Thoughtful thoughts for 2012

HBR article on: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/five_things_you_should_stop_do.html

Areaware

Very cool items: http://areaware.com/productlist.asp

Robotic kids

There are numerous kits available, best sources for choosing one would be http://www.pololu.com/ [pololu.com] , http://www.trossenrobotics.com/ [trossenrobotics.com] , http://www.robotshop.com/ [robotshop.com] ,http://www.lynxmotion.com/ [lynxmotion.com] , http://www.makershed.com/ [makershed.com] and a bunch of others. http://sparkfun.com/ [sparkfun.com] and http://adafruit.com/ [adafruit.com] for more general electronics components

Cant really recommend one in particular, as it depends on what you want to do. There are several categories : 2wheel differential drive bases, legged hexapods, 4wd bases, even bipeds and robotic arms.

If you get one that is designed to be Arduino-compatible, and can take any number of Arduino expansion shields, you will have endless possibilities. I'd say easiest starting point is a complete 2WD kit with some accessory sensors. This is a nice one http://www.makershed.com/product_p/mkseeed7.htm [makershed.com] , comes with motors and all. Just pick a "mainboard" and motor driver shield and you are good to go.

Fischer Technik is an absolute winner here.
Excellent for teenagers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischertechnik [wikipedia.org]

It goes well beyond what lego mindstorms has to offer.
True 6D connections, and even has stuff like pneumatics!
http://www.robotmatrix.org/Fischertechnik-Pneumatic-Robot.htm [robotmatrix.org]

Bram Stolk
http://stolk.org/HoverBiker/ [stolk.org]

I have about 10+ years of experience with the FIRST Robotics competition. For an "all inclusive robotics" kit you will need to increase your budget. However, electronics and software kits are in budget. Here's my list:

1. Innovation FIRST's Vex Robtic system. [vexrobotics.com] This is hands down the best system available. The kit is basic enough that you can get something working while also open enough that the possibilities are limitless. You can interface your own custom circuits with it. It comes with default software in source code form that you can modify to whatever you would like. It also has mechanical kits where you can build almost anything. It's also not flimsy. This is one of the most expensive options, but you can start around $300 and add on for years.

2. Lego Mindstorms [lego.com]I would reccomend this kit for someone younger (8 or so.) It's not quite as extensible mechanically or electrically but is easier to use.

With those two out of the way and actually answering your post based on the budget, I would recommend a Basic Stamp kit from Parallax [parallax.com]. The kits are aimed at learning electronics and software. They're not a lot to them mechanically, you need additional parts and know-how for that. The kits are low cost and require you to learn. I cut my teeth on the Basic Stamp 2 (BS2) and I turned out to be a successful software engineer.

Map Reduce

http://search.slashdot.org/story/11/12/19/0154227/mapreduce-for-the-masses-with-common-crawl-data

Google Chrome to be #2

Google's Chrome browser is set to be #2 and what is interesting to me is Larry Page's comment in the article: "...it might not be clear how Google can make money from Chrome..." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204012004577071933883857786.html

What's #1 worth

Article on what #1 is worth in search results (SERP) has many relevant cites. One item stands out to me: the number of clicks to the number of searches:

In August of 2006 AOL leaked millions of search records. Some SEOs scoured through this data to look at click data by ranking. A comment on Jim Boykin's blog reveals the percent of clicks for each position for 9,038,794 searches and 4,926,623 clicks. Donna Fontenot shared the relative click volume of lower ranked results relative to the top ranked site.


4,926,623 / 9,038,794 = 0.545053134

So 54.5% of searches on Google result in a click. Alternatively, 45.5% of search do not result in a click. I think this is an important data point to keep in mind when dealing with metrics.

Leadership today

Peggy Noonan's Article commenting on Steve Job's thoughts on innovation in companies.  Steve believed that company's stop focusing on creating value and focus on salesman and accounting.  These are ideas in Steven Denning's Radical Management.

500 algorithm change per year

According to the Google post, there are approximately 500 changes to their search algorithm a year.  Tough work for an SEO...

Usability

Recent post on various usability studies: http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-usability-tips-based-on-research-studies/

Reboot management

David Carr had an interesting article on management philosophy's.  Showcasing the winner of a contest for an organization built around personal comments to each other with no formal titles. Interesting and not that different than PDP process.

Multitasking

Fun and entertaining post to read on multitasking and work:
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/11/four-destructive-myths-most-co.html

While I've never been a fan of 'multitasking' for the reasons Tony points out, there are many examples of where 'multitasking' works (just take a look at the comments).  In the end, I believe how you define 'multitasking' determines if people can effectively utilize 'multitasking'.

I would have liked some links to the research Tony used to determine they are myths.

Forrester Evaluates Enterprise Search Landscape

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/forrester-evaluates-enterprise-search-landscape-none-open-source-012749.php

Vivisimo is leader, IBM is bottom, and Open Source Search (OSS) not evaluated.  Ratings have qualitative elements.

Killer Insights

Chris Murphy of InformationWeek posted some very good points from CIOs at the IW 500 conference.


So as a CIO, are you immersed in a six-month bakeoff to decide on the right content management or email system? Lane's implication: You're doing the wrong job -- Ray Lane, Hewlett-Packard chairman


Great IT teams today are asking the question: What does the end customer need from us? -- Chris Murphy

"Many of us have been educated out of our creative confidence." -- Sir Ken Robinson

Creativity is: "unique ideas that have value."

-- Sir Ken Robinson

"Your best friend is the CMO. That's where the action is really happening." -- Robert Urwiler, Vail Resorts CIO

“The only thing we were going to be wed to is being open minded” -- Paul DePodesta, New York Mets VP of player development and scouting

"Social media points us in the direction of where we need to do more research." -- Jared Anderson, Best Buy senior manager of customer experience research

"...hackers searched for and exploited one of just two ColdFusion-based websites the lab still had. Companies often don't keep up the attention and technical skills needed to keep those small systems secure" -- Jerry Johnson, CIO, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

How to deal with contextual synomys

Just read an interesting post on Lucid Imagination's Blog from Nicholas Chase:
How do you deal with contextual synonyms? For example, “bow” and “ribbon” are synonyms — unless you’re also looking for arrows.


That caught my attention and I read the entire post and slide show - highly recommend.

In short - how a company created an 'automated' testing method based on TREC and use it to tune relevance.  I for one would appreciate the release of SQUAT.

Faceted Search

Excellent blog post on faceted search by Tony Russell-Rose.

Metadata

Found a unique description to help describe what to use metadata for from Draves:

• what you should learn first if you don't understand this sub-unit or data
• what you should learn next if you do understand this sub-unit or data
• what other sub-units or data this piece of data is related to
• what kinds of people (jobs, industries, interest areas) might be interested in this subunit or data
• what kinds of courses this sub-unit or data might be used for

Draves, W., Coates, J.(2007). Nine Shift Work, life and education in the 21st century. LERN Books. River Falls, WI. ISBN: 1-57722-030-7