NEW TECHNOLOGIES

New technologies and material changes transform businesses’ expectations and the way they interact.  Globalization has changed the markets and environments dramatically in which organizations function.  New countries, governments, leadership, and markets emerged that created a global economy which stimulates both opportunities and conflict.  The crumbling of the Berlin Wall for instance, which unified East and West Germany is one example of an emergence which transformed that region.  In addition, the European Union created a cohesive economic culture that changed the face of global markets and entrepreneurs began appearing in places like the Balkans, Russia and Siberia changing the face of the former Soviet Union.

Information technology redefined traditional business models by altering work performance, production costs and how information is used.  The methodologies of how organizations collect, store, manipulate, utilize and transmit information have lowered costs and increased the value and quality of services and products.  Information technology is at the heart of emerging e-commerce strategies and organizations (Cummings & Worley, 2008).

Managerial innovation responds to globalization and information technology by accelerating their impact on institutions.  New networks, strategic alliances and virtual corporations provide innovative ways of manufacturing goods and delivering services.  Companies and individuals who implement new initiatives can address preliminary conditions, including initial ideas, investments and control systems.  In his book, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses, Amar Bhide (2000) purports that differences in conditions have affect on:

1. The nature of opportunities pursued;
2. The degree to which dependence relies on former analysis and planning rather than adapting to unforeseen situations;
3. The strategies to secure customers, employees, credit, supplies and other inputs; and
4. The factors that differentiate the successful initiatives from the unsuccessful ones (p. 196).

Most individuals that start a new enterprise face inadequate conditions and traditionally lack ideas, experience and credentials.  In addition they usually experience significant capital constraints.

The introduction of new technology can assist in stimulating a business. For example, a new technical system was introduced at Capitol Records in the early 1990s (a former place of employment).  At that time, support staff which included paralegals and administrative assistants, were being introduced to an upgraded technology for communication and documentation needs.  Traditional electronic typewriters that were standard issue at the time were replaced with word processing machines.  Most personnel affected were excited at the prospect of increased levels in their productivity the new technology offered and embraced the new tools.

                                                                                                                         Electronic Typewriter

The new system allowed staff members to produce and save lengthy document templates in an electronic format.  In addition, errors and corrections could be made on a terminal monitor, rather than utilizing the auto-correct buttons the typewriters provided with a more primitive white out method.  This meant that mistakes could be corrected on a terminal screen alleviating the need to print a document before it was complete thereby saving time and production costs.  Up until that point, documents were typed up manually.  Corrections were generated on documents that sometimes left unattractive blemishes and marks from the white-out methods employed.

       

                                                                                                       Electric typewriter with small LCD screen

Other staff members were fearful and not as eager to embrace the new technology as it meant they were required to learn and train on a new system.  The more enthusiastic personnel who were not technology challenged, embraced the material change and welcomed the opportunity to learn and apply a new technology at their workplace.  Once the learning curve phase was complete they transformed into motivated individuals who were more effective.  The upgraded system increased the quality and levels of staff productivity.

                                                                                                               Word Processing Machine

In conclusion, Howard Means (2001) reminds us that before the internet there was Arpanet. The images in this post attest to how far we’ve come in word processing technology which can be traced back through laptops and desktops to the 30 ton ENLAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer).  Cars were preceded by steam powered tricycles and trains by wind propelled land ships (p. 17).  Digital technologies are an important tool in today’s world.  As the economy continues to evolve, businesses will seek solutions to enhance and develop their organizations.

References

Bhide, A. (2000). The origin and evolution of new businesses (p. 196). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Cummings, T., & Worley, C. (2008). Organizational development and change (9th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Means, H. (2001). Money and power: The history of business (p. 17). New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Mobile Phones Can Be Beamed Onto Palms Using New Technology

Researchers are developing a revolutionary new technology that puts the mobile phone on the palm of your hand — literally. Using a special camera that combines high-speed vision and two rotational mirrors, Masatoshi Ishikawa and colleagues at the University of Tokyo have found a way to project a device's display or keyboard onto the palm or any other surface, so that one can operate it remotely at home or office.

The system can detect the movement of a 3D object every two milliseconds, Ishikawa said. The high-speed vision allows the programme to track moving objects, so that users would be free to walk with the phone image on their palm, without the display ever shifting, ABC News reported.

