Thursday, May 26, 2011
TEDx Brussels 2010 - David Orban - Connects Every Thing
From the TEDx description of the talk: "David Orban connects every thing. After ten thousand years of accelerating techno-social evolution, the speed of change in machines is getting decoupled from that of humans, as we realize that we must grant them autonomy. As every thing gets connected, and the Internet Of Things builds itself, we will be free to be human, again! David Orban is an entrepreneur and visionary, an analyst of the global high technology landscape. He is Advisor and member of the Faculty of the Singularity University, and former Chairman, and a Director of Humanity+. He frequently speaks at conferences about the social impact of accelerating technological change, and of the Internet of Things.
David Cameron's 2011 World Economic Forum Keynote
World Economic Forum
Forum Annual Meeting participants. On the future of Europe, he said: "We are an open, trading continent. We have a proud record of invention. We’ve got advanced democratic values. But yes, we’ve got to recognize that Europe has to earn its way. The world doesn't owe us a living. So let's make the choice to do things differently, to fight for our prosperity."
Cameron outlined his vision of a new direction for the continent: a risk-taking investment culture, a Europe-wide patent scheme, tougher stress tests, killing off sovereign debt and removing crushing regulation are a formula for growth.
"Now is the time to go for a genuine Single Market," he said, pointing to commitments from leaders across Europe to open and free market reform.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Making Music on an iPad with Garageband
In this video Hagop Tchaparian and Scott James show how you can make music on and iPad with Garageband and a few pieces of equipment from Apple and Guitar Center.
using iPad and iPad music applications such as digidrummer, iCanBass and JamPad
by applegirl
Peter Beinart in Conversation with Paul Krugman
Summary
Professor and journalist Peter Beinart talks with Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and a Nobel Laureate in Economics.
Peter Beinart in Conversation with Paul Krugman
The Graduate Center, CUNY
fiscal policy
Measures employed by governments to stabilize the economy, specifically by adjusting the levels and allocations of taxes and government expenditures. When the economy is sluggish, the government may cut taxes, leaving taxpayers with extra cash to spend and thereby increasing levels of consumption. An increase in public-works spending may likewise pump cash into the economy, having an expansionary effect. Conversely, a decrease in government spending or an increase in taxes tends to cause the economy to contract. Fiscal policy is often used in tandem with monetary policy. Until the 1930s, fiscal policy aimed at maintaining a balanced budget; since then it has been used “countercyclically,” as recommended by John Maynard Keynes, to offset the cycle of expansion and contraction in the economy. Fiscal policy is more effective at stimulating a flagging economy than at cooling an inflationary one, partly because spending cuts and tax increases are unpopular and partly because of the work of economic stabilizers. See also business cycle.
Peter Beinart
Peter Beinart is an American journalist and Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York. He is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and Senior Political Writer for The Daily Beast website. Beinart worked at The New Republic until 2006, for much of the time writing The New Republic's signature "TRB" column, which was reprinted in the New York Post and other major American newspapers.
From 2007 to 2009, Beinart was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Beinart is the author of The Good Fight: Why Liberals, and Only Liberals, Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, and The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris.
Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, at Princeton University, and an Op-Ed columnist for the Times. His numerous books include "The Great Unraveling," "The Conscience of a Liberal," and "The Return of Depression Economics," an updated edition of which was published in 2009. For his contributions to New Trade Theory, he received the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Professor and journalist Peter Beinart talks with Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and a Nobel Laureate in Economics.
Peter Beinart in Conversation with Paul Krugman
The Graduate Center, CUNY
fiscal policy
Measures employed by governments to stabilize the economy, specifically by adjusting the levels and allocations of taxes and government expenditures. When the economy is sluggish, the government may cut taxes, leaving taxpayers with extra cash to spend and thereby increasing levels of consumption. An increase in public-works spending may likewise pump cash into the economy, having an expansionary effect. Conversely, a decrease in government spending or an increase in taxes tends to cause the economy to contract. Fiscal policy is often used in tandem with monetary policy. Until the 1930s, fiscal policy aimed at maintaining a balanced budget; since then it has been used “countercyclically,” as recommended by John Maynard Keynes, to offset the cycle of expansion and contraction in the economy. Fiscal policy is more effective at stimulating a flagging economy than at cooling an inflationary one, partly because spending cuts and tax increases are unpopular and partly because of the work of economic stabilizers. See also business cycle.
Peter Beinart
Peter Beinart is an American journalist and Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York. He is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and Senior Political Writer for The Daily Beast website. Beinart worked at The New Republic until 2006, for much of the time writing The New Republic's signature "TRB" column, which was reprinted in the New York Post and other major American newspapers.
From 2007 to 2009, Beinart was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Beinart is the author of The Good Fight: Why Liberals, and Only Liberals, Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, and The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris.
Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, at Princeton University, and an Op-Ed columnist for the Times. His numerous books include "The Great Unraveling," "The Conscience of a Liberal," and "The Return of Depression Economics," an updated edition of which was published in 2009. For his contributions to New Trade Theory, he received the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
iPad Camera Kit Secrets... Microphone Magic
iPad camera connection kit, sold to quickly and easily import photos and videos from your camera, iphone and ipod has some undocumented secret features. It turns out that you can connect high quality studio USB microphones, and is also fully compatible with the iMic device for even NON-USB mics and audio input from mixing boards etc. Suddenly your "Magical" Apple Tablet becomes a Field recorder & a Podcast recording, production and upload studio!
