Archive for March, 2010
Seton Hill University to Hand Out iPads, Sense of Superiority Starting This Year?
Students at Seton Hill University (not the similarly named, sports-centric larger university in South Orange, New Jersey) are a damned lucky bunch--or someone has a pretty spot on sense of humor. The "iPad Initiative" begins in Fall 2010, with the simple and enticing slogan
While not technically falling on April 1, this does reek of shenanigans. Let's just put that out there. But such incentives are not unheard of--remember Duke and Drexel Universities' free iPods for new students ?
If it's true, Seton Hill is the first college to take advantage of the presumed educational benefits of 's iPad, from note-taking (via typing or voice recording) to communication, textbook reading, and the superior ability to goof around in class. It would be a ballsy move since the iPad is a completely unproven product--but given how publishers like it could be a shrewd one as well.
Seton Hill even goes one step further by providing a 13-inch MacBook Pro to to all incoming freshmen in addition to the iPad, a pretty impressive luxury (or, again, a topper on a great prank). I'm pretty sure gave me nothing more than a plastic Molson-branded beer mug.
[Via ]
LEGO Table Could Transform Boring Board Room Meetings
Looking for a way to spice up office meetings? Consider hiring ABGC Architecture and Design to build a LEGO table like this one, which was commissioned by Dublin ad agency Boys and Girls. reports that the table was made with 22,742 LEGO bricks snapped together the old-fashioned way--no glue necessary. The whole thing was placed atop a stainless steel base and covered with a four foot by nine foot slab of glass, presumably to prevent angry employees from smashing the table.
ABGC isn't the first group of visionaries to create massive works of art out of LEGO. We recommend checking out Nathan Sawaya and his mind-blowing sculptures.
Today in Most Innovative Companies
News of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Nike, Hulu, Google, and IBM.
: Relax, Cleveland Cavs fans. . The all-star will become a free agent in July, around the same time his seven-year contract with Nike will expire. LeBron has reportedly worked out a new multi-million dollar deal with the shoe-and-apparel giant, but according to sources, the contract does not include incentives or bonuses for playing in cities with larger markets, like New York or Los Angeles. While it's not set in stone that LeBron will stay with the Cavs, some believed the Nike contract might have influenced his decision to leave during free agency.
: In the Darkness will be the first feature-length movie to on Hulu.com. Will "straight-to-Hulu" replace "straight-to-DVD" for future J. Lo movies?
: Scientists today released a new that allows viewers to see parts of the U.S. that will be frozen-over in the coming months. The map provides projections for average temperatures in the U.S. until the end of the century, and highlights the areas which will be above or below freezing.
: The Big Blue a global entrepreneurship initiative to help start-ups take advantage of its technology. The program will give businesses access to new technologies and Smarter Planet strategies that will improve "capital efficiency, marketing and sales, product validation and differentiation by opening up its ."
CEO Alan Mulally: Ford Still in Black but Also Green, Partners With Microsoft Hohm
[Photo: Stephen Wilkes]
Ariel Schwartz contributed to this report.
At his address at New York's International Auto Show today, Alan Mulally rallied the nation's car manufacturers with a call to arms--and just a hint of boasting. If the industry doesn't wake up to the need for greener vehicles, such as hybrids and EVs, he warned, America will be hit hard. "We are, literally, fighting for the soul of manufacturing in the United States right now."
His company's in that battle? The announcement that Ford is partnering with Microsoft to integrate its technology into new EVs. Up until now, the home energy management service hasn't been that exciting. It doesn't have many utility partners yet, which means that the most important information of all--ongoing energy consumption data--isn't available to most users. But Hohm is about to get a major boost with today's announcement that the service will be integrated into the Ford Focus Electric in 2011, another unnamed hybrid in 2012, and a third, yet unnamed hybrid in 2013.
As part of the partnership, Hohm will assist drivers in figuring out the best time to juice up their vehicles based on when electricity rates are lowest. The service might indicate, for example, that electricity is cheapest between midnight and 6 a.m. on a certain day--a potentially money-saving piece of data. In addition to saving drivers cash, the feature will also hopefully help utilities reduce consumption during times of heavy stress on the electric grid. And that means less of a chance that the grid will fail when, say, 100,000 people in a certain area are all trying to charge their EVs at the same time. (Watch more info on Hohm in the video ).
The Ford CEO is still right behind the combustion engine, too--he also exhorted the political classes to pull their collective fingers out. "Governments around the world are going to have a tremendous role to play," he said, suggesting they should offer consumers incentives to get on board the new technology. The best place, after all, for EV- and hybrid-spotting, is either Hollywood or Silicon Valley.
But Mulally didn't miss the opportunity to pat himself and his company on its collective back, either, given that they avoided government bailout bucks in one of the bleakest times in American history for auto makers. "I'm very pleased we respected all our debt-holders and all our stockholders," he said.
Below, Fast Company's own Paul Hochman talks to Julius Marchwicki, Ford's SYNC Product Manager, and Jim Buczkowski, Global Director of Electrical and Electrical Systems at the Nwe York Auto Show.
Motorola Droid finally receives Android 2.1 update with multitouch web browser
Verizon has finally begun rolling out the Android 2.1 update to Motorola Droid users, .
As we mentioned in our — which was initially supposed to land sometime in early February — it includes pinch-to-zoom multitouch capabilities in the web browser, maps, and gallery applications. It will also include , a visual search app for Android that generates search results from photos.
