Friday, January 25, 2013

Control in the cloud

SUBSCRIBER CONTENT: Jan 25, 2013
 
Startups & Venture Capital
 
Firm offers clients secure way to share their data
 
Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal
 
OwnCloud, whose CEO is Markus Rex, aims to help companies build and control their own file-sharing system in the cloud.
W. Marc Bernsau
 
While the concept of the “cloud” is one of the hottest topics in IT right now, many companies still have misgivings about how safe and secure it is — and how much control they really have over their own data.
Lexington-based ownCloud Inc. aims to assuage such uncertainty by giving companies the ability to build their own file-sharing cloud, and maintain control over access to the files and where they are stored.
“The desire that companies have is to protect their sensitive data,” said ownCloud CEO Markus Rex, who noted that the cloud’s growing prevalence throughout commerce is prompting businesses to assess their options.
Started as a free open-source project in 2010 by Frank Karlitschek — with the community version still available through owncloud.org — the business editions were released last year under ownCloud.
OwnCloud’s software allows companies to securely sync and share documents, and to use whatever cloud storage service or server they want — whether it’s their own server, or a global cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services or Rackspace.
Files can be accessed from mobile devices as well as desktops, and data can be shared with specific users. Businesses can also connect their private ownCloud server to public cloud services to provide extra backup.
“It’s a new slant on sharing content,” said Michael Ficco, vice president of business development at Standing Cloud, an ownCloud hosting partner.
Services offered by ownCloud can be more realistic for smaller businesses as a cost-effective alternative to investing in hardware and manpower.
Rex said in 2012, there were more than 1 million downloads of ownCloud’s community, business and enterprise editions, and the commercial side now has more than 40 customers in a variety of industries, as well as 90 global partners.
The company has 36 employees, including four in Lexington and five at two locations in Germany. The others work from various locations throughout the U.S. and Europe.
The firm has raised $3.75 million from two rounds of investments. The most recent, a $2.5 million round led by General Catalyst Partners, was announced in late November.
Ultimately, Rex said the cloud is going to become more important in the future.
“It’s going to be totally seamlessly integrated into everything,” he said. “In two to three years, we’re not going to think about where stuff is, and how it gets from where it is to where it needs to be. Files will just show up when and where we need them. It’ll be anytime access, anywhere.”

Original story link here.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Skeptical, but not cynical

Cape Ann Skeptics think there are more questions than answers


By Taryn Plumb
Globe Correspondent /  January 23, 2013 

Dr. Richard Sagall helps guide the Cape Ann Skeptics as they consider topics such as hauntings and voodoo. Top right, a vampire at Barrett’s Haunted Mansion in Abington. Bottom, voodoo dolls and a voodoo effigy at a festival in Benin.

