If you are waiting in wings and have a plan to join the cozy club in heaven, now is apparently a good time. Next week signifies the start of the infamous Tetrad that will see four blood-red lunar eclipses followed by six full moons.
It is a cycle that has just started and is slated to end in September 2015. This cosmological event is so rare that NASA confirms it has happened only three times in the last 500 years.
2014 was supposed to be “the year of wearable tech,” but four months in, it seems clear that it’s going to take some time for wearables to go mainstream. The majority of attention is being paid to smartbands and smartwatches, and new entries to the market keep coming. Google has announced their expansion outside of Glass with smartwatch Android Wear, Nissan has unveiled a watch concept that would pair wearable tech with the car industry, Disney has made headlines with their new smartbands for guests, even Will.i.am is developing a smartwatch. The competition to be the star of tech that lives on our wrists is intense, but so far it is unclear whether consumers—even tech-hungry Millennials— are going to embrace these innovations. Research suggests that one-third of those who have purchased wearable tech abandoned their devices after just six months of use, causing some to wonder if the “next big thing” in tech is a harder sell than brands previously suspected. One of the big issues of wristband and Glass technology is that currently it is very noticeable and not necessarily stylish. We wrote that wearable tech would have to be either beautiful or undetectable to be embraced by a broader audience than the techie crowd, and the makers of these devices are heeding the warning, with Google partnering with glasses-maker Luxxotica for more fashionable Glass frames, and Intel working with Opening Ceremony and Barneys New York to create a wristband that actually looks cool.
So what will the future of wearable tech actually look like?
I go into the garage for a hammer.
On my way back into the house, I stop for a cold drink and remember that the kitchen trash needs to be taken out for tomorrow’s collection.
Dropping the can at the curb, I turn and notice that the landscaper forgot to turn on the drip irrigation system, so I trot over and flip the switch. I walk back into the house and realize that I forgot to put the cold bottle of water back into the fridge. I open the door and find my hammer, sitting on the top shelf, chilling next to a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
I’m glad I found the hammer. The only question is, “What did I need it for in the first place?”
Edward Snowden — the ex-government contractor who exposed the NSA’s efforts to spy on the web’s most popular services — offers a simple answer to this sweeping online surveillance campaign. The way to combat NSA eavesdropping, he says, is to encrypt data as it moves across the wire.
That’s what he told the tech heads at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas last week, appearing by way of a video feed streamed across the net from Russia, where he’s been granted temporary asylum from the U.S. government. Properly implemented, he explained, today’s encryption techniques work: The NSA has no way of cracking them. The onus is on the tech world to actually use them. “You guys who are in the room now are all the firefighters,” he said. “And we need you to help fix this.”
The good news is that the giants of the net — including Google and Microsoft — are already working to encrypt data, not only as it moves across the public internet but as it travels through private lines that run between the massive data centers that underpin their many web services. According to leaked government documents, the NSA has ways of tapping these lines, opening a backdoor to the internet that even those at the heart of the tech world hadn’t thought about. If the Googles and the Microsofts encrypt the data moving between their computing facilities, they can go a long way towards answering Snowden’s call to arms.
Facebook may soon understand not only what we do on the social network, but what we mean. In short, what we tell Facebook is no longer enough. The social network now wants to read between the lines. It’s a critical difference that could have Facebook’s members — and advertisers — using the site in entirely new ways.
Joining a business accelerator program isn’t the right choice for every entrepreneur, and it doesn’t guarantee success. For a selected few, however, it provides a much-needed jumpstart towards a more promising future. My third company, Retention Science, is a graduate of MuckerLab, a mentorship-focused accelerator based in Santa Monica, California. Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of accelerator programs.
Pros
1. Curriculum and Clear Structure
Business accelerator programs typically consist of three to six months of crash courses, speaker series, and professional workshops designed to help you learn a lot in a very short period of time. Certain accelerators conclude their programs with a Demo Day, where entrepreneurs publicly debut their products to a group of peers, tech reporters, and investors. By establishing a clear schedule of classes and milestones, the program helps entrepreneurs stay focused and reinforces the need to be agile and move fast.
Imagine: Briefcases full of cash. Scrooge McDuck diving into his swimming pool vault of gold coins. Winning $100 at a blackjack table. Feeling a little dishonest yet?
Just thinking about getting our grubby little hands on some cold hard cash can make us more likely to cheat, according to a new study in Psychological Science. Oddly enough, thinking about time seems to make people more honest.
She’s lived and breathed GM most of her life. She’s worked there since age 18. “I was on the line…all day long,” the now first female CEO of a major american automobile company recently told “Fast Company” Editor-at-large Jon Gertner over tea. Here’s a look into how Barra will lead GM.
If I were more of a betting man, I’d wager that Mary Barra is a very clever poker player.
How would I know?
A few weeks ago, Barra–the newly appointed General Motors CEO–came through New York City on business and met me for coffee one afternoon in Greenwich Village. (Actually, Barra ordered tea.) If she had any inkling at the time that a big promotion was coming down the road, and that she’d be named the first female chief executive of a major American automobile company, there was no telling.
Instead, the conversation veered from talk about GM’s big cars (the new Cadillac) to its spunky smaller models (such as the Chevrolet Sonic). We took detours into the company’s view on the future of the Chevy Volt (still very positive) and spent a few minutes circling around whether GM perceives a market in tiny, low-impact, city transportation vehicles (entirely plausible).
On those Fridays after Thanksgiving, the late Joseph P. Barrett, a longtime reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin, recalled, even members of the police band were called upon to direct traffic. The cops nicknamed the day of gridlock Black Friday, and soon others started to do the same.
Dispatches From The Front 