Other new features include speech-to-text support for any text box, a 3D layout in the pictures gallery, and support for Yahoo e-mail. Inexplicably, Verizon notes that Yahoo e-mail isn’t accessible over Wi-Fi.
The update started rolling out at noon yesterday to 1,000 Droid owners and reached 10,000 users by midnight last night. Verizon planned not to roll out any updates today, possibly for troubleshooting purposes in case something goes wrong with the update. The roll out will continue tomorrow, April 1, at 200,000 users a day until all Droid owners receive it. If you’re anxious to receive the update right away, you can try manually updating as .
Companies: , ,
Foursquare location game generating real-world rewards as it approaches 1M users
As approaches a million users a year after launching its location-based game, the company is making formal alliances with brands and stores that want to exploit its popularity. And that is turning into real money for an app that many people believed was pointless when it started.
Dennis Crowley, chief executive of Foursquare (right), said at the conference today that more stores, restaurants and brands are joining the company’s new digital coupon program by putting stickers in their windows that offer coupons to Foursquare users who visit them.
With Foursquare, you check in at a given location using your mobile phone. The location information is uploaded to the service, and you can earn the title of “mayor” of a place if you have spent more time there than any other Foursquare user. The achievement is then automatically posted on Twitter. It sounds silly and simple, but Crowley said the app will hit a million users in a few weeks. Those members have “checked in” to locations more than 22 million times. The mission, Crowley said, is to “turn the whole world into a video game.”
“We want to know if you can get the same feeling from Foursquare as when you play Zelda [a video game series] for six hours,” Crowley said.
Foursquare got a ton of users because it made the app game-like, with lots of rewards. People can get badges for being a karaoke expert if they visit a karaoke bar three times in a month. Those badges are so popular that Foursquare users are changing their regular behavior to win badges, Crowley said. Parents use Foursquare at playgrounds to organize play dates. Badges have multiplied like crazy.
“It encourages people to create more interesting lives,” Crowley said.
And the app is now so popular it is starting to generate commercial results, as you can see from the above picture of a digital coupon offered via the Ridge Lytton Springs winery in Napa Valley, Calif. in Milwaukee, said its sales went up 30 percent after it posted Foursquare stickers in its windows and gave out coupons to Foursquare users who visited it. Foursquare has created partnerships with MTV and Starbucks (pictured left).
In a comic example, Seattle sex toy store Babeland offered a free vibrator to its Foursquare mayor. At JFK, patrons can get a free taxi ride if they become the mayor at the taxi stand. In another example, a medical marijuana dispensary in Beverly Hills offered 15 percent discounts to whoever became the mayor of its location. A cemetery in Maine offered a free tour to anyone who checked into it more than 100 times. And a lawyer in Miami offered a free consultation to anyone who checked into Foursquare at five jails in town.
At the recent conference in Austin, Foursquare showed the biggest parties in real time so members could go to parties where the most people were. See the picture at right for a real example of that in action.
It remains to be seen if Foursquare can make a lot of money out of this or if the service will be somehow crushed by Twitter, which is launching its own location services. And it’s worth noting that location-based rivals such as Booyah’s MyTown, which has 1.5 million users, are also planning on cashing in on Foursquare’s popularity.
Companies:
Made To Stick: Snapple, the KKK, and Making Ideas Credible
[transcript of video]How do you get people to believe your ideas? Well, there’s something we can learn from really sleazy ideas that catch on. For years, Snapple struggled to fight rumors that it supported the KKK. The idea was completely absurd—as one of the founders of Snapple said, “How could 3 Jewish boys from Brooklyn support the KKK?”But the rumor kept spreading because it had some “evidence” on its side. People would say, “Look at the label—there’s an old wooden slave ship on the front. And on the back there’s a weird K with a circle around it—that’s the sign of the Klan.” And sure enough, if you looked, you’d see a ship and a circled K, and maybe you’d start to wonder. But the reality is less scary: The old wooden ship was a depiction of the Boston Tea Party—get it, Snapple Tea, Boston Tea Party? And what about the K with a circle around it? Well, it doesn’t mean “Klan.” It means “Kosher.” Whoops.This crazy rumor challenged people to “see for themselves.” See, look, there’s a K on it. Its credibility derived from something that people could test for themselves. My brother and I call this a “testable credential.” Notice what’s going on here conceptually—when we think about making ideas credible, we usually think about the source. The Surgeon General says something, and we believe it, because he’s a credible authority. But when you use a testable credential, you’re basically outsourcing the credibility of your idea to the audience. It’s like a “try before you buy” concept for ideas.I worked with a senior exec at a major department store chain who thought that the company’s store managers were doing way too much audit paperwork. He had a chance to present the idea to his colleagues – how could he convince them that he was right? Well, he brought in a big unruly stack of paperwork—519 pages in all—and said, this is the amount of paperwork our managers have to fill out. Every month. And his audience could see for themselves that it was absurd. That’s a testable credential. And using testable credentials is an effective way to convince your audience to believe your ideas.To learn more about testable credentials—including one used by a Nobel-Prize winner—check out the resources below.
Chip and I love Snopes.com, the urban-legend clearinghouse. See its . In , we have a long section about testable credentials in the Credible chapter of the book. (Here's from that chapter that tells the story of a scientist who had to put his own health at risk to convince people that his theory about ulcers was right. He eventually won the Nobel Prize for his insight.) Another testable credential is Wendy's classic "" campaign. (If you've never seen these ads, put life on pause and take a look.) The message is, basically, "See for yourself--our beef patties are way bigger than the other guys'."