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Posts Tagged cloud computing

One way to crack a coder shortage Peter Kerr May 17

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Ever tried to get hold of a professional who can write computer code?

Such is the shortage, that a recent would-be returning ex-pat Kiwi, who knew how to program, put out a general inquiry through WellRailed if anyone in Wellington or wider NZ would be interested in meeting once he got here.

Apparently he immediately had 26 replies, and half a dozen offers of employment, sight unseen, with no interview whatsoever.

So; it would seem there’s a definite shortage of people who understand and can manipulate the workings of computers, mobile devices and apps.

It is this developer (another name for coder and programmer) shortage that’s driven Enspiral (a digital collective cum incubator cum clever people autonomously working together) to offer a type of ‘coding for dummies’ course, specifically around Ruby programming. (sticK’s had a couple of stories on Enspiral’s different type of business model before; see here and here.)

It is called Code Yoga, and its intent is to expose people who have never coded before to what it is about, and, reasonably quickly, help them get a level where could be employed at a junior coding level. From there – well, the world’s your oyster if that’s your bent.

This is very much an Enspiral kinda thing to do.

The collective’s co-creator, Joshua Vial, and the rest of its current eco-system of 105 people based mainly in Wellington but linked to Hong Kong, Berlin, New York and Phnom Penh, share a philosophy of helping people to help themselves.

It is part of the social enterprise model that drives most of the 12 companies that reside (the wrong word but it will have to do) under its umbrella.

Enspiral itself is programmer short-handed at times, so at the very least it is feeding its own needs.

But, in identifying a patently obvious shortage, and doing something about it in a ‘just do it, just learn it’ manner, Enspiral’s demonstrating an attitude that’s bigger than itself.

According to Vial, many of the dozen or so people who have done the course since it kicked off in recently (advertised through the interesting ‘teaching/learning’ platform Chalkle), have graduated to real, paying jobs in IT.

These include writers, teachers, other types of professionals, as well as students.

As a crash course compared to university or polytech based one to three year courses, it is obviously quite different.

However, as a way of introducing newbies to the hidden world of code, and whether it is a gig they’d like to have a go at for a while, these Enspiral guys deserve some credit.

Heck, some of them might even enjoy it as a challenge!

P.S. Enspiral’s kicking off a dev boot camp in the next month or two too – keep an eye out if you’d like to be part of t


Email sales tool allows companies to ‘dress to impress’ Peter Kerr May 07

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On the face of it, creating clever emails with embedded graphics and other gee-whizz stuff that acts as a smart sales tool should be pretty easy.

But (apparently), there’s only three companies around the world have pulled off the feat – including Auckland-based LiveLink Connect.

The three-year old six-person entity (you can hardly call it a start-up now), was incubated through The Icehouse and has had two angel funding rounds for a total of about $450,000 invested.

Its founder and managing director Jason Roberts (disclaimer….an old mate of mine) had been in sales and marketing roles for a number of years and more often than not found email a terrible sales tool.

“It was hard to share information between distributors, retailers and customers, and, if as a salesman you sent an email, you had no idea if it was opened,” says Roberts.

“As a salesman, you want to ensure your email dresses to impress and ensure the ability to perfectly time your follow up call, so that was one of the things we set out to do.”

Roberts et al have created what they call ‘everything email’, which as well as being robust technology is also able to work with other email products LLC has on a collegial basis.

For example, company logos are rendered properly no matter what type of device the email is read on (and estimates now are that 50% are done so on a mobile device), whether it has been opened, or even if a disclosure document has been read.

The latter ability is especially important for those selling financial services such as insurance or broking other products – and having an electronic proof of a disclosure having been opened is becoming an increasingly important sales tool for LLC.

“What we’ve created, and continually improving is technologically complex, though, being cloud-based means it has to be simple, easy, secure and cheap,” he says.

“The information and data we can provide back to our clients about what actions have occurred as a result of the email makes its an invaluable marketing and sales tool – exactly what we set out to achieve.”

