Google is planning to launch an experimental network that will make internet access better and faster for consumers.
Link to website
Tags: experimental network, Google, Network, internet access, Research, Internet2, Broadbandt, gigabit, high speed, trends,
The title of Philip Delves Broughton‘s Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School was interesting enough to jump on my reading list but when I began to see his book mentioned in blogs and on twitter I pulled it from my wish list and dropped it into my cart. It was not a mistake. The opportunity to learn about the life of a Harvard MBA candidate is a pretty interesting read.
Broughton is the former Paris bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph of London. His writing was easy, flowing and pleasant. Broughton was also very human in his approach to writing about the elite training ground for the high stress world of finance, venture capital and banking.
Broughton was also able to describe those MBA alums who spoke of those demands and losing wives and children to the long hours of business. It was a bit odd to read that more than a few alums went through the divorce process four times.
Worse yet was those few who admitted their own children did not know who they were due to those demanding hours. Most wanted their MBA to provide for their family while in fact they were losing touch with them in the process…all for the glory of wealth and fame.
And yes it was interesting to hear how his class of 2006 could land $400,000 jobs, his thirteen interviews with Google were pretty demanding.
In the end he skipped his graduation on a rainy Saturday in to take his infant son to his favorite Boston spot for cannoli. At one point in my life I would have ridiculed this man for skipping his Harvard commencement. For $175,000 (minus his new BMW — see below) you better be sure I would show up come rain or snow for that moment. Today with two small children and a backdrop of a soggy event on Harvard Square I kinda understood his decision.
I was impressed with his review of their first year known as RC: required cirriculum. The demands of Harvard’s case studies was rather impressive as their main tool for teaching. And from the looks of it those case studies required round the clock research and planning. The feel of his fellow students all aiming for post Harvard success was an interesting read, especially from the foreign students. Most of his fellow students agreed they did not want to be called upon to review a case study. The demands were extremely high and Broughton described a couple of painful episodes of his participation and those by his fellow students.
Al Gore’s latest book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis should be considered by anyone interested in learning how the world can conserve resources with next generation technologies to reduce the globe’s carbon footprint.
Its easy to think this book is a political sequel to An Inconvenient Truth. That would be a mistake. The book has set off all the political rhetoric one would expect.
I found Chapter 11: Population rather interesting and worth the read alone. Clearly we live in a world that is experiencing a sustained population boom in China and India.
This brings ultra-large scale social responsibility as well. The impact of population on energy and food is obviously critical but the underlying issue on this still taboo subject must be moved to the forefront.
How will China and India care, feed and shelter their children? More importantly how can green fuels be utilized in favor of coal and other cheap, outdated solutions? There are options.
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard looks to be another great read from Chip and Dan Heath who wrote Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. It was quickly listed as one of the top 100 business books of 2007….I couldn’t agree more. They launched a website dedicated to the lessons of Made to Stick and continued their book’s conversations online.
In mid 2009 it was announced Chip and Dan were finishing a follow up book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard scheduled to be released February 16 2010 and have also launched a new website supporting both Switch and Made to Stick plus their Fast Company column and speaking engagements.
–Hint: grab their RSS feed to stay ontop of their latest work.
Here is my review of their opening chapter. Exactly how do we change? How do individuals, organizations and societies change in a world of rapid news, technology and fast food? Better understood its not only old dogs that don’t change but individuals, small groups and large complex organizations.
The Heath Brothers introduce fundamental research to introduce a three-step framework for identifying the types of change necessary for humans to not only believe in but actually accept. Easier said than done right?
Welcome human psychology to the new evaluation of both rational and emotional sides of our brains. This is where Chip and Dan really shined in Made to Stick!
15 petabytes of data a year will be generated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) a particle physics project running at CERN and that requires a very robust network. Data generated by LHC is being distributed to over 7,000 scientists worldwide and travels across the US Midwest via BoreasNet.
In this video CERN technologists discuss the network’s requirements which supplies the TeraScale switches that connect 6,000 processors and 2,000 storage devices. TeraScale supports 672 line-rate Gigabit and 56 line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports per system, allowing CERN to deploy fewer systems and simplify the architecture of its network.
Tags: Large Hadron Collider, CERN, Network, Research, Internet2, BoreasNet, WiscNet, reading