We tend to assume that successful companies like Facebook get large, wealthy and powerful by making better decisions than everyone else. Consider Facebook's recent decision to buy mapping company Waze for a rumoured $1 billion and to hire ex-Apple mapping team leader Richard Williamson. Clearly Facebook has decided it needs its own mapping functionality and not rely on Microsoft's Bing, in it's desktop product, or Apple's maps on iOS and Google on Android. Is this a good decision? Well on the face of it yes, but really Facebook seems to be the last person in the room to wakeup and smell the coffee. As I noted when discussing Apple's mapocalypse back in September 2012 - location services are going to be really important in the future. Apple couldn't afford to gift this market to Google and Facebook can't either. Google became interested in maps back in 2004, when it bought the Australian company Where 2 Technologies. Now this is an example of a good strategic decision. Our computing devices weren't even very mobile in 2004 but Google invested heavily in mapping - this implies great long term vision. Apple's lauded leader Steve Jobs actually made a very poor strategic decision in 2007 when the iPhone launched. Google Maps should never have been invited on board; Apple should have had its own mapping service from the start. This they belatedly corrected in 2012 because they realised they had to. So where has Facebook been? Have they all been too busy playing Farmville! If Facebook really wants users to spend all their time online in Facebook, and with Facebook Home that is exactly what they want you to do. Why did nobody in their Menlo Park HQ think "hey guys, we like really need our own mapping app." This troubles me. The Facebook execs clearly aren't always that smart.
The final free public lecture in 2013's Gibbons Lecture series is all about CAD/CAM - the acronym for Computer Assisted Design and Computer Assisted Manufacturing. CAM involves robotics but CAD is the application of Computer Graphics to Engineering – in fact, at one time it was Computer Graphics but it has advanced far beyond these simple beginnings. Engineering Computer Graphics is the topic of our last Gibbons Lecture on May 23 which will be delivered by Professor Gordon Mallinson from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Auckland. Full details of the time and venue are here. If you cannot attend the lecture will be streamed live and after the event.
We've all heard the phrase "death by powerpoint" and we've all sat through interminably dull presentations, talks and lectures. However, I came across an article yesterday called "No excuse for boring an audience: Advice on giving technical presentations," which makes the fairly obvious point that usually it's not Powerpoint's fault but the presenters. Borring presenters give borring talks and yes their slides probably suck as well. But people were giving borring talks long before Powerpoint or Prezi. The article refers to an essay written in 1985 that makes a very clear argument that it's your responsibility to make your presentation interesting, exciting and fun, and that above all you must be enthusiastic about your subject. If you are going to give a presentation soon I recommend that you read it.
The video below is a little stop-motion animation made by IBM. Why would IBM researchers want to make a movie? So they can demonstrate that they can move individual atoms around - that's correct, the little dots that make up the movie are individual atoms!
The researchers aren't just having a laugh, they're actually trying to discover the smallest number of atoms that can store a bit of data. They're aiming to make an atomic memory data storage system. Once you've watched the world's smallest movie watch the "making of the world's smallest movie" for information on how and why it was done.
Our next Gibbons Lecture on 16th May will be delivered by Dr. Burkhard Wuensche from our Department of Computer Science at The University of Auckland. Dr. Wuensche will be discussing the relationship between computer gaming and computer graphics. Dr. Wuensche has an extensive history of research publications that he often illustrates with whimsical examples.We particuarly like his generated images of rabbits, a bit late for Easter, but cute never-the-less. For more information on the venue, date and time visit the Gibbons Lectures website. The lecture will be streamed live and after the event if you cannot attend in person.
The NZ Herald today published a very interesting interview with Sherry Turkle, a professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT and founder and director of the MIT initiative on technology and self. She is very concerned that in interacting with technology people are losing skills in reading each others emotions - "This is a complex dance that we know how to do to each other," she says. It's a dance she fears is being forgotten. In the interview you get a strong sense that she is far from being an apostle of new technology. You can watch her express similar concerns in this TED talk.
Mashable has published a photo gallery of what the world looks like through Google Glass or rather what Glass looks like in use. Some of the images are slightly distorted by refraction and lens flare but it's clear that the technology works - whether it will be widely adopted is another matter. On one hand wearers of Glass look desperately geeky but on the other hand if it enables people to look up and ahead rather than down and into their hands maybe it will be a good thing.
