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New technologies like big data, sensors, mobile, smart grids are changing the way cities operate.
Cities want to help you find parking spaces, avoid traffic jams, get instant help when emergencies happen.
Some cities are really leading the charge with super cool projects that show just how wonderful city life can be.

Rio de Janeiro watches all in real time

Rio built the "Rio Operations Center" to monitor events in the city in real time. The center was initially created to monitor the weather, so city officials could react faster to floods.
But it's also used to monitor any emergency event. It can spot a medical emergency on Copacabana beach and a traffic accident keeping soccer fans from Maracana stadium.

Hamburg port uses mobile apps and virtual fences

Hamburg’s port will soon be handling 25 million containers annually. All of that shipping is causing problems. Truckers spend about half of their time waiting at the terminal for an open space where they can load their cargo.
The port is using new "geofencing" tech to help. A geofence is a virtual perimeter that shows up on an app. Truckers get a mobile device that plots their location and directs them to open loading docks more quickly.
It also allows them to make mobile payments, so they don't need to leave their trucks to take care of financial transactions.

San Francisco offers free EV charging stations

San Francisco provides its citizens with lots of smart projects. One of the best is a bunch of city-owned electric vehicle (EV) charging stations.
There are three “showcase” chargers in front of City Hall, 26 stations in 12 city-owned, public parking facilities and 23 more at the airport and on Treasure Island.
The city promises that there will be no cost to use them through 2013.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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With Obama’s second inauguration approaching, it’s time to hold him to his campaign promises–especially those he made to women. There’s been a lot of discussion about Obama winning reelection because of women; now we need to start discussing specific actions Obama can take to create the future he imagined.

The Obama campaign began focusing on women long before politicians started making inappropriate remarks about rape, bringing women’s rights to the forefront. Last May, the Obama campaign introduced us to an avid supporter of the president named “Julia.” Julia is a fictitious young white, middle-class woman featured on the website Obama launched called “The Life of Julia.”

Now that Obama is starting his second term, I thought it was worth spending a little more time with Julia to check in and see if she still has such an optimistic viewpoint. After all, now that we’re certain for awhile that politicians won’t be moving us back to the 1950s, it’s time to hold Obama to his campaign slogan promise to move us “forward.”

Unfortunately, as a 19-year-old female college student trying to launch my career, I’m not convinced that Julia’s idyllic life will be quite so easily achieved by myself or my peers.
At age 18, Julia receives a Pell Grant for college, as well as an American Opportunity Tax Credit for up to $10,000 over four years. However, the average cost of a four-year university went up 15 percent between 2008 and 2010, with public universities in states such as Georgia, Arizona and California suffered increases of 40 percent and more. These fee increases, fueled by state budget cuts for higher education, have put an added stress on families like mine, a stress that a tax credit does little to alleviate and even Pell Grants can’t cover.



I attend Scripps College, a California private school, on a half-tuition merit scholarship.  I’m one of the lucky ones who’s able to afford the education I’m receiving, and so is Julia. At age 25, Julia is well on her way to paying off her college loans, since Obama capped income-based federal student loan payments and kept interest rates low. Julia “makes her payments on time every month,” which she is able to do after starting her career as a web designer at age 23.

I hope to be so fortunate when I begin my career, for many college grads aren’t so lucky. Fifty-three percent of recent college grads are jobless or underemployed, making regular loan payments much more difficult than they are for Julia.
Even if one manages to enter the career of her choice, circumstances remain challenging for women. Among recent college graduates, full-time working women earn an average of 82 percent of what their male peers earn, according to a study released in October by the American Association of University Women. This remains true even after the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that Obama signed at the beginning of his first term. It is crucial that Obama continues to support the Paycheck Fairness Act as well, which was voted down unanimously by Republicans in Senate in June.

By age 27, Julia has been working for four years as a web designer, and “her health insurance is required to cover birth control and preventive care, letting Julia focus on her work rather than worry about her health.” Four years later, Julie “decides” to have a child–and this word underlines that it’s a woman’s decision when or if to have a child. The word also reflects the empowered women Obama supports, as when he thanked his wife Michelle in his acceptance speech as “the woman who agreed to marry me” (an interesting contrast to Mitt Romney’s reference to his wife as “the best choice I’ve ever made” in his concession speech).

