Do you constantly checking your phone for new emails, even before and after work? Even from bed? You’re not alone.
Continue reading… “We are checking our phones all the time”
Big retailers luring online shoppers offline
Walmart began allowing shoppers to order merchandise online and pay for it with cash at a store when they picked it up.
Online shopping has surged. Traditional retailers have lost millions in sales to so-called showrooming. Showrooming is when shoppers check out products in stores that they then buy from Web sites like Amazon. It has gotten so bad that Best Buy even replaces standard bar codes with special Best Buy-only codes on big ticket items so they cannot be scanned and compared online.
Continue reading… “Big retailers luring online shoppers offline”
When big data meets broadband
Scientists want to build a telescope capable of taking roughly 1,400 photos of the night sky consisting of 6 gigabytes of information each somewhere in the mountains in Chile. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope would result in several hundreds of petabytes of processed data each year. This month the National Science Board will decide if it should fund the next phase of LSST to build that data-generating telescope.
Continue reading… “When big data meets broadband”
The future of Google is Project Glass
Project Glass
Some could easily say that Google had lost its way over the last few years. But last year Google announced that it would focus on its core products. So now Project Glass is the future of Google. Not as a product that will make them billions of dollars but what it means for Google as a company and its future.
Continue reading… “The future of Google is Project Glass”
Automate or perish – has it come to this?
Robots made by Kiva Systems move product shelves on a warehouse floor.
Author and entrepreneur Christopher Steiner tells the story of stockbroker Thomas Peterffy, the creator of the first automated Wall Street trading system in the new book due next month, Automate This. Using a computer to execute trades, without humans entering them manually on a keyboard, was controversial in 1987—so controversial that Nasdaq pressured him to unplug from its network. Then, with a wink, Peterffy built an automated machine that could tap out the trades on a traditional keyboard—technically obeying Nasdaq rules. Peterffy made $25 million in 1987 and is now a billionaire.
Continue reading… “Automate or perish – has it come to this?”
Growing number of poor people land in jail as for-profit companies add huge fees for probation
Private probation companies add huge fees for probation.
Gina Ray, 31 and unemployed was fined $179 for speeding three years ago. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked.
Higgs particle discovery
This plot shows the discovery as seen in one of the LHC detectors.
In Geneva, scientists using the Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle to very high confidence that is consistent with what we expect the Higgs particle to look like.
Continue reading… “Higgs particle discovery”
European Union rules digital games and software can be resold
EU rules sales of used software legal.
Are you looking for a second-hand copy of Angry Birds? The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that software authors cannot prevent customers from reselling their products.
Continue reading… “European Union rules digital games and software can be resold”
Ratio Of PCs to Macs sold has fallen to levels not seen since the 1990s
Horace Dediu’s chart
An excellent chart has from analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco shows the ratio of PCs sold to Macs sold each year since the early 1980s (via Philip Elmer-Dewitt, who notes that the peak year for Microsoft dominance was 2004).
Continue reading… “Ratio Of PCs to Macs sold has fallen to levels not seen since the 1990s”
More money makes people less human: Study
Psychology has only recently begun seriously investigating how having money, that major marker of status in the modern world, affects psychosocial behavior.
At the University of California, Berkeley two undergraduate students are playing a Monopoly game that one of them has no chance of winning. A team of psychologists has rigged it so that skill, brains, savvy, and luck—those ingredients that ineffably combine to create success in games as in life—have been made immaterial. Here, the only thing that matters is money.
Continue reading… “More money makes people less human: Study”
The downfall of Microsoft
Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer
Two-time George Polk Award winner Kurt Eichenwald analyzes one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the lost decade of Microsoft— traces the “astonishingly foolish management decisions” at the company that “could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its , in the August issue. Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.
Continue reading… “The downfall of Microsoft”
A QR code for your headstone
Death may be permanent, but headstones are always changing.
Gravestones are the very mark of solidity; their stone says longevity, durability, time immemorial. But there is at least one headstone company in Seattle that brings headstones into the 21st century by pasting a QR code sticker onto them.
Continue reading… “A QR code for your headstone”
