We have the technology (to quote The Six Million Dollar Man), but commercial tools for exploring, assisting, and augmenting our bodies really can approach a price tag of $6 million. Medical and assistive tech manufacturers must pay not just for R&D, but for expensive clinical trials, regulatory compliance, and liability — and doesn’t help with low pricing that these devices are typically paid for… Broadcasting platform : Vimeo Source : MAKE: Blog Discovery Date : 07/01/2012 01:00 Number of articles : 2
For some reason, Forbes.com thought it was a good idea to post an article called “If I Were A Poor Black Kid.” Check out a few excerpts and let us know your thoughts: President Obama gave an excellent speech last week in Kansas about inequality in America. “This is the defining issue of our time.” He said. “This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.” He’s right. The spread between rich and poor has gotten wider over the decades. And the opportunities for the 99% have become harder to realize. The President’s speech got me thinking. My kids are no smarter than similar kids their age from the inner city. My kids have it much easier than their counterparts from West Philadelphia. The world is not fair to those kids mainly because they had the misfortune of being born two miles away into a more difficult part of the world and with a skin color that makes realizing the opportunities that the President spoke about that much harder. This is a fact. In 2011. I am not a poor black kid. I am a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background. So life was easier for me. But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city. It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them. Or that the 1% control the world and the rest of us have to fight over the scraps left behind. I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia. If I was a poor black kid I would first and most importantly work to make sure I got the best grades possible. I would make it my #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently. I wouldn’t care if I was a student at the worst public middle school in the worst inner city. Even the worst have their best. And the very best students, even at the worst schools, have more opportunities. Getting good grades is the key to having more options. With good grades you can choose different, better paths. If you do poorly in school, particularly in a lousy school, you’re severely limiting the limited opportunities you have. And I would use the technology available to me as a student. I know a few school teachers and they tell me that many inner city parents usually have or can afford cheap computers and internet service nowadays. That because (and sadly) it’s oftentimes a necessary thing to keep their kids safe at home then on the streets. If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study. I’d become expert at Google Scholar. I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books. I’d watch relevant teachings on Academic Earth, TED and the Khan Academy. (I say relevant because some of these lectures may not be related to my work or too advanced for my age. Is this easy? No it’s not. It’s hard. It takes a special kind of kid to succeed. And to succeed even with these tools is much harder for a black kid from West Philadelphia than a white kid from the suburbs. But it’s not impossible. The tools are there. The technology is there. And the opportunities there. In Philadelphia, there are nationally recognized magnet schools like Central, Girls High and Masterman. These schools are free. But they are hard to get in to. You need good grades and good test scores. And there are also other good magnet and charter schools in the city. If I was a poor black kid I would get technical. I would learn software. I would learn how to write code. I would seek out courses in my high school that teaches these skills or figure out where to learn more online. I would study on my own. I would make sure my writing and communication skills stay polished. Because a poor black kid who gets good grades, has a part time job and becomes proficient with a technical skill will go to college. There is financial aid available. There are programs available. And no matter what he or she majors in that person will have opportunities. They will find jobs in a country of business owners like me who are starved for smart, skilled people. They will succeed. President Obama was right in his speech last week. The division between rich and poor is a national problem. But the biggest challenge we face isn’t inequality. It’s ignorance. So many kids from West Philadelphia don’t even know these opportunities exist for them. Many come from single-parent families whose mom or dad (or in many cases their grand mom) is working two jobs to survive and are just (understandably) too plain tired to do anything else in the few short hours they’re home. Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it. Discuss… Source
Since Dr. Dre ‘s highly anticipated album Detox is years overdue, it seems like he took a break from music a long time ago. But Dre is officially going to be stepping away from the recording studio. This indefinite musical pause will come after he finishes working on Kendrick Lamar and Slim the Mobster’s respective albums. Dr. Dre hasn’t revealed if and when Detox will be released, but he’ll continue to make moves with Beats By Dre. Get the rest of the story here . RELATED POSTS: Dr. Dre To Return To DJing? [VIDEO] Dr Dre: “I’ve Never Heard Of 50 Cent’s Headphones”
Follow @iamgwoods We all never expect to see an iPad get it on with an Xbox 360 controller in a diorama hotel room, and with voice “acting” from Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live is known for some pretty off-beat humor, but this skit takes the cake. “We’re Going to Make Technology Hump” comes from last weekend’s show, hosted by Emma Stone. In it, Stone and Andy Samberg host a softcore tech porn TV show where they, literally, make technology hump. This skit has everything: Android devices, cheap porn music, digital cameras, curling irons and more. The skit has three bizarre scenes that mimic the style of cheesy softcore porn movies complete with lame dialogue and absurd plot lines. The video is pretty much safe for work, though anyone overhearing the video is going to have some questions. No nudity, just a whole lot of digital innuendo. It gives “unwrapping” a brand new meaning. The camera lens erection was expected, but pretty funny. Follow @iamgwoods Affion Crockett Spoofs Rick Ross [VIDEO] Jamie Foxx To Launch New Sketch Comedy Series On Fox HILARIOUS: Affion Crockett Spoofs Drake Again!
