Cloud Computing - Security, Compliance, and Opportunities

Controlling data in the cloud: outsourcing computation without outsourcing control

A group at PARC has been studying the Cloud Computing space and published this paper (download) in CCSW. The particular this paper argued that life in the cloud can be advantageous from a business intelligence standpoint over the isolated alternative that is more common today.

Cloud Computing and Security

The same group also posted a blog entry on several issues are of potential interests for both technical development and business management.

In particular, it points to four (4) levels where Cloud Computing could increase technical vulnerabilities; two (2) areas with known potential business concerns; and two (2) opportunities where Cloud Computing enables new capabilities that is difficult to do today.

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Disruptive Innovation and Organic Electronics

FlexTech 2010

Given PARC's unique capabilities in the flexible, printed, and organic electronic applications, I am glad to report that the FlexTech 2010 show was well attended.

PARC presented two workshops on current work and Mark Bernstein, PARC's CEO, gave a keynote speech on disruptive technology.

PARC and Disruptive Technology in an Emerging Eco-system

Mark's keynote on "The changing model: Moving technologies from research to applications" focuses on what happens when new emerging technology is disrupting industry dynamics. In this scenario, the ability to find and collaborate with the right partners becomes imperative.

View more presentations from PARC (Palo Alto Research Center).

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2010 Flexible Electronics & Displays Conference

PARC at 2010 FlexTech

PARC will be actively participating in the upcoming 2010 FlexTech.

* Feb 2 Keynote session: "Moving technologies from the lab to real-world applications" by Mark Bernstein, CEO of PARC.

* Feb 3 "Flexible Printed Sensor Tape based on Solution Processed Materials" and "Sensing of blast events with flexible sensor tapes" - discussion of current projects by PARC technologists.

* Feb 2-4 PARC will be at booth 204 showcasing services in material characterization and optimization, application development, and system prototyping. Come by to see samples and learn about what PARC can do for your product road-map.

Flexible and Printed Electronics at PARC

PARC has been engaging in works related to both flexible and printed electronics for long time. And, PARC is a global organization that can provide both the technical (hard and soft) infrastructure and commercialization capabilities for our partners in this emerging technology area.

For more information on PARC's work in flexible and printed electronics.

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Open source and its hook

Marten and Open Source Hook

I was chatting with Marten Mickos recently. The question of what makes an open source effort succeed when others just flounder came up. He suggested that having a specific hook/niche that can be easily articulated is an important factor amongst many others. In the case of MySQL, it was a database designed specifically for web usage.

In the mundane business talk, it is about having an unique value proposition.

CCN and its Open Source

CCN's open source release came out last year. So, Marten's observation got me thinking about what is CCN's hook.

According to the recent Network World article, it is about security and multimedia/content consumption.

Would be interested in your take on what CCN's unique value proposition is. I am all ears.

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Digital Content Consumption - through the lens of users

Digital Content Design - building blocks

A major characteristic of digital content that makes it different from the traditional medium is that it can be consumed in non traditional settings. For example PARC has done identified the notion of "micro-waiting" as a new way that users engage content.

We are also exploring the categories/thresholds of "information overload." The obvious implication is how can technology help users find the nuggets of useful information given the constant deluge of data from all sources.

Embodied Interaction Framework

Beyond understanding these building blocks, there are teams at PARC exploring the issue of how to design an embodied interaction framework that leverages natural human behavior to alter system state or trigger interaction. Or, in plain(er) English, create devices/solutions where a user does not need to learn a new "language" to interact with technology. What makes PARC's approach unique is that this explicitly incorporates social science and psychology insight, also areas that PARC has a long history of advanced work, into the technology design.

Moving from Content Creation to Content Consumption

Although nobody would dispute the truism that content creation and consumption are the two sides of the same coin, people don't always think of it that way. Today, there seems to be little understanding of the consumption side beyond aggregate measurements to meet the needs of content creators/providers.

Let's flip the lens around and ask how to measure and deliver consumption pattern in the eyes of individual consumers. If we can make it seamless and nearly invisible, this could ignite the next phase of the digital revolution.

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Flexible Electronics: Materials and Applications

The Textbook

Flexible Electronics: Materials and Applications

Given PARC's work in flexible and printed electronics. It is little surprise that we also write the textbook on this topic. And, this is my reference reading material before attending Printed Electronics USA 2009.

Printed Electronics at PARC

Here are some of the areas that we are working on right now:
- PEN substrate
- Ink-jet printing (nanoparticle)
- Polymer dielectrics
- Polymer semiconductor

In our facility, we support different print head technologies and can customize to each project's specific needs. So far, we have done work with Microfab, Spectra, and Xerox print heads.

