Disqus - Latest Comments for ddingee

Re: Pressure pushing MEMS

ddingee — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:11:05 -0000

Don't know about circuit examples, but there are several good sites explaining MEMS concepts from middle- to high-school levels. Try these:

http://bourneresearch.com/b...

http://mechse.illinois.edu/...

http://www.ohiomems.org/x10...

Re: What recession?

ddingee — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:40:23 -0000

Real-time update: news crossing the wire the 3Com deal has been scrapped.

Re: Privacy is such a lonely word

ddingee — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:22:54 -0000

Ah, a product of your environment indeed - the first question asked when visiting most defense contractor facilities, "does your phone have a camera." Once again, few folks will be motivated to make a camera-less phone since the market will be infinitesimal. There must be a lot of phones sitting in cars in parking lots of defense contractors ...

I'm not against having all this information floating around - not at all. There will be some great uses. But we can't have our privacy totally safeguarded, and yet be highly transparent, at the same time. Someone will game the information system for gain, looking for something to exploit. Unfortunately.

Re: Helping consumers get green

ddingee — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:13:18 -0000

I agree - I wrote that cold, hard capitalism column on designing for energy efficiency last May, making the exact point that designers wouldn't do it until became profitable:

http://www.industrial-embed...

But marketing to consumers involves some psychology. Yes, you can motivate people by making it cheaper to do something in the long run. But you can also motivate folks by delivering an unexpected benefit, or a higher level of service - especially in today's commodity, low-bidder-wins environment.

An unexpected software download that saves me energy and made my experience better was welcome. If it were easy, and could be delivered cost efficiently - both big ifs on a mass market scale - it would generate some buzz, would it not?