- Nooski Mouse Trap — I have one, it is fantastic. This man built a better mouse trap. Now please beat a path to his door.
- Introduction to Node.js (video) — Two weeks ago, Yahoo! hosted a BayJax meetup dedicated to NodeJS (since the meetup coincided with Cinco de Mayo, we named it ‘Cinco de Node’). Ryan Dahl, the creator of NodeJS, gave a talk on the project and was very kind to let us record his presentation for YUI Theater. (via anselm on Twitter)
- Living With a Computer (Atlantic Monthly) — a 1979 blast from the past about what it was like to get your first computer. So much of this article remains as true today as it was then: upgrade fever, impatience, more dependencies, etc. Yet another hazard is that recommending the right computer is a little like recommending the “right”‘ religion. People tend to like the system they’ve ended up with. The most important point about computers, more so than about religions, is that the difference between a good one and a bad one is tiny compared with the difference between having one and not. (via pomeranian99 on Twitter)
- Why You Can’t Have a Receipt for Your Taxes (Clay Johnson) — In the end, this is because our dollars are not packets.
"Innovation" entries
Four short links: 5 October 2010
Better Mouse Trap, Node.js Tutorial, Eternal Computing Truths, and Tax Receipts Exposed
Be innovative, but don't use that word
Author Scott Berkun revisits the "Myths of Innovation" three years later.
Scott Berkun challenged popular assumptions about innovation and greatness three years ago with "The Myths of Innovation." Now, as an updated paperback edition is published, Berkun revisits the book and its themes.
Four short links: 17 August 2010
Stemming Demo, Mapping Service, Value of Data, and The Magic of the Valley
- Demo of Stemming Algorithms — type in text and see what it looks like when stemmed with different algorithms provided by NLTK. (via zelandiya on Twitter)
- Crowdmap — hosted Ushahidi. (via dvansickle on Twitter)
- Opinions vs Data — talks about the usability of a new gmail UI element, but notable for this quote from Jakob Nielsen: In my two examples, the probability of making the right design decision was vastly improved when given the tiniest amount of empirical data. (via mcannonbrookes on Twitter)
- The Next Silicon Valley — long and detailed list of the many forces contributing to Silicon Valley’s success as tech hub, arguing that the valley’s position is path-dependent and can simply be grown ab initio in some aspiring nation’s co-prosperity zone of policy whim. (via imran and timoreilly on Twitter)
Opening the doors of government to innovation
When I organize a conference, I don’t just reach out to interesting speakers. I try to find people who can help to tell a story about what’s important and where the future is going. We’ve been posting speakers for the second annual Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC Sept 7-8, but I realized that I haven’t told the story in one place. I thought I’d try to do that here.
Why software startups decide to patent … or not
Berkeley Patent Survey finds first-mover advantage trumps patents for some.
Researchers Pamela Samuelson and Stuart J. H. Graham discuss key results from the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey, including how software startups perceive, use and are affected by the patent system. Of particular note, startups find that first-mover advantage and complementary assets are more important than patents.
Beware the march of the IP trolls at the House Committee on Small Business
What new massacre of technological and cultural innovators is being planned behind closed doors?
Four short links: 14 July 2010
Cloud Data Ingest, Microbiome, Patent Blindness, Russian Open Data
- Flume — Cloudera open source project to solve the problem of how to get data into cloud apps, from collection to processing to storage. Flume is a distributed service that makes it very easy to collect and aggregate your data into a persistent store such as HDFS. Flume can read data from almost any source – log files, Syslog packets, the standard output of any Unix process – and can deliver it to a batch processing system like Hadoop or a real-time data store like HBase. All this can be configured dynamically from a single, central location – no more tedious configuration file editing and process restarting. Flume will collect the data from wherever existing applications are storing it, and whisk it away for further analysis and processing. (via mikeolson on Twitter)
- How Microbes Defend and Define Us (NYTimes) — there’s been a lot of talk about the microbiome at Sci Foo in the last few years, now it’s bubbling out into the world. Turns out that “bacteria bad, megafauna good” is as simplistic and inaccurate as “Muslim bad, Christian good”. Fancy that. (via Jim Stogdill)
- Startup Model Patently Flawed (Nature) — “There is a lot of stuff that academics are realizing isn’t patentable but they can commercialize for themselves by starting a company,” says Scott Shane, an economist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and a co-author of the study. Because surveys of entrepreneurial activity — including government assessments — typically focus on patent activity, they may be significantly underestimating academics’ efforts, he notes. (via pkedrosky on Twitter)
- Open Data on Russian Government Spending (OKFN) — a group outside government is adding analytics to the data that departments are required to release.
Four short links: 2 July 2010
Street Demographics, Hack for Africa, Opportunity Spotting, News or Filters?
- Brien Lane, Melbourne — an alleyway painted with statistics about the area. Urban spaces as screens. Check out the other photos. (via Pete Warden)
- Apps 4 Africa — from US State Department, The challenge is to build the best digital tools to address community challenges in areas ranging from healthcare to education and government transparency to election monitoring. (via Clay Johnson)
- Hopeful Monsters and the Trough of Disillusionment (Berg London) — this was a great Foo talk, lovely to see the ideas written up and circulated widely.
- Tyranny of the Daily 10 Percent (Julie Starr) — do we have a production quality problem, or do we have a filter problem? Intersection of two trends we’ve seen: “news reinvention” and “information overload”. I find myself wanting to spend more time quantifying what we’ve already got that’s good and being clearer about what we think is missing, before thinking about what to replace it with and how to foot the bill.
Four short links: 16 June 2010
Consulting, Idea-Gathering, Understanding Git, and Javascript Libraries
- So You Want to Be A Consultant — absolutely spot-on tips for understanding the true business of a consultant. (via Hacker News)
- BBYIDX — a free and open source idea-gathering application written in Ruby, […] the basis of the Best Buy IdeaX website.
- The Git Parable — The following parable will take you on a journey through the creation of a Git-like system from the ground up. Understanding the concepts presented here will be the most valuable thing you can do to prepare yourself to harness the full power of Git. The concepts themselves are quite simple, but allow for an amazing wealth of functionality to spring into existence. (via Pete Warden)
- Ext JS + jQTouch + Raphael = Sencha — merging some touch and rich graphics libraries and developers. We’re setting up a foundation called Sencha Labs that will hold the copyright and trademarks for all the non-commercial projects affiliated with Sencha. Our license of choice for these projects is, and will continue to be, the MIT license. We will fund maintainers for our non-commercial projects with contributions from Sencha and the communities of these projects. (via bjepson on Twitter)
How do we measure innovation?
In response to the IEEE’s report on Patent Power, which lists the top companies ranked by number of patents, Ari Shahdadi and Brad Burnham made trenchant comments in email that I thought were worth sharing (with their permission): The main article is sad to read, with choice quotes like this: “Clearly, the global recession seriously hampered innovation in the United States.”