Roberts says LLC’s next major development is a sophisticated and integrated ‘statement stopper’. That is, to halt the sending of letter-based bills such as electricity, and instead has them sent by email.

LLC’s tracking ability indicates whether a customer hasn’t opened a company’s email, and a paper statement can then be automatically sent by snail-mail.

At that stage, Roberts expects to feature on the radar of a larger company looking to expand its offering, “so in five years or less we’re definitely looking to be acquired.”

Given that LLC is export-expanding, and is now trialing its technology with CMC, a division of giant Indian company Tata, that five year window may be short.

Not too bad for a sales tool that seems a sitter but obviously is a difficult one to pull off.


The Power of Un-Location gets an airing Peter Kerr Apr 16

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Toby Ruckert of Unified Inbox had an interesting blog recently – demonstrating what he has called the Power of Un-Location.

(sticK had a blog on an earlier version of Unified Inbox here.)

For a brief period while in Shanghai, he (relatively unintentionally) went back in time 25 years or so, where he didn’t have a mobile phone or internet connection. In this he found quite a freedom.

Toby’s expressed many of the disconcerting pressures and issues that some of us have about always being connected, always feeling like you’re having to check in to see who has been checking in. I see some of the same in my own children and their relationship with Facebook, (I’m probably one of its worst users).

It is not difficult to see why some researchers believe that modern children are having their brains rewired differently to how older generations did – a result of all this immediate connectivity and ability to find an answer to any question straight away.

I thoroughly recommend a read of Toby’s blog. He articulates some excellent reasons for disconnecting for a little bit at least – not the least of which can be summarised as ‘sanity’.

There’s always a danger in considering the past to have been slightly more rosy-coloured than today, but he raises some good points in his discussion.

His blog also points to other examples of people reverting, at least temporarily, to a non-connected lifestyle.

I’m sure that in the not too distant future, doctors and others will thoroughly recommend, if not almost force, all of us to have a break from always being on. In the meantime, thanks Toby for highlighting the Power of Un-Location.


Creating a deep infrastructure tool and asset for Christchurch – a (relatively) cheap idea well worth NZ Inc considering Peter Kerr Mar 12

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Here’s an idea, so time topical it deserves much more thinking about by Christchurch, government and NZ Inc.

The Cement & Concrete Association of NZ’s (CCANZ) education and development manager Joe Gamman spoke at the recent Multicore World 2013 conference in Wellington. He’s been working alongside Callaghan Innovation on a potential ‘big data’ project for the past few months, and MW13 was, comparatively speaking, its first public airing. (Here’s the publicly available ‘Smart Idea’ project that received funding)

The general topic of his talk was around ‘Networked Infrastructure – Connecting Christchurch to the World’.

Dr Gamman’s pitch is to use the rebuilding of Christchurch as the world’s first test validation site for a ubiquitous sensing of the built environment. (Some of his presentation can be found here).

In other words, with standalone sensors able to be placed in any number of structures, buildings, roads, underground infrastructure (well, just about anything really), and the data about stresses, uses, traffic, changes over time (anything you want to measure) being collected, why not make this data available to the world.

What Dr Gamman sees being created is a piece of knowledge infrastructure; which only grows more valuable over time, and helps other people design new cities and improve old ones based on the learnings gained by having abundant infrastructure sensors as part of Christchurch’s rebuild.

“We have the opportunity to be high-touch as well as high-tech,” Dr Gamman says. “Such a curated data set would itself become an asset. A networked-Christchurch project would create a city where people will want to come to see what cities of the future will look like.”

Dr Gamman says there are a number of issues to address – not the least the legal framework around the data, who and how it can be accessed, and how it is protected.

Now, data security will become increasingly important as we develop an ‘internet everywhere’ society.

But security is just one component of an extremely good idea that would take advantage of the opportunity that Christchurch’s rebuild now provides.

Dr Gamman (and a hat tip to CCANZ for giving him the means to explore this idea) is now stress-testing the proposal, looking for corporate and government backers, and generally running the idea up the flagpole to see who salutes.

