Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 73
August 3, 2017
Have An Accent? It Might Help You Get Your Next Job
AI voice-assistants have long had difficulty understanding foreign accents, but now Amazon may be taking steps to address this frequent issue. In Australia, the brand is hiring “a linguist with Australian background” to join their team. The same may be happening in other places around the world as these linguists can listen to the language and annotate everything from word pronunciation to pauses between words to help artificial intelligence understand all kinds of accents. Perhaps even inclu...
August 2, 2017
Trend Watch – The Rise Of Media Escapism
Is it ever ok to take a break from your outrage and the 24-hour news cycle? We all should hope so. Yet taking this kind of break is leading to a widespread side effect: guilt. That time you spend watching The Bachelor or staying home from the latest angry protest march is time where you’re not impacting the world. In this well argued article, Washington Post writer Emily Yahr argues that we need this escape from media in order to maintain our perspective. “Media escapism” may be the only way...
July 20, 2017
MIT Shares Theory On Why Some Neighborhoods Evolve
Why do some neighborhoods evolve and gentrify while others don’t? This fascinating story is about a joint research program between MIT and Harvard to identify what causes urban change. Tested with five American cities, this system quantifies the physical improvement or deterioration of neighborhoods. The early results are already surprising: “Contrary to popular belief, raw income levels and housing prices do not predict change in a neighborhood. Instead, it had more to do with other factors....
July 18, 2017
Fully Automated Toothbrush Helps Lazy People Be Lazier
If you are one of those people who thinks that brushing your teeth properly takes too long, this new product will help. A startup called Amabrush has launched a toothbrush that will clean all your teeth in 10 seconds. It looks like a futuristic gag used to keep criminals quiet, but watching how this works it’s easy to imagine that this is one type of household space where we will see lots of innovation and new solutions in the future.
Read the full story on Futurism >
Love non-obvious storie...
Louis Vuitton Creates New Luxury Watch To Connect World Travelers
The intersection of luxury products and personalization will continue to bring interesting new ideas and this new watch from Louis Vuitton called the Tambour Horizon is a perfect example. The watch “is built to be a companion to the traveler. A feature within the watch allows users to view recommendations in big cities from Louis Vuitton without having to leave the connected watch screen. Louis Vuitton is also encouraging Tambour Horizon owners to download the Louis Vuitton Pass application.”...
July 17, 2017
Famous iPhone Hacker Creates Tool To Let You Hack Your Car
The more technology gets baked into things that we once enjoyed in simpler formats ,the more people will choose to “Strategically Downgrade.” Many farmers, for example, have turned to new ways of hacking the software on their tractors themselves. Now there is a new tool, from the same hacker that famously hacked the iPhone when he was 17, that allows anyone to hack into their car and change the settings. I am anticipating more efforts like this from consumers hungry to fight back against the...
July 14, 2017
Fender Uses eLearning To Help Guitarists Not Give Up So Easily
For anyone who has ever aspired to play the guitar, taken a few lessons and then given up … Fender has a new solution to try and keep your passion for the guitar alive. In a perfectly strategic new move, the brand is launching an eLearning platform with videos to help people more easily learn how to play the guitar and some of their favorite songs. The entire effort is a perfect example of unselfish thinking. The brand understands that the longer someone sticks with the guitar, the more likel...
July 13, 2017
KFC’s Surprising Reason For Launching Its Own Mobile Phone
On the surface, this announcement that KFC is partnering with Huawei to launch a new smart phone may seem like a random move. The phone will be branded in KFC signature red with an engraving of Colonel Sanders on the back to celebrate the brand’s 30 year anniversary in China, but that’s not really the most interesting part. There will only be 5000 of these phones released and apparently the phone “also comes with a KFC-branded music app preinstalled, which lets you create and share playlists...
July 12, 2017
Etihad Airlines Lets Passengers Bid To Sit Beside An Empty Seat
Anyone who has ever boarded a long haul flight sitting in the economy cabin knows that moment of fleeting hope where you imagine reclining to a full bed position in several empty seats that just happened to be located right next to you. Now Etihad is helping some travelers try to make that dream closer to a reality by opening up bidding on empty “neighbor seats” to win that empty seat beside you to remain empty. Sure, it’s another clever airline upsell idea, but unlike charging for drinks or...
July 11, 2017
World’s Top Sci-Fi Writers Share Predictions Of 20 Years Into The Future
Reading Sci-Fi is the most beautiful way I know to imagine the consequences of the future instead of just hoping to see a picture of it. This interesting partnership between the XPRIZE and ANA Airlines asks 20 top writers to share their visions for the future and then opens up the dialogue to anyone to submit their own story of the future for a chance to win a cash prize and trip to Japan. It’s a beautiful campaign and idea – and the stories they already have on www.seat14c.comare worth readi...
