? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kick-start-innovation-free-data-120000810.html
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Sunday, March 24, 2013
How to Kick-Start Innovation with Free Data
WASHINGTON, D.C.? Government-funded projects have yielded a wealth of information, but much of this data has historically remained locked up in difficult-to-use form. To get this data to people who might start businesses with them, the Obama administration created the position of chief technology officer. Todd Park, the nation?s current CTO, has plenty of innovation experience. In 1997, at the age of 24, he co-founded his first start-up, called Athenahealth, which provides online data management for physicians. After momentarily retiring to focus on his family he set up two other start-ups before joining the White House team four years ago. At a media briefing in February he talked about getting government data into the hands of entrepreneurs to spark innovation and economic growth. [An edited transcript follows.] You?re an entrepreneur who helped launch three successful health-tech start-ups. How did you end up working for the U.S. government? In the summer of 2009 I got an e-mail from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asking about my becoming its chief technology officer. My first question was: Why are you talking to me? Because I don?t know anything about government. I didn?t serve at any level. But they said, it?s actually your background as someone who?s not in government, who?s been a health-tech entrepreneur. In March 2012 you became the chief technology officer of the U.S. What do you as the nation?s CTO? It?s a position the president established for the first time in his first term in office. I?m the second CTO, after Aneesh Chopra. The gist of the job is that I run an incubator inside the government. It?s not birthing companies; it?s birthing projects that all have the common denominator of unleashing the power of tech to advance the president?s programs, whether that?s job creation, economic growth, improved outcomes in health care, education, public safety or energy. How does the incubation work? One category of projects is the Open Data Initiative program. This set of initiatives aims to liberate data from the vaults of the government to spur entrepreneurship, innovation and scientific discovery. A lot of data has been made public, but in unusable form, like books or pdfs or static Web sites. So the notion is to make them available as bulk downloadable files, as APIs [application protocol interfaces], so that you can actually use this stuff to create value. It was inspired by what the government did in prior eras, when it opened up weather data decades ago, making the data downloadable electronically by anyone, for free. What happened once U.S. weather data became freely available? Entrepreneurs picked it up and turned it into the Weather Channel, weather.com, weather apps, weather insurance--all which grew the economy, created jobs and improved our lives all at the same time. GPS is similar story. Beginning the 1980s Pres. Ronald Reagan began the process of opening the GPS system for civilian and commercial access, which was completed under Pres. Bill Clinton. The access has spawned an incredible array of innovations by American entrepreneurs ranging from navigation systems to precision crop farming to location-based apps. In fact, it?s estimated that last year alone civilian and commercial access to GPS added $90 billion in annual value to the U.S. economy. And the number keeps growing. So this is a play that gets the president and us very excited. Without legislation, without regulation, without incremental expenditure of taxpayer capital, you?re basically taking data?information resources that taxes have already paid for?and you?re jujitsuing it, if you will, into the public domain as fuel for entrepreneurs to pick up and turn into awesomeness. How much data is there in the government? The thing that?s really amazing to me is that weather and GPS are just the tip of the iceberg. The analogy we use is the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they are in a giant warehouse wheeling in a box that has the latest treasure. That?s a really good metaphor for the data treasures that are held in the vaults of the government?data which taxpayers have paid for and which we should give back to them. We?re focusing on six sectors in particular: health, energy, education, public safety, global development and finance. How do you get innovators and entrepreneurs involved in the process? We do these ?Datapaloozas,? where folks get together to learn more about the data that?s available and to showcase what entrepreneurs have done with them. Just to show you how fast this can go, we actually started this effort when I was at HHS with something called Healthy Initiative in 2010. We kicked it off by inviting 45 very skeptical entrepreneurs into a room and saying, ?Here?s a bunch of data we have. What do you think?? Ninety days later 20-plus new innovations were showcased. It not only inspired entrepreneurs to do innovations of their own but also inspired people who own data inside the government to realize the value of putting it out there. Two years later in June 2012 we had a Health Datapalooza that drew 1,600 entrepreneurs?and several hundred entrepreneurs who were angry they couldn?t get in. What were some of the products that were showcased at the Health Datapalooza? Two hundred and thirty?plus companies had gone through an American Idol?style contest for the right to present. Most of these companies have been founded in the last 18 to 24 months, all leveraging open data to actually do something remarkable in health care. An example is Pete Hudson, who started a company called iTriage. The mobile app took a bunch of data around where all the doctors are, like GPS for health care providers. As a user, you can punch in your symptoms and it tells you based on the GPS and the data you punched in who the best local providers are that can help you. It?s been downloaded nine million times and has literally saved people?s lives. Do you keep track of how the data is used? No. The data is completely free, there are no conditions, there are no agreements to sign, no registration process?you just take it and do