Homepage of Christopher (Chris) Welty Brief bio: Chris Welty is a Research Scientist at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York. Previously, he taught Computer Science at Vassar College, taught at and received his Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnice Institute, and accumulated over 14 years of teaching experience before moving to industrial research. Chris' principal area of research is Knowledge Representation, specifically ontologies and the semantic web, and he spends most of his time applying this technology to Information Retrieval and, in the past, Software Engineering. Dr. 15 Free Tools for Web-based Collaboration No man (or woman) is an island – and this statement can’t be any truer if you’re a designer or developer. Though paid/subscription services like Basecamp and Zimbra are great, individuals strapped for cash have a ton of alternatives that provide similar (if not better) features. In this article, you’ll find 15 free tools to help you facilitate remote/web-based collaboration. Whether you need basic whiteboarding/brainstorming tools or fully-featured project management applications – you should be able to find a tool or two that’s worth checking out. Google Docs Google Docs is an excellent application for collaboration.
Summary of strengths and weaknesses of each package in the context of analysing open-ended questions This section draws some comparisons between the four selected CAQDAS packages as an aid for users who may be considering which program to use for analyzing the responses to open-ended survey questions. There is no question of identifying which package is the ‘best’ because they each have different strengths and weaknesses, which may interact differently with the very wide range of circumstances that may be covered by the description “open-ended survey questions” (OEQs). In view of the time that it can take to become familiar with a new software program, we would suggest that if you have been using one of these packages already then that would probably be the best one for you to consider first. All four programs have been used successfully with the trial data so there are few critical weaknesses. The particular packages examined here are ATLAS.ti 6, MAXQDA 2010, NVivo 8, and QDA Miner 3.2. Presentation of the data and ease of reading the texts
Toolkits for User Innovation Toolkits for user innovation allow manufacturers to " abandon their attempts to understand user needs in detail in favor of transferring need-related aspects of product and service development to users along with an appropriate toolkit". User toolkits are based on the idea that manufacturers possess the knowledge of the solution possibilities, while the users possess the knowledge about needs. This information is sticky and can therefore not be transferred easily between the user and the manufacturer. User toolkits can be used in a variety of settings, and has been shown to be applicable in systems ranging from production of electronic circuitry to Apache security software (Franke & Von Hippel, 2003).
Hosain Rahman's beautiful failure By Alex Konrad with Ryan Bradley FORTUNE -- The bracelet -- a half-inch wide and rubberized -- represented a decade's work, a thing so small and versatile it could both track its wearer's health, then actively work to improve it. In a sense, the UP was meant to become a part of its user's life, a part of his or her story. An example: The UP measures sleep cycles by keeping track of movements throughout the night, then vibrates its wearer awake after he or she has reached just the right amount of deep sleep. It was the culmination of a nearly decade-long collaboration between Hosain Rahman, co-founder and CEO of Jawbone, and Yves Behar, a gadget designer as famous as Apple's Jonathan Ive. Rahman and Behar had married software and product design to build wearable computing devices before—most successfully with their Bluetooth headsets, the name of which had become synonymous with the company—but never in something quite as ambitious.
Inventive online resources for inventors Last week, I received an e-mail asking if I had ever taken a look at sites and services for inventors. I hadn't. And judging by the size of those sites' communities, I'm guessing that most other folks haven't, either. Below are some of the neatest resources, both on the Web and on your iPhone, designed specifically for inventors. Web sites Incuby Incuby is an online community designed for inventors who want to get the word out about their inventions.
Desktop Public Edition Compare the desktop editions of the Lavastorm Analytics Engine. Please ensure that your PC meets the following minimum requirements and has administrative privileges to your local machine: RAM - 2 GBHDD - Over 1 GBCPU - Dual Core 2 GHz x86 or x64 processor (Intel/AMD)O/S - Microsoft Windows® XP SP 3, Vista, or 7 (32 or 64-bit) The Quality Toolbook This is the entire text from my 400+ page book 'A Toolbook for Quality Improvement and Problem Solving', now in around 700 hyperlinked web pages. There is a standard layout in each chapter of: When to use it How to understand it Examples How to do it (step by step) Practical variations There are 33 chapters describing tools in detail here. With the 'Practical Variations' section, there are actually around 100 tools described in detail.