TREND REPORTS
Devialet’s $3,000 Speaker Destroys Worlds With 4,500 Watts of Loud
[Product]
2016/06/28 23:34
I GET TO audition a panoply of speakers on this job, and one of the most striking—both visually and aurally—is Devialet’s Phantom. The French company’s speaker is designed to look like some ovular starseed space egg, with cylindrical drivers firing outwards from both sides as you crank the jams, extending and receding in a blur of sound and motion. It’s also goddamn loud. The base model Ph...
(Video) Microsoft Gets Hands-On with Gesture-based Computer Interfaces
[Tech]
2016/06/28 23:34
Microsoft research teams are tackling several different challenges involved in accurately translating hand gestures for computer interface systems.Almost every object you encounter day-to-day has been designed to work with the human hand, so it's no wonder so much research is being conducted into tracking hand gestures to create more intuitive computer interfaces, such as Purdue University's De...
Why Google Would Want to Build its Own Phone
[Business]
2016/06/28 23:34
Google is reportedly thinking about building its own phone, instead of outsourcing the Nexus phones to manufacturers like LG and Huawei, according to The Telegraph.This chart from Statista shows the problem Google would be trying to solve. Right now, Android is the most popular smartphone platform in the world by far, with more than 80% global market share. But Android handset makers and carrie...
Twilio Raises More Than Expected in IPO
[Investing]
2016/06/28 23:34
Technology company’s shares priced above previous rangeTwilio Inc. raised more than it expected in its initial public offering, an optimistic sign for the dozens of other technology companies that have been valued at more than $1 billion in private fundraising.The San Francisco company’s IPO priced at $15 each, raising $150 million by selling 10 million shares, the company said in a release l...
Digital Audiences Bloom in Warmer Months for Seasonal Travel Categories
[Consumer]
2016/06/28 23:34
Summer has officially arrived, and many consumers across the U.S. are finalizing their seasonal travel plans or have already embarked on their summer vacations. With school out of session and the weather more pleasant, summer nearly always tends to see a boost in travel activity. Interestingly, consumers’ online activity reflects this ‘real-life’ behavior quite accurately, as we see an incre...
Street Furniture Gets A New Lease On Life As Art in Poland
[Design]
2016/06/28 23:33
Temporary urban "hacks" are restoring life to quiet areas.Most small architecture interventions in cities require a well-trafficked area to actually get implemented. But the enterprising experiments of NO studio, which is a collaboration between Polish designers Magda Szwajcowska and Michal Majewski, brought attention to forgotten corners in the city of Wrocław during the Lower-Silesian Festiv...
(PDF) Mckinsey - Imagining Construction’s Digital Future
[Business]
2016/06/27 11:11
The industry needs to change; here’s how to manage it.The construction industry is ripe for disruption. Large projects across asset classes typically take 20 percent longer to finish than scheduled and are up to 80 percent over budget (Exhibit 1). Construction productivity has actually declined in some markets since the 1990s (Exhibit 2); financial returns for contractors are often relatively...
(PDF) DeepHand Motion Tracking Enters the VR Arms Race
[Tech]
2016/06/27 11:10
Researchers at Purdue University have developed a system that uses a depth-sensing camera and a deep-learning network to translate physical hand movements into VR environments. The VR arms race is in full flight, and hands seem to be the next front line in the battle, whether that's fought with infrared cameras, electromagnetic sensors, handheld controllers like those used by the HTC Vive, Play...
(PDF) Doctors Are Telling Their Patients to Get Fitness Trackers, and They aren’t Listening
[Consumer]
2016/06/27 11:09
It seems patients aren’t quite getting the message when their doctors recommend incorporating wearables and other fitness trackers into their lives.About 30,000 US patients were asked if their primary care provider had recommended using wearables, in a Nielsen study (pdf) commissioned by the Council for Accountable Physician Practices (CAPP). Only 4% said yes. The year before, Nielsen posed th...
