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Category Archives: TECHNOLOGY
BBC Nature: ‘Brinicle’ ice finger of death
With timelapse cameras, specialists recorded salt water being excluded from the sea ice and sinking. The temperature of this sinking brine, which was well below 0C, caused the water to freeze in an icy sheath around it. Where the so-called “brinicle” met the sea bed, a web of ice formed that froze everything it touched, including sea urchins and starfis.
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Mountain Hill Cabin by Fantastic Norway
Norwegian architects Fantastic Norway have designed a mountain lodge with a sloping roof that you can ski over. The triangular timber cabin will be located in the mountainous district of Ål, where it will provide a private retreat that can only be reached on skis during the winter. The house will contain two bedrooms beside the ground floor living rooms and a third bedroom on a floor above. The project is due to complete in summer 2012.
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NASA’s Curiosity en route to Mars
An Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Saturday morning, shuttling NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover on a one-way trip to the red planet. The nuclear-powered vehicle weighs one-ton and is the largest rover sent to Mars – it is packed with instruments that will sample the Martian soil to search for signs of life, past and present.
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Jorian Ponomareff Drift
What Ken Block does in his car, stunt rider Jorian Ponomareff demonstrates on a motorcycle. Check out his latest video, Drift, to see his incredible skills on the two wheels.
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Nintendo + West Coast Customs Life-Size Mario Karts @ LA Auto Show
To bring part of Mario’s make-believe world to life, Nintendo has partnered with West Coast Customs to create life-size models of Mario’s Standard Kart and Luigi’s Bumble V Kart. While the characters are forced to enjoy their rides in the hazardous Mushroom Kingdom, we checked them out in the (relative) safety of the Los Angeles Convention Center during today’s LA Auto Show. Naturally, the West Coast Customs tie-in means that the karts’ construction will be chronicled in an upcoming episode of the shop’s reality television show.
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GQ: The Craziest Jeans in the World
Brandon Svarc of Naked & Famous Denim recently spent some time at the GQ fashion closet to highlight a few of his label’s most memorable jeans. From glow-in-the-dark denim to the heaviest jeans ever created, the passionate Svarc personally delves into each piece’s distinctive elements exploring the unique construction quality and build.
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Is Technology Destroying Jobs?
Watch live streaming video from techonomy at livestream.com
TechCrunch Article –
For all the benefits of living in a connected world, there is one huge disconnect: the economy seems to be growing, but it is not creating jobs. This disconnect is not a temporary blip that will disappear with a full economic recovery. It is part of a longer-term structural change in the economy.
Yesterday at the Techonomy conference, I moderated a debate (which you can watch above) between two economists, Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT’s Sloan business school and Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, about whether or not technology is the engine of the economy or whether, in fact, it is destroying jobs.
Many of us take for granted that technology is the brightest spot in the economy, where most of the innovation and job creation occurs. But if you look more broadly at the impact of technology across every industry, it doesn’t look so great. Technology makes businesses more efficient, often by eliminating the need for repetitive tasks and the workers who do them. We are not replacing those jobs with enough new, higher-skilled ones to make up for the loss.
So what we are seeing in the U.S. over the past decade is productivity growth without the job growth that usually comes with it. Traditionally, productivity growth and job growth went hand in hand, but that is no longer the case. Annual productivity growth in the U.S. between 2000 and 2009 was 2.5%, a faster rate than at any time since the 1960s. Yet the last decade saw the total number of jobs decline by 1.1 percent.
The official unemployment rate in the U.S. is 9.1 percent, with 13.9 million million out of work. Median wages in the U.S. have gone almost nowhere since the 1970s, which was the impetus for Cowen’s book, The Great Stagnation. Meanwhile, income disparity between the richest 1 percent and everyone else keeps growing. The other 99 percent is not too happy about that, as the #OccupyWallStreet movement illustrates.
