Nintendo has long defined the rules of childhood. In Nintendo’s world, logic and whimsy are intermixed and there is always a bigger boss and another castle. We learned from Nintendo that you can always turn your enemy’s weapons against them and that evolution is a fact. We learned that the best stories are played out in your head and even when you don’t have a lot of friends you at least always have Mario. Nintendo also defined video gameplay. Their NES console, while seemingly underpowered, sat under millions of Christmas trees and at millions of birthday party tables for almost a decade. Their audience grew up, new members joined, and the SNES, Nintendo 64, GameCube, and Wii pushed the envelope ever so slightly with each generation. The Game Boy grew up too, morphing into the GBA, the DS, and now something else entirely. The Nintendo 3DS isn’t hard to love. It’s a cute little handheld aimed at an interesting demographic. Because children under 7 shouldn’t use the 3D feature, it seems Nintendo has made this for tweens and, more important, early adopters in the 18-36 market. → Read More
After having been a tech executive for many years, I needed to take a break, and I wanted to give back to society. Duke University engineering dean Kristina Johnson gave me a great spiel about how the school’s Masters of Engineering Management program churns out great engineers, and how engineers solve the world’s problems. She said that I could make a big impact by teaching engineering students about the real world and encouraging them to become entrepreneurs. I felt so excited that I joined the university without even asking for a proper salary. That was in 2005.
I was shocked—and upset—when the majority of my students became investment bankers or management consultants after they graduated. Hardly any became engineers. Why would they, when they had huge student loans, and Goldman Sachs was offering them twice as much as engineering companies did?
So when the investment banks tanked in 2008, I cheered because engineering had become sexy again for engineering grads (read my BusinessWeek column).
But thanks to the hundred-billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts, investment banks recovered and went back to their old, greedy ways. And they began offering even more money to engineering grads (and themselves). → Read More
Ralph Lauren watches have taken a lot of heat in the time since their announcement a few years ago. Yes, Ralph Lauren (RL) is a fashion brand, and yes they are pricey – but they have a lot of redeeming values. One of the things RL did right in their partnership with Richemont was not to BS the movements. They simply use movements (sometimes made specially for them), from established and respected movement makers such as Piaget, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and IWC. When asked what movement is contained one of their watches – they proudly tell you that they didn’t make it, and who did. → Read More
Let me start with two questions. Why is it that such a successful company as Facebook feels like it needs to change and reinvent its interface constantly? And why are we so complacent with these changes that, quite literally, disrupt our online social lives?
We have seen how social media is changing the world around us, yet we don’t have a say in its progress. Undeniably, Facebook is already part of all of our lives, even for non-users.
Below, I highlight 5 critical problems that Facebook needs to fix immediately: → Read More
Why risk human lives when we have robots that could do the job just as well? That’s what a team of researchers at Kyoto University thought when it sent a mini rescue robot to investigate the inside of a partially collapsed building in Hachinohe, a small city in North Eastern Japan. Parts of the gymnasium’s ceiling fell down following the earthquake, making it too dangerous for humans to enter the building themselves. → Read More
Editor’s note: Guest writer Amanda Hesser is a cookbook author, co-founder of cooking community site Food52, and a food columnist for the New York Times.
The entity with the greatest influence on what Americans cook is not Costco or Trader Joe’s. It’s not the Food Network or The New York Times. It’s Google. Every month about a billion of its searches are for recipes. The dishes that its search engine turns up, particularly those on the first page of results, have a huge impact on what Americans cook. Which is why, with a recent change in its recipe search, Google has, in effect, taken sides in the food war. Unfortunately, it’s taken the wrong one.
In late February, when Google announced that it was adding a new kind of search, specifically for recipes, it seemed like good news for a site like ours -– at last Google was shining its searchlight on content we deeply care about. But then came the bad news: once you get your new recipe results, you can refine the results in just 3 ways: by ingredient, by cooking time and by calories. While Google was just trying to improve its algorithm, thereby making the path to recipes easier and more efficient, it inadvertently stepped into the middle of the battle between the quick-and-easy faction and the cooking-matters group. → Read More
Research In Motion has made another acquisition-mobile development company TinyHippos. In an announcement on both RIM’s development blog and TinyHippos blog, the BlackBerry manufacturer said that it bought the Waterloo-based development team (RIM is also based in Waterloo) for their extensive experience in web and mobile widget/web development. Terms of the deal are not disclosed.