I wrote as much on Monday, but take it from AMPAS president Tom Sherak: “Someone the Academy hired to perform a very important function messed up, messed up badly. He’s done everything he can, but this is him. The Academy did what it needed to do by accepting his resignation when he offered it. Does it tarnish it? I hope not. If someone feels it does, then we will work really hard getting the tarnish off. It wasn’t us, it was someone who worked for us. It’s like anything else. I hope not. We are going to continue to do what we do, which is support the arts and the technology of arts, and we want to be as above the fray as we can be.” [ LAT ]
MC Hammer is trying to make that super bread with his new search engine venture. MC Hammer, entertainer-turned-entrepreneur, demonstrated some of the capabilities of WIREDoo, which Hammer called both “Deep Search” and “Relationship Search,” at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. Hammer, cognizant of the presence of Google co-founder Sergay Brin in the audience, said that the technology isn’t meant to replace existing search, but to add value. Specifically, search queries add the notion of data relationships to results. For example a search of the word “car” might also come with the relationships to insurance, cost, specs, mileage, and who the driver will be. A search for “home” might also include relationships to community, schools, financing, insurance and so on. According to the people in attendance, Hammer’s site might actually be pretty useful and a viable contender for Google’s crown. Maybe Hammer will end up with more money than Jay-Z after all. Hey, anything is possible.
At the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) in Santa Barbara, California this week, Microsoft Researchers are showing off some experimental touch interaction projects that look beyond the flat glass touchscreen and move into different areas where touch-sensitivity could be employed. OmniTouch, one of the projects making a major appearance this week, uses a pico projector and… Broadcasting platform : Vimeo Source : BetaNews – CES 2007 Discovery Date : 17/10/2011 05:08 Number of articles : 2
This is the catch-22 of our current economy : people need jobs. But in many instances machines and computers do those jobs better, faster and for less than it costs to give those jobs to actual people. As a result, in 7 more years, certain trades and careers won’t even be an option anymore. Any guess what they are? Flip through and find out.
