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Posted: 10 December 2013

Fellow futurist Gerd Leonhard says machines may eventually know us so well they will tell us when to break off a date.

In his latest guest post, Gerd examines how the web will change our lives - yet again. ...

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Siri says 'dump him'? How mobile devices could run (or ruin) your life

The Web is set to change our lives dramatically over the next decade. This will also raise questions about the use of personal data and the need to balance ...

iPA, YOU KNOW MY EVERY MOVE

Virtual PA re-writes the rules of office efficiency

Dateline: 14 November 2014

At the annual Service Excellence Awards banquet in New York, Electra Speed, a virtual personal assistant from Virgin Stars, won the top honour against ...

Lizanne Jacobsohn

Does great customer service cost more?

Posted: 9 December 2013

There is often an assumption that superior customer service is accompanied by superior costs - is that really true?

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Can Better Customer Service Be Used to Increase Prices?

This is a guest post from Patrick Campbell of Price Intelligently, curators of an excellent blog all about pricing strategy.

Wolfgang Grulke

What is America's largest private company?

Posted: 9 December 2013

Do you know? Should you?
Well, here are some clues...it's the largest maker of food ingredients in the world. Annual revenues are $137 billion and it employs 142 000 people in 67 countries and on average charters 520 ships at any one time. It makes burgers, cooking oil and McNuggets for McDonalds, sweeteners for Coca-Cola, malt for Miller-Coors, chocolate for Mars.
Can you guess yet?
It's been called 'the biggest company you've never heard of'.
Go to www.cargill.com or read about them on Wikipedia! ...

Complete story...

Doug Vining

3D printers are the new PCs

Posted: 7 December 2013

And where better to get the next generation of innovators and makers involved in emerging technology than at school?

We've long passed the dream of a PC in every home, and in every classroom. Now we effectively carry around personal computers in our pockets. But putting a 3D printer in every school will accelerate this technology in ways we can't even imagine. The MakerBot Academy is a great ...

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MakerBot Launches Mission To Put 3-D Printers In Every U.S. Public School

The MakerBot Academy could put as many as 5000 printers in public schools by the end of this school year.

Cameron webb

Maybe Nest get in on the action...

Posted: 5 December 2013

...with a personal learning thermostat (wearable tech) built in to the smart watch, auto-responding to individual surroundings and level of personal activity throughout the day.

This would be amazing as a heating exchange system where energy you create personally during the day is used to power the tech.

As a technology it also might play a part in virtual travel - adding authenticity to the ...

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KEEP YOUR COOL IN ANY CLIMATE

Wristify lets you get rid of the air conditioning unit and throw out central heating too

Dateline: 17 August 2017

Those whizz-kids from MIT have done it again. This time they have produced a 'personal climate control' system. It's like one of those balance bracelets, but regulates your body temperature with a thermo-electric cell. Wristify will change the way we keep our cool, both indoors and on the go. Central heating and air conditioning are obsolete. Just strap on the wrist band and you can set your ...

Doug Vining

African energy boom

Posted: 5 December 2013

There's another reason why Africa is poised to dominate high growth markets in the next decade - energy.

East Africa is undergoing an energy revolution driven by massive offshore natural gas finds in Tanzania and sizeable oil discoveries in Kenya and Uganda, all in the past three years. And offshore gas and oil extend to northern Mozambique, where additional finds have boosted potential.

Our ...

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Kenya's energy revolution: full steam ahead for geothermal power

Electricity may be at a premium in Kenya, but the country hopes to be the world's leading exponent of geothermal power by 2023

NAMIBIA STRIKES IT RICH

Desert state becomes African oil and gas giant 'overnight'

Dateline: 20 July 2016

There's a new word in Southern Africa for oil - Namibia. Since the discovery of significant reserves of crude and gas a mere five years ago, the industry ...

