Daily Archives: May 23, 2017

Conceived on a napkin in 1993 by Richard Platt and David Tucker at Incite (soon to become Selsius Systems), the world's first IP PBX was a true killer app for the rapidly emerging IP network platform. Connecting people together via real-time voice turned out to be an ideal use of newly ubiquitous fast ethernet infrastructureand unifying voice and data networks helped turn convergence into a buzzword.

High-quality, real-time human-to-human communication requires a high-performance network, naturally, and in 1998 the soothsayers in Ciscos M&A division foresaw IP comms driving IP infrastructure spending, and a match made in Dallas was born. Currently representing well over $1 billion in direct sales of Cisco Unified Communications equipment, and many multiples of that in indirect network infrastructure revenue, its clear that connecting people over the network is a big deal. And while just about everyone else in Silicone Valley is focused in roughly the same head-space, Ciscos proven ability to weaponize its technology with industrial-strength security, reliability, manageability, and scaleand then point it at the lucrative enterprise marketturned it into the largest PBX vendor on the planet (from zero to #1 in under five years).

Figure 1 - Sexy! (and CSI's Ted Danson looks pretty good too...)

Convergence turned out to be more than a buzzword, and Cisco has innovated intensively ever since, integrating call center, voice mail, IM, conference calling, video, and immersive telepresence products into a complete arsenal for enterprise collaboration.

One key to the success of Cisco collaboration running on top of the network has been the success of a teeming ecosystem of solutions, integrations, applications, and scripts running on top of Cisco collaboration. In a word: developers. Rich APIs for call automation, management, compliance, interoperability, etc. mean ISVs and in-house devs can mainline business intelligence directly into the communications infrastructure: connecting people, systems, processes, and (most recently) the Internet of Things into one hyper-converged network of networks.

In its latest bid to assimilate the business world into The Network, Cisco Spark takes the IP collaboration stack out of the server closet and into the cloud, marrying persistent chat, WebEx-style video conferencing/screen-sharing, HD voice/video, and unique hardware endpoints into an elegant, multi-platform user experience that meanwhile keeps the tortured silicon (and sysadmins) to a minimum. In a play to further blur the lines between LAN and WAN (remember borderless networks?), Cisco Sparks unique end-to-end encryption, adaptive bandwidth usage, UC infrastructure interop, and sheer reliability-at-scale extend the tradition of killer comms forged in the sun of a million enterprise support contract SLAs.

Figure 2 - Cisco Spark: rich cloud collaboration on any device

Two recent innovations are particularly exciting both for users and developers: the launch of the Cisco Spark Board room-conferencing system, and the announcement of the Cisco Spark video SDK.

Garnering what amount to raves in the taciturn world of business equipment, the Cisco Spark Board is the Olympic gymnast of phones: it may well be on steroids, but it's elegant, immensely capable, and makes it all look dead easy.

Figure 3 - Compelling, powerful room collaboration: the Cisco Spark Board

The Spark Board connects effortlessly to the Cisco Spark cloud by simply plugging it into your network (your high-quality, Cisco specced network, natch.) It then provides the well-appointed enterprise conference room with a big, beautiful touchscreen video conferencing collaboration unit that connectsseemingly via ESPto your mobile or PC for screen-sharing, whiteboarding, etc. Combining sophisticated capabilities with intuitive use, backed by industry-leading security and availability, the Spark Board is pretty much the apotheosis of the original Selsius IP Phone.

Complementing Cisco Sparks ability to provide omnipresent video-enabled collaboration, the Cisco Spark video SDK gives developers the power to embed Spark-powered collaboration (including video, messaging, sharing, etc.) into their existing applications.