It is an idea, which, if implemented will benefit everyone, everywhere.

It will especially benefit Christchurch and provide huge economic spillover benefits for the city and New Zealand.

Gerry Brownlee, this would seem like a low-cost, high-profile and high return project that would be a real focal point in Christchurch’s rebuild.

As a government, National plays free and loose with the word ‘innovation’ – well here’s one that deserves a boost.


Getting to grips with multicore’s hugely disruptive technology – an opportunity for NZ Inc Peter Kerr Feb 28

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There was some serious brainpower assembled at the recent Multicore World 2013 conference in Wellington.

Some of the subject matter was way-beyond the once over lightly understanding that I have of computers and computing. But the clear message was that there’s currently a big gap between what multicore computers (many cores on one chip) are capable of, and the programs to run them.

As an analogy, it is as if a car engine has eight cylinders, but there’s only fuel getting through to one or two of them – vastly decreasing its possible performance.

Put another way, multicore hardware is way, way ahead of multicore software. (When you consider that 64+ cores on a chip are now being manufactured, it is obvious, as has often been stated, that hardware capability is no longer an issue). How this clear gap is resolved is very much a problem in search of an answer.

It would’ve been good to see a heavier concentration of government and corporate IT heavyweights at the two-day conference held at the Wellington Town Hall.

The line-up of speakers would grace any northern hemisphere conference (and no doubt pull in hundreds of attendees), looking over the horizon at where the actual bits and bytes of computing is heading.

In other words, as opposed to the frothy apps and gee-whiz retail end of things, this conference was about where all the hard work of computers, memory, transactions and data crunching takes place.

One of the underlying themes of the conference put together by Oamaru-based Nicolas Erdody (Open Parallel) is that NZ Inc has an opportunity as the world grapples with how to utilise the huge amount of power available, but not yet being accessed.

The (parallel) programming required to take advantage of multicore, where the instructions to and from each core has to inform and be informed by every other core, is not easy.

As Poul-Henning Kamp, a Danish software writer and inventor of ‘Varnish’ commented; “parallelism is hard…..really, really hard.”

And one thing that hasn’t been decided is what computer language is best suited for writing parallel programming is still unclear – and indeed numbers of languages could evolve.

New Zealand has the opportunity to be a niche operator and software supplier in this emerging world – providing answers where others find it too difficult.

Ex-patriot Kiwi Dr Ian Foster (originally from Wellington, and these days among other roles the Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago) helped frame some of the already apparent and emerging possibilities capable through multicore in his keynote address.

(His, and the other presenters talks can be found here).

He described the exponentialism that multicores potentially provide as offering new paradigms that “can bring about huge transformations”.

Where he sees the grunt of multicore having near-future effects are:

-          Digital visual effects

-          Digital fabrication (additive manufacturing)

-          Industrial internet (heavy industrial internet)

-          Data analytics (big data)

Foster says multicore is a hugely disruptive technology – New Zealand has an opportunity to ride its wave, or (especially if the country doesn’t build a second fibre optic cable linking us to the rest of the world) be left behind.

Disclaimer:

I helped write some of the publicity and press releases around Multicore World 2013. The thoughts above are mine alone however.

 

 


Give up the total DIY for tech start-ups – Clark-Reynolds Peter Kerr Feb 13

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The great Kiwi ‘traditional’ of do-it-yourself (DIY) has its downsides in many tech developments according to serial entrepreneur Melissa Clark-Reynolds.

Speaking as one of a panel at Unlimited Potential’s AGM, Clark-Reynolds says entrepreneurs and start-up founders need to, quickly, get over the idea that they can proficiently do every task themselves.

The founder of Minimonos, an online environment for children which currently has 90% of its 1.5 million followers in the U.K. says getting the right people with the right expertise in at the right time can save a heap of trouble and money. It can also mean the success (or failure) of a project getting off the ground she says.

“Perhaps it is the downside of our Number 8 wire mentality, and something it would be good at times for us to ditch,” she says.

