There’s something oddly satisfying about hearing something gross — something that automatically scrunches your face and makes you cover your eyes, though maybe opening two fingers so that you can sort-of, kind-of see. That’s why we created the new TED Playlist called GROSS!
Included in this playlist: Marcel Dicke’s rousing case for why we should eat insects. Kees Moeliker on how discovering a live duck copulating with a dead duck changed his life. And Marcus Byrne’s love letter to the dance of the dung beetle, which allows it to roll poop over great distances.
TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. A new playlist is added every week. We hope you enjoy this installment.
Gmail shows little sign of becoming any less popular, but any iOS user will find that dealing with a Gmail account on an Apple device is not the most pleasant experience. Mailbox was released to help address this fact and proved so popular that newcomers were greeted by a lengthy waiting list before they could get started. The app has now been updated in a number of key areas and, perhaps most importantly, anyone is free to jump right in and get started without the need to wait on a reservation list.
This is obviously great news for people who have been waiting to try out the app, but there is also plenty for existing users to take advantage of. One of the major standout features of the app from its inception was the way in which emails could be dealt with using little more than a swipe; swipe one way to delete or mark as read, and the other way to snooze.
The snooze feature has been enhanced in this latest release. Just as before it is possible to hide emails that you do not want to deal with immediately, but you are now able to deal with multiple messages simultaneously. The actual snoozing process has also been improved so that the options you are provided with are appropriate to the time of day and the day of the week.
Another noteworthy change means that when in the neat conversation view, you can view email addressed by double tapping a message bubble. The latest update includes all of the big fixes and performance improvements you would expect. Check out Mailbox and see if its unique snoozing option can help you to achieve inbox zero and better manage your messages.
You can find out more and download a copy of this free app from the Mailbox review page.
Microsoft continues to build and leak Windows Blue at a solid rate. Last month we toured build 9364, and now 9374 is out. There are plenty of rumors about where “Blue” is headed, including even, oh the horrors, bringing back the Start menu and adding a boot-to-Desktop option. With 9374 now out on the web (BN can not tell you where to find it, but I am sure you will stumble upon it if you look), I decided to see what changed.
Before we go any further, just for the record, this installation is 32-bit only and you will need to choose “Custom” when running setup — an upgrade does not work. I installed in Virtual Box, and I recommend you use some sort of virtualization software as well. This leak is certainly not ready for prime time just yet.
What is New?
First and foremost, you will notice that the version is now, indeed, listed as 8.1 Pro Preview. Honestly, you cannot miss this because the name is on the Desktop in the lower right corner and listed within the computer properties screen.
Despite recent rumors, there is not, at least yet, any Start menu or a boot-to-Desktop option, though those may perhaps still be in the works. Personally, I do not miss those things and could care less if they are added or not, but many users will no doubt want them.
The biggest addition to this latest build is the new Kiosk mode, which can be accessed from the PC Settings found in the Charms menu. The option is listed under the User setting. Kiosk mode allows you to lock down user accounts to certain functionalities that you choose and also makes it possible to set an app to launch upon Startup — possibly a reason for HTPC fans to finally move on from Windows 7, as 8 previously had no option for starting Windows Media Center upon boot (though some hacks existed to make it possible). Kiosk mode looks incomplete at this point. The feature is tailor-made for parental controls and also for computers located in retail locations that wish to have a dedicated store app.
The Search option also is changed slightly, and no longer displays the app list behind it, but only the actual Search column on the right of the screen. This also looks incomplete — I could only access from the Start page, while the Desktop brought up only an empty column — no search box in it.
Conclusion
There is not really much to see here. Only the Kiosk mode and Search screen are really new, and neither feels complete at this point. Given that 9374 is a leaked build this is not a big surprise, and bugs are to be expected, too. The OS is certainly not ready for anything close to production use and should only be run on a test system or in virtual mode.
Make it small, make it lite, make it fast. Those are the key ingredients for any well thought out sports car and something that BMW knew from the beginning. Therefore it should come as no surprise that their iconic 2002 is one of those machines. By today’s standards they are underpowered, but that doesn’t mean that they still don’t make one of the best platforms around for customization. Marc Norris’s Bavarian Workshop of West Hills, CA decided to take this concept and make it a reality with their own vision of what a factory BMW M2 might have been like.
Last week, we wrapped up our second conference of the year, as paidContent Live in New York City drew a packed house and standing-room-only workshops. More than 40 innovators, analysts, and content creators joined us on stage to discuss the future of digital media. Meanwhile, over on GigaOM Pro, our analysts took a look at the consumer products market, including new products and developments in OTT and streaming content services, as well as initial analysis of last week’s OpenStack Summit.
Note: GigaOM Pro is a subscription-based research service offering in-depth, timely analysis of developing trends and technologies. Visit pro.gigaom.com to learn more about it.
Analyst David Linthicum provides his takeaways from last week’s OpenStack Summit in Portland, OR. As the cloud computing standard continues to gain in popularity, Linthicum sees it as an increasingly important competitor to Amazon Web Services, especially as OpenStack gains traction with companies such as IBM, Rackspace, and HP (as well as many smaller startups). Linthicum offers his analysis and opinion on OpenStack’s future as a viable cloud computing standard, and offers suggestions on what major hurdles still exist for OpenStack’s interoperability and compatibility for the industry.
Analyst Paul Sweeting looks at recent developments in consumer products market – the past quarter was anchored by the CES expo in Las Vegas and closed with new buzz about a potential smart watch from Apple (and offerings from other competitors). The past quarter also saw new developments in consumer-facing copyright laws in the US and Europe in response to the newly-emerging used digital goods market. Sweeting looks at the proposed changes to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as other potential copyright law reforms targeting content aggregation services. He also reviews the past quarter in the OTT market, including services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu, who are actively producing their own original content as well as serving up existing content on demand. Sweeting also provides a near term outlook on the consumer products market, including game consoles, connected TVs, streaming content services, and smart watches
Analyst Stowe Boyd highlights some of the biggest developments that emerged in the social business marketplace. Kicking things off with Marissa Meyer’s elimination of Yahoo’s WFH policy, Boyd provides data on the remote work habits of US workers across multiple industries, and the continuing consumerization of enterprise solutions, led by the likes of Salesforce and Microsoft and supported by hybrid consumer/enterprise products such as LinkedIn, Behance, and Mendeley. With continuing changes in business culture and the release of products such as Tempo and Mailbox, Boyd delves into the changing role of social tools in the workplace and wonders who comes first in the workplace – the business or the worker?
Used to be, when a TV show got canceled, it was dead and it stayed dead. But with the rise of the digital age, shows are coming back from the grave right and left.
This week, news broke that the remaining eight episodes of the ABC sitcom Don’t Trust the B In Apartment 23, which was taken off the air in January, would be posted to ABC.com, Hulu and iTunes.
The announcement is a boon for fans of the show, but they shouldn’t get their hopes up that successful online distribution will mean another season of the show; much of the cast has already moved on to other projects.
However, another show may truly get a second life: Also this week, rumors spread that Microsoft is looking at rebooting NBC’s Heroes, which was canceled in 2010, for Xbox and MSN distribution.
As television continues its evolution from a single box that sits in your living room to a multi-platform experience across many devices, resurrections like these are increasingly common — though sometimes they’re less like Lazarus, and more like zombies.
Netflix is of course a front runner in the rebirth business, thanks to picking up Arrested Development (only one more month, Bluth fans!).
But there’s a deep history to this practice. For instance: In late 2009, producer Ashton Kutcher turned to YouTube to screen the unaired five episodes of model drama The Beautiful Life, which had just been canceled by The CW.
They’re all still online, along with a plea posted by Kutcher saying that they’d be able to produce more episodes if the channel’s subscriber count hit a certain, unspecified threshold.
Whatever that threshold was, it was greater than 35,000 subscribers — which is the channel’s current standing, four years later. But TBL does deserve credit for being an early example of a show realizing the potential power of digital distribution — arguably ahead of its time in that respect.
The key is transitioning from digital distribution to actually producing new episodes. The most daring and ultimately successful example of this isn’t necessarily Joss Whedon getting to make a feature film follow-up to Firefly or the return of Veronica Mars as a feature — the real kickoff of digital distribution having real meaning for canceled shows comes from the early 2000s, and DVDs.
The Fox animated series Family Guy first premiered in 1999, and was canceled in 2002. But thanks to blockbuster DVD sales of the first three seasons, it was brought back to the airwaves in 2005, and has remained a key part of Fox’s schedule ever since. Creator Seth MacFarlane has even gone on to create at least two other shows for the network.
(Personal anecdote: I was working as a clerk in a DVD store in 2003, and I keenly remember how we couldn’t keep Family Guy box sets on the shelves; they sold out like crazy.)
Sometimes, things need to end. Sometimes, shows don’t work or don’t connect with a wide audience, and those involved are ready to move on. The Onion satirized this beautifully in the aftermath of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign with this piece headined “Stars Of Canceled Show Terrified Fans Will Raise Money For Movie,” centered around recently-terminated NBC sitcom Animal Practice.
The episodes of Animal Practice left unaired after its cancelation are currently available online, though it’s unlikely to come back — a zombie, for better or worse.
But as the industry figures out how to make original content on the web sustainable and profitable, we’ll see more and more examples of Lazarus.
This is breaking news in the field of cancer screening and testing. We now have a simple (harmless) blood test that can detect and precisely identify all cancers tested to date – way before conventional medical procedures, like positron emissions tomography (PET scans…
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Students who enter college with their formal diagnoses of mental illness in place are more likely to graduate without interruption, according to psychiatric researchers.
Sound reasonable? So, rush your high school kid off to the psychiatrist! His future is at stake…
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Scientists from the University of Tubingen, Germany, have discovered a technique to improve both sleep and memory at the same time by playing sound waves attuned to the frequencies of the brain’s oscillations, according to a study published in the journal Neuron.
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A startling development in usually gun-friendly Missouri has concealed weapons holders up in arms, so to speak, following an improper release of private information by none other than the Missouri Highway Patrol.
According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, someone within…
A lot of folks complain that they’re usually too busy for healthy eating, so they feel forced to stock up on fast foods, packaged soups with MSG, or do take outs and order home delivery pizzas and Chinese food with GMOs and toxic additives.
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A new study just published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension has found there’s a substance that lowers high blood pressure significantly. It’s not a new Big Pharma drug and it comes free of side effects. Instead of medication, it’s simply a small…
Gmail shows little sign of becoming any less popular, but any iOS user will find that dealing with a Gmail account on an Apple device is not the most pleasant experience. 
