Failed Robot - Latest Comments

Re: 2012 – A Year in Making

Avi Techwriter — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 05:06:19 -0000

Awesome Haiyan! Keep on shining:)

Re: 2012 – A Year in Making

Colin Raney — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:46:11 -0000

Stay awzm Haiyan!!

- colin

Re: Playsettings – Playful crockery for dextrous dining experiences

spyphonecalls.com — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 04:19:14 -0000

Yep very cool, where to buy such gadgets:)))?

Re: Playsettings – Playful crockery for dextrous dining experiences

Dean Stringer — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 19:02:50 -0000

Hehe, very nice. Looks like fun. Love the Cactus one, thats got potential :)

Re: Designing for an ecosystem – OpenIDEO’s user engagement framework

Charlotte Fliegner — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 07:23:01 -0000

Hi Haiyan, Can I please use your diagram in a university essay I am writing on clans & tribes in online communities? Thanks, Charlotte

Re: Crowd-sourced radiation readings from Japan

King Neece — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:31:41 -0000

Remove radiation from any water
source

Our University of Alabama patented
solar desalination product uses no electricity, has no filters to replace, can
be taken anywhere and extracts pure water from any contaminated water source.
It removes radiation, fluoride, salt, pesticides, bacteria, dirt and other
contaminants from any water. It aids people to be prepared for disasters, saves
hundreds on bottled water and utility bills. Made tough in the U.S.A.

Please visit us:

http://freshwater.ecogreene...

These units can also be placed
together in arrays of literally any size, as needed, to accommodate a desert
vegetable farm or remote area water needs, etc.

Re: Extending the lifespan of the gadget

monitor a mobile phone — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:25:02 -0000

When Apple released iPhone4S,
smartphone competitors probably weren’t the only ones beginning to
sweat. Digital camera makers also have much to be worried about.

Re: Lessons from the Hitch

Max Song — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 02:25:46 -0000

Dear Haiyan,

Thank you for writing this beautiful piece on Christopher Hitchens. I discovered his work last year, introduced to me by my roommate as I struggled with concepts of faith, and divinity. Hitchen's pieces, as he fought dying, and the utter clarity and confidence of his words on perhaps the murkiest subject in the world, was a source of strength that will remain with me for a long time. Death, they say, is the truest test of faith. It is only on your deathbed, unable even to get up, that you truly confront how you cast your existential lots.

Re: The building blocks of innovation and the history of the steam locomotive

Haiyan — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:53:08 -0000

Hi John, thanks for reading. I've just finished writing this article as well, so I hope you'll come back to read it.
I like your blog. You cover some interesting topics and I especially liked your reference to Ben Franklin's apology to printers.I guess for us technologists it's still fun to revel in the solutions... to dabble in new technologies that seem like they might address something but doesn't quite yet. Franklin himself spent a lot of time playing with electricity to little avail (aside from surmising that lightning was electricity). In transitioning technology to something impactful, it's necessary to go through the steps of applying it to a problem or a need, but that doesn't mean we can't tinker along the way.Sincerely,Haiyan

Re: The building blocks of innovation and the history of the steam locomotive

Haiyan — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:22:56 -0000

Scott! It's finally done! Come back and read it :) http://blog.failedrobot.com...

Re: Crowd-sourced radiation readings from Japan

Gary Neece — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 13:56:37 -0000

Remove
radiation from any water source

Our
University of Alabama patented solar desalination product uses no electricity,
has no filters to replace, can be taken anywhere and extracts pure water from
any contaminated water source. It removes radiation, fluoride, salt,
pesticides, bacteria, dirt and other contaminants from any water. It aids
people to be prepared for disasters, saves hundreds on bottled water and
utility bills. Made tough in the U.S.A.

Please
visit us:

http://99ers.me

These
units can also be placed together in arrays of literally any size, as needed,
to accommodate a desert vegetable farm or remote area water needs, etc.

