New Florence. New Renaissance.

The personality of the early adopter

at least early adopters of consumer tech...in a Mindset Media study...leaders, assertive...immodest.

Apple innovates the "user manual"

It combines it with its marketing pitch, and has its Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Bob Borchers, not some actor do the walk through.

BTW, it's not skimpy - runs over 30 minutes, and if you want to download takes up 101 mb on your iPod or 318 mb on your laptop.

14 Science and Tech questions for Obama and McCain

ScienceDebate 2008 has cataloged from thousands it has collected over the last several months 14 areas it has invited the Presidential Candidates to clarify positions on. They cover the following topics:

1. Innovation.

2. Climate Change

3. Energy

4. Education.

5. National Security

6. Pandemics and Biosecurity

7. Genetics research

8. Stem cells

9. Ocean Health

10. Water

11. Space

12. Scientific Integrity

13. Research

14. Health

Using the web to track teen habits

"Nearly 59,000 captive teens might seem like every parent's worst nightmare. But for Helsinki (Finland)-based Sulake, such a group provided a pain-free way to gain valuable insight into what "kids these days" really care about"

"Pain-free because Sulake runs Habbo, the nine-year-old virtual world that as of early June had some 100 million avatars, 9.5 million of them active on the site each month. And because Sulake could use the world as a platform to question the teens—virtually. Habbo's second Global Youth Survey features the results of a two-month-long poll conducted at the end of last year, which surveyed 58,486 teens in 31 countries. The findings were recently published in a 255-page report targeted at companies looking to market to the lucrative demographic."

BusinessWeek

Innovation - in cheating in exams

Ok, so many of these would probably fail basic math and science and history and geography - but when it comes to ingenuity and teamwork you have to admire them..

read about these high-tech school cheaters

Corporate Innovation Competitions

"Cisco's innovation contest is one of at least a dozen corporate-sponsored competitions that have cropped up in recent years, all aimed at developing and rewarding innovation.

Innovation prizes are no substitute for the expensive, painstaking research and development that's the lifeblood of a high-tech company, but companies find them a relatively low-cost way to generate potentially valuable ideas from around the world. Cisco's I-Prize was borne out of the Cisco I-Zone, an internal Web-based workspace where employees can submit new ideas."

BusinessWeek

Metrics to measure Innovation

"In this system, which began last year, (Emerson Electric) managers divide new-product sales into one of four categories: minor improvements, major improvements, products that are new lines for the business, and ones that are completely new to the world"

BusinessWeek

In time for Father's Day

 

Popular Science has a gallery of some tech gift ideas for Dad.

A Tabasco tie would be pretty hot also :)

"Economy Boosting" Technologies

"History is filled with examples of how technology helped usher in new eras of prosperity. To help build the case for optimism, the MIT News Office asked a collection of MIT faculty and researchers for their thoughts on the potentially life-altering technologies that lie just around the corner."

Read the perspectives at MIT News

Celebrating Nerds

Benjamin Plotinsky reviews in Commentary magazine (sub required) two recent books - Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People and David Anderegg’s Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them.

"In general, according to Nugent, nerds “remind others, sometimes pleasantly, of machines.” ‘What nerds crave above all else is order, “a heavily rule-bound universe.” Hence they favor role- playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, which operates according to laws prescribed by the “Dungeon Master.” Medieval court society is similarly perceived as hierarchical and rule-bound, and thus more easily navigable than, say, a contemporary American high school. The same can be said for the fantasy universe of a writer like J.R.R. Tolkien..."

"In Anderegg’s judgment, antagonism toward nerds is a distinctly American phenomenon—a direct descendant of 19th-century American anti-intellectualism. That being the case, and despite the fact that most nerds will turn out all right in the end, he worries that the stereotype has produced a great deal of unhappiness among young Americans. He also thinks it has scared brainy teenagers away from intellectual pursuits, resulting in particular in a national shortage of scientists. "