Obama’s $100-million brain-mapping initiative

April 3, 2013 Leave a comment

In the next ten years, the U.S. government will be spending $100 million to map the human brain. Just like we mapped the human genome, and are already seeing a great return on the investment even though the truly exciting technologies (personalized medicine, etc.) are barely here yet, the government hopes the brain-mapping initiative will yield many benefits to science and business.

The Human Brain

The Human Brain

The first business benefits will likely be in the medical field. With a more thorough understanding of the brain’s functions, doctors should be able to better treat diseases and conditions like Alzheimer’s and epilepsy. If your business is in the medical field, be on the lookout for improved drugs and treatments for brain disorders. Think about looking for health benefits for your employees that include new treatments for brain disorders, as well.

Mapping the brain should also yield tremendous results in the area of mind control of electronics. Like we mentioned in the previous post, more natural controls for our electronics are just around the corner. This year it’s magical armbands – next decade it’ll be a headband. Amputees are already using mind-controlled prosthetic limbs with great success. Better understanding of the brain should lead to more fine-grained control and the capture of more complex thought processes.

The next wave will likely be improved AIs. As we understand how our brains work, we should be able to replicate them more exactly in artificial beings. If you think Siri is cool, wait until you have Jarvis (Iron Man’s personal assistant, if you didn’t see The Avengers). We’ll be able to offload annoying mental tasks, like counting calories and taking notes in meetings, to our digital assistants.

After that, who knows? If the brain mapping project achieves even one of these outcomes, it will have been a rousing success. For now, stay tuned for technology news and keep taking advantage of the innovations that come down the pike.

By Sharon Campbell

Filed under Technology

With a flick of the wrist

March 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Wouldn’t it be cool if your app worked by magic? Just wave your hand to turn the page in your ebook, go to the next slide of a presentation, or send an email. And if you’ve ever played a video game like World of Warcraft where you had to bind all of your abilities to different key combinations – just think what it would be like to cast your spells with a flick of the wrist rather than ALT-CTRL-F7!

It’s not called magic, it’s called MYO. And it’s coming out this year.

MYO is an armband that reads the subtle electrical signals produced by your body when you flex your muscles. It also senses its own motion. It’s kind of like a next-generation mouse, where your hand isn’t merely guiding a hunk of plastic around on your desk – your hand is the mouse.

The MYO is more intuitive to use than a mouse, provides a finer level of control, and has more points of input. Suddenly, you can fly a plane in a flight simulator by describing its arc with your own palm. It doesn’t even have to be a simulator – hook up a drone to work with your MYO, and you can fly it through the air using your hand as the remote control.

You don’t have to have a complicated virtual-reality application for MYO to be an improvement. Think how nice it would be if your whole desk – or your airplane tray table – worked as a touchscreen for your computer or smartphone. When your body is the controller, anywhere you can go and anything you can do can join the information age.

By Sharon Campbell

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWu9TFJjHaMtwo_rings

Filed under Hardware, Technology

Hadoop: Making Use of Big Data

January 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Today we’re going to talk about Big Data, and what to do with it. Basically, Big Data is all the thousands or millions of facts and figures about your business that you’re starting to collect. Clicks on ads, retweets, the fact that the blue socks sell better on Tuesday evenings – all those factoids add up.

Hadoop is a software framework for dealing with all of that data. Hadoop is from Apache, and its original components were invented by Doug Cutting based on a 2004 paper about Google’s MapReduce data processing software.

Hadoop is good for storing and retrieving large amounts of data in parallel from disjointed (read: cloud) storage devices. So, it’s great for storing your customers’ non-sensitive profile information, all of your transaction histories, etc. It’s also great for cloud computing: it seamlessly handles data that’s sitting on multiple physical storage devices, and it’s designed to keep chugging along even if a significant portion of its servers are knocked out. It’s not so great for performing complex calculations on small amounts of data, and it’s definitely not great for things like financial transactions that can get messed up if executed in parallel. But it can store all the information related to those financial transactions, so you can do things like track spending patterns to identify fraudulant purchases.

So, good stuff! Venturing into the world of Big Data? Keep track of it all with Hadoop.

Head over to Apache’s website for all the technical details.

By Sharon Campbell

Filed under Internet, Software, Technology

Janus Networks on page 101 in Inc Magazine

December 29, 2012 Leave a comment

1JN_Magazine_Ad_8 28_v2

Filed under Internet, Small Business Services, Technology, Uncategorized

If you live on the second floor, make sure there’s a fire escape

November 30, 2012 Leave a comment

A few lucky technology companies seem to become “the next big thing” overnight. Remember when you were thinking that “tweet” was a stupid verb, and then the month after that, you had to add a “share on Twitter” button to your home page? Companies that can quickly capitalize on the next big thing piggyback off of the original prodigy’s success and even become buzz-worthy in their own right.

