The New York innovation consultancy PSFK created an inspirational report about the future of health and technology for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Imagine the creativity of thousands of medical, technology and creative professionals applied to persistent global health problems. Amazing work, very dense, more than 200 pages of new solutions, presented in simple visuals. Solid evidence for encouragement about the future.

Above, an instructional baby blanket prototype by the advertising agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay, from page 133 of the report.

Like many travelers who have spent time in Beijing recently, I read Andrew Jacobs’ piece in The New York Times on the demolition of Gulou, an ancient neighborhood near the Drum and Bell Towers. Photojournalist Matthew Niederhauser writes about the logistics of the video story behind the story on DSLR Newsshooter, the website of Guardian photojournalist Dan Chung.

Amazingly, this was Niederhauser’s first video project for the Times.

Photo of Matthew Niederhauser from DSLR Newsshooter.

“It’s quite obvious. You’re seeing a knuckle-ball effect.”

– Rabi Mehta, an aerospace engineer at NASA, on the official ball of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

FIFA announced the official ball of the 2010 World Cup — the Adidas Jabulani — in December 2009. Adidas called it the roundest and most accurate ball ever made, citing wind tunnel testing at Loughborough University in England and its own laboratory in Germany.

In June, NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, released analysis indicating the ball wobbles at speeds of 45-50 miles per hour. It doesn’t look like the Loughborough people were talking to the NASA people.

Two observations:

1. NASA’s timing and use of sports to teach concepts of physics is brilliant.

2. Experts in computational fluid dynamics, such as physicists at NASA and designers at Formula 1 racing teams, have an opportunity to collaborate on equipment for future sports events. The potential for co-branding, education, and credibility is substantial.

]]> http://www.mercurybrief.com/2010/07/nasa-on-the-world-cup-ball/feed/ 0 http://www.mercurybrief.com/2010/07/andy-grove-on-a-job-centric-economy-lessons-from-east-asia-in-the-1970s-and-80s/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=andy-grove-on-a-job-centric-economy-lessons-from-east-asia-in-the-1970s-and-80s http://www.mercurybrief.com/2010/07/andy-grove-on-a-job-centric-economy-lessons-from-east-asia-in-the-1970s-and-80s/#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 00:35:24 +0000 Bob Page http://www.mercurybrief.com/?p=3520

After getting out of one industry after another, the USA is running out of businesses to get out of. From an opinion piece by former Intel Chairman Andy Grove in the 5 July edition of Bloomberg Businessweek:

“Manufacturing employment in the US computer industry today is about 166,000. One company in Taiwan and China, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., also known as Foxconn, employs more than 800,000. This is more than the combined headcount of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Sony….

“New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote that if Washington really wants to create jobs, it should back startups. Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment….

“In a thorough study of the industrial development of East Asia, Robert Wade of the London School of Economics found that these economies turned in precedent- shattering economic performances over the 1970s and 1980s in large part because of the effective involvement of the government in targeting the growth of manufacturing industries….

“If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us.”

The Nielsen Company released its latest three-screen report on 11 June 2010, documenting significant changes in media consumption during the last two years. The report has implications for the way stories are told, including format, duration, content and production values.

In the USA, moving-picture storytelling expanded from the movie screen to the television screen in the 1950s. The Nielsen reports show expansion now taking place into the smaller screens of smartphones.

The pace of strategy and tools to integrate storytelling for multiple screens is accelerating. Last month Adobe, for example, announced HTML5 extensions to Dreamweaver software that enable website developers to optimize content across multiple screens.

Highlights from the Nielsen first-quarter 2010 three-screen report on televisions, personal computers and smartphones:

• HDTV: More than half of US television households now have a high-definition television and receive HD signals. HDTV penetration grew 189 percent between 2008 and 2010.
• DVR: More than a third of homes have a digital video recorder, up 51 percent since 2008. This makes it possible for more viewers to watch TV programs on their own schedule, or “time shift.”
• Broadband: 63.5 percent of homes now have broadband Internet access, with high-speed connections that improve online video delivery.
• Smartphones: Nearly a quarter of households (up 38 percent year-over-year) have smartphones, simplifying the process for consumers to “place shift” and watch video wherever they are.
• Mobile Video: The audience for mobile video grew 51.2 percent year-over-year, and now includes more than 20 million users. Fifty-five percent of the audience for mobile video is aged 25-49.

