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TED Prize 2012: Crowdsourcing "City 2.0"
Today, TED announced the winner of the 2012 TED Prize: the City 2.0. Breaking from their tradition of recognizing an individual global innovator, TED is embracing the concept of crowd-sourcing urbanism (an idea we obviously support at Open Source Cities). The organizers…
via opensourcecities:
Can better urban planning make us healthier? - CSMonitor.com
Does urban sprawl cause obesity and unhealthy habits?
Matthew Turner and co-authors have written an under-appreciated paper that was published in the Journal of Urban Economics. Here is the abstract of their paper titled “Fat City”:
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“We study the relationship between urban sprawl and obesity. Using data that tracks individuals over time, we find no evidence that urban sprawl causes obesity. We show that previous findings of a positive relationship most likely reflect a failure to properly control for the fact the individuals who are more likely to be obese choose to live in more sprawling neighborhoods. Our results indicate that current interest in changing the built environment to counter the rise in obesity is misguided.”
Intuitively, Turner estimates a fixed effects regression using panel data where he tracks the same person over time for people who move from the center city to the suburbs or vice versa. If sprawl makes us fat, then the average person who moves from the center to the suburbs should be gaining more weight over time than the people who never leave the center city or never leave the suburbs. Turner rejects this hypothesis.
So, there is plenty of work to be done here but it remains an open question of how urban form affects our behavior. I’ve been especially interested in this question focused on our carbon footprint as a function of urban form.
8 Crazy Things IBM Scientists Have Learned Studying Twitter
A team of IBM researchers spends their days sifting through Twitter. They use live streams of tweets to develop machines that are smarter than the typical computer, an area of study known as “machine learning.”
Using these tweets, they’ve developed technology that allows a machine to understand that some tweets are just background noise and others are newsworthy and important.
Click here to see what they’ve learned→
For instance, a tweet that says “I urgently need my cup of Starbucks and a scone and before I head over to Staples” is distinctly different than a Tweet that says: “URGENT: I just bit into a scone from @starbucks to find over 10 staples baked into it. Please RT and be careful.”
The top 10 trends from the year’s big smart grid show | gigaOM
One of the year’s largest smart grid conferences — DistribuTECH — closes today in San Antonio, Texas. The event is relatively unknown in IT and web circles, but it’s like the CES for utilities, power companies and the vendors that are trying to sell them stuff.
However, I’m interested in what seems to be a growing number of startups and entrepreneurs at the event, and that seems to be a sign that real innovation and new business models are actually starting to happen when it comes to adding digital intelligence to the power grid and managing energy data.
Here are the top 10 trends that I took away from the event:
1. Managing big data. Managing large streams of energy data is fundamental to the future of the grid, as well as for helping consumers reduce their energy consumption. What methods the software companies use will also determine how well they’ll do in the industry. Startups like Opower and Tendril are essentially big-data plays, using cloud computing tools and sophisticated analytics, and both companies released interesting news at the show. Oracle, touting its software and data management, had a huge booth on the floor. I chatted with both the newly acquired Ecologic Analytics (bought by Landis+Gyr) and eMeter (acquired by Siemens), and these companies manage the massive amounts of data that flow off of meters for utilities. Cloud computing is no longer a dirty word for utilities; in fact, it’s likely the future of this business.
2. The Internet of Things. Beyond connecting meters and grid devices, the smart grid really extends to create the Internet of Things, connecting cars, home batteries, solar panels, light bulbs, thermostats, and consumer electronics like televisions and cell phones. The term the Internet of Things is oft-used in IT circles, but hasn’t really caught on in the smart grid and utility industries. But it will, and it will also provide new lines of business for the power grid vendors.
A Big Texan Breakthrough for the Internet of Things | Motley Fool
Remember the last time your dishwasher texted you when it broke? Unless you’re Bill Gates, you probably have the kind that just sits there and leaks while you’re on vacation. Such smart devices do exist, but connected appliances are most likely to be sold as part of a complete package, with touchscreen controls and sophisticated solutions most people don’t really need.
