It’s no secret that Apple and others would like to see their devices become the singular platform for managing your digital life. Should you be worried? Continue reading

Get ready to strap on your armor, mount your faithful steed, and … open your arms for a hug. If you’re going to effectively tackle organization change, you’re going to need to be resilient to attacks, fast moving, and have no small amount of empathy for the people around you. I say “effectively” because there are certainly many ways to implement change – some with horrendous consequences. However, with a deft hand, a good leader can reshape an organization like melting butter. Ok, that butter thing is probably a bad metaphor but you get the idea! Read the full article... Continue reading

Controlling weather, pacifying volcanic eruptions, channeling energy from time and space? If you believe the stories, these and other unbelievable technologies forever disappeared from the face of the Earth when Atlantis sunk below the roiling ocean. Real or not, if the founders of Atlantis ever existed they were certainly incredible innovators. The good news for us is that their purported powers of innovation are not an unfathomable secret. So, where does disruptive and transformative innovation really come from? Read more on my LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/secret-innovation-lost-city-atlantis-mark-w-bennett Continue reading

As some of you may already know, besides being a technology junky, I’m also the founder of a fledgling idea called Space Corps that you can follow at @YourSpaceCorps on twitter or visit our pretty rudimentary website at http://www.spacecorps.com. When I say “fledgling idea”, I mean it’s not much more than an ember being carefully fanned by a few others and myself. One of our followers on twitter recently asked, “You tweet a lot, but what do you really do?” It’s a good question. We do a lot of dreaming and a lot of brainstorming trying to figure out how... Continue reading

Here’s a fact: the bad guys know who you are and they know how to open the doors to even your most sensitive secrets. The widespread use of social media means that virtually everyone has some public presence online. If you use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest or any of the other hundreds of social media outlets then this means you! The problem is that everything about your online identity is protected by something you know. A username, a password, an email address, the name of your first girlfriend or boyfriend – you get the idea. And if you know... Continue reading

Understanding thelegality of asteroid mining starts with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Some may argue the treaty bansall space property rights, citing Article II: "Outer space, incl udingthe moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means." One thing is clear, better legislation is needed and there will be many more discussions on this topic. Who Owns Asteroid Rights? via @popsci Continue reading

Simple but good advice ... Continue reading

It's great to see our youth pushing the envelope of privatized space exploration. When your project is living on a shoestring, it's amazing to see how that constraint can really drive innovative engineering. It's like back in the day when computers only had 16K of RAM (or less) and you had to fit all of your code into a tight and efficient bundle. Student-Led 'Time Capsule to Mars' Funding $25M Mission by Flying Photos Continue reading

http://www.hanoulle.be/2011/04/why-over-how-my-look-at-dudes-law/ The above is a worthwhile blog entry to read even if you aren't directly involved in an Agile software development project. It discusses a mindset that I have always found useful even if it does get me into trouble on occasion — turn over enough rocks and eventually you'll find a snake. At the root of this is the philosophy of asking "why" are you doing something before you dig too far into "how" you do it. I'm often heard telling people who want to collect lots of metrics or other data, "Why do we want that data? What... Continue reading

Microsoft has started giving away their desktop graphing calculator for free. You can download it from the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9caca722-5235-401c-8d3f-9e242b794c3a Continue reading

Not sure how much press this will receive but this is an incredible discovery. No, it's not life on another planet, but it's pretty "alien" in terms of what we consider normal biology for an organis ims on Earth. - Mark "Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything... By Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo via www.wired.com Continue reading

Sometimes, an ineffective meeting can be more damaging than no meeting at all. But, if you're not the person in charge of facilitating the meeting, how can you help keep the group and the meeting in line? In this article, Ellen Gottesdiener offers some suggestions for both facilitators and non-facilitators that may help ease some of your meeting frustrations. Read the full article by Ellen Gottesdiener here: Amplifying Collaboration with Guerilla Facilitation. Continue reading

(CNN) -- How do computers remember things? It's something most of us never think about. But you may start to take notice if HP Labs is successful in commercializing a new version of computer memory, which would make our electronics dramatically faster and more energy efficient. The technology is called memristor, and it is designed to work more like our brains and less like the electronic on and off switches that run computer memory now. Continue reading

OpenStack Open Source Cloud Computing Software San Antonio, TX - July 19, 2010 - Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE:RAX) today announced the launch of OpenStack™, an open-source cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology standards and cloud interoperability. Rackspace, the leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project. The project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. Rackspace and NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide. Continue reading

via www.space.com Continue reading

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc displaced iPhone maker Apple Inc to become the second most popular provider of smartphone software in the Image via CrunchBase United States during the first quarter, the latest sign of the increasing competition in the fast-growing mobile market. via www.reuters.com Continue reading

LONDON (Reuters) - New software by startup company ALGO Technologies offers to cut trade execution time to levels close to the speed of light, giving exchange clients an edge in the high-frequency trading arms race. via www.reuters.com Related articles by Zemanta Technology Review on High-Frequency Trading (datacenterknowledge.com) Continue reading

The Data Deluge | VizWorld.com "Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analysing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still." Continue reading

It showed that microscopic worm-like structures found in a Martian meteorite that hit the Earth 13,000 year Image via Wikipedias ago are almost certainly fossilized bacteria. The so-called bio-morphs are embedded beneath the surface layers of the rock, suggesting that they were already present when the meteorite arrived, rather than being the result of subsequent contamination by Earthly bacteria. via www.foxnews.com Ok, I know this isn't IT related but still pretty cool so I thought it worth posting. Personally, I believe the evidence is starting to really pile up in favor of life on Mars at some point in the... Continue reading

I recently started dabbling with building iGoogle "gadgets". If you aren't familiar with iGoogle, it's a service from Google that allows users to create a highly personalized web-based portal with various pieces of news, weather, content, and a slew of other types of web-based applications in one handy location. It's the first place I go each morning to view my local news, check the weather, monitor stock prices or even kill time playing silly online games during the long train ride to work. The most intriguing thing about iGoogle is that they provide an open API that allows just about... Continue reading

This is an amusing folk tale (a modernized version) that I found thought provoking. It picked it up from a leadership article I was reading about awarding productivity. I don't really know who originally authored it, though I suspect it originates from an old folk tale for children. If anyone knows, drop me a note and I'll add some credits. The Little Red Hen Once upon a time, there was a little red hen who scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered some grains of wheat. She called her neighbors and said, "If we plant this wheat, we shall have... Continue reading

They believed it would help make personal computing less expensive, because Google would give away the software free of charge. They wanted to shrug off 20 years of accumulated software history (what the information technology industry calls the "legacy") by building an OS and browser from scratch. Finally, they hoped the combined technology would be an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer, providing a new Image via Wikipediaplatform for developers to write Web applications and unleashing the creativity of programmers for the benefit of the masses. via www.technologyreview.com Google clearly has the clout and money to pull this off... Continue reading

In a deft act of genomic manipulation, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, MD, transplanted a bacterial genome into yeast, altered it, and then transplanted it back into a hollowed bacterial shell, producing a viable new microbe. The technique may provide a way to more easily genetically engineer organisms not commonly studied in the lab and could aid in the expanding effort to create microbes that can produce fugenome e Image by jurvetson via Flickrngineering and opens new applications," says Jim Collins, a bioengineer at Boston University, who was not involved in the research. "I see this... Continue reading

We're looking for a qualified software engineer with experience developing web-based applications in Java. If you think you've got the right stuff, take a look and submit your resume. Continue reading