The Network Podcast

Rio goes digital with Knowledge Squares. cs.co/tnp One thing seems certain: With Rio de Janeiro playing host to soccer’s World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016, this most spectacular of Brazilian cities will end up with some spanking new infrastructure. Think stadiums, hotel rooms, roads and public transit. But some observers say these global sporting events will also leave a less concrete legacy in the form of greater digital inclusion—this in a country still known for its sharp divide between rich and poor, haves and have nots. A key driver of this change is a city government plan to build a network of digital community spaces, dubbed “Knowledge Squares” and “Knowledge Ships.” The purpose of these structures, which will be scattered throughout the city, is to induct local residents into the digital world and transform neighborhoods into smart communities. The project is already well underway. Under the leadership of Mayor Eduardo Paes, the city has already completed one Knowledge Square and five Knowledge Ships—including one Knowledge “Mother Ship” about twice the size of the rest—and is on track to complete two more before year’s end. The goal is to build at least 40 by 2016, according to the city’s department of science and technology. Franklin Dias Coelho, the city’s chief information officer and head of the department of science and technology is in charge of the initiative. He says, “one of the project’s main goals is the creation of a knowledge network designed to ensure that Rio becomes more advanced in digital literacy in education, entertainment, services and training.” It’s about democratization of knowledge through allowing people access to the Internet and distance learning tools. The spaces are even open on weekends.” Each of the spaces resembles a futuristic cube covering an area about the size of an NBA basketball court. The plan calls for each to be situated in a poor neighborhood. Many will be a stone’s throw from Rio’s famous hillside slums, or favelas, which have historically been home to violent gangs, drug traffickers and impoverished young people. While designs vary somewhat, each space typically has a reception area, a playground and an outdoor movie theater where people can watch films projected onto a large screen—the “eye” of the ship. Other features include a multimedia gallery, a digital library, a production room for editing digital content and “caves” where children can hole up with magazines, books or iPads loaded with educational apps. Users can also dip their toes into the waters of participatory democracy by navigating around digital maps of the neighborhood and inputting suggestions, complaints and comments to the city government. Some spaces also have an amphitheater for lectures, screenings of videos and films, and performing plays for the community. Eventually, the city wants the structures to be no more than a 15-minute walk apart—hence the name of the umbrella program that the structures fall under: “Digital Rio 15 Minutes.” The spaces will also provide all manner of educational opportunities, including classes on everything from digital literacy and information technology to English for tourism, virtual reality and even networking taught by the Cisco Networking Academy. Other offerings include classes on technology in the community, at work and in entrepreneurship. Future classes will include things like robotics, hackathons and app development. In addition to various city agencies, the project is being developed in partnership with two federal universities in Rio as well as external partners such as Cisco, Intel and the Sequoia Foundation. The initiative has not gone unnoticed in the broader community. It recently caught the attention of the New York-based smart city think-tank, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), with co-founder John Jung calling the digital spaces “One of the most dramatic and extensive opportunities to provide digital inclusion

As the number and variety of video screens grows around us, so does the need for content aimed at different devices rather than repurposed to fit all of them. cs.co/tnp First there was the big screen, then television brought images into our homes. Decades later we got hooked on video games and PCs. But now there are screens everywhere, with laptops, tablets, smartphones, digital signage, and more all vying for our attention. This is not just affecting our lives but also throwing up new challenges for content makers and advertisers. They are keen to take advantage of each new medium because research shows that whenever a novel device comes along we make time for it in our busy schedules. Andrew Lipsman, Vice President of Industry Analysis at comScore, a firm that analyzes digital viewing habits, says: “We’ve looked at a given day of media usage. What you see is that tablets peak late in the evening, between the hours of 7 p.m. and midnight.” With smartphones, he adds: “You see peaks when people are in transit, going to work in the morning or out to lunch.” Desktop viewing, meanwhile, tends to happen in lunch breaks or evenings, when it may overlap with TV. New devices are not just changing former viewing times, but also what we watch on each device. Reading maps on a computer is old hat, Lipsman reports. Now we use phones. An important finding is that the more choices we have, the more we watch. “The availability of more screens means that people are, in aggregate, spending a lot more time with digital media,” says Lipsman. Over the last three years, Americans have almost doubled their screen time, he reveals. Even though most of us can now watch video whenever we want on our smartphones, desktop viewing is still on the rise. “And there is really no evidence that TV is falling off,” Lipsman says. Increased viewing is potentially a good thing for content makers and advertisers who want to attract your attention. But today’s multi-platform viewers also pose a problem. In the old days, when there was just one screen and one channel, you could be pretty sure of reaching your audience on that channel. Now there are not just hundreds of channels, but also many more screens. For content owners, therefore, “the challenge is how do they get smarter at integrating their thinking about all of these screens, so that they can reach audiences as efficiently as possible, and monetize each of those screens,” according to Lipsman. From a technical point of view, much of the focus so far has been on making content work on as many different technology platforms as possible. The fact that you can watch YouTube clips easily on your phone is largely thanks to these efforts. However, if you have already watched your favorite show on TV, chances are you won’t want to watch it again on your phone. So producers are increasingly aware that it makes sense to tailor content to particular devices, particularly if it can be done cost-effectively. A good example is where the outtakes from a TV show can be posted onto the Internet so viewers can see them on a digital device. “To me, that’s a smart effort at being scalable across platforms,” Lipsman says. “You’re already shooting that episode and you’re going to have a lot of outtakes. You’ve got a lot of character actors and other pieces you can use in different ways. It’s not a whole lot of incremental effort.” The value of this multi-platform content creation approach is that most producers still rely on a single channel, such as TV, for most of their revenue, and adding special content related to that on other media will often strengthen the loyalty of their viewers. The tailored content offers additional advertising opportunities, which works well for brands. Digital media has also helped many clever advertisers stand out by producing content of their own. Felix Baumgartner’s Red Bull Stratos stunt is a prime example. Platform owners are getting in on the act. In May, for example, t

