My wish list of what Nest ship after Google acquisition, A Managed Router for the Home

Google acquired Nest and details are in the press release.

Nest, Google and you.

Today is undoubtedly an exciting day for all of us at Nest, but it’s also meaningful for you, our customers. I’m sure you have questions about whattoday’s news means for you, the Nest Thermostat, and Nest Protect. While Tony answered many of the broader questions regarding our new partnership with Google, I thought we’d talk product – my favorite!

When you look at stuff in the home the thermostat and smoke detectors are kind of important, but not as important as internet access in the home.  Without Internet connection the Nest thermostat and smoke detector are kind of dumb.

So how about if Nest ships a Home Router that is managed device that Google’s smart people with Nest can give us a more highly available internet?

This seems so obvious i hope this comes true by the summer.  You’ve got to believe that the Nest team had gone through the use case and numbers to create a Nest Router.

Nest says Safety shouldn’t be annoying.

How about internet connection should not be annoying!!!

A simple thermostat UI.  Green things are working.  Red Internet connection is down.  Google knows your home router has lost connection and is figuring out why?  DNS problems.  Local internet provider issue.  Hard reset required.  “push here to reset”  Or timeout without internet connection, then hard reset yourself. 

Wouldn’t it be great if home routers worked like your smartphones.  Android in Routers.

Water vs. Agile project methodologies

I am about ready to jump on a webinar on Agile and Waterfall methodologies.

Agile Meets Waterfall: How to Manage Multiple Methodologies

January 14, 2014
11:00am — 11:59am PST

SPONSORED BY

FEATURED PANELISTS

Rich Morrow founder / head geek,quicloud LLC

Dave Ohara Founder, GreenM3

Jesse Dowdle Director of Engineering,AtTask

MODERATED BY

Cormac Foster

Agile methodologies have had tremendous success in task-oriented teams and are increasing their penetration into the enterprise. Still, Agile is just a tool, and not all projects, business processes, and corporate cultures are natural fits. But managing multiple methodologies can be an enormous challenge without the right approach.

Since I am talking on the subject I decided to write a bit first as notes to myself.

So, what is Waterfall Methodology?  Here is a post that compares Waterfall and Agile.  I’ll pull out nuggets that gives you the high level concepts.

What is the waterfall methodology?

Much like construction and manufacturing workflows, waterfall methodology is a sequential design process. This means that as each of the eight stages (conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, implementation, and maintenance) are completed, the developers move on to the next step.

...

Advantages of the Waterfall Methodology

1. The waterfall methodology stresses meticulous record keeping. Having such records allows for the ability to improve upon the existing program in the future.

...

Disadvantages of the Waterfall Methodology

1. Once a step has been completed, developers can’t go back to a previous stage and make changes.

...

What is Agile?

Agile came about as a “solution” to the disadvantages of the waterfall methodology. Instead of a sequential design process, the Agile methodology follows an incremental approach.

Developers start off with a simplistic project design, and then begin to work on small modules. The work on these modules is done in weekly or monthly sprints, and at the end of each sprint, project priorities are evaluated and tests are run. These sprints allow for bugs to be discovered, and customer feedback to be incorporated into the design before the next sprint is run.

...

Advantages of the Agile Methodology

1. The Agile methodology allows for changes to be made after the initial planning. Re-writes to the the program, as the client decides to make changes, are expected.

...

Disadvantages of Agile Methodology

2. As the initial project doesn’t have a definitive plan, the final product can be grossly different than what was initially intended.

Steven Levy Benefits from Snowden Crisis, gets 2 hrs with NSA executives

Most of us are familiar with Steven Levy and his writing.  Steven is most know for “In the Plex"

From the In the Plex  blog:

The Googleplex Goes Hollywood with “The Internship”

During the months I spent researching In the Plex, I often encountered the term “Googliness.” It was kind of a puzzle from Lewis Carrol. You can’t understand the company unless you grasp the meaning of this term, but of course the term means nothing unless you have a sense of Google’s essence. "Googley" is also as much an aspirational value as a descriptor. When Googlers use the term, they are referring to their optimism, constructive ambition, brains, technical prowess, and 

I have had the chance to sit in media briefings with Steven and met others who worked along Steven.  It is kind of funny to thing that I have researched the writer. :-)  It important to know a writer if you want to interpret what they write.  

