Futurist

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Cheap Thoughts: Telepresence

Speaking of working from home, we have an arrangement here at work that is a pretty interesting use of telepresence tools. One of our developers works remotely but needs to attend occasional meetings. Rather than fly him in and out, we’ve set him up with a Wifi-enabled camera which he can use to pan, tilt, and zoom around the room. All that’s missing is some way for him to drive the camera from room to room and he could be virtually here. The camera isn’t cheap but it easily paid for itself the very first time it kept our developer from traveling.

I was thinking of bringing in my now-unused Roomba vacuum and using that to move the camera around. I could slap a small UPS battery on top to power the camera and interface it with the camera software to let it be controlled remotely.

Another thing that would be useful to telepresence tools would be an additional fisheye-lens camera. This should show the whole room in a separate window while the main camera is pointed somewhere else. When the viewer needs to focus on something or someone in the room, the viewer will know where the main camera needs to be pointed. Better yet, the viewer could simply click on a point on the room image and the main camera would point there. That might make it painless enough that attending a meeting virtually wouldn’t be so much about fiddling with the tools but being able to focus on the meeting itself.

Interesting stuff. I’ll have to see what I can put together to make this work.

Marissa Mayer doesn’t get it

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer recently nixed the company’s work-from-home policy in an effort to build camaraderie:

“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” read the memo to employees. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

The goal of Mayer to cure what ails Yahoo: Reviving a moribund and enervated workforce that has struggled to innovate and excel over many years. One of the many problems has been the liberal use of work-from-home policies that have been woefully mismanaged to create a culture that is simply not energized.

Mayer is supposedly some kind of whiz kid, and I’d be more open-minded about this move if it weren’t for one thing: this is an asinine way to lead if I ever heard of it. There’s no shared sacrifice. Mayer doesn’t have to worry about balancing her work and home lives because she brings her home with her to work:

Many others at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ pointed to the nursery Mayer had built — for which she paid personally — next to her office as a perk others at Yahoo do not get.

“I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set em up in the cube next door?” joked a husband of another employee who will be losing her work-from-home privileges.

The story quoted an anonymous Twitter user agreeing with this tactic …

“Marissa is doing what good leaders do,” wrote one person on Twitter. “Making sure her Yahoo team is communicating & working TOGETHER.”

… but the likely reason this user was not named is because this person doesn’t have a fucking clue what leadership is.

Leadership is not a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do thing. If you ask your team to sacrifice and yet your Little Dumpling gets a playpen palace in your office your team will be stampeding for the exits in a New York second. If Queen Yahoo isn’t willing to set the example for her team then she’s not a good leader.

I don’t know what work-from-home policy is best. Each company and each situation is different. I do know that if you make a drastic change to your employee’s arrangements and continue feathering your own nest then soon you won’t have a team left to lead.

via Despite Yahoo Ban, Most Tech Companies Support Work-From-Home Policies – Kara Swisher – News – AllThingsD.

LED bulbs: a bright idea

The three or four regular MT.Net readers know of my long history of griping about CFL bulbs. I’m a greenie, don’t get me wrong, but aside from the handful of CFL bulbs I bought when they were first introduced in the market the CFLs I’ve had have fizzled depressingly quickly. The culprit? Cheap electronics.

Imagine my surprise today when I was wandering through Costco and saw an end-cap stacked with LED bulbs on sale. These bulbs are normally $15 apiece but a manufacturer’s instant rebate knocks them down to under $5! What’s more, this rebate runs through the rest of 2013!
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BREAKING: Huge Meteor Explodes Over Russia.

Meteor explodes over Russia


Yesterday, a huge meteor exploded 12 miles over the heads of the Russians citizens of Chelyabinsk.
Watching all the videos on Slate’s Bad Astronomy page, I was struck by how frightening it must’ve been to witness this event. It’s pretty sobering to see this rock hurtling towards you, knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

It made me wonder how close this was to what the dinosaurs saw right before their world ended. I also wondered if this was a preview of how our world might end.

Apparently, at about 09:30 local time, a very big meteor burned up over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia just east of the Ural mountains, and about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow. The fireball was incredibly bright, rivaling the Sun! There was a pretty big sonic boom from the fireball, which set off car alarms and shattered windows.

via BREAKING: Huge Meteor Explodes Over Russia..

Another doomsday threat dies out

Looks like the killer asteroid Aphohis won’t become a killer any time soon. New data shows it passing Earth in 2036 (2068 may be another matter).