TinyHippos develops Ripple, a multi-platform mobile environment emulator that runs in a web browser and is custom-tailored to HTML5 mobile application testing (we’ve embedded a demo video below). It essentially allows developers to “look under the hood” of mobile applications to see how the apps are performing in a variety of mobile environments. → Read More
Blunt Umbrellas Reduce The Possibility Of Rain-Related Impaling “Condor” Supercomputer Made Of 1,716 PS3s Now Online Woah, This Robobird Really Flies Like A Bird – Like, With Wings Time Waster: Play Old Handheld LCD Games In Your Browser Twimal: Super-Cute Twitter Toy Pet Reads Tweets For You (Video) → Read More
Seems you can customize just about any item you want on the web these days. And a number of these sites are popping-up throughout Europe, including Golden Hook for customized knitwear, L’Usine à Design for furniture, Design Your Own Dishes (coming soon) for dishes, Shoes of Prey for women’s footwear, La cerise sur le chapeau for hats …you get the picture.
Normally, customers can personalize items online and see what they look like before ordering. But while these sites are becoming more and more popular, there is still one big issue that remains: what if customers are unsatisfied with their personalized product ? What should be done with returns and how do these types of companies minimize them? → Read More
As you probably know, computer processors are made up of a bunch of teeny tiny transistors on top of brittle silicon. While this works well for devices that can deal with solid frames, new technologies that need to be more flexible will require a new type of processor. One that can bend. → Read More
With another year comes another Harry Winston Opus watch. As we eagerly anticipate the result per annum, 2011 reveals itself as being a shockingly good season for the collection. Back in 2000 the Opus collection started as a series of limited edition timepieces that were a collaboration between Harry Winston and a single famous watch maker. The concept was dreamed up by then man-in-charge Max Busser. The tradition has been so successful, that it continues in even fuller force. This year the Opus man is watch maker Denis Giguet of MCT, who created the amazing Sequential One. Giguet lends his talents to the Opus game and wins with the Opus XI. While the Harry Winston DNA is a bit hard to see in this watch, the piece is amazing and quite unlike anything I have ever seen before. It takes complexity to a new level. Never has the display of just the hours and minutes been cause for such jaw-dropping wows. → Read More
You would think that, in a city like Seattle, people would learn to A: not have gigantic, pointy umbrellas, and B: look where the hell they are walking. But no, that is not the case. I fear for my life on blustery days when iPhone-absorbed pedestrians of smaller stature menace my eyeballs with their spiky bumbershoots. Today I learned that there are blunt umbrellas. I implore you, world, for god’s sake make this the standard. And make them cheaper, $80 is too much. [via Uncrate] → Read More
Supercomputers are expensive to make no matter how you look at it. But if you use a whole bunch of PS3s, you can save over 10x the cost compared to this guy. The Condor project is a supercomputer made up of 1,716 PS3s for the Air Force’s image processing tasks and is considered one of the top forty fastest computers in the world. Its big task involves monitoring 15 square miles 24/7, but not in the way you think. → Read More
Cross-discipline collaborations are nothing new for the car, bike, or any industry, really. By putting their heads together, people can produce truly new and interesting works of engineering, though the result is almost always horrendously expensive. In this case, considering the collaborators are the well-known bike maker Specialized and the famed auto designer McLaren, you know it’s going to cost you a dollar or two over the competition. → Read More
A nice little unpublicized feature in the latest MacBook Pros: the USB ports provide an extra 1100mA of current, allowing devices like iPads to charge as fast as they would from an outlet. Good for people who use their laptop as their main power hub. The more you know! → Read More
Innovative web and mobile payments platform Dwolla is announcing today its FiSync integration for financial institutions, a technology which lets users of participating banks integrate with with the Dwolla platform. FiSync will let members of partner financial institutions to send and receive money via phone, web, Twitter and Facebook as well as at real life stores instantly.
Because of a technology partnership with The Members Group, a full Dwolla FiSync core integration will eliminate the 2-3 day wait times associated with Automated Clearing House transactions and will allow users to directly send and receive funds from their bank accounts, with out the need for a pre-loaded Dwolla account. → Read More
When Elon Musk first came to Silicon Valley he was researching advanced, highly-energy-dense super-capacitors at Stanford. Coincidentally, when speaking at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco about the future of electric vehicles Musk said, “If I were to make a prediction, I’d think there’s a good chance that it is not batteries, but super-capacitors.” → Read More
Buffalo just outed their new portable BDXL Blu-ray writer, the BRXL-PC6U2-BK drive. BDXL is the new Blu-ray spec that can store up to 100 GB on three layers and 128 GB on four. The burner can operate at speeds of up to 4x using 2 USB 2.0 ports and 2x using only one. → Read More
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