Parked @ PARC

Coffee machine

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:24:00 +0000

Email message on how to use the coffee maker

==
... we had a problem with the use of pre-ground coffee...:

Beans (never ground coffee) go in the righthand side.
Water goes only in the lefthand side water reservoir.

If you wish to use the PRE-GROUND COFFEE feature, rather than having the machine grind beans for you, you may place NO MORE THAN TWO LEVEL SCOOPS (see scoop in cupboard) of ground coffee in the ground coffee funnel (See 8 in Fig. 1, attached).

If you place any coffee in the ground coffee funnel you MUST press the "Pre-ground coffee" button (See h in Fig. 3, attached) on the front panel before you press the 1-Cup or 2-Cup buttons, otherwise the machine will attempt to grind additional coffee and will overfill the mechanism.

NEVER pour unmeasured ground coffee into the ground coffee funnel.

If you don't know how to use a particular feature of the machine, the instruction manual is in the cupboard next to it...

Thanks!
==

What is truly important

As I have suggested, coffee is one of the common fuels at PARC. So, people take it very seriously when something happens to the coffee maker.

Also a nice touch to include attached diagrams in the email.

Lucky I drink tea...

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Cloud Computing - Security, Compliance, and Opportunities

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:07:00 +0000

Controlling data in the cloud: outsourcing computation without outsourcing control

A group at PARC has been studying the Cloud Computing space and published this paper (download) in CCSW. The particular this paper argued that life in the cloud can be advantageous from a business intelligence standpoint over the isolated alternative that is more common today.

Cloud Computing and Security

The same group also posted a blog entry on several issues are of potential interests for both technical development and business management.

In particular, it points to four (4) levels where Cloud Computing could increase technical vulnerabilities; two (2) areas with known potential business concerns; and two (2) opportunities where Cloud Computing enables new capabilities that is difficult to do today.

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Disruptive Innovation and Organic Electronics

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:58:00 +0000

FlexTech 2010

Given PARC's unique capabilities in the flexible, printed, and organic electronic applications, I am glad to report that the FlexTech 2010 show was well attended.

PARC presented two workshops on current work and Mark Bernstein, PARC's CEO, gave a keynote speech on disruptive technology.

PARC and Disruptive Technology in an Emerging Eco-system

Mark's keynote on "The changing model: Moving technologies from research to applications" focuses on what happens when new emerging technology is disrupting industry dynamics. In this scenario, the ability to find and collaborate with the right partners becomes imperative.

View more presentations from PARC (Palo Alto Research Center).

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Vacation and TMT Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:53:00 +0000

Vacation

Will head out for some quality family time. See you guys in a couple of weeks.

Morgan Stanley's 2010 Tech Conference

Are you attending this year's Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference? If you are, let me know. I will be there and it would be good to catch up.

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2010 Flexible Electronics & Displays Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:33:00 +0000

PARC at 2010 FlexTech

PARC will be actively participating in the upcoming 2010 FlexTech.

* Feb 2 Keynote session: "Moving technologies from the lab to real-world applications" by Mark Bernstein, CEO of PARC.

* Feb 3 "Flexible Printed Sensor Tape based on Solution Processed Materials" and "Sensing of blast events with flexible sensor tapes" - discussion of current projects by PARC technologists.

* Feb 2-4 PARC will be at booth 204 showcasing services in material characterization and optimization, application development, and system prototyping. Come by to see samples and learn about what PARC can do for your product road-map.

Flexible and Printed Electronics at PARC

PARC has been engaging in works related to both flexible and printed electronics for long time. And, PARC is a global organization that can provide both the technical (hard and soft) infrastructure and commercialization capabilities for our partners in this emerging technology area.

For more information on PARC's work in flexible and printed electronics.

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The proud, the few, the (PARC 2010) interns

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:01:00 +0000

PARC Internship

Yes, we do "interns". As a matter of a fact, this is a pretty good opportunity to work with some of the top names in a field, do interesting work, visit the San Francisco bay area, meeting interesting people, and get paid for your work.

We have opportunities in hardware, software, social science, and business.

More information and how to apply for the 2010 PARC Internship.

