Capitalogix

Carrot: A Pitch-Perfect Satire of the Tech Industry

This comedy short parodies the type of announcements made by seemingly every start-up in America.

 

It is not hawking a watch or a pair of glasses .... Rather, it is pitching the edible root:

"It's not just a vegetable. It's what a vegetable should be."

 

Well done and funny.  Worth a quick view.

 

 

 

via Introducing Carrot.

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading

Alibaba's IPO debut roared ... and its shares soared 38%. 

 

 

In many ways, the IPO was surprisingly big.

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Can Technology Really Change Your Habits? (FastCompany)
• The 10,000 Hours Myth: Practice Predicts Only 12% of Performance. (Spring)
• The Man Who Created The First Pop-Up Ad Says 'Sorry'. (TheVerge)
• Do Dogs Really Feel Shame and Guilt? (Psychology Today)
• China Says New Supersonic Sub Would Reach San Francisco In 100 Minutes. (Sploid)

 

Trading Links:

• Apple's Secret War Against Samsung is Working. (MacObserver)
• Microsoft Still Doesn't Get Why the iPhone Succeeded. (TUAW)
• The Dark, Disturbing World of the Visa-For-Sale Program. (Fortune)
• U.S. Hikes Fee to Renounce Citizenship By 422%. (Forbes)
• Here's How Much Aid The U.S. Wants To Send Foreign Countries In 2015, and Why. (INFOGRAPHIC)

Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

Gartner Group's latest Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is out. 

Last year, Big Data was at the “peak of inflated expectations.” 

This year, the Internet of Things is at the top of the hype cycle.  

A new entry to the Hype Cycle this year is “data science,” projected to reach the plateau in 2 to 5 years. It’s more a discipline for dealing with big data then a specific technology or set of technologies, so it’s interesting to note that big data is still considered by Gartner to be 5 to 10 years away from reaching that stage.  

 

Source: Gartner, August 2014

Gartner's Hype Cycle Special Report highlights “the four Nexus of Forces (social, mobile, cloud and information),” which were highly correlated with items that had changed most significantly on the peak portion of the Hype Cycle. Two trends Gartner called out especially as having an impact at earlier stages of the Hype Cycle were digital business and the Internet of Things.

The 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies marks the 20^th anniversary of the report.  

 

For more, see this video, which talks about the Hype Cycle as a tool for tracking how innovations and their business impact evolve over time and what is new about the 2014 version.

 

The Monkey Selfie Cannot Be Copyrighted

This monkey took a selfie using a photographer's camera. 

 

 

via Mashable.

It went viral. 

Then the photographer tried to sue to protect the copyright he thought he deserved because it was his camera, his set-up, his planning, etc.

However, the U.S. Copyright Office has settled the recent debate over the so-called monkey selfie, declaring in updated rules that a piece of content produced by an animal can't be registered.

Aren't humans animals?

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading

What's been good for ALS, but bad for your Facebook stream?

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Ask This Small Question To Make Big Changes. (FastCo)
• The Next Twenty Years Are Going to Make This Last Twenty Years Just Pale. (CDixon)
• Hackers reverse-engineer NSA's leaked bugging devices. (NewScientist)
• Masters of Love. Science says lasting relationships come down to these two things. (Atlantic)
• How Our Delusions Keep Us Sane: The Psychology of Our Essential Self-Enhancement Bias. (BrainPickings)

 

Trading Links:

• The Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity. (MarginalRevolution)
• America's Top 10 Fastest-Moving Housing Markets. (Forbes)
• Mind-Blowing Fact Of The Day: China Has Over 52 Million Vacant Homes. (ZH)
• Offshore Accounts. Far-reaching new rules aim to catch overseas tax cheats. (WSJ)
• Echo Boom. There are more 23-year olds than any other age group in the US today (BusinessInsider)

"Humans Need Not Apply" - Video about Automation and Humanity

Here is an interesting video about automation and what it will do to jobs and humanity.

 

 

via YouTube.

The point is to anticipate (and be prepared) for what is coming.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading

Everything in this 1991 RadioShack ad now exists in a single smartphone ... Tough Business!

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Steve Blank on the Next 50 Years of Business Innovation. (Inc.)
• The First Cellphone Went on Sale 30 Years Ago for $4,000. (Mashable)
• 11 Product Names That Mean Unfortunate Things in Other Languages. (MentalFloss)
• What Happens to Our Brains When We Have Stage Fright? (Buffer)
• How Long Can You Live Without Food or Water? Real-life Barbie, Valeria Lukyanova, has decided she's going to try it. (Examiner)

 

Trading Links:

• Peculiar Traits of Rich People. (Fool)
• Family Offices Chasing Wealthy’s $46 Trillion in Assets. (Bloomberg)
• You Can’t Avoid Asset Allocation … Even If You Try. (CapitalSpectator)
• Forget Passive vs. Active -- Here's How To Evaluate Any Investment Strategy. (Millennial)
• The Average Stock Is More Expensive Now Than It Was At The Peak Of The Dot-Com Bubble In 2000. (BusinessInsider)

It Is the Rubik's Cube's 40th Anniversary - Can You Solve It Yet?

The Rubik's Cube just had it's 40th anniversary of invention. 

It is, arguably, the world's best-selling toy, having sold over 350 million units.

Here are a few things you might not know about it.

1.  The Rubik's Cube was invented by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian professor of architecture and design, who wanted a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry to his students.

2.  The toy was originally named the Magic Cube. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Rubik admitted that it was strange to refer to his creation as a "Rubik's cube" and says that he calls it "my cube." Rubik introduced the toy as the Magic Cube in Hungary, named for his theory of "magic cubology," but the Ideal Toy Corp. dubbed it the Rubik's cube in 1979.

3.  All possible Rubik's cube combinations can be solved in 23 moves. No matter how the cube starts out, its colors can be perfectly rearranged in 23 or fewer steps. See here.

 

Toys aren't just for Kids.

 

CubeStormer 3, built from Lego mechanical and robotics parts and powered by a Samsung Galaxy S4, shattered the world record by solving a Rubik’s Cube in only 3.253 seconds – considerabley faster than the fastest human time of 5.55 seconds.

You can watch the robot break the world record yourself below:

 

 

 via YouTube.

The smartphone acts as the brain of the robot. It uses a custom app that uses the camera to make note of what the scrambled cube looks like, then sends instructions to eight Lego Mindstorm EV3 bricks, which then in turn manipulate the arms of the robot to move the cube.

“We knew CubeStormer 3 had the potential to beat the existing record but with the robot performing physical operations quicker than the human eye can see there’s always an element of risk,” Gilday said in a statement, “In the end, the hours we spent perfecting the robot and ensuring its motor and intelligence functions were properly synchronized paid off. Our big challenge now is working out if it’s possible to make it go even faster.”

Related articles

On 40th anniversary of Rubik's Cube invention, Google posts a playable version of the world's ...

Erno Rubik celebrates the 40th anniversary of his famous cube

Here Are Some Links to Start Your Weekend

Do you believe that our Democracy was bought and sold a long time ago?

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Why You Should Hustle Every Day. (TheNextweb)
• Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One. (NYTimes)
• You Could Read An Entire Harry Potter Book In Under 90 Minutes With This App. (HuffPost)
• 35 Expensive Things for Your Dream House. (Distractify)
• Military's 'Iron Man' Suit May Be Ready to Test This Summer. (LiveScience)

 

Trading Links:

• Remember Lotus Notes? It's Still a Billion-Dollar IBM Business. (WSJ)
• What Will Robots Do to Property Values? (Freakonomics)
• Can Emerging Market Bonds Help Us Predict the Next Bear Market? (FinancialSense)
• How Do You Rein In High Speed Trading? (Points and Figures)
• Welcome to the Odd World of Alternative Currencies. Believe it or not, they're coming. (Futures)

Fake Conference Call Site Captures White Collar Existential Tension & Dread

Conference calls are often mind-numbing and frustrating.  ConferenceCall.Biz is a site that captures that brand of white collar existential tension and dread ... as performance art.

 

via Zach Scott.

 

It is a simulated conference call in which the participants seem perpetually talking at cross purposes, coming into the conversation late, and expressing frustration that they’re discussing material they’ve already covered. Lucky you, it even has distracting background sounds, like a dog barking.

The audio and images are randomized so that each conference call proceeds in a new way.

It's kind of like the Eagles' song "Hotel California" ... you can check-in any time you like, but you can never leave (at least until you close the browser window). From the sound of it, the ConferenceCall.Biz participants have been attempting to get the deliverables to management for a long time.