Mobile Computing
A new publication in HMD – Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik: Mobile Computing (edited together with Stefan Meinhardt from SAP).
Available now, also as eBook.
Add comment August 22nd, 2012
Posts filed under 'News'
Philanthropical Engagement in Research – Strategies to Support private Funding
The Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development has just published a study on “increasing private funding for “R&D” (the study actually is in German, it is available from http://www.rat-fte.at/tl_files/uploads/Studien/Publiktionen/2012_Strategien%20zur%20Erhoehung%20der%20privaten%20Forschung.pdf). The study has been done by Hannes Leo.
During the last decade, Austria’s RTI (Research, Technology and Innovation) System developed further: some say that Austria closed the gap between being an “innovation follower” and the group of “innovation leaders” (IMHO we have not quite closed that gap but still, the direction is right and the dynamics were good!).
Much of that development was due to public funding – what is being analysed in the study is the current state of private funding in Austria (and Europe) and how private funding could be increased.
In the study, Hannes Leo starts by analysing the situation of private funding (“sponsoring” one might even say) in general. It is shown that the landscape in Europe is not as elaborated as in the US; and even within Europe there are tremendous differences. From that perspective, Leo argues for an enormous potential in Austria: there are private foundations but there is (yet) no philanthropical culture as in Germany or Switzerland: for instance, private and non-private foundations donate in Austria 4 EUR per inhabitant (and year): in CH the corresponding value is EUR 109; and in DE EUR 183(!). And therefore, if that gap was closed in would be of great benefit mostly to basic research – which anyway is a sector that has somehow been neglected and only recently gets more attention.
So, in conclusion, what do we need to increase philanthropical funding in Austria? According to Hannes Leo, we need
- better legal regulations for private foundations
- increased network activities between foundations, i.e., more exchange, etc.
- better public relations for private foundations
Overall, an interesting study well worth reading!
Add comment August 5th, 2012
Neelie Kroes on digital handcuffs and openness
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… presented at the World Wide Web conference, Lyon: Her speech “What does it mean to be open online?” is available at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/12/275&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
A “parol” for openness! Enabling new business models, easier access, etc. She argues that creators need to have ways to profit from their work but that there is more than one way of doing it. She also argues that openness and safety and privacy need to go together. And that transparency is key to success. |
IMHO there are already many systems/concepts/etc. that indicate that “openness” is there and will stay. Open source, for instance. But also Open Streetmap, Linked Open Data, Open Innovation, open access, open science, … The question is whether these are always transparent, safe and privacy aware.
Add comment April 22nd, 2012
The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives
… nice article forwarded via LinkedIn. See http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/02/the-seven-habits-of-spectacularly-unsuccessful-executives/.
By referring to research done by Prof. Sydney Finkelstein, Eric Jackson argues for the following seven habits that CEOs of unsuccessful companies did have
- Habit # 1: They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment: “Pride will have a fall”, one could say.
- Habit #2: They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests: this one is interesting, as one would have expected that the more one identifies with one’s company, the better it is. The danger apparently is that a “private empire” mentality may take place.
- Habit #3: They think they have all the answers: the danger here IMHO is more obvious: one would not listen to other opinions or perspectives.
- Habit #4: They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them: you loose excellent people in your team …
- Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image … and focus too much on the media.
- Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles: that is an interesting one again. Because, if you are too cautious or cowardly that’s no good either …
- Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past: this may be a classic …
IMHO the difficulty with all of these it that to some degree we want CEOs to have these habits. The tricky thing is to have sufficient but not to much of these properties. The question is how to measure …
Add comment January 6th, 2012
Some figures and realtime displays on the world’s population: we are 7 Billion people!
By the end of October 2011, the earth’s population was estimated to reach 7 Billion people. There were some amazing data and figures communicated with this – artificial – border that had been passed:
- per second, there is an increase by 2.5 people, that is 150 per minute, 9.000 per hour and 216 every day – the error-rate is apparently up to 5 %
- there is quite a number of countries/areas where there exists no official statistics. So areas are being flown over with airplanes and estimates are made; or, from the number of cattle, the number of people in a certain area is inferred.
And I came across two pretty nice live counters/tools:
One is a live counter available at http://www.umrechnung.org/weltbevoelkerung-aktuelle-momentane/weltbevoelkerungs-zaehler.htm:
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The other one is breathingearth.net:
and a truly impressive animation!
Add comment November 2nd, 2011
FYI: New Booklet on the “Geoweb”
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Karl Rehrl and myself have edited an issue in HMD – Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik on Geoweb.
So what is this issue about? Increasingly, we are using the Web to answer questions about the “where”: where is the nearest pub? And what’s the shortest path to it? What activities can I do at my holiday location? These and many other location-based issues are addressed by state-of-the-art Web applications. And this special issue of HMD tells you how to engineer Geoweb applications. |
Add comment January 31st, 2011
German Encyclopedia on Information Systems
The 2nd edition of Oldenbourg’s 
has been published (it is German only).
Good overview, very much from an information systems’ perspective (and not so much from a computer science point of view. Anyway, well done …
Add comment February 23rd, 2009
Salzburg Research passes ISO 9001:2000 audit
ISO 9001:2000 is an international standard that has its origins in assessing suppliers for technical systems. Salzburg Research today successfully passed the audit (by TÜV Österreich).
I believe that the following three main points argue for a quality management system:
- With a QM-System you define rules about processes and interactions; also, these rules are the same throughout the organisation
- Knowledge is embedded within an organisation (we all know that this is only possible to a limited degree, but anyway)
- Finally, it is a documentation to the outside world (both customers as well as owner) that Salzburg Research is standing for quality
On the negative side there is – obviously – some overhead in necessary documentation and also, you may loose some degrees of freedom/individuality.
3 comments December 2nd, 2008
Lange Nacht der Forschung – Researchers’ Night 2008
Beginning with sunset (16:39) and lasting until midnight, the researchers’ night 2008 took place, also at Salzburg Research. All over Austria some 240.000 people participated (Der Standard, Salzburger Nachrichten, Landeskorrespondenz).
At Salzburg Research we had an immense amount of people coming to see some applications of our research work (tagIT – a Geo-tagging application; tourguide – a project about pedestrian navigation; a traffic control centre; and finally, a project showing the use of sensors using SunSPOTs). The response was truly positive!
Most amazing to me was that even at 11:30pm we had people coming and wanting to see our demos. We do not expect such a huge interest (overall there were some 300+ unique visitors).
Pictures are available here:
2 comments November 9th, 2008
Digital Leben
… a new Series by 
ORF Ö1 Radio from Monday to Thursday about living in a digital world. Very practical discussion, e.g. about storing/backing up your data (photos from the last holidays), about security, eSport, social networking, etc. …
Available as PodCast on http://oe1.orf.at/podcast/ – highly recommended. I am looking forward to podcasts on navigating, finding the closest (and cleanest) loo (e.g. www.mizpee.eu), rules for filtering e-mails (and how to practically deal with huge amounts of information in general), being locked in in your e-car, …
Add comment September 2nd, 2008
