What Are Your Tech Habits and Grades?

We're in the deep freeze of winter here in Chicago, and spring is far cry away.  But no matter, `spring in this case is mostly a frame of reference.  Besides, I wrote this article a year and a half ago, when we were about to hit an unusual March heatwave.  

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March 9th 2012

Spring cleaning is an annual ritual in the US. Practically, it means staking stock of junk in your house and tossing it out, and altogether cleaning and organizing the rest of your stuff. Until the following year, that is, when this, too, becomes junk. Psychologically or spiritually, it means looking over your relationships, career or business, and other commitments, values and endeavors, and letting go of whatever you ought to let go and otherwise keeping what you want or need.

In essence, then, spring cleaning is an opportunity for a holistic, interlinked tune-up and not just a segmented, particular effort. You clean up your house, you feel more apt to deal with a sticky friendship. You clarify and resolve a career problem, you are ready to get rid of longstanding clutter on your desk.

So with that preamble aside, let’s jump into useful spring-cleaning advice - 10 Bad Tech Habits and How to Break Them. As an example, I grade myself on how well I maintain good habits:

1. Keeping proper condition and posture (B). My chair at home is comfortable and supports my back well, and my desk is positioned so the monitor is angled properly and the keyboard keeps my forearms relaxed and parallel to the floor. With my mobile devices, not so good, as I’m often hunched over.
2. Cleaning up my devices (B). iPhone, good. Tab, fine. But laptop, oh, man, it could use a good water-blasting. One key has totally fallen off, and the stenciling on many of the keys have been rubbed off from excessive use.
3. Keeping off the smart phone (B). I’ve had a few friends who were blatantly and repetitively rude about answering calls and sending text messages, while in a meeting with me and-or others. Needless to say, they are no longer friends. Me, I get absorbed in it once in a while, but I’m good about putting it aside for meetings and meals.
4. Backing up data (A). I’ve lost data before, but thankfully nothing bad or extensive. Still, in my business endeavors, content is my competitive advantage, so every few days I back up my precious files onto a 500-GB external drive.
5. Taking regular breaks (B). I don’t do online or video games, but I do get absorbed with my work for hours at a time. There are a few times when I skip past lunch or dismiss the need to use the washroom.
6. Maintaining proper shutdown (A). All good here. I shutdown my laptop and Tab, when I’ll be away for a couple of hours or going to sleep for the night. I have recently begun to put my laptop to sleep and turned off the (external) monitor, if I expect to be back in few minutes. I am also good at unplugging my devices from their power or charger.
7. Keeping my devices off the bed (A). In Dubai, I periodically slept with my BlackBerry, that is, within easy reach on the bed, usually just to check my US sports scores in the morning when I wake up. Mostly, though, it was on the nightstand. Regardless, it rarely disturbed my sleep, and on the whole the bed is rarely a place where I work my devices.
8. Updating systems regularly (A). No problem here. I have a small backup laptop, which I don’t really use. But periodically I switch it on, so that Windows and programs can update themselves.
9. Having strong passwords (A). No problem here, either. They’re alphanumeric, and I change them periodically.
10. Optimizing my device batteries (C). I know I need to do this, but I have rarely done so.

One more thing, not having to do with devices per se:

Keeping social sites free of clutter (A). I delete favorites, groups and pages, contact details, trash and spam on a regular basis. Whether it’s on YouTube, Gmail, Skype or iPhone, the content on my sites and devices is clean and orderly. 

Spring cleaning, in this vein, is pretty much a regular habit.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Keep Your Pants On, Google Street Views Comes

Google Street Views

We know that Google has been in serious hot water over its privacy shenanigans, but the stories in PC Mag are just silly - Frenchman Sues Google Over Public Urination Street View Pics. 

First story

It so happens that a certain Frenchman urinated in his garden, and Google Street Views nabbed him. He’s engaged an attorney to sue for damages, to a tune of €10,000 euros, as he’s become the laughingstock of his village.

I’m thinking, Dude, are you kidding me? What, your toilet wasn’t working? Or were you just too lazy to walk a few meters inside to relieve yourself privately? Isn’t there a French law that prohibits such public activity anyway?

Second story

An American couple was none too happy that Street Views took photos of their home. Now, apologies, if their family name (Boring) wasn’t silly enough, then their $1 winning award was definitely a rolling-on-the-floor-laughing (ROFL).

The judge initially threw out their case, but they appealed and won. Google had to dip into their super tight budget, but did manage to pay this (ahem) hefty settlement. I guess American law is entitled to have its fun now and then.

Anyway, Street Views reminds of the film War Games: The Dead Code.  The uber-smart military computer, named Ripley, is programmed to stamp out terrorism anywhere in the world. But two innocent high school boys stumble unwittingly into a war game, and become the target of her defense system. There is virtually no place they and their accomplices can go, where Ripley cannot track them.