Clark-Reynolds questioned whether the NZ gaming industry (those who make the PC and smart-phone oriented games) is as healthy as sometimes portrayed.

Most companies creating such games are doing so on a toll basis for others, “working for hire.”

She says there are exceptions such as Ninja Kiwi and Dave Frampton (whose CHOPPER – is his best seller. His Blockheads app has over 1.5 million downloads).

“We need to create and grow our own IP, not necessarily just do it for others,” says Clark-Reynolds.

The rapidly changing of the net, devices and how people access content is something everyone also needs to be aware of she says.

The Minimonos team has watched, “fascinated” by the growth of computer tablet use, and how it may impact on their online interactive world.

“For the last two quarters, the number of children playing on tablets exceeded the number playing on a PC,” she says.

“It is transforming the way we present our material, and means again we’re going to have to tweak our presentation.”

She also had a prediction of what will be ‘hot’ in the near future.

“There’s a massive education bubble going on, and all over the place we’re seeing pressure to reform it,” Clark-Reynolds says.

“Education’s not strong in the tech world, and when you look at things, there’s a real gap between what children use and experience at school, and what they have available at home.”

The hype, and hope, around education-oriented apps is difficult to appreciate from New Zealand she says.

She recently heard of one USA purchase of an education start-up.

“It has no business model, no revenue, and yet it raised $75 million,” she says.

“Something started up in that sector is going to flip really fast.”


Personalised time/place knowledge goal of ThunderMaps Peter Kerr Nov 16

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ThunderMaps co-founders (L-R), Lachlan Priest, Mickael Foucaux, Clint Van Marrewijk, Shannon Smith and Lewis Gyson; aiming to make geospatial information usable in real time

Location-based intelligence is one of the up-and-coming applications of all things mobile.

Wellington-based startup ThunderMaps reckons it has a solution to a problem – individuals and organisations having geo-knowledge that is valuable to others, but having no practical way of sharing their information.

ThunderMaps co-founder Clint Van Marrewijk says the five person team’s goal, is to reduce the barriers to the adoption and use of spatial information by the public.

“There is so much valuable data going to waste. We take data available from separate organisations, and data inputted from the public, and give users, usually smart-phone owners, the ability to filter that for themselves,” he says.

“Users can subscribe to receive alerts when things happen in places they care about. People can also report events or hazards that they witness, while they are on the move.”

Van Marrewijk says a good example of the problem that ThunderMaps is looking to solve is an individual knowing the location of missing manhole covers, graffiti, environmental breaches, or road hazards for example.

At the same time government and local government agencies also possess highly valuable geo-data from an individual’s perspective, but it isn’t released in a way that’s usable for normal people.

“ThunderMaps provides a platform where any organisation can distribute data, and control the types of data that is received from and shared by the public,” he says.

ThunderMaps has tapped into the NZTA’s Traffic Road Event Information System, so that road users can receive the same alerts that government officials receive when roads are icy, there’s a crash, hazard or major blockage of traffic. Anyone can sign up for free now, to receive alerts in their location of interest.

“Isn’t it wrong that this data isn’t easy to access? It’s almost criminal that this information isn’t accessible; the government simply must continue to release this data so that we can get it into the hands of people that can get the most use out of it – the public”

“We will enable efficient decision making, reduced costs, faster response times and increased community engagement in the role of government.”

The spatial dividend gap, defined as a failure to reap the benefits of spatial information, has been estimated as having a cost of $480 million a year in New Zealand (2009 ACIL Tasman study).

Van Marrewijk says ThunderMaps will help bridge this gap by providing an easy to use platform for both individual users, sharing their geo-data with others, and an easy way for government agencies that collect information, to distribute it to the public.

With development being carried out since June, ThunderMaps aims to eliminate the need for a business, organisation or cause to build an expensive individual app to report the location of incidents, in their particular field of interest.

ThunderMaps have been taking their platform to first mover organisations, and they are beta testing it with them now.

Among those showing positive interest are neighbourhood watch groups, graffiti response trusts and government agencies concerned with hazard reduction and awareness.

