Archive | August, 2009

Cellphone Use Linked to Brain Cancer

August 26, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

cancer

A new report Cellphone and Brain Tumors – 15 Reasons for Concern states that:

Studies, independent of industry, consistently show there is a “significant”  risk of  brain tumors from cellphone use.

Some of the findings published in the report include:

  • For every 100 hours of cellphone use, the risk of brain cancer increases by 5%
  • For every year of cellphone use, the risk of brain cancer increases by 8%
  • After 10 or more years of digital cellphone use, there was a 280% increased risk of brain cancer
  • For digital cellphone users who were teenagers or younger when they first starting using a cellphone, there was a 420% increased risk of brain cancer.

The full report is available online here.

General Interest, Trends
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US States With More then 10% Unemployment

August 22, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments


Michigan 15.20%
Rhode Island 12.40%
Oregon 12.20%
South Carolina 12.10%
Nevada 12%
California 11.60%
Ohio 11.10%
North Carolina 11%
District of Columbia 10.90%
Kentucky 10.90%
Tennessee 10.80%
Indiana 10.70%
Florida 10.60%
Illinois 10.30%
Alabama 10.10%
Georgia 10.10%

Ref: Is Your State’s Unemployment System in Danger?

depression 2.0, Economy, General Interest, Jobs, Obama, Trends, Unemployment, United States, US
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Carleton and Ottawa University Publish World Leading Research on Zombie Plagues

August 18, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments


A recently published research paper from professors at Carleton and Ottawa University has determined that

A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.

The research is said to have possible real-life applications to modeling allegiance to political parties.

The full text of this world leading research is available online – When Zombies Attack

For those looking for more practical advice:

Check out this app to spread word of the coming Zombie outbreak – ZOMBIEGRAM.

Canada, General Interest, Government, Government Policy, Ottawa, Universities
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JobNob – Linking Unemployed and Startups?

August 15, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

I like watching what is going on in Silicon Valley in general.  There are always good tech and trend insights.  But there are also some very innovative ideas related to social innovation.
For instance there is the “JobNob” events being held in the valley.  JobNob links unemployed people with start-ups looking for volunteers to give a win-win to both.   The JobNob pitch is below:
Come “Jobnob” with cool new startups and other job seekers at this informal networking happy hour where unemployed people who want to keep their skills sharp are matched up with startups that could use their help.
  • Bummed Out Job Seekers – are you willing to volunteer at least 5 hours a week for a startup? Help out a startup and you’ll get a leg up on the competition, keep your skills sharp and have some good experience to put on your resume. And when the giant gears of the economy start churning again, you could well be one of the first ones back on the payroll.
  • Cash Strapped Startups – are you willing to buy a smart, talented, unemployed person a drink? Come with one or two specific projects that you need accomplished and we’ll help you find the perfect person to get the job done. And if you get funded you can always hire them!

They have run three JobNob events so far and have two more scheduled for August and September.

Related information and press coverage is available here.

This would be a great program to have running in Ottawa.  Organizations such as Lead to Win, OCRI,  The Ottawa Network, CATA or Ottawa Talent Initiative would be good sponsor organizations to make this happen locally.

Best practices, Creative Class, depression 2.0, Economy, Entreprenuerism, General Interest, Innovation, Jobs, Local Start-ups, Opportunities, Ottawa, Ottawa Start-ups, Regional Economic Development, Silicon Valley, Technology, Trends, Unemployment
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Government 2.0

August 15, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

Tim O’Reilly spoke at http://www.aifestival.org about Government 2.0.   According to People and Places:

He advocated enabling four types of interaction:

  • Government to citizen – providing services and information to citizens
  • Citizen to government – citizens report on probelms that need government assistance
  • Citizen to citizen – not every problem needs to be solved by government
  • Government to government – we need better cooperation within government agencies

Tim suggests that there are some lessons from the technology space that could be useful in building Government 2.0

Build open, expandable systems

In open government this might mean open, portable health records, or open data that allows competition by third parties on government contracts.

Build simple systems and let them evolve

Simple systems like the Internet Protocol can act like hourglass models – they run on a diversity of systems, and support a diversity of applications around a simple protocol.

Design for cooperation

The notion of governance via loosely coordinated groups is a Jeffersonian one. And a system like the Internet domain name system looks decidedly Jeffersonian.

