Category: Tech

Technology

The 1981 Vision of the Internet and Newspapers

This is a great old 1981 news report from what appears to be a local San Francisco television station, talking about the then-futuristic Internet.  I love the opening line:

Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee and turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper.  It’s not as far-fetched as it may seem …”

I received this video link from two friends at the National Press Club, Rick Dunham and Larry Lipman, both via Facebook.  Rick and Larry are former NPC presidents and this is making the rounds today among my friends in journalism.  Keep that in mind as you observe the focus in this news piece on the impact of the Internet on newspapers in particular.  Very interesting to see this with the hindsight of history.

Apple Files in Russia to Protect “iWatch”

Interesting news to those of us who are tracking the work of Eric Migicovsky. Business news outlets yesterday reported that Apple, Inc., has filed for trademark protection of the term “iWatch”.

Apple has already announced plans to roll out an iWatch sometime – perhaps next year in 2014 – and presumably this is in response to the outrageous interest in the Pebble, Migicovsky’s invention that broke records last year at Kickstarter.com when Migicovsky was raising money to make the device. The news outlet USDailyVoice.com adds this interesting comment at the end of their news report about Apple’s trademark application in Russia, when they referred to:

… an interview with Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky, where the owner of the smart watch makers said that he doesn’t have any comment regarding a possible Apple buyout.

Interesting. We’ll keep tracking this one.

The Winklevoss Twins are investing in SumZero.com

I’m intrigued by three former Harvard students.  Divya Narendra, and the Winklevoss Twins, or the “Winklevii”, as the Twitterverse calls them. For those who don’t know, Divya Narendra, Tyler Winklevoss, and Cameron Winklevoss are credited by many with having invented the Facebook concept while students at Harvard University, and creating a prototype, then hiring fellow student Mark Zuckerberg to build on the basic software and create a more complex system.  What happened next is the subject of several court actions:  Zuckerberg either stole their software and used it to create his version of Facebook, or created something original from scratch.  A lot of this is addressed in the 2010 movie The Social Network, based on the book Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich.

But … whatever happened to the Winklevoss Twins, and to Divya Narendra?  For one thing, the twins eventually won a $65 million settlement against Facebook, a company that was valued by Forbes in a Feb. 21 article at $67.8 billion.

But what are they doing now?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Divya Narendra co-founded a site called SumZero, which is a social network for professional investors.  He created it with fellow Harvard alum Aalap Mahadevia.

And now the Winklevii are investing as well.  “The band is back together”, the Journal quotes Tyler Winklevoss as saying.

The twins created Winklevoss Capital as a legal entity to invest the proceeds from the Facebook settlement, and SumZero is their first investment.

The concept is based on exclusivity.  Only qualified active investors are permitted access to the database, and only if they pass the application process.  Narendra personally reviews each application and reportedly rejects about 75 percent of them.  Once accepted, a user cannot simply lurk and monitor the work of others, but must maintain a certain level of activity to stay involved.

It’s an intriguing concept that draws an active group of participants and weeds out others, resulting in an exclusive high-quality community.

The official website is at SumZero.com.

 

 

Migicovsky lands $15 million for Pebble

There’s a May 16, 2013 report at the way-cool blog TechCrunch that Eric Migicovsky has landed a $15M investment from Charles River Ventures.  The article includes an update of the now-famous Kickstarter campaign, stating that Migicovsky’s company is still working to fulfill the 85,000 orders they received via that crowdsourced fundraising effort.

If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, here’s a bit of background.

Migicovsky originally conceived of the Pebble and announced it through an online video in 2012.  Click here to see the original video they made to raise funds at Kickstarter at Vimeo.

The original fundraising target he posted at Kickstarter was $1 million.

Raising funds through a crowdsourcing website like Kickstarter isn’t the same as raising money through a traditional venture capitalize or accredited investor.  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) doesn’t allow just anyone to sell stock to just anyone else.  The reason is that the SEC theoretically wants to protect what they call “unsophisticated” investors from being financially hurt by reckless business ventures or charlatans.   If you want to issue stock or solicit investment funds, you must recognize a number of legal disclosures and other regulations that often require an attorney to put together correctly.  That can be expensive.  Furthermore, your target audience may be limited to “accredited” investors, and most people don’t qualify.

To get around that, crowdsourcing sites like Kickstarter take a different approach.  One way is to sell something to “investors”, so that they actually become customers, but with an understanding that the customers are purchasing something that may not deliver for a year or so.  Furthermore, there’s a risk that the item might not be delivered at all, but in exchange for that risk, the customer is also potentially getting in on the ground floor of a great product and potentially joining the cutting edge of a new technical development.

