Take a look:

Tokyo Data Centre: the largest in the world

It is the Google Earth image of the largest data centre in the world: 1.4 million square foot, or 130,000 square meters. It is located in Tokyo and compares to a medium size industrial plant (as a comparison, the largest FIAT car plant covers an area of 2 million square meters but that includes a good portion of open spaces).

Data centres are getting bigger and bigger and the “logistics” to support their needs is very complex, and industry in itself. It has to provide reliable and stable environment condition, energy and temperature to start with.

It is curios at a time where we talk about the virtualization of data centers in the cloud that a company is building a modular data centre, that is the shell for containing the data centre, to offer it to companies wishing to have their physical data centre hosted in an effective environment.

This is what i/o Data Centres is doing in NJ where they have bough the former printing facility of the New York Times and are converting it into a modular data centre.

The biz of data is really taking up very many nuances but all of them are telling us that data are at the core of our Society and its Economy.

This video is very interesting because it shows how contemporary technology meets traditional.

It is more than just showing a new product, in this case a mobile phone with a cover made of wood.

The way the film is made is what impresses me the most. Getting something as ancient as a wood instrument, like a xylophone, and take this concept to play such lovely melody(Cantata 147 di Bach).

It doesn’t show in the film but the calculation and preparation for it to happen is enormous and requires knowledge in different areas, music, computing and movie making. How something so complex can be so simple, poetic and inspiring is just amazing. Think outside of the box.

The World Trade Web (WTW) is an economic network representing international trade activities: in other words it is a sort of a weighted network whose nodes correspond to countries with edge weights reflecting the value of imports and/or exports between countries.

Recently, a group of mathematicians at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire have recreated the WTW from between 1870 and 2006 and then simulated it under different stress conditions.

Actually, once a sensible model is defined, network simulations could shed light on the interdependence of the network nodes and components and the implications for robustness to sudden component or node failures. So, mathematicians at Dartmouth College have shown that the WTW evolved over time through a main trend moving towards “robust yet fragile” configurations (robust under random attacks but fragile under targeted attack). Said configurations are highly correlated with the connectance of the network. Moreover, simulations showed that rapid transitions appeared in the structure of the network in the 1960s and 1970s, where the measures of robustness rapidly increased (due to coming globalization) before resuming a declining trend (as indicated by connectance and trade imbalances). On one side higher connectance provides benefits, on the other side it provides shorter paths for impacts to propagate through a network.

Mathematical studies like these are fascinating and can play a role in the evaluation (and prediction) of the trends of economic markets, particularly with regard to stability.

What about applying this mathematics to make an extinction simulation of the Telecom market ? (extinction analysis is a technique used in the analysis of ecosystems, for the purposes of investigating the robustness of a network)

The paper is available at:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1104/1104.4380v1.pdf

The cost of silicon wafer (independently of the complexity of the circuits you have etched on it) is about 250,000$ per square meter. Has Moore predicted, the cost per chip decreases, but this is because we can cram more transistor on a given surface, not because the surface gets cheaper.

It is therefore understandable that researchers are trying to use that surface at best. Unfortunately, as soon as a new chip is released someone gets a bright idea that would make better use of that surface if only one can change the architecture of the chip but at that time it is too late. One can update the software but it is not possible to update the hardware of the chip, rewire the transistors.

Actually, the restructuring of a chip is possible with the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) but these chips are very big and hence very costly.

The Tabula Chip

Now, however, a new company, Tabula, has announced a reprogrammable chip that is much smaller than an equivalent FPGA and hence much cheaper.

For their cost, FPGA are used in the prototyping phase to finely tune the design of a new chip but they are not used in the final product, if this has to be produced in high volumes, because it is cheaper to use normal chips. With the Tabula chip it gets economically viable to use the same chip during the prototyping phase and in the product. The added bonus is the possibility to change the chip once it is in the product thus enabling a better operation of the product. It is what is done with the upload of a new software version but now it is the hardware that is being upgraded.

The surface of the Tabula chip is one third of an equivalent FPGA chip making it 5 times cheaper. The trick used is to provide tunnels to connect different part of the chip, an equivalent of stacking 8 layers of circuits on one another. This provide great restructuring opportunities allowing for a substantial redesign on the chip even after it has been soldered on a main-board.

