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A white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival in the Gilded Age.
Both books look very intriguing in different ways.
Both very interesting, but what pretty flowers!
I’ll bet the Rudder book is very interesting (and would probably make me a little anxious, ha).
I’ve only read one Sides book – The Ghost Soldiers – but I really liked it. I’ve got to get going on another one.
This will be my first book by the author, but I’ve seen so many glowing reviews about his writing that I wanted to give this a go. And if I’m going to read about ice and snow, it needs to be well before winter arrives!
I am intrigued by Dataclysm…thanks for sharing…and I love the way you’ve arranged them with the flowers.
Thanks! My flowers are one of the many reasons I love summer.
I am curious about Dataclysm. Enjoy both of your new reads.
In The Kingdom of Ice looks very interesting.
Lovely photo of your new books! I’ve also been taking break from blogging this summer.
They both sound good and I hope you enjoy them!
For some reasons, I don;t think these would be for me. Hope you love them though.
On April 4, 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft. The small firm used to develop and sell BASIC interpreters. Little did they know that in the next 40 years, their company will become the biggest software firm in the world, and also bag the title for one of the most valuable companies.
Today, there is a little bit of Microsoft in everybody’s life. Whether it is the desktop computer where Microsoft’s Windows has about 90 percent market share or the company’s Office which is unarguably the best productivity suite available. Maybe you are into gaming and own an Xbox One, or your company relies on Azure cloud services.
In the last 40 years, Microsoft -- which once used to sell program language interpreters -- has expanded into several categories, and now makes full-fledged operating systems for not just desktop computers, but smartphones, gaming consoles, servers, as well as Internet of Things devices. Surface tablets and Xbox consoles show the company’s side interest in developing its own hardware modules.
"Early on, Paul Allen and I set the goal of a computer on every desk and in every home. It was a bold idea and a lot of people thought we were out of our minds to imagine it was possible. It is amazing to think about how far computing has come since then, and we can all be proud of the role Microsoft played in that revolution", Gates wrote in an email sent to all Microsoft employees yesterday.
"In the coming years, Microsoft has the opportunity to reach even more people and organizations around the world. Technology is still out of reach for many people, because it is complex or expensive, or they simply do not have access. So I hope you will think about what you can do to make the power of technology accessible to everyone, to connect people to each other, and make personal computing available everywhere even as the very notion of what a PC delivers makes its way into all devices", Gates noted.
"Under Satya's leadership, Microsoft is better positioned than ever to lead these advances. We have the resources to drive and solve tough problems. We are engaged in every facet of modern computing and have the deepest commitment to research in the industry. In my role as technical advisor to Satya, I get to join product reviews and am impressed by the vision and talent I see. The result is evident in products like Cortana, Skype Translator, and HoloLens -- and those are just a few of the many innovations that are on the way".
And this attitude was the reason Windows Phone 7 -- arguably Microsoft's first real take on a mobile operating system-- wasn’t released until 2010. By this time, iPhone had showed its dominance in the world, and Google was upping the ante with Android. Windows Phone is still struggling to gain any substantial market share. The mobile platform still has a wide "app-gap" problem, though the company seems to have found a couple of ways to fix it.
But one of the most exciting things that happened in the company was its decision to open up. Under Nadella, Microsoft finally accepted that it doesn’t have a significant user base in smartphones. The company realized that if it didn't open up to rival platforms, it would miss out on a lot of users. And that’s one of the first things Nadella did after taking the charge of the company. Microsoft launched Office on iOS. Until then Office was only available on Windows, Windows RT, and Windows Phone, and a half-baked mobile version on Android.
The move received an overwhelming response from users, resulting in Office apps -- Word, Excel and PowerPoint -- top the app chart in within 24 hours of their release on the platform. Late last year, the company made premium access to the Office suite free on iOS and Android. Office for iOS was in the works at Microsoft for a long time, but Ballmer used to prioritize its products on Windows devices first. Nadella evidently changed that.
