Monday, 28 May 2012

Bike ejector

Locking your bike when you only need to leave it unattended for a couple of seconds is a pain. A better way: a device that sits on your front forks and jams the spokes if someone tries to cycle away (once they've got up a bit of speed), ejecting them from the bike.

There are a couple of ways of implementing this. A mechanical, springloaded rod that is entered between the spokes. Some kind of mechanical counter is used to ensure the villainous cyclist has got enough speed (indicated by rotations) before ejection. Or a remote controlled device (again with a springloaded rod that is entered between the spokes. This allows for more user control, and prevents injury of the owner of the device forgets to deactivate it before getting back on.

[Note: the post is intended for humor only - such a device could cause serious injury and should not be tried at home]

Sunday, 27 May 2012

Finding new words

It should be relatively easy with crawl the world wide web comparing its contents to all established dictionaries (all languages, technical glossaries, and slang dictionaries), and hence finding examples of character strings that don't fit existing word definitions. And for each such string it should be possible to measure it's frequency.

Of course, there will be numerous spelling mistakes (and in fact data on common spelling mistakes is useful for both spelling correction, understanding the way people type, and the way people think), but it should be possible to filter these out based on similarity rules.

What would you want to do this? To answer the question "what is the most common undefined word?", but also to set about adding definitions for those words to relevant dictionaries to increase the extent of structured human knowledge.

Polytunnel robot

Some continued thinking on polytunnels: it is probably within the realm of existing technological capability to create a polytunnel building robot, opening up the possibility of putting vast swathes of desert under plastic potentially allowing moisture to be retained, and succession to occur.

It might also be possible for these robots to be solar-powered, and to be able to harness local materials (self-replication would be good too, but it's a ways off). Markus Kayser's SolarSinter, hints at the possibility of putting the desert under glass, using available sand.

Perhaps a polytunnel building robot could be the next project for the Global Village Construction Set

Analysing conversation

I am always intrigued by what people spend their time talking about (a quick google suggests we spend between 2 and 5 hrs a day talking). So how to get that data?

It would be an interesting experiment to place mics in bars, clubs, restaurants, shops, near watercoolers, etc to capture conversation, which could then be transcribed and analysed. Obviously the particular locations would need to disclose to people that the experiment was in progress, and steps would need to be taken to ensure privacy of data.

Alternatively, venues could offer subsidised drinks and food in return for this invasion of privacy, with marketing organisations paying the venues for the resulting intelligence gleaned. This could potentially be a win-win-win for consumer, venue owner and marketing organisation. There is also the potential for marketing organisations to identify people who are Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen, and follow-up with these individuals, for example offering them free samples.

An initial batch of questions:
  • What topics are people talking about? (work, home life, friends, celebrities, TV shows, etc)
  • What brands/companies/products are people talking about? What are they saying? What attitudes were conveyed by word choice and tone of voice?
  • How do people get from one topic to another?
  • What syntactic structures are common?
There are a couple of movements into the tracking consumers space, e.g. SceneTap and Shopperception, so perhaps this (potentially scary) future might become commonplace and not an experiment.

SMART objectives

The SMART criteria are a useful set of requirements for setting sensible objectives for organisations. However, when applied to employees I feel that there's something missing: controllable/influencable.

It is possible for an objective to be specific, measurable, attainable (by the organisation/team), relevant and timebound, but not be something that an individual has much control/influence over.

So I propose iSMART: influenceable; specific; measurable; attainable; relevant; timebound.

Optimising supermarkets

Until we get that robotic delivery service sorted, the widespread adoption of dropboxes and cheaper delivery costs, it's likely that we'll have to put up with the existence of supermarkets.

I suspect there is much to be done to optimise supermarkets; there are three key problems: finding goods (with subproblems of knowing whether goods are stocked, knowing whether the goods are in stock, and routing); aisle congestion; and checkout congestion.

Finding goods

The low-tech solution is better sign-posting, but there are so many types of goods in the average supermarket (let alone hypermarket) that detailed sign-posting would be counter-productive - it would be hard to find the right sign.

The high-tech solution is a digital store map, accessible by smartphone with voice recognition location search. The next step beyond this is a Sat Nav style display (or docked smartphone) on the shopping-cart that maps out a route in-store based on the items in a list (downloaded from online account).

