Chuck Hull: the father of 3D printing who shaped technology; Hull knew his invention would take up to 30 years to find its way into people’s homes. Today the possibilities appear endless

Chuck Hull: the father of 3D printing who shaped technology

Hull knew his invention would take up to 30 years to find its way into people’s homes. Today the possibilities appear endless

Shane Hickey in Berlin

The Guardian, Sunday 22 June 2014 14.35 BST

Chuck Hull found retirement was not for him so he returned to 3D Systems and is now vice-president and chief technology officer.

Although measured and deliberate in his responses, there is one moment when the softly spoken Chuck Hull – known as the father of 3D printing – tells of his surprise about what exactly his creation was capable of achieving.

In 1996, surgeons at the Wilford Hall medical centre in Texas working to separate a pair of conjoined twins thought that only one would be able to walk after the operation. After a model of the girls’ bone structure was generated using 3D printing, however, they found a shared upper leg bone to be bigger than expected and split it successfully, resulting in both twins being able to walk. Read more of this post

Computer metaphors are invading our language

Computer metaphors are invading our language

By Howard Axelrod

|    JUNE 14, 2014

AN OLD friend called a few weeks ago to catch up. There was a kind of splinter in his voice. After a warm-up exchange about the NBA playoffs, he told me that his sister was using drugs again. Her husband had known for months and hid the knowledge from my friend’s family.

“It’s taking a while to process,” he said. Then he added, “Process our emotions, process the situation — that’s what everyone keeps saying. But it doesn’t feel like the right word. It sounds so efficient, when, really, everything is such a mess.”

“I can only imagine,” I said.

Related

Dante Ramos: Technology reboots the language

“You’re a writer,” he said. “Give me a word I can use. Instead of ‘process,’ a word that goes with how it feels.” Read more of this post

Online travel agents: The market for booking travel online is rapidly consolidating

Online travel agents: The market for booking travel online is rapidly consolidating

Jun 21st 2014 | From the print edition

IN 1996, when Microsoft was still ahead of the big technology trends, it launched a small brand called Expedia Travel Services. It hoped to persuade customers to book holidays online. It was not an immediate success. Few households had an internet connection then and, just as importantly, most people thought the idea of buying a holiday through the ether (not to mention typing their credit-card details into a web browser) plain foolish.

Read more of this post

These Two Guys Built Dropcam To Catch A Dog – And Just Sold It For $555 Million

These Two Guys Built Dropcam To Catch A Dog — And Just Sold It For $555 Million

JULIE BORT TECH  JUN. 21, 2014, 9:34 PM

Dropcam founders Greg Duffy and Aamir Virani

The story of Dropcam is a classic tale of Silicon Valley success.

Late Friday, Google’s Nest announced that it was buying Dropcam for $555 million in cash. Read more of this post

THE INSIDE STORY OF YO: How A ‘Stupid’ App Attracted Million Of Dollars And Rocketed To The Top Of The App Store

THE INSIDE STORY OF YO: How A ‘Stupid’ App Attracted Million Of Dollars And Rocketed To The Top Of The App Store

ALYSON SHONTELL TECH  JUN. 22, 2014, 8:49 AM

Moshe Hogeg was getting tired of asking his employee, Or Arbel, for a favor.

Hogeg, the CEO and founder of Tel Aviv company Mobli, had requested a simple way to get in touch with his wife and his assistant via his smartphone. Email chains were burdensome. Even texting encouraged longer conversations than Hogeg had time for. He envisioned a simple app with large buttons that, when pressed, would send a one-word notification to another person: “Yo.” The “Yo” would let the person know they were needed or being thought of. Read more of this post

Unblinking Eyes Track Employees: Workplace Surveillance Sees Good and Bad

Unblinking Eyes Track Employees

Workplace Surveillance Sees Good and Bad

By STEVE LOHRJUNE 21, 2014

A digital Big Brother is coming to work, for better or worse.

Advanced technological tools are beginning to make it possible to measure and monitor employees as never before, with the promise of fundamentally changing how we work — along with raising concerns about privacy and the specter of unchecked surveillance in the workplace. Read more of this post

Will people let Dropcam see into their homes when it’s owned by Google?

Will people let Dropcam see into their homes when it’s owned by Google?

By Kabir Chibber @quinto_quarto 8 hours ago

Nest, which makes internet-connected smart devices for the home, has boughtDropcam, which makes cameras that monitor the home, for $555 million. Nest was itself acquired by Google back in January for $3.2 billion. Read more of this post

London’s tech economy is booming as apps and games made there entertain the world – and experts predict the first global trillion-dollar company will rise in the UK, most likely in big data. What is the secret to this rapid success?

