PetChatz
PetChatz is an innovative communication system designed for cats, dogs, and people that allows you to interact with your pet from anywhere in the world. (Pics and video)
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Pros and cons of robot-assisted surgery
Robotic surgery
What if you need a hysterectomy, and the surgeon wants to do the surgery with a robot? Instead of working directly with his hands, he will sit at a console manipulating a set of robotic arms outfitted with tiny surgical instruments.
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Americans hate their jobs more than everyone else in the world hates their jobs
Monster.com and market research company GfK conducted a survey of 8,000 workers across the United States, Canada, India, and Europe which we suppose makes it somewhat official: America is number one! Number one in the percentage of employees who hate their jobs, that is.
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Holiday travelers beware – 89% of public Wi-Fi connections are not safe
84 percent of travelers aren’t properly protecting themselves from public WiFi threats.
The holiday season is the time of year we travel. It’s when people buckle up on planes and trains across the world, relishing the relatively recent wide-spread availability of public WiFi. (Infographic)
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Smartphones with larger screens use 44% more data
Smartphones with larger screens use more data.
Your WiFi and data consumption will probably be higher if your smartphone has a large screen compared to a device with a smaller screen. In fact, monthly WiFi and cellular data consumption on smartphones with screens 4.5 inches and larger is 44 percent greater than it is on smartphones with screens under 4.5 inches, at about 7.2GB and 5.0GB respectively.
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The death of coal in America
Train carrying coal to a power plant.
The Great Energy Shift is happening in spurts and is starting in places like Arizona and Mississippi instead of coming from legislation in Washington. Last week two two utilities faced decisions on whether to fight the future or embrace it.
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The decline of driving in the U.S.
Americans began taking their foot off the gas pedal well before the recession.
Energy an urban-planning nerds have been pondering a very interesting question these days – has the U.S. passed peak car? Ever since the recession, Americans have been driving less, getting fewer licenses, and using less gas. But is that just the work of the recession, or something more permanent?
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Cities are our most important innovation platform
Cities are crucial to our continued ability to innovate and compete.
We tend to think about individual gifts of insight when we think about innovation—researchers in crisp, white lab coats, slick tech entrepreneurs with fancy gadgets and VC’s doing inspired deals. But, innovation is really a messy business. It is full of blind alleys and half-baked ideas, random collisions and abrupt changes in direction. Ideas mix and recombine, fail, reemerge and, in the end, a precious few become wildly successful.
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Libraries and librarians are more relevant than ever in the digital age
Harold Washington library in Chicago.
The need for libraries, and librarians has been placed under scrutiny due to the advent of the internet. Everything in print is now available online. So do we really need physical libraries and librarians anymore? Of course we do…now, more than ever before.
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Mini Metal Maker: A $1000 3D printer that prints metal
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/78961565[/vimeo]
The Mini Metal Maker prints 3D objects from digital files directly in precious metal clay, rather than in plastic. Once these clay objects air-dry, they are fired in a kiln to produce beautiful solid metal objects of high purity and precision. Using metal clay essentially replaces the entire wax-casting or lost-wax process ordinarily needed to do this. The Mini Metal Maker will add new capability for the DIY inventor or artist by making fabrication in metal easy and direct. It will be a boon for anyone interested in creating their own gears, miniature mechanisms, or printing detailed jewelry or metal ornaments. The Mini Metal Maker is built around the concept of using the minimum number of parts, reducing the cost to produce and also eliminating many chances for error during assembly.
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Elementary school students in Finland to learn coding
Teaching programming is part of an effort to encourage the development of tech skills at an early age.
In the near future, elementary school students in Finland could be adding coding and programming to their nightly homework routine. Following in the footsteps of neighboring country Estonia, Alexander Stubb, the Finnish Minister of European Affairs and Foreign Trade, says that teaching basic programming skills to young kids in the classroom is on the country’s radar.
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Top 20 people skills you need to succeed at work
“People skills come down to how people interact with each other.”
While being qualified for a certain job, having the ability to lead a team, or having extensive and highly developed technical skills are crucial to your professional success, it is also imperative that you have great soft skills – more commonly known as “people skills.”
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