Revue issue #1

BigchainDB I discovered this month through the Ethereum Facebook group. Leading to me dipping into BigchainDB’s Whitepaper. They are building a scalable decentralised database. To fill a gap in the the decentralisation eco-system. That points to a performance of 1 million writes per second throughput. Which makes quite the difference. Storing petabytes of data. It has been designed to store at a scalable capacity legally binding contracts and certificates. Directly on the database. With a permissioning system enabling you to set configurations for private enterprise blockchain databases to open, public databases. Whilst also complementing such decentralised processing platforms as Ethereum and decentralised file systems like InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). We’ve already started playing about with it at Cappui. And are seriously starting to consider testing an integration with it in our decentralised application called Famoi which we are currently architecting. Since it may just complement our IPFS storage system configuration needs and solve a number of problems we have currently been looking at ways to solve.

Read the Whitepaper here, visit their website here or dash straight to their Github page here.

EthCore are creating the next generation of Ethereum clients and want it to be the worlds lightest and fastest client. It is being written in the Rust language. For those not in the know. This is a language that was created back in 2010. And is a systems programming language thats main focus  is safety, speed, and concurrency. Really worth checking out the documentation and playing about with this to. Though moving back onto Ethcore. What really hit me whilst running this for the first time is how it only took me near to ~45mins to download #900,000 blocks. Compared to what would may have taken many an hour before. Install and starting playing with it here.

Bots. Now they are taking on the news service. And I love it. Allowing news to feel like a conversation rather than simply a feed of lots of content. Allowing you to soak in information through what is an immersive environment. As well as discover news and be notified daily. Could be an interesting evolution of how we digest news and interact with content I believe. Discover it here.

This report was released a week or so ago. So if you missed it then read it. It is an informative whitepaper detailing Industry 4.0. The next industrial revolution that is happening as we speak. And is largely about the automation of supply chains to the Internet-of-Things (IoT). You can download the report here, where a pdf with the whitepaper will download.

Calm. A recent app that I thankfully discovered through Kevin Rose’s recent Journal. So thank you Kevin. And checkout Issue one of his monthly journal here and sign-up for it here. 

Calm motivates you to meditate daily. Using typical gamfication methods such as awarding you with daily streak badges. What makes this app so great though is the calming and ambient background noise/music. It creates an automatic sense of relaxation and truly engages you. And the women who begins and ends every meditation session has one of the most soft and calming voices I’ve heard in awhile. And is just the cherry that tops off this clean and wonderful app. Check it out and start your seven days of meditation here. Because it really does motivate you. 

So after months of research on supply chains, transparency, counterfeiting, theft and fraud of assets and products for Famoi. My first major decentralised application. A decentralised and autonomous asset management and supply chain network infrastructure. 

The aim of the research has been to learn how I may best develop a solution that would work autonomously with global supply chains. Recording, certifying and tracking their provenance as they journey through their supply chain. That would be simple to transition and integrate into current solutions used by manufactures, suppliers and retailers. As well as using this technology to protect valuable assets such as art or jewellery. To making sure food or pharmaceuticals has not been misused or abused through its journey.

So I’ve properly started to put my head down and start diving in an writing this whitepaper of Famoi’s. And it is coming along slowly. Will I need help along the way. Most certainly. This is after all a journey in itself. Will I need a number of authoritative and intelligent minds from the developer and crypto community, to edit, critique and add their wizardly knowledge to it. Yes I certainly will.

The whitepaper will after-all act as the core guidelines for a project which is quite large. And in-turn will need much support to make it really happen to the scale that I in-vision the applicaiton to operate at. Which of course will mean working with partners and testing the application throughout the development continuously. Especially on an Enterprise level within supply chains. This has required me gaining clarity and the ability to clearly express my vision for Famoi.

So impart this whitepaper is massively important as both a proposal and for me personally. It allows me to architect the solution, create a set of core values for the future opensource development of the application. And hopefully empower the community by sharing and proposing my ideas.

I awoke a couple of mornings ago pondering the idea of organising a series of informal educational morning talks on emerging tech in London over breakfast. These would be low-key talks targeted at enterprise/medium sized corporations, VCs/Equity Investors and anyone interested in learning how they many integrate and slowly transition these new and emerging technologies. Such as distributed systems, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and micro-services into their existing businesses.

Giving one or two start-ups the chance not to pitch their products. But discuss and share knowledge with a select thirty or so people once or twice a month. If you have any ideas, would like to collaborate, talk or partner with me on this project. Or even better attend such an event.  Do let me know by contacting me via [email protected].  I’d be delighted to hear from you.