CIO

Apr 20 2009   3:05PM GMT

Selling the smart grid

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
smart grid, energy, green tech, utilities, electricity, CIO

“It turns out customers don’t actually want utilities to turn off their appliances.”
~ Mark Farber, Photon Consultants

Well, there’s a shock. In her post on Earth2Tech.com, Josie Garthwaite writes about the challenge of convincing consumers that smart grid technologies are actually in their best interests. Here’s an excerpt:

Making the smart grid’s most basic elements — two-way communication between utilities and energy users, advanced control systems and smart devices — appealing to consumers could be key to its success. So how can smart grid backers make the investment look more like a boon, and less like a boondoggle for those on the other side of the meter?

For many utilities, adding information technology and two-way controls to electronic devices and appliances represents a potential gold mine of efficiency and a workaround for building expensive new power plants. As Farber put it, “A button is as close to a dispatchable power plant that you can imagine.”

For consumers, however, the benefits of the smart grid have proven to be less obvious, despite promises that it will offer more insight and control over their energy use (and spending). “It turns out customers don’t actually want utilities to turn off their appliances,” said Farber, referring to the two-way control technology that would allow a utility to cut power use when demand strains supply.

If that translates to my espresso machine sputtering to a halt when I need it most… I’m not sure I could be convinced.

Mar 2 2009   1:56PM GMT

Closed-circuit TV “a high-tech Panopticon”

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
closed circuit television, CCTV, Panopticon, surveillance, privacy, Security, civil rights, CIO

In The Guardian, Paul Lewis writes about Westminister’s CCTV system: “Using the latest remote technology, the cameras rotate 360 degrees, 365 days a year, providing a hi-tech version of what the 18th century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham conceived as the ‘Panopticon’ - a space where people can be constantly monitored but never know when they are being watched.”

I remember the Panopticon from Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. (Disclosure: I read it for a philosophy course.) Foulcault believed that the effect of the Panopticon — if not the precise design — was pervasive throughout modern culture.

From Wikipedia:
The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the “sentiment of an invisible omniscience.”

250px-Panopticon.jpg

Bentham himself described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.” … Many modern prisons built today are built in a “podular” design influenced by the Panopticon design, in intent and basic organization if not in exact form. As compared to traditional “cellblock” designs, in which rectangular buildings contain tiers of cells one atop the other in front of a walkway along which correctional officers patrol, modern prisons are often decentralized and contain triangular or trapezoidal-shaped housing units known as “pods” or “modules” designed to hold between sixteen and fifty prisoners each. In these designs, cells are laid out in three or fewer tiers arrayed around either a central control station or a desk which affords a single correctional officer full view of all cells within either a 270° or 180° field of view (180° is considered a closer level of supervision). Control of cell doors, CCTV monitors, and communications are all conducted from the control station.

Feb 28 2009   8:14PM GMT

Would a results-only work environment make you more productive?

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
innovation, productivity, work place, ROWE, results-only work environment, business, CIO, human resources, employment, management

Last Friday we featured results-only work environment (ROWE) as our word of the day and I felt stirring within me feelings I’d almost forgotten. Feelings of hope, glimmers of possibility. Maybe even sanity…  I was thinking back to the first of January, when I was inspired by a fresh new year and a fresh new approach to work and — dare I say it? — work/life balance. For some reason, the first week of January everything seemed to be going to heck in a handbasket. Crises to deal with, fires to put out and damage to control for one thing or another. And somehow, the fresh energy of the new year had gotten stale. But then I was writing about the ROWE and there it was again…

Here’s how Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson describe the ROWE to Tim Ferris:

In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Currently, there are two authentic ROWEs—Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy Co, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small brokerage firm in New Richmond, WI. At both organizations, the old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.

Selling employees on the ROWE concept is not difficult. The issue is…

How to convince your boss

On their website, Ressler and Thompson have a pretty compelling list of reasons that your boss should be interested in giving the ROWE thing a try:

• PRODUCTIVITY – Get more work from existing workforce now
• RETENTION – Keep the talent you want; say goodbye to the talent that isn’t producing results
• ATTRACTION – Be a magnet for the best talent from all generations
• ELIMINATION OF WASTEFUL PRACTICES – Elimination of unnecessary tasks and processes; communication becomes more efficient and effective
• A WORKFORCE THAT’S FLUID, FLEXIBLE AND ACCOUNTABLE – Ability to perform in a more agile, 24/7 manner with clear, measurable goals for every employee
• OPTIMIZATION OF SPACE – No need for 1:1 workspace requirements or hoteling programs
• LIFE BALANCE FOR ALL – Environment that is inclusive and fair without the headache of managing a flexible work program
• IMPROVED EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT/MORALE/LOYALTY – Happy employees boost the bottom line, are more dedicated and produce better results
• GO GREEN – Reduce your impact on the environment by creating a culture where everyone uses common sense about where they get work done – whether from home, a coffee shop or library. Wherever. Whenever.

