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.
VIDEO: Blackberry to battle on with phones
Blackberry chief says the market will decide firm’s fate
VIDEO: The robot that can play the violin
A retired engineer in the USA has created a ‘kinetic sculpture’ that can replicate digital files and play them on a violin.
Sony VR helmet set for 2016 launch
Sony unveils an upgraded version of its PlayStation virtual reality helmet, which it says will go on sale in the first half of 2016.
Carmakers face a challenge from tech giants
Carmakers face a challenge from Google and Apple
Artificial Intelligence Technology Is 'Breaking Out of the Box'
NEW YORK — We are entering an age of accelerated development of artificial and robotic technology, three panelists told an audience of investors, engineers and journalists recently.
“A lot of the things that technology was traditionally lousy at are now really, really good, and getting better all the time,” said Andrew McAfee, the principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This is unprecedented and unexpected.”
McAfee was speaking at an annual lecture on science and technology hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations; joining him on the panel were Rodney Brooks, an entrepreneur and emeritus professor of robotics at MIT, and Abhinav Gupta, of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. All three were optimistic about the development of robotics and artificial intelligence technology, but each acknowledged areas where there are still tremendous challenges to overcome.
“Just in the past few years,” McAfee said, excitably, “digital technologies in all their manifestations, including robots, have been breaking out of the box and starting to demonstrate capabilities that they never ever had before.”
But something as fundamental as taking keys out of a pocket, Brooks said, remains beyond the current capabilities of robots. Even determining that a picture of a child was a picture of a child is too hard. Great strides have been made in other areas, like creating machines that can win a chess game against even the most experienced grandmaster, but it will take years more research to mimic the dexterity of the human hand, the panelists said, or even the spacial awareness of a 1-year-old.
And yet, the most important issues to sort out, the panelists agreed, are not technological. They’re in the policy realm.
“None of It Is Rocket Science”
“Why is our infrastructure so lousy?” McAfee asked, exasperated. “Why are our immigration policies — as far as I can tell — designed by our enemies? Why are [our schools] turning out the kinds of workers we needed 50 years ago? If we can get these things right, that’d be the best thing we could do to improve the prospects of the American worker, and none of it is rocket science.”
Encouraging immigrants to create companies here is another issue. The government permits immigrants who invest $1 million in the economy to stay permanently, Gupta noted. “Why don’t we have that for people who have ideas to open a start-up?” he wondered.
Research investment is another area where American government policy needs a serious rethink.
“In the U.S., it’s going down,” said Gupta. “In China, it’s doubling. Europe is even better than the U.S.! If you talk to researchers, like me, Europe has much better research funding than America has.”
Two of the largest industries in the American economy — healthcare and education — are ripe for disruption, the panelists said.
“We are not seeing crazy price declines in these huge industries that we are seeing elsewhere,” McAfee argued. “What’s going to bring them there? Opening up these markets. Getting rid of the incumbent’s advantage. Education is a cartel.”
Geeks Will Astonish Us
In the end, despite the monumental challenges yet to be overcome, the panelists were optimistic about the accelerating abilities of technology and artificial intelligence.
“The exponential improvement in the elements of computing is not about to run out of gas,” McAfee said. “We’ve got generations more of it to go. Geeks out there are going to take that computational power and that ocean of data and do things that astonish us.”
But the panelists couldn’t muster the same sentiment when it comes to policy-making, economics and security.
“As different technologies have proliferated and really democratized access to innovation and to making things, the economy has moved in the other direction,” McAfee said. “It’s moved toward more concentration. The big guys are getting bigger. The workforce is becoming more polarized instead of less. I’m really worried about this polarization of opportunity and of mobility. I think it’s already a challenge and it’s going to get a lot bigger. And what we do about that is going to be the challenge that defines us for the next generation.”
Moreover, the global security landscape is becoming more threatening. The proliferation of accessible technology is as beneficial to Iran and the Taliban as it is for Silicon Valley start-ups. Equipment available at RadioShack is used in IEDs targeting American troops in Afghanistan, said Brooks.
“Cybersecurity is scary as hell,” McAfee noted.
“The threats of the future are going to be very different sorts of threats,” echoed Brooks. “And that worries me.”
Child Poverty Exists In Silicon Valley, Too. Here's Who's Helping Often-Overlooked Kids
Jorge Valencia is from Silicon Valley. But his daily life couldn’t be further from those “basically swimming in gold” not even five miles away.
