via chrisbrogan.com
The HTC Rhyme
The HTC Rhyme is something of a delicate matter, as it is HTC's firstphone that is said to have been designed with a female audience in mind. Yet it comes in dull colours and looks quite a lot like every other HTC handset we’ve seen so far.
PENTAX Q-REVIEW
Let’s get one thing straight from the start. The Pentax Q is quite an incredible camera to behold. It’s tiny. But not only is it tiny, it also looks great.
NIKON 1 V1
Nikon has announced two new compact system cameras: the Nikon 1 V1 and the Nikon 1 J1. We got our hands on both new cameras today, so until we can bring you our Nikon 1 V1 review
The ULTra Personal Rapid Transit System
"Think of it as a horizontal lift," says Fraser Brown, managing director of ULTra, the company that has built a new way to travel to Heathrow Terminal 5 from the business car park
THREE MIFI HSPA
Three has updated its MiFi range with the new Huawei E586 complete with HSPA+, and we have managed to get our hands on one to test out all its mobile internet goodness
Friday, March 25, 2011
Sword & Sworcery: The Most Anticipated iPad Game You've Never Heard Of
Nostalgia runs deep in today’s indie game development scene, from Minecraft’s blocky textures to the old school platformer escapades of Super Meat Boy. And when a developer combines those comforting “jaggies” with a new and truly unique experience, that’s when gamers begin to drool.
This recipe is what first drew us to Sword & Sworcery, a forthcoming iOS adventure game from Superbrothers, an “ambiguously pluralized art and design organization in Toronto.” The project was made in conjunction with Capy, a Toronto-based game studio.
But we didn’t discover it on some indie gaming message board or an insider blog. It emerged from the ether on a handful of cryptic tweets — little updates emanating from those in the know who were already enjoying an advanced release.
So what is Sword & Sworcery? Good question.
On its face, the game looks like an homage to those early Sierra Entertainment titles, where you guide your pixelated hero via text commands. Mix that aesthetic with some Legend of Zelda-style questing, a dose of humor, and a tactile control scheme made especially for the iPad, and you’re getting closer to what S&S is all about. Throw in a dynamic ambient music system, optional Twitter integration, and some sweet arcade style combat, and you’re almost there.
Confused yet? We were too. Luckily, the game’s creator/artist/animator Craig D. Adams came to our aid with some insights into Sworcery’s development and upcoming release.
via mashable.com
Sword & Sworcery: The Most Anticipated iPad Game You've Never Heard Of
This recipe is what first drew us to Sword & Sworcery, a forthcoming iOS adventure game from Superbrothers, an “ambiguously pluralized art and design organization in Toronto.” The project was made in conjunction with Capy, a Toronto-based game studio.
But we didn’t discover it on some indie gaming message board or an insider blog. It emerged from the ether on a handful of cryptic tweets — little updates emanating from those in the know who were already enjoying an advanced release.
So what is Sword & Sworcery? Good question.
On its face, the game looks like an homage to those early Sierra Entertainment titles, where you guide your pixelated hero via text commands. Mix that aesthetic with some Legend of Zelda-style questing, a dose of humor, and a tactile control scheme made especially for the iPad, and you’re getting closer to what S&S is all about. Throw in a dynamic ambient music system, optional Twitter integration, and some sweet arcade style combat, and you’re almost there.
Confused yet? We were too. Luckily, the game’s creator/artist/animator Craig D. Adams came to our aid with some insights into Sworcery’s development and upcoming release.
via mashable.com
Search Is Google’s Castle, Everything Else Is A Moat
Google is moving in many directions—mobile, browsers, productivity apps, operating systems, social. At first glance, it may seem like it is trying ever so hard to move beyond its giant one-trick pony: search. What people keep forgetting is that it is a pretty good trick. Benchmark Capital VC Bill Gurley reminds us how good this trick is in an excellent post that looks at Google’s market expansion strategy not as one of a series of aggressive offensives, but rather a highly defensive strategy.
Warren Buffet famously describes the best businesses as “economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats.’” Search is Google’s economic castle (perhaps with other forms of online advertising such as display thrown in there), and everything else is a moat trying to protect that castle. Android is a moat. The Chrome browser is a moat. The Chrome OS is a moat. Google Apps is a moat. These are all free products, subsidized by search profits, that are intended to protect the economic castle that is search.
Gurley goes further and says not only does Google build moats around itself, but then it scorches the earth surrounding the moat:
So here is the kicker. Android, as well as Chrome and Chrome OS for that matter, are not “products” in the classic business sense. They have no plan to become their own “economic castles.” Rather they are very expensive and very aggressive “moats,” funded by the height and magnitude of Google’s castle. Google’s aim is defensive not offensive. They are not trying to make a profit on Android or Chrome. They want to take any layer that lives between themselves and the consumer and make it free (or even less than free). Because these layers are basically software products with no variable costs, this is a very viable defensive strategy. In essence, they are not just building a moat; Google is also scorching the earth for 250 miles around the outside of the castle to ensure no one can approach it. And best I can tell, they are doing a damn good job of it.
Remember, what is the default search engine of Android and Chrome? It’s Google. Android and Chrome are merely distribution nodes feeding into search. Without Android, Google would be more vulnerable to becoming displaced as the default search engine on mobile phones. The Chrome browser similarly keeps Google search front and center, just in case Firefox ever decides to go with Bing.
