As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
IPhone Killer: The Secret History Of The Apple Watch
In early 2013, Kevin Lynch accepted a job offer from Apple. Funny thing about the offer: It didn’t say what he would be doing. So intense is Apple’s secrecy that all Lynch knew was his vague title, vice president of technology, and that he’d be working on something completely new.
Is Silicon Valley the 'Epicenter of Social Change?'
Earlier this week, as CEOs like Apple’s Tim Cook and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff sparked a headline-grabbing debate over “religious freedom” laws in Indiana and Arkansas, I was asked by a reporter whether Silicon Valley, with all its wealth, prosperity and economic power, had become “the new Hollywood” for organizers of social causes.
I based my answer (that the balance of power is shifting and tech leaders are increasingly playing a bigger role in the political system) on the fact that Silicon Valley and the technology industry as a whole has captured the cultural zeitgeist of the moment. This digital revolution has been a long time coming and is starting to reshape people’s everyday lives, largely for the better.
Recent advances in technology are transforming our economy and society by changing the way we access information; communicate with each other; get from point A to B; and buy things. Companies like Uber, Facebook, Amazon and Spotify have found themselves at the center of consequential national conversations; the sector’s dominant social and content platforms have incredible reach; and companies themselves are commanding larger and larger audiences — a role once occupied by traditional media outlets and production studios.
Plus there’s a startling amount of wealth creation happening in Silicon Valley and it’s largely concentrated in the hands of founders and investors who are making huge sums of money. That gives them more power (real or perceived) than many in the private sector and makes them more influential than most when they take a public stand for something that matters to them, their customers and their employees.
On top of all that, tech has been a sustained source of national job creation over the past decade and remains one of the brightest spots in the U.S. economy. Just look at this year’s Silicon Valley Index, which reported nearly 58,000 new jobs – the highest growth rate in 15 years – created in the region. But there’s also a downside. In the Bay Area, the business boom has widened the middle-income gap, jacked up housing costs and increased traffic. There are real tradeoffs and not everyone is riding the wave of prosperity.
We can look back on the second American industrial revolution for a comparable era of sweeping innovation, concentrated wealth and fundamental changes in the way people lived. The good news is that as a country, we’re much better positioned today to have important conversations about issues like income inequality, diversity and civil rights and take steps to ensure a wide swath of Americans have access to new opportunities.
For high profile executives like Tim Cook and Marc Benioff — and the 70 tech leaders who signed a Thursday letter condemning discriminatory, anti-gay laws that have cropped up in other states — taking a stand makes good business sense. They run large companies with thousands of employees and those companies depend on recruiting and retaining some of the world’s top talent, irrespective of gender, race or sexual orientation. Despite critiques of Silicon Valley, tech companies highly value their workers’ labor, whether through salaries, benefits, perks, workplace inclusivity or job flexibility.
So, is Silicon Valley becoming the “epicenter of social change,” as Michelle Quinn, the San Jose Mercury News reporter who approached me, suggests in her column? It remains to be seen whether the tech sector will continue to have an outsized impact on social and political issues driving the national dialogue. But one thing is certain: there’s never been a time when tech industry leaders have had this much impact on the advocacy world and political climate.
Bill Gates Urges 40-Year-Old Microsoft To Look Ahead
Microsoft turned 40 on Saturday.
To mark the milestone, co-founder Bill Gates sent a letter on Friday to the company’s employees, urging them to stay focused on future products.
“I am thinking much more about Microsoft’s future than its past,” he wrote. “I believe computing will evolve faster in the next 10 years than it ever has before.”
Though still a Goliath in the tech industry, Microsoft has trailed rivals such as Apple in both hardware and software for smartphones and tablets.
Since CEO Satya Nadella took office last year, the company has made significant progress. Sales of its Lumia phones and Surface tablets are growing. Microsoft Office, the widely popular software suite, finally released a version for Apple’s iPad.
But Gates hinted that the holy grail will be making advances in artificial intelligence.
“We are nearing the point where computers and robots will be able to see, move, and interact naturally, unlocking many new applications and empowering people even more,” he wrote. “Under Satya’s leadership, Microsoft is better positioned than ever to lead these advances.”