“There’s like, an invisible boundary around … eastside San Jose,” the 16-year-old told John D. Sutter, who documented poverty in Valencia’s community for CNN. “They don’t even see you as humans. They think you’re trash, or peasants, or less.”
Valencia — who said his family often lives on just $2 a day — is part of the impoverished population that exists within one of the most prosperous places in the U.S., according to CNN.
Despite many people prospering, about one in three kids in the San Jose area struggles with hunger, according to Second Harvest Food Bank. The organization is one of several fighting for the valley’s most vulnerable.
Between July 2013 and June 2014, Second Harvest distributed more than 1 million pounds of food to people in need throughout its service area, which encompasses San Jose. Volunteers help support its mission, contributing more than 316,000 hours of service connecting the hungry with food assistance throughout the last fiscal year.
“Many people think that here in Silicon Valley, which is such an affluent area, hunger really isn’t a problem,” Kathy Jackson, CEO of the food bank, said in a video produced by Second Harvest. “It shouldn’t be a problem, but it is a problem.”
Jackson said the organization serves a wide variety of clients who need help: Employed parents who can’t make ends meet making minimum wage, single mothers trying to provide for their children and unemployed professionals who lost their job due to the Great Recession.
Poncho Guevara, executive director at Sacred Heart Community Service in San Jose — another local nonprofit providing relief — said seemingly high pay doesn’t go very far in an area with skyrocketing costs of living expenses. He told NPR it’s common to see working class clients, like security guards at Google, have to rely on the organization’s assistance to feed their families.
The need for organizations like Sacred Heart and Second Harvest likely won’t dissolve anytime soon. A report released last month by Joint Venture Silicon Valley found that the pay gap between low-wage and high-wage positions had grown at a higher rate in Silicon Valley last year than other regions of the state, as Wired reported. What’s more, the wage gap between white workers and their black and Latino counterparts was significantly wider than the rest of the country.
“This is the moral shame of our community,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told CNN of extreme poverty among kids. “It is incredibly challenging to be a child growing up in poverty in this valley. There simply aren’t the support systems in place to ensure those kids can thrive.”
Last December, Sacred Heart garnered and gave away 17,400 toys and books to children in need for the holidays, ABC 7 News reported. But just days before Christmas, the organization was still thousands of items short of their goal.
A last-minute call-out for help garnered an additional 1,200 toys from the community.
“It’s actually inspiring to us because we feel like we’re not alone in the struggle to build a community free from poverty,” Guevara told the news source at the time.
Visit Sacred Heart Community Service or Second Harvest Food Bank online to support the nonprofits’ missions.
To take action against hunger, check out the Global Citizen’s widget below.
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The Oscars Of The GIF World Needs You
And you! And you and you and you. Kindly turn your attention to the only Vice-approved ceremony of awards season: The .GIFYs, a yearly event honoring the gems that sparkle in the dust of this terrible planet known as Internet.
Let us honor the humble Graphics Interchange Format, as we would a trillion Becks.
In its second year, the contest pits the best recent GIFs against each other, as chosen by a team of scholars. (Full disclosure: I was a panelist this year. Also, I was lying about being a scholar.) They’re split into categories like Art and Cats and all are “safe for grandma.” The winners are decided by public vote — which ends today — to be collected in an online capsule so your great great grandkids can laugh at how primitive we once were.
Vote here and gaze upon our favorite GIFs from 2014 below.
My Biggest Mistake Ever
Idiot!!!! in 1992
In 1992, I had just launched a new business called Video News International.
It was the world’s first video journalist network.
I had trained and equipped more than 100 VJs around the world, many of them highly established journalists with very good credentials in print or photography.
The idea was to cover news and sell the service to network news organizations.
Because the investors in the business all lived in Philadelphia, they wanted the business based there. (You know, Philly, media capital of the world… after New York, Los Angeles, London, Cleveland…) OK, that was a mistake.
One day, a young intern who was working for us named Anthony Lappe pulled me aside.
Besides working for us, he was also working for Comcast, the local cable company in Philly.
“There is something you HAVE to see,” he told me. “Comcast is doing this REALLY cool thing.”
A few nights later, Anthony took me down into the basement of the Comcast building in Philly.
There, in a remote corner were four or five young guys with long hair, dressed in jeans, messing around on computers attached to big video screens.
“This,” Anthony explained to me, “is the Internet.”
“What?”
“The Internet,” he said. “It’s going to be really big.”
Comcast had set up a ‘test’ of this Internet thing. They had connected 1300 homes in the greater Philadelphia area with this Internet thing and those homes now watched TV and accessed stuff through their computers.