amazing things with it. One example is Google. I remember Bryan Sivak, my successor at as CTO at HHS, called me one day and said, ?Go to Google, and type in ?aspirin.? It?ll make you really happy.? I did, and then?boom!?it pops up on the right-hand side next to the search results, a whole bunch of government-sourced scientific data about aspirin. Google has done it for every single drug, leveraging our national medical API?s. Best of all, I had no idea they were doing it. All great innovation ecosystems are chaotic, self-propelled and out of control. And I think we?re getting to that point where open-data ecosystems are at that happy place. You started another program, called the Presidential Innovation Fellows. What is that about? It allows us to bring in amazing people from the outside to complement the people on the inside. They operate in start-up mode: small, agile teams to come up with a minimal viable product and then engage with the customer as soon as they can. What were some of the innovations that have come out of the fellowship program? One was called Blue Button for America, which is all about enabling Americans to securely download their own heath information wherever they might be. There is also a project called MyUSA, which deals with the fact we have 24,000 Web sites across the U.S. government?our Web presence is organized the way the government is organized, which is to say incomprehensible. So MyUSA has built a prototype platform that helps you access and use the services and information. Overall, how would you describe the release of data? It?s an instantiation of one of our favorite laws of the universe, called Joy?s Law. From Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who famously said, ?No matter who you are, most of the smartest people in the world work for somebody else.? The whole idea behind open data is to say, look, we don?t know anything about the data. We don?t have the money or the expertise to do anything, so why don?t we just open it up to the people who paid for it already, and they will invent all kinds of things. Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
Intel NUC review: a little desktop PC that holds big promise
More Info
The name says it all. Late last year, Intel quietly introduced the Next Unit of Computing (NUC): a miniature, barebones desktop PC that represents a modern take on the traditional beige box. The NUC sits a mere two inches tall and comes nestled within a 4-inch square chassis. It also retails for just shy of $300. Don't let its diminutive size or price fool you, though. The Core i3 system is speedy, stable and more than capable of handling day-to-day computing tasks. Yes, it's a hell of a departure from the noisy monstrosities we lusted after just a few years ago. And it's a lot quieter, too.
Before you get too excited, though, let's temper that enthusiasm just a bit. As with any bare-bones kit, you'll need to install your own memory, storage, wireless networking components and operating system. In other words, unless you're willing to get your hands a bit dirty, the NUC isn't for you. And then there's the question of its price, which becomes a lot less tempting once you factor in the laundry list of necessary components. So, is the NUC deserving of its "Next Unit of Computing" title? Let's explore this question together.
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/s1Z6gt7uMb0/
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Beef Up a Too-Short Resume with Detailed Accomplishments and Volunteer Service
Recruiters only read your resume for about six seconds before moving on, but if you've been unemployed or you're fresh out of school looking for work experience, your resume may be so bare that six seconds is long enough. Here's how to spice it up with useful data that'll help you land a job.
Whether you've worked at the same company forever, or you're stuck in the old catch-22 that you can't get a job without experience (but you can't get experience without a job), don't look at a too-short resume as a drawback. It can actually be a huge advantage over other job hunters. You have room to go into detail about your accomplishments and experiences at the jobs you've had. For example, don't just list "managed 15 projects from start to finish," you have room to get into the details of those projects, and what "managed" really means, whether that includes controlling the budget, managing people, developing schedules and timelines, and so on.
Also, include any volunteer experience you may have. Volunteer work says a lot about a candidate and can go a long way, especially if the skills you used or learned are relevant to the job you're looking for. Plus, volunteering can help you learn the skills employers want. If you're unemployed or looking for new work, volunteering at nights or on weekends can be a fast track to a better job. For more resume-bolstering tips, hit the link below.
From One Paragraph to One Page: How to Beef Up Your Resume | The Daily Muse via Idealist Careers
Photo made using Vartanov Anatoly (Shutterstock) and White Studio (Shutterstock).
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The humble beginnings of the cash register
NEW YORK (AP) ? Imagine a store without a cash register and no other accurate ways to quickly tally up daily sales. That was the case for all retail establishments before the 1880s. Most store owners were left in the dark about whether they were making a profit or loss ? and many suffered since it was easy for sales clerks to steal from the cash drawer.
That all changed with the invention of the cash register following the Civil War by a little-known saloon owner, setting into motion decades of innovation. Here, a look at the history of the cash register and some highlights at NCR, formerly known as the National Cash Register Co., which helped to make the machine ubiquitous at stores across the country starting in the early 1900s:
?1879: James Ritty, a saloon owner in Dayton, Ohio, patents a machine with a mechanism that's inspired from the apparatus that counts the spins of an ocean liner's propeller in its engine room. The so-called "incorruptible cashier" was the first mechanical cash register and had metal keys with denominations pressed into them to indicate the amount of the sale. There was a bell to ring up sales.
?1880-1883: Ritty's mechanical register catches the attention of John H. Patterson, a businessman, who purchased several machines for his general store in Coalton, Ohio. He buys several more for his retail coal business in Dayton, Ohio.
1884: Patterson bought the rights to Ritty's invention from Jacob H. Eckert, who had purchased the rights from Ritty. The price: $6,500. He renamed the company the National Cash Register Co. from the National Manufacturing Co. and started to put the registers into production. That company is now known as NCR, the global technology firm.
1888-1895: Eighty-four companies sell cash registers but only three actually survived long-term. Patterson, who aggressively bought out his competition and had a flair for sales, sets up an inventions department to create bigger and better thief-proof registers. He opened the first training program for his sales people.
1902: The cash register offers shopkeepers cumulative totals and can give an audit trail of transactions. That helps businesses collect market research data.
1906: Charles Kettering, researcher for the National Cash Register Co., designs the first register powered by an electric motor.
1915: The cash register, dressed in fancy cast-metal cases, became an essential tool in nearly every retail establishment. The registers were made of different materials including brass, cast-iron and wood. National Cash Register ran the largest brass foundry in the world during that period. By 1915, more than 1.5 million cash registers were sold.
1960s: The retail industry shifts to electronic registers.
Early 1970s: National Cash Register introduces the first cash register that's part of the store's entire computer system. At the same time, National Cash Register introduces a bar coding scanning system to be used with the machine.
1974: The National Cash Register changes its name to NCR Corp. It makes the first bar code scanners.
1991: NCR acquired by AT&T
1994: NCR name changes to AT&T GIS by the end of 1996.
1995: AT&T GIS changes its name back to NCR Corp. in anticipation of being spun off to AT&T shareholders by January 1997 as an independent, publicly traded company.
1998: NCR installs first self-checkout system at a Ball's Hen House grocery store in Kansas City, Missouri.
2003: Self-checkout areas become mainstream at many grocery stores and other discounters.
2012: NCR launches a new software program that runs on Apple's iPad that's connected to the keyboard at the cash register counter or can be detached and used as a mobile checkout device.
_________
Source: NCR Corp. and Museum of American Heritage
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Saturday, March 23, 2013
FAA to close 149 air traffic control towers to meet required budget cut
Jim Urquhart / REUTERS
Annette Abplanalp, an air traffic control specialist who works for Serco Inc., watches plane traffic from the control tower at the Ogden-Hinckley Airport in Ogden, Utah, in this file photo taken March 11. The Federal Aviation Administration will close 149 federal contract air traffic control towers, including Ogden, beginning April 7.
By Jason Keyser, The Associated Press
CHICAGO --?Under orders to trim hundreds of millions of dollars from its budget, the Federal Aviation Administration released a final list Friday of 149 air traffic control facilities that it will close at small airports around the country starting early next month.
The closures will not force the shutdown of any of those airports, but pilots will be left to coordinate takeoffs and landings among themselves over a shared radio frequency with no help from ground controllers under procedures that all pilots are trained to carry out.
The plan has raised concerns since a preliminary list of facilities was released a month ago. Those worries include the impact on safety and the potential financial effect on communities that rely on airports as key economic engines for attracting businesses and tourists.
"We will work with the airports and the operators to ensure the procedures are in place to maintain the high level of non-towered airports," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement.
The FAA is being forced to trim $637 million for the rest of the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. The agency said it had no choice but to subject most of its 47,000 employees, including tower controllers, to periodic furloughs and to close air traffic facilities at small airports with lighter traffic. The changes are part of the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, which went into effect March 1.
All of the airports targeted for tower shutdowns have fewer than 150,000 total flight operations per year. Of those, fewer than 10,000 are commercial flights by passenger airlines.
Airport directors, pilots and others in the aviation sector have argued that stripping away an extra layer of safety during the most critical stages of flight will elevate risks and at the very least slow years of progress in making the U.S. aviation network the safest in the world.
Airlines have yet to say whether they will continue offering service to airports that lose tower staff. Any scaling back of passenger service could have major economic impact for communities.
Mark Hanna, director of the Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield, Ill., says without ground controllers as backup the risk to operate "goes up exponentially," especially at airports like his, which have such a broad mix of aircraft types: everything from privately operated Piper Cubs to the larger passenger planes of United and American airlines.
