reaDIYmates are fun wi-fi objects that you can build easily. They move and play sounds depending on what's happening in your digital life. Choose from a variety of existing designs, use our templates or create your own object.  Then decide what you want them to do through a simple web interface. Link them to your digital life (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, RSS feeds, SoundCloud, If This Then That, and more to come) or control them remotely in real time from your iPhone. You don't need any creative or technical skills to build and use your reaDIYmate, but if you want to go further, we made it super easy for you to change designs, write applications, or add inputs and outputs. They're Arduino compatible and you can plug 50+ solderless electronic bricks.

I am definitely a rsync user, and for anyeone whom is not allergic to command line i do not see why searching for another utility … Wrap an well thought rsync command inside a desktop short-cut and here we go! Rsnapshot is also something i liked

ownCloud has come a long way since the last time I gave it a look. What I’ve covered in this post doesn’t touch everything that ownCloud can do — such as its WebDAV support. But if you’re looking for an online storage and syncing app that keeps your files under your control, ownCloud is definitely worth a close look.

This is the first public ownCloud Android app release and it doesn't have to many features yet, but it does have the basics: browse, upload, download and delete files. The application also supports previews for videos and photos but only for those on your device (which you want to upload) and not for those available on the ownCloud server.

If you don't like starting at the beginning, try starting with the example code and programs. Also, check your progress through the course. Table of Contents Forward 1: Python Calculator 2: What is a Computer Language? 3: Conditional Statements 4: Loops 5: Introduction to Graphics 6: Back to Looping 7: Introduction to Lists 8: Random Numbers 9: Introduction to Animation 10: Functions 11: Excel Macro Demonstration 12: Controllers and Graphics 13: Bitmapped Graphics and Sound 14: Introduction to Classes 15: Introduction to Sprites 16: Libraries and Modules 17: Searching 18: Array-Backed Grids 19: Sorting 20: Exceptions 21: Recursion 22: Formating Example code and programs

My friends barely use Facebook either. When I was a student, I used to log in approximately every ten minutes. If you said "Facebook break", everyone knew what you meant. When I logged in, I could guarantee a stream of amusing "banter" and gossip, as links and pictures were shared. Now, I log in, and it's a wasteland. Almost all the links I click on and the online running conversation I have has migrated to Twitter, which I check religiously. So too have all the most prolific Facebook users I used to know. While we probably still count as "regular users", for more and more of my generation, Facebook is little more than an electronic address book.

Ein Nachtrag noch zur Reihe der rund um die re:publica erschienen Druckwerke zum netzpolitischen Themen: Ulrich Herb von der Wissenschaftsberatung scinoptica hat einen Sammelband mit dem Titel “Open Initiatives: Offenheit in der digitalen Welt und Wissenschaft” herausgegeben, der versucht die wachsende Vielfalt an Open-Bewegungen zu erschließen

Offenbar konzentrieren sich Manager gern auf eine einzige soziale Plattform: In allen drei Netzen Twitter, Facebook und LinkedIn sind nur 18 Prozent der Befragten vertreten. Mit dem Engagement wächst auch die Bedeutung von Social Media für Führungskräfte: 78 Prozent der Teilnehmer waren zum Umfragezeitpunkt der Meinung, dass eine Strategie für Social Business wichtig für die Zukunft ihres Unternehmens sei.

In case the quotes didn’t clue you in, this post doesn’t argue against massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as the ones offered by Udacity, Coursera, and edX.  I think they are very worthy ventures and will serve to progress our system of higher education. I do however agree with some criticisms of these courses, and that there is room for much more progress.  I propose an alternative model for such massive open online learning experiences, or MOOLEs, that focuses on solving “problems,” but first, here’s a sampling of some of the criticisms of MOOCs.

"Behavioral Pricing" - In Deutschland leider verboten. Oder zum Glück? http://t.co/O4RYASZr

Gerd works because he keeps his story fresh - always listening. I believe data is the new soil rather than just the new oil. Have you also seen this? http://datajournalismhandbook.org/1.0/en/

Installation Instructions Open wp-content/plugins Folder Put: Folder: wp-print Activate WP-Print Plugin

As he said in Austin, artists are becoming much like sex workers — once you’ve scored a record deal, “you’re just the fresh stripper.” Sensationalism aside, his point is that both artists and fans must assume responsibility for the future of music if it is to mean something more than viral videos and hit singles. This is about engagement. This is about sustained relevance.

