Developers by Davis

Development by Davis: “With Mozilla Webmaker, a new generation of coders learns the language of the web” plus 3 more

With Mozilla Webmaker, a new generation of coders learns the language of the web
Relationship coffee: Creating shared value with transparency and trust
Intel Announces New Intel Science and Technology Center for Big Data
Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 Wrap-Up

With Mozilla Webmaker, a new generation of coders learns the language of the web

Posted: 31 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT

We're proud to launch "Mozilla Webmaker," a new program to help people everywhere make, learn and play using the open building blocks  of the web.

The goal: help millions of people move from using the web to making the web. With new tools to use, projects to create, and events to join, we want to help the world increase their understanding of the web and take greater control of their online lives.

And we'd like you to join us.

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Relationship coffee: Creating shared value with transparency and trust

Posted: 31 May 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Sustainable Harvest's inclusive business model is called Relationship Coffee™. While many companies today operate on a series of short-term, profit-driven decisions, Relationship Coffee transforms the way business is done by building long-term relationships based on transparency and trust. We create market access and traceable supply chains for smallholder farmers, and involve our suppliers in negotiations with the final buyer, helping the farmers become empowered, informed actors in the coffee supply chain. By shifting the paradigm from closed, one-off transactions to an open and collaborative supply chain, we have seen Relationship Coffee strengthen the specialty coffee industry and help all stakeholders thrive in their businesses.

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Intel Announces New Intel Science and Technology Center for Big Data

Posted: 30 May 2012 12:00 PM PDT

Intel announced today 6^th in a series of Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTCs) with the opening of the ISTC for Big Data. The center will be headquartered at MIT, with a community of collaborating institutions including Brown University, Portland State University, University of Washington, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, University of California at Santa Barbara, and Stanford University

We opened this center to address the unprecedented growth in digital data and the issues that it entails. In the future, this is likely to accelerate even further through more pervasive use of digital media, ubiquitous connectivity, growing use of smart mobile devices, growing penetration of geo-spatial mapping and round-the-clock sensing. This data flood will be large in size, multi-dimensional and highly correlated. Storing and providing unique visualization techniques to efficiently parse and extract meaningful information from this data is key, and it is the ultimate goal of the center.

With this in mind, this new ISTC for Big Data will explore data analytics to support data-intensive discovery including database management, analytics and visualization support for massive datasets and their implications for computer architectures.

Expanding on this, the research at this center will focus on exploring the challenges and opportunities associated with Big Data including

A) Designing and prototyping hardware and software for storing, managing, processing, understanding, and visualizing "big data". This includes user interfaces and data visualization.

B) Discovering novel algorithms and scalable, co-designed architectural alternatives for effectively dealing with the three inherent attributes of big data: massive, unstructured, and dynamic;

C) Innovative ways of exploiting modern processor technology trends such as, multicore, manycore, and emerging non-volatile memory technologies

The research could have impact in several areas. Financial services applications are an example of business with big data challenges, as they look for patterns to try to make sense of the huge streams of data.

In science, there's already a huge volume of data that needs to be processed in areas like astronomy (to make sense of Petabytes of data from telescopes) or genetics (with experiments on gene expression with the hope of creating more customized treatments for people), as well as medical collaboration and diagnosis.

Another area is "urban-scale sensing" where cities have the potential to generate massive amounts of data from GPS-enabled vehicles and other devices, electricity and water monitors, and weather and air quality systems. The research would help with storing the data and making sense of it so that the city managers and inhabitants can benefit.

We expect synergy between this new center and the other ISTC centers, such as the ISTC for Cloud Computing and ISTC for Embedded Computing.

The leaders of the center are Dr. Sam Madden (Academic PI) and Dr. Michael Stonebreaker (Academic Co-PI) both at MIT, Dr. Pradeep Dubey (Intel PI), and Dr. Jeff Parkhurst (Intel program director).

Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 Wrap-Up

Posted: 30 May 2012 10:50 AM PDT

As promised, Intel had a significant presence at the 2012 Maker Faire Bay Area, ranging across a wide variety of departments, from the Corporate Affairs Group sponsoring Education Day, Intel Labs supporting the Make Your World Booth, the Intelligent Systems Group demoing their Computer Controlled Orchestra, and Intel Studios documenting it all.

Education Day & Setup

Maker Faire started off with a bang with Education Day, two days before the main faire opened. Nearly 2000 students toured a selection of booths and exhibits to get a taste of what Maker Faire is all about. Around 90 volunteers from Intel, most from the Interaction and Experience Research Group at Intel Labs, acted as tour docents to help the student groups navigate the space.

Featured on the tour were a group of Intel Makers: Intel Labs employees who participate in the Maker movement in their spare time. Mario Alzate showed off his homemade electric-power tricycle and Eric Salskov found it easy to demonstrate his wind turbine in the gusts that blew across the San Mateo site. Lucas Ainsworth displayed his mechanical cardboard Kinetic Creatures while Jay Silver encouraged kids to make music with bananas and a Makey Makey kit.

Intel family members got involved too, with Karen and Josh Tanenbaum showing off their Steampunk props and superhero, Captain Chronomek and father-son duo Jim and Schuyler St. Leger printing Intel keyfobs on a MakerBot. Vicki Fang's Peacock Chair was put out of commission by an early morning power surge, but still made a lovely display, and Mikal Hart showed off his Arduino-based "reverse geocaching" puzzle box, which demands to be taken to a specific location before revealing its treasures. Pete Denman demonstrated his custom wheelchair, electronics, computer interfaces, and utensils as well as provided kids an opportunity to create a collaborative art piece.

At the end of Friday setup, as the Makers put the finishing touches on their exhibits before opening to the public Saturday morning, Intel sponsored the traditional paella dinner that serves as a kickoff for the Faire.

Make Your World Booth

Intel Labs and the Lab at Rockwell Group co-sponsored the Make Your World booth, a playful environment for kids to learn about basic circuits and interactivity.

The walls of the booth held an assortment of Arduinos, lights, motors, and audio outputs, accessed via small gold terminals sticking out of the wood. Visitors to the booth were given alligator-clip wires that allowed them to complete the circuits by connecting terminals and seeing the effect in the space: blinking lights, spinning objects, funny sounds, and more.

Kids who wanted to learn more were encouraged to take part in our switch workshops, where they used foam board and tin foil to create more complex inputs to control the circuit. We also gave away sticker sheets of different "inputs" and "outputs" and a take-home kit containing supplies for making a simple circuit out of copper tape, LEDs and a battery. Many of the stickers ended up on the booth itself, along with notes, doodles, and other decorations.

Computer Controlled Orchestra

The Intelligent Systems Group, in collaboration with Sisu Devices, showed off the Computer Controlled Orchestra throughout the Faire in the Fiesta Hall. Intel Atom processors power a complex mechanical system that uses paintballs to play musical notes in a highly coordinated and graceful ballet of sound and motion.

Intel's Computer Controlled Orchestra

Maker Education Initiative

Perhaps most significantly, Maker Faire 2012 witnessed the founding of a new non-profit organization, the Maker Education Initiative (MEI), of which Intel (through our Corporate Affairs Group and the efforts of Carlos Contreras) is a cornerstone partner. Along with Intel, the Maker Education Initiative's founding sponsors are Cognizant and O'Reilly Media, and the goal of the organization is "to create more opportunities for young people to make, and, by making, build confidence, foster creativity, and spark interest in science, technology, engineering, math, the arts—and learning as a whole". The MEI announcement got re-blogged and tweeted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.