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Cozying up on Twitter

Twitter...yet again. Stephen Rose over at Fast Company has discovered a new use for the beast: Following the activities of business contacts with whom you want to ingratiate yourself. So What? Twitter skip this paragraph if you know is a micro-blogging service. You use...

Tags: Twitter, Sales Strategy, Sales Force Management, Internet, Sales, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-06-24

Displays: More is more

Display manufacturer NEC has released a report on monitor size and its relationship to productivity. Surprise: There's a positive correlation. Big surprise: for editing tasks text and spreadsheet the gains can be as much as fifty percent. So What? "Fifty percent"? Brighter screens, faster...

Tags: NEC Corp., Monitors & Displays, Recruitment & Selection, Workforce Management, Payroll Solutions, Microsoft Office, Hardware, Components, Human Resources, Office Suites, Software, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-06-20

Perfecting the potato

Today, a couch potato still needs to operate that remote, which keeps his right thumb fit and toned. Gaze tracking could make his potato-hood complete. by Ed Gottsman

Tags: Mouse, Gesture, Gaze, Eye Gesture, Mice, Hardware, Peripherals, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-06-12

Lollicams

According to The Register, there were 1,400 incidents of crossing guard abuse (driving past while they're in the road, revving engines, shouting epithets, etc.) reported in the UK last year. Dozens of guards (they're called "lollipop ladies" because of the signs they carry and because, apparently, few of them are...

Tags: Camera, Sign, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-06-10

Perfecting the potato

New Scientist is reporting on new gaze tracking technology designed for use in 3D virtual worlds. Gaze tracking has been used for years by people with motor neurone disease, cerebral palsy and other "locked-in" syndromes, but only to operate desktop interfaces. This more recent technology will bring the likes of...

Tags: Mouse, Gesture, Gaze, Eye Gesture, Mice, Hardware, Peripherals, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-05-21

REST: Reducing Effort in Script-based Testing

The narrow but very important problem: Test scripts used for version 1.0 of an application will probably break when applied to version 2.0 of that application. Testers try to edit old test scripts so that they won't need to create new ones from scratch, but the process is slow, tedious...

Tags: GUI, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-05-14

On polite police

The Register is reporting on a pilot program in the UK under which police officers will have video cameras sticking out of their helmets. The goal is to encourage good behavior on the part of suspects (and, I suppose, on the part of police officers). So What?...

Tags: Camera, Register, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-05-12

On being detained in Cairo

I've brought up Twitter before. Twitter is a micro-blogging service. You use it to "tweet" messages of no more than 140 characters. Your friends, colleagues and the general public can follow your Twitter stream and keep up with such urgent intelligence as, "Feeling bored," or "Currently surrounded by idiots." Or,...

Tags: Twitter, James Karl Buck, Telecom & Utilities, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-05-07

On owning your own bits

I recently got rid of my CD collection. It wasn't a big collection, as these things go: Maybe 200 discs. I didn't even need the shelf space...I just wanted to clear out an increasingly embarrassing relic of the "age of atoms." So What? Where...

Tags: CD, Digital Music, Digital Media, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-05-06

WSJ cleverly coins 'Motorborg', creates jealous blogger

The Wall Street Journal reported recently on Inrix, Inc., a Kirkland, Washington-based Microsoft spinoff that tracks speeds on 100,000 miles of US highway using data from GPS-enabled fleet vehicles, toll booths, road sensors...and citizens' mobile devices. The data is sold to a variety of companies (including MapQuest, Dash, and...

Tags: Wall Street Journal, Sensor, Blogger, Dash, GPS, Handhelds, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Hardware, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-05-05

Internet addiction: threat or menace?

An editorial in a recent issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry presents the case for "Internet addiction" as a legitimate disorder deserving of inclusion in the DSM. (The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--the official compendium of the conditions and syndromes that afflict humanity. If...

Tags: Internet, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-05-02

Ambient's strange necklace

New Scientist reported recently on a strange necklace that will soon be available from Ambient Corporation of Dallas, Texas. It has a package of sensors that pick up electrical impulses around the vocal chords. These signals are used to drive an artificial voice. Effectively, the necklace lets you subvocalize audibly...

Tags: Phone, Voice, Ambient, Telecom & Utilities, Telecommunications, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-04-18

Twitter, again

Last month, a colleague of mine attended the South by Southwest conference, a techno-lovefest that brings together software developers, graphic designers and a gaggle of luminaries of various persuasions. The big news, according to him, is that Twitter has come of age. (For a good explanation of Twitter see here.)...

Tags: Twitter, Instant Feedback, Web 2.0, Blogging, Internet, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-04-14

On the (mis-) use of DNA

Fascinating piece in the Wall Street Journal recently about the English/Welsh DNA database. We'll sneak up on it. The movie GATTACA always bugged me, or rather people's reaction to it did. Whenever I'd mention biometrics, people would say, "Have you seen GATTACA? Isn't that a frightening view...

Tags: DNA, Analysis, Employee Discrimination, Biotechnology, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-04-11

Integrated health management

Eighteen luminaries (including Google co-founder Larry Page) recently developed a list of 14 Grand Engineering Challenges which they consider "essential for humanity to flourish." A couple of the challenges seem a bit...odd (Enhance Virtual Reality, Reverse Engineer the Brain), but one stands out from the rest (at least, for the...

Tags: Insurance Company, Health Care, Insurance, Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Business Operations, Corporate Insurance, Enterprise Software, Software, Human Resources, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Online Communications, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-04-10

The hands-free Etch-A-Sketch

New Scientist is reporting on something it calls the "Moanstick," an alternative joystick technology designed for people with motor impairments. With Moanstick, you can move the mouse smoothly in two dimensions, click, and double click–hands-free. How, you ask? By moaning dolefully with varied pitch, energy and vowel sounds. (The video...

Tags: Mouse, Mice, Hardware, Peripherals, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-03-25

On living with your doctor

Aerotel has announced the GeoSkeeper, a Global Positioning System-enabled, wrist-mounted unit that alerts a call center when you press its panic button. The call center can also track your position and raise an alert when you leave predefined zones such as your school. In addition to the GeoSkeeper (can you...

Tags: Doctor, Monitoring, Health Care, Aerotel, Vertical Industries, Healthcare, Benefits, Call Centers, Enterprise Software, Software, Human Resources, It Operations, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-03-11

'Requirements Critic' checks documents for problems

Requirements Critic ("RC") is a joint project out of our Silicon Valley and Bangalore labs (time difference: An almost perfect 11.5 hours) that's looking for ways to aid the process of requirements development. Its current prototype is a Microsoft Word plug-in that acts sort of like a grammar checker-except it's...

Tags: Requirement, Requirements Critic, Real Estate, Productivity, Business Operations, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-03-10

Smart badges? We don't need no stinkin' smart badges. Or do we?

MIT's Human Dynamics Lab is working on a form of social networking as old as humanity itself: Face-to-face introductions and subsequent chit-chat. Users wear badges that calculate how far apart people are standing (a good indicator of their reactions to one another, perhaps); record their conversation; and track their movements....

Tags: Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Norm, Internet, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-03-07

Wikinomics 6: Platforms for Participation

And once again we come to a post on co-author Don Tapscott's Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. This Wikinomics series has just two posts to go; savor it while you can. Don Tapscott's thesis in this chapter is that we're in an era of what I...

Tags: Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc., Don Tapscott, Sales Strategy, Development Tools, Sales, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Ed Gottsman

Blog posts 2008-02-26