During Julia’s pregnancy, she is portrayed with her hand resting slyly on top of her stomach so as not to reveal any ring. While I respect Julia’s privacy, the real world is not as accepting of such ambiguity. Just this year, the private high school my boyfriend attended allegedly fired a teacher for getting pregnant without being married. The lawsuit is underway, but a tarnished reputation is hard to clean and a hostile employer is hard to return to.

So, while visiting with Julia has calmed my fears of a future reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale, I’m still afraid. I fear for entering the job market not only as a recent graduate during an economic downturn, but also as a woman. I fear for those women less lucky than white, middle class Julia and me, who can’t easily pay off their student loans or rely on their parents’ health insurance.

I’m afraid, but I’m also proud. Julia’s experience may be a privileged one, but it is also hopeful. Julia has been criticized as pandering to women, but Julia isn’t just one in a binder full of women. Julia stands for a set of promises Obama has made about the future, and it’s up to us to stand with Julia to make sure women and men of all races, classes and sexualities can get there together.

Taken from here.
 


Tiffany & Co., once the boon of the luxury market, is struggling because of a shift in shopper's values.
Sales growth has slowed, and business could get worse before it gets better.
Consumers want function instead of show, meaning that tech companies are thriving while frivolous retailers like Tiffany struggle.
"Luxury is battling the tech industry," said Brian Sozzi, chief equities analyst at NBG Productions. "People want the hottest gadget and are willing to pay full price because it offers greater function."
For instance, a shopper can justify buying an iPad mini or iPhone 5 because it's something he or she will use constantly.

At the end of the day, a $500 Tiffany necklace just isn't functional enough, Sozzi said.
Consumers are scaling back following the fiscal cliff and obliteration of the payroll tax credit, meaning that they're very choosy about what they'll spend on.
"The iPhone 5 and a great case that could fundamentally alter one's life for the next two years or a Louis Vuitton bag that doesn't match all the outfits in the closet?" Sozzi asked. "You decide."
In order to thrive in this challenging market, Tiffany and other luxury retailers are going to have to convince shoppers that their products serve an everyday purpose.
Unfortunately, Tiffany's had the same marketing campaign for years, said Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing.

It refuses to change.

"If Tiffany is set in its ways and keeps repeating its 'same-old, same-old' strategies, it gives more adaptable companies an opportunity to capture market share lost by Tiffany," Danziger said."Marketers must translate key consumer insights into marketing strategies that will draw the customers in and get them to buy."

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Everyone is expressing their excitement over 12/12/12 in different ways, whether it be by throwing 12/12/12 parties, updating their Facebook status or getting married. (I celebrated by hitting snooze 3 times and eating oatmeal.) Even Benedict XVI, the pope himself, is excited. Why else would he use today to send out his first ever tweet? More »

Taken from here.

Android Phones Help Amazon Tribe Stop Deforestation

The Surui tribe of the Brazilian Amazon has struggled to maintain its traditional culture amidst rampant deforestation of its ancestral lands.
The Google Earth Outreach team devised a plan to help the Surui people bring in money while protecting their forests. Google equipped and trained members of the tribe with Android smartphones, which they now use to measure the carbon offsets of the trees on their lands.
Following four years of collaboration between the Surui people and Google, the project received validation in May. Now companies around the world looking to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions can buy Surui carbon stock on the international market, and simultaneously help the tribe maintain its way of life.


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Some of the hottest tech trends of 2012, like mobile apps and solar energy, are changing the world for the better. This year, we saw a variety of inspiring innovations tackle some of the world's greatest challenges.
We've seen iPods help dementia patients, Android phones monitor carbon offsets and mobile apps prevent texting while driving.
From homelessness to electricity access, government accountability to deforestation, there are few problems tech can't address.

