Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict: Well, ladies and gentleman, what we have here is more than just a “same name” puzzle on the Wheel of Fortune, it’s a breakfast treat — the Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict. This glorious creation involves doughnuts, brownies, frosting, Cadbury Creme Eggs, and fried pound cake masquerading as hash browns. We’re literally tearing up thinking about it.
Skin Is Amazing:Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft have teamed up to make “touch screens for our bodies” that they are calling Skinput. What does that mean? Well, imagine a standard keyboard being projected onto your arm. When you touch the “keys” with your fingers, Skinput uses soundwaves to determine what keys have been pushed – meaning that one day you could replace the keyboard in front of you with a light projection on your forearm. But that’s not all, this could also mean huge innovation for gaming, mobile and the skincare industry.
Pizza in a Cone: I hope you’ve Scotchgarded your chair, because this will blow your mind. Opening yesterday across from the Empire State Building was K! Pizzacone, promoting “pizza on the go.” As its names suggests, this pizza is shaped like a cone. It starts out with a crust cone filled with cheese and your choice of a sauce or pesto; you then have the option to add more fillings. Congratulations, human race, you did it!
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I’m not sure that this necessarily falls into the “digital trends” category — but I’ve always had a rather loose definition of that concept.
This is the ElectroluxScan Toaster — developed by Sung Bae Chang and entered into the Electrolux Design Contest. The premise is simple: you hook up the toaster to your computer via USB and then download an image, news story, or Cathy cartoon to the toaster. The modules within the machine then realign and toast the image onto your bread.
I don’t want to overstate this, but I’m fairly certain that this is the best thing to ever happen in the history of mankind. Take that, Guttenberg.
Florence Henderson (a.k.a. Carol Brady), just launched a tech support service. Actually, this isn’t that surprising. Before Ol’ Flo got her cheekbone implants, she was pretty well known for handing out advice (for instance: “Don’t play ball in the house,” and “Face facts, you’re never going to be as popular as Marcia”).
The service — which is aimed at “mature” computer users — is called FloH Club (which sounds like the name of a terrible discotheque in suburban Milwaukee). La Henderson describes the experience in a quick video on the site (check it out, they must have had a serious budget for floral), where she says FloH Club is “like roadside assistance…but for your computer.” Just call up her team (who, she mentions several times, are based in America — she does everything but stare into the camera and wink to emphasize this point) and they’ll coach you on how to use Facebook, print out a document or take a picture. She then holds up a camera, as if to say, “This here is an automatic daguerreotype machine. Press this button on top and it will trap your likeness.”
In fairness, the concept is a good one. I know a lady, let’s call her “Carol Rossi,” and from time to time she has difficulty with techie stuff, like streaming videos of the Barefoot Contessa on FoodNetwork.com. If she joined FloH Club, she could get telephone support from a woman who once rocked a serious mullet, rather than call her son — who we’ll call “Fandrew Rossi” — at work.
The paradigm of publishing is shifting, evidenced by this week’s Conde Nast closures. Newspapers and magazines need to move with the times, and that might mean literally embracing movement.
Entertainment Weekly and Esquire generated serious buzz with their respective forays into the integration of motion + magazine. What’s next? Check out the above video, which shows where the future of magazines could be headed. It is a fascinating look at what might be in store for a changing industry. It is also a helpful catalyst for thinking about how the public relations industry will shift in response.
The ad wars: Microsoft vs. Apple. Apple recently did away with their ad campaign featuring actor Justin Long, and replaced it with a new set that teaches consumers about how environmentally friendly Apples are.
I’ve got to give this one to Microsoft. Their ads communicate that the product is easy to use. Apple tells me how my laptop won’t be too toxic once it’s in the landfill. I’m all for being environmentally friendly - but when I’m spending over 1,000 bucks on a computer, I’m not imagining it anywhere near a landfill.