"We have accomplished a lot together during our first 40 years and empowered countless businesses and people to realize their full potential. But what matters most now is what we do next", Gates writes in his email. Microsoft does have a lot of things to look forward to in the coming months and years. Later this year, Microsoft will release Windows 10 for desktop computers, as well as smartphones, IoT devices and Xbox One. In the coming months, Microsoft will also release the next iteration of its productivity suite, Office 2016. For the first time, the company is simultaneously releasing Office on OS X and Windows.
Additionally, Microsoft has showcased a number of products that could change the way we compute and interact with technology. Its augmented reality headset HoloLens is just one example. It will be interesting to see what the company does next and how things work out for it in the coming years.
1 result(s) found for: 2016-000912-13. Displaying page 1 of 1.
Medical condition: subjects with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis.
After having to look this up a couple of times now, I figured I’d share my approach. While you currently can’t technically style previous sibling elements, I’ve figured out a pretty handy workaround.
Suppose you have a progress bar with steps that you want to style. You want the active step to be highlighted and all the steps before it as well (to denote that those steps are completed). Prettying up the active step is easy, but how do you handle the previous steps? You actually style the previous steps by styling the following steps.
Let me show you what I mean….
First, let’s get our step navigation built and styled.
The HTML is simply an unordered list with five list items – the first of which has an “active” class. The line between them is actually one solid line that goes behind all of the steps, added using the CSS “:before” pseudo-element and positioning it in place.
Now that the HTML and basic CSS are in place, we can think about how to style the active and completed steps.
You could change the active class of these steps in many different ways, but I’m going to keep it simple for this example.
When you click on one of the steps, the “active” class is removed from all of them and then re-added to the one that was clicked.
Again, you could change this class position in many, many different ways, but I’m trying to keep it simple.
Here’s the real secret to this whole process: you actually need to style the steps following the “active” step, not the previous ones.
Using the “~” sibling selector, we can style all the elements after the “active” element. All we need to do is style ALL of the elements as though they’re active, and then go back and style all the elements after the “active” one as though they are the normal state.
This is exactly what I did (although a bit more complex) with my CSS-only star rating pen.
Unlocking student talent is an approach to personalizing learning? In brief, it’s about putting kids first by giving them “voice and choice” in their own learning. Integrated into the 21st Century classrooms of differentiated learning that vary the “pace and face” of instruction to target the individualized differences. These purposefully-designed student-centered classrooms, encapsulate the accepted concept of personalizing learning. It is when these three components intersect, differentiation, individualization and student-centeredness.This is the next generation of the differentiated classroom and the added refinements are clearly outlined: Personalized learning adapts a metacognitive approach that fosters self-direction, self- monitoring and self-evaluation. In essence, personalized learning is student ownership. However, this new model is guided by motivating factors that ignite, invigorate and instill the learning, as well as fostering, metacognitive, reflective, coaching and feedback. Personalized learning means greater student achievement through self-determined change (interests), challenge (goals) and choice (methods). In short, the thrust is to engage students in ways that they become the “stewards of their own learning”.
How do we prepare our students for the test of life? We teach them how to learn when they are not being taught! In other words, we give them the gift of self-reflection, self-awareness, self-initiative, self-direction, self-assessment and self-regulation – the gift of knowing when they know, and when they don’t know. Metacognition: The Neglected Skill Set for Empowering Students, is written with the teacher in mind. It is more practical than theoretical, but most definitely grounded in research findings and connected to emergent data. With the 30 ready-to-use metacognitive strategies in this book, teachers will deepen learning for their students through explicit reflections on planning, monitoring and evaluating their own work. As students learn how to “think about their own thinking”, they become more aware and, thus, better able to make adjustments on their own work. They gain a sense of ownership, and teachers get results they can count on through students empowerment. Metacognition is like magic for 21st century classrooms – it changes student behaviors before your eyes.
Thinking About Thinking in IB Schools: How We Know What We Know.
