#opensource
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Lightshow in the NYC Park Ave Tunnel
For the first time, the Park Avenue Tunnel was open to pedestrians this weekend. Artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer transformed the Park Avenue Tunnel into an interactive light and sound installation.
Top 4 Searches on HWKU
I accept the topics I post about can be rather eclectic. However, I did not see this coming. Presented without further ado, the top four searches leading readers to the site, according to WordPress:
- transnational corporation network structure
- tiny tiny rss reader api
- number of brand conversation
- 18-24 year old men demographics
I think doulingo is messing with me again.
Finally, An Eames Chair That Will Fit In My Office
Music is Language
“[T]he most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities.” Benedict Anderson
Cloud and Assembly Lines – Choose the Right Model
I’m at Red Hat Summit this week talking about cloud with customers and partners, and it occurs to me one of the common metaphors isn’t quite right. The problem with the “Assembly Line” metaphor is everyone thinks of 1907 Ford (“any color you want, as long as it’s black”). And that’s actually a lousy example. There was zero flexibility in product output and the only automation beyond individual parts was the well-defined hand-off during assembly. Don’t underestimate the power of those elements, but that’s nothing compared to what we can do today.
The right model is Chevrolet’s model: build knowing the products you need tomorrow are different from the ones you need today. Build knowing you will change your process while it’s still running. It’s no wonder that once implemented, Chevy beat industry-leader Ford to market by a full year while continuing to serve their current customers and took the lion’s share of the entire car market .
If your cloud isn’t open and changeable, your competitors will out innovate you and take your market.
{ photo from excellent slide show on 100 years of assembly lines at Chevrolet and GM: http://www.assemblymag.com/articles/89625-100-years-of-chevrolet-assembly-lines }
[ update: corrected link to Red Hat Summit keynote streaming ]
Generating Reports in R – Suggestions?
I would like to programmatically generate a report using R. The contents are mostly graphs and tables. I have a working system, but it’s too many pieces. When I hand this off to someone else, it become immediately fragile.
Isn’t there a better way? Here are my elements:
- R script: collection of functions to manipulate the data interactively, and with the report
- R script: wrapper to the above functions, and calls knit (from the knitr package) function to generate the report
- R/LaTeX: report template
- bash: script to tie it all together, and clean up leftovers
That’s four languages. Ugly.
Meet the cloud that will keep you warm at night
You already have a physical presence at your customers, why not give them a distributed data center too? German company AoTerra is building OpenStack into their heating systems.
Will the lower hardware and HVAC requirements out weight operating costs born of density in a traditional data center? I can’t wait to find out.
http://gigaom.com/2013/05/24/meet-the-cloud-that-will-keep-you-warm-at-night/
How do you turn your phone into a tool?
I picked up a Galaxy S III over the summer, and a few minutes every week making the phone do more work for me. What are your Android tips?
- Change application view to alphabetical list or grid
- Apps – menu – view type – select
- Make sure you set up a password on your phone.
- Put contact info on your lock screen
- Create one touch icons for most common calls. I have one that I hit and it calls my wife’s personal phone. You can find it under widgets.
- Alternatively, you can use the ‘favorites’ list, and have that as a widget on one of your pages.
- Change the keyboard: Purchase SwiftKey from Google Play
- Arrange icons so that most used are on the bottom row that stays with every page.
- Mine are: phone, contacts, Google search, apps, and a folder containing work mail, Gmail, and texts.
- Put regularly used apps, or apps you need in a hurry, on the front page.
- Mine include a lot of reading, but also TripIt, RSA token, maps, remember the milk (lists), camera, etc.
- Epistle to edit and sync text files with my laptop (uses dropbox)
- For Web stuff I want to read (news articles etc) on the go, I use instapaper (website) and sync with instafetch (app). So, I always have plenty to read on planes.
- Find news with Zite or Flipboard apps.
- Create a calendar widget so you can see the next few days without having to open the app
- I have 2 Remember The Milk widgets: what I have to get done for the day, and what I am waiting on others to do.
Transnational Corporation Networks Affect the Market and Stability
The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0025995