Über zwanzig Autorinnen und Autoren haben sich zum Wandel und den neuen Chancen unserer Öffentlichkeit in Bezug auf Medien, Internet und Journalismus geäußert. Die Stimmen hat die Heinrich Böll Stiftung in dem kostenlosen und zum Download freigegebenen "Band 11 der Schriften zur Kultur und Bildung" zusammgeführt und mit den folgenden Worten beschrieben: "Das veränderte Medienverhalten und der Schwund der Werbeeinnahmen in den Printmedien führen bei den Verlagen und den Sendern zu einer intensiven Suche nach neuen Verwertungs- und Distributionsmodellen. Die Öffentlichkeit ist im Wandel – nicht ohne gravierende Folgen für den Journalismus. Neue Akteure – meist ohne Zertifikat der Journalistenschulen - treten im Internet auf und verändern den professionellen Journalismus durch neue Formen. Die vierte Gewalt demokratisiert sich. Auf Kosten der Qualität?"

Do you use Google+ more than Facebook? Are you an avid Twitter user, but not so active on Google+? Do you auto-share online media, such as songs or news articles, onto Facebook? These are just some of the questions being asked in the ongoing evolution of the "Interest Graph," succinctly defined by software engineer Adam Rifkin as "WHAT people care about." He was contrasting it to the term popularized by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "Social Graph," which is WHO people care about. As I've watched the Interest Graph evolve over the past year, what's struck me the most is that it has forced people to make a choice. I'm willing to wager that most of you have chosen one platform as your primary means to track and express what you care about.

Wenn wir etwas als virtuell bezeichnen, dann müssen wir eigentlich immer einen Bezug angeben, zu dem das Ding virtuell ist. "Virtuell" ist eigentlich kein Adverb, sondern immer ein Adjektiv. Das Wort "flüssig" können wir ohne weiteres sowohl als Adjektiv verwenden, z.B. wenn wir an Weihnachten auf den Boden zeigen und sagen, dass da gerade flüssiges Wachs von der Kerze auf den Teppich tropft, oder auch als Adverb, wenn wir auf die Kerze zeigen und sagen, der Wachs ist flüssig. Die Adverb-Bedeutung von "flüssig" können wir dann als Metapher auf andere Erfahrungen übertragen, z.B. wenn ich zu meinen Freunden sage, dass ich zu hause bleiben muss und nicht mit ihnen Bier trinken kann weil ich gerade nicht flüssig bin.

Deutsch LA’s new Invention Strategy team has put together a nice report summarizing key observational trends from 2012′s SXSWi. The report was based on two strategic lenses:

1) Start-ups represent emerging bets at the intersection of technology and culture

2) Clusters of start-ups help to identify what’s broken in current industries and where there’s opportunity for disruption.

I think viewing start-ups from this perspective is a clever approach at “predicting” future consumer needs and how brands can provide solutions. Good job to the Invention Strategy team; I’m excited to see what they come up with next.

Knowledge wants to be free! Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction 1 This encyclopedia covers areas relevant to the design of interactive products and services like websites, household objects, smartphones, computer software, aircraft cockpits, you name it. 2 The encyclopedia is free, includes HD videos, commentaries, and lots more. All chapters are written by elite professors or elite designers who have contributed greatly to the area they write about. 3 We think you deserve free access to materials written by the world's foremost authorities - worth thousands of dollars - whether you are from New York or New Delhi. In fact, we wrote a mission statement about what we want to continue to do for you. And since we save you time and money, we know you will help us in return!

Open Access bedeutet, die Produkte von Forschung – etwa in Form von wissenschaftlichen Artikeln – frei zugänglich zu machen. Bei Open Science geht es darum, nicht erst das Produkt, sondern bereits den Forschungsprozess oder sogar die Ideenfindung öffentlich zu machen. Die Idee des Gedanken des (Mit)Teilens ist bei Open Science noch stärker.

As the leader you have a few rules to follow: • Keep the energy up, and keep the attitude positive. • Keep this meeting to less than 90 minutes. Stay focused and on target. Since your time is limited, don’t let the conversation stray. • Look for breakthrough improvements, as well as incremental improvements. • Make sure everyone has input during the meeting.

fuse-google-drive is a fuse filesystem wrapper for Google Drive released under GPLv2

Currently in preliminary development stages.

Status:
directory listing works, incorrect stat() info
redirecturi is now hardcoded -- you do not need the file
clientsecrets and client id should now be in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fuse-google-drive/

Discussion:
#fuse-google-drive on irc.freenode.net

Dependencies:
fuse
curl
json-c aka libjson
libxml2

I sometimes struggle to explain to my clients why I, as a digital strategist, provide value above and beyond what they may get form the web designer, or the SEO specialist, or the communications person, etc.  It's not that these people don't add value by what they do (in fact, we couldn't do what we do without them!). But without the digital strategist to tie it all together and align the various digital tactics with the overall business strategy and goals, all of the other pieces probably wouldn't get the business where it needs to go.