Radar observations made during this week’s close encounter with the asteroid Apophis have ruled out the risk of a catastrophic cosmic collision in 2036, NASA says. Experts say it’ll be much farther away at that time than it is right now.

The crucial readings came on Wednesday when the space rock, which is thought to measure at least 885 feet (270 meters wide), approached within 9 million miles (14.5 million kilometers) of Earth. NASA is monitoring Apophis with its 230-foot (70-meter) Goldstone radio dish in California. Optical readings also have come in from the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico and the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii.

The bottom line? "We have effectively ruled out the possibility of an Earth impact by Apophis in 2036," Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said today in the all-clear news release. “The impact odds as they stand now are less than one in a million, which makes us comfortable saying we can effectively rule out an Earth impact in 2036. Our interest in asteroid Apophis will essentially be for its scientific interest for the foreseeable future.”

via Another doomsday threat dies out: Asteroid Apophis won't hit us in 2036 – Cosmic Log.

Call Time For Congress Shows How Fundraising Dominates Bleak Work Life

I first got an inkling of just how big of a problem fundraising is for Congressional members when I went to the Veterans Campaign seminar a few years ago. A large portion of the training emphasized the need to raise funds. The underlying message was that one would never be a good politician unless one were also a good fundraiser. It was an eye-opening introduction to the real world of a Congressional representative.

The question is what to do about it? Implement four-year terms for House members? Public financing? How does America wrestle its representation back from those who have bought and paid for it?

The amount of time that members of Congress in both parties spend fundraising is widely known to take up an obscene portion of a typical day — whether it’s "call time" spent on the phone with potential donors, or in person at fundraisers in Washington or back home. Seeing it spelled out in black and white, however, can be a jarring experience for a new member, as related by some who attended the November orientation.

via Call Time For Congress Shows How Fundraising Dominates Bleak Work Life.

Google Fiber shout out in the N&O

N&O Editor John Drescher gave a little shout out to Google Fiber today in his column praising mayors. Says Drescher:

“In Kansas City, Sly James has attracted technology startups by working with Google to provide Internet service 100 times faster than typical broadband.”

I’m hopeful the Triangle area will one day be successful in luring Google’s service here. Our broadband pipes should be collectively owned like our streets and other infrastructure.

Governor, Mayor sign Dix Park lease

Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, Governor Perdue, and Secretary of State Elaine Marshall sign the lease creating Dix Park

I got to watch today as Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, Governor Perdue, and Secretary of State Elaine Marshall signed the least that created Dix Park this afternoon. It was a fantastic occasion. I look forward to helping shape this wonderful new park.

Here’s Laura Leslie of WRAL’s story on the signing:

In one of her final acts in office, outgoing Gov. Beverly Perdue formally signed an agreement Friday to lease the Dorothea Dix Hospital campus to the City of Raleigh, which plans to turn it into a “destination park.”

The Raleigh City Council and the Council of State, a panel of 10 statewide elected officials, approved the agreement earlier this month, and Friday afternoon’s signing finalized the deal on the 325-acre site that is just south of downtown.

Trading parking fees for tolls?

This week a new section of the Triangle Expressway (TriEx) opened, leading to Holly Springs and Fuquay Varina. The tolls for a ride on the TriEx are a few bucks each way.

I got to wondering today if one of the attractions for a company locating in RTP is the abundant free parking. Companies might think that amounts to a better deal but then someone has to build bigger roads to serve RTP commuters and someone has to pay for those roads. Up until the TriEx, all of us taxpayers paid for roads. Now those who use the TriEx will pay for it, and those tolls add up.

It seems to me that it’s all around cheaper to locate in an urban setting, where the infrastructure is already equipped to handle things. Sure, no one likes to pay parking fees but what about the time wasted sitting in traffic, and the tolls that accumulate? Aren’t RTP commuters trading their parking fees for tolls and wasted time?

What is flying over Denver?

What is flying over Denver?


A man approached KDVR in Denver recently with a claim that a strange aircraft was flying regularly over an area north of the city. The aircraft moves impossibly fast and appears to take off and land near a neighborhood:

DENVER – It’s a mile high mystery in the skies over Denver.

Strange objects caught on camera flying over the city and nobody can explain it.

We first learned about these sightings when a metro area man, who does not want to be identified brought us his home video. He captured the images on his digital camera from a hilltop in Federal Heights looking south toward downtown Denver.

He said, “The flying objects appear around noon or 1:00 p.m. at least a couple of times a week.” The strangest part is they are flying too fast to see with the naked eye, but when we slowed down the video, several UFOs appear.

I watched the video several times this week and get more and more curious with each viewing.
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