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The world will never be the same. Our society used to build machines and parts, in factories and in assembly lines. Today, our society builds computer programs and data bases, on laptops and in many cases, from anywhere around the world. People and businesses are becoming more efficient. They are working smarter, not harder, because they are beginning to leverage the most valuable employee of all: Data.

Take for example the airline industry. Consider all those times you got bumped off of a flight, rescheduled, canceled, or offered money to take a different flight. We’ve all been there and it always happens for a reason. This reason is that airlines try to prevent the loss of business and in doing so, they look at dozens of consumer driven behaviors such as how long you travel for, how many weekend flights you take, how many return flights you take, how many flights you take during the week, if you are a frequent flier, and the list goes on. All of these individual data points are used to inform a business decision. The decision is objective. The decision is data driven.

But what happens when we can make decisions using even more data points? Much more data points? Literally, hundreds of thousands if not millions of data points, and did I mention, in real time?

Welcome to the Data Renaissance. Thanks to increasingly efficient and scalable technologies like solid state drives, mobile devices, and cloud computing, the possibilities of data analysis are endless. I mean, just think about how much time we either spend online or connected to a mobile device. This has tremendous implications from travel, health and fitness, to finance, education, and media and the best part is, we haven’t even scratched the surface.

Like I said before, the implications here are huge. Many companies recognize the need to have these comprehensive data sets while having ways of analyzing that data. The digital media and online advertising industry in particular are both in a unique place since their very foundations are dependent upon these high growth technologies; digital devices and the Internet. In this space, companies are racing to a holy grail of advertising where they can leverage millions of individual consumer behaviors to inform brand engagement opportunities and purchasing decisions. Unlike the airline industry, online advertisers can leverage millions of data points instead of those “dozen,” and if done correctly, the consumer experience will be better than it’s ever been before. Everything will matter. Everything will be relevant. We will all become more enlightened and informed to things that interest the most because these new technologies are launching us into the very early, but still uncharted, data renaissance.

(Disclosure: The post can also be found at Lotame Learnings. Lotame is my current employer)

From the Industrial Revolution to the Knowledge Era – Next Up: The Data Renaissance is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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When it comes to Social Media, Obama just gets it. This is how he won his campaign and this is how he will remain intimately connected to the people.

He will be addressing the nation on a weekly basis at http://www.change.gov/ through short videos which will be syndicated elsewhere. Here is the first:

Obama gets Social Media is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

With the economy declining, one thing is certain: Innovation will lead to good products and services, and good products and services will lead to revenue. This could not be more true in the technology world.

It doesn’t matter what you are doing, as long as you continue to innovate and prove value in a market (good or bad), you can and will succeed. 

This is a great presentation that outlines the harsh reality of our current economy as it relates to technology. Financials meet Tech. Great stuff.

It feels good to be in Tech is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

Jonathan Zittrain defines Generativity in the following manner:

“Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences”

Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It

In reality, this description somewhat defines the nature of a social networking sites. If you look at social networking sites today, users are able to participate in 3 ways, all of which contribute to the generative nature of a social network: Users are able to:

1. Generate self identifying content (their profile, blog, homepage)
2. Generate and consume bi-directional content (messaging, statuses)
3. Generate and consume multi-directional content (groups, discussion boards, forums)

These three methods of participation allow the internet and social networking sites to grow at the staggering rate they are today. However, as these sites grow, keeping the content organized so that it remains relevant and meaningful to the user, becomes increasingly difficult. This issue is more prominent in the third method, as users are able to impact the entire network in a single instance.

Take for example the Groups feature. A single user can create a group made available to the entire network. That’s fine. But what happens when multiple users create the same group? An overlap occurs, and what should have been a single meaningful group, now becomes one group of many just like it.

Today, I joined my University of Wisconsin – Madison group as I am a recent alumni. There were about 3-4 identical groups? Do I join them all? The same scenario applied to many of the groups I wanted to join.

The generative nature of social networks allow for more noise, and enables users to disrupt the very social graph they create, making the networks more complex and less meaningful. Other people recognize the growing occurrence of this noise, and ironically enough, have used the same generative nature of social networks to maintain strong connections, content, and a healthy social graph (see Triiibes).