The first and easiest way to improve WordPress performance is plugins. Deactivate and delete any unnecessary plugins. Try selectively disabling plugins to measure server performance. Is one of your plugins significantly affecting your site's performance? Then you can look at optimizing plugins. Are plugins coded inefficiently? Do they repeat unnecessary database queries? WordPress has its own caching system, so generally speaking, using functions like get_option(), update_option() and so on will be faster than writing SQL. Themes After plugins come theme optimization.

Sometime back i wrote about How to reduce WordPress server load on Shared Hosting and there i talked about Google XML sitemap Generator plugin can be one of the main culprits behind your High server/ CPU load on your shared hosting. In this post i will talk about few things about the same plugin and how to configure some of its settings so that it uses less CPU or memory on shared hosting. I am assuming here that you already have installed the plugin and have some issues with your CPU/Server load on shared hosting. You should change the default options only when you know what you are doing. Some of the configuration changes as described below surely will help you reduce your server load and run your blog smoothly.

Remove unnecessary plugins: Use only the required plugins, do not over load your WordPress installation with unnecessary plugins which is not serving any real purpose. Most of the time I am tempted to install plugins to achieve something which is not really required. So always stay away from those plugins. We will publish a list of really important plugins for WordPress in a  future post.

Several weeks ago I decided to speed up my WordPress blog since I thought it was running quite slowly. In the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research and this article is what I came up with on how to best increase the speed of a WordPress blog. Navigation: 1. Basic Optimization 2. Template Optimization 3. External Objects 4. WordPress Plug-in Optimization 5. Database Optimization 6. Conclusion Before we can start optimizing our WordPress blog we first need to see how long it takes to load it and what it’s size is. To be able to do that I would recommend using tools such as Pingdom or Firebug with an additional add-on called YSlow. Through these tools you should be able to measure your progress, i.e. a decrease in load time. Before using all these little tweaks make sure that you back up your blog first!

Meine private Top 10 oder der Anwendungen für die Kommandozeile, vielleicht sollte ich eher sagen, dass das meine Lieblingsanwendungen sind und nicht unbedingt die, die ich am häufigsten benutze (dann müsste wenigstens sudo noch dazu).

Mit den Möglichkeiten der Vernetzung im Web erhöht sich allerdings die Wahrscheinlichkeit enorm, auf kluge und weise Menschen zu stoßen, die einen hilfreichen Beitrag zu einem Thema leisten können. Es reduziert die Möglichkeiten der Meinungsdiktatoren in Wirtschaft, Politik und Medien, Wissen zu horten und über monopolisiertes Wissen Macht auszuüben. Das Ganze ist unglaublich anstrengend. Wer sich gegen die vielen Stimmen im Netz durchsetzen will, muss sehr gute Argumente haben und ein wahrer Überzeugungskünstler sein beim Bohren dicker Bretter, wie es Max Weber formuliert hat. Bedenkenträger sind aber unverzichtbar, um Innovationen und neue Ideen durchzusetzen

So what did the designers at Google actually do not just to make their product so much more beautiful, but so much more beautiful than Facebook? Co.Design talked to Google+ lead designer Fred Gilbert to unpack the subtle brilliance behind their awesome redesign--a redesign that was completed in less than two months--and his notes are full of lessons that could hone the experience of almost any product.

The Google+ Badge allows you to connect your website to your Google+ page or your personal profile on Google+. Adding the badge to your website helps you connect with friends, fans, and customers. Since Google+ pages and profiles are different, we offer two slightly different versions of the badge: one for each case. Badges that link to Google+ profiles allow people to easily find you on Google+ and add you to a circle directly from your website. Badges that link to Google+ pages include these features and add some additional functionality. They help Google consolidate +1's from your website and your Google+ page, and make your website eligible for Google+ Direct Connect.

Welcome to the worst decade since the Great Depression. Trillions of dollars of financial assets destroyed; trillions in shareholder value vanished; worldwide GDP stalled. But this isn't a financial crisis, or even an economic one, says Umair Haque. It's a crisis of institutions-ideals inherited from the industrial age. These ideals include rampant exploitation of resources, top-down command of resource allocations, withholding of information from stakeholders to control them, and a single-minded pursuit of profit for its own sake. All this has produced "thin value"-short-term economic gains that accrue to some people far more than others, and that don't make us happier or healthier. It has left resources depleted and has spawned conflict, organizational rigidity, economic stagnation, and nihilism. In The New Capitalist Manifesto, Haque advocates a new set of ideals: (1)Renewal: Use resources sustainably to maximize efficiencies, (2) Democracy: Allocate resources democratically to foster organizational agility, (3) Peace: Practice economic non-violence in business, (4) Equity: Create industries that make the least well off better off, and (5) Meaning: Generate payoffs that tangibly improve quality of life. Yes, adopting these ideals requires bold and sustained changes. But some companies-Google, Walmart, Nike-are rising to the challenge. In this bold manifesto, Haque makes an irresistible business case for following their lead.

