Innovation
Dragons Spotted in London : The BTC Challenge
Last month most of the graduates in the BTC programme participated in a "Dragons Den" style competition. The board was made up from senior executives from Capgemini and was held in the London office of the British Computer Society (BCS).
Small teams had a few weeks to prepare a 10 minute presentation regarding an innovative idea from four predefined categories. This was in addition to their normal project work.
All the teams did a fantastic job at presenting new ideas to subject matter experts, and everyone agreed although it had been hard work, it was a fantastic opportunity and a lot of fun.
David Evan's from the BCS attended the event, you can read his opinion here: David Evan's BCS Blog
Boku: Programming is Child's Play
It has recently been announced that the new Microsoft software, Boku for the Xbox 360 will be released within the next 12 months.
For those of you who don't know about this project; at the 2007 tech fair Microsoft presented "Boku: lightweight programming for kids". The general idea behind this educational game is not to teach children a programming language per se, but rather to introduce them to the general concepts of software creation.
Boku is the name of the central character, a cartoon robot head that hovers over a grassy field. The system will use as little text as possible to allow youngsters to understand the system intuitively without getting bogged down with detail.
Instead, users will string together cards with different emblems on them, each allowing Boku to perform a different action. The system will incorporate behavious, generality, abstract states, sensors, physics and messaging without users even knowing it. All wrapped up with real time experimentation and feedback.
The general concept seems a lot like the LOGO system of old with a bit of Phrogram thrown in for good measure. However, unlike these other systems, and simple languages like BASIC, the real hook with Boku is the integration into a gaming platform. The possibility of great graphics and a "game like" feel would have definately interested me when I was younger. Instead I had to cope with the pressure of a blank screen and a blinking cursor.
The future plans for Boku include giving the system a secondlife feel and Facebook type interactions, allowing the developers of tomorrow to share programs and discuss ideas.
iPlayer : Bandwidth Hog or Multimedia Marvel?
This month the BBC iPlayer seems to always be in techie news. If you have not seen this technical marvel before (and shame on you if not), the iPlayer is a service the BBC provide, to allow you to stream shows to your PC - and soon your Wii consoles.
The beeb have come under criticism from ISPs who are demanding they pay for network upgrades because of all the traffic it is generating for their networks.
Now, if I understand that correctly we pay for the BBC and we pay ISPs for internet services, so, indirectly, aren't they asking us to fund the upgrades? Which you can argue is a fair point, we benefit from a better infrastructure. However, ISPs have been delivering an altogether underwhelming service over the past few years with moot promises of "super fast broadband" and "unlimited downloads" for a fixed fee. If they had not shaped the market into a fixed price structure it is much easier to charge customers for the service they receive (and for consumers to get what they pay for). So, if the BBC did contribute to the costs, does this mean a share of the infrastructure will be publicly owned?
James Murdoch, chief exec of BSkyB, has been quoted as accusing the BBC of stifling competition. I can't really see how, true that the BBC is funded in a totally different way to commercial channels, but doesn't this mean that they will never be allowed to stream commercial content. Channel 4 have 4OD and Sky have SkyAnytime, the difference is that most other offerings you have to pay for.
Honey. I Shrunk the Geeks!
I came across an article this week from computerworld.com that I recommend every new hire in the technology world should read (link below).
There has been much discussion on the state of the Technology industry and this post touches on the potential changes we are all likely to see in our careers. I do not see these changes as something to fear, in fact, if we embrace the notion of compounding our techy know how with business awareness and increased soft skills, we path the way for new and exciting opportunities. Saying that, I think it is important to remember that it is nearly always the less business focused people that develop these new technologies, then, others mashup, extend and use them in a more creative way.
So, are the days of the geek tapping away in a darkened room numbered and will the technology savvy grad, with the soft skills to match, inherit the earth? You decide.
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