In addition to the video of Shane Robison, Foremski’s blog has a longer clip of Head of Marketing Michael Mendenhall, Labs Director Prith Banerjee and CEO Mark Hurd discussing the new blueprint for R&D in the Labs:
Silicon Valley watcher Tom Foremski (a former FT columnist) brought a video camera to last Thursday’s HP Labs launch and posted a clip of Chief Strategy Officer Shane Robison discussing HP’s strategy. Says Foremski:
This is one of the most lucid accounts of HP’s strategy that I’ve come across.
Watch the YouTube video and see what you think:
E Pluribus Unum - Out of One, Many
HP Labs Pluribus - Out of Many projectors, One super-screen
Super-bright, large-scale, and very high-resolution digital projectors are indispensable tools of modern communication. They help CEOs wow audiences of analysts. They make rock concerts intimate. They turn computer gaming into a spectator sport. And they can make digital cinema an instant reality.
They are also very expensive. Prices for high-end projectors run into tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, which keeps these devices from being widely used.
HP Labs’ Nelson Chang and Niranjan Damera-Venkata had a hunch they could make a much cheaper projection system by combining the outputs of several smaller projectors to create a single, high-quality image. They work in the Multimedia Interaction and Understanding Lab in Palo Alto on a project code-named Pluribus.
Seeing Pluribus in action, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the huge, crystal-clear picture it creates. Hook a 16-foot screen up to a game of Madden NFL Football, for example, and the players are life-size - putting you front row and center at the same scale as the real thing.
Although Pluribus looks great, its true appeal lies in the cost savings it offers anyone in the business of projecting large images. How so? For example, Pluribus can combine ten off-the-shelf projectors costing $1,000 each to project an image as bright and sharp as that created by a single high-grade projector costing $100,000.
Once this technology reaches your local Best Buy it will cause the prices of what is possible with high-end home theatre to be reset to a new price-point. You’ll just have to be patient. Hear Nelson and Niranjan discuss their work in the podcast.
Bernardo Huberman is one of only four Senior Fellows at HP Labs - the most distinguished technologists in the company. He runs the Social Computing Lab. His research focus is on the behavior of millions of people using the internet and how this can be analyzed and predicted. He is recognized around the world as an authority on how people communicate and collaborate on the Internet. His lab has recently developed Cloudprint, which lets you store documents in the cloud so you can retrieve and print them on any printer using a mobile phone.
One amusing way of illustrating his research in everyday terms is the choices people make when they place bets. Using the patters of behavior that the bookmakers need to understand to make a living, he looks at predictions we can make in corporate purchasing departments and other business settings.
To hear Bernardo’s remarks click on the podcast icon below.
I blogged on Chandrakant’s work measuring lifetime energy use last December. He runs the Sustainable IT Lab at HP.
In this podcast, he expands on the issues he’s researching on least use of energy, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and using Joule’s as a measurement of energy consumption.
In our discussion, Chandrakant refers to the following sketch he created to show ‘cradle-to-cradle’ energy use.
Stan Williams is one of the four Senior Fellows at HP Labs - the most distinguished technologists in the company. He runs the Information and Quantum Systems Lab and his research focus is on what is called CeNSE - the Central Nervous System for the Earth.
Stan is looking over the horizon to developments in nanotechnology - the control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale, where dimensions are measured in nanometers. One nanometer is one billionth of a meter - way smaller than the proverbial width of an ant’s leg. In fact, the comparative size of a nanometer to a meter is the same as that of a marble to the size of the earth. Or another way of putting it: a nanometer is the amount a man’s beard grows in the time it takes him to raise the razor to his face!
I asked Stan to describe his research interests in the terms that my Mum could understand. Click on the podcast icon below to hear what Stan says about his research. It could revolutionize human interaction with the earth as profoundly as the Internet has revolutionized personal and business interactions. Hear him describe a possible future world where trillions of nanoscale sensors and actuators are embedded in the environment, monitoring every breath we take, every move we make. And how concerns for our privacy in this world are addressed.