About six weeks ago, I joined Seth Godin’s social network called Triiibes (which he created using a white-box social network: Ning). The network was only made available to those that made an early purchase for his new book. As a result, the content and communication in the network is much stronger and meaningful then I’ve seen on any other network.

As social networks grow, they must look to sites like Wikipedia for guidance. They must learn how to keep the network connected using only meaningful and unique data points.

(Jonathan Zittrain’s book is a good read for anyone interested in technology and communications, and their inevitable effects on society)

Generativity of Social Networking Sites and Their Accountability is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

I’d like to say that Thomas Friedman said it best when he said,

“What would happen if you cross-bred Henry Ford and Yitzhak Rabin? You’d get Shai Agassi.”

I think I can improve.

Shai Agassi is a hero.

Bottom line. (Read Thomas’s book, The World is Flat, and you might think he is one as well)

The plain reality is that our civilization is experiencing harsh consequences directly resulting from our own innovations. The most highly debated and discusses innovation being automobiles and oil.

But, when you look at how oil has effected the socioeconomics of almost every culture worldwide, you would immediately understand how it is going to take a lot more then alternative energy to fix the oil problem. Because within the oil problem, there exist an entire set of other connected issue, from technology, to economy, and even religion. Being able to solve a problem, that addresses all connected problems, is extremely difficult. Doing this on an international scale is much harder, and executing the solution is near impossible.

Shai Agassi is on a mission to create

“global energy independence and freedom from oil”

Say that out loud. Think of all the many countless factors at play. He is trying to account for them all, and deliver a solution that could fix the ills brought upon by the industrial revolution.

Most importantly, he is committed, and determined to address, perhaps the hardest issue of our time. And for that he is a hero.

Shai Agassi is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

Intel’s announcement with Yahoo to bring widgets to the living room is not a real shocker.

I have seen this image 2 years ago, while I was in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. (The widgets appeared on a 42″ LCD, hanging behind a 1 way reflective piece of glass. This was hanging in the bathroom, allowing people to check stocks and weather while brushing their teeth. It was also a prototype by Yahoo).

The idea is simple: make the Internet available in and on more mediums.

Television is clearly the most logical place to start.

But does it require hardware modifications on a television? Couldn’t the same be accomplished with a console or set box top provider like Microsoft or Scientific Atlanta?

Either way, its nice to see that companies are taking real strides to get Internet in the living room. Or is it?

Linking Up the Living Room With The Internet is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

How great would that be? For those of you that are not familiar with Microsoft Exchange, the idea is this: Being able to sync your phone with Facebook. Everyone in your Facebook social graph becomes a contact in your phone.

Some things you could do with such a solution:

• Anytime your friend buys a new phone or changes their number, they simply make the edits themselves in their Facebook account, and the number becomes available in your phone.
• If you add a new friend on Facebook, you can choose to include them in your “Mobile Sync” setting allowing you to choose, whether or not you’d like this new “Facebook Friend” as a contact in your phone.
• Text messages becomes Facebook messages.
• Your Facebook newsfeed becomes a newsfeed on your phone.

I’m probably going to buy the new iPhone when it comes out. In the past, I’ve stuck with Windows Mobile devices because it allowed me to sync my contacts, email, calender, and tasks with my Microsoft Exchange Server (I run MS SBS out of my house). But instead of updating all of my contact information time and again in outlook, I’d prefer a system that utilizes self published user information; aka: Facebook.

As Apple and Google have been addressing the mobile market in new and innovative ways with the iPhone and Android, it seems to me that Facebook is in the best position to capitalize off of the “network” business.

ON A SIDE NOTE: I’ve also been looking for a tool that seemlessly syncs outlook Contacts and calender with my Facebook account, but I haven’t found one yet. This would be ideal.

I hope Facebook comes out with either of these solutions.

If only Facebook created their own Microsoft Exchange is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

Of all the doctor’s offices I’ve ever been in, I can undoubtedly say they all have one thing in common: The overwhelming amounts of patient files and folders. Next time you go see the doctor, take a look behind the front desk. You will most likely find the sea of colored tabbed, manila folders, each one corresponding to a different patient.

Think about this for a second. Each medical office or facility has huge amounts of patient data that exist in isolated silos. If I were to visit two different general physicians, I would get two different examinations, with two different diagnoses, two different perspectives, and two different data sets on my health. Although they may be very similar, they will most certainly be different to some degree.