SEE ALSO: The Top 5 Gadget Innovations of 2012
Take a look at these 12 tech solutions to major global challenges. What innovations were you most impressed with this year? Let us know in the comments.
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More About: Social Good, Tech, Year End 2012, apps, features

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Many companies see social media as just another marketing and communications tool. A particularly effective one maybe, but just another of many.
According to Erich Joachimsthaler, founder and CEO of Vivaldi Partners, they're missing out on the biggest source of value from these platforms. In a recent report, he outlines how brands can use social media to change their entire business, not just their marketing.

"Where I see the biggest opportunity is to think about your entire business model. There's so much of this social information that is unstructured information, and consumers make 75 percent of it," Joachimsthaler says. "If you want to think about your business, if you want to create value and competitive advantage, it's about thinking about that information and penetrating it at every step of your value chain."

One of the best examples of this, which Joachimsthaler has studied in depth, is Burberry.
The first thing that's allowed them to change their business is the sheer size of their social reach. "Burberry has about 15 million — and that's growing rapidly — Facebook likes. This is an astounding figure," Joachimsthaler says. "This is astounding because even Nike is not as strong, and Nike is a $15-18 billion dollar company. Burberry is at about $3 billion. So it's a massive difference, the two companies don't compare."

They built that following by offering something useful. People on Facebook can see Burberry fashion shows before the celebrities who actually sit in front of the catwalk.
But what's truly innovative is what they do with those likes.
"What Burberry does is, it has made those videos shoppable. You can click on the particular garment and you can basically make an order on the spot. So Burberry can collate the orders from 15 million people. They haven't manufactured the product yet in China, but they have taken the orders, they know exactly how many people have ordered what," Joachimsthaler says. "They already have my money in the bank. 15 million times $200; that's a lot of money in the bank. When they have the orders, they can then send the order to China, manufacture it, and within two weeks they can either deliver it to your home, or you can have it delivered to a store and you can buy additional garments."

For a taste-driven and occasionally fickle industry, this saves a tremendous amount of money. "This changes the entire value chain," Joachimsthaler says. "The fashion business is fraught with forecasting. You forecast what will be bought in the next year, you need to produce them, manufacture them in China, there are inventory problems, there are logistics problems, then you put it in the store, the thing doesn't sell, if it doesn't sell you have to send it to the outlet store and mark it down.

Burberry avoids a great deal of that.
There's huge potential here that's yet to be realized, and it could be a game-changer for the industry. We've only seen the beginning, Joachimsthaler argues. Someday, companies like Burberry could operate with a fraction of their inventory, and never have to mark anything down.
It's a tremendous innovation in operations, and one that will have a large impact going forward, possibly even beyond the fashion industry.

NOW READ: These Social Currency Wheels Show Why Everyone Loves Samsung And Forgot About Sony

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With the holiday season upon us, we're pressed to socialize with our coworkers and spend time with family all at once.
The folks on this list have found an easy solution to that time crunch—all year round. Their cofounders are their spouses.
It's a daring choice to launch a company with your true love. If things go wrong, your jobs and your marriage are both at stake.

On the other hand, marrying your cofounder has advantages, too. Running a company is an all-consuming thing. Why not share that with your beloved?
While it makes sense for the couples, risk-averse investors have sometimes looked askance at these arrangements. But Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley have rich histories of married cofounders including the founders of Cisco Systems, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner; VMware, founded by Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum; Bebo, founded by Michael and Xochi Birch; and Buddy media, founded by Michael and Kass Lazerow.

Casey Sackett and Jennifer Wong, cofounders of Alt12 Apps

When Casey Sackett and Jennifer Wong were expecting their first child, Jennifer found no easy way to document the experience.
"I had a pregnancy journal to hand-write notes, a couple of reference books for health information, a few photos of my growing baby bump on my phone," she says. She wanted all this stuff on her phone as a few other things, like a contact her mom's support group for advice.
So in 2009, Casey Sackett and Jennifer Wong launched Alt 12 Apps with BabyBump, a mobile app for expecting mothers. They've since launched two more apps.
So far, so good for the couple. They raised $1.26 million in venture capital last spring and more than 1.2 million people have downloaded their app.