Is the U.S. worker in the same position today as the workhorse was 100 years ago when it was replaced by another technology: the engine (first steam, and then internal combustion). Peak employment for horses was in 1901, there were 3.25 million working horses in the England. Those jobs went away with the introduction of machinery, tractors, cars, and trucks.
Today, workers in factories are being replaced by robots and software, more broadly, is automating many jobs that people used to do. Companies benefit because they can operate leaner and make more profits, but what about the people? For the first time ever, the Luddite fear that machines will replace people seems to be coming true.
But wait a second, says Brynjollffson. His central argument, which he puts forth in Race Against the Machine, a book he co-authored with Andrew McAfee, is that it is not people versus machines. It is people with machines. Technology is just a tool that lets us be even more productive.
The problem is that not enough people know how to use the new tools of the Internet, mobile, and cloud computing. The workforce as a whole does not have the right mix of skills. Hence tech companies can’t hire enough engineers while the rest of the economy suffers from perpetual unemployment.
When you look at the actual economic data, things seem grim. But I am an optimist. I think technology can help lead the way by creating new jobs and redefining employment. The cost to create new companies has never been lower, and new forms of work that use the Internet as its organizing principle (instead of the firm) are beginning to become more commonplace.
But will it all be enough to restart job growth across the economy as a whole? I’m not sure anyone can answer that question just yet.
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Solid Grey
This is a $165 Solid Grey backpack. Made out of single piece of rigid polyprene (plastic) and would look even better painted like a ninja turtle shell.
“These unique bags feature a folding hardshell design, EPDM foam lining and straps for keeping your tablet or laptop safe and secure, two interior compartments for keeping small items handy, a built-in document clip — so your papers don’t end up smashed at the bottom of the bag — and a flexible fit, which means your back will like it just as much as your eyes do.”
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How Google, eBay, And PayPal Are Gearing Up For A Very Mobile Holiday Shopping Season
TechCrunch Article –
Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. And e-commerce spending is up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season. I sat down with executives from Google, eBay, PayPal and ShopKick to discuss the trends that are expected to emerge in the e-commerce space over the next few months. They center around mobile, tablets, and deals.
PayPal has more than doubled its mobile payments volume since the 2010 holiday shopping season, and we haven’t even hit the thick of this year’s rush. eBay is projecting $5 billion in mobile payments volume in 2010 and this number could increase in the next few months. And Google projects that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and one of the biggest shopping days of the year) will come from mobile devices. Tablet devices are now a part of the online shopping experience and retailers are taking note. Clearly, all signs point to the fact that this could be the breakout year for mobile shopping.
Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
All of the companies I spoke to unanimously agreed that this would be the year of mobile for the holiday shopping season. Steve Yankovich, head of eBay’s mobile business operations and development, says he expects this to be the biggest year for mobile sales for eBay yet. eBay has said that the company expects to see $5 billion in gross merchandise volume in 2011, and this will be partly buoyed by a strong mobile presence in November and December.
PayPal’s Senior Director for Mobile, Laura Chambers, echoes Yankovich’s forecasts and says that merchants are even preparing for the onslaught of traffic to their mobile sites. A number of big retailers, such as Armani Exchange, Guess and The Limited have recently put PayPal’s mobile express checkout as an option for payments on their mobile sites as a way to help the conversion process. “We are seeing strong investments by online retailers for mobile shopping this year,” she says.
Chambers says that last year, the peak day for mobile payments for PayPal was December 12, with $4.7 million in mobile payments volume. Now PayPal is seeing $10 million in mobile payments per day, and we haven’t even officially hit the holiday shopping period. Clearly, the mobile payments numbers could even triple from last year to this year.
While many consumers may shop on mobile for their holiday purchases, the usage of product search, barcode scanning, and other informative apps will also play a big part in this year’s mobile shopping. eBay’s RedLaser barcode scanning apps have seen scans go up 50 percent over the past year. If you aren’t familiar with how it works, RedLaser will scan the barcode of a physical product and show you where you can buy it on eBay’s properties and where it is available in local store locations around you (via Milo) and for how much. The app has been updated with PayPal functionality so that users can actually buy the product directly from the app.