The quintessential question, “How do we know what we know?” seems to drive the quest for high performing learners to learn more, dig deeper, explore, investigate and in the end, be able to validate and justify. With rigorous principles paralleling the International Baccalaureate curriculum framework, (as well as other recognized curriculum frameworks) drive that inquiry. While “knowledge comes on the coattails of thinking, the Theory of Knowledge approach extends this, as students dig into the evidence-based scenarios about, ”How we know what we know”. This professional learning enhances the work of students with the depth and breath of mega-thinkers. It supports the remarkable curriculum work, with complementary discussions and exercises that provide that added, oomph! Grounded in principles of curiosity, confidence, connectedness, reasoning, communication, reflection and open-mindedness, practical threads of thinking, practicing and performing are ever-present. Empower students with lifelong skills that will impact every sector of their lives.
Real world application drives 21st Century, academic learning. In this generation, students don’t learn to do they do to learn. They live in a fast-paced society and are impatient with the slow and steady rhythm of the traditional classroom. How do significant curriculum shifts toward a more relevant, rigorous, inquiry-oriented approach occur within this assessment-driven culture? How do teachers guide kids to dig into authentic problems? How do they support “high-tech” applications in a digital-rich classroom? How do they foster collegial, “high-touch” teamwork on projects and papers? How do they challenge students with rigor in “high-thought” explorations, investigations, and experimentations? “The times, they are a changing”, and they are changing at breakneck speed. How do we, as leaders, retool schools to meet the challenges in relevant ways?
Nuggets of info and some great tools . . .the takeaway strategies that can be applied in the classroom immediately w/o a lot of changes to lessons will be all helpful in adding deeper critical thinking. Joey Dale, Middle School.
It's time to transform instruction with enriched Problem-based Learning in a Nutshell Here is the big secret about PBL . . . It’s not that complicated! Moving toward relevance in the curriculum that uses 21st Century, real-world applications, student inquiry models are front and center-problem-based, project, and service learning experiences are among the most frequently cited. It’s efffective to get started with tools already familiar to teachers today: graphic organizers, essential questions, rich and relevant content, rigorous thinking skills, digital-rich tools for searching and researching, collaborative team work and presentation skills. Simply put: PBL is like DIY (Do It Yourself) projects- Do It-to-Learn-It, 21st Century methodology, rather, than Learn It-to-Do-It, 20th Century traditions.
Great job of not being an educational “expert” yet, being an entertaining presenter. Wish more people had you background and experience to share with teachers. Alice McKay, High School English.
Using the Three Story Intellect to assure teachers that students are moving through the three levels of thinking-gathering, processing and applying, students learn to think more deeply. As they become more aware of their thinking, confidence increases dramatically, and the shift from the teacher-directed classroom environment to a student-centered culture of respect, responsibility and reliability is the ultimate goal. Learn how to teach kids to think, critically and creatively. Help students begin earlier, rather than later, to adapt self-dispositions of mindfulness that prepare them for test of life. Grounded in 21st Century thinking processes: productive problem solving, mindful decision-making and creative innovation, students develop awareness and control of their own actions, words and deeds. (Can substitute DOK’s or Bloom’s Taxonomy to align to district).
First and foremost, Robin and Brian, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! You really provided a new set of eyes for our Instructional Leaders. Your professional learning engagement is literally the TALK OF THE TOWN TODAY! Folks have actually thanked me for PD, which in my world, does not happen all that often!!! Even have Administrators asking for professional books/resources for their toolboxes!!! Talk about "use the next day strategies!" Saw it in action for myself today! Here is how you know that you hit a home run...we held a mini-conference today and the presenters left your session on yesterday and went back and reworked their presentations for today.Marcella Heyward-Evans, EdD Chief Instructional Officer.
Who’s Doing the Talking: Is the Brain Engaged?
Invite! Excite! Ignite! is about that mysterious, magical, confounding, frustrating, exhilarating, important, and misunderstood profession of the classroom teacher. Three million teachers currently work with 50 million students in US k12 classrooms. NCES.Gov, 2015. Among these dedicated teachers, many find that their most valuable help, often comes from other teachers, the teacher across the hall or down the wing a ways, or through chance meetings in the teacher workroom. This book is for them. It consists of ideas, strategies, quotes and notes from thousands of teacher-to-teacher interactions.
It was such a pleasure to see you work with our teachers last week. What a very talented and professional pair you are. I know our district's students will benefit from your shared expertise. I am so glad we found you.- Shelly Smede-Director of Staff Development Idaho Falls, ID.