Alesis iO Dock
Introduce your entire music studio to your iPad. iO Dock is the world's first professional audio interface for iPad.
Happy Toy Machine Allows You To Build Your Own Plush Toys
The TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Alley audience choice winner today is Happy Toy Machine, which allows you to design and create plush toys online.
The site allows adults and children to customize their plush toys by colors, size, body parts, shape, type, build and more. When you are satisfied with your design, you can actually have your creation built and sent you. It’s sort of like the Build-A-Bear on steroids.
Price ranges from $30 to $50, which is comparable to Build-A-Bear’s prices. The startup says the design element of the site is designed specially so that children can interact with the site and be able to design toys on their own.
In the future, the company would like to partner with video games or other entertainment properties to leverage Happy Toy Machine’s platform.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Aaron Koblin: Artfully visualizing our humanity
About this talk
Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data -- and at times vast numbers of people -- and weaves them into stunning visualizations. From elegant lines tracing airline flights to landscapes of cell phone data, from a Johnny Cash video assembled from crowd-sourced drawings to the "Wilderness Downtown" video that customizes for the user, his works brilliantly explore how modern technology can make us more human.
Toyota announces new Prius V and I take a look at geeky toys inside
Got a smartphone? Soon it'll be connected to your car and Toyota shows just how in its new Prius V
Monday, May 23, 2011
Livescribe Releases Connect, Puts Ink In The Cloud
Livescribe smartpens allow you to record and send the ink you draw or write on paper. They also record the surrounding audio so you can sync the audio with the drawings, something that’s great for students, reporters, and anyone who goes to meetings regularly. For a while, they had little apps that could run on the pen including a very cool piano app that allowed you to draw a piano and then play it on the page.
Now, however, they’ve added an interesting new feature: Livescribe Connect, a system that allows you to send entire pages to multiple recipients including Twitter users, Facebook, Google Docs, and various other cloud services. We got a quick hands on and were able to talk to the company about future plans.
How does Connect work? Well, you draw or write something and then draw an underscore. You then write a one or two word command (“Twitter,” “email joe@joe.com”) and then select a portion of the page or a set of pages. Then, when you sync the pen via USB those pages automatically go to the people or accounts in question.
The major concern is that the Pulse pen isn’t wireless yet so the utility is somewhat limited. However, it looks like a wireless pen is in the offing and the features and dead-simple interface make up for some of those shortcomings.
Erick and I hung out with the Pulsonian Commander, Jim Marggraff, on Fly Or Die a few weeks ago and got to talk about the new product.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
AsiaD Set for October in Hong Kong–Here’s the Mossberg-Swisher Guided Video Tour
As BoomTown noted in January, the D: All Things Digital conference–after an initial foray into smaller, niche Dive events–has been mulling going global next.
So, my longtime partner in digital crimes, Walt Mossberg, and I–along with D biz honcho Lia Lorenzano–headed to China in January to visit some possible locations for our first AsiaD.
And now it’s official: We’ll be doing an event October 19 to 21 in Hong Kong.
While we are still working out all the location logistics, Walt and I are already hard at work with our Dow Jones partners there to bring the magical mystery tech tour that D has been here to the audience there.
It will be a pan-Asian event, bringing in speakers and demos from all over the region, as well as inviting some key U.S. digital players to be interviewed in what is clearly one of the most important markets going forward.
We’d welcome any feedback, of course, as well as suggestions.
And we’ll keep you updated to our progress too. As with big D, which is set to take place May 31 to June 2 (and has been long sold out), we’ll be posting reports and videos of AsiaD.
Until we can say more, here is a video of moments from the visit Walt and I had there, including a helicopter tour of the vertical city, delicious dumplings and, of course, a whole lot of tech:
Gotta Share! The Musical & others
For our latest mission, a musical breaks out at the GEL Conference in New York. A speaker is suddenly interrupted by a man who refuses to turn off his cell phone. This is the fourth in our series of Spontaneous Musical projects.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
About The Center for Public Integrity
The mission of the Center for Public Integrity is to produce original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. To pursue its mission, the Center:
Generates high-quality, accessible investigative reports, databases, and contextual analysis on issues of public importance.
Disseminates work to journalists, policymakers, scholars, and citizens using a combination of digital, electronic, and print media.
Educates, engages, and empowers citizens with the tools and skills they need to hold governments and other institutions accountable.
Organizes and supports investigative journalists around the world who apply the Center’s values, mission, and standards to cross-border projects.
Remains independent by building a strong and sustainable financial base of support, including a community of committed individuals and foundations.
Nuclear fire protection: A critic's view
Nuclear power critic Paul Gunter, with the reactor oversight project Beyond Nuclear, discusses his views on fire protection at nuclear power facilities. He argues that new fire rules are merely a paper solution to a long-standing problem of unsafe reactors, and thus will not protect the public health and safety.
Nuclear industry official Alexander Marion, a vice president with the Nuclear Energy Institute, discusses new fire protection rules for U.S. reactors. New rules will enable the industry and regulators to predict and estimate risks based on available information and respond accordingly.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Hot startupTwilio: infrastructure for developers to build telephony apps in the cloud
Twilio is white hot. It's a new kind of company: one that provides APIs to other companies so they can build new apps on top of their infrastructure. Here I meet with the CEO to learn more about this interesting company.