But the way that Google creates its moats, ravages the industries it enters because it offers it products for free or less than free. Carriers and cell phone manufacturers actually have an economic incentive to use Android. Google is essentially paying them to adopt it.
So don’t measure the success of Google’s new businesses by how much revenue or profit they generate directly. Measure it by how much they shore up Google’s core search business.
via techcrunch.com
Self-strengthening nanocomposite gets stronger from repeated stress | KurzweilAI
Researchers at Rice University have created a synthetic material that gets stronger from repeated stress, much like the body strengthens bones and muscles after repeated workouts, says Pulickel Ajayan, professor of mechanical engineering, materials science, and chemistry.
The researchers tested the high-cycle fatigue properties of a polymer-based nanocomposite with carbon nanotube fillers by infiltrating a forest of vertically aligned, multiwalled nanotubes with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), an inert, rubbery polymer. Repeatedly stressing the material didn’t seem to damage it, but instead made it stiffer.
They used dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) to test the material. They found that after 3.5 million compressions (five per second) over about a week’s time, the stiffness of the composite had increased by 12 percent and showed the potential for even further improvement.
Their work appears March in the journal ACS Nano.
via kurzweilai.net
7 Tips for Launching a Successful Podcast
Brian Casel is a web designer and co-host of Freelance Jam, the live web show for independent professionals who build the web. Connect with Brian on Twitter @CasJam.
Podcasts are among the oldest types of syndicated content on the web. Yet the format remains a popular choice among content producers looking to connect with a wide audience. Audio podcasts were the norm for many years, but video has taken the podcasting world to new heights.
In this article, I’ll to walk you through the steps necessary to ensure your video podcast gets off to a great start. We’ll cover everything from conception to technical set up, promotion, and monetization. Every podcast is different, but this guide should help you navigate your way through the process and hopefully spark some broadcasting inspiration.
1. Choose a Topic You’re Passionate About
Before you hit record, it’s a good idea to give serious thought to why you’re starting this podcast in the first place. And don’t take this step lightly! Starting a podcast takes a lot of hard work (maybe more than you think). Not everybody is cut out for it. But we’ll assume that you are.
A good starting point is to figure out which topic you can talk about naturally and endlessly. Your true passion. We all have one. What’s yours? A good measure is to do a test show with no notes or preparation whatsoever. Can you fill 30 to 60 minutes just talking about your topic off the top of your head and make it interesting? Good! You found your topic.
Now, search iTunes for other podcasts in your niche. Did you choose a crowded niche with many existing podcasts? Try to think of ways to differentiate your show from theirs. For example, you can choose a sub-niche with a more targeted audience.
2. Brand Your Podcast
Now that you’ve chosen your topic, it’s time to start crafting your podcast. Just like creating products or services, your podcast is its own brand. Branding your podcast starts with choosing a good name.
Pick something that is both memorable and speaks to your topic/audience. It’s my opinion that direct, descriptive names work better than abstract or overly creative names. Before you can hook your audience with your killer smile and groundbreaking content, you’ll need them to tune in. That’s why your podcast name needs to jump out and grab them. Remember that much of your audience will be discovering your podcast via iTunes or Google search. So it’s a good idea to include a keyword or two within your show’s name.
Next, you’ll need a logo. For a podcast, it’s important to come up with an attention grabbing logo and a show image for your iTunes listing. Again, it’s about crafting your brand to stand out in iTunes podcast search results.
3. Format and Structure
Will this be an audio or video podcast? It’s my belief that video podcasts have an easier time gaining traction with an audience simply because they are more personal. Aside from offering valuable content, you’re selling your personality, and video is the most effective and authentic way to do that. It’s a good idea to offer an audio-only version of the podcast for those who prefer to listen and don’t want to download bulky video files.
Now we need to structure the show. Let’s start with your schedule. Once a week? Once a month? Whatever schedule you choose, be sure to keep it consistent. A quick way to lose audience members is to release a show four weeks in a row, then go on hiatus for several months. People appreciate a regular schedule, and even a regular day of the week.
Finally, you need to choose your show length. Break it down into segments and allot a certain amount of time to each segment. I believe 30 to 50 minutes is a good length for an episode as it’s long enough to pack in quality, in-depth conversation, and short enough to fit within the typical work commute. Some prefer quick episodes of under 20 minutes each. Again, consistency is key. You don’t want to set your audience’s expectation for 45 minute episodes, then do a 15 minute episode.
4. Plan Your Content
Now it’s time to map out the most important aspect of your podcast, the content. Podcasts are no exception to the adage “content is king.” Your topics, conversation flow, personality, and overall engagement are what will ultimately determine the success of your podcast.
It’s a good idea to keep a running list of show topics. As soon as an idea strikes, note it down and plan it for an upcoming show. One way my co-host Dave and I come up with topics is to simply recognize when we stumble upon a great topic for a show. We’ll be having a spontaneous chat, talking shop about freelancing and web design, when suddenly it’s apparent we’ve hit on something interesting and relevant for the show. Write it down.
Some podcasts break each episode into segments. If your niche is somehow tied to current events, it may be a good idea to cover news topics as part of your show. Perhaps a guest interview is a main component in your format. Plan for each of these segments and keep in mind the timing and flow of each.
