TREND REPORTS
COVID-19 Fuels a 50% Increase in Omnichannel Shopping
[Consumer]
2021/01/07 09:08
The COVID-19 pandemic has democratized e-commerce for all types of consumers, and over 18 million CPG buyers (and counting) in the U.S. have flooded the online space since March. Online shoppers have been mirroring their purchasing within the channel to their constantly shifting, pandemic-related needs and are becoming further entrenched in their shopping behaviors. But not all online engagemen...
OpenAI Debuts DALL-E for Generating Images from Text
[Tech]
2021/01/07 09:07
OpenAI debuted two multimodal AI systems that combine computer vision and NLP: DALL-E, a system that generates images from text, and CLIP, a network trained on 400 million pairs of images and text..OpenAI today debuted two multimodal AI systems that combine computer vision and NLP: DALL-E, a system that generates images from text, and CLIP, a network trained on 400 million pairs of images and t...
(Video) Reactive Video Slows Onscreen Instructors to Stay in Sync with Viewers
[Tech]
2021/01/07 09:06
When trying to learn a physical skill such as judo or yoga from a video, it can be frustrating if you're not able to keep up with the onscreen action. That's where Reactive Video playback comes in, as its slows videos down to match the speed of their viewers.The system is being developed via a collaboration between Britain's Lancaster University, California's Stanford University, and the FX Pal...
(PDF) Mckinsey - How Charging in Buildings can Power Up the Electric-Vehicle Industry
[Business]
2021/01/07 09:05
More than 50 million electric vehicles could be sharing roads in the next five years. Updating charging infrastructure is key to scaling the industry.E-mobility has reached a tipping point. More than 250 new models of battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) will be introduced in the next two years alone, and as many as 130 million EVs could be sharing roads t...
Will You have to Carry a Vaccine Passport on Your Phone ?
[Business]
2021/01/07 09:04
What seemed so impossible at the beginning of the pandemic is now real: vaccines are here, in record time. They bring much-needed hope to a holiday season shadowed by death and fear.[In Singapore, people are already required to check in with a contact tracing app before entering places like cinemas. Will these systems also track vaccination status?]While authorities work out details for this ma...
Air Purifying Window that Uses Sunlight to Purify Your Home
[Design]
2021/01/07 09:03
After spending a year quarantined with three roommates, the air quality in our apartment, if you can imagine, has grown quite stuffy. The solution seems simple: crack open a window. That’s true, we could do that, but giving our neighbors a clear view into our home does not sit well with any of us. For my roommates and I specifically, we have the bad luck of having large windows that look out o...
(Patent) Apple Wants a Patent for a Method of Locating Wireless Devices
[Tech]
2021/01/06 09:10
U.S. patent application, US20200404423, describes a method for location-tracking of wireless electronic devices. The method includes playing a sound at a specified frequency by an accessory device via a communication link, receiving the sound by the electronic device and filtering the sound associated with direction data generated from sensor data of the electronic device. The illustration belo...
(PDF) Mckinsey - A New Model for the Consumer-Goods Industry
[Business]
2021/01/06 09:09
Twelve trends, accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, are disrupting the consumer-goods industry’s traditional success model.The consumer-goods industry thrived for decades with a winning model: build mass brand equity, grow with grocers as they expand, and drive operating efficiencies. But in the past decade, that historic success model has been disrupted by 12 trends, most of which have now bee...
Novel Film That Keeps us Dry and Cool
[Tech]
2021/01/06 09:08
New Moisture-Absorbing Film Evaporates Sweat 6 Times Faster and Holds 15 Times More Moisture.Shoe insoles made with the sweat-absorbing film, which change color from blue to pink as they absorb moistureSweat is important for keeping us cool, but too much of it isn’t very pleasant either. Now, researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a new film that can absorb sw...
