Leatherman’s New Wearable Tech Can Repair Your Wearable Tech


Every link in the Leatherman Tread bracelet contains usable tools. It will come in both stainless steel and black DLC finishes (shown).

Every link in the Leatherman Tread bracelet contains usable tools. It will come in both stainless steel and black DLC finishes (shown). Leatherman



The Leatherman Tread will come out this Summer. It’s an interesting departure for the company, and an industry first: a serious multi-tool that can be worn on the wrist. Each link on the band includes two to three functional tools, for a total of 25 usable features.


It’s an ingenious design. The bracelet is fully customizable and can be re-built with slotted fasteners. The user can rearrange links, add or remove tools, or just adjust the bracelet’s size for comfort down to one quarter of an inch. Even the clasp is functional, with a bottle opener and #2 square drive. Other tools include hex drives, screwdrivers, box wrenches, a carbide glass breaker, and a hook-style box cutter that doubles as a SIM card pick.


Know what you’re thinking: Those links are going to snap off when I torque the hex nuts on my portable DAC. Wrong. This MacGyver wristband is constructed of metal-injected molded 17-4 stainless steel. The tools may be tiny, but they’re not going to snap or bend under stress. There’s an optional Swiss quartz movement watch (available in the fall of 2015), but I see the crafty Bushwick guys opting for the naked bracelet, which looks kinda Chrome Hearts.


Tread3_zps68a3a863

Leatherman



The other selling point, which is huge: this thing is TSA- and security-friendly. In fact, that was the original inspiration for the Tread: being able to travel and pass security checkpoints with a full compliment of Leatherman tools.


The Tread bracelets will be available in April or May. The stainless steel finish will cost $150, and the black diamond-like carbon finish will cost $200. The tread watches will cost $500 for stainless steel and $600 for black DLC.


The Leatherman Tread watch in stainless steel.

The Leatherman Tread watch in stainless steel. Leatherman




Aspiring Singer Arrested in Israel on Suspicion of Hacking Madonna


Chime For Change: The Sound Of Change Live Concert In Twickenham

Christie Goodwin/Redferns/Getty Images



The specific hackers behind the Sony breach and data leaks may never be identified or arrested. But authorities say they have caught a hacker behind another high-profile breach: the intrusion into computers owned by Madonna, which resulted in leaks of her songs before their scheduled release.

The Israeli suspect, 39-year-old Adi Lederman, was arrested in Tel-Aviv on Wednesday following a joint investigation by the FBI, the internet crime unit of Israel’s anti-fraud police and an Israeli private investigator.


Lederman, in a bit of irony, is an aspiring singer himself, having auditioned on air in 2012 for the Isareli TV talent show Kohav Nolad (A Star Is Born).


Asher Wizman, the private investigator, says that Madonna’s Israeli manager Guy Oseary contacted him following the December 17 leak of demo songs from Madonna’s upcoming album “Rebel Heart”—a breach that the singer called “artistic rape” and a form of terror.


According to Wizman, Oseary contacted him because there had been rumors that the hack pointed to someone in Israel. An expert sent to New York to examine Madonna’s computers reportedly confirmed that the hack originated in Israel, though it’s unclear how he did this.


“Our investigator found her computers, at home and at a studio, were broken into from a computer in Israel,” Wizman told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot . “We tracked down the computer, and the man behind it. After gathering enough evidence, we turned to the police and he was arrested today.”


In a raid of Lederman’s home, police seized computers and media storage devices.


Israeli police told the paper that Madonna wasn’t the only victim. Lederman had allegedly hacked the computers of several international artists in order to steal unreleased demos and final tracks and sell them.


No charges have been filed against Lederman, though police asked a court to put him under house arrest while they continue the investigation. The court granted a 10-day house arrest yesterday. His attorney denied the allegations to reporters and said she believed there was insufficient evidence to indict her client.


Following the leak of her unfinished demo songs, Madonna’s team released the final versions of six of her songs online, some of which debuted in the No. 1 slot on iTunes. The rest of the album is to be released in March.


During Lederman’s audition for Kohav Nolad in 2012 judges asked him what he did for a living. He reportedly replied, “Mainly wasting my life away, it seems, because I’m told that I should be on stage.”


For his audition, he sang the Stevie Wonder tune “Don’t You Worry About a Thing.”



George Lucas on How His New Film Is Like Star Wars for Girls


In George Lucas' Strange Magic, the Bog King (voiced by Alan Cumming) isn't traditionally handsome. But his mom, Griselda (Maya Rudolph), thinks he’s a catch, and is eager to pair him up with Marianne (Evan Rachel Wood).