Ok now, Tim Ferris is the guy that wrote The 4-Hour Work Week so he may take an especially rosy view. I have no illusions that I could do my current job in four hours a day — let alone four hours a week. Still, Ferris raises some good points and has some good advice. For example, he suggests that if you’re trying to talk your boss into a ROWE, you sell her on a trial period instead of a complete revolution. Theory is that’s all it’ll take to convince her of the benefits.

That said, well, here it is lateish on a Saturday afternoon. And I’m tying up loose ends for work, posting to my work blog. Thinking back, again, to New Year’s Day, when I was doing the exact same thing. But, to be honest, I’m kind of in the mood for it. Come Tuesday afternoon, I might not be. And which time am I likely to get more done? I can tell you, unequivocally, that I’m at least twice as productive when the stars align properly and I actually want to work. Especially if I don’t flog myself to sit like a lump in front of the keyboard when the energy just isn’t there but, instead, take a little time to recharge.

And now my memory wanders a few years further back. I was on the phone with Paul Gillin just before I signed my first contract with TechTarget. We were talking about what the terms of my contract, what I would be expected to accomplish. “And beyond that,” he said, “We don’t care what you do. You do the work and you manage your own time.” Eminently sensible, I thought.

Gillin went on to say that they had no issues with people working from home. Then he chuckled — and, Reader, it was an evil chuckle — and explained that giving people control of their own time was absolutely the way to get the most work out of them.

Jan 14 2009   7:26AM GMT

IPv6 addresses - how many is that in numbers?

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Internet, IPv6, communications, CIO, quiz

IPv6 is our Word of the Day today. The big difference between it andIPv4 is the increase in address space. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits; IPv6 addresses are 128 bits. That’s a lot more, for sure, but what does it look like in numbers? What could we compare it to in real-world terms?

DevDevin did the math:

How many IP addresses does IPv6 support? Well, without knowing the exact implementation details, we can get a rough estimate based on the fact that it uses 128 bits. So 2 to the power of 128 ends up being 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 unique IP addresses.

How do you say that, though?  340 trillion, 282 billion, 366 million, 920 thousand, 938 — followed by 24 zeroes.  There’s no short way to say it in numbers without resorting to math. 

Here’s how Wikipedia expresses it:

The very large IPv6 address space supports a total of 2¹²⁸ (about 3.4×10³⁸) addresses - or approximately 5×10²⁸ (roughly 2⁹⁵) addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion (6.5×10⁹) people alive today. In a different perspective, this is 2⁵² addresses for every observable star in the known universe.

 Steve Leibson takes a shot at putting it in real world terms. It’s big — grains of sand don’t even enter into it. No, he’s got to take it to the atomic level. Here’s his conclusion:

So we could assign an IPV6 address to EVERY ATOM ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths. It isn’t remotely likely that we’ll run out of IPV6 addresses at any time in the future.

Rob Elamb takes a shot at expressing the number of possible IPv6 addresses in words:

First of all, he’s more precise with his numbers: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456

And he shows us how to say it:

340- undecillion
282- decillion
366- nonillion
920- octillion
938- septillion
463- sextillion
463- quintillion
374- quadrillion
607- trillion
431- billion
768- million
211- thousand
456

So, all words, that would look like:

Three hundred and forty undecillion, two hundred and eighty-two decillion, three hundred and sixty-six nonillion, nine hundred and twenty octillion, nine hundred and thirty-eight septillion, four hundred and sixty-three sextillion, four hundred and sixty-three quintillion, three hundred and seventy-four quadrillion, six hundred and seven trillion, four hundred and thirty-one billion, seven hundred and sixty-eight million, two hundred and eleven thousand, four hundred and fifty-six.

That’s a big number.  

IPv4 allowed for four billion IP addresses, which must have seemed like plenty at the time. I guess the assumption was that not everyone on the planet would want an IP address and nobody’s coffee maker or toaster would need one. Just goes to show you, you never know.

Jan 13 2009   1:18PM GMT

IPTV or Internet TV?

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Internet, IPTV, cable television, communications, CIO, Internet TV

When I selected IPTV for today’s Word of the Day, it was in response to seeing articles about iTV (Internet television) and assuming — silly me! — that it was the same thing.