Kind of like Google and Street Views.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Discretion is the Better Part of Social Media

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Social media has clearly emboldened many to speak out, when perhaps they wouldn’t otherwise or elsewhere. It has become the lightning rod for that reverential Freedom of Speech. As far as the workplace in particular is concerned, there is a veritable battle around the choices and consequences of speaking out. But you see in Social media sites becoming NSFW [not safe for work] that the matter can literally spin your head in circles. Who or what is protected, where and when something is said, etc. in New York alone, can make you falling-over dizzy.

So what to do? For me, it’s about discretion. 

For employers, treat your employees fairly and customers respectfully, or else face the wrath that only social media can deliver.

For employees, what you say on your personal Facebook or Twitter profiles is always a matter of choice. But I do not recommend airing dirty laundry on your company in such a public forum. Never mind privacy controls or legal protections, speaking out on these sites is like two announcers talking candidly and negatively with each other during a commercial break, without realizing that they’ve got a hot mike (i.e., their talk is being broadcasted).

It was Falstaff, the stoutly, pub-frequenting friend of Prince Hal, the future Henry V, who said the better part of valor is discretion. So it is for these emboldened employees, too.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Human Bent of Amazon's Octocopter Delivery

Bloomberg's Tom Keene, Sara Eisen and Scarlet Fu seem to scoff at Jeff Bezo's octocopter delivery concept (hmm).  You'd think by now, people, especially business reporters, wouldn't be so dismissive of futuristic, innovative ideas.

eBay leveled off in 2013, after a steady upward rise in its stock performance over five years. This rise coincides with John Donahoe's appointment as President and CEO in 2008.  There is certainly no dismissing such performance, especially during a devastating downturn.  But I wonder how innovative eBay really is.  Donahoe's reference to bold innovations in commerce, delivery and PayPal does not seem bold.  They're not among The 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2013, based on a Booz & Co. study.  

Be that as it may, eBay is proof positive that you don't have to be an innovation leader, in the least, to do really well as a company.  Yet, I'd still caution CEOs like Donahoe from characterizing what Amazon and Google are doing as "long-term fantasies," lest their companies go the way of BlackBerry.

Amazon hopes to get its delivery-by-drones plan "off the ground" by 2015. Is this possible? Kramer Levin Special Council Brendan Schulman visits the News Hub to talk about laws and FAA regulations related to this endeavor.

There was a bit of a discussion, after I posted this video no Google+:

There was a tongue in cheek response I saw yesterday on the Amazon drone topic. It basically said, if Amazon drones start up, the next big thing will be how many are shot down by people looking for free stuff. Although the comment was a little funny at the time, it actually could become a big concern.

Definitely, Joy. It's an awesome retail idea, but Jeff Bezos said we were about five years away from seeing these drone deliveries from Amazon. So much that has to be worked out are the human factors. The technology is already here.

The technology is here for a 15 minute flight time and if your lucky a 1km return trip no waiting around. In 5 years they will be more valuable than what is in the box and they will be unguarded? They would have to add prop cages but this is a crass play on peoples wishes of a high tech Amazon and future. Like the old Pop Science cover stories. At best for them these will replace the workers in the warehouses which is what I suspect this is all about.

Safeguarding both octocopter and order must be on Bezo's To-Resolve list, as the economic and political fallout of lost jobs must be as well.

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I guess that, in the future, babies can be ordered on Amazon, and have them delivered to eager, waiting parents in a matter of minutes.  

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Talking Gloves, Fun Vehicles and Gulfstream Jets

This latest Bluetooth offering lends new meaning to the phrase Talk to the hand!  At one point, I had the habit of gesturing to my colleagues: call me (thumb and little finger spread, as with the talking glove) and e-mail me (finger tapping an `air keyboard).  They teased me for my gestures.  Wait until I buy each of them one of these babies!  

I want that Toyota FV2 for Christmas!  I can be the geeky (but cool) sidekick to Batman in the next film.  I can act good, too.  I've already performed Macbeth on stage.  

High tech + high luxury = Gulfstream G-650. OK, I want to buy it!  Now, to come up with $65 million...  Can I crowd-fund this top wish list item on Kickstarter?

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

From Science Fiction to Technology Reality

In AI (Artificial Intelligence), an advanced humanoid replaces a son for a despondent couple.  Their son is in a coma, and there is no telling when, or if, he'll wake up.  As deft drama would have it, however, that son does reawaken and soon pits himself against his robotic playmate.  

Atti is more of a cute playmate, then a parent replacement.  Busy parents will sometimes plant their young children in front of the TV, while they do things around the house.  So Atti can preoccupy the little ones better than TV, because it can interact intelligently.   

In the classic Terminator, the cyborg is sent back from the future to the present to kill the lady, who bore a son, who was to become a revolutionary leader.  The cyborg, superbly cast as Arnold Schwarzenegger, that is, before a huge road fire stripped him of his flesh, is all metal, mechanics, and intelligence in the final scene.  

