tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63749031011565618242024-03-13T18:11:21.875+01:00Project Management - Get's Things Done!Project and Risk Management, Leadership Consultancy, Common Sense advice and support for EntrepreneursUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1063125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-90802413790456084412015-01-05T13:31:00.000+01:002015-01-05T13:31:55.532+01:002014 is finally closed, long live 2015 - What Now!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2014 is finally closed, long live 2015 but what a year 2014 has been for the tech industry.<br />
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With some of the <b><a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/data-protection/23669/ico-warns-of-surge-in-uk-healthcare-data-breaches"><span style="color: orange;">worst cyber attacks in history</span></a></b>, it will be a year to forget for many, raising data security straight to the top of the agenda for most CIOs.<br />
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Cloud adoption has continued to increase, helped in no small way by the <b><a href="http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/4515/google-price-cuts-see-cloud-costs-fall-by-10-per-cent"><span style="color: orange;">pricing wars</span></a></b> between Amazon, Google and Microsoft.<br />
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When it comes to the public sector, there has been a simmering tension between <b><a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/government-it-strategy/23609/labour-to-help-local-government-go-digital"><span style="color: orange;">Whitehall, consultants and large suppliers</span></a></b> on the back of several large contract problems.<br />
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So what does 2015 hold in store for us? IT Pro asked analysts and industry experts for their views.<br />
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<b>1. The Internet of Things will finally make sense</b><br />
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Bola Rotibi, research director at analyst house Creative Intellect Consulting (CIC), believes the hype around the Internet of Things (IoT) will deflate.<br />
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She says: "The industry and market will flounder in trying to grasp exactly the definition of IoT and why it really is different from what has been evolving from the machine to machine world.<br />
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"In fact the initial hype of IoT will quickly subside as the reality of the fact that it touches so many industries that it cannot be determined the difference of what is actually an IoT market and the general evolution of every other technology sector."<br />
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But colleague Clive Howard says that the Internet of Things (IoT) will start to make more sense for businesses as more industry use cases come out of it.<br />
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“IoT will continue to be big news but we will start to see a lot more sense coming through,” he says. “Less about vending machines and thermostats and more about industrial applications that provide real value. I think generally we’re going to see more tech stories in the enterprise space whether mobile or IoT.”<br />
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Forrester Research believes the IoT trend will help CIOs focus on longer term business change rather than cost-saving exercises.<br />
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The research firm’s Frank Gillett says: “Though most early IoT implementations are driven by line-of-business executives seeking specific operational efficiency improvements, the CIO’s tech management teams will eventually be drawn in to help with security, networks, software integration, interoperability, and analytics.<br />
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“Over the longer term, CIOs need to anticipate where business leaders will go after achieving operational efficiency improvements and plan for technology and infrastructure to support engaging with customers in new ways, creating new revenue streams, and offering new business models.”<br />
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<b>2. Beware the second coming of the systems integrator</b><br />
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Georgina O’Toole, of analyst group TechMarketView, believes that after two years of trying to break free of the shackles of Big IT providers, the government will turn to those with system integrators (SIs) again.<br />
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“From collectively being on the ‘naughty step’, the Cabinet Office has accepted that they require suppliers with deep knowledge of the public sector to guide them on what will be a difficult transformational journey over the next few years,” she predicts.<br />
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“In the world of ‘digital’, systems integrators will be the bolt that holds everything together and helps the public sector ‘Join the Dots’.<br />
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“The large SIs are taking this approach to developing their business outside of Whitehall as well – using their integration skills to, for example, take data analytics capabilities to the table and open up new opportunities.”<br />
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She believes this reliance on SIs will grow as more SMBs work as subcontractors for large IT firms handling a public sector contract.<br />
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<b>3. Apple Pay will introduce new cyber threat opportunities</b><br />
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Security firm Trend Micro believes the <b><a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/23739/apple-pay-could-launch-in-uk-next-year"><span style="color: orange;">much-awaited launch of Apple Pay</span></a></b>, Apple’s mobile payments app, will bring huge risks to consumers using it, because it has not been trialled in the real world.<br />
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“Apple Pay is not alone in the market – other payment systems have or will be introduced by other companies and trade associations,” the firm says. “Not all of these payment systems have been thoroughly tested to withstand real-world threats, and we may see attacks targeting mobile commerce in 2015."<br />
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<b>4. There will be an 80% chance you’ll suffer a cyber attack</b><br />
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As <b><a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/23593/sony-pictures-hack-sony-threatens-twitter-over-stolen-data-tweets"><span style="color: orange;">Sony Pictures</span></a></b> knows, the price to pay for suffering a cyber attack that results in a data leak is high, the film studio has seen embarrassing emails, feature films and staff’s personal details enter the public domain.<br />
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It’s 'cancelled not-cancelled' anti-North Korea movie, The Interview after hackers threatened ‘9/11’ style retaliations.<br />
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But even with new <b><a href="http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/compliance/4385/cloud-providers-fail-to-meet-new-eu-data-protection-regulations"><span style="color: orange;">EU Data Regulations</span></a></b> set to charge up to five per cent of a firm’s annual turnover (or up to €100 million) for breaches,<br />
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Forrester still believes eight out of ten enterprises will suffer a breach next year, whether they find out or not.<br />
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It says: “Forrester believes that in the coming year, breaches of sensitive data such as intellectual property and customer records will continue.<br />
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Given that more S&R pros will invest in detection and response capabilities, more security teams will be in a better position to detect and respond to breaches.<br />
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“Thus, we feel confident that while at least 60 per cent of enterprises will discover a breach, the actual number of breached entities will be much higher, as high as 80 per cent or more.”<br />
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<b>5. Newbie 'Containerisation' will disrupt IT departments</b><br />
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According to 451 Research, 2014 saw an “explosion of activity” around Docker, the young upstart company specialising in containerisation.<br />
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The open-source technology of Docker enables sysadmins and developers to automatically deploy applications inside software containers, allowing those processes to run in isolation.<br />
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“[We] anticipate disruption in IT departments in 2015 as they start to use Docker,” says 451 Research. “While containerisation technology has existed for years, Docker is a more modern, lightweight form that is widely viewed as a next-generation virtualization technology<br />
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“451 analysts believe Docker will be adopted by large enterprises to work alongside, as well as replace, traditional virtual machines because of its management and efficiency advantages.<br />
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“Docker has not yet achieved parity with traditional VMs in some critical areas, including orchestration and security, and a large number of vendors are rapidly addressing this.”<br />
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<b>6. Private IaaS providers will compete with Amazon</b><br />