Susan Gregg Koger and Eric Koger, cofounders of Modcloth

High-school sweethearts Eric and Susan Gregg Koger launched Modcloth thanks to Susan's love of vintage clothing.
Susan couldn't resist buying cute vintage pieces, even if they didn't fit her. Eventually, she and Eric went off to college and her dorm room grew so full of stuff they decided to sell it online.
Today Modcloth employs 300 and has raised money from Accel and Norwest.

Erika Trautman and Cameron McCaddon, cofounders of FlixMaster

Erika Trautman and Cameron McCaddon fled the high cost of the Bay Area to launch their startup in the relatively affordable locale of Boulder, Colo., where they joined the 2011 class of TechStars, an incubator.
The company makes a product that allows for easy, Web-based video editing—a tool that typically has required expensive desktop software.
Since its launch a few months ago, FlixMaster has grown to about 6,000 users and has gained the attention of some big partners, like Sony.




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Larry Page is the head of the world's most important Internet company, Google.
Page ran Google alongside co-founder Sergey Brin up until 2001 when Eric Schmidt came on board to serve as chairman and CEO.
Last year, Schmidt stepped down to become executive chairman of the company, while Page assumed the role of CEO at Google.

How'd Page take Google to such great heights? Where's he taking it next?
SEE ALSO: The Google+ Boss Just Brilliantly Deconstructed Everything Annoying About Facebook

On starting a business

"I think part of the reason we're successful so far is that originally we didn't really want to start a business."
Source

On the purpose of companies

"You need to invent things and you need to get them to people. You need to commercialize those inventions. Obviously, the best way we've come up with doing that is through companies."
Source.

On having high standards

"You may think using Google's great, but I still think it's terrible."
Source



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How many times has a guy not called you back or just disappeared off the face of the earth or said he is more of a loner? Or did he use the classic, “It’s not you, i’s me.” This one of the most frustrating things in relationships and it leaves you totally confused and closure-less. But what if there was a way you could find out exactly why he or she was just not that into you? And what if you could turn that into a business? Well entrepreneur Audrey Melnik did just that. She is the founder and developer of WotWentWrong, a new online venture offering closure and answers for relationships past – and a blueprint for future dating success – directly from one’s former partners. Match.com may be the yenta of the online world, but Audrey could be the closure goddess.

Passionate about the intersection of internet technology and business, Melnik has successfully developed and enhanced the online businesses for both corporate and government clients in the U.S. and Australia, including Pfizer, Yellow Pages and GE Money.  In 2006 she was instrumental in helping Australian career-building website LinkMe evolve from startup to $10 million valuation in six months. Audrey credits her time in New York City and all the relationship fun she had here (New Yorkers really are the best) as well as the thriving tech community as her inspiration for WotWentWrong. She hopes the web app will help people from both sides of a relationship learn and grow. Melnik received a Bachelor of Business Systems on scholarship from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, where she currently resides. We chatted with Audrey for a bit about how the hell this business works,



The Grindstone: Did you always picture yourself being an entrepreneur growing up?
My parents and grandparents were entrepreneurs and I saw a lot of examples of entrepreneurship in my community growing up, which made it a lot easier to imagine that one day I would also follow that path.  To me it represented the freedom to follow my own lifestyle choices rather than the traditional 9 to 5 routine that is enforced by many jobs.

 The Grindstone: How did you come up with the idea for WotWentWrong?
I’ve often thought how incongruous it is that we spend so much time and effort improving our skills for our vocations and getting feedback on our work performance so we can improve for the future, and yet, it’s so very different when we think of applying those same concepts to our personal relationships.  It’s not widely acceptable to request and give feedback in our personal relationships and so we often move on from these failed romantic scenarios none-the-wiser as to what went wrong.
So when I experienced a situation that so many people do, where I had a perfectly good date never to hear from him again, I wanted to come up with a socially acceptable and positive way to learn from that experience so I could improve for next time, or at the very least get closure.

The Grindstone: Were you very scared to leave your IT job?
Not really- In a way I was lucky, because I had already left the safety of a permanent job many years before and was used to working for myself. It wasn’t as scary to stop working (and forego the guaranteed salary that comes along with it), and I had acquired enough funds from my consulting work to fund the development of WotWentWrong.

