NEW NET Weekly List for 08 Oct 2013

Below is the final NEW NET (NorthEast Wisconsin Network for Entrepreneurism and Technology) list of technology news and issues for Tuesday, 08 October 2013. The NEW NET meeting for 08 October was cancelled due to schedule conflicts.

The ‘net

1.        Google vs. Facebook vs. Baidu: Battle of the Internet empires  http://www.zdnet.com/google-vs-facebook-vs-baidu-battle-of-the-internet-empires-7000021589/  “A recent analysis of Alexa Website popularity data by Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute found that "Google is the most visited website in most of Europe, North America, and Oceania. Facebook, in contrast, is the most visited website in most of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as much of the Spanish-speaking Americas." A closer look shows that Google is really the overall global winner…Among the 50 countries that have Facebook listed as the most visited visited website, 36 of them have Google as the second most visited, and the remaining 14 countries list YouTube…The biggest exception to this is China. There, the Chinese search engine Baidu is the top site…”

2.       Create Your Own Hotspot Using Hotel Room’s Ethernet Connection  http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/10/tnhyui-hotel-wifi/  “…Wi-Fi is now as standard as a toilet in the hotels and motels around the world…Instead of dealing with spotty connections and speeds that resemble early ’90s dialup, use the hotel’s ethernet connection. Regardless of which room you spring for, there’s a good chance yours will have ethernet. With this wired connection you can create your own wireless network that actually gets you online…The Asus WL-330NUL N150 is a tiny wireless access point that can also can be used as USB ethernet adapter for ultrabooks and Macbook Airs without ethernet ports. Just plug it into that unused networking cable, create a Wi-Fi network with a password, and enjoy speedy wireless internet that’s not being shared with the entire hotel…”

3.       4 simpler alternatives to Google Analytics  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2051368/4-simpler-alternatives-to-google-analytics.html  “…Maybe you don’t like the famously complicated interface that Google Analytics features. Or maybe you just want to double up on tracking tools so you can ensure Google is giving you accurate information. Alternate tracking services are legion, and while most of them are inexpensive, only a few are actually free. Here’s a look at four noteworthy alternative tracking tools, all of which I tried out in production…While most do have a nominal cost, all of them offer free trials with no credit card required to sign up…Clicky…GoSquared…Woopra…ShinyStat…”

4.       BRCK wireless router packs a fallback 4G connection, internal battery  http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/06/insert-coin-brck-wireless-router-with-4g-fallback-connection-built-in-battery/  “…a hardware project…that aims to ease connectivity woes…BRCK…is a rugged wireless router that connects to the internet via Ethernet, WiFi, 3G and 4G, and can switch its source on the fly if a connection dies. For example, if your home service goes out, it can start using a cellular signal instantly -- if you've slotted in a sim card, that is. During power outages, the brick can stay online for up to 8 hours thanks to an internal battery. The package can support up to 20 devices on WiFi and has 16GB of built-in storage, which can hold data synced directly from Dropbox, connected devices or other apps. An online component called BRCK Cloud, allows users to configure the hardware and monitor stats such as mobile data usage, broadband uptime and more. Through the web-based interface, users can also specify which connections the box will fall back on when another fails…”

5.        Connectify Dispatch Goes Freemium -- Faster Internet For PC Users  http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/connectify-dispatch-goes-freemium----faster-internet-for-pc-users-226139881.html  “…Connectify 7…now includes a free version of Dispatch, the company's PC software application that lets users combine Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G to create a faster and more reliable Internet connection. The PRO version of Connectify Dispatch, which was Kickstarter-funded in late 2012, has grown steadily in popularity with users that demand more control over their available bandwidth to create faster and more seamless Internet connectivity…Connectify Hotspot users now have access to Dispatch's load-balancing functionality to speed up general web browsing, BitTorrent downloads, and much more. In Dispatch Lite mode, consumers will immediately be able to enjoy the benefits of combining any available Internet connections at no cost…”

6.       Yahoo! Email Upgraded  http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/08/yahoo-updates-mail-on-all-platforms-with-new-design-that-mirrors-award-winning-weather-ios-app/  “Yahoo is updating its Mail app across all platforms with a fresh design that includes syncing themes, a new compose experience, collapsible toolbar and better handling of threaded conversations…If the look of the themes feels familiar, it might be because you’ve seen Yahoo’s Apple Design Award-winning Weather app for iOS. The new appearance of Mail owes a lot to that app…First of all, Yahoo is bumping the storage limit for Mail to 1TB for all users…All of the features that were previously a part of Yahoo’s ‘Mail Plus’ product are also now free for all users. This means that things like disposable email addresses, POP email and mail forwarding are all included with a basic Yahoo Mail account…”

7.        Ayla prepares to show off its internet of things prototyping iBox  http://gigaom.com/2013/10/04/ayla-prepares-to-show-off-its-internet-of-things-prototyping-ibox/  “As the internet of things starts to take off, manufacturers of these connected everyday devices would probably rather focus on designing cool products and apps, rather than working on the nuts-and-bolts backend stuff. That’s why a bunch of platforms are emerging to take care of that aspect, such as Xively, Carriots and Ayla Networks…Ayla…provides those manufacturers with either the tools and source code they need to build connected products…Ayla will be showing off its “iBox” – a riskily-named prototyping unit intended to help manufacturers perform early tests on their ideas for connected products and services. The iBox includes a connectivity module from Apple supplier USI, which in turn uses a Broadcom Wi-Fi chip (Broadcom and Ayla have partnered for a while now) and an STMicro microcontroller with an accelerometer, gyroscope and other sensors built in….The purpose of the iBox is ultimately to help manufacturers capture and show initial data in real-time…they can set accelerometer thresholds through the app, so if the iBox then suffers a big enough fall then that will trigger an alert on the phone. Or they can just move the thing around and get some insight into the kind of x/y coordinate data that it churns out…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