News
Update:

Fukushima deadly hot particles hit U.S., Health right
violation (video)

West Coast, Seattle, Boston hot spots: Cancer to
dramatically increase yet public kept in dark

On Monday, it was confirmed that the major human right to
health is being violated in the United States by the public not being advised
that Fukushima hot particles contaminated the United States and that West Coast
cancer are due to surge, based on scientific analysis by Scientist Marco
Kaltofen of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) of radioactive isotopic
releases from Fukushima who presented his findings at the American Public
Health Association (APHA) annual meeting in Washington DC as reported by
nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen.

"Mr. Kaltofen’s analysis confirms the detection of hot
particles in the US and the extensive airborne and ground contamination in
northern Japan due to the four nuclear power plant accidents at TEPCO’s
Fukushima reactors," according to nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen of Fairwinds.

Re: The building blocks of innovation and the history of the steam locomotive

John Conti — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:54:57 -0000

I love this post. Studying the steam engine is in fact one of the great scientific, industrial, economic and social stories (I know, duh). What's better is it is a story that continues on.

When I brooded upon this topic a while back I wondered if maybe we humans haven't inverted the notion of "invention". It is so fun to talk about invention, but your story highlights what the Greeks thought of steam. I wonder if we as humans need to focus on discovering what "the problem" is, rather than what the solution is.

As an engineer and designer it seems we are often inventing early solutions while "obvious" problems lay around unattended too. I wrote about this a bit myself [shameless link to my own content: http://john-conti.com/gin/2...].

Just added this blog to my RSS. So glad I wandered in via Twitter.

Best Regards,
John

Re: The building blocks of innovation and the history of the steam locomotive

Scott Underwood — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 10:54:30 -0000

tap tap tap... is it tomorrow yet?

Re: What can the bagels tell you about your office?

Jamesmcbennett — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:57:37 -0000

If away from the computer, could screen saver time be a calculator. Switching all computers to screen saver after 20 seconds idle or something short might be necessary that might even measure chat at the desk. Possibly a coffee index (coffee consumed/number of people in office) might also be an indicator.

Other soft measures would be 'distraction', 'serendipity' and in large offices inter-company social networks.and if you want to go over the top, ask Deb Roy to install a system that will not only tell you have much people chat, it will tell the subject. (Big Brother Warning!) http://www.ted.com/talks/de...

Re: What can the bagels tell you about your office?

Antonia Anni — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:50:48 -0000

Lunch Time Measure perhaps, those who stay on their desk over those who go out. Then you can measure how many people and how often they participate in the friday beer o'clock.

Re: What can the bagels tell you about your office?

Haiyan Zhang — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:35:47 -0000

I should mention here that one soft measure I'm interested in is the 'social rhythm' of the office. How much do people socialise and chat... and I'm trying to find ways to index this. Experiments forthcoming and thoughts welcome!

Re: Your flagship product is our nice-to-have feature

Haiyan Zhang — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:56:01 -0000

Was chatting with a colleague the other day about the potentials of developing a product that is solely reliant on one backbone platform (ie. twitter or facebook). It certainly increases your chances of being acquired by one of those platforms if they do decide to fold in your 'feature set'... however, you're hedging your bets in terms of being first and best-to-market with your product by trumping the competition.

Re: Your flagship product is our nice-to-have feature

ktillman — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 03:17:17 -0000

The one advantage the t.co URLs don't seem to have is speed. Its a small bone to pick in the the context of all the advantages from analytics that will help people understand their true reach, but the t.co urls are very slow.

Re: Your flagship product is our nice-to-have feature

Tom — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:14:18 -0000

Platforms baking in their own versions of 3rd party tools certainly doesn't kill innovation or competition in my opinion, but it does mean building on someone else's platform should always be a short term strategy and you need to diversify as you can't rely on being bought out.

