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How to dig out from the information avalanche
Majority of workers feel overwhelmed by deluge of data,
survey finds
By Eve Tahmincioglu
updated 8:18 p.m. ET March 16, 2008
Don't expect Shaun Osher, the CEO of Core Group
Marketing in New York, to answer your e-mail right away.
He has stopped responding to e-mails every minute and
only checks his e-mail account twice a day. He also started
turning off his BlackBerry during meetings.
This tactic has made him so much more productive
that earlier this year he held a meeting with his staff of 50
and "strongly suggested" that they stop relying so heavily
on e-mail and actually start calling clients on the phone.
And, he requested his employees put cell phones and
PDAs on silent mode during meetings, as well as curtail
the common practice of cc-ing everybody when sending
out an e-mail. "There was so much redundancy, so much
unnecessary work," he explains. "One person could handle
an issue that should take two minutes, but when an email
goes out and five people get cc-ed, then everybody
responds to it and there's a snowball effect."
It's not that Osher has anything against technology. In
fact, he loves it. The problem is, last year he realized he
was inundated with so many e-mails and so much
information in general that he began to experience data
overload. "In the beginning, e-mail and all this data was a
great phenomenon, revolutionizing what we do. But the
pendulum has swung way too much to the other side," he
maintains. "We're less productive."
Osher isn't the only one out there under a data
avalanche. Thanks to technological innovations, you can
be talking to a customer on your cell phone, answering a
LinkedIn invitation on your laptop, and responding to email
on your PDA all at the same time. Besides, during
tough economic times, who will want to miss any
information when your job could be on the line if you indulge
in the luxury of being offline? Turns out, seven out of 10
office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by
information in the workplace, and more than two in five
say they are headed for a data "breaking point," according
to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey.
Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets,
says there are a host of reasons we're all on the information
brink: "exponential growth of the size of the information
'haystack,' the immensity and immediacy of digital
communications, and the fact that professionals are not
being provided with sufficient tools and training to help
them keep pace with the growing information burden."
Ellen Kossek, a professor from Michigan State, believes
we are less productive in this age of 24-7 technology, and
our multitasking mentality has spawned a "not-mentallypresent"
society. "We're becoming an attention-deficit
disorder society switching back and forth like crazy,"
Kossek says. "We're connected all the time. We're
working on planes, in coffee shops, working on the
weekends. Work is very seductive, but yet we're actually
less effective."
The key to getting your head above the data flood,
according to workplace experts, is managing and reducing
the information you're bombarded with.

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive - (slightly adapted)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23636252/

          Repliee is more than a humanoid robot ? it is an
     honest-to-goodness android, so lifelike that it seems like
     a real person. It has moist lips, glossy hair and vivid
     eyes that blink slowly. Seated on a stool with hands
 5    folded primly on its lap at the 2005 World Exposition in
     Japan's Aichi prefecture, it wore a bright pink blazer and
     gray slacks. For a mesmerizing few seconds from several
     meters away, Repliee was virtually indistinguishable from
     an ordinary woman in her 30s. In fact, it was a copy of
 10    one.
          Japan is proud of the most advanced humanoids in
     the world, which are expected to eventually be used as
     the workforce diminishes among the decreasing and aging
     population. But why build a robot with pigmented silicone
 15    skin, smooth gestures and even makeup? To Repliee's
     creator, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Director of Osaka University's
     Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, the answer is simple:
     "Android science."
          Besides the justification for making robots
 20    anthropomorphic and bipedal so they can work in human
     environments with architectural features such as stairs,
     Ishiguro believes that people respond better to very
     humanlike automatons. Androids can thus elicit the most
     natural communication. "Appearance is very important
 25    to have better interpersonal relationships with a robot,"
     says the 42-year-old Ishiguro. "Robots are information
     media, especially humanoid robots. Their main role in
     our future is to interact naturally with people."
          Mild colorblindness forced Ishiguro to abandon his
 30    aspirations of a career as an oil painter. Drawn to
     computer and robot vision instead, he built a guide robot
     for the blind as an undergraduate at the University of
     Yamanashi. A fan of the android character Data from the
     Star Trek franchise, he sees robots as the ideal vehicle
 35    to understand more about ourselves.
          To imitate human looks and behavior successfully,
     Ishiguro combines robotics with cognitive science. In turn,
     cognitive science research can use the robot to study
     human perception, communication and other faculties.
 40    This novel cross-fertilization is what Ishiguro describes
     as android science. In a 2005 paper, he and his
     collaborators explained it thus: "To make the android
     humanlike, we must investigate human activity from the
     standpoint of cognitive science, behavioral science and
 45    neuroscience, and to evaluate human activity, we need
     to implement processes that support it in the android."
          One key strategy in Ishiguro's approach is to model
     his artificial creations on real people. He began research
     four years ago with his then four-year-old daughter,
 50    casting a rudimentary android from her body, but its
     mechanisms resulted in strange, unnatural motion.
          Humanlike robots run the risk of compromising
     people's comfort zones. Because the android's
     appearance is very similar to that of a human, any subtle
 55    differences in motion and responses will make it seem
     strange. Repliee, though, is so lifelike that it has
     overcome the creepiness factor, partly because of the
     natural way it moves.
          Ishiguro wants his next android, a male, to be as
 60    authentic as possible. The model? Himself. The scientist
     thinks having a robot clone could ease his busy schedule:
     he could dispatch it to classes and meetings and then
     teleconference through it. "My question has always been,
     Why are we living, and what is human?" he says. An
 65    Ishiguro made of circuitry and silicone might soon be
     answering his own questions.

