A place where we discuss trends, news, insights, and more -- with you. We look forward to your comments! [Note: All initial comments are moderated to prevent spam.] Click on the below excerpts for the full post. To subscribe to this and other feeds, receive our e-newsletter, follow us on Twitter (@PARCinc) or other social media, please visit: www.parc.com/subscribe.

Ethnography in Industry: Methods for distributed & large data sets (part two)
posted 30 August 2010

We believe that virtual worlds and similar Web 2.0 spaces hint at an emerging mixed or "hybrid" ethnographic methodology that depends on agile collaborations between quantitative researchers, qualitative researchers, and software engineers. This is not just an academic enterprise. The ability to glean this data has many implications for designing and scaffolding online communities, learning new aspects of personality and social behavior in online worlds, and mapping digital personas to physical needs. The ability to leverage this architecture for more tailored marketing is one commercial opportunity. In addition to inferring basic demographics, personality inferences may lead to more nuanced methods of targeted advertising. And the ability to infer demographics based on online interaction metrics helps fill in the gaps left from zip code segmentation alone -- after all, not everyone who lives in your neighborhood (or in your home!) is exactly like you...

comments (0) tags: ethnography in industry, research methodology posted in ethnography, our culture & processes

Want to be retweeted? Add URLs to your tweets!
posted 16 August 2010

In a previous post, I described a recent study in which we found that including hashtags in a tweet enhances the retweetability of the tweet. In this post, I'll focus on another factor that might affect retweetability: the URL.

comments (1) tags: recommendation systems, twitter posted in social & enterprise computing

Design principles for news abundance
posted 6 August 2010

Google's Eric Schmidt recently observed that the Internet is disruptive because it replaces information scarcity with information abundance. What is now scarce in our busy world is reader attention, not "column inches" of news print -- so traditional design rules don't apply. People expect to access this abundance of information easily, and want systems that help them manage their reading attention and information diets.

comments (0) tags: curation, information overload, kiffets, long tail, social indexing posted in social & enterprise computing

The quest for the perfect news reader
posted 2 August 2010

Don't get me wrong, I think aggregators like Flipboard offer a great way to read content from your social information streams. But is it the best way to get your news? Or let me put it this way: are you doing yourself a disservice when you only read news that comes to your attention through your friends? Frankly my friends’ interests don’t necessarily overlap with my own, and the cumulative interests of my friends doesn’t exactly cover all of my interests. The ideal news reader...

comments (4) tags: curation, information overload, kiffets, long tail, news, social indexing posted in social & enterprise computing

Enabling news companies as content curators
posted 27 July 2010

There's a feast and a famine in news today: we're getting too much news too fast and struggle to filter quality information from noise, and/or we struggle to find high-quality, relevant content along our individual long tail interests. Curation is one way to deal with this problem. But sharing is not necessarily curating. The best curation requires domain knowledge and strategic thinking to organize topics with a purpose and point of view for the curated collection. What's missing: an effective, scalable way to do this across the Web. This is a huge opportunity, especially for news companies.

comments (5) tags: curation, information overload, kiffets, long tail, news, social indexing posted in social & enterprise computing

At the heart of curation: Kiffets backstory
posted 27 July 2010

In their competition for readership and advertising revenue, online news publishers need to differentiate themselves through curation. This project (as with many things at PARC!) has roots in a trajectory of evolving expertise -- spanning early collaborative filtering and later information visualization and sensemaking systems (beginning with tools for intelligence analysts), to social computing today. Intelligence analysts' situations then are not that different from people's information needs now: too much too fast or too little too late. So insights from our analyst research have guided development of the Kiffets system, which personalizes news along people's content needs and passions. As in our systems for intelligence analysts, the AI and collaboration technology serves as a cognitive amplifier that enables scaling the sheer amount of information that needs to be collected, filtered, and organized.

comments (1) tags: curation, information overload, kiffets, long tail, news, social indexing posted in social & enterprise computing

