New Florence. New Renaissance.

The Libra cryptocurrency

The cryptocurrency, called Libra, will be a secure blockchain-based payment system backed by hard assets and designed for ordinary users, making it among the boldest efforts yet to bring digital currencies into the mainstream.

Facing continuing scrutiny of its privacy practices, Facebook introduced Libra in a manner that seemed intended in part to head off potential regulatory concerns. It said it is creating a subsidiary, called Calibra, that would be governed with the help of external partners, to ensure “the separation between social and financial data.” Calibra will offer a crypto wallet—a digital app that can be used to pay for items online and send money—using Libra.

WSJ

Here's a white paper on the concept

 

 

Best Buy and fitness

On Tuesday, workout equipment will be available online, including spin bikes from Flywheel Sports, a compression recovery system from NormaTec, muscle rollers from Hyperice, rowing machines from Hydrow (in video) and a series of connected treadmills by NordicTrack. The products will begin to hit stores in the coming months.

The announcement comes as Best Buy has already started to venture into health tech. It acquired GreatCall, a health-services platform that focuses on personal emergency response services for senior citizens for $800 million in August 2018. Earlier this year, it began to sell TytoCare’s telehealth devices online and in some stores. Then, earlier this month, it acquired senior remote monitoring company Critical Signal Technologies for an undisclosed amount.

CNBC

 

 

 

Mixed reality at Airbus

Mixed reality allows aerospace trainees to learn in an immersive virtual environment without the need for an actual physical aircraft or parts. This 3D environment can offer features that real-life training cannot, such as the ability to view elements in three dimensions from any angle.

HoloLens helps Airbus designers virtually test their designs to see if they are ready for manufacture. Mixed reality speeds up the process substantially, decreasing the time spent by 80 percent.

Mixed reality technology can also help workers on the production line access crucial information while keeping their hands free. Digital information, such as instructions or diagrams, can be overlaid on a real piece of machinery to aid in complex or hard-to-reach tasks. These kinds of mixed-reality solutions have allowed Airbus to cut manufacturing time by a third while improving quality.

Microsoft Transform blog

 

 

 

Amazon's new fulfillment robots

E-commerce leader Amazon.com Inc. on Wednesday announced it had developed two sleek new warehouse robot models called Xanthus and Pegasus, saying the designs are intended to improve safety and efficiency for its sprawling buildings and enormous workforce.

The launch comes as Amazon is investing heavily in its distribution network to support its April offer to upgrade the nationwide delivery terms of its Amazon Prime subscription service from two-day to next-day shipping.

DC Velocity

 

 

"Multi-sensory" cuisine

Courtesy of Workfront, I had a chance to enjoy a Heston Blumenthal meal during a recent trip to London.

He is a brilliant chef who has innovated "multi-sensory"dishes

"Blumenthal’s discovery that what we hear, smell, see, and touch when we eat can have a profound effect on how little or how much we enjoy our dinner is simultaneously obvious and groundbreaking. He’s now using this notion to trigger happy memories for the people that are lucky enough to eat at The Fat Duck in Bray, southern England. The single dish that sums up the multi-sensory approach is Sound of the Sea. Seafood, kelp, seaweed and edible sand are plated to resemble the seashore and served alongside an iPod in a conch shell, which plays sounds of seagulls and the ocean waves."

Here is a video from his "experimental cuisine"

 

 

Reimagining Capitalism

From a must read issue of Forbes.

"And those were just some of the billionaires willing to speak on the record. Virtually everyone I talked to acknowledged the need for change. Some incremental and many systemic; some spoke in whispers, many in full-throated pleas for “reform” or “a reboot.” The rock star Bono had perhaps the most poetic suggestion: a reimagination.

If such a term conjures Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, two of capitalism’s visionary saints, so be it. Entrepreneurial capitalism remains, objectively, the best system ever invented to create and distribute prosperity, and if you look at the billion-plus people in China, India and elsewhere who were lifted from extreme poverty in the past two decades, it remains easy to sing its praises. The dynamism remains true in the U.S., too. Of The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, 67% are self-made and 11% are immigrants. “America works, and it works now better than it ever worked,” Buffett says."

You may enjoy this Bill and Melinda Gates discussion about billionaires and philanthropy

 

 

Forbes

 

 

Text Analytics

For as long as companies have hosted quarterly conference calls, analysts and journalists have tried to parse not just what a company’s executives say, but how they say it. Software from Amenity Analytics promises to automate this process by spotting when chief executive officers try to duck tough questions. The software, its makers say, can even pick up on the signs of potential deception that CIA and FBI interrogators look for—including stalling and the use of qualifiers—and can gauge the sentiment of what is said on calls and reported in public filings, issuing a positive or negative numeric score. The goal is to make it easier for investors to wade through information and quickly make trading decisions.