Aus Gestaltersicht kann Design fast alles – und doch muss sich eine ganze Profession eingestehen, dass sie an den wichtigen Veränderungen der Welt nur geringen Anteil trägt. Dennoch findet das Potential des Entwerfens Anklang: Der Philosoph Peter Sloterdijk z.B. nennt Design “das Zeug zur Macht”, weil es die Menschen mit Kompetenzen ausstattet, mit der Welt zurechtzukommen.

A servo motor is a special geared DC motor equipped with an electronic circuit for controlling the direction of rotation, as well as the position, of the motor shaft. Because servo motors allows precise angular positioning of their output shaft, they are used extensively in robotics and radio-controlled cars, airplanes, and boats to control the motion of their various parts. In this lab session, we will first explore what a servo motor consists of and how it works and then illustrate how to interface it with a PIC microcontroller.

At the moment, the term “personalization” is surrounded by confusion, mostly because it has evolved far beyond what it once was: product recommendations. It’s now much more sophisticated and can be automated to provide insight at the individual visitor level (which is obviously great for marketers), as well as can integrate CRM data with each visitor’s online experience, in real time.

If you run a high traffic WordPress installation you will want to optimize WordPress and your server to run as efficiently as possible. This article is a general overview of the avenues to pursue. It's not a detailed technical explanation of each aspect. If you need a quick fix now, go straight to the caching page, you'll get the biggest benefit for the smallest hassle there. For a quick introduction to WordPress Optimization see the cheat sheet. For all the articles on optimizing WordPress see the WordPress Optimization category.

So, in the updated model, there are Seven Cs of social technologies: Content – in the forms of knowledge-based assets, experiences and expertise – this is where it all starts. Consumption - of content, as in usable, reference-able, searchable, tag-able and reusable. Contribution - of content that can and should be user-generated. Conversation - about content – it's what makes it socially relevant to the business. Collaboration - with others over content – it's goal oriented and how we get things done socially. Connections - made with others regarding content. In competitive business, it's not just what you know, but who you know. Once connections are made, vicarious reinforcement follows. Control  -  this  is  the  most  important  and  relevant  "C"  enterprises are dealing with today. Social learning technologies should enable customers to govern the continuum of openness and control as it applies to their business. Social technologies should enable providers and users to navigate the Seven Cs while remaining meaningful to the workflow of the business.

Social Media ist ständiges ausprobieren: Social Media ist – einmal gestartet – ein kontinuierlicher, zyklischer Prozess, der immer wieder auf Tauglichkeit geprüft und gegebenenfalls angepasst werden muss. Social Media ist keine einmalige Angelegenheit.

Collaborating is challenging enough without having to work in an underperforming work environment. It’s time to step back and take a look at how your workspace is performing and make the necessary adjustments so that it is less obstacle for you and your team to overcome.

Appelle, Boni, Incentives, Motivationstrainings - es gibt viele Versuche, die Leistung von Menschen zu verbessern. Schon lange weiß die Psychologie, dass dies alles fragwürdige Methoden der Motivationsförderung sind. Die Hirnforschung sattelt noch eins drauf.

Hochinnovative Unternehmen verstehen es, diese fünf Innovationsfallen zu vermeiden. Sie setzen nicht nur auf eine Verbesserung des Bestehenden, sondern lassen radikale Innovationsansätze zu. Sie versuchen nicht, in übersättigte Märkte Produkte hineinzubringen, die noch überflüssiger sind, als die, die es bereits gibt, sondern sie entwickeln Produkte, für die es noch keine Märkte gibt, Dienstleistungen, die einzigartig sind, und Geschäftsmodelle, die klassische Branchengrenzen sprengen. Unternehmen hingegen, die sich aus den Innovationsfallen nicht befreien können, drehen sich weiter im Kreis.

Watch the video above to hear about what “planned serendipity” really is (you can’t plan to win the lottery, alas), how Steve Jobs literally architected good luck into Pixar and Apple, how luck plays into Amazon’s current status as a tech product hit factory, and how even rank-and-file employees can “storm the gates” to make their companies more open to success.

