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.
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.
Continue reading… “Cities are our most important innovation platform”
“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.”
Continue reading… “Top 20 people skills you need to succeed at work”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Sx34swEG0[/youtube]
What if you could carry a single credit card device in your wallet that would digitally store up to eight credit, debit, membership, and gift cards and lets you switch between them with just a push of a button? Companies like Apple and Google have tried to give us digital wallets, but nothing has really caught on. People still feel tied to their physical wallets.
Continue reading… “Coin: High-tech card could replace everything in your wallet”
“The Illusion of Choice,” via Reddit, is a chart of corporations that create a chain of smaller brands that can all be traced from the 10 mega companies featured here. We assume that you have heard of the biggest brand names and their products that you bring home all the time, however, it’s incredible to know what these giants own and control. Their influence is staggering as shown in this data visualization.
Continue reading… “The 10 mega corporations that control almost everything you buy”
Don’t be afraid to be weird (you probably are) — at least you’ll be remembered.
Hedwig von Restorff, a German psychologist, made an important, though not very counterintuitive, discovery in the 1930’s: things that somehow stand out are remembered more easily than typical things. Suppose we read the following list to a group and then asked them to recall it:
apple, truck, necklace, tomato, glass, dog, rock, umbrella, butter, spoon, Lady Gaga, pillow, pencil, chocolate, desk, banana, bug, soup, milk, tie
Continue reading… “The value of being the “weird” job candidate”
Workers in cubicles with high partitions were the most miserable.
Is your work station an invading overlord? Do your belongings march across the long desk you share with other workers, spilling out of your space and encroaching on the neutral zones abutting your colleagues’ work areas? Don’t worry, thanks to recent research by Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear at the University of Sydney, that mess probably doesn’t bother your coworkers all that much. In fact, of all the myriad annoyances of office life, workspace cleanliness bothered scarcely 10% of workers — although workers in offices where there are no partitions, coworkers were bothered slightly more.
Four of the seven fastest-growing technology jobs did not even exist on TheLadders five years ago.
According to new research, technology jobs have replaced those in middle management as the positions employers are trying to fill most.
Continue reading… “Top 10 fastest growing job titles are all in technology”
“The pay-TV industry has reported its worst 12-month stretch ever.”
2013 has been a tough year for cable-TV operators. This will probably be the worst year for the pay-TV industry in terms of customer retention, according to a report Tuesday by independent research firm MoffettNathanson.
Beijing has long mistrusted foreign technology companies and the Snowden revelations have exacerbated those concerns.
The fallout from the U.S. spying scandal is starting to take its toll as U.S. technology companies including Cisco Systems Inc and IBM Corp are facing unprecedented difficulties selling their goods and services in China.
Continue reading… “Fallout from NSA leaks hurting U.S. tech sales in China”
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” ~ John F. Kennedy
Preferences and expectations are changing and growing among consumers just as quickly as advancements in technology, encouraging (if not demanding) that brands embrace a strategy of non-stop adaptation to the next generation and the next big thing.
Continue reading… “20 expert predictions for the future of customer service”
3D printed underwear.
For those who hate to do laundry the days of washing your underwear may soon be over. Thanks to the power and versatility of 3D textile printing, the Tamicare company has created a biodegradable and completely customizable fabric that comes in any desired shape, with no fabric waste. (Video)
Continue reading… “3D printed biodegradable underwear can be made in 3 seconds”