Transvideo: using video to aid product launch
More and more companies are using short videos (typically under 90 seconds) that they can post on their web sites to introduce their products or services. Transvideo Studios, along with its in house creative team called Picturelab, has been making videos for 30 years and is behind the videos for many of the most well known tech companies in Silicon Valley.
"We've been doing videos for tech companies in Silicon Valley for a really long time, and we've had a studio and sound stage since 1981," explains Rico Andrade, Executive Producer for Transvideo Studios. "One of the things that's been a part of the business has been doing videos that talk about what the company does, and especially with the increase in the number of videos that you see online and the cost of making the videos and hosting them, more and more tech companies started seeing the return in creating a simple video that explains what they do."
When Transvideo takes on a new client, it tries to learn everything possible about the company and its product, from value proposition to competitors to target customers. This information helps set the tone for the video and guide the story being told.
"We're a full production house," explains David Sabin, Producer and Post Production Supervisor for Transvideo, "so we take it from concept (we do all the writing) to design all the way through to distribution. A project generally starts with a client coming to us, and we learn as much as we can about that particular product—we do our homework and find out what the client needs and come at it from a perspective of what a customer might want out of this as well."
From there, Transvideo will submit concepts and style frames, which, after approval from the client, will be used to create story boards for the clients to review in conjunction with the script Transvideo is drafting. Finally, they complete the animation work and start submitting first cuts of the video.
Going through the process of settling on a story and creating the video can have benefits for the client apart from the video itself. "Frequently the questions that we ask of our clients help them focus their own marketing," says Sabin, "and I have to say that art directors at these different companies love us, because we bring to them ideas and perspectives that they perhaps haven't thought of before."
Lazy Man's Lasagna
Jack Scalfani shows you how to make Lazy Man's Lasagna. Be sure to subscribe to this channel and see Jack's new channel:
Braised Red Cabbage - German
Jack Scalfani gets some German going with this simple side dish.
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
3 1/2 lb red cabbage (1 medium head), quartered, cored, and thinly sliced crosswise
4 bacon slices, chopped
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 large sweet onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup white-wine vinegar
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
preparation
Rinse cabbage under cold water, then drain (do not pat dry).
Cook bacon in an 8-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat, stirring, until crisp, about 3 minutes. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon, reserving it for another use. Add butter to bacon fat, then increase heat to moderate and cook onions, stirring, until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Stir in cabbage, vinegar, brown sugar, salt, and pepper and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 1 1/4 hours.
Elliot Krane: The mystery of chronic pain
About this talk
We think of pain as a symptom, but there are cases where the nervous system develops feedback loops and pain becomes a terrifying disease in itself. Starting with the story of a girl whose sprained wrist turned into a nightmare, Elliot Krane talks about the complex mystery of chronic pain, and reviews the facts we're just learning about how it works and how to treat it.
FACEBOOK COO SANDBERG: The Women Of My Generation Blew It, So Equality Is Up To You, Graduates
Sandberg gave this commencement address at Barnard yesterday. In it, she says today's young women need to close the ambition gap before they can close the achievement gap. Otherwise, they'll blow it like Sandberg's generation has.]
Thank you, President Spar. Members of the board of trustees, esteemed members of the faculty, proud parents, squirming siblings, devoted friends: congratulations to all of you. But especially, congratulations to the magnificent Barnard Class of 2011.
Looking at you all here fills me with great joy, in part because my college roommate, a member of your faculty, Caroline Weber, is here. Carrie, it means so much to me to be at your school, and in part because I work in Silicon Valley, let’s just say I’m not usually in a room with this many women. For the wonderful men who are here today, if you feel a little uncomfortable, we’re really glad you’re here, and no line for the men’s room. It’s worth it.
I graduated from college exactly 20 years ago. And as I am reminded every single day where I work, that makes me really old. Mark Zuckerberg, our founder and my boss, said to me the other day, “Sheryl, when do midlife crises happen? When you’re 30?” Not a good day at the office. But I am old enough to know that most of our lives are filled with days we do not remember. Today is not one of them. You may not remember one word I say. You may not even remember who your graduation speaker is, although for the record, Sheryl with an S. You won’t remember that it was raining and we had to move inside. But you will remember what matters, which is how you feel as you sit here, as you walk across the stage, as you start the next phase of your life.
Today is a day of celebration, a day to celebrate all the hard work that got you to this place where you can sit, kind of sweltering in that gown. Today is a day of thanks, a day to thank all the people that helped you get here, the people who nurtured you and taught you, who held your hand, who dried your tears. Today is a day of reflection. Excuse me, a little laryngitis.
As you leave Barnard today, you leave not just with an education, but you take your place amongst the fortunate. Some of you came here from families where education was expected and emphasized. Others of you had to overcome far more obstacles to get here, and today you become the very first member of your family to graduate from college. What an amazing accomplishment. But no matter where you started, as of today you are all privileged. You are privileged in the most important sense of the word, which is that you have almost boundless opportunity in front of you. So, the question is, what are you going to do with it? What will you do with this education you worked so hard to achieve? What in the world needs to change, and what part do you plan on playing in changing it?