Uh. No, as it turns out, they’re two competing delivery models. IPTV is like a replacement for cable TV and typically offered by the same carriers. And it isn’t always delivered over the Internet, as this Crash course in IPTV explains. However, I think I can say confidently that Internet TV is always delivered over the Internet. Robin Good explains the difference between Internet TV and IPTV in this post.

If this all seems unnecessarily complicated and difficult to untangle, maybe you should just wait. According to many Industry watchers, the two will eventually converge into a hybrid of some sort. What that will look like is still up in the air. Or will it be online?  

Dec 23 2008   3:26PM GMT

Skype’s 2008 — the good, the bad, the… back door?

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
VoIP, Mobile, telephony, communications, CIO, Skype

On FierceVoIP, Doug Mohney discusses the kind of year Skype’s had: 2008 Year in Review: Just Skype, Baby

Skype celebrated its fifth year of operation over the summer and now has more than 370 million registered users. The company brags that its peer-to-peer VoIP/IM/video client software is in use in nearly every country on the planet and that people have made more than 100 billion minutes worth of free Skype-to-Skype calls.

Further on in the post, Mohney mentions that Skype’s Chinese parter was discovered to be eavesdropping on customers and in this post, Mohney speculates about the possiblity that Skype has a built-in back door for precisely that purpose:

Rumors have been floating around on Skype selling a special listening device to interested governments and there has long been speculation about a back door to the program. Because Skype’s code and protocols are both proprietary and closed, security experts have long wondered what Skype is capable of and what risks may arise in deploying the software in an enterprise environment.

Dec 15 2008   1:25PM GMT

Seebeck effect demo

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
video, CIO, quiz, electronics

Dec 9 2008   6:17PM GMT

Jaguar and ECOphlex - Greening the data center, fast

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Uncategorized, data center, energy efficiency, green, environmentalism, HPC, high-performance computing, supercomputers

This video from Cray takes you on a tour of the ECOphlex cooling system at work in a data center.

Nov 30 2008   5:38PM GMT

Who could resist Fennec? It’s so cute!

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Uncategorized, messaging, wireless, Mobile, applications, video, social bookmarking, design, gadgets, social networking, CIO, demonstration, Mobile Computing, browsers, Fennec

Site director Margaret Rouse and I were IMing a couple of weeks ago, which we do a fair amount of because our “office” spans about 800 miles. We were discussing a definition for Fennec, Mozilla’s mobile version of the Firefox browser when suddenly she said, apropos of nothing I could discern, “It’s so cute!”

As you probably know, IM conversations are prone to the occasional missed step or dropped thread. I wondered briefly what she was talking about. A cute browser, I wondered? But I had faith… and then there it was, a link.  Here’s what I saw:

No denying, it’s cute. But I was still none the wiser. I knew that Margaret is a dog person and, in fact, has raised guide dogs. That’s a cute pup, I said. “What kind is it?” It’s a fennec, she told me. A little fox. (Comprehension was, you’ll be glad to hear, swift and, well, comprehensive: Big Firefox: full-sized fox mascot. Small verson: small fox mascot. Gotcha.)

At least at this point, the mobile adaptation of Firefox is named for a small, desert-dwelling fox. Here’s a video demo:

All clear? Me too. Now I wonder what this week's IMs will bring...

~ Ivy Wigmore 

Oct 15 2008   9:00AM GMT

What is Blog Action Day? A chance to help fight global poverty.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, small business, business, Web 2.0, media, Technology, Internet, useful, cool, culture, education, learning, free, academics, volunteer, green, event, entrepeneurship, resource, Development, tool, politics, blogging, buzz, science, communications

Blog Action Day is, according to its founders, “an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day.”

In 2007, the issue was the environment. In 2008, the theme is poverty.

By coordinating the efforts of many bloggers (more than 10,000 different sites, as of this morning), the organizers hope to galvanize improvement in the lots of the world’s poor. As measured by the World Bank, substantial improvements have been made since the 1980s.

Even so, one quarter of the world continues to subsist on less than $1.25/day.

Here’s what you can do to help:

• Participate in the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC). Just head over to laptopgiving.org.
• Tune in to BlogTalkRadio’s 12-hour Blog Action Day talkathon to discover how dozens of prominent bloggers and technologists will be helping in the effort.
• Support microlending efforts at Kiva.org. Learn more about microcredit, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in this Business Week article, “Can Technology Eliminate Poverty?
• Read WebTeacher’s post describing a social business to find out how this form of concerned commerce works.
• Donate to or participate in the development of the technologies described at PracticalAction.org. These include micro-hydro plants, small-scale wind generators, affordable solar lanterns and biogas plants.
• Learn more in online poverty resources listed on BlogActionDay.org.

Spread the word!