In George Lucas’ Strange Magic, the Bog King (voiced by Alan Cumming) isn’t traditionally handsome. But his mom, Griselda (Maya Rudolph), thinks he’s a catch, and is eager to pair him up with Marianne (Evan Rachel Wood). Walt Disney Studios



George Lucas has three daughters. Like any loving father, he wanted to make them a movie; unlike many other fathers, he could do something about it. When he first started thinking about the prospect 15 years ago, he knew two things for sure: he wanted to tell a story about love, and he wanted it to be a fairy tale. “One of the funniest love stories I’ve ever seen is A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he says. Inspired by the love-potion hi jinx in Shakespeare’s comedy, Lucas began dreaming up a story about the chaos of a love potion among the fairies and elves—as a musical. The result, Strange Magic, hits theaters today, and in Lucas’ eyes is the perfect love letter for his daughters. Anyone’s daughters, really. “Just like Star Wars was designed for 12-year-old boys,” says Lucas, “Strange Magic was designed for 12-year-old girls.”


Lucas filled the film with his own favorite songs, from Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” to “Wild Thing” to “Love is Strange,” the 1956 Mickey & Sylvia hit that Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey immortalized in Dirty Dancing. “Originally the idea was that I would use all of the lyrics of all the songs, and I’d weave them together so that they told the story,” he says. But ultimately the rock opera concept was a little hard to pull off: “We decided that we could actually sharpen the story, tell it faster, and do more emotionally for the characters if we allowed them to speak, rather than just sing.”


poster But it’s not just the songs that make this movie worthwhile. It’s the message. Lucas, his animation team, and director Gary Rydstrom managed to make a sincere love story that feels grounded in reality even as it takes place in a fantasyland of fairies and elves and goblins—which is to say that nobody transforms into a handsome prince to get the girl. In fact, the Bog King, the romantic lead voiced by Alan Cumming, is a pretty unattractive dude. “If you look at Bog over the course of the movie, he goes from a scary bug-like creature to a gentlemen,” says Rydstrom. But this transformation is in the way he’s perceived, not in a makeover. “Everyone deserves to be loved, and they deserved to be loved no matter what they are, or what they look like,” says Lucas. Beautiful, defiant fairy Marianne, voiced by Evan Rachel Wood, eventually sees past Bog’s appearance; as she warms to him, he appears ever hunkier to her. Yes, it’s a classic ugly duckling story, but every generation needs to be reminded that what’s under the surface matters more than appearance.


The relationship between Marianne and the Bog King is just one of the love stories in Strange Magic. Dawn, Marianne’s boy-crazy little sister, can’t see Sunny (voiced by Elijah Kelley), as more than her best friend—but Sunny, absolutely head-over-heels for Dawn, is determined to make her fall for him. Sunny is really the catalyst for most of the plot, and is the most sympathetic, relatable character in the movie. (Who among us hasn’t gotten caught in the friend zone?) Thankfully—and minor spoilers here—he’s the lucky beneficiary of what possibly the most satisfying love-story turn I’ve ever seen in a romcom, animated or not.



Expedia Buys Travelocity, Merging Two of the Web’s Biggest Travel Sites


travelocity-expedia

Getty Images



Online travel giant Expedia has agreed to acquire big-name competitor Travelocity.


On Friday, Expedia said it would acquire Travelocity from its parent company, Sabre Corp., for $280 million. With the deal, Expedia is once again expanding its broad portfolio of travel sites, amid increased competition in the market.


The Bellevue, Washington-based company also owns Hotels.com, Hotwire, Egencia, and others. But it still faces competition from big names Priceline and Orbitz and other players.


The company’s latest move brings together two of the market’s largest travel services, but in a way, they were already together. Since 2013, Expedia has powered Travelocity’s US and Canadian websites as well as its customer service program, and it has shared its hotel offerings with the company.


Meanwhile, now that it has let go of Travelocity, Sabre Corp. says it can concentrate on its core business: back-end systems for the sale of airline tickets, hotel rooms, and car rentals.


“We have had a long and fruitful partnership with Expedia, most recently by partnering to strengthen the Travelocity business,” Tom Klein, Sabre President and Chief Executive Officer said in a statement, “so our decision to divest Travelocity is a logical next step for us both.”



Leatherman’s Wearable Tech Can Repair Your Wearable Tech


Every link in the Leatherman Tread bracelet contains usable tools. It will come in both stainless steel and black DLC finishes (shown).

Every link in the Leatherman Tread bracelet contains usable tools. It will come in both stainless steel and black DLC finishes (shown). Leatherman



The Leatherman Tread will come out this Summer. It’s an interesting departure for the company, and an industry first: a serious multi-tool that can be worn on the wrist. Each link on the band includes two to three functional tools, for a total of 25 usable features.


It’s an ingenious design. The bracelet is fully customizable and can be re-built with slotted fasteners. The user can rearrange links, add or remove tools, or just adjust the bracelet’s size for comfort down to one quarter of an inch. Even the clasp is functional, with a bottle opener and #2 square drive. Other tools include hex drives, screwdrivers, box wrenches, a carbide glass breaker, and a hook-style box cutter that doubles as a SIM card pick.


Know what you’re thinking: Those links are going to snap off when I torque the hex nuts on my portable DAC. Wrong. This MacGyver wristband is constructed of metal-injected molded 17-4 stainless steel. The tools may be tiny, but they’re not going to snap or bend under stress. There’s an optional Swiss quartz movement watch (available in the fall of 2015), but I see the crafty Bushwick guys opting for the naked bracelet, which looks kinda Chrome Hearts.


