Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 80

A Look into the Future of Tech?

One person’s outlook on a variety of technologies out to 2025. Not sure I agree with much of this but it does get you thinking. Perhaps it would be more interesting to see this diagram (or some variant thereof) looking at the acceleration of technologies. So based on 3G to 4G migration, for example, how long from 4G to 5G?

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I also think that more interesting that just technological evolution is cultural evolution as a result of technological progression. What will these technologies do to the h...

The Need to be “Always On”

I’ve talked before about the coming age of being “always on.” It’s only a matter of time before everything is connected. But what I haven’t talked about is the impact that has on our lives and the need, as humans, that we have to be connected to each other.

Humans are social creatures by nature. We want to talk with each other. Of course, there are always outliers (those who want to live apart) but we have created entire epicenters around centralized locations (i.e., cities, villages, etc.) th...

Lessons Learned from the 2012 Olympics: Digital Presence Best Practices

The 2012 Olympics was a ground-breaking world-wide event. Sure, Usain Bolt became the first man to win gold in the 100- and 200-meter dash but I’m not going to talk about that! The games were a turning point for how we consume content and heralded a truly 24/7/365 global digital experience.

First, a quick recap of the games. This data was pulled from public sources. The mobile data represents facts that were reported about half-way through the games:

With 219.4 million viewers, London Olympics...

The Evolution of the Cloud

We’ve all seen the news stories recently about consumer-focused cloud offerings. Apple. Amazon. Google. But these aren’t new. There have been dozens of consumer-focused cloud offerings for years. What’s interesting about these new services is their focus on the delivery aspect of cloud-based media, not just the storage of it.

Companies like DropBox paved the way for consumer-focused cloud offerings (although they do get adopted by SMBs and other companies as well). But there is nothing in the...

The Benefits of Wondering

Although I’m uncertain as to when it started, society as a whole has definitely cracked down on the day dreamer. Lost in thought, the day dreamer represents the antithesis of the modern workforce culture. Dreaming is simply time spent that is not productive.

And even though some could argue that artists by nature are day dreamers, I would counter that they too live under the thumb of productivity with a need to produce new and more works.

The pure act of day dreaming, what I will call wondering...

Photo: Some Images Go Beyond Just Visual Appreciation

Bored? Got a few minutes and want to do something fun and mindless? Check out NatGeo’s “puzzle-ization” of the latest crop of contest-winning photographs. Even if you don’t really like building the puzzles, just watching these pics get turned into them is pretty cool:

http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/photo-contest/entries/puzzle/winners/

One Step Closer…

I am a firm believer that renewable energy sources will eventually become the dominant form of energy production. Up until now, solar has really been an ineffective method to generate electricity. But that’s because we have always been thinking big (i.e., how can we generate enough electricity to power our house).

Researchers at MIT have been trying to think smaller. What if we can produce just enough electricity to power an alarm clock? Then, what if we take the aggregate demand of all those...

The Neuroscience of Shopping

Wired recently published a great article titled the “neuroscience of Groupon.”

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/the-neuroscience-of-groupon/

Although a joke title, the article does explore many of the psychological (and biological) underpinnings of coupons, discounting, and, of course Groupon. It’s a pretty heavy read but it’s really insightful and makes you really take stock of how stores place products.

From the article:

This snapshot of the “neural predictors of purchase decisions” re...

Monkey Business

Literally.

I guess there’s a huge business in training, handling, and putting your monkey into movies.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/05/pirates-of-the-caribbean-the-hangover-part-ii-favorite-movie-monkey-scenes.html

Not sure why we are differentiating between monkeys and other primates. One of my favorite “monkey” scenes of all times is Clyde in Every Which Way But Loose when he smacks Clint around. But Clyde is a chimp, not a monkey. Well, neither is the monkey doll in Monkey Sh...

I Wonder What They Are REALLY Doing…

Joseph Holmes, photographer, spent two months capturing candids of people texting. Now that may not seem like a very interesting subject matter but I believe he got inspired by the curiosity of wondering what was so important.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/09/joseph-holmes-photographs-punctilious-texters-in-nyc-encourages/

When you look at these pictures, you begin to wonder what they are texting. Is it about banal things? Is it something important? Is it life changing? Because regardless of...