Intelligence analysts may benefit from Amazon-like recommendation engine

“Analysts who read this report also read the following reports.” Intelligence analysts may see that sort of message — much like the book and movie recommendations consumers see at Amazon.com and NetFlix — when they look up intelligence reports in a new Web library. The U.S. government intelligence community is planning a $5 million secure intranet, called A-Space, that will include an Amazon-like recommendation engine for intelligence reports, plus MySpace-like pages to help locate internal experts. The goal is to help analysts “tunnel through” 16 different intelligence agencies and share information, according to The Washington Post (25 August 2007). The government already has launched Intellipedia, a secure, Wikipedia-like site for the intelligence community.

Is your private-sector intelligence effort making full use of these Web technologies, such as a recommendation engine to make sure customers of one report are encouraged to look at related materials?

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Related:
Military Intelligence Goes Web 2.0: DOD agency using wikis, AJAX, blogs
US launches ‘MySpace for spies’

Revenge by gadget, or annoyance-tech

People are inventing novel technologies to deal with life’s everyday annoyances. For example, MIT graduate students — who designed a “no-contact jacket” that delivers a jolt of electricity to anyone who touches it, such as subway gropers — call it “annoyancetech.”

In “Revenge by Gadget,” Jennifer Saranow of The Wall Street Journal (17 August 2007) describes some common annoyances and the commercially available products available to deal with them:

Lousy drivers? There’s a luminescent screen for the rear window of cars that allows the driver to flash one of five messages to other drivers, e.g., happy face, sad face, “Back Off,” “Idiot.” (My suggestion, in the interests of civility: When you know you’ve made a bad move, it would be nice to be able to flash “Sorry!”) Naturally, some folks have suggested images of offensive hand gestures.

Neighbor’s dog barking all night? Get an outdoor “bark control” device that shuts up other people’s dogs by answering their barks with an ultrasonic squeal that humans can’t hear. (The device is disguised as a birdhouse so the neighbors don’t know. No word on what the birds think.)

Boss or spouse tracking your whereabouts via cell phone? There’s an “excuse box” that plays one-minute sounds — such as police sirens or airport announcements — in the background to help explain to callers why you’re late or convince them you’re someplace other than where you really are.

Blaring TV at the car-repair shop? There’s a universal remote-control handset that allows people to shut off loud TVs in public places. But the zappers can be zapped: Some business owners have removed the infrared receivers from TVs in public places so the zappers won’t work.)

And, of course…

“Though illegal in the U.S., cell phone jammers have been floating around for nearly as long as cell phones.”

Historically, many inventions have dealt with life’s annoyances. The TV remote control — back in 1950 — allowed people to skip commercials. But inventions today benefit from the minitaurization of electronics and cheap production in China.

Disruptive innovation, defined

Jose de Francisco Lopez, co-founder of Consultaglobal.com, a research and management consulting firm focused on innovation practices, offers a framework for understanding different types of innovation. (It’s worth checking out the blog link to see his diagram.) Along the way, he tries to define various types of innovation, including disruptive, transformational, incremental and gradual innovation. Some of the definitions are stronger than others. Below — with some editing and paraphrasing (by me) — is his definition of disruptive innovation. See what you think.

Disruptive innovation: Technical or business breakthroughs that “change the rules of the game,” involve a relatively fast rollout and leapfrog established vendors. A successful disruptive innovation drives the market to a point of no return: creating new value, and rendering former solutions obsolete.

Does this spacesuit make me look fat?

In the four decades humans have been traveling into space, the suits have remained bulky, weighing in at about 300 lbs. They’re so clunky that about three-quarters of the energy astronauts exert on space walks goes towards trying to make the suit bend. But MIT researchers are designing a stretchy, skintight BioSuit that’s custom-fit for the individual astronaut. (Think Spider-Man instead of John Glenn.) As David Butcher of ThomasNet reports:

For the last seven years, MIT engineers have been designing a new, slimmer spacesuit that features full range of motion for the astronaut — one small step for space fashion, one giant leap for space travel.

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Related:
Photos of the prototype are here and here.
Boston Globe story: It’s one small step for fashion, one giant leap for spacesuits
Sunday Times (of London) story: Space chic: to the catwalk and beyond!

Top 10 job shortages, 2007

The top 10 jobs that employers have difficulty filling
(global, 2007):

1. Sales representatives
2. Skilled manual trades (e.g., electricians, carpenters, cabinet makers, masons/bricklayers, plumbers, welders)
3. Technicians (production/operations, engineering, maintenance)
4. Engineers
5. Accounting/finance staff
6. Laborers
7. Production operators
8. Drivers
9. Management/executives
10. Machinists/machine operators

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Source: Survey of 36,629 employers in 27 countries, by Manpower Inc., March 2007
Note: This is a global, aggregated list. There are significant regional and country-specific differences. For example, in the U.S., teachers are the second hardest job to fill. The full 2007 Manpower Annual Talent Shortage Survey is available here.