Watch this space – literally!

P.S.
Since yarning to Van Marriwijk, they’ve scored a couple of forward-moving successes:

• It has recently been accepted in the ‘Dragon’s den style’ presentation round of the government’s Open Door to Innovation – a bureaucrat attempt to harness market innovation http://ict.govt.nz/programme/open-door-innovation
• It has trials pending with two Wellington schools for truancy reporting


TIN100 again proves it is the meat of an innovation club sandwich Peter Kerr Nov 01

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One way to consider the value of the TIN100 report is to consider what things would be like if it didn’t exist.

The almost 200 colour page report on the NZ-owned top 100 (well 200 if you count the additional ‘mentions’ at the back) high value manufacturing, biotechnology and ICT is now into its 8th edition – and its value grows over time.

(As an aside, the collated data of the past eight years is also an important part of the specific bespoke reports TIN100 is able to carry out on request – taking information, converting it into knowledge and clipping the ticket for such expertise)

Its information, contacts and commentary provide a roadmap of what was quite hidden until Greg Shanahan kicked the publication off.

What will be interesting is whether Shanahan, when commenting on Australia as a safe haven for TIN100 companies, also looks to carry out the same exercise across the ditch. Apparently there’s nothing similar in Aussie, and the TIN100 report also includes a six-page overview of Australia’s TIN50.

Again though, not having this resource – which though sponsored by IRL, MBIE and NZTE, still costs $399 – would leave a huge void in the promotion, understanding and employment attraction of the value-adding businesses in the sector.

Where else for example, would you get an appreciation that there are nine changes to the TIN100 from last year?

  • Six companies had revenue growth sufficient to push into the TIN100
  • Three companies (Catalyst IT, Fraser Engineering Group and Wedgelock Equipment) have been included for the first time
  • Bomac and EFI Prism left the TIN100 following acquisition and amalgamation into multinational businesses
  • Reduced revenue figures saw seven dropping back to the TIN100+

Launching the TIN100 in Wellington, Shanahan says part of the purpose of the publication is to provide a reference for other would-be and actual clever technology-oriented companies. This is especially in the two-degrees of separation NZ-context, who to contact for particular expertise/technology.

In its industry analysis section, the TIN100 notes that 42 companies that have featured in the publication have been acquired by overseas buyers. After a lull following the global financial crisis, acquisitions have increased significantly over the past two years – indicating founder and local investor fatigue, as well as increased overseas investment interest (obviously!).

The TIN100 also notes that though revenue was up 2.2% for the largest 100 locally-owned, export focused technology companies, staff numbers were up 5% to over 28,800.

This was especially driven from growth in IT services and the support sector which increased its headcount by 14%, much due to the index’s second largest company Datacom taking onboard 440 new people.

And, as Shanahan contemplates an Aussie edition, the TIN100 says NZ companies with an established foothold who had entered the Australian market strongly with something such as an anchor contract, are doing well. New Zealand’s lower cost structure is also helping Australian growth.

With some clever graphics and interesting tables, the TIN100’s an interesting read.

At the risk of repetition – a NZ landscape without this resource would be much poorer for it.


An angel lines up in books’ corner Peter Kerr Sep 13

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Lisa Buchan and Mike Peters are looking to socialise books in a digital age with Literary Angels

Here are two aspects of books – an industry ripe for a social media makeover.

Firstly, chances are, if you’ve had a good read lately, you’ve told someone else about it.

Secondly, with the sometimes predicted death of printed books through e-books, the publishing industry is experiencing the same kind of digital disruptive change experienced by other industries…..and is desperately looking for new ways to engage with readers.

Hello Literary Angels – a newly launched Facebook facing (with other social media to be added) service looking to allow readers, publishers and authors to have a group hug, and promote and excite in this new bits and bytes world.

L.A. are the brainchild of longtime computer/IT involved friends, Lisa Buchan and Mike Peters under the Vangelizer label.

“Literary Angels go forth and promote books,” Buchan says. “They let people tell others what they may like. The main idea is to present a way to socialise a book.”

