Category: Tools and Information

How Submarine Foams Withstand the Crushing Pressures of the Deep Sea | LiveScience

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Radio signals that may have been emanating from the flight recorder of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 marked the beginning of a new phase of the search for the aircraft and its passengers. Once signals emerged, the investigation expanded to include exploration of the ocean floor to detect the aircraft and recover the block box.

The location of the black box is estimated to be about 15,000 feet (4.6 kilometers) below the ocean surface. The pressure at such depths in the ocean is about 455 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. The remains of Titanic are located at a depth of 12,500 feet (3.8 kilometers) depth, which has pressure of about 380 atm. The additional 2,500 feet increases the pressure by 75 atm. In addition, the temperature is only 34 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 4 degrees Celsius) at such depths.

via How Submarine Foams Withstand the Crushing Pressures of the Deep Sea | LiveScience.

The Coffee Connecting Machine | Coolbusinessideas.com

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The Singapore Economic Development Board has created one of the most interesting brewing units the world has ever seen: the Coffee Connector. Here’s a machine which removes all awkwardness of initial contact, and as a bonus, gives you and your new acquaintance a cup of hot coffee.

The device senses when two people are standing in front of it, waiting for coffee. Users step up on its platform and enter details such as their names and what topics interest them, e.g., technology, health care and sustainability. As the machine begins to brew, exposed mechanics show the spectacle of coffee-making, creating a mesmerizing conversation starter.

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8 Smart Ideas for Overhauling Google’s Homepage | WIRED

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It’s hard enough to get a group of friends to pull off a potluck, yet when members of the after-hours creative group The Letter Society congregate, they manage to take on ambitious tasks like redesigning Google’s homepage.

Each month, this group of designers, who met in college and have held down gigs at motion graphics powerhouse Imaginary Forces, ad agency Leo Burnett, Procter & Gamble, and digital agency Razorfish, choose a subject ripe for a redesign and offer up their creative visions. This month, the team turned their talents towards Google’s search box. “I decided that because we had not done a web-focused project that I would throw us into the deep end by trying to reimagine the most iconic website on the internet,” says Erik Wagner, a member of the society and originator of this project.

Anything that deviates runs the risk of appearing tone deaf.

Redesigning Google’s homepage is a more difficult challenge than it seems. The search giant is known for its spartan starting screen so anything that deviates from that runs the risk of appearing tone deaf. On the plus side, Google’s passion for data driven “design”–whereby 41 colors of blue will be mercilessly A/B tested–has left plenty of white space open to the designers.

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Best Smartphones for Business: 2014 Edition | Businessnewsdaily.com

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Your smartphone is an indispensable business tool. It lets you stay in contact with employees, colleagues and collaborators. It helps you plan your workday and schedule meetings, and it enables you to stay productive all day long, even when you’re away from the office. That’s why it’s important to pick a good phone — but to do that, you’ll have to navigate through a minefield of mediocre devices, as well as stay up-to-date on all the new devices hitting the market.

Whether you want the biggest screen, the longest battery life or simply the best selection of productivity apps, there’s a solid smartphone for you. Read on for a list of the best business phones money can buy.

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Mini Opener | CoolBusinessideas.com

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This invention is a propeller shaped bottle opener that opens mini liquor bottles, beer bottles and aluminum can tabs. The Mini Opener is the very first bottle opener invented to open mini liquor bottles but its also versatile because it will open beer bottles and soda can tabs as well. It’s a great invention because it directly solves a problem that hasn’t been address by any other product on the market.

Beyond Honeybees: Now Wild Bees and Butterflies May Be in Trouble | WIRED

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By now you probably know about the plight of America’s honeybees: the collapsed colonies and dying hives, threatening pollination services to crops and the future of a much-beloved insect.

But it’s not just honeybees that are in trouble. Many wild pollinators—thousands of species of bees and butterflies and moths—are also threatened. Their decline would affect not only our food supply, but our landscapes, too. Most honeybees live in commercially managed agricultural colonies; wild pollinators are caretakers of our everyday surroundings.

“Almost 90 percent of the world’s flowering species require insects or other animals for pollination,” said ecologist Laura Burkle of Montana State University. “That’s a lot of plants that need these adorable creatures for reproduction. And if we don’t have those plants, we have a pretty impoverished world.”

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How Women Entrepreneurs Can Avoid Being Bulldozed Over in Business | Allbusiness

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Women, according to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are the key to economic expansion. And all signs are pointing to that expansion hurtling on well into 2014 and beyond. In 2013, statistics from the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) reported that in the United States alone, 8.6 million firms were owned by women with about 7.8 million people employed and $1.3 trillion generated in sales. Of the 8.6 million women-owned firms, 2.7 percent are majority-owned by women of color and 4.2 percent of all women-owned firms have revenues of $1 million or more.

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3 major challenges waiting for Target’s new CEO | Fortune.Management.cnn.com

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FORTUNE — It takes a lot to unseat a chief executive officer who has spent his entire career — 35 years — with his company. But the exposure of 110 million customers’ personal and payment data does the trick, apparently.

Following an attack by hackers who captured customer information this past holiday season, Target Corp. (TGT) CEO Gregg Steinhafel is out after resigning Monday. The retailer’s current chief financial officer John Mulligan will temporarily replace Steinhafel. While the data breach was likely the main impetus for Steinhafel’s ouster, Mulligan and whoever comes in as Target’s permanent CEO have a lot more than cybersecurity issues to worry about.

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