Thanks Ron! Don’t be a stranger.

/chris

I appreciate your compliment very much.

I see the misuse of B2C marketing program design as a source of some common B2B mistakes in the social media consulting arena. A consumer’s word-of-mouth entertainment time used to sway many other consumers’ discretionary spending habits does not translate easily to developers being paid to create software on business time - where there is little free time and no excess budget. The principles still apply, but the design of the marketing programs and microsites must address a different marketing lifecycle. A classic old-school example is where IBM built a pervasive “job security” metaphor focused on non-technical buyers inside companies who routinely pushed IBM computers into engineering departments. It comes down to understanding how to influence the tools and embedded component sales models in my opinion.

I do have a few samples in this web site’s embedded components marketplace. Some of my B2B clients use my asynchronous video conversation platform to interact with their clients. You can view some of their activity here - if you don’t mind suffering through the terribly old fashioned login script I wrote several years ago: http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/marketplace/

Best regards,

Ron

Thank you for your interest in working with LTSpice via this blog post. I will fill you in on my own experiences and perhaps this will trigger some new ideas for you. From your question, I think you have downloaded myflip-flop gates described in this post. I also assume you have tried to extend their use beyond my simple test bed.

I went through a learning curve in the use of LTSpice supplied logic gates. I had already confirmed with other LTSpice online users that the basic building blocks for my own mixed analog/digital designs can and should start with these basic building blocks. At first I thought all basic gates supplied with the LTSpice library are created “equally” - in the sense that each flip-flop behaves like a collection of generic similarly behaved set of gates as defined in some of my digital logic text books. This turns out not to be true.

Some LTSpice library gates are better choices than others based on the actual performance of the logic gates within the simulator. I discovered that the worst flip-flop gates to start with are included within the SR Flip-Flop and the best ones are in the D Flip-Flop. This is why, in my final design, I selected the D Flip-Flop even to meet SR Flip-Flop design requirements. See my last photo in this post.

I more fully explore the subject in my next post here: http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2008/04/74hc193-for-ltspice-switchercadiii/

In the 74hc193 blog post, I describe a more complex circuit built from many of my basic flip-flops along with some controls to simulate more specific real-time behavior constraints via the .param and .tran statements: See figure #2 {larger view} as a detailed example. The .param control works as a global set of controls because I included these same variable names within each gate of my sub-assemblies.

Does this help?

Best regards,

Ron

Really good blog post on the webinar. Very curious about your experience in talking to B2B clients in such a technical field about social media and how it applies to that. Have you done any blog post on that?

Thanks,

Daniel

Embedded in a mixed analog and power model these logic functions fail to perform. I did a side-by-side with the SR Flop for example, and given the same input and output characteristics with a very, very simple demo circuit and my more complex application.. the SR Flop in the more complex application failed. Any Ideas???

Allen Kelly, Northrop Grumman

I appreciate your willingness to post your comments on this subject - here or anywhere for that matter. It’s inspiring for those of us who follow the history, and present activity derived from your hand held personal computing club. I agree, consumer device executives in charge of today’s platforms routinely fail to recognize just how magnificently your club exposed the lowly HP-41 [and friends] calculator’s awesome-flexible-portable computing power.

But of course, I can’t blame these executives one “bit.” I too initially missed your leadership and it’s over arching value when I first started this post, over a year ago – and I am an accidental member of the choir – having launched my own career fresh out of college with the reusable programming power of the HP-41 – and remain just an accidental isolationist with respect to your club’s meetings.

In this blog post from start to finish - I am proposing an all the above approach to open-source leadership for conumer devices with your club as a role model.

Some options that come to mind - along with an implied commitment to continue the drive towards some satisfactory solution:

a) Leverage your existing hp-41 [and friends] open-source emulations as virtual platforms onto current consumer devices. Try this google search for example: [rpn calculator ipod touch] for 12,600 web pages so far and counting. Did I mention many of the current consumer device manufacturers have an open-source or free developer tool kit and one or more distribution channels ready to help developers such as your own hand held computer club members reach every user of their mobile computing devices?

b) Enhance item a) above with an Eclipse IDE plugin for designing everthything from simple emulated programs to cross-compiled M-code images for download by an even larger developer community who might rely on your emulation platforms. Perhaps emulate the various HP-41 hardware accessories for display and instrumentation via wi-fi /bluetooth/carrier connection for those willing to buy multiple consumer devices - to the user, manufacturer, and carrier’s delight;

c) Start a new software initiative on a new hardware platform following the footsteps of your own success. Your point above is that this is damn risky, and I too have outlined many of the key areas of difficulty [and their solution] in real-time embedded software development using multimedia preso’s right here on this web site. I hope to continue being a significant source of knowledge for manufacturer’s and their developer communities who desire to follow this approach - for areas not already coded by such able goups as your own. But to your point, even the very popular “LinuxWorld conference” – just this morning - has announced that it has merged with a new more general open-source initiative with more than Linux in mind for its next events called “OpenSource World”. Your point on difficulty is again well taken considering how many open-source Linux developers have now found the need to merge with a more general open-source program. Now there’s room for Java and even your own club’s software derived for the HP-41 and friends at this venue if it is useful for you and your memebers;

d) Get HP to re-release a new edition programmable calculator with all of the power described in a) and b) above yet with new electronics. They have the greatest chance to appreciate your club’s efforts, but the field of manufactures is so much larger now.

In closing, the whole notion of the value of a math processor has sort of fallen by the way-side here in the US (and world-wide for that matter) in comparison to games and the simple “where’re you at” mobile device conversations of today. Frankly, I see the re-release of your club’s efforts as the center of a new portable programmable math-and-more software initiative onto some existing consumer devices as part of the solution to today’s downward financial trends –a hope for the moral future sort of thing in addition to a pragmatic problem solving unit.

Best regards,
Ron

Having a “community” develop software requires leadership and a clear vision. Human egos get in the way and while many people will work just to contribute (and have ego fun) the manufacturer and its “user community” has to have a clear well developed relationship to provide the most effective result.

Even the HP Computer user’s group has not survived the egos of the manufacturer’s managers. The community was so large that the Saturday night dinner at their Conferences had 10,000 people in attendance. The user community is constant, it is the manufacturer that keeps changing. For a bit of history on this see the bottom of the web page at:

http://holyjoe.net/hhc2005/

X Y,

Richard

What you ask for seems obvious in hindsight, thanks for the suggestion. Control of forground color, background color, and both of these color transparencies, is very “do-able” since all controls are handled by the PHP GD library. The necessary step is to add these color controls as seen on http://www.php.net into the wpmathpub.php plugin code:

imagecolorallocate
imagecolortransparent
imagecolorallocatealpha

I will put this feature request on the list for next release.

Best regards,

Ron

my blog’s background is black, and the theme i am using is trying to put the output in a light grey and is messing things up. is there a way to have the output in white? or any color for that matter….

-tyler