Category: News

As a member of the Glass Collective, which looks to fund startups that build apps for Google Glass, venture capital giant Marc Andreessen clearly thinks wearable devices are a growth market. The Andreessen Horowitz co-founder recently shared just how blown away he was the first time he tried Google’s connected eyewear, and he’s banking on the notion that consumers will have the same reaction. “You put it on and you’re like ‘Oh my God, I have the entire internet in my vision. Where have you been all my life?,’ ” Andreessen said during a keynote presentation at the she++ conference, according to TechCrunch. Google Glass is now available to beta testers who were willing to shell out $1,500 for pre-production units, but Glass won’t be available to the general public until 2014.

The Powerball jackpot is currently at $140 million, as nobody won the jackpot prize on Wednesday. The estimated cash value is $91.3 million.

Wednesday’s winning numbers were: 9,19,31,56,59, Powerball: 2.

There were no winners for the $2 million Match 5 Power Play prize. The $1 million Match 5 prize saw winners in California, Connecticut and Florida.

There were a total of 664,631 winners in Wednesday’s drawing. $9,279,075 worth of non-jackpot prizes were won.

Odds of winning the jackpot, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association, are 1 in 175,223,510.

The next drawing is on Saturday.

As usual, people are talking about the drawing on Twitter:

Gotta go get some more scratch offs and play the power ball

— Jay (@_javai) April 26, 2013

One should begin each day with a positive thought, for it can enrich your life…Powerball, Powerball, get me out of this goddamned place!

— Vseslav Botkin (@VseslavBotkin) April 26, 2013

@starbucks should sell Powerball tickets; it’d really save me some time in the morning. #wouldyoulikeamilliondollarswithyourcoffee #fb

— Scott (@ScottDMe) April 26, 2013

I bought a the winner power ball ticket…Now don’t wait til they announce it .. You better jump on the wagon now…

— LeRoy Stanfield Jr. (@72LeRoy) April 26, 2013

If I’d hit the powerball, I’d quit school the following day

— Nicky Flash (@GumpWV) April 26, 2013

would it be such a crime if i won powerball?

— Luke Vrabel(@bdbeatslayer) April 26, 2013

Gods! Tis a wonderful time to be alive. even if you do not win any powerball lottos.

— Sake Man (@lord_jagganath) April 26, 2013

Conceptual artist Alicia Eggert uses words as found objects in her sculptural art — a body of work that serves as an ongoing investigation of time. Here, she tells us about taking her neon piece “You are (on) an island” to various locations in the world, shares how childhood experiences in South Africa sparked her fascination with time, and reveals how she thinks each person experiences time uniquely.

You live and work in Maine, but you recently toured a piece — which involves rather delicate neon sculpture — around the UK. How did this come about?

My collaborator Mike Fleming and I originally made “You are (on) an island (2011)” for an art festival called Sacred and Profane. The festival takes place on Peaks Island, which is off the coast of Portland, Maine. Every fall, on a weekend in October closest to the harvest moon, visitors take a ferry to the island to explore an abandoned World War II army battery, which artists completely take over with installations and performances. The battery doesn’t have any electricity, and people have to walk around and explore the dark, cavernous rooms by candlelight. So when Mike and I were brainstorming ideas for an installation, we started talking about using neon, and filling a whole room with light. We came up with the statement: “You are on an island” – with the word “on” blinking on and off, so it sometimes says, “You are an island.” We worked with Pat Boulduc of Beacon Neon to fabricate the text, and we installed the sign on construction scaffolding in the middle of a room that was completely flooded with water. It was pretty breathtaking.

We later posted documentation of the piece online, and an artist named Richard Wheater, who runs a gallery and workspace called Neon Workshops, in Wakefield, got wind of it. He wrote me an email out of the blue saying he thought it would be perfect for the UK, and he wanted us to bring it there.

But instead of just shipping the neon over and putting it on display in his gallery, Richard suggested that we take the sign on a guerilla sculpture tour, mount it on the back of a truck and drive it around Yorkshire, and take people by surprise on their daily commute to or from work. But neither of us had the money to pay for any of that, so we launched a Kickstarter campaign, and raised over $12,000. We shipped the neon to the UK in December and flew over in January to go on tour for two weeks.

Isn’t neon incredibly fragile, though? How did you manage to move it around?

Yes, it’s made out of glass tubes that are pumped, in this case, full of argon and a little bit of mercury. When the gas is electrified, it glows bright blue.

When we arrived in the UK we rented a flatbed truck, and spent the first few days erecting the sculpture’s wooden structure on the truck. We couldn’t always leave the glass letters attached to the structure, especially when we were driving long distances at 70 miles an hour on the motorway. So the neon was mounted to rails that could be lifted up and attached to the framework, but then brought back down to travel on foam in the truck bed when we were on motorways.

Our daily routine started with a trip to Neon Workshops, where we’d load the neon onto the truck. We would then drive to a certain location, unload a ladder and tools, lift the rails up onto the structure and attach them, and then wire everything up to a little generator. We’d try to do all that by dusk so we could get some really great sunset shots — also because you couldn’t see the neon very well during the day. We would then drive short distances around that area, and make photographs and videos in different locations. And then at the end of every day we would have to take the glass back down, drive back to Neon Workshops, store it in the gallery where we knew it would be safe, and then go to bed. It was quite a rigorous routine. But over the course of two weeks we drove all over West Yorkshire, drawing a circle around Wakefield, our home base. And we made a short weekend trip over to North Wales.

Any surprises?

We were surprised by how many CCTV cameras there are in the UK. There’s definitely way more CCTV there, and a lot of police vans. And since we were doing the project without permission, we were unsure of what we could get away with and what we couldn’t. But whenever we did encounter a police van or a policeman, they normally just seemed curious, but didn’t even stop to ask any questions. By the end of the trip, we were driving right up onto traffic islands and down pedestrian shopping streets.

How did the public respond?

A lot of people asked us what it was and what are we doing. We would explain by saying, “This is art,” basically. We would hand out postcards featuring an image of the sign, and explain that we were invited to the UK to do this project by a gallery in Wakefield. A lot of people would say things like, “Oh, man. You have to go to this part of Scotland. It’s really beautiful. It would make a great photograph.”

One time we were parked in the Bull Ring, in Wakefield, when a family walked by, and I could hear a little girl say, “We’re not on an island, are we?” I actually heard quite a few people ask that same question, which really surprised me. I realized that people in the UK don’t feel like they live on an island because they don’t feel isolated. If anything, it feels like it’s in the center of the world.

I think people who live there forget that it’s an island because they think of it as much bigger than it actually is.

Exactly. I’ve taken the same sculpture to Australia, and the response there was very different. People would see the sign and say, “Yes. This is perfect for us because we feel so isolated down here. And even though Australia is a continent, we feel like we’re on an island, and this sign describes exactly how it feels to live here.”

It was really surprising to me to see how people responded to the statement very differently in the UK than they did in Australia, or in Maine where it was first on display. As artists, we can’t really have expectations about how people will respond to work. I’m often intrigued by how everyone’s response to the same thing can be very different.

Video above: “The length of now”.

Video below: “Now”: This kinetic sculpture’s red acrylic line segments align to spell the word “NOW” approximately once every second. Made with help from Alexander Reben. Video by David Meiklejohn.

How did you get your start as an artist, and how you came to play with the themes of time and language?

My background is in architectural design, but I took a sculpture class during my very last semester of college, which introduced me to conceptual art. I literally cried to the professor at the end of the semester because I felt like I had just wasted four years of school studying the wrong thing. But I went to work at an architectural firm in New York for a few years after graduating, and I eventually went back to graduate school for sculpture.

I’ve always been very intrigued by time. I can’t really explain why. I think it’s just because it rules our lives in so many ways, but at the same time it’s so hard to define. It’s not a tangible thing, even though we see the tangible effects of time. We have very few words that we use to explain it, and words like “now” are very ambiguous.

When I was a kid, I lived in South Africa for a few years because my parents were missionaries there during apartheid. South Africans had three different ways they used the word “now.” A simple “now” was a really casual reference to the present; it lacked any sense of urgency. “Just now” was even more casual. It’s like, “Oh, I’ll get around to it.” And then “now now” was a more urgent expression, meaning “This is happening right at this very moment.”

I think I’ve always had an interest in how people regard and refer to the passing of time, and how the language we use to describe time also structures our understanding of it. Time is different, not just culturally, but for every single person. I really believe each person lives in a different time universe.

I think of words as found objects, and I play with their forms in the same way Duchamp played with urinals and bicycle wheels. I began by giving words like “now” a physical form, and asking questions like, “How long is now?” For instance, I wrote the word “now” with a piece of string and then pulled it taut into a line, so I could measure the length of now. That led to other projects that allow language to change over time. And projects like “You are (on) an island” demonstrate how one word, or the absence of it, can contain a whole world of meaning.

Would you consider doing something similar in the United States?

Definitely. But the ability to tell people in the UK we were invited there was really empowering. It would be very different if we were to just decide to take the sculpture on tour in New York City, without receiving an invitation first. So I’m waiting to see what happens next, because I feel there are many places, many islands, the sculpture could travel to. But I would really like to receive an invitation.

Does the location partly dictate the shape of the piece?

In some ways, yes and, in some ways, no. I really like to make work that I feel is universal. The initial idea was inspired by an island in Maine, but the phrase “You are an island” applies to everyone, because no one can really know what it feels like to be another person. Mike and I have also had discussions about whether or not it needs to be shown on legitimate “islands,” or if every land mass is an island — and if you zoom out far enough, the Earth is kind of an island in the solar system; and our solar system is an island in the universe.

Video above: “Pulse Machine”: This electromechanical sculpture was “born” in Nashville, Tennessee on 2 June 2012, at 6:18 PM. The sculpture will die once the counter reaches zero. Made in collaboration with Alexander Reben. Video by David Meiklejohn.

Tell me about other work you’ve made about time.

I’ve made quite a few things to illustrate the concept of “now.” “NOW (2012)” is a kinetic sculpture whose red acrylic line segments align to spell the word NOW approximately once every second. The lines that create it slow down ever so slightly as the word forms, but just like time itself, they never quite come to a complete stop.

I’ve also made a sculpture with a human lifespan, called “Pulse Machine (2012).” It was made in collaboration with an engineer named Alexander Reben. We programmed the sculpture to have the lifespan of a baby born in Tennessee in 2012 — which, if you average the male and female life expectancy rates together, it about 78 years. Surprisingly, that’s actually a little bit lower than the national average in the US.

The sculpture is made up of two parts. A kick-drum sits on the floor, beating a heartbeat rhythm, and a mechanical counter hangs on the wall nearby. The drum beats the sculpture’s pulse, and the mechanical counter uses flip digit numerals to count down the number of heartbeats remaining in the sculpture’s lifetime. And there’s a battery-operated internal clock that keeps track of the passing time even when the sculpture’s unplugged.

Every time you plug the sculpture back in, it goes through a series of steps to determine how much time has elapsed, and the numbers reset themselves to catch up to the present time. The sculpture will “die” when the counter reaches zero.

Creating art means creating objects that, if people deem them important, will be saved for posterity after you die. But a lot of the work that I like to make, which is new media art and kinetic art, has moving parts and electronics that need maintenance, like a car. Even if you diligently maintain it, it probably won’t be able to run forever. So I was excited to make a work of art that’s intended to die, as a way of challenging our desire for things to last forever.

Video above: “Eternity”: A wall-mounted sculpture made in collaboration with Mike Fleming. It employs 30 electric clock movements and 36 hour and minute hands. Once every 12 hours, the hands align to spell the word ETERNITY. This video shows the piece 45 minutes before and after ETERNITY at 300 times the actual speed. Video by Mike Fleming.

So you’re a conceptual kinetic artist.

Maybe, although I don’t only make things that are kinetic. The kinetic aspect comes from my interest in time. I like to allow the artwork to change in the same way that everything else in the world is changing all the time.

I’m constantly figuring out what I’m interested in. But I’ve realized that in order to be making, I need to be learning. I’m not the kind of artist who can go to my studio and sit there by myself and expect ideas to come into my imagination out of the blue. I get my inspiration out in the world, from other people. I’m inspired by other artists, and as a professor I’m inspired by my students and other disciplines. And I have a feeling my work will evolve as I keep absorbing new information and discovering new technologies.

How’s it been to be a TED Fellow so far?

Oh, man. The conference was probably the most inspiring experience of my life to date — not just the talks, but meeting the people that were there to attend the talks as well. So many great minds were gathered in one place. I feel like I went to the future and I got a glimpse of what it might be like, and I got to meet the people who have the potential to shape it.

In that environment, I really had this feeling that anything is possible, and that we can all work together to solve the world’s problems. When I got home, I realized that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t feel that same sense of empowerment. So it’s hard to maintain that level of inspiration. But the TED Fellows network is incredible. There are TED Fellows all over the world, doing great things in every imaginable discipline. And the opportunity to form relationships and learn from so many brilliant people is the best gift the Fellows program could have ever given me.

Nearly a decade ago, Apple proved that advertising was key in getting consumers hooked on their brand. Memorable iPod commercials used color and indie music to create Apple’s new image as the company that sells the best portable electronics. It’s for that reason that following advertising trends in the mobile industry are a bit more interesting than, say, ads for fast food restaurants.

Today, Samsung released a new TV ad that the Korean company will use to try and sell the Galaxy S4 to consumers. The ad, which can be seen below, is fairly straightforward, much like the ads for the device Samsung has already released. It briefly highlights the phone’s larger, clearer screen and thinner profile before moving on to highlighting the software features Samsung has created for the device.

Actually, the ad is rather boring compared to Samsung’s ads for the Galaxy S3. Last year, the company focused on going after the competition directly, implying that Apple loyalists are sheep and making fun of those who wait in lines at the Apple store for new products. There’s little doubt that the ads increased Samsung’s profile in the U.S. and helped the Galaxy S III ship over 50 million units, and the return to boring feature-heavy ads is a bit disappointing.

Sometimes, your device needs protection. And sometimes, you also need to protect your iPhone (apologies). With Smartskin Condoms for Smartphones, you can keep your phone safe from rain, sand, or any other unsavory materials that it may come into contact with.

These “rubbers” are actually made of soft and stretchy protective thermoplastic – and they’re water resistant. According to the product description, your smartphone will retain full touchscreen capability and 98% camera clarity with the condom attached. That 2% is a small price to pay when it comes to keeping your device clean.

Just snap them on and apply the sealing tabs (which you should get at least three uses out of).

“You never know when you’ll get lucky…enough to take your phone to the beach, or on a boat, or cycling in the rain, or driving a rally car, or riding a camel in the desert. But thanks to the sleek and stretchy Condoms for Smartphone, you’ll never have to say no to an unexpected bit of excitement again. Keep them in your wallet for that special situation or emergency occasion, and know that your smartphone has protection at a moment’s notice.

You can grab a pack of 3 for $18.49. As of now, the Smartskin condoms are only available for the Galaxy S3, and iPhones 4/4S/5. Oh, and they’re also available for your iPad.

Always pack protection.

[Firebox via PSFK]

You will reads lots of dribble today about Samsung first quarter phone gains compared to Apple. Most will ignore something fundamental to the numbers: What they represent. IDC and Strategy Analytics separately put out data, for shipments, which mean handsets going to carriers, dealers and other sellers. That’s very different from sales to businesses and consumers, Gartner’s measure and the more accurate one (that data isn’t ready yet).

For few quarters is the difference between shipments and sales likely to be so pronounced, actually even more so in Q2. Apple comes off its second full quarter of iPhone 5 sales and global distribution, and so shipments into the channel, nearly complete. Meanwhile, Samsung ramps up for Galaxy S4’s launch, while achieving full global availability for the S III. Second quarter is the more likely bloodbath for Apple, but actual sales will foreshadow much. Still, shipments hint something now, and iPhone faces serious challenges.

By Strategy Analytics reckoning, Samsung shipped 106.6 million handsets during Q1, obtaining 28.6 percent global share. Apple ranked third, with 10 percent share from 37.4 million units. IDC puts Samsung shipments higher (115 million) but share lower (27.5 percent). Apple’s number is same as Strategy Analytics but market share less: 8.9 percent.

“Apple’s global mobile phone market share is approaching a peak”, Woody Oh, Strategy Analytics senior analyst, warns. “Apple will need to launch new models, or partner with additional major carriers like China Mobile, if it wants to expand significantly beyond its current ceiling of 10 percent global volume share”.

But no new models are coming. Apple chooses not to compete with Samsung, by holding back new phones until autumn. During this week’s Apple earnings conference call, in response to a question about when to expect new products, CEO Tim Cook answers: “We’ve got some really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014”. Don’t expect anything sooner. So Galaxy S4 and other Androids, like HTC One, face no new competition from Apple.

Smartphone Story

Global phone shipments actually mask Apple’s broader market situation. The data pits a smartphone against competitors selling handsets of various types. Three things:

• Smartphone shipments exceeded feature phones in Q1 for the first time, reaching 51.6 percent share, according to IDC.
• Apple smartphone share declined nearly 7 points, even as unit shipments nudged up.
• iPhone growth fell way behind the market, reversing trend of exceeding it.

On a smartphone-to-smartphone basis, in the category now globally more important, Apple struggles for the first time. Meanwhile competitors — Samsung significantly — bring exciting new models to market while the fruit-logo company rests on iPhone 5’s laurels.

Smartphone shipments grew by 41.6 percent during first quarter, according to IDC. Among the top-five, only Apple grew below the market, and considerably less — just 6.6 percent. By comparison: LG (110.2 percent); Huawei (94.1 percent); Samsung (60.7 percent); ZTE (49.2 percent).

Top Five Smartphone Vendors Q1 2013 (Units in Millions) 

Vendor	1Q13 Unit Shipments	1Q13 Market Share	1Q12 Unit Shipments	1Q12 Market Share	Year-over-year Change
Samsung	70.7	32.7%	44.0	28.8%	60.7%
Apple	37.4	17.3%	35.1	23.0%	6.6%
LG	10.3	4.8%	4.9	3.2%	110.2%
Huawei	9.9	4.6%	5.1	3.3%	94.1%
ZTE	9.1	4.2%	6.1	4.0%	49.2%
Others	78.8	36.4%	57.5	37.7%	37.0%
Total	216.2	100.0%	152.7	100.0%	41.6%

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, April 25, 2013

Clueless Cook

During this week’s Apple earnings conference call, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi put forth a 30 percent industry growth estimate (now known to be too low), observing iPhone to be much lower, and looking ahead: “Broadly incorporating your guidance for next quarter and thinking about fiscal Q1, it appears very unlikely that Apple will grow at that market rate of 30 percent or more”.

Cook’s deflection reveals much. He starts by discussing iPad shipments, rather than iPhone, presenting more positive perspective. Hey, that’s what these execs are taught to do in media training. He continues: “On the phone side, the numbers that you talked about, the sell-in comparisons year over year, you really have to convert that to sell-through to look at the underlying demand”. Cook is right about that, which is why I assert the Gartner numbers matter much more.

Then Cook concedes: “However, I take your point if the market did grow by 30 percent, we still, after that normalization, we grew less than that. And so I think the question or the — this point is not lost and we do want to grow faster. We don’t view it, however, as the only measure of our health”. He then goes on to customer satisfaction stats and how iPhone 4 and 4S pricing will woo first-time smartphone buyers.

The first-timers are more likely to purchase from Samsung or, across China and some other parts of Asia, from Huawei and ZTE. Chinese manufacturers “have made significant strides to capture new users with their respective Android smartphones”, Ramon Llamas, IDC research manager, says.

Assessing Apple

So I see a few direct takeaways from the data currently available:

1. Apple’s real world situation isn’t likely as bad as some arm-chair pundits will suggest — not this quarter, and certainly not based on unit shipments.

2. Gartner’s numbers, for actual sales, are better measure of just how well iPhone is doing, and they’re not available yet.

3. Second quarter is the one to watch for any Apple bloodbath, measured by either shipments or sales, but better the latter. Apple has nothing new to offer, while the hottest Androids of the year come to market.

4. China’s rising stars, particularly Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE, will impede Apple’s push into the world’s largest smartphone market.

Apple is ripe for smartphone troubles. But it’s too early to say how much, or how little.

Photo Credit: 1000 Words/Shutterstock

Theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander gave a Google Tech Talk earlier this week, which Google has now made available for viewing. The talk is called “Do you fall at the same rate as your mirror image?”

Intrigued yet? Here’s the abstract:

Over the past decade, based on work pioneered by the speaker, cosmologists have had reason to suspect that Einstein’s gravity has a preferred handedness (chirality). In this talk, after giving an overview of the structure of general relativity, I will explore the cosmological, gravitational wave detection and particle physics consequences of the Chiral Nature of General Relativity. I conclude with an astonishing new direction of unifiying gravity with the weak nuclear interaction, that differs from string theory. At stake potentially is the long elusive goal of physicists to develop a Grand Unified Theory – a coherent model of particle physics, gravitation and cosmology!

Alexander specializes in the interface between cosmology, particle physics and quantum gravity (String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity).

Qualcomm’s insanely powerful Snapdragon 600 chip has found a home in many flagship devices, including the HTC One and some models of the Galaxy S 4, and as far as benchmarks and performance goes, it blows everything else out of the water. At this point, it really doesn’t seem like a mobile CPU could get any better. Well, according to Qualcomm, their Snapdragon 800 chip is going to be better. The next flagship SoC is slated to hit mass production in late May, although there’s no word on when it will appear in consumer devices.

The Snapdragon 800 bests the 600 by featuring new Krait 400 architecture, which can maintain a steady clock speed of 2.3 GHz and packs Adreno 330 graphics, which is capable of 4K, 30 FPS output. Needless to say, the Snapdragon 800 is going to be hard to top.

source: Engadget

Come comment on this article: Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 to hit mass production stage in late May

Happy Friday #TeamBlackBerry!

On deck this week, five tips for the BlackBerry 10 camera, such as how to geotag photos and how to access your photos and more from a DLNA compatible device.

1 – Use different Shooting and Scene Modes

The BlackBerry Z10 has lots of options to help you capture the perfect picture depending on your situation, so after opening the camera make sure you review the various options available to you.

For example, in addition to the Normal shooting mode, you also have the option of using a Stabilization or Burst shooting mode. Stabilization is great if you’re like me and can’t keep still when taking pictures. Burst on the other hand is a great way to capture the perfect action shot, such as your dog catching a tennis ball or jumping into the family pool (ed – make sure you are out of the splash zone!). On top of Shooting Mode options, you also have several Scene Modes available to you such as Action, Whiteboard, Night and Beach or Snow.

To access these options tap the icon with three dots that appears in the bottom right corner and customize the settings to your desired preferences.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

Amanda Bynes captured a lot of headlines last year with her arrests and various antics around Hollywood, including allegedly locking herself in store bathrooms, walking around a tanning salon nude, and driving around town performing hit-and-runs in her trashed car.

But she’s moved to New York to focus on a fashion career, and recently posted pictures on Twitter of a new look that may start a whole new chapter for her. Whether it’s a good chapter or not remains to be seen.

The 27-year old actress (former actress?) says her new haircut–which is partially shaved–is the new her, and showed it off on Twitter.

Could this be the beginning of a new leaf for Bynes? Only time will tell.

I think amanda bynes has been dancing with lobsters a little too much lately…

— Ricky Dillon (@RickyPDillon) April 25, 2013

Idk if Amanda Bynes is really in need of help, or if she is pulling off the most amazing and fully committed Amanda show skit of her life

— YA BOY DANNY TANNER (@_DannyTanner_) April 24, 2013

Stop the presses, Amanda Bynes is being weird. See her latest hair debacle here: bit.ly/10hry07

— StyleCaster (@StyleCaster) April 26, 2013

You look like Miley Cyrus “@amandabynes: twitpic.com/clx833”

— ☀ KID INK ☀ (@TeamDrizzyCB) April 26, 2013

The latest data from analytics firm Flurry research shows that mobile apps are now used by more than 50 million people in America during the most hectic period of the day. And that moment is at 8:00 p.m. — smack in the middle of TV’s prime time. On weekdays, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. is the stretch when mobile apps reach more than 50 million U.S. consumers. This happens to coincide with the time most big broadcast television shows air. It probably is no coincidence that while mobile app usage exploded between 2011 and 2013, the most important prime time shows started imploding. “American Idol” is now only a shadow of its former self; its audience collapsed to just 12 million people last Wednesday. “Survivor” has plunged below 10 million viewers.

Continue reading…

I love Lean. In my eyes, the work Steve Blank, Eric Ries, and others have done to provide a cogent, accessible frame around the academic concepts of emergent strategy is one of the most important contributions to the innovation movement over the past few years.

I have repeatedly stated that the next wave of innovation will come from companies that harness the transformational power that too often lies latent inside their organizations. There is a growing sense that so-called lean start-up techniques — developing a minimal viable product, learning in the marketplace, and pivoting based on market feedback — can help to unleash this potential. Indeed, in this month’s Harvard Business Review cover story, Blank notes that the development of the lean start-up toolkit comes “just in time” to “help existing companies deal with the forces of continual disruption.”

If I had a quibble with lean techniques it is with the extreme perspective that some practitioners take that research and thinking are useless — that learning comes only from developing prototypes and testing in-market. That’s not right. Any initial strategy for a new growth business will be partially wrong, but the thinking that went into it is likely to be partially right, too. Good innovators invest the time to research their opportunities and formulate as robust hypotheses as they can so that they focus the learning from their experiments.

Consider the research Jeff Bezos did before he founded Amazon.com that led him to focus on books rather than music, clothing, or electronic appliances. Studying the book market then led Bezos to locate his company near some of the major book distributors. Sure, he might have gotten there through experimentation, but studying market dynamics helped him to cut a couple of corners. There’s no doubt that people inside large companies over-engineer business plans, but don’t let the pendulum swing too far the other way.

Of course, the value of a tool depends on its application. Innosight’s field experience helping large companies more systematically pursue the creation of disruptive growth businesses suggests that leaders looking to leverage lean should heed three pieces of advice.

• Create mechanisms to enable experiments. One of Blank’s most important points is that there are no answers inside the building — entrepreneurs need to learn in the marketplace. Corporate leaders can take steps to encourage this kind of market-based learning. Consumer packaged goods companies can test ideas in the corporate store where employees shop, for instance. Telecommunications companies can create a small secondary network where they can test ideas without running the risk of interrupting service to millions of customers. Service companies might have a handful of clients that agree to be guinea pigs for new ideas. These kinds of mechanisms help to reduce the friction of testing — and accelerate the process of learning.
• Pick people carefully. I call it the Jordan fallacy, in homage to Michael Jordan’s one-year with the Chicago White Sox AA affiliate. Jordan was undoubtedly one of the best basketball players we’ve ever seen. But when he left basketball to play another sport, he couldn’t compete with athletes who had spent their entire lives perfecting their craft. Sure, he was better at baseball than 99% of the population, but he simply wasn’t world class. Companies fall into the Jordan fallacy when they ask their very best operators, who are skilled at executing a known business model, to transform overnight into entrepreneurs who are skilled at searching for an unknown business model. That doesn’t mean that companies should either outsource the task or bring in entirely fresh blood. It’s vital to include people in innovation initiatives who know how to work internal systems and have a good understanding of the unique, difficult-to-replicate assets that create your company’s competitive advantage. The best candidates for this role might be hidden not among your top performers but among the “aliens” who live at the fringes of your organization.
• Be prepared for lean’s consequences. My colleague Mark Johnson notes how a company’s business model eventually leads to a set of implicit rules, norms, and metrics that govern its operation. Following the lean start-up methodology can require making rapid decisions about funding a particular venture; quickly killing ideas that hit too many roadblocks; or launching an idea before it has gone through the typical quality control process. Companies with rigorous annual-planning processes or ones with very deliberate, consensus-based decision mechanisms will struggle to truly embrace the lean start-up approach because it will run counter to many of these systems. Leaders have to carefully ensure that their resource allocation, portfolio management, and incentive systems encourage the rapid-fire experimentation that characterizes a lean start-up.

There are indeed substantial opportunities for companies to build cultures that are conducive to lean start-ups. Blank notes that Qualcomm, General Electric, and Intuit already have. By remembering these three pointers, leaders can maximize their chances of joining this list in practice, not just in theory.

We’d heard reports about Android-powered notebooks that would be shipping later this year, and Intel has taken the stage to shed some more light on those Androidbooks. According to Intel, these new notebooks will be very aggressively priced, coming in at just $200, and many of them are definitely going to be running Android instead of Windows 8. And yes, these are touchscreen PCs that Android can completely take advantage of, complete with Intel’s Atom CPUs that have performed extremely well in benchmarks.

Intel’s executive vice president, Dadi Perlmutter, said many of these notebooks will likely be “convertible” notebooks; they can essentially be a tablet or a laptop, depending on what the user needs in a particular circumstance. Perlmutter did also say there will be higher end Android notebooks running on Intel’s Core line of processors, as well as the cheaper Atom processors.

source: Cnet

Come comment on this article: Intel to power Android Notebooks, says they’ll be priced as low as $200

Last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown was a polished, modern turn-based tactical shooter that was at the top of many game-of-the-year lists and seems to have resurrected the XCOM brand, as well as tactical RPG genre in general.

Now, 2K Games is capitalizing on Enemy Unknown‘s success by releasing an XCOM-branded third-person shooter. The publisher announced today that The Bureau: XCOM Declassified will be released on August 20 (August 23 in Europe) for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. 2K’s statement did not touch on whether the game will be coming to next-gen consoles or the Wii U at a later date.

The Bureau will be set in 1962, and tell the story of XCOM’s first encounter with aliens. Players will “lead” squads of Bureau agents against the invaders and cover up any evidence of the encounter.

“The Bureau tells the story of XCOM’s mysterious beginnings,” said Morgan Gray, creative director at 2K Marin, the development studio in charge of The Bureau. “We’re expanding the universe with a declassified tale of government conspiracy and heroic cover-ups told through third-person tactical gameplay.”

The game will also feature the XCOM strategy games’ feature of forcing players to live with the consequences of their decisions. Bureau agents can die permanently, and 2K is billing the game as more tactical than a normal third-person shooter.

“The team has been working hard to leverage core XCOM elements like tactical decision-making and permanent death of squad mates in a purposeful way that makes this a unique tactical shooter,” said Gray. “To that end, The Bureau will challenge players unlike any other third-person tactical shooter.”

Apple has just released a new ad for the iPhone 5, and it’s good. Much better than their previous efforts, in fact. It’s a one-minute ad called “Photos Every Day,” and uses a simple fact to make a point about the device’s massive popularity.

“Every day, more photos are taken with the iPhone than any other camera.”

And with that, the only words in the ad, Apple builds a nice commercial around the act of snapping pictures with the iPhone. Gone is the barrage of words that they’ve been throwing at you with their previous ads, and it’s been replaced by a subtle piano. Apple is at its best when making ads like this. Let’s hope it continues.

Amazon has released a new update for its Kindle for Android app, which has tens of millions of users, according to the company.

The update includes a new design and interface, and easy access to samples.

“Customers have told us they love the UI of Kindle Fire and how easy it is to access and navigate their digital content,” a spokesperson for Amazon tells WebProNews “We’re extending this design to Kindle for Android by optimizing the Kindle Store for tablets, improving the library interface, redesigning the home screen, and simplifying navigation through the app.”

“For customers who are new to Kindle or Kindle apps, we’re making samples of many of the best sellers even easier to find, to help them get started,” the spokesperson adds. “Customers will find the samples on the home screen of their Kindle app.”

The app gives users acccess to over 1.5 million books in the Kindle Store, including 300,000 exclusive titles.

The update can be downloaded from the Amazon Appstore for Android or from Google Play.

Foursquare has a lot of imitators, making the check-in ubiquitous — and even a little passe these days — across social networking apps. At first glance, Chicago startup Evzdrop looks like one of those clones. Instead of checking in at places, users “drop” their locations on the map and, just like Foursquare, you can take the temperature of all of bars, restaurants, clubs and other venues in your area.

But then you start noticing some differences. There’s no option to find your friends, and certainly no mechanism for following them. You can interact with anyone who “drops” into your location, but you’re most likely dealing with a complete stranger. If you ask a question or make a postive or critical comment, you’re just as likely to get a response from the venue’s owner as you are from one of its patrons. And once you’ve left a location, you’ll still be able to see all of the activity going on there, but you’ll find your ability to interact with the locale much more limited.

Evzdrop CEO David Rush said he and fellow co-founder Eric Brown were inspired to start Evzdrop in 2012 because of the difficulty of sorting useful information about a bar, restaurant or event from social networks.

“There’s a fire hose of information coming out of Facebook and Twitter,” Rush said. “Check-ins are more about showing where you are to friends, which is what Foursquare has become today. … We wanted to create an app that allows you to share a common interest in place — one that lets you get the perspective of people who, along with you, are actually at an event.”

To that end, Evzdrop has created a kind of geofenced social network, allowing only people who are actually at a location to engage with one another and the business itself. Everyone else is just a voyeur. They can follow all of the drop posts going at location, but they can’t participate themselves except to comment on other people’s drops.

From my experiences fiddling with the app, many of the drops aren’t terribly useful — “Dude, this band rocks!” — but as more people use the app, more useful information rises to the top through a “props” system that allows other people at vote up the most entertaining or informative posts.

The idea, Rush said, is to create not just a repository of immediate information — older drops disappear form the site — but a real-time dialogue between all of the people sharing the same space. That differentiates it from Yelp and other reviews sites, Rush said.

If Evzdrop can reach critical mass it should be able to tell if the Hamachi at the local sushi bar is particularly fresh or foul on any particular hour. Sports bar owners will be able to alert you to which games they’re showing in playoffs, or respond to requests from customers on the premise to switch to a different game. Concert attendees can demand a band play a particular song.

Do we really need another check-in app?

Of course, to get this kind of depth out of the service, Evzdrop really needs to scale. Right now it’s still a tiny operation. It has six employees and $500,000 in angel funding, and its Android and iPhone app only has a miniscule 11,000 downloads. Growing that base is going to be difficult to say the least. Not only are there numerous competing apps promoting their own take on the check-in, every major social network, review app and location-based service — from Facebook to Yelp to Google Latitude — have added check-in capabilities. The last thing most consumers want to do is download and register an account with another check-in app.

Building a business around social-location is also proving to be a difficult even if you 3.5 billion check-ins like Foursquare. New York’s check-in pioneer just raised another $41 million in financing, but it’s under intense pressure to prove it has viable business model.

Rush said that Evzdrop hopes to gain traction by targeting business owners and event planners, getting them to promote the app to their customers. Rush thinks the app would be particularly appealing for helping track customer sentiment and complaints at big events like concerts or benefits, where organizers can communicate with a lot of people en masse.

To that end Evzdrop is making venue owners a key part of the network, rather than just peripheral participants. They don’t get control their local social networks like, say, moderators on a discussion board. But they can communicate privately with their patrons, Evzdrop provides them with real-time data about the sentiment of their clientele. Rush said it Evzdrop considers itself just as much a customer relations management (CRM) platform as it does a social networking app.

That business focus is also key to its business model. While any business owner can register their place with Evzdrop, gaining access to its customer communications tools, Evzdrop hopes to build a premium platform that would allow businesses to market promotions to their most frequent customers as well as give them more control over the interaction within the walls of their social networks.

Rush said one tool Evzdrop plans to implement is a means to flag negative sentiment, allowing a proprietor to intercept a critical drop before it goes live giving them a chance to address the complaint immediately. Rush said Evzdrop would never allow businesses to censor posts — every drop would still go live – just create a kind of early warning system for negative feedback.

It seem Evzdrop is trying to walk a fine line. It’s admirable that Evzdrop is trying to develop its business model at the get go, as opposed to Twitter and Foursquare, which built their social networks and then tried to figure out how to make money. But if patrons start perceiving Evzdrop as just a promotional pulpit for businesses, they won’t use it as a social network. And if Evzdrop can’t build up a social network, it doesn’t have a business.

Concert image courtesy of Flickr user humbert15.

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