"emerging tech" entries
Why I Love Hackers
TechWeb TV posted a short video from my opening keynote at ETech. Nominally this year's version of my O'Reilly Radar talk, which focuses on emerging trends that we're watching, the talk was wrapped in a larger theme, namely, why I love hackers, the edges they explore, and why hackers and alpha geeks, not entrepreneurs, are the first step in technology…
Neuroscience and Epistemology at ETech
At ETech, I had a fascinating conversation with Marie Bjerede, VP and General Manager of Qualcomm's Portland Design Center. She was telling me how the threads we'd brought together at ETech had validated her own thinking and helped her bring together her private passions and her professional life. I asked her to write up our conversation, and she agreed. Here's…
ETech 2008 Coverage Roundup
Here's some of the coverage of our Emerging Technology Conference that's come across my desk since I got home and have had a chance to catch up on what people had to say. Ryan Singel at Wired News gets a shout-out for consistently excellent coverage: Lessig Calls on Geeks to Code the Money Out of Politics Wired News Thu, 06…
@ETech: Wednesday Morning Keynotes
Another day, another set of expansive keynotes. John McCarthy, father of LISP, a giant in artificial intelligence, gave a sit-down high-level talk about Elephant 2000, a proposed programming language intended for transaction processing and electronic data interchange. He described Elephant in terms of its ability to capture "speech acts," which I'll define roughly as words that lead to actions. (One…
@ETech: fire eagle Launches
Most of the Yahoo news these days is about its possible absorption by Microsoft, but there are still new projects coming out of the company. Right now Tom Coates is onstage at ETech, launching fire eagle, an open location information-brokering service. You can share your location online with sundry sites and services. It's liberal with what it takes in, but…
@ETech: Tuesday Morning Keynotes
Saul Griffith started the day with a sober, but ultimately hopeful, talk about energy literacy. The subtitle of the talk was "know what you can do, do what you can," and the core of his talk (we'll point to the slides when we get 'em) was the steps we need to take, individually and collectively, to be able to have…
I Thought You Guys Were Supposed To Be Utopian: The EFF at Etech
(A guest blog by Danny O'Brien, the EFF's cultural ambassador) As one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's outreach folk, I have to concede that our message is not often about cyber-unicorns and crypto-ponies. We're often warning companies and hackers about what we see as upcoming threats to their rights, and urging them to take action. To give some examples: one…
ETech Insider's Guide
ETech starts tomorrow. If you're going here are some last minute tips about the schedule, events and logistics. Bring your open-source gadgets! We are going to have sessions on OpenMoko (the OS phone), IPRE (an OS, educational robot), and the XO Laptop. Plus we will have an OS Hardware talk from Phil Torrone and Limor Fried. The best way to…
New Release 2.0 on Next-Generation CRM … and a New Installment of Our Facebook Application Platform Report
In this month's Release 2.0, we consider the next generation of customer relationship management (CRM) and the search for an all-in-one-place inbox and address book. We need some sort of universal inbox and address book because it's not just email that we're neck-deep in nowadays. Once you've figured out a way to organize one means of input, there's another one….
RFID Startups Go After Lucrative Niches
CNN Money has a short but interesting article on two companies that have developed high-end systems for niche markets that make use of RFID tags. The first is for a horse-training system: As Heidi Lemack-Beck rides her horse Jazzmine around the arena at Rhythm & Blues Stables in Allentown, N.J., six pairs of electronic eyes watch every move of these…