Figure 4 - Cisco Spark SDK video windows and controls embedded in an iPad app

Initially supporting iOS/Swift (with Android to follow) and browser-based apps via JavaScript and WebRTC, the Cisco Spark SDK provides frameworks and self-contained widgets that let coders turn a mobile app or a web page into a secure, high-performance collaboration tool with literally a few lines of code:

Figure 5 - Cisco Spark SDK video widget sample code

Combined with Ciscos existing Spark messaging APIsopening business IM up to the possibilities of chat bots connected to IT systems and automation of all kindsthis superset of pervasive cloud collaboration fully integrated into line-of-business apps, literally burning a hole in your pocket (in the case of a Note 7!) or immersing the boardroom (in the case of a Cisco Spark Board,) is nirvana for the agile enterprise.

Last-minute update: perhaps signaling the beginning of the collaboration singularity, Cisco has announced the acquisition of MindMeld, a San Francisco artificial intelligence luminary. Though details on how this will play out are scarcethe term cognitive collaboration is being bandied aboutits exciting to contemplate how networks, convergence, integration, and now artificial intelligence can potentially transform business communication yet again.

If you would like to learn about Spark APIs, a great place to start is our Spark page on Cisco DevNet.

David Staudt, Cisco DevNet Developer Evangelist / Principal Engineer, Cisco Systems Inc.@dstaudtatcisco

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The Collaboration Singularity Is Drawing Closer - InfoWorld

In Brief At the point of a black hole's singularity, the laws of physics cease to apply. Researchers running a simulation have created such a singularity outside of the confines of a black hole. Naked Physics

Einsteins general theory of relativity is a cornerstone ofour understanding of how the universe works. A great deal of the science we do has roots in this theory. As Phys.org points out,estimating the age of stars, using GPS for navigation, and a host of other possibilities exist thanks to Einstiens calculations. The theory has stood the test of time, even with over a century of challenges.

The theory does break down as do all standard laws of physics at a singularity. Singularities are points in the universe where a celestial bodys gravitational field becomes infinite. In our universe, general relativity says that this phenomenon existsonly in the center of a black hole. Singularities existing outside of this condition would be known as naked singularities. A concept known as the cosmic censorship conjecture, introduced in 1969,stated all singularities would be cloaked by an event horizon. Naked singularities, however, would be exempt from this principle.

Using computer simulations, researchers have predicted the formation of a naked singularity in three-dimensional space for the first time. That being said, although the simulations may have shown a naked singularity, it wasnt a simulation of our universe. Researchers Toby Crisford and Jorge Santos from Cambridges Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics used a universe shaped quite differently from our (relatively) flat one. They used anti-de Sitter space for theirsimulation, which curves in the shape of a saddle. Having a universe with curvature allows for some novel possibilities. Given this shape, researchers were able to force the creation of a naked singularity.

The known universe is not curved, therefore the findings are not directly applicable to our universe. However, that does not make this discovery insignificant: other seemingly unrelated theories of particle physics are connected to gravity in anti-de Sitter space. Equipped with this simulated cosmic censorship violation, theres no telling what the future has in store for the field of theoretical physics.

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New Research Shows That a Naked Singularity Could Exist in Physics - Futurism

For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that a universe like ours with three spatial dimensions could actually host a naked singularity - an event so intense, the laws of physics would fall apart.

Until now, researchers have only been able to place naked singularities in five-dimensional universes, but by proving that they could theoretically exist in three spatial dimensions, these physicists have found something that could challenge Einstein's general theory of relativity.

If you're not familiar with naked singularities, think of them like a black hole that's been turned inside-out - if you could take all the strangeness that's inside a black hole, and expose it to the Universe as a naked entity, that's what we're talking about here.

No one's ever detected a naked singularity in our Universe, but these hypothetical regions in space are predicted to form when huge stars collapse at the end of their lives, resulting inliterally infinite density - something that our laws of physics cannot handle.

That means if a black hole's unimaginably violent centre could potentially occur in open space, someone's going to have to explain why general relativity - something that's supposed to be universal - no longer applies.

"A naked singularity, if such a thing exists, would be an abrupt hole in the fabric of reality - one that would not just distort space-time, but would also wreak havoc on the laws of physics wherever it goes and lead to a catastrophic loss of predictability," Avaneesh Pandey from the International Business Times explains.