Another shopping app developer who has high hopes for mobile this holiday season is ShopKick. Co-founder Cyriac Roeding says that this year will be the year of mobile for physical shopping. For background, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a store. Once a Shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called “kickbucks” to the user for walking into a retail store, trying on clothes, scanning a barcode and other actions. Kickbucks can then be redeemed across all partner stores for gift card rewards or for Facebook Credits. User can also receive special discounts on specific products at partners stores like Macy’s, Best Buy or Target.
Roeding explains that the cell phone is the only interactive platform you carry with you in a physical store, and retailers are looking to use the platform to help drive transactions. Clearly, a mobile rewards app that offers in-store discounts can help do this. “The internet has caused brick and mortar retailers more trouble than benefit over the past fifteen years. Now retailers are catching on to how the internet can help retailers—that’s where mobile comes in.”
Sameer Samat, VP of Product Management for Google Commerce, tells me that the search giant is seeing a growing number of users are making buying decisions using their mobile phone. “We are definitely seeing m-commerce conversions growing and becoming bigger over time,” he says. “But users are also using their mobile phone to search for products and find local availability.”
Samat says that Google has seen a 200 percent growth in mobile product search usage and Google Shopper app downloads over the past year. Shopper, which is available for iOS and Android, allows you to find product prices, reviews, specs, local inventory of products at nearby stores, and more.
As we mentioned above, Google is forecasting that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday. will come from mobile. “There’s no doubt that users are now making buying decisions using their mobile phone,” says Samat. “And we are seeing m-commerce conversions growing and becoming bigger over time.”
Tablets
As tablets have grown to be the go-to browsing device, the iPad, and other devices are also becoming a way to shop. And retailers are catching on to this trend. According to a National Retail Federationstudy, 20 percent of retailers have invested in tablet device apps this holiday season.
With this in mind, Google debuted Catalogs in August, an app for tablet devices that includes 200 catalogs from major brands including Anthropologie, Bare Escentuals, Bergdorf Goodman, Crate and Barrel, L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Pottery Barn, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sephora, Sundance, Tea Collection, Urban Outfitters and Williams-Sonoma.
The app is more than just a browsing experience. When consumers find an item they’d like to purchase, they can tap to find it in a store nearby or tap “Buy on Website” to visit the merchant online.
Google’s Samat says that “the tablet is the ultimate leanback experience and we see that playing a big role in holiday shopping as a replacement for the mail order catalogs you used to browse through.”
PayPal calls it ‘couch commerce’ and believes that tablet commerce will have a record year. PayPal recently reported that consumers who own both a tablet and a smartphone are significantly more likely (63%) to indicate increased overall spending on mobile purchases, versus owners of smartphones only (29%). Owners of both a tablet and a smartphone buy nearly twice as often as those who only have smartphones and more than 40% of dual owners made more than 20 mobile purchases over the past year, compared to only 12% of smartphone-only owners.
Forrester just released a report predicting a 15 percent increase in online shopping sales this year to nearly $60 billion, partly due to the increase in consumer-use of tablet computers for shopping.
Beyond Black Friday And Cyber Monday
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are historically the top-high-grossing online shopping days during the holiday season. But execs expect to see high volumes of online shopping on other days thanks to an increase in mobile shopping and deals.
Yankovitch tells me that eBay expects revenue numbers to be well over numbers that eBay saw last year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but expects to see more activity at times when people aren’t traditionally shopping.
The day of Thanksgiving is one of those days, says Chambers. Because people will have their phone everywhere (including at the table), consumers are expected to make purchases on the fly, especially on Thanksgiving evening. In fact, PayPal is predicting that after dinner on Thanksgiving Day will be the first mobile shopping spike this holiday season.