Was ist eigentlich Linux, was der Kernel, was eine Distribution, und wofür steht GNU? Dabei geht er auch auf vermeintliche und echte Stärken und Schwächen des freien Betriebssystems ein: Software, Security, Support, Spiele und mehr.
Bevor er zum Praktischen und Technischen kommt, porträtiert der Autor außerdem noch die Open-Source-Community mit ihren Mailinglisten und Konferenzen und erklärt dem Linux-Neuling, wo er sich Hilfe holen kann.

Instead of starting from bare bones and building everything involved in an app, including news feeds, notification systems and more, application programming interfaces (APIs) allow companies to focus on what makes their product unique. APIs offer a scalable and reliable way to simplify the development process, avoiding rework by using existing tools built by others. They can give developers a massive advantage by shortening the development cycle and helping them be first to market. Increasingly startups are making APIs their business, allowing developers to use their tools or pull from their base of APIs to add functionality to their apps.

Our curriculum has been broken out into three main categories: beginner, intermediate and advanced. Materials may include presentations, handouts, code and whatever else we've got!

Capturing the chaos of the design process and forging ahead with a narrow and precise path of action is becoming ever easier thanks the product development solutions out there. It’s no longer a problem to have multiple users around the table creating a product – now that the wealth of information co-design produces can be quickly filtered, aligned with requirements and developed.

Before we jump into the specifics, the most important thing you need to know when making any design choices is why. Ask yourself this: "what is my goal?" All elements of design are able to invoke different emotions in the viewer and affect them in various ways. While adhering to general principals is good when you're getting started, you want to based your design choices on the impact you want them to have. That requires knowing what that impact will be. Do you want your design to attract attention to specific sections? Do you want certain words or phrases to have more impact than others? You make these basic choices like these already. When writing a research paper or a resume, you've probably bolded a section header to help with identification. If all the text on that page was the same, it would be more difficult for the reader to navigate or skim. The simple decision of emboldening text and making it larger suddenly adds greater context to the design of a document, and it's one you're probably making subconsicously. When you're thinking about design, you want to move those choices out of your subconscious and into the front of your mind. Think about what you hope to accomplish and then apply the principles you learn in this guide to the design tasks you encounter on a regular basis. Thinking a little more creatively and knowing the right techniques is all you'll need to add a greater visual impact to the design work you'll encounter on a regular basis.

Allow me to disagree — and I’m very happy to be able to do so. RSS is alive and well; it just completely failed to get adopted by the mainstream. I don’t think a lot of people would even be interested in subscribing to Twitter feeds and Facebook walls via RSS, so it’s not a big deal that these services have been phasing out support for it. At the same time, a lot of applications, some of them now becoming very popular with mainstream users, make extensive use of RSS behind the scenes (like Flipboard, or now Google Currents). RSS is doing just fine, it’s just ended up in another place than what we all were hoping for.

Background Python is the main scripting language used at Google. This style guide is a list of dos and don'ts for Python programs. To help you format code correctly, we've created a settings file for Vim. For Emacs, the default settings should be fine.

You'll be able to learn simple programming techniques, soldering skills, and other basics before moving on to more advanced skills like using an Atmega and Xbee Wireless. The curriculum is simple enough for a child to understand, but interesting enough for an adult to walk away with some good knowledge. The entire curriculum is free and you'll even get a nice big Intro to Arduino book. If you've been toying with the idea of taking on some of the electronics projects we've featured here but didn't know how to start then this curriculum will give you a good understanding of what you need to know.

Over the last few years, we have been developing our own approach to developing social media strategies. First individually at our former agencies and jobs, and then through the last 1.5 years together, this framework has been iterated numerous times and has grown a bit more mature with every client we’ve worked with. It has been informed by countless insights and inspirations from all kinds of folks in the industry and beyond. We now feel it’s time to publish our approach to give back and open it up for more people to improve and advance it. The framework is meant as a guide, which helps us work through a process with our clients in a structured way. It tackles the questions, which help us define the answers that turn make up the strategy.

Reorganizing information is a function supported by software for managing personal information (PIMs, personal information managers), for requirements engineering, among others.

Knowledge Management Links used by the Researchers

List of Knowledge Management Periodicals∞ at the Knowledge Management Resource Center
List of Knowledge Management White Papers∞ at Executive Information Systems, Inc.


