Month: January 2008
In-Q-Tel Portfolio Gadget for the CTO
In-Q-Tel is a famous not-for-profit organization created to help bridge the gap between the needs of the US Intelligence Community and advances in commercial technology. In-Q-Tel has attracted some of the best minds in the technology business and has also established a fantastic reputation for finding emerging companies and entrepreneurs with promising ideas.
Enterprise CTOs looking to track emerging technologies should pay attention to In-Q-Tel. To help do that I wrote a Google Gadget that summarizes some of the helpful information In-Q-Tel provides on its website. The gadget uses Dapper.net to "scrape" information from each of In-Q-Tel’s portfolios. This allows for a list of all the companies in one location. I then feed the resulting "Dapp" into my favorite RSS service, Feedburner.com.
If you click on the company name you will be presented with In-Q-Tel’s write up on the company and a link to the company’s URL.
Here is a screen grab of what the gadget looks like:
Video for CTO’s: YouTube and CTOvision
Google has made it so easy to embed video on any webpage, including blogs. By use of the Google Ajax Search API and the easy to use Typepad platform, I’ve been able to add a new section to this site that I would appreciate your testing out. Please review it at:
http://www.ctovision.com/cto-video-page.html
That page shows video thumbnails of technology related topics. You can other technology related terms under those videos to bring up searches on other subjects.
Please give it a try and let me know if this is of use or if you have other terms you suggest be on the video search list.
Thanks!
Dell, Apple and Sony: who is thinner?
Of course the really big news today is Apple’s ultrathin notebook, the MacBook Air. I have a four month old MacBook and now I feel ancient.
But there was another thin product I just learned about that has me even more excited. A friend of mine noted my post on Sony OLED thin visualizations on Plaxo and pointed me to link for Dell’s new "Crystal."
From the Dell website: Tempered glass, highly polished
metal tripod stand, unobtrusive connections, capacitive touch controls,
integrated webcam, microphone and speakers, and a 22” HD panel helped
Dell Crystal take home the 2008 Best of Innovations Award at the
International Consumer Electronics Show which recognizes the most
innovative consumer electronics (CE) products in the industry’s hottest
product categories.
For more info see: Dell Crystal
I see one of these in my future.
Government Web2.0 Trends for 2008
I blog a bit at the site of Washington DC’s ExecutiveBiz. The ExecutiveBiz blog is widely read and focuses on items thought to be of interest to area senior executives and attendees of the ExecutiveBiz events.
I just posted an entry there that I would appreciate my CTO friends checking out. I could use any feedback you have on the theories and ideas I posit there. The entry is on Government Web2.0 Trends for 2008.
The first theory I posit there is that Web2.0 in government will result in more innovation. I say:
Most large organizations, including government, find the most innovation where there is interaction with others. Innovation frequently seems to come from the edge. With more Web2.0 in government, there will be increased interactions among users internal to government and with citizens. Every interaction is an opportunity to learn of an unmet need which is an opportunity to fuel innovation.
I really believe this dynamic will be more at play in 2008 due to enhanced use of Web2.0 in government. But I’d appreciate views on whether or not this will be a reality or whether or not we need to do things to ensure this comes true.
Thin Visualizations
I’ve long been a fan of thin-clients. Now I’m becoming a fan of thin-monitors. Fans of thin monitors have been hearing about paper thin screens for quite a while. And we keep getting teased by the corporate world saying something is just about to be released. Well now you can finally buy your own ultra thin TV. Check out Sony’s new super-thin organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV. At it’s thinnest point it is 3mm thick. That’s not bad.
These things have low power consumption and reportedly show video with an incredibly high contrast ratio and very deep blacks. At 11 inches it is still pretty small, but now that they are in the market for early adopters I imagine it won’t be long before larger versions are available.
This current model is very expensive, but if trends hold the price should drop like a rock.
CTOvision Blog 