Life, the Universe and Everything

emergentfutures: Guardian ‘seriously discussing’ end to print...

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:35:04 +0200

Guardian ‘seriously discussing’ end to print edition

The publisher of the Guardian and Observer newspapers is close to axing the print editions of the newspapers, despite the hopes of its editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger to keep them running for several years.

Full Story: The Telegraph

That would be a big name quiting print editions indeed… Who’s next?

"In-stream, native advertising works best. What do LinkedIn, Twitter, Buzzfeed and Tumblr all have in..."

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 21:26:16 +0200

“In-stream, native advertising works best. What do LinkedIn, Twitter, Buzzfeed and Tumblr all have in common? These companies all embed sponsors in their content stream rather than laying ads on top it. This provides a less disruptive user experience and better engagement for advertisers. In-stream ads also scale well to smaller screens which, for many publishers, can be a marketing black hole. “If you can get into the feed where people are looking and not piss them off, that works,” said BuzzFeed’s CRO, Andy Wiedlin.”

- Turning social media into cash: 6 insights from the new tech titans — paidContent

(via futuristgerd)

Makes sense to me…

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between,..."

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 19:10:17 +0200

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.”

- C.J. Huff, the superintendent of Joplin Schools since July 2008, led his district of 1,100 employees and 7,700 students through the recovery effort that has followed the devastating May 22, 2011 tornado that ripped through the heart of Joplin, Missouri. (via poptech)
Great quote - I love this attitude for leadership.

"Your conscious is so small, it’s the broom closet in the mansion of the brain."

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 18:28:41 +0200

“Your conscious is so small, it’s the broom closet in the mansion of the brain.”

- David Eagleman’s research includes time perception, vision, synesthesia, and the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system.
(via poptech)
I’d love to see what David actually means with this… Something like the part of the brain where consciousness can be located is relatively small? Since I’m totally sure that the impact of it on life is quite a bit bigger.

emergentfutures: Why College May Be Totally Free Within 10...

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 09:31:42 +0200

emergentfutures:

Why College May Be Totally Free Within 10 Years

Higher education is in transition and with a coming proliferation in online courses could be totally free for many within a decade. The status quo won’t yield easily. But this is looking like a real answer to runaway student debt.

Full Story: Time

Very interesting vision. The impact of a shift like that for people working in that sector will be huge if this becomes a reality!

ckck: This is the Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant in Andalucía,...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:58:48 +0200

ckck:

This is the Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant in Andalucía, Spain, which is a type of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant. It works by reflecting sunlight off of heliostats (sun-tracking mirrors, basically) onto a tower where salts are heated. These heated salts are then used to create steam, which in turn runs a turbine that generates electricity. It is also capable of producing electricity day and night thanks to a salt storage system that can keep the turbine going for 16 hours. For more, watch this video.

Having never even heard of this type of solar power plant until just the other week, I feel like I just took a leap into a future I didn’t even know existed. My mind = blown. And not only is this a really ingenious way of harnessing solar power, the whole thing just looks incredible too. Yay for environmentally-friendly energy without it looking like a complete and utter eyesore.

Amazing facility indeed… I read about this before but these pictures are among the best I’ve seen!

futuristgerd: … despite the rise in second screening people...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:56:59 +0200

futuristgerd:

… despite the rise in second screening people only one in ten people browse the internet for information about the programme they are watching. Furthermore, 68% of respondents that do use the internet to connect with a programme would not want the websites for products, personalities or adverts that have just been shown on television, to automatically appear on their second screen. So instead of interacting with the programmes they are watching, people are talking about them with friends. This behaviour is more prominent among younger age groups and gradually declines with age. (via 24% of people use second screens while watching TV | Econsultancy)

Feels completely natural to me… Not a surprising statistic.

museumofusefulthings: 3-D Printing and controversy arising. See...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:54:55 +0200

museumofusefulthings:

3-D Printing and controversy arising. See more here.

Even the thought of this becoming reality is rather unsettling to me…

Camera+ For iPad

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:48:40 +0200

Camera+ For iPad:

parislemon:

Camera+ has been on the homescreen of my iPhone for years. Today, they released a version for the iPad. No, you probably don’t want to be that dumbass holding up your iPad at a concert (though you can be that guy with this release!), but this is brilliant for editing.

To that end, developer tap tap tap updated the iPhone app as well with iCloud syncing (and iPhone 5 support, of course), so you can shoot on the iPhone and then immediately edit on the iPad. Perfect. And the iPad version is on sale for $0.99 to celebrate the launch.

More from them on the launch.

That must be really cool, certainly with iCloud syncing!

smarterplanet: 3d printed iPhone 5 case (Taken with Instagram...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:46:40 +0200

smarterplanet:

3d printed iPhone 5 case (Taken with Instagram at Shapeways LIC)

Wow! That’s the first 3D printed product that actually looks ready to use that I’ve seen so far…

Customer experience will be become a new management discipline, says Forrester analyst

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:42:28 +0200

Customer experience will be become a new management discipline, says Forrester analyst:

smarterplanet:

ibmsocialbiz:

Companies in nearly every industry disappoint their customers, especially when customers cross channels. Many cusomer experience initiatives don’t realize their potential because neither employees nor partners have a complete picture of what the customer experience (CX) actually entails or the dynamics that go into creating it. They need a new approach: one that considers the influence of every employee and external partner on every customer interaction.

We anticipate that organizations will move to break away from their tunnel vision to embrace the concept of the “customer experience ecosystem,” which Forrester defines as “the complex set of relationships among a company’s employees, partners, and customers that determines the quality of all customer interactions.” We foresee that CX designers will have a broad mandate. They will plan and organize complex systems of people, products, interfaces, services, and spaces. Defining customer-journey maps is critical in linking the moments of truth affecting customers’ experiences to specific activities that the organization and/or its partners undertake.