Amazon officially launched the second version of the Kindle today and judging by blog comments, it seems as though no one is excited as they thought they would be. Many of the differences are strictly aesthetic and the $360 dollar price tag has stayed the same. According to TechCrunch, below are the features that have changed from the original:
The new Kindle is slightly lighter. The first generation weighed 10.3 ounces while the second weighs only 10.2 ounces
It’s much less ugly. Gone is the retro look of the first generation for a curvier and more symmetrical design that (like every other mobile device hitting the market these days) borrows elements from the iPhone
The screen has a higher wow factor At six inches tall, it can display 16 shades of gray, and it can turn pages 20% faster (or so Amazon claims)
It can actually speak to you Amazon’s new Text-to-Speech feature will use a computerized voice to read any book to you in one of three speech rates, and in either a male or female voice
The new controls are better designed. Instead of a weird slider on the right-hand side that’s used to move from line to line, there’s a new 5-way joystick. The keyboard is also no longer split into two regions like those funky desktop keyboards you see at Fry’s but never buy.
There’s been no price drop It still costs roughly the same amount ($359) but at least there’s still no monthly wireless fee for downloading books, magazines, etc.
It can hold a much bigger library Storage has been boosted to 7x the original size, allowing the device to carry over 1,500 titles at a time
It downloads content just as fast. Amazon is touting 60 second downloads for books, etc. — the same rate it gave for the first Kindle
You can pick up your reading on a separate Kindle. I’m not sure how useful this will actually be for people, but a new feature called “Whispersync bookmarking” makes it possible to start reading a book on one Kindle then continue reading it on another, just where you left off
It still comes in only one color. White
“It downloads content just as fast.” Uh, would you purchase it if it didn’t?
Despite the snow and ice, Maria and I decided to rep M Booth at the NY Tech Meetup in Chelsea last night. This month’s meetup included several mobile demos, including one from Mobile Commons that I didn’t really understand because it was Simpsons-themed and I never really watched The Simpsons (don’t hurt me!).
My personal favorite was definitely OMGICU, which allows people to send in celebrity sightings via text message, kind of like a mobile Gawker Stalker. Cute name, right? I also liked the demo of Peek, a simple mobile e-mail device that I might want to get for my mom. At the end, Jeff Jarvis got up to speak about his new book What Would Google Do?, which is a question I often ask myself (sadly, not joking).
For more NY Tech talk, check out Matt Caldecutt’s writeup of the event, or you can live vicariously through Maria and me, via last night’s livetweets.
A new survey found that C-suite executives and IT managers trust social media just as much as mainstream media when considering tech purchases.
The “Tech Decision Maker” study found that decision makers consider their personal experience (58%) first when short-listing tech vendors, followed by word-of-mouth and industry analyst reports, tied at 51%.
But a nearly equal number of respondents cited user-generated media (28%) and traditional media (27%) as most influential in purchasing decisions. Advertising (17%) and direct marketing (21%) were listed as the least important information sources when short-listing vendors.
In the most exciting post of its inaugural week, Gadgetwise reports that Life Magazine’s photo archive is now searchable on Google Images. This is amazing! I used to be obsessed with Life back in the day, and their photography is absolutely unparalleled.
Apparently we Millennials are an unruly, resourceful bunch. A new study found that almost half of all Millennials who use social networks, blogs, vlogs, or Twitter do so without support from their IT departments, or even against their company IT policies. In addition, 60% of respondents said they are unaware of their companies’ IT policies or they are simply not interested in following them.
The report concludes by saying that if companies don’t adapt and offer the technologies that Millennials want (over half of respondents said that a company’s use of technology was a major factor when they select an employer) the new generation will “go rogue” instead. Luckily, M Booth has a very forward-thinking, accomodating IT department (thanks, Alfredo!).
The site has also tapped five well-known tech bloggers provide reports and reviews on various tech products. MediaPost reported that NetShelter hopes to launch a similar site for the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
NetShelter is hoping this move will help it to compete with CNet as to go-to destination for information on tech gadgets. It should be interesting to see if opening up communication accomplishes this, especially as economic forecasters are predicting that many Americans will be tightening their belts this holiday shopping season.