Walking like a cyborg is no small feat, and no fiction, for Michael Gore.  This is not new technology, or at least the concept isn't new.  But perhaps we're closer, yet, to using robotics to help us walk or otherwise navigate our lives, post-injury.  

A Virtual Retina Display, eh.  Our retina becomes a screen in how I imagine the old projection TV functioned.  It's super-intriguing.

Denzel Washington, in the film Déjà Vu

In one of the most awesome, mind-bending scenes in Déjà Vu, Washington is chasing after a terrorism suspect, who is in the past and in the midst of activities leading up to his bombing of a passenger-full ferryboat.  The high tech glasses permit Washington, who is in the present, to go mobile time-travel, that is, outside the control room, and thus pursue the suspect to cut short his activities. 

So can the Virtual Retina Display peer into the past or into the future?  

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Can We Resolve the NSA Fiasco Cooperatively?

Data centers are under high lock-and-key, and the locations of these centers are classified information (rf. Google).  But the cables that transmit data are, by contrast, apparently not.  So the snafu arising from secret surveillance by the National Security Administration is reverberating globally.

I imagine the NSA is caught between the proverbial rock-and-a-hard-place: They must protect Americans, but they need information to do so.  The highly combustible balance between security and liberty is at issue.  Yet, the handling of this issue by President Barack Obama and his administration has at best not inspired a whole lot of confidence among Americans and has at worst only reinforced their amateurish, inept efforts.

Bloomberg Contributing Editor Richard Falkenrath discusses the popularity of apps that delete all data after use as a tool against NSA spying. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "Bloomberg Surveillance."

Because technology is ever evolving, such an app is welcome.  Yet, it must be an ongoing development.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer

“As you know, there have been a number of reports over the last six months about the U.S. government secretly accessing user data without the knowledge of tech companies, including Yahoo,” says Mayer. “I want to reiterate what we have said in the past: Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency. Ever.”

Reference:  Yahoo Will Follow Google In Encrypting Data Center Traffic, Customer Data Flow By Q1 ’14.

Reports of NSA spying on our data are very disturbing. Google began protecting our data last year, and Yahoo! is scrambling to do the same by January 2014. Microsoft is late to the party. What about the hordes of other companies that collect our data?

Yet, the fundamental issue I raised at the outset remains a quandary indeed.  Are we to play a high-tech cat-and-mouse game with the NSA, or more importantly are we all to band together, address the heart of the matter, and come to a working solution and resolution?  We can compete, and we can battle.  But at the end of the day, the question is why?  

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

The Wild, Wide-Eyed Future of 3D Printing

London is hosting an international 3D print show - attracting the latest technology and innovation for the industry. Bloomberg's Ryan Chilcote headed down to investigate how 3D printers intend to revolutionize your life.

This past month there were 3D Printshows in London and Paris, and up next is New York City in February 2014.  We are still a ways away from mass 3D manufacturing, but the applications are already astounding: from car bodies and anatomical models, to fashion design and film costumes.  But development and evolution tend to make technology smaller, faster and cheaper, so we have reason to expect a future when things we own are things we printed.

A small manufacturing company in the north of England is hoping to revolutionize the world of prosthetics. Bloomberg's Ryan Chilcote reports on how 3D printers are being used to - literally - print eyes.

At the present: Prosthetic eyeballs take 6 weeks to make by hand, and cost $10,000.  In the future: 12 hours, and $160 (after economies of scale).  Such phenomenal lifts in the numbers alone.  I imagine healthcare systems are keeping a close eye, literally, on such technology, because it can be a game changer in the increasingly competitive landscape they're in.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Robots Can Disrupt Markets and Save Lives

Two hundred years ago, 90 percent of America's workforce was in farming. Today that number has dropped to 2 percent. Silicon Valley startup Blue River Technology is hoping to close the gap on the labor market with their LettuceBot. Cesar makes real time farming decisions on one California's biggest crops. This robot is attempting to disrupt a $1.4 billion dollar lettuce market.

 Lettuce is apparently no small market, and farming is clearly a labor-intensive effort.  But sophisticated algorithms in the LettuceBot can ensure the right spacing for optimal growth among lettuce plants.  It is costly technology, but Blue River carves its business model around service.  So here we have another example of why STEM education - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - are is critical for future (and current) jobs.  The LettuceBot may disrupt the market by supplanting low-skilled labor on the farm, and may - just may - improve the bottomline for farm owners.

  

Bloomberg looks at HyQ, a robot from Italy that may soon be saving lives after an earthquake strikes.

Humankind has evolved from a bent-over, hunched on all-fours ambulation, to an upright, two-legged one.  Moreover, with our seemingly boundless creativity and discipline, we have created sophisticated vehicles with wheels for speed and wings for flight.  But HyQ makes it clear that we have not surpassed the usefulness, and underrated sophistication, of an animal like sheep, or goat, or dog, especially in navigating rough, sloping terrain.  By all means, deploy such robots in a post-earthquake site.  It's quite costly technology, but with recent weather devastation in the northern Philippines and central Illinois, what country or state can afford to lose lives, instead?