Finally, it’s beneficial to think about some kind of script for your show. This will be different for everyone. My preference is to have a few sentences written out beforehand to use as the introduction to the show; something to get it off to a strong start and introduce the topic and guest properly. The rest of the show’s topics are planned using short bullet lists indicating which points I want to hit on.
The idea is to make sure I’m covering what I want to cover, while keeping the delivery natural and somewhat improvised. Again, it’s up to you to find the right balance.
5. Record, Broadcast, and Edit Your Podcast
via mashable.com
MySpace’s death spiral: insiders say it’s due to bets on Los Angeles and Microsoft — Scobleizer
I’ve been watching the death spiral MySpace is in for a while. Back in December I interviewed CEO Mike Jones onstage at LeWeb. Back then I thought maybe MySpace could pull it out, but since then I’ve learned the MySpace “plane” that’s in a death spiral has increased its velocity — in the wrong direction.
Since talking with Mike in December I’ve been asking people involved what went wrong and two common themes have evolved:
1. Their bet on Microsoft technology doomed them for a variety of reasons.
2. Their bet on Los Angeles accentuated the problems with betting on Microsoft.Let me explain.
The problem was, as Myspace started losing to Facebook, they knew they needed to make major changes. But they didn’t have the programming talent to really make huge changes and the infrastructure they bet on made it both tougher to change, because it isn’t set up to do the scale of 100 million users it needed to, and tougher to hire really great entrepreneurial programmers who could rebuild the site to do interesting stuff.
Here, let’s go back and watch the video with YFrog’s CEO, Jack Levin. He was one of Google’s first infrastructure employees. Now, consider that Silicon Valley has lots of talent like him. Think about the technology he knows. Hint, it isn’t Microsoft. Microsoft’s technology just isn’t used by many serious web companies that I know. Stack Exchange and PlentyOfFish are two notable exceptions and neither is located in Silicon Valley and they hardly are companies with the scale of MySpace used to have (more than 50 million users).
Workers inside MySpace tell me that this infrastructure, which they say has “hundreds of hacks to make it scale that no one wants to touch” is hamstringing their ability to really compete.
For instance, I asked why MySpace didn’t really do anything great with all the Facebook likes I’ve put into that system (that’s a new feature MySpace added late last year, but it doesn’t seem to work very well). Or, when I asked Mike about how he was going to do something like Aweditorium did, he didn’t have a good answer. They answered with the cameras off: they can’t change their technology to really make new features work or make dramatically new experiences like the one that Aweditorium brought to the iPad. And now that they have laid off a lot of people morale is down and hiring is very tough for them, they tell me.
Which gets me to the Los Angeles issue. There just aren’t “web scale” companies down in Los Angeles, and because Los Angeles is such a large place — it can take hours to drive across the city — there isn’t a single neighborhood that has built up a good talent base, the way Palo Alto or South of Market in San Francisco has.
This bet on Los Angeles doomed MySpace when Facebook came along. Facebook has hired tons of talent from Google and other companies. This expertise helped Facebook not only keep up with scale, but add new features. Just today the QA team at Facebook shipped a cool new feature.
In Silicon Valley company managers, investors, and others have noticed these two things and are actively betting against both. This will make it tough for Microsoft to get its cloud computing strategy to work and will be tough for tech companies (and money) to locate in Los Angeles. It wasn’t lost on me that yesterday when I was at Y Combinator several of the folks involved there bragged that Ashton Kutcher visited the headquarters a few weeks ago.
I remember back when I worked at Microsoft that folks in the evangelism department bragged that they got MySpace to switch to Microsoft technologies like ASP.NET (MySpace used to be on ColdFusion which was an even worse technology bet and was creaking all over the place). Facebook, meanwhile, had made bets on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and that let them hire quicker and find people who knew how to scale that stuff up big time.
Interesting lessons to watch. What decisions has your company made to accelerate innovation or doom it?
-->
via scobleizer.com
Thursday, March 24, 2011
AidSlut « Tales From the Hood
AidSlut
23 Mar
You know what? Weeks like this one really make me feel dirty.
You wanna know why? Well, in a word, Japan.
Okay, it takes more than one word. I have nothing against Japan per se. Here’s my issue: The Japan Earthquake-and-subsequent-tsunami emergency response fundraising CF.
I don’t know a single actual aid worker who is in favor of mounting an international disaster response effort in Japan. And I’m not just saying that – we do talk to each other, across agency lines, about this kind of thing. But I know scores of marketers and fundraisers and donor reps who have spent the past week + with humanitarian blue-ball syndrome over the revenue potential of this spectacularly dramatic high-visibility disaster.
Not that aid workers know everything. But just so that we’re all clear:
Those who actually make their livings designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating humanitarian aid interventions say that a relief effort in Japan is somewhere between unnecessary and a bad idea. But…
We’re all still fundraising. “Our donors expect us to respond…” says the marketing department. Right – so this is all about the donors, then, is it?
Japan itself has said – repeatedly – that it wants only very specific kinds of support (search and rescue dog teams, for example, in the initial days), and in very limited quantities. This is one of the wealthiest, most technologically savvy, and generally most well-organized countries on the planet. Japan is a major contributor to disaster response in other countries through institutional donors like JICA and a full array of locally based HRI-affiliates. Japanese NGOs have valiantly tried to resist to onslaught of Western good will, but against all rational logic, we’ve insisted on “helping.”
