An American President's Christmas Message From America To All

An American President's Christmas Message From America To All

It may amaze one to ponder that only 30 years ago (December 23, 1981), a President of the United States felt it was his leadership duty to speak directly about the reason for the season and assure all, whether they believed in Christianity or not, that our country and its citizens were protected here as one, under "Faith and Freedom" ... regardless of belief or circumstance.

May God bless the memory of Ronald Reagan. A message as poignant and timeless in 1981 as it is here in 2011.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Ford Uses QR Code To Create Social Interest In New Escape LA Auto Show Reveal

Under wraps and QR Codes, the new 2013 Ford Escape gets an introduction by Ford CMO, Jim Farley at BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Los Angeles. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)


Ford Uses QR Code To Create Social Interest In New Escape LA Auto Show Reveal

On November 4th, during an end of day keynote presentation at BlogWorld and New Media Expo, Jim Farley, Chief Marketing Officer of Ford Motor Company, announced a social media based promotion of the next generation Ford Escape . This promotion will run daily until the Global Debut of the Ford Escape (first previewed as the concept SUV, The Ford Vertrek) at the LA Auto Show during Press Days on November 17, 2011 at the LA Convention Center.

While giving a presentation to a room full of New Media writers, Jim pointed out that the SUV car parked to his stage right had QR Codes that would connect people with an interactive support site. Anyone with a QR Code reading application loaded into their compatible iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G (all require iOS 4.2 or later), would be taken to a site managed by GoldRun where each day, a new puzzle would reveal a small image of the Escape, or some related feature associated with it. Other challenges would reveal teaser videos which share more information about the Escape.

iPhone user at BlogWorld scans QR Code and launches GoldRun social media promotion for the new 2013 Ford Escape. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)

While Ford will be sharing the teaser videos on the newly minted Ford Escape Facebook fan page for those without iPhones or iPads, those with these devices will get to see the teasers first through the QR Code apps.

For example, the video demonstrating the new handsfree lift gate was first seen by users of the GoldRun app, and then hitting the public two days later.

Anyone who completes the final challenge will not only see a full reveal but will also be entered to win a vacation worth up to $3,000 through Living Social Escapes.

Image Credit: GoldRun (2011)

Download the GoldRun app here and like the new Ford Escape Facebook fan page here.

What is really cool about this is how Ford leverages its understanding of communications in a New Media world and has the confidence built through previous social media engagements to use internet and internet-based writers to engage a whole new strata of people who like to do more ... than just read.

Hopefully, we will see you at the LA Auto Show as a guest of The Ford Motor Company.

Peter Shankman Delivers Keynote To Open BlogWorld In L.A.

Peter Shankman gives away a 2 month Premium account trial on HARO during his Keynote speech to open #bwela. All one has to do is logon to VOCUS HARO - as in Help A Reporter Out, and type in 2moadv56737 ... and you are HARO'd [ctrl-click image to hear Keynote presentation]. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)

Peter Shankman Delivers Keynote To Open BlogWorld In L.A.

If you missed the opening day at BlogWorld L.A., Peter Shankman shared critical insights to New Media operatives about the importance of relevance with one's audience.

It make no difference if one is producing a blog, is a small business reaching out to customers on the internet through social media strategies, or just plain marketing products directly on the internet, being relevant to the needs and expectations to the target of one's internet effort is essential.

Peter Shankman gives entertaining Keynote speech to open #bwela. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)

Here is a link to an audio clip of the full keynote presentation (running time, 1 hour) including a lengthy introduction to BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Los Angeles by co-founder Rick Calvert (about 9 minutes) from the standing-room-only keynote hall.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Los Angeles (at the L.A. Convention Center) will be running for two more days - November 4 and 5, 2011.

Peter Shankman Delivers Keynote To Open BlogWorld In L.A. at Technorati>

Ricoh's eWriter Combo Solution Automates Knowledge Management

The "eQuill" secure, WiFi enabled, digital clipboard interface [ctrl-click image to launch demo video]. Image Credit: Ricoh eWriter Solutions

Ricoh's eWriter Combo Solution Automates Knowledge Management

We scan in thousands of paper pages to memory, index the images so that we can locate them in a relevant search, have special permissions and authorizations captured on paper and wish to have these added to our digital Knowledge Management/Information Technology (KM/IT) process environment. Locating, tracking, utilizing, capturing, and just general Information Technology process could drive the average, yet intelligent person to be completely lost without a process handbook. Being able complete a task could take an incredible amount of time and direct knowledge about the transaction map in order to receive the desired result.

Having a heads up display, just as pilots have in order to know what is going on with the craft they are flying, would be nice to have in order to be able to deal with the demands and transactions that occur in a typical corporate KM/IT environment.

Head's Up! - Ricoh's eWriter Solutions combination for a paperless transaction, and more efficient KW/IT world. Image Credit: Ricoh eWriter Solutions

Enter Ricoh and the eWriter Solutions "eQuill" WiFi-enabled control tablet that can be used as a digital clipboard combined with Ricoh's cloud services enterprise software to bring a head's up mentality or focus to the KM/IT processes and workflow one encounters on a daily basis. The eWriter Solutions eQuill eliminates paper as it automates capture, storage, and maintenance of a KM/IT environment from point-of-capture to point-of-audit.

The Ricoh eWriter Solutions system improves business efficiencies by moving paper processes ... online. The tablet control interface delivers all the qualities of paper by bringing all that people like about working with paper ... to the eQuill digital clipboard.

The Ricoh eWriter Solutions system embodies all the advantages of business-class KM/IT by extending secure KM/IT services to the edges of any organization. The eQuill interface automates IT without altering the current workflow used today. Use the tablet interface as one would a clipboard and achieve accurate, lower cost, and higher quality barrier-breaking results over traditional, non-online, paper-based approaches.

The Ricoh eQuill system solution allows one to reduce the paper in a process from a typical workflow from a possible eight (8) steps to just two (2).

TYPICAL Paper-Based Process:

Image Credit: Ricoh eWriter Solutions


Ricoh eWriter Solutions eQuill digital clipboard system:

Image Credit: Ricoh eWriter Solutions

Image Credit: Ricoh eWriter Solutions


Depending on the Knowledge Management/Information Technology environment, the advantages of barrier-breaking results are almost boundless. At Ricoh, the eWriter Solutions eQuill system solution is all about workflow automation and bridging the "paper gaps" that exist in every KM/IT critical communications workflow process.

What do the "paper gaps" (leakage) cost an average business? Well, in most cases the Ricoh eWriter Solutions eQuill paperless approach delivers a Return-On-Investment of around six (6) months. When most business operations consider a good decision is one that can deliver cost advantage benefits within a two (2) year ROI timeframe ... a six month ROI decision becomes a no-brainer.

Who needs an eQuill digital clipboard for secure, paperless communications? Image Credit: Ricoh eWriter Solutions

So, if your Health Care, Document Management, Mobile, Field Service, Product Delivery, On-Site Construction, Factory Floor, and etc. Workforce could use a tool as revolutionary as a pilot's head's up display, like an online, digital clipboard combined with cloud services management [complete with routing simplification, audit intelligence, tamper proof, evidence ready, standards compliant (HIPAA, FIPS Validated, SAS 70 Audited), functionality], then Ricoh's eWriter Solutions eQuill digital clipboard system solution is ready to work for your Knowledge Management/Information Technology, secure paper functions, of your business.

Released in the United States on June 1, 2011 with the rest of the world to follow soon.

Google's Blogger Down For Over 24 Hours!

Blogger Logo - Image Credit: Blogger.com

Google's Blogger Down For Over 24 Hours!

Blogger ... Google's web log hosting portal, has been down for a full 24 hours at the time of this posting.

This seems like a modern era record for this usually very reliable communications service and personal publishing arm of the giant search powerhouse, Google.

With all of the push Google has been putting in on Chrome, one has to ask - Is Blogger now becoming just an ugly stepchild to the array of focused services that Google has to offer? What - isn't Blogger sexy enough for Google to keep outages down to a minimum?

If this is the case, Google's shine is losing its luster.

This excerpted from Blogger's Status Link:

Push-Button Publishing

Blogger Status

Friday, May 13, 2011

We’ve started restoring the posts that were temporarily removed and expect Blogger to be back to normal soon.

Posted by at 06:07 PDT

To get Blogger back to normal, all posts since 7:37am PDT on Weds, 5/11 have been temporarily removed. We expect everything to be back to normal soon. Sorry for the delay.

Posted by at 04:25 PDT

----

UPDATE May 13, 2011 - 9:50am PT:

Blogger back online after nearly 30 hours of non-service.

Thanks, Google ... but we will be keeping an eye on you.

Intel Goes 3-D On Transistor Design Concept

In the three-dimensional tri-gate transistor, there's a lot of gate surface area in contact with the semiconductor material, so there's a lot more of the tiny strip of semiconductor material (pictured as the blue inversion layer) for current to flow through. This makes the difference between the transistor's "on" and "off" states much larger, which means that the transistor can switch between states much faster while still producing a clear string of ons and offs. Image Credit: Intel

Intel Goes 3-D On Transistor Design Concept

This month will go down in electronics history as the time marked as the advent of transistor design going three dimensional (3-D).

Intel has been exploring this new 22nm "tri-gate" transistor for over a decade, and the company first announced a significant breakthrough with the design in 2002. A trickle of announcements followed over the years, as the new transistor progressed from being one possible direction among many to its newly crowned status as the official future of Intel's entire product line.

This approach is significant primarily because it improves the core function of a computer to process data via the transistor switch. The transistor's substrate is sort of like a magic wire that can either conduct electricity or not, and the gate is the switch that controls whether the wire will conduct or not.

When a voltage is applied to the metal plate that forms the transistor's gate, a tiny strip of semiconductor material between the source and the drain changes from an insulator into a conductor, thereby turning the switch "on" and allowing current to flow from the source to the drain. When the voltage is removed, current stops flowing ... or, at least, current is supposed to stop flowing when the switch is off. In reality, trace amounts of current will constantly flow between the source and the drain. This so-called "leakage current" wastes precious power and becomes even more of a problem as transistors get smaller and more numerous.

Standard transistor gate design (note: blue layer functions as the switch). Image Credit: Intel

In the three-dimensional tri-gate transistor, there's a lot of gate surface area in contact with the semiconductor material, so there's a lot more of the tiny strip of (magic wire) semiconductor material (pictured as the blue inversion layer) for current to flow through. This makes the difference between the transistor's "on" and "off" states much larger, which means that the transistor can switch between states much faster while still producing a clear string of ons and offs.

Planar transistor vs Tri-Gate transistor. Image Credit: Intel

Another advantage relates to reducing its power consumption. One could take advantage of this new structure by applying less voltage to the gate. Sure, the blue inversion layer adjacent to the gate would be less conductive, but there's more of it available to carry electrons, so one can still let the same amount of current through when the switch is on.

The middle part that sticks up there is called a "fin." If Intel wants to stretch the gate and inversion layer sizes out even further, its approach lets it add multiple fins under a single gate, for boosts in performance and/or power at the expense of transistor density.

Ultimately, the advantage of stretching the gate out into the third dimension are that one can much more easily either boost the chip's frequency or reduce its power, or some mix of the two.

Graph shows advantages of new 22nm 3-D design over 32nm Standard gate design in transistors. Image Credit: Intel

Intel claims that the 22nm tri-gate transistors switch between 18 and 37 percent faster than the 32nm planar type (depending on the voltage level). Or, looked at from the voltage side, the new design can reduce active power by up to 50 percent.

These design advantages deliver very significant jumps in performance and efficiency, and these 3-D transistors will go a long way toward making Intel's "x86 in smartphones at 22nm" dreams come true.
(ht: Ars Technica)

Additional resource reading

• Intel's tri-gate page (intel.com)
• A tri-gate press briefing from 2006 (download.intel.com)
• Another good Intel tri-gate explainer (intel.com)
• Intel press backgrounder on tri-gate. (newsroom.intel.com)
• Intel's announcement (newsroom.intel.com)
• RWT on challenges at 22nm (realworldtech.com)

Anti-Laser - The "Coherent Perfect Absorber" Is Born

In an anti-laser, or coherent perfect absorber, the outgoing laser beams are replaced by incoming ones, and light flows into a light-absorbing material instead of out of a light-amplifying one. Image Credit: Science/AAAS

Anti-Laser - The "Coherent Perfect Absorber" Is Born

Everyone is familiar with laser light emitting devices such as pointers used in presentations and lectures, lightshows performed at events, openings, and concerts, even with the red-light that hits a barcode on the front of one's morning newspaper and pastry purchase at the corner 7-11 ... but this was not the case 51 years ago.

Now there is a new tool that has been developed through the the use of focused wavelength of light but unlike with the laser, where the focused wavelength is passed through a material that amplifies the light, the anti-laser utilities the opposite concept of passing a focused wavelength of light through material that absorbs the light. The process has been given the name "Coherent Perfect Absorber" giving a new, future meaning to the an-acronym "CPA".

In the anti-laser, incoming light waves are trapped in a cavity where they bounce back and forth until they are eventually absorbed. Their energy is dissipated as heat. Image Credit: Yidong Chong/Yale University

When the laser was first conceptualized and developed into a working device, no one knew that it would eventually lead to replacing records and needles when one listens to music or film projectors when one watches a home movie transferred from a computer to a laser/DVD disc. The same could be said at the dawn of the anti-laser CPA process, No one knows what this new tool will bring to the tool-box, and what new applications can be developed, to solve the many problems we encounter that make our lives easier and more efficient.