Pulitzer Prize winners Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof visited this campus last year and they spoke about their critically important book, Half the Sky.
In that book, they assert that the fundamental moral challenge of the 19th century was slavery; of the 20th century, it was totalitarianism; and for our century, it is oppression of girls and women around the world. Their book is a call to arms, to give women all over the world, women who are exactly like us except for the circumstances into which they were born, basic human rights.
Compared to these women, we are lucky. In America, as in the entire developed world, we are equals under the law. But the promise of equality is not equality. As we sit here looking at this magnificent blue-robed class, we have to admit something that’s sad but true: men run the world. Of 190 heads of state, nine are women. Of all the parliaments around the world, 13% of those seats are held by women. Corporate America top jobs, 15% are women; numbers which have not moved at all in the past nine years. Nine years. Of full professors around the United States, only 24% are women.
I recognize that this is a vast improvement from generations in the past. When my mother took her turn to sit in a gown at her graduation, she thought she only had two career options: nursing and teaching. She raised me and my sister to believe that we could do anything, and we believed her. But what is so sad—it doesn’t just make me feel old, it makes me truly sad—is that it’s very clear that my generation is not going to change this problem. Women became 50% of the college graduates in this country in 1981, 30 years ago. Thirty years is plenty of time for those graduates to have gotten to the top of their industries, but we are nowhere close to 50% of the jobs at the top. That means that when the big decisions are made, the decisions that affect all of our worlds, we do not have an equal voice at that table.
So today, we turn to you. You are the promise for a more equal world. You are our hope. I truly believe that only when we get real equality in our governments, in our businesses, in our companies and our universities, will we start to solve this generation’s central moral problem, which is gender equality. We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.
So my hope for all of you here, for every single one of you, is that you’re going to walk across the stage and get your diploma. You’re going to go out tonight or maybe all summer and celebrate. You deserve it. And then you’re going to lean way into your career. You’re going to find something you love doing, and you’re going to do it with gusto. You’re going to pick your field and you’re going to ride it all the way to the top.
So, what advice can I give you to help you achieve this goal? The first thing is I encourage you to think big. Studies show very clearly that in our country, in the college-educated part of the population, men are more ambitious than women. They’re more ambitious the day they graduate from college; they remain more ambitious every step along their career path. We will never close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap. But if all young women start to lean in, we can close the ambition gap right here, right now, if every single one of you leans in. Leadership belongs to those who take it. Leadership starts with you.
The next step is you’re going to have to believe in yourself potentially more than you do today. Studies also show that compared to men, women underestimate their performance. If you ask men and women questions about completely objective criteria such as GPAs or sales goals, men get it wrong slightly high; women get it wrong slightly low. More importantly, if you ask men why they succeeded, men attribute that success to themselves; and women, they attribute it to other factors like working harder, help from others. Ask a woman why she did well on something, and she’ll say, “I got lucky. All of these great people helped me. I worked really hard.” Ask a man and he’ll say or think, “What a dumb question. I’m awesome.” So women need to take a page from men and own their own success.
That’s much easier to say than to do. I know this from my own experience. All along the way, I’ve had all of those moments, not just some of the time; I would say most of the time, where I haven’t felt that I owned my success. I got into college and thought about how much my parents helped me on my essays. I went to the Treasury Department because I was lucky to take the right professor’s class who took me to Treasury. Google, I boarded a rocket ship that took me up with everyone else.
Even to this day, I have those moments. I have those moments all the time, probably far more than you can imagine I would. I know I need to make the adjustments. I know I need to believe in myself and raise my hand, because I’m sitting next to some guy and he thinks he’s awesome. So, to all of you, if you remember nothing else today, remember this: You are awesome. I’m not suggesting you be boastful. No one likes that in men or women. But I am suggesting that believing in yourself is the first necessary step to coming even close to achieving your potential.
You should also know that there are external forces out there that are holding you back from really owning your success. Studies have shown—and yes, I kind of like studies—that success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. This means that as men get more successful and powerful, both men and women like them better. As women get more powerful and successful, everyone, including women, likes them less.
I’ve experienced this firsthand. When I first joined Facebook, there was a well-read blog out in the Valley that devoted some incredibly serious pixels to trashing me. Anonymous sources called me a liar, two-faced, about to ruin Facebook forever. I cried some when I was alone, I lost a bunch of sleep. Then I told myself it didn’t matter. Then everyone else told me it didn’t matter, which just reminded me of one thing: they were reading it too. I fantasized about all kinds of rejoinders, but in the end, my best and only response was just to do my job and do it well. When Facebook’s performance improved, the trash talk went away.
Do I believe I was judged more harshly because of my double-Xs? Yes. Do I think this will happen to me again in my career? Sure. I told myself that next time I’m not going to let it bother me, I won’t cry. I’m not sure that’s true. But I know I’ll get through it. I know that the truth comes out in the end, and I know how to keep my head down and just keep working.
If you think big, if you own your own success, if you lead, it won’t just have external costs, but it may cause you some personal sacrifice. Men make far fewer compromises than women to balance professional success and personal fulfillment. That’s because the majority of housework and childcare still falls to women. If a heterosexual couple work full time, the man will do—the woman, sorry—the woman will do two times the amount of housework and three times the amount of childcare that her husband will do. From my mother’s generation to mine, we have made far more progress making the workforce even than we have making the home even, and the latter is hurting the former very dramatically. So it’s a bit counterintuitive, but the most important career decision you’re going to make is whether or not you have a life partner and who that partner is. If you pick someone who’s willing to share the burdens and the joys of your personal life, you’re going to go further. A world where men ran half our homes and women ran half our institutions would be just a much better world.
