it anywhere.

In this article about heavy use of technology to create cyber-supported collaboration and meeting spaces, there are two figures that caught my eye. 30% savings on office space turns into big bucks. 70% reduction of use of conference rooms is an even better deal because conference rooms tend to be over-subscribed and a bottleneck resource in offices I've visited in Japan and in many US office spaces.  The elimination of wired telephony and substitution of VOIP-equipped laptops as single office appliances is predictable everywhere, but the drive to space economy, and arrangements that support fluidity in work will come from the laboratory that the Japan market is.

The 2004-11-02 Michael Kanellos CNET News.Com article expands on this effort and provides other resources on workplace topics.  It might be tough for there to be no specific desk assignments and fewer desks than employees in a US office, but mobile US workers would find this arrangement particularly satisfying on the road and in limited home-office space.  Meanwhile, I will remember to be thankful for the blessing of a basement SOHO space that is the largest open area in the house.  At the same time, I must discipline myself to use even this bountiful space more effectively.

posted by orcmid at 11/7/2004 10:22:30 PM

RFID Privacy Being Ignored

ACM News Service: RFID Rights.  It is being observed that those deploying RFIDs are flagrantly ignoring consumer privacy issues and not even applying the provisions that they used as reassurance about keeping the technology benign.

It's all pretty funny.

Listening to:

Meat Loaf VH1 Storytellers DVD Special, Viacom: New York, 1999.  I watched too, luxuriating in the 19" LCD monitor that I replaced my 21" glass monitor with.  I only knew Meat Loaf from the MTV videos and was surprised to learn that this fellow is from the musical stage.

Watching:

Billy Joel and Ray Charles Baby Grand, Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volume III The Video, DVD edition, Sony Music, 1997.  We saw Ray on Friday night and I had to play this duet version.  After the film, the lyrics and the context of Baby Grand are poignant and touching.  Listen carefully.

posted by orcmid at 11/7/2004 10:00:56 PM