Life at PARC as an Intern

Here is quick glimpse of what interns did at PARC in 2009. Look forward to good stories from the class of 2010 interns.

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Open source and its hook

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:48:00 +0000

Marten and Open Source Hook

I was chatting with Marten Mickos recently. The question of what makes an open source effort succeed when others just flounder came up. He suggested that having a specific hook/niche that can be easily articulated is an important factor amongst many others. In the case of MySQL, it was a database designed specifically for web usage.

In the mundane business talk, it is about having an unique value proposition.

CCN and its Open Source

CCN's open source release came out last year. So, Marten's observation got me thinking about what is CCN's hook.

According to the recent Network World article, it is about security and multimedia/content consumption.

Would be interested in your take on what CCN's unique value proposition is. I am all ears.

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CCN and internet at 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:01:00 +0000

2020 Vision: Why you won't recognize the 'Net in 10 years

Here is an interesting article that talks about various efforts currently under way to tackle existing problems with internet today. Naturally, PARC's content centric networking (CCN) was mentioned as one of the efforts.

Content-Centric Networking

The article focused on the security implication of CCN although I would argue that it is just one of the reasons that CCN is a compelling solution. For example, by focusing on content instead of IP, CCN opens up new ways of consuming digital content that is not possible today.

The best way to find out more is to watch this video presentation by Van on CCN. And, for those adventurous and technically-inclined enough, you may also want to try out the CCN open source release.

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Parties and other good thoughts for 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:59:00 +0000

White Elephant

Like a lot of places, end of the year means office parties. This year, we played White Elephant.

After some cunning stratagem in the face of fierce competition, I am glad to report that I come away with the biggest prize, an electronic bug killer.

The question now is how do I slip it into the next White Elephant exchange. Thinking...

Happy 2010!

Happy holidays and look forward to a fruitful 2010.

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Robots at PARC

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:45:00 +0000

Email Notice

Tomorrow, Dec. 17, I will host three visitors who are bringing their robot to PARC. They will be “exploring” the hallways and the cafeteria with scanning laser range finders and video cameras.

They will engage in 3 activities:

1. Collect a dataset for use by the robotics research community to study localization and mapping.
2. Give a demonstration of the robot and allow interested people to tele-operate it.
3. Collect a dataset with people around.

Does this happen a lot?

It just so happened that I hosted a visitor to PARC over lunch on the 17th. As we chatted in the cafeteria, the robot came toward us. My visitor was not fazed and thought that this happens regularly at PARC.

Well, sort of. We do have a separate lab space for land-bound and flying robots. We don't usually let them out in cafeteria though.

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Digital Content Consumption - through the lens of users

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:15:00 +0000

Digital Content Design - building blocks

A major characteristic of digital content that makes it different from the traditional medium is that it can be consumed in non traditional settings. For example PARC has done identified the notion of "micro-waiting" as a new way that users engage content.

We are also exploring the categories/thresholds of "information overload." The obvious implication is how can technology help users find the nuggets of useful information given the constant deluge of data from all sources.

Embodied Interaction Framework

Beyond understanding these building blocks, there are teams at PARC exploring the issue of how to design an embodied interaction framework that leverages natural human behavior to alter system state or trigger interaction. Or, in plain(er) English, create devices/solutions where a user does not need to learn a new "language" to interact with technology. What makes PARC's approach unique is that this explicitly incorporates social science and psychology insight, also areas that PARC has a long history of advanced work, into the technology design.

Moving from Content Creation to Content Consumption

Although nobody would dispute the truism that content creation and consumption are the two sides of the same coin, people don't always think of it that way. Today, there seems to be little understanding of the consumption side beyond aggregate measurements to meet the needs of content creators/providers.

Let's flip the lens around and ask how to measure and deliver consumption pattern in the eyes of individual consumers. If we can make it seamless and nearly invisible, this could ignite the next phase of the digital revolution.

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Flexible Electronics: Materials and Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

The Textbook

Flexible Electronics: Materials and Applications

Given PARC's work in flexible and printed electronics. It is little surprise that we also write the textbook on this topic. And, this is my reference reading material before attending Printed Electronics USA 2009.

