Headworx

Klaus Schwab , the Founder and the Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum wrote a great post on The Age of Adaptation . One outstanding feature of this revolution is the scope and scale of its disruptiveness . The Industrial Revolution occurred relatively slowly, like long waves in the ocean; though it began in the 1780s, its impact was not really felt until the 1830s and 1840s. The current technological revolution, by contrast, hits economies like a tsunami, with little warning and inexorable force. Disruptiveness thate hits like a tsunami. Uber, Airbnb, reshaping and eliminating the supply chains, 3D printing impact on the manufacturing industry, rapidly evolving consumer habits... Gone are the days of big fish eating small fish. In the post-post-crisis world, fast fish will dominate – and slow fish will die. This by the way is music to my ears, because being a fast and agile startup, able to move fast and pivot quickly as the trends and opportunities are identif...

I am late to the Bitcoin party. But after finally understanding what it is and how it works, I have to admit this invention by Satoshi Nakamoto is on par with the invention of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Bitcoin is a splendid triumph of mathematics and especially public cryptography, applied to one particular problem of digital currency. It is a completely out-of-the-box solution that could never be created by established players like banks or governments. What is even more important, the idea of blockchain can be extended to other domains. This has already become an area of interest for VCs. My blog will by no means be able to tell the whole story. For those who want to dig deeper, I strongly recommend the book Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Below are some important highlights from the book, telling the story. Satoshi Nakamoto’s main invention is the decentralized mechanism for emergent consensus. Emergent, bec...

With my laptop dead I was considering the least complicated way to get up and running. The replacement MacChromeBook has been a great tool for email, but I cannot do many things using this machine. For example the Glovius Viewer I use for viewing 3D (STEP) projects is not available for MacOS. Yes, Windows still rulez the desktop application arena. So the easiest way seemed to be: buy exactly the same make / model and move the hard drive over to the new one, then send the broken one for warranty repair. So I did. The new Yoga somehow is different from the old one, to the extent Windows boots and then crashes with a blue screen. I have not seen a blue screen for many years. Unfortunately I could not get the machine going until in the safe mode I removed drivers for several network (ndis) related devices. Then I let Windows install new drivers and I thought I was back in business. Far from that. Glovius, when launched, reported the trial had expired. Trial? I have a full paid vers...

My last week of very intense business development and travel (Atlanta / Vancouver / Salt Lake City) started with a crash - I found my ThinkPad laptop completely dead on Monday morning. What a great start of the week full of presentations and travel. After realizing the laptop was really dead and due to my travel plans any warranty replacement would not work, I decided to buy a temporary replacement. A Chromebook was the simplest idea. After all we run the company on Google Apps for Business, so everything is cloud - based. I did a quick research, picked a favorite model just to find Amazon would not ship it to Vancouver, Canada (my next overnight stop) and Amazon.CA was out of stock. So I went off to Best Buy looking for alternatives. They had two models (Acer and HP) but they looked really bad. Cheap plastic, thick body, poor screens. $300 price tag does not seem high, but I had a feeling of throwing money down the sink. When a $900 (Canadian) MacBook Air drew my attention. I neve...

If you think the Internet of Things has already arrived... then think again. I don't see too many traces of it... Truth to be told, we are still in the middle of the smartphone era. Mobile services are booming. Everybody (the term usually means everybody in Silicon Valley) is using Twitter, Uber, and a galaxy of other mobile apps. But go and ask everybody (even everybody in Silicon Valley) what IoT products they use and the most common answer would be... none! Well some have a Nest thermostat. And some bought a box of Philips Hue lights. Two iconic products we refer to when discussing smart homes. But those who own both, can really be counted on the fingers of one hand. Then there are the alliances. Z-Wave, ZigBee, Thread, Bluetooth, EnOcean, AllJoyn, IPSO, OIC, with no products on the market. Z-Wave has managed to reach to a handful of smart home enthusiasts, ZigBee is under covers of some industrial products, the rest is still drafting the specs with only simulators availab...