Have you ever explored one of the first rockets to launch into space? You haven’t? Then what are you waiting for? Go to the New York Hall of Science!
Oh, you don’t live in New York. No problem, the museum will come to you through one of its Telepresence virtual tours.
With Cisco TelePresence, the Hall of Science takes remote visitors all around its museum floor. People in places like Sacramento, California; Seattle, Washington; St. Joseph, Michigan; Ontario, Canada; and Mexico City, Mexico have gone to the Hall of Science to dissect cows’ eyes, learn about the phases of matter, and study the science of sports—and they haven’t set foot on an airplane.
Yesterday Google announced a change in their executive leadership. There is much speculation about why it happened, but the immediate consensus is that it was focused on driving change faster within the company. That may be right or it may be wrong. Every company goes through some executive changes over time, but the more interesting area to explore is how this fit into a broader “industry timeline” perspective.
For the first 5 years of the past decade, Google was the belle of the ball. It became a verb. It changed the way we find, use and look at information. It didn’t invent search, but it built a better mousetrap and changed the world in amazing ways. People predicted that it would replace the Internet!! And then the “social Internet” happened and people started finding more interesting information from Facebook and Twitter instead of Search and RSS. The business of information changed, just as many other industries go through change. Nobody truly saw it coming, but the last 5 years of the decade were much different from the first 5 years. And while Google is still “it” in Internet search, they aren’t really “it” in social Internet. People can speculate all they want about if this is a strategy issue or execution issue, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that people are legitimately talking about Google as a “maybe they missed it” in this decade. And that’s an interesting discussion because of the pace at which it happened. About 5 years. [NOTE: I'm not predicting, assuming or implying anybody's demise. I'm a huge Google fanboy. It's the pace of change that's interesting to me.]
So what does all of this mean for companies that aren’t Google, or aren’t one of the core pillars of the Internet? What if you make cars, or pharmaceuticals, or widgets? Maybe you’re a brick and mortal retailer. What if your business isn’t in the hyper-competitive information business? Read More »
I was traveling last week. I decided to order a shuttle service for the one-hour trip from San Jose to the San Francisco International Airport. Last week, however, the trip took 2 hours. Our super helpful driver tried his best to speed up our travel time by taking a different route and changing freeways -- but with not much success.
As I was looking out the window admiring the long parking lot on the freeway (insert sarcasm here), my mind started wondering: “I wonder what’s going on out there while I’m sitting in here”. Fueled by curiosity, I later jumped on the Internet to do some research and got my calculator out. Here is some fascinating information on what 2 hours means in the world of social media and web 2.0. Read More »
Imagine, getting your commute time back via an autonomously driven cars or personal rapid transit systems. For anyone asking, what’chu talkin’ about, Willis?
Wikipedia defines the driverless car as: A driverless car is a vehicle equipped with an autopilot system, and capable of driving from one point to another without aid from an operator. Driverless passenger car programs include the 800 million EC EUREKA Prometheus Project on autonomous vehicles, the 2getthere passenger vehicles from the Netherlands, the ARGO research project from Italy, the DARPA Grand Challenge from the USA, and Google driverless car.
And personal rapid transit (PRT) as: Personal rapid transit (PRT), also called personal automated transport (PAT) or podcar, is a public transportation mode featuring small automated vehicles operating on a network of specially-built guide ways. PRT is a type of automated guideway transit (AGT), which also includes systems with larger vehicles, all the way to small subway systems.
That’s right in the near future K.I.T.T. could really possible! Of course the systems not only give you back some of your valuable time they could make driving a safer experience for all. According to the head of Vislab Professor Alberto Broggi, “Right now 93 percent (quoting European statistics) of all the road accidents are caused by human errors so if you can help the driver, or even remove the driver we might be able to solve this problem.”
Google recently made headlines and caused quite a stir when they piloted their driverless car on an California highway.
Google isn’t the only entity causing a stir this year though. Stanford, VisLab and 2getthere also made headlines with their driverless car projects. Read on to see examples of each in action… Read More »
Have you ever explored one of the first rockets to launch into space? You haven’t? Then what are you waiting for? Go to the New York Hall of Science!