‘Geeks always felt empowered with new technology … but he was able to bring that experience to everyone,’ one tech blogger tells MTV News. By Gil Kaufman Steve Jobs Photo: Getty Images For tech bloggers and digital gearheads, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was Yoda, Gandalf, Dumbledore and the ultimate dungeon master rolled into one. The tech guru, who died at age 56 on Wednesday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, didn’t just make cool gadgets; he visioneered elegant, sculpture-like machines that made computing fun, exciting and effortless. Remember Steve Jobs’ many innovations by flipping through this photo gallery. “Steve Jobs was the first person who was able to turn computers and computing into an emotional experience for everyone,” said David Pescovitz, co-editor of BoingBoing and research director for the Institute for the Future. Pescovitz, who began a lifelong love affair with all things Apple more than 30 years ago in the basement of his Cincinnati home, where he would write rudimentary code on an Apple IIc, said the two crucial things Jobs did were to empower the individual with technology and create a new kind of technology experience. “Geeks always felt empowered with computers and new technology and it was always an emotional experience for them, but he was able to bring that experience to everyone.” Jobs, a notoriously detail-oriented taskmaster, demanded perfection from the legion of Apple employees who worked to create such landmark devices as the Macintosh computer, iPod, iPad and iPhone. Determined to break out of the bland, gray boxes produced by his rivals, Jobs brought that heart-touching experience to the masses by seamlessly weaving together technology, design elegance and engineering into devices Pescovitz said you wanted to “hold, touch and experience.” There were other MP3 players before the launch of the iPod in 2001, but John Gruber, an Apple enthusiast and founder of the technology blog Daring Fireball , said Jobs’ insight was making music personal again . “Your favorite music — all of it, with you everywhere you go,” he said of the devices that have become the standard-bearer for portable music storage. It’s easy to forget now thanks to the ubiquity of iTunes and the more than 10 billion songs sold since the store opened in 2003, but Eric Garland, CEO of leading online media metrix company Big Champagne , said for a time, the Apple boss was spurned by the major record labels. “It’s funny now to think of the notion of 99 cent downloads or paid downloads as an utterly noncontroversial one, but it’s hard to remember just how contrarian this play was eight or nine years ago,” Garland said. At a time when Garland was facing intense pressure from the record industry to stop seemingly “legitimizing and encouraging” music downloading (both legal and non) by measuring download numbers, he said Jobs seemed to be his only kindred spirit. “The most powerful people in the industry said, ‘This [downloading] has to stop and go away,’ and they intended to keep litigating it until people stopped downloading on the Internet.” While Garland admitted that he didn’t have the clout Jobs did in arguing that the genie was out of the bottle already, he recalls hearing from one executive after that music boss had been paid a personal visit by Jobs during the initial iTunes pitch. “He said to me, ‘Hey, you may be right,’ ” Garland said. ” ‘Steve Jobs was showing us this thing, and we think it’s the future of the business.’ And that was iTunes. Looking back, Jobs saw that this was not just the future of the music industry but, as has now been demonstrated, the future of all media and, in fact, connectivity among netizens.”Though the labels initially said no, Jobs persevered and Garland said that when people wonder how Apple was able to convince the labels to do a 180 on their position, the answer is simple. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was the strength of Steve’s passion, persuasive gifts, persistence and personality that managed to change hearts and minds,” he said. President Obama, Nicki Minaj, Bill Gates and more remember Steve Jobs. Jobs’ unwillingness to compromise or settle until the design met his level of taste made the Apple CEO unique, but Gruber said it was his ability to give each of his new devices a unique purpose that really set Jobs apart from his peers. “Think about the dramatic shift from the personal computer being this beige thing on your desktop that you wanted to hide to something people treated as an objet d’art, that they admired like they would a finely designed chair or an Eames recliner,” Pescovitz added. “The reason the iPod did so well was because it was a product that told its own story. It beckoned to you to want to engage with it and interact with it. That came from the design and simplicity of it and the very idea that it would dramatically change your relationship to music.” Steve Jobs’ impact went way beyond computers. Check out his innovations in the film industry. And while the science fiction-like idea of having every song you ever owned in your pocket was forward-thinking enough, Pescovitz said a counterintuitive move Jobs made shortly after introducing the iPod made us rethink how we interact with our music all over again. “When he released the first iPod Shuffle [in 2005], people thought, ‘How could I use this without a screen?’ The point was to shuffle. You could fill it with several thousand songs and continually be surprised by the next song you heard.” The concept of putting your music on shuffle now is another part of our modern digital lexicon that Jobs almost singlehandedly invented, creating yet another new relationship between people and their music collections. And, with the recent addition of the iCloud to the Apple universe, Pescovitz said Jobs made the crucial leap that cybernauts have been waiting for since the Internet became a daily part of our lives. “The cloud plays against this notion that cyberspace is a place you go to through your laptop,” he said. “Cyberspace is overlay on top of existing reality. Media can and should be everywhere all the time. The kind of emotional experience that you’re able to achieve sitting at a desk or in front of your home stereo can now be achieved wherever you are. It drastically changes your relationship to media and the world.” Steve Jobs changed the world, but how did he change you? Tell us on Facebook. Related Photos The Steve Jobs Legacy
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