Technologies

Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Financial

Reblog of FastCompany’s Most Innovative Companies in Financial:

1. FiLife

The No. 4 personal-finance site on the Web, the IAC-Dow Jones joint venture relies on a Q&A format with a host of social and game-like features to get Americans talking about money, still a taboo. Since the site relaunched in February 2009, traffic has exploded from 140,000 visitors to 3.5 million. Top 50: No. 27

2. Intuit

The folks at Quicken bought Mint.com, the new leader in online money management, and put the startup’s founder, Aaron Patzer, in charge of other products in the personal-finance division. Intuit is also expanding into a full-service tech provider for small businesses.

3. Yodlee

Its platform is the back end for 85% of all online personal financial management, including online services for 6 of the top 10 U.S. banks, including Bank of America, and many leading portal sites, such as Mint.com. At the 2009 Finovate conference, Yodlee launched the FinApp Store, modeled after Apple App Store, with an Open API so developers can build apps for the company’s various program suites.

4. Triodos

The global financial crisis brought attention to Triodos, a Dutch bank that backs only organizations that create social, environmental, or cultural “added value.” The bank operates in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and the U.K., where its lending grew by almost a third in the first half of 2009.

5. Enterprise Community Partners

In 25 years, Enterprise has invested more than $10 billion in public-private partnerships to fund affordable housing — currently at the rate of $1 billion a year. The for-profit/not-for-profit hybrid announced a new commitment this past October: $4 billion over the next five years for housing that’s both affordable and green.

6. Itaú Unibancoe

After a merger earlier this year, this private bank became the largest financial conglomerate in the southern hemisphere and one of the top 20 worldwide. Its funding for education benefits 40,000 students in central Brazil and promotes sustainability.

7. Credit.com

Winner of Finovate’s 2009 Best of Show, this free service makes credit scores easier to understand: Credit.com does a “soft inquiry” on your credit report, then gives you a letter grade that’s an estimate of the range of scores you’d get for $15 a throw from the credit bureaus. A grade of B correlates to a FICO score of 700-749, a TransUnion score of 765-844, or a PLUS score of 695-739.

8. Vancity

Canada’s largest credit union has carved out a niche for itself as a social responsibility/sustainability leader, a vision that helped drive profits up more than 50% in the thick of the financial crisis. In 2009, its slate of eclectic for-profit and community-benefit initiatives included a $400,000 enviroFund grant program for local projects.

9. SimpliFi

This new personal-finance Web site goes beyond the tracking features of a Mint.com to tell you what to do with your money. Named Best Of Show at FinovateStartup 2009, it uses the same financial modeling engine used by 95% of certified financial advisers and is itself a registered investment adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

10. Vittana

The pioneering education microfinance outfit, which is financed through a Kiva-like lending model from small donors in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden, has made the first-ever student loans in Peru, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Mongolia, and Vietnam. Although it’s less than a year old and still very small — a few hundred students — the startup has drawn accolades.

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Favorite TED Presentations

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year’s TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

Here is the list of some of my favorite TED presentations, but there are just so many inspiring presentations:

Joshua Prince-Ramus believes that if architects re-engineer their design process, the results can be spectacular. Speaking at TEDxSMU, Dallas, he walks us through his fantastic re-creation of the local Wyly Theater as a giant “theatrical machine” that reconfigures itself at the touch of a button.

At TED2009, Al Gore presents updated slides from around the globe to make the case that worrying climate trends are even worse than scientists predicted, and to make clear his stance on “clean coal.”

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

We’re at a unique moment in history, says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today’s interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic — and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy.

Can the interests of an individual nation be reconciled with humanity’s greater good? Can a patriotic, nationally elected politician really give people in other countries equal consideration? Following his TEDTalk calling for a global ethic, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown fields questions from TED Curator Chris Anderson.

You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.”

20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

Apple iPad Special Event (Jan 2010)

Here are four links to live blogs and video of Apple’s special event on January 27, 2010. Main focus is Apple’s new iPad tablet:

• GDGT Liveblog
• Engadget Liveblog
• Apple.com Quicktime video
• Mashable Apple Tablet page

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Response to Fast Company’s E-readers post

After reading this post – Why I Hate E-readers, and Doubt They’ll Ever Hit the Mainstream – from Fast Company, I odd to agree with the writer’s thought on ebook readers.  I think that at this point in time, any mobile consumer technology with a single function will not survive the growing marketing.  In the last few years, mobile devices and their capabilities have converged.

Although Amazon’s Kindle reader benefits the needs of book readers in terms of removing the amount of books they carry, how many people really have the time and the ability to read multiple novels within let say a week?

From the technology and design perspectives, why would people spend $300+ on a devices which only good for ebook reading?  When for about the same amount of money one can get a 10.1 inch netbook and is able to do all the other stuff like IM and web surfing.  I’m sure there are people who like to use their Kindles to read, but that seems to be a niche market.

