Man, I hate April Fools’ Day. What used to be a fun day of pranks on friends has evolved into a massive competition between websites to see whose ‘joke’ can go the most viral. I’ll admit some are funny, though when there’s so much BS posted to the ‘net it drowns out the real, actual, valid news. So, I’ll be posting no jokes here. I’m sure you’ve seen too many today already!
Traditional TV is dying…
TV networks have resisted the push by Apple, Google, and others to go to more of a channel less, video-on-demand business model for years…but they’re fighting a losing battle. The consumers want it, and the technology makes it easy. The latest development is seeing these video-on-demand companies offer original programming…essentially starting to become a new sort of TV ‘channel’. Netflix has House of Cards and Lilyhammer (with eight more shows in the pipeline), and Amazon has announced a new show called ‘Betas’. When people start turning to these internet-based companies for their TV shows, the traditional model of cable boxes and TV guide ‘schedules’ will quickly become obsolete. As someone who ‘cut the cord‘ years ago, I can’t wait!
AT-AT loft bed
Wow, this is cool! A loft bed that looks like an incredibly detailed AT-AT. Nice!
(via LikeCool)
Sherpa – predictive AI for your iPhone
Sherpa is a new, predictive artificial intelligence that will soon be available for iPhones (if you want to sign up, follow this link). It’s raised a bit over $1M seed funding so far, and promises big potential by making location a key part of its services. For example, based on your calendar and current traffic, it would know that you’ll be late for an appointment and offer options for notifying the meeting organizer, and even alternate routes to take. Ideally you’d be able to avoid that situation, as it would notify you when you need to leave to make it to your meeting on time. Weather forecasts will be based not only on your current location, but where it knows you’re going. It’s a background app, pushing information to you as needed…pretty cool stuff if they can pull it off.
Sabotaging creativity
There’s a neat article over at Fast Company about sabotaging creativity. It deals with the issue that I think many creative people have (myself included)…we create lists of projects, articles, whatever, that we want to tackle in the future. The gist of this article is the idea that the existence of that list itself hurts creativity more than it helps. I for one have a huge list of topics I’ve wanted to write about here…yet I find myself focusing instead on whatever captures my interest at a particular time. I’m thinking lists like this are really more useful for project managers who are in a position to delegate these tasks to others. For self-led creative types, these lists really don’t help all that much. I can’t bring myself to delete my lists…yet…but maybe someday. 🙂
(read more at Fast Company)