"trends" entries

Radar Theme: Make

[This is part of a series of posts that briefly describe the trends that we're currently tracking here at O'Reilly] DIY culture is back, from rocket cars to simply tweaking things you already own to make them better. People want control over their devices again, whether access to the internal computer systems of their car or the ability to make…

Radar Theme: Web Ops

[This is part of a series of posts that briefly describe the trends that we're currently tracking here at O'Reilly] It has been reported that every 100ms of latency costs Amazon 1% of profit. Every company whose web site drives their business is in the same situation, they just don't know it yet. The techniques of web ops are being…

Radar Theme: The Physical Web

[This is part of a series of posts that briefly describe the trends that we're currently tracking here at O'Reilly] The next step for computing is to move out from the computers. Every device has the potential to become network-connected, delivering information to or from a web service. The mobile phones in our pockets also let us take apps and…

Radar Theme: Personal Genomics

[This is part of a series of posts that briefly describe the trends were currently tracking here at O’Reilly: 1, 2] Genetic analysis software and hardware used to be very expensive, only for professionals—now it’s trickling down to ProAms, and soon (under 5 years) will be widespread for consumer applications. This changes how drugs are developed and applied (don’t test…

Radar Theme: Neuro-everything

[This is part of a series of posts that briefly describe the trends that we're currently tracking here at O'Reilly] Humans are consistently irrational, and every lottery ticket sold proves the point again. Psychologists, economists, neurobiologists are all studying what makes us behave the way we do. The promise is that we'll be able to be better: compensate for our…

Radar Theme: Synthetic Biology

[This is part of a series of posts that briefly describe the trends that we're currently tracking here at O'Reilly] Drew Endy taught undergraduate students how to make e. coli bacteria that smelled like wintergreen, using his biobricks. This shows us a future for biology where "useful biological tasks" can be "automated" using "components". The quotes indicate where research and…

Energy Savings, Strange Attractors, …

… the Intrinsic Cost of State Change, Orbiting Alien Voyeurs, and 200 Square Kilometers of Solar Panels Somewhere in Texas The Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Berkeley National Labs recently published the results of their first Data Center Demonstration Project (pdf). (Disclosure: My colleague Teresa Tung of Accenture R+D labs was the report's principal author). The study follows up on…

Marc Fleury and Home Automation

Marc Fleury of JBoss fame blogged about his new project, OpenRemote. OpenRemote aims to build open source middleware, UI, and hardware for home automation while working hard on interoperability with all existing protocols and systems. Also working on the project is Mark Spencer, the creator of Asterisk. At O'Reilly we're watching the move of computing from desktop computers out into…

The new internet traffic spikes

Theo Schlossnagle, author of Scalable Internet Architectures, gave a great explanation of how internet traffic spikes are shifting: Lately, I see more sudden eyeballs and what used to be an established trend seems to fall into a more chaotic pattern that is the aggregate of different spike signatures around a smooth curve. This graph is from two consecutive days where…

BarCampBank is spreading

When Ben Black and I organized the first BarCampBank in North America last year, we hoped that it would spread. According to William Azaroff's post on NetBanker, the movement is there and growing: What's all this about BarCampBanks? From a North American premiere in Seattle almost a year ago, we've witnessed two more in the last few months, and eight…