Here is the full text of the letter, as shared by Twitter user Amit Roy Choudhary, a blogger who covers Microsoft:
Tomorrow is a special day: Microsoft’s 40th anniversary.
Early on, Paul Allen and I set the goal of a computer on every desk and in every home. It was a bold idea and a lot of people thought we were out of our minds to imagine it was possible. It is amazing to think about how far computing has come since then, and we can all be proud of the role Microsoft played in that revolution.
Today though, I am thinking much more about Microsoft’s future than its past. I believe computing will evolve faster in the next 10 years than it ever has before. We already live in a multi-platform world, and computing will become even more pervasive. We are nearing the point where computers and robots will be able to see, move, and interact naturally, unlocking many new applications and empowering people even more.
Under Satya’s leadership, Microsoft is better positioned than ever to lead these advances. We have the resources to drive and solve tough problems. We are engaged in every facet of modern computing and have the deepest commitment to research in the industry. In my role as technical advisor to Satya, I get to join product reviews and am impressed by the vision and talent I see. The result is evident in products like Cortana, Skype Translator, and HoloLens — and those are just a few of the many innovations that are on the way.
In the coming years, Microsoft has the opportunity to reach even more people and organizations around the world. Technology is still out of reach for many people, because it is complex or expensive, or they simply do not have access. So I hope you will think about what you can do to make the power of technology accessible to everyone, to connect people to each other, and make personal computing available everywhere even as the very notion of what a PC delivers makes its way into all devices.
We have accomplished a lot together during our first 40 years and empowered countless businesses and people to realize their full potential. But what matters most now is what we do next. Thank you for helping make Microsoft a fantastic company now and for decades to come.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Truth About Life In 2015 At Stanford, Where 21-Year-Olds Are Offered Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars Right Out Of School
The sunny campus of Stanford University, with its many trees, sprawling quads, and kids with backpacks, looks like many American colleges. But because Stanford is in Palo Alto, California, in the middle of Silicon Valley, things are happening there that don’t happen anywhere else.
15 Highest-Paying Companies In America
This story was originally published by 24/7 Wall St.
The median income for all Americans was $35,540 in 2013, up slightly from the year before. At a number of U.S. companies, salaries are considerably higher. Based on figures provided by Glassdoor, 24/7 Wall St. examined the 15 highest paying companies in America. At these companies, the median annual compensation is at least four times the nationwide median income.
The companies that pay their employees the most fall primarily into two industries: consulting firms and tech companies. These companies attract some of the nation’s most highly-skilled workers, who demand high salaries to match their expected performance.
According to Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, both types of high-paying companies require very high-skilled workers. However, these workers are highly paid for very different reasons.
Six of the highest paying companies are consulting firms, law firms, accounting firms, or some combination of the three. Chamberlain explained there are barriers to competition in these kinds of companies. It is very difficult to uproot very old firms with relationships cultivated over long periods of time by very experienced employees.
“When you are a consulting firm you don’t have much in the way of machines and other capital,” Chamberlain said. Instead, “you have a little bit of software, you have an office space, but your main asset is the human capital in the heads of your partners.” The value of these types of companies is disproportionately in their employees, and they are highly paid as a result.
Click here to see the highest paying companies in America.
The other nine companies are in the information technology sector, particularly semiconductor manufacturing and its related services. These companies also require very high-skilled workers. However, the shortage of labor in these sectors is the primary reason these companies pay so well. “There is definitely a bidding war in the Bay Area for certain types of positions,” Chamberlain said. While this trend is industry-wide, all of the nine highest paying tech sector companies were located in California.
For instance, the growth in new technologies such as mobile devices has been so rapid it has been impossible for the labor market to keep up. Chamberlain suggested the shortage has been further compounded by restrictive immigration policies like the hard cap on H1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to bring specialty workers from overseas. These polices have put constraints on the supply of workers, further driving up competition.
None of the highest paying companies are in the manufacturing or goods producing industries that would have characterized a similar list several decades ago. The difference, according to Chamberlain, is that many of the jobs provided by the companies currently on this list are very difficult to outsource because they require relatively advanced judgements and non-routine tasks.