Via forrester.com

Interesting concept - one I should consider for my company I suppose!

Social Data Startup Gnip Goes Deeper Into Twitter’s Past, Offers Full Archive Of Public Tweets

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 05:52:13 +0200

Social Data Startup Gnip Goes Deeper Into Twitter’s Past, Offers Full Archive Of Public Tweets:

courtenaybird:

Gnip is announcing a new product today that provides access to the full database of public tweets from the beginning of time — or rather, the beginning of Twitter.

…The new product, called Historical PowerTrack for Twitter, has been in testing with customers including Esri, Brandwatch, PayPal, Brandwatch, Waggener Edstrom, Network Insights, Union Metrics. Moody says this data opens up a number of new use cases. For one thing, financial firms are developing trading algorithms that incorporate Twitter data, and they can now test those algorithms on data from the past — in other words, if they think they can use social network activity to predict of stock market activity, they now have a giant database for seeing whether that’s true. Moody says there are also academic researchers looking at the impact of Twitter activity on the Arab Spring.

“We fundamentally believe that social data is going to be in every application. We’re only at 1 percent of the journey.”

(via TechCrunch)

Funny… Just days ago I reblogged a post stating that recording history about impact of social media on historical events runs into problems, because the “older” a tweet is, the bigger the chance that a link that is part of that tweet doesn’t work anymore… I wonder how that relates to this post.

poptech: The Science of Procrastination - And How To Manage It...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:23:32 +0200

poptech:

The Science of Procrastination - And How To Manage It (by AsapSCIENCE)

(via Brainpickings)

Nice clip! Well made, sounds feasible too…

jasonramsey: Taken with Instagram Some pretty cool features...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:12:52 +0200

jasonramsey:

Taken with Instagram

Some pretty cool features for sure! I love the “do not disturb”… Very well implemented.

poptech: ROBOTBOAT MARK VI. Each robotboat is fully...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:12:29 +0200

poptech:

ROBOTBOAT MARK VI.

Each robotboat is fully autonomous, needs no fuel, and will bring to bear myriad sensors at remote points on the surface of oceans, lakes, and rivers.

Here’s why the Robotboat is the best way yet to generate information about the world’s oceans:

More data = better ocean management

Fully automatic = cheap to acquire data

Fast = station-keep in high seas; get to points of interest quickly

Durable = collect longitudinal data; self-righting

Each boat = millions upon millions of datapoints

Looks like some nice projects…

heyitsnoah: Digital history is going missing … (via History, As...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:04:51 +0200

heyitsnoah:

Digital history is going missing …
(via History, As Recorded on Twitter, Is Vanishing From The Web, Say Computer Scientists - Technology Review)

This is really interesting… Never thought of this, but from personal experience I know that links from older tweets or facebook posts not always work anymore. The way we’re using social media these days recording history gets another dimension…

chels: First light for the Dark Energy Camera brings us this...

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 22:30:58 +0200

chels:

First light for the Dark Energy Camera brings us this gorgeous image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365, which sits 60 million light years away from Earth. This shot was taken from atop Paranal Mountain in the Atacama desert of Chile with the 570-megapixel camera.

Over a year ago, I did a story on the making of this incredible camera, which was assembled at Fermilab and put together to shed light on the mystery of dark energy. The thing is huge; standing under it made me feel miniature. The lens of the camera is the size of a phone booth and the apparatus that holds it to the telescope looks like one of those crazy circular carnival rides that you strap your arms and legs into so you can swing around chaotically.

We don’t really know what dark energy is, but we know it’s accelerating the expansion of the universe and that it makes up about 75% of the content of the cosmos. It’s one of my favorite things to think about, and I can’t wait to see what revelations about this mysterious force come from the work at the Dark Energy Survey. Congrats to the whole team who made this happen!

That’s a pretty picture for sure… Of something 60 million lightyears away!?

Apple's Stock Price Breaks Through $700, Sets New All-Time Records for Price and Market Cap

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 22:29:45 +0200

Apple's Stock Price Breaks Through $700, Sets New All-Time Records for Price and Market Cap:

parislemon:

The stock will open tomorrow well above $700 (it’s $702 right now in after-hours). The market cap is at $655 billion — it’s now nearly $400 billion ahead of Microsoft.

It was only May 26, 2010 that Microsoft was still ahead in that regard. Since then, Microsoft has gained around $35 billion in value. Apple has gained $430 billion.

Incredible…

artjonak: There are no words! A Father and Mother kissing their...

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 22:09:31 +0200

artjonak:

There are no words! A Father and Mother kissing their dying little girl Goodbye. If you are wondering why all the medic people are bowing: in less than an hour, two small children in the next room are able to live thanks to the little girl’s kidney and liver.

Source: http://www.cy8cy.com/she-may-have-died-but-she-lives-on/

Wow. Just wow. Nothing but respect for these parents.

iPhone 5 Pre-Orders Top Two Million in First 24 Hours

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 22:04:31 +0200

iPhone 5 Pre-Orders Top Two Million in First 24 Hours:

parislemon:

Apple:

Apple today announced pre-orders of its iPhone® 5 topped two million in just 24 hours, more than double the previous record of one million held by iPhone 4S. Demand for iPhone 5 exceeds the initial supply and while the majority of pre-orders will be delivered to customers on September 21, many are scheduled to be delivered in October.

Insert “disappointment” joke here.

That surprises me… Double the old record!? Is that because of the features of the 5, have people been postponing buying a new phone till this release, or is something else going on here?