But simple solutions to large problems — like a suddenly dangerous appliance alerting you to its problem — are always valued. That’s why Texas Instruments designed the SimpleLink wireless processor, which should be able to get just about anything with a silicon controller online with ease. If this is what manufacturers and consumers need for broader adoption, it could position TI as the go-to company for getting hooked into the Internet of things.
Could Twitter Help Us Create Smarter Transit Routes?
“Traditional city maps visualize just one aspect of urban design—the city’s intended structure, full stop. But add in a layer that visualizes how people actually use the city, and then the map becomes much more interesting. Eric Fischer did exactly that when he used Twitter’s API to collect tens of thousands of geotagged tweets and map them onto the streets of New York, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay area. The maps amount to something close to adesire path on a macro scale: The maps show where our buses and subways should be, if they conformed to the way we actually move and live.”
via studio630:
Northwestern, IBM collaborate on business analytics courses - AnalyticBridge
Northwestern University and IBM are collaborating on new business and technology curricula to help students gain the latest skills in business analytics. The new courses of study, Masters of Science degree programs with analytics concentrations in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of Continuing Studies, will better prepare students and current professionals who are seeking new analytics skills for today’s competitive job market.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there will be a 24 percent increase in demand for professionals with management analysis skills over the next eight years. The need for this specialized talent is being fueled by an increased use of business analytics by companies to better understand the explosion of data generated online, via social networks and mobile devices, or through real time sensors. With so much data residing within, and shared across, these digital sources, organizations are seeking new ways to understand, measure, act and even predict outcomes based on customer and social sentiment.
The demand for new higher education programs such as those at Northwestern illustrates the evolution of analytics. Once considered an area of focus for technology majors, that has moved beyond computers science and is now a required competency across businesses from finance and IT to human resources and marketing.
Real Time Farms tells you exactly where your food came from | Grist
Real Time Farms is a “crowd-sourced online food guide” that tells you exactly where the meal on your plate came from.
As crazy as it sounds, our vision is to collectively document the whole food system.
That does sound crazy, but so does the notion that a bunch of volunteers would build the most comprehensive and frequently updated encyclopedia in human history. And that one seems to have worked out okay.
Real Time Farms is in its early days, so only a tiny fraction of restaurants, farmers markets, and their fans have imported data on where ingredients are sourced. It feels like the kind of thing that will require a really big technological solution at some point in the future, like DNA barcoding of food or super cheap RFID tracking of crops from field to fork. Or maybe just more of us moving to Portland.
Math breakthroughs don’t often capture the headlines—but MIT researchers have just made one that could lead to all sorts of amazing technological breakthroughs that in just a few years will touch every hour of your life.
RF-enabled app locates lost objects or children
We’ve recently seen RFID technology used to help farmers track cows and locate children. Now, recently launched Bikn enables consumers to find lost objects, pets or children with a system consisting of an RF-enabled iPhone case, multiple tags and an app. READ MORE…
via springwise:
Predicting Disasters Of The Future: Economic Disaster, Water Shortages, And Cyber Attacks
A new report asking experts what disasters they’re afraid of has enough in it to make you hide under the bed. Bad news for optimists: The experts think global catastrophe is more likely than ever.
via fastcompany:
Step into the Smarter Planet Time Machine!
For a little Friday Fun, try one of these three settings:
Or for quintessential quantum experience, try the Random button to sample one of the more than 3800 posts about All Things Smarter since we started three years ago in November, 2008.
You are welcome to like or reblog your favorites to feed our collective intelligence on those posts that best reflect how the world’s systems can become more sentient and sensable.
Of course, you can always browse through the misty mountains of Smarter Time via the Archive. Want to hold Smarter Planet in your hand? Get the mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Cufflinks with Wi-Fi hot spot turn you into a digital 007 | CNET
These silver oval ‘links keep your cuffs together without the embarrassment of using some silly analog plastic buttons, and also double as a USB thumbdrive with 2GB of storage and an embedded wireless hot spot.
They can be used to share data and Internet access between smartphones, tablets, laptops, and just about anything else that’s USB- or wireless-compatible.