8.       NSA Storing Internet Data, Social Networking Data, on Pretty Much Everybody  https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/nsa_storing_int.html  “…The old NSA tactic of hiding behind a shell game of different code names is failing. It used to be they could get away with saying "Project X doesn't do that," knowing full well that Projects Y and Z did and that no one would call them on it. Now they're just looking shiftier and shiftier. The program the New York Times exposed is basically Total Information Awareness, which Congress defunded in 2003 because it was just too damned creepy. Now it's back. (Actually, it never really went away. It just changed code names.)…The budget document…shows that the agency is pouring money and manpower into creating a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion "record events" daily and making them available to N.S.A. analysts within 60 minutes…We have to assume that the NSA has everyone who uses electronic communications under constant surveillance. New details about hows and whys will continue to emerge -- for example, now we know the NSA's repository contains travel data -- but the big picture will remain the same…”

9.       Tor stands strong against the NSA  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052149/tor-stands-strong-against-the-nsa-but-your-browser-can-bring-you-down.html  “…the U.S. NSA and its British equivalent, the GCHQ, have been actively trying to defeat the encrypted protection provided by the popular Tor anonymity software…amazingly, it appears the attempts have failed. The latest Snowden leak suggests that Tor has actually withstood the brunt of the NSA’s efforts thus far. “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time…With manual analysis, we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users.” That doesn’t mean Tor is a magic bullet for cloaking your online steps, however…”

10.     China: 2,000,000 Analysts To Monitor Internet Posts  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24396957  “…More than two million people in China are employed by the government to monitor web activity, state media say, providing a rare glimpse into how the state tries to control the internet. The Beijing News says the monitors…are "strictly to gather and analyse public opinions on microblog sites and compile reports for decision-makers"…Tang Xiaotao has been working as a monitor…"He sits in front of a PC every day, and opening up an application, he types in key words which are specified by clients…He then monitors negative opinions related to the clients, and gathers (them) and compile reports and send them to the clients…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

11.      Skype costs mobile industry $100 million a day  http://www.telecomengine.com/article/skype-costs-mobile-industry-100-million-day-tyntec  “…Skype is costing mobile operators some $100 million a day…the study reveals that some 280 million users now spend about two billion minutes a day on Skype…and…43% of mobile operators regard the company as a major threat to their revenues…14% of the operators interviewed…said that messaging revenues had declined by more than 21% in the past year due to the adoption of OTT services by their customers…”

12.     Apple Bought Cue Because Google Now Eats Siri’s Lunch  http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/03/why-did-apple-buy-cue-because-google-now-eats-siris-lunch/  “Apple has acquired the ‘smart assistant’ company Cue, for over $40M. Why? Because Google is absolutely murdering Apple when it comes to the utility of Google Now. Apple is likely to use the acquisition…to bolster the offerings of its Today section…This would improve the utility of the section, which is fairly sparse right now, and enable Apple to more vigorously compete with Google Now…Siri and iOS 7′s new Today section of the Notification Center simply don’t compare to Google Now in-depth, usability or overall power…Google Now can be considered reason enough to buy an Android phone, and I don’t think Apple is blind to how good it is…Apple introduced Today as a way to show you upcoming appointments, weather and basic directions to home or to work. This is sort of skimming the top of what is possible with the host of sensors your smartphone has available to it and the troves of data that you store in your inbox and other services…Google Now does all of that and a lot more…”

13.     Mobile charger gets power from hydrogen  http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/brunton-hydrogen-reactor-portable-power-pack/  “…one area where we could see fuel-cell usage increase is in portable power, like Brunton’s Hydrogen Reactor Portable Power Pack charger…the compact Hydrogen Reactor uses fuel-cell technology to create electricity – through the reaction from combining hydrogen with oxygen – which can be then sent to charge a device connected via USB. The source for the Reactor comes in the form of a removable Hydrogen Core that can be recharged when spent. Each Core…is equal to 30-plus AA batteries, enough to recharge a smartphone six times. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, the Core does not deplete over time…Brunton has designed it with backpackers and other outdoorsy types in mind…The charger will retail for $150 and include two Hydrogen Cores. Each additional Core costs $15…”

14.     Google announces $279, Chromebook Pixel-inspired HP Chromebook 11  http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/google-announces-279-chromebook-pixel-inspired-hp-chromebook-11/  “Google has announced…the HP Chromebook 11…starting at $279…the computer does sport a 1366×768 non-touch IPS display, a significant step up in color and viewing angles from the TN panels we've seen in cheap Chromebooks to date…the Chromebook 11 sports a dual-core ARM SoC…the Exynos 5250 combines two Cortex A15 CPU cores with one of ARM's quad-core Mali-T604 GPUs…This chip won't come near the performance of an Ivy Bridge chip from Intel, but it should be more than sufficient for Chrome OS, and it also allows the laptop to be completely fanless. 2GB of RAM, 16GB of solid-state storage, dual-band 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, and up to six hours of battery life are also standard…the laptop includes…charging via a tablet-and-phone-like micro USB port (which can also output video via the SlimPort standard, much like the recent Nexus devices). The system also comes with 100GB of Google Drive storage for two years, a 60-day free trial of Google Play Music All Access, and 12 free GoGo Inflight Internet sessions. A 4G version will be available…”

15.     HP's new Chromebook 14 for $299.99  http://www.cnet.com/laptops/hp-chromebook-14-fall/4505-3121_7-35827866.html  “…The new Chromebook 14 features Haswell-based architecture, and according to HP will deliver 9.5 hours of battery life. The 14-inch screen runs at a not too impressive 1,366x768-pixel resolution and looks…pixelated…the bezel feels a bit wider than we'd like and at over four pounds it's noticeably heavy for something that includes only 16GB of storage…With price starting of $299.99 (for the Wi-Fi-only version; $349.99 for the coming 4G model) this is a budget machine…The Chromebook 14…includes 200MB of data/month for two years…The Chromebook 14 seats two USB 2.0 ports, a single USB 3.0 port, HDMI, and a full-size SD card slot…”

16.     Tablet baton passes from Apple to Android  http://linuxgizmos.com/tablet-baton-passes-apple-android/  “…data from the first half of 2013 indicate that leadership of the mobile tablet market has now shifted from Apple to Android. Data…show the number of Android-powered tablets sold surpassing iPads for the first time, and the share of tablet-related hardware revenues achieving parity…the smaller 7-inch-class “finally are the majority of shipments,”…over the past year, iPad ASP dropped 17 percent while ASP for the rest of the tablet market grew 17 percent…”

Apps

17.     The Best Smartphone Apps for Serious Readers  http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/09/page-turners/  “…These apps will help procure ebooks, stories from the web, audiobooks, and even dusty analog tomes…iOS…Digg Browse your own RSS subscriptions and read popular stories…Instapaper Tap…removes the ads and other cruft…Wattpad eBook Reader…hosts millions of works by unknown scribes…Android…Feedly…online news sources…in quick-to-load cards…can be organized by category…When you find a web page you want to save for later, Pocket grabs the text, video, and images and reformats it all for mobiles…Moon+ Reader Pro…more than 10 reading themes, superb font and layout customization, and support for just about every file type you throw at it…”

18.     Spike Kickstarter Project Puts Accurate Laser Measurement Hardware Right On Your Smartphone  http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/30/spike-kickstarter-project-puts-accurate-laser-measurement-hardware-right-on-your-smartphone/  “Smartphones have pretty good cameras, but nowhere near good enough to do the kind of high accuracy measurement work that’s required for engineering or remodelling projects. Enter Spike, a new smartphone attachment…The Spike…attaches to the back of a smartphone and integrates directly with software on those devices to make it possible to measure objects and structures accurately from up to 600 feet away, just by taking a picture with your device. The accessory itself ads a laser range finder, advanced GPS a 3D compass…to your smartphone’s existing capabilities, and it’s much more portable than existing solutions…the device is “built for developers & hackers,”…they suggest augmented reality as a possible consumer application, but are interesting in seeing exactly what the dev community can come up with via its full-featured API. Laser accurate measurements could indeed bring interesting features to location-based apps…”

19.     McDonald's testing mobile ordering app  http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/mcdonald-tests-mobile-ordering-app-article-1.1457588  “McDonald's mobile payment app lets customers order and pay for food via smartphone or tablet before stepping foot inside the restaurant…The app will make fast food even faster by allowing customers to order and pay for their food via a smartphone or tablet before they set foot in the restaurant…the app lets users order a meal remotely then collect it in person from a store or drive-thru window. The app can also be used by the fast food chain to alert customers to special promotions and to offer loyalty programs and rewards points…Other US companies competing for the same consumers, such as Starbucks, are also investing heavily in apps, mobile payments and other features designed to appeal to the smartphone generation…”

SkyNet

20.    Google Authorship: The Future of Your SEO is You!  http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-authorship-future-seo/68622/  “Some of the main goals of blogging and content strategies are to drive traffic, earn links, and to rank higher on Google, right?...with Google Authorship & Author Rank being so important today I am surprised at how many bloggers and website owners have still not embraced it…Google Authorship…can help improve rank while branding yourself as a respected writer in your field…Add a Face to Your Work…Rank Over Plagiarists…Connect With Readers…Index Faster…Author Rank…”  https://plus.google.com/authorship

21.     Google Apps now lets you share Docs, Slides, and Drawings without forcing recipients to sign in  http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/10/08/google-apps-now-lets-you-share-docs-slides-and-drawings-without-forcing-recipients-to-sign-in/  “Google…announced it has tweaked the way sharing works for Docs, Slides and Drawings. Recipients no longer have to sign in or create a Google account if they don’t have one…If the recipient does not have an email address linked to an existing Google Account, he or she will still be able to view the document in question without taking any extra steps. If a file is shared with edit or comment permissions, however, the receiving user must still sign in with a Google Account in order to edit or comment on that file…”

22.    Google acquires gesture-recognition startup Flutter  http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/google-acquires-gesture-recognition-startup-flutter/  “Google has acquired…startup…Flutter, which works with webcam-equipped machines running Windows and Apple’s OS X, allows you to control songs and videos on your computer using hand gestures. For example, a simple palm gesture will pause a song, while a ‘thumbs right’ gesture takes you to the next track. The Kinect-like software is compatible with a range of programs and services, including iTunes, Spotify, Rdio, VLC, Quicktime, and, through the Chrome browser, Netflix and YouTube…Windows users can get it for free…there’s a chance we could see it worked into a future version of Android or incorporated into Glass…” 

23.    Google Research’s Open Project beams apps to external display using smartphone’s camera  http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/09/26/google-researchs-open-project-lets-you-beam-apps-to-an-external-display-using-only-your-smartphones-camera/  “Google Research today revealed a project for transferring mobile content to a remote display, just by using the smartphone camera…the company notes that while the computing power of today’s mobile devices continues to grow at an accelerated rate, they remain small and thus don’t really have the space to spare for input and output bandwidth…Google…has been looking into how to let mobile users leverage nearby input and output resources for their smartphones. Open Project is an end-to-end framework that allows you to “project” a native mobile application onto an arbitrary display using a smartphone camera…Google notes the display can range from a PC or laptop monitor, to a TV connected to the Internet, to a public wall-sized display…”

24.    Whirlpool deploys Google Apps to 68,000 employees to ‘breakdown geographical barriers’  http://www.businessinsider.com/google-lands-whirlpool-for-google-apps-2013-10  “…Whirlpool has 68,000 employees and 66 facilities around the world who will standardize on Apps, Google's cloud email and office productivity suite. Whirlpool did not ditch Microsoft Exchange or Office for Google. It was using IBM's Lotus Notes…5 million businesses are using Google Apps, Google claims. The majority are small to mid-sized businesses…Microsoft…Office 365, the cloud version of its Microsoft Office apps, is the "fastest growing product" in company history on track to generate $1.5 billion worth of revenue on annual basis…Microsoft has…been snagging some giant contracts for Office 365 including a 100,000-employee deal with State of Texas early this year, a 600,000-seat contract with the Department of Veterans and a 200,000-seat contract with Toyota last year. Toyota…looked at Google Apps, but ultimately decided against Google largely because Google's enterprise sales team wasn't set up to deal with the complicated sales process of a huge multinational company…”