Tread3_zps68a3a863

Leatherman



The other selling point, which is huge: this thing is TSA- and security-friendly. In fact, that was the original inspiration for the Tread: being able to travel and pass security checkpoints with a full compliment of Leatherman tools.


The Tread bracelets will be available in April or May. The stainless steel finish will cost $150, and the black diamond-like carbon finish will cost $200. The tread watches will cost $500 for stainless steel and $600 for black DLC.


The Leatherman Tread watch in stainless steel.

The Leatherman Tread watch in stainless steel. Leatherman




Aspiring Singer Arrested in Israel on Suspicion of Hacking Madonna


Chime For Change: The Sound Of Change Live Concert In Twickenham

Christie Goodwin/Redferns/Getty Images



The specific hackers behind the Sony breach and data leaks may never be identified or arrested. But authorities say they have caught a hacker behind another high-profile breach: the intrusion into computers owned by Madonna, which resulted in leaks of her songs before their scheduled release.

The Israeli suspect, 39-year-old Adi Lederman, was arrested in Tel-Aviv on Wednesday following a joint investigation by the FBI, the internet crime unit of Israel’s anti-fraud police and an Israeli private investigator.


Lederman, in a bit of irony, is an aspiring singer himself, having auditioned on air in 2012 for the Isareli TV talent show Kohav Nolad (A Star Is Born).


Asher Wizman, the private investigator, says that Madonna’s Israeli manager Guy Oseary contacted him following the December 17 leak of demo songs from Madonna’s upcoming album “Rebel Heart”—a breach that the singer called “artistic rape” and a form of terror.


According to Wizman, Oseary contacted him because there had been rumors that the hack pointed to someone in Israel. An expert sent to New York to examine Madonna’s computers reportedly confirmed that the hack originated in Israel, though it’s unclear how he did this.


“Our investigator found her computers, at home and at a studio, were broken into from a computer in Israel,” Wizman told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot . “We tracked down the computer, and the man behind it. After gathering enough evidence, we turned to the police and he was arrested today.”


In a raid of Lederman’s home, police seized computers and media storage devices.


Israeli police told the paper that Madonna wasn’t the only victim. Lederman had allegedly hacked the computers of several international artists in order to steal unreleased demos and final tracks and sell them.


No charges have been filed against Lederman, though police asked a court to put him under house arrest while they continue the investigation. The court granted a 10-day house arrest yesterday. His attorney denied the allegations to reporters and said she believed there was insufficient evidence to indict her client.


Following the leak of her unfinished demo songs, Madonna’s team released the final versions of six of her songs online, some of which debuted in the No. 1 slot on iTunes. The rest of the album is to be released in March.


During Lederman’s audition for Kohav Nolad in 2012 judges asked him what he did for a living. He reportedly replied, “Mainly wasting my life away, it seems, because I’m told that I should be on stage.”


For his audition, he sang the Stevie Wonder tune “Don’t You Worry About a Thing.”



George Lucas Confounds Expectations With Strange Magic


 In Strange Magic, the Bog King isn't traditionally handsome, but it doesn't stand in his way.



In Strange Magic, the Bog King isn’t traditionally handsome, but it doesn’t stand in his way. Walt Disney Studios



George Lucas has three daughters. Like any loving father, he wanted to make them a movie; unlike many other fathers, he could do something about it. When he first started thinking about the prospect 15 years ago, he knew two things for sure: he wanted to tell a story about love, and he wanted it to be a fairy tale. “One of the funniest love stories I’ve ever seen is A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he says. Inspired by the love-potion hijinx in Shakespeare’s comedy, Lucas began dreaming up a story about the chaos of a love potion among the fairies and elves—as a musical. The result, Strange Magic, hits theaters today, and in Lucas’ eyes is the perfect love letter for his daughters. Anyone’s daughters, really. “Just like Star Wars was designed for 12-year-old boys,” says Lucas, “Strange Magic was designed for 12-year-old girls.”


Lucas filled the film with his own favorite songs, from Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” to “Wild Thing” to “Love is Strange,” the 1956 Mickey & Sylvia hit that Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey immortalized in Dirty Dancing. “Originally the idea was that I would use all of the lyrics of all the songs, and I’d weave them together so that they told the story,” he says. But ultimately the rock opera concept was a little hard to pull off: “We decided that we could actually sharpen the story, tell it faster, and do more emotionally for the characters if we allowed them to speak, rather than just sing.”


poster But it’s not just the songs that make this movie worthwhile. It’s the message. Lucas, his animation team, and director Gary Rydstrom managed to make a sincere love story that feels grounded in reality even as it takes place in a fantasyland of fairies and elves and goblins—which is to say that nobody transforms into a handsome prince to get the girl. In fact, the Bog King, the romantic lead voiced by Alan Cumming, is a pretty unattractive dude. “If you look at Bog over the course of the movie, he goes from a scary bug-like creature to a gentlemen,” says Rydstrom. But this transformation is in the way he’s perceived, not in a makeover. “Everyone deserves to be loved, and they deserved to be loved no matter what they are, or what they look like,” says Lucas. Beautiful, defiant fairy Marianne, voiced by Evan Rachel Wood, eventually sees past Bog’s appearance; as she warms to him, he appears ever hunkier to her. Yes, it’s a classic ugly duckling story, but every generation needs to be reminded that what’s under the surface matters more than appearance.


