Get Used To The Word “Smart”

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You all know what a smart phone is. For those of you who don’t, it is a mobile phone with more advanced computing features. The first smart phones mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobile phone and a camera. Today’s smart phones also have portable media players, digital photo and video cameras and GPS navigation capabilities plus 700,000 apps.

Now we are entering the world of smart cars, smart roads, smart parking and smart public transportation. I am sure after that we will find ourselves involved in smart clothes, smart food, smart furniture, smart exercise, smart arts, and yes, smart travel.

Many of the car companies today are advertising smart cars with all the latest gizmos like navigation, voice recognition, remote controls, and automatic sensors. Bill Ford, Executive Chairman of the Ford Motor Company, has been trying to stay ahead of the curve by looking way into the future to see how we can cure some of the traffic challenges drivers face today by just applying smart technology.

Ford said the answer to traffic problems is not to build more roads. “When Americans began moving west we didn’t add more wagon trains, we built railroads. To connect our country after World War II, we didn’t build more two-lane highways, we built the interstate highway system. Today we need that same leap in thinking for us to create a viable future. We are going to build smart cars, but we also need to build smart roads, smart parking, smart public transportation systems, and more. We don’t want to waste our time sitting in traffic, sitting at toll booths, or looking for parking spots. We need an integrated system that uses real-time data to optimize personal mobility on a massive scale, without hassle or compromises for travelers. That’s the kind of system that’s going to make the future of personal mobility sustainable.”

Here is some of his thinking:

1-A smart road system that automatically changes traffic lane direction based on timing and congestion levels.

2-Automobiles that signal a network system when they run into traffic jams on the highway. The signal warns cars behind them to change course and take a different route.

3-Traffic jam alerts on the dashboard so drivers have the option to proceed to the next metro train stop. Drivers hop on a train to work, and then after work take the train back to the station where they parked their car.

4-Red traffic lights that switch to green if no other cars are approaching.

5-A smart phone app that automatically books parking spots and then alerts the location to drivers.

Some of these ideas may sound a little farfetched. Not so! Just remember life before Google.

I want to credit CNET for distilling some of this information so we can get a snapshot of what is going on in Detroit. I also included links from Ad Age, Geek.com, Popular Science, Science Daily, The Car Connection, and Wired for additional information. I even gave you a clue to what each story is about. Simply fascinating!

From Pupil Tracking to Gesture Recognition, Vehicles’ Best Selling Point Is Increasingly Inside the Cockpit

Look Ma No Hands

Detecting An Icy Patch

Cars That Talk To Each Other To Prevent Accidents

Google Controls Your Driving

Happy Trails To You………….

Smart Phone Camera Editing

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Most smart phone users often forget, or don’t even know, that they can edit photos from their camera roll.

Go into the camera roll and click on the edit link on the top right (check around the margins in case the edit link is located someplace else on your cell).

Then check for icons for rotate, auto enhance on, tap red eye (eliminates red eye), and crop (change photo size).

Experiment. The more I investigate, the more functions I find.

Estelle Ellis Rubinstein, a Pioneer at Seventeen, Dies at 92

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Estelle Ellis Rubenstein

I get very moved by people who took personal and business chances long before it was commonplace, as it is today in the digital world. Today, pioneers are applauded whether they succeed or don’t quite make it. Back in the 1940s, it was rare to hear about people who were willing to make bold moves in their careers, especially women. 

The following story is about Estelle Ellis Rubenstein, a marketing pioneer at Seventeen Magazine. She died over a week ago at the age of 92. I started my career at Women’s Wear Daily in 1966. I know what it was like for women to exert themselves in those days, much less 20 years before. 

I just wanted to honor Estelle Ellis Rubenstein by placing her story in my blog. Women like her have been an inspiration my entire life. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/media/estelle-ellis-rubinstein-a-pioneer-at-seventeen-dies-at-92.html?_r=1

Steven Tyler Told Me A Little Known Secret

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I am searching for someone, anyone, who read rock star Steven Tyler’s book “Does The Noise In My Head Bother You? A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir.” He dedicated it to his mother Susan Rey Blancha Tallarico.

I want to discuss the little known secret he shared with his readers.