A look at how the use of mobile devices is reducing errors and increasing safety in manufacturing. cs.co/tnp Ten years ago, an employee at a manufacturing firm would have to use pen and paper to conduct a plant floor inspection or quality control check. With handwritten notes, there was the potential for mistakes. The time it would take for a discovered problem to be addressed would vary considering how long it took for someone to learn about it and find the resources to solve it. But as mobile technology has advanced, those same workers now have the option to instead use a mobile device such as a tablet or an iPad to perform the same functions. And those that do are finding that they are saving time and money while reducing the risk for errors and increasing safety in the workplace. Manufacturers may have been slow to adopt mobility in the workplace but that reluctance seems to be gradually fading as once more conservative manufacturers are viewing the use of mobile as a way to get a leg up on their competition, notes Heather Ashton, research Manager for IDC Manufacturing and Retail Insights. Manufacturing employees “are becoming the smart connected worker by taking the technology with them,” she notes. “They’re moving throughout their workday connected at all times, which is huge.” Not only they are adopting the use of mobile more, they are actually developing their own applications. According to a spring 2012 IDC survey, nearly 40 percent of 373 surveyed manufacturers across a variety of sectors said they intended to develop half or more of their applications for mobile platforms in 2012. “Almost 80 percent were developing some kind of mobile app,” Ashton says. “2012 was a year when we really saw mobile taking off in a totally different direction in the field of manufacturing.” Eaton Corp. is one example of a company that has developed its own mobile application to enhance operations. John Gercak, vice president of information technology for Eaton’s $4 billion vehicle group, said his team in the United States and India spent about seven months developing the “Powertrac.” The mobile application, which went live last December, uses a global positioning system (GPS) on an iPad and a cellular network to track the company’s test vehicles for supporting its products. “With this app, the driver takes the iPad with them in the vehicle while on the track and we’re able to see in real time on the Web exactly where the vehicle is at all times,” he said. Gerak said this is particularly useful because “if there’s a safety issue, we’re able to tell and notify the drivers in advance so as to avoid any potential accidents. Before if a vehicle was broken down, we weren’t able to know right away and contact the other drivers so from a safety perspective, it’s very helpful,” he added. Overall, Ashton says companies are using mobile to improve safety and efficiency but also to ultimately drive bottom line savings and top-line revenue. But just how are they doing that? Using mobile applications or mobile devices give managers more operational visibility – meaning they are able to identify problems on the production line, drill down into problem areas and take action right on the work floor, notes Ashton. Also, by being able to take pictures and videos during plant floor inspections, workers can capture quality issues and immediately communicate with the appropriate departments. Kristin McClane, president of Milford, Ohio-based CIMx Software Inc., agrees that the use of mobile is transforming quality control management. “If you’re manufacturing an assembly of something and run into an issue, you’d have to contact a quality engineer to see what the problem is. And then in order for him to make a change, he’d have to go back to his PC at their desk and that could take hours if he gets pulled on 10 other fires on the way back there,” McLane says. “With mobile, he could pull up a document on the fly. The speed of change is

See how cars are becoming part of the Internet of Everything. cs.co/tnp Cars need fuel or electricity to keep moving, but increasingly it is data that keeps them running right. Information from sensors in all of a car’s critical sub-systems, from fuel injection to brakes, feeds into electronic control units that both monitor and manage these sub-systems. But for the most part, data that is generated in a car stays in a car. That is starting to change as cars become part of the Internet of Everything. Cars can report diagnostic information to head off potentially expensive repairs and can receive system updates over a wireless data connection, using either an embedded radio or a phone linked to the car’s systems through Bluetooth. But using short-range wireless technology, cars can also broadcast information about their position, direction, and speed to nearby vehicles. This would allow collision-avoidance systems that are both less costly and more comprehensive than current approaches, which rely heavily on radar. Cars can send the same information to receivers placed alongside roads, providing for real-time monitoring of traffic flow and volume. Analysis of the data would let traffic engineers discover improvements to the infrastructure, such as traffic light placement and timing and turn restrictions that would reduce congestion. Real-time analytics could allow traffic light timing and even speed limits to be adjusted on the fly. A key to making this all work is a variant of Wi-Fi known as IEEE 802.11p or Dedicated Short-Range Communications. An Australian company, Cohda Wireless Pty. and a Santa Clara, Cal.-based competitor, Savari, make the wireless modules that go into cars and can communicate both with each other and with roadside transceivers. (Cisco is an investor in Cohda.) The system is getting its largest scale test in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has equipped nearly 3,000 vehicles with Wi-Fi-based transmitters for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. The Safety Pilot Model Deployment, funded by a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation equips each car, truck, or bus with a global positioning system receiver and DSRC radios to exchange speed and position data with nearby vehicles. The system also includes a computer that integrates the vehicle-to-vehicle information with onboard data, in part to determine how drivers respond to the warnings and other information they receive from the system. The system can generate lane-change and collision avoidance warnings, while roadside sensors can collect data on traffic flow. The initial challenge with vehicle-to-vehicle communications is that getting the full benefit of the system requires that most cars be equipped with sensors and DSRC radios, since a vehicle not so equipped is invisible to others. Studies show, that vehicle-to-vehicle communication starts to benefit road traffic users at about 10 percent penetration of the vehicle population. Given that cars are staying on the road for an average of about 10 years, that means it will take at least a decade for all road traffic participants to benefit, even if manufacturers starting installing the systems on all new cars tomorrow. Dave McNamara, a consultant to Cohda on the Ann Arbor pilot, says the Department of Transportation is promoting aftermarket solutions that would allow older cars to participate in the system. In the meantime, the traffic control system as a whole could benefit from the vehicle-to-infrastructure communications even if only a minority of cars and trucks are equipped.