Aisle congestion

A simple fix to aisle congestion would be narrower shopping-carts, as this would allow more shoppers to pass each other on the aisles. However, this could reduce the amount people purchase, making it an unattractive choice for supermarket owners.

Another possibility would be to monitor store traffic and aisle congestion, for example with pressure-sensitive floors or 3D imagers such as Kinect. Data on which aisles get congested could be used to rearrange stock. This should also mean that shoppers visit more aisles on average, which increases their exposure to products - something which would be attractive to supermarket owners.

Checkout congestion

There are numerous solutions to checkout congestion: self checkout; in-shopping-cart self-checkout; near-field-communication-based checkout; etc.

For classic manned checkouts, monitoring people entering the store, combined with knowledge of the average visit length, should allow supermarkets to predict and preempt checkout congestion (i.e. upmanning in advance of an anticipated period of congestion).

Overall busyness

A solution to overall busyness would be to publish store visit data, allowing customers to easily identify when the store would be quieter, and tailoring their shopping plans accordingly. This might benefit the supermarket in requiring less staff overall, as busy periods would be smoothed out.

Saturday, 26 May 2012

Wall-mounted toothpaste dispenser

Why? To reduce waste by getting as much toothpaste out of the tube as possible, as easy as possible.

How? Wall-mounted holder for the toothpaste tube with rollers to squeeze the tube from the thin end.

Problems remaining? Getting out the toothpaste from near the cap.

Sunday, 13 May 2012

Pruning the literature

Occasionally in the literature of a subject (and perhaps more frequently in the literature of business and management subjects) there are terms and definitions for which the underlying concepts are not truely distinct. Is there value in pruning the vocabulary of a subject to remove such duplication? Has this ever been done?

Knowledge worker value chain

What do knowledge workers do? I've been wondering just that, here are my thoughts:
  • Taking/anticipating requests for information
  • Collecting information
  • Making requests for information
  • Storing inforation
  • Analysing information
  • Forming opinions
  • Making decisions
  • Creating information (creativity)
  • Preparing outputs (e.g. reports)
  • Distributing information
And here's how the steps interlink:

Green = the administrative side
Orange = the analytical/creative side
Blue = the output side

Taking notes in the digital age

Why do we continue to take notes in the digital age? Principally because the act of taking notes helps get the information into memory, and secondarily to have something to refer to (which may be shorter, more accessible, better structured or simply more familiar than formats available online).

These are good reasons, that are unlikely to go away in shortterm (although the role of memory in society is perhaps diminishing). And as such, we need to make better use of those notes.

What would education be like if every student published every note they take to the web? And if then students could vote on each others notes, helping identify the best ones (and thus helping teachers refine their teaching material). There are numerous tools around for storing, and publishing notes to the web, but it doesn't yet feel like we're anywhere near every student's every note.

There are two enablers required - one is good quality, low cost, low hassle handwriting recognition; and the other is a cultural shift of public by default. Imagine, in real-time seeing the notes of students appear on the web as they write them in class.

This approach isn't just limited to education: imagine in a government organisation or corporate, meeting notes appearing in real-time on the intranet as employees note down the output from meetings.

An observation on learning

When learning a practical knowledge base (e.g. a musical instrument) it's easy to come up with things that you want to do that are beyond the scope of your current knowledge and ability. Likewise when learning a conceptual knowledge base (e.g. economics) it's easy to come up with things you want to understand that are beyond the scope of your current knowledge.

There are two sources of these thoughts: having read about, seen or heard something in relevant media; or something creative. For example, you may have heard a particular tune that you want to be able to play, or seen a particular playing technique that you want to be able to use; you may have seen a particular economics concept referenced in an economics publication. In terms of creativity, you might want to be able to play a tune that has sprung to mind as an idea; or you may have stumbled upon a novel way of looking at a concept.

Why are these interests important? They represent students' enthusiam for the subject and they can be creative output. When a student has come up with something they want to do, there is a sense of ownership that can be used to motivate the student to study. And any ideas are not something we want to loose or not see explored.