MindBullets Editors

KEEP YOUR COOL IN ANY CLIMATE

Published on: 5 December 2013 1 Comment

Wristify lets you get rid of the air conditioning unit and throw out central heating too

Dateline: 17 August 2017

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Lizanne Jacobsohn

Exceptional customer service needs to be underpinned by flawless processes

Posted: 4 December 2013

Amazon is the primary example of how to get the processes right - find out how your company can leverage what Amazon does

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Logistics Strategies You Should Steal From Amazon

Robots are just the beginning. Here's a lesson in logistics from the everything store.

Doug Vining

Mission accomplished - again

Posted: 4 December 2013

In another first for technopreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX has launched a satellite into geostationary orbit. This really sets the cat among the pigeons for this market, previously dominated by EU and Russian launch vehicles. Not only is SpaceX a private, entrepreneurial company, it's changing the game by substantially reducing the launch cost.

Soon SpaceX will face the 'problem' of demand far ...

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SpaceX launches commercial satellite

The US SpaceX company has announced its intention to take a big slice of the market for launching the world's TV and telecoms satellites.

THE FINAL (BUSINESS) FRONTIER

Space tourism and satellite launches compete for profits

Dateline: 27 September 2015

The race to launch a successful private space business has been won - and the victor, surprisingly, is not Virgin's Sir Richard Branson, but a 40-year-old ...

Doug Vining

Airdrop on your doorstep

Posted: 3 December 2013

Amazon Prime Air is the new drone delivery service announced by Jeff Bezos on Sunday. The idea is to deliver parcels of up to 2kg by electric octocopters to households within 30 minutes of order. That's speed and efficiency!

I have no doubt that Amazon will make this a reality eventually, although there are many regulatory hurdles to overcome, which could take years. But only the lucky few who ...

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Amazon drones and the rise of robotic air travel

Even if Amazon's drone delivery service does not succeed, the idea it embodies is too powerful to suppress, writes Alistair Fairweather.

DRUG DRONES SWAMP BORDERS

Swarms of quadrotors overwhelm law enforcement with tons of cocaine worth billions of dollars

Dateline: 27 April 2017

More than 150 fast and high-flying aerial drones flew over the border from Mexico and crossed the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in the last 24 hours. Each ...

Wolfgang Grulke

In this ubiquitously connected world, a quiet moment is golden...and necessary

Posted: 29 November 2013 2 Comments

Mark Borkowski came to an interesting observation in his blog: "‘Teach us to sit still” T.S Elliot prayed. How wise. This new world of hyper connectivity allows no time for new perspectives and so the constant noise can lead to conversations that are potentially thoughtless and worse dangerous, whilst informed detachment can actually inspire a more intense engagement."

We used to encourage people to take time and 'smell the roses' - today we cannot get any kind of perspective by being connected all the time. We seldom have time to synthesize the ...

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Doug Vining

Don't give my circuits a (short) cut

Posted: 28 November 2013 1 Comment

The latest in wearable computing is hidden in plain sight. It's invisible, because it looks natural.

That's the idea behind the Sony SmartWig - a hairpiece that can compute, or at least sense things. And what will they call it when a couple of SmartWig wearers put their heads together - 'hairy collaboration'? ...

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Sony Seeks ‘SmartWig’ Patent for Hairpieces With Sensors

Sony Corp., which popularized portable music players with the Walkman, is seeking a U.S. patent for “SmartWig” hairpieces that could help navigate roads, ...

WEARABLE ELECTRONICS ARE JUST SO YESTERDAY!

Computerized bio-implants are what make you cool

Dateline: 24 December 2019

Only a few years ago I had a wardrobe full of garments packed with electronic implants - then they were so cool. But this weekend, I trashed the lot! The ...

Lizanne Jacobsohn

We won't retire!

Posted: 3 December 2013 1 Comment

Just when we thought the baby boomers were finally going to retire quietly - they're stamping their feet and changing the game!

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Half of all baby boomers intend to keep working past age 65

The generation known for fomenting rebellion is now rebelling against retirement -- and that's good news for employers.