The relationship between Marianne and the Bog King is just one of the love stories in Strange Magic. Dawn, Marianne’s boy-crazy little sister, can’t see Sunny (voiced by Elijah Kelley), as more than her best friend—but Sunny, absolutely head-over-heels for Dawn, is determined to make her fall for him. Sunny is really the catalyst for most of the plot, and is the most sympathetic, relatable character in the movie. (Who among us hasn’t gotten caught in the friend zone?) Thankfully—and minor spoilers here—he’s the lucky beneficiary of what possibly the most satisfying love-story turn I’ve ever seen in a romcom, animated or not.



Expedia Buys Travelocity, Merging Two of the Web’s Biggest Travel Sites


travelocity-expedia

Getty Images



Online travel giant Expedia has agreed to acquire big-name competitor Travelocity.


On Friday, Expedia said it would acquire Travelocity from its parent company, Sabre Corp., for $280 million. With the deal, Expedia is once again expanding its broad portfolio of travel sites, amid increased competition in the market.


The Bellevue, Washington-based company also owns Hotels.com, Hotwire, Egencia, and others. But it still faces competition from big names Priceline and Orbitz and other players.


The company’s latest move brings together two of the market’s largest travel services, but in a way, they were already together. Since 2013, Expedia has powered Travelocity’s US and Canadian websites as well as its customer service program, and it has shared its hotel offerings with the company.


Meanwhile, now that it has let go of Travelocity, Sabre Corp. says it can concentrate on its core business: back-end systems for the sale of airline tickets, hotel rooms, and car rentals.


“We have had a long and fruitful partnership with Expedia, most recently by partnering to strengthen the Travelocity business,” Tom Klein, Sabre President and Chief Executive Officer said in a statement, “so our decision to divest Travelocity is a logical next step for us both.”



Microsoft Continues Its March Toward Open Source With Latest Acquisition


Microsoft has agreed to acquire open-source software company Revolution Analytics, heavily embracing the R programming language, a data analysis tool widely used by both academics and corporate data scientists.


The software giant announced the deal on Friday, but did not disclose the terms.


Revolution Analytics is best known for offering developer tools for use with the R language, and though Microsoft already works with R, this represents a new bet on the language, reflecting the company’s wider interest in data science.


Just as IBM’s Netezza appliance, SAP’s HANA database, Oracle’s Big Data appliance are designed for use with R, so too is Microsoft’s Azure ML cloud service, a service for building machine learning applications. And Microsoft uses R for its own projects. “We have a data science community inside Microsoft that uses R to analyze business data across a variety of things, and even build models for quite a few applications,” says Microsoft vice president for machine learning Joseph Sirosh.


In this sense, the company is not unusual. Inside the corporate world, R has become a de facto means of analyzing data, and it’s often used in the data science competitions run by startup Kaggle, competitions that have become a popular way for companies to tap independent data scientists for help with particularly thorny problems.


Revolution was founded in 2007 by Yale University computer scientists to create a suite of tools for working with R, and it hired CEO Norman H. Nie, the co-creator of SPSS—one of R’s main competitors—in 2009. In addition to contributing to the continued development of the R programming language, the company develops both a free, open source community version of its Revolution R suite of developer tools, as well as paid commercial versions of the software.


Most importantly, Revolution Anyltics has created tools that help extend the abilities of the open source version of the R language, Sirosh says. “There are seriously limitations to how it can be used with big data, because all of the data has to be loaded in memory.”


By bringing Revolution into the fold, Sirosh says, Microsoft will gain access to all of that technology and be able to make it available to all of its own customers on all of its development platforms. He emphasizes that Microsoft will continue to support Revolution’s existing products and customers.


The move deepens Microsoft’s investments in open source as well. Last fall Microsoft open sourced its .NET development platform, and the company has helped support a range of open source development, big data and analytics tools in recent years, including Node.js, Hadoop, and MongoDB. Traditionally, the company did not play so nicely with open source. But times have changed, with open source coming to dominate the software world.



Microsoft Acquires Open Source Data Science Company Revolution Analytics


Microsoft has agreed to acquire open-source software company Revolution Analytics, heavily embracing the R programming language, a data analysis tool widely used by both academics and corporate data scientists.


The software giant announced the deal on Friday, but did not disclose the terms.


Revolution Analytics is best known for offering developer tools for use with the R language, and though Microsoft already works with R, this represents a new bet on the language, reflecting the company’s wider interest in data science.


