New Florence. New Renaissance.

Vending Machines for literally everything

Vending machines are not for soda cans anymore. Redbox has over 40,000 DVD rental kiosks. That’s more locations than McDonalds and Starbucks have combined. Best Buy has over 200 express kiosks where you can buy a selection of gadgets and accessories – and they come with a price match guarantee and a return policy to reassure customers. Uniqlo, the Japanese retailer, has announced it will sell thermal T-shirts and down jackets via vending machines in malls and airports in the US.

But all this pales in comparison to vending machines in Japan where you can buy a hot cup of noodles, ice cream, t-shirts, burgers, bananas, fresh lettuce and lots more. In Holland you can rent bikes, in the UAE you can buy gold coins, borrow and lend books in Canada, bowling socks in S. Korea, baguettes in France, french fries in Australia, LEGO in Germany. The video below has more examples. This article has even more examples.

What is the most interesting product or service you have bought from a vending machine?

Mobile, Robotic Grocery Store

one Swedish startup and a Chinese university are taking the concept further: they've designed and autonomous shop that's designed to travel to customers. The Moby Mart, created by Wheelys, Hefei University of Technology and tech firm Himalafy, has been dubbed 'the supermarket that comes to you'.

The prototype, which the organisations have beta testing on the streets of Shanghai, is currently moved around by humans but the creators say future versions will use computer vision to navigate the streets and come to customers.

Wired UK

Flexible Architecture

Norman Foster, the famed architect, whose firm spent the last eight years perfecting plans for Apple’s glassy Campus 2 talks about the need for flexible architecture in this Wired interview

‘Make the floor-to-floor of a car park that much bigger, so if you’re not going to be filling it with cars in the future you could more easily retrofit it for more habitable space.”

Photo Credit

Inside an Amazon warehouse

From Tech Insider, at one of the fulfillment centers in California on a particularly busy day – Cyber Monday

 

 

Skip college. Earn a million.

One of the nation’s largest building-supply chains, 84 Lumber Co. spends millions on ads to drive home its message that learning a trade can be more valuable than earning a college degree. The company pays manager trainees about $40,000 a year, and that’s just the beginning. Those in charge of top-grossing stores can earn $200,000, and in a few cases more than $1 million, including bonuses. Yet, astonishingly, its recruiters have had trouble finding qualified takers.

The 250-store chain and other employers are taking that message to the masses. Associated General Contractors of Colorado is spending $2 million on recruiting and apprenticeships. Carpentry Contractors Co. in Minnesota hired a comedian to star in recruiting videos that have racked up a quarter-million views on YouTube.

Businessweek

Here is one of their latest commercials

Getting Bot in the Kitchen

Robotic butlers that can cook dinner for the family won’t exist anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean technologists aren’t aiming to help out in the kitchen. A swath of companies, from appliance giants to gadgets startups, are fielding devices that help prepare meals and shop for groceries so families can eat more healthily. Here’s a look at some of the most promising devices so far.

Time (sub required)

The NBA Warriors and “super workers”

In Silicon Collar I had several examples of how machines can turn employees into “super workers”

• Aided by telematics, UPS drivers on average get into less than one accident per million miles driven.
• Foxconn employees working alongside bots and precision equipment have delivered billions of high-quality electronic devices to Apple and other customers.
• Amazon’s data center employees have delivered of an unheard of 50+ price cuts as part of its AWS services

Some of the most impressive super workers profiled in the book are the coaches and players at the Golden State Warriors. 3 NBA finals in a row, and more to come according to many commentators and a whole slew of team and individual records.

I wrote in the book about how with missile tracking technology and wearables the team keep innovating

“For Kirk Lacob, Assistant General Manager of the team, part of his job is to scout and introduce technologies infused with rich data to help make his players more competitive. It's a version of automation in the sports world. It's also leading to jokes as to whether Curry is a 3-point shooting robot.” 

Photo Credit

 

Fishing Drone

The PowerRay, a submersible drone attached to a fishing line, can take a lot of the guesswork out of fishing. The fish finder spots fish, relays their position to the user, and attracts them with a built-in light and a bait drop.

Bloomberg

Rethinking our community colleges

LATI is a model for the growing number of politicians, CEOs and academics who believe that community colleges have the potential to become much needed engines of economic and social mobility. Last year, 99% of its students entered the workforce or went on to four-year colleges. The school has an 83% retention rate, well above the national community-college average of about 50%, and few instances of students' defaulting on their loans. The evolving curriculum is designed with input from more than 300 regional businesses, and starting salaries for LATI alumni average 27% more than those of other new hires in the region. All of this has led the college, with a student body of almost 2,500, to 14 consecutive years of growing enrollment. Officials originally projected that LATI would reach its current size in 2040.

That success, sadly, is an outlier. Across the nation, community colleges--which educate about 40% of all undergraduates in the U.S.--are facing declining enrollment and tightened budgets. Even as officials hold them up as the answer to bridging America's yawning blue-collar-skills gap, many are ill equipped to deliver on the promise. Less than 40% of community-college students graduate, and many drop out their first year. While more than 80% of two-year students say they want a bachelor's degree, only 14% get one after six years.

Time (sub required)

 

Man+Machine = better 3D printing

Mitsuhashi’s bright idea has been to use the learned skills of his machinists to inform and optimize designs for the 3D printer. By combining the best of both man and machine, he’s solving one of the biggest problems posed by 3D printing in its early years — the need for labor- and time-intensive post-processing work. Surface finishing, for example, is so far proving to be one of the most time-consuming parts of post-processing required by 3D printing, and can lead to damage of, or inconsistencies between, finished parts. Kinda takes the shine off this radical new technology, right? So minimizing, or, better, eliminating post-processing work is absolutely key to making 3D printing function on the grand, game-changing scale it could.

Oxy