I have a six-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter. I want more choices for both of them. I want my son to have the choice to be a full partner not just at work, but at home; and I want my daughter to have a choice to do either. But if she chooses work, to be well-liked for what she accomplishes. We can’t wait for the term “work/life balance” to be something that’s not just discussed at women’s conferences.
Of course not everyone wants to jump into the workforce and rise to the top. Life is going to bring many twists and turns, and each of us, each of you, have to forge your own path. I have deep respect for my friends who make different choices than I do, who choose the really hard job of raising children full time, who choose to go part time, or who choose to pursue more nontraditional goals. These are choices that you may make some day, and these are fine choices.
But until that day, do everything you can to make sure that when that day comes, you even have a choice to make. Because what I have seen most clearly in my 20 years in the workforce is this: Women almost never make one decision to leave the workforce. It doesn’t happen that way. They make small little decisions along the way that eventually lead them there. Maybe it’s the last year of med school when they say, I’ll take a slightly less interesting specialty because I’m going to want more balance one day. Maybe it’s the fifth year in a law firm when they say, I’m not even sure I should go for partner, because I know I’m going to want kids eventually.
These women don’t even have relationships, and already they’re finding balance, balance for responsibilities they don’t yet have. And from that moment, they start quietly leaning back. The problem is, often they don’t even realize it. Everyone I know who has voluntarily left a child at home and come back to the workforce—and let’s face it, it’s not an option for most people. But for people in this audience, many of you are going to have this choice. Everyone who makes that choice will tell you the exact same thing: You’re only going to do it if your job is compelling.
If several years ago you stopped challenging yourself, you’re going to be bored. If you work for some guy who you used to sit next to, and really, he should be working for you, you’re going to feel undervalued, and you won’t come back. So, my heartfelt message to all of you is, and start thinking about this now, do not leave before you leave. Do not lean back; lean in. Put your foot on that gas pedal and keep it there until the day you have to make a decision, and then make a decision. That’s the only way, when that day comes, you’ll even have a decision to make.
What about the rat race in the first place? Is it worthwhile? Or are you just buying into someone else’s definition of success? Only you can decide that, and you’ll have to decide it over and over and over. But if you think it’s a rat race, before you drop out, take a deep breath. Maybe you picked the wrong job. Try again. And then try again. Try until you find something that stirs your passion, a job that matters to you and matters to others. It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.
At Facebook we have a very broad mission. We don’t just want you to post all your pictures of tonight up there and use Facebook to keep in touch, even though we want that, so do a lot of that. We want to connect the whole world. We want to make the whole world more open and more transparent. The one thing I’ve learned working with great entrepreneurs—Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google—that if you want to make a difference, you better think big and dream big, right from day one.
We try at Facebook to keep all of our employees thinking big all day. We have these posters in red we put around the walls. One says, “Fortune favors the bold.” Another says, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” That question echoes Barnard alum Anna Quindlen, who said that she majored in unafraid. Don’t let your fears overwhelm your desire. Let the barriers you face—and there will be barriers—be external, not internal. Fortune does favor the bold, and I promise that you will never know what you’re capable of unless you try.
You’re going to walk off this stage today and you’re going to start your adult life. Start out by aiming high. Like everyone here, I have great hopes for the members of this graduating class. I hope you find true meaning, contentment and passion in your life. I hope that you navigate the hard times and you come out with greater strength and resolve. I hope that whatever balance you seek, you find it with your eyes wide open. And I hope that you—yes, you—each and every one of you have the ambition to run the world, because this world needs you to run it. Women all around the world are counting on you. I’m counting on you.
I know that’s a big challenge and responsibility, a really daunting task, but you can do it. You can do it if you lean in. So go home tonight and ask yourselves, “What would I do if I weren’t afraid?” And then go do it. Congratulations, 2011.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-coo-sandberg-the-women-of-my-generation-blew-it-so-equality-is-up-to-you-graduates-2011-5#ixzz1MmdxaBSN
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Adventures in Summer Learning
School may be out, but learning is still in. In Adventures in Summer Learning, you'll meet parents, teachers, and researchers in Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Boston who are discovering the best ways to keep kids engaged with learning during the long summer break — and avoid the 'summer slump.' The research is clear that children who don't read during the summer can lose up to three months of reading progress and that loss has a cumulative, long-term effect. Adventures in Summer Learning offers practical suggestions for parents about how to create a literacy-rich summer, as well as profiles of effective formal programs for at-risk youth and children with learning disabilities.
Feynman 'Fun to Imagine' 4: Magnets (and 'Why?' questions...)
Physicist Richard Feynman explains to a non-scientist just how difficult it is to answer certain questions in lay terms! A classic example of Feynman's clarity of thought, powers of explanation and intellectual honesty - and his refusal to 'cheat' with misleading analogies...