The computer system beams ultrasonic wave emitters, so users actually feels the keyboard pressing against their skin, without anything in their hand. The sensation is simiar to holding a 3 gramme object. "You won't need a keyboard , you won't need to carry a smartphone, or a computer. You can make a call without anything," Ishikawa said.

Ishikawa expects the technology to turn into a reality in a year or two.

The 'palm phone' is the latest in a string of systems that Ishikawa has developed using high-speed vision technology. Last year, the Japanese researcher unveiled a robotic hand designed to win the game rock-paper-scissors 100% of the time.

Oculus Rift

The Rift is an upcoming virtual reality head-mounted display, being developed by Oculus VR. During its period as an independent company, Oculus VR raised US$2.4 million for the development of the Rift.

The consumer version of the product is expected to become available sometime in 2015. Oculus released two 'development kits', DK1 in late 2012 and DK2 in mid 2014, to give developers a chance to develop content in time for the Rift's release; these have also been purchased by many virtual reality enthusiasts for general usage.

Videos of these development kits featuring both impressions and gameplay have been broadcast on YouTube by a number of popular video game content providers, with home video titled "My 90-year-old grandmother tries the Oculus Rift" going viral, with over 2 million views.

History

Through Meant to be Seen (MTBS)'s 3D discussion forums,Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, developed the idea of creating a new head-mounted display that was both more effective than what is currently on the market, and inexpensive for gamers.

Coincidentally, John Carmack had been doing his own research and happened upon Luckey's developments. After sampling an early unit, Carmack favored Luckey's prototype and just before the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Id Software announced that their future updated version of Doom 3, which would be known as BFG Edition, would be compatible with head-mounted display units.[13] During the convention, Carmack introduced a duct taped head-mounted display based on Luckey's Oculus Rift prototype, which ran Carmack's own software. The unit featured a high speed IMU and a 5.6-inch (14 cm) LCD display, visible via dual lenses that were positioned over the eyes to provide a 90 degrees horizontal and 110 degrees vertical stereoscopic 3D perspective.

On March 25, 2014, Facebook announced that it had agreed to buy Oculus VR for $400 million in cash, $1.6 billion in Facebook stock, and an additional $300 million subject to Oculus VR meeting certain financial targets in a transaction expected to close in the second quarter of 2014.

Developer versions

The Oculus developer kit was an initial version financed by a Kickstarter campaign, which sought to get the initial Oculus Rift into the hands of developers to begin integration of the device into their games.[19] Since then, four different iterations of the hardware have been revealed to the public.

Developer kit

First version of the Oculus Rift development kit

Front view

Back view

Control box

In August 2012, Oculus announced that the "dev kit" version of the Oculus Rift would be given as a reward to backers who pledged $300 or more on Kickstarter. There was also a limited run of 100 unassembled Rift prototype kits for pledges over $275 that would ship a month earlier.

Developer kit preorders were made available for $300 on their website starting on September 26, 2012. These kits sold at a rate of 4–5 per minute for the first day, before slowing down throughout the week. As of March 12, 2014, the Rift DK1 kit was no longer available to order from Oculus.

While the first prototypes of the device used a 5.6-inch (14 cm) screen, the Rift developer kit uses a different 7-inch (18 cm) screen. The panel's pixel switching time is also significantly lower, reducing latency and motion blur when turning one's head quickly. The pixel fill is also better, reducing the screen door effect and making individual pixels less noticeable. The LCD is brighter and the color depth is 24 bits per pixel.

The 7-inch screen also makes the stereoscopic 3D no longer 100% overlapping, the left eye seeing extra area to the left and the right eye seeing extra area to the right. The field of view (FOV) is more than 90 degrees horizontal (110 degrees diagonal), which is more than double the FOV of most competing devices, and is the primary strength of the device. The resolution is 1280×800 (16:10 aspect ratio), which leads to an effective of 640×800 per eye (4:5 aspect ratio). However, since the Rift does not feature a 100% overlap between the eyes, the combined horizontal resolution is effectively greater than 640. The image for each eye is shown in the panel as a barrel distorted image that is then corrected by pincushion effect created by lenses in the headset, generating a spherical-mapped image for each eye.