WildCat is a four-legged robot being developed to run fast on all types of terrain. So far WildCat has run at about 16 mph on flat terrain using bounding and galloping gaits. The video shows WildCat's best performance so far. WildCat is being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA's M3 program.

Similar to HyQ, Wildcat leverages the sophisticated anatomy and movement of four-legged animals, but this robot is built for speed.  I imagine that it already has military uses, as is, but with improved speed, agility and quiet, its applications can multiply easily.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Before the Internet, by Joy of Tech

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My random associations:

1. Because the cloud is called the cloud, it does take imagination to know what it is.
2. Now and then, apparently, social media stokes ennui into a revolution.
3. In the dark, anything with light can be hypnotic. Consider: the theater.
4. The meditative mind is the antithesis of internet mind, unless it's part of religion.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

The Age of the NSA, by Joy of Tech

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Now Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, knows how we citizens feel.  When I lived in Dubai, a couple of my friends and I would joke, and greet "Hi, Sheikh Mohammed," Ruler of Dubai, whenever we called each other.  Here, in the US, of course, we make sure to pay our respects to President Obama over the phone.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

What CEOs Pray For, by Joy of Tech

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This Joy of Tech comic says it all and says it brilliantly.  Clockwise, from the upper left:

1. Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt:  The curious, commandeering sentinels of privacy  
2. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg:  The stewards of an imploding star
3. Dick Costolo:  The student who learned his IPO lessons
4. Tim Cook:  The understudy who took center stage
5. Thorsten Heins:  The conductor of a train wreck  
6. Steve Ballmer: The cheerleader with a fading cheer
7. Jeff Bezos: The bookseller with tech firm dreams

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Need for Deep Dialogue in "Schooling the World"

SCHOOLING THE WORLD: THE WHITE MAN'S LAST BURDEN [emphasis, added]

If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? 

You would change the way it educates its children. 

The U.S. Government knew this in the 19th century when it forced Native American children into government boarding schools. Today, volunteers build schools in traditional societies around the world, convinced that school is the only way to a 'better' life for indigenous children. 

But is this true? What really happens when we replace a traditional culture's way of learning and understanding the world with our own? SCHOOLING THE WORLD takes a challenging, sometimes funny, ultimately deeply disturbing look at the effects of modern education on the world's last sustainable indigenous cultures. 

Beautifully shot on location in the Buddhist culture of Ladakh in the northern Indian Himalayas, the film weaves the voices of Ladakhi people through a conversation between four carefully chosen original thinkers; anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence; Helena Norberg-Hodge and Vandana Shiva, both recipients of the Right Livelihood Award for their work with traditional peoples in India; and Manish Jain, a former architect of education programs with UNESCO, USAID, and the World Bank. 

The film examines the hidden assumption of cultural superiority behind education aid projects, which overtly aim to help children "escape" to a "better life" -- despite mounting evidence of the environmental, social, and mental health costs of our own modern consumer lifestyles, from epidemic rates of childhood depression and substance abuse to pollution and climate change. 

It looks at the failure of institutional education to deliver on its promise of a way out of poverty -- here in the United States as well as in the so-called "developing" world. 

And it questions our very definitions of wealth and poverty -- and of knowledge and ignorance -- as it uncovers the role of schools in the destruction of traditional sustainable agricultural and ecological knowledge, in the breakup of extended families and communities, and in the devaluation of elders and ancient spiritual traditions. 

Finally, SCHOOLING THE WORLD calls for a "deeper dialogue" between cultures, suggesting that we have at least as much to learn as we have to teach, and that these ancient sustainable societies may harbor knowledge which is vital for our own survival in the coming millennia.

I saw this film two years ago, while I was still in Dubai.  Simply on the face of it, it was thought-provoking.  At a deeper level, it was quite disturbing.  I didn't have the privilege of the summary above, and it captures well what was swirling in my head.

Religion, education or democracy, the West had a narrow, self-centered notion of what other regions and cultures needed.  Alternatively, it was the desire to exercise power and to satisfy greed that prompted the West to plunder (i.e., colonize) indigenous, mostly defenseless peoples - from Asia and the Middle East, to Africa and South America.

The organizers of this film showing did the right thing: We spent several minutes in the theater talking about the film, after viewing it.  They arranged further dialogue on it.

It's not to say that we, or anyone for that matter, ought not try to help indigenous cultures.  Rather, it's a matter of seeking to understand first, before being understood.  Certainly, before stepping and imposing something.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Khan Academy Teaches Millions of Students

With the backing of Gates and Google, Khan Academy and its free online educational videos are moving into the classroom and across the world. Their goal: to revolutionize how we teach and learn. Sanjay Gupta reports.

Its mission is to provide a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.  Still by any standard or walk of life, Bill Gates is not just anyone and he does not sit just anywhere.  The ambitious academy is the brain child of Salman Amin Khan, an Indian American educator and entrepreneur.  The fact that Khan Academy has unwittingly engaged the famous, wealthy tech icon adds immediate credence to this brain child.

The following are comments from 60 Minutes (emphasis, added):

This is a God send for me and my daughter. She consistently comes home with difficulty in math and only math. I have scoured the internet for the past 3 years looking for something that will help her understand math the way she needs it. That was always the issue for me as well. I need to be able to understand a concept my way, the way my brain works. Traditional classroom lecturing pretty much goes over her head and she is lost with some concepts and loses all the information by the time she gets home to do homework. I look forward to math now where I used to dread having to help her with math homework. Thank you for reaching every student every where. Love the mission.

I teach middle school science, and the idea of the flipped classroom actually holds some appeal for me. Generally lecture is the most boring part of my class (or any class) for both students and teachers. It makes sense to make that part homework, and have the students come into class preloaded with the "information" part of the lesson. That way I can spend class time on labs, practice, writing, etc. There are definitely some issues that need to be worked out, but it's intriguing.

This is like the 4th time this has been hyped.  Online education is not a panacea.  Other online schools have instructors doing lax work, not following up, students questioning instructor capability.

It is certainly difficult for a teacher with a large class to adapt his or her teaching to each student's learning ability, style and interests.  American education, for one, is geared for mass teaching, and advances standards that apply across the board for millions of students.  So the teacher must abide by this longstanding Zeitgeist and protocol.

Khan Academy is clearly one solution where individual adaptation is possible.  Why is this important?  Because individualized teaching optimizes the learning experience for students, as the parent above suggests.

The notion of flipped classroom is also intriguing: Students do homework at school, and do schoolwork at home.  This is so different from how it's usually done, that those students who want or need an alternative like this can revel in it.  The caveat, though, is that the usual approach may work perfectly well for some students, so we don't necessarily want to dismiss what is working well.

More videos from 60 Minutes:

Khan Academy in the Classroom: School administrators Alyssa Gallagher and Jeff Baier of the Los Altos, California, school district are testing out Khan Academy software in their classrooms.

Google's Eric Schmidt on Khan Academy: Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, explains why he's backing the work of Sal Khan and Khan Academy.

Khan Academy's "world-changing" plan for education: Khan Academy's core team - Sal Khan, Shantanu Sinha, Sundar Subbarayn, Ben Kamens and Jason Rosff - say they hope to revolutionize education.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

High Tech Transforming Teaching and Learning

Ohio's 2013 teacher of the year, Carole Morbitzer, shares her five favorite technologies for engaging -- and keeping tabs on -- students in the classroom, and keeping in touch with them after school.

If I were a school-age boy, I'd love Ms. Morbitzer's tech class! Notice how students work on Apple PCs, too.

A friend commented:

She's quite right, get immediate feedback on the kids progress, don't want until a test. I'd just like her to show how she uses this with group based activities/learning (I'm sure she does) because she is awesome. I'm a relatively recent convert to Apple and my kids are excelling with the iMac. The Smartboard has definitely helped with their classroom learning. Odd because at work I've seen the return of the whiteboard for efficiency and communication amongst team members. A time and place for everything.

Archbishop Stepinac High School, in White Plains, N.Y., is one of the first schools in the U.S. to do away with paper textbooks. Instead, the all-boys prep school requires students to use tablets and laptops in class. (Data provided by Statista.com.)

I traveled across countries for consulting projects, and learned to travel light by using digital texts and manuals.

A digital dissection manual, published by a professor and students at Columbia's medical college, aims to improve the gross anatomy student experience.

Publishers of medical textbooks, themselves, must innovate, digitize and devise, or else perish.

A growing number of education experts, school districts and companies are applying what young people love about games and gaming to new tools for teaching core subjects. But do they work?

I'm not into gaming, but I'm intrigued with the potential of gaming for teaching and learning.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Staggering Phenomena of the Twitter IPO

Facebook has since righted the ship, after its IPO fiasco a year and a half ago.  In contrast, Twitter is off to a terrific start as a public company, despite the fact that it's the most expensive stock in all of technology as far as price-to-sales ratio is concerned.  All of this, for a company that is losing millions of dollars.  It's a remarkable yet odd world we live in, when even the fundamentals of business, that is, earning money, do not seem to apply.  But we are reminded, I suppose, that investors play in a very different world altogether and may not even care about the business.  They just want to make money.

What a select, fortune few rake in, for an IPO like Twitter's, is staggering indeed.  Vast segments of the world cannot even fathom what these numbers mean or what such cash looks like.  Congratulations to these big winners.  I hope they will channel a good amount of their spoils for charitable or humanitarian purposes.

It's a tall order for Twitter to realize its potential and to deliver dividends to its shareholders.  But if in fact Vine by itself outgrows the rest of Twitter, as Jack Dorsey expects, then that potential may be far greater than we can imagine today.