From the BBC TV series 'Fun to Imagine'(1983). You can now watch higher quality versions of some of these episodes at www.bbc.co.uk/archive/feynman/
Leonard Susskind: My friend Richard Feynman
About this talk
What's it like to be pals with a genius? Onstage at TEDxCaltech, physicist Leonard Susskind spins a few stories about his friendship with the legendary Richard Feynman, discussing his unconventional approach to problems both serious and ... less so.
I decided when I was asked to do this that what I really wanted to talk about was my friend Richard Feynman. I was one of the fortunate few that really did get to know him and enjoyed his presence. And I'm going to tell you the Richard Feynman that I knew. I'm sure there are other people here who could tell you about the Richard Feynman they knew, and it would probably be a different Richard Feynman.
Richard Feynman was a very complex man. He was a man of many, many parts. He was, of course, foremost a very, very, very great scientist. He was an actor. You saw him act. I also had the good fortune to be in those lectures, up in the balcony. They were fantastic. He was a philosopher; he was a drum player; he was a teacher par excellence. Richard Feynman was also a showman, an enormous showman. He was brash, irreverent -- he was full of macho, a kind of macho one-upsmanship. He loved intellectual battle. He had a gargantuan ego. But the man had somehow a lot of room at the bottom. And what I mean by that is a lot of room, in my case -- I can't speak for anybody else -- but in my case, a lot of room for another big ego. Well, not as big as his, but fairly big. I always felt good with Dick Feynman.
It was always fun to be with him. He always made me feel smart. How can somebody like that make you feel smart? Somehow he did. He made me feel smart. He made me feel he was smart. He made me feel we were both smart, and the two of us could solve any problem whatever. And in fact, we did sometimes do physics together. We never published a paper together, but we did have a lot of fun. He loved to win. With these little macho games we would sometimes play -- and he didn't only play them with me, he played them with all sorts of people -- he would almost always win. But when he didn't win, when he lost, he would laugh and seem to have just as much fun as if he had won.
I remember once he told me a story about a joke that the students played on him. They took him -- I think it was for his birthday -- they took him for lunch. They took him for lunch to a sandwich place in Pasadena. It may still exist; I don't know. Celebrity sandwiches was their thing. You could get a Marilyn Monroe sandwich. You could get a Humphrey Bogart sandwich. The students went there in advance, and they arranged that they would all order Feynman sandwiches. One after another, they came in and ordered Feynman sandwiches. Feynman loved this story. He told me this story, and he was really happy and laughing. When he finished the story, I said to him, "Dick, I wonder what would be the difference between a Feynman sandwich and a Susskind sandwich." And without skipping a beat at all, he said, "Well, they'd be about the same. The only difference is a Susskind sandwich would have a lot more ham," ham, as in bad actor. (Laughter) Well, I happened to have been very quick that day, and I said, "Yeah, but a lot less baloney."
(Laughter)
The truth of the matter is that a Feynman sandwich had a load of ham, but absolutely no baloney. What Feynman hated worse than anything else was intellectual pretense -- phoniness, false sophistication, jargon. I remember sometime during the 80s, the mid-80s, Dick and I and Sidney Coleman, we met a couple of times up in San Francisco at some very rich guy's house -- up in San Francisco for dinner. And the last time the rich guy invited us, he also invited a couple of philosophers. These guys were philosophers of mind. Their specialty was the philosophy of consciousness. And they were full of all kinds of jargon. I'm trying to remember the words -- "monism," "dualism," categories all over the place. I didn't know what those things meant, neither did Dick -- neither did Sydney for that matter.
And what did we talk about? Well, what do you talk about when you talk about minds? One thing, this one obvious thing to talk about -- can a machine become a mind? Can you build a machine that thinks like a human being, that is conscious? We sat around and we talked about this -- we of course never resolved it. But the trouble with the philosophers is that they were philosophizing when they should have been science-iphizing. It's a scientific question after all. And this was a very, very dangerous thing to do around Dick Feynman. Feynman let them have it -- both barrels, right between the eyes. It was brutal, it was funny -- ooh, it was funny. But it was really brutal. He really popped their balloon.
But the amazing thing was -- Feynman had to leave a little early. He wasn't feeling too well, so he left a little bit early. And Sidney and I were left there with the two philosophers. And the amazing thing is these guys were flying. They were so happy. They had met the great man; they had been instructed by the great man; they had an enormous amount of fun having their faces shoved in the mud; and it was something special. I realized there was something just extraordinary about Feynman, even when he did what he did.
Dick, he was my friend. I did call him Dick. Dick and I did have a little bit of a rapport. I think it may have been a special rapport that he and I had. We liked each other; we liked the same kind of things. I also liked the kind of intellectual macho games. Sometimes I would win, mostly he would win, but we both enjoyed them. And Dick became convinced at some point that he and I had some kind of similarity of personality. I don't think he was right. I think the only point of similarity between us is we both like to talk about ourselves. But he was convinced of this. And he was curious. The man was incredibly curious. And he wanted to understand what it was and why it was that there was this funny connection.
