Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel is Investing in Marijuana
[Consumer]
2015/01/11 11:09
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund pours funds into the company behind Leafly, an online cannabis community.Well, sort of. Founders Fund, a venture capital firm he cofounded, is announcing today that it participated in cannabis-focused private equity firm Privateer Holdings‘ $75 million round of funding, of which it has secured about $50 million so far. (To be clear, Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewi...
(Video) This Energy Monitor Can Control an Entire House of Appliances Remotely
[Product]
2015/01/11 11:08
Smappee from Belgium can itemize electricity usage and control a household full of devices by retrofitting them with Internet of Things capabilities.The ever-growing Internet of Things promises a programmable, wifi connected utopia of objects that act on the consumer’s behalf, fulfilling their every need and desire. While innovations such as Jibo and Mellow inch us ever closer to this reality,...
CES 2015: Sex Tech Plunges Into The Wearables Market
[Tech]
2015/01/11 11:07
With an upcoming app, OhMiBod aims to promote sexual health (and its customers’ pleasure) by upgrading its devices.PSFK has frequently noted benchmark moments in the marriage of sex and tech, as when developers made long-distance relationships more intimate and offered to turn everyday object into playthings with an updated pencil sharpener. One company’s showing at CES 2015, however, looks t...
America's Best-Selling Vehicles In 2014
[Product]
2015/01/11 11:05
According to auto sales data tracking website Good Car Bad Car, over 750,000 Ford F-Series Pickups were sold across the United States in 2014, making it the year's best-selling vehicle. In fact, pickup trucks actually claimed the top three positions on America's bestseller list last year. The Chevolet Silverado came a distant second behind the F-Series, with 529,755 sold. The top three was roun...
(Video) Why The Quantum Dot is the Hottest TV Tech Going
[Tech]
2015/01/11 11:04
If you’ve been paying attention to the market for TVs over the last few months, and especially during CES this week, you’ve been hearing a lot about 4K and 8K. But the real action today, and going forward, is in quantum dots.Known alternately as QDots or nanocrystals, quantum dots are the foundation behind what is expected to be one of the biggest sea changes in the television market over the...
A Cabinet Formed From Intersecting Squares
[Design]
2015/01/11 11:03
Mexican designer Joel Escalona partnered with French company Roche Bobois on an intriguing cabinet called Booleanos. The storage piece’s architectural facade is formed from the illusion of layered squares that are emphasized with various shades of gray panels.Despite the offset angles, the cabinet is built for storage with three doors, one drawer, and one flap that open up to reveal storage sp...
Spinal Implant Could One Day Let Paralyzed People Walk Again
[Tech]
2015/01/10 15:52
EPFL's soft-and-stretchy e-Dura implant (Photo: EPFL/Alain Herzog)Three years ago, scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) reported success in getting rats with severed spinal cords to walk again. They did so by suspending the animals in a harness, then using implants to electrically stimulate neurons in their lower spinal cord. Although this ultimately resulted in the ra...
(PDF) Understanding 5G : Perspectives on Future Technological Advancements in Mobile
[Business]
2015/01/08 12:55
Study Explores Technical Requirements, Use Cases and Implications for Ecosystem.The GSMA has released a major new report at the GSMA Mobile 360-Europe event being held in Brussels today, outlining its perspectives on the development of 5G. The new GSMA Intelligence report, ‘Understanding 5G: Perspectives on Future Technological Advancements in Mobile’, provides an overview of network technolo...
Harman Breaks Car Audio Into "Individual Sound Zones (ISZ)"
[Tech]
2015/01/08 12:55
Harman's new system is designed to break the car's cabin up into sound zones for each passenger.Harman has announced a new in-car setup that allows drivers to create "individual sound zones," each of which can play different sounds with minimal interference from other zones ? potentially eliminating the age-old argument over who gets to choose the music.Harman's individual sound zones (ISZ) bre...
Amazon Bought This Man's Company. Now He's Coming for Them
[Business]
2015/01/08 12:55
The historic downtown commercial district of Montclair, N.J., is known for its restaurants, antique shops, and art-house movie theater. It’s not usually home to lavishly funded attacks on the entrenched giants of global e-commerce. Yet on the second floor of a three-story red-brick building on Bloomfield Avenue, across a parking lot from a fancy pizza joint and up an unmarked stairwell, are th...
(PDF) The Global Language Network and its Association with Global Fame
[Consumer]
2015/01/08 12:55
HOW would you rank “important” languages? If asked to rattle them off, many people start with English, but after that are reluctant to go further. Important how, they ask. One approach would be to look at people and money: surely a language is important if it is spoken by lots of people, in countries with great wealth (and presumably, therefore, power).But in December came a new approach. A g...
Shopping, Productivity and Messaging Give Mobile Another Stunning Growth Year
[Consumer]
2015/01/08 12:55
In the six years that Flurry has been reporting on our mobile app usage, and in some cases addiction, we’ve seen stunning growth. This last year was no different. According to Flurry Analytics, in 2014 overall app usage grew by 76%. In this context, Flurry defines app usage as a user opening an app and recording what we call a session. In 2014, Shopping, Utilities & Productivity, and Messa...