Humanitarian aid is not broken so much as it has been prostituted. Despite the good that truly does get accomplished, accomplishing good is increasingly a back room function, a by-product of the industry’s core purpose which increasingly appears to be revenue-generation.
Japan is only the most recent example, but it’s a poignant one. I’m not even up-to-date on the statistics (too busy ranting), but last I read it was something like half a million people fleeing Abijan, but no one knows or seems to care. The poorest country on the Arabian peninsula – Yemen – is about to totally melt down, and when it does there will be massive and widespread humanitarian need. Don’t even get me started on eastern DR Congo and it’s unfathomably high average of something like 10,000 women raped per year since 2001. Or my old favorite – Afghanistan and the seeming impossibility of scraping together a few measly tens of thousands of USD for disaster risk reduction. Real humanitarian need, for all practical purposes being ignored. “We can’t raise money for conflicts”, say the marketing departments.
And yet the good-hearted people of America have become convinced that the country which gives us Toyota, Nikon, Playstation III, that came very close to kicking our asses in WWII, and that almost owns us economically as it is, is somehow in dire need of our $10 donations (and apparently socks).
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
I swear. Some days we’re such AidSluts.
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Tags: accountability, Japan, ranting, WTF?
- Comments 10 Comments
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- Author J.
If Movie Posters Were Honest
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via cracked.com
Google Chrome's Experimental New Tab Page for Touch Screens
10 comments:
- gab_gagnon said...
It looks like the LaunchPad in Mac OS X Lion...
- March 20, 2011 10:02 AM
- Prashant Rohilla said...
Its good, but i would like a bit Icon Effect on this!
- March 20, 2011 11:49 AM
- Andy L said...
Great feature. Very, very useful!
- March 20, 2011 12:24 PM
- David Knowles said...
Looks cool. Hopefully they will bring back pages to the tab page through.
Could this be the first part of the merge between Android and Chrome. After all I have forgotten the amount of times Google themselves have said chrome is for Keyboard devices and not tablets and yet they go and developed a touch interface for chrome . This interface seem contrary to that statement. But we also know in the long term Google plans to merge the two OSes I do wonder if this is the beginning of that long term goal.
- March 20, 2011 5:34 PM
- Matt said...
Eric Schmidt said that Android is for touch screens and Chrome is for devices with Keybaords but now Larry is in charge !
- March 20, 2011 6:12 PM
- bwims said...
When is a chrome browser coming out for Android?
- March 21, 2011 4:50 AM
- David Knowles said...
"bwims said...
When is a chrome browser coming out for Android?"Honeycomb looks a lot like it Chrome, at least heavily base on chrome. I guesting much of the code is the same save for the Hardware rendering elements.
- March 21, 2011 6:43 AM
- Rakesh Kumar said...
Well I'll be happy to see chrome browser for my android device. when it will come?
- March 22, 2011 3:28 AM
- modeyeu said...
- March 22, 2011 7:30 AM
- Ultra Berry Slim said...
Well I'll be happy to see chrome browser for my android device. When it will come?
- March 23, 2011 4:44 AM
A Tale of Two Future Net TVs, From Apple and Microsoft | Fast Company
Recent moves by two of the biggest names in tech may be shedding light on their plans for digitally connected televisions. Can Apple and Microsoft succeed where Google and Yahoo have already been?
Microsoft's interactive TV business
Microsoft's Tom Gibbons, a member of the Windows Phone team since 2009, and previously head of Microsoft Hardware business (makers of some very successful keyboards and mice) has recently been repurposed. His job title inside MS is now "corporate vice president of TV and Service Business within Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business." His responsibilities include "driving subscriptions usage and global partnerships" for this business unit, using the fact that he's "experienced in hardware, software and consumer product development."
Gibbons is, to put it bluntly, a hardware guy. While at the Windows Phone team, he's reported to have led the group that came up with the hardware reference designs for Win Phone 7 handsets--and his experience at the Hardware business unit speaks for itself.
All of this has the tech world pondering one question: Is Microsoft planning an assault on the Net-connected TV game? There have been rumors about this since late last year, and the fact that the company's been making some success with its Xbox content interface and Media Center systems certainly adds to the intrigue.
Apple's AirPlay licensing deal
Meanwhile, Apple may be planning to license its AirPlay technology to "electronics makers" that could use it to stream movies, TV content, and user-recorded video into TV sets directly, without needing a connected Mac or wired-up iPad, according to Bloomberg. At the moment, Apple only licenses its technology to connected device makers for streaming audio, not video, and collects a $4 licensing fee from every audio product sold.
Expanding that license to video-connected devices would enable Apple to reap a huge new revenue stream. TV makers will be keen to incorporate the Apple tech for a number of reasons: TV makers know Apple's iPad and iPhone are hot sellers, and they are powerful systems for collecting video content that's recorded by users or downloaded or streamed through services like Netflix. By advertising their TV sets as "Apple AirPlay ready" TV makers could easily attract more clients, and probably charge a slight premium.
The system would sidestep the existing Apple TV project, which Apple still deems to be a mere "hobby," but it would get Apple-specific technology into millions upon millions more devices, which could turn into an incredibly useful ecosystem for Apple to promote its future media plans for music, TV, and video. Plus, with video streaming enabled in the right way, it could be a vehicle for Apple to get its thousands of iOS games onto the big screen in people's homes--with iPhones or iPads as sensor-equipped games controllers. Apple's already made small moves in this direction with its HDMI connection kit for the iPad 2.