Just as IBM’s Netezza appliance, SAP’s HANA database, Oracle’s Big Data appliance are designed for use with R, so too is Microsoft’s Azure ML cloud service, a service for building machine learning applications. And Microsoft uses R for its own projects. “We have a data science community inside Microsoft that uses R to analyze business data across a variety of things, and even build models for quite a few applications,” says Microsoft vice president for machine learning Joseph Sirosh.


In this sense, the company is not unusual. Inside the corporate world, R has become a de facto means of analyzing data, and it’s often used in the data science competitions run by startup Kaggle, competitions that have become a popular way for companies to tap independent data scientists for help with particularly thorny problems.


Revolution was founded in 2007 by Yale University computer scientists to create a suite of tools for working with R, and it hired CEO Norman H. Nie, the co-creator of SPSS—one of R’s main competitors—in 2009. In addition to contributing to the continued development of the R programming language, the company develops both a free, open source community version of its Revolution R suite of developer tools, as well as paid commercial versions of the software.


Most importantly, Revolution Anyltics has created tools that help extend the abilities of the open source version of the R language, Sirosh says. “There are seriously limitations to how it can be used with big data, because all of the data has to be loaded in memory.”


By bringing Revolution into the fold, Sirosh says, Microsoft will gain access to all of that technology and be able to make it available to all of its own customers on all of its development platforms. He emphasizes that Microsoft will continue to support Revolution’s existing products and customers.


The move deepens Microsoft’s investments in open source as well. Last fall Microsoft open sourced its .NET development platform, and the company has helped support a range of open source development, big data and analytics tools in recent years, including Node.js, Hadoop, and MongoDB. Traditionally, the company did not play so nicely with open source. But times have changed, with open source coming to dominate the software world.



Is Keeping Things Simple the Wearable Industry’s Way Forward?


fitbit_660

origami_potato/Flickr



Humans have a natural characteristic of living inside their own head and think that the way it works in their head is similar to how it works in someone else’s head. Chances are that the person who will read this article belongs to the 5% of people who naturally feel excited about the future, when it comes to technology and the positive impact it will have in their daily lives. The other 95% are the ones that get introverted at hearing the word “technology”. It is a word that still scares the hell out of most people and in my opinion their angst is kind of valid.


When it comes to providing information to the 95%, many businesses have been known to turn to Strategy Analytics. They are a service that helps companies chart prosperous routes through the complex technology markets. So I wonder, based on their Wearable Device Ecosystem (WDE) model, should they have the responsibility of strategizing the wearable tech market? The Strategy Analytic service claims to take a more holistic view of the wearable market, which in my opinion does not take into account whether a consumer will actually be comfortable enough to use the new technology. The more and more I think about it, the more I am beginning to realize that when it comes to the Wearable Tech industry, the “eco” in ecosystem needs some self-reflecting.


Taking the Angst Out of Tech


As technology grows, it continues to accelerate at a pace where it is getting more and more confusing to the 95%. So it is time to make a case. I feel that every chance to keep things simple needs to be grabbed with both hands. This should quickly increase the way consumers fully adapt to buying and wearing wearable devices. Executing this tactic can actually be a noble task if consumers end up being more comfortable with technology. Another tactic that could be used is adding some empathy towards the approach because it could assist in the positive growth of the unstoppable tech beast.


For some time now the focus has been on how to market wearables. It seems that regardless of the limitations one only has to look at where the industry is today. There are plenty of signals out there that will make one think; are we asking the right questions on our quest? I am beginning to get the feeling that at this point Wearables are kind of trying hard to solve a problem that isn’t really there.


Change takes time, but up until this day I really have not seen any prototype devices that have convinced me that they work towards minimizing the prospect of them ending up in the kitchen drawer. To be honest, I am done reading reports about how million devices are predicted to be shipped by 2020. I would rather read an in-depth survey telling me what could be done to take away the skepticism that lives among so many because doing so will ensure that technology will continue to serve a purpose by getting the remaining 95% on board. I strongly believe that technology should have a positive impact but I do wonder if the industry is taking a smart approach to achieve this.


Wearables, Hearables, Nearables


How can we go about keeping things simple? Well it starts with not getting carried away by trying to reinvent new category names. This marketing tactic has been and continues to be used to try and make the headlines. Making up words like “Skinnables,” “Implantables” or even “Invisibles” is done so as to give the device some attention and some real viralability. Bringing up the question, wouldn’t it be better to keep the category names simple? I think so.


I strongly believe in three simple categories. Everything we wear on the body or in the body should be called (1) Wearables, with the exception of one category called (2) Hearables. I believe this exception deserves its own category simply because of the level of adaption gained already and because the position on the body actually makes it a better place to measure many different physiological biometrics with greater accuracy than the wrist. The challenge for Hearables is getting the vital features into a tiny device, something that is currently being achieved by companies like Bragi and Earin, who are doing some great work.


The third and final category is a device that we cannot wear on the body or in the body. It is a device that needs to be in our physical vicinity in order to fulfill an immediate need or have some sort of purpose, this category is known as (3) Nearables (IoT). Now personally I can’t wait for the terms IoT (Internet of Things created by Kevin Ashton) or IoE (Internet of Everything created by Cisco) to become outdated and replaced by the term Nearables. I would like to use Adam Greenfield’s words in my own convenient context because again it is the language that reveals the approach.