That an aviation sector as sensitive as air traffic control could become subject to political brinkmanship in Washington was especially frustrating, he said.
Hoping to escape the final cut, he and other airport directors were left to argue with the FAA about whether the closure of their facilities would adversely affect what the agency described in a letter as the "national interest."?
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Regency Travel and Tours unveils highlights of Qatar | News ...
As the burgeoning city of Qatar rapidly advances becoming ever more attractive to local, regional and international tourists, Regency Travel and Tours - named World?s Leading Travel Agency by the World Travel Awards in 2012 - has unveiled a new hand-guide to the country?s top excursions.
Regency Holidays, the leisure & tours division of Regency Travels and Tours, and a household name for holiday travel in Qatar is launching a new range of exciting serviced tour packages, allowing both locals and expats alike to discover the hidden treasures of Qatar ? 101 Things to do in Qatar.
The ?101 things to do in Qatar? product will offer a range of serviced packages under History, Culture, Adventure, Entertainment, Water Sports, Shopping and Leisure. Whether you?re a Doha resident looking for a fun family weekend or a traveller in transit searching for a spot of culture, Regency Travel and Tours tailored packages and 24 hour booking service make discovering Doha easy.
From afternoons of adventure in your own private desert camp to an evening of romantic dining at a sunken desert dinner table, carved from the sands of the Arabian dunes. See a falcon race across the sky after its prey or take a turn through history at the Museum of Islamic Art. Stroll through Souq Waqif on a hot Doha day and haggle with the spice merchants, watch a wonderful sunset splinter across the Arabian Sea from the deck of your own private Dhow, listen to tales of the undiscovered ocean from the original pearl divers.
From jet skiing, to fishing and horseback riding choose any one of the 101 Things to do in Doha and discover the city as you?ve never seen it, through the eyes of the locals who know best.
101 Things to do in Qatar is the brain child of Regency Travel and Tours, birthed from 26 years of experience as the leading tour operator in the country. As one of the key ambassadors for inbound and outbound tourism in Qatar to both international and local traders, it was only natural that Regency Travel and Tours progress Qatar?s vision 2022 goals to market the country to the next level.
By positioning Qatar as an ideal cultural and luxury leisure destination for individual and family travellers the new range of affordable packages designed by the local Qatari community outlines the numerous opportunities Qatar holds for entertainment under the 101 Things to do in Qatar brand.?
The core objective of this new brand is to expose the possibilities for family and independent entertainment by educating the public and tourism faculties with a series of pamphlets and brochures highlighting prime locations, activities, camps, outings, trainings and recreations.
With an emphasis on quality and service, Regency Holidays will roll-out their new campaign from March 2013 with a series of trademarked red ?101 Things to do in Qatar? branded flyer stands, soon to be available in hotels, cafes, restaurants, shopping malls and gas stations across the country; offering free city-guide brochures to the public, inviting them to experience the city?s best entertainment and excursions.
On a mission to educate the public the Regency Holidays team will be inspiring the industry with a branded road show, enhancing the knowledge of hotel concierges, and sub-agents in the local market with the full list of ?101 Things to do in Qatar?; equipping them with the perfect tool to sell the experience to travellers who might be curious about what the country has to offer in the way of entertainment. With packages created from as short as a two hour shopping blitz to a day of overnight desert camping anything can be easily and affordably arranged through Regency Holidays, depending on the client?s desires and availability. By training these key bodies in the local tourism industry Regency Holidays believe they will be able to provide a better service to visiting guests from neighboring GCC countries and international travellers by giving them a richer and more meaningful experience of Qatar.
The new campaign will involve heavy social media plugs and presence on the recently re-launched website,? www.RegencyHolidays.com and on Facebook, in an effort to captivate a wider audience, promoting the product extensively as the ?101 Things to do in Qatar? gathers momentum and champions itself firmly as the countries number leading city-guide. In 2012 Qatar was named World?s Leading Business Travel Destination by the World Travel Awards.
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Source: http://www.breakingtravelnews.com/news/article/regency-travel-and-tours-unveils-highlights-of-qatar/
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BBC commissions first iPlayer-exclusive drama, sees which way the wind is blowing
A few weeks ago, the BBC began to ask "Where Next?" and just like magic, it's now revealing its future direction. The corporation is commissioning its first strand of original dramas that'll air exclusively on its iPlayer VOD service. The deal's rather minor, given that it'll feature six short films in two years that are aimed at BBC Three's "youth" audience, but we can't imagine this won't be followed by something meatier down the line. Perhaps we could see the corporation remaking its seminal series House of Cards... oh.
Filed under: HD
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/22/bbc-commissions-first-online-dramas-for-iplayer/
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