Anthony introduced me to the head of the Internet project.
“Anthony tells me that you have like 100 journalists around the world with video cameras making stuff,” the guy said to me.
I said I did.
“We are looking for content to put on our Internet here,” and he tapped a giant video display terminal. (Those were the days when the screens were giant cathode ray tubes).
Well, I said I had lots of content to offer.
The guy’s eyes lit up.
“Cool,” he said. “We would like to put it on our network.”
Well, I am always looking for new clients.
“What are you going to pay?” I asked.
He said that they could not pay anything for the content, but they would set up a URL for me, a website.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We’ll build you a website that will have all the content on it, and we’ll give you a URL.”
“What’s a URL?” I asked
“It’s kind of like your address on the web.”
“The what?”
“The Internet,” and he tapped the CRT again.
“We can make a URL and website for you any way you want and call it.. Oh, Broadcast.com, or TV.com or Television.com or News.com. And you’ll own the website and the URL in exchange.”
“What would I do with this URL thing?”
“Well, it could be your business. You know, you could be TV.com or Broadcast.com – video and information on the web. You make it, we’ll take care of the technical details.”
“I don’t see how TV.com is a business,” I cleverly replied. “You’re only in 1300 homes. And there’s not even any advertising.”
“Not yet,” he said. “But one day there might be.”
I thought about it for two seconds.
“Naah…” I said. “I have bigger fish to fry. This looks like the next 8-track to me.”
And I walked out.
Idiot!
Well, that Internet thing turned out to be bigger than I thought.
Sorry Anthony.
You were right.
Tablet video game combats lazy eye
Video games firm Ubisoft is working on a title that it believes can treat lazy eye, a condition that can result in reduced vision.
Gartner confirms Apple now top smartphone seller globally
While significantly disagreeing on the shipment or sales numbers of its rivals, analysis firms IDC and Gartner have agreed that Apple surpassed all expectations in a number of areas with its record-shattering calendar Q4 performance, with Gartner awarding Apple the crown of top smartphone seller in the world. An earlier report by IDC had Apple barely missing the top spot, claiming that Samsung shipped 75.1 million units, despite a sharp drop in profits and revenue.
New Cannes Award Called 'The Glass Lion' Created To Honor Work That Challenges Gender Bias
With the support of LeanIn.org, Cannes Lions created the Glass Lion award to recognize progressive work that promotes more inclusive and equal representations of all genders.
“The Glass Lion will award highly creative, positive and progressive contributions to gender representation within creative advertising and communications,” Senta Slingerland, the director of Brand Strategy for the Lions Festival, told The Huffington Post.
The Glass Lion will be awarded at this year’s Cannes Lions festival in Cannes, France. Cannes Lions is an annual festival that honors creative projects in all different types of communication fields.
The award was an idea Sheryl Sandberg brought to the table after Slingerland launched the See It Be It program, an initiative that promotes female creatives, in 2014.
Cindy Gallop, founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn and IfWeRanTheWorld consultancy, was appointed president of the jury that will vote on the winner of this year’s Glass Lion award. She said the award will celebrate work “that will set gold standard for creative and sociocultural change,” in a Cannes Lions press release
Gallop explained a vision of the award to Adweek: “It’s about celebrating [women] and should show great work that represents the world around us today,” she told Adweek. “Young men as well as young women should want to win this award with great work that reflects the future of our industry.”
Sandberg also noted her enthusiasm in the press release, stating, “If our messages to women — and men — portray equality, we will help create a more equal world. LeanIn.Org is thrilled that Cannes Lions is making The Glass Lion a reality so we can all applaud advertising that is more representative of the world as it should be.”
The winner of the Glass Lion is awarded points that will go towards other special honors such as Network of the year and Creative Marketer of the year.
“We’ve created this award to encourage content creators, and clients buying content, to produce stories that present a more gender-neutral view of the world, a more respectful image of gender and its nuances, a more inclusive world, and a more progressive way forward,” Slingerland told HuffPost. “That is the key real to gender equality: a culture shift.”
H/T AdWeek
Why We Should All Be Thrilled About the FDA Starting to Embrace Innovation
On Feb. 19 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took a huge step toward patient-centric medicine when it approved the marketing of genetics-testing company 23andMe’s carrier test for Bloom syndrome. This was a startling — and good — development because it affirmed the rights of consumers to drive their own healthcare decisions and procedures. But it also means that it has become urgent to develop policies to regulate the rights of companies to resell data derived from the contents of our DNA and from our medical records.
