“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”
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.
BarkBox
Matt Meeker, president and CEO of Bark & Co., has created a dog-themed subscription service that caters to the canine obsessed population. His service, BarkBox, delivers a box filled with hand-picked dog products, every month to your doorstep.
Gladwell lays out his argument for being a big fish in a little pond.
Attending an elite college or working for a famous company could kill your dreams is what Malcolm Gladwell seems to think. The popular author lays out his argument for being a big fish in a little pond in his latest book, “David and Goliath,” a work that aims to overturn conventional notions about what makes for a disadvantage and who should be considered an underdog.
Continue reading… “Why you should be a big fish in a little pond: Malcolm Gladwell”
The “sharing economy” is revolutionizing the way Americans think about ownership and commerce.
In New York City, you can rent a room on Airbnb, catch a ride with Uber, sell your old threads on Modabound, and leave your nine-month-old with a shared nanny. The “sharing economy” is revolutionizing the way Americans think about ownership and commerce. It’s also poised to make a handful of venture capitalists in Palo Alto and Tribeca very, very rich. Airbnb is estimated to be worth $2.5 billion. Uber’s valuation is rumored to be $3.5 billion.
Continue reading… “Why it’s time for the sharing economy to become the sharing society”
Technology firms like Cisco and GE have created a special division to focus on the internet of things and Intel is following in their footsteps. The new IoT Solutions Group combines the Intelligent Systems Group and Wind River acquisition, and will be headed up by Doug Davis.
Continue reading… “Intel forms a special division to focus on the Internet of Things”
Off-grid solar
The off-grid clean energy market is booming. Sub-Saharan Africa is seeing 300 percent compound annual growth in off-grid lighting; Bangladesh is putting up 30,000 to 40,000 solar home systems every month; and d.light, a for-profit seller of solar lights, recently reached its1 millionth customer. (Video)
Continue reading… “Off-grid solar is the next big market in clean energy”
Imagine a world filled with hyperlinked smart objects that are constantly interacting over a network to improve user experience IRL. The ‘Internet of Things’ is perhaps the buzzwordiest buzzword in all of the tech sector right now, as it promises to produce a sleek, futuristic, friction-free—and lucrative—environment for all of us to live and consume products in. Which is probably why it’s relentlessly being heralded as the next big thing in consumer electronics: Recent projections from some of the industry’s biggest players say the IoT could be a $15 trillion market in just six years.
Continue reading… “Internet of Things will be the ‘biggest business in the history of electronics’”
The government CIO role is increasingly under pressure due to the development and implementation of digital government strategies, leading to the creation of new roles, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner predicts that by 2014, more than 10 percent of government organizations will have appointed a chief data officer and over 20 percent will have appointed a chief digital officer.
Companies today are more excited than ever about the Internet of Things thanks to widespread Internet adoption and over 10 billion connected devices around the world. Nearly every business, including those from traditionally low-tech industries, wants to get on the cloud, track a group of devices, and gather data. The question is why would a company is connect a previously “dumb” product to the cloud. Or stated differently, if a company invests in making my toaster talk to my lawnmower, is that really a good business decision and why?
Continue reading… “Is connecting your product to the Internet of Things a good business decision?”
Floridians working at a variety of mostly small manufacturers make everything from bottle caps and handmade knives to fishing reels and personal submarines. (Photos)
Vials of genetically engineered life-forms.
For Jack Newman, a scientist, creating a new life-form has become as simple as typing out a DNA sequence on his laptop. He clicks “send.” And a few yards away in the laboratory, robotic arms mix together some compounds to produce the desired cells.
Continue reading… “Companies rush to build ‘bio-factories’ for a wide range of products”