For decades, physicists thought that black holes and their mysterious internal singularities could exist in harmony with Einstein's general relativity due to something called the 'cosmic censorship conjecture.'

The basic idea is that whenever a singularity forms in the Universe, it will always be hidden away behind a black hole's event horizon, which means the laws of physics around the black hole can continue to function as normal.

"If true, cosmic censorship means that outside of black holes, these singularities have no measurable effect on anything, and the predictions of general relativity remain valid," Sarah Collins writes for Phys.org.

More recently, mathematical simulations of five-dimensional universes have predicted the existence of naked singularities that would throw the idea of cosmic censorship conjecture out the window.

That's not so bad - we've never even come close to finding another universe, especially one with five dimensions, so general relativity can go on its merry way.

Except that now UK physicists Toby Crisford and Jorge Santos from the University of Cambridge have simulated a universe with the same number of dimensions as our own, and lo and behold - it can host naked singularities too.

To be clear, the pair aren't saying they've simulated a naked singularity in our Universe per se - the universe they've simulated has three spatial dimensions and one time dimension like ours, but it's got a whole different shape.

While our Universe is thought to be fairly flat, Crisford and Santos's universe is 'saddle-shaped'.

General relativity allows for the existence of manydifferently shaped universes, and the pair worked with a specific type of curved universe calledAnti-de Sitter space, as seen below:

Krishnavedala/Wikimedia

One particular feature of this saddle-shaped universe is a point of no return, where light is actually reflected back onto itself.

It's a bit like putting space-time in a box, and at the walls of this box, the physicists were able to force theformation of a singularity.

So what does this mean for us?

Well, the good news is that no one's been able to prove that naked singularities exist in our Universe, which is just as well, because black holes are bad enough company as it is- space-time in a box as it is -imagine those cataclysmic death traps withoutan event horizon.

But by demonstrating that naked singularities are actually possible in a universe like ours with three spatial dimensions, Crisford and Santos have a promising new set-up for us to find quantum gravity - something that could one day merge general relativity with quantum mechanics as a universal 'theory of everything'.

"The naked singularity we see is likely to disappear if we were to include charged particles in our simulation - this is something we are currently investigating," Santos told Phys.org.

"If true, it could imply a connection between the cosmic censorship conjecture and the weak gravity conjecture, which says that any consistent theory of quantum gravity must contain sufficiently charged particles. In Anti-de Sitter space, the cosmic censorship conjecture might be saved by the weak gravity conjecture."

It's heady stuff, but if the strangeness of naked singularities can help us finally fill the gaps in modern physics,we're glad they exist (in theory).

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

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Naked singularities can actually exist in a three-dimensional ... - ScienceAlert

2016 was a year of headlines in artificial intelligence. A top-selling holiday gift was the AI-powered Amazon Echo; IBM Watson was used todiagnosecancer; and Google DeepMinds system AlphaGo cracked the ancient and complex Chinese game Go sooner than expected.

And progress continues in 2017.

Neil Jacobstein, faculty chair of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Singularity University, hit the audience at Singularity Universitys Exponential Manufacturing Summitwith some of the more significant updates in AI so far this year.

DeepMind, for example, recently outlined a new method called Elastic WeightConsolidation (EWC) to tackle catastrophic forgetting in machine learning. The method helps neural networks retain previously learned tasks.

And a project out of Newcastle University is taking object recognition to the next level. The researchers have created a system thats hooked up to a robotic hand, which is learning how to uniquely approach and pick up different objects. (Think about the impact this technology may have on assembly lines.)

These are just two of a number of developments and advances moving AI ahead in 2017.

For those worried AI has become overhyped, we sat down with Jacobstein after his talk to hear firsthand about progress in the field of AI, the practical applications of the technology that hes most excited about, and how we can prepare society for a future of AI.