General Technology

25.    A14 to become Britain's first internet-connected road  http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/02/super-highway-a14-internet-connected-road  “One of the UK's most congested highways, connecting the busy container port at Felixstowe to Birmingham, is to become Britain's first internet-connected road in a pilot project that could pave the way for everything from tolls to self-driving cars. A network of sensors will be placed along a 50-mile stretch of the A14 in a collaboration between BT, the Department for Transport and the Cambridge start-up Neul, creating a smart road…sending signals to and from mobile phones in moving vehicles. The technology, which sends signals over the white spaces between television channels instead of mobile phone networks, could even pave the way for government systems to automatically control car speeds…”

26.    'Terminator'-style cube robots swarm and self-assemble  http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57606083-1/terminator-style-cube-robots-swarm-and-self-assemble/  “…M-Blocks robots are cube-shaped modular bots with no external moving parts…they can move, crawl over each other, and self-assemble…Each little cube hides a small flywheel that can hit speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute. Magnets embedded in strategic locations help the M-Blocks stick together…current M-Blocks are about the size of wood alphabet blocks, but one goal is to miniaturize the technology…Watching the radio-controlled M-Blocks move is fascinating. They spin, jump, click together, and fly off each other. The researchers hope to eventually turn the blocks into autonomous robots that can make their own decisions about how they turn into different shapes…”

27.    New computer is the size of a pack of index cards, costs $100  http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/15/new-computer-is-the-size-of-a-pack-of-index-cards-costs-100/  “CompuLab…announced a tiny, bare-bones computer called the Utilite that will sell for $99 and up. It’s just 5.3 inches by 3.9 inches by 0.8 inches, which means it is just slightly larger than a pack of 100 index cards…it has a…Freescale i.MX6 system-on-a-chip, with an ARM Cortex A9 processor…with one, two, or four cores. The device will have up to 4GB of RAM and can contain a hard drive with up to 512GB plus a microSD card with up to 128GB of storage…It will run Linux or Android…CompuLab has packed a lot of I/O capabilities…including two Gigabit Ethernet ports, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi b/g/n, four USB 2.0 ports, stereo line-in and line-out, and HDMI and DVI-D ports…Its draws just 3 watts to 8 watts of power…For the…price…you could buy four Raspberry Pi computers — but remember that the Raspberry Pi is very bare-bones and doesn’t even include a case…it looks like this could be an economical and convenient way to stick a computer anywhere you might need one…”

28.    Cheap, spray-on solar cells developed by Canadian researchers  http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/cheap-spray-on-solar-cells-developed-by-canadian-researchers-1.1913086  “Silicon-free solar cells, light and flexible enough to roll up or use as window blinds, are under development at a University of Alberta lab. The solar cells are made using nanoparticles — microscopic particles just 30 to 40 atoms across — that are very cheap to produce from zinc and phosphorus…“We turn these things into inks or paints that you can spray coat onto plastics,”…The zinc phosphide nanoparticle solar cells are also cheaper than conventional solar cells…Silicon solar cells…involves heating the materials repeatedly to very high temperatures – around 1000 C…the solar nanoparticles are “actually made in a standard, bubbling pot glassware set up  in the lab…We actually use spray coaters that you can buy from an automobile touch-up shop for paint…”

29.    Butterfly Biomimicry Inspires Multiple Technologies  http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/one_butterfly_i077431.html  “…The Morpho is a jewel among butterflies, with its gracefully contoured, iridescent blue wings flashing in the breeze…Their brilliant color comes not from pigments but from precisely aligned structures in the wing scales that play tricks with light, producing what physicists call "structural color." Certain colors are canceled out, and others reinforced, by the arrangement of "photonic crystals" that resemble tiny trees…Engineers have already mimicked the iridescence by creating photonic crystals of their own. But there's more. The structures on Morpho butterfly wings also absorb heat, repel water, and control the flow of vapors. The Morpho is a treasure house of design ideas for biomimetics projects…From fabrics to cosmetics to sensors, all kinds of innovations are being inspired by this one genus of butterfly…”

30.    Cyberpunk Author Plans Tallest Skyscraper Ever  http://www.fastcodesign.com/3018510/straight-out-of-sci-fi-cyberpunk-author-plans-tallest-skyscraper-ever  “…The Center for Science and the Imagination (CSI), a roundtable of scientists and sci-fi writers…hopes to provide a platform for the intermingling of sci-fi ambition with scientific rigor and exploration. The organization has found a spirited collaborator in Neal Stephenson, the acclaimed author behind cyberpunk classics Snow Crash and Quicksilver. Stephenson and CSI have unveiled plans for a stunner of a skyscraper that, if ever built, would possibly be mankind’s crowning achievement. The project envisions a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) tower capable of launching rockets into space. It would scale the upper registers of the troposphere to scrape the bottom of the stratosphere…Stephenson’s high-concept construction would be 24 times the height of the Burj Khalifa, utterly dwarf Mt. Everest, and nearly double the maximum heights for commercial airspace…”

Leisure & Entertainment

31.     Valve Releases Specs for Prototype Steam Machine  http://www.anandtech.com/show/7397/valve-releases-specs-for-prototype-steam-machine  “…today Valve released the details for their prototype Steam Machine…it will be up to various system builders to decide exactly what configurations they want to ship, but…Valve is covering a decent range of performance, from basic Core i3 processors up through the latest Haswell i5-4570 and i7-4770…The bigger differences come on the GPU side of things. At the top of the ladder sits NVIDIA’s Titan GPUs, which is…arguably overkill…the GTX 760 and GTX 660 are far more reasonable. Valve also lists 3GB of VRAM for the GPUs…that's a bold move as well, as it enables developers targeting Steam Machines to plan on having more VRAM than many typical desktop cards currenlty in the wild …”

32.    Split's wireless earphones ditch cables for clocks  http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/04/splits-wireless-earphones-ditch-cables-for-clocks  “Headphones are great, but the cables are annoying. Split by Greenwing Audio hopes to get rid of the wires with two tiny wireless earbuds. Wireless bluetooth headphones already exist, but are either joined by some sort of cable, or unwieldy and expensive earbuds with short battery life. Split…earbuds are totally separate, with their own batteries, storage, processors, and music players built-in. The earbuds then use short radio bursts to synchronise on-board clocks, which then allow the earbuds to play your music in-sync without having to be constantly connected…Using synchronised clocks and quick radio bursts allows Split to be much smaller and lighter than traditional Bluetooth or other wireless earphones, making them just one inch long, and barely bigger than the earbud itself, with a four-hour battery. To start playback you can just separate the earbuds, which are magnetically held together. From there, music playback control is managed by using a 3-axis accelerometer that detects when you bite. One bite 'click' skips the track, while a double bite cycles through the volume settings. A tap on the right earphone will lock or unlock the player, meaning you can still eat without constantly changing the track …”