The reason why I feel this is a justified DigiDame topic is because Tyler is 64. He is a very different 64 than most of us. He does have the same aches and pains but his spirit is forever young. I know that many of you are asking why I would be so enamored with a guy who has been basically a drug addict most of his life. He admits in his book he blew $20 million on drugs over the years.

I guess the reason why I find him so fascinating is because of his creativity and energy. He is so far out there that I loved every minute of his book. Even when he was a youngster in Sunapee, New Hampshire, (he still has a home there and goes every chance he gets) he was an independent thinker. He had the freedom to be creative and make alternative choices.

Maybe we all live vicariously through people like Tyler. He is a father of four, a song writer, received a doctorate at Berkeley, another one at UMass, Boston, a poet and painter, and a person who learns something new on a daily basis. He is so far from the norm that he makes us all feel like we live in an ageless state, even if it is only for a performance, an interview, or his book. When he shared “His Little Known Secret,” with his readers, I felt 19 again. I felt what he felt and I didn’t want to let go. This is how he explains it. “When I heard The Everly Brothers’ “I Wonder If I Care So Much” and those double harmonies….I lost my breath! No one ever did those anguished teen love songs better than them. ‘Cathy’s Clown,’ ‘Let It Be Me,’ ‘So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad),’ and ‘When Will I Be Loved?’ Oh man, those hearts trending Appalachian harmonies!

“Those harmonic fifths. I mean, G-d lives in the fifths, and anyone can sing harmonies like that….that’s as close to G-d as we’re going to get short of a mother giving birth. Behold the act of creation — divine and perfect.

“If you have any doubts about this, take a deep breath and hold a note with someone, a friend, your main squeeze, your parole officer. Ahhh, when two people hold the same note and one person goes slightly off that note you will hear an eerie vibration–it’s an unearthly sound. I think in those vibrations there exists very strong healing powers, not unlike the mysterious stuff that the ancient Shamans understood and used. “Now sing in fifths, one sings C and the other G. Then one goes off key …that’s dissonance. Fifths in musical terms are first cousins and in those fifths there’s a magical throb. If you close your eyes and you touch foreheads, you’ll feel a wild interplanetary vibration. It’s a little known secret, but that’s how piano tuners tune a Steinway. G-d and sound and sex and electric grid–it’s all connected. It’s pumping through your blood stream. G-d ‘s in the gap of synapses. Vibrating, pulsating, that’s Eternity Baby.”

Christiane Amanpour Speaks Out

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TV War Zone Queen, Christiane Amanpour, commented on blogging in the August Issue of Vanity Fair.

Asked if foreign correspondents are war junkies, she replied “That’s the biggest pile of crap. If you want us to be the eyes and ears in our field, not people spinning in blogosphere or sitting in armchairs opining about what’s going on in the rest of the world–you need people who are willing to go to the battlefront.”

I love that quote !

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Happy 30th Birthday,Whitney !!! This One Is For You

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Whitney Hess

My daughter Whitney has turned into a locavore. Her heros are Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp. She is very serious about saving the farms of America. Instead of accepting gifts from family and friends for her 30thbirthday, she asked everyone on her blog, called “Pleasure and Pain,” to contribute money to Farm Aid. Her goal is to raise $30K.

Basically, most of the money will be raised online.

Whitney explains, “Thousands of family farmers in the United States are pushed off their land every year. As large factory farms are replacing them, the quality of our food is severely diminished, and our environment and our food security is in danger.”

Details are spelled out so be sure to click here.

To read Whitney’s blog click here

Happy Birthday, Whitney. We are incredibly proud of you.

What Does Crowd Funding Mean?

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I really want everyone who reads DigiDame to understand what Crowd Funding means. You probably heard this term casually mentioned over the last few months while at cocktail parties or in stories you have read in the press. You didn’t pay much attention to it because it sounded so complicated and esoteric.

Crowd Funding is really easy to understand and makes a lot of sense. It is very trendy in the digital community. You will absolutely impress everyone (especially the digital babies) when you reference “Crowd Funding” in a conversation. All of a sudden people will start looking at you as if you are some kind of rock star.

That is exactly what DigiDame aims to do. If I can understand something, then you can too. I like to dumb things down as much as possible when trying to understand a new concept so I can truly appreciate what it means and how I can use it in my life.