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Forrester believes the saturated public cloud infrastructure market will continue to be popular with customers looking to scale and benefit from economies of scale.<br />
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However, it predicts that while smaller infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers cannot compete, they will try to offer rival deployments in the private cloud.<br />
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“Many other cloud IaaS providers are turning to the possibilities of hosted private cloud IaaS and on-premises private cloud IaaS as possible ways to compete, since they have gotten limited traction in the public cloud IaaS market,” it says.<br />
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“Offerings where the service is identical to the customer and operated uniformly, whether multitenant or single tenant, on-premises or in the provider's data centre — are potentially attractive to many customers.”<br />
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It sees this development as the only way customers with a requirement for on-premise infrastructure can go to the cloud.<br />
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Additionally, Forrester believes 2015 will see Microsoft’s cloud business overtake its on-premise division in profitability.<br />
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“Microsoft will generate more margin dollars from cloud-based services than its traditional on-premises applications and Windows,” the analyst house predicts. “Under Nadella’s mandate, commercial product development teams are focused on driving innovation into the cloud versions of its properties first (on-premises second).<br />
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“And its sales engines are all rewarded for pushing as much cloud into each enterprise license agreement as possible.”<br />
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<b>7. Citizens will demand greater control over their own data</b><br />
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Consumers are becoming increasingly wary of how their data is used by companies, believes customer identity management platform Gigya.<br />
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Its own survey found 80 per cent of people have abandoned online registration pages because they did not like sharing the information they were being asked to share.<br />
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“Businesses must put transparency at the forefront of their data practices in 2015 and proactively address these privacy concerns by letting customers know upfront what data they want to collect, explaining how it will be used, and allowing them to easily opt in and out,” the company warns.<br />
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<b>8. Wearables, in their current form, will fail</b><br />
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While the tech industry awaits the launch of the Apple Watch and <b><a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/23688/google-glass-why-google-should-call-it-quits-for-consumers"><span style="color: orange;">Google Glass</span></a></b> (still) expectantly, no wearable has changed the way we live yet.<br />
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EMC’s president of products, Jeremy Burton, predicts <b><a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/23379/uk-lagging-behind-world-in-wearable-tech-use"><span style="color: orange;">wearables will almost entirely die off</span></a></b> in 2015, only surviving by serving niche markets.<br />
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“Apple fanatics worldwide expect wearables will go mainstream following the emergence of the Apple Watch, but I’m not so sure,” he says.<br />
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“Let’s face it, nobody under 35 wears a watch anymore – they rely on their smartphones for everything. A lot of wearables will fail, with the guys wearing their Bluetooth ear piece all day propping up the market.<br />
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“Now, that said, not all wearable technology will end in abject failure. Standalone, niche wearables that shake up industries for the better – such as FitBits or Jawbones that monitor vitals or health activity – will continue to flourish and be incorporated into sports clothing, shoes and equipment. “<br />
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CIC’s Howard broadly agrees. He says: “A lot of the heat comes out of wearables [in 2015]. There will be many more devices released but I don’t see adoption sky-rocketing and I think vendors will start to temper their expectations.<br />
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“We’re already seeing this with Google Glass. Wearables are more of an industry product than consumer. Unless someone discovers that killer app.”<br />
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<b>9. Data scientists will become 'popular' as industry specialists</b><br />
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As firms wake up to the potential of big data, the role of data scientists has been a big topic of conversation in 2014.<br />
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And Hitachi Data Systems CTO for EMEA, Bob Plumridge, believes firms will start to hire them more and more as they discover just how much technical expertise is required to make sense of – and use – big data.<br />
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“They will also need to understand the business value of the data being generated and analysed in a specific sector,” he adds.<br />
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“By 2020, all businesses will need their employees to have the technical skills we associate with a data scientist today. The problem we currently face is that there is a <b><a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/23346/teradata-cto-recognises-data-science-skills-gap"><span style="color: orange;">significant skills gap</span></a></b> in the UK for workers with the advanced data skills to meet business needs.”<br />
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This will be a tough challenge to solve in only five years and the development of UK tech talent must continue to be high on the agenda for both the government and businesses alike.<br />
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Next year will also see firms classify data more clearly, Plumridge contends.<br />
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“The issue for IT teams [right now] is that they are going in data blind. Often data isn’t classified at the point of creation, leaving businesses with no way of knowing whether they are looking at HR, sales or customer data.<br />
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“With the majority of data holding little to no value, the importance of classification is paramount to ensure businesses retain the crucial 20 per cent.”<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-4897608193934548152014-10-01T17:27:00.001+02:002014-10-01T17:27:09.316+02:00Study Proves Power corrupts even the honest - Video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JoLLPNZLBAo" width="420"></iframe><br />
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When appointing a new leader, selectors base their choice on several factors and typically look for leaders with desirable characteristics such as honesty and trustworthiness.<br />
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However once leaders are in power, can we trust them to exercise it in a prosocial manner?<br />
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New research published in The Leadership Quarterly looked to discover whether power corrupts leaders. Study author <b><a href="http://www.hec.unil.ch/people/jantonakis"><span style="color: orange;">John Antonakis</span></a></b> and his colleagues from the University of Lausanne explain,<br />
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"We looked to examine what Lord Acton said over 100 years ago, that 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"<br />
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To investigate this the authors used experimental methods to distinguish between the situational and individual component; and determine if power corrupts or if corrupt individuals are drawn to power.<br />
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After completing psychometric tests to measure various individual differences, including honesty, participants played the 'dictator game' where they were given complete control over deciding pay-outs to themselves and their followers.<br />
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The leaders had the choice of making prosocial or antisocial decisions, the latter of which resulted in reduced total pay-outs to the group but increased the leader's own earnings.<br />
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The findings showed that those who measured as less honest exhibited more corrupt behaviour, at least initially; however, over time, even those who initially scored high on honesty were not shielded from the corruptive effects of power.<br />
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"We think that strong governance mechanisms and strong institutions are the key to keeping leaders in check," concludes Antonakis. "Organisations should limit how much leaders can drink from the seductive chalice of power."<br />
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<b>More information: This article is "Leader corruption depends on power and testosterone" <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.07.010"><span style="color: orange;">DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.07.010</span></a> and appears in The Leadership Quarterly, published by Elsevier.