33.    Nickster Gives Educational Toys A Modern, Digital Twist  http://www.core77.com/blog/toy/nickster_gives_educational_toys_a_modern_digital_twist__25655.asp  “…I still find it shocking to see toddlers walking around with smartphones. Instead of scoffing, Steve Cozzolino saw opportunity. At a fateful dinner party, Cozzolino noticed that eight out of nine children were playing around on some kind of digital device (including a set of 1-year-old twins on an iPhone). At the time, he was in the process of creating Nickster, a physical toy set…which now consists of a physical toy set and a themed app to teach kids basic principles of building, matching shapes and counting. But it was in these digital mavericks—who could barely walk but could tap and swipe—that Cozzolino realized that saw the future of play…it connects children back to physical toys…anticipating how anyone (let alone a toddler) is going to interact with something can be near impossible. Keeping their attention is another feat in itself…"We elected to develop the app as 3D visuals rather than 2D graphics, which I believe will enhance the child's connection to our toys as well as help enable the app to stand apart from others …”

Entrepreneurism and Technology

34.    General Assembly NYC to stop offering coworking services  http://gigaom.com/2013/10/04/general-assembly-nyc-goes-all-in-with-classes-and-community-plans-to-end-coworking-services/  “General Assembly has long downplayed its coworking services in New York City…to emphasize its networking and education potential. Now the startup is moving away from coworking altogether….the company said that three years after opening its doors to New York startups…it will stop offering its coworking services…The startup, which has campuses around the world (although it only offered coworking in New York), plans to help its current members find spots at other coworking spaces. It will continue to offer hackathons, panels and other networking events …”

35.    Bitcoin Falls 15% Following FBI’s Silk Road Seizure  http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/02/bitcoin-falls-15-following-fbis-silk-road-seizure/  “Bitcoin is taking it on the chin following the FBI seizure of Silk Road, a popular – and partially hidden – marketplace for drugs and other items generally outside the orbit of the law…about $1.2 billion in Bitcoin flowed through Silk Road, resulting in a nearly $80 million commission for the service. Bitcoin is responding as you would expect, as a core market that accepted it has been taken down…Bitcoin traded as high as $145 per coin at the end of September. Today, it’s trading around the $119 mark …”

Design / DEMO

36.    Design lab finalists reveal gadgets of the future  http://www.zdnet.com/design-lab-finalists-reveal-gadgets-of-the-future-7000021152/  “The eleventh annual Electrolux Design Lab competition fast forwards us to the future where technological boundaries do not exist. Here we reveal the eight finalists selected from over 1,700 entries from across the globe. Take a closer look at these stunning futuristic concept designs…3F stands for “Form Follows Function”. The physical body of this vacuum cleaner can change and mutate to suit the task required…Atomium is a 3D printer that uses molecular ingredients to construct food layer by layer…Breathing Wall is a future-oriented and wall integrated air cleaning concept…Global Chef is a kitchen appliance and service that connects people and cultures across the globe through cooking using hologram technology…Kitchen Hub is a device designed to help the family to eat better, healthier and to reduce food waste…Mab is an automated cleaning system consisting of hundreds of flying mini-robots that can clean all types of surfaces…Nutrima kitchen scales analyse your food's weight, nutrition, freshness and levels of certain toxins…OZ-1…is a portable air purifier and stress reliever …”

37.    Nike's 5 Lessons On Innovation By Design  http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019090/innovation-by-design/nikes-5-lessons-on-innovation-by-design  “…Here are five important takeaways about Nike's unique relationship with design that every innovator should know…LEARN BY DOING…Parker would hack his running shoes to make them better, ripping apart the outsole and modifying the insole in pursuit of the ultimate performance…STAY BALANCED…Even as a CEO, Parker still keeps a sketchbook…Every left page is devoted to business brainstorming, while every right page to designs and doodling of the elaborate shoes he might dream up…DESIGN AS DIRECTION…Design helps a company think about where it is and where it wants to be…ABANDON THE PAST, EMBRACE THE FUTURE…It's important to be open to new ways of innovating, even if they come at the cost of the proven way of doing things…STAY FOCUSED…Nike…is…partnering with other companies who might have strengths that Nike can leverage…”

38.    Paperglass: A Simple, Brilliant Design Innovation Enables Flat-Folding Eyeglasses  http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/paperglass_a_simple_brilliant_design_innovation_enables_flat-folding_eyeglasses_25647.asp  “If there is a flaw in the basic design of eyeglasses, it is in the hinge and stems. Because the stems of every pair of eyeglasses protrude from the hinges in the way they do, that means that when folding them shut…the overall closed shape is a lot bulkier than the constituent parts. Which in turn makes eyeglass cases bulkier…Japanese manufacturer Nishimura Precision Co. has designed a brilliant solution with their Paperglass product. By designing the stems to curve upwards from the hinges, it enables them to clear the lenses while folded in. This renders the glasses incredibly flat—so flat that if you're using them as reading glasses, the specs themselves (even inside the case) can be used as a bookmark …”

DHMN Technology

39.    The Real Reason Stratasys Bought MakerBot  http://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeshsharma/2013/09/24/stratasys-bold-moves-a-conversation-with-company-chairman-scott-crump/  “Unlike its high profile counterpart, 3D Systems which has been making news through a slew of acquisitions…Stratasys has mostly kept a low profile. Until recently, that is. Earlier this year, the company made a splash by acquiring Brooklyn-based MakerBot, the most well-known consumer 3D printer brand in the market. The acquisition surprised analysts because Stratasys is mostly known for its focus on selling to industrial customers.  “It was a big and bold move,” says Scott Crump, chairman and chief innovation officer at the company…For now, price elasticity for consumer 3D printers interests him…MakerBot…broke a price barrier by offering 3D printers that cost less than $2,000. In the process, the printer became a hit among hobbyists and educational institutions…The average consumer’s adoption curve for 3D printers, however, still remains low…He says a combination of low prices (due to price elasticity) and content on the Internet will help Stratasys “proliferate into new markets…”