The electric vehicle — is it finally time?
posted 24 June 2010

Arguably, the all-electric powertrain will be the most significant disruption in automotive technology since Henry Ford introduced the first assembly line over 100 years ago. So far, the gasoline- (or diesel-) powered internal combustion engine has been a tremendous success despite its limited efficiency, particulate matter and CO2 emissions, complexity, and maintenance demands. An all-electric powertrain, however, would eliminate many common failure modes associated with internal combustion engines. The recent introduction of plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles have sparked a new wave of public interest and heightened expectations -- is it finally time for electric vehicles to displace the internal combustion engine for good?

comments (2) tags: batteries, electric vehicles, ev posted in cleantech, electronic materials & systems

Connecting information using context: Meshstro
posted 22 June 2010

Let’s face it: email is ripe for innovation. We rely on folders and keyword searches to sift through thousands of emails to locate buried messages and documents… but the problem goes beyond the inbox. Today’s business processes are more dynamic, more human-centric, ad hoc, unscripted, and loosely orchestrated – they represent the framework for our interactions with team members, business partners, and customers. The information that fuels these interactions is digital: emails, documents, web site links, database records, IMs, tweets, and so on. Keeping track of all this information in the context of a person, a partner or customer, or a particular activity is a TIME CONSUMING, MANUAL, CUMBERSOME process. And it’s only getting tougher.

comments (0) posted in guest contributors, human computer interaction (HCI), social & enterprise computing

Ethnography in industry: Methods overview (part one)
posted 14 June 2010

It's really hard for companies to understand ethnography -- even after they understand what objectives it can be used for. In this second post in our series on ethnography, I thought it might be useful to provide an overview of data COLLECTION methods (and methodologies) that ethnographers use to understand a particular population or situation of interest; while specific needs vary, for our clients the general goal is to help them address a murky problem or innovate differentiated products. Note the emphasis on data "collection" as opposed to data ANALYSIS...The science and art of ethnography is not in a preset formula for these individual methods. It's in the selection, unique combination, customizations, and analysis -- which together can yield the "deep" understanding that in turn inspires innovation, or fosters change. There IS a method to the madness.

comments (8) tags: ethnography in industry, ethnomethodology posted in ethnography

PARC Forum online
posted 26 May 2010

We're pleased to announce that we're now streaming our popular PARC Forum videos live at www.justin.tv/parcinc. You can also watch videos anytime at www.parc.com/forum, and now also at www.slideshare.net/parcinc. Be sure to subscribe to email announcements or feeds for regular updates about upcoming talks and more.

comments (0) posted in parc.com

Ethnography in industry: Objectives?
posted 27 April 2010

All of us have encountered a lot of confusion and misconceptions about ethnography, especially relative to the many methods that can be used to inform technology design. In my first post here, I’d really rather respond to the obvious and eminently reasonable question I often hear in my work as a researcher in the field of user-centered technology innovation: “What’s it good for, in my business?” In today’s hard-nosed and often economically trying times, ethnography can be seen as a tactical weapon enabling companies to gather new insights and thus gain advantage over their competition. Ethnographers’ data collection and analysis methods have therefore been condensed, recombined, adapted – both systematically and as-needed – to meet these business demands.

comments (9) tags: epic conference, ethnography in industry posted in business of breakthroughs, ethnography, our culture & processes, our milestones

Smart Technology Scouting – Part 2
posted 13 April 2010

Technology scouting has been happening for many years. But as companies increasingly look outside for opportunities, it becomes even more important to have clear practices associated with each step of the process. One popular technology scouting framework to address this is "Want-Find-Get-Manage”, which I've expanded for the purpose of sharing advice. And while I’ve written this talking largely about the formal technology scouting function, in reality, the principles apply for many people that help keep their companies connected to the rest of the world. As companies are developing more dependencies on external partnering, the models and standards are still very much emerging, which makes this a wonderful time for learning from each other.

comments (2) tags: open innovation, technology scouting posted in business of breakthroughs

Scaling, collaboration are keys to maintaining U.S. cleantech edge
posted 7 April 2010

[EE Times invited this post from Scott Elrod, who directs our cleantech program.] PARC was recently invited to present transformative ideas at an energy technology conference sponsored by ARPA-Energy, a new Energy Department agency charged with funding high-risk, high-payoff technology. The agency recently set a benchmark in government efficiency by reviewing 3,700 project proposals from across the U.S. in record time, ultimately funding 37. I’ve shared some of the innovative ideas I saw at the technology showcase in another post, but the key questions that persist are: Can the U.S. sustain an edge in clean technology? What clean tech technologies will win, and what’s needed to get us there? How can an industry focused on IT make the transition to a completely different technology and market: energy technology?

comments (0) tags: energy, materials posted in cleantech, electronic materials & systems

Innovation: defining, doing, measuring
posted 31 March 2010

[The Economist invited us to contribute an abridged version of this post, "How do you define innovation?", for their blog.] Innovation is a sorely overused word. Yet we are constantly asked to define it. A number of theorists and practitioners have offered up their variations: product innovation, business model innovation, technology innovation, design innovation, radical innovation, incremental innovation, disruptive innovation, open innovation…and so the list goes on. All are useful; none are complete. I don't have a pat answer, catchy definition, or compelling metaphor for this. But here’s what I do know: however it is defined, innovation is a valuable change, unconstrained by the way things are. I think I can safely claim that we’re speaking from experience…

comments (5) tags: open innovation, portfolio management posted in business of breakthroughs, ethnography, glossary (our definitions), our culture & processes, our milestones

Energy Innovation Summit: highlights
posted 9 March 2010

Organized by the the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy ("ARPA-E"), the inaugural Energy Innovation Summit that took place recently in D.C. brought together key players to spur the networks that will, according to the organizers, "bring about the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, in the way the U.S. has led previous revolutions in life sciences and information technology". Participants included venture capital investors, technology entrepreneurs, large and small corporations with an interest in clean energy technologies, scientific researchers, and policymakers/government officials. For a nerd like me, the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit was a candy shop. If you couldn't be there (or even if you were!), read on for what I consider the most noteworthy morsels from the event...

comments (1) tags: government, green, photovoltaics posted in cleantech, electronic materials & systems

Shift Happens (at PARC)
posted 3 March 2010

PARC hosted a fieldtrip for TTI/Vanguard attendees following their recent "Shifts Happen" conference in San Francisco. [Through private conferences that they describe as "part classroom, part think-tank, and part laboratory", TTI/Vanguard is a forum for senior-level executives that links strategic technology planning to business success.] Surprisingly, the questions I was asked before and after the demo-presentation tour weren’t that different. Basically, folks were looking for simple answers or replicable formulas to some pretty fundamental challenges: How do we do what we do? How do we do it differently than before? How do we make the right choices? There's no single formula, but...

comments (2) tags: field of use, intellectual property, Pasteur's Quadrant, portfolio management posted in business of breakthroughs, conferences & talks, our culture & processes, our milestones

Defining ubiquitous computing vs. augmented reality
posted 2 March 2010

What's the difference between Ubiquitous Computing ("ubicomp") and Augmented Reality ("AR")? I hear this question often, and you could replace "augmented reality" in that question with any of the following buzzy paradigms for people-interacting-with-computers: Virtual Reality, Pervasive Computing, Mobile Computing, Wearable Computing, Multi-Device Interaction, Cloud Computing, Intelligent Systems, Ambient Intelligence, Context-Aware Computing, Adaptive Systems, Machine Perception, Social Computing, Smart Environments, Everyware, and so on. For the most part, I don’t find formal definitions useful; you can call it whatever suits your fancy. All that matters is that I understand what you mean when you use a term and that you understand what I mean when I use it. The attributes of a definition that carry lasting meaning are not technological properties (performance, cost, size, distribution, latency), but the core capabilities that the paradigm enables for usage.

