Archive for August, 2011

iOS vs Android

Aug 17 by JD Rucker | 16 comments

As Google and Apple continue to grow in the mobile market, Android and iOS are quickly becoming the predominant operating systems for phones and tablets. There are many statistics to look at and comparisons to be made. Here, we present a visualization tackling the debate. Thanks to our friends more »

USB toothbrush helps you stay fresh at work

Aug 16 by David Lux | 1 comment

Philips has just introduced the Sonicare DiamondClean USB, a toothbrush that can help you stay fresh and clean while you’re at your desk. The new electric toothbrush uses a USB port to keep its batteries charged, which is why the consumer electronics company has dubbed it “the iPod of toothbrushes.” Aside from USB connectivity, the more »

Swarmanoid: The future of awesome gadgets

Aug 15 by JD Rucker | add comment

The dream of making the perfect robot that can do a lot of our human activities may have found a simple solution in Swarmanoid, an open scientific project whose goal is  the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system. Rather than build robots that can do many things, they build more »

How Rounds stacks up against the video chat powerhouses

Aug 14 by Connor Livingston | 1 comment

I admit it. I had no idea what Rounds (formerly 6rounds) was when a friend invited me to check it out. My first thought was that it’s just another TinyChat or Google Hangout. After about 3 minutes in, I realized it was much more than that. The easiest way to describe it is as a video chat client for Facebook or more »

Cisco taps into well-performed bad poetry to accomplish... something

Aug 14 by Connor Livingston | add comment

“The beauty of writing poetry is that you don’t have to make much sense to be good at it.” ~ Unknown Poet When a company that attributes 16% of its revenue to routers does anything creative, it’s worth reporting. The video below is currently featured on Cisco’s YouTube channel and has accumulated 153 views in 6 days. It’s possible that their more »

The evolution of HiFi from phonograph to flac

Aug 13 by Rocco Penn | 2 comments

Looking back at the world of music and communication, it’s amazing to see the transitions that have taken place to get to where we are now. With iPods, FLAC (free lossless audio codec), and the domination of digital files over physical venues, we are able to immerse ourselves in recordings of the more »

Neil deGrasse Tyson continues his onslaught on the government's betrayal of science

Aug 12 by JD Rucker | 9 comments

When Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson was on Bill Maher last week, he laid into the plans to slash NASA’s budget. When the topic of the James Webb Space Telescope came up, he broke in and said, “Don’t get me started.” Maher had him. “No, I want to get you started…” What followed was intelligent, eloquent, more »

The truth about cat videos

Aug 12 by Connor Livingston | add comment

Not everyone loves cat videos, but everyone watches cat videos. The animal is a natural for videos – they just do dumb or funny things regularly. As a result, the internet and YouTube viewers in particular are attacked by a constant onslaught of cat videos. Most believe that these videos come from more »

Less than half of mobile employees are "more productive" in the office

Aug 12 by Rocco Penn | add comment

The thing that most people fear when they have mobile employees is the productivity level. As humans, the common belief is that we’re more productive when people are standing over our shoulders. In this world of mobile connectivity with devices that can do almost anything we need them to do from more »

Google+ and Facebook are perceived the same by users

Aug 12 by David Lux | 2 comments

How different is Google+ from Facebook? It turns out, they’re not that different. A recent eye-tracking study has revealed that users of Facebook and Google+ look at their respective social networks in almost the exact same way. The study, conducted by EyeTrackShop, studied 54 people while they used Facebook more »

Automotive social media report card: Facebook

Aug 11 by JD Rucker | 1 comment

As it does with most trends in marketing, the automotive industry has gone from way behind just a year and a half ago to shaping the venues and carving the path today. There have been some missteps to say the least, many in the business from car dealers to manufacturers are fully embracing social media as a venue to get their brand and message out more »

The American Identity According to Social Media

Aug 11 by Rocco Penn | 3 comments

There is so much that can be learned about a people through social media data. People don’t always act the same way online as they do in the real world, but if anything it allows likes and interests to be more genuine based upon the anonymity associated (for now) with online activities. In other words, more »

Is the PC really dying?

Aug 11 by JD Rucker | 11 comments

When Mark Dean, CTO of IBM Middle East and Africa, declared this morning that we are in the “Post-PC Era”, a tinge of frustration and anger popped up in me. Items that are used daily in millions of households across the world don’t simply die. I was annoyed when IBM CEO Lou Gerstner declared that “The PC is dead” in 1999. I was more »

Microsoft envisions the "home of the future"

Aug 10 by Connor Livingston | 1 comment

What if every wall in your home was a digital display? What if your kitchen table would set itself and also be a touchscreen-enabled entertainment device. What if your kitchen counters were “smart” enough to know what items were on it and had the ability to react accordingly, keeping coffee cups more »