</b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-90165398493968954892014-05-05T10:34:00.001+02:002014-05-05T10:44:49.468+02:00TNW: Building Habit Forming Products - Nir Eyal <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oQBsnSC_TRM" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
In Amsterdam, <b><a href="http://www.nirandfar.com/about">Nir Eyal</a></b> (author of “<b><a href="http://www.pdfbooksplanet.org/business-and-job/13803-hooked-a-guide-to-building-habit-forming-products-by-nir-eyal-ryan-hoover.html">Hooked</a></b>“) was one of many speakers at the <b><a href="http://thenextweb.com/conference/europe/">Next Web Europe 2014 Conference</a></b>. His keynote on ‘building habit forming products’ is very interesting.<br />
<br />
A video of this keynote talk is shown here It will hopefully make you realise how our buttons are being pushed by very smart developers who have studied human behaviour and habits.<br />
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Read more at <b><a href="http://www.nirandfar.com/%E2%80%8E">Nir Eval's website.</a></b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-34387658232439510782014-04-14T13:55:00.000+02:002014-04-14T14:00:23.724+02:00Barry Schwartz: TED Talk on Our Loss of Wisdom - Video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" mozallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="http://embed.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
A wise person knows when and how to make the exception to every rule…<br />
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A wise person knows how to improvise…<br />
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Real-world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined and the context is always changing. A wise person is like a jazz musician, using the notes on the page, but dancing around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situation and the people at hand.<br />
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A wise person knows how to use these moral skills in the service of the right aims. To serve other people, not to manipulate other people.<br />
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And finally, perhaps most important, a wise person is made, not born. Wisdom depends on experience, and not just any experience.<br />
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You need the time to get to know the people that you’re serving. You need permission to be allowed to improvise, try new things, occasionally to fail and to learn from your failures. And you need to be mentored by wise teachers.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-21044180336947089432014-03-18T14:21:00.002+01:002014-03-18T14:21:24.388+01:00Are people willing to take orders from a non-human, robotic boss? - Video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/j6dyeuAXb1I" width="420"></iframe>
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A study conducted by a team of researchers at <b><a href="http://hci.cs.umanitoba.ca/projects-and-research/details/would-you-do-as-a-robot-commands">Human Computer Interaction (MCI) Lab in Manitoba</a></b> Canada, has revealed evidence that suggests that people can be prodded into doing something they don't want to do, by a robot.<br />
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They've posted a blog entry on their web site describing an experiment they carried out to learn more about how people might respond to a robot boss, versus a human one, and the results they found.<br />
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The experiment consisted of asking volunteers to complete different tasks, some fun (singing songs they liked), some tedious and boring (changing file name extensions for a very large number of files).<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KgfhvJT1_hg/UyhH1QlfwrI/AAAAAAABGpI/hGNfCsKmSoI/s1600/Robot+boss.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KgfhvJT1_hg/UyhH1QlfwrI/AAAAAAABGpI/hGNfCsKmSoI/s1600/Robot+boss.png" height="241" width="400" /></a></div>
Some of the volunteers were asked to perform the tasks by a human being, others were asked to do the same tasks by a small friendly-looking <b><a href="http://www.aldebaran.com/en">Aldebaran Nao humanoid robot</a></b>.<br />
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The volunteers and their taskmasters were set up in an office-type environment, with desks set apart from one another.<br />
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The participants were filmed as they carried out the experiment and the researchers analyzed the results afterwards.<br />
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All of the volunteers were told repeatedly before the experiment that they could stop any task they chose at any time, with no negative consequences.<br />
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In studying the video, the researchers found that 46 percent of the volunteers (both male and female) complied with a request to perform a task (which took 80 minutes) they didn't want to do, when asked to do so by the robot, compared to 86 percent compliance when asked by a human "boss."<br />
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The researchers note the lower percentage but also point out that nearly half of those who participated complied when asked to do something they didn't want to do, when asked by a robot.<br />
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The research is being carried out to learn more about how future humans might interact with future robots in real workplace environments.<br />
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The team's initial findings indicate that humans will not summarily dismiss a robot authority figure, and many will do as it asks.<br />
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The team plans to continue with its research, no doubt, looking to find the limits of such interactions.