The democratization of data is a real phenomenon, but building a sustainable data democracy means truly giving power to the people. The alternative is just a shift of power from traditional data analysts within IT departments to a new generation of data scientists and app developers. And this seems a lot more like a dictatorship than a democracy — a benevolent dictatorship, but a dictatorship nonetheless.
These individuals and companies aren’t entirely bad, of course, and they’re actually necessary. Apps that help predict what we want to read, where we’ll want to go next or what songs we’ll like are certainly cool and even beneficial in their ability to automate and optimize certain aspects of our lives and jobs. In the corporate world, there will always be data experts who are smarter and trained in advanced techniques and who should be called upon to answer the toughest questions or tackle the thorniest problems.
Last week, for example, Salesforce.com introduced a new feature of its Chatter intra-company social network that categorizes a variety of data sources so employees can easily find the people, documents and other information relevant to topics they’re interested in. As with similarly devised services — LinkedIn’s People You May Know, the gravitational search movement, or any type of service using an interest graph — the new feature’s beauty and utility lie in its abstraction of the underlying semantic algorithms and data processing.
The problem, however, comes when we’re forced to rely on these people, features and applications to decide how data can affect our lives or jobs, or what questions we can answer using the troves of data now available to us. In a true data democracy, citizens must be empowered to make use of their own data as they see fit and they must only have to rely apps and experts by choice or when the task really requires an expert hand. At any rate, citizens must be informed enough to have a meaningful voice in bigger decisions about data.
The good news is that there’s a whole new breed of startups trying to empower the data citizenry, whatever their role. Companies such as 0xdata, Precog and BigML are trying to make data science more accessible to everyday business users. There are next-generation business intelligence startups such as SiSense, Platfora and ClearStory rethinking how business analytics are done in an area of HTML5 and big data. And then there are companies such as Statwing, Infogram and Datahero (which will be in beta mode soon, by the way) trying to bring data analysis to the unwashed non-data-savvy masses.
Combined with a growing number of publicly available data sets and data marketplaces, and more ways of collecting every possible kind of data — personal fitness, web analytics, energy consumption, you name it — these self-service tools can provide an invaluable service. In January, I highlighted how a number of them can work by using my own dietary and activity data, as well as publicly available gun-ownership data and even web-page text. But as I explained then, they’re still not always easy for laypeople to use, much less perfect.
Statwing spells out statistics for laypeople.
Can Tableau be data’s George Washington?
This is why I’m so excited about Tableau’s forthcoming IPO. There are few companies that helped spur the democratization of data over the past few years more than Tableau. It has become the face of the next-generation business intelligence software thanks to its ease of use and focus on appealing visualization, and its free public software has found avid users even among relative data novices like myself. Tableau’s success and vision no doubt inspired a number of the companies I’ve already referenced.
Assuming it begins its publicly traded life flush with capital, Tableau will not just be financially sound — it will also be in a position to help the burgeoning data democracy evolve into something that can last. More money means being able to develop more features that Tableau can use to bolster sales (and further empower business users with data analysis), which should mean the company can afford to also continually improve its free service and perhaps put premium versions in the hands of more types of more non-corporate professionals for free.
Tableau is already easy (I made this) — but not easy enough.
The bottom-up approach has already proven very effective in the worlds of cloud computing, software as a service and open-source software, and I have to assume it’s a win-win situation in analytics, too. Today’s free users will be tomorrow’s paying users once they get skilled enough to want to move onto bigger data sets and better features. But the base products have to be easy enough and useful enough to get started with, or companies will only have a lot of registrations and downloads but very few avid users.
And if Tableau steps ups its game around data democratization, I have to assume it will up the ante for the company’s fellow large analytics vendors and even startups. A race to empower the lower classes on the data ladder would certainly be in stark contrast to the historical strategy of building ever-bigger, ever-more-advanced products targeting only the already-powerful data elite. That’s the kind of revolution I think we all can get behind.
Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Tiago Jorge da Silva Estima.
Great article Derrick – appreciating your work on the topic here on GigaOm.