40.    Hacker Scouts is more than just makers  http://www.garratt.info/blog/hacker-scouts-is-awesome-technically/  “Hacker Scouts is a national non-profit organization that teaches kids about science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM)…From a technical perspective, Hacker Scouts is exciting because of the material it covers, and how in-depth it goes…Why Hacker scouts is awesome: (1) The material…The Hacker Scout curriculum was laid out by engineers and experts who use these skills every day…(2) Education for All – Hacker Scouts is Open Source…Hacker Scouts was designed as a program that would be open to everyone, with all the material made open source…Only in an open source system can the motivated student really pursue her interests in depth and find exactly how things work, down to the smallest detail…(3) Hacking, not Making…If I told you I was making cookies, it could mean I was using a recipe, or maybe even heating up store-bought cookie dough. However, if I told you I was hacking cookies, it would tell you that I really knew my stuff! You can imagine me testing out different recipes, thinking outside the box, trying new crazy ideas…The maker movement is wonderful at getting the common person involved in technology, but Hacker Scouts focuses on taking people much further…For example: Rather than playing with snap circuits and little bits, we teach soldering, and circuit design…Rather than programming with Scratch, we teach C++ and Python…Rather than Lego Mindstorms, we teach chassis design and motor controllers…”

41.     Full Linux Arduino TRE debuts at Maker Faire Rome  http://linuxgizmos.com/arduino-tre-sbc-runs-linux-on-arm/  “The Arduino project announced a third-generation Arduino single board computer featuring a dual-processor architecture, and able to run a “full Linux” OS. The Arduino TRE features both a 1GHz 32-bit TI Sitara AM335x 32-bit ARM Cortex-A8 processor, for running Linux, and an 8-bit Atmel ATmega microcontroller, for AVR-compatible control of “shield” expansion modules…“the Arduino TRE is two Arduinos in one.” Basically, the new ARM Cortex-A8-based Sitara AM335x’s job is to run Linux applications and manage the SBC’s PC-style interfaces (video, audio, Ethernet, USB, optional WiFi, etc.), while an Atmel ATmega microcontroller takes care of the SBC’s real-world I/O (analog inputs, digital I/O, PWM outputs, etc) and handles the interface to shields (Arduino expansion modules) in a fully AVR-compatible manner…the 1GHz TI ARM processor offers up to “100 times more performance” than Arduino’s earlier Leonardo and Uno boards…”

42.    In China, Lessons of a 'Hackerspace'  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303722604579111253495145952.html  “…Xinchejian, China's first formal "hackerspace," a community-run workshop where ordinary people tinker with everything from art projects to robots…There are hundreds of hackerspaces world-wide and over a dozen now in China…Xinchejian, founded in 2010, means "new workshop." It occupies a rented room in a Shanghai warehouse. Members pay around $16 a month to use the space and tools…The Taiwan-born David Li, a 40-year-old programmer and a co-founder of Xinchejian, wants to lower the barriers for experimentation and play…”

43.    Much-Hyped 3D Printer Market Reaches Tipping Point  http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/02/gartner-3d-printer-market-forecast/  “3D printing remains a nascent market, despite high levels of hype around the technology’s potential…but there’s no doubting the technology’s trajectory. Enter analyst Gartner with a new report, which predicts worldwide shipments of sub-$100,000 3D printers will grow 49% this year, to reach a total of 56,507 units. That rate of growth is forecast to rise to 75% in 2014…“The 3D printer market has reached its inflection point,” said Pete Basiliere, research director at Gartner…the speed of development and rise in buyer interest are pressing hardware, software and service providers to offer easier-to-use tools and materials that produce consistently high-quality results.” “As the products rapidly mature, organisations will increasingly exploit 3D printing’s potential in their laboratory, product development and manufacturing operations…In the next 18 months, we foresee consumers moving from being curious about the technology to finding reasons to justify purchases as price points, applications and functionality become more attractive…”

44.    Peachy 3D Printer Has an Eye-Popping Price Tag  http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&doc_id=268556&itc=dn_analysis_element&dfpPParams=ind_186,industry_consumer,bid_26,aid_268556&dfpLayout=blog  “…The Peachy Printer is marketed to be a $100 3D printer with its own unique method of printing. The Peachy uses a laser beam controlled by two moving mirrors that heats up light sensitive resin until it hardens. These mirrors map out and print the X and Y axes using the sound card in your computer…A dripping system of saltwater and an analyzer to record and send information to and from the computer is used to control the water level that the resin floats on to control the Z axis. The resin is raised to meet the laser at the appropriate levels to make all axes complete simultaneously. Another perk of the printer is that it is also a scanner that allows you to scan an object into the Blender program. The scanning feature uses the laser to send the information of the laser's location on the object to the computer, mapping out the object until the 3D model is complete. A useful way to take advantage of this would be to scan your cell phone and create your own custom case. It would end up costing you about a dollar to print out…The team…Kickstarter campaign…goal was to raise $50,000 Canadian dollars, but the current total of money raised to this point is $530,171…The Peachy Printer kits will start shipping in July 2014…”

Open Source Hardware

45.    Ardulab provides open source platform for space experiments  http://www.gizmag.com/ardulab-space-experiments/29100/  “With Raspberry Pis and 3D printing all the rage, ambitious DIY projects have never been more achievable. However, when it comes to space experiments, it’s still a professionals-only game…Infinity Aerospace…wants to change that with Ardulab: an open source experiment package based on the Arduino processor that provides students and others with the ability to send experiments into space for under US$5,000. The developers compare the Ardulab to the move from mainframe computers to DIY personal computers in the 1970s that put innovation in the hands of hobbyists. It’s meant to solve the problem of how to carry out microgravity experiments on a tight budget…Ardulab was designed by a group that includes NASA’s Singularity University, Stanford’s Aerospace Engineering program, XCOR Aerospace, Atmel, Silicon Valley Space Center, and NanoRacks…The Ardulab package conforms to NASA standards and is intended for use on the International Space Station (ISS), though it can also be used on suborbital flights aboard Virgin Galactic, or the XCOR Lynx. It’s designed to work with experiment carriers called NanoRacks, which carry payloads that conform to the standard dimensions of a cubesat…The company describes using Ardulab as a simple matter of putting your experiment inside the container, programming the microcontroller, and sending it off to Infinity Aerospace, after which it will be sent into space with 9 months. You then receive video and data output from the experiment…”

