Sugata Mitra: What the Slumdog Guru Did Next
Sugata Mitra is the Indian academic and polymath who became known for his Hole in the Wall computer-based education scheme where he left internet-connected PCs in rural Indian villages and observed the amazing ways in which children with no English skills or previous exposure to computers teamed up to find information and solve puzzles. ... The banks put ATMs everywhere so I built myself a DIY [kiosk] in the wall of the slum with a glass pane and a touchpad running Microsoft Windows and it had a broadband internet connection and I left it there. It was three feet off the ground and the first people who came there were children and they said ‘What is this?’
The five minute CIO: Mick Callan
IT architecture should cross over between IT and certainly enterprise architecture is more about the business than it is about IT, being able to communicate and articulate what the business needs. Sometimes IT is working well if it's innocuous. It's about meeting the business needs and streamlining IT to fit around those in as unconvoluted a way as possible. The five pillars of IT architecture are business technology strategy, human dynamics, quality attributes, the IT environment, and design. People sometimes put it all in IT environment or design, but human dynamics is a huge part that's often missed. If you talk to people in the IVI around capability models, they are all tuned around the business needs.
My Digital Banking Nirvana
One potential solution is to integrate Capital One’s new SureSwipe login feature into a new mobile banking relationship. With SureSwipe, all a customer needs to do is remember a pattern as opposed to passwords, making login easier.Digital consumers also do not want to go through a series of authentication steps just to see the balance in their account. In the U.S., GoBank provides the opportunity to see balances with a simple swipe of the finger. GoBank is still one of the few banks in the U.S. to provide this instant balance feature, even though Mapa Research found close to 20% of major banks worldwide offing this functionality.
Aruba Networks: the network-aware application & the (mobile) application-aware network
Jon Green says that facilitating the new #GenMobile network will demand open interfaces. This is open interfaces as opposed to a proprietary protocol for networked routers. Mobility-Defined Networks operate such that the networks should be “defined and shaped” by the needs and demands of mobile users. The technology here should be capable of constantly capturing and correlating real-time state information – it will then be able to automate network security actions based upon that data. Aruba says that the focus for us here is on the middle control layer of software that can automate manual tasks and processes.
Need for Proactive Enterprise IT Innovation
While the robot and high-powered computer disruption outlined by Brynjolfsson is not quite upon us yet, disruption was the common topic among the CIOs and other C-level execs at the conference. Digital business transformation means "using technology to radically improve performance or the reach of your business," said MIT research scientist George Westerman during a panel on digital transformation. Those transformations can include putting the customer first in every process as advocated by Dell CIO Adriana Karaboutis or having a goal where 80 percent of all business transactions are digital by 2020 as outlined by AT&T CIO Thaddeus Arroyo.
Tech worker groups boycott IBM, Infosys, Manpower
The main goals of the boycott are "attention getting" and putting pressure on the IT staffing firms to change their practices, Conroy said. With IT staffing agencies competing to fill U.S. positions, the companies contracting for their services may want to consider if the staffing firm "has a good reputation," she said. The boycott should also raise concerns about staffing firms violating equal employment laws, said Les French, president of WashTech. "In addition to calling attention to an illegal practice, we want to show there are valid challenges to the 'labor shortage' of STEM workers," French said in an email.
Hong Kong: Silicon Harbour or Silicon Failure?\
The government has issued no fewer than five Digital 21 Strategy documents since the handover, detailing its blueprint for ICT in the SAR. It has tried to encourage the local startup scene to flourish by building facilities including Cyberport, the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, and more recently hot-desk spaces like The Hive and Cocoon. It’s also been trying to get foreign businesses to move in by offering up disused factories as datacentres and waiving the fees usually levied on firms wanting to convert such buildings to tier-one and -two bit barns.
The depressing truth about e-waste: 10 things to know
In 2012, the United Nations reported that in five years, the world's electronic waste would grow by 33% from 49.7 million tons to 65.4 million tons. That's the weight of 200 Empire State Buildings or 11 Great Pyramids of Giza. Considering the lifespan of a cell phone is now only 18 months and a laptop's life span is only around two years, that rapid growth rate isn't surprising. What is surprising, however, is how little the public knows about e-waste and how to properly dispose of electronics. Here are 10 things to know about the e-waste life cycle.
Troubleshoot and Resolve Routing Issues—BGP
We can use BGP in the following conditions: Customer connected to multiple Internet service providers (ISPs); Service provider networks (transit autonomous system) and In very large enterprise networks, where we can use BGP at core layer as a redundant routing protocol. Common Neighbor Stability Problems of BGP: Misconfigured neighbor’s IP address and AS number; Reachability issues when interfaces other than directly connected interfaces are used while peering (update-source issue); Authentication must be properly implemented (if configured) and Router ID must be unique. BGP often stuck in idle or active state
The Agile Organisation: Are You Ready for Revolution?
Anyone who has been in an Agile team can tell you stories about people who follow the letter but not the spirit of Agile. While it’s true that positive behaviours can lead to a virtuous circle that eventually changes mindset, it’s equally true that a team can normally carry only one or two such people, before the effort breaks down. If this is the case with a small team, imagine how much harder it is for a whole company, where the existing structure actively discourages transparency, inspection and adaptation.
