Brit cops blow £14m on software – then just flush it down the bogs
Surrey Police has pulled the plug on a multi-million-pound computer system it spent years developing.
Way back in 2005, the force began overhauling its criminal intelligence setup. Since then it has spent £14.8m developing gear called the Surrey Integrated Reporting Enterprise Network (Siren). It is unclear how much of this dosh was spent on coming up with the acronym.
The commuter-belt coppers commissioned Siren because their current computers "offered limited flexibility to meet the demands of individual forces".
Now the force has changed its mind and decided to go with a system already in use by other forces. The decision was savaged by tax campaigners as a waste of public money. Read more...
A deep dive into Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project
Imagine, if you would, a mobile environment in which you had complete control over how every little thing you see looks and acts. Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko (B2G) project is a mobile operating system that uses the web as your delivery mechanism for everything. As it stands right now, the B2G project is very much pre-alpha, but after spending some time with the OS on the Samsung Galaxy S2 it is clear that Mozilla plans to deliver a whole new experience to users. Read more...
Microsoft’s new ‘Beamatron’ turns the real world into a digital playground
We cover Microsoft Research’s projects here at TNW mostly because we’re dorks who get off on gadgets, tomfoolery, and technology that has no real world application. However, what we are bringing you today is a fun slurry of off-the-shelf Xbox equipment, software that you can snag yourself, and nightclub fixtures.
Please say hello to the Beamatron.
By hooking a projector, Kinect sensor, and swiveling unit that, according to Microsoft is akin to a spotlight mount, the company’s Research team has built a tool that allows you to race a virtual car around your real room. Here’s how it works: first, the Kinect sensor using KinectFusion makes a digital 3D map of the room. Then, a car is shot onto the ground using the projector. Microsoft has banged out some code that takes into account the real world terrain, and as the car zips around, it reacts to the physical landscape. Read more...
Raspberry Pi available February 20, check out the datasheet now
If you were looking forward to getting your Raspberry Pi $25 (or $35) PC soon, it looks like you have a little bit longer to wait. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just announced that the production of their boards has hit a slight delay and that the first set of units will not be ready until February 20th. Once they are done they will be shipped (via air transit) to the UK where they will undergo the final stages before being sold and shipped out.
Details about the delay were sparse, but the announcement noted that the quartz crystal package the Raspberry Pi board uses has been replaced by a different model in China — where the RasPi is produced — so inventory for that specific part is low. The good news is that while there was a delay new inventory has been found and production has resumed (or at least will resume).
That wasn’t the only announcement from the Foundation today — they also have presented followers of the project with Broadcom’s datasheet for the BCM2835 SoC. This is, as you’ll recall, the heart of the Raspberry Pi board and the part that allows it to do all the great feats we’ve seen it do so far, like play CD-quality audio, run Quake III, and playback HD video.
The BCM2835′s datasheet (PDF) is quite dense, so don’t expect to hop right in unless you are IEEE-certified. This abbreviated datasheet is 205 pages long, so while it probably has a lot of great information in it, it’s a bit hard to parse. (We’ll report back if we see anything notable!)
(Source: geek.com)
4 ways to manage your project management budget
In the big picture world of project management, ensuring the overall success of a project is a project manager's top priority. If a project goes wildly over-budget (as they often do), it will not be considered a success, even if it's delivered on time and meets end users' needs. That's why project managers need to meticulously manage their budgets.
Here are four strategies for maintaining control of your project budget and preventing massive cost overruns.
1. Continually forecast the budget. A project run without frequent budget management and reforecasting will likely be headed for failure. Why? Because frequent budget oversight prevents the budget from getting too far out of hand. A 10 percent budget overrun is far easier to correct than a 50 percent overrun. Your chances of keeping the project on track with frequent review of the budget plan is far greater than if you forecast it once and forget about it. Read more...