Buchan says, as is especially being seen in America with bookshops closing all over the place, there are increasingly few people working in the retail environment who can recommend books or genres for someone walking in off the street. LA is one way around this she says.

Like many things in life and the digital world, LA have a front end and backend.

How it works is, after having read and enjoyed a book (hardcopy or an e-book) a fan touches or scans a Q.R. (quick response) code. This takes them straight to the book’s LA page, and the fan can in turn select, via Facebook, friends they wish to inform about the book.

The same fan is also able to give away, for free, one copy of the book (which, when you think about it is what often happens with a paperback).

These (non-gifted) friends may purchase the book, and in turn create a virtuous circle of recommended reading.

Meanwhile, at the backend a publisher, literary publicist or author (or all three) can see any action carried out on that angel.

These include who has downloaded a sample chapter, clicked on a back page, clicked on the author page off Facebook.

“All this is incognito, as Facebook cannot give out personal attributes about a person without their express authorisation,” Buchan says. “The only time we do ask permission is when a person gives or receives a free e-book. That’s so people don’t set up a scam giving away thousands of books.”

In the four months of beta-testing, such permission hasn’t been an issue. Many avid readers like to be the first, to be noticed and noted as one step ahead. They’re happy to be identified as recommenders.

LA/Vangelizer’s business model is to charge a publisher and/or author. Publisher’s always have a publicity and advertising budget, the majority of which goes to the distribution and retailing side of things.

As publishers too look for a new way of connecting with readers, LA will pick up some of this spend Buchan says.

She and Peters have test-crash-dummied Wellington author John Draper’s new book Minstrel Boy using Literary Angels under an e-book model, and an English publisher has LA for a hard copy book ‘Harry Potter on Location’, a film location guide for the UK-made movies.

Buchan says as with all these types of new ventures, their team is learning by doing and as they do it.

Their main target is the Frankfurt book fair in early October.

“That’s when we’ll really launch publicly,” she says. “That will set the expectation, and we’ll be taking orders and getting angels out the door from late October.”


Gunning for better play; Makerspace takes aim at crowdfunding Peter Kerr Aug 28

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The Wellington Makerspace [TWMS] wants to build a better gun, well that’s not strictly true.

The community actually play a lot of what are commonly known as first person shooters [FPS], such as Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Team Fortress and the like. Lots of action, shooting and online team playing.

“Normally a player will use a combination of Mouse and Keyboard [PC] and game controller [Console] but things are about to change”….

The guys at The Wellington Makerspace – a digital prototyping facility located in Hipster central, Wellington, New Zealand- have designed and built a working prototype USB-compatible game controller AKA “video game gun” using an OpenSource mini-computer known as an Arduino and a bunch of stuff including a tracking/guidance system and some clever coding.

They also fitted a recoil mechanism to the AK47 replica airsoft gun used to create version One’s more realistic experience -and hey presto the perfect gaming solution for more immersive play is born.

Makerspace which has a small suite of sophisticated machines that allow prototypes to be built very cost – effectively isn’t getting into the real armaments industry though – yet although they have been known to make some cool medieval weaponry in their spare time…

Its founder Lee Bennett wants to perfect the design of the controllers ‘guts’ but insists on the sharing ethos.

“We want an open source option rather than making or selling something proprietary,” says Bennett. “We’ll be able to make our own guns, cases and accessories to order here at the [Maker] Space and outsource for capacity if neded, but most importantly we’ll be aiming to provide what we’ve created for others to develop as they see fit.”

He says they may use Kickstarter, or PledgeMe (NZ’s first crowdfunding platform) as the capital raising method and are developing their own Bootstrapper add-on to TWMS current offering and Bennett envisages that there will be many people willing to contribute funds in return for receiving a completed V2 controller and case -or maybe just the internal electronics kit and code for individuals to hack their own weapon of choice.

Bennett states that ‘Version Two’ will be upgraded significantly with some very cool features – so watch this space, contribute and play better!


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