LifeStraw is the winner of this years World Changing Ideas Awards held by Saatchi and Saatchi. This award has been celebrating the ultimate in Innovation over the years. And this year it has honoured Simplicity in Innovation.
LifeStraw is a water filter built into a straw. It is mainly targetted for use in developing nations where an estimated 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. It is highly portable, just 25 cm, (less than 10 inches) long – reducing the need to travel long distances to central water wells. It requires no power or spare parts and can filter up to 700 litres of water - around one year’s supply. It turns even the dirtiest water into safe drinking water.
Imagine its utility when there is an emergency health situation post floods, quakes and other natural disasters!
Feb 26, 2008
Feb 25, 2008
Key Predictions for IT Organisations
Gartner recently published its report on Key Predictions for IT Organisations and Users in 2008 and beyond. The ones that affect my life are ordered below by decreasing importance:
· By 2012, at least one-third of business application software spending will be as service subscription instead of as product license. I wonder why Gartner is sounding so cautious about the 33%. As my CTO says it makes huge financial and technological sense for the customer (no bulk payments, no obsolete lines of code hanging about the warehouse) and the vendor (recurring income, better ways to innovate). For service providers like us, this just shows that we are in the right direction.
· By 2012, 50 per cent of traveling workers will leave their notebooks at home in favour of other devices. This prediction affects me two ways – as a laptop lugger it saves my shoulders, but as a business architect it adds an additional facet - One needs to necessarily gear all applications for greater portability across devices: mobile, laptop, blackberry, treo, and ‘Internet-centric pocketable devices at the sub-$400 level’.
· Through 2011, the number of 3-D printers in homes and businesses will grow 100-fold over 2006 levels. This is a VOW idea. It sounds sci-fi and the 3-D printer Gartner is speaking about is more like a manufacturing unit “ …a device that will carve the design out of a block of resin.” I haven’t seen a single one yet of a thing that’s going to grow 100 fold in three years time. Was 2006 figure 10 units…available in NASA labs etc?
· By 2011, suppliers to large global enterprises will need to prove their green credentials via an audited process to retain preferred supplier status. Even the Vatican does a tree penance. How long will the Enterprise be left behind?
· By 2012, 80 per cent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology. This implies that from here on, there need not be a greater outlay towards MS office each year, and the TCO is actually set to some down.
· By 2011, Apple will double its U.S. and Western Europe unit market share in Computers. Doubling the market share means capturing around 15% market. Impressive. But that shouldn’t bother me much as I don’t report to Bill Gates.
· By 2012, at least one-third of business application software spending will be as service subscription instead of as product license. I wonder why Gartner is sounding so cautious about the 33%. As my CTO says it makes huge financial and technological sense for the customer (no bulk payments, no obsolete lines of code hanging about the warehouse) and the vendor (recurring income, better ways to innovate). For service providers like us, this just shows that we are in the right direction.
· By 2012, 50 per cent of traveling workers will leave their notebooks at home in favour of other devices. This prediction affects me two ways – as a laptop lugger it saves my shoulders, but as a business architect it adds an additional facet - One needs to necessarily gear all applications for greater portability across devices: mobile, laptop, blackberry, treo, and ‘Internet-centric pocketable devices at the sub-$400 level’.
· Through 2011, the number of 3-D printers in homes and businesses will grow 100-fold over 2006 levels. This is a VOW idea. It sounds sci-fi and the 3-D printer Gartner is speaking about is more like a manufacturing unit “ …a device that will carve the design out of a block of resin.” I haven’t seen a single one yet of a thing that’s going to grow 100 fold in three years time. Was 2006 figure 10 units…available in NASA labs etc?
· By 2011, suppliers to large global enterprises will need to prove their green credentials via an audited process to retain preferred supplier status. Even the Vatican does a tree penance. How long will the Enterprise be left behind?
· By 2012, 80 per cent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology. This implies that from here on, there need not be a greater outlay towards MS office each year, and the TCO is actually set to some down.
· By 2011, Apple will double its U.S. and Western Europe unit market share in Computers. Doubling the market share means capturing around 15% market. Impressive. But that shouldn’t bother me much as I don’t report to Bill Gates.
Feb 22, 2008
Scribus
Downloaded this Open Source Desktop Publishing software, Scribus, for making a few neat pdf files. This is a wonderful product though on first use it didnt seem intuitive at all. To quote from its help manual..."First time users of page layout applications like Scribus can find starting out quite frustrating. The interface seems approachable and familiar enough, but when you make your beginning steps things often do not quite work as expected. Do not make the mistake of launching Scribus, opening a new document and expect to start typing. Making the most of an application like Scribus, requires a bit of understanding of the concepts of "workflow" in the page layout world. It might seem a bit arcane at first, but will pay off in the end."
It is a great tool for people to get acquainted wiht Desktop Publishing. This lead me to thinking about PDF and what was the need that spurred its evolution. It turns out that John Warncock had outlied it in his papaer "The Camelot Project"
To know more about whats happening with the PDF, these blogs are great Jim King's Blog, Adobe Developer Connection
It is a great tool for people to get acquainted wiht Desktop Publishing. This lead me to thinking about PDF and what was the need that spurred its evolution. It turns out that John Warncock had outlied it in his papaer "The Camelot Project"
To know more about whats happening with the PDF, these blogs are great Jim King's Blog, Adobe Developer Connection
Feb 19, 2008
Mahalo
Mahalo (Hawaiian for 'Thank You') is "...is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Our search results only include great links".
It could be seen as a confluence of Digg, Wiki and Google, far out-doing what each of those three do individually. Of course it has its drawbacks, considering that it is human-powered, still in Beta, and a lot remains to be seen as to how the search results keep pace with constant changes.
While Jason Hiner heralds it as the future of Search, I tend to disagree. Even for the purpose of research oriented information gathering, Mahalo has a huge amount of drawbacks. I tried the term 'Prince', with the intention of finding more information about the program that converts XML to PDF. Heres what Mahalo came up with...all results related to the singer Prince.
Google got to princexml.com at least as the ninth in its list.
So, I think it will be quite some time before this human powered mechanism can arrive at a dependable database of search results. Till then it is Google for me.
It could be seen as a confluence of Digg, Wiki and Google, far out-doing what each of those three do individually. Of course it has its drawbacks, considering that it is human-powered, still in Beta, and a lot remains to be seen as to how the search results keep pace with constant changes.
While Jason Hiner heralds it as the future of Search, I tend to disagree. Even for the purpose of research oriented information gathering, Mahalo has a huge amount of drawbacks. I tried the term 'Prince', with the intention of finding more information about the program that converts XML to PDF. Heres what Mahalo came up with...all results related to the singer Prince.
Google got to princexml.com at least as the ninth in its list.
So, I think it will be quite some time before this human powered mechanism can arrive at a dependable database of search results. Till then it is Google for me.
Feb 18, 2008
Feb 15, 2008
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