New Florence. New Renaissance.

Udacity – the “Hollywood of Education”

Fortune interview with Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Udacity

“Facebook has a class internally that they used to be teaching just to internal engineers to become basic data scientists. And we digitized on this specific class so everybody in the world can become a data scientist at the level a Facebook engineer is required to be a data scientist. You might argue this is kind of giving away some of the competitive advantage, but the truth is it's really great for the world that now everybody in the world can take this class, free of charge actually, and tool themselves up, to be able to educate themselves with our help. Obviously the class doesn't contain any confidential Facebook information. It's at a level which is industrywide, and Udacity as a policy only accepts these kind of classes. We don't do proprietary classes because we are really passionate about democratizing education.”

Photo Credit

A Unified Theory of Comedy

Our journey took us from Japan to the West Bank to the heart of the Amazon, in search of various zingers, wisecracks and punch lines that would help explain humor once and for all.

The result is The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, to be published next week—on April Fool’s Day, naturally. As is often the case with good experiments—not to mention many of the funniest gags—not everything went exactly as planned, but we learned a lot about what makes the world laugh.

Slate Magazine

Gardening Innovations

nice gallery in Sunset magazine

“They are landscape architects, environmentalists, urban farmers, soil scientists, and horticultural visionaries who have turned their personal passions into pursuits that collectively reshape our homes, gardens, neighborhoods, and public spaces.”

The 20 Most Published Scientific Fields

Nice data visualization in Popular Science of 20 scientific fields with most published articles - click image to enlarge

“Every scientific idea has its day. Theories are born and experiments are designed; results are put to the test, then disproved or accepted as canon. As scientists discuss an idea, they cite the paper that proposed it in their own work. Then, as the conversation moves on, references to the paper drop off. The rise and fall of citations serves to measure the lifespan of a paper’s underlying ideas. Popular Science visualized that pattern across disciplines. Generally, citations peak more quickly today than they did 50 years ago. According to Jevin West, an information scientist at the University of Washington, that trend could be because there are more scientists tackling problems, or because technology has connected them better, accelerating the conversation.”

The 1,000 mph car

This is the cockpit of Bloodhound SSC, a supersonic car being built by a British team to set a new land-speed record by driving at 1,000mph (1,609kph). Most of the controls on the right of the driver are used to make it go and those on the left are to stop it, using a combination of wheel brakes, air brakes and parachutes. The car uses a jet engine from a Typhoon fighter aircraft and a hybrid rocket. It will be driven by Andy Green, a Royal Air Force pilot, who holds the existing land-speed record of 763mph in Thrust SSC. This was set in 1997 at Black Rock Desert, Nevada. As this desert is not big enough for the new record attempt it will take place on a larger expanse of flat ground at Hakskeen Pan in South Africa’s Northern Cape. Testing will begin there next year along with an attempt to reach 800mph. If all goes well, Wing-Commander Green will try for 1,000mph in 2016.

The Economist

Fandango: Beyond Tickets

Over the past year, the country's leading online seller of movie tickets has started producing original shows and acquired a company that specializes in tie-in promotions with retailers. On Thursday, the company will announce the acquisition of Movieclips, a Zefr Inc.-owned outfit that produces movie-related video programming and stores movie trailers and indexed movie clips.

WSJ (sub required)

CloudFlare – evolving the Akamai model

Traditionally when a user types in a web address, his web browser sends a request to access the site’s servers. CloudFlare acts as a virtual middleman, fielding requests and neutralizing threats. The startup also stores some of its customers’ content on servers across the U.S., Europe, and Australia, an approach that enables pages to load superfast because the content is located closer to the web surfer. It’s an approach not unlike that of older rival Akamai Technologies , but CloudFlare uses a freemium model: A free basic plan promises sites speed tweaks and protection. Paid options serve up faster performance and deeper security features. As Prince likes to point out, his little startup now signs up as many as 5,000 new users a day, roughly the size of Akamai’s entire client base.

Fortune

 

Retrofitting Vending Machines for Mobile Payments

To boost sales at vending machines among consumers who rely largely on credit cards, PayRange’s USB-size Bluetooth-enabled device can retrofit a cash-operated machine to accept payments via the company’s smartphone app

A “Beautiful” Internet

Marchetti sought to bring the exclusive world of luxury and the highly accessible world of e-commerce together. Before his plan could succeed, he had to achieve the impossible: Convince tech-averse luxury designers to trust him with their storied brands.

You could say that he has succeeded. Today, Yoox is a $605 million business. The Italian company designs and operates online stores for 37 luxury brands, including Armani, Alexander McQueen, and Brunello Cucinelli. Yoox handles merchandising, digital production, packaging, and delivery on behalf of its clients, in essence becoming a one-stop-shop for luxury brands just now trying to understand online sales.

Fortune

How do you pronounce it …check out the video

 

The Chicago commute evolves

On a trip to Chicago this week, I tried different modes available to get around the city, and was impressed how an already efficient commute continues to evolve with technology

The Chicago Transit Authority data (schedules, routes etc) is available via a wide variety of third party apps

More taxis (though not as many as in New York city) have digital displays and are taking electronic payments

Buses have become much more digital and much more pleasant to ride as I wrote here

Finally, the Watertaxi has become a nice form of getting around at least some parts of the town