Author: JD Rucker

Do you remember the person who consulted with you about social media and told you that brands are having tremendous success on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest? That’s the type of person that you’re reaching the most according to a report by NBCUniversal Integrated Media. The report is designed to show how consumers who are part of GenX and GenY are digesting their influences. It took a split approach to the study which consisted of 2,500 people – 2,000 were average respondents age 18-49 and the other 500 were “digital trendsetters” in the same age group which represent 5% of the national…

It was hot, then it was cold, then it was hot, then it was cold. Google+, the search giant’s 54th attempt at a social network, is going on two years old now and it has made a splash in the social media world with half a billion users, over 100 million of whom are considered “active”. These seem to be impressive numbers until you spend enough time on the site and realize that it’s still not in the same league as Facebook when it comes to engagement. People live a good portion of their lives on Facebook, while they struggle to remember to check their Google+. They aren’t far off from having a truly valid social…

Around 250 people have been reported injured as a spectacular meteor blazed across the sky in the Urals region of Russia near Chelyabinsk east of Moscow. Even during the day, it was clearly visible on several dashboard cameras. Conflicting reports are coming in about whether or not it was shot down by the military. Despite shaking and explosions in the sky, the National Earthquake Information Center reports no major earthquakes in the area indicating that it disintegrated before hitting the earth. There are peculiarities in the reports and videos as described below. The damage shown above…

For the sake of full disclosure, let me state up front that I supported California Proposition 37 which would have mandated labeling of genetically modified foods that we buy, I try to eat organic foods whenever possible (restaurants are sadly behind on this one so some GMO slips into my body), and I am not the biggest fan of Monsanto or their practices. With that said, I came close to feeling sympathetic to them. Close. Then I came to my senses. The moment of weakness came in a story I was reading on RT.com that discussed the “seed oligarchy” that they’ve created for themselves in the parts of the world…

When the NYTimes published a story last week claiming that a review drive of the Tesla Model S ended with a flatbed and a stranded journalist, CEO Elon Musk lashed out against the claims on Twitter. It seemed at the time to be the bitter response to a negative review that is often the knee-jerk reaction to bad press. Then, it turned interesting. NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2013   Juicy stuff coming – that was the promise. While we waited, the reporter…

Proponents of drone warfare say that any technology that allows the United States to achieve its military goals without risking American lives is a good thing. They say that the collateral damage (ie loss of innocent lives) is a part of any type of military operation when an enemy is embedded within the population the way al Qaeda is and it doesn’t matter whether you send in tanks and troops or drones and bombs, there’s going to be consequences. At least they’re not (always) Americans, right? This is the sort of arrogance that can get our country in trouble with the international community. The Obama…

Before anyone starts chanting that the conspiracy theorists were bound to find something in the Cybersecurity Executive Order to attack for the sake of attacking, keep one thing in mind. I like the order as a whole. In many ways, it’s pretty impotent and stays in line with what privacy activists (myself included) had hoped for – a one-way street of information sharing that will allow public and private entities involved in critical infrastructure to better defend themselves. My hope was that the sharing would be even deeper, that there would be more tangible ways that the government could educate…

For a man who built an online empire that is dedicated to make as much of our lives as public as possible, Facebook co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been able to keep his personal life in the dark and his media attention under control for the most part. We know very little about the man other than what he has been willing to share. Is he really that boring or is he simply a master of privacy in the public world he’s building? It could be a mixture of the two. He knows about privacy. He may know more about online privacy than any CEO in the world. It’s his job to make people disregard their privacy, to encourage…

Some of the best minds in modern technology migrate to the automotive industry every year. From software to design, aerodynamics to aesthetics, the art and science of building cars is something that is in a constant state of flux. There have been innovations and additions made to vehicles, but there hasn’t been a game-changing shift in decades. Volkswagen and engineer Ulrich Hackenberg are working on changing that with their vision of a “global car”. It’s a concept that has been discussed for decades but has been too ambitious to implement. VW as been riding a string of victories over the past…

Greatness in television science fiction does not have a very strong track record. Star Trek didn’t last very long before getting cancelled. Even ST:TOS lasted much longer than Firefly. Despite all of the poor excuses for scifi TV series in recent years, Battlestar Galactica was the one shining piece of stellar entertainment. Unfortunately, SyFy backed themselves into a corner. On one hand, they ended the series with no opportunity for a sequel. Then, they tried to play the prequel game with the failed Caprica. This didn’t bode well for Blood and Chrome, the prequel that should have been.  There’s…