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.
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?”
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.
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.
Apple
When an Apple programmer’s project got canceled, he wasn’t worried. Ron Avitzur just kept sneaking into the office until the program was finished.
Continue reading… “How an unemployed programmer kept sneaking into Apple to complete the job”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0I7h6Uucnc[/youtube]
The first real-time brain-scanning speller will allow people in an apparent vegetative state (unable to speak or move) to communicate, according to Maastricht University scientists. (video)
Continue reading… “Mind-reading speller allows vegetative-state patients to communicate”
Chistensen illustrates the difference between mobile devices today with this famous graph.
Microsoft had taken the same approach to mobile devices that they had with PCs until last week’s announcement of the new Surface tablet: build the software themselves and let partners build the hardware. Google took a similar strategy with Android but then reversed course when they acquired Motorola. Apple’s integrated strategy was once widely ridiculed as a repeat of their losing 1990′s desktop computer strategy, but is now being copied throughout the industry.
Continue reading… “Integrated approach to mobile devices is winning”
Facebook has acquired the facial-recognition software company Face.com
A problem with uploading your life into the cloud: you’re sending it Internetward with an understanding of today’s technologies — and tomorrow always comes.
Continue reading… “What happens to all the data we upload with the technologies of tomorrow”
“Social-Mobile-Local” is an overused buzz phrase and most of the attention has been placed on the “social” and “mobile” parts of the phrase. In social, the spectacular rise of Facebook and Twitter is clearly a disruptive and critical trend. In mobile, the adoption of the smartphone (led by Apple’s iPhone and now catapulted forward by Android) is also a fundamentally important platform transition. Much less attention has been paid to the third concept, “local,” which is ironic since it may be a much larger real business opportunity than either social media or Smartphone application revenue. Over the next five years, this massive opportunity will come into focus as local businesses embrace the Internet and adopt new interactive technologies that increasingly automate the connections between their customers and themselves.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gb5poTdUMg[/youtube]
The Tek Robotic Mobilization Device is a device that allows people to stand up is being hailed as a potential breakthrough for the disabled. The machine allows paraplegics – those without the use of their legs – to perform everyday tasks far more easily from shopping in the supermarket to ironing.
Continue reading… “Tek Robotic Mobilization Device: Next generation wheelchair lets users stand up”
Apple Store in Boston
Since the iPhone launched five years ago, Apple has created a total of 35,852 retail jobs.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJUblvGfW6w&hd=1[/youtube]
“The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public,” George Jessel famously quipped. Dr. Susan Weinschenk unpacks the secrets of eliciting response from people — the core purpose of design, it’s been argued — through a combination of behavioral science, psychology, and practical examples to alleviate the misery and mystery of public speaking in 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People.
Continue reading… “5 secrets every presenter should know about people”