46.    Intel teams up with Arduino to promote open-source hardware community  http://www.zdnet.com/intel-arduino-partner-on-family-of-boards-for-developers-education-7000021493/  “Intel and Arduino, an open source hardware maker, will partner to create the Intel Galileo board, a family of Arduino-compatible development tools based on the chip giant's architecture…For Intel, the partnership with Arduino is a move to attract the hobbyist community and embed its architecture in universities…The Galileo board features the Intel Quark SoC X1000, a low-power small core product. The Quark is Intel's effort to extend into the Internet of things and wearable devices…the company will donate 50,000 Galileo boards to 1,000 universities around the world in the next 18 months. The chip giant will also work with 17 universities to develop curriculum based on the Intel Galileo board…the Galileo board…can be programmed with Apple's Mac OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows.”

47.    Open Free Tools That Let You Hack Your Whole Life  http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/10/tessel/  “Imagine a home speaker system that identifies everyone in the room and plays only the music they wanna hear…Tim Ryan and a team of four other engineering students built such a contraption last year, as part of their senior capstone project…They created a collection of hardware and software that let anyone build all sorts of physical devices that interact with the people around them…The core of their project is a custom-designed circuit board called the Tessel, and they’ve now “open sourced” the board’s designs…Ryan and his colleagues have formed a company, called Technical Machine, that will steward the open source project and help others build their contraptions. Technical Machine sits at the intersection of two major technology trends. One is the “quantified self” movement — where people collect and analyze data describing their themselves and their habits by way of health trackers like the Fitbit, productivity trackers like RescueTime, and music applications like Last.fm. The other is the “internet of things” — where our everyday world is reshaped by all sorts of web-connected devices…”

Open Source

48.    Bringing open source to the masses, one small, local conference at a time  http://opensource.com/life/13/10/bring-open-source-masses  “The folks who planned the RTP180 conference for Open source all the things a few weeks ago in North Carolina did so in an open source manner. Using Triangle Wiki—a local collection of information about the towns of and around Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill that anyone can edit and add to—they posted info, found speakers, and coordinated the agenda. Then, they opened the event by bringing in "contributors" from the crowd to give the introduction. Six attendees read from bits of paper they were given, adlibbing here and there, to introduce the topic for the evening's small, local conference: open source…The show started as they welcomed nine speakers; each talked (for only five minutes!) about how they use open source in their lives and careers, to better themselves and the public…”

49.    Oregon State boosts Open Source Lab by bringing it into academic fold  http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2013/10/oregon_state_boosts_open_sourc.html  “Oregon State University is giving its Open Source Lab a major promotion, moving it from a services role within the university into an academic department as part of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science…Oregon State started the lab 10 years ago to make it easier for university departments to use open source software as an alternative to proprietary tools…The lab quickly grew beyond that basic function, hosting a variety of open source projects and providing student employees with hands-on experience on prominent open source endeavors…”

50.    Upverter & Sparkfun Release Over 500 Open-Source Designs  http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1319651  “Sparkfun, an open-source electronics company, and Uverter, an online design tool, have teamed up to bring a massive library of editable and hackable open-source designs to you for free…Sparkfun is a company that sells electronic parts, pieces, and kits…built on the idea of open-source…next is Upverter, an online pcb editing, simulation, and collaboration tool. In this one place you can design your boards, visualize how they will look, simulate the circuits, collaborate with coworkers, and even send them off for production…Sparkfun has uploaded over 500 of its designs into the tool so that you can simply log in, select what you want, and instantly be working on your own derivative of their work. Having a library like this at your fingertips is…a fantastic resource…”

Civilian Aerospace

51.     Commercial Observatory Bound for the International Space Station Lands First Customer  http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/37552a-commercial-observatory-bound-for-the-international-space-station-lands  “The German Aerospace Center…signed an agreement with Teledyne Brown Engineering…to place the first commercial Earth observation payload on the international space station (ISS) in late 2015. The decision by Germany’s space agency…is a long-awaited validation of space station backers’ view that the orbital outpost…will find an Earth observation market…”

52.    Stratolaunch quietly making progress  http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:04ce340e-4b63-4d23-9695-d49ab661f385&plckPostId=Blog%3a04ce340e-4b63-4d23-9695-d49ab661f385Post%3add366625-ca5e-4215-8af1-5f83237def46  “Stratolaunch Systems, a…project developing a commercial air launch space access system, is quietly starting up production inside its recently opened 88,000 square ft. site at Mojave, Calif. The facility is laying up the first parts of the enormous composite wing and fuselage sections of the 385-ft span carrier aircraft which will carry the Orbital Sciences-built multi-stage booster to launch altitude…Measuring around 128 ft. long, the payload will be encased in a 16.4 ft. diameter fairing. Gross lift off (or drop) weight is expected to be over 465,000 lb, with the air launch vehicle (ALV) able to deliver 13,200lb to low earth orbit and 9,900 lb. to a highly inclined (HIO) orbit. Flight testing of the 6-engined carrier aircraft is expected to begin in 2016 with first launch of the ALV in 2018…”

53.    Billionaire rocketeers duke it out for shuttle launch pad  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/02/us-space-launchpad-idUSBRE9901HE20131002  “…NASA's Launch Complex 39A…at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida…is the focus of a battle of another sort, between two billionaire techies seeking to dominate a new era of private space flight…fierce competition for control of the pad by digital entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos has led to a government probe and congressional lobbying, delaying NASA's choice of a partner…SpaceX, already has two U.S. launch sites for its Falcon rockets at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and California's Vandenberg Air Force bases. Musk…also plans to build a site, probably in Texas, for commercial launches and wants Pad 39A for Falcon rocket launches to ferry cargo and possibly astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. Blue Origin, the company formed in 2000 by Amazon.com Inc. founder Bezos, is working on a suborbital reusable spaceship called New Shepard…Two weeks ago, Blue Origin…filed a protest…over the NASA solicitation for Pad 39A proposals…SpaceX told NASA it had no problem with other companies using the launchpad if SpaceX was awarded a five-year lease. However, Musk says SpaceX is light-years ahead of the competition. "I think it's kind of moot whether or not SpaceX gets exclusive or non-exclusive rights for the next five years…”

