I spend a lot of my day (and night) talking to people. In fact, if I were to total all of the activities in my life – and probably the lives of most people I know – the largest single activity on which time is spent (although curiously perhaps not by level of effort) across my entire life has been communication. Words have meaning. Continue reading
The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater) has produced a number of fascinating experiments lately focused on the uses of quadrotor helicopter robots. Four-propeller aircraft designs were popularized in the 1920s and 1930s to help solve some of the persistent issues with vertical flight (i.e., torque-control). Continue reading
Ever since I first got onto the Internet in the late 1980s and involved in its commercialization in the early 1990s I’ve seen year after year of brilliant (and sometimes silly) innovation and growth. It should be no surprise that pundits the world over are looking to 2012 to be yet another record-setting year wherein more people get online and stay online in ways that are well understood and some that may emerge before our very eyes (Pinterest, anyone?). Continue reading
A colleague of mine sent me this video ahead of a quarterly meeting we conducted with our entire business unit and it started me thinking about the nature of opportunity. From where are great opportunities born? Continue reading
When you stop and think about it, evolutionary science is pretty amazing stuff. On one hand you’re dealing with infinitely complex systems that are constantly changing to adapt to myriad elements of the environment in which they exist. Continue reading
Unless you’re living in Bill Gates’ house, chances are most of the objects around you aren’t Internet-connected. In fact, the vast majority of appliances, mechanical systems, and even doors/windows are “dumb” with respect to their ability to tell you much of anything unless you’re standing immediately in front of them. Continue reading
Now that SOPA and PIPA are effectively dead (okay, shelved but not actually dead), it is worth circling back and looking at what the world would look like without some of the sites that have transformed the Internet. For example, YouTube announced yesterday that it is streaming over four billion videos a day - a figure that is up 25% from just eight months ago. Continue reading
