Some--okay a lot--of folks might say I spend too much time lurking around on Twitter. (www.twitter.com). They're possibly correct. But it's not all time wasted. One of the things that keeps me coming back there with alarming regularity is that the more the number of people I follow increases, the more interesting stories I find that I otherwise would have missed. I'll spare you the political rants, celebrity gossip, sports scandals and cute cat pictures. Consider them homework.
The ones I want to share today may actually have some relevance to process control people such as yourself.
Number 1. More and more companies are caving to your desire to BYOD-bring your own device-into the work place. Wanna check your data on your tablet and your email on your iPhone? Fine. Just don't expect your friends in the IT department to be happy about it. According to a Global Information Inc. report, 65% of global companies say they will allow some level of BYOD by the end of 2012. Only 11% have no plans to do so.
Number 2. The good news. Methane hydrate. Write this term down. Methane hydrates are found in and under the Arctic permafrost and in ocean sediments along nearly every continental shelf in the world. The world's gas hydrate resource has been conservatively estimated to be at least twice the total amount of all remaining petroleum and natural gas reserves, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Journal of Research. According to Forbes, if this advance pans out the way it could, it's going to set the entire gas and oil industry on its ear. The complete story is here. http://www.forbes.com/sites/
Number 3. The bad news. Pakistan gets its own Triangle Shirtwaist fire. The latest casualty count is well over 300 in two fires, at least one of which sounds hauntingly familiar. See a complete report here. Seems no matter how hard we try, we can't seem to get safety right. It's easy to say all kinds of nasty things about third-world countries, developing economies and people who aren't necessarily our friends, but the same themes keep popping up over and over again. Usually the results aren't as catastrophic, and, mercifully, our record stateside has gotten a whole lot better, but that old profits-over-people meme has had an astonishingly long shelf life and a global reach.
Number 4. News from ISA. Lots of good educatin' going on over there. At ISA Automation Week (less than 2 weeks from now), Greg McMillan and Hector Torres are going to present "Effective Use of Key PID Features" This and the other presentations from the ISA Mentors and others could make a trip to Orlando on the 24th of the this month worthwhile.
