Category Archives: Uncategorized

Your Body Will Be Looking for New Surfaces

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Remember the name Pranav Mistry. He is a 31-year-old Indian computer scientist who is leading the world in gestural interaction. To learn more about gestural interaction, please watch the video above that was taped a few years ago. You will think it is all science fiction. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Mistry’s “SixthSense” wearable technology is going to allow you to use natural hand gestures to project digital content onto other surfaces, like walls and physical objects around you. “SixthSense” frees information from the confines of digital devices by seamlessly projecting onto your physical environment.

Mistry is the head of the Think Tank Team and Director of Research at Samsung where he works on a wide variety of topics including wearable computing, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing, gestural interaction, artificial intelligence, machine vision, collective intelligence, and robotics. He is best known for his work on SixthSense and Samsung Galaxy Gear.

Everyone is waiting for the next big thing. This could be it. Did you ever see anything so remarkable? Okay, maybe a baby being born, but that’s it!

Say Hello to the Apple of the East

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I am so lucky to be writing DigiDame because it forces me to focus on tech subjects that I think you, my 50-plus crowd, would like to know more about. Sometimes I get stories on the job, contacts, research, and even from industry discussion groups.

I learned about the “so called” Steve Jobs of China from a techie girl friend who just returned from a whirlwind Asian tour. She actually met the young, billionaire entrepreneur who consistently wears black turtlenecks and jeans and behaves a lot like the Apple founder. The Chinese media is already calling Lei Jun and his company, Xiaomi, the “Apple of the East.”

We all heard of Chinese knockoffs but this is too much. All kidding aside, Lei Jun is nothing to snicker at. His company is selling millions of mobile phones (some say they look just like iPhones) and the Chinese market is counting on him to put that country on the map in the innovation category.

The reason Xiaomi (pronounced SHAO-mee) is being taken so seriously is because it did actually sell $2 billion in handsets last year. The potential is huge. China is the world’s largest mobile phone market.

Just like Jobs, Lei is highly regarded as a successful startup expert. He has a software company called Kingsoft that he took public in 2007 and walked away with $300 million. He also invests in other successful software and Internet companies, takes them public, and accumulates more and more wealth. His first success was a biggie, Amazon paid $75 million to acquire his e-commerce company Joyo.com. in 2004.

Forbes calls Lei one of China’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, worth $1.7 billion. It’s going to be interesting to see if Lei becomes as popular and beloved as Jobs on a worldwide basis. Can it happen twice in one lifetime?

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The Price of Traveling

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glassesSo many of my friends are traveling all over the world. They have the time of their lives. However, many of them suffer from terrible jet lag when they get home. Their days are night, their nights are days. A few confided that it almost makes the trip not worth it

Continue reading →

Bill Clinton Joined Twitter Last Night

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clintonIn less than 24 hours, Bill Clinton has over 300,000 following him on Twitter and he barely sent our four tweets. The guy is just a magnet. The media was all over the story today because everyone is so curious as to what he will say. Continue reading →

Dark Meat

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I love dark meat Turkey. So does Larry David. I found this out because Kara Swisher of AllThingsd.com shared the video below with her readers. It’s pretty funny, especially if you come from Brooklyn.

I want to dedicate this blog post to Elliott Lampert, my friend in Miami, who had to spend Thanksgiving in the hospital. You will be out soon. Get some good rest. Thank you Mindi for keeping us informed. I finally see the virtue of texting.

Quite a Turkey Day.

A Bigger Apple

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I hate when friends want to hold my iPhone to see a photo or a video. They usually want to get closer to the screen. Unfortunately, they sometimes lose my photos when they try to enlarge the image or they displace videos when they want to switch from one to another. I have been known to grab my iPhone after I see them trying to manipulate the screen. “Get your sticky fingers off my screen,” I sometimes say out loud or mumble to myself

Recently I found a solution to my dilemma that I want to share with you. It’s the new ultra-sleek 3M Projector Sleeve for the iPhone 4/4S. All you do is slip your iPhone into the case. The case allows you to project pictures and videos everywhere and anywhere. All of a sudden everyone can share together. While it hasn’t been publicly announced, 3M is going to shortly introduce a projector sleeve for the iPhone 5. 3M calls the sleeve “dock and go.” I love that because it is small and thin enough to go with you everywhere. You can slip it in the pocket of your jeans, your purse, or the pocket on your shirt.

