Google is planning to launch a new company with the absurdly ambitious objective of extending our lives. “Calico” is the name of the company and will be run by Arthur Levinson, chairman and ex-CEO of biotech company Genentech.
Continue reading… “Google hopes to cure death with its new health startup Calico”
What happened to biofuels?
Everybody was talking about biofuels a few years ago. Politicians in the U.S. saw corn ethenol as a path to “energy independence,” while greener folks preferred biodiesel made from waste cooking oil. Fans of biofuels said that these were supposed to be just a bridge to second-generation biofuels like cellulosic ethanol and algae biodiesel; these wouldn’t be made from food crops or limited feedstocks, and they would be much greener overall.
Continue reading… “What is the future for biofuels?”
How a self-driving car sees the world.
At about 8am every morning, Anthony Levandowski gets into the driver’s seat of his white Lexus for his daily commute to work. Most of us perform this routine five times a week, 50 weeks out of the year. But, Levandowski’s commute is different. He has a chauffeur and it’s a robot.
Continue reading… “Google’s quest to popularize self-driving cars”
Futurist Thomas Frey: Our teenage years have always been a time of great awkwardness, super hormones, and bad decision-making. But lately these years have moved even further down the path of supreme weirdness.
Margaret Focarino, Commissioner for Patents, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was in a state of crisis in 2009. There was a huge backlog of pending patent applications and it was growing. The process for reviewing patents had not changed in decades and was out-of-date. Employee job satisfaction was low and the longstanding distrust between management and the patent examiners union was ever-present.
Continue reading… “Patent system gets streamlined makeover”
More than 90 percent of BMW’s cars will have connectivity built into them.
BMW has around 3 million vehicles that are directly connected to their data centers, according to BMW’s VP of IT Infrastructure Mario Mueller at GigaOM’s Structure Europe conference in London. That number will grow to 10 million connected vehicles by 2018, meaning BMW will increasingly be operating as an IT and cloud-focused company,
Continue reading… “BMW to have 10 million connected cars within 5 years”
A company called Pilus Energy has a new technology for harvesting renewable energy from wastewater. The company has tweaked bacteria to come up with proprietary energy-harvesting organisms it calls BactoBots™, leading to a new generation of high efficiency microbial fuel cells.
Continue reading… “Self-destructing microbial robots turn wastewater into high value products”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKJbGhlqmaw[/youtube]
Virgin Mobile decided to harness our contempt for advertisements into nothing other than another advertisement: 25, to be exact. There is something different about this ad campaign, though. If you blink just once, you just might miss it. Using the power of your webcam and your eyes, the phone company created something called “blinkwashing,” which kinda sounds like some sort of psychological torture. As the final installment in Virgin’s “Retrain Your Brain” campaign, the ad’s premise is to persuade consumers to ditch their current “controlling” pricey mobile plans for Virgin’s no-contract ones.
Continue reading… “Virgin Mobile’s ‘blinkwashing’ ad changes scenes when the viewer blinks”
The U.S. has massive renewable energy potential.
Transmission lines hold much of the same challenge and promise of the interstate highway system a century ago. The transmission network – the high voltage, long distance power lines that carry electricity from power facilities and into communities – is currently a patchwork system, lacking centralized organization or planning. Assuming that America cannot achieve 100% clean energy with distributed resources, the transport of renewable electric energy across state lines is a major hurdle to realizing a future without fossil fuels.
Continue reading… “The future of the energy infrastructure in the U.S.”
The best teams might be temporary, but their company’s success is enduring.
We often think of high-performance teans as long-term allies—a band of brothers in the organizational world. It takes a while for teams to move through the traditional phases of storming and norming before they start to really perform. It’s easy to assume that the longer a team is together, the better they’ll be at performing. But research into the inner workings of teams, particularly creative teams, suggests a different conclusion, one supported by experience from many of the most innovative companies: The best teams might temporary, with members forming around a given project and then going their separate ways to work on new projects.
Continue reading… “The strongest teams might be temporary”
Why are vinyl record sales up?
In the era when it seems like all of our music has gone digital, an interesting trend has been reported by Amazon: sales of vinyl records are up 745% since 2008.
Continue reading… “Amazon reports vinyl record sales are up 745% since 2008”
If we lived in a PR utopia, it would look something like this: Businesses would send journalists timely, interesting stories. Journalists would receive an ongoing supply of quality information. Readers, in turn, would grow enthusiastic about brands, turning media coverage into a conduit for sales and investor interest.
Continue reading… “When media and big data collide”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.