Author: JD Rucker

The manner by which humans retain and retrieve information is an area widely explored and as of yet not completely understood. The human brain consists of about one billion neurons. Each neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than a trillian connections. This amounts to quite a large storage capacity. Our friends at Mindflash examine how the brain retains all this information and displays it visually – after all, visuals are the easiest media to retain for most. Click to enlarge. …

As businesses continue to get more involved with social media as part of their branding, marketing, and customer relations, most are hiring “social media managers” to be their voice in Web 2.0. It’s a growing trend that many have said will burst in the coming years. Is it real? When search engine optimization became important to businesses a few years ago, we didn’t see many companies hiring SEO managers. Most would simply hire firms to handle it for them. Social media appears to be different, most likely because it’s less technical in nature than SEO (even though some of the best in that industry…

Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Eric Schmidt walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, I’m Barack Obama.” Not funny? That’s because it wasn’t really a joke. The setting will likely not be a bar, but the four leaders of arguably the most influential entities in the world will be meeting on Thursday with other business leaders in San Francisco. Will the sheer gravity of the event tilt the world on its axis? Throw in GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and it just might happen. “The president and the business leaders will discuss our shared goal of promoting American innovation, and discuss his commitment to new…

Drawing comparisons between Facebook and the United States is easy. Both are influential in their world. Both have leaders that are loved and hated simultaneously. Both have both the ability to generate tremendous amounts of money while skeptics still point to their eventual economic collapse. It’s not much of a stretch. This graphic by our friends at Soshable looks at several of the key comparisons between the two super-powers. Do they match up well? You be the judge. Compare the directions they’re heading. The US has its hands in several different pots right now around the world while Facebook…

If you want to hear the bright side of a company, you ask the CEO. If you want to hear the challenges, you ask the COO (unless the company is failing, in which case you ask the CFO). If you want to hear the truth, you talk to the CTO. That’s exactly what the BBC did last week when they asked their customary three questions of Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor. His reply was not only telling, but very likely a major revelation about where Facebook (and more importantly, people developing on the Facebook platform) is going in the very near future. What’s the Next Big Tech Thing in Your Industry?…

Infections of various types are normally the cause of computer problems. It could be malware, worms, viruses, or any number of security threats that spread from computer to computer through networks and the Internet. In this case, the problem was pretty easy to isolate. When over 32K objects are currently infected on your device, it’s likely that there is some sort of problem with your security. Did you install Norton or something?…

It’s inevitable. No matter how big a company is, how carefully they go about doing it, or how sorry they are when they’re caught, black hat SEO techniques never end well. Google is the judge, jury, and executioner of search and they wield a sharp and heavy axe. JC Penney learned this the hard way this week. Thanks to a NY Times investigation, they were exposed as participating in a link-building scheme that sent them to the top of search rankings for hundreds, possibly thousands of important organic retail search terms. While the Times does a good job of putting the pieces together, understanding…

It’s human nature to be at our most vulnerable when dealing with issues of the heart. Scam-masters and con artists know this and they’re taking advantage of the online dating craze that has grown for a decade and that shows no signs of slowing. This graphic by our friends at Zone Alarm shows the bad side of eRomance. When you’re lonely and looking for fun or fulfillment online, remember that there are those in the same field but with completely different goals. Click to enlarge. …

The thing that truly sparked the initial growth of eCommerce has become the greatest point of abandonment on sites that try to sell us stuff. The online shopping cart – a once cool and integral part of the retail end of the Internet – has devolved over the years to cause many to walk away from shopping from their computer. What happened? “What didn’t happen” is the better question. It hasn’t changed. What once made things easier has failed to improve in functionality and ease and as a result, more people “bail” from the shopping cart page than any other on retail websites. People find products, prepare…

Many claim he has a reality distortion field around him that takes whatever he really says and converts it into something that people instantly and unequivocally believe. Others claim that he is an android from the future, someone who doesn’t really exist in this world but who is controlled by super-intelligent beings who know exactly what to make him say. If there was any doubt to his humanity, it can be wiped away by the video below. Claiming to be the first televised shot of Apple’s Chosen One, this video depicts a stark opposite to the calm and composed icon of geekdom. Steve Jobs, preparing for…