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-67722292757066685222014-03-17T10:17:00.001+01:002014-03-17T13:02:18.845+01:00Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman on de-biasing thinking in decision-making - Video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/f432ultnPQI" width="409"></iframe><br />
<br />
How do you increase the chances that the thinking behind a decision is valid? Daniel Kahneman discusses the Pre-Mortem, a simple technique for "de-biasing" the thinking that goes into a decision before it is locked in. <br />
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In just three minutes, Kahneman makes the case for shining a light on the thinking that has led to a decision before there is no turning back.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-8954572266654071112014-03-17T10:14:00.001+01:002014-03-17T13:01:56.040+01:00Prof. Daniel Kahneman: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" - Video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/qzJxAmJmj8w" width="409"></iframe><br />
<br />
Public Lecture by Prof. Daniel Kahneman<br />
<br />
Thinking, Fast and Slow<br />
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013<br />
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Aula, University of Zurich</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-31317671062943154162014-03-07T16:58:00.001+01:002014-03-07T16:58:55.515+01:00DARPA MUSE: Deep program analysis, and big data analytics, create public database<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BB4xAoOESgY/UxnrBCMtwkI/AAAAAAABF0c/_h0pcmLLVlk/s1600/muse+envision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BB4xAoOESgY/UxnrBCMtwkI/AAAAAAABF0c/_h0pcmLLVlk/s1600/muse+envision.jpg" height="306" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><span style="color: orange;">DARPA's <a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Mining_and_Understanding_Software_Enclaves_(MUSE).aspx">MUSE</a></span></b> seeks to leverage deep program analysis and big data analytics to create a public database containing mined inferences about salient properties, behaviours and vulnerabilities of software drawn from the hundreds of billions of lines of open source code available today. <br />
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The program aims to make significant advances in the way software is built, debugged, verified, maintained and understood, and to enable the automated repair of existing programs and synthesis of new ones.<br />
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During the past decade information technologies have driven the productivity gains essential to U.S. economic competitiveness, and computing systems now control significant elements of critical national infrastructure. <br />
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As a result, tremendous resources are devoted to ensuring that programs are correct, especially at scale. <br />
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Unfortunately, in spite of developers' best efforts, software errors are at the root of most execution errors and security vulnerabilities.<br />
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To help improve this state, <b><a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Mining_and_Understanding_Software_Enclaves_(MUSE).aspx"><span style="color: orange;">DARPA has created the Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves (MUSE) program</span></a></b>. <br />
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<b><a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Mining_and_Understanding_Software_Enclaves_(MUSE).aspx"><span style="color: orange;">MUSE</span></a></b> seeks to make significant advances in the way software is built, debugged, verified, maintained and understood.<br />
<br />
The collective knowledge gleaned from <b><a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Mining_and_Understanding_Software_Enclaves_(MUSE).aspx"><span style="color: orange;">MUSE</span></a></b>'s efforts would facilitate new mechanisms for dramatically improving software correctness, and help develop radically different approaches for automatically constructing and repairing complex software.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4WcZEcXQSqY/UxnrvTZ6DzI/AAAAAAABF0k/TUcQknEH-OE/s1600/Suresh_Jagannathan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4WcZEcXQSqY/UxnrvTZ6DzI/AAAAAAABF0k/TUcQknEH-OE/s1600/Suresh_Jagannathan.jpg" height="200" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: medium; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Personnel/Dr__Suresh_Jagannathan.aspx"><span style="color: orange;">Suresh Jagannathan</span></a></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
"Our goal is to apply the principles of big data analytics to identify and understand deep commonalities among the constantly evolving corpus of software drawn from the hundreds of billions of lines of open source code available today," said <b><a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Personnel/Dr__Suresh_Jagannathan.aspx"><span style="color: orange;">Suresh Jagannathan</span></a></b>, DARPA program manager. <br />
<br />
"We're aiming to treat programs—more precisely, facts about programs—as data, discovering new relationships (enclaves) among this 'big code' to build better, more robust software."<br />
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Central to <b><a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Mining_and_Understanding_Software_Enclaves_(MUSE).aspx"><span style="color: orange;">MUSE</span></a></b>'s approach is the creation of a community infrastructure that would incorporate a continuously operational specification-mining engine.<br />
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This engine would leverage deep program analyses and foundational ideas underlying big data analytics to populate and refine a database containing inferences about salient properties, behaviours and vulnerabilities of the program components in the corpus.<br />
<br />
If successful, <b><a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Mining_and_Understanding_Software_Enclaves_(MUSE).aspx"><span style="color: orange;">MUSE</span></a></b> could provide numerous capabilities that have so far remained elusive.<br />
<br />
"Ideally, we could enable a paradigm shift in the way we think about software construction and maintenance, replacing the existing costly and laborious test/debug/validate cycle with 'always on' program analysis, mining, inspection and discovery," Jagannathan said. <br />
<br />
"We could see scalable automated mechanisms to identify and repair program errors, as well as tools to efficiently create new, custom programs from existing components based only a description of desired properties."<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-81574031925269507652014-03-07T11:27:00.002+01:002014-03-07T11:27:34.110+01:00Diversity at CERN: Great science needs great people<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/IYulqH5yh_M" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: orange;">Great science needs great people, a look at diversity at CERN. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: orange;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="color: orange;">A word from the DG: <a href="http://diversity.web.cern.ch/">Strength in diversity</a> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: orange;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="color: orange;">The <a href="http://diversity.web.cern.ch/about/cern-diversity-programme">CERN Diversity Programme</a> </span></b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-32214879142219155312014-02-22T09:14:00.000+01:002014-02-22T09:14:07.995+01:00Panel Discussion: Opening Up Network Hardware<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/fzA4VIUnAIw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />OCP Summit V - January 29, 2014 - San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California
"Opening Up Network Hardware" - Najam Ahmad (Director, Infrastructure, Facebook); JR Rivers (Co-founder and CEO, Cumulus Networks); Martin Casado (Chief Architect, Networking, VMware); Matthew Liste, (Managing Director, Core Platform Engineering, Goldman Sachs); Dave Maltz (Partner Development Manager, Microsoft)<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-55535116436621265262013-12-11T20:46:00.001+01:002013-12-11T20:50:59.852+01:00Dr Brene Brown on Vulnerability - TED Video <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" mozallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="http://embed.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="420"></iframe><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><a href="http://brenebrown.com/%E2%80%8E">Dr Brené Brown</a> is a research professor and best-selling author of "<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daring-Greatly-Courage-Vulnerable-Transforms/dp/1592407331">Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead</a>" (Penguin Portfolio, 2013).
</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>She has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame.