While paying high salaries perhaps makes a poor work environment more tolerable, it does not guarantee workplace satisfaction. All but one highest paying company received an overall employee rating greater than 3.2 out of 5, the average company rating from Glassdoor reviewers. CEO approval ratings were also strong in many of these companies, but not universally. More than 80% of reviewers in just six of the highest paying companies approved of their CEO.
To identify the highest paying companies in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the median annual salaries in companies provided by Glassdoor. Employee ratings, CEO approval ratings, and the percentage of employees who would recommend the company to a friend also came from Glassdoor. Revenue figures and total headcounts for public companies came from financial filings. When available, company information for private companies was provided by the companies themselves.
These are America’s highest paying companies.
The Progressive Promise of Today's Technology
When the 2008 presidential campaign began, iPhones did not exist. Today, as the 2016 campaign gets underway, smartphones are in the hands of 75 percent of Americans, who use them to summon cars at the touch of a button, control their thermostats while vacationing on a beach, take photographs and videos of themselves (and, sometimes, of others), and navigate the streets of nearly any city on earth, among thousands of other uses, including, every once in a while, making a phone call.
It’s a small example, perhaps. But it speaks to the way in which new technologies are rapidly transforming our lives. These technologies are not just tools or marvels – they have reshaped Americans’ expectations of businesses, government, community institutions, and one another.
We have been in such a place before. On a sweltering August day in the summer of 1912, before a crowd of thousands in the old Chicago Coliseum, Theodore Roosevelt accepted the nomination of the newly formed Progressive Party. “The prime need today,” he declared, “is to face the fact that we are now in the midst of a great economic evolution.”
That economic evolution was driven by the birth of new technologies – trains and telegraphs, phones and phonographs. But these technologies – and the new assembly-line factories they brought with them – stood in sharp contrast to an antiquated government still operating on principles more suited to an America of farms than of factories.
For the Progressives, the results were plain to see: growing inequality, an unchecked rise in corporate power, government captured by special interests, environmental destruction. However, they also saw the lost potential due to a government that had been frozen in the status quo. The Progressives were not unnerved by the technology-fueled transformation of American life. They were excited by it. They saw the promise of these innovations and believed government could harness the new ways of organizing human effort they brought with them to make Americans healthier and better educated and liberated from ancient limitations of distance and ignorance.
The foes of Progressivism, the populists on one side and the conservatives on the other, were essentially mirror images of one another, each trying to hold back change – the former in the economy, the latter in government. They were not only history’s losers – they were wrong. What Roosevelt and others knew was that in order to keep faith with the founders’ essential vision of America as a land of equal opportunity, government had to keep pace with the times.
In the face of this new economy, the Progressive Party put forward in its 1912 platform a set of ideas largely new to American politics, a wish list for the century ahead. To review the 1912 Progressive platform is to be reminded of generations of struggles, successes, and setbacks experienced by progressives in both parties over the past hundred years. The platform included calls for a minimum wage, the prohibition of child labor, rights for labor unions, an eight-hour workday, disability benefits, and mandatory days off from work. Progressives sought to choose party nominees through primaries instead of the backrooms of party bosses, and they endorsed the direct election of U.S. senators, women’s suffrage, campaign finance limitations and disclosure, the registration of lobbyists, and state-level initiatives, referendums, and recalls.
They proposed a series of new government departments that eventually became the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Labor, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Institutes of Health, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and even the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The platform advocated the creation of national laboratories, an interstate highway system, education for all, and federal estate and income taxes. The then-new ideas put forward in the Progressive Party’s platform were mere dreams in 1912. Today, they are all realities of American life.
Especially from the perspective of a century later, what might well be the central plank of that platform was the demand for “[t]he protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use.” Insurance for the unemployed and for older Americans came to pass in the 1935 Social Security Act. However, in the years since, the first part of this plank – protection “against the hazards of sickness,” the last jewel in the crown of twentieth-century progressivism – was always out of reach. That was the case until the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. With this achievement, the final empty box on progressives’ to-do list was finally checked.
The question we now face is, “What comes next?” Having completed the work of the twentieth century, progressives can now turn their attention to mending and expanding on what has already been built or protecting it against those who would tear it down. Both are essentially conservative approaches.
There is a better course: a new agenda for a new America. Once again, progressives must look clearly and honestly at the wrenching, technology-fueled economic transformations all around us and propose solutions equal in scale to the opportunities and troubles we see.