The makers of the 3M Projector Sleeve claim that users are getting a kick out sharing their new favorite viral video from YouTube® or streaming the newest films from Netflix® on the wall, on the ceiling or on the side of a tent. Others are creating photo sharing nights with family and friends with special slide shows. The 3M Projector Sleeve allows for 100 minutes of projection time. It also has a rechargeable battery. It’s very simple to use. Just project, share and enjoy. It even works as a back-up charger for your phone with the press of a button.

I plan to use the 3M Projector Sleeve for client presentations, to review photos on my camera roll, and to show off interesting videos I took at concerts, musicals, and plays. I may also start my own human interest channel on YouTube and share the videos with friends when we all gather together.

Amazon has the 3M Projector Sleeve on sale for $165.98 through November. It usually sells for $229.00.

Below is a video demonstration.

Eric Schmidt Of Google Meets Kara Swisher & Walt Mossberg of WSJ (AllThingsD) At 92nd St Y

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Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher and Eric Schmidt.

I was waiting for this night for a long time. Three of the most famous names in the digital world were on stage at the 92nd St Y in NYC, one of the most respected institutions for lectures, talks, and entertainment in the United States.

Eric Schmidt is Executive Chairman of Google.
Walt Mossberg is the author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau in 1997.

Most of the presentation focused on what Schmidt calls “The Gang Of Four,” Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. He said the future really will be about what Facebook does the best, gather personal information from users and their contacts. This will be a valuable growth area and each company will integrate this into their own formats.

Schmidt also pointed out that big name, national newspapers will survive but local ones will not. As strange as this sounds he predicts that celebrities Iike Jay-Z will be the big brands in publishing. “It is very obvious that Americans are celebrity crazed and follow their every word. A newspaper named after a major star will draw more attention than what local newspapers call themselves today.”

Another Schmidt prediction is that mobility will be the most important factor in technology growth. “Software will be designed for mobile devices and then for the web. Today it is the other way around. We have discovered that most users can get along with just using their smartphones. They don’t need anything else.”

Schmidt said six billion people use a phone. One billion use a smartphone. He wants Google to always be the “Center Of Information.”

Become An Investor For The Fun Of It

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I get calls every week from tech start-ups asking me to either help them with a public relations program or to secure funding. I try to do my best, but lately they are coming to me fast and furious. Call it a sign of the times, but an increasing number of college graduates or working folks are leaving their careers to become entrepreneurs. I spend countless non-billable hours helping where I can. I write pro-bono press releases, distribute them to targeted press, and make calls to see if we can secure editorial placement. I also spend endless hours working on strategy and business plans.

Eliot often asks me if HWH is really a non-profit. I tell him it is a form of new business. One of these guys/gals are going to make us rich. It hasn’t happened yet, but there is always tomorrow. There are so many great ideas out there that need the support of seasoned professionals like you. I don’t care if you are a fireman, housewife, doctor, teacher, writer, salesperson or CEO, you have something the under 50 crowd needs—a lifetime of experience. Intuitively, you may have a better sense of judgment than the idea person.

Start small. Take a look at www.kickstarter.com. I talked about the company before in generalities but now I want to get specific.

“Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects which include films, games, music, art, design, and technology. Some projects only require a dollar to show you support them. Anyone can join in. Most of the supporters are much younger than us, but that is because they knew about Kickstarter before us. The site launched on April 28, 2009 and to date has raised over $350 million by more than 2.5 million people, funding more than 30,000 creative projects. People who fund Kickstarter projects do not get equity. The Project creators keep 100 per cent ownership of their work. The only gratification you get is identifying a good idea and giving a little bit of yourself towards it.”

Take a look at this Kickstarter project. I bet my ocean loving friends can dig this.

