maandag 27 april 2009

A New E-Paper Competitor


Pixels containing ink reservoirs could lead to bright e-readers that look more like printed paper.


Inkwells: Each hexagonal pixel in a new e-paper design has a reservoir in the center containing carbon black ink that spreads out when a voltage is applied. Credit: Gamma VisionA new display technology could make electronic paper look more like the real thing. Conventional ink on paper has a much higher brightness and black-and-white color contrast than electronic paper. The new display, made by researchers at the University of Cincinnati, in Ohio, is designed to match the brilliance and contrast of paper. "We've demonstrated a technology where you have the brightness of paper, and color has the same saturation that you expect from printed media," says electrical- and computer-engineering professor Jason Heikenfeld, who led the work, which was published in Nature Photonics.
The pixels also switch between black and white within one millisecond, making the technology suitable for video (LCDs currently switch in a few milliseconds). A slower refresh speed of tens to hundreds of milliseconds is one of the main issues plaguing current e-paper.


So far, Heikenfeld and his colleagues have made rigid black-and-white displays that reflect 55 percent of ambient light--far more than any electronic-paper products currently on the market. White paper reflects 85 percent of ambient light, so it looks much brighter than Heikenfeld's system. But Heikenfeld says that the technology could be used to make full-color flexible plastic displays that have more than 60 percent brilliance, and higher-grade materials and manufacturing processes should eventually make his device almost as bright as white paper.

zondag 26 april 2009

090426 Kroonvensche Heide wandeling

Na blessures van Kees, Ary, Heide en Ell weer eens gewandeld. De keuze was het Kroonvensche Heide van Ontrack. De wandeling is 9 kilometer lang (niet te lang, je weet maar nooit met al die "doke" knieen!).

Prachtige natuur.

Ontrack beschrijft op hun website de wandeling als volgt:

Kroonvensche Heide 9km
Deze wandeling in het zuidelijkste stukje Kempen voert u door bossen en langs velden, en gaat bijna geheel over zandpaden.U loopt langs vennen met veel flora en fauna, en u zult oog in oog staan met de Heksenboom uit de legende van Zwarte Kaat die prachtig staat te pronken aan het smokkelaarspad, maar ... wat zou er onder die boom liggen?




De foto's van de wandeling staan hier.


090418 Iain en Cynthia weekend

Iain en Cynthia op bezoek in Uden. (Foto's staan hier).
Zaterdag de Berg en Breuk route gelopen. Zoals altijd weer heel mooi en heel fijn om dat aan bezoekers te laten zien.

Berg en Breuk route
Een prachtige wandelroute door de schitterende natuur van Bedaf en omstreken; de Bedafsche Bergen, een prachtig stuifzandgebied, en de Peelrandbreuk, unieke natuur door de invloed van een miljoenen jaren oude tektonische breuk. Deze route is ontwikkeld naar aanleiding van het aanwijzen van deze wijstgronden als 1e aardkundig monument van de provincie Noord-brabant. De route is ongeveer 6,5 km lang en grotendeels onverhard dus trek stevige schoenen aan.


Download de folder van de route hier



Zondag nog een stukje groen van Uden bekeken en de molen.

Het kind kwam boven drijven!

woensdag 22 april 2009

Universities will be 'irrelevant' by 2020

Source: Kurzweil twitter news (http://twitter.com/KurzweilAINews)

Universities will be irrelevant by 2020 in a world where students listen to free online lectures on iPods, course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free, says Brigham Young University professor of psychology and instructional technology David Wiley.

Read Original Article>>

maandag 20 april 2009

The irrational side of change management

April 2009, McKinsey Article

Most change programs fail, but the odds of success can be greatly improved by taking into account these counterintuitive insights about how employees interpret their environment and choose to act.

APRIL 2009 • Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller

Source: Organization Practice

In 1996, John Kotter published Leading Change. Considered by many to be the seminal work in the field of change management, Kotter’s research revealed that only 30 percent of change programs succeed. Since the book’s release, literally thousands of books and journal articles have been published on the topic, and courses dedicated to managing change are now part of many major MBA programs. Yet in 2008, a McKinsey survey of 3,199 executives around the world found, as Kotter did, that only one transformation in three succeeds. Other studies over the past ten years reveal remarkably similar results. It seems that, despite prolific output, the field of change management hasn’t led to more successful change programs.

It also hasn’t helped that most academics and practitioners now agree on the building blocks for influencing employee attitudes and management behavior. McKinsey’s Emily Lawson and Colin Price provided a holistic perspective in “The psychology of change management,”1 which suggests that four basic conditions are necessary before employees will change their behavior: a) a compelling story, because employees must see the point of the change and agree with it; b) role modeling, because they must also see the CEO and colleagues they admire behaving in the new way; c) reinforcing mechanisms, because systems, processes, and incentives must be in line with the new behavior; and d) capability building, because employees must have the skills required to make the desired changes.

This prescription is well grounded in the field of psychology and is entirely rational. One of its merits is its intuitive appeal: many managers feel that, once revealed, it is simply good common sense. And this, we believe, is precisely where things go wrong. The prescription is right, but rational managers who attempt to put the four conditions in place by applying “common sense” typically misdirect time and energy, create messages that miss the mark, and experience frustrating unintended consequences from their efforts to influence change. Why? Because when they implement the prescription, they disregard certain, sometimes irrational—but predictable—elements of human nature.

In our research and by working with companies attempting change, we have identified nine insights into how human nature gets in the way of successfully applying the four conditions required for behavioral change. As we describe these insights, we’ll show how various companies have, either by conscious awareness or simple luck, overcome or leveraged counterintuitive sides of human behavior in making change happen.

Rest of article >>


TCP / IP Sensors and Transducers

Exemys RME1  Analog module

Acquired information can be read through Ethernet in four different ways.
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Product data sheet>>

zondag 12 april 2009

Loes Stuifbergen 1 jaar

Kleinkind Loes is vandaag 1 jaar geworden.


In Nijmegen de opa's de oma's de tantes, de ooms met cadeautjes.

Maar 1 is een leeftijd waar de verpakking interessanter is dan de inhoud.


Foto's zijn op Flickr te bekijken.