Like the industrial expansion that created the middle class, the twenty-first-century digital revolution can power a return to broadly shared growth. Instead of accommodating ourselves to secular stagnation, we should be crafting the policy agenda that will make such a revival possible. This means dramatic changes in a tax code and regulatory policies that were created for a bygone economy so that we can unleash private-sector investment and innovation. It includes a new public infrastructure to support smart appliances, vehicles, and buildings. We must rethink what unemployment and job-training benefits look like for an Individual Age in which there are fewer jobs created by corporations than those people create for themselves. Our schools need to be rethought in ways far more fundamental than those contemplated in the tired debate over reform, and a college education must be made as universal as progressives made high school a century ago.
In 2016, we will mark two decades since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This landmark legislation shaped the public-policy landscape of the digital age. However, it mentioned the Internet in only two places – and one of them focused on prohibiting its use for obscene purposes, which, as you might surmise, never took effect. The twentieth anniversary – and the 2016 campaign – should force us to look forward, not only to new, twenty-first-century policies but also to a whole new agenda that takes seriously how much our world has changed. From our workplaces to our streets to our homes, technology is presenting new chances for a better life, and challenges to the laws and lives we know. But smart devices will only reach their potential if there is a wise government that encourages their development and responds to the questions they raise. A future where our cars and coffee pots and computers talk to one another is merely the tip of the iceberg of the prospects of a networked world. A digital policy for the new century, tailored not just to the moment but for the future, is vital if we are to unleash economic growth, shared prosperity, and the full potential of technology for citizens and consumers. But such a policy architecture requires a new consensus – on privacy, on security, on customer protections, on growth and mobility.
American progressivism was born in response to the technological explosion of the Industrial Age. It can now declare “mission accomplished” and act as a conservator of a proud legacy – or it can do the hard work to think anew and act anew in response to the possibilities and problems of an economic evolution just as vast. “[I]t behooves Americans to keep abreast of the great industrial changes,” Roosevelt said on that hot day in Chicago in 1912, “and to show that the people themselves…can meet an age of crisis with wisdom and strength.” We have a proud heritage and much work to do.
A version of this essay originally appeared in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. To see the other essays in this series, click here.
The 20 Funniest Tweets From Women This Week
Each week HuffPost Women rounds up the most hilarious 140-character jokes from women on Twitter we could find to brighten your day. We’ve got to hand it you ladies, these keep us laughing every single week. For this week’s great tweets from women, scroll through the list below. Then visit our Funniest Tweets From Women page for our past collections.
This is an A and B conversation so C your way to D store and ask E what the F he’s doing cuz know what G, he probably H your lunch not I. K?
— Abbi Crutchfield (@curlycomedy) March 30, 2015
the great thing about being a female comic is that it’s NEVER your tweets that keep you from getting that hosting job.
— Laurie Kilmartin (@anylaurie16) March 31, 2015
I can see clearly now the pain is gone…
Me, after poking my eye out with my mascara wand.
— Domestic Goddess (@DomesticGoddss) April 2, 2015
If you respond to “I haven’t watched it yet, don’t say anything” with “ok, all I’m going to say is..” and then literally ANYTHING, fuck you.
— Taylor Casti (@thecoppergirl) March 30, 2015
Be the author of your own story. Be the drunken star of someone else’s Snapchat story.
— Colette McIntyre (@calledcolette) March 31, 2015
On Easter we celebrate a person’s ultimate sacrifice and resurrection- when our savior Anna gave her life to save Queen Elsa.
— OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) April 3, 2015
Hey there Delilah, remember acoustic guitar guy? You went on like half a date & then he wrote that creepy song? umm he came up on my Tinder.
— Aparna Nancherla (@aparnapkin) April 3, 2015
Here’s an accurate impression of me as a friend:
*sends you seven separate text messages instead of one paragraph about the same topic*
— Amy Spiker (@ASpiker) April 1, 2015
Explaining gefilte fish to a non-Jew. It never gets easier. #Passover
— Andrea Lavinthal (@andilavs) April 3, 2015
*looks at facebook photos from 2009* Welp, I can’t run for president
— Lauren Zupkus (@laurenzup) April 3, 2015
“Tear Here” should add “First try with hands, then teeth, then scissors, steak knives and eventually a chainsaw. Good luck.”
