38594519
submission
pbahra writes:
At first glance, there isn’t much that links a Web-based start-up with a rocket-powered car designed not merely to break the land speed record, but to smash it, by traveling at 1,000 miles per hour. Not many start-ups burn £300,000 a month, not many in turn get £25,000 a month in public donations. Not many—in fact none—are pushing the boundaries of engineering in the way that Bloodhound SSC, which aims to hit Mach 1.4 in a South African desert in 2014, is doing. But according to Richard Noble, the ebullient man behind the dream, the 1,000-mph car maybe the ultimate open-source project and has a management structure that start-ups would do well to emulate. How open is Bloodhound? “As open as we can possibly make it,” said Mr. Noble. “We are going to make absolutely everything available. There are no patents.”
38433927
submission
pbahra writes:
There is no shortage of talk about Big Data and the transformational impact it will have, but one sector of the economy that traditionally hasn’t been a heavy user of technology is hoping it can reap the benefits, too. Charities, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations — or the third sector — are hopeful that the ability not merely to handle vast datasets, which is one attribute of Big Data, but the combination of disparate datasets, will bring new insights to their work, resulting in greater efficiencies on the ground, and better value for money. For example, using satellite data, weather information, population density and other information allows teams to focus efforts on distributing things like malaria nets or doing indoor residual spraying, or even stepping up education programs in areas likely to be blighted.