obruxelle

The Renaissance was a cultural movement based on classical sources for example the Greek and Roman art and literature.

Information Renaissance, I think is really different as it is not based on any past knowledge. I think the way we see information today is more an evolution of what was information before the Information revolution with some important changes.

That is why I have got some problem with using the word renaissance with information. Maybe it comes from my understanding of the French word renaissance which for me means rebirth (after a dark period in the case of the Renaissance). That was the case with the European Renaissance as culture and sciences was in a pretty bad shape for a few centuries during the middle ages.

Information was not in a dark period before the information revolution, people had access to information pretty easily and there were good contents (maybe better that most of the things you can find on the internet now). I think we should not use the term of renaissance because it does not express well the evolution.

I have tried to find a word to replace renaissance and which can express a constant evolution with some important evolutions throughout it. I have not found it for the moment. Maybe it is going to be the subject of a future post.

Posted by Olivier Bruxelle at 12:30 PM | Permalink

The beta version of Microsoft Office 2010 was released a week ago to the public. It is a good opportunity because it allows the public to have a free license of the software for a year.
I have now used it for a few days, and even for a beta version it is fully operational.
Some improvements have been made with the interface, which now has a nice design and is really easy to use. The interface has the same kind of menu that is found in Microsoft Office 2007. I think those menus allow you to find the tools much more easily than with the older versions of Microsoft Office or with OpenOffice.
The developers have also worked on security. A document coming from the internet is now isolated from the computer so it cannot interact with it and create problems such as bringing a viruses without the acknowledgement of the user.
A new format of documents has been introduced in Microsoft Office 2010. It is called OpenDocument. This format is an ISO standard. This is a good addition for Microsoft, which used to use proprietary formats for its documents. It will help to develop interoperability between different software.
Finally, in Microsoft Office PowerPoint it is now possible to add 3D effects. It will help to create presentations that will be different from the one that everyone is used to seeing, with the basic effects that were used in the old versions of Microsoft Office PowerPoint. Thus, making this product unique from a potential competitor.
I think that with Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010, Microsoft managed to create valuable improvements in the domain of office suite, which had not been improved in a while.

Posted by Olivier Bruxelle at 02:32 PM | Permalink

Today, I am going to present a second Green IT application: the Cisco Smart Grid (Cisco)

A Smart Grid permits the delivery of electricity from the producer to the consumer using a digital network to control the distribution. The use of the digital network permits improvements in the distribution of electricity. A specific device must be plugged into outlets of your homes. Those specific devices will communicate with the electricity producer to improve the regulation of the electricity’s production. It is going to permit different prices depending on the time of day more easily. What is the link with Green IT? The goal is to reduce people consumption by providing a wide difference in electricity’s prices depending on the period of the day, which is supposed to make people more concern about their consumption.

The second point is that renewable energies like sun or wind are not available all day long. Smart Grid will permit to solve this problem by fixing prices depending on the period of the day to follow the availability of electricity. Using a smart grid will also permit to route electricity, so it would be possible to use sources of renewable energies close to houses to reduce the loss due to Joule effect. Then, people will be able to control precisely the consumption of their different devices in the house using a software connected to the control devices plugged in the different outlets, and so it is going to make people think about a way to reduce their electricity consumption and so be more aware of energy wastes. Some electronic devices will also be able to receive information from the grid to manage their energy consumption as the future Whirlpool cloth dryer (Foster, Whirlpool to produce smart clothes dryers, 2009).

Cisco has installed a pilot system for smart grid in Germany a couple weeks ago (Bordage, 2009). It is too early to see the real impact of this technology on electricity consumption. For the moment estimations expect a 10% reduction of the consumption. Such a reduction can be good for the environment if it associated with a more important use of renewable energy sources.
Cisco will also launch a consortium to create a standard for smart grid using an IP based network (Bordage, Constructeur > Smart Grid : Cisco lance Smart Grid Ecosystem, 2009). This standard will reduce the cost of smart grid technologies and will permit the development of this technology.
This technology will probably start to develop a lot in a few years as the European Union plans to create a law to encourage the use of intelligent network for electricity providing. Many important firms in the IT world, like IBM, Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent, are also working on smart grid technologies.

Bordage, F. (2009, October 13). Constructeur > Smart Grid : Cisco lance Smart Grid Ecosystem. Retrieved November 1, 2009, from GreenIT.fr: http://www.greenit.fr/article/acteurs/constructeur/smart-grid-cisco-lance-smart-grid-ecosystem
Bordage, F. (2009, October 20). Energie > Smart Grid : Cisco et YelloStrom lancent un pilote en Allemagne. Retrieved November 1, 2009, from GreenIT.fr: http://www.greenit.fr/article/energie/smart-grid-cisco-et-yellostrom-lancent-un-pilote-en-allemagne
Cisco. (n.d.). Smart Grid Solutions - Industry Solutions. Retrieved November 3, 2009, from Cisco System: http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/energy/smart_grid_solutions.html
Foster, P. (2009, October 12). Whirlpool to produce smart clothes dryers. Retrieved November 2, 2009, from thegreenitreview.com: http://www.thegreenitreview.com/2009/10/whirlpool-to-produce-smart-clothes.html

Posted by Olivier Bruxelle at 01:27 PM | Permalink

Turnitin is a software that has been developed to fight against plagiarism. It uses an algorithm to create a digital fingerprint of each documents submitted. When the digital fingerprint as been created, the software is able to compare it with a huge database of documents (over 12 Billion Web pages logged and archived, over 100 million student papers, over 80,000 major newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals and thousands of books including literary classics).
This software is very powerful. It is able to detect plagiarism even if the text is more than 50% of the text’s original words have been changed using synonyms. It is also able to detect plagiarism in a text made from a mix a two or more other texts.
This software is available on the website Plagiarism.org. It can be useful to both teachers and students. It allows students to check the quality of their papers before submitting them, which can be important to prevent getting in trouble for submitting a plagiarized paper. It can also be useful for teachers to work more efficiently. Teachers do not need to take up valuable time checking the sources of students’ papers, and they can focus more on the actual papers’ grade.
The disadvantage of this program is that it is really expensive. It costs around $5.00 to submit a paper on the website (a paper with less than 5000 words), and a paper can be resubmitted only once. If the costs do not decrease significantly, there is a chance that this tool will not be used by a lot a people to prevent plagiarism. Even if the idea is interesting, an important reduction of the cost of the service has to be done.
Even if this program has been designed for academic purpose, we can easily find an application in a professional world when someone write a paper which is going to be published.
To conclude, I would like to share some interesting information that is provided on Plagiarism.org. Several studies have proved that it takes longer to use a document from the Internet and change words to try to and hide it than writing a paper in your own words. So, remember that the next time you start late writing a paper.

Posted by Olivier Bruxelle at 12:32 PM | Permalink