Crowd Funding is what a lot of young people do to raise funds for their innovations, developments, ideas, concepts, or inventions. It means that funds are being solicited from the masses for a project, rather than going to a few major investors. It really started in the entertainment business when fans contributed funds to rock groups and movie projects over the Internet. Then it expanded to political campaigns—a la Obama. Nowadays, people soliciting funds use websites that have been developed just for this purpose. The most popular site in this space is called “Kickstarter” because they have been able to collect millions of dollars for new projects in a matter of days.

Wikipedia points out that “ArtistShare” is documented as being the first Crowd Funding website for music (2000/2001) followed later by sites such as Sellaband (2006), Indiegogo (2008), Pledge Music (2009), Kickstarter (2009), RocketHub (2009), GoFundMe (2010), and Rock the Post (2011). Kickstarter just captured headlines again this week with the successful funding of the Ouya Gaming platform, raising $2.5 million in one day.

It is also important to know that many of the Crowd Funding websites give contributors the product at a substantially reduced cost if they contribute a certain amount of money. This discount can be as much as half the product’s selling price. This is a huge draw to help collect funds and to build orders. It is a marvelous strategy to start out with hundreds, thousands or even millions of products pre-sold. It is a win-win for everyone involved.

The reason why most people raise funds this way is because they have been rejected by venture capitalists and angel investors who require a lot of paper work and justification. Most “new idea” people are unable to raise money for their projects because there are more of them than the folks who dole out the dough. Crowd Funding is becoming extremely popular because there are millions of people in the United States who love contributing a dollar or two to support “startups,” “political campaigns,” “a new movie,” “a medical experiment,” and/or any kind of new development. It is very ‘hip” to say, “Oh, yes I invested before anyone really knew about it.” The truth is they only sent in a dollar or two just so they can feel like an insider. Crowd Funding is considered a “cool” thing to do, especially for “green causes.”

Crowd Funding also became popular because of the United States of America JOBS Act that was signed into law by President Obama on April 5, 2012. The Act allows the funding of a company by selling small amounts of equity to many investors. Not all crowd funding translates into equity. A lot of Crowd Funding is just a social transaction.

Ideas Worth Spreading

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The best way to stay young is to keep living as if you have decades ahead to create and explore. In the age of some of the most amazing developments in technology, there is just no excuse not to keep your mind filled with exciting new ideas and the promise of new opportunities.

You can get that mental stimulation right from the comfort of your favorite chair even though my hope for you is that you get out and “kick some ass.”

Let me introduce you to TED. No, TED is not some young digital developer who is about to make billions because of his new invention. TED is a series of conferences held all over the world where some of the smartest people in their respective fields stand and deliver new ideas and concepts in an 18-minute forum. Some of the past speakers have been Bill Clinton, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Nobel Prize winners.

I personally got involved with TED when my client Jill Tartar, Founder of the SETI Institute, was asked to speak at a TED conference. She was also presented with a $100,000 check for her work to explore, understand, and explain the origin, nature, and prevalence of life in the universe. Every year TED gives a check to one individual as part of their program to fund the “One Wish to Change the World.”

TED has existed since 1984 and stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. In recent years TED has morphed into a more positive “world changing” theme. It is owned by the private, non-profit Sapling Foundation. TED’s mission is to disseminate “Ideas worth spreading.” Hence, my headline. It was created by Richard Saul Wurman, an architect and graphic designer who coined the phrase “information architecture.”

Today you can be a TED fan by simply going to www.ted.com. You can also find TED on YouTube, Netflix, iTunes Podcasts, iTunes, and on the TED Radio Hour on NPR. You can also watch TED on the go! A simple download of the TED application gives you access on an iPhone or iPad. Don’t have an iOS device? Google Plays allows you to access TED on Android devices, including the Sony Tablet P, and Amazon Apps allows you to download them to your Kindle Fire.

Here are some interesting TED talks

Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone http://www.ted.com/talks/regina_dugan_from_mach_20_glider_to_humming_bird_drone.html

Neil Burgess: How your brain tells you where you are http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_burgess_how_your_brain_tells_you_where_you_are.html

Bill Gates on mosquitoes, malaria and education

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html

What’s The Story With Instagram?

