SuccessLogbook

Google Goggles Sudoku Demo

Faster than the world champion Sudoku

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rdftOloAH9Q

Magic with 3 IPODs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jvXqXcVF5S8

Some things are simply amazing.

Plenty of robots can fly, but none can fly like a real bird. That is, until Markus Fischer and his team of engineers at the German technology company, Festo, developed SmartBird, an avian robot that can take off and fly through the air by simply flapping its wings.

SmartBird was inspired by the herring gull, Larus argentatus. It is a bit larger than this gull species, with a two-metre wingspan and a carbon-fiber “skeleton” that weighs 450 grams. Like live birds, SmartBird’s “torso” can flex, providing directional control and is radio-controlled and monitored from afar.

Social platforms will emerge as a new source of business intelligence.

There’s a lot of competition when it comes to social networking tools. The likes of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all vying for users’ attention. So how about consolidating them all into one app? Stroodle isn’t the misspelling of a popular pastry, it’s an app that allows users to do just that – easily check all their social activity from one place.

The app allows users to add one or more of these networking tools in a matter of seconds. They can then crosspost to all their networks simultaneuously and check the activities of all their friends from one place. Individual abilities such as the Facebook ability to like or wallpost is still there, as well as the ability to @ reply, retweet or DM people on Twitter, with similar functionality for LinkedIn also.

There’s not a lot missed out in Stroodle, excluding a few more complex Facebook and Twitter commands, which makes it an ideal app to quickly consult for social networking information.

Read more: http://www.148apps.com/news/major-social-networks-place-stroodle/#ixzz1QD2nYHVl

http://www.148apps.com/news/major-social-networks-place-stroodle/

Data is the new platform, and social is the intelligence
By Cortney Fielding Jun. 23, 2011, 3:01pm PT 8 Comments

Gavin Michael – Global Managing Director, R&D and Alliances, Accenture – Structure 2011The days of viewing everything in the cloud through an application lens is nearing its end. Now, we are evolving into a world where quantity, processing speeds and distribution of data will make us see the world through a data lens, according to Gavin Michael, global managing director for R&D and alliances at Accenture, during GigaOm’s Structure on Thursday.

“We see data taking its rightful place as another platform inside enterprise,” Michael said.

Michael was on hand to present the Accenture Technology Vision 2011, a cross-industry research project that takes stock of the evolving trends in IT and how they will impact business and society as a whole. The research team looked into 400 hypotheses based on input from scientists, architects and engineers. They found fifty that held true, which they consolidated into eight trends:

Data takes its rightful place as a platform.
Analytics is driving a discontinuous evolution from business intelligence.
Cloud computing will create more value higher up the stack.
Architecture will shift from server-centric to service-centric.
IT security will respond rapidly, progressively—and in proportion.
Data privacy will adopt a risk-based approach.
Social platforms will emerge as a new source of business intelligence.
User experience is what matters.

During his presentation, Michael underscored the idea that data in the cloud has all sorts of different shelf lives, with some information only useful for minutes. “Distributed data is rapidly becoming the new normal,” he said.

He also emphasized the idea that cloud computing will create more value higher up the stack.

“We look at the cloud and notice it’s time for a new convergence away from infrastructure as a service to value coming from the cloud as we move higher up the stack,” he said. ”Cloud will have its real impact in areas such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS).”

Finally, he said consumers are diving the major evolution in IT trends like never before.

“Technology is back on the agenda from a point of innovation and growth,” he said. “We are entering a new reality where consumers are more demanding through the emergence of technology. And the way in which we make decisions based in enterprise is changing based on analytic power of these new platforms.”

http://gigaom.com/2011/06/23/data-is-the-new-platform-and-social-is-the-intelligence/