commbasics

For a couple of months now, I've been doing live broadcasts on a variety of subject, ranging from semiconductor design to marijuana legalization , on a new network called Vpype. The broadcasts are sponsored by Vpype and Magma Design Automation and can be about anything that might pop into my mine. Yesterday, I had an interview fall through so I vamped on the subject of privacy in social networks, which I had touched on earlier this week in a blog. This is a big topic right now and I'm kinda surprised I haven't had more discussion... but a lot of people may be on vacation. So the interview can be seen here, and you can comment here, or go directly to my channel on Vpype  (that's even better for the show). Watch video live on Vpype Live Broadcaster

While at DAC last week I had a few interviews scheduled for the live Vpype broadcasts (sponsored by Vpype and Magma Design Automation ) that never got off the ground due to bandwidth issues.  One of them was with Robert Cravotta, former embedded and microprocessor editor for EDN and now the chief analyst for Embedded Insights .  Luckily, I brought my Zi6 with me. Robert and I have been talking off and on for the past couple of months since his layoff about the uses of social media and he's taken technical journalism to another level in his new endeavor.  He was in charge of EDN's very popular Microprocessor Directory... that has disappeared under the new ownership.  In Robert's head, however, was the seed of an idea that would make the directory more valuable to the engineering community but never had the opportunity to implement under Reed Business Media.  Embedded Insights is, in essence, the culmination of that idea.  But I'll le...

"I love it when a plan comes together"   John "Hannibal" Smith. Late last year, I started advising Magma Design on the use of social media and it they have been approaching it deliberately and with purpose.  They don't want to follow what everyone else does and they want to make sure it does them some good.  My first piece of advice in social media strategy is "get a vision for what you really want to do."  They are and I'm proud of their efforts so far. Today, however, they did something REALLY good. May 27, John Cooley's ESNUG published a review by a user on Magma's Quartz product that claimed the product missed some substantial errors in an SoC design.  On June 2, the user wrote to John that found out he had been wrong in his results and that Quartz had not missed any errors nor had it produce false errors and he asked for a correction especially in light of the coming Design Automation Conference.  He didn't want to damage Magma...