Knowledge Management Organizations and Sites
http://www.kmci.org/∞ Knowledge Management Consortium International
http://www.aiim.org/∞ Association for Information and Image Management
http://www.km.gov/∞ Knowledge Management in the Federal Government
http://kmba.org/∞ Knowledge Management Benchmarking Association
http://www.cio.com/forums/knowledge/∞ Knowledge Management Research Center
http://www.brint.net∞ KM Think Tank: Brint Institute
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/∞ Knowledge Board

The Hackerspaceshop was found in early 2012 by Florian 'overflo' Bittner with a lot of support from the community at metalab , a hackerspace in central Vienna, Austria.

Ich habe mich in letzter Zeit ziehmlich mit dem Thema LED Matrix beschäftigt, hauptsächlich mit dem Rainbowduino RGB Led controller von Seeedstudio. Dieser Treiber steuert eine common anode 8x8 rgb led matrix an. das schöne: jeder controller hat ein i2c/spi/uart anschluss (man kann beliebige matricen hinzufügen), das negative: software pwm. nichts desto trotz, habe ich die rainbowduino firmware aufgemotzt und dazu eine einfach library für Processing geschrieben, damit man das teil auch einfach ansteuern kann. ich wollte mich natürlich mit einer 8x8cm "grossen" led matrix zufrieden geben, daher baute ich mir selber eine grössere. Das ganze habe ich in meinem blog dokumentiert, hier ein screenshot der matrix ohne diffuser:

Built by a startup company called Pwnie Express, the Pwn Plug is pretty much the last thing you ever want to find on your network—unless you've hired somebody to put it there. It's a tiny computer that comes preloaded with an arsenal of hacking tools. It can be quickly plugged into any computer network and then used to access it remotely from afar. And it comes with "stealthy decal stickers"—including a little green flowerbud with the word "fresh" underneath it, that makes the device look like an air freshener—so that people won't get suspicious.

Tired of waiting for Raspberry Pi? With delay after delay, and no fixed release date in sight, maybe it’s time to look for an alternative

The Raspberry Pi is no doubt a very exciting device, with an unmatched ratio of size, power, and value. However, after months of delays and false starts ranging from manufacturing problems to certification issues, the open source wonder board hasn’t actually been delivered to those who have bought it, or would love to buy it. All is not lost though, as there are several alternatives available that might just pique your interest.

Eric Wilhelm, Gründer des Webdienstes Instructables.com – auf dem Konstruktionspläne für offene Hardware angeboten werden –, ist jedoch optimistisch. Ninja Blocks könnten für alle interessant sein, die ein einfaches, konkretes Problem haben, dass sich mit bisherigen Systemen nicht kostengünstig lösen ließ – etwa eine SMS zu erhalten, wenn die Post ein Paket vor der Tür abgelegt hat. Michael Nelson von der Georgetown University glaubt gar, dass die Ninja Blocks den "Hype um das Internet der Dinge“ entscheidend weitertreiben könnten. Er hat sich bereits eine der bunten Kistchen bestellt, zusammen mit fünf Sensoren, einem WLAN-Dongle und einer Webcam. Die 265 Dollar hat Nelson nicht angelegt, weil er sich von seinem Ninja Block die Lösung von Alltagsproblemen erhofft. „Ich kann nun anfangen nachdenken, wie man Probleme löst."

EEBus ist ein Vernetzungskonzept, welches die Energiewirtschaft mit intelligenten Abnehmern vernetzt. Dabei werden unterschiedliche Technologien eingesetzt. Bei dem Standard werden bereits existierende in ein einheitliches technologisches Konzept gebracht. Initiative EEBus wird in Kürze präsentiert In Kürze wird die Initiative EEBus vorgestellt. Miele hat daran entscheidend mitgearbeitet; ebenso die anderen Gründungsmitglieder Gira, ABB/Busch Jaeger, Vaillant, SMA, E.G.O., Landis+Gyr, Jung, Kofler Energies, Kellendonk und der Branchenverband VDE. Die Initiative hat zum Ziel, EEBus als offenes Vernetzungs-Konzept von Smart Grid und Smart Home weiterzuentwickeln und am internationalen Markt zu etablieren. Laut Miele wurden bereits mehrere Geräte veräußert, die mit "SG ready"-Stickern (Smart Grid ready), versehen wurden