How tech’s new wave turned UK on to winning ways

London’s tech economy is booming as apps and games made there entertain the world – and experts predict the first global trillion-dollar company will rise in the UK, most likely in big data. What is the secret to this rapid success?
Juliette Garside

The Observer, Sunday 22 June 2014

Near the tree trunk-shaped reception desk and the tubular slide, youngsters in skinny jeans perch among beanbags scattered on the Astroturf floor. Beneath a ceiling sprouting jungle foliage, the talk is all ofapps and coding. Read more of this post

Oracle: Cloudy With a Chance of M&A

Oracle: Cloudy With a Chance of M&A

DAN GALLAGHER

June 20, 2014 2:00 p.m. ET

Oracle ORCL -3.98% closed its fiscal year on a bum note. But the software giant left little doubt that it intends to get big in the cloud—and quickly.

The transition won’t be an easy one. Oracle’s stock fell Friday on the heels of its fiscal fourth-quarter report, in which it missed earnings and revenue forecasts. In part, the shortfall resulted from some customers choosing to subscribe to Oracle’s cloud offerings as opposed to licensing the software. This means less revenue being booked up front because recognition is spread out over time. Read more of this post

Content remains a giant mystery, but that hasn’t slowed the flood of VC cash

Content remains a giant mystery, but that hasn’t slowed the flood of VC cash

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON JUNE 20, 2014

Content marketers might actually have no idea which metrics translate into actual business results, but content marketing companies are seeing a huge uptick in venture financing, anyway.

Out this week from CB Insights is a report that content marketing startups raised $292 million dollars across 44 deals in the 12 months spanning the Q2 2013 to Q1 2014. This was a 47 percent bump in deal activity over the year prior, but a 125 percent spike in dollars, as latter-stage companies like Percolate, NewsCred and Contently rolled out big funding rounds. Read more of this post

Hi, I’m a Tablet. I’ll Be Your Waiter Tonight.; Chains Like Panera Bread and Chili’s are using apps and tablets to improve food preparation, ordering and payment, and to entertain customers

Hi, I’m a Tablet. I’ll Be Your Waiter Tonight.

Panera and Chili’s Turn to Tablets to Streamline Service

By STEPHANIE STROMJUNE 20, 2014

BRAINTREE, Mass. — An idea came to Ronald M. Shaich, the chief executive of Panera Bread, as he was driving his children to school about four years ago: What if everyone could order lunch the way he did?

The Shaich household’s morning routine included a call to the manager of the nearest Panera location to order lunch for Mr. Shaich’s son (Asian sesame chicken salad with half the normal amount of chicken and twice the won ton strips) and daughter (various salads but with dressing on the side). Read more of this post

Nest co-founder Tony Fadell, a former acolyte of Steve Jobs, explains how he invented a new thermostat and how his role changed after leaving One Infinite Loop

Tony Fadell: In his own words

Adam Lashinsky

JUNE 20, 2014, 10:30 AM EDT

Nest co-founder Tony Fadell, a former acolyte of Steve Jobs, explains how he invented a new thermostat and how his role changed after leaving One Infinite Loop.

Tony Fadell, a former Apple  AAPL -1.03%  executive who went on to co-found Nest (which recently sold to Google  GOOG 0.26%  for $3.2 billion), has been likened to Steve Jobs and Larry Page for his innovative thinking and disruptive technology. Read more of this post

Google’s Chromecast may pose threat to smart TVs

Updated : 2014-06-20 19:27

Chromecast may pose threat to smart TVs

By Bahk Eun-ji

Google Chromecast, which made its debut here last month, is gaining popularity and favorable customer reviews.
Chromecast is an adapter ― about the size of a USB stick ― that plugs into a television and allows users to mirror content such as videos, music, photos and apps from a computer, tablet or smartphone onto a TV screen.
Google sold 2.7 million Chromecasts in the U.S. last year and about 200,000 in Korea over the last month. Amid its growing popularity, some experts believe Chromecast could threaten smart TVs because of additional functions they do not offer.  Read more of this post

Doubts about Amazon’s future overshadow Fire Phone launch

Doubts about Amazon’s future overshadow Fire Phone launch

As it unveils the latest in its line of smart devices, the tech company faces a growing number of challengers

Juliette Garside

The Guardian, Friday 20 June 2014 19.17 BST

The list of household names – Blackberry, Nokia, HTC, Motorola – that have almost bankrupted themselves trying to make a hit smartphone is long, but this week Amazon became the latest tech company to take on the challenge.

Jeff Bezos stepped on stage in Seattle on Wednesday to unveil his Fire Phone. With his mother in the audience, he presented the latest in a line-up of smart devices that already includes the Kindle Fire tablet and a Fire TV box. With a 3D screen, a scanner that will recognise – and try to sell you – anything from cereal bars to songs, and unlimited cloud storage for photos, Amazon’s smartphone is a technology light year away from its first black and white e-reader. However, few expect it to take sales away from the two brands that now dominate mobile: Apple and Samsung. Read more of this post

Apple’s Foe Is Margin Risk, Not Fire Phone

Apple’s Foe Is Margin Risk, Not Fire Phone

Amazon’s phone is limited to maintaining and expanding the Prime user base.

June 20, 2014 11:00 a.m. ET

Credit Suisse

Amazon.com launched a new smartphone, which they named the Fire Phone.