Another popular day has been the second Sunday in December, which is one of the last days where people feel confident that items will be shipped in times for the holiday. And Chambers says across the board, Sunday is the biggest day for mobile shopping generally.
Deals
There’s no doubt that deals, coupons and discounts will be a large part of the online holiday shopping experience, especially with the current state of the economy. According to the recent Forrester report, 58 percent of Americans say they are more price-conscious today than they were a year ago and nearly half believe they find better values online.
“I really expect consumers to be deal hunting this season,” explains Chambers. She says that PayPal, which has historically offered special deals for the holiday shopping season, will be bulking up on more consumer deals this holiday season.
Samat says that Google has always seen a spike for queries like deals, coupons, and sales during the holiday time and fully expects to see an increase this year. “The consumer desire for a better deal will help give certain product decision tools a big bump,” he explains. “People may take more time this year to find the best possible price.”
Deals could also include lucrative holiday shipping offers. In 2010, 45 of the top 50 online retailers offered some sort of promotional deal between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, most of which were a type of shipping promotion. And in 2011, Shop.org anticipates that a record 92.5% of online retailers will offer free shipping and not just as a Cyber Monday promotion.
Clearly, there’s plenty of optimism from retailers, and tech companies regarding online spending and shopping this holiday season. And this holiday season is somewhat unique considering the big bet that retailers are making on newer technologies, such as mobile, geo-location, tablets, local product search and more. The big question is how consumers will react to and engage with these technologies over the next several weeks. It could be a very mobile Christmas.
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Finder
According to the laws of the universe written at the time of the Big Bang, things are supposed to go AWOL for absolutely no reason while we desperately try to find them. Keys, tv remote and pens are the worst offenders that love to go invisible at just the time they would be needed.
The concept is basically a two part system with a main terminal and stickers with embedded RFID locators. The stickers can be configured as labels, and when you need to find something, all that needs to be done is to start off the main terminal, and it will automatically look for the object required.
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Nokia HumanForm Concept Phone
Nokia HumanForm was created in a joint effort to translate the most promising new nanotechnologies into meaningful user experience, prototype those for decision making; and transfer and set aspiration for future portfolio.
Project is a key to bring significant user experience benefits to the market thereby creating mindshare and value share through nanotechnology enabled experiences.
Nokia HumanForm is a visionary solution for a dynamically flexible device beyond touch screen and voice communication where technology is invisible and intuition takes over.
Natural interactions are enabled with a kinetic user interface.
I was one of the creators and Design Manager of Nokia HumanForm concept. The concept and a follow-up Nokia Kinetic Device prototype were launched in Nokia World 2011.
Nokia Research Center (http://research.nokia.com)
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Tianjin West Railway Station
Construction for the ‘tianjin west railway station’ by hamburg-based gmp architekten has recently completed in tianjin, china. positioned 130 kilometers southwest of beijing, this hub will become a new stop on the high speed line between the capital city and shanghai in addition to providing connections to the regional and underground networks. the structure will facilitate a commercial area to the north and an original city center to the south, bridging and unifying the encompassing urban context.
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BOB
BOB from Jacob Frey on Vimeo.
After running on over 100 festivals BOB finally reached Vimeo with his little running wheel. We would like to thank everyone who enjoyed the film, voted for us on festivals and gave us a laugh during the screenings. It’s an incredible feeling to make people happy.
This was the first time we created an 3d animated movie during our studies at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg and we would have never thought that it became that successful.
There are a lot of things we would have done differently nowadays but for a small team, six months and almost no knowledge of the software, we are proud with the result and finally want to share it with everyone.
Credits:
BOB: Tom Zahner
student producer: Anna Matacz
director: Jacob Frey & Harry Fast
script: Jacob Frey & Stefanie Ren
character design: Harry Fast
lighting & rendering: Michael Lederhuber
music: Karol Obara
sounddesign: Marco Manzo
For further info check out bob-film.com and leave us a comment in our guestbook.