— Abby Heugel (@AbbyHasIssues) April 3, 2015
*sees a group of teens, is terrified*
*realizes she’s invisible to them*
*is somehow hurt even more*
— Janine Brito (@janinebrito) April 3, 2015
~*WhEn yR eX dOeSn’T cHaNgE tHeIr FaCeBoOk pRoFiLe pIc OfTeN EnUfF sO YoU CaN’T ReAlLy TelL iF ThEy LoOk sHiTty nOw *~
— Lynn Bixenspan (@lynnbixenspan) April 3, 2015
Can Claire Underwood from House of Cards please do an exercise tape where she’s like cold and dispassionate but she gives you a perfect ass?
— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) March 30, 2015
If you love something, let it go. I want it. It’s mine now.
— Yael (@elle91) March 22, 2015
The enemy of my enemy is also my enemy, can’t have too many enemies.
— (maura) (@behindyourback) March 30, 2015
*becomes an adult*
No, what the heck
— moody monday (@mdob11) March 29, 2015
idk about having kids but I would adopt a 80 year old. Because there so cute at that age.
— Luwanda (@LuwandaJenkins) April 3, 2015
How about no more Instagrams of your food or your private plane.
— Natasha Leggero (@natashaleggero) April 3, 2015
My favorite pastime is apologizing to inanimate objects i bump into .
— Allie Goertz (@AllieGoertz) April 1, 2015
The Easter Bunny Could Soon Bring Safer Candy With Natural Food Colors
Candy left by the Easter Bunny on Sunday morning comes in festive hues of blue, green, yellow and pink, sparking smiles from many kids. This brightly colored loot may be less welcome, however, to a growing number of parents who worry about the potential health hazards the colors reflect.
Could the Blue 1, Red 40 and Yellow 5 dyes, for example, found in Peeps marshmallow chicks, Whoppers Mini Robin Eggs, Jelly Belly’s Kids Mix and countless other sweets harm their children?
To be safe, many like Courtney Sucato of Phoenix, are no longer taking chances with the man-made additives, which are generally derived from petroleum and coal. Sucato now swaps out the mainstream sweets her kids collect during other people’s Easter egg hunts with a stash of naturally colored candy she keeps at home. More products are being sold with alternative colorings — from beet-based reds to yellows and oranges from citrus — in response to emerging health studies and rising consumer demand. A small Seattle-based biotech company has even begun harnessing the natural color-making machinery of algae in an effort to produce safe pigments.
The market for natural food colors is predicted to grow nearly threefold between 2014 and 2020.
Courtney Sucato stands with her son, Tyler. She said his ADHD symptoms became far more manageable after she eliminated artificial food colors from his diet. (Photo: Morgan Henderson)
For Sucato, it all started when she noticed that her son Tyler, then 4, would repeatedly melt down in “horrible tantrums” shortly after eating artificially colored snacks and soft drinks. “I Googled the ingredients in all of those things. The only thing they had in common was Yellow 6. Within two weeks, we were a dye-free family,” recalled Sucato, noting that Tyler also appeared to react to other artificial colors. Although she can’t be certain of a link, she said that Tyler’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms significantly improved after the change.
“That was three years ago, and we haven’t looked back,” said Sucato.
To avoid artificial coloring in edible products is no easy task. The additives are found not only in candy, but in a variety of other foods and drinks including yogurts, frozen pops, salad dressings, boxed mac ‘n cheese, even pickles. Mouthwash, shampoo, cough syrup and vitamins are among non-food items that are often artificially dyed to make them more appealing to consumers. As more and more colorful products filled grocery and drug stores between 1950 and 2010, the average American’s daily consumption of artificial food colors increased more than fivefold.
“Artificial colors are often used to make you think that a product is healthier than it really is,” said Lisa Lefferts, a senior scientist with the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. “They’re so unnecessary.”
Research dating back to the 1970s suggests that synthetic dyes certified by the Food and Drug Administration could be linked to ADHD and other behavioral problems — although those results are still fiercely debated. There have also been hints of cancer risks. As consumers have caught wind of the concerns, corporations have taken notice, while still generally insisting on the safety of their products.
In February, Nestle became the first major candy manufacturer in the U.S. to pledge to remove artificial flavors and colors from all of its chocolate candy. By the end of the year, Butterfingers and Baby Ruth bars will no longer contain the likes of Yellow 5 and Red 40. Natural food colors such as annatto, derived from the seeds of the achiote tree, will take their place. (Of course, natural does not always mean safe and these alternatives, too, may trigger allergic reactions.)
“This is purely consumer driven,” said Leslie Mohr, marketing manager at Nestle, adding that prices won’t change for customers.
Consumer demand is pushing others to find innovative ways to tackle the common downsides of natural colors, such as inferior vibrancy and stability as well as higher production costs, compared to their artificial counterparts. Matrix Genetics, based in Seattle, is among these emerging players.
The company announced in February that it had found a way to manipulate spirulina, a type of blue-green algae, to rapidly and efficiently produce natural food dyes. By adding a second copy of a specific gene, Matrix Genetics said, it can now double the plant’s natural production of phycocyanin, a bright pigment that can replace Blue 1.
Jim Roberts stands in front of bioreactors used to grow algae in the Matrix Genetics lab. (Photo: Lynne Peeples)
But that’s just the “low-hanging fruit,” said Jim Roberts, chief scientific officer at Matrix Genetics. With a little more tweaking, his team hopes to also create shades of red, blue, green and purple.
“The door is now open,” said Roberts. “The natural colors we can produce will span the entire spectrum.”
In addition to modifying the plant’s pigment-producing genetics, he noted that his company is optimizing spirulina’s ability to turn light into energy. The result, Roberts said, should be safe, environmentally friendly and commercially viable natural colorings. Unlike some of its cousins, he said, the algae does not produce any toxins. It can also be grown in marginal places such as saltwater ponds, noted Roberts, which means the colorings could be made without major impact on fresh waters or use of valuable agricultural lands.
Two years ago, the FDA approved spirulina extract as a color additive for certain uses. Yet high costs and inefficiency have held back production, according to Roberts.
“The first thing that has to happen is for production to go up. Then, costs can come down and more companies will be able to use it,” said Elijah Church, manager of technical support at Roha Food Colors. “We’re just at the beginning of spirulina’s potential.”
The catalyst for increasing consumer demand, Church said, was a controversial British study published in 2007 that concluded the consumption of food additives, including food colors, significantly increased ADHD-type behavior. European regulators responded by requiring that food and drink labeling indicate the use of six artificial colors and warn of their potential effects on attention and behavior. Some companies went as far as to remove the artificial colors altogether.
Mars, for example, removed these dyes for M&Ms sold in Europe. The same candies on U.S. shelves, however, still contain three of the so-called Southampton Six: Yellow 5, Yellow 6 and Red 40. The ingredients label on a bag of Easter-themed M&Ms purchased this week by The Huffington Post listed a total of 10 artificial colors. The company maintains that all its ingredients are safe.
In March 2011, responding to a petition from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the FDA’s Food Advisory Committee gathered an expert panel to review the 2007 British study and others into the safety of synthetic food colors. While the committee ultimately concluded there was not enough evidence to support any bans or warning labels, some panel members remained unconvinced.
“The FDA framed the question primarily in the form, ‘Are food colors a cause of hyperactivity?’” wrote Bernard Weiss, an expert in environmental health at the University of Rochester, in a commentary after he testified on the panel. His own research has shown a link.
Weiss suggested that a more appropriate question would have been whether food colors are “behaviorally toxic to the general population of children.” And he asked, “What kind of data — and how much data — does it take to render an outcome conclusive enough for action?”
“Think about how long it took us to prove cause and effect with smoking,” added Lefferts, who also sat on the FDA panel. “It was almost as if they were asking questions in a way so that they wouldn’t get an answer that suggested a link.”
Other experts express concern that the research to date has generally underestimated people’s actual exposure to artificial colors. In a study published last April, Purdue University nutrition scientist Laura Stevens and her colleagues concluded that children today are eating and drinking “far more dyes” than previously thought.
“Those studies that used a bit more seemed to reveal that there certainly were kids who responded adversely to the dyes,” said Stevens, suggesting that the use of lower estimates may have affected the outcome of the FDA’s review.