The use of “IoT” is a great example of how an industry is explaining a top-down, expensive, tech-centered, approach creating an unlivable corporate dystopia, in this case not in our smart city but more in our smart home. You’d almost forget for whom the smart home device is made for in the first place. If the industry cares about taking the angst out of technology, they should realize that this angst would not serve a purpose when it comes to getting consumers onboard. In the end we all fear what we do not know.


So to continue, the word Nearables is a more suitable word rather than IoT or IoE. It logically encapsulates all the other devices besides Wearables and Hearables. From a marketing perspective, Nearables is derived from the word Wearables, which has had a lot of positive attention already. This, in my opinion, makes Nearables a self-explanatory word that is easier to embrace more so than IoT, making it the best way forward.


So there we have it, Wearables, Hearables and Nearables — a smart way of introducing technology to the 95%. In order to create realistic value propositions for the wearable tech industry we now only need to figure out how to ask consumers the right questions. If the battery technology makes a leap, we can then start to add some context to the collected data so the industry can put itself in a position to let the devices do the rest.


Mano ten Napel is the founder of the wearable startup Novealthy.



Box Shares Surge in the First Big IPO of 2015


150123_IPO9

Box



Box finally made its Wall Street debut, a year after first filing for an IPO.


Trading under the ticker symbol BOX, the online-file-sharing company opened at $20.20 on the New York Stock Exchange, about 70 percent higher than its initial public offering price of $14, and at one point, the stock rose as high as $24.73. Box sold 12.5 million shares at its initial $14 IPO price, above the expected price range of $11 to $13.


The good reception from Wall Street is a small triumph for the company, which weathered market turbulence when it first attempted to go public, as well as questions about whether or not it would be profitable, given fierce competition from a host of other players in the online storage space. Those competitors, which include tech giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, can afford to offer their services at rock-bottom prices.


So the company has worked to differentiate itself. Led by co-founder Aaron Levie, Box has pushed to transform its basic file-sharing services into a kind of online platform for running all sorts of other apps, both apps from Box and apps from third parties.


Now, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.6 billion, and having raised an additional $175 million, the company has more resources to continue to its expansion—and continue its battle with the Googles and the Microsofts.



Is this the Earnest, Fast-Paced Future of Science Communication?


Jason Silva plays the guinea pig during an episode of Brain Games.




Jason Silva plays the guinea pig during an episode of Brain Games.


 NGT/Stephen Holtzhauser



It’s the quintessential college experience: late nights, pizza, and heady intellectual conversations. And then there was that one friend, whose philosophical musings would bring unconnected thoughts together into a stream of mellifluous prose; it all sounded pretty convincing at the time – even if the specifics were hazy – leaving us with the sense of fertile pastures just outside our mental grasp.


Jason Silva is the polished, better-sourced, hipper version of that roommate, one that can walk the walk in addition to talking the very frenetic talk. As the creator of the Shots of Awe video series (see an example at the end of this post) and host of National Geographic’s Brain Games , Silva has made a name for himself as a leading science evangelist and technology enthusiast.


But unlike the professorial Bill Nye or the authoritative Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Silva takes a different communications tack, guiding us through a journey of wonder rather than telling us precisely how it is. It’s a refreshing antidote to the jaded, nothing-but-the-facts approach taken by scientists who feel they have the moral high ground, an approach that only serves to propagate a culture war. “I’m interested in exultation, wonderment, inspiration, and content that acts as a decentering experience,” says Silva, using language that could just as easily apply to a religious experience. And in many ways, that’s just what the modern world is to Silva, with its delivery and continued promise of new knowledge and techno-futurism.


To Silva, the sequence of events that, as he puts it, “took a naked ape and put him on the Moon,” required a carefully calibrated balance of human instincts. We are naturally curious explorers, certainly, but unbridled wanderings without focused expertise isn’t particularly productive. On the other hand, ceaseless technical development and capacity building without an inspired objective leads to products with subpar utility. “We love security and ritual and routine,” Silva reflects, “but also mystery and danger. We need to find a way to dance between these two modes, and I think that’s a tough skill to develop. There’s got to be a functional output.”


Silva’s projects cover a wide range of subjects and flavors of “functional output.” His Shots of Awe are “a way to eternalize fleeting epiphanies,” two-minute serums meant to inspire and develop questions rather than to provide detailed explanations. Silva himself is involved with every aspect of production, from video clip curation to music selection and editing, and with a new video every week it’s an ambitious schedule. Brain Games* is a larger enterprise, a surprise hit for the National Geographic Channel that has offered a glimmer of educational hope as “lifestyle” shows dumb down other corners of the cable universe. Silva credits the show’s production and writing teams, who combine “triple-vetted” science with a screenwriter’s instinct for pacing and storytelling.


