O.Design :: Forum

Bruce sterlin su Torino World Design Capital [by Anonimo]

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:27:30 +0000

Logica:: Bruce sterlin su Torino World Design Capital

Torino world design capital intervista Bruce Sterling

make an Earbud Cord Caddy [by MrEHQE]

Sun, 2 Mar 2008 21:46:12 +0000

Hacks:: make an Earbud Cord Caddy

Nice tutorial how to make an Earbud Cord Caddy

Re: Evil Mad scientist, CNC machine [by MrEHQE]

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:23:16 +0000

Hacks:: Evil Mad scientist, CNC machine

Altra CNC machine realizzata con il lego

Re: Lego laser plotter [by danielriga]

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:53:10 +0000

Hacks:: Lego laser plotter
The video is very interesting!

Re: Asus: Eee PC, la risposta commerciale all OLPC [by MrEHQE]

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 10:34:49 +0000

Osservatorio:: Asus: Eee PC, la risposta commerciale all OLPC

Punto informatico. fa una prova su strada di eeepc

Bruce Sterling @ LIFT Seoul 2007 [by MrEHQE]

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:31:14 +0000

Ideas:: Bruce Sterling @ LIFT Seoul 2007

Bruce Sterling @ LIFT Seoul 2007

Core77, Open source and the Long Tail [by MrEHQE]

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:00:34 +0000

Logic:: Core77, Open source and the Long Tail

Video

[From The Open Road]

Recently I was fortunate to interview Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired and the keynote speaker for the Open Source Think Tank, coming up February 7-9 in Napa Valley, Calif. Given Chris' views, I think he's an ideal person to headline an event whose theme is "The Future of Commercial Open Source." (While attendance is by invitation only, you can still apply for admittance.)

Everyone has heard about Chris Anderson's article, book, and blog, The Long Tail. If you haven't, you don't live on this planet (not that there's anything wrong with that). Anderson's theory--that there is big opportunity in lots of little markets--resonates in a world whose technology increasingly permits, encourages, and even requires that we move beyond mass market product development to cater to individual tastes.

As Chris put it in his original Wired article:
For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching--a market response to inefficient distribution.

Free products (or, at least, their discovery) from the physical world, however, and the economics of consumption change. Dramatically.

I spent some time talking with Chris to see how his theory applies to open source. His ideas pushed me to re-examine my own, as my thoughts on how the Long Tail would apply to open source turned out to be a bit naive...

Q: How does open source play into the Long Tail?

Anderson: Anybody writing software for anyone to consume for any reason. That's the Long Tail applied to open source. Open source is fundamentally a marketplace in which anyone can participate. It's a meritocracy. It's a more efficient way of discovering development talent, rather than the old model of hiring out of universities and such.

This has serious repercussions for an industry that is starved for talent. The distribution of participants is more dispersed in the online world. As a result, you get more new ideas, different approaches, talents, and energies that come from surprising places. These would not have been identified in past years. (I interjected that Ross Mason, founder of the Mule project and inhabitant of Malta, is a good example of this.)

Look at Google's Summer of Code. If you map its participants you find develpoers in far-flung places like Madagascar. Things like language, academic training, credentials, and such don't matter as much with open source, widening the talent pool. This should make for better code.

Taste, talent, and demand is much more diverse than traditional markets relfect. Traditional markets reflect traditional bottlenecks with distribution, not necessarily reality. The Long Tail economy gives us a broader distribution of demand; the open-source Long Tail economy gives us a broader distribution of development talent and, by extension, development projects.

Did open source inspire the Long Tail?

No...It actually started with the entertainment world: music, books, movies, etc. When you start talking about a diversity of tastes, music is the obvious example. Wal-Mart is a classic case of constraining the market because its model is to only distribute "hits."

It wasn't until a year afterwards that I really started to look at open source as an example of the Long Tail phenomenon. Open source turns software development on its head. If open source were only available as executables and if it were only sold through physical locations, it wouldn't be the Long Tail explosion that it has become.

But there's more to come. The shift of software from the desktop to the Web will really be the making of open-source software. The Long Tail side of software will almost certainly be Web-based because the Web lowers the barriers to adoption of software. There will always be some software best delivered as packaged bits. But the big problem with packaged software--or one big problem--is the risk associated with installation. It just might not work. The Web removes that problem.