Is 2013 the Tipping Point for “Mobile-First” design? cs.co/tnp So you just missed the last plane home because you’re stuck in traffic in an unfamiliar city. It’s late. You’re tired, cranky. You need a hotel—fast. Fortunately, among your smartphone apps is Hotel Tonight, which claims to provide easy mobile booking of same-day unsold hotel inventory. With one eye and one thumb on your phone screen, you launch the app and secure a last-minute deal. Time elapsed: seconds. Effort required: no more than a few taps. Welcome to the world of “mobile-first” design, in which apps are primarily and uniquely tailored to the mobile medium, versus being shrunken-down versions of Web apps. It’s not exactly a new trend, but with more businesses realizing that success or failure in the modern economy may be tied to their mobile engagement strategy, it’s gathering momentum fast. Some industry experts say 2013 could be the year it takes off. “We’re finally at the stage of companies designing software uniquely for modern mobile devices,” says Luke Wroblewski, CEO of a San Francisco-based Internet startup called Input Factory and author of the book Mobile First. “They’re using the mobile medium to challenge ingrained mindsets and assumptions about how their products, business and software have to work.” Until recently, most mobile apps have been like that StairMaster or Bowflex machine in the garage—everybody has one, but few are using it to its full potential. That’s because most companies have responded to the rise of the mobile Internet by trotting out a dumbed-down, small-screen version of their website and porting it to the mobile space with little regard for the medium’s peculiar constraints and opportunities, Wroblewski says. “The companies that have been successful in designing for mobile are the ones that have really thought about it differently,” he says. Take Hotel Tonight. Unlike its competitors in the hotel space, the three-year-old company was built entirely around the mobile use case. With its streamlined checkout flow, and bare bones user interface and user experience, it is hyper-focused on one objective. By contrast, incumbents such as hotels.com, expedia.com and priceline.com offer a slew of features and functions that tired travelers who just want a room now don’t care about, Wroblewski says. Other companies that are heeding the mobile-first clarion call include such giants as Google, Facebook and Intuit. GoDaddy now offers businesses mobile commerce services and tools for building mobile websites. Last year, eBay saw its revenue shoot up 15 percent largely as a result of its willingness to embrace mobile platforms, with downloads of its suite of mobile apps surpassing 100 million globally, according to a press release. When it comes to designing for mobile, Wroblewski says companies need to drastically shift gears. While desktop users are usually seated in a comfortable position with a mouse, precise use of a cursor, a full keyboard, full power and a good network connection, mobile users are often in real-world situations that require short bits of partial concentration and one-handed use. With this in mind, Wroblewski says, the mobile interface needs to accommodate and optimize one-thumb/one-eyeball experiences. Designers can use visual cues and other techniques to manage what he calls “perceived performance”—where an application’s interface seemingly responds instantly to users’ actions. Designers also need to take into account the ergonomics of fingers and thumbs—for example, by having larger controls and “touch targets” than are found on pointer-based devices. They also need to consider how people actually hold and interact with palm-sized devices. And designers need to be able to expose otherwise hidden gestures, like taps and swipes, so that they can bring in relevant controls to the user when needed—versus relying on an excessive amount of training, Wroblewski says. Technology research company Fo