If too-cool-for-school detachment seems to be on its way out as a cultural sensibility – as presaged by empathy-bolstering websites like Upworthy, and Humans of New York – then earnestness is a growth stock and Silva is a blue chip. By his own admission, Silva is “terrified of boredom,” which he characterizes as a coping mechanism to gird ourselves from the exhausting state of constant mental engagement with the world. By chasing novel connections and challenging viewers, Silva hopes to scramble previous mental models and demand a fruitful, if challenging, reconstruction. “When you lose your center, you have to reconstruct your beliefs and understanding about the world,” he notes. “Any engagement that is potent must first disrupt.”


*Brain Games airs Mondays at 9pm ET on National Geographic Channel.



An Ode to SkyMall as It Files for Bankruptcy


Check out my Taz hat. Not purchased from SkyMall, but pretty badass none the less.

Check out my Taz hat. Not purchased from SkyMall, but pretty badass nonetheless. Emily Dreyfuss



My parents didn’t love each other anymore, so at 10-, 7-, and 2-years-old, we flew unaccompanied between Idaho and LA for visits. We may not have had chaperones or the security of an intact nuclear family, but we had one essential comfort: The SkyMall catalog.


As the eldest sibling, it fell to me to read the descriptions to my brothers. I ad-libbed.


“THIS is the garden gnome we’d need if we lived by ourselves in the forest. We’d set this up outside our rotted out tree trunk to warn away bad guys.”


“What bad guys?” little 7-year-old Ben would ask.


“Uh, that bad guy,” I’d say, pointing to some smelly adult on the plane.


We devoured every page–even the ones with the posters of slogans we didn’t understand. Why is that cat hanging in there, we wondered?


My favorite was the convertible furniture section. I was big into playing house at the time, pretending I had no parents and was in charge of my own destiny. The centerpiece of said destiny was surely going to be that magic-looking bureau that actually opened up into what the catalog called a liquor cabinet but looked to me more like where a witch stored her potions. I was no dummy; I knew what liquor was, and I knew people abused it and went to something called “Ah” to deal with that, so I figured instead of liquor I’d hide way better things, like makeup and food. Or magic potions if I ever came across any.


When my dad would pick us up at LAX, we’d bring our copy of SkyMall, dog-eared, pored over.


“Dad, can we get the life-size tiger for your house?”


I can only imagine how much he wanted to laugh in our faces, but divorce does a tricky thing to parents: it makes them never want to say no to you. That year, he let us pick our Christmas gifts from SkyMall. All of them. Literally. I have no memory of what we actually chose. He flew us back to Idaho so we could spend the holiday together and I just remember the elation of picking up the phone in the back of the headrest on the Delta plane and calling a human being from the air. The line cracked, but from down deep below the thin air, a woman’s voice said, “Hi, thanks for calling SkyMall.” Outside the window, smog and clouds skidded past and I was talking on the telephone to a human being who was going to send us presents!


The possibilities in life were limitless.


That was the only time I ever bought anything out of the catalog, but Ben spent a good decade ordering Christmas presents from its pages. He did this for two reasons: first, he saw it as a sort of tradition, beginning on that trip in 1991; and second, he inevitably was flying to whichever parent we were spending the holidays with and hadn’t thought about a gift for anyone yet.


Before the Internet, before Amazon, SkyMall was the best option for slackers with no cash but a credit card furnished by family guilt.


“Mom, I bought you a bunion strap and a stepping stool for your dog!” Ben would say, never able to keep his gifts a secret until Christmas day.


“YOU bought it? How?”


“With your credit card.”


“Oh. That credit card is for emergencies, honey.”


“It was a Christmas emergency, Mom.”


There was no answering that.


SkyMall was our babysitter. Our distraction. When we got older we delighted in mocking the absurdity of it, how ridiculous and unnecessary was everything in its pages. In this way, we explained to each other that we were maturing, that we weren’t dumb little kids anymore. When I became a teenager–embarrassed by everything and everyone–I’d tease the boys for liking anything in the catalog.


“That is SO pointless,” I’d say.


“OK, we can stop looking at it,” Ben would say.


“No, no,” I’d protest. “Harry is having fun.” Harry, wide-eyed and three years old would narrow his eyes into a look that seemed to say, “I know I’m being used.”


SkyMall was a tradition. An absurd, capitalistic embodiment of everything that was shallow and wrong with our lives, and yet it also brought us comfort. No matter if the plane was delayed, or we were stuck alone on a layover, missing whichever parent we were leaving, missing the friends and the life we were leaving behind each time we went between homes, it was there to make us laugh. To let us roll our eyes. To surprise us with a new level of novelty and frivolity.


SkyMall, that stupid wonderful completely American wonder that, with its insistence that you take your own free copy, announced it was your right as a human in the ‘90s to never not be shopping. Never not be consuming.


Of course, I didn’t think about how genius it was for them to tap into such a captive audience, stuck with nothing to do but wait. I never felt manipulated back then. I was a kid. Now it’s not hard to see how the business model wasn’t sustainable into the aughts and beyond.