Not only did the FDA allow 23andMe to resume business; it also took the step of exempting these types of carrier DNA tests (such as for Tay-Sachs disease) from its pre-market review requirements. This will have the effect of accelerating innovation, because the technology industry is “eating” medicine. Companies such as Apple, Google, IBM, and Microsoft are developing health platforms, artificial-intelligence-based analysis tools, and wearable medical sensors. Medicine has become an information technology and is advancing on an exponential curve.
Here’s the back story to the FDA decision. You probably remember that the FDA forced 23andMe to remove its DNA-testing product from the market in 2013 due to “lack of scientific evidence.” The FDA took pains to explain that it wanted to help 23andMe but that the company had failed to follow the regulatory process and provide sufficient evidence to back up its claims of accurate detection of certain genetic markers common in breast cancer, warfarin sensitivity, and many other states of health. The shutdown riled Silicon Valley and technolibertarians who felt that the FDA was unfairly regulating their right to information.
Many physicians, for their part, protested that consumers could easily misinterpret results. The FDA argued that 23andMe had never shown clear evidence that its tests were not throwing false positives at unacceptable rates. False signals could be dangerous if misconstrued or taken as gospel. For example, genetic testing for certain gene variants closely associated with particularly noxious forms of breast cancer might encourage a woman to put herself in significant peril by undergoing radical surgery or other risky treatment for no possible benefit.
On the one hand, this is a plausible argument. On the other, the regulatory process to date has stifled innovation in the area of consumer-driven genetic testing. Traditionally, anyone seeking genetic testing had to go through a physician or a formalized service with counseling and other information sessions as a key component. 23andMe, founded by Anne Wojicki, was built on the idea that consumers are smart enough to handle their own healthcare information and guide their own care.
Now, apparently, the FDA is starting to agree with Wojicki not just in words but in deeds.
23andMe charges $99 for a partial genomics sequence and offers this as a way of tracking ancestry rather than of identifying genetic indicators of health risks. DNA sequencing costs have fallen from about $3 billion, the investment in sequencing the first human genome in 2001, to about $1,000 today. Costs will continue to fall, and the speed of sequencing will keep increasing. We can expect that within five or 10 years full human-genome sequencing will costs less than a cup of coffee, take a couple of minutes, and become as common as a blood test.
Here’s why this matters so much. The combination of cheap and good (or good enough) is powerful and inevitable. It means that, in the near future, with help from very smart artificial-intelligence systems, consumers will be able to take control of their health and obtain the care they deserve for far less than it costs today. Being cheap and good also means that people will be able to buy effective technologies online through an app store based in India or Canada, in the form of software, connected hardware, or some combination of the two. DNA tests will be done through a chip on your phone case, not in a 23andMe facility.
But here is my concern. 23andMe has made no secret of its ambition to become an information-services provider to large medical and drug companies. Big Pharma is champing at the bit to obtain as much individual DNA information as possible about large swathes of the populace. This will be a key part of research into what is often called “precision medicine,” a future when treatments will be able to more finely target ailments at the truly individual level.
We lack sufficient safeguards for consumers who supply their DNA data to companies such as 23andMe. Once this information is made public, its privacy is lost forever. Devising and implementing safeguards will require significant discussion and debate, so that needs to begin now. It is encouraging that D.J. Patil, who has just been named the country’s chief data scientist, has named this topic as being amongst his most important tasks.
The reality for now, however, is that we still haven’t figured out how to properly deal with personal data online beyond making requirements for disclosure of their theft. Personal DNA information will become far more critical and more important to safeguard than the details of our life circumstances. In the Exponential Era these data will become bits and bytes for all of us, the same as a cookie on our browsers. On the one hand, I can’t wait to see what emerges as the FDA slowly releases the brakes on innovation. On the other, I can’t wait to see what Patil and his team come up with in terms of safeguards for people. It’s going to be a very exciting time in personalized medicine, DNA, and the e-health space.
The Future of Sports Entertainment
By Drew Jankowski, 2013 Venture for America Fellow
I Love My Golf
During high school and college summers, my family spent Sunday afternoons playing golf and watching the PGA Tournament du jour. Dad would DVR CBS or NBC (adding an extra hour and a half of course, in case of a playoff), and the family would sit down to watch the end of the event during dinner. Since graduating and entering the working world, I can’t afford the expense of a DVR, which leaves me stuck with the schedule dictated by the networks, or the compacted highlight reel somewhere on the internet. Some other media has gone online, but sports remain on the existing system of networks and content providers.
