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

 

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.

Skeptical, but not cynical

Cape Ann Skeptics think there are more questions than answers

By Taryn Plumb

Globe Correspondent /  January 23, 2013 

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.

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

Imagine a park bench: An ordinary prop in the backdrop of the urban environment, used for quick, convenient respites or talk of the good old times by old men, something expected and constant but, more often, ignored.
But for Blake Evitt, it is a living obstacle, very much present: He might consider its dimensions, its give, structure, and location in both physical and mental space, and how to incorporate and overcome all that as he moves with it and past it.
The Somerville native, 25, has dedicated the last several years to studying parkour, an obstacle course-like form of physical training that he’s now introducing to his hometown.
With the discipline, “everything becomes something you can interact with,” said Evitt, who began offering classes in November through Parkour Generations Americas.
Originating in France in the 1980s, parkour is not easily defined, as difficult to fit into the parameters of words as those of space and time. Also referred to as “freerunning” or “street tumbling,” and called a sport by some, a philosophy and an art by others, it is a practice of fluid movement, requiring no equipment but the body and the mind, as much cerebral as it is physical.
Inspired by military obstacle courses, it incorporates leaping, jumping, gymnastics, martial arts, break dancing, and other movements to move from one point to another.
“It’s running, jumping, climbing,” said Evitt, “making your way through an environment,” whether that’s the city, the suburbs, or the woods.
In November, he started out with just a couple of classes for adults and kids in Somerville. Now, he’s teaching nearly a dozen, held both inside and outside and as after-school programs, attracting an age spectrum from 5 to 63. Courses are held at various parks throughout Somerville, inside at the Cummings School on Prescott Street, in various elementary and middle schools, and at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.  
“I think it’s explosive, plus it has the thrill factor,” said Deidre Williams, whose two sons, Ian, 8, and Dean, 11, take classes. Unlike other activities, it’s not as structured, she added, and the adventure-seeking component adds excitement.
Ian, a small blond figure dressed in black, described it simply as “fun” and “curious.” Having done soccer, football, snowboarding, and break dancing, he says it makes him feel “happy, creative, and flexible,” when he’s doing his own improvisation.
“If there’s one move you like and another move you like, you can,” he paused to clap his hands for effect, “put them together.”
To demonstrate, he ran to the padded wall of the Cummings School gym, jumping and tapping it with the fingertips of his right hand and the toes of his right foot.
His brother, meanwhile, red-faced and sweaty after a recent Tuesday night class, said, “I feel like one of those people on ‘American Ninja Warrior’ ” (a TV show that features often-perilous obstacle courses).
During his class a few minutes earlier, he certainly looked like one. Along with four other kids, he did drills in which he climbed up, over, and through a multilevel, railing-like structure (picture hopping a chain-link fence); crawled backward and forward without touching knees to the floor (as if working up and down an invisible ladder); did handstands; traversed balance beams, all wobbly and pinwheeling arms; and jumped like a frog, in one fluid movement, onto a roughly 2½-foot-tall stage.
“If you make a lot of noise, it probably means you’re doing something wrong,” a tanned and trim Evitt, dark hair pulled back, instructed as the group ran and bounced and grappled with their footholds. He added that he should only hear one sound: that of their final landing.
In another exercise, they made their way across a course of mats, cones, and the climbing structure, with the challenge to not touch the floor. Leaps carried them from mat to mat, nimble hops landed them unsteadily on the narrow bit of flat space on cones, and tangles of arms and feet shimmied across bars upside down, backward, and forward.
“I always take the complicated way!” Dean called out at one point as he swung like Tarzan.
“You really get in shape,” Vivien Shea, 11, said after class, standing with her twin brother, Cole, and older brother Jack, 14.  
“He likes to pretend he’s a ninja,” Cole said of Jack.
“I don’t pretend,” his brother quipped. “I am.”
Evitt agreed that it’s “fun, and like learning how to be a kid again,” but he stressed that parkour can be easily misconceived by extremists — do a YouTube search, for instance, and you’ll come up with literally hundreds of thousands of videos, many of young men bounding from rooftop to rooftop, scaling buildings, or doing handstands many stories above the whirl of traffic.
Although he’s done his fair share of boulder-scaling and streetscape leaping and dodging, Evitt says it’s much more than that thrill-seeking cliché. It’s literally changed his perspective, how he sees and interprets things. And it’s social but not competitive, and also is about fitness and perseverance, as well as overcoming obstacles both in the physical world and in the mind, he said.
“It’s being strong to be useful,” said Evitt, whose training also includes the Brazilian martial art capoeira, dance, and weight lifting.
An active kid involved in soccer, swimming, and tennis while growing up in Somerville, he discovered parkour as a French major at Davidson College in North Carolina. He later researched and wrote about it, and in 2010 was awarded a $25,000 grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation  to travel and study parkour as an “agent for positive social change.” He’s spent the last 2½ years traveling to numerous countries and training with members of the Yamakasi, the group who initially developed parkour.
Eventually, he’d like to get into performance with dance studios, circus troupes, and other acts, he said, and ultimately foster more of an exchange between the United States and Europe.
For the short-term, though, the goal is to expand classes to numerous areas beyond Somerville, and to add another instructor. Similarly, Parkour Generations Americas, a London-headquartered company, intends to begin running certification classes over the next few months, Evitt said.
“People are getting addicted faster than I expected.”

Original story link here.

Great photos by Jim Davis:

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© 2013 The New York Times Company

Better Lessons for teachers

PREMIUM CONTENT: Jan 18, 2013

 

Startups & Venture Capital

 

BetterLesson: Connecting teachers worldwide

 

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

 

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.

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. 

Your life, the movie

PREMIUM CONTENT: Jan 4, 2013 

Startups & Venture Capital

Startups: Mobile direction to home movies 

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

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.