Tag: tipping point

Introducing the AWS IoT cloud

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 11, 2015

The emerging IoT developer community received a much anticipated jolt of news when Amazon finally announced new enterprise services dedicated to the AWS IoT cloud launch at their 2015 re:Invent conference.
This new AWS IoT cloud service will permit web based interfaces to manage IoT events from various devices: sensors, wearables, drones, and of course mobile tools and apps around an established AWS ecosystem.

The AWS IoT cloud emerges as Amazon’s long term platform following the SalesForce Thunder platform announced last month. Both vendors look to establish key IoT cloud solutions in the corporate enterprise space. They join Cisco’s IoT, Microsoft’s Azure IoT, Oracle’s Movintracks along side GE’s energy launch of Current IoT. The race is now on to process millions of data events from light bulbs to dishwashers and cars over the MQTT protocol and process those messages in their respective clouds.

Amazon is leveraging 11 services around their IoT Cloud strategy to include existing AWS services: Kinesis, Redshift, S3, SNS, SQS, ML, DynamoDB and Lambda. A key investment to this strategy was the recent acquisition of 2lemetry, a IoT enterprise company tuned for transforming raw data from IoT devices onto their ThingFabric platform.

Tags amazon, analytics, AWS, AWS IoT Cloud, business, change, cisco, cloud computing, GE Current, Globalization, Innovation, IoT, kinesis, knowledge, lambda, microsoft, MQTT, Network, oracle, raspberry pi, re:Invent, redshift, tipping point, trends

Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Education Globalization Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest read: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 9, 2015

Tim Wu’s second book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires is wonderful examination how American information empires were established and stifled innovation at the same time. This is my second book by Wu following his brilliant Who Controls the Internet.
Wu identifies long business cycles surrounding the birth of information systems. While they begin open over time they were consolidated and driven by the market to become closed.

We displays how they become open again following amazing innovations force a business change in order to survive in the new marketplace.

The Master Switch opens with the birth of the Bell AT&T telephone monopoly. This is a facinating story when held against the garage startups of Apple and Google.

There is an amazing look at how countries and cultures also view information empires differently. The case for Wu is the capitalist, independent market approach to radio vs the UK’s BBC dominated by the royal family.

The Master Switch reveals how four key markets actually hold government infrastructure: telecommunications, banking, energy and transportation. These four and their capitalist owners for generations established control over any citizen’s attempt at challenging their monopolies. The lesson Wu establishes is corporate control by closed technologies. Yet one cannot help but understand they magically protected the country from the devastating affects of revolution leading up to and more importantly the horrific aftermath of World War I that forever removed Paris as the hub for film entertainment.

Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Globalization Google Innovation Internet2 Milwaukee Network OpenSource Technology WiscNet

LMSaaS

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date August 31, 2015

Over breakfast this weekend at a popular farmhouse two high school teachers sat next to me to discuss how their respective LMS solutions made teaching difficult. Both were from wealthy suburbs outside Milwaukee. What really peaked my interest was hearing how one spent over 45 minutes trying to add polling for in-class feedback.
I helped lead the adoption of a Moodle LMS at a private Wisconsin college in 2007 that is still in use today and also had the pleasure of attending a conference at UW-Madison with Martin Dougiamas the founder of Moodle.

Yet over that breakfast I was intrigued by their difficulty with all things LMS for the upcoming school year. Frustration ranged from how one teacher received no LMS training (poll example above) while the second teacher spoke about her district migrating to a new LMS vendor over the summer.

Of course no technology discussion can avoid a teacher mentioning K12 servers going offline for hours during the school day making their teaching even more difficult. Seems like teachers have a lot to confront on a daily basis in delivering education to a classroom of twenty plus students. A local LMS run from an empty closet is no longer acceptable.

Tags amazon LMSaaS, analytics, culture, google classroom, Innovation, k12, k12.wi.us, LMSaaS, moodle, Network, Technology, tipping point, WiscNet

Education Globalization Reading Vietnam War

Latest read: Why Viet Nam? Prelude to America’s Albatross

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date August 20, 2015

It took me four years to locate Why Viet Nam?: Prelude to America’s Albatross by Archimedes Patti. As a US Army Lieutenant Colonel, he joined the OSS (CIA) assigned to Indochina in January 1944, six months before D-Day. This is one of those rare books that layout the foundation of America’s role in Vietnam before the end of World War II.
Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross The strong Vietnamese opposition to French and British efforts to re-colonize Indochina after World War II for natural resources. Sound familiar? Patti provides surprising details regarding the CIA’s established relationship with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh.

This is simply a must read to understand how the CIA, US Army and US State Department established a foundation for IndoChina during World War II.

Yet for all of Ho’s efforts Patti reveals from D-Day to the dropping of the atomic bomb that old white European leaders alone determined the future of IndoChina with a second run of colonial exploitation of Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian peoples.

Patti was able to document the original developing political structures in Asia by the middle of World War II. Patti began meeting with Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap. He writes how both developed an independant and nationalist view of Vietnam’s future vs continued European and Chinese colonialism.

Make no mistake Dean Acheson established the “creation of an American world order” while Patti was the CIA officer on the ground. The CIA and State Department’s initial records on Ho Chi Minh were established in a cable written on December 31 1942 as the CIA was seeking French relations with Texaco in IndoChina.

Tags archimedes patti, colonialism, Dean Acheson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Education, Franklin D. Roosevelt, french union, Graham Greene, Harry S. Truman, Ho Chi Minh, indochina, Reading, tipping point, Viet Minh, Vietnam War, vo nguyen giap

Education Reading Vietnam War

Latest read: Death of a Generation How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date August 12, 2015

Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War by Howard Jones is a compelling well written topic that focuses on the critical years of the Kennedy Administration and the evolving US war in Vietnam. Jones has painstakingly researched how Diem was a key part of the increase of Vietcong success in and around Saigon from 1960.

The first half of the book details the repeated frustration all political and military leaders had with Diem only to see in 1961 the transfer of power to his brother Nhu.

Jones brings the opening eight chapters into focus on Diem’s inability to reform the political and social process in the south, locking his family into full control of the country’s wealth. The role of the US ambassadors were to move the Diem family towards democracy. We never succeeded.

At the same time the coming crisis is revealed with behind the scenes accounts of the multiple clashes within the Kennedy Administration. This contributed to Kennedy’s lack of trust with the Joint Chiefs of Staff following their Bay of Pigs fiasco. Jones has done well to bring the European and Cuban conflicts into the scope of how the US was approaching Vietnam, and ultimately China and the Soviet Union.

The Battle of Ap Bac in 1963 proved to be a perfect sign of how bad the South would fight in their first major battle. John Paul Vann‘s role in Ap Bac is now legendary. Coupled with the June Buddhist crisis and the worldwide attention to the self-immolation of Quang Duc which forever turned the south against Diem and his family. It was the fallout of this event that the Kennedy administration began exploring how to engineer a coup de tat.

Tags Buddhist crisis, dean rusk, edward landsdale, elbridge durbrow, frederick nolting, henry cabot lodge, john f kennedy, lucien conein, madame nhu, maxwell taylor, ngo dinh diem, Ngo Dinh Nhu, tipping point, Vietnam War