In a statement to HuffPost, the FDA said that it continues to be “engaged in the scientific and regulatory review of color additives in food and their potential impact on various populations.”
Many consumers are not waiting for any further reviews. Dawn Van Hee, founder of the Natural Candy Store — which is one of Sucato’s go-to sources for sweets — said she has witnessed a rise in customer demand for and availability of natural colors, especially over the last couple of years.
She expressed frustration that large companies such as Mars won’t sell her the same natural products — like those M&Ms — that they’ve been shipping to Europe. Still, “we’re seeing a lot of developments in food chemistry,” said Van Hee, noting her excitement about the bright blues that spirulina offers.
“It’s great to know that more people out there are taking notice,” said Sucato. “ADHD is running rampant. If we can calm some of those symptoms with diet, this world would be a more peaceful place.”
6 Ways to Build for Digital Change
30 years ago, Alan Trefler had the idea that it should be possible to enable organizations to do a better job of engaging with their clients by making it possible for business and IT to be able to interact differently. It was this inspiration that led Trefler to bootstrap Pegasystems. Fast forward to 2015 and the issue of the relationship between business and IT and the connection with the customer is as contemporary as any issue in enterprise software today, yet so few organizations have been able to do a really good job of having the business work effectively together or connecting with their clients across the entire customer lifecycle.
Alan Trefler, CEO of Pegasystems
Trefler believes that by changing the fundamental way that business and IT work together, organizations can bring a culture of responsiveness and customer engagement to the very way the company works. Known globally as a Business Process Management (BPM) platform, Pegasystems is focusing the company towards Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and other strategic applications. “We really see what we do as much more than just managing business processes, but bringing together processes, case management, analytics, customer interaction and self-service by creating a model of how the institution wants to deal with its customers and from that model our system writes the code,” says Trefler.
As CEO of Pega, a $600 million company with over 3,000 staff, Trefler is responsible for shepherding this transformation as he guides, mentors and services his customers in how they can approach digital transformation to create real compelling value for their customers. Here is his advice on how organizations can position themselves to succeed in the digital world.
6 Ways to Build for Digital Change
1. Build for multiple channels
In a “mobile-first world” Trefler says that Pega’s vision of the future of customer service, CRM and business process is having a brain in the organization that can reach into each channel – mobile, the website, the contact center and the physical branch location if one exists – and create a model for the business that doesn’t get mired in a quick fix, single channel solution. He says that the whole idea of going mobile first is really only ideal if all or most of what you are doing is on the mobile device, like Uber for example. But if you are a business that operates across multiple channels, going mobile first runs the strong risk of building logic, rules and processes into that mobile channel that are then going to intrinsically either diverge from the rest of your business or put enormous cost pressures on your business as you go and have to re-implement it in multiple places.
Trefler is not the first to warn against mobile-first strategies, and after having had their flirtation with trying to whip together some mobile apps, Trefler says that he is seeing a lot of companies finding that their satisfaction scores are not improving in the way they want and they are actually just beginning to see that what’s going to empower them in the future is to develop the skills and capabilities to interact with customers across all of these channels with equal strength. “I think understanding how important that is, is a key part of beginning this journey correctly,” Trefler says.
2. Get the business and IT to work together in a completely different way
“I think the business and IT relationship changing has got to be a first principle to making this all work properly,” says Trefler. It can’t be business just running off and buying stuff because they are frustrated with IT. It can’t be IT continuing to have the lists of yes you can have this in 2021. It’s got to be that the business needs to be able to take more empowered roles in being able to actually help construct the real software. “And what that does, is actually keeps the business and IT folks on the same page, and puts all the smart minds to work,” says Trefler.
The problem for many companies is that they know they want to do something, but they are stumped with figuring out exactly what to do and who should do it. According to Trefler, the solution is to get business and IT to work together in a completely different way. He criticizes the whole process by which business defines what they want and then gets it done in software, which is so critical in running businesses these days, as staggeringly and agonizingly manual: “Those computer systems in the mobile device, in the front office or any place in the organization, on the web, those are all written in garbage code that has nothing to do with and is unconnected to the business requirements. The dialogue about what’s getting built can happen at a higher level of metaphors than programming languages in machines and random specs in documents.”
