Inside MAYA Design's Innovation Boot Camps
By: Kate RockwoodGroup Project: Maya Design's Mickey McManus, Chris Pacione, Dutch MacDonald, and Amy Ferchak collaborate to help engineers understand design. | Photograph by Chris Crisman
How a little lab called MAYA is giving firms such as Emerson and General Dynamics an innovation boost.
better keep this over here not at technoist or AmIArt.org
NEW YORK — If there was a (booby) prize for the most misused design cliché, a firm favorite would be “form follows function,” with “less is more” coming a close second.
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EmotivTan Le, co-founder and president of Emotiv, with the Epoc headset.
I'm enjoying this article over a cup of tea... while arbitering a 7 year old cooking session. btw She's just worked out how much 125g of butter is by herself by reading the label and halving 250g. I will have to ignore her pleas for help more often.
this is so... cool? is this like being in at the start of wikipedia and watching it take off... or the internet... or like galaxyzoo... or seti...
of course on closer reading it may prove dreadfully disappointing... but...
Too much STUFF to read and do. I think I'll go play football and postpone the where is my blog moving and what is it turning into discussion again.
Dr Georgina Child
BVSc DACVIM (Neorology)
A series of mysterious cat deaths was caused by the government-mandated practice of irradiating imported pet food. The Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, has ordered the controversial sterilisation process, which has been in place for more than a decade, to cease immediately, following compelling overseas evidence that some cats can suffer fatal neurological damage after eating irradiated dry food. Dogs do not appear to be affected by similarly treated food.
About 90 cats fell ill last year and 30 died before a Sydney vet, Georgina Child, made the link in November between the mystery illness and a brand of Canadian gourmet pet food called Orijen.
The manufacturer, Champion Petfoods, blamed the contaminated food on Australian quarantine regulations, which demand that pet food not cooked over a specified temperature undergo irradiation of 50 kiloGrays upon arrival in the country. Of the 60 countries Champion Petfoods exports to, only Australia makes irradiation compulsory.
The Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service and the company that carries out the process, Steritech, insisted at the time the irradiation process was harmless. A limited range of imported human foods, including dried herbs and some tropical fruits, are also irradiated before landing on store shelves, but at much lower levels than that mandated for pet food. Mr Burke said the inspection service decided to act in response to international reports his department received only late last week. Work was being done in state and federal governments to see how safety standards for pet food could be improved.
This is right up there with the NZ schoolgirls discovering NO Vitamin C in Ribena.
came to the egg.co blog by yongfook from yongfook's lifestream sweetcron - and i think he/she's the developer of sweetcron which is moving fast up the list of today i decide on what platform to focus on!
what i love here is the embedded TED talks are all ones i love and are influencing my thinking right now!
- May 29, 2009 - 11:12AM
- Page 1 of 3 | Single Page View
As two Stanford University researchers described their experience watching public reactions in the initial days of the H1N1 flu outbreak, it sounded like one of those nature films in which tiny fish dart back and forth in perfect unison - thousands of individuals behaving as if they were one body.
But what the researchers were watching was in cyberspace, and they were tracking thousands of Twitter-posts pouring into an internet site in response to shifting developments on the flu.
With every twist and turn of the flu reports, the mass of Twitters swung in near perfect unison, the researchers noticed, even though the individual Twitterers had no contact with each other outside the web site.
It was a rare window on the public's psyche as it reacted to the explosion of information - and uncertainty - on a potentially dangerous outbreak of disease.
The researchers, James Holland Jones, an associate professor of anthropology, and Marcel Salathe, a biologist, devised an online survey to gauge people's anxiety about the H1N1 flu epidemic in real time.
Posted during the early reporting of the news, the survey generated about 8,000 responses in a matter of days, but promptly dropped off as doomsday predictions did not come to pass - a development that worries Jones.
"Swine flu is still out there and will be back next flu season," he said. "We've dodged the pandemic for now, but I think it's a very open question whether we have really dodged it. You certainly won't hear that on the 24-hour news channels."
As charted by Jones and Salathe, the shifting reactions over H1N1 suggest that as the country becomes more wired, a threat that is perceived as imminent can be amplified in the echo chamber of instant information and lightning-quick social networks.
But like those schools of fish that change direction in a flash, then instantly shift course again, people today may move from indifference to anxiety and back to indifference in the blink of an eye. Continued...
You can not be human and not fight for Aung San Suu Kyi's freedom. Maybe I'm setting the bar too high, based on the evidence of her imprisonment. But I refuse to believe that.
Please come along and promote at schools in the Newtown area!
Oyunbileg Luvsan has a small butcher stall in the Huchit Shonhor market, one of the largest food markets in Ulaanbaatar. Since the beginning of her business in 2000, she has been selling fresh meat that she purchases from the wholesale markets. Her husband drives his truck to purchase and bring meat from the wholesale markets located outside the city.