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I don’t know about you, but I do not have any artistic talent. I can’t draw, paint, or sculpt. I always wanted to, but just don’t have the skills to create something that would be worthy of showing in public until now.

Along comes Instagram, a free photo sharing application for both iPhone and Android, which allows you to apply a digital filter to your mobile pictures that changes the entire look of the composition.

You can now create photos that just two years ago you could only do using expensive digital photo editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop.

Yesterday, I discussed how my cousin Milo changed the look of his photos with a new filter being offered by Olympus on their digital cameras. When I saw what he was doing, I quickly dug out my two year old digital camera — the Panasonic Lumix — to see if I could do the same thing. I abandoned my camera over a year ago when I found myself using the iPhone for most of my photo needs. As I quickly found out, since most of these filter features are so new, my two year old digital camera was now outdated.

Once again, a smartphone app comes to the rescue. There are many apps being offered today on iOS and Android formats that allow you to creatively alter photographs. One of the most popular apps is Instagram.  Instagram became widely popular because it offered the amateur picture taker the opportunity to alter photos in a number of different ways and instantly exhibit them on Twitter and Facebook. While Instagram photos can’t compete with the shots cousin Milo takes with his Olympus camera, it certainly is perfect for the average smartphone user who wants to get creative.

I guess that is why Facebook paid $1 Billion to purchase Instagram this past April.

Click on Instagram (shaded) above for some amazing facts about the company.

Straight shot taken by David Nieves

With Instagram’s Amaro Filter

Straight shot by David Nieves

With Instagram’s X Pro Filter

Become A Photo Artist

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Milo Hess

I just spent the last five days with my cousin Milo Hess, a well-respected and published photographer, who taught me something new about picture-taking. Many of our digital cameras have a “filter” feature that allows us to alter the look of the photos we are taking. Milo takes photos that look they they were hand-painted. They are stunning and look like art pieces (check out the photos below). Milo, who is titled as an “Olympus Visionary” for the camera company’s social media department, explained how the  process works. He uses the “Olympus Dramatic Tone Filter,” one of the art filters built in to certain Olympus cameras. I am sure you can find a similar feature on your own digital camera. Check the instruction book.

Milo said at the turn of a dial or a press of a button, the “Olympus Dramatic Tone filter” lifts the contrast, color, and saturation to create a unique, almost HDR (high dynamic range) look. He said that the setting is not for every photo situation, but when used for certain images it’s, well, very dramatic.  That is why Instagram, the iPhone and Android application that Facebook bought for a billion dollars earlier this year, is so popular. It helps change the entire complexion of the photograph.

For more info go to olympusamerica.com

A Little About Milo

A graduate of Pratt Institute and the High School of Art and Design in NYC, Milo has been a multi-faceted member of the NYC design community for over 30 years.The winner of over 35 design awards — including 5 NY Area Emmy Awards for his work in broadcast design — Milo has been an art director/designer for WCBS TV, Fox 5 and WPIX TV News over the years. He designed the original on-air look  of  NY1 News for Time Warner Cable for which he received an Emmy. 

Most recently he has been the art director for a PR/Business Communications agency, Magnet Communications (HAVAS Advertising) where he designed graphics for meetings/events, promotion and written copy for Fortune 100 companies.

He is also an accomplished photographer, having his 9/11 photographs in the permanent collection of the NY Public Library as well as other images in Popular Photography magazine. Currently, he is shooting freelance journalism for The Downtown Express, Chelsea NOW and The Villager NYC weekly newspapers. He was awarded 2009 First Place Award for Spot News from The NY State Press Association. Recently, he was named an Olympus Visionary pro photographer by Olympus America and is a social media photography critic.

As a freelance designer… his recent projects include corporate  meeting/ graphics/marketing design for Fortune 100 corporations including Johnson & Johnson, Ortho McNeil, Pfizer, Novartis, Canon, Aventis, IBM, Citigroup, Dish Network, Sony among others. Milo has licensed his graphic art  to Villeroy & Boch, the European lifestyle conglomerate for a line of ceramic pet products as well as a line of stationery for teNeues Publishing and bookmarks for Antioch Publishing. The father of two grown children, native New Yorker Milo resides in Tribeca with Elle and their tuxedo cat Oreo