The State of Sports on TV
As a sports fan, you have few options for watching your favorite events without illegally streaming them. Of course you can watch live, but you need a basic cable package, and you can only access from your specific home and receiver. Unfortunately, if you want a channel your basic package doesn’t provide, you might pay $30-$40 more per month for the sports package, only to watch a couple events. My parents, big hockey fans, CAN NOT get the NHL Network at all, because their cable company can’t reach a deal with the network. If you can afford a DVR system, you can watch whenever you like, as long as you remembered to record and happen to be at home.
Dish Network recently announced its service, Sling TV, which will allow live access to a limited number of networks, including ESPN, for $20 per month. While an improvement, fans will still need to purchase the entire package, and if they want to watch the Premier League on NBC, they will still need their other cable or satellite package. Dish seems to market Sling TV as an innovative new solution, but this new product only changes the technology and the delivery mechanism, while the same business model remains.
What Does TV Look Like Going Forward?
With exponential growth continuing in technology, the possibilities for media grow as well. We only limit our ability to provide innovative media services by our ability to apply new business models. Some simple improvements come to mind:
Omni-channel delivery: Services will provide the same content across TV, desktop browser, and mobile delivery channels with seamless experiences. Some of the existing services, such as Hulu, have already mastered this design challenge, but the content remains limited by the service.
Cloud-based DVR: Services will capture and record content that you pick for later streaming to any device. This amounts to a simple playlist if the content itself already exists online.
The death of the cable box: Viewers will access every piece of content they want online. The content will get transmitted by simple web protocols to any browser or app, and cable boxes will disappear. Viewers will no longer need a dedicated piece of hardware, but rather will access their content anywhere they have an internet connection.
How Do Sports Fit Into That Vision?
First, sports fans will watch any event they want, wherever they have an internet connected device. They’ll watch the Sunday football on their smart TV, the “SportsCenter” highlights on their phone, and March Madness on their tablet. With a new “Pay for what you watch” model, viewers will have the freedom to watch events as they wish, without needing a full package of channels they don’t watch. Additionally, services could provide ad-free recorded events for a premium, allowing viewers to watch without the distraction of commercials. With everything happening online, we will enable new event experiences like interacting with other fans in chat rooms and sharing clips on social media, all while watching the event live in real time.
What Challenges Do We Face?
The technology to enable these media innovations will come along whether or not we use them for sports media. It seems we have a stakeholder problem here, and I feel confident we can build a model that works for everyone. The value chain has many constituents right now: teams, leagues, networks, advertisers, content carriers, cable companies and viewers. Maybe there are more I don’t even know about. However, the cost burden right now seems to get passed down the chain to the viewers, who end up paying for a lot of content they simply don’t watch.
From my perspective, the model today rewards cable companies when viewers DON’T watch. Additionally, stakeholders up the value chain like advertisers and teams also suffer when viewers don’t turn on the TV. This means that cable companies have few incentives to provide good products and services to their viewers. No wonder everyone hates their cable company. The sports media market in North America was worth $12.5 Billion in 2013, and PWC projects this market will grow by 9 percent yearly through 2018 (PWC 2014). Certainly we can slice it so that consumers don’t have to bear the burden alone.
What’s Next?
Soon, tech startups will follow in the footsteps of Netflix and Hulu in creating a new model for sports media. Small companies will have a number of advantages over the incumbents, and will have the opportunity to create truly innovative new ways for sports fans to enjoy events from anywhere. Soon I’ll unplug from my cable provider in favor of more specific services that better serve my needs and desires. However, before I can sit on my couch and watch live golf on my laptop, we need a revolution in the way we deliver sports media. I decided to start Zelustream to figure out how to start this revolution and make my dream a reality.
Drew Jankowski is a 2013 Venture For America Fellow who currently lives and works in Providence, RI. He studied Engineering and Studio Art at Dartmouth, while also playing on the varsity golf team. Drew is currently using the VFA Innovation Fund to launch ZeluStream, which aims to change the way sports fans watch their favorite events.
D'Oh! Homer Simpson Figured Out The Higgs Boson Years Before Physicists Found It
Maybe Homer Simpson only acts dumb.
How else to explain a 1998 episode of The Simpsons in which a guy who usually comes across as a doughnut-eating doofus stands at a chalkboard bearing a complex equation that prefigures the discovery of the Higgs boson.