54.    Backers Insist Brazilian Spaceport Is Nearing Launch Readiness  http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/37550backers-insist-brazilian-spaceport-is-nearing-launch-readiness  “The company created to sell commercial launch services aboard Ukrainian rockets operated from a Brazilian equatorial spaceport is seeking to convince skeptics that it is finally nearing launch readiness…Alcantara Cyclone Space (ACS) says an inaugural flight from the Brazilian Alcantara site likely will occur in 2015….three-quarters of the development needed for the Cyclone 4 rocket — using Cyclone 3 and Cyclone 4 first and second stages and a new upper stage…is completed, ACS officials said, and 48 percent of the launch site’s construction has been completed…Brazil and Ukraine agreed in October 2003 to develop the Alcantara site using Cyclone 4 after Brazil’s own domestic rocket development foundered with an August 2003 on-pad explosion…ACS will have at its disposal a launch site whose proximity to the equator gives a vehicle…a much wider launch market offering more capacity to a given orbit than can be offered from Russia’s high-latitude spaceports. In addition to its equatorial location, Alcantara, like Europe’s Guiana Space Center, can launch into polar and equatorial orbit without overflying land areas…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

55.     GPUs Power One-Third of Top Russian Supercomputers  http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-10-02/gpus_power_one-third_of_top_russian_supercomputers.html  “…Russia is counting on the power of NVIDIA GPUs to advance science and research and bolster national competitiveness…Russia recently released its twice-yearly list of the country's 50 most performant systems and for the fifth time in a row, Moscow State University's "Lomonosov" supercomputer – powered by NVIDIA GPUs – took the top honors. Over the last decade or so, the technique of using general-purpose GPUs (GPGPUs) to boost computational power (by as much as 50X) has had an enormous impact on HPC. The current fastest US system, the Cray Titan, installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is outfitted with 18,688 Nvidia Tesla K20X nodes…On the Russian list, three of the top 10 systems employ GPUs and nearly one-third of the entire list leverage these massively parallel GPUs. The fact that three years ago, there were no GPU-based systems on this list emphasizes just how quickly GPGPU computing has infiltrated the high-end of HPC…”

56.    NVIDIA GK180 Tesla K40 “ATLAS’ GPU With Over 4 Teraflops  http://wccftech.com/nvidia-preparing-gk180-based-tesla-k40-atlas-gpu-4-teraflops-compute-performance/  “…NVIDIA has plans to introduce a brand new GPU for the high-performance compute market – The NVIDIA Tesla K40 codenamed ATLAS. The NVIDIA Tesla K40 would be based on the latest GK180 chip which features 2880 Cuda Cores with peak single precision performance…of over 4 TFlops and 1.4 TFlops with double precision…The Tesla K40 graphic card would feature 12 GB VRAM with a memory bandwidth of 288 GB/s…The Tesla K40 would be shipping in the Passive, Active and TTP,SXM form factors with a TDP of 235 W in standard and 245W in SXM form factors…”

57.     PCIe Gen3 Expansion Appliance Accelerates HPC Applications  http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-10-03/pcie_gen3_expansion_appliance_accelerates_hpc_applications.html  “One Stop Systems, Inc…introduces the first PCIe Gen3 expansion appliance to support up to sixteen high-end accelerator boards. The High Density Compute Accelerator adds 73.3 Tflops of computational power using sixteen NVIDIA Tesla K10 GPUs…The Accelerator consists of the rackmount chassis, three modular power supplies, four pre-loaded canisters, and the front bezel…Each canister is equipped with four PCIe x16 Gen3 slots that operate up to 128Gb/s each. While the enclosure supports any type of PCIe card, for convenience the canisters are provided pre-loaded with four Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors or NVIDIA Tesla K10 or K20 GPUs…”

Trends & Emerging Tech

58.    Emerging game technologies  http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/27/the-deanbeat-emerging-game-technologies-and-the-battle-royal/  “…at the Login conference on gaming…We focused on disruption across the game industry’s categories and the emergence of new technologies…We’ve seen a Cambrian explosion of new game technologies, from the Oculus Rift to the SteamOS. Games are shifting from competing within isolated walled gardens and unique territories. Now game companies are crossing from physical to digital and vice versa, indies are doing battle with the big guys, and gaming now has many global competitors. It looks to us like a giant free-for-all…Games have become a service, or something that you run on behalf of customers for long after the launch…Free-to-play as a business model has swept through the industry. Mobile platforms have flourished. User-generated content is huge. eSports has blossomed. And now everyone is trying to figure out how to make AAA-quality games on the emerging game platforms. Those platforms aren’t just the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. They include Android and iOS tablets and smartphones. And in the future, they will include wearable devices like Google Glass and the many competitors that it has inspired…Developers want to see a strong ecosystem surrounding a new technology, or they won’t make games for it…We discussed SteamOS and Steam Machines and whether it can crack Microsoft’s grip on the PC with Windows and bring a new console to the living room. Valve has a huge digital distribution service with Steam. But it may have trouble moving beyond hardcore gamers…”

59.    7 hottest trends in HR technology  http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2013/10/06/7-hottest-trends-in-hr-technology/  “…Technology has been dominating the HR and Talent Management space for the past decade – with more “real serious widespread adoption” happening in the past year…Here’s My Take On The Top 7 Trends in HR Technology: 1) There Will Be A Move From Quantity To Quality…2) The Number Of So-Called Breakthrough HR Technologies Will Diminish…3) It’s All About Implementation…4) Analytics Is The Special Sauce…5) Social Media And Continuous Learning Continues To Grow In Significance…6) Real Time Talent Management Matters…7) Mobile, Mobile, Mobile…”

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