And one day we were walking. We were in France. We were in La Zouche. We were up in the mountains, 1976. We were up in the mountains, and Feynman said to me, he said, "Leonardo." The reason he called me Leonardo is because we were in Europe and he was practicing his French. And he said, "Leonardo, were you closer to your mother or to you father when you were a kid?" And I said, "Well, my real hero was my father. He was a working man, had a fifth grade education. He was a master mechanic, and he taught me how to use tools. He taught me all sorts of things about mechanical things. He even taught me the Pythagorean theorem. He didn't call it the hypotenuse, he called it the shortcut distance." And Feynman's eyes just opened up. He went off like a light bulb. And he said he had had basically the exact same relationship with his father. In fact, he had been convinced at one time that, to be a good physicist, that it was very important to have had that kind of relationship with your father. I apologize for the sexist conversation here, but this is the way it really happened.
He said that he had been absolutely convinced that this was necessary -- the necessary part of the growing up of a young physicist. Being Dick, he, of course, wanted to check this. He wanted to go out and do an experiment. So, well he did. He went out and did an experiment. He asked all his friends that he thought were good physicists, "Was it your mom or your pop that influenced you?" And to a man -- they were all men -- to a man, every single one of them said, "My mother." (Laughter) There went that theory down the trashcan of history. But he was very excited that he had finally met somebody who had the same experience with my father as he had with his father. And for some time, he was convinced that this was the reason we got along so well. I don't know. Maybe. Who knows?
But let me tell you a little bit about Feynman the physicist. Feynman's style -- no, style is not the right word. Style makes you think of the bow tie he might have worn or the suit he was wearing. There's something much deeper than that, but I can't think of another word for it. Feynman's scientific style was always to look for the simplest, most elementary solution to a problem that was possible. If it wasn't possible, you had to use something fancier. But no doubt part of this was his great joy and pleasure in showing people that he could think more simply than they could. But he also deeply believed, he truly believed, that if you couldn't explain something simply you didn't understand it. In the 1950s, people were trying to figure out how superfluid helium worked.
There was a theory. It was due to a Russian mathematical physicist, and it was a complicated theory. I'll tell you what that theory was soon enough. It was a terribly complicated theory full of very difficult integrals and formulas and mathematics and so forth. And it sort of worked, but it didn't work very well. The only way it worked is when the helium atoms were very, very far apart. The helium atoms had to be very far apart. And unfortunately, the helium atoms in liquid helium are right on top of each other.
Feynman decided, as a sort of amateur helium physicist, that he would try to figure it out. He had an idea, a very clear idea. He would try to figure out what the quantum wave function of this huge number of atoms looked like. He would try to visualize it, guided by a small number of simple principles. The small number of simple principles were very, very simple. The first one was that, when helium atoms touch each other, they repel. The implication of that is that the wave function has to go to zero, it has to vanish when the helium atoms touch each other. The other fact is that the ground state, the lowest energy state of a quantum system, the wave function is always very smooth -- has the minimum number of wiggles.
So he sat down -- and I imagine he had nothing more than a simple piece of paper and a pencil -- and he tried to write down, and did write down, the simplest function that he could think of which had the boundary conditions that the wave function vanish when things touch and is smooth in between. He wrote down a simple thing. It was so simple, in fact, that I suspect a really smart high school student, who didn't even have calculus, could understand what he wrote down. The thing was that that simple thing that he wrote down explained everything that was known at the time about liquid helium and then some.
I've always wondered whether the professionals, the real professional helium physicists, were just a little bit embarrassed by this. They had their super-powerful technique, and they couldn't do as well. Incidentally, I'll tell you what that super-powerful technique was. It was the technique of Feynman diagrams.
(Laughter)
He did it again in 1968. In 1968, in my own university -- I wasn't there at the time -- but in 1968, they were exploring the structure of the proton. The proton is obviously made of a whole bunch of little particles. This was more or less known. And the way to analyze it was, of course, Feynman diagrams. That's what Feynman diagrams were constructed for -- to understand particles. The experiments that were going on were very simple. You simply take the proton, and you hit it really sharply with an electron. This was the thing the Feynman diagrams were for. The only problem was that Feynman diagrams are complicated. They're difficult integrals. If you could do all of them, you would have a very precise theory. But you couldn't; they were just too complicated. People were trying to do them. You could do a one loop diagram. Don't worry about one loop. One loop, two loops -- maybe you could do a three loop diagram, but beyond that you couldn't do anything.
Feynman said, "Forget all of that. Just think of the proton as an assemblage of little particles -- a swarm of little particles." He called them partons. He called them partons. He said, "Just think of it as a swarm of partons moving real fast." Because they're moving real fast, relativity says the internal motions go very slow. The electron hits it suddenly. It's like taking a very sudden snapshot of the proton. What do you see? You see a frozen bunch of partons. They don't move, and because they don't move during the course of the experiment, you don't have to worry about how they're moving. You don't have to worry about the forces between them. You just get to think of it as a population of frozen partons. This was the key to analyzing these experiments. Extremely effective, it really did -- somebody said the word revolution is a bad word. I suppose it is, so I won't say revolution -- but it certainly evolved very, very deeply our understanding of the proton, and of particles beyond that.
Well, I had some more that I was going to tell you about my connection with Feynman, what he was like, but I see I have exactly half a minute. So I think I'll just finish up by saying I actually don't think Feynman would have liked this event. I think he would have said, "I don't need this." But how should we honor Feynman? How should we really honor Feynman? I think the answer is we should honor Feynman by getting as much baloney out of our own sandwiches as we can.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Study: Regulating Dangerous Chemicals Does Not Cost Jobs
Study: Regulating Dangerous Chemicals Does Not Cost Jobs
James Heintz: Under current law, thousands of dangerous industrial chemicals are effectively unregulated
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
PARC tour, Part II: Ethnography research
Victoria Bellotti manages PARC's Socio-Technical and Interaction Research team at PARC where she also developed PARC's Opportunity Discovery research targeting methods and program. Victoria studies people to understand their practices, problems, a...
