Computer hardware has become infinitely more powerful through the years, a trend that has allowed computer makers to push the performance to levels we almost thought were impossible just a decade earlier. The exponential growth of computing performance is very noticeable when you examine how the performance of the world’s most powerful computer systems, the supercomputers, has changed over time.


Here is the performance of the fastest supercomputer in the world, the past 15 years:

  • Top in 2010: 2.57 petaflops
  • Top in 2005: 280.6 teraflops
  • Top in 2000: 4.94 teraflops
  • Top in 1995: 170 gigaflops

If we set the fastest supercomputer in 1995 as the baseline:

  • The top supercomputer in 2000 was 19 times faster.
  • The top supercomputer in 2005 was 1,650 times faster.
  • The top supercomputer in 2010 was 15,100 times faster.

Or, illustrated with a chart:

Supercomputing performance over the past 15 years

Also see:
Rewriting Moores Law with faster improvement in computer speed using IBM silicon photonics

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Mobile App Review – mBook — from moodlenews.com by Joseph Thibault

mBook is the 2nd app for Mobile Moodle developed by MassMedia (MassMedia.hk) from Hong Kong.  This is an expanded version of mPage specifically tailored for use on the iPad (the app is not available on any other OS).  This app is also a hybrid, requiring a purchase from the Apple App Store as well as installed files on your Moodle server (server side installation files are available from http://mbooks.hk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2).  NOTE: the same files for mPage are required for mBook (so installing for one of the apps makes your site ready for the other, which is a plus).

mBook is listed at $3.99 in the Apple App Store.

Gartner’s top 10 technologies for 2011 — from GlobalKnowledge.com by Larry Dignan; with special thanks to Mr. Cal Keen, Calvin College, for this resource

  1. Cloud computing
  2. Mobile apps and media tablets
  3. Next-gen analytics
  4. Social analytics
  5. Social communication and collaboration
  6. Video
  7. Context-aware computing
  8. Ubiquitous computing
  9. Storage class memory
  10. Fabric based infrastructure and computers

Vlingo 2011: The Future of Intelligent Voice Apps

Web jobs for young professionals

.My thanks to Adam Henige at nicholascreative.com for this information/job board.

 

The future of Microsoft Windows Azure: Platform as a service — from arstechnica.com by Peter Bright

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At PDC yesterday, Microsoft unveiled its roadmap for the Windows Azure cloud computing platform. Moving beyond mere Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), the company is positioning Windows Azure as a Platform-as-a-Service offering: a comprehensive set of development tools, services, and management systems to allow developers to concentrate on creating available, scalable applications.

Over the next 12-18 months, a raft of new functionality will be rolled out to Windows Azure customers. These features will both make it easier to move existing applications into the cloud, and enhance the services available to cloud-hosted applications.

csunplugged.org -- for teaching Computer Science in K-12

— my thanks to Professor Joel Adams at Calvin College for this resource

Also see:
Exploring Computational Thinking
Google is committed to promoting computational thinking throughout the K-12 curriculum to support student learning and expose everyone to this 21st century skill.

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From DSC:
In reading Ray Ozzie’s views of the future (Ray is the departing high-level visionary at Microsoft), it was interesting to note that Ray points out the dangers of complexity — at least in the world of computing/software development. Quotes from both 2005 and 2010 are below:

From 2005:

Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.  Moving forward, within all parts of the organization, each of us should ask “What’s different?”, and explore and embrace techniques to reduce complexity.

And then again from 2010:

Complexity kills. Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers and IT.  Complexity makes products difficult to plan, build, test and use.  Complexity introduces security challenges.  Complexity causes administrator frustration.

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Concept, graphics, idea from Daniel S. Christian:
But free for your taking and implementing!

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What:

  • Choir Practice: A mobile-based method of practicing one’s part

Features

  • The ability for the choir member to go directly to measure ____
  • The ability for the choir member to highlight measures ____ through ____ (like highlighting text in Microsoft Word), then click on the play button to loop through those measures
  • One could speed up a song up or slow it down (without affecting pitch)
  • The application would allow for all of the vocal parts to begin playing upon downloading a pre-packaged song or the application could always start playing with a certain part (i.e. 1st or 2nd soprano, alto, tenor, or bass)
  • The musical notes could be the same color or one could choose to display the notes in different colors
  • Bonus features might include a video of a director directing this song

Why:

  • This type of thing would be a great cross-disciplinary assignment for your institution’s curriculum — Music and Computer Science come to mind for this application
  • Your institution could sell this application on Apple’s App Store to develop a new revenue stream
  • Your choirs could produce the packaged songs / tracks
  • Plus, such an app would help choir members learn their parts — 24x7x365 — in the car, on the road, in the gym, etc.
  • Enhances one’s ability to listen to other parts as well
  • Aids your marketing departments as you point to this as a solid deliverable from your programs
  • Creates “study aids” for your own school’s choirs/students as well as for choirs at smaller churches and institutions (worldwide)
  • Helps those choir members who don’t have access to a piano or don’t know how to play a piano

Have fun whomever takes this idea and runs with it! The choirs of the world will appreciate you — and so will their audiences!   🙂

Along these lines…another win-win here includes:

That students in the future (I hope) will be able to choose from a multitude of potential roles when presented with multi-disciplinary projects/assignments/courses:
  • Vocalists, pianists, and other type of musicians
  • Composers
  • Programmers
  • Graphic artists
  • Videographers / video editors
  • Audio specialists
  • Writers
  • Project Managers
  • Actresses/Actors
  • etc.
As such, students could:
  • Learn to appreciate other disciplines
  • Participate in/contribute to projects that could be published on the web
  • Exercise their creativity
  • Practice being innovative

 

Daniel Christian

Google ‘Code-In’ calls on K-12 students to become open source developers — from The Journal by John K. Waters

Google wants to get middle and high school students interested in open source software, and the company is betting that a new “outreach contest” that includes cash prizes and a grand-prize trip to the Googleplex in California will appeal to budding programmers.

Google’s new “Code-In” competition, which gets underway Nov. 22, presents 13- to 18-year-olds with eight tasks, ranging from refactoring code and interface design to such not-so-techie jobs as writing and editing software documentation and developing marketing materials. For every three tasks they complete, the students earn $100, up to a maximum of $500. Ten grand prize winners will get an all-expenses-paid trip with a family member to Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters. The trip includes a tour of the sprawling Googleplex facility and meetings with some of the company’s engineers.

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Job Vacancy – Mobile Programmer (Closing 26 October 2010) — from HITLab New Zealand News

Research Associate – Mobile Programmer
HIT Lab NZ is looking for a Mobile Programmer (Fixed-term until April 2011)

An exciting opportunity has now opened up in the HIT Lab NZ for a Research Associate to work on improving and extending our current software platform. The successful candidate will work in collaboration with the current HIT Lab Team and receive access to different advanced technology currently developed at the HIT Lab NZ.

To be successful in this role you will need to be able to take responsibility for:

  • Enhancing the 3D graphics engine with new functionalities
  • Integrating other commercial and open source 3D graphics engines into the mobile AR framework
  • Developing specific features for the architecture/urban planning area,
  • Developing specific features for the cultural heritage/tourism area,
  • Integrating new multimedia functionalities to the platform (audio, 3D audio, video, etc).

Ideally, our successful candidate will have:

  • Strong knowledge of Computer Graphics, Visualization, Mobile architecture & programming
  • Robust software engineering and software architecture understanding
  • Strong maths (3D Algebra), problem solving and analytical skills
  • Excellent Java programming skills
  • Proficiency in Computer Graphics Programming (OpenGL)
  • Experience with Android and Mobile Programming
  • Familiarity of OpenGL ES will be a plus
  • Familiarity with 3D graphics engines
  • Ability to work in a small team environment
  • Excellent communication skills

Hottest jobs and skills in cloud, mobile app development — from pcworld.com by Meridith Levinson, CIO

Want to lock in some job security in IT over the next five years? Then make sure you’re poised to move into cloud computing or mobile application development. That’s where the IT jobs are expected to be, according to 2,000 IT professionals recently surveyed by IBM.

IBM’s annual global Tech Trends survey identified cloud computing and mobile application development as the hottest tech trends and most sought-after IT skills for the next five years. An overwhelming majority of survey respondents (91 percent) expect cloud computing to overtake on-premise computing as the primary IT delivery model by 2015. More than half (55 percent) of survey respondents believe that in the same amount of time, the need to develop applications for mobile devices (such as Android, iPhone, iPad and PlayBook) will far surpass the need to develop software for traditional PCs and servers. These trends will impact IT jobs and the skills needed to do them.

© 2025 | Daniel Christian