comments (11) tags: ambient intelligence, AR, augmented reality, context-aware computing, everyware, mobile computing, pervasive computing, smart environment, ubicomp, virtual reality posted in glossary (our definitions), human computer interaction (HCI), our culture & processes, ubiquitous computing

Vehicle-to-grid: Does it make economic sense?
posted 10 February 2010

Vehicle-to-Grid is a fascinating concept that appeals to venture capitalists and energy economists alike. Imagine millions of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids connected to the power grid, storing excess energy generated by wind farms at night and selling power back to the grid during peak demand hours. But is V2G truly a win-win-win -- that is, does it make economic sense for PHEV/EV owners and manufacturers? Given the battery depreciation economics, Lithium-ion may not be the right chemistry for V2G. It might be wise for us to focus our attention on more feasible ways to integrate renewables into the grid.

comments (1) tags: batteries, electric vehicles, energy, lithium-ion, smart grid, v2g, vehicle-to-grid posted in cleantech

Preventing energy waste in data centers
posted 29 January 2010

Data centers are energy vampires. Approximately half the energy consumed by data centers today is simply wasted in order to accommodate occasional peak demand such as viral videos or breaking news. But we're now entering the "third wave" of data center efficiency advances: software managing hardware (the first wave was hardware such as HVAC, and the second wave was software such as virtualization to consolidate processes on fewer centers). PARC has developed a suite of energy management solutions which are based on model-based optimization and control to "adapt" energy use to resource needs.

comments (0) tags: data centers, energy efficiency, IT, virtual machines, virtualization posted in cleantech

It’s the market disruption, not the disruptive innovation
posted 28 January 2010

Disruptive innovation is about market impact. No business model or new technology is intrinsically disruptive. It's the application in the market, and the reaction of the consumer, that determines whether something is disruptive or not.

comments (1) tags: disruptive innovation, opportunity discovery posted in business of breakthroughs, cleantech, ethnography

What are big research problems in Social Web technologies?
posted 20 January 2010

Just finished reading Dion Hichcliffe's piece over at ZDNet on emerging technologies for Social Web in 2010. I have been reading all these different predictions to see how it relates to our research agenda. Dion's piece is long, but several points re...

comments (0) posted in uncategorized

Smart technology scouting – Part 1
posted 20 January 2010

Technology scouting has been happening for many years. Yet the models for how best to find and secure opportunities are still emerging as companies increasingly look outside. In this post, I share advice and principles for effective technology scouting, including defining The Why (are we scouting?) and The What (technologies and specific technology characteristics are we looking for?) Furthermore, scope is a tricky thing: if a scouting team's "find" mandate is too narrow, you're likely to miss valuable options; but if it's too broad, you end up exploring too many options that are never going to fly. How should a company assess its organizational capacity to absorb, define its time horizon for expected impct, and identify the technical needs it is scouting for?

comments (5) tags: open innovation, technology scouting posted in business of breakthroughs

The Web is finally starting to behave like a butler
posted 19 January 2010

When the Web was just beginning to take hold back in the mid-1990s, I remember thinking, “This is great for getting access to information, but it’s setting user interfaces back about 10 years.” It's now 15 years later, but I’m happy to say that we’ve caught up and are finally starting to surpass where we left off. The Web has moved from a face without a brain, to just a pretty face, to a helpful butler that supports users' tasks and anticipates their needs in an unobtrusive way.

comments (2) tags: user centered design, user experience, user interface design posted in human computer interaction (HCI)

Workshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation: Reports
posted 12 January 2010

PARC recently hosted the first of two co-organized and NSF-funded workshops on Technology-Mediated Social Participation. Workshop reports addressing themes such as integrating theory across levels from the individual to the community; developing new methods of measuring social connections and social capital across networks; and building an infrastructure for reliable and responsible data collection are now available.