</b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-70539676496918083192013-11-21T15:23:00.000+01:002013-11-21T15:23:28.661+01:00Explore: Stephen Fry explains Cloud Computing - Animated Video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/J9LK6EtxzgM" width="420"></iframe>
Stephen Fry explains the history of computer thinking and the revolution of utility in cloud computing in this 5 minute animation.
<br />
<br />
<b>This is a paid advert from <a href="http://www.databarracks.com/">Databarracks</a></b> a UK company who provide Infrastructure, Disaster Recovery and Backup services from some of the most secure data centres in the world.<br />
<br />
This video re-iterates the belief that an English person 'invented' or 'created' the internet. This, of course is a matter of conjecture and is unlikely to be the case.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-37240463769846214092013-11-11T17:02:00.001+01:002013-11-11T17:04:01.802+01:00Eugene Kaspersky speaking about Cyber Attacks to Australian Press Club 2013<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6tlUvb26DzI" width="420"></iframe><br />
<b>A speech by Eugene Kaspersky at the Press Club in Canberra, Australia. The broad talk was designed to bring non-tech journos up to speed on infosec issues.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>In it, he said a engineer friend told him Stuxnet had 'badly infected' the internal network of a Russian nuclear plant after the sophisticated malware caused chaos in Iran's nuclear facilities in Natanz.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The malware, widely considered to have been developed by the US Government as a means to disrupt Iran's nuclear enrichment plans, had crossed a physically separated 'air-gapped' network in the Russian plant after it was carried across on a USB device</b>.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-45712199481500901362013-09-02T14:54:00.001+02:002013-09-02T14:54:45.715+02:00TED Ed Video: The Higgs Boson Field explained - Don Lincoln<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/joTKd5j3mzk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: orange;">One of the most significant scientific discoveries of the early 21st century is surely the Higgs boson, but the boson and the Higgs Field that allows for that magic particle are extremely difficult to grasp. </span></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><a href="http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/08/fermilabs-don-lincoln-explains-higgs-field"><span style="color: orange;">Fermilab's Don Lincoln</span></a> outlines an analogy (originally conceived by David Miller) that all of us can appreciate, starring a large dinner party, a raucous group of physicists, and Peter Higgs himself.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Lesson by Don Lincoln, animation by Powerhouse Animation Studios Inc.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><a href="http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/04/beginning-universe-beginners"><span style="color: orange;">Other informative animated videos are available here</span></a></b></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-30696494359581310662013-08-21T16:21:00.004+02:002013-08-21T16:21:59.430+02:00The Surprising Truth About Moving Others<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GAiUqZoy2SI?list=PL1914D9BC4F719956" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Bestselling author <b><a href="http://www.danpink.com/%E2%80%8E">Daniel H. Pink</a></b> argues that everyone, no matter what their profession, is in sales now.<br />
<br />
In this episode of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/8..."><b>BOOKD</b></a>, Pink joins a group of experts from different backgrounds to discuss his brand new book, TO SELL IS HUMAN, and what skills the new art of selling requires.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-10704699142814847112013-07-11T15:13:00.001+02:002013-07-11T15:13:47.971+02:00Cognitive Productivity in a Knowledge Overload World - Video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YxE4SN4ZVnI" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
To harness rather than drown in the ocean of knowledge that swamps us daily via the media and the Internet, we've got to become more cognitively productive, says <b><a href="http://blogs.sfu.ca/people/lpb/%E2%80%8E"><span style="color: orange;">Luc Beaudoin</span></a></b>.<br />
<br />
The <b><a href="http://www.sfu.ca/"><span style="color: orange;">Simon Fraser University</span></a></b> adjunct education professor drives home that message in his new book Cognitive Productivity.<br />
<br />
Released on Leanpub, a Vancouver-based online bookstore, it's the first research-based book to explain how marrying learning strategies that underlie cognitive science with learner-friendly technology can make us more cognitively productive.<br />
<br />
Drawing on concepts in cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field that encompasses linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and artificial intelligence, Beaudoin defines cognitive productivity as our mind's ultimate goal.<br />
<br />
He explains how the artificial intelligence-like makeup of not just our brain, but also our mind, inspires that goal.<br />
<br />
"The mind is like a sophisticated software program. It is engineered to cognitively process information, turning it into knowledge that we use to solve problems, develop marketable products or better our own lives," explains Beaudoin.<br />
<br />
"If we, however, inundate it with information in varying formats, such as PDF files, audiobooks and Ted Talks, without meaningfully encoding and using it, then it will be quickly forgotten and the potential benefits of learning will be lost."<br />
<br />
Enlightened by what his own varied career path has taught him about what fosters learning, Beaudoin cites examples of how information overload and learner-unfriendly technology are combining to break down our cognitive productivity.<br />
<br />
"Merely skimming and archiving information, which most of us do to try to stay afloat on our sea of information, stymies cognitive productivity," says Beaudoin.<br />
<br />
"There's not enough active reading, annotating and harvesting of information gems, which we must then practise recognizing and using if we're to become expert with the knowledge."<br />
<br />
Referencing cognitive science-based learning strategies, Beaudoin demonstrates how conveying information in a synced knowledge-environment that incorporates learner-friendly technologies can enhance cognitive productivity.<br />
<br />
Some examples of this he says are: "allowing users to annotate all content in the same way, whether it be ebooks, podcasts, web pages, audiobooks or videos, and enabling users to easily create productive practice challenges from any content they read."</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-71256967961785067552013-06-23T10:28:00.001+02:002013-06-23T10:29:47.534+02:00Going To The Cloud In Stages - YouTube<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VbvUqVo0U5k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Racker Joseph Palumbo answers the question, "Do I have to move everything to the cloud in order to take advantage of it?" in the second video in our series, Cloud Questions You Didn't Even Know You HadUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-6164624321650940012013-05-13T08:35:00.000+02:002013-05-13T08:35:19.866+02:00RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what economic motivation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/u6XAPnuFjJc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.
Watch the full lecture here: http://www.thersa.org/events/video/vi...