The Fire Phone has a rubberized frame, Gorilla Glass, and a 13 megapixel (MP) rear-facing camera. It also has a 4.7 inch liquid crystal display high-definition (LCD HD) display, a Qualcomm (ticker: QCOM ) Snapdragon chipset, and 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. Read more of this post

Google’s Nest to buy home-monitoring camera startup Dropcam for $555 million: Report

Google’s Nest to buy home-monitoring camera startup Dropcam for $555 million: Report

Reuters
Jun 21, 2014 at 08:23am IST

Dropcam, the home-monitoring camera startup, will be bought by Google’s Nest Labs for about $555 million in cash, a technology news website reported on Friday.

The deal was signed on Friday and is yet to close, according to the report by Recode.net.

Nest confirmed the acquisition in a blog post on Friday, but did not specify the price tag. Neither Google nor Dropcam were immediately available for comment.t confirmed the acquisition in a blog post on Friday, but did not specify the price tag.

Dropcam plans to move from San Francisco to Nest’s offices in Palo Alto, California, Recode wrote.

Nest makes smart thermostat and smoke alarms and was bought by Google earlier this year for $3.2 billion.

Google and Microsoft plan to join Apple in offering theft-deterring “kill switches” in their smartphone operating systems, as part of an agreement with mayors and police agencies

Google, Microsoft to add smartphone ‘kill’ switches

Friday, June 20, 2014 – 21:46

AFP

WASHINGTON – Google and Microsoft plan to join Apple in offering theft-deterring “kill switches” in their smartphone operating systems, as part of an agreement with mayors and police agencies.

The announcement came in a report Thursday by the “Secure Our Smartphones Initiative” led by the New York state attorney general with officials from San Francisco and London. Read more of this post

Why ‘Yo’ Is Not a Complete Joke

Jun 20, 2014

Why ‘Yo’ Is Not a Complete Joke

EVELYN M. RUSLI

When news broke this week of a $1 million investment in Yo — an app that simply lets people send “yo” to friends” – it appeared to be a bad joke.

To some, the tech scene has come to resemble a parody of itself, one even stranger than the spoofs on television. Not even Pied Piper, the fictional startup on the HBO show “Silicon Valley” was able to raise $1 million—instead, settling for $200,000 despite its sophisticated software. Yo, meanwhile, was built in eight hours by an entrepreneur who wanted to create a basic notification service for his friend. Read more of this post

Can Apple Crack the Smartwatch Code? Company Takes On Rivals Google and Samsung With Wrist Device to Launch Later This Year

Can Apple Crack the Smartwatch Code?

Company Takes On Rivals Google and Samsung With Wrist Device to Launch Later This Year

DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI, EVA DOU and LORRAINE LUK

Updated June 20, 2014 7:34 p.m. ET

Apple is planning multiple versions of its smartwatch, likely to be launched in the fall, people familiar with the matter said, as the company tries to counter wearable devices from rivals such as Google and Samsung. George Stahl joins Michael Casey to discuss. Photo: Getty Read more of this post

Apple’s iWatch may sport multiple designs: WSJ

Apple’s iWatch may sport multiple designs: WSJ

1:21pm EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc plans to launch smartwatches with multiple screen sizes and designs this fall, the Wall Street Journal on Friday cited a person familiar with the matter as saying.

Taiwan’s Quanta will begin mass production of Apple’s first smartwatches from July, in time for an October launch, several sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. Read more of this post

Intuit president and CEO Brad Smith reflected on the company’s three decades of agility, outlined current products and partnerships, and forecasted industry trends-while carefully alluding to imminent Intuit innovations

Intuit CEO Brad Smith Talks Big Trends and Changes

SAN ANTONIO (JUNE 18, 2014)

BY DANIELLE LEE

Intuit president and CEO Brad Smith reflected on the company’s three decades of agility, outlined current products and partnerships, and forecasted industry trends—while carefully alluding to imminent Intuit innovations—on the final morning of the Scaling New Heights conference Wednesday in San Antonio.

“We’re like Tim Duncan,” he told the general session audience during a sit-down with conference host and QuickBooks consultant Joe Woodard that later opened into an audience Q&A. “We won a championship ring in each of the last three decades, and are going to continue to win.” Read more of this post

Using marketing analytics to drive superior growth; Companies have so many analytical options at their disposal that they often become paralyzed, defaulting to just one approach

Using marketing analytics to drive superior growth

Companies have so many analytical options at their disposal that they often become paralyzed, defaulting to just one approach.

June 2014 | byRishi Bhandari, Marc Singer, and Hiek van der Scheer

There’s no question that the development of better analytical tools and approaches in recent years has given business leaders significant new decision-making firepower. Yet while advanced analytics provide the ability to increase growth and marketing return on investment (MROI), organizations seem almost paralyzed by the choices on offer. As a result, business leaders tend to rely on just one planning and performance-management approach. They quickly find that even the most advanced single methodology has limits. Read more of this post