A look at how proximity-based social networking applications are providing connection, protection, and social change. cs.co/tnp The next revolution of the Internet is upon us, and not only is it continuing to shape the way we do things, it’s changing the way our things do things. In 2008, the number of devices connected to the Internet surpassed the number of people on the planet, and just like people these “things” are talking to one another via the Internet and now more than ever. Proximity-based social networking applications, which use geo-proximity as the main filter for discovering people and places, are instrumental in this online evolution, as our immediate needs are often dictated or affected by how near or far we are from something. As more technologies enable devices to discover one another over distances through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC (Near Field Communications), businesses and marketers are using social networking, mobility, and gaming to dive into the proximity pool. The emerging proximity-based mobile social networking market is expected to reach $1.9 billion in revenues by 2016, according to an analysis report by Gigaom Pro. This is paving the way for innovation in retail, finance, healthcare, construction and transportation. At the same time, the proximity trend is anticipated to lead network operators to develop new business models, as a significant amount of content will come through local wireless networks. For consumers, the ability to use these opt-in services to discover new people and places is key, and a more micro or local approach to catering to consumers is going to be crucial for any networks and businesses that want to remain relevant. With any disruption comes the opportunity to instigate change for the better. Where technology is concerned, any disruption that can be leveraged to propel businesses forward can typically be used to benefit humanity beyond consumerism. How can proximity spark social change? The possibilities that proximity services can provide for the sake of connection, protection, and social change are just beginning to unfold. Case in point: the presence and location technology company, 3M Monitoring, provides products and services for the criminal justice industry. Harnessing GPS, RF and cellular communication, 3M’s Domestic Violence Proximity Notification System tracks aggressors, and sends early alerts to victims and law enforcers. This is done through security layers that are created around the victims, as proximity notification layers are built around the aggressors. So far, 3M has worked with local criminal justice agencies to develop successful domestic violence deterrence programs in Europe. While 3M focuses on using proximity for protection, the mobile proximity-based social network POS REP facilitates reconnection and reintegration. Created exclusively for military veterans, the platform reconnects veterans who served together and connects them to resources in their area. POS REP Founder Anthony Allman says the inspiration for the network transpired after the suicide of Purple Heart recipient and veteran advocate Clay Hunt. Allman says quote “I have been able to identify no less than 5 vets that live just miles from me, “Without POS REP, I would have been looking for bumper stickers to pin other vets. Those days are over.” Could proximity-based social networking for social good become a trend? Allman says that with respect to trends, POS REP is in discussion to license its technology to various interest groups that perceive value from our proximity-based product. He says quote “We are heads down trying to prove the model in our veteran community, but we hope to ultimately serve as a partner platform for any organization looking to accomplish the same goal.” As devices or “things” start to communicate with one another and develop their own intelligence more, what they’ll be able to accomplish through proximity and beyond is g

The world’s top sport is suddenly awash in new kinds of data -- and new insights about how to win. cs.co/tnp More than a decade after the "Moneyball" revolution in baseball, a new data age is dawning in the soccer universe -- and some of the early insights are already challenging century-old beliefs. Corner kicks don’t have any bearing on a game’s outcome, the numbers show. Superstars are less important than the worst players on the field. More ball possession doesn’t translate into more goals scored. Soccer -- or football, as most of the world calls the sport -- is cautiously embracing data analytics. The trend is beginning to influence the way professional players are evaluated and choices coaches make when planning on-field tactics. Top clubs in Europe and the U.S. are hiring computer scientists and mathematicians to try to gain an edge. “We haven’t had the a-ha ‘Moneyball’ moment yet in football,” says David Sally, co-author of "The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer is Wrong," which will be published this summer. But, he says, soccer epiphanies are just around the corner. The first big step has been simply to gather new forms of soccer data. Baseball teams have gathered detailed statistics going back to the 1870s. But baseball is a game of many isolated, measurable events -- an at-bat, a fielding chance -- while soccer is more free-flowing and amorphous. Little data was ever recorded or analyzed. But a company called Opta, founded in 1996, began collecting new kinds of information from English Premier League games and now does the same for Major League Soccer in the U.S. For the first time, a club can know how far each player runs during a game, how many tackles each defender makes, and even which two players pass most often to each other. Little by little, club management has been getting interested. Other companies have jumped in. Prozone tracks player movements and collects and analyzes on-field data. The Castrol Performance Index uses an algorithm to create player ratings. Northwestern University’s Luis Amaral, who studies complex systems, founded a soccer data analytics firm called Chimu Solutions. It analyzed statistics and, for instance, threw into doubt the notion that the team that dominates ball possession usually wins. Chimu showed that winning teams typically hold the ball less than half the time. Meanwhile, managers and executives of the world’s top soccer clubs have been flocking to the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston to learn more. One of the first applications of analytics has been in player evaluation. By crunching data, clubs are finding they can virtually scout more players around the world to find talent that might otherwise have been overlooked. Data is also changing ideas of how to build a winning team. Sally and his co-author, Chris Anderson -- both Ivy League professors -- run a consulting firm that crunches data for pro soccer teams. As Sally explains, data is showing that the relative strength of the weakest players on a team has more to do with winning than the relative strength of star players. The conclusion: spend resources on making sure every player on the field is strong, instead of splurging on a couple of superstars and filling out the roster with cheap so-so players. The emerging frontier involves using data to plan and adjust on-field tactics. The New York Red Bulls of Major League Soccer aggressively adopted data. David Lee is the team’s “performance analyst.” He sorts data about opponents and discovers tendencies. “It can open the coaches’ eyes to look for things the data is showing,” he says. Some of the insights described in Sally and Anderson’s in "The Numbers Game" might yet deeply effect soccer coaching: Now that data shows that corner kicks don’t alter the outcome of the game, teams might try something different on the field when they earn a corner kick. In coming years, Sally says, soccer data analysts are expected to

