Logistics Institute

Last week I went to the Logistics Institute in Hull which was great (and i've just realised is the number one link in Google if you search for 'Logistics Institute' so good for them! :-) :

http://www.hull.ac.uk/logistics/index.html

I watched a few presentations from some of their incubator tenants and then had a tour round the building. It's a fantastic looking building before you go inside, nice big glass front and so on. But it also has a really good feel to it and some truly excellent training / event facilities that i'm going to try and find an excuse to use at some point in the future!

They also have a technology showcase area where you can see the technologies being developed by some of their tenants as well as other organisations. I love this kind of thing as it's so much easier than reading about something in a dry, boring document. They had some really nice equipment on display including 2D print examples, RFID tags and a new mobile application which is a bit like Skype but allows you to call several PC's / mobiles at once.

I think what is particularly good about the Logistics Institute is that it is literally (physically) attached to the University of Hull and has business tenants so it really is combining both worlds and I have a feeling that the physical proximity of business and academia will be a real benefit for them.

As an example of this, their membership is for both business and students and both types of members can access their resource centre and use the other facilities (which include meeting rooms as well as state-of-the-art laboratories).

This is definitely another one I shall be keeping an eye on and am sure i'll have more to report back in the future.

Cloud Computing

I just watched a webinar called 'Powering Your Business with Cloud Computing' hosted by the Grid Computing Now! KTN.

It was a really interesting seminar about an organisation called Rozmic and how it uses Cloud Computing for a new service it's released. There were also some interesting questions at the end, the main issues people had with using Cloud Computing seem to be interoperability between different providers, security concerns (which are pretty much overcome by keeping the really sensitive data inhouse) and pricing (the fact that you can't easily predict how much you will use and therefore how much it will cost which is difficult for less flexible large organisations, and that it's all new so pricing can still vary quite a lot).

However, the potential financial advantages seem to be huge, especially for small business and start ups. Ross Cooney at Rozmic made the good point that with Cloud Computing you can take your time over purchasing hardware as you're not in the usual desperate situation of having to get new servers tomorrow, instead you can use cloud computing in the interim while negotiating a good deal for equipment. And of course you can have less equipment inhouse and take advantage of cloud computing for some of your needs.

Ross also suggested an 8 hour rule whereby any server that will be in use for more than 8 hours a day is cheaper to have inhouse, anything in use less than 8 hours a day is cheaper using cloud computing. He stressed this wasn't rigorously tested but I think it's a good rule of thumb for a small business trying to work out what to do.

Anyway you can watch the seminar online at the Grid Computing Now! website:

http://www.gridcomputingnow.org/

As far as I can tell you have to register in order to watch the seminars but it's free and then you can also see what other webinars they have coming up.

Green Computing

Having been on holiday for nearly three weeks i'm still mainly catching up on emails etc. But just wanted to quickly blog about a conference on the 17th October at Leeds Metropolitan University called 'Green Computing Conference':

http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/inn/news_green_conf08.htm

Hopefully i'll be attendng and will post a blog with any interesting links / docs etc collected on the day...

After all surely Green Computing is going to be one of the biggest things to affect the IT industry over the next few years, what with the combination of continuing scarcity of energy sources and political will to decrease carbon footprints? Should make for an interesting day.

Some useful websites...

I have a few links i've been saving up over the last few days so I want to signpost them all in this post.

First up is KnowledgeRICH:

http://www.knowledgerich.com/

It's a free service for businesses to get in touch with Universities in the region to work on innovative projects. What a great idea!

Next up is the Yorkshire Science and Technology Network:

http://www.ystn.co.uk/

I went to their last event in Leeds, it's free (although invite only so you have to sign up to attend) and gives a good networking opportunity to meet people from quite a variety of organisations. They have a couple of speakers at each event and in the past these have included Tim Berners-Lee and Wayne Hemingway.

Next I wanted to point out Cisco's I-Prize:

http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/iprize/index.html

This is a competition to create an idea that Cisco will then fund anything up to $10 million! The really cool part to it is that when you enter you basically register into a community and then can get ideas from other people and create a team from within that community. A very cool way to encourage collaboration...

Finally, 4mations:

http://www.4mations.tv/

This site allows you to upload your own animated movies and games with the most popular each month winning a cash prize! The site isn't the most user-friendly i've ever come across, but if you get stuck you can click 'help' at the top right of the page to get to a fairly useful FAQ.

Melt 2008

Yesterday I was in Sheffield for the Melt 2008 Inspiration Session, and very inspiring it was too! Melt gives R&D awards to artistic, media and technical talent to explore the creative and economic possibilities of innovative content exploitation - basically they invest in cool, new things :-) They also do a lot of mentoring and giving of advice to help the projects make progress.

Personally my favourite part of the afternoon was the Melt Show and Tell where we saw short 10 minute presentations from 5 Melt projects. I loved them all! :

Healthy Island - an interactive game for teachers to encourage healthy behaviour in their pupils. A great way to bring more modern technology into the classroom without using a whiteboard!
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/7-earth-heart.html

Call of the Wild - a sound controlled game using animal noises. The added value with this one has got to be the whole 'all the family' can play factor.
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/13-call-of-the-wild.html

Piefighter - a mobile game using bluetooth and involving throwing pies at friends using your mobile and gaining free beer! Surely a winner with students.
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/16-blueface.html

Lost Angels - another mobile game, this time in a tamagochi / virtual pet stylie using real world info (i.e. news sources). You can really see this being picked up by the increasingly younger mobile market.
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/10-lost-angels.html

Wizard Academy - interactive 3D / 4D (think water being sprayed at you in 4D!) game for use in theme parks and visitor attractions. This one I thought was particularly commercially attractive, you can see it being used in lots of places.
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/14-wizard-academy.html

I shall try to keep my eye on the progress of all of them...

Going Global Conference

Another event to blog about, this one is for any industry and is being run by UKTI:

http://www.tradeyorkshire.com/eventdetails.aspx?id=45997

It's all about improving international business relationships, export and trade. Sir Alan Sugar is the key speaker, although personally i'm more impressed with the host, Declan Curry - always been a fan :-)

The event is in Harrogate on the 30th September and even more importantly it's free! It'll be a great opportunity to get free advice, inspiration and more importantly meet other businesses.

Singularity 2008

Just came across an online conference called Singularity which has some very interesting sessions:

http://www.singularity08.com/

It's from 24th - 26th October and features some fairly well known speakers including Tim O'Reilly and Molly E. Holzschlag.

It's not free, which is a shame as it's an online conference but then I guess the quality of the speakers would probably not be as high, however there are 'hubs' where people can get together to watch the conference, the nearest to us being in Manchester:

http://www.singularity08.com/hubs/

I'd be interested to hear from anyone how they thought it went...