The Menlo Briefs

Will They Carry My Bag, Too? - Zappos -- a major online shoe seller -- has adopted something new to help cut costs: an army of little yellow robots. Rather than having people wandering through the warehouse with a cart to fulfill orders, the Kiva robots bring the orders to them. Supporters of the robotics industry have said that using robots controlled by U.S. workers to cut costs could provide a viable alternative to outsourcing jobs from the U.S. [more]

Rumors of Its Death May Be Greatly Exaggerated - After nearly 40 years, is it time to say goodbye to the computer mouse? Maybe, maybe not. A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years due to the introduction of gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices. Logitech -- the world's biggest manufacturer of mice and keyboards -- agrees that the number of ways people can communicate with their computers is increasing, but that doesn't mean the mouse is going anywhere anytime soon. Are they right? Well, ask yourself this: How ready are you to wave your hands in the air or make faces at devices with embedded video readers? [more]

Shopping in the Future - In western Germany there is a store called the Future Store -- quite an audacious name for a grocery store. But this grocery store isn't like any other you've been to. Not only is there a robot named Roger to help you find what you're looking for, but you can also buy your groceries using your cell phone. Using free software from the supermarket, the telephone has been transformed into a mobile shopping assistant. Using the camera on the phone, shoppers can scan the barcodes of their own shopping. When it's time to go, the shopper places their phone in an automated pay station where a barcode reader reads the final amount. [more]

Goodbye to faulty software? - Is it possible to write software without bugs? A team of European researchers think so. The key, they believe, lies in an esoteric reformulation of mathematics called ‘type theory’ based on the notion of computation. Essentially, at the start a program sets out to prove a theorem that it does what it says it's going to do. By proving the theorem, the program is correct. [more]

How Low Can You Go? - If you're a new micro-chip developed by the University of Michigan, you use 30,000 times less power in sleep mode and 10 times less in active mode than comparable chips now on the market. That's pretty darned low! The Phoenix Processor, which sets a low-power record, is intended for use in cutting-edge sensor-based devices such as medical implants, environment monitors or surveillance equipment. [more]

Robot Lovers? - Is the day coming when robots can be lovers? (And we don't mean just tawdry mechanical sex machines.) David Levy, author of the book Love and Sex with Robots thinks so. "...when there are robots that have also emotions, personality, consciousness. They can talk to you, they can make you laugh. They can...say they love you just like a human would say 'I love you', and say it as though they mean it..." he says. [more]

Hope for Those with Migraines - When someone suffers a migraine, there are many things they'll try to stop the pain. Dark and quiet rooms. Ice packs. Medications. But sometimes even that isn't enough. Now there's a new tool for migraine sufferers -- a hand-held transcranial magnetic stimulation device that eased migraine symptoms in some study volunteers. [more]

Life in the Looking Glass - Sometimes when I look at our industry I start feeling like Alice when she fell through the looking glass. Nearly all companies have failed investments in software initiatives -- many in the six and seven figure range -- and yet they insist on acting as if nothing's wrong! Curiouser and curiouser, indeed! The good news is that the leading causes of these failures can be avoided by applying Menlo's High-Tech Anthropology^® practice. Join us for the next FREE 90-minute presentation on August 14th to learn how our approach creates the right software for the right application.

The Value of Offshoring - These days hearing a story about another company offshoring their work seems hardly remarkable. The promise of low costs is an old one these days. But is there really value in offshoring, or is it a bit of false economy? M.S. Krishnan and colleagues Claes Fornell of the Ross School at the University of Michigan and Jonathan Whitaker of the University of Richmond analyzed the offshoring and outsourcing activities of 150 North American firms and business units from 1998 to 2006. What they found was that offshoring and domestic outsourcing of front-office functions (e.g. customer service) result in similar declines for customer satisfaction. However, when it comes to offshoring back-office functions (e.g. information technology, human resources, finance and accounting, and research and development), there is no decline in customer satisfaction. [more]

Turn the Page - One of the frustrations I've felt with reading books online is that it just doesn't feel natural. However, a new dual-display e-book reader developed by researchers at Maryland and Berkeley Universities lets you flip pages naturally, just like a book. It's still in testing, but early reactions have been good. [more]