The UK may be behind the curve when it comes to 4G adoption, but this hasn’t hampered British mobile innovation. The UK is a hotbed of mobile creativity and talent, being one of the most advanced markets for smartphone adoption. There are 36 million active smartphones in the UK today, equivalent to more than half the national population, according to analyst firm Portio Research. Overall mobile penetration is 130% - Portio estimates the UK had 83 million mobile subscribers at the end of 2012. It is no coincidence that advertisers spend more on mobile ads per user in the UK than in any other country in the world. The UK is a leader in app development, for example. In March this year a British teenager, Nick D’Aloisio, famously sold his news digest iPhone app, Summly, to Yahoo for $30 million. Meanwhile Spanish operator Telefonica has chosen London as the base for its digital business, Telefonica Digital - in recognition of the talent and opportunity that is in the UK. British innovation is also heating up in the emerging field of machine-to-machine communications, better know as Internet of Things. This is where objects, from traffic lights to consumable products, are given digital properties so they can be controlled or provide value-added information across mobile connections. British company EVRYTHNG is already selling commercialized IoT solutions to global brands. Cambridge, UK-based Neul is another homegrown IoT specialist. It is currently working with local government organizations and the UK Highways Agency to roll out practical solutions that transform everything from the way trash is collected to addressing road hazards. Neul co-founder Professor William Webb is also a board member at Cambridge Wireless, a not-for-profit forum representing the wireless and mobile industry in the UK. He believes the arrival of 4G services in the UK will transform the development and take-up of M2M applications. He says community-based healthcare is an area of huge potential for the technology. Commonly suggested applications include monitoring devices that gauge whether patients have taken their medication, or if their condition has deteriorated, but Webb sees broader potential where multiple sources of data can be combined to paint a bigger picture. He suggests, “If there is someone elderly and frail living at home and a system can see that they haven’t used any electricity for the last 24 hours, it could trigger an alert.” Cambridge is home to one of a number of clusters of mobile innovation in the UK, born out of university research labs, and it is arguably the most successful. Chip manufacturer ARM, whose tiny devices power many modern smartphones, originated there. In its latest move the company has announced a partnership with Boston-based company LogMeIn, to accelerate commercial development on the Internet of Things. The two parties have launched a rapid development kit designed to reduce the cost, complexity and learning curve required to bring related products and solutions to market. Another hub of activity to watch is in Surrey, south-west of London, where a newly established 5G Innovation Centre has emerged from the UK’s University of Surrey in Guildford. It is backed by $55 million of government and private funding put up by some big names in the telecoms industry. Dr Shahram Niri, general manager of the center, says the center’s goal is to become not just a national hub for research into future mobile technologies, but a global research centre. The 5G Innovation Center is an offshoot of the university’s Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR), the UK’s largest and most well-known academic research centre in mobile and satellite communication systems. Although 4G networks are still in their infancy, Dr Niri believes it is vital to push ahead with the next generation of cellular technology because of the accelerating rate of bandwidth consumption as rich applications and content are mobili

A look at online services that are uncovering local culture for tourists and giving historic dwellings new life in South Korea. cs.co/tnp April 30th marked the 20-year anniversary of the World Wide Web, the system of urls, hypertext and protocols that paved the way for what today we take for granted as the Internet. It’s hard to imagine how we managed to get by before everything from news headlines to soul mates were a mouse-click away. The Internet has certainly enhanced our lives in many ways, increasing our productivity (along with ADD-tendencies and information overload). But it’s also played a role in accelerating globalization and homogenization at the expense of local cultures and traditions. It sometimes seems that we wear the same jeans, drink the same soft drinks, listen to the same music and watch the same funny cat videos the world over. This view is especially resonant in countries that are mostly on the receiving end of the Internet flood of western culture. The reality, though, is much more nuanced. The Internet is a two-way street, and can also help preserve cultural heritage and diversity. The Network contributor Amy Cortese says she experienced this firsthand last year on a trip to Seoul. Having never been to South Korea before, she was somewhat dismayed to find one of those modern Asian cities with towering skyscrapers and congested thoroughfares. And her international brand hotel, while very nice, could have been in any almost city on the planet. Cortese knew from Korean friends that that a traditional culture lurked somewhere beneath the bustling modern façade. But how to find it? Not surprisingly, it was just a mouse-click away. She happened to be speaking at a conference about the sharing economy, and was introduced to a website called Kozaza.com, an Airbnb-like service that lets travelers looking for more than generic hotel rooms book stays in traditional Korean homes known as hanoks. Cortese chose one in Bukchon, an historic neighborhood situated between the summer and winter palaces of the old Korean monarchy. This newly-trendy neighborhood happens to have the last remaining concentration of hanoks, its steep, winding alleys lined with their decorative facades. She settled on one that was listed under the heading “Charm House” – a slightly mangled English translation that turned out to fit it perfectly. Like most hanoks, hers was a single story red-clay home built around a central open courtyard, designed to provide ventilation in the summer and keep out the cold winds in the winter. Inside, the walls were made of Korean paper lacquered with bean oil, and the soft pine wood floors were heated from underneath—one reason that hanok-dwellers sleep on mats on the floor. Wooden beams were ingeniously hand-cut and fitted, and Cortese was amazed to learn that the entire house was built without a single nail. The crowning glory of the Charm House was its ornate tiled roof, or giwa. It was as far from an impersonal hotel as one could get. After leaving shoes at the door, the charm house’s proprietors, a young couple called the Kims, showed Cortese around the sparsely furnished home and offered tea. The Kims said they had moved from an apartment in the city and jettisoned 70% of their belongings to adjust to their new minimalist life style. The next day Mrs. Kim escorted the guests down winding alleys and up hills until they reached an unassuming building. There she left the visitors to have one of the most memorable meals of their trip. These are the kind of experiences that give travelers a more intimate sense of a place and a window into a culture, and in her case would have been nearly impossible without a website like Kozaza. At the same time, her stay in the hanok helped, if even in a small way, to preserve that culture. Three decades ago, there were over 800,000 hanoks in Seoul. Today, the number is closer to 12,000. Like many such traditional homes around the world

Is the use of Social Media tools in manufacturing the wave of the future, or simply a pursuit with diminishing returns? We examine why increasing numbers of manufacturers are looking more closely at the use of Social Media. cs.co/tnp Social media continues to play a pivotal role in day-to-day commerce. It offers shoppers valuable resources, from product evaluations and opinions to advice and trends to watch, but what about social media’s influence in the manufacturing sector, the source of consumer satisfaction? According to a recent survey by the Manufacturing Leadership Council, 13 percent of manufacturing executives plan to digitize their design/production processes, and social media tools represent an important component. By 2023, that percentage will rise to more than half (53%). What’s the goal of increased social media-based interactions? Manufacturers want to tap into valuable customer opinions, preferences and desires. They also want to encourage collaborations between employees, partners and suppliers in order to create better end products. For example, Frito Lay, the snack food maker, offers one illustration of a manufacturer going directly to its core constituency for critical product feedback. The company collaborated with customers via social media to define and select the most appealing flavor ideas. Such combinations of crowdsourcing—a form of distributive problem-solving—and taste buds represents a novel, and completely different, approach to the use of social media in manufacturing. At the other end of the spectrum, a range of more industrial companies are beginning to employ social media-driven, collaborative tools for their workforce. Aircraft manufacturer, Airbus, offers partners and dealers a range of interactive procurement portals. These platform-based resources enable suppliers to describe their capabilities to Airbus buyers in addition to exchanging requirements and proposals online during the bid process. Such social media trends extend even further. Industrial Mold and Machine in Twinsburg, Ohio makes custom molds for plastic bottle manufacturers. The company empowers its workers by providing an iPad-accessible Social Media platform for production-line quality control, design access and problem-solving. Who said: “Too many cooks spoil the broth?” In this, and similar instances, manufacturers are using collaborative Social Media technology to advance their operations through multiple, diverse collaborations. These examples illustrate a larger movement that’s occurring across a variety of manufacturing verticals. In many ways, trends such as BYOD illustrate that it’s more profitable for manufacturers to harness the potential of new technologies than to fight them. A variety of social business platforms, otherwise known as Enterprise 2.0, promise the possibility of company-wide interaction via wikis, blogs and related SM tools. They offer an equalizing platform for the workforce and leadership to exchange ideas, troubleshoot problems and generally interact to make organization-wide improvements. But as companies try to extract value from social media, questions remain. For example, is it really useful for CEOs to be tweeting about their business trips, products or business strategies? At what point does it become a pursuit with diminishing returns? There are those who think adoption of social collaboration tools into the manufacturing process is somewhat optimistic. That’s because manufacturing generally involves assembly line specifications, designs, chemical/physical property data and production timelines, to name a few. While social media has found a home in the consumer products market, some think it will be much tougher to meet the kinds of restrictions and cost-effective conditions manufacturing entails. Still, such technologies represent a fundamental shift in how business continues to evolve. Manufacturers know the only way to play is to get into the game. According to technology

A look at how the use of personal cloud services is impacting IT departments and why experts say the trend will only grow. cs.co/tnp Many consumers today use personal cloud services such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Evernote, and iCloud. The lure of these services is clear: they allow users to store files such as documents, notes, and photos on a central server – automatically syncing these files to all of their devices – and they allow users to share files with others with the click of a button. In a recent survey, 75% of US consumers said they planned to use a personal cloud service in the near future, and 72% said they planned to use it store both work and personal documents. But Consumer enthusiasm for personal cloud services has a lot of corporate IT departments worried, especially since several of these cloud services, including Dropbox and Evernote, have suffered from large security breaches. CIOs know their employees regularly upload work documents to personal clouds and access these services from work computers, which clearly puts enterprise information and networks at risk. To protect corporate networks, some IT departments have chosen to block access to personal cloud services, resorting to segregation of work and personal content. These same companies often implement enterprise-grade cloud services, such as Box, Accellion, Citrix Systems’ ShareFile, or Egnyte--- in an attempt to offer an enterprise-sanctioned cloud storage solution. More sophisticated companies sometimes use security software to monitor which cloud services employees access, attempting to filter sensitive file uploads. Obviously, these strategies fall short, as many employees will continue to use their own devices to access personal clouds, and find easy ways to upload company documents to these services. In light of the inevitable creep of personal clouds into the corporate realm, some companies are adopting a concept called personal-enterprise integration that allows employees to ‘bring your own cloud’, in much the same way they already embrace ‘bring your own devices’, or BYOD. Instead of walling off personal clouds and denying their existence, forward-thinking IT departments are finding ways to integrate employees’ personal clouds in a secure fashion. A recent study showed that 73% of US IT professionals said employees’ use of personal cloud applications has had a direct impact on their decisions to implement cloud technologies in the enterprise. While companies are still in the experimental stages of personal-enterprise integration, many will ultimately build API connections between popular personal cloud and enterprise apps, predicts Forrester Research in a recent report titled, “The Coming Integration of Personal Cloud Services and Enterprise Apps”. Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester who is quoted in the report said, “The tug of war between empowered employees using new technologies to improve their work and IT’s efforts to secure company data and enforce compliance will continue for the next few years.” “Employees will increasingly drag IT into embracing personal cloud services…and CIOs will ultimately find personal-enterprise integration a better choice than walling off personal cloud services.” To make personal-enterprise integration work, IT departments need access to new technologies – and enterprise IT vendors are starting to develop offerings to help companies securely mix work and personal clouds. At the same time, personal cloud services like Dropbox and Evernote are building in enterprise features to make their offerings more ‘business focused’. Dual log-in capabilities are a first step into personal-enterprise integration. Some cloud services allow users to have ‘work’ and ‘personal’ logins for one personal cloud account, partitioning documents into two categories. Microsoft SkyBox and iCloud are leaders in this regard. Another emerging model is the blended personal-ente