“That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson” Simon Singh, author of the 2013 book The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, told The Independent. “If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is. It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”
The equation was snuck onto the blackboard by one of the writers for the episode, who had a friend involved in research on the Higgs, the Daily Mail reported.
Singh knows a thing or two about the Higgs boson, the elementary particle whose existence was predicted in the 1960s but not detected experimentally until 2012. In addition to being the author of several popular books about science, he holds a Ph.D. in particle physics from the University of Cambridge.
His doctoral thesis is entitled “Heavy flavour physics at the CERN PP̄ collider“–CERN being the Swiss-based research organization whose scientists confirmed the Higgs’ existence.
The Nightmare of Youth Unemployment and How to Fight It
High levels of youth unemployment may be one of cities’ worst nightmares: not only does it signal and perpetuate a struggling economy, but high numbers of disengaged youth can lead to immense frustration across an entire generation, increased crime, and even revolt. To reduce unemployment rates, cities not only need to create jobs but also need to develop youth who are motivated, skilled and ready to make the most out of available opportunities. In this article, we travel from Lilongwe to Cali, Bototá, and Nairobi to explore initiatives that take creative and holistic approaches to youth employment, seeking to open up new fields to marginalized young people by developing character skills alongside job skills.
Chance For Change, a UK-based organization that works with young people, operates in Lilongwe’s Area 23, a dense settlement home to tens of thousands of people. The organization runs six-month programs aimed at training young people to become independent adults. Chance For Change targets young people who have previously been involved in crime, gangs, prostitution, and other anti-social behavior. Key to the organization’s approach is to teach the young people life skills in combination with business skills. In addition to enterprise training, participants learn about global citizenship, HIV and sexual health, and drugs and alcohol.
Because dance and music reach across all social levels in Cali, several private and public institutions have recognized that these arts can be harnessed to improve the self-esteem of youth from the comunas, in turn mitigating violence and social exclusion. Accordingly, dance and music — and in particular, salsa — have become instruments to empower marginalized youth who often lack other opportunities. The Department of Culture organizes a music contest that is open to any young person living in a comuna. Participants can compete in rock, salsa and urban music and are given funds to record their music, with the chance of record deals for the winners. The department also provides financial support to the approximately 90 salsa schools that operate across the city, with the aim that youth will learn skills from which they can generate income.
Initially created by the Spanish cooperation agency in the 1980s, the Escuelas Taller program is designed to train young students in trades related to the conservation of historical and cultural heritage. The Escuela Taller de Bogotá opened its doors in 2005 and now enrolls over 400 students in its educational programs each year. Students aged 18-25 can take workshop courses in carpentry, construction, cooking, handmade paper, and theater stage building. Although focusing on traditional trades, the programs are designed to be innovative; the construction workshop, for instance, accepts women even though the trade has traditionally been male only. The school also operates two restaurants, a bakery and a store selling the handmade wooden objects. These establishments generate income and serve as a training opportunity for the students.
In Nairobi, the city dubbed the Silicon Savannah, youth employment initiatives are more likely to focus on emerging technology sectors than traditional trades. One company, Nairo Bits, brands itself as a Digital Design School and leverages the technological savvy of youth in Nairobi’s informal settlements to have a direct impact on livelihoods. The design school equips youth with knowledge and skills in web design, IT, multimedia, and entrepreneurship. The curriculum also incorporates character development and life skills that increase chances of employment. Another organization, Akira Chix, empowers the next generation of female technologists with the technical skills to develop innovative solutions to address Africa’s pressing challenges. The group provides mentorship and outreach programming to increase the positive impact of women in their community.
Whether through industries on the forefront of innovation or through fields that draw on traditional craftsmanship and arts, companies, non-profit organizations and government institutions all have a role to play in fighting off potentially debilitating youth unemployment. Check out more of the discussion on work, leverage and leadership for poor urban youth on URB.im and contribute your thoughts.
Hilarious #WeaselPecker Memes Take Over The Internet
The woodpecker-riding weasel may have already flown the coop, but #weaselpecker memes are here to stay — at least until some other shiny object distracts the Internet.
Let’s enjoy riding this absurd set of jokes out while it lasts. Without further ado, here are some of the best #weaselpecker memes:
Didnt take long for this to happen! #WeaselPecker pic.twitter.com/ErEKsX2Lc3
— Charlie Hayes (@oxfcharlie) March 3, 2015
I came in like a #WeaselPecker pic.twitter.com/9pkVciT9t4
— The Poke (@ThePoke) March 3, 2015
@sheeraf @Laradio Putinpic.twitter.com/bEsxl690Pm
— Marcel Steeman (@msteeman) March 3, 2015
To Mordor!