To have agility, Trefler says it’s the conjunction of understanding that you need to have seamless service experiences that go across channels and that you need to change the very way that business and IT work together so it’s not all about translating things into the programming language of the machine.
3. Don’t rush to a quick fix
In lots of enterprises, Pega is seeing what Trefler describes as almost panic reactions to stuff speeding up but them not knowing how to deal with it. His advice in dealing with all of this massive change is “don’t panic”. Instead of rushing into inadequate solutions and quick fixes that aren’t going to get you there, Trefler suggests that business buyers in the enterprise take a step back and ask themselves what’s going to really make them have strategic business outcomes and how it’s going to work across all their channels.
As a chess master turned global chief executive, Trefler sees a connection between how he thinks about business strategy and chess. He says that the thought process of a strong player falls into three phases. The first phase is pattern recognition, the second phase is the more detailed analysis and the final phase is sitting back and trying to figure out what has been missed. “I think by being able to put together those three phases, a chess player is able to both be effective in how they make decisions and also prevent against risks and uncertainties. That is very much how I think about business. You want to be strategic, you want to see the patterns and you want to be open to new patterns. You want to use that to focus your analysis and then you always want to question what pre-existing biases may be present. What are the things you might have done last time that are influencing you and may no longer be appropriate? And it’s that sort of check step that I think is really critical in both business and chess,” says Trefler.
4. Treat digital like electricity
Because digital is going to underlie the entire future of businesses and be central to how businesses work, Trefler says that digital has got to be percolated throughout the entire organization, it’s got to touch everything. To hire a CDO or not to hire CDO is not the question. Business operations and the IT organization need to be completely committed to working together hand-in-hand on the digital agenda if they want to be a part of a successful business.
Trefler thinks that the worst part of not having the business understand the technology better, is that they don’t know what to ask for. In his book, Build for Change, Trefler draws an analogy of what it would be like if you wanted to either build a house or make a massive addition and you had never been to Home Depot. You would just have to imagine would be easy and what would be hard, and you would end up asking for lots of things that were really complicated and expensive. On the other hand, if you had walked through Home Depot before, you’ve seen things like French doors and bay windows and you could have a really intelligent conversation with your architect, and they may push back but suddenly, you’re talking about things being off-the-shelf in a place where that’s adequate or actually even better.
“That’s what has to happen for organizations to get digital. The business people need to understand what’s possible, what’s easy, what’s expensive – and what’s not. And like any other good business person, that will influence how they engage with the rest of the organization,” says Trefler.
5. Have the ability to execute
While Trefler thinks that executives definitely need to appreciate the role of data, he thinks that when it comes to change, it’s less about data science and more about the ability to execute. He says there are three things: data, judgement and the ability to execute. Data is about what happened, judgement is the insight that builds on that data and enables you to take the context provided by data and form good decisions and the ability to execute is being able to bring the process to the fore. Trefler says that being able to execute is the most important of the three and in the human metaphor it’s the muscle: “Just having smart brains but not being able to execute, is no better than just being all muscle and having no brains. I think even more than data science, which is part of our product line, it’s important to have that build for change muscle, so you can use your insights to try something and have it execute across your entire business.”
6. Be intellectually curious
To stay ahead of digital disruption, Trefler advises that organizations be open to input from all different sources. With the world so wonderfully connected it’s easier to see what competitors are doing, what potential new entrants are doing and what your clients are doing with technology. Trefler thinks that organizations need to explicitly go out there and seek opportunities to try new stuff in addition to trying to have a culture of innovation that is central to the company. At Pega, they do a hack-a-thons where they challenge their engineers and project management teams to come up with ideas that they may not normally fund. Out of these they end up getting a lot of innovative ideas that they actually do try.
They also try to work with academic communities, such as MIT, to get ideas, as well as staying open to looking at companies and acquiring them when they make sense. These activities keep them constantly exposed to seeing lots of stuff, which Trefler sees as an important part of knowing what else is going on out there and meeting some of the right people to help you think fresh.
You can watch the full interview with Alan Trefler here. Please join me and Michael Krigsman every Friday at 3PM EST as we host CXOTalk - connecting with thought leaders and innovative executives who are pushing the boundaries within their companies and their fields.
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