The Grindstone: Is it tough to be a woman in IT? Any sexist or sexual harassment horror stories?
I’ve never really felt that my gender was a disadvantage in the IT space; in fact, quite the opposite.  For starters, because IT is quite male-dominated, it means that the work environments are relatively less catty and gossipy than a more female dominated environment.  I also feel that as a female I bring a different perspective to the projects I work on than if the project was entirely populated by males.

The Grindstone: How did you raise the money for this startup? Was it difficult?
I have 100% bootstrapped the endeavor thus far.  This has allowed me the freedom to develop WotWentWrong in the direction I have, which is great, but it certainly doesn’t reflect so well on my bank account!  I’m now in San Francisco looking to raise a Seed Round for WotWentWrong and take it to the next level.

The Grindstone: Was it essential to travel the world to find the right development team?
Australia, where I’m from, has some fantastic developers.  And I would have loved to get some of them on my team.  However, as a bootstrapper, I was conscious of the cost of development and wanted to have a great outcome, with the best price.  Australian developers are amongst the most expensive in the world.  Australian dollar to US dollar, our salaries are higher, and then add in the fact that the Australian dollar is worth more than the US dollar meant that I might be able to find what I needed from outside of Australia at a better price.
Last year, when I started WotWentWrong, I was already planning to spend some time in Israel and I was aware that Israel had a vibrant tech scene, so I decided to recruit my developers from there.

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Microsoft made waves in the tech world on Monday night with the announcement of Surface, its new Windows tablet.

Everything about Surface—from the shroud of mystery around the Los Angeles launch event to the presentation's focus on hardware and design—is out of character for Microsoft. The tablet (which could be viewed as a full-blown tablet or a hybrid tablet PC) is ultra-thin, with a 10.6-inch screen and USB, micro SD and micro HD video connectivity. Surface will be available in two models, one with an ARM processor featuring Windows RT, and another with an Intel processor featuring Windows 8 Pro. The tablet is actually powerful enough to repl…
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More About: Announcement, microsoft, Microsoft Surface, surface, Tech, Windows 8, Windows 8 Tablet

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If you’re anything like me, you’ve laughed at your mom’s immense confusion over Facebook — but she may actually be more tech savvy than you are, you young and hip individual.
New research by Nielsen and BabyCenter finds that moms are spending a significant amount of time using media and are among the earliest users of tech platforms. In other words, your good old Mama Bear may have taken a leap of faith with that iPhone before you gave in and purchased the trendy product yourself.

The study reveals that mothers are 38 percent more likely to have an Internet TV device as well as 28 percent more likely to own a tablet. They’re also really good at multitasking, and while this isn’t a breaking discovery or anything, it’s rather neat to learn that one in four moms admits to “talking on the phone while watching TV or online and confessed to shuffling through social media sites while watching online video.”

So when she calls you to ramble and you punch out an email as she talks, just know that she has probably done the same when chatting with you via phone before.
The lesson here is to have a little more faith in your mom when it comes to gadgets. You can giggle all you want when she calls you screaming that someone with a nude Twitter avatar and username “SexySex” is following her, but she’s better with technological advancements than you think.
[via AdWeek]
More About: Facebook, Tech, trending, Twitter

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Name: Shoptiques
Quick Pitch: Shop local boutiques online.
Genius Idea: Brings an offline industry online; lets you shop by neighborhood.

It all began with Paris and a shoe.

While shopping in France’s capital four years ago, Olga Vidisheva stumbled across what she describes as a “tiny, one-location wonder boutique with the friendliest, most stylish owner.” There, she found a pair of suede sandals unlike anything she’d ever come across in a department store, which she promptly purchased and packed into her suitcase home.
Vidisheva says she has wanted to go back to that boutique ever since, but has never been able to. Since that time, she’s discovered some fantastic boutiques stateside, picked up a MBA from Harvard Business School and is now on a mission to make the experience of browsing and buying from boutiques available to everyone everywhere through her newly launched site, Shoptiques. The sites lets you buy clothing and accessories from 50 boutiques with one flat shipping and return fee.

