Silicon Valley View of the Digital World

Greetings from the Australian National University, where Monique Morrow, from CISCO is speaking on "Changing landscape of a digitised world: Are you ready?". This is an interesting preview of the good and the bad of the digital future of work, education, government and culture. While thought provoking, one aspect worried me was that this was very much from a North American/European point of view, with just one mention of anywhere else (India). It would be useful to have a perspective, of the world's growing economies in Asia, Africa and South America, even Australia. On example is that Monique talked about the TV show "CSI: Cyber" and knowing the real person it is based on. There are also two hi-tech TV shows set in Canberra, with ANU used for some scenes: Secret City and The Code (some of the characters look familiar from my government work).

Cisco Cius Business Tablet Telephone

Cisco have announced a 7 inch Android tablet computer aimed at business. The Cisco Cius docks with a desktop IP phone, making a device reminiscent of 1990s computer/phone and video phone units, which did not prove to be popular. But the Cius can be removed and used as a wireless tablet computer. It will be interesting to see if this catches on.

Other tablet computers come with a docking station and could be placed alongside an IP phone. Also these tablet computers have IP phone functionality built in and could be used as a very functional desktop phone, with the addition of a low cost handset.

One flaw in the Cius design is that it appears to have no physical keyboard on the phone handset. The intention appears to be that the tablet touch screen is used as the dialing pad. This is a poor design choice, as phone keypads can be dialed quickly without the operator looking at it and receive heavy use which is likely to wear out the touch screen.

IP-Enabled Energy Management

Steven Fraser, Head of Cisco Research, talked at ANU last month. One topic was Green ICT and when I mentioned I teach it at ANU, he put me in touch with Rob Aldrich at CISCO USA, co-author of IP-Enabled Energy Management: A Proven Strategy for Administering Energy as a Service (Rob Aldrich and John Parello, 2010, also available as a Kindle e-book).

There is also proposal for a "Power and Energy Monitoring MIB" co-authored by John Parello to the IETF, October 16, 2010. This is for an Internet standard which is a subset of the existing Management Information Base (MIB) specifically for power and energy monitoring of devices. Essentially what CISCO is proposing to do is to bring together the previously separate approaches to computer based monitoring in a building: one based on IP which was used for Internet networking devices and a separate network was using for building monitoring typically using individual serial lines and proprietary protocols for SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition).

Product Description

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Software through Iteration

Greetings from the Australian National University where Steven Fraser, Head of Cisco Research is speaking on "Best Practices: Tales of Adoption and Agility through Iteration". He is starting back in the early days of software engineering with the first NATO Software Engineering Conference and Fred Brooks.

The seminar is taking place in the Computer Science and IT Common Room. This is a curious room with two doors: one marked CS Staff Room and the other CSIRO Staff Room, but leading into the same shared room.

Steven discussed ways to encourage the adoption if best practice in software development. Curiously, given that he was talking at a unviersity, he did not mention the role of education. He then went on to discuss CISCO's work with universities on research. CISCO has $5M for "gifts" to researchers, typically for small projects with a couple of students (4% currently goes to Austrlaian projects). CISCO issues RFP-Based Research Proposals. I noticed there is an RFP for "Green" including "Business Sustainability in the Context of Energy Efficiency: organizational and business aspects of energy conservation and sustainability".

Software "Best" Practices: Tales of Adoption and Agility through Iteration

Steven Fraser (Cisco Research Center)

COMPUTER SCIENCE SEMINAR

DATE: 2010-11-30
TIME: 16:00:00 - 17:30:00
LOCATION: CSIT Common Room, Level 2, CSIT Building
CONTACT: Elisa.Baniassad@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
Software "best" practices have been increasingly embraced through a mix of enthusiast passion and practical need. Agile practices no longer have the luxury of "choosing" small non-mission-critical projects with co-located teams as first suggested by early practitioners. This talk will outline a variety of "best" practices and processes to share observations on approaches and adoption.

Steven will also address "Collaboration Opportunities with Cisco"

Note that "afternoon tea" (inc. wine, beer and nibbles) will be provided.

BIO:
Steven Fraser is the Director of the Cisco Research Center (http://www.cisco.com/research) in San Jose California with responsibilities for developing university research collaborations and facilitating technology transfer between researchers and Cisco Business Units. Previously, Steven was a member of Qualcomm's Learning Center in San Diego, California enabling technical learning and development in software engineering best practices. Steven held a variety of technology roles at Bell-Northern Research and Nortel including Process Architect, Senior Manager (Global External Research), and Design Process Advisor. In 1994, he was a Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) collaborating on the development of team-based domain analysis (software reuse) techniques. Fraser was the XP2006 General Chair, the Corporate Support Chair for OOPSLA'07 and OOPSLA'08, Tutorial Chair for both XP2008 and ICSE 2009 and co-Publicity Chair for XP2010. With a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal, Fraser is a member of the ACM, a senior member of the IEEE, and a frequent impresario of conference panels and special events. (For Steven's publications, see http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/%7Eley/db/indices/a-tree/f/Fraser:Steven.html)