VMware announces Horizon App Manager
Last year at VMworld, VMware previewed Project Horizon, its cloud-based management service, which is part of an effort to help companies embrace the cloud and the wealth of cloud applications currently available on the market. Today, VMware is announcing the first product release associated with that vision, the Horizon App Manager.
"We're seeing all these iPads and tablets coming into the enterprise, and we're also seeing a lot of SaaS adoption," explains Noah Wasmer, Director of Product Management and Advanced Development at VMware. "I was asked to [launch] an initiative in advanced development to look at the next generation of computing."
A big part of computing's next generation is the phenomenon of users accessing an ever-growing number of applications from a myriad of devices, which is quickly making the days of device-centric computing a thing of the past. This presents a host of new challenges for administrators.
"[With] Salesforce and Trovix and SuccessFactors and Box.net coming into the enterprise, administrators are saying, 'How do I secure this? How do I control them?'" says Wasmer. The Horizon App Manager helps administrators address these challenges with a tool that allows them to synchronize their existing users and groups from on-premises directory services into the cloud. "[This] will basically allow you to keep all your security and passwords behind the firewall but now be able to add app entitlement in the cloud."
The service is priced at $30 per user per year, and it is intended to be extremely simple and intuitive to install. It also provides significant benefit for users by providing a single sign-on experience, eliminating the requirement to remember a slew of different passwords for each application.
"On the user portal, one of the things that we saw is that once users start using the service, they actually fall in love with it," explains Wasmer. "Many of us have sticky notes or some way of trailing all these different passwords. Once you start using this, you start saying, 'Wow. This is really how I want to work.'"
Horizon is a hosted service, and VMware expects to release new features and applications for it on a monthly basis. "We just really see cloud applications being the future..." says Wasmer. "VMware has been in the business of helping companies move from the private cloud into the public cloud, and we think this is an important step infrastructurally for us to help move them along."
Thomas Heatherwick: Building the Seed Cathedral
About this talk
A future more beautiful? Architect Thomas Heatherwick shows five recent projects featuring ingenious bio-inspired designs. Some are remakes of the ordinary: a bus, a bridge, a power station ... And one is an extraordinary pavilion, the Seed Cathedral, a celebration of growth and light.
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You might have heard of PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). That's where all sorts of modern tech was invented. Ethernet. Object-oriented programming. Laser printers and much more. Earlier this week they invited me over for an exclusive look at several things they are working on. Here is the fhthttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifirst part, where we discuss the future of networking, which they call content-aware computing.
Here, Teresa Lunt,http://www.parc.com/about/people/122/teresa-lunt.html http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifce President and Director of the Computing Science Laboratory research organization, and Nacho Solis, http://www.parc.com/about/people/178/nacho-solis.html researcher, tell me how networks are changing.
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Magic Piano by Smule was one of the iPad apps we couldn’t wait to try; now we’ve tried it and we’re in love. While many view the iPad as a device to consume content, if Magic Piano is any indication it’s also going to be a device to help create music.
I got to speak to Dr. Ge Wang, the co-founder, CTO and CCO at Smule yesterday about the development process for Magic Piano, the differences in developing for the iPad versus the iPhone and what the iPad might mean for the future.
Wang, an Assistant Professor at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, really wanted to build an application specifically for the iPad and one that would show off the devices best features.
Working around the clock for just over two months, the team at Smule built Magic Piano to be both an experiment and working proof of concept, as well as an app that could be fun and creative.
Check out this video demonstration that I made earlier today, showing off Magic Piano for iPad:
Wang told me that the size of the screen was both a big inspiration for the app and also something that was highly important in the development process. Unlike the iPhone, which can have 5 multitouch points hit at one time, the iPad has 10. That means you can literally put all of your fingers on the iPad and play or create different sounds.
As for the circular piano shape – while part of that was out of utility — you can fit more keys on screen if you do something in a circle or a spiral — it was also to add a sense of whimsy and fun to the app.
As for the challenges in developing for the iPad versus the iPhone, Wang told me that because the technologies are similar, the size of the device was what was most important to consider. As a side note, it’s clear the company also spent some time dealing with the physics of the device and how the app works; it is something that you can easily use from multiple angles, whether you have it in one hand or propped up on your knees.
Wang sees the iPad as having tremendous potential for the creation of music. Looking at Magic Piano, I have to agree. If this is what you can create in two months as a proof of concept and experiment, who knows what could be built in the next six!
Magic Piano (which costs $2.99) is in many ways the spiritual successor to Ocarina for the iPhone. By that I mean it’s a concept that is simple but brilliant, and one that can truly capture the power of a new device in a way that you may never have considered.
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Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5 Percent Of Social Media Experts Are Clowns” (TCTV)
In essence, businesses need to better understand how to use social media and how to apply an authentic human touch while doing so. Vaynerchuk thinks current efforts are abysmal. “”99.5 percent of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns,” he says, continuing with “we are going to live through a devastating social media bubble.”
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