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Ericsson's vision of a "Networked Society" is beautiful, terrifying

Posted: Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:18:22 +0000

There's a fine line between technology that enables a better world and technology that makes us head in the wrong direction. Movies like The Matrix, Terminator, and iRobot have given us a fiction view of what could happen if technology connected us all and eventually had the ability to take over. Such a vision has been a distant whimsical threat until very recently. Today, it all seems possible. We're On the Brink of amazing things in society, as Ericsson puts it. The telecom gear maker has put a lot of effort into communicating their dream of the near future with their Networked Society website. The documentary they had created below tells the tale of a potentially beautiful string of technological advances that will completely change the way humans do, well, everything. Meanwhile, their Facebook page for the project is part advertisement, part educational. Even their To-Do List of Tomorrow advertisement asks questions that will make you think. Why doesn't our shopping cart know what items are in it? Their Networked Society City Index pictured above is disappointingly clunky (it's made with Adobe Flash, for crying out loud!) but the statistics are strong and it seems to be a work in progress.
"The Networked Society City Index interactive tool lets you explore and compare the effects ICT has on society, people, and business - in major cities all over the world. Learn about a city, drag-and-drop two cities and compare, or discover initiatives happening in the cities right now."
Here is the documentary and 2 other advertorial-style videos that tell us the direction that Ericsson is heading with this as well as gives us insights into where society itself may be heading in the near future. According to Stacey Higginbotham of Gigaom, "The 20-minute documentary looks at the past, present and future of connectivity and technology, and the impacts on people, business and society." 20-minutes may be considered long for an online video, but it's well worth your time. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7cuatm_bqw[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzmvjf88Sfw[/youtube] [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/30848566[/vimeo]
Fun and frightful UFO video for the skeptic in all of us

Posted: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:25:35 +0000

Most people fall in the "maybe" category. There are others who are absolutely certain there are no extra-terrestrial UFOs, that they're just government experiments, fabrications of modern video editing, or misunderstood phenomenon. Others are positive that there are visitors from other planets (or other dimensions) flying around abducting people and mutilating cows. Regardless of which of the three camps you're in, one thing is certain - the sightings are on the rise. Many say that the frequency of sightings aren't going up but that we now carry personal camcorders in the form of smartphones with us wherever we go. Now that the technology is in our hands, we're shooting more videos and snapping more photos of crazy things in the skies. Others say that we're reaching a critical stage in our existence that is prompting aliens, dimensional travelers, or nephilim to start the process of making contact and easing us into acceptance before they unveil themselves to the world. Here's a video that may be fun to watch. It may add fuel to the fire that it's all fake. It may spark questions of the validity of the claims in the various clips. Either way, enjoy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi3Q4nZKUIo[/youtube]
Internet killed the outlet store

Posted: Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:26:46 +0000

The concept of "Factory Outlets" was a brilliant one. For better or for worse, they are dying a rapid death thanks to the internet and the rise of "Flash Sales" in particular. Originally, factory outlets were designed to sell 2nd-grade products directly to the public. The first known outlet store was Dexter Shoes. Founder Harold Alfond knew that not every shoe made at his factory was suitable to sell to distributors so he attached a store directly to his factory and opened it to the public in the 1960s. Since then, outlet malls and other retail settings offer companies a venue to sell last year's lines, overstocked items, and (to a lesser extent) production mishap merchandise. It became big business in the 80s and 90s. Now, it may be dying. The rise of online retailers makes it challenging to operate brick and mortar businesses. Outlet stores and their lower margins are feeling the pressure from the internet. For the last couple of years, the growing trend towards using flash sales and daily deals to get rid of overstocked merchandise is cheaper and more effective than outlet stores. Many companies that have traditionally done will with outlet stores such as Nordstrom and Gap are starting to shift much of their merchandise into the growing online flash sale segment. The infographic below by Monetate examines the growth of this industry and offers tips on how consumers can take better advantage of them. Click to enlarge. (Via: Tagged.com. H/T: Seattle Dodge)
My faith in the US education system has been restored

Posted: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:34:29 +0000

Blogging can be rough (from a #firstworldproblems perspective, at least). You're constantly being attacked for your opinions, bashed for your mistakes, and ridiculed for your presence as one of the biggest failures on the internet. I deal with it every day. Sometimes, it's hard to muster the gumption to put words on the screen. As a parent, the education system in America has also been a source of angst. The list of problems with schools, parents, and the students themselves often makes me want to be a homeschooler. It makes it more difficult knowing that the internet offers so much potential as a true educational aid but that it's often squandered because of all the "cool and fun stuff" available to us and our children. Then, I get an email like the one above and my faith in both blogging and the United States education system gets restored. No need for commentary here. I'll let the letter speak for itself. I now have my official "favorite reader" on Techi. Thank you, and I hope your project is spectacular. Just remember, it's Joe Hallock who did the original study.
"Blue Busters" video proves nothing, not even Apple, was immune to the 80s

