IBM on Monday announced plans to deploy an internal cloud computing environment that will make more than a petabyte of information—the equivalent of 100 times the content of the Library of Congress—instantly available to employees under a project called Blue Insight. IBM said it also plans to make the service’s architecture, dubbed IBM Smart Analytics Cloud—available to customers.
Wi-Fi wants its piece of the Smart Grid | VentureBeat
The Wi-Fi Alliance has created a task force to work on setting standards so that Wi-Fi can play a large role in future development of the cleaner, more efficient Smart Grid. Today, this new group released a white paper exploring all of the areas where Wi-Fi could aid in communication between the new electric meters, utilities and their customers.
Data visualization: a new way of looking at the world - CNN.com
“Specialists from scientists to accountants have been dealing with data for decades,” said Martin Wattenberg, a researcher at IBM’s Center for Social Software. “What’s new is that there’s a whole lot more data of relevance to consumers. “At the same time, people are generating a whole lot of data themselves.” There are several reasons why we’re seeing more data visualization in popular culture and why it’s becoming simpler and more innovative, experts say. Computers and software have gotten cheaper during the past few decades, and the technology needed to build applications is now in the hands of more people. Meanwhile, more data are becoming digital, making it easier to parse and catalog. “You have stuff available on government sites that would have only been available on paper a decade ago,” Wattenberg said. Finally, through the advent of social media applications like Facebook and Twitter, coupled with the rise of increasingly sophisticated mobile phones, a cultural shift is seemingly under way. “People are sort of happily defining their own social networks for other people to see, and that has led people to become interested in exploring data in ways they weren’t interested before,” Wattenberg said.
Participatory Sensing - An Interview with Deborah Estrin - O’Reilly Radar
The iPhone is a rich portable computer with onboard sensors. Specifically, it is a location-aware (GPS), motion-aware (accelerometer), directionally-aware (digital compass) visually aware (camera being used to scan QA codes or serve as visual input), sonically aware (microphone and speakers), always-connected (wireless or 3Gs) handheld computer. Every operative word in that sentence is deeply meaningful and rich with possibilities we have just begun to explore. The iPhone does a whole lot more than display information. It is an environmental sensor. Its value lies just as much in sensing information as it does in displaying information.