BusinessWeek

 

From drugstore to health clinic

On an April morning, I followed Gonzalez down a curving parquet pathway, through this stucco box that’s been repurposed as health care’s new front door for America’s communities. This store in Spring, a working-class neighborhood north of central Houston, has eliminated aisles that once offered the likes of mops and greeting cards so that a full one-fourth of its footprint is now devoted to wellness. The entire left side features products supporting the new mission, from health food—think turmeric powder shakes—to mobile equipment, such as shower chairs, usually found in warehouse stores.

Fortune

see video starting around 0.33 on the concept

 

USPS and self-driving trucks

The United States Post Office will run a set of limited tests this month that will see an autonomous tractor trailer deliver mail between distribution centers in Phoenix and Dallas, reports CNBC. The self-driving tractor trailer is being provided by autonomous truck company TuSimple.

However, if the pilot program goes well, the Post Office does have a long-term goal of automating the mail trucks that do deliver mail to your house. Recently the Post Office has been soliciting bids from companies that could build mail trucks that drive themselves as a postal service worker sits in the back sorting mail to be deposited into people’s roadside mailboxes.

FastCompany

 

 

SUV for driving on the moon?

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Toyota are cooperating on a manned, pressurized rover powered by fuel cell electric vehicle technology. The tough-looking rover is said to boast a new type of fuel cell that will ultimately provide a total lunar-surface cruising range of more than 6,200 miles. That range will help the rover cover some serious distance—perhaps to the far side of the moon?—when it eventually touches down.

Motor Trend

 

 

 

AI and product design

A typical club-design process might involve five to seven physical prototypes; for Epic Flash, Callaway created 15,000 virtual ones. From those, an algorithm determined the best design, selecting for peak performance—i.e., ball speed—while also conforming to the rules set forth by the U.S. Golf Association. Golf Digest gave the $530 Epic Flash driver a score of 20 out of 20 on its 2019 “Hot List,” the only driver to earn that honor. A human could not have achieved this kind of rapid iteration, or precision.

The Epic Flash offers just a taste of the ways in which algorithm-driven design could transform our planet as it becomes significantly more common and, in time, even the norm. “With a precise idea of the conditions this thing I’m designing will see in real life, I can design it better,” says Maurice Conti, chief innovation officer at Alpha, an innovation arm of the telecommunications company Telefónica. Though still nascent, artificial intelligence and machine learning are starting to alter our built world, from spatulas to skyscrapers, ­helping designers solve technical problems with unprecedented speed.

Fortune

 

 

Blockchain with impact

Newsweek has an issue which highlights a wide range of blockchain applications. An example is Chronicled which is developing a blockchain based solution to supply chain management, recording all of the transactions that take place as pharmaceuticals travel from factory to container to shelf.

 

Another is Bitlumens which is focused on adoption of clean energy - video below

 

Onboard - Medical - diagnostics

The idea is elegantly simple: Use information gathered by a vehicle's numerous multiaxis accelerometers and other sensors during an accident in order to help predict the injuries inflicted on the occupants, and share this data with first responders so they're prepared to provide precisely the care needed. For example, the data could be used to immediately dispatch a medevac unit instead of waiting for an ambulance to arrive, assess, and then summon medevac. MDGo claims that—for survivable accidents—such tailored care and time savings could improve victims' long-term outlook for mortality and morbidity (chronic pain/side-effects) by as much as 44 percent.

Motor Trend

 

 

 

 

Mobility trends

Highly recommend this issue. The cover itself gives you an idea on how we will move around in the future - the last mile and much farther.

Rethinking Cities

Does the trend towards urbanization spell disaster? Maybe not. Recent research suggests those numbers may be deceptive. In fact, the typical urban resident produces less CO2 than average for the country they live in. The average American is responsible for 23 tons of CO2 per year; the average Washingtonian, just 19.7—and New Yorkers generate only 7.1 tons apiece.

That's because cities offer opportunities for efficiency in a way sprawling suburbs and scattered rural areas simply can't. Small apartments are easier to heat and cool than suburban homes, dense cities make public transit an attractive option, and stacking offices makes them more efficient to manage. In other words, the "concrete jungle" is actually a lot greener than it looks.

National Geographic

The issue has lots of ideas and examples like Baku, Azerbaijan below

Google in India

A generation ago, the U.S., Europe, and then China added similarly huge numbers of people to the Internet. Yet the process in those areas was steady and gradual, moving from dial-up modems through clunky Wi-Fi to mobile tech. Contrast that with India, where hundreds of millions of people have skipped the early-stage Internet altogether; many have never even touched a computer. Instead, they have started online by downloading apps and watching mobile-phone videos at a furious rate. Since 2017, Indians have begun downloading more apps than Americans do. And last year, India became the biggest consumer of mobile data on Android phones. “We have not seen this kind of user behavior anywhere else in the world,” says Rajan Anandan, vice president for India and Southeast Asia for Google, the purveyor of Android mobile-phone software. Google also owns YouTube, which started the phenomenon of user-generated video in Silicon Valley more than a decade ago and now has 245 million Indian users.

Fortune

 

 

 

Auto Infotainment trends

In an effort to satisfy a growing demand from drivers for high-tech gadgetry, automakers are placing audio, navigation, telephone, and texting capabilities—a bundle of features known as infotainment—front and center, adding a screen on the dashboard where only knobs and buttons used to be. In 2014, just 53 percent of vehicles sold in the U.S. had a dashboard touch screen, according to data from research and consulting firm IHS Markit. This year, that number is up to 82 percent.

But for all of the convenience these systems are supposed to provide, CR’s most recent owner satisfaction survey of members suggests that there’s plenty of room for improvement. From data collected on more than 60,000 vehicles, only 56 percent of owners reported that they were very satisfied with their car’s infotainment system.

Consumer Reports

here are some features they recommend

Who's out there?

It’s no wonder that Kepler, which ran out of fuel last October, is regarded almost with reverence by astronomers. (“Kepler was the greatest step forward in the Copernican revolution since Copernicus,” University of California, Berkeley astrophysicist Andrew Siemion told me.) It’s changed the way we approach one of the great mysteries of existence. The question is no longer, is there life beyond Earth? It’s a pretty sure bet there is. The question now is, how do we find it?

The revelation that the galaxy is teeming with planets has reenergized the search for life. A surge in private funding has created a much more nimble, risk-friendly research agenda. NASA too is intensifying its efforts in astrobiology. Most of the research is focused on finding signs of any sort of life on other worlds. But the prospect of new targets, new money, and ever increasing computational power has also galvanized the decades-long search for intelligent aliens.

National Geographic

Video about the Starshade, one of many tools in the search for Earth-like planets

 

BA "Look Up" Magic

I am headed to UK next and hope to see one of these billboards in London (they are not that new, but I have not been to London in a few years).

"The charming execution, which featured adorable children on the digital boards pointing at overhead planes, masked a technologically complex backend. It involved mounting an antennae on the roof of a building near each board. The antennae picked up data from the transponders of British Airways aircrafts within 200 kilometers and fed that information into to an application that identified the flights. The application then sent the information to a server that served the messages about the plane's destination or origination. A "trigger zone" acted as a trip wire to determine when a plane should instigate a message and cloud altitude data determined if the plane could actually be seen."

 

 

The monster Cricket World Cup event

Tomorrow starts what will be 46 days of one of the most watched events in the world - the Cricket World Cup. England, the host country (with Wales), will play South Africa in the first match at the hallowed Oval grounds in London as the official app page below shows.

The Telegraph says

"The tournament is now the third biggest stand-alone world championship in any sport, below football and rugby, according to Sportcal, a sports market intelligence company. It will generate about £400 million for the International Cricket Council in broadcasting rights alone."

My own cricket is rusty. I played it when I was very young but have not kept up. The technology and the athleticism is so much better now. I have 4 games penciled in my calendar - the semis and the finals, and one game in person while in the UK. However, I asked a few friends in technology from around the world who are fanatical cricket fans the following questions and each, surprise, surprise has strong opinions.  

a) Which team do you think will win the tournament? Who would you like to win the tournament?

b) Is there a player or two you think will dominate the tournament?

c) which technologies (on the field, in broadcast etc) will make this tournament more exciting from your pov?

d) how do you plan to stay productive across 46 days of this competition?

Thomas Otter who will be watching from Germany:

a) England are in theory the favorites. They have home grown advantage, and they looked impressive against Pakistan. As has been the case since 1896, England cricket reaps the rewards of immigration.Today their best batsman and captains is Irish, and their new exciting bowler is from Barbados.

I would like South Africa to win. It is time to deal with the ghosts of 1999. I’d like to see Afghanistan surprise a top side or two. The story of Afghanistan cricket is a most remarkable thing. A small slither of joy to emerge out the horrors of decades of war and strife.

b) Batting has dominated this form of cricket lately, so I’m hoping that the bowlers will get their chance to shift this. I’d like to see Kagiso Rabada (of S Africa) bowl Virat Kohli (of India) with a yorker first ball. The fielding keeps getting better but this still takes some beating.

c) The decision tech keeps Improving. It brings more fairness to the game. I hope that we talk more about the cricket than the tech though. Kohli’s cover drive is perfection, the tech still has a way to go.

d) I hope to catch a game live, but I’ll be watching a lot on TV. I will also watch some games with the cricket diaspora in Heidelberg.

Vijay Vijaysankar who will be watching from the U.S.:

a) Highest chance is for England. I would like India to win

b) Virat Kohli of India

c) Hoping for better Umpire Decision Review System (DRS) for LBW decisions (that's leg before wicket, one way a batsman can be dismissed) 

d) By planning meetings around it as much as I can . Time difference is not terrible this time with the cup being held in UK 

Dennis Howlett who is in England, so pretty close to the action:

a) England are favorites but the weather plays a huge part in how each pitch plays and it's an open question whether England has the temperament to stay the distance. I wouldn't be surprised if India did really well with their line up.

b) I don't really want to pick a stand out player at this point. There are so many that could shine. Relieving Root of the England captaincy in favor of Morgan could see some serious slogging but then you never know. Can Archer repeat his impressive start? Is he the next gen Anderson? I'd be delighted to see a player who has been a solid journeyman shine - for whatever team. And it's high time we saw a world class spinner emerge from at least one of these sides while playing in English conditions. On batting v bowling - it's all about the weather. Headingley (one of the venues) can (and has) produced some of the most exciting cricket of all time IMO - who can forget Botham destroying Australia in a test where the odds were 250-1 on an England win. I saw that. Or Viv Richards (of West Indies) smashing 135 before lunch one glorious Saturday morning. I saw that too. I doubt that will be repeated this year given the fixtures to be played there. 

c) I'd like to see drones take a part in following the action. Example - you rarely get a full sense of swing from the TV position behind the bowler's arm but you can from above. Stump mics? Turn 'em up so we can hear the on-field sledging - always a fun part of the game for me.

d) I will try and make at least one of the Headingley fixtures. They are always incredibly good-natured with food and drink readily exchanged among competing crowds...unless it's India and Pak - then it's not quite so convivial. But that match isn't scheduled for Headingley so...but Sri Lanka v India could be a lot of fun. It's a helluva good way to spend a day out - whatever the result. If the weather holds, take your sunblock. And a poncho to save getting drenched by summer storms.

Play ball!...oh wait, I hope I still remember baseball rules after this summer.

 

Singapore's startup ecosystem

Singapore’s effort to create an ecosystem to support startups is gaining ground, with the city-state now home to more than 150 venture capital funds.

L’Oreal SA, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. are among more than 100 entities running incubator and accelerator programs, according to Enterprise Singapore, the government agency spearheading enterprise development. Venture funding has increased to $10.5 billion in 2018 from $800 million in 2012, according to data from PitchBook.

BusinessWeek

 

 

 

"Memorials are our specialty"

I would love to be in Washington, DC today. So many Memorial Day activities like Rolling Thunder, the large parade, the always solemn Arlington National Cemetery and so much more as this page shows

I am not, but no matter where you are it is a good day to remember the sacrifices of so many.   

Photo Credit

Tires and steering wheels at the Indy 500

For the Indy 500 and the 5,000 tires used there, the right side must sustain long duration—turn one can last 35 seconds—of loads over 3,000 pounds.

“The right front is stiff, the right rear is stiff, matched to the front,” Adams says. “They are durable and consistent.”

The right rear tire comes one-third of an inch bigger than the left rear, which is also softer. The left front is where the grip comes to play, so expect to see 11-inch treads in the front and over 15-inch treads in the rear.

Firestone, which has served for the past 20 years as the exclusive provider of racing tires for the IndyCar circuit, will produce one specification for every corner of the car from its factory in Akron, Ohio. Adams says most teams will have two variations of dry tires, one that puts a focus on durability and an alternate that has an initial performance benefit that drops away quickly. Every team will also have rain tires. Every tire includes a mix of fabric, steel, and over 10 different compounds.

Popular Mechanics

BTW, the steering wheel on those cars is way different than what you and I have in our cars

Book table. Then buy ticket.

There are many motivations for traveling: taking advantage of a school vacation or holiday break or pursuing cultural enrichment in an unfamiliar city. But for passionate eaters like Ms. Martins, there’s no better reason to jump on a plane than a meal at a bucket-list restaurant.

For dining obsessives of this ilk, the annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants list serves as a travel punch-card — a roster of upscale restaurants that beg to be tried. The 2019 list will be announced at the end of June, and although the awards have been criticized for, among other things, their large number of corporate sponsors, a dearth of female chefs, and the ease with which restaurants and others can game the vote, they remain a global benchmark.

New York Times

 

Last year's list

 

 

Electrifying Aviation

MagniX's approach is to build an electric motor for standard aircrafts that fly nine to 15 passengers on standard, 100- to 1,000-mile routes, and that take off and land at standard airports. "So the only thing that's different is, instead of being gas-guzzling, emissions-creating aircraft," he says, "they don't need any fuel and don't create any emissions."

Earlier this fall, MagniX passed a critical milestone: powering a propeller on a Cessna "Iron Bird" with the company's 350-horsepower, all-electric motor powered exclusively by battery.

Pacific Standard

 

 

 

RIP, I.M. Pei

Best known for designing the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre in Paris, Mr. Pei was one of the few architects who were equally attractive to real estate developers, corporate chieftains and art museum boards (the third group, of course, often made up of members of the first two). And all of his work — from his commercial skyscrapers to his art museums — represented a careful balance of the cutting edge and the conservative.

New York Times

 

You may enjoy this walk down memory lane

 

TopGolf: tech-enabled social hive

I had seen the 170 foot tall mesh fences in several cities. I just did not want to show off my poor game at those TopGolf locations which are sprouting up around the country and around the world (the company was founded in the UK).

So, I grudgingly accepted the invite from ASUG during SAP Sapphire week for a reception at the Orlando location. Turns out there is way more than golf at these venues. They are hives of social activity often with as many as 1,500 customers. There is a 50 table restaurant. A 3,000 sq. ft roof terrace. A room with several pool tables. Nearly 300 flat screen TVs. The whole space covers 65,000 square feet. On this evening, one of the sponsors, SNP publicized its Bluefield approach to S/4HANA migrations by serving a drink made with Blue Curacao.  And donuts you could inject with sugary fluids. The video below describes the syringes and the location in more detail.

The place is not just for grown ups. Don't take my word for it. Kyle Fish, a 6th grader says "I love Top Golf because I'm able to hang out with my family & friends and they have great food."

He took his mom, Stacey Fish and his sister Audrey, a 8th grader to TopGolf for Mother's Day.

Most patrons, of course, are there for the golf. They are hitting balls from over hundred bays. Each bay can hold 6 players. 600 players hitting balls at the same time calls for a lot of technology. Each specially designed golf ball has a RFID chip which ties it to each player. The field has circular zones with nets and RFID readers. The distance of the shot (the zones are 20 feet to over 200 feet ahead of you) and how close you get to the center of a zone determines the points you earn. No scorecards or pencils required - the scores are reported to your console and recorded on your digital membership. Instant feedback. No cheating.

This location was open till midnight. Others are open till 2 am. You can play rain or shine from the comfort of your bay. Who needs golf courses and waiting impatiently for others to tee off? Who needs to lug the cart in the blazing heat or biting cold?

Of course, Audrey says it even better: "the food at Top Golf is delicious and you don't have to love golf to enjoy the experience."

 

Dean Kamen, Polymath

Dean Kamen keynoted at PowerPlex last week. I would have been content to just listen to him talk about his serial inventions which have earned him nearly 450 patents - the Segway, insulin pumps, prosthetics and countless other items.

However,  in his talk he spent plenty of time on FIRST and how it has fired up so many of our young about robotics and STEM topics. 

and that is about to get turbocharged with help from Disney 

But to me even more inspiring was how he has helped revive Manchester, NH. That textile town is now a high-tech hub. This Politico article describes Kamen's role in the revival. So many other US towns could benefit from similar rejuvenation.

Just when you thought he could not do any better, he ended his talk with

"Us technologists solve problems...we can always wait for politicians or lawyers...but why wait?"  

Indeed.

New toys for the Blue Angels

It will cost the U.S. Navy nearly $90 million to design and implement necessary modifications to the aircraft, including smoke generators and adjustments to the aircraft’s flight control software. Super Hornets destined for the Blue Angels also will feature changes to allow pilots “more situational awareness and faster access to critical flight information.” However, the warplanes will lose none of their lethal punch. The Blue Angels are required to make sure their jets can be ready for combat within 72 hours.

Blue Angel pilots will continue to fly without the G-suits that other military pilots wear into battle. Designed to counteract the pooling of blood in the body that could cause pilots to black out during extreme, high-G maneuvers, the suits interfere with the unique flight control setup on team aircraft. Each team fighter jet is fitted with a 40-pound tensioned spring to the flight controls, requiring constant pressure by the pilot throughout the flight. This removes any possibility of play in the controls, allowing pilots to fly within inches of one another.

Popular Mechanics

 

 

Leonardo as Archaeology

In an interview at the Met, Bambach described what she calls the “archaeological method” she used to excavate details about Leonardo (over 23 years): she studied the intricacies of his handwriting; transcribed and translated the artist’s words herself instead of relying on previously published translations; and read the same books Leonardo read in their original form. Rather than focus on a single theme (anatomy or engineering) or on a single aspect of Leonardo’s artistic legacy (drawing or painting), Bambach resolved to present the artist in his entirety through the lens of both art historian and biographer.

National Geographic

 

 

 

Green Concrete

Making cement–the mineral compound that constitutes the most crucial ingredient of concrete–is an extremely carbon-intensive process. It’s produced in factories with massive kilns where raw materials, like limestone, clay, and shale, are heated to temperatures up to 1550 degrees Celsius, then ground into a powder. Heating the cement minerals to such high temperatures poses a sustainability concern, says Kemal Celik, professor of civil engineering at New York University in Abu Dhabi and the director of the Advanced Materials and Building Efficiency Research (AMBER) Laboratory. Producing cement accounts for around 7% of global CO2 emissions.

This fact, Celik says, got him interested in finding a better way to make the material. He and his team already knew that magnesium oxide, a mineral found in salt deposits like lakes and salt flats, could be converted into a type of cement. In the United Arab Emirates, where Celik and his team work, they realized they could tap the over 70 operating desalination plants for access to brine left over from the process of purifying seawater, which would otherwise just be dumped back into the Gulf. Synthesizing the magnesium oxide in brine into a cement-like substance requires much less heat than making ordinary cement. And, Celik says, as magnesium oxide cement hardens over its lifetime, it absorbs carbon dioxide over time to gain strength, potentially making it a carbon-negative building material.

FastCompany

 

 

Robotic Farm

Your next salad might include leafy greens grown by robots in California greenhouses. About 75 percent of the lettuce farmed in the U.S. comes from that state’s Central Coast and San Joaquin Valley. Cultivating it requires warm temperatures, not too much rain, and lots of time and labor. Startups such as Iron Ox, a maker of agricultural robots, and big players such as John Deere are investing in artificial intelligence to raise produce more efficiently.

At Iron Ox’s fully robotic grow house in San Carlos, Calif., an autonomous robot plants, cares for, and harvests crops.

BusinessWeek

 

 

 

 

Smarter Office Buildings

Office developers and landlords once had to think only about supplying electricity, plumbing and heating to workplaces, leaving tenants to design their offices to their own technical specifications. 

But these days, the providers of office space are being driven to provide telecommunications infrastructure and add sophisticated technology like smart windows to better compete. 

Every year, office technology becomes more advanced, and developers and landlords have to stay on top of the trends or risk falling behind. Those that have the technological prowess may be able to command premium rents, but those that lack it may be forced to offer a discount. 

New York Times

 

Video of Smart Windows from View

Ford's Advanced Manufacturing Center

(Ford's) new Advanced Manufacturing Center in Redford, Mich., just north of its Dearborn, Mich., headquarters. The 100,000-square-foot center was an investment of $45 million, and it brings together engineers and specialists from across the company to collaborate.

You can have a look at some of the gadgets in use in the attached slideshow.

The automaker is using new technology such as virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D printing and small robots (not the giant caged ones it's been using for years) in different ways.

Louisville Business Journal

 

 

Solar Thermal

While photovoltaic (PV) panels that convert sunlight into electricity are more common, thermal solutions are what’s needed to meet industry’s growing demand for heat. In a solar thermal system, mirrors focus sunlight to intensify its heat and produce steam at the high temperatures needed for industry. Another key advantage is the ability to store the heat using simple, proven thermal energy storage in order to deliver steam 24 hours a day, just like a conventional fossil fuel plant. With the right technology, solar thermal can be a reliable, efficient and low-cost energy source for industrial steam generation.

Popular Mechanics

 

 

Digital Marketing Data Nuggets

Spending on digital media surpassed television ads in 2017, and now global digital spend is anticipated to top $333 billion this year.

Thanks to Tamas Hevizi for pointer to the infographic from Visual Capitalist. Here are some nuggets

 

• Search:
  The top five search results for a keyword on Google get 70% of the clicks.
• Social media:
  80% of B2B leads come in through LinkedIn vs. 13% on Twitter and 7% on Facebook.
• Video marketing:
  Video will represent 82% of all internet traffic by 2021.
• Cold email marketing:
  Emails sent between 10-11am have the highest open rates. Tuesday is the best day to send cold emails.
• Paid advertising:
  The mobile ad blocking rate has increased 90% year-over-year.
• Lead generation:
  61% of marketers say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge.
• Content marketing:
  47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.

 

 

 

 

Design Futures

A conversation with Kim Jones (of Dior Men) and Jony Ive (of Apple) in Document Journal

This quote from Ive is mind blowing

"My equivalent of that is when we have an idea that’s beyond the enabling technology. When we’re absolutely certain that the idea can’t even be prototyped. So often, we have ideas and we’re waiting and working on the technology that will enable the idea. It’s just a strange sort of patience that’s necessary when you feel really good about a direction and an idea, and you just have to wait for the technology to mature."

BTW pretty appropriate that you can customize the cover - order here

 

 

National Parks as Movie Stars

A gallery of movies which feature National Parks via the Travel Channel

 

like Arches National Park in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade

 

Moonshot of the 19th Century

Promotory Point, UT was the site of the dramatic completion, 150 years ago today, of the first transcontinental railroad, which linked the Union Pacific on the east and the Central Pacific on the west. A giant crowd gathered to witness the final ceremonies. Following prayers and brief but grandiloquent speeches, the president of the Central Pacific, Leland Stanford, using a silver sledgehammer, nervously drove the last spike, made of gold, into a polished California laurel tie. A Western Union telegraph apparatus was connected along with the spike, so that Stanford's final strokes were instantly heralded in all cities of the United States. Two locomotives, Jupiter and 119, crept forward until their noses touched, and a cheering crowd confirmed a single-word telegram: "Done."

Encycolpedia.com

The 1912 mile railroad constructed between 1863 and 1869 was an amazing achievement. This site has a lot of history about the bravery and ingenuity during the construction. 

Before its completion "a journey across the continent to the western states meant a dangerous six month trek over rivers, deserts, and mountains.  Alternatively, a traveler could hazard a six week sea voyage around Cape Horn, or sail to Central America and cross the Isthmus of Panama by rail, risking exposure to any number of deadly diseases in the crossing.

Image Credit - Wikipedia

 

 

HD Vision for Armored Vehicles

A new vision system for tank crews promises to cure one of the worst problems of armored warfare: poor visibility. The Multifunction Vehicle Protection (MVP) Sensor by BAE systems rings the exterior of a tank with high definition cameras, giving crews an all-around view of their surroundings. This will allow tankers to identify and deal with threats faster than ever before, increasing overall vehicle effectiveness and battling crew fatigue.

Popular Mechanics

 

 

 

Automating Bookkeeping

While Pilot relies heavily on automation to parse the paperwork, it also uses account managers (aka people) to assist its customers.

“Pilot is born out of the pain points from our previous companies,” CEO Waseem Daher told Fortune. “What is bookkeeping? It’s a series of structured data—dates, amounts, and so on—but it still involved the incredibly laborious process of people clicking around in QuickBooks.”

Fortune

 

 

 

Happy 150th, Periodic Table

The History of the Periodical Table

 

Lavoisier’s list of elements, published in 1789, five years before his execution, had 33 entries. Of those, 23—a fifth of the total now recognised—have stood the test of time. Some, like gold, iron and sulphur, had been known since ancient days. Others, like manganese, molybdenum and tungsten, were recent discoveries. What the list did not have was a structure. It was, avant la lettre, a stamp collection. But the album was missing.

 

Creating that album, filling it and understanding why it is the way it is took a century and a half. It is now, though, a familiar feature of every high-school science laboratory. Its rows and columns of rectangles, each containing a one- or two-letter abbreviation of the name of an element, together with its sequential atomic number, represent an order and underlying structure to the universe that would have astonished Lavoisier. It is little exaggeration to say that almost everything in modern science is connected, usually at only one or two removes, to the periodic table.

The Economist

 

 

Orbital Ads

Oh no, you may say, but they are headed our way. From Slate

"Since Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957, satellites have been a mostly invisible part of our daily lives, allowing us to make phone calls, monitor the weather, and map our locations. We can sometimes catch them in the night sky, but they’re hard to spot, even if you’re looking for them. Satellites like StartRocket’s Orbital Display are meant to be watched, and as satellites are becoming easier to launch, our skies could become the biggest screen of all.

StartRocket isn’t alone in the for-profit entertainment satellite game. ALE is the Japanese startup behind Sky Canvas, a project to launch a series of satellites that release shooting stars on demand—“a whole new level of entertainment,” its website boasts. Its first show will take place over Hiroshima in spring 2020."

 

Rock climbing as Olympic Sport

For McColl, last month’s news that organizers of the Paris Games would like to separate speed climbing from bouldering and lead climbing to make two events was vindication that the strategy is working. “For 2020, we got one medal and 40 spots. Now, we have 2 medals and 72 athletes in 2024. My hope is we’ll get four medals by 2028.”

According to McColl, the evolving Olympic format is having a trickle-down effect that will be felt throughout competitive climbing’s ranks. “For 2020, we’ve been encouraging all the [national] federations and competitive climbers to do combined events with all three disciplines. But for 2024, with speed being taken out, combined competitors won’t need to do speed,” he says.

National Geographic

 

 

 

Keyhole gardening

Keyhole gardens are raised circular beds, usually made from native materials like rocks and sticks, with keyhole-shaped access to the center, where there is a basket or tower filled with kitchen scraps for compost.

The raised beds are made up of densely packed layers of grass clippings and cardboard, all designed to create the most fertile, nutrientrich soil after just three months. Less water is needed with this type of design, and the raised beds discourage evaporation and water loss through the ground. As Dejong explains, the open-bottom design encourages worms—the "rock stars" of the garden—to come up from the ground, turning food scraps into compost.

"It’s such a simple concept, but it works so well," says Dejong. "Nothing is wasted. Every drop of water goes directly to the roots, which surround the food scrap basket. And the nutrients from the compost mean the plants are literally soaking in nutrients."

Costco Connection

Video from country of Lesotho where the concept was first tried.

 

 

 

I Promise school

Ninety percent of the students at LeBron James' I Promise School met or exceeded individual growth goals in recent district assessments, outpacing students across their Akron, Ohio, district and marking "extraordinary" test-score improvement from when the school opened in July 2018.

That's according to The New York Times' Erica L. Green, who reported Friday that the third- and fourth-graders at I Promise School "were, by many accounts, considered unredeemable" upon their arrival -- "identified as the worst performers in the Akron public schools and branded with behavioral problems." Now, with the inaugural 240 students finished with Measures of Academic Progress testing, the school is "helping close the achievement gap in Akron."

CBS Sports

 

 

 

So much digital in making something so analog

The magic in making pencils

 

Peak Car?

While there continues to be exciting news about EVs and AVs, the overall market for vehicles is also going through plenty of disruption and innovation

BusinessWeek says

Auto sales in the U.S., after four record or near-record years, are declining this year, and analysts say they may never again reach those heights. Worldwide, residents are migrating to megacities—expected to be home to two-thirds of the global population by midcentury—where an automobile can be an expensive inconvenience. Young people continue to turn away from cars, with only 26 percent of U.S. 16-year-olds earning a driver’s license in 2017, a rite of passage that almost half that cohort would have obtained just 36 years ago, according to Sivak Applied Research. Likewise, the annual number of 17-year-olds taking driving tests in the U.K. has fallen 28 percent in the past decade.

The recent Lfyt IPO filing says

We believe that the world is at the beginning of a shift away from car ownership to Transportation-as-a-Service, or TaaS. Lyft is at the forefront of this massive societal change. Our ridesharing marketplace connects drivers with riders and we estimate it is available to over 95% of the U.S. population, as well as in select cities in Canada. In 2018, almost half of our riders reported that they use their cars less because of Lyft, and 22% reported that owning a car has become less important.

Laser Scans of Notre Dame

Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral has for centuries inspired artists, photographers and others who sought to replicate its form. Among those was the late Andrew Tallon, a professor at Vassar who used laser scanning to create massive digital files that captured the cathedral down to its precise measurements.

"Can it help us rebuild? Yes, it can,"  Columbia art history Prof. Stephen Murray told ZDNet with respect to Tallon's work. "I think it's terribly important."

 

 

 

 

Amazon's flock of sateliites

Amazon has plans to establish a constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to patch up areas with poor or no internet connectivity.

Amazon's planned push into satellite-delivered broadband is taking shape under Project Kuiper, details of which appear in three documents filed with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) last month

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the existence of Amazon's satellite broadband ambitions, noting that it was a "long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet

ZDNet