Contributions to Kinect for Xbox 360. Contributions to Kinect for Xbox 360 Kinect for Xbox 360 has been a smashing success since its November 2010 debut, thanks in part to contributions from Microsoft Research to its audio, skeletal-tracking, and facial-recognition capabilities. And further refinements could mean the best is yet to come. Silicon Valley’s Kinect Contributions Mihai Budiu distinctly remembers the buzz surrounding Kinect for Xbox 360 when it was unveiled in 2009 as Project Natal. Helping Kinect Recognize Faces To use a Kinect for Xbox 360 gaming device is to see something akin to magic.
Kinect Audio: Preparedness Pays Off It always helps to be prepared. Kinect Body Tracking Reaps Renown By any standard, Kinect for Xbox 360 has proved to be a technological sensation. The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. Rescuing Nokia? A former exec has a radical plan. Midsize businesses face enterprise-caliber threats Interview A couple of months ago, a book appeared in Finland which has become a minor sensation. In the book, a former senior Nokia executive gives his diagnosis of the company, and prescribes some radical and surprising solutions.
Up until now, the book has not been covered at all in the English language. This is the first review of the proposals outlined in Uusi Nokia (New Nokia - the manuscript) and draws on three hours of interviews with its author, Juhani Risku. It’s very, very timely – and even if you don’t follow Nokia, mobile or telecomms it’s a fascinating exercise in business analysis and organisational studies. Enjoy. [If you’re in a hurry – use this handy jump list: Nokia Research » Symbian » Marketing » Dual CEO model Design: contextual » London Office People: Kallasvuo » Vanjokki » Aho » Ojanperä » Ahtisaari » McDowell] The diagnosis is largely one that others have made.
Midsize businesses face enterprise-caliber threats. Nokia’s New Chief Faces a Culture of Complacency. Minh Uong/The New York Times The prototype was demonstrated to business customers at Nokia’s headquarters in Finland as an example of what was in the company’s pipeline, according to a former employee who made the 2004 presentation in Espoo. But management worried that the product could be a costly flop, said the former employee, Ari Hakkarainen, a manager responsible for marketing on the development team for the Nokia Series 60, then the company’s premium line of smartphones. Nokia did not pursue development, he said. “It was very early days, and no one really knew anything about the touch screen’s potential,” Mr. Hakkarainen explained. As Nokia’s new chief executive, Stephen Elop, takes over this month, he faces a formidable task: to regain the company’s lost ground in the smartphone segment of the global phone market, especially in the United States, while maintaining its worldwide dominance as the largest maker of mobile phones.
His biggest obstacle, according to Mr. Mr. Why Nokia's Collapse Should Scare Apple - Patrick Barwise and Seán Meehan - The Conversation. By Patrick Barwise and Seán Meehan | 9:01 AM April 25, 2011 Nokia’s inability to field a credible response to the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and Google’s Android operating system in 2008 has precipitated a freefall in its share price. Today, Apple is riding high, making this the perfect time for it — and every successful company — to reflect on Nokia’s fall and ensure that they don’t suffer the same fate. Not so long ago, Nokia was the disrupter. In 1994, the dominant global provider of mobile handsets was Motorola: its shares were trading at an all-time high and it was seen as an outstanding innovator and even described by a senior consultant at A.
T. Kearney as “the best-managed company in the world” — not so different from Apple today. By 2000, Motorola’s global market share had collapsed from 45% to 15%, while Nokia’s had grown to a market-leading 31%. Over time and with success, Nokia too lost some of its ability to stay in touch with, and adapt early to, market trends. Unwired View » How Nokia was disrupted. Part 1. Back in 2007 Nokia was riding high. They owned well over a third of the mobile phone market, and about every second smartphone sold in the world had Nokia name on it. They set the directions for the rest of the industry, leaving competitors scrambling to catch up with every new product launch. The latest device – Nokia N95 – was a masterpiece of technology.
It took more then a year for Nokia’s biggest competitor – Samsung – to launch anything remotely competitive. Fast forward 4 years. What happened? To those familiar with Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory, the answer should be pretty obvious. How great companies get disrupted Every industry goes through 2 different development/change cycles. During the period of sustaining innovation, players in existing markets innovate by adding features to the products that makes them better and more attractive to the ever growing number of users.
And that’s exactly what happened in a smartphone industry over the last 4 years. Why big tech companies like Google can still innovate. Google lost one of its star engineers this week. Can a company be too big to innovate? Star Google engineer Lars Rasmussen leaves the company for Facebook Facebookers also reportedly are leaving to start their own companies Can a company be too big to innovate? (CNN) -- Earlier this week, one of Google's rock-star engineers left that mammoth company -- population: 23,000 -- for Facebook, which has about 2,000 employees. The departure of Lars Rasmussen, co-creator of Google Maps and Google Wave, is only one example, but it raises interesting questions about the precarious nature of corporate tech innovation: Can companies grow and continue to be be creative and innovative? Or will smaller operations always have a monopoly in the new-ideas department?
This is especially pressing because, with this latest project, the highly ambitious e-mail replacement software called Google Wave, Rasmussen was trying to prove to himself and to Google that innovation is possible at an enormous company. Why Google can’t build Instagram. Tonight I was talking with an exec at Google and I brought up the success of Instagr.am (they’ve gotten more than 500,000 downloads in just a few weeks) and asked him “why can’t Google do that?” I knew some of the answers. After all, I watched Microsoft get passed by by a whole group of startups (I was working at Microsoft as Flickr got bought by Yahoo, Skype got bought by eBay, etc etc). I told him a few of my theories, and he told me back what they are seeing internally. Turns out he was talking to me about these items because Google, internally, knows it has an innovation problem (look at Google Wave or Buzz for examples of how it is messed up) and is looking to remake its culture internally to help entrepreneurial projects take hold. 1.
Google can’t keep its teams small enough. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. So, how does a big company innovate? Another way? Some of these lessons sure seem counter intuitive. So, how about you? Jeff Bezos on innovation: Amazon ‘willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time’ One question at Amazon.com’s shareholder meeting this morning in Seattle clearly made an impression on Jeff Bezos, sparking an extraordinary response from the Amazon CEO and founder on the qualities of innovation and the characteristics of the company.
The question: Amazon seems to be executing well lately — is the company taking enough risks? Added the shareholder, “If it’s still Amazon’s philosophy to make bold bets, I would expect that maybe some of them wouldn’t work out, but I am just not seeing that. So, my question is where are the losers?” Continue reading for the full text of Bezos’ response, transcribed from the company’s webcast. In a way, that is like the nicest compliment I’ve ever gotten. First of all, I think we have gotten pretty lucky recently. You should anticipate a certain amount of failure. We’ll have more of Bezos’ comments on other topics in a follow-up post. [Update: Hat tip to Evan Jacobs, who asked the question.] Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator's Dilemma - James Allworth.
At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future. So This is Openness, Google X, and What Have You Done? You probably recall the stories and, well, I may have even written one or two of them, including the requisite quotes from Google spokespersons. They were about the spirit of innovation at Google Labs, and whether or not the model of trying a plethora of new projects simultaneously and let Darwin decide the victor, was a smart way to construct a viable service. The lessons, as Google would teach them, went something like this: There are many different ways to build great products, and there's no way to know in advance which way is the best.
Whenever possible, Google leans toward "openness," which involves as many of its target consumers as possible... wait a minute. What am I doing babbling on about it, when I can let Google's own history speak on its own behalf? Survival of the fittest An example of top-down innovation at Google is its Translate technology.
The core business of the company, the Google engineers wrote, is innovation. It's a small world after all... Flatland.