- Theory of Relativity in Words of Four Letters or Less — this does just what it says, and well too. I like it, as you may too. At the end, you may even know more than you do now.
- Effective Set Reconciliation Without Prior Context (PDF) — paper on using Bloom filters to do set union (deduplication) efficiently. Useful in distributed key-value stores and other big data tools.
- Mental Notes — each card has an insight from psychology research that’s useful with web design. Shuffle the deck, peel off a card, get ideas for improving your site. (via Tom Stafford)
- The Internet of Things To Come (Mike Kuniavsky) — Mike lays out the trends and technologies that will lead to an explosion in Internet of Things products. E.g., This abstraction of knowledge into silicon means that rather than starting from basic principles of electronics, designers can focus on what they’re trying to create, rather than which capacitor to use or how to tell the signal from the noise. He makes it clear that, right now, we have the rich petrie dish in which great networked objects can be cultured.
ENTRIES TAGGED "Internet of Things"
Stickers as sensors
GreenGoose looks to unlock the data in everyday activities.
Put a GreenGoose sticker on an object, and just like that, you'll have an Internet-connected sensor. In this interview, GreenGoose founder Brian Krejcarek discusses stickers as sensors and the data that can be gathered from everyday activities.
Four short links: 14 October 2011
Relativity in Short Words, Set Math, Design Inspiration, and Internet of Things
Strata Week: What happens when 200,000 hard drives work together?
IBM is building a massive 120-petabyte array and Infochimps releases a unified geo schema.
IBM takes data storage to a whole new level (120 petabytes, to be exact), Infochimps' new API tries to make life easier for geo developers, and the "Internet of people" keeps an eye on Hurricane Irene.
Citizen science, civic media and radiation data hint at what's to come
The evolution of Safecast is a glimpse into networked accountability.
After a tsunami caused a nuclear disaster in Japan, a radiation detection network starting aggregating and publishing data. The result, Safecast, shows how citizen science and open data are changing our understanding of the world.
With M2M, the machines do all the talking
Machine-to-machine applications: what they are, what they do, and why they need their own networks.
In machine-to-machine communications, devices and sensors connect with each other or a central server rather than with human beings. Two M2M experts discuss M2M's applications in this interview.
Four short links: 10 February 2011
API Economics, Spreadsheet Risks, New York of Things, Pair Programming Fail
- Instapaper’s API — Marco Arment wanted to prevent people building their own front-ends using the API and thus removing his (advertising) revenue source. He could offer a cripped API, but people scrape to work around that. He could tithe the apps people build on top of his API, but that’s hard work to set up and run. His solution: the API only works for paying customers.
- European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group: Horror Stories — horrifying reading. I was surprised by how many companies build Excel into their accounting workflow.
- New York’s Central Nervous System is Growing — another datapoint in the sensor network Internet of Things buildout. The lump, an ultra-low power sensor, will communicate with other white lumps under parked cars all over the island, telling each other when you pulled in, how long you’ve been parked and when you rumble away. Last month, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp. announced plans to place these sensors underneath the 30 new parking spots next to Roosevelt Island’s subway and tramway. (via BLDGBLOG)
- Where Pair Programming Fails for Me — I found that in order to pair, I had to act as if I was in a continuous meeting. I had to not just listen to my pair, but appear to be listening; I had to nod in the right places, repeat back what my pair said in active listening fashion. I had to pick the right moment to interject. I tried to model my partner’s mental state in my head so I could see his viewpoint better. While I was doing this, I was trying to see the code that he was writing, and the design that he was trying to make the code fit. If there was a failing test, I was trying to figure out the test and the test framework at the same time.
Four short links: 26 October 2010
NoSQL Experience, Connected Future, Hacktivism, and Mobile UI Guidelines
- 12 Months with MongoDB (Worknik) — every type of retrieval got faster than their old MySQL store, and there are some other benefits too. They note that the admin tools aren’t really there for MongoDB, so “there is a blurry hand-off between IT Ops and Engineering.” (via Hacker News)
- Dawn of a New Day — Ray Ozzie’s farewell note to Microsoft. Clear definition of the challenges to come: At first blush, this world of continuous services and connected devices doesn’t seem very different than today. But those who build, deploy and manage today’s websites understand viscerally that fielding a truly continuous service is incredibly difficult and is only achieved by the most sophisticated high-scale consumer websites. And those who build and deploy application fabrics targeting connected devices understand how challenging it can be to simply & reliably just ‘sync’ or ‘stream’. To achieve these seemingly simple objectives will require dramatic innovation in human interface, hardware, software and services. (via Tim O’Reilly on Twitter)
- A Civic Hacktivism Abecedary — good ideas matched with exquisite quotes and language. My favourite: Kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. (via Francis Irving on Twitter)
- UI Guidelines for Mobile and Web Programming — collection of pointers to official UI guidelines from Nokia, Apple, Microsoft, MeeGo, and more.
Four short links: 20 October 2010
Bad Game Mechanics, Under NoSQL Covers, the LAN of Things, and the Smithsonian Commons
- Pwned: Gamification and its Discontents (Slideshare) — hear, hear! Video games are not fun because they’re video games, but if and only they are well-designed. Just adding something from games isn’t a guarantee for fun. (via jameshome on Twitter)
- Redis Under the Hood — explanation of the insides and mechanisms of this popular distributed key-value store. (via tlockney on delicious)
- The LAN of Things (Mike Kuniavsky) — Before we can have an Internet of Things, we will need to have a LAN of things.[...] Most of the utility of a LAN came from its local functionality. Thus, before we can build a useful (from a user perspective) Internet of Things, we need to learn to build useful LANs of Things. [...] I think it’s important to start thinking about what the highly localized uses of sparsely distributed technology can be. What can we do when there are only a couple of things with RFIDs in our house? What totally great service can be built on having two light switches that report their telemetry in the house? What totally valuable information can you tell me if I only wear my motion sensor every once in a while? Love it. (via Matt Jones on Delicious)
- Mike Edson’s Talk at Powerhouse Museum — the Director of Web and New Media Technology at the Smithsonian is smart, articulate, and trying to do something cool with the Smithsonian Commons prototype. (via sebchan on Twitter)
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