Coherent light is incident on an absorbing material in a resonator formed by two parallel reflective surfaces or mirrors. The interplay of absorption and interference leads to perfect absorption of the incoming radiation and its conversion into other forms of energy1. The schematic of a laser would be entirely analogous, with only the arrows for light and energy reversed: energy pumped in would result in coherent light out. Image Credit: Nature Volume: 467, Pages: 37–39 Date published: (02 September 2010)


Dr. Wenjie Wan, a Phd from Princeton University, is a post-doctoral associate in applied physics at Yale. In photo, Wan works with the optical set up for an anti-laser experiment in the applied physics lab at Yale which involves prisms, mirrors and silicon. An anti-laser (or, in technical terms, "coherent perfect absorber") works in the reverse of a conventional laser. Instead of emitting a beam of light, it absorbs it. Two laser beams with the exact same frequencies are emitted into a silicon wafer. The silicon aligns the light waves so that they become interlocked and oscillate until they are absorbed and transformed into heat. The concept is in it's infancy and may be adapted to new computer technology down the road. Image Credit: STEPHEN DUNN, Hartford Courant (2011)

This excerpted and edited from the Hartford Courant -

The Anti-Laser Is Here
Yale researchers butild device that absorbs light
By William Weir - Hartford Courant - Feb. 17, 2011

A. Douglas Stone, a physicist, and his team describe the anti-laser in Friday's issue of Science.
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The possibility of an anti-laser had been suggested by other scientists, but only in passing, Stone said. And other physicists have stumbled upon the basic premise while working on other projects, he said, but they did not follow through.

"Nobody took it serious, until us," Stone said. "It was literally a footnote."
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Any dark material can absorb light — a car's black interior on a summer day, for instance — but to absorb near 100 percent of the light of a laser beam requires a bit more precision. The difference in the anti-laser is that instead of using an amplifying material, it uses one that absorbs it — or a "loss medium." After his research team did the math, Stone said, they decided that silicon was the best choice.

The anti-laser is set up to split a single laser beam into two and direct the two beams to head toward each other, meeting at the paper-thin silicon wafer. The light's waves are precisely tuned to interlock with each other and become trapped. They then dissipate into heat.

Perhaps the most novel part of the device is that it allows the operator to tune the light's wavelengths and determine how much of the laser light is absorbed. That allows the device to work as an on-off switch for light.

Stone first proposed the idea last year, in a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters. But it's one thing to write about it and do the math, and it's another to actually create it. That's where Stone's collaborators came in, a team of applied physicists headed by Hui Cao and Wenjie Wan. The divide between theoretical physics and applied physics is a stark one. As of Wednesday, Stone hadn't yet seen the finished device, built in another building on campus
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Wan said it took about a year to build the device. Pointing at the mirrors, prism, beam splitter and the silicon wafer that make up the device's basic components, he said the design is fairly simple. But achieving the necessary level of precision was a challenge. Even now, they're fine-tuning it.
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Now that the anti-laser has been built, what exactly do you do with it? Its best potential use, so far, appears to be in optical switches, used in the next generation of computers, which operate on light as well as electrons. Cao also has suggested that it could be useful in radiology, capturing images of human tissue normally too deep to see.

But as with much of science, the practical applications will be for others to figure out.
Reference Here>>

InMap Application Creates A Matrix Of One's Contact World

LinkedIn has launched InMaps, an experimental project that creates a stunning visualization of the connections within your business network. Image Credit: LinkedIn via Mashable (2011)

InMap Application Creates A Matrix Of One's Contact World

LinkedIn, the world wide web's strongest portal in the professional life social media cloud has just released an exciting, new visual application that might help one to use the contact network in a deeper, and hopefully, useful way.

Many use these social media portals to just line up their next professional working position (a job), but when one is able to gain information through taking the existing information in one's database and look at it in a different and unique way ... a whole new world opens up. Additional opportunities to connect on targeted and previously unused common connection points is only the beginning for LinkedIn's new InMap visual application.

This excerpted and edited from Mashable -

LinkedIn Launches Tool to Visualize Your Business Network
By Ben Parr - Mashable 1/24/2011

InMaps sifts through all of your connections, detects the relationships between them, and groups them into different network clusters. For example, LinkedIn separated my networks into eight clusers, including my technology/social media contacts, my Mashable network and my network of classmates at Northwestern University. It color-codes and clumps these networks together so you can see the depth of your connections in one interface.

InMaps is an insight into who the major connections, bridges and influencers are in your network. People with bigger dots and their names in larger fonts have more connections (and typically more sway) in specific clusters. Perhaps that’s why my friend Neal Sales-Griffin, the former president of Northwestern’s student body, is so prominent in my professional graph.

InMaps also includes a few options for sharing. It creates a landing page with your LinkedIn InMap (you can check mine out as an example) and provides Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn share buttons so you can spread your map to the rest of your network.
Reference Here>>

So, launch LinkedIn's InMap and see just who in your professional contact world is a "Big Dot/Larger Font" (BDLF?) kinda' influence in your overall network!

Ahhhhhhh ... social media!