Blog of Random Thoughts and Pictures

Calculating Carbon footprint from Travel

April 27th, 2008

Thanks Eamonn for picking up my question on the calculation of my carbon footprint from recent trips, I’ve had a look at the Dopplr solution in association with AMEE and it is exactly what I was looking for.
carbonfootprint_travel.JPG

The movers and shakers on this months Programming Community Index

April 27th, 2008

A the joys of programming, there are so many to choose from and my interest in a recent Slashdot article on the TIOBE Programming Community Index was raised due to a couple of small “home” projects I’ve recently managed to complete. Firstly the movers and shakers on this months Programming Community Index list were
1. Java
2. C
3. (Visual) Basic
4. PHP
5. C++
6. Perl
7. Python
8. C#
9. Ruby
10.Delphi
For me there are certainly a couple of surprises in there, but for now I have some comments on the Perl / Python tussle.
python-v-perl.GIF
So my home project was a “script” to read out (using a ‘text-to-speech’ program) a Quote of the Day from a RSS feed.
I’ve had this QOTD feed on my feedreader account for years but never seem to get a chance to read them, now I just have them read out for me once a day.
Having completed the project in Python [9 lines of code and an imported library feedparser] I wondered why does Python exist? Shouldn’t Perl do the job perfectly fine?
Many suggestions are offered, such as Pythons readability and extensibility, or the fact that Python offers much faster application development, and for me I wanted to see if this was true ……. and my experience is born true by this article from the Linux Journal on Why Python? by Eric Raymond [May, 2000] although my disclaimer is that if you manage to read the comments I’m a 3).
Finally back to the ‘Quote of the Day’, as a network programmer I should have been thinking about doing this project with the Quote Of The Day (QOTD) protocol, utilising a service provider like http://quotes4all.net/ but then I’m not so sure Python would have come up on my radar, if I had started out like this.

I’s to the Future

April 5th, 2008

It’s massive and ICT 2008 comes to Lyon on November 25-27th 2008 ….. book your hotel now!
There are three main parts to this event, the speaker/panel based conference, the exhibtion and the networking session, and its important to make an impact on all three.
For the moment there are two main deadlines to consider
1) Call for exhibitors
2) Call for networking proposals
As for past events in 2004 the host city for IST 2004 was Den Hague with the overall theme of “Participate in your future”. We certainly did this as this is where our first in-roads on the Living Labs approach was made public …. with the help of our partners from CDT Lulea.
ICT 2004 in Den Hague
In the picture above we’re setting up the demo stand Touching Mobile Research.
ICT 2006 was held in Helsinki,
ICT 2006 in Helsinki:- Photo by CDT, Martin Vallmark

Photo by CDT, Martin Vallmark

With a theme of ‘Strategies for Leadership’, we took a big lead with Jim & Zeta hosting a very influencial Security Networking session
So here’s to looking forward to ICT 2008.

CoreLabs, the end of the beginning

April 1st, 2008

With so many things happening recently I haven’t had a chance to tell you about a project that has just successfully finished its research programme.
CoreLabs Logo
CoreLabs started in March 2006 with the stated mission to conduct as broad coordination as possible among European private, public and civic stake-holders and related projects working with systems/environments (Living Labs) for open user-driven innovation of (primarily) new ICT based products and services.
CoreLabs mission also included the establishment a European Network of Living Labs and to propose related supportive policies and governance structures. The long term objective with the Living Lab network is to become a enabling key instrument in a new European innovation infrastructure.
So did CoreLabs manage to do this?
The projects achievements include all planned deliverables and targeted objectives (ref DoW) three of which can be downloaded below:
D2.1a Best Practices
D3.2 Technological & Mass Customisation Aspects, which was edited by Claire and myself here at the TSSG.

D5.1 Methods & Tools Inventory and Taxonomy

There were as quite a few additional deliverables and impacts achieved such as the ;
(Co-)organisation of more than thirty (30!) LL-events across Europe
The election based formation of a Living Lab Portfolio Leadership Group, LLP-LG
Creation of the physical (Rubik’s cube based) Living Lab Harmonization Cube, presented
at the e-Challenges conference 2007 in Den Hague.
A Living Lab Book; European Living Labs. A new approach for human centric regional innovation, in which Chapter 4 on the Technology Platform for the ENoLL is a contribution made by Claire & myself also.

ENoLL Book


To mention but a few.
The project had its final review on February 14th 2008 and the EC have kindly reported that that through these achievements the project has contributed to the understanding of the changing techno-socio-economic paradigm. The report does go on to state that this ongoing transformation requires research on how to optimally embed ICT in all segments of the European society (health, mobility, learning, government, leisure, etc.). ‘Living Labs’ appear as an optimal tool to realise this objective.
There is tons still to do, but CoreLabs has clearly being a guiding light in this initaitve.
And so as the quote from W.Churchill goes:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. (10 Nov 1942).