I agree with CEO Dick Costolo that millions of people, a segment of whom are investors, understand what Twitter is and how it works.  Movie stars, athletes and broadcasters are on Twitter in hordes, and the familiar hashtag is often referenced on TV.  But it took time to get to this point of understanding and activity.  I got active over two years ago, but it was only this year that I found my stride in using it.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

News like a Network of Nerve Cells

In the old days, which wasn't too long ago really, many of us read newspapers and watched the news on TV.  I, for one, love reading the news.  But the advent of social media and smart phones radically changed my reading habits and, in so doing, opened my sights to a wider horizon of news.  This was an article I wrote two years ago, at the heels of Steve Jobs' death, and that revolutionary transition to digital news still resonates for me today.

October 22nd 2011

News of Saddam Hussein’s capture came to me through a Saudi friend.  I was in Dhahran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, consulting for Saudi Aramco, and my friend and I were walking on the campus of their HQ.  That was in December 2003, literally two months before Facebook was launched. Fast forward a mere eight years, to now.  I found out about Steve Jobs’ death on my BlackBerry, while quickly scanning my friends’ news feed on Facebook.  I was still in bed, barely awake in the predawn dark, and that morning in early October 2011 was a sad beginning to the day for me in Dubai.


I learned, too, about Muammar Gaddafi’s death from a headline on LinkedIn Today yesterday, this time while sitting at my desk and browsing on my laptop. This was stunning news indeed, and the rough videos of his capture on YouTube were shocking.  Then, once again on LinkedIn Today, I see this article from Wired today:  On Facebook, NATO Chief Announces End to Libya War. 

Indeed the NATO Chief does:

Admiral Stavridis has a page on Facebook, where he keeps in contact with 7000+ fans. He has a blog, too, but apparently he broached his recommendation to end this NATO engagement to his fans first.

Writer Spencer Ackerman is practically gushing about this:

"Who could have predicted,” asks my colleague Mike Isaac in WIRED’s new app guide, discussing Facebook’s mobile app, “that one skinny nerd from Harvard would completely change the definition of social experience in the 21st century?” The power of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation has been on display all year as the Arab Spring has reshaped the Middle East.

In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson discusses how the internet has democratized the distribution of and access to digital products like music. What he means is something like this: The primary content creators like CNN and BBC have so many ways to put their news out there. For example, content aggregators like Google News and LinkedIn Today are marvelous conduits, not just for sharing news but also for expanding on it. Wired, along with a world of blogs, are dynamic, far-reaching content interpreters. Finally, of course, news reaches the content recipients, millions of us who are seemingly everywhere online and literally everywhere in the world.

No question, Zuckerberg is a leading figure in all this and Facebook is by far the most populated community online. But again what’s most amazing to me is what he and many others have spawned as far as information and communications are concerned.

No doubt, Facebook is a revolutionary social creation. But this by itself isn’t that amazing to me. Rather, it’s the fact that our world is so intricately connected that news comes to us much more quickly and through so many different avenues.

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This ominous forest of branches and twigs is the intricate network of nerves in our brain. Imagine, instead, all the content creators, aggregators, interpreters, and recipient represented as these nerve cells. It’s not imagination, of course. It’s as real as life gets.

Consider one more thing. They say at some point in our lives, these nerve cells stop growing and begin to degenerate. However, as far as information and communications go, there is simply no stopping or degenerating in sight. Traditional media like TV and radio will not go away any time soon, and neither will good old fashioned friend-to-friend word of mouth. In fact, the media and technology that enable all of this will, like the broader universe we live in, expand indefinitely.

It’s an unusual form of evolution, I’d say, because the new guard is not replacing the old guard, but rather is standing shoulder-to-shoulder among them. 

It’s a kind of multilinear evolution. 

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD 

Reflecting on Funny Media and Technology

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Funny, how media and technology have seeped into our modern day parlance.  How nostalgic it may be to harken back to the good old days.

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Of course, kids can bring their devices outside.  Even U-verse allows you to bring the TV to the backyard, and keep its wireless connection.  But we get your point, Will, and we agree.

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You see, that's the thing:  With the advent of Google, I don't have to store a lot of stuff in my memory, personal and computer.  Google has a gaggle, or googol, of information that it can collate and present to him when I need it.  

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This cartoon was framed as Microsoft Marketing Strategy.  In fact, this weekend, I was on a Hangout with a couple of guys while watching the Blackhawks-Jets game, and one of them did not want the Microsoft Surface (tablet) because of Windows.  I said, I was actually looking into it, as I liked the convenience of Office Suite, USB ports, and a keyboard.  Still, it made me see, at least in part, why Surface may be tanking in the market.  A company cannot keep putting out problematic operating systems, and expect the market to stay strong and loyal.

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A couple of comments were not too kindly toward Google or Glass.  But I thought this was funny.

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@Sara__Raymond There is 3D Printing. Soon we can see photos of yummy food, then print them all :)
— Ron Villejo, PhD (@RonVillejo) October 2, 2013

@Sara__Raymond They're working on it :P
— Ron Villejo, PhD (@RonVillejo) October 3, 2013

Well, I wasn't sure if this lady got my joke, and was just playing along, or if she believed that we could in fact 3D-print food.  