I'm sure I remember reading [Joel Spolsky|Paul Graham|Jason Calacanis] riffing on a similar theme, but the best my google-fu can manage right now is: http://www.joelonsoftware.c...

Re: Crowd-sourced radiation readings from Japan

Hendrik Warntjes — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 11:07:23 -0000

Thanks for that. Reassuring that you are also reading higher values than official - or even other GM counters. Out of curiosity: what is your average uSv/h up there in Hokkaido? In Tokyo (with my Gamma Scout that reports higher values) it's around 0.24 uSv/h over past few weeks. Second question, hope you dont mind, what is the conversion factor of your GS? I mean to translate from CPM to uSv/h, these devices apply a conversion factor - as teh Gamma Scout are calibrated, it should be different for each device. My factor is 106. Can I ask what you see on yours?
Thanks!

Re: Crowd-sourced radiation readings from Japan

Koester — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 05:16:34 -0000

Hello,
here one more info. http://www.biei-footpath.co...
The differences in readings are based on the calculation from cpm into sieverts. There are a lot of variables involved to come to the sievert value.
These variables are not internationally standardized. The calibration of devices are also not standardized. Measurements are not comparable.
What drives me crazy is that the use limit values for sieverts per year, per hour, for kids, workers, etc. similar to other countries and instituions but the sievert calculation they do regardless to those respective calibrations of divices.
If they measure and publish 3 or 4 times lower sieverts they should at least adjust their oficial limits accordingly.
May be not intentionally, just lack of education.
I contacted some responsible authorities but no one can answer my questions and explains the real calculation according to their devices they use.
My readings are online every 10 min. here: http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~cam/

Regards, Stefan Koester-Hirose

Re: Crowd-sourced radiation readings from Japan

Hendrik Warntjes — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:17:42 -0000

Jusat saw your post. I got a GS2, and I seem to have the same problem: GS has consistently higher mcSv/h values than other device. A few indicators that it's the translation from CPM to mcSv/hr are
a) i roughly get the same CPM as the folks at Safecast (around 40-50 CPM in central Tokyo). You can check this when you download the data to the computer. However Safecast translate CPM into mcSv/h using a factor of 350 (see http://blog.safecast.org/20... and they continue to do so. My GS translates using a factor of 106, i.e. while my CPM readings are identical, the mcSv/h readings are higher by a factor of 3.
b) GS do advise that around 106 is the correct factor. http://www.gamma-scout.com/...
c) Safecast advise that they use a more sensitive pancake probe, i.e. they would pick up more CPM... this does not soudn right as I get similar CPM values to them with my less senstive GS2. The GS would have to report only 1/3 of counts if the pancake probe was that much more accurate.
d) in northern Germany, the GS2 measured mcSv/h are 0.08-0.012, which is consistent with official figures there.

Can we compare our figures? I would feel slightly better if I knew that at least between our two GS we would get similar readings, i.e. it's not miscalibration (which is unlikely given that they are supposed to be calibrated, and the test in Germany shows good figures)

Thanks!
Hendrik

Re: Visualising the Community DNA for OpenIDEO

Tristan Cooke — Mon, 30 May 2011 22:15:53 -0000

For what it's worth I think you might have got the weighting a bit off. It takes alot more effort to submit a concept and I don't feel that is valued in the current scale.

Re: Crowd-sourced radiation readings from Japan

yoineiine — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:51:41 -0000

Hi, I have a question about the radiation data. My home town in Mitaka Tokyo. I always see that data in Mitaka around 0.150µSv /h with yellow sign in the map http://japan.failedrobot.com/
It's a way up high amount than other places in Tokyo. I really would like to know about detail of the area. Please let me know if you know about any farther information. Thanks.

Re: Crowd-sourced radiation readings from Japan

Haiyan — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:33:24 -0000

I believe there is a conversion factor between cpm. But I think this factor differs based on the type of isotope your counter is detecting. I found this page which might help: http://www.blackcatsystems....