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-10779440001744716892013-05-05T10:08:00.001+02:002013-05-05T10:08:46.559+02:00TED tailors 'ideas worth spreading' for US PBS TV<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VUbbgkvDLvw/UYYTPDCE6mI/AAAAAAAA6c4/oSESLv2xPGA/s1600/pbs+president.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VUbbgkvDLvw/UYYTPDCE6mI/AAAAAAAA6c4/oSESLv2xPGA/s400/pbs+president.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><span style="color: blue;">PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger is shown in 2011 in Beverly Hills, California. TED conferences has teamed with the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting to create an education-focused version of its real-world conferences for a show set to air on PBS stations nationally on Tuesday and again on Thursday.</span></b><br />
<br />
The prestigious TED gathering known for perspective-shifting presentations by the brilliant and famous is tailoring "ideas worth spreading" for a television audience.<br />
<br />
TED teamed with the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting to create an education-focused version of its real-world conferences for a show set to air on PBS stations nationally on Tuesday and again on Thursday.<br />
<br />
"Re-imagining education is the key to a more hopeful future," said TED curator Chris Anderson.<br />
<br />
"What better time to gather some of the country's most respected and forward-thinking education advocates, and make this the theme of TED's first-ever original television broadcast special."<br />
<br />
The program is hosted by Grammy-winning musician John Legend and features presentations by Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates as well as by social activist Ken Robinson, the most watched speaker at Ted.com.<br />
<br />
Online videos stemming from TED conferences—which are renowned for mind-bending mixes of creativity, passion and innovation—passed the billion-view milestone late last year.<br />
<br />
The number continues to rocket, with more than a million TEDTalks watched daily, according to the organization behind the prestigious TED gatherings that give rise to the presentations made available free on the Internet.<br />
<br />
The nonprofit Sapling Foundation behind the conferences began making its recordings of talks available online as podcasts in 2006, then began streaming videos free at a TED.com website the following year to reach a global audience.<br />
<br />
The move to original television programming is another step on the path to reaching as many people as possible with ideas for making the world a better place.
"TED, at its core, is about spreading ideas," said Juliet Blake, who produced the "TED Talks Education" program.<br />
<br />
"Public television reaches a huge audience," she continued. "I hope people who watch the show on PBS come graze more videos at the ted.com website."<br />
<br />
The PBS broadcast will be the first of more television programs to come, and a project is already in the works in Europe, according to Blake.<br />
<br />
"The plan is not necessarily to do a lot of television; but to do tough, provocative, exciting television," Blake said.<br />
<br />
The TED program on PBS will live on at public broadcasting and TED websites, available to anyone in the world with Internet access.<br />
<br />
Funding for the PBS program came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to TED.<br />
<br />
"This collaboration between PBS and TED is a natural fit as our organizations both aim to educate, engage and inspire," said PBS chief programming executive Beth Hoppe.<br />
<br />
TED started in 1984 as a private gathering in California.<br />
<br />
With Anderson as its "curator," TED has become renowned for 18-minute talks devoted to mind-bending perspectives on anything from music or dance to climate change or futuristic technology.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-78758721005927063662013-04-30T13:20:00.003+02:002013-04-30T13:20:26.944+02:00Explosion in online consumer data collection poses major threat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HMgxh5bu18Y/UX-ow1w7Y8I/AAAAAAAA58Q/PXM8oTlszhU/s1600/terryb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HMgxh5bu18Y/UX-ow1w7Y8I/AAAAAAAA58Q/PXM8oTlszhU/s200/terryb.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: medium; text-align: left;"><a href="http://sydney.edu.au/business/staff/terryb"><span style="color: orange;">Dr Terry Beed</span></a></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A marketing expert at the <b><a href="http://www.usyd.edu.au/"><span style="color: orange;">University of Sydney Business School</span></a></b> has warned of a mounting threat to privacy posed by a massive increase in consumer information being amassed in a way that does not comply with the code governing data collection by market and social researchers in Australia.<br />
<br />
Honorary Associate Professor of Marketing, <b><a href="http://sydney.edu.au/business/staff/terryb"><span style="color: orange;">Dr Terry Beed</span></a></b>, says that market research tools such as SurveyMonkey are now readily available to individuals or firms who may not use them correctly or ethically.<br />
<br />
Dr Beed has recently completed a major review of the Market and Social Research Privacy Code administered by the Association of Market and Social Research Organisations (AMSRO) and co-regulated by the Australian Privacy Commissioner.<br />
<br />
His warning coincides with Privacy Awareness Week (28 April to 4 May) - an effort by authorities across the Asia Pacific Region to boost consumer understanding of the mounting threat to privacy.<br />
<br />
The University of Sydney Business School is partnering with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to promote Privacy Awareness Week ahead of changes to next year's changes to privacy laws.<br />
<br />
"The ground is changing under our feet," Dr Beed said. "There has been an explosion in the amount of personal data being gathered in the digital environment and it has revolutionised the way we go about marketing goods and services."<br />
<br />
"However, much of this data is being gathered by people with no background in market and social research," Dr Beed added. "It is important that they are sensitised about working with consumers' personal information in accordance with the privacy regulations."<br />
<br />
Dr Beed says much of this information is being onsold to marketers often via data brokers without the knowledge or consent of consumers and in possible breach of the Privacy Codes, which are approved by the Australian Privacy Commissioner.<br />
<br />
"Marketers are now using age, gender or product preferences to design highly targeted advertising," Dr Beed said. "While this may be annoying to some consumers it is relatively harmless. Of far greater concern is data that might be related to incomes, debt levels or health profiles which is gathered and onsold without any warning to the consumer."<br />
<br />
"Alarmingly, data analysis tools are becoming more sophisticated and are enabling the reconstruction of individual consumer profiles from a diverse range of sources," he added<br />
<br />
Despite the dangers, a recent survey found that very few Australians were fully aware of privacy protections in this country.<br />
<br />
The survey, conducted by AMSRO which represents the established market research sector, found that 25 percent of Australians claimed to have no knowledge at all of how companies were required to protect their privacy.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-4335016052671508022013-04-28T13:44:00.000+02:002013-04-28T13:44:48.002+02:00MYO Wearable-Computing Armbands with Bluetooth 4.0 Connectivity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oV0PbKZyqg8" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
"Wave goodbye to camera-based gesture control." That is the confident directive coming from a one-year-old Waterloo, Ontario, startup called <b><a href="https://www.thalmic.com/"><span style="color: orange;">Thalmic Labs</span></a></b>.<br />
<br />
The company is prepared to ship its next batch of wearable-computing armbands for device controls early next year. <br />
<br />
The $149 armbands called <b><a href="https://getmyo.com/"><span style="color: orange;">MYO</span></a></b> do not require cameras in order to track hand or arm movements. The armbands can wirelessly control and interact with computers and other digital consumer products by recognizing the electric impulses in users' muscles.<br />
<br />