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

NetApp CIO and CMO Collaborate

CIO Cynthia Stoddard (middle) and CMO Julie Parrish (left) of NetApp talk about the importance of trust, transparency, and earnestness in their collaboration.  Not being territorial is crucial, because each function and staff must rely inviolably on one another.  For example, technology enables marketing efforts, and marketing guides technology.  Stoddard and Parrish work well together, precisely because they recognize and appreciate their mutual reliance.

Stoddard and Parrish emphasize that they're part of one NetApp team.  They have each other's best interests in mind, deliver on their commitment, and communicate transparently.  These under gird trust.  Stoddard speaks to the business point of view, not just technology.  Practically speaking, it means embedding themselves into the business, identifying its priorities, and grasping the reasons.  Not just for technology and marketing, but also for other functions in the company, such as HR.  In this regard, then, everyone comes to recognize the volume of data available and the complexity that is technology.

Going forward, Parrish speaks about getting back to basics, such as questions they should ask and work to answer.  She adds that having vision guides what technology her organization needs in regards to marketing.  That said, Stoddard's pulse on predictive analytics, as the future of technology, has context, purpose and direction.  Finally, making sure they grasp customer views, sentiments and needs, and they are clear on what questions or problems are on the table, help them identify that 'sweet spot' between human intuition and data analytics.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Good Tech Habits to Maintain

Spring cleaning is an annual ritual in the US. It means staking stock of junk in your house and tossing it out, and cleaning and organizing the rest of your stuff. Until the following year, that is, when this, too, becomes junk. Psychologically or spiritually, it means looking over your relationships, career or business, and other commitments, values and endeavors, and letting go of whatever you ought to let go and otherwise keeping what you want or need.

In essence, then, spring cleaning is an opportunity for a holistic, dialectic tune-up, not just a segmented, particular effort. You clean up your house, you feel more apt to deal with a sticky friendship. You clarify and resolve a career problem, you are ready to get rid of longstanding clutter on your desk.

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So that preamble aside, let’s jump into useful spring-cleaning advice on technology habits, from Mashable - 10 Bad Tech Habits and How to Break Them.  I reframe these habits positively, and grade myself on how well I keep them: 

1. Keeping proper condition and posture (B). My chair at home is comfortable and supports my back well, and my desk is positioned so the monitor is angled properly and the keyboard keeps my forearms relaxed and parallel to the floor. With my mobile devices, not so good, as I’m often hunched over. 
2. Cleaning up my devices (B). iPhone, good. Tab, fine. But laptop, oh, man, it could use a good water-blasting. One key has totally fallen off, and the stenciling on many of the keys have rubbed off from excessive use. 
3. Keeping off the smart phone (B+). I’ve had a few friends who were blatantly and repetitively rude about answering calls and sending text messages, while in a meeting with me and-or others. Needless to say, they are no longer friends. Me, I get absorbed in it once in a while, but I’m good about putting it aside for meetings and meals.
4. Backing up data (A). I’ve lost data before, but thankfully nothing bad or extensive. Still, in my business endeavors, content is my competitive advantage, so every few days I back up my precious files onto a 500-GB external drive. 
5. Taking regular breaks (B-). I don’t do online or video games, but I do get absorbed with my work for hours at a time. There are a few times when I skip past lunch or dismiss the need to use the washroom.
6. Maintaining proper shutdown (A). All good here. I shutdown my laptop and Tab, when I’ll be away for a couple of hours or going to sleep for the night. I have recently begun to put my laptop to sleep and turned off the (external) monitor, if I expect to be back in few minutes. I am also good at unplugging my devices from their power or charger. 
7. Keeping my devices off the bed (A). In Dubai, I periodically slept with my BlackBerry, that is, within easy reach on the bed, usually just to check my US sports scores in the morning when I woke up. Mostly, though, it was on the nightstand. Regardless, it rarely disturbed my sleep, and on the whole the bed is rarely a place where I work my devices. 
8. Updating systems regularly (A). No problem here. I have a small backup laptop, which I don’t really use. But periodically I switch it on, so that Windows and programs can update themselves. 
9. Having strong passwords (A). No problem here, either. They’re alphanumeric, and I change them periodically. 
10. Optimizing my device batteries (C). I know I need to do this, but I have rarely done so. 

One more thing, not having to do with devices per se:

• Keeping social sites free of clutter (A). I delete favorites, groups and pages, contact details, trash and spam on a regular basis. Whether it’s on YouTube, Gmail, Skype or iPhone, the content on my devices is clean and orderly. Spring cleaning, in this vein, is pretty much a regular habit. 

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

The High Technology of Batman

Unlike Superman, Spiderman or the Hulk, Batman doesn't have super powers.  To fulfill his crime-fighting purpose, then, he has to rely on high technology gear, materials and vehicles.  Of course he has considerable wealth, with which to acquire and develop his Bat arsenal.  Most of which are already available.