Autonomous sailing robots to study the oceans. Each boat can sail itself anywhere and send data back to shore. Funding ends next Friday. Each robotboat is fully autonomous, needs no fuel, and will bring to bear myriad sensors at remote points on the surface of oceans, lakes, and rivers. Think of it as a satellite for the seas. It studies the health of the world’s water.

Click on the arrow in the video. If you are getting this post via email, you may have to go to http://www.digidame.com to see the video. It is worth it. I couldn’t get the video on Kickstarter to embed here so I used Mashable’s coverage. If you want to know more about the project, go to Kickstarter.

Looking For The Next Steve Jobs

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Will.i.am

Simon Cowell

Steve Jobs

It was only a matter of time. I am surprised it took this long. I even thought of it myself, but I don’t have millions of dollars to make it happen. It takes the likes of Simon Cowell and Will.i.am to back this sort of a thing. Looking for The Next Steve Jobs is like Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Does he really exist?

The duo of Simon and Will.i.am are working on a project called the ”X Factor for Tech.” The details are very sketchy at this point but basically it will be the same kind of format that has proven to be successful for singers and dancers: teams of producers screen the entries, the on-screen TV judges select the ones they want to present on stage, the audience then decides on the finalists and then the grand prize winner.

The big question for ”X Factor for Tech” is their particular format. Will there be a final winner for each show that gets a sum of money for a startup, or will it take a year to get to the grand finale? How serious are they in finding the next Steve Jobs? Personally, I think that is just a euphemism for finding inventors who are game changers like Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Four Square, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Steve Case of AOL, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

Unlike the entertainment business, there is just a limited number of geniuses. Most of the time when you hear a new and interesting concept, it first sounds like a winner. Then as time goes by, the concept starts developing warts that the money people don’t want to address and the inventor doesn’t know how to cure on his or her own.

If you ever watch Shark Tank, a TV show format with a similar objective as what I think “X Factor for Tech” will be about, you start to understand why the Sharks only give money to those who can stand on their own. They can’t be nursemaids to the idea people. Too many inventors/creators need money but they also need guidance. They know nothing about marketing, accounting, legal requirements, hiring, firing, meeting deadlines, or even sales. The minute the Sharks find out that the person standing before them is an empty suit, he or she gets turned down.

The same thing will happen on “X Factor for Tech.” Simon and Will.i.am are not about to give money for an idea that will go no place fast, so it is going to be interesting to see how they cultivate the inventor. The same thing holds true with American Idol, The X Factor and all of the other entertainment shows. Half of the grand winners cut a record or two but you never hear from them again.

That is show business. This is the tech business. The ultimate Steve Jobs didn’t just appear one day. He was created after decades of trying to make things happen and then deciding that he had enough substance to lead. Very few on earth ever feel like that other than the impostors. There are tons of them. It is going to be interesting to see if these two music moguls will be able to spot that.

The Other Side Of Twitter

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Most older folks often question the validity of Twitter. Many of my friends think it is a place where everyone goes to post what they ate for dinner, what movie they saw, and who their favorite rock star is. Au contraire! Twitter continues to be a social media platform where users report information as it develops and voice their opinions on current events

I want to show you what I mean. Crimson Hexagon, a social media research company, recently surveyed Twitter to see what Americans thought of Apple Maps Vs Google. Their results really give you the nitty gritty. Crimson Hexagon grabbed more than 50,000 tweets that mentioned the Maps app, which comes standard on the iPhone 5, over the last six days. Just 10% of those expressed interest, approval or excitement, such as this review from pastor Charlie Campbell: “I was a little nervous about losing Google maps but I must say I like Apple’s maps even better.”

Then Crimson Hexagon dug up 22% of the tweets expressing an outright hatred of the Apple app. But another 30% cracked jokes at the expense of Maps, such as this from entrepreneur Chris Eh Young: “If you ordered an iPhone 5, shipments are being delayed. Apple is forcing the delivery guys to use Apple Maps.”

Click on the Mashable story here written by Chris Taylor to learn more. It is quite fascinating.