The MYO is worn around the forearm; its purpose is to control computers, phones, and other devices, sending the data via Bluetooth. Windows and Mac operating systems are supported and APIs will be available for iOS and Android.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--iSgJ5lTkqQ/UX0JOiddR4I/AAAAAAAA5vs/X2xw-tPCpAQ/s1600/Armbands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--iSgJ5lTkqQ/UX0JOiddR4I/AAAAAAAA5vs/X2xw-tPCpAQ/s400/Armbands.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (BLE) is used for the MYO to communicate with the paired devices. (Bluetooth version 4.0 is the most recent version of Bluetooth wireless technology.<br />
<br />
It includes a low-energy feature promoted as good news for developers and manufacturers of Bluetooth devices and applications—enabling markets for devices that are low-cost and operate with low-power wireless connectivity.)<br />
<br />
The MYO specs include on-board, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and an ARM processor. Also part of the mix are the company's proprietary muscle-activity sensors and a six-axis inertial measurement unit.<br />
<br />
A user's gestures and movements are actually detected in two ways: muscle activity and motion sensing. The Thalmic team says that when sensing the muscle movements of the user, the MYO can detect changes down to each individual finger.<br />
<br />
Also, when tracking arm and hand positions, the MYO picks up subtle movements and rotations in all directions.<br />
<br />
Right now, as indicated in their newly released video of the company, Thalmic Labs hopes for greater things for MYO via a developer community. They expect an official developer program to be up and running in the next few months. <br />
<br />
They pride themselves in groundbreaking technology, as a team with specialties from electrical engineering to embedded system design. Nonetheless, they are looking to developers for innovative ideas in applications.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fcFa-EazmE4/UX0Kyk-WmcI/AAAAAAAA5v4/QFFfZefBlEI/s1600/MYO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fcFa-EazmE4/UX0Kyk-WmcI/AAAAAAAA5v4/QFFfZefBlEI/s400/MYO.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-87678295149665980332013-04-24T13:50:00.000+02:002013-04-24T13:50:03.922+02:00Twitter Saved Us From a Scam: Dutch Bank ING DIRECT’s Social Media Strategy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/64352265" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<br />
While social media can certainly be risky if you don’t take proper precautions, it can also be your number one ally in times of crises.<br />
<br />
One such company is <b><a href="http://www.ingdirect.co.uk/">ING DIRECT</a></b>. The banking brand recently averted a potential PR crisis by harnessing the full potential of social media. How?<br />
<br />
On the afternoon of April 2, 2013, the company’s social media team received a Tweet from a Twitter user alerting them that somebody was sending out text messages in a phishing scam targeting ING customers.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q2eNagz5VN8/UXfFYI9M0AI/AAAAAAAA5dg/gHo3q21rAGw/s1600/ING-Text-Scam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q2eNagz5VN8/UXfFYI9M0AI/AAAAAAAA5dg/gHo3q21rAGw/s320/ING-Text-Scam.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
“ING Bank member alert!” the fake text shouted urgently, guiding recipients to call a provided phone number to “remove restrictions” placed on their credit cards—by disclosing highly confidential banking and personal information.<br />
<br />
ING’s social media team and other departments worked together quickly. Internally, the news travelled through the company at lightening speed.<br />
<br />
The first public service announcement to warn clients was sent out from ING DIRECT’s social service Twitter account a few minutes after the initial alert, and within the hour a similar mass tweet was sent to all of its major social media channels.<br />
<br />
“If we didn’t have social media, we would not have been able to respond with the speed that we did or alert as broad of an audience as quickly as we did,” explains <b><a href="https://twitter.com/jaimestein">Jaime Stein</a></b>, ING DIRECT’s Senior Manager, Social Media.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: blue;">SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY</span></b><br />
From this crisis Jaime was able to come out with two key takeaways for any business effectively using social media to deal with a crisis situation:<br />
<br />
1. Monitor your social media diligently—a single Tweet can mean everything in crisis management. In this case, ING DIRECT was only able to act as quickly as they did because they were paying attention to what people were saying to them on their social media channels.<br />
<br />
“We always have somebody actively monitoring conversations, not only directly to us but other conversations in the ecosystem,” says Jaime. “One major advantage we had in this recent crisis situation was this.”<br />
<br />
How can you best monitor all of your social media channels at once so you and your team don’t miss a beat? Set up social media streams using <b><a href="http://hootsuite.com/">HootSuite</a></b>.<br />
<br />
For companies, the key to this is also organization-wide accessibility to key data—so consider setting up a social media Command Center.<br />
<br />
Command Centers help organizations manage crisis situations by enabling them to:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Monitor brand mentions, sentiment and influencers from one place.</li>
<li>Coordinate social team response across departments.</li>
<li>Capture and archive conversations for offline responses.</li>
</ul>
<br />
2. Make sure there is a strong social media team in your organization. Educate them to to communicate quickly (both internally and publicly) in crisis situations. It’s all about speed during potential PR disasters.<br />
<br />
Luckily, social media allows you and your team to move faster than ever before to respond to clients and associates.<br />
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“With the phishing scam, we had the ability to put out an important announcement to all of our Twitter accounts without sending emails, or phoning each other across the organization to say ‘By the way this is happening,’” explains Jaime.<br />
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“This is because we have such an engaged team of people across the country in social media. That really helped. We currently have 40 to 50 people plugged into <b><a href="http://hootsuite/">HootSuite</a></b> and they’re constantly engaged and active on social media.”<br />
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Educate your organization’s social media team and prepare them for emergencies. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.<br />
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That’s what the social media team at ING DIRECT believes. According to Jaime, as risky as social media can be in businesses, it can be just as beneficial: “How you handle bad situations will be what matters most,” he asserts. And this principle trickles from the top down at ING DIRECT.<br />
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“From 5 years ago to today, there’s a clear acknowledgement among leaders that this is something that’s really important and that they need to invest time and money in,” the company’s CEO <b><a href="http://blog.ingdirect.ca/">Peter Aceto</a></b> told us recently.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-88959738596488546612013-04-22T10:20:00.002+02:002013-04-22T10:24:32.710+02:00David Foster Wallace on Ambition - Video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Like Neil Gaiman, who famously admonished, "Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving," Wallace cautions against the lose-lose mindset of perfectionism:<br />
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"You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in failure. It’s actually kind of tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is."<br />
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Wallace also sees learning and teaching as intertwined:<br />
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"I was a very difficult person to teach when I was a student and I thought I was smarter than my teachers and they told me a lot of things that I thought were retrograde or outdated or B.S. And I’ve learned more teaching in the last three years than I ever learned as a student."
