cilinc.net

the death of the book

maz — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:35:24 +0000

NPR is featuring, at its site, an excerpt from The Shallows titled “The Very Image of a Book” [...]. [It] describes how pundits have, for about two centuries now, been eagerly proclaiming the imminent death of the book. And, over and over again, they’ve been proven wrong.
(Nicholas Carr)

credit: Royalty-Free/Corbis

There’s life in the old dog yet.

water swirl hydropower plant

maz — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:40:59 +0000

The swiss association GWWK has built the first hydropower plant with water swirl technology. This way of energy generation is especially desinged for small constructions with drop heights starting from 0.7 meters. The originator of the technology called “gravitation water vortex power plant” is from Austria: Zotlöterer

credit: GWWK

How does it work?
According to Daniel Styger from GWWK you can imagine a filled bath tub. Opening the drain automatically leads to a swirl in the water while draining off. This phenomenon caused by the gravitation is the basis of this patented technology.

One more fact is remarkable about the plant in Schöftland (Switzerland): it’s a collaborative project financed by 100 private sponsors.

technologies that changed the world

maz — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:41:31 +0000

On computerscienceschools.net you can find an interesting list if the 10 tech milestones in the past 130 years.

I largely share this view – except the iPod. To my mind this device is just a consitent enhancement of Sony’s good old cassette-based Walkman based on today’s technology – although I have to admit that the Apple’s success is impressive. I would trade the iPod in for a technology from the energy sector like the battery or solar cells or perhaps already photovoltaics.

credit: Phoenix Solar

Excel or the story of innovation resistant reporting

maz — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:14:14 +0000

O’Bierne described the typical scenario that faces many accountants: every month they have to download data from a variety of databases (accounts, sales and so on); they then spend days copying, pasting, sorting, filtering and manually re-classifying data to get it into the shape they want. Then someone will want to see a different view, so for a set of accounts structured in 4-4-5 periods, one department might want to see reports by calendar month, while another wants 13 four-weekly periods. Or one consumer may want an analysis based around different groupings than the main chart of accounts. (via AccMan)

credit: QUANTIX

Meanwhile there are hundreds of data mining, data warehouse and flexible reporting tools but similar scenarios like the one described by O’Bierne happen probably every day in most companies. I also experience this in my job over and over again. In my special case it concerns especially HR figures and reports. To my mind the keywords to explain this phenomenon are flexibility and habit.

Cisco’s business “iPad”

maz — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:11:03 +0000

Cisco pretends to market a real business tablet device (with Google’s Android OS):
The innovative Cisco Cius is an ultra-portable, mobile collaboration business tablet that offers access to essential business applications and technologies. (Cisco Cius)

credit: spiegel online

But the really interesting question is if someone needs a business edition of Apple’s status symbol. Just think about video conferencing … it’s not that widely accepted – all the more sitting on the airport. Or working on your mails … reading is possible on nearly any mobile device but writing – most people prefer to write on a “real” keyboard. So let’s see if Cisco can change these habits.