So what do we need? Teachers need tools to communicate to students the path to that knowledge they have expressed an interest (a learning roadmap) and the students/teachers need tool to enable logging of those thoughts, questions and ideas (to be explored, answered and implemented at a later date). And we need cultural acknowledgement and respect for these units of engagement, insight and enthusiasm.

Monday, 7 May 2012

Efficiency targets

Making processes more efficient is an exercise in creativity. It requires looking what is currently in a new light, coming up with ideas and testing them, experimenting, measuring, benchmarking.

Like creativity, it is stifled by pressure and targets. It's rare that people think it effective to instruct others to "be creative", and yet it is quite common to instruct others to "be more efficient", and to even set targets for that efficiency.

To get your employees to make processes more efficient:
  • let them know that efficiency is important, and that it's something that should be seized where opportunity arises
  • give them space to be efficienct
  • give them time to be efficienct
  • give them the confidence to be efficienct, that they can make mistakes without fear

Managing discomfort

In any particular situation involving discomfort there are two general responses: to accept the discomfort and push on; or to seek to minimise the discomfort. It is not possible to lead a productive and fulfilling life (or perhaps any kind of life) without using a combination of both responses.

In general, the latter response is associated with many human vices, such as laziness and overeating. However, if we always accept discomfort, without seeking to minimise it, we can damage ourselves and therefore not perform optimally (assuming of course that we have the strength of will to endure the discomfort).

How can we help ourselves to make the optimium choice?

Education and experience are essential, in part because they give us mechanisms to interpret the data about our discomfort and assess the level of risk of damage that the data indicates.

Is it possible to shortcut that education and experience through technology? Introspective technologies that give us more objective data to our present state should be able to facilitate our decision making.

For example, imagine you are running for exercise. You are feeling pretty tired, and you're trying to decide when it is optimal for you to turn back. You want to do enough exercise to maintain or increase you level fitness, but you don't want to be too tired for work the next day. Data on blood glucose, distance run vs previous runs, etc can help us make more informed choices. Imagine asking the question "Computer, should I continue running?", with a response such as "The data suggests that you should run for another 10 minutes before turning back, based on your current tiredness level, previous performance and work commitments tomorrow".

Saturday, 5 May 2012

Health retreat

I believe that more intervention is needed for people who a experiencing problems managing their personal health from the perspectives of diet and exercise (and potentially other behavior-driven problems such as gambling addiction, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, smoking, etc).

My gut feel is that best way to achieve this is to take people out of their normal environment into one that better supports them in an environment that facilitates behavioural change; a retreat location where the attendees are fed a nutritious diet and encouraged to exercise with instructors present.

The jey problems with such a retreat are: cost; who pays (company or individual, government?); childcare responsibilities; work responsibilities; other responsibilites.

To address the cost and work responsibilities issues, the retreat could provide open plan work areas with internet connect, meeting rooms, telepresence, etc. This would reduce the cost to employer, potentially allowing the employer to fund the retreat. (Obviously this is only really suitable for the kind of worker who can work remotely.)

In terms of timescale, I have read that it takes 21 days to break or make a habit. Perhaps a month all-in. A subsequent month of support to embed new habits in real life.

Keyword density

I was thinking today about ranking web search results (or general text data search results) based on keyword density, ie the number of times the word appears divided by the total number of words in the document.

One mention of the word in a long document suggests that the document is not particularly relevant, but a single word document would get the highest score and is also not particularly useful.

What is the optimum keyword density in a relevant source?

 My guess is something like 1/50 or 1/100.

Another thought that comes to mind is about user control over search results ranking, for advanced users using searching in a professional or research capacity. It seems to me that there are so many good ways of ranking results, but that the advanced user would benefit from being able to control them. Perhaps through a series of slides for: PageRank; keyword density; inclusion in page title; inclusion in metadata; etc, that could be tuned with the results below dynamically changing.

Barcode distribution

I suspect that there are numerous perception-driven variables that produce distributions that resemble a barcode i.e. a graph with multiple peaks.

A couple the come to mind:
  • wealth (x-axis) vs happiness (y-axis)
  • intelligence (x-axis) vs perception that human potential for intelligence roughly equivalent been people
This is as a result of subjective experience of the independent variable, to do with society's tendency to group people according to the independent variable, which affects group that the individual interacts with and compares him/herself with.