Keep in mind that sites like Google, Digg, etc. are simply open-source projects of a sort. They tend to be heavily modified instances of open source. Hence, any definition of open source that doesn't include Web sites in its definition is going to miss the mark.

Interesting...But will open source survive the Web? One of the big problems with the so-called Web 2.0 companies is that they're net consumers of open source, not net producers.

The Web is built on the 1 percent model. One percent of your users are contributors. Should open source be any different? It doesn't need everyone to be a contributor.

Regardless, the Long Tail of open source is not Linux. It's super-targeted niche services delivered over the Web. That, and the development underlying Sourceforge, is not going to change regardless of contributions from the Web companies.

Are there particular projects that you think have embodied your theory the best?

Sourceforge. This is exactly what I have in mind when I talk about the Long Tail of open source. Many projects on Sourceforge are obscure to the point of being almost impossible to believe that there is demand for them. Many are only written by one person and have only that user. What's fascinating about Sourceforge is that it's nondiscriminatory: the marketplace sorts out the hits.

However, keep in mind that I'm not just talking about open source here. Consider Salesforce.com with its AppExchange. By building an open platform, Salesforce.com is enabling a Long Tail economy around itself.

Your theory suggests that you need "both ends of the curve"--both the short tail (hits) and the long tail (nonhits). Is there a problem with this model if the "grown-up" open-source projects move off Sourceforge? This tends to be the case. Will Sourceforge become less useful? Less Long Tail, in other words?
Good point. I'm not sure. There is a potential problem if the popular open-source projects move away on Sourceforge.

Even open-source software projects tend to be measured on the "hits" basis you disparage. Can you conceive of a company that aggregates the "losers" and makes one big "hit" out of it?

What's the value add? What justifies paying for something that can be had for free? I don't see a need for this. I can't see a model where any particular vendor can support all the disparate bits. A caveat emptor model (like Sourceforge) works. I don't see how Red Hat could economically justify offering the kind of granular project support you suggest. Open source is a Long Tail phenomenon, but any given open-source company is just one player in that larger phenomenon.

Fascinating stuff, and just a glimpse into Chris' thoughts on the Long Tail of open source. Remember, you can still apply for admittance to the Open Source Think Tank. Hearing Chris explore this subject in more detail would be valuable.

IRC: ingegnerizzare l’incrocio tra domanda ed offerta di tecnologia [by MrEHQE]

Mon, 7 Jan 2008 12:21:16 +0000

Italiano:: IRC: ingegnerizzare l’incrocio tra domanda ed offerta di tecnologia

Shannon.it pubblica un articolo dal titolo "IRC(Innovation Relay Center): ingegnerizzare l’incrocio tra domanda ed offerta di tecnologia".

Eccone un estratto:

DI MARCO BENNICI

Il dibattito sugli IRC non ha mai preso in considerazione almeno finora alcuna strategia di marketing. Sono i vari operatori IRC a decidere come meglio promuovere le offerte e richieste del network. Il rischio di una simile impostazione � di perdere di vista alcune questioni strategiche di non poco rilievo. ‘Ingegnerizzare’ la catena degli IRC � una della possibilit� per rendere pi� efficiente e pi� veloce il processo di adozione delle tecnologie inserite al suo interno.

Richiamando alcuni pilastri fondamentali del marketing � bene anzitutto vedere quali spazi si aprano per esso nei confronti delle offerte di tecnologia di IRC. Troppe volte si legge ‘marketing’ come ‘comunicazione’. Questa visione riduttiva della materia lascia fuori tutta una serie di elementi di carattere strategico che possono fare la fortuna o meno di certe scelte di mercato. Che si tratti di marketing strategico od operativo, differenziandosi su un orizzonte di breve o di medio-lungo periodo, il marketing � sempre frutto di un’impostazione strategica. Di breve periodo, giocher� sui due-tre anni, di medio-lungo su un arco temporale pi� ampio. Le leve da utilizzare sono quelle del ‘marketing mix’ (prodotto, prezzo, promozione, distribuzione) e delle strategie attorno a cui costruire comunicazione del brand, partnership ed opportunit� di economie di scala.

Nel caso degli IRC, non dovendosi aggredire un mercato fatto di ‘n’ consumatori, sarebbero inutili ragionamenti di medio-lungo periodo, ma potrebbe fare comodo una segmentazione del mercato. Offerte e richieste potrebbero dirigersi verso i pezzi di esso pi� ricettivi nei confronti dei loro appelli. Per effettuare una efficiente segmentazione non basta fare riferimento alla catena del valore del prodotto/progetto, ma sarebbe opportuno sviluppare opportuni strumenti che possano fare da ‘marcatori’ lungo l’intero processo di sviluppo della tecnologia. In questo senso si dovrebbe ‘ingegnerizzare’ la catena del valore tecnologica, rendendo pi� facile l’inoltro di offerte e richieste.

A tali modalit� operative dovrebbe essere affiancata una migliore comunicazione. Offerte e richieste sono compilate sotto forma di documenti testuali, spesso senza alcun ausilio di carattere visivo, filmati o altro tipo di presentazioni. Questi documenti sono poi diffusi dagli IRC alle aziende in maniera tradizionale, con e-mail, newsletter e bollettini tecnologici. Manca, insomma, un brand e mancano, soprattutto, degli standard comunicativi uniformi che rendano gli IRC riconoscibili nei vari ‘punto di contatto’ con le imprese clienti.

Rientrerebbe sempre in una prospettiva strategica inserire nel circuito IRC le scienze umane e quelle socio-economiche. Esse potrebbero fare da base per una corretta segmentazione del mercato. Nello stesso tempo idee di marketing adeguatamente formulate e diffuse in IRC potrebbero dare il via allo sviluppo di nuove tecnologie e di nuove offerte tecnologiche.

Molti prodotti di successo sono nati proprio da buone intuizioni di esperti di marketing. Anche la tecnologia pu� essere frutto, insomma, di ispirazione. Essa � normalmente spinta verso il mercato. Se gli IRC fossero implementati aprendosi al marketing e ad una certa porzione delle discipline umanistiche potrebbero trasformarsi in acceleratori potenti di innovazione. Ma questo per ora � un altro film. La certezza � che non sarebbe affatto difficile girarlo.

RISPOSTA DI ENRICO GIUBERTONI

L’articolo di Marco Bennici � una risposta al dibattito sviluppato nei commenti del suo precedente post ospitato da Shannon.it (vedi articolo del 5 ottobre 2007), ovvero come le potenzialit� offerte dagli Innovator Relay Centers possano essere applicate al Marketing .

Marco Bennici ha affrontato questo tema e da questo importante articolo emergono diverse opportunit�, ma anche alcuni aspetti ancora da definire per organizzare degli IRC Marketing Oriented che possano sviluppare nuove idee imprenditoriali.

La risposta a questo articolo credo debba darla il mercato, e per mercato si intende non tanto i mercati nazionali, quanto le collaborazioni tra nazioni a livello Europeo.

Chris Anderson - nel suo celebre testo The Long Tail - analizza il nuovo marketing, ormai quasi del tutto organizzato su strumenti tecnologici, che sta trasformando la societ� del del XXI secolo, da un mercato di massa, a una massa di mercati.

Io credo che gli Innovation Relay Centers come strumenti di marketing possano giocare un ruolo importante nel concorrere allo sviluppare progetti di Marketing avanzati.

In questo senso - per fare un esempio - mi riferisco a tutti quei progetti che utilizzano strumenti di marketing ad alto contenuto tecnologico come i siti di Social Shopping (vedi Wikipedia), i siti di Social Networking, le interrelazioni di marketing legate alla blogosfera e in generale tutto ci� che gira intorno al Social Web.

Chi opera nel Marketing che cosa ne pensa?

Re: Build you own CNC machine video tutorial [by CNC Video]

Thu, 3 Jan 2008 02:38:31 +0000

Tech:: Build you own CNC machine video tutorial
Cool CNC Video. I also make free CNC Video Tutorials. If you are interested in learning how to use CNC Technology at home, you can check out the videos here:

CNC Tutorial Videos

Have a good one,
Ivan Irons

Velcro Laptops [by MrEHQE]

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:37:30 +0000

Hacks:: Velcro Laptops

Instructables add Velcro to laptops. Nice idea.