2016 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award

Posted on December 11, 2016 by admin

ieeecomsocawardAya Wallwater, Gil Zussman, and myself received the 2016 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award at the 2016 IEEE GLOBECOM earlier this week, for our paper on measurements and algorithms for networks of energy harvesting nodes that appeared in the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing in 2013 [Paper PDF]. This IEEE Communications Society Award recognizes originality, utility, timeliness, and impact of the work.

This is my second IEEE Communications Society Award. My previous one is the 2011 IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communications.

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How Slow is a Pebble Watch?

Posted on December 10, 2016 by admin

Just as a I started considering using Pebble Watches as a low-power IoT platform for my experiments with fog computing, Pebble announced that the watches will not be manufactured anymore. Pebble is sold to Fitbit; independent operation of Pebble stops. And this is only mere weeks after I started characterizing Pebble performance.

Continue reading →

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Shelved Project Ara: Would Have Made a Great Research Project

Posted on September 6, 2016 by admin

Google’s project Ara, aimed at creating a smart phone consisting of easily interchanged modules, is officially shelved.

ara-courtesy-google

Ara should have been a research project, and not a productization attempt. As a product, it was always questionable: it’s hard to figure out what could make customers wait in line for these phones (“I can change a camera, uhuh, OK, and?”), and it’s not clear what would make manufacturers want to produce them (“Let me see if I get this straight, I now get to sell components with lower profit margins, rather than integrated devices with higher ones — I should do this why, exactly?”).

For a research project, seamless modularization would have been an intriguing and potentially transformative goal. Modularity is cool. Continue reading →

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My Favorite Collection: Countries and States Ran, v. July 2016

Posted on July 29, 2016 by admin

As of July 2016, the totals of places where I went running and ran at least one mile include:

  • Countries: 12 out of 196
  • Canadian provinces and territories: 3 out of 13
  • US states: 30 out of 50

The recent additions to the collection are Delaware and North Carolina (both added in March 2016) and Iceland (added in March 2015). The countries and the states where I went running are: Continue reading →

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Pain Of Not Doing A Planned Race, or Woes of a DNS

Posted on July 23, 2016 by admin

The wisdom of racing is that finishing dead last (DFL) is better than not finishing (DNF), and not finishing is better than not starting (DNS). DFL < DNF < DNS.

DNS_DFL_shirt

Well, T-shirt wisdom aside, sometimes you gotta take the annoying DNS.  And that’s the case with my planned 2016 New York City Triathlon, which is going on this Sunday, less than 16 hours from now. Continue reading →

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Work-Wearables: Next Step in Major Wearable Technology Deployments?

Posted on July 6, 2016 by admin

New Zealand Herald has an interesting opinion piece on the promise of wearable tech in work-wearables. The author makes several good points about why work wearables look like a promising area: work wearables have more reasons to be wearable, their price is easier to justify, and one won’t necessarily have to worry as much about style.

Different from, say, using existing lifestyle trackers for figuring out the employees’ levels of fitness, the argument is for wearables as tools for getting work done. Like smart uniforms that have long been envisioned by different military agencies — helping people be more productive in the 3rd of the lifetime that they spend at work.

Continue reading →

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IoT Spectrum Devices: Unusual Design Choices in Amazon Dash Button

Posted on June 30, 2016 by admin

Amazon recently announced that it will be partnering with over 50 additional brands in deploying its Dash buttons, small electronic buttons that can be sprinkled around the house and clicked to order the product a button represents. There are now more than 150 buttons available, covering products both ubiquitous (Doritos, Huggies, Gatorade) and niche (Greenies, L’il Critters Vitamins, Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% Whey Protein).

amazon_dash_buttonA Dash button in its intended deployment.
 

From an engineering point of view, Dash Button is a curious creature. Other smart buttons, such as the Flic Wireless Smart Button, exhibit the design choices that an engineer would naturally come up with: a smart button is a small device with a replaceable coin cell battery, communicating over Bluetooth. If you come up to me, or any other engineer, and ask them to sketch on a napkin a smart button design, you’d get something like Flic.

Continue reading →

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Why I Volunteer On The Grace Hopper Conference Scholarship Committee

Posted on June 3, 2016 by admin

I am finding it exceptionally rewarding to be serving on the Grace Hopper Conference Scholarship Committee, that is, reviewing Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference travel grant applications. I’ve served on this committee in 2015 and 2016, and plan to continue doing it in the foreseeable future.

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I Wish I Could Dance: Science Magazine Dance Your PhD Contest

Posted on June 1, 2016 by admin

Science Magazine announced its 9th annual Dance Your PhD Contest — a competition for best explaining your PhD research in an interpretive dance.

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Offbeat Tidbits In Scientific Publications

Posted on May 25, 2016 by admin

My treasure of a dentist, the most caring of all dentists I ever had, said the darnest thing to me the other day: “You do research, really? Good for you. I could never do it myself, it’s so boring.” She said it as she was reaching for a sharp triangular implement which, she explained earlier, was “like a cookie-cutter, but for the gums.” Cookie-cutting gums is fun for her, you see. Research is boring. My jaw would have dropped if my mouth was not already propped wide open with a different triangular (this one rubbery, not sharp) implement.

Research, boring? I mean, seriously!?

Continue reading →

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