To live is to question.
Critical thought prompts “why?” and “how?” and pushing back against prevailing opinion. It’s brought us the concept of the spherical earth, prompted us to explore above our heads, below our feet, and beyond the horizon, and made legendary figures of Galileo and Copernicus, Einstein and his brilliant modern counterpart, the British physicist Stephen Hawking.
“It makes for a much more fulfilling life when you’re honest about things,” said Dr. Richard Sagall, cofounder of Cape Ann Skeptics, which urges its members to question and probe, examine and hypothesize. “It gives you a better appreciation of what you know and what you don’t know, and how to evaluate claims.”
“Skepticism,” as the group defines it, is not about judgmental scoffing or raised-eyebrow condescension. Rather, it’s more of a philosophy: looking deeper, querying, trying to ascertain the real truths — or untruths — of a matter. It’s not cynicism, it’s not contrarianism; it’s rational, critical, and scientific thinking.
“When people hear the word ‘skeptic,’ there’s a negative connotation,” said Bob Bowles, a computer software engineer from Gloucester who attends the group’s monthly meetings. “It just means ‘curious.’ ”
Sagall, a retired medical doctor from Gloucester, agreed, acknowledging that we all have biases and blank spots. The group doesn’t like to use the term “debunking”: Instead, members seek to “prove” or “disprove.”
“It promotes thinking about things, not just accepting what you hear,” said Elizabeth Thomas, a retired computer programmer living in Gloucester. “People might think it’s the same as cynicism, but it’s not, it’s evaluating the evidence.”
Skeptic groups abound across the world — from Texas to California to London — inspired by such celebrated question-askers as Canadian magician James Randi, Richard Dawkins, and the nonprofit Skeptics Society  — among many others.
Cape Ann Skeptics has Dawkins’s most famous quote on its homepage: “By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”
The Cape Ann group held its first gathering in September 2010, and usually attracts 30 to 40 people to its monthly discussions.
Points of debate have included voodoo, vampires, Santa Claus, simulated reality, free will, psychological matters, Internet security, surveillance, economics, numerous medical topics, even the many myths surrounding Coca-Cola.
Only two topics are typically avoided, as at any civil dinner party: religion and politics.
“It’s an opportunity for like-minded people to get together and have a discussion that they might not have otherwise,” said Sagall, who worked in family medicine and occupational medicine, and now runs the nonprofit NeedyMeds,  which provides assistance to people who can’t afford their medications and health care costs. “One of the things you learn going to skeptic meetings is how much you don’t know.”
Bowles said he likes being exposed to new ideas. Before, he might simply have accepted things he heard or read without question. But now, he’s prompted to dig, noting that our brains are cluttered with so much information — some of it true, some of it not — and every day we’re bombarded with more and more “tiny nuggets” — sound bites, propaganda, and marketing — when the real story is “more complicated and interesting.”
“It broadens your view of the world around you,” he said.
Of course, the whole idea is to have fun with it. Good-natured heckling and pot-stirring are encouraged, as is something known as “kittle pitchering,” an 18th-century term defined as a “jocular method of hobbling or bothering a troublesome teller of long stories,” by pummeling them with questions or objections, so as to distract them from settling into a “storytelling groove.”
While the crowd at a recent Tuesday night session didn’t go quite that far, they were a boisterous group: laughing, joking, indulging in red and white wine, pizza, and rich Italian dishes, and crackling with questions. Roughly 45 men and women — most age 40 and up — crammed into a back room at La Trattoria and Pizzeria on Gloucester’s Main Street to hear Sagall’s talk: “Are you really sick? Overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, and the natural course of disease.”
Proudly brandishing a button declaring, “Skeptics: Think about it!” Sagall explained the difference between “subjective complaints,” or symptoms (such as soreness, depression, or pain), and the more measurable “objective findings” (a broken bone or a lump found during a mammogram). He also discussed the various types of tests — screening, diagnostic, predictive — and noted that doctors have to be careful interpreting them.
“Medicine is an art, as much as a science,” he said. You “never treat a test, you treat a patient.”
Keeping in mind the natural course of disease is also important, he emphasized. For instance, 90 percent of people with back pain will get better in 90 days, “no matter what you do.” He also spoke of the harm of overdiagnosis, which can result in unnecessary costs and anxiety, and inappropriate treatment.
Ultimately, he encouraged more “patient empowerment,” and acknowledged that “doctors are not always right.”
“Any questions?” he asked when he was done.
“A thousand,” a voice in the crowd quipped.
Someone suggested that overdiagnosis is a failure of the medical education system; another wondered whether it was a consumer protection issue; while someone else pointed out that it underscores how important it is to take control of your health and know your own body.
The discussion also turned to what some felt was the “scam” of healthy cholesterol levels; the effectiveness of flu shots; the philosophical issue of placebos; pharmaceutical “need and greed”; the money in clinical testing that lures in the vulnerable; second opinions (Sagall pointed out that, almost all of the time, people will go with opinion “B”); and, ultimately, whether attitude affects recovery.
Sagall thinks no, but he was rebutted by a woman who pointed to “The Anatomy of Hope,” written by Jerome Groopman, which explores how that emotion could have a role in the outcome of an illness.
“I really disagree with what you’re saying,” she noted as she leaned back in her seat and folded her arms.
Sagall shrugged and smiled. “That’s what we’re about here.”

© Copyright 2013 Globe Newspaper Company.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Parkour: A different way to interact with the environment

In Somerville, parkour growing by leaps and bounds 

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

January 17, 2013

Better Lessons for teachers

PREMIUM CONTENT: Jan 18, 2013
 
Startups & Venture Capital
 
BetterLesson: Connecting teachers worldwide
 
Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal
 
Alex Grodd, founder and CEO of BetterLesson, says teaching is the hardest job in the world. The company’s more than 1 million teacher-generated resources aim to make it easier.
W. Marc Bernsau
 
Alex Grodd has been there: In his time as a sixth grade teacher, he spent many nights crafting lesson plans from scratch, finding that information culled online was only peripherally useful.
And, much as he wanted to connect with other educators, he didn’t know how — phone banking, email lists and meet-up groups proved inefficient.
All this ultimately inspired him to found Cambridge-based BetterLesson. The startup provides a free, worldwide networking site that allows teachers to share lesson plans and resources, exchange and critique ideas, and ask and answer constructive questions.
“Teaching is the hardest job in the world,” said Grodd, BetterLesson’s CEO, who taught sixth grade for the Atlanta Public Schools and Roxbury Preparatory Charter School. “We’re trying to make it more sustainable, and have teachers be able to focus on the things that they should be focused on.”
Since its founding in 2008, the nine-employee company has cultivated a user base of 175,000 educators — with about 10 percent of its traffic international — and has grown to include more than 1 million teacher-generated resources. It’s backed by $2.7 million from Highland Capital Partners, General Catalyst Partners, NewSchools Venture Fund and New Markets Venture Partners, along with angel investors.
BetterLesson also recently received a $3.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The need for sharing resources among educators is clear, said Grodd — teachers spend “inordinate amounts of time reinventing the wheel.” By allowing them to connect and share their best teaching tools, tips, and resources, the company’s goal is to ultimately foster — and improve — education. 
“Teachers have a lot of great ideas and sometimes they’re not shared for many reasons,” said David Kujawski, a sixth grade science teacher at Walpole’s Bird Middle School. Teaching can be “insular,” but the site has “dismantled some of those obstacles for the greater good of teaching and learning,” he added.
An active member, as well as a curator of the site, Kujawski said he likes being able to reach out globally, bounce ideas off other teachers, and communicate directly with the educators who write lesson plans he finds useful.
Such free exchange of ideas “revolutionizes” instruction, he said, making teaching easier, more efficient and, ultimately, more rewarding.
“This has immediate impacts on the quality of education that our students receive,” he said.
As the site moves forward, the goal is to build out interfaces and features to accommodate educational standards that are part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, Grodd said. The site also aims to provide more matchmaking and social elements eventually, he said.
Although the majority of services are free, the site also offers premium features that incorporate such services as professional development, custom branding, analytics, and privacy permissions — allowing individual districts and organizations to privately share, rate and curate curriculum and lessons.

Original story link here.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Artscope Magazine: Nathan Stevens

NATHAN STEVENS
Taryn Plumb
 


From a distance, it is a billow of color — bold greens, pinks, oranges and blues — seemingly emanating from an empty trashcan. Step closer, and you realize those bits of color are actually squares — sticky notes, to be exact.
Still closer, and you see the random and scattered black marker scrawlings. 
“Learn to speak German.” “Wait for the bus.” “Be a better husband.” “Constitute a nation-state.” “Administer some medicine to a dog.”
Composed of 2,600 sticky notes, Nathan Stevens’ installation, “There are many things I may never get to do,” is essentially a thought cloud, a physical manifestation of the stream of consciousness.

Read the entire article in our magazine pages...