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Call Of Duty MW3: Join the PS3_HK_UNIT
Call Of Duty MW3 came out yesterday and I didn’t wait another day to get my copy. After finishing Battlefield 3 it was good to be able to compare the two most anticipated games for 2011. Battlefield definitely has better graphics (not a huge difference) but I’m enjoying the game play of COD MW3 a bit more and the online game play is better. We currently have four troops in Hong Kong called HK_UNIT with a few more guys from the UK and Australia joining the team. If you would like to join our team. Log onto your PS3 account and add myself ‘SILVR-F3RN’ or one of the other soldiers in our unit.
See you in the warzone!
Source
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The Best Studio in the World, at the Best Island in the World: Black Rock Santorini
Black Rock Studio Santorini from Alexandros Maragos on Vimeo.
Black Rock is a combination luxury villa and world class recording studio located on the magnificent Greek island of Santorini. Build in a style that combines modern and traditional Cycladic architecture, Black Rock blends perfectly with the Aegean landscape. A heaven of inspiration and tranquility between sea and sun, offering a breathtaking panoramic view of the Aegean sea, and the volcanic islands.
Black Rock Studio won the Best New Studio In the World title by Audio Pro International Industry Excellence Awards 2009. A judging panel of over 100 industry experts and executives, including some of the most respected figures in the business, voted & gave the title to Black Rock.
Santorini voted as the Best Island in the World by Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards 2011 NYC. Santorini is a new World’s Best Island Overall winner, moving up from its No. 6 ranking on last year’s list of Top Islands Overall and displacing the Galápagos from the No 1 position.
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Peter Jackson reveals the Red Epic secrets behind The Hobbit
Filmmaking legend Peter Jackson’s given us another insight into the making of the Hobbit movies, and this time he’s talking about his envious collection of tech. Filming with no less than 48 Red Epic cameras at 48fps in full 5k resolution might sound fantastic, but it hasn’t all been a bed of cotton candy. Two 3D cameras need to be mounted at the same “interocular” (the inch-or-so distance between your eyes) which is impossible given the size of the Epic and its lenses. The team had to hire specialist firm 3ality to build a rig where one camera shoots the action and the other is pointed vertically at a mirror. Those who would love to shoot with an Epic should also beware that the cameras naturally desaturate the action to such an extent that the makeup, costume and set design teams have to over-color everything to look natural in post production. For more interesting facts, head down past the break to catch the video in full, and try not to imagine how many years bad luck you’d get if you broke one of those mirrors during a key scene.
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Need For Speed: The Run Official Trailer 1 Directed By Michael Bay
If you’re a serious gamer or spend enough time on the internet and Facebook. You would of noticed a lot more attention and investment into PS3, X-Box and PC game marketing. Battefield 3, Call of Duty MW3 have both had teasers, short films, trailers etc. drip fed out over 6 to 12 months leading up to a games releases. Not to mention the huge budgets to build a lot of hype and with clever ideas, create viral traction. The latest trailer is for Need For Speed ‘The Run’ which has brought on board the vision and hype of Michael Bay (Directed Transformers). The game is set for to drop November 15th.
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i’m watch
Designed by Italian company Blue Sky. “I’m Watch” is the first “smartwatch” based on the Android system, a custom version of Android 1.6. The watch runs on the Freescare i.MX233 processor, packs a 1.54″ capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 200 x 200 pixels and fitted with 4GB of built in storage, 64MB of RAM. Its 450mAh Li-Po battery will provide about three hours on speakerphone use or up two days in standby. It also packs in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, but has not WiFi. It is available to preorder for €300 and shipping will commence on the 30th January 2012.
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3: The Vet & The n00b
The official Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3 live action trailer featuring Sam Worthington, Jonah Hill and Dwight Howard. Whether you’re a veteran of Call of Duty or a n00b just starting out, there’s a soldier in all of us.
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