Another thread in the fabric that is leading us to the transformation of products into services! A company will be able to sell you a cell phone and after a few months propose you the get an upgrading to your cell phone, making it more performant! Or, may be, it could be the Telecom Operator you are connecting to that will ask permission to rewire your phone to provide better service!

A British company, Peratech, has created a transparent material that is sensitive to pressure. It can be used as a touch screen and in addition to detect the position of your finger it can tell the pressure you are exercising.

The screen is made by a very thin layer, 6-8 micron, of Quantum Tunnelling Composite (QTC) sandwiched between two layers of Indium Tin Oxide in turn sandwiched between two glasses to provide rigidity to the screen.

The resulting screen is very precise in terms of touch localization (much better than a resistive based touch screen) and is much more power savvy than a capacitive based touch screen (since it uses energy only when touched).

The winning feature is the very thin layer of QTC that can detect extremely tiny deformations and hence can tell how much pressure is being applied. This opens up intuitive manipulation of 3D objects representation.

This technology is also being applied to create an artificial skin for robots providing them with the sense of touch.

Representation of electrons flow in QTC

What is QTC? In normal composite the polymer contains carbon molecules that act as conductor. Their surface is smooth and the C molecules touch one another creating a conduction path. In the case of QTC the conduction path is created by nano particles of metal. These have a spiked surface, as shown in the figure, and are not touching one another since a tiny wetting substance keeps them apart. The spikes allow a much greater quantity of free electrons to be stored (since electrons love to stay on the surface of things…). According to classical physics the electrons cannot move from one particle to the next since they would have to overcome a barrier that is greater than their potential.

Intuitively, when I press the QTC the particles get closer one another and this barrier decreases (but never goes to zero since the particles never touch one another). According to quantum physics, there is a probability that an electron can jump over a barrier (or better tunnel through it) and this probability depends on the electron energy and the barrier potential. This is not just math equations, it is real and the electrons indeed tunnel. The probability of tunneling can be calculated with precision and by measuring the electrons flow we can tell what is the barrier value and hence we can calculate the distance between the particles and derive the pressure that move them that close. E voilà!

Google has just announced Google Map Maker to let people like me and you (so far only those in the USA) to annotate Google Maps and provide more details based on their knowledge of the land.

One can add info on the best pizza, another a shortcut through a park or even the perfect spot to watch ganders.

It is just amazing to see how the collective efforts of people can create something that is very valuable, for free. Clearly Google is going to benefit real $ since its map ecosystem will be even more attractive to advertisers. But still. Everyone is also going to gain and this is exactly what a biz ecosystem is about!

The images from Minority Report of manipulation of information on floating screens are still vivid in our memory. They were the product of special effects, implemented using computers. But they were not just a figment of imagination.

At that time a researcher at the MIT, John Underkoffler, was working on application of gesture recognition to the manipulation of information. Similar work were taking place in other universities.

Few years later John founded Oblong, with the idea of revolutionizing the world of human environment interface.

[vimeo 2229299]

As you can see from the video this idea is now a product, an expensive one, though. But we know that when technology is the cost, that cost is going to come down in a short time.

My bet is that by the end of this decade we will have this technology in several ambient and some geeks, or well to do, will have it in their living room. Give it a few more year and the remote controls, the light switches and the washing machine knobs will be history.

What if we could use a 4 meter telescope to extract the visual information obtainable with a 40 meter one? What if we could observe rotating black holes thus confirming one of Einstein’s most intriguing predictions? And what if the same novel physical discovery allowed us to multiply twenty fold the information we can carry on a given frequency?

Fabrizio Tamburini

Sounds like sci-fi or an Hollywood movie? If we added that the author of all this is a 47 year old Venetian Astronomer with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics that, in spite of being one of the world’s most renowned experts in the field of quantum physics, is still in search of his first stable occupation in the Italian academia you would surely be inclined towards the Hollywood blockbuster.

Sometimes, however, life is stranger than fiction and we had proof of this during the compelling lecture Fabrizio Tamburini gave yesterday in Venice Telecom Italia Future Centre. He announced that by the end of June an experiment like the seminal one of Marconi will take place in Venice in order to prove his theory; a transmitter will be placed at San Marco while the receiving station will be placed on the facing island of San Giorgio. For a given frequency three channels of information will be transmitted: if they will be received without interfering one with the other the theorised breakthrough in the telecommunications world will be reality.