While high school programs have long studied game video, new web-based apps tag, sort and analyze video for a low-cost, data-driven competitive advantage. cs.co/tnp National Basketball Association teams have spent a lot of money on data analytics that can break down tendencies of rival teams. But this year, a disruptively cheap web-based version of the technology helped the high school boys on the Fort Bend Travis Tigers basketball team storm to the Class 5A Texas state championship. The technology was pioneered by New York start-up Krossover Intelligence, which launched its basketball service in 2010. It now offers similar services for football and lacrosse, and says there are more than 1,000 schools using the technology. Most are high schools, but in April, tiny Amherst College used the data to help it analyze their opponent in the NCAA Division 3 men’s basketball championship. The Boston Globe published a story about it saying, "It was almost sinister, completely unfair, what they did with that knowledge." Krossover is a web application that digitally tags and analyzes video footage, giving coaches a host of ways to sort information and video clips. Coaches upload game video to the site, and within 48 hours the company tags the video and builds a database of the game by on-court actions and players. A coach could, for instance, watch all the missed shots of a particular player, or see what an opposing player does most often each time he gets the ball in a certain place on the court. Another service, Hudl, allows coaches to send video and diagrams to team members over the web. Software company, Gamebreaker lets coaches break down their video and share the edits on a site called HomeField. The trend is for such services to move online and down-market, so almost any school can afford it. Sharman White, the boys basketball coach at Miller Grove High School in Georgia says, “We were in the stone age before.” He says, before, he would cut up DVDs to make highlights, and the time for doing that was very long. “And even then, you can’t get breakdowns of all the different things that happen on the court without having to watch the tape a million times.” White, whose team won five state championships in a row, believes he’s seen improvement that directly relates to the technology. These services save coaches boatloads of time. And because the services are on the web, they’re far more flexible. Coaches can give their players access so the players can do their own analysis on a laptop or mobile phone -- or sort for their own best plays which also enables them to assemble highlight reels for college scouts. Sue Phillips, girls basketball coach at Archbishop Mitty High School in California says she sends the kids videos as homework assignments, or she asks them to check the video and write notes. The team then splits up at practice, discussing different aspects of their past games while huddled around school-provided iPads. Phillips says the kids love it because they don’t have to convene in a classroom and they don’t have to monopolize more of their time. She says parents love it too – some kids have a parent that wants to get involved. This type of technology is an early example of a growing trend: the consumerization of analytics. Over the past decade, analytics -- software that combs through data to identify trends and find ways to optimize operations -- has become vital to the way big enterprises operate. But it’s expensive and usually requires high-powered computer systems. Now companies are building simpler, cheaper, “good enough” analytics services that are accessible by a wider audience. Other examples include health apps like Fitbit, which crunches and analyzes some of your fitness patterns, and smart meters that can track and analyze home energy use. And in the post-Moneyball era, the sports world is increasingly hungry for data and ways to analyze it. Word about online video analysis is spreading thr