Shoptiques isn’t the first business that’s attempted to bring the boutique industry online. London-based Farfetch.com, which raised $18 million in January, has made the inventories of some 200 boutiques available for online purchase. Backend solutions like Shopify have also made it easier for small businesses to set up storefronts on the web.
So what makes Shoptiques different? The biggest differentiator is product. Farfetch focuses on upmarket brands and products with pricetags not infrequently in the high hundreds and low thousands. Brands aren’t a focus on Shoptiques, and products are priced between $50 and $300.
Shoptiques also invites you to shop differently: that is, like a local. Shops are organized by neighborhood, so you can pull up all the inventory from Brooklyn, for instance, or West Hollywood. From there, you can filter by color, price, size and style. You also have the option to browse across cities by category, just like any other apparel retail site.
Shoptiques is a recent alum of Y Combinator’s accelerator program and has raised an initial seed round from Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Benchmark Capital, General Catalyst and SV Angel, among others. The startup takes a “healthy cut” of each sale made on the site, Vidisheva tell us. Everything sold online is brought in and photographed by Shoptiques. Once a sale is made, the boutique is responsible for shipping it to the customer and keeping track of remaining inventory.

Inventory and sales growth are top priorities for Shoptiques going forward, as are further curation and personalization features, Vidisheva says. “If your style is classic, and mine is edgy, we should experience the site in a different way,” Vidisheva says of Shoptiques’s plans for personalization. “Perhaps we’ll start shoppers with a quiz, recommend that they follow a few boutiques and go from there.”

Mobile is also on the roadmap, with an emphasis on bridging the online and offline shopping experience. “We want to become a destination for boutique living and shoping,” Vidisheva explains. “If you’re on the streets of Nolita, we want to tell you which boutiques near you have stuff. We really see our boutiques as partners, and we want to drive traffic to their offline stores as well. We benefit because they’ll be in business a long time, and we want to work with them for a long time.”
All that’s very promising, but we still feel one element is missing from the shopping experience: the interaction with that friendly, stylish boutique owner Vidisheva met in Paris. Phone numbers for each of the boutiques are provided on the site so that shoppers can ring when they have a question about styling or fit. But we’d love to be able to jump in a video or even an SMS chat with boutique workers while we were shopping, or see how a particular piece has been styled on a store mannequin.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/Alija

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Last night at the Campaign for the American Conversation series held at the 92Y in Manhattan, I was lucky enough to get to see Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Location and Local Services, up close and personal. Arguably one of the most recognized faces and important people in Silicon Valley (she once actually crashed the internet herself), Mayer was the first female engineer to join Google 12 years ago. She is a dead ringer for actress Naomi Watts and talks about a mile a minute. She is also very humble. The Stanford grad with an estimated net worth of $300 million pretty much said, anybody could be an amazing student and get into 10 different top colleges and then get 14 different job offers for companies like Google straight out of college. “I think a lot of people could do it, but a lot of people don’t do it.” I don’t really think that’s true Marissa, but it is a nice thought.

Marissa told Josh Tyrangiel, editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, which sponsored the chat, about a counselor at one of the extremely prestigious and academic summer camps she attended. All the campers were in awe of him because he was so smart. His name was Zoon (of course.) One day as all the campers were sitting around discussing how amazing Zoon was another counselor said, “You guys are totally wrong. It isn’t what Zoon knows. It’s how Zoon thinks.” Zoon, like Marissa Mayer, looks at the world in a slightly different way than the rest of us, which is why she is responsible for basically how we retrieve and share information. I put together a list of Marissa’s best advice lessons from this great chat.