Image Source: Shutterstock

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Watch: Where AI Is Today, and Where It's Going in the Future - Singularity Hub

If terrorism is a crime against humanity, then it shouldnt matter where an atrocity takes place. We should feel as wounded if the atrocity takes place in Madras or Manila as if it happens in Manchester. And yet we know its not like that. Bomb attacks, random acts of mindful violence, have an acute sense of place.

We know those cafes in Paris. We see the news footage and imagine ourselves having a caf creme and a pastry there. We feel the pain, and it stays with us. The bus station in Baghdad, or the shopping centre in Nairobi are remote to us, in every sense of the word. We watch, momentarily stunned, and move on quite quickly. We cant help it: we understand that the right to live in peace is universal, but when a truly terrible action is visited on a place thats familiar to us, the anger that wells up, the despair that pervades, is something we just cant control.

On listening to accounts of that awful night at the Manchester Arena, I could picture the very streets those terrified people were running down, away from the scene of the carnage, I know the hotels in which they sought refuge, I could put faces to the Mancunian voices who talked about offering lifts home and rooms for the night. I imagined the CIS building, the citys first skyscraper and our proud symbol of the swinging Sixties, looking down impassively on the mayhem. That familiarity, together with the glottal-stop accents of the young people being interviewed, was heart-wrenching in the extreme.

The morning after the incident on Westminster Bridge in March, I wrote in this newspaper that the idea of Londoners standing shoulder to shoulder was a romantic fiction. The capital is an atomised, diverse, individualistic and materially imbalanced city, and the concept of a Londoner is a moot one anyway. Its a polyglot city like few others, and we all come to London for a mixture of reasons, but mainly in search of employment.

I have lived in London many more years than I lived in Manchester, but when someone asks where I come from, I always reply Manchester. And the city of my birth, also racially diverse and with its own share of urban blight, really does have a definable character, a personality, and a civic pride that is actually quite humbling.

There issuch a thing as a Mancunian, in all shades and colours and persuasions, and in the ensuing days, as the gruesome story of Monday night unfolds, well hear an awful lot more about how many saw this as an assault on their city, its values, its sense of fun, its amiability, its brotherhood. Thats why people didnt have to think twice about offering assistance: its what we do. And what many Mancunians will know now as Liverpudlians have discovered, repeatedly is that there is a flip side to that sense of belonging: there are occasions when it hurts, too.

Im not saying that Manchester is unique in these respects, but its history, from its importance as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution to its cultural significance in contemporary Britain, provides the city with a self-assurance, a swagger even, that gives it a certain singularity.

There is a lot of guff talked about individual places having a spirit, but thats indeed what Manchester has. You can see it on the streets of the city every Saturday night, when young people, dressed as if theyre in Ibiza, queue up in search of good times. You can take it from our lyrical expressions of the vagaries of life (and Heaven knows were all miserable now). You can experience it in ordinary, everyday connections with strangers, ready with a joke, and very hard to impress. And you can extract it from what the Bishop of Manchester said the morning after: The key to Manchesters success over centuries, he said, is that its a vibrant city where people have come to learn to trust each other and to live together.

That spirit has not been crushed by the events of Monday night. If anything, it is shown up in an even sharper relief against the barbarity of the offence. Manchester has been here before, of course. In June 1996, the biggest bomb in Britain since the end of the war was detonated by the IRA in the city centre, tearing apart the Arndale Shopping Centre, but miraculously not taking any lives. In the subsequent years, as Manchester rose from the wreckage and was transformed into the snazzy, modern centre it is today, Mancunians would joke that the IRA did us a favour in allowing us to rebuild the city.

There will be no jokes in years to come about what happened in the Manchester Arena this week. Children have not been allowed to grow up. Families are scarred for ever. The one solace relatively tiny though it is is that the wheels and motors that propel this great city, and the people who imbibe its spirit, will surely overcome.

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Mancunians in all their singularity and swagger have already prevailed against terror - iNews

Technology has a funny habit: just when you think it cant get better, it does. Take 3D printing. The ability for a machine to spit out soft material in a precise pattern that almost simultaneously hardens into an actual thing you can use is pretty incredible.