comments (1) tags: collaboration, collective intelligence, HCI, social computational systems, technology trends posted in conferences & talks, human computer interaction (HCI), social & enterprise computing

Cloud computing and security
posted 21 December 2009

You can’t avoid the cloud computing topic these days. As usual, the extreme viewpoints are the most visible -- cloud computing is either marketing hype, or game-changing. If you turn to security experts, it’s either “nothing new” or a “focal point". While there’s some truth in each viewpoint, it’s a little hard to untangle what’s really going on. An oft-quoted survey from IDC reports security is the biggest concern with cloud computing. We did our own series of interviews with different members of the cloud ecosystem, and asked them to identify the security/privacy issues and the concerns of their customers.

comments (3) tags: cloud computing, mobile security, privacy, SaaS, software as a service posted in security & privacy, social & enterprise computing

A Study on Efficient Diffusion of News in an Organization
posted 14 December 2009

[joint work between Les Nelson, Rowan Nairn, Ed H. Chi] In our knowledge economy, enterprises’ competitiveness often depend on the efficiency in which important news travels to the right people at the right times. Knowledge workers depend now heavi...

comments (1) posted in uncategorized

The Future of Technology-Mediated Social Participation
posted 7 December 2009

Who would have thought that simple architectures for participation could rival the scale of results previously achieved only by massive private or public works projects? While we can get excited about the possibilities, we also have to be realistic. Most social technology efforts fail: for every Wikipedia, there are thousands of dead or dying wikis. The Workshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation at PARC will bring together approximately 30 researchers from industry, academia, and government to draw up a scientific agenda and educational recommendations for a new era of social participation technologies. As individuals, we’re limited by how much we know or think about any of these things, which is why I’m hoping that participants on the panel and in the audience at this week’s PARC Forum can help. We see further when we stand on the shoulders of others.

comments (3) tags: collaboration, collective intelligence, HCI, innovation, social computational systems, technology trends posted in conferences & talks, human computer interaction (HCI), social & enterprise computing

PARC Innovations Update (2009 #5)
posted 30 November 2009

printed electronics opportunity/challenge; keeping U.S. innovation competitive; more

posted in e-newsletter archive, electronic materials & systems

Printed electronics: The opportunity (and the challenge)
posted 30 November 2009

A $300 billion industry is in the making. Raghu Das, CEO of analyst firm IDTechEx (and the first guest contributor to PARC’s blog), argues that the “printed electronics” industry will eventually become far larger than the semiconductor industry today. By offering such advantages as new form factors, lower cost, and large area electronics, printed electronics have already made available devices such as batteries, photovoltaics, transistors, new display technologies, sensors, printed conductors, and more. But these are enabling technologies -- not products. How can we create new markets and novel designs for products that users need?

comments (3) tags: organic electronics, printed electronics, thin film transistors posted in electronic materials & systems

On keeping U.S. innovation competitive
posted 18 November 2009

PARC today is no longer “Xerox PARC” but a commercial entity with multiple Fortune 500 and other clients. We're building our contemporary innovation model by positioning ourselves at the heart of industrial R&D, government contracts, and world-class university research. (For us, the last one is translated as bringing together the top minds from diverse fields: our talent is our primary asset.) To support the next waves of innovation, we need to examine how the rest of the U.S. and world will replicate Silicon Valley – with its access to top talent, multicultural citizens, venture infrastructure and corporate partners, universities, and inexhaustible energy. But here’s the thing: two-thirds of our commercial income comes from abroad. Asia, in particular, is aggressively probing for new engines of innovation.

comments (2) tags: competitive edge, innovation, open innovation posted in business of breakthroughs, our culture & processes, our milestones

Experts’ domain knowledge improves automated recommendations
posted 9 November 2009