Steven just posted on his 2 hour interview the NSA.

I Spent Two Hours Talking With the NSA’s Bigwigs. Here’s What Has Them Mad

• BY STEVEN LEVY
• 01.13.14

What I liked best in Steven’s closing comment on how he thanks Snowden.

Dark times as these may be at Fort Meade, it’s good for the nation that the closed-mouth agency is opening up more to the press. Personally, I owe Snowden some thanks. He finally got to me into the NSA.

What really pissed off the NSA is Snowden triggering the PR crisis.

They really hate Snowden. The NSA is clearly, madly, deeply furious at the man whose actions triggered the biggest crisis in its history. Even while contending they welcome the debate that now engages the nation, they say that they hate the way it was triggered.

Who is Open Compute Summit worth it to attend? Check out the sponsors

It can be hard to figure out what the impact is to Open Compute and its Summits.  The fifth summit is coming up on Jan 28-29, and I have gone to all of them.  

People will many time ask is Open Compute worth it?  Who is using it?  

I don’t have a clear answer.  One way I’ve used to judge the worth is what vendors are sponsor the event.  Here is the current list.

For the data center crowd note that Emerson, IO, Rosedin Electric and Schneider

Changing the news with Statistics - sports, economics, and politics

One of the fun things I’ve learned over the past years is how journalism and media news works in the technology area.  Working on publishing technologies at Apple and Microsoft I used to focus on low level things like printers, postscript language, fonts (a lot), graphics, color systems, and spoke at conferences back when print publishing was big.  Now, with this blog, working with the GigaOm folks, and a variety of other companies I’ve had an interesting view of how the news becomes the news.

The basis of the news are many times the facts, and many times those facts are in statistics.  I ran across this post on eight cool things journalists should know about statistics.

Nate Silver: Eight cool things journalists should know about statistics

by Sandra OshiroPublished Oct. 18, 2013 11:26 pmUpdated Oct. 20, 2013 4:20 pm

Journalists need to bring science and forecasting into their news coverage, despite the fact that predicting outcomes is viewed as “uncouth” in some newsrooms, statistician Nate Silver told a gathering at the Online News Association conference Friday.

My favorite are the last two.

7. Insiderism is the enemy of objectivity. Insider information may not be reliable. A journalist whose circle is too tight may forget there is more outside of it. Silver cited forecasts made on the McLaughlin Group that he called as accurate as “monkeys throwing poop at a dartboard.”

8. Making predictions improves accountability. Silver called on journalists to be more empirical in their coverage. But he also said if journalists state what will happen in the future, they need to think such predictions through and not treat forecasting as a game.

Nate Silver who is the source of the above ideas has started an effort to change sports, economics and politics journalism.

Seeking Lead Writers in Sports, Politics and Economics

by Nate Silver

FiveThirtyEight is conducting a search for lead writers in three of our most important content verticals: sports, politics and economics. 

These are high-profile, full-time positions for people with an outstanding combination of writing and statistical skills. They will principally involve: (i) writing 2-3 feature-length articles per week (typically between 500 words and a few thousand words) and (ii) contributing to long-term FiveThirtyEight projects — that is, assisting in the build-out of our data-driven models and interactive features.

The three principal qualifications for these lead writing positions are as follows:

·         First, candidates must be able to write clearly about complex ideas. Strong prose style and composition represents a major part of the skill set. But we also seek candidates who can display a clear sense of editorial judgment: how to select story ideas, and how to present data-driven content in a way that can be approachable for a smart (but non-specialist) audience.  We strongly prefer candidates who have a demonstrated track record of writing for the broader public.

This may seem hard for a writer, but imagine you have the backing of a data visualization staff.  check out this post.

 

Visual Journalist 

We are looking for one or more Visual Journalists to design and develop graphics, interactive features and web applications for the site. The Visual Journalists will work on a small team in the FiveThirtyEight newsroom in New York City, using information design and web development to help readers explore and understand the data behind the news.

…

Computational Journalist

FiveThirtyEight is also looking for one or more Computational Journalists to join our data visualization team. Our Computational Journalists will create interactive features, models, and systems that collect, process and present real-time data and predictions about sports, politics, economics, science and lifestyle topics.