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Startup School, Meraki, Acquisition instead of Innovation?

 yCombinator just posted all its videos from Startup School 2013.. Including the Jack Dorsey talk that I posted earlier.

Meraki was a company that grew out the Roofnet Project at MIT to make wireless meshing and networking easier. They were acquired by Cisco, and now have turned full circle to supply MIT with wireless networking.

How can it be cheaper for companies just to acquire rather than innovate? Shouldn’t have Cisco spent $1.2 billion on R&D instead? WPP is another company that behaves in a similar way – instead of trying to understand a new generation, they just bought Vice.

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Triangles, Books and the 2001 Aliens that almost were

“The Sierpinski Triangle page to end most Sierpinski Triangle pages ™”

Wow. Just wow. If only most webpages were more like this one.

Two books recommended by Jack Dorsey recently:

  1. “The Score Takes Care of Itself” by Bill Walsh.
  2. “The Art Spirit” by Robert Henri.

Bonus: “Dorsey’s Daily List”

Do Don’t
Stay present Drink hard liquor or beer (on weekdays)
Drink only lemon water and red wine Avoid eye contact
Stand up straight Be late
Say hello to everyone Set expectations for someone and not able to meet it
Stand up straight
Meditate on this list
Video journal every single day
7 hours of sleep
6 sets pushups/squats/planks. Run 3 miles

I’m trying to be better at these things. Set expectations for someone and not able to meet it is the one that I struggle with most. Not sure about video journal or meditating on this list.

Designs for Aliens in 2001 that didn’t quite make the grade.

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Accelerator on a Chip, Chat and JS AR

A particle accelerator on a chip. From the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park.

vLine link gives you free video chat in the browser.

An augmented reality flood fill simulator that uses HTML5.

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Meta Business Logic, Attention Blindness, Elinor Ostrom and the Commons

Shouldn’t it be possible to make a completely online activity that generate content of some kind or other – then embed the business logic of the activity into the pricing system? You could make activities that live in the cloud, that only generate profit and always cover their costs.

Of course, The Activity is something completely different.

I love ELI5.

What is happening to your eyes (& brain) when you are thinking about something & you stare into the distance, seemingly oblivious to what is happening in front of your eyes?

Was the one that got me into it. Attention blindness was something that I did that used to drive my brother and sister crazy – they could be shouting into my ear, but I would be lost in thought.

Elinor Ostrom was an economist who was particularly interested in the Commons. Near where I grew up in Wales there was a common where my brother and I would punt a rugby ball back and forth as the sun went down – we also shared the field with some rare orchids and several horses. I only realise now how lucky I was to have direct experience of common land.

The FNF are trying to bring an electronic commons to life in North America. Alter Mundi are trying to do the same in South America.

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Tessel, Strangeloop, Patents, Free Software Documentary

Tessel looks like a hardware platform that could be the next Arduino. tessel.io

All the slides from the recent Strange Loop 2013 conference.

Could the insane software patent system in the US finally be about to be reformed?

Revolution OS is a documentary which traces the history of GNU, Linux, and the open source and free software movements. It features several interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs (and hackers-cum-entrepreneurs), including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf.”

Richard Stallman seems like such a kind and good person.

 

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Firepad, Bad time to buy a House, Design is One, Muscle Shoals, Glitch Architecture

Firepad is an open source collaborative code and text editor. It would be interesting to take the principles behind it and transform it into a video rather than text based workflow, for chaining effects and layering content.

“We were all corrupted by the housing boom, to some extent. People talked endlessly about how their houses were earning more than they did, never asking where all this free money was coming from. Well the truth is that it was being stolen from the next generation. Houses price increases don’t produce wealth, they merely transfer it from the young to the old – from the coming generation of families who have to burden themselves with colossal debts if they want to own, to the baby boomers who are about to retire and live on the cash they make when they downsize.”

It’s a bad time to buy an expensive house. (Does this hold true for the madness that is London?)

“The first fifty are very difficult…the second are great!”

“I wanted to affect the lives of millions of people”

Design is One. A film about Lella & Massimo Vignelli.

“What is it about Muscle Shoals? It’s just a little place.”

Nitzan_Bartov_Azrieli_tall

“I’m an Architect: I break things on purpose.”

Nitzan Bartov glitches architecture.

SirJohnSoaneBankOfEnglandInRuins

There are visual echo’s of Sir John Soane’s designs for the Bank of England – and that he presented the site in ruins as well as it would be when it was freshly constructed.

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Steam OS, Many -duinos, Drakon, NoFlo and compiling to JS

Steam announces SteamOS.

The Microduino does exactly what is says on the tin, as does the Femtoduino. If you want to do some Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy – use the RFduino.

DRAKON is a visual language for specifications from the Russian space program. DRAKON is used for capturing requirements and building software that controls spacecraft.

The rules of DRAKON are optimized (sic) to ensure easy understanding by human beings.

DRAKON is gaining popularity in other areas beyond software, such as medical textbooks. DRAKON is universal. Its purpose is to represent any knowledge that explains how to accomplish a goal.”

Code from flowcharts! Wouldn’t this be a lovely way of learning openFrameworks? Perhaps the new visual editor that it’s being crying out for?

More flow based fun, from NoFlo. How do you do for loops?

Look at all the languages that you can compile to JavaScript now.

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Three African Cities, Aeon, Calico

Three interesting African cities:

  • Lagos
  • Cape Town
  • Nairobi

These are the three places I’d set up media nodes in Africa if I was so inclined. They’ve all got great music and tech scenes.

Aeon Magazine is a new publication about “nature, culture and ideas” from Mag Culture.

“MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – September 18, 2013 – Google today announced Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases. Arthur D. Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief Executive Officer and a founding investor.”

Being able to live forever seems like a pretty good employee perk.

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Dioramas and Projection Mapping, Temboo, Webstreaming via Sockets

Beautiful Dioramas by Lori Nix. Imagine adding projection mapping to these.

“Ever wish your Arduino could respond to the weather on the other side of the world? Or send you an email to let you know what it’s up to? Upload stuff to your Dropbox account? Or detect if you’re at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals?”

Now you can, with the Arduino Yún and Temboo.

Finally, an example of live video streaming via Websockets using HTML5.

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Realtime OF, C++ 11, Objects in 3D and Cognitive Distortions

Hybrid Live OF Sketching IDE from d3cod3.

Source here.

Some simple C++11 examples.

Both links via Zach Lieberman.

Manipulating objects in photos in 3D. Paper here.

The five cognitive distortions of people who get stuff done.

Both links via Jason Kottke.