Hewlett-Packard announced today that it has sharpened the focus of its advanced research group, HP Labs, to address the most complex challenges facing technology customers in the next decade.
Labs was founded by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard 41 years ago, before Hewlett-Packard even made computers, before the Internet and certainly before anyone on the planet had sent a single email.
Today, the world is different. As the Internet becomes the dominant platform for the IT world, Labs is looking at ways to fundamentally change the way all information is accessed, shared and communicated.
The new HP Labs now consists of 23 distinct groups of researchers spread across seven worldwide locations; it is led by Prith Banerjee, who joined as director last August.
I was part of the team that help develop the announcements that Prith and the Labs researchers shared with the world this afternoon. As well as the Press Conference and speeches, there was a unique exhibit of some of the latest technology from Labs. I visited the exhibit and took the opportunity to talk with some of the researchers about their projects. I was also delighted to meet a couple of retired employees.
Check out my following six blog entries which are podcast interviews with researchers and retirees.
Someone in the news here at HP Labs is April Slayden Mitchell, who works on video for mobile devices.
April is profiled on a wonderfully quirky blog called DollyMix (Thought Candy to stimulate your ladybrains) which kicks off a series of interviews with “geek girls” by asking her why there are so few women in the technology industry. She offers sound advice to girls still in school who are thinking of a career in science or engineering:
Take as many computer classes as you can and don’t be afraid to ask questions and get involved – even if you are one of the only girls. Also, while you are taking those engineering and math classes, focus on your writing and oral presentation skills as well. The ability to communicate clearly with others through both spoken and written word can only benefit your career.
Geeks with superior communication skills will always have an unfair advantage over their more insular colleagues, men or women.
Following the series of four podcasts on Social Media that I did from the National Speakers Association convention in San Francisco in the last week, I’ve been more attuned than usual to mention of the effects of blogs, podcasts and online networks in our world today.
Facility with Social Media is one of the clear differentiators between the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, claims Edward Luce in yesterday’s Financial Times.
Luce quotes Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, who marks a clear difference between the two campaigns’ use of social media and technology:
The Obama website offers almost instant video replays of his speeches, which are also packaged by Obama officials for YouTube. A few mouse clicks from each webcast provides a simple procedure to make online donations. Users can set up blogs, join the Obama Facebook group and even download ring tones featuring recordings of his speeches.
The contrast with Mrs Clinton’s relatively conventional website is instructive. In one of her first webcasts Mrs Clinton offered to “have a conversation with America”. But the questions she received were obviously screened. The fact these “conversations” took place online could not disguise the fact they were controlled.
This is eerily reminiscent of the contrasting ways in which smaller, more entrepreneurial companies approach this technology when compared to the larger organizations of the Fortune 500.
Luce chronicles the flexibility and tactical advantages offered by an aggressive use of web-based tools when compared to a more inflexible establishment approach. This observation isn’t new. Back in 2000, author Christopher Locke predicted the end of business as usual in his prescient book The Cluetrain Manifesto. Locke claimed that thanks to the conversations taking place on the web, citizens have found a voice that undermine the traditional command-and-control hierarchy that organizes most corporate marketing groups and political campaigns.
Is it too late for Hillary to get a clue?
A theme of last weekend’s National Speakers Association convention in San Francisco was the emergence of Social Media as a tool for entrepreneurs and freelance professionals.
I ran out of time at the event to meet with two NSA members who taught a well-attended workshop on Hidden Gems of the Internet. As I mentioned in my last podcast, these two Social Media Teachers shared a ton of useful information about the many tools available to build an independent business online.
I caught up with Michael and Sheryl on the phone and asked them to give their reading of the acceptance of these tools, what the opportunity is, and what obstacles there are to wider acceptance of Social Media.
In our conversation they reference a number of resources:
To hear their insights on Social Media and much more, click on the podcast icon below.