Initial prototypes used a Hillcrest Labs 3DoF head tracker that is normally 125 Hz, with a special firmware that John Carmack requested which makes it run at 250 Hz, tracker latency being vital due to the dependency of virtual reality's realism on response time. The latest version includes Oculus' new 1000 Hz Adjacent Reality Tracker that will allow for much lower latency tracking than almost any other tracker. It uses a combination of 3-axis gyros, accelerometers, and magnetometers, which make it capable of absolute (relative to earth) head orientation tracking without drift.

The weight of the headset is approximately 379 g (13.4 oz),[25] which is an increase of about 90 g (3.2 oz) in weight due to the increased screen size, and it does not include headphones.

A dial on each side of the headset allows adjusting each display to be moved closer or further away from the eyes. The development kit also includes interchangeable lenses that will allow for simple dioptric correction.

In June 2013, a 1080p version of the Rift was shown at Electronic Entertainment Expo.

The entire source for the Rift DK1 was released to the public in September 2014, including the firmware, schematics, and mechanicals for the device. The firmware is released under a simplified BSD license, while the schematics and mechanicals are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Crystal Cove

In January 2014, an updated prototype codenamed "Crystal Cove" was unveiled at Consumer Electronics Show, which uses a special low-persistence of vision OLED display, and includes a new motion tracking system that uses an external camera which tracks infrared dots located on the headset. The new motion tracking system would allow the system to detect actions such as leaning or crouching, which should help alleviate sickness experienced by users when the software did not respond to these actions.

Developer kit 2

In March 2014 at GDC, Oculus announced the upcoming Devkit 2 (DK2) which they expected to begin shipping in July 2014. It features several improvements over the first development kit, such as having a higher-resolution (960×1080 per eye) low-persistence pentile AMOLED display, higher refresh rate, head positional tracking, a detachable cable, and the omission of the need for the external control box.

A teardown of DK2 revealed that it incorporates exactly the same screen as the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 smartphone, including the front panel from the device itself.

Crescent Bay

In September 2014, during the Oculus Connect conference in Los Angeles, Oculus once again presented an updated version of the Rift, codenamed Crescent Bay. This version has a greater resolution than the DK2, a lower weight, built-in audio, and 360-degree tracking thanks to the presence of tracking LEDs in the back of the headset. Oculus has also licensed software library RealSpace3D, which is expected to provide the Rift with HRTF and reverb algorithms.

Consumer version

A consumer-oriented version of the Rift is in development, which will be aimed at a general market and feature improved components. Improved head tracking, positional tracking, higher resolution, and wireless operation are some of the features under consideration for the consumer Rift.

On April 30, 2014, Business Insider titled an article to assert that the consumer version of the Rift will be released in 2015, based on a partial quote attributed to "Management at Oculus VR." The quote in question indicates that the company would be "disappointed" if the headset is not released commercially before 2016. This article has been referenced by multiple other sources as official confirmation of a 2015 release date,but representatives of Oculus assert that no release date has yet been announced.

Adoption

Paramount for the immersion into virtual reality are a high frame rate (at least 95 fps) as well as a low latency. Furthermore a pixel persistence lower than 3 ms is required to avoid nausea when moving the head around.

Games and game platforms must be specifically designed to work correctly with the Oculus Rift. Oculus is producing a software development kit (SDK) to assist developers with integrating the Oculus Rift with their games. The SDK will include code, samples and documentation. Since its introduction, many developers have been working on integration.

Team Fortress 2 was the first game to add support for the Oculus Rift, and is currently available to play with the Oculus Rift dev kit by use of a command line option. The second title to support the Oculus Rift was the Oculus-only version of Museum of the Microstar which was released in April 2013. Half-Life 2 was the third, and Hawken is the fourth game to support the Rift; it was prominently featured in the Kickstarter, and Oculus used it to demo the Rift at the GDC.

Several titles are playable on the Rift via the free and open source Vireio Perception VR drivers. Games currently with full or partial support include Left 4 Dead, Skyrim, Portal 2, Half-Life 2, BioShock, Star Citizen, and Elite: Dangerous.

The Gallery: Six Elements is the first announced game being designed specifically for the Oculus Rift and Virtual Reality, rather than adding Rift support to an existing game. This is considered important because many existing games use features that do not translate well to VR, such as a HUD, cutscenes, menus, third person sections, fast movement speeds, not being able to see one's own body, etc.

Several prominent figures from the games industry, notably John Carmack, the co-founder of Id Software, Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Corporation, Michael Abrash, the author of Zen of Graphics Programming and Graphics Programming Black Book, Cliff Bleszinski, former design director at Epic Games, and David Helgason, the founder of Unity 3D publicly endorsed the Rift. Epic Games, creators of the Unreal Engine, have announced that the engine will integrate support for the Oculus Rift. David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies, has announced support for the Oculus Rift with the Unity engine. John Carmack, formerly of id Software, had stated that he had plans to make the Oculus Rift a concurrent part of the Doom 4 development to ensure that it worked well with the game at launch. Michael Abrash, who was researching virtual reality and augmented reality at Valve said "I personally would like to get our games running on the Rift and make it a great experience". Notch, developer of Minecraft, while initially stating that his games would likely support the Rift, shortly after announced the cancellation of such plans, following the Oculus' acquisition by Facebook. However, a Minecraft mod by the name of "Minecrift" adds unofficial support for the Rift.

Several commercial options are also available that could potentially add Rift support to games that don't have it natively, including Vireio Perception 2.0, the VorpX commercial driver, and Dynamic Digital Depth's Oculus Rift "Add-On" VR with their TriDef Ignition stereoscopic 3D drivers.

Tiny Sphere Satellite Will Test Future Space Surveillance Network

Astronauts released a tiny satellite from the International Space Station last month that will be used as a test bed for a future "space surveillance network," according to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

The spherical machine, called SpinSat, measures 22 inches (56 centimeters) across. The satellite was released using a robotic arm within the space station's Kibo module, under supervision from the outpost's Expedition 42 crew.

The spaceflyers, particularly NASA astronaut Terry Virts, snapped pictures from the orbiting laboratory of the SpinSat as it tumbled and sailed away from the space station. [Satellites Gallery: Science from Above]

One major goal of SpinSat's mission will be to test how well new electrically controlled micro-thrusters can stabilize the satellite's position, NASA said in an update.

SpinSat's main mission, however, is to act as a calibration target forspace surveillance. The military is interested in testing whether it can track the orbits and spin of spacecraft and then characterize them.

"It's a good calibration object for them to say, 'Okay, we know this thing's going by. Can we do a maneuver detection, can we do a change detection, how small of a rotation can we see, how small of a shift in the orbit can we see?'" Andy Nicholas, the project's primary investigator,said in a statement.

If the new thrusters work as planned, the International Laser RangingService will then watch SpinSat's movements using ground stations around the world. The service tracks satellites with high accuracy — to about 0.4 inches, or 1 cm — but the military is aiming to do better.

Several retroreflectors — cubes with three flat mirrors — are installed on SpinSat. When light strikes any of these surfaces, it reflects in the same direction. As a result, ground stations can fire a laser at the moving satellite and triangulate its position based on the light that gets reflected back.

"They know the laser light's moving at the speed of light," said Nicholas. "They know where they were pointing the laser, and from that get very accurate orbit positions — down to the millimeter level."

Researchers can also figure out the satellite's spin rate as the laser light moves from reflector to reflector. Since there is space between each reflector, scientists can calculate the spin based on how the distance between the reflector and the ground station changes when SpinSat passes overhead.

SpinSat will also provide information on atmospheric density, as gas particles create drag on the satellite. When the sun is at the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity (as it is right now), extreme ultraviolet radiation puffs up Earth's atmosphere. Scientists are interested in studying the effects of this "swollen" atmosphere now, compared with measurements from four satellites, collectively known as the Atmospheric Neutral Density Experiment (ANDE), that were deployed during space shuttle missions in 2006 and 2009.

The new SpinSat is based on ANDE's design, but is slightly bigger. There are two ANDE satellites remaining, but researchers were unable to use them for this experiment, as NASA was concerned that, over time, atmospheric drag may cause these smaller satellites to hit the space station, according to the Naval Research Lab.

President Obama now in 3D

Obama 3D Printer - United States President Barack Obama now has a 3D version of his upper body all thanks to a 3D printer.