Quote for the day:
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.” -- Andrew Carnegie
Sugata Mitra is the Indian academic and polymath who became known for his Hole in the Wall computer-based education scheme where he left internet-connected PCs in rural Indian villages and observed the amazing ways in which children with no English skills or previous exposure to computers teamed up to find information and solve puzzles. ... The banks put ATMs everywhere so I built myself a DIY [kiosk] in the wall of the slum with a glass pane and a touchpad running Microsoft Windows and it had a broadband internet connection and I left it there. It was three feet off the ground and the first people who came there were children and they said ‘What is this?’
IT architecture should cross over between IT and certainly enterprise architecture is more about the business than it is about IT, being able to communicate and articulate what the business needs. Sometimes IT is working well if it's innocuous. It's about meeting the business needs and streamlining IT to fit around those in as unconvoluted a way as possible. The five pillars of IT architecture are business technology strategy, human dynamics, quality attributes, the IT environment, and design. People sometimes put it all in IT environment or design, but human dynamics is a huge part that's often missed. If you talk to people in the IVI around capability models, they are all tuned around the business needs.
My Digital Banking Nirvana
One potential solution is to integrate Capital One’s new SureSwipe login feature into a new mobile banking relationship. With SureSwipe, all a customer needs to do is remember a pattern as opposed to passwords, making login easier.Digital consumers also do not want to go through a series of authentication steps just to see the balance in their account. In the U.S., GoBank provides the opportunity to see balances with a simple swipe of the finger. GoBank is still one of the few banks in the U.S. to provide this instant balance feature, even though Mapa Research found close to 20% of major banks worldwide offing this functionality.
Aruba Networks: the network-aware application & the (mobile) application-aware network
Jon Green says that facilitating the new #GenMobile network will demand open interfaces. This is open interfaces as opposed to a proprietary protocol for networked routers. Mobility-Defined Networks operate such that the networks should be “defined and shaped” by the needs and demands of mobile users. The technology here should be capable of constantly capturing and correlating real-time state information – it will then be able to automate network security actions based upon that data. Aruba says that the focus for us here is on the middle control layer of software that can automate manual tasks and processes.
Need for Proactive Enterprise IT Innovation
While the robot and high-powered computer disruption outlined by Brynjolfsson is not quite upon us yet, disruption was the common topic among the CIOs and other C-level execs at the conference. Digital business transformation means "using technology to radically improve performance or the reach of your business," said MIT research scientist George Westerman during a panel on digital transformation. Those transformations can include putting the customer first in every process as advocated by Dell CIO Adriana Karaboutis or having a goal where 80 percent of all business transactions are digital by 2020 as outlined by AT&T CIO Thaddeus Arroyo.
Tech worker groups boycott IBM, Infosys, Manpower
The main goals of the boycott are "attention getting" and putting pressure on the IT staffing firms to change their practices, Conroy said. With IT staffing agencies competing to fill U.S. positions, the companies contracting for their services may want to consider if the staffing firm "has a good reputation," she said. The boycott should also raise concerns about staffing firms violating equal employment laws, said Les French, president of WashTech. "In addition to calling attention to an illegal practice, we want to show there are valid challenges to the 'labor shortage' of STEM workers," French said in an email.
Hong Kong: Silicon Harbour or Silicon Failure?\
The government has issued no fewer than five Digital 21 Strategy documents since the handover, detailing its blueprint for ICT in the SAR. It has tried to encourage the local startup scene to flourish by building facilities including Cyberport, the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, and more recently hot-desk spaces like The Hive and Cocoon. It’s also been trying to get foreign businesses to move in by offering up disused factories as datacentres and waiving the fees usually levied on firms wanting to convert such buildings to tier-one and -two bit barns.
The depressing truth about e-waste: 10 things to know
In 2012, the United Nations reported that in five years, the world's electronic waste would grow by 33% from 49.7 million tons to 65.4 million tons. That's the weight of 200 Empire State Buildings or 11 Great Pyramids of Giza. Considering the lifespan of a cell phone is now only 18 months and a laptop's life span is only around two years, that rapid growth rate isn't surprising. What is surprising, however, is how little the public knows about e-waste and how to properly dispose of electronics. Here are 10 things to know about the e-waste life cycle.
Troubleshoot and Resolve Routing Issues—BGP
We can use BGP in the following conditions: Customer connected to multiple Internet service providers (ISPs); Service provider networks (transit autonomous system) and In very large enterprise networks, where we can use BGP at core layer as a redundant routing protocol. Common Neighbor Stability Problems of BGP: Misconfigured neighbor’s IP address and AS number; Reachability issues when interfaces other than directly connected interfaces are used while peering (update-source issue); Authentication must be properly implemented (if configured) and Router ID must be unique. BGP often stuck in idle or active state
The Agile Organisation: Are You Ready for Revolution?
Anyone who has been in an Agile team can tell you stories about people who follow the letter but not the spirit of Agile. While it’s true that positive behaviours can lead to a virtuous circle that eventually changes mindset, it’s equally true that a team can normally carry only one or two such people, before the effort breaks down. If this is the case with a small team, imagine how much harder it is for a whole company, where the existing structure actively discourages transparency, inspection and adaptation.
Quote for the day:
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.” -- Andrew Carnegie