Migicovsky offered his Kickstarter customers a chance to purchase a functioning Pebble.  He had already made a prototype, and had determined that through mass production, he could afford to make them and sell them at $100 each, but only if he could sell at least 10,000 of them.  So the Kickstarter campaign deal told would-be buyers that if they were willing to put up $100 to buy a Pebble now, and if at least 10,000 people agreed within a 30 day period, then everyone would be charged $100 at the end of the 30 days, and he would deliver the Pebble within a year.

That was his promise.  The Kickstarter website would handle the payment collection and notification of all would-be customers.  Migicovsky needed 10,000 customers to pledge $100 within 30 days, so he could raise the $1 million.

The Kickstarter campaign launched April 11, 2012.  By May 18, the campaign had raised over $10 million.

It was the single largest amount ever raised through Kickstarter.

The big technology companies took notice.  Apple announced plans to build the iWatch, with similar integration to other devices like the Pebble, and biometrics, for delivery in 2014.

But that hasn’t stopped interest in the Pebble.  This month’s news about the $15M investment from Charles River Ventures underscores that fact.

The Pebble has a huge advantage on the software front.  Migicovsky’s team is offering the Pebble with its own open software developer kit (SDK), which they’re calling the PebbleKit. The SDK enables “third party apps to send and receive data from the smartwatch” as quoted from the TechCrunch article.  In addition, the “Pebble Sports API … enabl[es] developers to build GPS-enabled smartwatch apps similar to the RunKeeper app”.

TechCrunch also reports that the Pebble should be available via retail outlets in four to six months.  If you’re keeping track, that means the Pebble will be available in plenty of time for Christmas 2013, while Apple’s iWatch might be available sometime next year, maybe.  Perhaps.  It could happen.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on Skere9 Star Eric Migicovsky.  Stay tuned.

Thanks to “bigdelboy” at Oracle Technology Forum

I just posted the following comment in a thread at the Oracle Technology Network forum, and I thought I’d repost it here, see below.

= = =

This is Steve O’Hearn, and thanks to bigdelboy for reposting the URL for the script download for my book, OCA Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam Guide: Exam 1ZO-047. I didn’t realize my earlier posts providing the URL were flagged as spam. You’re correct that I posted that URL in several forums at once. It’s unfortunate that whoever or whatever may have deleted my entries would’ve done so on behavior alone without regard for the content of the message.

Anyone can visit my blog at blog.corbinian.com and look for the “1ZO-047 SQL SCRIPTS” link and follow the instructions. And yes, the script download is limited to owners of the book itself. The script is worthless to anyone else anyway.

For anyone wondering about preparation for the exam, please note that my book includes 728 pages in 18 chapters, including one for each of the exam objectives, and each of those chapters includes the following:

– Text to address the exam objectives in detail
– A detailed chapter summary (“certification summary”)
– A through “two minute drill” reviewing the concepts of the chapter
– A “self-test” on the chapter, including 15 questions each, and each question is designed to match the pattern of the actual certification exam. This means that many questions are based on code samples, and all offer multiple choice answers.
– Detailed explanations for each “self-test” question and each and every answer – including an explanation as to why each answer is either right or wrong

In addition to all of this, the book also includes a complete 70-question practice exam at the end of the printed book.

And in addition to that, there’s another complete 70-question practice exam available online to owners of the book.

These exams are not included in the 728 pages of text. Altogether you’re getting over 1,000 pages of material with which to prepare for the exam.

The book really is a complete package for exam preparation. And judging by the volume of email I get from happy readers who are now certified, I dare say its very effective.

Good luck to you if you are studying for the exam! And please feel free to contact me with any comments or questions you may have. I’ve read that I’m apparently not allowed to post my email address here, but my blog website is listed above, and you can contact me via the blog.

– Steve

The state of spy drone imagery: Argus

“This is the next generation of surveillance … it is important for the public to know that some of these capabilites exist.”

These are the words of Yiannis Antoniades, designer of Argus, the world’s highest resolution camera with 1.8 billion pixels.  Antoniades is an engineer with BAE Systems and developed the camera under contract to DARPA.  The camera uses Wide Area Persistent Stare and shows an example of a 15-square-mile area video image that offers multiple drill-down capabilities.  Colored boxes highlight moving objects, including cars and people and even birds.  You can see a man waving his arms; the camera can see objects as small as six inches on the ground.

But is it being used now?  The answer to that question is “classified”, says the video.