1. There are 130 hours of potential work time in a week if you shower strategically: Okay. Now not all of us worked at startups (that then became one of the the most important and richest companyies in the world), but Marissa did. She does admit that she started working for a search engine startup at the absolute perfect time in terms of stars colliding, but Google also succeeded because she worked tremendously hard. “I did an all-nighter at least once a week for the first few years,” she said. When asked to describe her success in one word she said “hard work.” That’s two, but we’ll let it slide.
2. Sometimes it helps to not make a big deal about being the only girl in the room: Marissa said she has always been not very “gender aware” or “gender blind” rather. She knew she was always very good at the maths and sciences. Her teachers just told her she was good at them and not good job considering you are a girl or you are the only girl. When she was taking computer science and cognitive classes in college she didn’t really notice she was the only woman in most of her classes or one of only a few women until a college columnist wrote about “the blond woman in all of the upper-level comp classes.” Marissa said if she had thought about being one of the only girls it would have made her more self conscious so she was glad she didn’t notice. This helped her when she was the only woman at Google as well.
3. Technology is so fast-paced, it is easy to catch up: Not that we are all going to be Marissa Mayer, but she didn’t get her first computer until 1993, her first year of college ( a Mac for anyone curious.) She was a TA for a computer science course very shortly after learning how to turn on a computer. “Because it moves really fast, you can catch up really fast,” she said. She made this point because she finds that a common misconception with women in technology is that girls are intimidated when they get to college and are thrown in with the computer science boys they think they are way behind. Little boys have been playing video and computer games for years so she thinks girls get intimated and think they can’t catch up. But Marissa says they can, even if they don’t start until college. Look at her.
4. Give yourself a lot of options when making a decision but don’t kill yourself with pressure: Marissa stressed the importance of always having options in life and evaluating every single one of them. Of course, her process for evaluation included charts, graphs, environmental impact reports, etc., She did not make basic pro/con lists. She described an agonizing 8-hour discussion with a Stanford friend when making her decision to go to Google. He said something to the effect of, “Marissa, you’re thinking about this all wrong. You’re putting so much pressure on yourself to choose the right one. I see a lot of good choices, one of which you’ll choose, and give everything to.” So it is good to go over your options but don’t make the pressure so intense that you can’t think. “Don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself in choosing right or wrong.”
5. Find your rhythm: Marissa, 36, is a person who loves her job. In the first few years at Google she could have stayed home and relaxed on the weekends. But after she got done what she needed to do instead of going to a movie or something she wanted to go back to work. “Work is fun and fun is work. For me, it wasn’t a tradeoff.” But she says, for other people not having that Saturday afternoon to go to a movie or do nothing is a tradeoff. Marissa really sees burnout as a result of resentment. If you resent the fact that you don’t eat dinner every night at 8 then you will get burnout and your work will not be as good. Marissa always tells her employees to find their rhythm. She talked about one young man who needed to go to Tuesday night potlucks with his friends in order to feel good. Another woman would take a call at 1am but if she was late for her kid’s soccer game she couldn’t take it. And what’s Marissa’s rhythm? She says she doesn’t need a lot of sleep but she does need to go traveling every two or three months for a solid week. She does this for the new experience and also to reassure her that her company will survive without her.
6. Embrace the “geek” title: When Tyrangiel asked her what she like in high school she said a nerd and then corrected herself and said actually “I prefer geek.” She has said in the past she considers herself to just be a geek working at Google, not a woman in technology working at Google.

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Post from: TheGrindstone

Taken from here.



Surprisingly, the best part of the March/April issue of the Economist’s lifestyle and culture magazine, Intelligent Life, is not a story called “The Rise of the Man Bangle.” No, it’s the lovely cover photo of Cate Blanchett, who shows us how ‘no airbrushing’ should be done.
Blanchett, who has been spending much of her time lately as co-artistic director (with husband Andrew Upton) of the Sydney Theatre Company, is 42. And what we see above is the face of a (very pretty) 42-year-old woman. Compare that to these photos we saw of Demi Moore for Helena Rubinstein cosmetics earlier this week, where 49-year-old Moore is glossed into an image that looks more like daughter Rumer than her. Heck, compare that to some of the ads Blanchett’s done for skincare company SK-II:


I understand that ads for cosmetics or skin care products have different needs than cover photos for Economist-produced culture magazines (though really, SK-II? that woman looks barely legal). So rather than thinking of this as a screed against airbrushing or whatever, let’s just call this giving props to Blanchett and Intelligent Life for depicting a lovely 40-something woman like she is a lovely 40-something woman, and not a college co-ed.
In a statement of purpose about the cover shoot, IL editor Tim de Lisle wrote:

