Today we celebrate the crowning event of that fateful July 4th, 1776, when a group of men with vision and faith, courage and fortitude, had the temerity to officially accept the principles of a sacred document, the Declaration of Independence, that marked the birth of our great nation:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

It took great courage to declare independence from a sovereign power. There were many in the Colonies who did not agree. But the brave Founders were fueled with passion, grounded in determination, and sustained with an abiding faith that the cause they supported was in accordance with God’s will.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,[70] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. …

And so, probably not fully realizing the grandeur of the moment, these great men pledged their all in support of the equality of man and freedom of the soul.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Today, dear founding fathers, I salute you, and from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. May the God in Heaven bless your sacred memory.

Last month, I created a series of posts (one, two, three) about the Internet of Things.  I turns out that one of my colleagues who inspired that series of blog posts is now employed by Tendril, a company that is involved in this Internet of Things business for real.

According to their press release footer:

Tendril is a leading energy platform company that is helping to drive the large-scale deployment of the Smart Grid through the development of forward-thinking solutions as well as its work to establish industry protocols. The Tendril platform provides an open standards-based, scalable and secure end-to-end solution for the Energy Internet – the network for existing and upcoming Smart Grid technologies. With applications, products and services enabled by the platform, Tendril creates a dialogue and marketplace between energy providers, consumers and the energy ecosystem.

The Smart Grid concept will certainly be involved in attaching lots of devices to the Internet. For one intriguing project, Tendril has teamed with Whirlpool to focus on the roll-out of smart home appliances in the US. For example,

For a refrigerator to actively manage its energy consumption, it must be able to quickly, reliably and seamlessly communicate with the electric utility company. … In this case, the refrigerator will automatically move its defrost cycle to a non-peak time without impacting the performance of the appliance.

I like the idea of having smart appliances coordinate with the electric utility to save energy and reduce my energy bill. It will be great to see what companies like Tendril will do to productively contribute to the Internet of Things.

I began my career in 1977 as a digital electronics designer.  My first engineering project was to design a color graphics display, powered by a 16-bit microprocessor and interfaced to a Data General Eclipse minicomputer that was at the heart of a Minuteman II missile simulator at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. So when Tracy Kidder wrote his seminal work, “The Soul of a New Machine,” about the development of the Data General MV/8000 computer, I was immediately hooked.  I still have that book on my office bookshelf.

On May 19th, Tom West, the leader of the Eagle Project which spawned the MV/8000 computer, passed away.

The New York Times article reporting his death was appropriately entitled, “Tom West Dies at 71; Was the Computer Engineer Incarnate.”

Mr. West and his team of engineers at the Data General Corporation, in Westborough, Mass., developed a 32-bit microcomputer that briefly led the field of digital processing in the early 1980s, when the computer industry was poised between the eras of the mainframe and the PC.

…

Joseph Thomas West III was born in Bronxville, N.Y., on Nov. 22, 1939, the son of an American Telephone and Telegraph executive who moved the family often. Mr. West attended four different high schools before enrolling at Amherst College, where both his father and grandfather had received their degrees. Because of low grades, however, the college asked him to take some time off. He spent a year playing folk music and working part time at the Smithsonian Observatory in Cambridge, where he first became interested in computers, before returning and finishing his studies with a major in physics.

Thanks, Tom, for inspiring me at an early stage of my career!  May you rest in peace as your legacy lives on.

It has been reported that Albert Einstein explained his theory of relativity this way:

If you spend two hours speaking with a beautiful woman, you feel, at the end of the two hours that you’ve spent only two minutes with her; while if you spend two minutes sitting on hot tin, you feel you’ve spent two days!

I recently stumbled across a graph that seemed to convey the same message:

Perhaps these examples will work for those who have never spent time with a beautiful woman.

My son Ryan is studying Industrial Design at Arizona State University.  He regularly updates us about interesting points related to his chosen profession. Yesterday, he alerted me via Twitter that today, April 26th, would be World Intellectual Property Day:

An event established by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2000 to “raise awareness of how patents, copyright, trademarks and designs impact on daily life” and “to celebrate creativity, and the contribution made by creators and innovators to the development of societies across the globe”. (Wikipedia)

On the WIPO Website, speaking about the role of design, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry describes design as “the language of communication of objects,” helping to communicate both function and esthetics. (I can’t figure out how to link to or embed the video featuring Mr. Gurry, but you can access it via a link in the second paragraph of this page)

As an active participant in an industry whose value is primarily based on intellectual property, I’m pleased to raise my voice in support of intellectual property and the art and science of design that plays such a crucial role in creating such value.

We road warriors often grouse about the dumb stuff the airlines do and the weirdness of the TSA.  However, once in awhile, we can cheer about a big step forward in flying convenience.   The latest cheerable enhancement is the paperless boarding pass.  Other airlines have offered this perk for awhile, but US Airways has offered the option for the just the past few weeks.  I gingerly brought both paper and paperless boarding passes for a flight week before last, but today, I didn’t even bring a paper backup.

When checking in online, I specified which email address I prefer, and moments later, a link appeared in my email box, which I could access from my iPhone to display a boarding pass like the one to the right.  I presented the image on the phone and my driver’s license at the security checkpoint, and again showed the image on my phone at the gate.  It works great!

Thanks, US Airlines, for taking this big step in the right direction!

Have you ever clicked on “Reply All” and then realize you have sent your reply to all 500 people (or 5,000) on an email distribution list?  Arrrrrgggggh! 

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting story today about this all-to-frequent mishap in the email world.  I hadn’t realized how extensive the “email storms” can be as people reply again and again to such events.

Some email storms have lasted so long—overloading servers with hundreds of thousands of emails—that at least one company, TV-ratings provider Nielsen Co., has disconnected the "Reply to All" button from its system.

In 1997, Microsoft weathered a storm involving an estimated 15 million emails. A 2007 email storm at the U.S Department of Homeland Security clogged the system with millions of emails.

Here is an interesting diagram illustrating how one “reply to all” can cascade into a large storm:

So, next time you are temped to click on “Reply All”, please think twice, or thrice.

What happens when you want to scan everything in the world and streets are too narrow for cars? Invent a scanning tricycle!  That’s what Google did.

A recent PCWorld article describes the Google Trike:

In 2009, Google introduced the Google Trike, a 250-pound, 9-foot-long, 7-foot-high bicycle equipped with the same terrain-charting cameras that deck out its Street View cars. The idea behind the Google Trike is to scope out locations where cars can’t go, such as parks, trails, university campuses, pedestrian malls, zoos, and other landmarks.

Now Google has released loads of new images taken from the Trike, such as the Château de Chenonceaux in Civray-de-Touraine, France and the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin. The pictures are accessible through Google Street View.

This short video shows how it works. Just think what a great workout you would get if this was your job.

Space.com reported yesterday that the U.S. Air Force’s second X-37B robotic space plane blasted off from Florida on the afternoon of March 5th on a mystery mission.  There was lots of secrecy around this launch, but space.com provided the following photo.  I find it interesting that this little shuttle-like spacecraft could just about fit in the room I’m sitting in right now.  I look forward to learning more of how this type of vehicle will be used in the future.

I have never been too successful as an entrepreneur.  I guess my brain doesn’t look quite like this delightful rendition from the Grasshopper Group: