Siegfried Reich

Dr. Ingela Bruner vice chancelor of BOKU

… first woman in this position of a “Rektor”. Somewhat a milestone. See Der Standard.at (and many others).

She als is chairperson of the “Salzburger Wissenschaftsrat” (scientific advisory board).

Add comment July 4th, 2007

Successful viva on the “graphic novel”

… by Andreas Strasser. “Going Graphic – History of the American Graphic Novel from a Cultural History Perspective”, a great piece of work. Congratulations, Andreas! Well done.

See also the entry on Wikipedia on graphic novels. Or, ask Andreas for a copy of his thesis.

Add comment June 15th, 2007

FYI, The Economist: Rise and Fall of Corporate R&D

the March issue of The Economist has an article “Out of the dusty labs” on the rise and fall of corporate R&D. Quite interesting to see how V. Bush’s initial idea (of separating research and development) blurs in today’s economy.

The “fusion of research and development” helps in addressing a fundamental issue in Bush’s separation: how do (good) ideas get into marketable products?

At IBM “technology transfer” is even considered a bad phrase: there should not be a need for a handoff anyway.

The success of Dell and also Apple’s iPod are good examples that basic research is not a necessity for having success in the IT sector: (new) business models get more important, again, the classic way (basic research, development, marketing, etc.) is not true any more.

And finally: Mr. Brown (formerly running PARC) is cited the following way: “When I started out running PARC, I thought 99% of the work was creating the innovation, and then throwing it over the transom for dumb marketers to figure out how to market it. ” And now I realise that there is at least as much creativity on finding ways to take the idea to market as coming up with the idea in the first place. I would have spent my time differently if I had figured out that early on.”

Add comment June 3rd, 2007

FYI: Mac Plus (1986) vs AMD dual core (2007)

Excellent article and discussion about the development of end-user software in the past 20 years at hubpages.com. Metrics include load time of OS and applications, size of applications, etc.

The picture of the 86 Mac above (running OS 6.0.8) reminds me of my student days at the University of Linz.

Also good discussion!

Add comment June 1st, 2007

Opening of GIScience at Salzburg

Salzburg has (again) an institute of the academy of sciences: the GIScience research lab has been officially opened on May 30, 2007. Congratulations to Josef Strobl!

It is good to see that not only applied research is funded but that also basic research can florish. Geoinformatics in Salzburg is getting (much) stronger!

Add comment May 30th, 2007

FYI: Researchers’ Tree

In April 2005, Salzburg Research celebrated 5 years of existence. Frau Landeshauptfrau gave us a pear-tree as a present. See the pictures below where we planted the tree, and, unfortunately, the place today. Somehow the tree did not survive last winter (it was still there late 2006) …

The “Forscher-Baum” (“Researchers’ Tree”), planted late 2005 by Andrea Mulrenin (left, red jacket), Pater Toni (blue jacket) and Sigi Reich (red jacket, supervision).

Add comment May 18th, 2007

1st birthday of Sigi’s R&D Blog

… was on April 13th, see The Initial Entry.

So far there was only one comment (by my “old” friend Sunil – thanks for that); still, I meanwhile see blogging as a (personal) tool for me that helps me to archive, summarise, etc. highlights of the current week (similar to the intellectual capital report of Salzburg Research does for the current year).

Add comment April 27th, 2007

e-business Watch in Tourism

E-business Watch is a set of studies about the penetration of ICT in several sectors. The study refered to above concerns the tourism sector.

Compared to other sectors, tourism has strengths in “C2 Use of ICT systems for sourcing” and in “D2 Firms accepting users online”, while not doing so well with respect to other criteria.

The e-business watch web-site is available at www.ebusiness-watch.org

Add comment April 22nd, 2007

Web 3.0 in brandeins.de

(image is referring to brandeins.de)

There is an article on Web 3.0 in the current issue of brandeins.de (which is about change in general). The article is by Wolf Lotter (“Elementarteilchen”, pp. 52 ff) well written, critical, partly arguing for similarities with the “last hype” (that ended in 2001) but also outlining differences. Personally I like the reference to Vannevar Bush, whose article “As we may think” (of 1945) is still worthwile reading today.

Add comment February 24th, 2007

NRHM – The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia

There is a new issue of NRHM, a journal published by Taylor Francis. This issue is about “Structural Computing” and it has been guest-edited by Pete Nürnberg, formerly with the University of Aalborg/Esbjerg, now with Xtructure.

I think this is particularely interesting as “structural computing” is a difficult to explain, yet exciting field. You should read Pete’s introduction: it is not just a guide to the papers but also explains the background idea of SC. He talks about “organic structures” (as mentioned by V. Bush in 1945, see http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush – still a great read!), and finally makes the point that we should not necessarily aim at building smart tools but aim at building tools for smart people. The point is that we should focus on systems supporting the way we humans think (and work).

Add comment February 11th, 2007