It’s almost eerie how well the music website Pandora recommends music based on just one example of a favorite song. It does so by relying on human experts to characterize songs based on a large and musically sophisticated set of characteristics (melody, harmony, rhythm, orchestration, etc.). This approach -- of using human expertise to develop a rich set of attributes that deeply capture the essence of an item -- could be adapted to greatly improve the recommendations currently being offered in other domains, such as news, movies, hotels and so on. In our enthusiasm to develop automated recommendation systems, Pandora reminds us of the value of incorporating the intelligence of domain experts into the process.

comments (1) tags: crowdsourcing, recommendation systems posted in ethnography, human computer interaction (HCI), our culture & processes, social & enterprise computing

Tempted by location apps?
posted 5 November 2009

Privacy should be the biggest concern for users of location-based social networking apps like Foursquare, Google Latitude, Loopt, and others. Will these companies store and analyze your location traces to figure out what ads to show you as part of their business model? You can deduce a lot about people from their locational traces: where they sleep and work and play, what stores and restaurants they like, who they spend time with, more.

comments (4) tags: mobile devices & interfaces, mobile security posted in security & privacy, social & enterprise computing, ubiquitous computing

Face tracking & computer vision
posted 26 October 2009

This face tracker outputs a cloud of points that map onto image coordinates, which can be used to determine the 3D orientation of a face relative to the video camera. The algorithm also overcomes the challenge of "deformable movements" such as glasses, eye blinks, and lips.

comments (1) tags: computer vision, user behavior modeling posted in ubiquitous computing

Part 4 on WikiSym paper: A proposed modified model of Wikipedia Growth
posted 20 October 2009

As mentioned in the first post on the slowing growth rate of Wikipedia, it appears that article growth reached a peak around 2007. Rather than exponential growth, it appears that Wikipedia display logistic growth. A hypothetical logistic Lotka-Volter...

comments (1) posted in uncategorized

In Memoriam: Bob Spinrad
posted 16 October 2009

Bob Spinrad, computing pioneer, technology visionary, and former manager of PARC, passed away on 2 September. We welcome your quotes and memories of Bob and his career.

comments (0) posted in other

Will mobile payments usher in a new era of crime?
posted 13 October 2009

With the recent news that Amazon launched a mobile payments service, I have to wonder if fraud will go through the roof. But Amazon wisely invented 1-Click payments to reduce user burden, and soon this feature will apply to mobile users. All of this is very nice and convenient for the user. Except if you're among the 8+ million users a year who lose their mobile phones. Then it becomes very nice and convenient for whoever finds your phone.

comments (2) tags: malware, mobile devices & interfaces, mobile security, pervasive computing, ubicomp posted in security & privacy, ubiquitous computing

Brainstorming for quality ideas: 10 tips
posted 6 October 2009

I've often heard "brainstorming" touted as a way to make an organizational culture more innovation-friendly. No argument there: brainstorms, if well-constructed, can be a great source of new ideas. But the problem for many companies isn't a lack of ideas. More often, it's a lack of high-quality ideas and poor practices for supporting the transformation from idea to innovation -- i.e., the implementation. In these cases, open-ended idea generation isn't likely to lead to organizational wins. These organizations need to focus on improving the quality of ideas and the mechanisms for selecting and supporting them going forward. Brainstorms are an interesting technique to look at, because they represent a microcosm of organizational behaviors... the behaviors that support or undermine innovation.

comments (5) tags: brainstorming, innovation culture posted in business of breakthroughs, our culture & processes

Personalizing news on the long tail
posted 5 October 2009

Online news is a crowded field, and personalized news is becoming the Holy Grail for news publishers facing decreased revenues and outdated business models. The challenge in personalizing the news: matching what people want with what they get. I believe that successful personalizing the news on the long tail requires three approaches with their own unique sources of "power": curation, search, and social participation. To news consumers, the appeal of personalized news is that they can keep up on the news that they care about, better manage their reading time, and address their information overload. For online news producers, the appeal is increased consumer satisfaction and potentially greater revenues.

comments (1) tags: curation, information overload, kiffets, long tail, news, social indexing posted in human computer interaction (HCI), social & enterprise computing