adapted from www.scientificamerican.com - May 2006

          Green is the hot topic these days, and the concept
     is having an impact on the way people think about
     datacenters. Companies around the world are
     announcing ways to save energy and reduce costs by
5   buying new hardware and services. Yet, there is little
     guidance on how you can take action to control energy
     costs. In the past, electricity has been treated as an
     overhead expense, like the cost of space. But with rising
     power costs and issues regarding reliability, supply, and
10  capacity, electricity requires its own specific strategy.
          Projects regarding performance optimization and
     cost reduction are a part of everyday best practices in
     nearly every area of business. So why not treat energy
     cost in the same way?
15      As Information Technologies (IT) pros, many of us
     make decisions about the configuration and setup of
     servers, the specifications on the equipment our
     organizations purchase, and the requirements for
     datacenter upgrades and construction. We even provide
20  early design input during application development. When
     it comes to these projects, we obviously have a golden
     opportunity to be green and influence the energy
     efficiency of any datacenter.
          The first part of any strategy is to know your current
25  energy usage. You need to know where your energy is
     used and by what specific equipment, as well as what
     usage is efficient and what is wasteful in the datacenter.
     Unfortunately, it's rare to find power-consumption
     metering in place that can break down usage to a level
30  where people can see the results of their actions. Most
     organizations typically only see a monthly power bill
     that rolls up consumption into an overall bottom line.
     This offers little incentive for saving energy since
     individuals never see the impact of their decisions, and
35  there is no way for them to prove that their changes
     have actually saved energy.
          One of the first issues people confront when
     considering a green datacenter initiative is whether they
     have executive support. For the purpose of the article, I
40  am going to assume the answer is "not yet." Executive
     support requires a serious commitment that provides
     resources and budget for your initiative. And while there
     is a lot of talk about green datacenters, the reality is
     that there is still often a lack of serious support at the
45  executive level. If you did already have such executive
     support, you would probably be running a green
     datacenter right now.
          Still, even assuming you are not getting the support
     you need, there is a great deal you can do to push your
50  green datacenter initiative forward. So how do you
     determine effective actions to take in achieving your
     goals? Fortunately, energy efficiency is not a new
     concept and there is a lot that IT pros can learn from
     other industries. [.]
55      Anyway, for whichever direction you choose,
     planning an energy efficiency program for your datacenter
     will require collaboration across groups in IT. Until
     recently, the typical approach to planning IT solutions
     has been to ignore power costs early on during the design
60  phase, focusing on the hardware and software being
     purchased, along with the labor and hosting costs of
     the solution. When power is buried in the overhead cost
     of running solutions in a datacenter, energy efficiency
     is a low priority. Exposing the actual power being
65  consumed by solutions is the first critical step in changing
     the behavior of your organization.

By Dave Ohara
TechNet Magazine, October 2007