Sensors and applications

An area that we are seeing a lot of interests in is printed flexible sensors. We have a project that measures acceleration, pressure, acoustic, and thermal status then incorporates memory and CMOS (logic) into a single printed sensor tape. The initial work is for DARPA but it would have wide civilian applications once the technical kinks have been worked out.

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Smart Phones of Near Future and PARC's Migitti Project

New York Times on Smart Phones

Here is an article from NY Times on what the future of smart phone may look like and how key players are pushing the envelop.

PARC's Migitti project was one of the featured solutions in the article. Beyond the technology, we also deployed extensive social science analysis to ensure its usability.

Migitti Project

Activity-Based Serendipitous Recommendations with the Magitti Mobile Leisure Guide

View more presentations from begole.

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Digital Content Consumption - What is Next?

Digital content consumption, today

It would be an understatement to say that digital content consumption is creating a headache for the traditional providers. The latest public display was billed as Media Brawl at Web 2.0.

Digital content consumption, tomorrow

What is right around the corner is a new generation of techniques and solutions. Here are some of the areas that PARC is working on.

* Non-traditional directed consumption through user generated content such as tags
* Predictive models through sentiment analysis and machine learning
* Distributed content and security management
* Recommendation systems built on reality mining in mobile devices

Digital content consumption, the day after tomorrow

One of the areas that there does not seem to get a lot of attention is how are users actually consuming content. Most the discussions have an implicit assumption of a bygone day when a person would actually devote a chunk of time to an activity, i.e. read a news article, in front of a decent size screen. With smart phone projected to overtake laptop as the most ubiquitous mobile device, the inevitable question in a couple of years is when I am on the go with a smart phone, when and how do I want to consume content?

One of the more interesting insight that PARC has worked on already is the notion of "microwaiting." The simple scenario, albeit a bit scary, is to think of stopping your car at a red light in your morning commute. You know the wait is about 60 seconds. And, guess what, we have found that this is an example where people are very receptive to consume content. Thus the term "microwaiting".

One of the things that people don't often know about is how social science plays a key role at PARC. This is an example where this unique combination of technical and social insight leads to really interesting design and business implications.

p.s. Let me know if you want to learn more about "microwaiting". We have published a CHI paper on this topic.

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Digital Distribution as a Competitive Advantage for Media Companies

The trouble with the digital world

The issues confronting many media companies in the world of internet, in general, and news aggregation, in particularly, is well known by now. The traditional business model of setting up the infrastructure to serve a particular geographic region is no longer seem as a compelling advantage.

Physical distribution of digital content as an advantage

Just thinking out loud. At the most basic level, while internet is considered "virtual", there is still a physical/geographic limitation on the actual routing of bits and byte. For example, by providing coverage outside of homes and offices in a region, this would deter others from setting up parallel infrastructure. Furthermore, by linking into regional advertising base, a media company can provide very fine-grained data for advertisers which would be worth a lot more than just general IP based information.

In other words, could this be a form of digital distribution that is highly defensible?

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Social Media Today and Tomorrow

Social Media

It is no longer controversial to suggest social media is here to stay. From blogs, twitts, to Facebook and LinkedIn, PARC is actively participating in understanding and shaping what is to come.

I believe there are at least three interesting ways to look at Social Media and how they are impacting what we do today.

Disrupting Traditional Services

Dis-intermediation is an old concept from the dot com time. And, we are seeing it play out today in industries like newspaper. The woes facing the traditional newspaper is well known. The bundling of breaking news, fact checking, investigation, and editorials to attract a broad audience for advertisers is no longer compelling given the proliferation of citizen journalists and opinion makers through blog, twitts, and videos who in term break up audience into more targeted segments.

There is a lot of work on finding a new business model for the traditional newspaper. I think the litmus test for a new model is to think of how would the next (goodness forbid) "Watergate" would be exposed and discussed.

New Data and Interaction

It is also fascinating to consider how social media is creating a new layer of social fabric into our daily life. For example, some of my friends can only be found via Facebook these days. Conversely, with so much data and unverified facts flowing, how do I know who/what to believe? At a high level, what are the additional insight on social interactions that was not knowable until now where every user is generating discreet data as a primary source?

This is an area of much work at PARC.

Tomorrow's Social Media Today

Finally, with a combination of changing social norm and new technology, it is also changing the lens we will use to see the world. For example, how will the increasing power of smartphone play into this picture? There is a term "reality mining" that may make into the mainstream one day which describes what is possible given the explosion of personal social media and location data through the use of social media tools on smartphones. We have built quite a bit of technology on this front at PARC.

As for the question of the ultimate big brother or the ultimate personal assistant? Only time will tell.

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PARC's Longevity

PARC is better than NASA

That should get your attention.

In a Harvard Business blog (http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/sviokla/2009/07/organized_information_is_the_n.html), John Sviokla argued that we need another ambitious project like NASA's Apollo on organizing information. Then, he concludes by arguing that for a cost of $100 million, PARC is a better investment than NASA's $150 billion.

With all due respect, I suspect his is a minority view. A better description is that both PARC and NASA spectacularly fulfilled their respective raison d’être in intended dimensions and beyond.

PARC's Longevity

Indeed, in my mind, a more interesting question is how has PARC kept up its role as a world leading source of technology and innovation.

For those who are looking for the Cliffs Notes version on PARC's longevity, the short answer is that PARC has continuously evolved existing know-how and invested in new ideas as each new generation of global technology and innovation come on-line.

I should start a new short series on PARC's longevity.

In the meantime, here is an interactive tool that highlights some of the milestones at PARC since 1970. (http://www.parc.com/about/milestones.html)

Organized Information at PARC

Coming back to John Sviokla's entry, PARC has a lot of investment into this precise issue. Here is a blog that talks about the notion of Augmented Reality as a way of intelligently organizing information. (http://blogs.parc.com/blog/2009/07/augmented-reality-increasing-collective-intelligence/)

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Opportunity Discovery

Fail fast fail cheap

This is probably the slogan that best captures the operandi modus of Silicon Valley and, to some extent, to innovation in general. The trouble is that "fail" is a dirty word in most places outside of Silicon Valley but the innovation imperative is not any less.

Over the years, companies have looked to PARC as a partner in creating innovation solutions. And, we have developed a methodology on how to "fail fast fail cheap" without the "fail".

Now, we are talking!

PARC's Opportunity Discovery service

The insight is that while small validations upfront to test assumptions and ability to consider all adjacent applications may add some additional initial overhead, they will yield a more robust and successful result and generally result in lower overall project resource and time requirements.

With PARC's Opportunity Discovery service, or O/D, we have created a systematic framework and a set of tools to unearth market and user insights which provide the basis to design a product/service.

On a per product/project basis, O/D allows the client team to capture and share information for better decision making. At the corporate level, O/D allows the management to feel comfortable that all reasonable options have been actively considered and explored before making a large investment.

Nothing is a success until it has been canceled three times

Hi-Tech Ethos

I was chatting with one of the PARC colleagues about one of the projects that I am working on and he made the observation "nothing is a success until it has been canceled three times."

I think this captures the spirit of Silicon Valley as well as any that I have heard.

Let a thousand ideas bloom

In the old days, the rule of thumb about getting a new idea funded by a VC works something like this.

For every 10 ideas, 1 turns into a business plan
For every 10 business plan, 1 turns into a VC conversation
For every 10 VC conversations, 1 gets funded.

In other words, an idea has a 1 in 1,000 chance of getting funded. And, this is makes no prediction on if a funded idea has even a 50-50 chance of surviving beyond the first two years.

1 in 3 vs. 1 in 1,000

Given the 1 in 1,000 context, having something canceled/rejected three times is really not that big of a deal.

On the other hand, if you feel light-headed after reading this statement, you should not be in Silicon Valley.

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I think the real question is how does PARC continue its longevity and relevance. Maybe I can convince somebody in the social science group to do an analysis.

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New Models for Increasing Innovation

PARC on Innovation - an eBroadcast

From Concept to Commerce: New Models for Increasing Innovation

Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 2pm EST/11am PST

http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/ebroadcast.pag?eventid=164160027

Learn:

* Why and when to partner with an external Innovation services company
* How to leverage an external Innovation Partner to create new lines of revenue
* What qualities to look for in an Innovation Partner to meet your diverse needs

Perspectives from a Senior Emerging Technology Analyst, a successful corporate Innovator, and a leading Innovation Partner on how to move from entrenched product offerings and market applications to new growth-based innovation models.

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Relational Software's Pitch

An archeological find

I was doing some research on Oracle. Specifically, I was trying to understand how the world transitioned from hierarchical database to relational database. It turned out that circa 1983 Oracle was handing out their stories when their name changed from its 1977 name as Relational Software to Oracle.

This is an archeological find on the earlier days of commercial relational database.


How did Relational/Oracle do it?

According to this 1983 document, the value proposition for relational database is that it can be manipulated by non-technical users. So, instead of waiting days on database administrators and programmers to produce the information, an user can construct a query and get the data in a matter of minutes/hours.

Ultimately, however, the key economic/business driver is that it is easier for corporations to build up huge amount of data than to hire and train database specialists. In this context, relational database and the SQL language make the data much more valuable to the business operators.

Looking for the fundamental economic shift

With perfect hindsight, Oracle was clearly right.

At a deeper level, however, relational database fundamentally changed the economics of database from a high-end specialty tool to something that is a common utility in almost all aspects of our digital life today.

The more relevant question is then, what technology is fundamentally changing the economics of how we do things today?

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