24 June 2006

Connecting the Dots: Collaborative Technologies Conference

Connecting the Dots: Collaborative Technologies Conference: "This morning's first speaker was John Seely Brown. His central theme was the macro nature of computer mediated networks and their effects but he, like many speakers today, clearly emphasized the fact that humans are the collaborators and it's not just about technology.

What was amazing was his story of Li & Fung. This firm has a loosely coupled network of 7,500 suppliers. It's a collaborative, relationship-based, feedback-looped network that's provided them with one helluva competitive advantage (even thinking about managing such a network and its interconnections made my eyes glaze over).

Interesting points:

* The world may becoming flat...but it's actually 'spiky'. The competitive future is to those that can identify unique differentiators by partners and embrace them.
* Tools: must be simple! People need simple. Can't be any extra work.
* THE most important element in videoconferencing is *eye contact*. People need to see that others are engaged with them and it's eye contact that does it.
* It is possible now to have virtual connections be better than being there in person
* Meetings are just part of collaboration.
* Web 2.0 is a participatory medium (damn...that's one of my slides for Thursday!)
* Discussed Second Life. You talkin' collaboration? What's more collaborative than being in an immersive environment?
* An Accelerating Confluence. Brown said we're on the cusp of a 100 fold change in 'punctuated evolution' disrupting Moore's Law! Mainly due to commodization of hardware and software."

Magnetic field research could make computers 500 times more powerful

Press Release - 22 June 2006 University of Bath: "Magnetic field research could make computers 500 times more powerful

Magnetic fields created using nanotechnology could make computers up to 500 times more powerful, if new research is successful.

The University of Bath is to lead an international £555,000 three-year project to develop a system which could cut out the need for wiring to carry electric currents in silicon chips.

Computers double in power every 18 months or so as scientists and engineers develop ways to make silicon chips smaller. But in the next few years they will hit a limit imposed by the need to use electric wiring, which weakens signals sent between computer components at high speed.

The new research project could produce a way of carrying electric signal without the need for wiring. Wi fi internet systems and mobile phones use wireless technology now, but the electronics that create and use wireless signals are too large to be used within individual microchips successfully.

The research project, which involves four universities in the UK and a university and research centre in Belgium and France, will look at ways of producing microwave energy on a small scale by firing electrons into magnetic fields produced in semi-conductors that are only a few atoms wide and are layered with magnets.

The process, called inverse electron spin resonance, uses the magnetic field to deflect electrons and to modify their magnetic direction. This creates oscillations of the electrons which makes them produce microwave energy. This can then be used to broadcast electric signals in free space without the weakening caused by wires.

The possibility of using the special semi-conductors in this way was first pointed out by Dr Alain Nogaret, of the University of Bath’s Department of Physics, in an important scientific paper in 2005 (Electrically Induced Raman Emission from Planar Spin Oscillator, in Physical Review Letters). The latest resea"