Above all else, if these devices do start arriving on the market by the end of this year, as the insiders promise, it could put to rest the "Apple is making a TV" rumors that have swirled for years.
A tale of two TVs
So we have Microsoft possibly gearing up to inject its software, hardware, and computing know-how into a real physical TV, and Apple potentially licensing its tech to third-party TV makers to place its iOS technology at the heart of the entertainment system of many consumers who own an iPhone or iPad.
Google and Yahoo have already made plays for their own versions of Net-connected TVs, but neither has quite the long, legendary experience in the hardware market that Microsoft has. Recent rumors suggest some TV makers have deemed Google's offering as unsuccessful and see Android as a simpler UI for the system. Meanwhile, Yahoo's Connected TV is said by some to be successful, but it's recently had to delay the widget store that offers access to third-party apps. And, circumstantially, how many folks do you know who have a Yahoo TV?
To read more news like this, follow Fast Company on Twitter: Click here.
via fastcompany.com
Does Google's Magazine Make It a Media Company? | Fast Company
Is Google a media company after all? David Carr, MediaBistro, and others think so. The most recent piece of evidence in the effort to out Google as a media giant in search (and advertising) monster's clothing is a magazine that has been "quietly" launched in the U.K. this week.
The magazine, called Think Quarterly, has chosen "data" to be the subject of its first themed issue. The issue, which you can see online here, is elegantly designed by a group called "The Church of London." There's a visual history of data capture, a look at the top ten places for "sexy" data online, and an interview with Google's chief economist Hal Varian--the same Hal Varian who recently protested to Carr, for his New York Times column, “We are in the business of media distribution, but I don’t think that we would be very good at media creation...I think it’s one thing that we have astutely avoided in the last 12 years...the media business is a tough business.”
Now that Varian has been caught red-handed, granting an exclusive interview to a Google-produced magazine, has he disproven himself?
Not quite. The magazine, with its elaborate design and intriguing articles, is high quality, and is technically available to anyone with an internet connection. But it can't really be said to be a huge media gambit--nothing, certainly, on the order of, say, acquiring Next New Networks. The print edition of the magazine isn't exactly something you'll be seeing on the newsstands of Picadilly Circus. ("Morning, mate. I'll have a copy of The Daily Mirror--no, no, scratch that, make it a copy of Think Quarterly.") The print magazine, in fact, had a very limited, and very targeted, run. A Google spokesperson in the U.K. tells Fast Company: "Like most companies we regularly communicate with our business customers via email newsletters, updates on our official blogs, and printed materials. This short book about data was sent to 1,500 of our U.K. partners and advertisers. There are only a limited number of copies, and they aren’t for sale or designed for anyone other than our partners."
Google may--or may not--be becoming a media company. As of now, Think Quarterly isn't the most compelling bit of evidence to marshall when making the case that it is. It's really just a marketing document.
Follow Fast Company on Twitter.
Read More: Most Innovative Companies: Google
via fastcompany.com
Leadership Hall of Fame: Richard Florida, Author of "The Rise of the Creative Class" | Fast Company
What was the impetus for you to write The Rise of the Creative Class?
I'd been a professor and been interested in cities all my life. Since I was a little boy growing up in New Jersey, watching Newark decline. I saw the racial riots--they really troubled me. I was interested in why this city where my dad worked in a factory; the factory closed; the neighborhood we lived in went up in flames; there were tanks, armor vehicles on the street and the National Guard. I think that had a big impact on me.
When I was looking at college I gravitated toward urban planning and cities. And I worked in this field as a pretty conventional urban planner: economic development, understanding why cities grow, looking at investment flows, business location decisions, the use of tax incentives to move companies. About this time I began to see a shift, not only in the landscape of business, but in what people want in their cities.
I was talking to my students at Carnegie Mellon. And they kept telling me, "It's not just that we're picking a job; we're picking a place to live." It became clear to me that the whole field of economic development and urban planning had tilted away from reality. I was seeing these trends happening and I said, "I have to write this book." What people want from a city and what is driving a city economy is very different than what I had learned. I wrote it because I was trying to talk honestly and candidly about these changes I was seeing in society, that people were telling me about, that I was seeing in the data. It didn't seem like my field was really up to talking about it.
Why do you think the book was so successful and resonated with the business world?
I was surprised and what people told me afterward was, "I read the book and it sort of explained me and explained my city." So I think it touched people in a very personal way--that's very odd for me, because I am writing as an academic: looking at the trends, using data, and the book is dense, filled with tables and charts. People also resonated with it because it helped them explain, not only their own personal lives, but the challenges their cities were facing.
Now the environment is so much better. But back then many cities were much more constipated, they didn't reach out to artists, they were not really welcome to ethnically diverse groups of people or the gay and lesbian population. And those people really felt their cities didn't really recognize their talents and capabilities and they were kind of an invisible Leadership in their cities. They were building business, they were creating companies, they were building nonprofits, and they were trying to making their neighborhoods better. One man said, "As artists and creative people, what you did is give us a seat at the table."
What does it mean to be part of the creative class today?
I really believe we have to put the word Class back on the table. I really believe the rise of a class that works with its mind and its creativity provides a lot of power to understand the social changes and social challenges we are going through. I offer this as a lens through which to not only view the potential growth of our economy, but the potential divide. And what really worries me is that the divides I pointed to in Rise of the Creative Class and the divides I pointed to as potentially occurring have become much more significant. And those divides are fundamentally class divides in our society--I wrote about them in subsequent books, such as Flight of the Creative Class.
What I have said in my books--which has been my core message and the mission of my life--is to harness the creativity that lies deep within each human being. Progress will not happen without harnessing the third of us that work in the creative class: scientists, techies, artists, musicians, professionals, people working in medicine and education. I think as we grow, the cities that will become the most competitive and prosperous, the nations that become the most sustainable, will be the ones that finally look and see the creativity that lies within everyone.
If we are going to solve the job problem we face, we are not going to solve it by putting more people in the creative class--that's a third--we are not going to bring back manufacturing--that's 10 to 20%. It's the service jobs--45% of our workforce, 60+ million people working in routine service jobs like home health care aids, retail sales, food preparation--that we need to make better and turn into creative jobs.
Where is the creative class congregating now?
As economies develop you get a bigger division of labor, not only in industry, but in geography. It's becoming more and more concentrated, but it has become so oppressively expensive to live in a place like London or New York or San Francisco. I said in the book, that if people in the great Midwest and Rust Belt cities, Pittsburgh and Cleveland and Buffalo, if the leadership would wake up and recognize the incredible asset they have of industrial architecture, this incredible place of authenticity and realism, that people would enjoy being there. They were leaving not because they didn't like it, but because they couldn't be themselves there.
I think one of the things, and a lot of people don't give me credit for this, one of the greatest things I have seen since I wrote Rise is the beginnings of the transformation in the Rust Belt. These cities are now recognizing the value of artists and culturally creative people, of embracing diversity, of embracing new immigrants, of embracing gay and lesbian communities. That's what I saw happening in Chicago and Toronto.
What really strikes me is the enormous success of college towns. When I wrote Rise you could see the rise of Austin, Texas. Consider the South by Southwest festival, what it is was then and what it is now. A couple of years later we could see in our data the rise of Boulder, Colorado and it's now one of the leading places for startups. The place at the top of our metrics now is Ann Arbor, Michigan. Here's a city that's in the shadow of Detroit, which many people are saying is collapsing and decaying. It's a large college town that has everything in common with Palo Alto, or Boulder, or Austin. We can add to the college town list Ithaca, New York or Madison, Wisconsin.
The Rust Belt and the Sun Belt division no longer explains the patterns that we see. There are certain cities in the Frost Belt that are growing and others declining. In the Sun Belt there are probably more declining than growing.
How has the writing process changed for you, from Rise to your recent book The Great Reset?
I have gotten better--I hope the audience thinks that. For me writing Rise of the Creative Class was very, very hard. I had to write it three or four times. Because I didn't start with a theme; I started with describing trends and changes I saw in society. Now I write more. Becoming a blogger and using social media has helped me. In the old days you wrote an occasional op-ed, an occasional academic paper, and you wrote a book. Now I write every day.
I see myself more as a writer. I see my ability to write about new ideas. I tried to really emphasize those skills, to support my other skills like management and administration. Writing has become more efficient and easier. And maybe I am less scared of it. Before, it was hard to get my thoughts on the page. I think academic life kills good writing habits. It may be important for peer-reviewed journals, but it doesn't translate readily into something an average person can understand. Before when I was writing a book, it was coming out as an academic text. So I had to translate it into this other language called "Real People." Now it's easier for me to switch between modes and write in a way that I hope conveys my ideas in a less stilted way. I have become more comfortable writing in a conversational style. Public speaking comes much easier for me and I've learned to try to write much more like how I speak and not be afraid of that.
What makes a good business book stands out?
I don't know. I think what makes any book a good book is that you need to have a subject that touches people in a conceptual way and in a heartfelt way; touches people's minds, brains, and their souls. And no one knows what that is going to be in advance. I think you need a strong narrative. Most academics don't understand that. And most business writers don't understand that. A strong narrative is hard to get, unless you are Michael Lewis or Malcolm Gladwell. It's really finding a construct that touches people's heads and their hearts--but that's true of any book. I didn't think of Rise as a business book. I thought of it as a book with big concepts that had appeal to a broad group of people. And that's what makes a good business book. The old idea of a business book only appealing to business men has broken down.
What are your three favorite business books?
I have so many favorite books, but there are three people that really influenced me. The first and most important is Jane Jacobs and her book The Economy of Cities, which I think everyone who works in business has to read. What the farm and agricultural land was for our first great American economy, what the industrial company was to the great Industrial age, what the Great American corporation was to our economy, the city is now the social and economic organizing unit of our time. If you want to understand how to be successful as a business, you have to understand not only your company, but your city that you live in.
The second one is someone who equally influenced me is Peter Drucker. InPost-Capitalist Society Drucker brought together some of his best writings on the knowledge economy, the information economy, how to motivate knowledge workers. My work hopes to be a synthesis of Jacobs and Drucker. The third book is by the great sociologist Daniel Bell, called the The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. He had been a journalist and had become a professor and was chronicling the changes that he saw. He was one of the first people, like Drucker, to look at the rise of more knowledge-driven, more technocratic, more meritocratic capitalism. I think anyone who wants to understand the time we live in that those three are the most important to read.
Business books have become more topical, more about puzzles and interesting questions. The business books I loved were the ones that looked at these big issues of economic and social development. I think that's where my works tries to be. There aren't a lot of us doing it anymore. People are doing more of a Freakonomics and a Tipping Point thing--and that's phenomenal and people love it. But I see myself much more in the tradition of Jacobs, Bell, and Drucker--trying to understand the broad trends in the evolution of capitalism.
Richard Florida is the author of The Rise of the Creative Class... And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (Basic Books).
Read more about The Rise of the Creative Class or our Leadership Hall of Fame.
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The Location of Every Single Nuclear Plant in the World | Fast Company
As the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis slowly comes under control, global attention is turning to broader existential questions about nuclear power. Despite providing 6% of the world's power without emissions and fatalities from their nuclear facilities, countries like Germany and China have announced slow-downs to their nuclear programs, and other countries may soon follow.
How is this going to affect nuclear power around the world? If we wanted to turn off all the nuclear plants, how easy would it be? New Scientist, using the World Nuclear Association's Reactor Database, has made this helpful interactive map of the world's nuclear power plants (minus a few in South America and South Africa). The colors of the dots represent different types of plants.
France, as you can see, is operating more than 50 reactors, which makes sense: it gets 39% of its total power output from nuclear. The U.S., for comparison, gets just 9% of its energy from its more than 70 reactors.
The map also shows nuclear plants currently under construction, which gives a good sense of the countries that have, up to this point, been investing in nuclear power. The U.S. is working on just one nuclear project currently, a second reactor at the already operational Watts Bar power plant in Tennessee. Russia has four under construction; India has five. But China, despite its new hesitation, takes the lead with nine reactors under construction.
Fears of a Fukushima repeat--or worse--aside, there is a lot of emissions-free power coming from nuclear power plants, and a lot of money being invested in building more, probably too much for them to simply go away. If, after the last two weeks, you're very frightened of living close to one, use this map to avoid them.
[Image from Flickr user Paul J. Everett]
Read more coverage of the Japan earthquake.
via fastcompany.com
OMG, FYI, and LOL enter Oxford English Dictionary, foreshadow the apocalypse -- Engadget
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Lockheed Martin shows off Orion spacecraft, new secret lair -- Engadget
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iRobot debuts 'throwable' 110 FirstLook robot -- Engadget
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How the Web Has Changed Our Perception of Copyright Law
Kaiser Wahab is a Media, Venture, and Tech Attorney at the NY firm of Wahab & Medenica, who loves to counsel a biz with something to say and thanks his intern, Lauren Mack, for her work on this piece. Read more on his blog or follow him on Twitter @BizMediaLaw.
There is no doubt that in 2011, copyright law isn’t what it was in 1976. The web (and mobile) have all forced the aging statute to evolve in ways that were never anticipated in a world of digital everything.
Only late last year, the Obama administration began the potential reform process via an inquiry into the government’s stance on copyright on the net, and an end result is still years to come.
While legislation stagnates, a new, aggressive approach to enforcing the 34-year-old law against online infringement by private and government interests is pushing the judicial envelope to fill the void. Here’s what it means, and some new tactics used to enforce copyright.
1. Factory Style Suits vs. Thousands of Jane & John Does
The real issue for copyright in file sharing suits is one of enforcement (i.e. content creators filing claims against individual defendants — each with their own filing fees, subpoenas, paperwork, and findings of fact — is a patently unsustainable method of fighting infringement). Recognizing the RIAA’s fatal flaw in filing suit against individual music infringers, the film industry is trying a new tactic and the Hurt Locker lawsuits are prime examples.
Filed by the ominously named “U.S. Copyright Group Law” firm on behalf of the producers, these suits targeted thousands of bittorrent downloaders. The original suit laid out nearly 5,000 IPs, without one name-identified party. Even the RIAA hand picked candidates whose identity was tracked down prior to suit. Moreover, since the Hurt Locker suits are being filed against “anon” users, the Copyright Group has subpoenaed ISPs in order to discover true identities.
These factory lawsuits have forced the courts to address several very problematic issues, such as:
- Whether courts should entertain suits against thousands of defendants that are vastly dispersed geographically.
- Whether courts have the tools/authority to force others (e.g. ISPs) to reveal the identities of thousands of defendants.
- Whether courts may join thousands of defendants in a single suit despite vastly different facts for each one.
- The size of monetary damage awards. For now, the courts’ disposition on these bread and butter procedural issues will really shape copyright to come.
A snapshot of early holdings on these issues:
Joinder. While some courts are still grappling with the issue, at least one has taken a stand against mass joinder. Judge Bailey of the Northern District of West Virginia severed 7,097 defendants in a prime mass porn infringer suit over “Batman XXX: A Porn Parody.”
User Identities. Once a single defendant is named, the plaintiff’s request for other user identities may be given greater weight than third-party user privacy. In Sony’s case against George Hotz, who showed users how to jailbreak their Playstation 3, the judge allowed Sony to subpoena Google and the web host for the usernames and IP addresses of all commenters on Hotz’s YouTube video demonstration and all users who accessed Hotz’s website since January 2009. Privacy advocates were shocked by the deference given Sony, who asserted the information was crucial to satisfying jurisdiction standards and proving actual distribution.
Damages. Since copyright holders are suing more individuals who do not profit from infringement, there is a movement to lower statutory damage awards. The Copyright Act allows for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement, but in two music downloading cases that made it to trial (Tenenbaum and Thomas-Rasset), both judges reduced awards of $80,000 and $22,500 per work to $2,250 per work.
Although statutory damages may apply when actual damages are difficult to gauge, the judge in Thomas-Rasset’s case wrote they must have “some relation to actual damages.” He went on to state deterrence alone could not justify bloated awards when the infringement was simply about free music. Juries may not be getting the hint however, as the jury in Thomas-Rasset’s third trial awarded plaintiffs $62,500 per song.
Let the Government Do It
Not to be seen as out of touch with content creators, the federal government has spurred its agencies into taking an unprecedented, active role in copyright enforcement. Hence, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security began obtaining warrants to shut down domain names hosting/linking to infringing content and products last year. The campaign was dubbed — wait for it — “Operation in Our Sites.”
The crackdown raised concerns, due to innocent sites being shut down and lacking due process (notice of seizure warrants are bypassed for expeditiousness). Despite these concerns, the government has taken the position that the violent pace at which the Internet can facilitate infringement demands swift and coordinated enforcement.
Moreover, the government is legislating enforcement solutions outside of copyright law, with the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which was introduced in the Senate last year. Under the bill’s current version, the Attorney General may bring an action against any domain name “dedicated to infringing activities” for a shut down order. COICA critics harbor many of the same fears over ICE’s operations, especially in determining what sites are “dedicated to infringing activities,” a standard which could potentially ensnare Google.
Conclusion
While copyright legislation moves at a glacial pace, copyright enforcement is the battle front du jour, and continues to evolve in bitter lawsuits. Recognizing copyright holders’ uphill battle, the government appears prepared to experiment with aggressive enforcement strategies, at the price of burdening free speech, due process, and fair play.
Until copyright law is legislatively balanced with language and mechanisms to address the Internet’s fast-paced evolution, the rights holders and users will likely continue to joust through inefficient and controversial lawsuits and heavy handed governmental action.
Interested in more Law & Business resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.
Image courtesy of Flickr, seychelles88
via mashable.com
Microsoft readies tool for managing iPads, iPhones and Android devices
Microsoft readies tool for managing iPads, iPhones and Android devices
by Chris Ward (RSS feed) on Mar 24th 2011 at 9:15AM
Just when you thought you were out, Microsoft pulls you back in. The Seattle-based giant is planning on getting its hooks into your iPad and iPhone. Well, sort of.
Microsoft has just announced a first beta of a new piece of management software, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012, which will let users manage iPads and iPhones, as well as Symbian, Android and even Windows Phone 7 devices.
Although few details have been announced, it seems likely that SCCM 2012 will allow corporate IT departments to enforce things like password complexity and security on target devices, wipe them remotely in case of loss or theft and so on. And, while your first impression might be that it's the Borg once again trying to assimilate you, in fact, it's a move that will allow you to use something other than Microsoft devices in a corporate environment.
That in itself might seem like a bad move on Microsoft's part, cannibalizing sales of its own phone and tablet systems, but the company has a long history of reaching out to other platforms. And don't forget that Microsoft's many departments have a fair amount of autonomy when it comes to deciding where products are targeted. The Office division apparently produces a fairly decent bit of software for the Mac, for example, and the Bing team offers iPhone enhancements that won't be available on Windows 7 phones until the end of this year.
Since each division is a separate profit center within the Microsoft Corporation, this is most likely just a case of the System Center team seeing an opportunity to make a buck by providing a feature that customers want.
via tuaw.com
It's a cake, it's Angry Birds, it's an Angry Birds cake - Pocket-lint
24 March 2011 16:14 GMT / By Rik Henderson
It just wouldn't be right if Pocket-lint let a finely crafted Angry Birds cake slip past without presenting it for the whole world to oggle at. After all, it's one of our basic food groups here on the Lint.
And this is one of the finest�specimens�in AB bakery that we've seen to date.
Created to celebrate Croatian radio DJ Tome's (@dj_tome) birthday, and tweeted about on his own Twitter feed, we are especially fond of the added iPhone 4 as the centrepiece to the cake. We bet it got a better reception than usual though (sigh).
You can also check out DJ Tome's day job on either 057 Radio in Croatia every Sunday night (''The Blue Room''), or weekly on LDBK Internet radio station�(''Sound 360''). He also has his own page on music site Mixcloud.com.
As for the cake, it's probably all gone by now. Catapult and all.
- Amongst all the iPad 2 shenanigans, an Angry Birds cake
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<p>And this is one of the finest specimens in AB bakery that we\'ve seen to date.</p>
<p>Created to celebrate Croatian radio DJ Tome\'s (@dj_tome) birthday, and tweeted about on his own Twitter feed, we are especially fond of the added iPhone 4 as the centrepiece to the cake. We bet it got a better reception than usual though (sigh).</p>
<p>You can also check out DJ Tome\'s day job on either 057 Radio in Croatia every Sunday night (\'\'The Blue Room\'\'), or weekly on LDBK Internet radio station (\'\'Sound 360\'\'). He also has his own page on music site Mixcloud.com.</p>
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Full tagsMobile phone apps, Gaming, Angry Birds, Rovio, Angry Birds Cake
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