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-26593272168160102712013-04-21T19:26:00.000+02:002013-04-21T19:26:14.603+02:00Router compromise, rogue remote control? Easy - ISE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Router hacking is joining the ranks of computer security headaches, where the wireless router becomes the key target for those seeking to trespass into someone else's network.<br />
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The remote attacker can take full control of the router's settings or just bypass authentication and takes control. The attacker is free to modify traffic as it enters and leaves the network.<br />
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Wrote Michael Mimoso in Threatpost, from Kasperksy Lab, "Hackers love to attack Java. Why? Well, not only because it is full of holes, but because it's everywhere, embedded on endpoints, Web browsers, mobile devices and more.<br />
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The same goes for attacking wireless routers; they're buggy and they're everywhere."
Earlier this week, that turned out to be more than a quip as, beyond Kasperksy Lab, other researchers exposed critical security vulnerabilities in small office and home office (SOHO) routers and wireless access points.<br />
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The research was from Baltimore, Maryland-based Independent Security Evaluators. Their key findings: All of the 13 routers they looked at can be taken over from the local network (four never requiring an active management session) and 11 of the 13 can be taken over from the WAN (two never requiring an active management session).<br />
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Actually, there is a another important takeaway from their research: The wireless router hacking vulnerabilities they examined do not take a pile of expertise.<br />
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"Our research indicates that a moderately skilled adversary with LAN or WLAN access can exploit all thirteen routers," they said. But while attackers may not need esoteric skills to break into routers, the ISE experts said the average end user can do little to fully mitigate such attacks."<br />
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"Successful mitigation often requires a level of sophistication and skill beyond that of the average user (and beyond that of the most likely victims)."<br />
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ISE's team said the vendors of these networking devices should be in the front of the line for mitigation actions.<br />
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Actions they can take include preparing firmware upgrades that address the issues, instructing their registered users how to upgrade device firmware; be timely in the issue and customer notification of patches; and design a method for automatic firmware updates with the opportunity for users to opt out; and perform regular security audits to ensure devices are as hardened as possible.<br />
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ISE has also announced its future plans toward focusing on SOHO routers. All signs are that they will stay on the case.<br />
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"Six months after releasing the advisories for the 13 routers, ISE will upgrade the firmware on all 13 routers and perform a reassessment to determine what—if any—impact deeper scrutiny from the security community has brought to the SOHO router industry."<br />
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According to ISE, its next study may include more than the 13 routers seen so far.
This research was conducted by Jacob Holcomb and directed by Stephen Bono and Sam Small. Jacob Thompson, Kedy Liu, Jad Khalil, and Vincent Faires also contributed.<br />
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More information: <b><a href="http://securityevaluators.com/content/case-studies/routers/soho_router_hacks.jsp">securityevaluators.com/content/case-studies/routers/soho_router_hacks.jsp</a></b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6374903101156561824.post-89049441047083124342013-04-17T13:10:00.004+02:002013-04-17T13:17:10.923+02:00Security holes in Android Smartphone apps - Videos<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Zhendong Su and his students at the <b><a href="http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/"><span style="color: blue;">UC Davis computer science department</span></a></b> have found serious security flaws in popular apps for Android smartphones.<br />
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Popular texting, messaging and microblog apps developed for the Android smartphone have security flaws that could expose private information or allow forged fraudulent messages to be posted, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis.<br />
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The security flaws were identified by graduate student <b><a href="http://leo.cs.ucdavis.edu/contact.htm"><span style="color: orange;">Dennis (Liang) Xu</span></a></b>, who collected about 120,000 free apps from the Android marketplace.<br />
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The researchers focused initially on the Android platform, which has about a half-billion users worldwide.<br />
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Android is quite different from Apple's iOS platform, but there may well be similar problems with iPhone apps, Xu said. The victim would first have to download a piece of malicious code onto their phone.<br />
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This could be disguised as or hidden in a useful app, or attached to a "phishing" e-mail or Web link. The malicious code would then invade the vulnerable programs.<br />
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The programs were left vulnerable because their developers inadvertently left parts of the code public that should have been locked up, Xu said.<br />
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"It's a developer error," Xu said. "This code was intended to be private but they left it public."<br />
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The researchers have submitted a paper on the work to the Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH) 2013 conference to be held in Indianapolis this October.
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0