LTL as a strategy
I confess I had to look it up.
A truck passed me on the highway and on the side, it said that they did both LTL and FTL shipments.
FTL means "full truckload." For the longest time, a full truckload was the only efficient way to ship goods around. A company would expand operations (not just trucking, but just about everything) so that it could use all of an available resource. No sense having half a shipping clerk or half a secretary or half a truck shipment--the rest was going to go to waste, so might as well use it all.
As Lisa Gansky wrote about in her seminal book the Mesh, the massive shift in data (and knowledge) produced by the net means that FTL isn't nearly the advantage over less than a truckload it used to be. Since it's so cheap and effective to coordinate activity, that extra space isn't wasted, not at all. It's shared.
Avoiding S-curve error
The future is bumpy. It comes in spurts, and then it pauses.
It's tempting to connect two dots and draw a line to figure out where the third dot is going to be.
In the long run, that's a smart way to go. For example, if we look at the cost per transistor in 1970 and again today, we can make a pretty smart guess about where it's going in the future.
But we won't get there in a straight line.
踏入九月，一早一晚，不時吹來微微乾燥清風，彷彿在耳邊傳來秋天的腳步，也就是說最適宜燒烤的季節慢慢來到。可惜氣溫依然高企，最好還是躲在冷氣房內歎燒烤美食，像中環九如坊的燒烤新店一叶，讓被寵壞的香港人提早嘗秋意。
近日串燒大行其道，各類型中式、日式串燒店紛紛上場，為大家送上一陣陣惹味燒烤風，新店一叶就採用多款獨特時令食材，甚至出動足有十二吋長的燒棒，難怪居於英國時經常嘆「無啖好食」的陳智燊（Jason）都話今次有口福。
初回港的Jason曾居於中上環區，由優雅高級餐廳、個性咖啡屋，到風味十足的地道小店，都是搬家後的Jason最為懷念的。這次來到位於隱蔽小街的一叶，甫進店內，即見到開放式燒烤爐，放眼看是以深木色和風設計的用餐區，空間雖不大，但卻舒適而充滿人情味。餐廳供應刺身、即燒串燒、日本料理、天婦羅及飯麵等，款式不算很豐富，但用料優質新鮮，名副其實的貴精不貴多。燒烤爐旁更設有迷你海鮮吧，擺放自日本等地入口的當造海鮮，訪問當日便有飛魚，由於這些海產貨量不穩，所以餐牌上未有標明，識食一族點菜時不妨留意一下海鮮吧上的「佳麗」！
經典科幻片《聯合縮小軍》與1987年的電影《驚異大奇航》帶起的人體探險風潮終於要被實現了，只是這次被縮小的是相機。來自George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering的研究團隊已開發出一款直徑僅1.5毫米的相機，能夠自由進出血管拍攝即時的3D影像，隨時監測身體狀況。
F. Levent Degertekin和相關研究團隊研發出的這款微型相機，被裝載在超過100個迷你零件組成的微型晶片上，能夠任意置入使用者的血管或心臟中，拍攝60fps的即時3D影像。此外，雖然稱為「相機」，其拍攝原理卻是透過超音波掃描，建構出血管內的影像。其利用 DNA 分子的特性，也就是在溫度低時，分子結構較緊密，而當溫度高時，分子結構會延長。因此研究團隊想到利用 DNA 來做成一個奈米籠子，在高溫環境中，籠子打開，藥物分子可進入籠中，低溫環境下，籠子關上，藥物分子就出不來，再注入體內，到了指定位置，再加溫打開籠子，如此便可免於搖控奈米機器人的麻煩，卻可達到相同的效果。
這款微型相機不僅只需20毫瓦的供電，無需擔心它在體內過熱；更支援休眠技術，讓使用者能在需要時將它喚醒，其它時間則使感測器保持在關閉狀態，節省耗能。目前該產品的開發還在原型階段，未來計畫應用在醫學領域，幫助使用者隨時監測心臟與血管的健康狀態，可望造福心血管疾病患者。
不久前Google才宣布其開發的智慧型藥丸即將開始生產，這款微型相機的研發，似乎也反映了物聯網的應用已經深入人體，幫助人們監測自身健康狀態，進而預防重大疾病的發生。然而，隨著個人健康數據也連上網路，網路個人資訊的隱私也更加與我們「切身」相關。