Venice experiment layout

But what’s the physical discovery that could allow this breakthrough? Details are quite involved (interested parties may find them here and here); the theory stems from some Majorana works of the 30′s. Its essence is nonetheless clear: electromagnetic radiations (in the following we’ll refer for clarity sake to light, a subset of them) possess characteristics we’re already familiar with. They possess a frequency (which accounts for an em radiations to be light instead of an x-ray or a radio wave and accounts for the perceived colour of light), an amplitude (is the light we perceive dim or strong?) and a polarization (which is the characteristic of light used to allow 3D projections and also used in sunglasses and photographic filters to eliminate scattered light).

Tamburini theorised and observed a supplementary propriety: vorticity. By observing the vorticity of the light received from a telescope we’re able to extract more information from it thus overtaking current diffraction limits and obtaining what once was feasible only with a telescope 10 times as big. Rotating black holes give light curved by the a vorticity that allow us to observe them.

Electromagnetic vortex transmission

And last but not least, by emitting electromagnetic radiations with a given vorticity and by being able to discriminate between em radiations differing only in their vorticity we’re effectively adding a new dimension to electromagnetic transmissions, multiplying the quantity of information we’re able to transmit for a given frequency!

So stay tuned on this blog: we’ll be keen to report on the actual experiment and give you further details on Tamburini’s activities.

Video Projection Mapping is a projection technique that can transform almost any surface into a dynamic video display. Specialized software is used to warp and mask the projected image to make it fit perfectly on irregularly shaped surfaces. The result is a dynamic projection installation that transcends ordinary video projection. Thanks to the new projectors it can be done over a match box or a large building facade.

Here in Venice I took part in a video mapping exposition at A+A art gallery. There are different works from local artists. You can see some of that on the video below. My work was based on a series of videos I am making on Venice Water Ways. I taped the image of San Marco tower reflected on the wet floor of the piazza, masked and projected on alittle wooden tower, creating a relation between image and form.

It is another case of augmented reality because it can create a window of digital projection in our real world.

Now withmicro projectors it is possible to adapt it to the mobile phones, it is a newfield of services that can be provided by Telecom Italia and Tim Brasil.

Here are some examples of large professional Video Mapping, done by a brasilian artist from Belo Horizonte called 1mpar.

Forecasters are talking  big numbers: 50 billions, 100 billions, 1 trillion. They are talking about sensors.

There are already billions of them, in our homes, in cars, in the environment. And they are growing fast. So the figure of 50 billions forecasted by Ericsson in 2015 does not seem far fetched at all. Nor a 100 billion figure in the following years. May be, the 1 trillion sensors forecasted by HP by 2020 is too big. But I wouldn’t be too sure. It correspond to 130 sensors per person and we may get there.

Graphic display of information derived from sensors data spread over a territory

We do not need to wait for those big numbers, we can start exploiting the big numbers we already have!

There is a lot of sensitivity behind the idea of using sensors data. These data can reveal private information, directly or indirectly through correlation. And Telecom Operators, that are in a wonderful position to gather a significant amount of data (any cell phone is a sensor, providing at the very least localization information in real time) are wary on using them, not to mention opening them up to third party usage.

We have been talking about our age as the Information Society Age, and, true enough, we generate massive amount of data, we are flooded by them but we are just marginally exploit them. These data are usually embedded within processes and are not accessible to third parties.

Just think about the difference it made when Apple opened up the links to the inner cell phone to third parties letting them develop applications. There are now over 450,000 of them. Compare this number with the number of services that cell phones where providing before this opening and nothing more needs to be said.

The same is going to happen once sensors data are made available. Expect an unexpected avalanche of services.

As Telcos are pondering on what to do with these data other parties are at hard at work to make this happen.

One of them is Pachube, a UK start up (it started in 2007) that is providing access to sensor’s data whose owners have agreed on their disclosure. Pachube set up a cloud to let third parties access the data to crunch them and provide services. They charge 2$ a month to get access to historical data or to large quantity of them, whilst current data are available for free.

Today they get feeds from 6 million sensorsa day from all over the world and this number is growing fast.

Pachube collects sensors data from all over the world

Are Telcos ready for this new business or will they see the train of opportunities pass before their eyes?