Episode 150 – Cyber Dementors

The Michaels go deep this episode on the idea of swarms, science, and security. We review work presented at this week’s ACM conference regarding swarming robots, envisioning many different uses for this technology. We discuss the challenges of landing on Mars, and how swarms of cubesats and other technology may help us be more successful in space exploration. And after today’s major internet attack we wrap up with the UK government’s new plan to help debunk much of the FUD that comes up around security issues. Finally, if you are out and about next week, come meet our co-host – … Continue reading

Episode 96 – The Professional Line Sitter

The Michael’s are back with a bit gamification for travel, we try and take a different approach then our prior episodes were we talked about how the Airline Industry was gaming boarding, and see if we can setup an on-line auction for improving your seating on the plane. Perhaps we can get a bit of advice from Zaboo and his seat saving network idea (see “The Guild” season 5). How can you make this game work for both the passenger and the airlines? When at restaurants can we figure out a way to swap locations in line? Can the Restaurant … Continue reading

Episode 86 – App Granularity & Gamification

Sandy, Phaedra and Michael R. are traveling, on vacation or otherwise engaged in important work, so Michael M. takes a shot at a solo show to explore some thinking on how a number of major apps are breaking down their function into smaller bite sized bits and deploying them as individual apps. Examples of this are FourSquare, with its Swarm app, Facebook, with the Messenger app, alongside some of the recent acquisitions like Instragam and WhatsApp. Linking to the Gamification theme of this podcast, Michael muses on how this application functionality breakdown allows for smaller component pieces of functionality can … Continue reading