Sixth Sense

Pranav Mistry's talk at TED created a quite bit of stir in 2009 on sixth sense and lot of patents still on hold flowing out of that research. But yesterday in our discussion at lunch I got an insight this may be even going beyond and surpassing the idea of embedding anything in the human body. Why embed anything when you can manipulate data with devices and objects in the natural world. Being a kingdom person I am more inclined to go this way.. .anyway apart from the philosophical and theological argument on this enjoy this TED talk that I have embedded here...or catch other fascinating talks at www.ted.com

New Concept Yacht

Feadship and CRN Yachts have some of my favorite naval architect designers. The guys at feadship have unveiled a new concepts having learnt some interesting lessons from mother nature. The SS Nautilus is almost becoming a reality :) at least in as a design concept!


Another very similar neat design is the "Phoenicia" designed by industrial designer Richard Partington. See image below:

Now it would be cool if this can sink deep ocean like a submersible. The hull design continues to get refined for this to become a possiblity on this scale of size and spaciousness inside.

drool and enjoy!

Sam Kurien.

Infinity Blade - Dungeons released

I have been a fan of the Infinity Blade games for the iPad and their use of unreal game engine. This one at Apple's keynote for their new release in April definitely raised the bar in bringing lots of cinematography and film techniques to the game with insane resolutions. Enjoy the well done trailer video:

 

Mithos Concept Design

Love the industrial design concept of this car and its video presentation by Italian designer Tiago Miguel Inacio


MITHOS - ELECTROMAGNETIC VEHICLE from Tiago Inácio on Vimeo.

Service Design

I have talked about Service Design in terms of Enterprise Architecture strategies but take a look of another video from Design Consultancy firm Continuum. I like the emphasis of connecting everything together so one message, and your set of core values is communicated through multiple touch points.

   

One of my senior leaders in the organization calls the same concept using the analogy of building ramps to connect to the highway which we nurture to build relationships with the customer, our end user or FAMILY!!

 Thoughts,

 Sam Kurien

Concept Day Made of Glass- Part 2

I had posted an earlier version of this in the past about "Corning Glass" a company in Ohio that makes Gorilla glass. From time to time they come up with concept vision videos like this about what dreams can become in glass and gadgets interfaces. My friend DAS send me this over email...so enjoy "A Day made of Glass 2. Expanded Corning Vision" - Courtesy of Corning Glass.

The New IT PlayBook

Technology departments in non-tech companies have always prided themselves in traditionally staying one step behind on the curve caution of adopting new disruptive technologies or the hottest and the latest trends. This is part because of sound reasons like management questioning dollar spending and partly because of integration of legacy systems and thought patterns of looking at that change is not worth at this time.

This has resulted in practices where native apps are supported extensively, infrastructure perimeters are protected instead of sensitive data. And avoiding in looking into efficiency that pertain to cloud offerings and empowering employees that bring personal devices that conglomerate into the IT infrastructure. But the new IT playbook is about being more agile, more mobile, more lighter and less expensive. The new playbook dictates that if technology component does not follow this model will result in them being cost center's and support centers rather than strategic player in the mission of the organization. I love cloud services but the traditional caution model keeps me in check, though advocates challenge the benefits of SaaS and cloud enabled services I am a fan of a hybrid model. I haven't seen this heavily advocated but the idea is having high availability critical systems in the cloud (with security layers in place) and having redundancy within your data center and create a vice-versa fail over tier's. Agreed, its a little expensive but this firms up the infrastructure layer and strengthens the business application layers greatly. Costing however can be worked out if technology leverages the input of collective thinking between departments, areas of services (in my context ...ministry)and analyses what works and what does not in a evaluative matrix that circles back to the vision, mission and objectives of the enterprise. 

The hybrid model I propose incorporates the Cloud based services and the traditional in-house software and infrastructure layers. This model is not for the faint of heart as it increases measurement processes and accountability at all levels. Forces to evaluate to think out of the box with the resources we have and making cost count.

Eventually over a period of time the cost in this model comes down and benefits go up. My CEO recently talked about the fourth quadrant in his presentation today where the objective for the management is pushing the entire organization not just to high productivity but engaging individuals into core values of the organization which inherently moves a business, workplace or ministry to Greatness. And in turn gives the people involved thee impetus to be GREAT!!

 Thoughts,

 Sam Kurien