We’re seeing wider availability of reasonably priced BI and visualization software tools to help us understand that harnessing all this data is possible – and I think even consumers are beginning to understand the value of all the data, and the ability to make meaning from it. One part of the puzzle that’s missing from what I can see is the education – knowledge transfer of how individuals can use the tools, what good data science methods are, and how data citizens can actively contribute to the larger data analysis community. I see movements like the Open Data/Open Gov folks, and events like the NYC Big Apps hackathon as part of the solution – but as individuals, where do we go to take part? What is the role of an informed, curious citizen in this? More venues exist for learning some of the ‘how’ to make sense of big data as an individual taking a course online, but I’m not seeing a vision from anyone talking about how to connect all of the dots. To make sense of data, we need the tools, the practitioners, the analysis of the problems, but we also need a vision of how all of these will work. If anyone has ideas of who’s got that vision, I’d love to hear it.
I feel one of the biggest impediments to the democratization of data is access. Most people know what they would like to answer, and how the data needs to be shaped to achieve that, but getting the data to do the actual analysis with can be one of the most difficult aspects.
This is a bit of a plug, but we’re working on enabling data access that is easily attainable by everyone. Our platform http://www.quandl.com is a “search engine for data” that is able to fetch time series data from a disparate sets of sources, and provide it in a simple searchable form that allows users to extract, validate, format, merge, graph, and share it however they want.
By providing the underlying data for analysis tools like Tableau, Statwing, and many others, we feel we can help to create the tool stack that empowers people to create a sustainable DIY data culture.
In every company I’ve worked at, I’ve seen this major divide between IT analysts and Business users. Part of it was cultural, but a major reason was as you point out: “a historical strategy of building ever-bigger, ever-more-advanced products targeting only the already-powerful data elite”. The business user typically was left to use Excel to prepare and analyze data.
It took 15+ years, but thanks to new players like Tableau, Spotfire and Qlikview which were sold primarily to the business user and focused on ease of use, the data democratization process has resulted in a power shift to the business user. Some IT departments have now come around and are trying to accommodate these “shadow IT” projects by providing IT support and giving Tableau users limited access to enterprise data stores.
As for upping the ante for the traditional players, it has happened already. Over the last two years, the larger vendors have responded with products like Visual Insight (MicroStrategy), Visual Intelligence (SAP), PowerPivot (MicroSoft), JMP (SAS) etc. taking aim at this segment of the market. The Big Data market is still new, but the trend to build user-friendly (or at the very least, SQL-aware) tools on top of Hadoop is also hitting its stride.
One good thing coming out of this data democratization is the realization that it has to be supported by a Data Governance effort. Otherwise we’ll see the unfortunate return of a major problem with data democracy: data chaos. Previously it would have meant comparing and reconciling two Excel spreadsheets, now we may end up reconciling the findings from two Tableau workbooks.
Thanks for the comment, and for making a really good point about data governance. Obviously, that’s not too big a concern for personal data use, but competing findings from lots of disparate data sets would be problematic.
Evaluating the benefits of digitising its menu boards, the John Lewis Partnership instructed Digital Media Projects Ltd (DMP), a technology company based in Harrogate to create a digital signage concept for its flagship Oxford Street store. Replacing typed A3 boards, diners visiting The Place to Eat restaurant, the Brasserie, the Bistro and the Coffee Shop now make their selection from 25 x 23” EX231W and two x 46” P461 NEC screens positioned alongside each serving section. The signage on these screens, powered by DMP’s digital signage solution can be created, amended and deployed from anywhere with an internet connection using their unique web-based Creator and CMS.
John Lewis Oxford Street, situated in London’s premier shopping district, offers seven floors of the best in fashion, home and technology, and is the largest of its 35 stores throughout England, Wales and Scotland. The Place to Eat, located on the store’s fifth floor, offers customers a superb panoramic view of the West End with seating for over 300 diners. Whilst The Place to Eat is a shopper’s restaurant within a department store, even the most discerning diners are attracted by the variety and quality of the food, accompanied by the high level of service synonymous with John Lewis. The Brasserie and Bistro on the third floor offer more upmarket meal choices with waited tables, and the fourth floor Coffee Shop provides a range of quick pick-me-ups for tired shoppers.