One #WeaselPecker To Bind Them All!
pic.twitter.com/zu7l9nKNAo (via @PollyClonal)
— The Poke (@ThePoke) March 3, 2015
Everyone’s jumping on this meme like a, um, weasel on a woodpecker… #RideTheWoodpecker #WeaselPecker pic.twitter.com/vjL3VZ1yT3
— Mark Kilner (@markkilner) March 3, 2015
John Travolta is all over the weasel and the woodpecker pic.twitter.com/HMxoDInWbh
— Elliot Wagland (@elliotwagland) March 3, 2015
To infinity and beyond….
#WeaselPecker pic.twitter.com/0wyIFKEKGq
— Elliot Wagland (@elliotwagland) March 3, 2015
BREAKING NEWS
#WeaselPecker pic.twitter.com/XFcJiVaBfT
— YOLOBirder (@YoloBirder) March 3, 2015
Travolta knows … #WeaselPecker pic.twitter.com/ZZzXx79fb0
— AngryBritain.com (@AngryBritain) March 3, 2015
The woodpecker escaped from this encounter physically unharmed, though as the memes above indicate, its dignity has been a bit tarnished.
Gender Is Actually Very Relevant In Tech, Despite What Marissa Mayer Says
Gender isn’t an issue in the tech industry, according to one of the top women in the tech industry. However, there’s quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.
“There are probably industries where gender is more of an issue,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a recent interview with Backchannel, publishing platform Medium’s tech industry site, “but our industry is not one where I think that’s relevant.”
Mayer, who’s been hesitant in the past to declare herself a feminist, was speaking from a personal perspective. Some have claimed that Mayer’s male colleagues are spared some of the criticisms leveled against her management style, simply because people are less comfortable with a woman exhibiting many of the traits it takes to run a major company. Her short discourse on gender in tech was an aim to dismiss those claims. “I never play the gender card,” she told Backchannel, “the moment you play into that, it’s an issue.”
Still, there are a variety of reasons why playing the so-called “gender card” may be hard to avoid.
Women entrepreneurs have to overcome a variety of — often sexist — hurdles to get funding for their companies:
Less than 3 percent of the companies that received venture capital funding between 2011 and 2013 had a women at the helm, according to a September study from Babson College. Women entrepreneurs seeking funds can be subject to business meetings that turn into date invitations and inappropriate questions about whether their businesses will survive if they change their relationship status or decide to have a kid.
A graph from Babson illustrating how little funding female entrepreneurs get. More than 97 percent of businesses that are backed by venture capital are headed by men, according to the study.
Even when women entrepreneurs don’t face outright sexism, they often have to deal with subtle bias. Many venture capitalists rely on “pattern recognition,” a philosophy that hones in on patterns that have been successful at other companies, to choose who to fund. That means that people who don’t fit the young, 20-something, white-male-with-hoodie stereotype may be at a disadvantage.
In addition, women make up just 6 percent of partners at venture capital firms, according to Babson. That could put women founders at a disadvantage because people are more likely to see potential in those who are like themselves.
The reasons why women make up such a small share of VC partners are being litigated right now in a trial pitting VC giant Kleiner Perkins against one of its former employees, who is claiming she was subject to gender discrimination at the firm.
Women who want to enter the tech industry as employees can find themselves in the minority too:
Spurred by calls from diversity advocates, companies like Google, Apple and Facebook released data last year on the racial and gender makeup of their companies. The results were predictably dismal. The share of women at most of these tech giants hovers at around 30 percent. At Yahoo, the percentage of female employees is slightly higher at 37 percent, though just 23 percent of its senior leadership team is made up of women.
What the gender breakdown looks like at Google.
Many of these companies have acknowledged that the lack of ladies is a problem. At Google, HR specialists are using a trove of research to help employees acknowledge and rid themselves of unconscious bias. Intel recently set aside $300 million to boost the number of women, Hispanics, blacks and other minority groups in its ranks.
Still, even once women make it in the door, there aren’t very many incentives for them to stick around:
Forty-one percent of women at tech companies leave after 10 years, compared to just 17 percent of men, according to the Harvard Business Review. A 2008 study from HBR found that a hostile work environment was one of the main reasons these women left.
The Los Angeles Times recently highlighted some of these women, whose complaints included being passed up for projects and promotions or having their projects dismissed or taken away.
“They just kept asking me to prove myself over and over again,” said one 15-year veteran.
And the pay gap that grows with seniority doesn’t help:
Overall, the tech industry has a smaller pay gap than other sectors. And while the difference between men and women’s pay starts off small, it grows as workers rise in the ranks, according to a recent study from Glassdoor, a site where workers self-report their salaries.
Of course comments like those from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year don’t help the case for pay equity. Nadella said at an event last year that women should shy away from asking for raises and instead trust that they’ll get what they deserve. (He later walked back the comments.)
One of the results of all of this: In Silicon Valley, the hotbed of the tech industry, women with bachelor’s and graduate degrees earn 40 to 73 percent less than their male counterparts, according to the the Silicon Valley Index, an annual release of indicators about the Silicon Valley economy and community.
The difference in earnings by education in Silicon Valley, according to the Silicon Valley Index.
Curt Schilling Outs Twitter Trolls Who Directed Horribly Vulgar Tweets At His Daughter, Gets One Fired
Even in the age of social media, one thing remains the same: Don’t mess with dad.
Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has outed multiple Twitter users who directed vulgar and offensive tweets at his daughter, Gabby, after the World Series pitcher himself tweeted congrats on her decision to attend and play softball at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island.
Congrats to Gabby Schilling who will pitch for the Salve Regina Seahawks next year!!
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) February 25, 2015
This is the tweet that started it all.
In a lengthy post on his blog, Schilling names the users, some of whom were ultimately fired or suspended from their respective jobs and schools — including a part-time worker for the Yankees.
Schilling said after he sent his congratulations on Feb. 25, graphic tweets soon appeared “with the word[s] rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely fathom began to follow.”
“Now let me emphasize again. I was a jock my whole life. I played sports my whole life. Baseball since I was 5 until I retired at 41. I know clubhouses. I lived in a dorm. I get it. Guys will be guys. Guys will say dumb crap, often. But I can’t ever remember, drunk, in a clubhouse, with best friends, with anyone, ever speaking like this to someone…” Schilling wrote.
Throughout the post, Schilling including screengrabs of the offensive tweets, along with the users’ handles. Schilling then detailed the names occupations of a pair of men: a host on student radio at Brookdale Community College, and a vice president of the Theta Xi fraternity at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
The pitcher even apologized to his daughter, adding she might be “embarrassed.”
“But as we have talked about, there is no situation ever in your life, where it’s ok for any ‘man’ to talk about you, or any other woman this way (and truth be told no real man would ever talk this way anyway). It truly is time this stopped,” Schilling wrote.
After Schilling’s post gained more attention, Brookdale Community College condemned the “unacceptable” tweets and announced the student had been suspended and local police are investigating.
Additionally, the Montclair State University student, identified as Sean MacDonald, had also been terminated from his position as a part-time ticket seller for the Yankees, the team said, according to NJ.com.
“We have zero tolerance for anything like this,” director of communications Jason Zillo said. MacDonald had been hired at the end of January and worked a total of 18 hours over four days, Zillo said.
Silicon Valley's Next Big Hack? Consciousness Itself
By Noah J. Nelson (@noahjnelson)
Is there something that lies beyond the quantified self movement? This MIT trained, former NASA robotics engineer says yes.
Admit it: you’ve used at least one of those self-improvement apps thinking that it would make you a better person. Heck, you might be using one right now: keeping track of steps, calories, sleep, even the number of times you checked your phone yesterday.
You might even be borderline obsessed with what this tells you as your phone and its wearable companions translate your life into trackable data. This is the core of the quantified self movement, and it has become a big business in the past half decade.
“The whole quantified self movement is a path towards self-awareness, it’s just right now a path towards conceptual self-awareness.”
That’s the New Age sounding take of Mikey Siegel, an engineer who is part of the “consciousness hacking” movement in Silicon Valley. Siegel–who has worked for NASA and holds a degree from MIT–and his cohort want to use technology to do more than just turn our activities into data. His work is all about turning what’s going on in our minds and bodies into something that can be can experienced externally, in some cases even as a collective experience.
Instead of looking at an infographic that represents heart rate over time, for instance, Siegel built HeartSynch, a hybrid science/art installation which he describes as a “technological mirror.” The installation, which made its way from Burning Man to become part of the Body Metrics collection at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, visualizes a group’s heartbeat and respiration in aggregate, guiding them towards a collective balance. Audio and visual feedback cue the group, showing them a path towards synching up. It’s a technologist’s approach to group meditation.
That focus on meditation is no accident, as the past two decades have seen a growing interest in scientific approaches