AMD is releasing a new graphics card under the name “Eyefinity” which can power 6 monitors simultaneously. This should be a boon to trading floors everywhere. Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research blogs his experience using it.
When the iPad was announced this week my first thought was, “They’ve come out with a giant iPhone!” (Okay, so technically it’s more akin to a giant iPod Touch, but as an iPhone user, this is where my mind goes.) I was skeptical about its potential usefulness. It’s confined to iPhone-like applications; everything has to come from the App Store. It won’t run a JDK, and isn’t even as useful to me as a netbook.
I was guilty of thinking inside the box. The old, stale, PC box.
Luke met with the good folks at Advanced Trading at SIFMA the other week, the result of which was this article “SIFMA: Cost Cutting, A Double-Edged Sword?” that outlined his observation on the maturity of the purchasing decisions investment banks make (or don’t make!) in hiring consultants:
Level 1: Lowest dollar cost – is it really the cheapest option if it takes twice as long ?
Level 2: Total Cost of Project – factor time to completion, debugging, compliance, etc
Level 3: Risk-adjusted cost perspective – probability of success for the investment
Our Surface showed up this week and we had fun unpacking it and setting it up yesterday.
Now, on to the real fun – developing apps for it!
Walking through Grand Central this morning I was surprised to see a bunch of enormous, larger-than-life sculptures that looked like little Google Maps pins. Then I noticed a massive wall-sized poster for Google Maps. Even at that early hour, then, I figured something was up with Google Maps!
Well it turns out I was right. Google Maps now includes New York area public transit options in its directions. The NYTimes has the details.
Here’s an example of directions from Lab49’s offices to UBS in Stamford, CT (link) :
Building sophisticated educational tools out of cheap parts, Johnny Lee demos his cool Wii Remote hacks, which turn the $40 video game controller into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.
to read more about Johnny Lee, visit his website
Built on the Apama platform, it’s called the Detica Market Surveillance Accelator. Designed as a sift, to survey all trades booked in a system for bad and/or illegal behavior, detect errors, and to aid in development of a more proactive support model.
In light of the Société Générale debacle, I expect to see more of these in development. Apama strikes me as a near-ideal match for this kind of application.
It is something that we encounter frequently. In fact, many of us suffer from this syndrome without being aware. Not sure if you already infected? Take this simple test:
Go back and try to remember when was the last time you woke up one day with a brilliant idea: you were going to build “wheel 2.0”! While innovation is our driving force, try to remember if before you started to work on your new wheel, you stopped and asked yourself one simple question: “Why?”