But theres room for improvement. To date, low production speed and quality have limited 3D printing to prototyping. Now, additive manufacturing companyCarbonaims tochange all that with a fast 3D printer capable of printing finished products.

[This is] what we've been dreaming of for 30 yearsto go directly from design...to end use parts, said Valerie Buckingham at Singularity Universitys Exponential Manufacturing Summit in Boston last week. That truly is what we consider the future of manufacturing.

In short, for polymer parts, Carbon thinks 3D printing can finally break into mass manufacturing and bring all the benefits of going digital along with it.

Seeing their mind-bending technology in action is like something out of science fiction. Buckingham, who's VP of Marketing at Carbon, described the tech as a digital light projector shining through an oxygen-permeable optics layer a little bit like a contact lens, into a vat of UV-sensitive liquid programmable resin above.

Translation: light is shined into a big bucket of ooze and makes something thats then lifted out of the ooze to be used in our everyday lives.

Since coming out of stealth in 2015, Carbon has raised $221 million in venture capital, and the company just unveiled its SpeedCell system in March. The system features printers that have twice the build area of the previous model and can interface with robots.

Buckingham shared her observations about the current state of additive manufacturing and the emerging trends she thinks are most important for product companies. Below are three focal points Carbon has centered its technology and processes around, and theyre points well likely see take root across the broader manufacturing spectrum in the months and years ahead.

Traditional 3D printing creates an object by depositing material layer by layer. But those same layers can cause mechanical weaknesses. Carbons layer-free method, said Buckingham, makes products that have the same mechanical characteristics in all three dimensions and have great surface finish and resolution, the kind youd expect from final quality polymer parts.

3D printing can be thought of as essentially stacking many tiny parts of a material on top of itself then having those parts stick together. Carbons continuous liquid interface production technologyCLIP for shortis like taking one big chunk of that material and chiseling it into the same product.

What's really important, Buckingham added, is that we can do it incredibly quickly. If youve ever watched a 3D printer do its thing, fast is probably not a word youd use to describe it. Carbons CEO says the CLIP method is 25 to 100 times faster than other industrial 3D printers.

In a comparison to how little the manufacturing sector has changed with digitization compared to most every other aspect of our lives, Buckingham noted that most production processes still involve design followed by prototyping and analog tooling. Carbons printers are one of the first technologies to change that and go directly from design to end use parts.

One of the critical factors of this technology is that it really places the designer at the center. And it makes it possible for them to manifest their vision directly into the world without a lot of these constraints, Buckingham said.

The company announced a partnership with Adidas just last month, in which Carbons technology will be used to make the mid-soles for a line of shoes called Futurecraft. The athletic wear company has expressed interest in mass-customizing its shoes; a person who weighs 120 pounds and wears a size 9 needs a differently-built shoe than a 180-pound size 9.

We've announced we're going to be making 100,000 pairs of these shoes next year, Buckingham said. That's a really big deal. That's not a science project. That's real final part production.

Products used to be a physical, static output of a process. But additive technology is changing that, and leading companies are figuring out how to design for the process. By digitizing production, you cut out the middle man and go from design to end use is, Buckingham said.

Finally, Buckingham emphasized the importance of provenance, or knowing exactly where a product comes from. This is crucial for highly-regulated industries like medical products. Parts created with additive technology are going to carry their born-on data with them, or, as Buckingham put it, You're going to be able to know when it was made, what the resin batch was, who the operator was, and how long it sat in the loading dock for.

That means product failures wont require mass recalls, where companies essentially guess what went wrong and end up wasting thousands of units of product so as to err on the side of playing it safe.

Embedded provenance data will let manufacturers pinpoint what went wrong, when, and where, making it easier to identify and solve the problem. This is going to really change how we think about risk and data when it comes to physical goods, Buckingham said.

Image Credit: Carbon/YouTube

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Carbon's Bold Mission to Finally Dematerialize Manufacturing - Singularity Hub