The retailer’s focus has always been on high quality and excellence of service, and they felt the digitisation of menu boards would not only create a more pleasant environment, but it would also allow them to make regular amendments and improvements to the choice of food served in the four establishments. Removing the reliance on printed materials meant they could react much more quickly to availability of ingredients and customer demand.
Before the digital signage system was installed, each restaurant entrance and serving area listed the day’s menu selection on a number of A3 boards. The production, distribution and fitting of traditional menu boards is costly. The boards at John Lewis need to be frequently updated to display the current menu selection to satisfy regular diners and reflect the changing seasons, for example, Mediterranean salads in the summer months and warming soups and stews in the winter. The menu selection available at various serving stations changes over to reflect the time of day, such as breakfast, lunch and late afternoon meals.
In discussions with the Head of Catering at John Lewis, digital signage specialist DMP and installer MVS Audio Visual involved NEC in order to identify the most appropriate display for the installation. The NEC EX231W met John Lewis’ expectations of image quality and reliability. The 23inch screens also matched the dimensions of the traditional A3 size signage which fitted within the restaurant environment. With 100mm 4 point VESA mounting and an ultra-light weight design, the EX231W allows for simple installation, from walls and ceilings in portrait or landscape to suit the location of the menu board. Low wattage LED backlight technology keeps power consumption and heat generation to a minimum. NEC NaviSet software enables centrally controlled asset management keeping maintenance costs to a minimum should the estate be expanded to include further sites.
A total of 27 NEC screens were installed by MVS Audio Visual throughout John Lewis Oxford Street. The solution consisted of 15 EX231W LED screens on the serving gantries and two P461 screens at the entrance to the Place to Eat, two EX231W displays outside the Brasserie and three outside the Bistro. Finally, six screens were installed in the Coffee Shop, three at the entrance in portrait orientation and three on the serving gantry in landscape. Each screen lists the appropriate menu selection alongside the price which is controlled and updated centrally by John Lewis through DMP’s web-based Content Management System (CMS). Strong contrast and appropriate screen brightness on the digital menu screens give diners a quick and easy reference from which to make their selection. John Lewis benefit from reduced costs associated with the production of traditional signage and huge potential by offering a more varied menu and special promotions, in addition to the ability to instantly react to market conditions and customer demands.
Get it right round you, you Ayr p***ks.
Keep it cool big boy.
It wasn't just the unadvertised £22 entry - it included a bloke on take at the turnstile. Gave him £50 three notes and says loudly "Two please" and he give me some coins in change and then claims I had only paid for one. Only after a protracted argument and support from the queue behind me (thanks) he relented.
Wee Ayr getting big big massive Dundee United so riled. Gorgeous.
After the game, Jamie's Chippy up on the Clemington Road. Very decent fish supper - fish cooked to order - £6.30. Better!
Sincerely hope no ayr fans have to declare themselves bankrupt after being made to pay 2 whole pounds more than they expected.
Yeah, all reasonable businesses add 10% onto the advertised price.
Look on the bright side, one way or another you probably won’t have to come to Tannadice next season.
Just watched the goals again. Pav’s was right in front of where we sit; it looked s beauty at the time and looks even better in replay. McMullan deserved his for his industry and taking a chance.
Safranko and Clark leading a 4-4-2 until we’ve secured second place.
4-1-3-2. Why not, so long as we score one more goal than the opposition and with that formation/team we could.
I thought Robson was poor last night until he went to left back. I might be tempted to go with Pawlett on the left, McMullan on the right, Robson to left back in place of Booth. Harkes was poor first half past night but that was uncharacteristic. He and Butcher are generally a very good pairing.
I thought you two at least would have picked up on the sarcasm.
I’m disappointed that you were being sarcastic.
Too subtle for me, I'm afraid.
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Thanks again for joining this drop! We have submitted the group's order with the vendor for the Mountainsmith Scream 25 Backpack and they are working hard to prepare it for shipment.
As soon as the group's order is ready at the vendor's location, they will send the bulk shipment to our warehouse in New Jersey where our warehouse team will break it up into individual orders and ship them. The current estimated ship date from our warehouse is 7/19.

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