Printed Electronics at PARC

Here are some of the areas that we are working on right now:
- PEN substrate
- Ink-jet printing (nanoparticle)
- Polymer dielectrics
- Polymer semiconductor

In our facility, we support different print head technologies and can customize to each project's specific needs. So far, we have done work with Microfab, Spectra, and Xerox print heads.

Sensors and applications

An area that we are seeing a lot of interests in is printed flexible sensors. We have a project that measures acceleration, pressure, acoustic, and thermal status then incorporates memory and CMOS (logic) into a single printed sensor tape. The initial work is for DARPA but it would have wide civilian applications once the technical kinks have been worked out.

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Printed Electronics USA 2009 Report

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:48:00 +0000

PARC's Printed Electronics

PARC participated in PEUSA09 as technical presenter, facility tour sponsor, and exhibitor. Come to this annoucnement if you like to download the assets that you have seen in the show.

PEUSA09 Field Report

Several people commented that printed electronics seem to have developed a robust vendor/supplier base. And, as people stake out their claim in the upstream value-chain, the next step would be for early adopter consumers/buyers to set the application directions.

Beyond the traditional application of OLED (organic light-emitting diode - bendable display screen), flexible and disposable sensors seem to be another area that can be high value-add yet difficult to achieve with traditional silicon based solutions.

Looking at the value-chain, "system integrators" services probably will play an important match making role for the immediate future as the buyers often do not have the development capabilities in-house for printed electronics while the suppliers may be too limited, albeit very in-depth, on the modules and materials.

Not surprisingly, these are the services (characterization & optimization, application development, and full-system prototyping) that PARC offers. More importantly, we have had a lot of interesting conversations with both vendors and buyers to work with PARC.

If you are interested in what PARC can do for you in printed electronics, pls contact PEUSA09@parc.com

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How many computer do you need in a room?

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:35:00 +0000

Million instructions per second (MIPS)

It is one of those inevitabilities working in technology. I recently found myself surrounded by 5 computers in my office. Two desktops and three laptops.

One desktop is my official office machine. I also have an official laptop for mobile computing, viz working from home. I acquired a second desktop to test out some beta software where I don't want to accidentally compromise my official machine. Then, I am testing two laptops right now because I am managing a conference where PARC is attending.

How many keyboards can one person handle?

I think the first take away is that I need to train my toes to type since two hands simply are not sufficient for the task. The second take away for me is that I am probably in possession of more computing power on my finger tip than the entire world had until the 1970's. Final take away? I need to get a life. :-)!

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PARC at Printed Electronics USA 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:04:00 +0000

Printed Electronics USA

A leader in Printed Electronics, PARC offers three unique capabilities to industry partners:

* Material Characterization: Characterizing and optimizing material performance in devices and circuits for printed electronics market materials suppliers;
* Application Development: Designing circuits and fabricating proof of concept, including sensors and display elements for clients exploring specific applications; and
* Full System Prototyping: Integrating complete systems containing printed electronics and conventional thin film components and/or standard silicon circuitry.

Please visit PARC at Booth 12 or contact PEUSA09@parc.com for more information. For more information on PARC's Printed Electronics capabilities, please visit www.parc.com/peusa09.

Jet-Printing: From Drops to Electronic Devices

Dr. Jurgen Daniel will be presenting in the conference on December 3rd at 12:05pm, discussing how to use jet-printing to fabricate flexible backplanes for driving displays and sensor-tapes for recording blast events in the battlefield.

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Next-gen Advertising using Context Mining

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:05:00 +0000

Reality or Context Mining

Migitti is a project that takes advantage of PARC's work on mobile computing and the new information afforded by mobile handsets.

The logical question is what else can you do with a deep personalized recommendation system like that. Maybe it is just a sign of the time taht we live in, advertising seems to be an obvious avenue to explore.

Activity-Based Advertising: Techniques and Challenges

Lots of people are making noise in this space, but from what I can tell, PARC's team are the only people who are exploring the entire eco-system for a total solution.

Activity-Based Advertising:Techniques and Challenges

View more presentations from begole.

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R2D2 vs. C3PO

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:13:00 +0000

Star Wars

I re-watched Star Wars: A New Hope over the weekend. I suspect it would not come as a surprise that I am a star wars fan being in Silicon Valley. More broadly speaking, Silicon Valley is full of people who are of the same ilk.

This reminded me of a chief scientist friend of mine who works in the Los Angeles area.

What?

One time he wanted to highlight what he was vs. was not looking for in a particular technology. To give it more texture, he said "this is like getting C3PO when I wanted R2D2."

And, instead of light bulbs in the room, he got a lot of blank stares.

(For the uninitiated, C-3PO and R2-D2 are two major characters in the Star Wars series.)

--
I am happy to report that in a recently visit to Silicon Valley his audience got the droid reference with knowing smiles.

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What do Mr IP and Mr TCP talk about?

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:12:00 +0000

Hero Worshiping

Vint Cerf, commonly referred to as father of IP, came to talk at PARC's Forum last week on the topic of "Information on the go".

Before the Forum talk, he came to visit with PARC and mostly hung out near the area where I sit. So, for a while, my area was pretty busy with people coming by to say hi to Vint.

Naturally, more as a brush with greatness opportunity, I emptied my mug and decided to go to the same area for a bit of star sighting.

What do father of IP and father of TCP talk about?

In case you do not know, Van Jacobson, father of TCP, works a few doors from me.

So, as I was doing my beverage refill, Vint, Van, and a couple other people were making tea and chatting. So, what do those groundbreaking great minds spending their time chin wagging about at PARC?

Eggs. How to prepare an egg. Specifically, comparing methods in making softboil eggs - how to get a hard yoke, a soft yoke, or a runny yoke.

Now you know.

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Smart Phones of Near Future and PARC's Migitti Project

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:03:00 +0000

New York Times on Smart Phones

Here is an article from NY Times on what the future of smart phone may look like and how key players are pushing the envelop.

PARC's Migitti project was one of the featured solutions in the article. Beyond the technology, we also deployed extensive social science analysis to ensure its usability.

Migitti Project

Activity-Based Serendipitous Recommendations with the Magitti Mobile Leisure Guide

View more presentations from begole.

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Digital Content Consumption - What is Next?

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:26:00 +0000

Digital content consumption, today

It would be an understatement to say that digital content consumption is creating a headache for the traditional providers. The latest public display was billed as Media Brawl at Web 2.0.

Digital content consumption, tomorrow

What is right around the corner is a new generation of techniques and solutions. Here are some of the areas that PARC is working on.

* Non-traditional directed consumption through user generated content such as tags
* Predictive models through sentiment analysis and machine learning
* Distributed content and security management
* Recommendation systems built on reality mining in mobile devices

Digital content consumption, the day after tomorrow

One of the areas that there does not seem to get a lot of attention is how are users actually consuming content. Most the discussions have an implicit assumption of a bygone day when a person would actually devote a chunk of time to an activity, i.e. read a news article, in front of a decent size screen. With smart phone projected to overtake laptop as the most ubiquitous mobile device, the inevitable question in a couple of years is when I am on the go with a smart phone, when and how do I want to consume content?

One of the more interesting insight that PARC has worked on already is the notion of "microwaiting." The simple scenario, albeit a bit scary, is to think of stopping your car at a red light in your morning commute. You know the wait is about 60 seconds. And, guess what, we have found that this is an example where people are very receptive to consume content. Thus the term "microwaiting".

One of the things that people don't often know about is how social science plays a key role at PARC. This is an example where this unique combination of technical and social insight leads to really interesting design and business implications.

p.s. Let me know if you want to learn more about "microwaiting". We have published a CHI paper on this topic.

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What is truly important

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:35:00 +0000

Fountain of productivity

It should not come as a surprise that coffee is one of the major fuels behind PARC's work. Similarly, it probably is not a surprise that there is a fairly nice coffee maker that would grind coffee beans on-demand in one of the common areas.

So, what happens when the nice coffee maker breaks?

Coffee maker updates

The coffee maker broke recently and there has been a ground swell of low-level anxiety. Not being a regular coffee drinker myself, I did not even know the thing was not working at first. Then, I noticed that, in the weekly lab meeting, the status of coffee maker became a prominent item that everyone seemed to pay particular attention to.

Not that I am suggesting there was ever a threat of a full-blown riot by the frustrated coffee drinkers. On the other hand, I am glad to report that we now have a fully functional coffee maker again.

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Going Mainstream - Cloud Computing's First Black Eye

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:26:00 +0000

When a technology goes mainstream

Technology is often known for the hype it generates but less is discussed about when it has gone mainstream. One reason is that when it is integrated into the fabric of everyone usage, it is no longer visible or hype-able (if there is such a word).

Put it another way, when a technology is talked about in the context of violating an unspoken norm of everyday, it is a good indicator that it has gone mainstream.

Cloud Computing's first black eye

So, after all the accolades and fear surrounding Cloud Computing in recent years, this is the first time that it has a specific impact to a substantial number of unfortunate users when T-Mobile, Microsoft 'almost certainly' destroyed users' Sidekick data

Ironic twists of event

The first irony is that this was not high on the list of potential issues that people have been predicting about Cloud Computing.

The second level irony is that this is actually a pretty simple fix that should have been caught/designed-in when the system was being architected.

The third level of irony is that, at the end of day, human remains the biggest variable in the use of a technology.

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Roman Polanski and Sentiments

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:08:00 +0000

Polanski in the news

Recently heard that Roman Polanski was captured and there has been lively debate on what to do with him.

I thought this could be an interesting case to see if there is any patterns on sentiments in the digital world. Unlike the Sonia Sotomayor analysis though, this is just a single slice of time look.

In the top 30 terms in the three major web results, most of them seems to be factual with a few negative terms such as "avoided."

(Correction: I originally used "repulsion" as an example of negative term, turns out that it is the title of one of Polanski's films and considered a milestone in the psychological thriller genre. My bad!)

More on the results

A reminder, if you are interested in finding out more about the result details or the inference engine used in this analysis, please let me know at yfjuan (at) parc (dot) com.

Results (top 30 terms ranked in the order of relevance with the most relevant on top)

Google	Yahoo	Microsoft
polanski saleby brach escroqueries extradite 8/18/1933 cleland zebiczny pianiste sexual quitters seigner extradition 2000s eatps.web.aol.com wife rozbijemy filming gets chris letterman arrest murderer hour directing revives diamants swindles began musician	polanski travelled directing extradition filming plotted arrest seigner revives murdered roman pleaded arrested dated credited fleeing letterman filmmaker zebiczny repulsion personals directors celebrated avoided meets zurich dwts favre fired collaborated	polanski extradition obama twitter sotomayor gmail geimer facebook zebiczny bankrupt filmography 8/18/1933 getty looting seigner tmz murderer rozbijemy msnbc extradite vick credited repulsion qaida drama screenwriter afghan feeds ancestor swindlers

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CCN open source release at CCNX.ORG

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:58:00 +0000

A new approach to networking

I have made references to the CCN project that a team at PARC is working on. Very glad to report that the first open source release has gone live at www.ccnx.org

PARC Newsletter announcement

PARC just released an early version of open source infrastructure software and protocol specifications for our "Content-Centric Networking (CCN)" architecture. Our goal is to enable experimentation in the network research community and establish a foundation of open core protocols for content networking. We are also beginning to work with clients to explore new business solutions enabled by the CCN approach.

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Digital Distribution as a Competitive Advantage for Media Companies

noreply@blogger.com (Martini Parenting) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:59:00 +0000

The trouble with the digital world

The issues confronting many media companies in the world of internet, in general, and news aggregation, in particularly, is well known by now. The traditional business model of setting up the infrastructure to serve a particular geographic region is no longer seem as a compelling advantage.

Physical distribution of digital content as an advantage

Just thinking out loud. At the most basic level, while internet is considered "virtual", there is still a physical/geographic limitation on the actual routing of bits and byte. For example, by providing coverage outside of homes and offices in a region, this would deter others from setting up parallel infrastructure. Furthermore, by linking into regional advertising base, a media company can provide very fine-grained data for advertisers which would be worth a lot more than just general IP based information.

In other words, could this be a form of digital distribution that is highly defensible?

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