Really?  THAT is classified? So why does that remind me of this clip from the 1980 film Airplane!:

For the record, the Argus video does state that it has, “for the first time … permission from the government to show some of these capabilities.”  So unless that claim is a lie, I don’t think it’s some rogue video.

It’s just an amazing advance in technology.

Another Great Book Review

Here’s another great review of my book OCA Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam Guide, this from R.C. Roper of Topanga Canyon, California, who says:

This is a great book, covering all of the relevant topics in detail. The chapters and sections are in the order the certification objectives appear on Oracle’s ‘Exam Topics’ page for this test, so it’s easy to navigate and find your trouble spots. There are over 200 end-of-chapter questions in the book, and that’s all I used to study for this exam. After only a week of study, I passed the exam with no other preparation except for the experience I’ve gained over the short time I’ve held my job. I can only imagine how well I would have done if I registered later for the test and gave myself more time.

Thanks, R.C.! The outline and overall structure was a major topic of discussion and debate in the original formation of the book, and frankly it made the job a bit challenging. It’s one thing to write a book that mirrors the exam objectives outline, and it’s another to create a book that conveys the information sequentially from start to finish in a way that initially made the most sense to me. Creating a single volume that does both simultaneously was tricky – but I think we did it, and did a great job. By “we”, I’m including the excellent team at McGraw-Hill, including Tim Green, Meghan Manfre (formerly Meghan Riley), and Molly Sharp, as well as the outstanding and brilliant technical editor Alistair Grieve who was tremendous and really went above and beyond with this effort.  And even the legendary Kevin Loney provided some key input.  So it was quite the team effort.  (Click here for the complete Acknowledgements section from the book!)

Java: Critical Update Issued by Oracle Corporation

Oracle issued critical updates to Java on Tuesday, Reuters reports:

The patch fixes 42 vulnerabilities within Java, including “the vast majority” of those that have been rated as the most critical, said Oracle Executive Vice President Hasan Rizvi.

For more: http://news.yahoo.com/oracle-fixes-42-holes-java-revive-security-confidence-213431315–sector.html

Are LinkedIn’s “Top Influencers” really just “Top Provocateurs”?

LinkedIn Logo

What does it mean to be a person who is influential?  I think most people say it’s about the ability to be persuasive.  And that’s a tough quality to measure.  But my many friends in the media try it all the time.  Influence is often assumed to directly correlated to the size of an audience someone has – if a large number of people pay attention to what a person says – voluntarily or involuntarily – that person is said to be influential.   A magazine is thought to be influential based on the number of readers it has.  The same is true with books, movies, etc.

LinkedIn has a measure they call “Top Influencers This Week”, it’s a box that displays the names and pictures of the individuals LinkedIn has determined are the most influential among LinkedIn users.  I ‘ve been noticing this feature lately because of an online discussion I’ve been monitoring within the Mensan community at LinkedIn.  The discussion is on the topic of the U.S. Constitution, citizen’s rights, gun control laws, and the aftermath of the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT.  I made the mistake of posting a comment or two at the beginning of the thread, which I generally don’t do, I try to stay out of political discussions at a professionally-oriented site like LinkedIn.  But there were a few fundamental misrepresentations of U.S. law that I figured might be a typo but were important to address, so I did.  Big mistake.  My email inbox has been flooded since with every comment since then, and even though I’ve gone back and deleted my original comments to try to get it to stop, they continue – I just received another two dozen comments in my inbox this morning.  Maybe there’s a “follow this discussion” box I can uncheck somewhere, but I haven’t looked yet.  But I digress.

Watching this discussion is making me aware of the LinkedIn “Top Influencer” feature.  The person who originated the discussion thread is currently listed as the number two “Top Influencer This Week” at LinkedIn, if I’m reading this correctly.  Another person in the discussion thread, who I believe has originated other discussions elsewhere on the site, is listed as the fifth most influential as I write this.

Here’s the problem: those two individuals are clearly in the minority of the discussion.  They aren’t influencing anyone, they are provoking most of the responses, and most comments are at odds with the two “top influencers”.  The reason LinkedIn charts them as “Top Influencer” is merely because they started a thread that got a lot of people involved.  But the majority of those people who are involved are arguing against the positions of the two “Top Influencers”.

So are these folks really “influencers”?  Perhaps LinkedIn should rename that feature “Top Provocateurs”, because that’s really all that is happening there.

So beware:  just because you’re told someone or something is at the “top” of any chart, be sure you know what the metrics are based on.

I hope I’ve managed to influence your thinking on this important aspect of data analysis.