According to CNN, the first-ever 3D printed portrait of Obama, which is also considered as the first-ever 3D-printed bust of a U.S. President, is now on display at the Smithsonian Castle.

The Obama 3D Printed project was said to have been inspired by the like masks of President Abraham Lincoln.

"They're called life masks because these were directly taken from his likeness," Günter Waibel, director of the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office, said. "so there was plaster put on his face ... and seeing that made us think, what were to happen if we could actually do that with a sitting president, using modern-day technologies and tools to create a similarly authentic experience that connects us to history ... to a moment in time ... and to a person's likeness."

Though the masterpiece is nowhere near than Lincoln's. it is made special with the help of 50 LED lights, eight high-resolution sports cameras and six wide-angle cameras that spark for about a second.

"This isn't an artistic likeness of the President, this is actually millions upon millions of measurements that create a 3D likeness of the President," 3D digitization program officer at the Smithsonian Adam Metallo said of the Obama 3D printed portrait.

The Smithsonian team also used handheld 3D scanners to collect precise peripheral data of the incumbent US president, reports the BBC.

On Tuesday, the White House released a video showcasing how the 3D printed bust was created, according to MSNBC.

So why was the Obama 3d printed bust made? Tom Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy claims, "it's also part of a broader trend, and that is the third industrial revolution," which Kalil describes as "the combination of the digital world and the physical world."

The history of the Internet

The history of the Internet begins with the development of electronic computers in the 1950s. Initial concepts of packet networking originated in several computer science laboratories in the United States, Great Britain, and France. The US Department of Defense awarded contracts as early as the 1960s for packet network systems, including the development of the ARPANET (which would become the first network to use the Internet Protocol.) The first message was sent over the ARPANET from computer science Professor Leonard Kleinrock's laboratory at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to the second network node at Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

Packet switching networks such as ARPANET, Mark I at NPL in the UK, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of communications protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the development of protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks.

Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) was introduced as the standard networking protocol on the ARPANET. In the early 1980s the NSF funded the establishment for national supercomputing centers at several universities, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET project, which also created network access to the supercomputer sites in the United States from research and education organizations. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the late 1980s. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Private connections to the Internet by commercial entities became widespread quickly, and the NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on culture and commerce, including the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking, and online shopping sites. The research and education community continues to develop and use advanced networks such as NSF's very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS), Internet2, and National LambdaRail. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s, or more. The Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was almost instant in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, already 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007.[1] Today the Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking.

New7Wonders of Nature

New7Wonders of Nature (2007–2011) was an initiative started in 2007 to create a list of seven natural wonders chosen by people through a global poll. It was led by Canadian-Swiss Bernard Weber[1] and organized by the New7Wonders Foundation,[2] a Swiss-based foundation. The initiative followed an earlier New7Wonders of the World campaign, and attracted 100 million votes from around the world before voting finished on November 11, 2011.[3]

Stages of the campaign

The New7Wonders of Nature campaign started in 2007, immediately after the campaign to elect the man-made New7Wonders of the World, in which more than 100 million votes were cast. From over 440 participants representing over 220 countries and through a national qualification and race to become one of the Top 77, as well as the recommendations of the Panel of Experts led by Prof. Federico Mayor, the list of 28 "Official Finalist Candidates" was determined. Voting until November 2011, during which time the New7Wonders World Tour planned to visit each of the finalists to allow them to present themselves to the voters across the globe.

Criticisms

Indonesia's Vice-Minister for Tourism said the company running the New7Wonders campaign used underhanded tactics, threatening to remove Indonesia's Komodo National Park from the list if Indonesia refused to host a declaration ceremony for $35m.[4] Nothing in the New7Wonders voting procedure prohibited repetitive voting, making the results subject to government and tourism industry campaigns to vote often for local sites with the financial incentive of increased tourism. Although New7Wonders is a non-profit organization that under Swiss law has absolutely no disclosure of accounts, many activities related to administering voting and other logistical duties are run by the for-profit organization New Open World Corporation.

Winners

References

1-The project founder Bernard Weber - A Short History 

2-The New7Wonders Foundation & Campaign

3-Voting procedure for the New7Wonders of Nature

4-aljazeera.com, Controversy mars Seven Wonders of Nature list