Neil Jacobsohn

Consumer trends of 2014

Posted: 3 December 2013

The TrendWatching.com website is a really good read. Very much focussed on consumer trends...but guess what! We are all consumers, no matter what business we are in, and the same forces that are shaping our actions as individual consumers are shaping the attitudes and actions of our business customers. So there's meat for both B2C and B2B in this collection of their seven consumer trends of ...

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trendwatching.com's Trend Briefing covering "7 Consumer Trends To Run With In 2014"

225,000 subscribers and 1,200+ clients turn to trendwatching.com for global consumer trend intelligence.

Doug Vining

China crisis has a female face

Posted: 2 December 2013

China has a national shortage of women. It's the most gender-skewed society in the world, where the one child policy has lead to a surplus of men and a dire shortage of women of the marrying age. Besides importing brides from Vietnam, this kind of distortion of society leads to all kinds of strange responses, and labour market consequences. As the population ages, the workforce will plateau ...

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Why China's boom may be coming to an end - and the 50 million women shortage is to blame

Some economists fear the double-digit growth China has enjoyed for the past decade may rapidly unwind – and the one child policy is to blame. The 1979 ...

THE GREAT FALL OF CHINA

China's ghost cities stay empty as the artificial bubble bursts

Dateline: 8 August 2018

It was as inevitable as China's rise to the position of the most powerful economy in the world. Now it looks as though that title will return to the United ...

Doug Vining

Tech trends for 2014

Posted: 28 November 2013

It's that time of year when analysts and research houses start trotting out their predictions for technology in the coming year, and beyond.

Here's a review of Forrester's picks by Forbes. ...

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Forrester: Top Technology Trends for 2014 And Beyond

This month, Forrester released its list of top technology trends for the three year time horizon. The author of the report, Forrester analyst Brian Hopkins makes the point that now that consumers and employees have continuous connectivity and an endless supply of apps, the CIO must drive the nimbleness that [...]

Doug Vining

Real value of electric cars

Posted: 28 November 2013

The real value of a car often only emerges when the car is sold on as a used vehicle. That's when you see the true value, what the market is actually prepared to pay, without subsidies and auto company deals.

Perhaps it's telling then, that most electrics don't command much of a premium once they are second-hand. As battery technology is likely to advance rapidly, early adopters suffer the ...

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Why prices for used electric cars are shocking

'Early adopters' are facing heavy depreciation on electric cars, despite Government incentives

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?

Despite the hype, the electric car has failed, again, to be a commercial success. Who is to blame?

Dateline: 8 July 2014

Remember the very first electric car, the EV1? They made a movie about its demise, and blamed the oil companies. Well, it's happened again. The electric ...

Neil Jacobsohn

Turning Co2 into liquid fuel

Posted: 28 November 2013

Here's a great way to turn carbon dioxide into liquid fuel - and all you need is a friendly, nearby volcano!

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Company Makes CO2 Into Liquid Fuel, with Help from a Volcano | MIT Technology Review

An Icelandic company figures out how to make methanol from waste CO2, but the economics may not work without a nearby volcano.

MindBullets Editors

$12b HAYFEVER INDUSTRY TURMOIL

Published on: 28 November 2013

A heath-care revolution as seasonal allergy sufferers turn to new biotech solutions

Dateline: 12 May 2016

In one of the biggest revolutions in self-administered health care, the traditional hayfever industry seems to have gone from boom to bust in just three years. Despite the fact we have seen the worst and longest hayfever seasons ever, the players who were dominant in the $12 billion industry in 2013 have lost up to 80% of their markets since then. Although the industry today is estimated to be about the same value 2013, three new companies have cornered more than half the market in the past few ...

Complete story...

Lizanne Jacobsohn

3D printed guns that can fire bullets may not be detectable by security

Posted: 27 November 2013

As Anton said in the 3D battery post - this takes us and disruptive technology even further

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3D printed guns are now banned in Philadelphia

Philadelphia makes a preemptive strike on 3D printed gun manufacturing.

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