Plants. That’s going to be the secret weapon for Amazon if they get their way in Seattle as their plans (pdf) include three massive biodomes in the front yard of their proposed skyscraper offices in the downtown area at 7th Avenue and Westlake. In essence, it would be their own miniature version of an Amazon rain forest, only the rain would be left on the outside of the domes. According to the proposal which is being reviewed by the Design Review Board, “In addition to a variety of workplace environments, the facility will incorporate dining, meeting and lounge spaces, as well as a variety of botanical…

A social media study conducted by Pew (pdf) reveals some interesting facts about social media use by teenagers. One of the most interesting takeaways is that Tumblr just isn’t as popular as many people believe in the youngest demographic. Twitter is. It’s growing substantially with 24% of teens microblogging their 140-characters regularly in 2012 compared to 16% in 2011. Instagram is also growing in popularity with 11% of teens using Facebook’s mobile image darling. Compare this to Tumblr, a much older service and one that is wrongly associated by many to be a teen haven, is sitting at only 5%…

Fans of the extremely popular Call of Duty video game series have experienced many emotional premises that dominate the game play and drive the story lines. Pride. Revenge. Hope. With the upcoming release from Infinity Ward, there is an overwhelming sense of a different kind of emotion, one that CoD fans haven’t seen in previous titles. Call of Duty: Ghosts is already being depicted as bringing despair to gamers, at least those who are used to America being a superpower. In this game, America will be broken. The government will have failed. The economy will have collapsed. Cities will be overrun…

Yahoo is finally tossing its hat into the social media ring. Recently, Yahoo announced that it would be incorporating tweets into its newsfeed on Yahoo.com. This signals a serious shift, since Yahoo is giving equal weight to tweets and ‘bona fide news.’ Anyone who’s paying attention will have noticed that Twitter is one of the largest growing companies in the world. With over half a billion users and over $250 million in advertising revenue just last year, Twitter is also one of the most valuable brand strategy tools available to a company. However, Yahoo is now using Twitter as a news outlet,…

Nikola Tesla was ahead of his time. In many ways, he is still ahead of our time. Some of his inventions and discoveries are still baffling scientists today (notwithstanding the conspiracy theory that his technology has always been understood but was suppressed, but that’s a different story). If he were around today trying to raise funds for his wireless energy concept, there’s a good chance that he would be met with insurmountable obstacles. The money is controlled by people who are not adequate in their understanding of how such amazing inventions can operate in this world and are driven by the…

There are food shortages around the world. People die from hunger in all countries and regions. Keeping the seven billion residence of the world fed has been a problem since the dawn of humanity. What will happen when there are 12 billion mouths to feed? According to Anjan Contractor, the human population will not be sustainable once we reach “peak” population, which is one reason why NASA is granting him the money to explore using 3D printers as a way to produce food and minimize waste? It doesn’t sound appetizing, but it may be necessary according to Contractor, who received a 6-month, $125,000…

There was a time when high school science projects involved baking soda volcanoes dropping egg-filled containers from helicopters. That may actually still be the case, but not for a batch of 1,600 high school students at this year’s 2013 Intel International Science. 18-year-old Eesha Khare developed a super-capacitor with a special nano-structure that allows more energy within a lower volume. It is able to deliver the energy more efficiently and stores it for up to 10,000 cycles (compared to most batteries that last around 1000 cycles). It can charge cellphone batteries in 30 seconds and…

Facebook and other social networks are employing keyword-sniffing programs that monitor our private communications such as chats and direct messages. When a potential criminal activity is found, the communication is presented to human auditors who determine whether or not to inform law enforcement. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? This was one of the most thought provoking questions I’ve ever explored before writing an editorial. The conspiracy-theory-loving, “leave my internet alone” part of me was absolutely outraged (albeit not a bit surprised) once I heard about this practice….

You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’! Yep, times are still changing, as more public company boards are lending their ears to digital directors who can develop their online marketing, social media and mobile device strategies.  “Content marketing” is the new buzzword on everyone’s lips, and C-suite execs are finding themselves “increasingly ill-equipped in the boardroom” and, in many cases, digitally illiterate. This may be enough to scare many into hurriedly making a Facebook or Twitter page – but it’s not the whole…

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is cited as 82% of today’s cloud investments, and is the deployment model for 84% of new applications, so what is SaaS? SaaS is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider, and made available to customers over a network. SaaS provides the most visible value to end users of the cloud models. SalesForce was created in 1999, and was the first SaaS platform built from scratch to achieve rapid growth. The products and services of SalesForce included customer relationship management, the sales cloud, and the service…