Posted: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:09:45 +0000

Those of us who grew up in the 80s are well aware that the culture, attitude, and utter cheesiness of the era was impossible to avoid. "Cool" had a much different meaning than it did in the 60s, 70s, 90s, and 00s, and the video you're about to watch was likely considered "totally radical, dude" by the Apple employees who were able to watch it in 1984. "Blue Busters" was never aired publicly but was shows as a multimedia extravaganza at Apple’s 1984 International Sales Meeting that included on-stage dancers and a rendition performed by the original Ghostbusters theme singer Ray Parker Jr. It has been on the internet for a while but interest was renewed to find it when an AP story ran detailing that the video existed as part of Stanford's Apple archive. The story claims that Steve Jobs is in the video somewhere, but all we were able to find in the stop-motion animation was a 34-year-old Steve Wozniak. Sit back and absorb the cheesiest thing you'll ever see released by Apple: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KOnfN-ZDrs[/youtube] (Via: TheNextWeb - H/T: Geek)
Flying robots that build things open doors to automated architecture

Posted: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 23:55:20 +0000

In the movies, it always start innocently. They are designed to help humans, to do the mundane or difficult tasks that are better suited for non-sentient robots rather than men and women. In the end, they always turn on us. Hopefully, the folks at the Swiss Federated Institute of Technology in Zurich are keeping that in mind as they develop the system for the Flying Machine Enabled Construction project. The video below displays where they are as of now in this first public demonstration:
"The installation, called "Flight Assembled Architecture", was conceived and built by teams led by my colleagues Fabio Gramazio & Matthias Kohler as well as Raffaello D'Andrea at the ETH Zurich. It illustrates a radically new way of thinking about materializing architecture: Use a multitude of mobile flying agents working in parallel and acting together as a scalable production means. As you can see in the video, the quadrocopters are programmed to interact, lift, transport and assemble small modules in order to erect a building."
Mankind, rejoice, but keep don't turn your backs on them. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnkMyfQ5YfY[/youtube]
What trended in 2011 (and what to expect from 2012)

Posted: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:37:44 +0000

Tech exploded this year. There's little to argue that gadgets and gizmos, social media and apps all had huge years as everyday life moved a step closer to becoming completely tech-driven for many in western society. What can we expect to see growing as the next big thing in 2012? That's the question that our friends at GPlus took on in the infographic below. From group buying to crowdfunding, the trends of 2011 showed winners and losers in the tech industry for what they really were. 2012 should show no less of a boom. If anything, the explosions will be even louder. Click to enlarge.
Social Media 2011: The bullseyes and blunders that dominated chatter

Posted: Sun, 25 Dec 2011 03:09:38 +0000

In the past, the best way to review the year was to look back through newspaper headlines and pick out the stories that were thought to be the biggest. It wasn't an exact science and required intuition and subjective reasoning to decide what was most important to the people that year. Today, social media gives us a relatively-accurate indicator about what the general population finds interesting enough to discuss. 2011 was loaded with major events from falling regimes to natural catastrophes. Celebrities made foolish mistakes. Politicians tanked their careers. Tech companies rose. Tech companies crumbled. Through it all, social media was there to spread the word about every major event in minutes, even seconds sometimes. Our friends at Flowtown chronicled the year through the eyes of social media and put together the timeline below that highlights some of the major news that spread through Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ (including the launch of Google+ itself). Click to enlarge.
House of the Rising Sun, ancient computers version

Posted: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:38:53 +0000

The term "ancient" is relative and unfortunately I can remember using many of the machines in this video, but compared to what we have today, the various equipment used here are "older than the internet," so to speak. It makes the end result, an equipment-generated variation of "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals, even more epic. According to creator bd594, "My last couple of videos I built a couple of robot bands (yeah! machines that play actual instruments). These videos didn't fair as well so I decided to go back to the basics and create a video staring my trusty old HP Scanner and a scrappy old hard drive which was converted into a robotic drum machine. For this video I recorded the audio separately soI could mix it down because the HP scanner isn't very loud. No effects such as delay and reverb have been used. I was very pleased how the hard-drive drums turned out and they sound great. i will definitely use it in my next video." Watch and be inspired: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w68qZ8JvBds[/youtube]
Despite a cure in hand, a vaccine is the only way to end malaria (and may be right around the corner)

Posted: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:56:59 +0000

Technology and science often move faster than the money and logistics required to implement it. Such is the case with malaria, a parasitic disease that causes high fevers, shaking chills, flu-like symptoms, anemia, and eventual death. There has been a treatment available since 1989 but the disease spreads faster than the drug can be distributed. Is there a vaccine around the corner that can stop this killer once and for all? According to research performed by the World Health Organization and Assay Depot, there just might be. It's still in the final stages of clinical trials, but Mosquirix is set to be licensed to hit the market in 2015. The drug works by stimulating the immune response once a parasite enter the bloodstream. By doing so, it can prevent the parasite from maturing and multiplying in the liver. This will change the lives of millions of people worldwide, particularly in Africa where the insect that westerner consider and annoyance can be deadly. Three-fourths of a million people die from the disease every year. This infographic explains more. Click to enlarge.