Above, on 19 May 2010, Adobe released HTML5 extensions to Dreamweaver CS5 to support web developers optimizing content across multiple screens. Graphic by Adobe.

“It’s simple. In the same way that anyone learning German becomes a Nazi, or anyone learning French becomes an ass___, learning Chinese has only one outcome — Communism.”

• From Aasif Mandvi’s hilarious bit on teaching Mandarin Chinese in Hacienda Heights, a town in Los Angeles County, Calif. For The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, produced by Oren Brimer and edited by Daric Schlesslman. Worth watching for Mandvi’s conversation with five smart middle-schoolers at the end of the segment.

The Los Angeles Times provides more details of the Hacienda Heights curriculum issue. More information about the Chinese government’s Chinese Language Council International, also known as Hanban, is available at the Hanban website.

Above, Aasif Mandvi points to a flash card example of Chinese language ‘propaganda’ pervading public schools in Hacienda Heights. From The Daily Show, 7 June 2010.

Thanks to Richard Burger and The Peking Duck.

Beijing writer and translator Brendan O’Kane’s reaction to Buzzfeed’s “16 Items They Only Sell at Chinese Wal-Marts.” Above, Item No. 1, crocodiles.

“When I first moved to China in 2002, I got to Harbin — the city in the Northeast where I first lived — about two weeks after the first Wal-Mart opened there. I avoided it for months out of some pretense that I was having a ‘genuine China experience,’ but after a while I succumbed to the desire for breakfast cereal and cheese, and shamefacedly made my way to the Harbin Wal-Mart only to find that it was exactly the same as a regular Chinese supermarket. The only difference was that all of the employees wore nametags with their English names. I spotted a couple of ‘Happy’s’ and a couple of ‘Apple’s’ and other standard Chinese English names, and after scouring the entire supermarket for something, ANYTHING, that I might want, I got my groceries (eggs, bacon, a couple of rolls and a thing of socks) rung up by a checkout girl whose English nametag said ‘Lonely.’

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so bad before or since.”

– Brendan O’Kane

Maureen O’Connor wrote recently on Gawker about how to discern fakers who have pictures of themselves walking on water. She is pretty mad at a shoe company named Hi-Tec Sports for producing a YouTube video and hoping people watch it.

She lists four ways to tell if a video is trying to sell something. A company logo, for example, is a clue.

When I was about 5 years old, a company told me a red circle printed on the heels of Red Ball Jets would make me run faster. A few years later, a company told me Earth Shoes would make me walk more naturally. Then Sperry told me Top-Siders would make me feel connected to sailing and old money. Now, Hi-Tec is trying to tell me these shoes are waterproof, and if I believe hard enough, I might be able to run on water. But probably not.

Somebody should really do something about these companies trying to sell stuff.

If you don’t already read technology columnist Andy Ihnatko, you should. Today he wrote a careful dissection of a Gizmodo story on what is probably the next generation of the Apple iPhone. Ihnatko writes a spot-on description of website competition, journalistic motivations, corporate motivations, his own motivations, and the processes behind publishing stories. In addition to having integrity, he’s funny.

American comedian/magician Penn Jillette on the demise of the Hummer in today’s Wall Street Journal:

“Hummers are stupid and wasteful and if they go away because no one wants to buy one, that’ll be just a little sad. It’s always a little sad to lose some stupid…. Although all over the world we humans have so much in common, so much love, and need, and desire, and compassion and loneliness, some of us still want to do things that the rest of us think are bug-nutty.

“Some of us want to drive a Hummer, some of us want to eat sheep’s heart, liver and lungs simmered in an animal’s stomach for three hours, some us want to play poker with professionals and some of us want a Broadway musical based on the music of ABBA. I love people doing things I can’t understand. It’s heartbreaking to me when people stop doing things that I can’t see any reason for them to be doing in the first place.

“I like people watching curling while eating pork rinds.”

Photo of Hummer stretch limo at Times Square in New York, from the Flickr photo stream of Reto Kurman.