Tag Archives: innovation

Falling Fruit – Map the urban harvest!

Falling Fruit wants it to be a tool to the contemporary forager. 

Their ‘edible map’ is not the first of its kind, but it aspires to be the world’s most comprehensive. While Falling Fruit users contribute locations of their own, they also comb the internet for pre-existing knowledge, seeking to unite the efforts of foragers, foresters, and freegans everywhere. This so far amounts to 1,255 different types of edibles distributed over 787,116 locations. The map is open for anyone to edit, the database can be downloaded with just one click, and the code is open-source

“The Death of Moore’s Law Will Spur Innovation” by Andrew Huang

“As transistors stop shrinking, open-source hardware will have its day.

Companies that produce open-source hardware are few and far between. At least, they are if you define them in the usual way: an enterprise that provides documentation and permission sufficient for others to re-create, modify, improve, and even make their own versions of the devices it sells. And although open hardware has made strides in recent years—including an increasing number of companies adhering to these practices along with the establishment of the Open Source Hardware Association—it remains a niche industry.

You might guess the reason to be simple—such companies must be set up and run by idealists who lack any hardheaded business sense. Not true! What’s held back the open-source hardware movement is not a lack of business acumen; it’s the rapid evolution of electronic technology.

The reasons for this are subtle, but as I will explain below…

Automating the Data Scientists by Tom Simonite

Software could automate some of the work performed by such data scientists, in hopes of making sophisticated data skills more widely available. 

Computers run complex mathematical operations on large collections of data, and selling data analysis software is a growing business. But human creativity and expertise is still needed to choose and deploy the methods that can explain the patterns in a data set.

The automatic statistician is one of a handful of tools being built to automate some of that expertise.  more…

Business Insights from Satellite Images

Orbital Insight uses image processing, neural networks, machine learning, and statistical analysis in search of insights from satellite images
The convergence of more powerful big data analysis tools, more intelligent machine learning algorithms, and more readily available satellite imagery has laid the groundwork for Orbital Insight. Many of Orbital’s customers are companies seeking information independent from government sources. 
So far, the company claims to have developed data products that forecast end­of­season crop harvest based upon mid­season spectral analysis and quarterly retail performance based upon counting cars in parking lots, as well as measure the rate of construction in China’s real estate sector and the fluctuations in global crude oil inventories months ahead of similar figures reported by other organizations. More…