With the advent of the internet, the social web, search optimization, and relational databases, it has become increasingly easier to share and access information.

Why can’t we apply the same methods to our own heath? Imagine if every doctor’s office shared one database, offering more insight to a patients health. Granted privacy is an issue and a big concern. But what if those patients lived in the database as ID’s rather then name? The patient would be completely anonymous, and doctor can gain new perspective to a patient’s health they may not have previously had.

Now imagine the database existed in an open source, atlassian-like structure. If the doctor was trying to diagnose a patient based on a list of symptoms, they could hypothetically type in some keywords into the database, and have real time, real world patients at their finger tips (with no personally identifiable information). It would be like a real time, global medical journal. Doctors would have to qualify in order to participate in the database.

Ultimately, the patient wins as their health becomes an open source project for all of the doctors that participate, without their indentity ever being known.

Organizing the world’s heath is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

IBM has recently announced “a next-generation version of its Cell processor, the first specifically geared for computer servers.”

The PowerXCell 8i will drive the Road Runner system now under test at Los Alamos National Labs to see if it can become the world’s first supercomputer to deliver sustained petaflops performance. Besides cracking the petaflops barrier, IBM hopes hundreds of users will decide to plug into their IBM servers a two-socket board housing the new Cell chips to deliver what IBM calls “supercomputing for the masses.”

Instead of servers being plugged into a grid, why not use PCs and gaming consoles?

I find this announcement to be kind of ironic since it was IBM that realized open source (the Apache Web Server) is more valuable than a centralized and closed platform, even if is somewhat open.

If I was IBM, here is what I would do.

The idea: Mixing different kinds of computers into a supercomputing grid to create an infinitely scalable supercomputer for enterprise solutions. Just as SETI and Stanford have created new hybrids of supercomputers for astrological data analyzation and Computational Earth and Environmental Science research respectively, a similar supercomputing hybrid model has yet to be adopted for commercialized use. This idea will allow users to submit their PCs or gaming consoles to the supercomputing grid, where they can be accessed whenever they are not being used, and will contribute to a commercially available supercomputer. By participating in this supercomputing grid, donations will be made to charities on the users’ behalf. These donations will depend on the amount of data processes computed on their machines. On the other end of the business, enterprises will be able to rent, lease, or even purchase data processing bandwidth. This will enable startups, small to medium businesses, and large businesses, to acquire computationally intensive processing power with extremely fast clock cycles which could easily deliver sustained petaflops performance and beyond. This would be the first ever cluster of machines available for commercialized use providing for cheap energy costs and cheap hardware costs. By participating in this grid, users will be members of ongoing charitable donations, and businesses will, for the first time ever, have paralleled computing power to the likes of SETI and Stanford. PCs were once thought of “business or research only”. Today, virtually everyone owns a PC. Supercomputers today are only thought of as “research-only”. This put supercomputers in the commercialized or “business” realm. IBM has just announced a new initiative to delver a supercomputer to the masses, as they predict an $8-$10 Billion market. Instead of creating a centralized supercomputer for the masses, this idea will create a decentralized supercomputer to the masses, that will exceed any one supercomputer.

That is what I would do.

My version of IBM’s new supercomputing initiative is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

Last year, I began pursuing an idea with a good friend of mine. We met with one of our extremely talented professors, Giri Venkataramanan, and began developing mathematical equations to turn our idea into a reality. Well, we stopped pursuing the idea due to a simple lack of free time, and sure enough, the idea has surfaced and is now in production.

“Terry Kenney’s Dragon Power Station prototype works by harnessing the kinetic energy of trucks passing over plates buried in the road and turning that energy into electricity.”

- Jason Chen, Gizmodo.com

Even one of the comments made, expresses the same thought process we encountered.

“@ludwigk: It’s a great idea though if done as already noted by NOT lowering your fuel economy. If they placed this on, say, every interstate off-ramp. Everyone needs to slow down anyways. Lots of traffic. It’s not going to hurt your fuel efficiency if you’re already trying to stop. all it will do is save you some wear and tear on your brakes. Granted, it’s probably not generating as much power as that article initially claims, but still…every bit counts.”

But if anything good comes from this, it is this: Validation. (Andy M taught me this)

The fact that this idea was developed, and is in production, validates our initial pursuit of invention.

Maybe next time.

An invention I should have pursued further is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich