Penguin: Open Source Networking, Telecommunications Waking Up…

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Innovation, Knowledge, Money, Security, SmartPlanet, Software

Open Source Networking and a Vision of Fully Automated Networks

Transforming telecom

As an example of transformative change that is now underway, Joshipura pointed to the telecom industry. “For the past 137 years, we saw proprietary solutions,” he said. “But in the past several years, disaggregation has arrived, where hardware is separated from software. If you are a hardware engineer you build things like software developers do, with APIs and reusable modules.  In the telecom industry, all of this is helping to scale networking deployments in brand new, automated ways.”

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Yoda: Kids Build Their Own Internet

Architecture, SmartPlanet, Spectrum

Bandwidth: How First Nations Kids Built Their Own Internet Infrastructure

Three years ago, the people living in the Ochiichagwe'Babigo'Ining Ojibway Nation in Ontario would crowd in each other's homes and outside the band office to access what little internet the community had. There was dial-up, there was expensive cellular data, and there was some service from an internet provider in a neighboring town; when the network went down, it would sometimes take weeks for a technician to come and fix the issue.

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Sabine Balve: World Leaders Forum Dubai

Education, Governance, Innovation, Knowledge, Politics, Resilience, SmartPlanet, Sources (Info/Intel)
Sabine Balve
Sabine Balve

World Leaders Forum Dubai, Global Think and Do Tank, A Coalition of the Connected Ones…

World Leaders Forum Dubai is more then just a forum and global campaign, it is a call to greater citizenship, an international THINK and DO TANK, we have more then 100.000 follower and around 5.000 scientists and top experts in all global topic questions. Addressing Global Citizen to empower especially global's youth and women to create as CHANGE-MAKERS a more sustainable future for all – with a NEW GREEN Economic model: HUMAN to HUMAN (H2H) to promote a World in Peace!  WLFDubai regroups Teams, Partners and Sponsors worldwide, JOIN, you all matter to us! – some of our plans:

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Patrick Meier: An Introduction to Humanitarian UAVs – Comment by Robert Steele

Access, Architecture, Data, Design, Geospatial, Resilience, SmartPlanet, Sources (Info/Intel)
Patrick Meier
Patrick Meier

An Introduction to Humanitarian UAVs and their Many Uses

Satellite images have been used to support humanitarian efforts for decades. Why? A bird’s eye view of a disaster-affected area simply captures far more information than most Earth-based data-collection technologies can. In short, birds have more situational awareness than we do. In contrast to satellites, UAVs offer significantly higher-resolution imagery, are unobstructed by clouds, can be captured more quickly, by more groups and more often at a fraction of the cost with far fewer licensing and data-sharing restrictions than satellite imagery.

Introduction to UAVs

There are basically three types of UAVs: 1) the balloon/kite variety; 2) fixed-wing UAVs; 3) rotary-wing UAVs. While my forthcoming book looks at humanitarian applications of each type, I’ll focus on fixed-wing and rotary-wing UAVs here since these are of greatest interest to humanitarian organizations. These types of UAVs differ from traditional remote control planes and helicopters because they are programmable and intelligent. UAVs can be programmed to take-off, fly and land completely autonomously, for example. They often include intelligent flight stabilization features that adapt for changing wind speeds and other weather-related conditions. They also have a number of built-in fail-safe mechanisms; some of the newer UAVs even include automated collision avoidance systems.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Fixed-wing UAVs like senseFly’s eBees (above) are launched by hand and can land a wide variety of surfaces, requiring only a few meters of landing space. They fly autonomously along pre-programmed routes and also land themselves auto-matically. My colleague Adam from senseFly recently flew eBees to support recovery efforts in the Philippines following Typhoon Yolanda. Adam is also on the Advisory Board of the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators). Other fixed-wing UAVs are flown manually and require an airstrip for both manual take-off and landing. Rotary-wing UAVs, in contrast, are “helicopters” with three or more propellors. Quadcopters, for example, have four propellors, like the Huginn X1 below, which my colleague Liam Dawson, another Advisory Board member, flew following Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. One advantage of rotary-UAVs is that they take-off and land vertically. They can also hover in one fixed place and can also be programmed to fly over designated points.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Rotary-UAVs cannot glide like their fixed-wing counterparts, which means their batteries get used up fairly quickly. So they can’t stay airborne for very long (~25 minutes, 2 kilometer range, depending on the model) compared to fixed-wing UAVs like the eBee (~45 minutes, 3 kilometers). Advisory Board member Shane Coughlan is designing fixed-wing humanitarian UAVs that will have a range of several hundred kilometers. Fixed-wing UAVs, however, cannot hover in one place over time. So both types of UAVs come with their advantages and disadvantages. Most UAV experts agree that fixed-wing and rotary-wing UAVs can serve complementary purposes, however. You can quickly use a quadcopter to an initial aerial recon and then send a fixed-wing UAV for more detailed, high-resolution imagery capture.

Humanitarian Uses of UAVs

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SmartPlanet: The Open Source Business Model

Culture, Design, SmartPlanet, Software

smartplanet logoFreedom from shareholders: how to succeed as an open-source business

For many launching businesses in today's fast-moving tech sector, the goal is to attract investors and shareholders, and eventually selling it all to an even larger company. One tech vendor, however, is bucking this urge, preferring instead to have a positive impact on its communities — both users and the cities in which it is locating offices. 

“A lot of companies are following that typical Silicon Valley path,” says Brian Cheung, CEO and co-founder of Liferay, Inc., a Los Angeles-based company which provides portal technology to organizations. “They’ve got their investors, and they’re aiming for that acquisition or that public offering. We're very conscientious about not doing that. We're still independent, privately held, with no outside capital.” The advantage to staying private is that becoming beholden to shareholders stifles innovation, he adds.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Cheung at Liferay's recent confab in San Francisco, in which he expounded on his company's unique philosophy toward innovation and community development. The company, which builds and distributes its software via an open-source model, is founded on the belief that innovation and growth comes from helping to make its customers and communities stronger.

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