Artscope website here

Artscope Magazine: Celebrating abstract art

EXPRESSIVE PAINTING 2013
Taryn Plumb
 


The Cultural Center at Rocky Neck
6 Wonson Streets
Gloucester, Massachusetts
Through JANUARY 27

Abstract art can be divisive, inspiring both devotion and disdain — with its admirers appreciating its rich context and cerebral, inside-the-canvas themes, and its critics abhorring its lack of form and, some say, talent.
“It does take more time to live with an abstract painting,” acknowledged Ruth Mordecai, curator of “Expressive Painting 2013,” which aims to explore the complex and demanding nature of abstraction. “It demands more from the viewer, perhaps. It’s like getting to know a person — it takes time.”
 Running through January 27 at the Cultural Center at Rocky Neck in Gloucester, the show features about 20 pieces from a mix of artists — some whose CVs include national and international shows, some who are just starting to reveal their work to the world — including Mordecai, Yhanna Coffin, Mary Cole, Susan Erony, Laurel Hughes, Deborah Lloyd Kaufman and Tom Nihan.
Encompassing acrylic, oil and mixed media on paper and canvas, the pieces range in both size and substance. Some of the forms and themes are recognizable; some are purely abstract, laying bare moods, movements and themes with intense brushwork, shapes, shading, rich layers and patterns of circles. 

Read the entire article in our magazine pages...

Artscope website here

Friday, January 4, 2013

Your life, the movie

PREMIUM CONTENT: Jan 4, 2013 

Startups & Venture Capital

Startups: Mobile direction to home movies 

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

Directr CEO Max Goldman, left, and CTO Eli Schleifer, demonstrate their “point and shoot moviemaking” for smartphones.
W. Marc Bernsau

It all started in the tub.
As Eli Schleifer was giving his infant daughter a bath one night, he shot a video on his phone of her giggling and splashing. When he was done, he had some nice footage, he recalled — but he realized that he didn’t have the tools, talent, or, most importantly, the time, to turn the sweet moment into a bona fide movie that would hold his interest (or that of his family and friends).
And so was born the concept for directr, a Cambridge-based startup that aims to do for video what point-and-shoot cameras did for photos.
Founded in April 2012 — and officially launched to the public in mid-December — the company’s free mobile app allows users to create short videos with multiple scenes, transitions, music and titles with just a few taps on their phones.
“It’s the idea of democratizing filmmaking,” said Max Goldman, CEO of the 12-employee company. “Our goal is to help people make beautiful, short movies.”
Consider the countless hours of video footage taking up digital space, or sitting relegated in the ether of the cloud. And the home movies that do get shared, noted co-founders Goldman and Schleifer (who is CTO), can often be directionless, repetitive and drawn out — a series of scenes with no apparent beginning or end.
“This is a problem that’s existed since the days of Super 8,” Goldman said. “It’s always been difficult to make a movie out of footage.”
For now, the app is available to those using an iPhone or iPod Touch. The app provides about 60 storyboards that people can follow shot-by-shot, or use as a loose guideline — anything from holiday celebrations, to cocktail outings, to baking, to odes to their pets. Then, when they’re done “directing,” the app takes care of the editing, soundtrack, and titles.
“It really is a “no-brainer” format, yet (it) allows each video to be unique, personal and meaningful,” said user Stephanie Spell, director of community outreach for the Collier County Sheriff’s Office in Naples, Fla., in an email interview.
And, while it’s an “innovative” way to “spark each individual’s creativity” and also capture and share both special moments and the everyday slice-of-life, it can also serve as a useful tool for public safety, she said. She’s now working with developers at directr to create an account with unique features for the sheriff’s office to provide safety messages to the community.
Small businesses and public and private agencies are an untapped market for directr, and also one the company didn’t initially expect, Goldman said.
Although the company declined to disclose user numbers, Goldman did say that he was “really excited” with its growth.
And, while the app is now free, directr sees ample opportunity for profitability, Goldman said — through such services as cloud storage, small business customization and branded storyboards for content marketing. It also plans to continue adding storyboards regularly, through partnerships with professional filmmakers and musicians, and another goal is to roll out the app for all smartphones and devices.
The company received $1.1 million in seed funding in June from NextView Ventures, Boston Seed Capital and Advancit Capital, along with individual investors, including Alexis Ohanian and Garry Tan.
Ultimately, Goldman and Schleifer see it as a unique time for video, with the recent convergence of HD cameras, broadband, cloud services, apps and increasingly more intuitive phones.
Also, “it’s amazing for people to be able to tell a story instantly,” Schleifer said. “That process of democratization is super powerful.”

Original story link here.