A look at the benefits and challenges of cloud computing in healthcare for patients and caregivers. iTunes: cs.co/tnp - Subscribe, listen to past episodes, rate the show or write a review. Today’s edition: How the cloud is impacting health care. Written by Joanne Taaffe. If ever there was an industry in need of higher quality for less money, it’s the healthcare sector. In addition to the demands of improving operational efficiency, healthcare service providers are facing stiff competition, which is putting the pressure on them, to do more for less. This is where cloud computing can make an impact. According to the “Healthcare Cloud Computing” forecast, the cloud computing market in healthcare is expected to be worth $5.4 billion by 2017. Here’s a look at some of the benefits. When the cloud is leveraged, healthcare institutions don’t need to invest in hardware infrastructure and maintenance. In addition, cloud collaboration allows hospitals, private practitioners, doctors, and clinics to improve services for patients by opening the pathway for health care providers to easily share information. Cloud-based storage makes the information available to anyone who's taking care of the patients, allowing healthcare practitioners to view their patients’ history, diagnoses and treatments. Dr. Suzanne Richins is a former RN with American Sentinel University, she says cloud-based applications benefit nurses and patients at point of care significantly. She also feels nurses with a nursing informatics specialization will soon be in high demand to manage health information systems. Richins says early in her career, she worked in the ER, and in her experience a couple minutes would pass before the patient would remember specifics about their condition. She feels this is dangerous because time is of the essence. She says people aren’t generally good historians when they’re sick. They often forget what meds they're on, and the cloud gives us access to important data. Stephen Baker, author of “The Numerati and Final Jeopardy, Man vs Machine and the Quest to Know Everything” explores the harvesting and use of data. He says the other problem the cloud addresses [in healthcare] is the duplication of tests. “The fact that data is now available in the cloud eliminates duplication… the care is more targeted. The care of patients needs to be personalized based on their history and physiology.” While the cloud provides great benefits to the healthcare industry, there are more than a few precautions to take when adopting the technology. Even though there are many benefits with the use of cloud in health care, there are also concerns. Cloud service providers are required to comply with many privacy standards such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Today there are a number of cloud providers offering HIPAA compliance, which Richins says should be taken quite seriously. She says people need to careful when they're picking a cloud provider and hospitals need to make sure their provider is following the laws. Individuals can be liable for breeches, and ultimately the person taking care of the patient is responsible. Baker says the scariest scenarios he can think of involve companies breaking the law and that privacy concerns on the part of the public will tend to keep the players honest, everything being relative. So what’s the future of the cloud in the healthcare industry on a grand scale? Baker says it’s all contingent upon what’s shared. He says the future of cloud collaboration in medicine depends in great part on the industry settling on open standards. He feels if hospital groups keep their data within their ecosystems of suppliers and partners, and use it as leverage to gain market share, the health care industry will be fractured, and won’t benefit from collaboration. And if that happens, he says in many ways we won't have the medical Internet we've been wanting and deserving for the

Concern from consumers about the origins of the products they purchase is prompting retailers to start using mobile technologies to track provenance and sustainability of goods. But costs could hold back widespread adoption, at least for the time being.

Tech startups are helping retailers use mobile devices to change the way offline stores interact with customers. Today, we'll look at three such companies. iTunes: cs.co/tnp - Subscribe, listen to past episodes, rate the show or write a review. TRANSCRIPT for "Mobile Retail" written by Anne Field: Your in-store retail technology won’t do much good if sales associates don’t use it. That, ultimately, is the conundrum David Hegarty is trying to address. Hegarty is founder of two-year-old San Francisco-based, Signature Labs. Here's some background: Most high-end retail stores make the lion’s share of revenues from repeat customers, according to Hegarty. Excellent, personalized customer service, of course, is essential to inspiring more-frequent visits, especially to fancier enterprises. But these days, fewer retail sales associates are making a career out of the job. As a result, they aren’t developing the long-term relationships that were typical in the past. And fewer of them can make effective use of the so-called "black book," a list of clients and preferences with which they can let customers know when new items come into the store. The perfect solution, at first, seemed to be to have an app for customers, and another for retailers. But Hegarty soon discovered that while consumers were eager to adopt the technology, sales associates tended to be less enthusiastic. The issue, then, wasn’t as much about the technology as it was with what Hegarty calls "a behavioral change." With that in mind, he decided to just focus on the sales associate piece of the puzzle, introducing a simple retail customer relationship management system for high-end retailers aimed at quickly building trust between client and seller. The first step is educating sales associates about just why the technology is needed in the first place--that having frequently returning customers boosts revenues considerably. Signature’s head of sales associate on boarding does in-person training, in addition to providing computer tutorials. And associates who hit their targets receive one of various levels of certification. Then, there’s the actual application, which focuses on a few, key actions. For example, Signature’s system analyzes sales receipts each day to identify high-potential customers. Then, sales associates receive a notification and send written thank-you notes to those people. Thirty to 60 days later, they’re reminded to let customers know about appropriate new merchandise. Store managers also have a dashboard to keep track of it all. Hegarty says, quote: "We make it really easy for the associate to be thoughtful." Mountain View, California-based Proximiant is all about turning the ability for customers to make in-store mobile payments into a way for retailers to build stronger relationships with them--and get access to a potential goldmine of data. Here’s how the new service works: Retail customers with New Field Communication--or NFC-enabled devices--can get a receipt at the check-out counter when they tap their phones on a small digital receiver right at the point of sale. IPhones aren’t NFC-enabled, so it scans a QR code that appears on the receiver and is captured as a digital receipt. The big deal for retailers is they can tell whether a customer has already bought from their store previously and then start sending them promotions. Founder Fang Cheng also started a touchscreen display company called Touchco, which was sold to Amazon in 2010. Dinesh C. is vice president of business development and marketing at Proximiant. He says, quote: "The moment customers check out and get their digital receipt on their phone, we start building a relationship with them." End quote. More important is what happens once the data is collected. Retailers can customize data to allow them to see anything from whether a Twitter campaign turned into real sales, to the type of products that are doing well. And bigger retailers can choose