Night vision googles

Spy hand camera

Heat ray technology

Kevlar material, by DuPont

Ceramic body armor, by Ceradyne

Magnetorheological fluid, used in "memory cloth"

Wingsuit

Fiber optics scope

Throwing star

Atlas Power Ascender

High Speed Amphibians, by Lockheed Martin and Gibbs Technologies

Icare motorcycle

Let the billions come, and I'm ready to be the Cape Crusader of Chicago!

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Solving Numerical Technology Problems

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I found this posted on the Funny Technology community on Google+.  Apartment buildings often have such a number keyboard, and you have to enter a code in order to, well, enter.

So it's easy enough to see which digits the code probably comprises of, and assuming that each digit is used once, we can readily calculate the number of possible codes:  4! (i.e., 4 factorial) = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24.  Then we enter each possible combination of these four digits, systematically, until the entrance door unlocks.  

Common sense, plus a little mathematics, and you can enter the building without difficulty.  Of course this keyboard poses a security risk, so it should have been replaced long before the four digits were rubbed off.  It should have been replaced with a more modern coding system, as this one is old technology.  In any case, how much common sense and numbers knowledge any visitor may have is a question mark.  

Let's take this a little further, shall we.  It's possible the code is more than four digits, so at least one digit is used more than once.  For example, it could a five-digit code with `0 used twice.  It could also be a six-digit code, with `0 and `7 used twice.  It's certainly possible that the code is eight digits long.  Of course we may not know ahead of time how many digits the code comprises.  Suffice it to say, If none of the 24 codes works, then it's a more complicated, but still quite manageable, situation to figure out.  

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I have a padlock like this, and I lost the combination.  I was using it frequently on one stretch, then I didn't need it for a long time.  In this case, there is also a foolproof heuristic, or what I call an algorithm, for figuring out the combination:

1. Discern what solution parameters are.  Standard locks like this in the US have three-number combinations.  Note it's three numbers, not digits.  Each number ranges from `0 to `39 (i.e., 40 numbers).  
2. Determine how the situation works.  For these locks, you turn the knob at least two full rotations clockwise, then stop at the first number.  From there, turn it counterclockwise fully, that is, past that first number, then stop at the second number.  Finally, turn it clockwise again straight to the third number (no full rotation).
3. Calculate the universe of solutions.  Because numbers can be repeated among the three of them, the number of possible combinations = 40³ = 64,000.
4. Implement each possible solution systematically.  It'll obviously be a much bigger table than the entry code problem above.      

Unless your lock has non-standard parameters and operations, this algorithm solves your problem perfectly.  It will probably take a long time to figure it out, but you're guaranteed to do so.

At the end of the day, this little padlock affords you greater security or protection than the entry plate, by virtue of its more complicated algorithm.  But let's get real:  If you're intent on entering an apartment building even without the code, you can jimmy the lock directly or simply break down the door.  Similarly, bolt cutters undo padlocks in a couple of seconds.

A year or two ago, someone posted a curious image: $1 million was stacked neatly inside a transparent casing.  The challenge was, If you can access the money, you can have the money.  The casing was made of high-tempered plastic or glass, so if you struck it repeatedly or even shot at it, it simply wouldn't break.  Quite a few people suggested aggressive solutions like these.  In fact there was a video or GIF of someone hammering at it and kicking it, to no apparent avail.

I suggested something different, a seemingly simpler algorithm:  Figure out how the money was placed inside, to begin with, and reverse that process.  There may be panels that came together, and where such panels are closed may be a chink in the armor.  There may be hidden bolts or screws holding something together, which can be undone.

My point is that the same basic algorithm for the padlock can be applied:  Conceptualize the solution vis-a-vis the problem, making sure you understand what you're dealing with.  Then, once you've arrived at the right working solution, implement it systematically.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

"I Forgot my Phone" and Charlene deGuzman

This is so hilarious for what is undoubtedly the case for many people.  It is also sobering to have it mirrored back to us, that for the connection and engagement and blah blah blah of social media, and convenience and coolness of devices, it all somehow figures into an unmistakable isolation.    

The lady is Charlene deGuzman. So now I'm curious about who she is and what else she has on her channel:

Born and raised in San Jose, California. At age six, she begged her parents for dance lessons after seeing Rudy Huxtable tap dance on The Cosby Show. They happily obliged, and she spent her childhood as a competitive dancer, until she fell in love with acting. She studied theatre at Arizona State University, then moved to New York City to perform Off-Broadway. She eventually went on tour and spent two years performing in theatres all over the country. Charlene settled down in Los Angeles in 2008.

Reference: Charlene deGuzman.

Alrighty, I like deGuzman's wry humor.  These short takes are sweet and funny.  

But this drum-off between two lovers is awesomely brilliant and ROFL-funny!

Thank you for reading and watching, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD