Author: Rocco Penn

The long hair. The mustache. The lack of a turtle neck. 32 years ago, Steve Jobs gave a presentation that wasn’t like the ones he has been famous for the last decade and a half but there are definitely flashes of the bravado and intellect that made him an icon. The video, gifted to the Computer History Museum by Regis McKenna, helps to bring humanity to a man that many view as super-human. The 23-minute clip is grainy and raw, nothing like the amazing videos that he has helped to create in recent years. It’s a metaphor of the man as he was then compared to what he eventually became. …

Speed is relative. Internet speed is extremely relative, which is why Verizon has been touting the impressive speeds that their network is providing to users. The problem is that they may not be spreading the message as well as they would if they simply came out and gave us real numbers. That’s been the complaint about their advertising for a while now, and Saturday Night Live is right there to express our concerns. How much faster is it than 3G? Where is the network strong and where is it still being developed? These questions and others are beautifully dodged by the SNL team in their recent satirical…

If this is the future of retail, I’ll be shopping online more often. Takashimaya, a department store in Tokyo, is working with Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro from Osaka University to demonstrate their concept of the next generation of retail merchandising. The timing couldn’t be better – the female mannequin is pushing their Valentine’s Day promotion as its first target. Ishiguro is known as the master of lifelike robotics and is best known for his work on the incredibly realistic Geminoid line of androids. This is the first time his work has been applied for commercial purposes. “I see this as the future…

There are definite distinctions between users of various social sites. They’re often easy to spot based upon their look (Tumblr), activities (FourSquare), and attitude (Pinterest), but the combination of the three can help us identify Yelp users very easily. Our friends at Flowtown take a humorous look at the Yelp phenomenon and the people who drive it. Reviews are important for businesses so the ability to spot a Yelp user as they’re walking in the door can be the best defense against negative comments that can haunt a business for years. Click to enlarge. (H/T: Peoria Chevrolet Dealer)…

Social media and the internet in general had dramatic effects on the election in 2008. This year is proving to give even more influence to online opinions and news aggregation as bumps are going up and down dramatically both with the GOP primaries and with the general public’s opinion of all candidates, including President Barack Obama. This infographic by MDG breaks down how social media has impacted the election so far and what effects it will have come November. Click to enlarge. …

Gadgets and gizmos are top of mind when people start talking about technology. It’s in the phones that we carry. It’s at our desks in our offices and at home. Technology is becoming a part of everything. Starting tomorrow in Las Vegas, new technologies will be highlighted at the NADA conference where members of the automotive industry converge once a year to see the latest and the greatest. This year’s event is a little different than it has been in the past. The industry has always been somewhat isolated from the rest of the technological world in a way similar to pharmaceuticals and space exploration….

Quadrotor technology developed at the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) lab at the University of Pennsylvania is able to fly with better accuracy than anything we’ve seen to date. Their ability to run complicated formations is both beautiful and terrifying. The beauty is obvious. They may sound like bugs and look exceptionally creepy as they do flips and run tight formations (the figure-8 is amazing), but they are “geek beautiful” in ways that few robotic devices have achieved. They are terrifying because the possibilities are endless. When possibilities are…

It’s clear that online payments are the future. Many pay for nearly everything online, but there are still security and convenience concerns that keep some skeptical. Billion of dollars will be spent online this year, but there are things to consider before putting one’s credit card online. This graphic by our friends at ZoneAlarm breaks down some of these concerns that face the online payment industry. Will they be fixed this year? Will more concerns arise? …

Just as movies are made outside of Hollywood and cars are built outside of Detroit, entrepreneurs, startups, and venture capitalists are present in places other than Silicon Valley. Worldwide, there are business-friendly environments that are conducive to expansion of technological advancements. This graphic by Gist examines these various “Entrepreneur Meccas” where talent and dollars collide to bring advancements to the world. Click to enlarge. (Via: Gist. H/T: Cleveland VW.)…

There are several questions that programmers must answer when deciding on their language of choice. Depending on who you ask, the passions towards one language or another can spark debates, even “nerd fights” as can be found in some videos (we won’t like them here but you can find them on YouTube). The three generally-recognized “modern languages” combine many aspects from past languages and attempt to solve the problems that they had. There is no clear winner, as certain needs can be more easily filled with different languages. PHP holds Wikipedia and Facebook in their camp. Python was the language…