With Safari books online and other e-book services available on iPhone, I think ebook device is already a thing in the past.

A Day in the Internet

This is an interesting Info-graphic about the Internet today, and we expect the amount of data to double by 2013?! Check it out!

Created by Online Education

Inspiration from Architecture

To get inspiration for what I do day to day in Enterprise Architecture and R&D, I actually like looking online for architecture and interior designs. Looking at elegant designs and layouts just give you the energy you need.  No matter if it is modern or old-style, if you look hard enough you can always find new ideas.  Sometimes I wish enterprise and software architecture can inspire outsiders.

Here is a list of sites with good portfolios in architecture, hope you will get inspired as well:

• Design Magazine
• Gluckman Mayner
• Steven Holl Architects
• Inhabitat – Circular Hakka Houses
• ArchDaily – Baton Rouge Downtown Library
• Unusual Architecture

Inspiring Visualization Groups on Flickr

FlowingData’s recent post – 7 Visualization Groups On Flickr to Find Inspiration – is worth reading for those who like to get new ideas on data visualization techniques and examples.  The seven groups mentioned in the post are:

• Info Graphics [link]
• Guardian Datastore [link]
• maps and charts [link]
• WebOps Visualizations [link]
• Diagram Diaries [link]
• Cool Data Visualization Techniques [link]
• FlowingData [link]

Check it out!

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Quick Reference for Android Dev Phone 1 update

According to MobileCrunch (TechCrunch), T-Mobile has confimed that Android v1.6 rollout is underway.  So for those who has the Dev Phone 1, HTC has also released the images for upgrade.  Links to images are available at: http://developer.htc.com/adp.html

For quick reference, here is the script of how to update the Android Dev phone (on a Windows machine):

1. Download the Radio and Image files from the above link
2. Download the Android 1.6 SDK and put it in the path (e.g. C:\Program Files\android-sdk-windows-1.6_r1\tools)
3. Open a command line console in Windows
4. Run: adb devices – and make sure your device is hooked up to the Windows box
5. Run: adb push <radio-image-package>.zip /sdcard/update.zip
6. Run: adb shell sync
7. Reboot the device into recovery mode by holding down the HOME key during reboot. When the device enters recovery mode, it displays a “!” icon.
8. With the recovery console displayed, open the sliding keyboard and hold down the ALT+l key combination to enable log output in the recovery console.
9. Next, hold down the ALT+s key combination to install the update. An “installing update” icon and progress bar (or a similar status message) are displayed.  When the progress bar completes, the installation is finished.
10. Press the HOME-BACK key combination to write the radio image, update the firmware, and automatically reboot. Note that if you do not use HOME-BACK at this point, the device will not load the updated radio image. After writing the radio image, the device shows a “updating firmware” icon for a few seconds and then automatically reboots in normal mode
11. Reboot and enter fastboot mode – power up the device (or reboot it) while holding down the BACK key. Hold the BACK key down until the bootloader screen is visible and shows “FASTBOOT”
12. Run: fastboot erase cache
13. Run: fastboot update <imagepackage>.zip
14. (Optional) Run: fastboot reboot

MobileCrunch News Article:

T-Mobile confirms that Android v1.6 (Donut) rollout is underway

Rumors were abound last night that T-Mobile would begin sending out the Android v1.6 update (known amongst the geekdom as “Donut”) today, and sure enough: they’ve just confirmed it.

The big changes here include a fix for a bug that would reset your phone after dialing 911 (Oops!), the new (and much prettier) market, improved voice search, a new camera interface, and homescreen search. Here’s the official word from ol’ Magenta themselves:

The rollout of Android 1.6 (Donut) to T-Mobile’s G1 and myTouch 3G customers is now underway, and provides new features and software enhancements. The update also includes an important fix for isolated instances of system reboots after dialing 911. We have worked with Google and HTC on a solution, and the rollout of Android 1.6 is being accelerated to ensure the system reboot fix is rapidly delivered to our customers.

The over-the-air update will be delivered to all G1 and myTouch customers in the coming days. Given the system reboot fix, we strongly encourage all users to install Android 1.6 when prompted to do so.

Regarding new and enhanced features, Android 1.6 includes:
* An improved Android Market experience that makes it easier to discover great applications.
* An integrated camera, camcorder, and gallery interface.
* Updated Voice Search, with faster response and deeper integration with native applications, including the ability to dial contacts.
* Updated search experience that make it easier to search various sources, such as browser bookmarks & history, contacts, and the web, directly from the home screen.

Additional details on Android 1.6 can be found at http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-1.6-highlights.html

If last night’s rumors continue to hold true, G1 owners should begin getting their updates today, and myTouch owners should start seeing it tomorrow. Let us know when you get yours!

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