Kred Logo

You’ve probably heard of Kred. It calculates people’s online “influence scores,” primarily based on data from Twitter. It’s been quite successful because it makes Twitter (Everyone’s using it! But what do I do with that?) useful to advertisers and marketing departments. I bet a lot of startups wish they had been able to capitalize on Twitter’s success the way Kred did. However, it’s a bit of a one-trick pony. Kred needs Twitter (plus a few other sites like Facebook and LinkedIn) in order for Kred to be Kred.

And right now Kred’s parent company PeopleBrowsr is in the middle of a nasty legal battle with Twitter over getting access to the data. It used to have a one-on-one contract with Twitter to gain access to its data, and Twitter just decided to let that contract expire.

No matter which way the lawsuit is resolved, I’m sure quite a few people over at Kred are looking at each other nervously.

It didn’t have to be a legal battle either – if Twitter ever went the way of MySpace, or was hit by a crippling cyber attack, or all its US servers went down because of coinciding hurricanes on the east coast and earthquakes on the west – Kred would be just as out of luck. Technology companies can spring up quickly and fade just as fast.

If your business relies heavily on just one other business, make sure you always have a Plan B.

By Sharon Campbell

Filed under Internet, Politics, Software, Technology, Web Service

Move the fax machine over, 3D printers are here

October 16, 2012 Leave a comment

Paper is on its way out. For most applications, words on a screen are just as good as or better than words on a piece of paper. The physical presence of paper was never really essential to most of its uses as printed memos and bills and receipts; one could argue that the digitization of such information brings it to a purer, more efficient form. Send your fax machine to an e-waste center and save a few trees.

Other objects are more tied to their physical forms than letters were to paper. You can’t drink from a digital coffee cup, pet a digital dog, or sit in a digital chair. But you can print the coffee cup and the chair (and maybe someday the dog?) almost as easily as you used to print those memos, if you have a 3D printer.

3D printers take the information age to the world of physical objects. Just as letters changed with email and photos changed with digital cameras, so every made physical object is poised to change in the next couple of years. With a 3D printer, you’ll be able to “photoshop” anything. You can make custom products and parts. You can fulfill orders on demand. You can iterate through hundreds of prototypes with very little time and cost. Soon enough, making your own table lamp will be like picking which family photo to print out and send with the Christmas cards.

This technology is right around the corner. 3D printing companies saw some of the strongest stock performance this year. MakerBot is already bringing the cost down to the enthusiast level and hopefully soon to basic consumers, and HP is rumored to have plans to bring 3D printers to the masses like they did with 2D printers in the 90s.

A 3D printer could be useful to almost any type of business. Even if you sell intangible services or digital products, you likely have some office equipment that requires maintenance. Start printing your own custom replacement parts and marketing gewgaws. You might even be able to take parts of your business that you thought would be purely digital and make them physical, like these World of Warcraft character models.

If your business sells or works on physical objects of any kinds, a 3D printer will be even more useful. 3D printers mostly work in plastic and metal right now, but models that print with food, cloth, concrete, bone, and even specific chemicals like medicines are all in various stages of practicality. The printers come in all sizes, too – there are models that can build a house.

If your business relies on selling or servicing physical objects, you want to be ahead of the curve on this one. Show your customers that you can design and print their custom glasses, cakes, plumbing pipes, musical instruments, prosthetics, vaccuum cleaners, and jewelry before they decide to do it all on their own. After all, if you’re an expert car mechanic, you’re still going to have a better idea than the average Joe or Jane about what part to print for their car, in what type of material, and how to install it. You might want to hire a CADD designer to make the blueprints, or learn how to make the patterns for the 3D printer yourself.

3D printing will also save you money, unless you need hundreds of exactly the same thing. 3D printing lets you make just one of something for a very low cost, so customization – an ever-growing trend for today’s consumer – is king. It uses less raw material and often makes a stronger version of the object. It avoids shipping and handling fees and delays. If you don’t like how something turned out, melt it down and make another one.

3D printing is coming. Get ready today for this new technology – one that I think will be as revolutionary as it is exciting.

By Sharon Campbell

Filed under Hardware, Internet, Technology

Mobile is the new place you need to be

September 13, 2012 Leave a comment

As you may have noticed from all the furor over the new iPhone today, people love smartphones. And why shouldn’t they? You literally have the internet in your pocket. It’s about the next best thing to being omniscient.

Smartphones today are like the internet was in the late 90′s and early 2000′s. There’s a snowballing effect of consumer and corporate adoption. The more people can do on their smartphones, the more they’ll expect every business to operate there, so more businesses will go mobile to meet expectations, and so on and so forth in a positive feedback loop until mobile is everywhere.

Build your mobile website

The good news is that, if you have a website, you’re already halfway there! Mobile is still the internet, after all, and if you have a good online presence already, chances are you’ll just have to tweak your website a bit to take the first and most important step in becoming mobile-friendly. (If you don’t have a website, then get one as soon as possible, and make sure it’s mobile-friendly from the start.)

Some websites are pretty easy to navigate on a smartphone. The text layout is clear and the menus aren’t too complex. Some are horrible. If you have a fancy flash intro, most mobile phones won’t even be able to display it. Either way, though, you can probably make some changes to make the website better for smaller screens. You’ll have to decide whether you want to make the main website mobile-friendly, or make a separate website just for mobile devices.

Just like for your regular website, you can (and should, unless you really know what you’re doing) hire professionals to help you design your mobile website and make the right calls. Once the mobile website is done and offers all the functionality of your full website, you can relax and know that your business has gotten in the mobile game.

Mobilize your service

Depending on the type of business you run, you might be able to do more with your mobile presence than just provide the information from your website. Can you think of ways to digitize your product or service?

Here are a few examples of fully and partially digitized products and services:

  • Smartphone tickets for airlines, movies, and concerts
  • Snapshots for check deposits, medical diagnoses, and repair estimates
  • Mobile appointment apps for deliveries and service calls
  • Movies, books, and games
  • Updates and trading apps for investments

Smartphones can detect someone’s position and read very subtle vibrations. They can display and record audio and video. They’re connected to the entire internet. If you can make a smartphone do something useful for your business – and don’t be afraid to think outside the box, like using a vibration signature to confirm a payment – go for it.

Increase your connection with customers

So maybe your business is very brick-and-mortar. Maybe you make pizza. Maybe you repair cars. Maybe you negotiate home sales. Maybe you run a fleet of delivery trucks. You can still take a step further into the mobile internet and offer some extra value to your customers.

For example, people love checking the progress on something they’re waiting for. Pizza in the oven? Show the completion bar filling. Dents smoothed out of the car? Send a picture. Buyers ready with a counter-offer? Text it to the sellers. Attach GPS devices to your delivery trucks and let customers track them on a map application.

Just make sure that people have the option to set their preferred update frequency; you don’t want to become a pest. Most people, however, will love knowing just what’s happening with the products and services they’ve bought from you. And you’ll be relevant to everyone who went crazy for the iPhone 5 today.

By Sharon Campbell

Filed under Internet, Technology

Cast a spell on your expense reports with ExpenseMagic

August 28, 2012 Leave a comment

Having a business means having expenses – and having expenses means saving receipts and filling out expense reports.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not that rare breed of person who just naturally loves to keep track of purchases and enter expense details into spreadsheets. Receipts have been known to accumulate in a desk drawer for weeks, fall out of my wallet on the way to the office, or just miraculously disappear. And when I finally get around to filling out an expense report, everything is scattered and it’s a hassle just to straighten and organize it all before I can start the menial task of entering my receipts by hand.

Maybe you’ve never lost a receipt, never forgotten where that stub was from, or what you were doing at that lunch. Or maybe you have the resources to hire someone to follow you around full-time and take care of this hassle for you.

For the rest of us, there’s ExpenseMagic.

ExpenseMagic is a service that brings the power of the cloud – and the experience of full-time bookkeepers – to your expenses. It provides a quick and hassle-free way to get a handle on your receipts and your expenses, bringing order to an area normally ruled by chaos.

Their iPhone app lets you take a picture of any receipt anywhere, and immediately log it in their system while on the go. They also accept digital receipts via email, or through a number of integrated services. The receipt will then live in the cloud until a set of actual human eyes looks at it, parses out the relevant information, and logs it into a database of your expenses. Their trained bookkeepers will collate and organize all of your expenses for you, and at the end of the month, you’ll get a full expense report without any of the stress or wasted time on your part.

That’s it. You can buy lunch for a business meeting, take a picture of the receipt before you leave the restaurant, and then promptly forget about it. All you have to worry about is sending the receipts with your smartphone, and they’ll do the rest.

The service has a bunch of useful features, such as support for Evernote, Dropbox, OfficeDrop, and a handful of other services, so it can slip right into the workflow and note-sharing applications you already use. They have a simple and quick mileage system to log the amount of business-related driving expenses, as well as automatic currency conversion for international expenses. There’s even calendar integration that allows you to assign each expense to a specific event in your calendar, so you’ll never have to remember exactly what you were doing and who you were with when you bought that coffee.

ExpenseMagic has a couple different pricing plans based on how often you incur expenses. You can download the app for free and start uploading receipts immediately. From there you can pay-as-you go for the price of $4.99 for 20 of what they call “Magical Uploads” – their name for their bookkeeper service. If you find the service useful, you can upgrade to an unlimited plan for $11.99/month or $20.99/90 days.

The service is currently only available for iPhone and as a webapp, although there is an Android version in the works.

If you’re like me and hate having to worry about expenses and whether you’re doing them right, Expense Magic might just be your ticket. You still have the responsibility to upload all your receipts, but that’s nothing compared to the old way of doing things. You could end up saving yourself hassle and time, and maybe even some money in the process.

By Matthew Thornton & Sharon Campbell

Filed under Small Business Services, Software, Technology, Web Service

Your new email butler, ToutApp

August 13, 2012 Leave a comment

If your typical day is anything like mine, you spend most of your time at work inside an email application.

It doesn’t matter whether you are responding to incoming emails on your phone, sending out hundreds of almost-identical emails directly to clients, or just obsessively checking your inbox to see if your boss has responded to that important message yet; the never-ending avalanche of email can often seem too much to handle.

That’s where ToutApp comes in.

ToutApp is a great email tool that helps to streamline your email tasks, freeing up your time and energy to spend on other aspects of your business.

It offers easy and reliable email tracking, giving you detailed, real-time stats on who has viewed your emails and whether or not they clicked on the links inside. This takes a lot of the guesswork (and stress) out of email—you won’t have to wait for confirmation emails anymore, and it erases any lingering worries about whether the email went where it was intended.

Other features include Tout templates, which save time by automatically filling in the information you would normally enter over and over again. It can auto-attach files, automatically CC and BCC people, and even fill in custom text templates—allowing you to focus on only the important details of each individual email.

You can also schedule your emails to be sent at a particular time, so you’ll never again need to remember to send that email out right after lunch.  Outlook doesn’t even need to be open for this to work—you can compose an email on Friday afternoon, and make sure it’s sent out first thing Monday morning… even if you’re not in the office.

If you use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, ToutApp makes things a lot easier by integrating directly into Salesforce and a number of other supported CRM apps. It synchronizes your contacts and automatically updates your email activity, right when you send the email. No more alt-tabbing between programs, or forgetting to update the CRM—ToutApp takes care of all of that automatically.

If you find yourself spending an inordinate amount of your time worrying about email and constantly updating your CRM, this app could free up your time (and mental real estate) to run the other parts of your business.

ToutApp is available as a web-based application, as well as a plugin for Gmail and Outlook. A mobile version is available for the iPhone. An Android version is currently in development, as is support for Apple Mail on OSX. The service has an introductory free trial period, and plans start at $30/month, going up from there depending on what features your business needs. There’s also an “always-free plan” ideal for personal use, which limits the amount of templates and time-shifted emails allowed per month.

For more information, visit their site, or watch their introductory video, embedded below.

By Matthew Thornton & Sharon Campbell

Filed under Internet, Small Business Services, Software, Technology

OpenStack, the new open-source operating system for cloud computing

July 29, 2012 Leave a comment

If your business is like a lot of others I know, your need for computing power swings up and down and all over the place. Maybe you have a Christmas rush to get orders through on your website. Maybe your traffic spikes every time you post a new update to your webcomic or online game. Maybe your company got mentioned on TV and you suddenly have 100 times your normal visitors.

Traditionally, your server administrators would caution you to buy a big enough server to handle spikes. After all, you can’t afford to miss out on your best sales and popularity peaks, even though you only use the full capacity once a year.

Cloud computing offers something a little different. It treats computer power the same way the power company treats your electricity – they provide more than you could ever use, they offer the power to a wide base of people, and you pay only for what you actually consume. If you think about it, this is a much more efficient (and cheaper) way to get the computing power that you need.

There are a few big players in cloud computing right now, and Amazon is at the forefront with their proprietary Amazon Cloud and related products. But cloud computing is about to bust wide open, because of OpenStack.

OpenStack is a new operating system designed to manage cloud computing, and it’s open source. Free. Available to everyone. It’s trying to do for cloud computing what Linux did for traditional servers. It’s been around for a couple of years, but recently it’s left the realm of “something some nerds are working on for fun” to become a really viable platform with, for example, a graphical dashboard that can be used by someone with basic computer knowhow.

To give you an idea of the OpenStack user experience, I suggest you check out their demo video.

In practical terms, what this means is that soon everybody and their great-aunt will be offering cloud hosting. Companies can even use it in-house, although that kind of defeats the whole “sharing” concept unless you have a large enough in-company user base.

So keep your eye out for some great deals and innovation in the area of cloud computing. And expect it to be powered by OpenStack.

by Sharon Campbell

Filed under Internet, Software, Technology, Web Service

← Older posts

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 39 other followers