Oyunbileg lives with her husband and two children in the Bayanzurh district of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. Her older daughter is a 6th grader in the local high school and her younger daughter is just 4 months old. She and her family live in a ger (a round, nomadic tent). Her family is working hard to build a new home on their land in the near future. She requests a loan to purchase more meat from the wholesale markets for her business.
via kiva.org
Every xmas and birthday I like to share my good fortune by giving to someone else. With Kiva, it's a double gift because as the money is repaid, I can loan it again and again. I've made 25 loans now to people from all parts of the globe.
Instead of buying pre-packaged packs of tomatoes or strawberries, they will be able to "harvest" as much or as little as they like – introducing the concept of "harvest by" dates rather than "best before" dates.
The idea has been proposed by Futurelab, a company that helps businesses predict trends of the future, and was part of a report commissioned by Sainsbury, the supermarket chain.
Lucy MacLennan, Sainsbury's technical manager, said: "This would completely change how we sell produce to our customers. It would get rid of best before dates and allow shoppers to buy the freshest possible fruit and vegetables."
Currently, produce out of season takes about three or four days to travel from field to supermarket shelf, but under the futuristic plan the plants would be grown in hydroponic pods.
These are special mini greenhouses that allow plants to grow without the need for soil; they grow in a special nutrient-enriched solution, cutting down on pesticides.
The pods would be very light and would allow the farmer to transport the plant from his farm to the supermarket while it is still growing.
Ms MacLennan said that shoppers picking their own crops in-store would, realistically, not happen for another ten years at least.
"It could cut right down on wastage and packaging. It would make not just environmental sense, but economic sense too so we are looking at it seriously," she said.
The produce most likely to be sold this way would be light-weight crops such as peppers, strawberries, raspberries, beans, peas, tomatoes and mushrooms.
I love the idea of living in a food farm. All urban environments should have aquaculture or horticulture built in!
Madame President
This goes in the must read must post Woman Warrior collection!
Burma's detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has reportedly been taken from her home in Rangoon to the notorious Insein prison.
A court will be convened at the jail to hear charges against her relating to a secret visitor to her home.
A spokesman for Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party says the pro-democracy leader will be charged over an incident last week where an American man swam across a lake and reportedly spent two days in her home.
The authorities caught him when he was swimming back.
Security measures have been been beefed up around her home as a result.
Ms Suu Kyi has been under house detention for 13 of the past 19 years since she won national elections in 1990.
Her latest home detention order is due to lapse in less than two weeks.
She has been suffering poor health in recent days.
Incredibly stupid and mixed up of me! I blogged the wrong credit for carnival. I think I was reading In a Strange Land's intro at the time of my hasty mistaken post. Apologies to Chally and correction, finally.
12th Down Under Feminists Carnival is collated by Chally from Zero at the Bone, where much other good reading resides.
Good reading is also at In A Strange Land by Deborah.
Apologies are by Andra who doesn't spend enough time reading (and proofreading) blogs.
Go Grace Hopper! Yes, I know she's dead. Like Ada Lovelace. But can you name a woman philosopher? Without googling it. Let's get the names of great women in technology out there! Frequently. This sounds fantastic. Wish I was there.
We are changing the world for women and technology one woman at a time. The Anita Borg Institute:
- Offers workshops, publications and information aimed to develop leadership skills
- Celebrates and highlights the success of women who are changing the face of technology
- Provides programs that change the way technology is created, learned and taught
- Creates new communities to change the culture of technology
- Enables our sponsors to recruit, retain and develop technical women resulting in higher levels of technology innovation and better financial performance
This was put together rather quickly but when girls are motivated they can achieve a great deal! It still makes me laugh whenever I watch it. I don't know if the video is going to be deemed suitable for school assembly although I don't see why not!
The web version has poor sound quality, so if you're wondering what is being said at the end, it's.... "what's all this paper doing round the toilet?"
All said, this was a great exercise in going with the flow.
Wouldn't mum be proud! Her birthday is also the 1st birthday of the Down Under Feminists Carnival hosted beautifully by Chally at in a strange land, who is not just referring to NZ.
Yesterday was rocketcar day 11. #FailWhale (started at yesterday midnight after a party) made it with seconds to spare and wetpaint. I tied it together with wool on the starting line. We still had lift off and made it 4 or 5m down the track before taking out one of the spectators with a spectacular rocket fart. Now the severely scorched arse of a #failwhale retires to our house.
Michael Harries musings : Technoist has finally shifted from blogger to posterous... with a little help from myself. Michael is finally publicising the intersections of his background in AI and machine learning with his work from large technology companies to small start ups and his interest in user experience and design. From the evolution of the device to the device evolving us.
The interesting graphic is called "Leaky Manifold" from young artist/designer Seth Mabbott. And I really ought to shift from blogger to wordpress as I've done for my sports club sites!
With 35 fabulous images in the article it was very hard to choose just one and on revisiting I'd pick a different handful for display. They are all fabulous. Attributions from top to bottom; Peter Sdobnov’s Treasure in 3D, Silwenka’s Gloris, Nabdrux An abstract piece of art by mailart-org, Quantum Fabric A pure fractal flame by Cory Ench and finally, Water Lilies
These fractal flames were created by Roger Johnston and are an “extension of the iterated function system class of fractals”.