PART 3: Population Shifts in Wikipedia
posted 22 September 2009

The research done at ASC continues to get more press, including Time magazine, NYTimes, Repubblica [Italian Newspaper]. We have been busy trying to put together a bunch more academic papers on Web2.0 (particularly some Twitter research we have been do...

comments (3) posted in uncategorized

Why a good curator is more than a filter
posted 15 September 2009

In addition there is growing interest by information consumers in taking more control of their media time. They want personalized news for their specialized interests. The problem? News on specialized topics is often hard to find and is scattered across many sources. Mainstream publishing organizations do not cover topics deep on the long tail because they lack both the editorial resources and the expertise. Can social media provide the means for curating the long tail? In traditional news publishing, the role of curating is typically combined with publishing. While curators of online information are needed to help us find interesting and quality content, the requirements and roles differ from traditional publishing.

comments (2) tags: curation, information overload, kiffets, long tail, news, social indexing posted in human computer interaction (HCI), social & enterprise computing

Technology scouting and acquistion: what do YOU want to know?
posted 9 September 2009

Next week, I'll be moderating a panel on "Creating Value with a Smart Technology Scouting, Acquisition, and Licensing Strategy" at Growth, Innovation, and Leadership (a Frost & Sullivan global congress on corporate growth). Since I'll write up the discussion after the event (and, of course, post here what I can), let me know what questions you want answered -- what would like to hear more about? What questions about acquiring technology from external sources are top of mind for you?

comments (2) tags: innovation strategy, intellectual property, licensing, technology scouting posted in business of breakthroughs, conferences & talks

A central nervous system for automatically detecting malware
posted 9 September 2009

It’s nearly impossible for anti-virus protectors to keep up with the pace of malware – producing descriptions of what that malware looks or acts like – around the clock, especially with close to a million new and unique malware instances every day. But what if you can use the circumstances of software installations and executions to tell what kind of software it is without even looking at the code? This information can auto-inform anti-virus protectors, and can be used to provide immediate advice to a client machine, which turns to the “centralized [malware] nervous system” to ask whether a particular piece of code is safe to install or not.

comments (4) tags: malware, mobile security posted in security & privacy

Remixing the news
posted 8 September 2009

Once music lovers could "Rip, Mix, and Burn" their own CDs they took control of their listening experiences. The economics and consumer expectations have changed for all digital media. Digital media consumers now demand more flexibility in getting what they want, stretching beyond traditional broadcasting models which pre-package content into channels. But as personalization, discovery, and sharing come to the news, it needs to be different from "playlists". How about social indexing to remix the news?

comments (2) tags: curation, information overload, kiffets, long tail, news, social indexing posted in human computer interaction (HCI), social & enterprise computing

Fear mobile malware
posted 1 September 2009

Online criminals have many tools for committing fraud and theft, including phishing and, increasingly, malware. A more acute problem is mobile malware, which will pose a serious threat to mobile communications as smartphone use explodes. The inherent limitations of smartphones – power, memory, bandwidth – make most anti-virus tools unsuitable once the rate of malware instances reaches a certain threshold, because smartphones can't handle the updates that PCs currently have to. So what happens when malware authors start developing viruses for smartphones at the rate they currently do for personal computers? We may not have to wait long to find out, because mobile platforms are rich with data and are convenient payment platforms ripe for defrauding. We must find better solutions before it's too late. And we can't use current strategies to combat the problem, because the mobile context is so much more vulnerable and resource-constrained.

comments (2) tags: malware, mobile devices & interfaces, mobile security, phishing, technology trends posted in security & privacy

Opening communication for open innovation: Should you share your strategy?
posted 27 August 2009

"Open Communication" is frequently cited as a necessity in successfully working with partners. But in my experience, opening up to the depth of communication required for successful open innovation is often a scary proposition for some companies. Should you share your strategy? Yes, with deliberate purpose.

comments (9) tags: innovation strategy, open innovation posted in business of breakthroughs