IEEE Spectrum December, 2007 - 2

the back story

Editor
Executive Editor
Managing Editor
Senior Editors

Senior Associate Editors
Associate Editors

Assistant Editor
Senior Copy Editor
Editorial Researcher
Administrative Assistants

IEEE Spectrum Journalism Intern
Interns

Contributing Editors

Susan Hassler, s.hassler@ieee.org
Glenn Zorpette, g.zorpette@ieee.org
Elizabeth A. Bretz, e.bretz@ieee.org
Harry Goldstein (Web), h.goldstein@ieee.org
Jean Kumagai, j.kumagai@ieee.org
Tekla S. Perry, t.perry@ieee.org
Philip E. Ross (Resources), p.ross@ieee.org
William Sweet, w.sweet@ieee.org
Steven Cherry, s.cherry@ieee.org
Samuel K. Moore (News), s.k.moore@ieee.org
Erico Guizzo, e.guizzo@ieee.org
Sandra Upson, s.upson@ieee.org
Willie D. Jones, w.jones@ieee.org
Joseph N. Levine, j.levine@ieee.org
Alan Gardner, a.gardner@ieee.org
Ramona Gordon, r.gordon@ieee.org
Nancy T. Hantman, n.hantman@ieee.org
Sarah Adee, s.adee@ieee.org
Francesco Ferorelli, f.ferorelli@ieee.org
Morgen E. Peck, m.peck@ieee.org
Joshua J. Romero, j.j.romero@ieee.org
John Blau, Robert N. Charette, Peter Fairley,
Alexander Hellemans, Jen Lin-Liu,
Robert W. Lucky, Paul McFedries,
Kieron Murphy, Michael Riordan,
Carl Selinger, Seema Singh, John Voelcker

ART & PRoducTion

Senior Art Director Mark Montgomery

Assistant Art Directors Laura H. Azran, Brandon Palacio

Photo Editor Randi Silberman
Director, Periodicals Production Services Peter Tuohy

Editorial & Web Production Manager Roy Carubia

Web Production Coordinator Jacqueline L. Parker
Web Production Specialist Michael Spector

iEEE MEdiA
Staff Director; Publisher, IEEE Spectrum James A. Vick, j.vick@ieee.org
Associate Publisher,

Sales & Advertising Director Marion Delaney, m.delaney@ieee.org
Recruitment Sales Development Manager Michael Buryk, m.buryk@ieee.org
Business Manager Robert T. Ross
Marketing & Promotion Manager Blanche McGurr, b.mcgurr@ieee.org
Interactive Marketing Manager Laura Book, l.book@ieee.org

List/Recruitment Marketing Manager Ilia Rodriguez, i.rodriguez@ieee.org
Reprint Sales +1 212 221 9595, ext. 319
Department Administrator Faith H. Jeanty, f.jeanty@ieee.org

Advertising Sales +1 212 419 7760

Telephone Advertising

Sales Representative John Restchack +1 212 419 7578
Advertising Production Manager Felicia Spagnoli
Senior Advertising Production Coordinator Nicole Evans
Advertising Production +1 732 562 6334

IEEE Staff Executive, Publications Anthony Durniak

EdiToRiAl AdvisoRy BoARd

Susan Hassler, Chair; Marc T. Apter,
Alan E. Bell, C. Gordon Bell, Francine D. Berman, Emmanuel Desurvire,
Hiromichi Fujisawa, Kenneth Y. Goldberg, Susan Hackwood, Erik Heijne,
David H. Jacobson, Christopher J. James, Ronald G. Jensen, Mary Y. Lanzerotti,
Tak Ming Mak, David A. Mindell, Fritz M. Morgan, Leslie D. Owens, Barry L. Shoop,
Larry L. Smarr, Harry L. Tredennick III, Sophie V. Vandebroek, Ba¸sak Yüksel
IEEE Spectrum Editorial Offices
RANDI SIlbERmAN

3 Park Ave., 17th Floor, New York, NY 10016-5997 U.S.A.
Tel: +1 212 419 7555 Fax: +1 212 419 7570
Bureau: Palo Alto, Calif.; Tekla S. Perry +1 650 328 7570
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org
IEEE Operations Center 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331, Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331 U.S.A.
Tel: +1 732 981 0060 Fax: +1 732 981 1721

www.spectrum.ieee.org

Michael Tamburro

Cooking by the Numbers
When we decided to let Spectrum Online visitors
interact with six years of data from our annual
R&D 100 report [see "The R&D 100," in this issue],
we turned to IEEE member Michael Tamburro
and his colleagues at Agile Partners in New York
City. We didn't find Tamburro through his company's Web site or a request for proposal. We
found him in the kitchen.
IEEE Spectrum's editor, Susan Hassler, interviewed Tamburro for Spectrum Online's Geek
Cooking podcast back in July [http://spectrum.
ieee.org /radio?01.07.07&segStart=2]. As he
recounted, he started cooking in his dorm room at
Cornell University, exploring the complex world
of Italian cuisine while honing his engineering
skills. When he and colleagues Jack Ivers and
John Berry founded the software company Agile
Partners in 2002, Tamburro was well into perfecting the recipe from his Italian grandmother (his
nonna) for a pasta-based dessert called cruspola.
Cooking and software development don't
seem to have much in common at first glance.
But as we discovered while working with Agile,
whipping up a good Web app requires some of
the same techniques used when experimenting
with a new recipe. All good chefs taste their food
during the course of preparation, adjusting the
ingredients on the fly-a dash of salt here, a
grind of pepper there, and the flavors, aromas,
and colors meld into a feast for the senses. Agile,
whose name comes from a programming methodology, emphasizes flexibility and iterations-
lots of tasting in other words-before the final
product is served. The result is our "R&D 100
Graph-o-Matic," which you can sample at http://
spectrum.ieee.org/dec07/rndcalc. As Nonna
would say, "Buon appetito!"
n

ciTing ARTiclEs in iEEE sPEcTRuM
IEEE Spectrum publishes two editions. In the international
edition, the abbreviation INT appears at the foot of each page.
The North American edition is identified with the letters NA. both
have the same editorial content, but because of differences in
advertising, page numbers may differ. In citations, you should
include the issue designation. For example, the first News page is
in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 44, no. 12 (INT), December 2007, p. 8, or
in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 44, no. 12 (NA), December 2007, p. 10.

December 2007 | IEEE Spectrum | NA

http://spectrum http://www.ieee.org/radio?01.07.07&segStart=2 http://http:// http://spectrum.ieee.org/dec07/rndcalc http://www.spectrum.ieee.org http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum December, 2007