Abstract
We live in a hyper-competitive world, where whole industries either shift towards services or become obsolete due to new market entrants, technologies or even social practices. A world, where permanent interactions with customers, fast time-to-market, and the ability to innovate »right« (e.g. the right thing or value) are the key to corporate success. On that score the business sphere isn't getting tired of emphasising the need for strategic innovation (which means »creating superior customer value«, business model innovations or even the disruption and creation of new markets). This paper uncovers some of the often overlooked links of design (design thinking, design-driven innovation and service design) to strategic innovation through the lens of »customer value«. It will do so by ...   Disenchanting the big corporate rhetoric on above claims by showing that prevailing and too one-sided understandings of strategy and innovation, rather reinforce than escape old industry paradigms.   Examining designs still undervalued contributions to strategy-making by approaching business challenges with a user/value-centric and radical service logic.   Showing that every dimension of strategic innovation culminates in the concept of perceived user value and meaning, which gets reviewed in detail (dimensions, forms, properties), especially with regards to constructing value propositions.   Arguing that the current service design and business model innovation discourses cannot be negotiated separately, as they may be good methodological complements.   So when speaking about the innovation of value for the customer, the paper argues, the above stated and seemingly separated fields intersect. Therefore their most apparent systemic connections and the facilitation of value creation by design are outlined and discussed.

Something that immediately occurred to me after reading this article was that in rapdidly moving and complex innovation environments (radical innovation), organizations must invest in building social capital between employees at the frontline of the innovation process. Here, taking time out from the desk to talk and make connections is core to business success. On the other hand, a business based on continuous improvement in a mature industry can benefit from fostering brokers to bridge different communities. This goes back to another long term theme on this blog. Networks aren’t an end in themselves, they are part of your strategy execution. First be clear on the strategy then create the networks that you need to deliver the strategy.

Back to blueKiwi. In last month’s update to our Enterprise 2.0 vendor evaluation research, we said “blueKiwi’s offering lies between the social platform Socialtext wishes to offer, and the ever-enticing notion of a modern replacement for email.” Done with explaining the acquisition rationale.

Die Fachgruppe Social Media im Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (BVDW) e.V. veröffentlicht zehn Thesen zur Zukunft von Social Media. Das Thesenpapier zeigt die wichtigsten Veränderungen für die Fachbereiche Marketing, PR, Vertrieb, Kundenservice und Personalmarketing auf. Laut den Experten der Fachgruppe Social Media ist für den damit verbundenen Entwicklungsprozess eine maßgebliche Professionalisierung in den Unternehmen notwendig, um die hohe Relevanz und Einflüsse von Social Media auf die Unternehmenskultur und die internen Prozesse anzupassen

Die Corporate-IT-Abteilung von Amazon stellte ihre äußerst geschäftskritische IT-Anwendung, das unternehmenseigene Intranet, in der AWS-Cloud bereit. In dem Whitepaper werden die Bereitstellungskriterien, die Sicherheitsanforderungen, die Architektur und die Implementierung der betriebsnotwendigen Anwendung erläutert. Es wird nicht nur beleuchtet, wie sich die Abteilung die Sicherheitsfunktionen von AWS und Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (und Microsoft SQL Server 2008) zu Nutze machen und eine Anwendung, die überaus vertrauliche Daten beinhaltet, bereitstellen konnte, sondern auch offen und ehrlich dargelegt, welche Lehren daraus gezogen werden konnten.

Conclusion These three simple principles of narration, transparency and shared power should provide enough guidance to motivated leaders in an organization. Implementation depends on the specific context of each organization and the ability to keep things in what I call, “perpetual Beta”. Power-sharing and transparency enable work to move out to the edges and away from the comfortable, complicated work that has been the corporate mainstay for decades. There is nothing left in the safe inner parts of the company anyway, as it is being automated and outsourced. The high-value work today is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems that have already been solved and for which a formulaic or standardized response has been developed. One challenge for organizations is getting people to realize that what they already know has increasingly diminishing value. How to learn and solve problems together is becoming the real business advantage.

Rather unbelievable how limited network comprehension is and how slow people gain a network mindset. it is a real problem. Changing the org chart, moving the nodes and connections, in an effort to improve performance, is primitive org/social network analysis (SNA). People are often dismissive of the org chart. However, organizational hub and spoke network configurations are critical for continuity, resource allocation, governance and so forth. Org charts are often the formal networks of the organization.

A social media platform like Handshake or a three-day process workshop are just tools to help build and maintain teams that work across organizational boundaries. These tools need to be complemented by new behaviors of the CEO and C-Suite, shared objectives and measures, and a governance structure and management processes to implement changes together and monitor and celebrate progress. These institutional changes are huge. Yet, as shown in the MITRE and patient journey examples, the best way to compete is to get everyone working together across boundaries to solve customer problems. Question: What experience have you had in building teamwork across organizational boundaries?

The title of his talk was “To Make Sense of Data, First Make Sense of People“. His central theme is that for a business, knowledge management is not purely knowledge management, and is becoming more & more associated with people management.  Change is getting messier, more human, and more social.  New tools and techniques are needed, and are becoming available for problem solving.

Dion Hinchcliffe has been a luminary in the social technology space, however with this talk “Mobility First: New Opportunities” he has shifted into being an evangelist for mobile computing.  For a very good reason: the shift to mobile computing is the most dramatic technology transition in history.  Ever.   What follows are my notes from the talk.

Combining “withhold judgment for a few minutes” with “draw me a picture” is a fantastic way to understand how you and someone else disagree.  And once you have a picture, you can modify the picture to show them how you look at the same set of facts differently, or how you are applying the same philosophy but seeing different facts… It’s very effective. How does this relate to BPM?  It should be obvious – but drawing pictures of processes isn’t just about executing them – it is about explaining the ideas. Eliminating ambiguity – not ALL ambiguity, but key ambiguities that can lead to process failure.

The lesson here for BPM: Keep strategic processes, components, and vendors close. Exercise control and deep expertise even if you can’t fully own the process yourself. Location matters- it affects supervision costs and timeliness of information. If you don’t control a strategic process today, figure out how to become less dependent on a single partner for that process. How to mitigate your risks (as Apple did by buying Anobit).

Discover the tools and techniques today's teachers and classrooms are using to prepare students for tomorrow -- and how you can get involved.

What should collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking look like in a modern classroom? How can parents help educators accomplish their goals? We hope this guide helps bring more parents into the conversation about improving education.

Why target education? The intention of the project is to get kids excited about programming computers again in the same way the BBC Micro produced By Acorn did in the 1980s. It’s an attempt to get away from the pointless exercise in learning how to use Microsoft Word and Excel and give kids some real IT knowledge. Doing this with current technology like a standard PC is expensive for schools. Even if they were to use a bare bones machine running Linux that bare hardware will still cost £199+ for one PC. The RaspberryPi is a cheaper alternative. Not only is it’s hardware cheaper. It’s a stateless computer. Which means if kids screw things up all they need to do is switch it off and on again. A worst case scenario is reinstalling the OS. The RaspberryPi is cheap enough that not only can schools buy them. But parents can buy them as well without having to worry about their kid breaking it.

Parts of this article made me think of this second memo. I am dubious about the whole idea of "managing innovation" in any sense beyond trying to not stifle innovation. Part of me thinks it's folly to speak of a "...consistent, predictable and sustainable path for innovation.", the same kind of folly evinced by the 2nd silly memo above. I think that Mr. Stikeleather has some sense of this himself when he calls innovation a "social art" and writes that managers can be "clouds of suppression". This weeks NY Times Book Review had a book about Bell Labs. AT&T's encouragement of innovation seemed to be just encouraging everyone to run into everyone else, and mixing theoreticians with engineers. I'm not convinced that you can do much more than that, save maybe get the hell out of the way. Mr Stikeleather may be onto something when he speaks of a need for "mastery of organization", that is something that managers can do for innovators. I don't know that I can innovate on a timetable or schedule, that does not seem like a good idea. At Bell labs they just let people follow their thoughts, some led to nothing productive, others changed the world.

If you aren't a fan of Google Reader's new interface, this add-on will take out all the clutter, giving you a pretty, readable version of the current article and nothing else. This add-on overhaul's Google Reader's interface to look more like Instapaper or Readability—it gives it a better looking font, strips out the buttons and other nonsense, and even hides the left sidebar until you mouse over it. It doesn't give you quite as many options as something like the famous Minimalist Everything extension does, but it sure makes Google Reader a lot nicer for actually reading your articles.

design principles and examples of how we’ve used them so far.

These build on, and add to, our original 7 digital principles.
1 Start with needs*
2 Do less
3 Design with data
4 Do the hard work to make it simple
5 Iterate. Then iterate again.
6 Build for inclusion
7 Understand context
8 Build digital services, not websites
9 Be consistent, not uniform
10 Make things open: it makes things better

The desire to learn new things. The desire to build something that has never before been built. The desire to hunt down problems--and then solve them. It was at this moment I realized something. Something which, to me, is an incredibly powerful revelation. Often times, I find myself hunting for solutions. I find myself desperately trying to figure out what I should do about X, and how to optimize Y. I find myself searching for solutions to problems, hoping to get them out of the way as quickly as possible so that I can move onto the next thing, the next chore, the next item on my todo list. It was in this moment that it all became clear to me-- I enjoy the problems. I crave them.

The psychology of social commerce reveals the emotional elements that stimulate the human network. It is the understanding of the 6 pillars of social commerce that facilitates the development of a more cohesive and connected online experience for customers. More importantly, by investing in the value, productivity and efficiency of consumer decision making and not just the outcome, businesses can not only earn reciprocity and goodwill, but also earn social capital as a result…and, that’s priceless.