Bryan O’Rourke shares his thoughts on technology, business, and consumer trends in health, fitness and more.
Check out this wonderfully animated video, Professor Philip Zimbardo (of the famed Stanford Prison Experiment) "conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world."
Elliot Van Buskirk had a recent post on Caterina Fake's (pictured on left) recent talk at the Wired Business Conference titled, "Mapping Desire, Exploring the Science of Online Recommendations."
Her observations on personal data and new web functionality are interesting: “One of the things that we saw with the efflorescence of Web 2.0 was that there are now exobytes and exobytes of data online. The future of the internet goes to whosoever is able to make all of this information work for the benefit of people out there who are trying to find things and are standing on the corner of 44th street and 5th avenue and it’s their mother’s birthday in two weeks, and they know it, and their computer knows it, and also knows that her taste is such that if there’s three scarves that are actually in inventory at Sax 5th Avenue, and if she just walks up the five blocks, she can get that for her. If you are able to solve problems like that for people, that will be immensely useful to people.”
Her firm Hunch gathers such a wide variety of data from its users that it may in fact be able to fill in gaps left unfilled by vertical recommendation engines such as Amazon’s and Netflix’s. For example, it has ascertained that people who prefer their sandwiches cut diagonally also prefer Ray-Ban sunglasses.
I was reading the WSJ again today and came across an Op-Ed by Holman Jenkins, Jr. titled "Obama vs. BP and You". Mr. Jenkins is a smart man, no doubt. However, his editorial really misses the most relevant point around the BP disaster: how duplicitous and irresponsible many of the American PEOPLE are because their behavior is a significant contributor to disasters like the current BP situation in the Gulf.
Before I continue, you should know, I live in Louisiana. My uncles and relatives make a living from the oil and gas industry and from the seafood industry. Point is the situation is disturbing and I believe that my friend Mr. Jenkins and many others should start spending less time blaming others and more time taking responsibility.
Now obviously BP's hands are dirty here. They demonstrated some pretty irresponsible behavior. However, when you are drilling for oil a mile under the ocean, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. That the disaster is a surprise is a joke and I don't recall folks failing to fill up their tanks given concerns before the crisis unfolded. There weren't any, so long as oil remained relatively cheap.
Holman in his Op-Ed, like many commentators today, fails to address the most pertient issue : the BP disaster and the public's response is a reflection of our hypocritical culture. As a nation we cannot on the one hand bemoan our political leadership, whom we elected, and cry foul to BP either for their conduct, while we turn the thermostat down to a more comfortable 74 degrees. You can't have your cake and eat it too and that is the trouble today. Most American's are driving around in their SUV's while being "concerned" about the ecology. Give me a break - and Mr. Jenkins your editorial doesn't help folks realize their culpability when you attempt to paint Obama as being the culpret against poor BP and us. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Little effort has been made to do anything about curbing consumption of power based on fossil fuels, despite all of the obvious consequences. Somehow people cannot connect the dots between their personal choices and outcomes and commentators like Mr. Jenkins don't help the matter, when he writes:
"A policeman kicks out your taillight and then writes you a ticket for a faulty taillight. A president announces a moratorium on offshore drilling as a sop to a section of his public that always opposes drilling, and to be seen "doing something." Then he turns around and demands that BP compensate those injured by the president's own careless action. Mr. Obama may not quite have committed the miracle of converting Tony Hayward into a sympathetic character, but voters who aren't keen on higher energy prices should be watching closely. Their taillight is ripe to be kicked out next."
Holman, come on man ! That is the analogy you chose ? It would be more appropriate to point out that the driver is kicking their own taillights out, not some third party cop. I suppose when the next ecological crisis happens you'll blame that one on our failure to keep up the "war on terror."
Wether you are a fan of President Obama or not perhaps if policies created higher energy prices people would start to use less fossil fuels and things like the BP disaster would be much less likely to occur. Has anyone thought about that ?
The WSJ reported today that the Internet is poised to overtake newspapers as the second-largest U.S. advertising medium by revenue behind television, according to the recent PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2010 to 2014.
As the PricewaterhouseCoopers report says, "The pace of consumers' migration to new digital platforms is running well ahead of the industry’s expectations and yet non-digital revenue streams will still account for two thirds of total global spending in 2014. Changing consumer behaviour is impacting on all segments of the entertainment and media industry, as companies search for the right role and positioning in the digital value chain that is now taking shape."
Indeed, many businesses and organizations have not adequately prepared for the sea change ahead as the "digital value chain" unfolds. With Ad revenues and customer interactions increasingly shifting from old platforms to new ones, there needs to be a realignment by companies in their distribution and promotional paradigms. Since many organizations are failing to figure it all out there will be a rise in competition across many industries as those who do understand the implications and opportunities bring their insights to bare on the market.
Get ready for the revolution. Its going to be a rough ride full of painful change and great opportunities.
Think about this, 3 years ago, if someone told you you'd have a decent video editing program on your cell phone, which can also shoot 720p HD video, and have a video conference on would you have believed it ? The answer is no. I am impressed with the newest iPhone. What isn't to love: An industry-leading screen, video chat, HD video, significantly faster processor, better battery life, updated OS that includes almost every missing feature people have been asking for, including multitasking.
Well Apple did it again, and its only the beginning of what is to come in the world of mobile technology. The arrival of main stream mobile video communication is here and part of the IPhone 4g. It will forever change the way we live, work and play.
Copyright © 2021, Bryan K. O'Rourke. All rights reserved.