When I fly now I try to write. Or sleep. Or squirm. Or, who am I kidding, look at Twitter. I haven’t noticed a SkyMall on the last 10 planes I’ve flown but I’m sure it was there, slick and expectant in the seat back flap, amid the wrappers and detritus of former travelers. Waiting for someone to notice it.


I’m sorry I paid $7 for inflight Wi-Fi instead of reading you, little shopping catalog. Forgive me.



Is Keeping Things Simple the Wearable Industry’s Way Forward?


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origami_potato/Flickr



Humans have a natural characteristic of living inside their own head and think that the way it works in their head is similar to how it works in someone else’s head. Chances are that the person who will read this article belongs to the 5% of people who naturally feel excited about the future, when it comes to technology and the positive impact it will have in their daily lives. The other 95% are the ones that get introverted at hearing the word “technology”. It is a word that still scares the hell out of most people and in my opinion their angst is kind of valid.


When it comes to providing information to the 95%, many businesses have been known to turn to Strategy Analytics. They are a service that helps companies chart prosperous routes through the complex technology markets. So I wonder, based on their Wearable Device Ecosystem (WDE) model, should they have the responsibility of strategizing the wearable tech market? The Strategy Analytic service claims to take a more holistic view of the wearable market, which in my opinion does not take into account whether a consumer will actually be comfortable enough to use the new technology. The more and more I think about it, the more I am beginning to realize that when it comes to the Wearable Tech industry, the “eco” in ecosystem needs some self-reflecting.


Taking the Angst Out of Tech


As technology grows, it continues to accelerate at a pace where it is getting more and more confusing to the 95%. So it is time to make a case. I feel that every chance to keep things simple needs to be grabbed with both hands. This should quickly increase the way consumers fully adapt to buying and wearing wearable devices. Executing this tactic can actually be a noble task if consumers end up being more comfortable with technology. Another tactic that could be used is adding some empathy towards the approach because it could assist in the positive growth of the unstoppable tech beast.


For some time now the focus has been on how to market wearables. It seems that regardless of the limitations one only has to look at where the industry is today. There are plenty of signals out there that will make one think; are we asking the right questions on our quest? I am beginning to get the feeling that at this point Wearables are kind of trying hard to solve a problem that isn’t really there.


Change takes time, but up until this day I really have not seen any prototype devices that have convinced me that they work towards minimizing the prospect of them ending up in the kitchen drawer. To be honest, I am done reading reports about how million devices are predicted to be shipped by 2020. I would rather read an in-depth survey telling me what could be done to take away the skepticism that lives among so many because doing so will ensure that technology will continue to serve a purpose by getting the remaining 95% on board. I strongly believe that technology should have a positive impact but I do wonder if the industry is taking a smart approach to achieve this.


Wearables, Hearables, Nearables


How can we go about keeping things simple? Well it starts with not getting carried away by trying to reinvent new category names. This marketing tactic has been and continues to be used to try and make the headlines. Making up words like “Skinnables,” “Implantables” or even “Invisibles” is done so as to give the device some attention and some real viralability. Bringing up the question, wouldn’t it be better to keep the category names simple? I think so.


I strongly believe in three simple categories. Everything we wear on the body or in the body should be called (1) Wearables, with the exception of one category called (2) Hearables. I believe this exception deserves its own category simply because of the level of adaption gained already and because the position on the body actually makes it a better place to measure many different physiological biometrics with greater accuracy than the wrist. The challenge for Hearables is getting the vital features into a tiny device, something that is currently being achieved by companies like Bragi and Earin, who are doing some great work.


The third and final category is a device that we cannot wear on the body or in the body. It is a device that needs to be in our physical vicinity in order to fulfill an immediate need or have some sort of purpose, this category is known as (3) Nearables (IoT). Now personally I can’t wait for the terms IoT (Internet of Things created by Kevin Ashton) or IoE (Internet of Everything created by Cisco) to become outdated and replaced by the term Nearables. I would like to use Adam Greenfield’s words in my own convenient context because again it is the language that reveals the approach.


The use of “IoT” is a great example of how an industry is explaining a top-down, expensive, tech-centered, approach creating an unlivable corporate dystopia, in this case not in our smart city but more in our smart home. You’d almost forget for whom the smart home device is made for in the first place. If the industry cares about taking the angst out of technology, they should realize that this angst would not serve a purpose when it comes to getting consumers onboard. In the end we all fear what we do not know.


So to continue, the word Nearables is a more suitable word rather than IoT or IoE. It logically encapsulates all the other devices besides Wearables and Hearables. From a marketing perspective, Nearables is derived from the word Wearables, which has had a lot of positive attention already. This, in my opinion, makes Nearables a self-explanatory word that is easier to embrace more so than IoT, making it the best way forward.


So there we have it, Wearables, Hearables and Nearables — a smart way of introducing technology to the 95%. In order to create realistic value propositions for the wearable tech industry we now only need to figure out how to ask consumers the right questions. If the battery technology makes a leap, we can then start to add some context to the collected data so the industry can put itself in a position to let the devices do the rest.


Mano ten Napel is the founder of the wearable startup Novealthy.