Learn from your users

Google was late to the game in mapping. But Google is used by 45% of all mashups online. That’s because when innovators started building mashups of Craigslist and Google Maps data, Google didn’t shut the door, but hired the first guy to build a mashup, and then released an API to make the task easier.

Lower the barriers to experimentation

The government tends to treat projects like the Apollo 11 rocket launch: “Failure is not an option.” It should be. We fail all the time, and we need to learn from it.

Build a culture of measurement

“If it works, do more, if it doesn’t, stop doing it.” We need to watch how our systems succeed and fail, and build systems that respond to user stimuli.

Throw open the doors to partners

Tim celebrates the iPhone ap store, suggesting that it worked vastly better than more controlled models for aplication development on the Blackberry or Nokia phones. Governments need to stop using tools like earmarks, sole source licensing, and no-bid contracts, which lead to a less open ecosystem.

Fixing complex problems requires figuring out what government needs to do, what private entites can do and what coordinated citizens can do. If we build systems that allow all these behaviors, we’ll see a great deal of positive change through Government 2.0

Related materials on Government 2.0:

Best practices, Government, Technology, Trends, United States

Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communications

August 15, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

Computing, Creative Class, General Interest, Information Technology, Innovation, Networking, New Media, Technology, Traditional Media, Trends, Web 2.0
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Emerging Technologies

August 15, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

The Gartner “Hype Cycle” illustrates the growth, maturity and adoption of technologies.  It can be used to determine whether to invest in types of tech – technologies with high user benefit and low time to mainstream acceptance are ripe for investment and implementation, while technologies with minimal user benefit and a long time until mainstream acceptance should be approached with “extreme caution.”

Commercialization, Entreprenuerism, Innovation, Open Source, Technology, Web 2.0
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50 most populous metro areas ranked by job postings per capita

August 14, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

Rankings Second Quarter 2009

50 most populous metro areas ranked by job postings per capita.
Rank (Last Qtr Rank) Metropolitian Area Job Postings Per 1000 People
1 (1) Washington, DC 133
2 (2) Baltimore, MD 90
3 (3) San Jose, CA 80
4 (7) Austin, TX 56
5 (6) Hartford, CT 54
6 (9) Seattle, WA 53
7 (8) Salt Lake City, UT 52
8 (11) Denver, CO 50
9 (5) Boston, MA 49
10 (4) Las Vegas, NV 49
11 (15) Charlotte, NC 49
12 (10) San Francisco, CA 47
13 (12) Milwaukee, WI 41
14 (30) Atlanta, GA 40
15 (13) Cincinnati, OH 39
16 (14) Oklahoma City, OK 39
17 (22) Orlando, FL 37
18 (23) Richmond, VA 37
19 (24) Jacksonville, FL 36
20 (16) Dallas, TX 36
21 (18) Phoenix, AZ 36
22 (19) Columbus, OH 36
23 (21) San Antonio, TX 36
24 (20) Tampa, FL 35
25 (31) Kansas City, MO 34
26 (34) Indianapolis, IN 34
27 (33) Sacramento, CA 34
28 (17) San Diego, CA 33
29 (27) Philadelphia, PA 33
30 (35) Nashville, TN 33
31 (29) St. Paul, MN 33
32 (26) Louisville, KY 33
33 (40) New Orleans, LA 32
34 (25) Houston, TX 32
35 (28) Cleveland, OH 32
36 (37) Providence, RI 31
37 (36) Pittsburgh, PA 31
38 (38) Memphis, TN 30
39 (32) Virginia Beach, VA 30
40 (44) St. Louis, MO 30
41 (39) Portland, OR 30
42 (42) New York, NY 28
43 (41) Birmingham, AL 28
44 (46) Chicago, IL 27
45 (43) Riverside, CA 26
46 (45) Los Angeles, CA 24
47 (47) Buffalo, NY 24
48 (48) Rochester, NY 19
49 (49) Miami, FL 17
50 (50) Detroit, MI 15

From http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends.jsp

Business, Economy, Jobs, Trends, Unemployment, United States
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Purple Forge is Hiring

August 12, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

Purple Forge has two immediate openings:

  • iPhone developer (full time)
  • Website developer (part time)

Visit http://www.leadtowin.ca/jobs/app/ for more information.

Business, Canada, Entreprenuerism, General Interest, Information Technology, Innovation, Jobs, Local Start-ups, Opportunities, Ottawa, Ottawa Start-ups, Technology, Trends
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Canadian Venture Capital Investment Down 42%

August 12, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

The CVCA has released their Q2 2009 Venture Investment data.

  • Venture investment down 42% from 2008  - $179M in 2009 compared to $309 at the same point in 2008.
  • Average deal size decreased to $1.9M from $2.9M.

Canada, Entreprenuerism, Venture Capital
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COBOL still going strong after more then 50 years?

August 11, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

I took a COBOL course while in University (not sure why I did at the time, other then I found programming languages interesting (and still do)) and also subsequently took a part-time job as teaching assistant for COBOL courses back in the ’80′s.   Unfortunately I  never had occasion to use my COBOL programming skills in any meaningful way — although I found the database/records orientation of the language to be useful in other contexts.

I was recently surprised to read that COBOL – one of the industry’s oldest programming languages – still “equates to 80 percent of the world’s actively used code,” according to Stephen Kelley of Micro Focus.

 

Best practices, Business, Computing, General Interest, Information Technology, Technology, Trends
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Lab on a Chip

August 11, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

This is another cool technology – a lab on a chip that does over 1,024 different chemical reactions in parallel.

labonchip

The technical paper describing the technology is available online.

Business, Commercialization, Computing, Entreprenuerism, Information Technology, Innovation, Technology
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Touchable Holography… One Step Closer to The Holodeck?

August 11, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

The video below gives a very interesting demonstration of a holographic-based user interface.   It is particularly interesting since they have integrated ultrasonic sound to provide a tactile component to the user interaction with the holographic interface.

Computing, Information Technology, Innovation, New Media, Technology
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OBJ Articles on Nortel

August 1, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

For you ex-Nortel and Nortel types – in case you haven’t seen it – Elizabeth Howell at the Ottawa Business Journal is running a three-part story on Nortel, the first two installments have been published (unfortunately the online versions don’t have the timeline graphics of the print version):

Canada, General Interest, Nortel, Open Source, Opportunities, Regional Economic Development
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Nortel Folk – Take a Look at Lead to Win!

August 1, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

If you are currently working in Nortel, Mitel or any of the other local tech companies that are under stress and under the threat of downsizing, then you are probably thinking about your “Plan B”.     If your “Plan B” involves launching your own business, then you should take a close look at the Lead to Win program.

Past successful Nortel alumnus who have participanted in Lead to Win have included: Chuck Colford (Trigence (aka AppZero), Congruance IT), David Vicary (Nakina, Weyes Eyes), Jerry Everett (onconference), Brian Hurley (Liquid Computing, Purple Forge), and many others.

Lead to Win is now accepting applications for it’s 4th session which will occur later this year (Lead to Win is currently nailing down the exact date and will announce it soon).

The program is focused on helping enterpreneurs develop and grow their businesses.

The program is free to qualified participants.

Program details, application process, testimonials, FAQ’s, training materials, etc are available online at www.leadtowin.ca.

If you know others who might be interested in the program, please send them to www.leadtowin.ca!

Business, business incubators, Commercialization, Ecosystems, Entreprenuerism, General Interest, Information Technology, Innovation, Innovation Hub, Jobs, Local Start-ups, Microbusiness, Nortel, Opportunities, Ottawa, Ottawa Start-ups, Technology, Unemployment
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GUI Mock Up Software Tools

August 1, 2009 by Brian Hurley 3 Comments

I spent some time recently looking at GUI mock up and associated requirements management applications.  I grouped the tools into three categories: general purpose tools that could be used for mock ups, specialized tools oriented towards mock-ups and simulation, and hosted services for mock-ups and collaboration with teams and customers.

iPhoneExamples

My research so far has identified the following -

General Tools for GUI Mock Ups

Specialized Tools for GUI Mock Ups

Relative to requirements management, I have never been a big fan of specialized tools (and there are a lot of them on the market, many with big price-tags) and have tended to favor tools such as MS Word, FreeMind mind mapping, Excel and powerpoint as means to capture, analyze and organize requirements.

Still some more research to do,  so if anyone has any suggestions based on their experiences please let me know!

Also see:

UPDATE:

HELLO THERE!

Are you an experienced User Experience designer?  Drop me a line (brian@purpleforge.com) – we are always on the look-out for good people to work with on new projects at Purple Forge.

Like Zombies?  Take a look at this!

Best practices, Computing, Creative Class, General Interest, How To's, Information Technology, Innovation, Open Source
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Flights as Art

August 1, 2009 by Brian Hurley 0 Comments

This website has some very interesting artwork that has been derived from the flight paths of airlines.

General Interest

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