When other magazines photograph actresses, they routinely end up running heavily Photoshopped images, with every last wrinkle expunged. Their skin is rendered so improbably smooth that, with the biggest stars, you wonder why the photographer didn’t just do a shoot with their waxwork.
It’s a supreme example of having it both ways. Publishers want a recognisable person on the cover, with a real career; but they also want an empty vessel—for clothes and jewellery and make-up, which often seem to be supplied by the advertisers with the most muscle.
[...] Cate Blanchett, by contrast, appears on our cover in her working clothes, with the odd line on her face and faint bags under her eyes. She looks like what she is—a woman of 42, spending her days in an office, her evenings on stage and the rest of her time looking after three young children. We can’t be too self-righteous about it, because, like anyone else who puts her on a cover, we are benefiting from her beauty and distinction. But the shot is at least trying to reflect real life. It’s a curious sign of the times that this has become something to shout about.

A curious sign of the times, indeed. I think that part about not being self-righteous, though, is my favorite part. Thanks, Tim!
[Also: I was lying earlier. I couldn't actually read "The Rise of the Man Bangle because it's not online, so who knows?; it could be the best thing ever.]
Photos: 1) Intelligent Life March/April cover; 2) P&G.com


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Post from: Blisstree

Taken from here.

Eastman Kodak has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York.

(See the full press release below.)

For months, shares of the ubiquitous film company have been under immense pressure as traders speculated the company would soon file for bankruptcy.

This speculation was amplified on September 30, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Kodak had hired Jones Day for restructuring advice. This move reaked of bankruptcy.

Days later, Kodak denied the bankruptcy rumors in a statement that was riddled with caveats.

News was quiet for around a month. Then Kodak exacerbated everyone's fears when it released its third quarter financial results. It reported a horrific net loss on falling revenue. The company confirmed that it was bleeding cash. And it also slashed its revenue and earnings guidance.

After that, things were quiet through the balance of the year.

Then on January 4, the Wall Street Journal once again reported that Kodak was preparing for a bankruptcy filing. Just the day before, the company was notified by the New York Stock Exchange that EK shares would be delisted if they did not soon trade above $1 per share.

On January 10, investors were given some hope when management announced it had restructured the company's businesses in an effort to cut costs and boost liquidity. The stock soared on the news.

Days later, Bloomberg reported that Eastman Kodak had met with Citigroup to provide emergency bankruptcy financing, citing unnamed sources. That was Friday.

And at 12:22 AM this morning, this announcement crossed the wires...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 19, 2012 12:22 AM Eastern Time

Eastman Kodak Company and Its U.S. Subsidiaries Commence Voluntary Chapter 11 Business Reorganization

Flow of Goods and Services to Customers to Continue Globally in Ordinary Course

Non-U.S. Subsidiaries Are Not Included in U.S. Filing and Are Not Subject to Court Supervision

Company Secures $950 million in Debtor-in-Possession Financing in U.S.

Kodak’s Reorganization to Facilitate Emergence as Profitable and Sustainable Enterprise

ROCHESTER, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eastman Kodak Company (“Kodak” or the “Company”) announced today that it and its U.S. subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for chapter 11 business reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

“Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation”

The business reorganization is intended to bolster liquidity in the U.S. and abroad, monetize non-strategic intellectual property, fairly resolve legacy liabilities, and enable the Company to focus on its most valuable business lines. The Company has made pioneering investments in digital and materials deposition technologies in recent years, generating approximately 75% of its revenue from digital businesses in 2011.

Kodak has obtained a fully-committed, $950 million debtor-in-possession credit facility with an 18-month maturity from Citigroup to enhance liquidity and working capital. The credit facility is subject to Court approval and other conditions precedent. The Company believes that it has sufficient liquidity to operate its business during chapter 11, and to continue the flow of goods and services to its customers in the ordinary course.

Kodak expects to pay employee wages and benefits and continue customer programs. Subsidiaries outside of the U.S. are not subject to proceedings and will honor all obligations to suppliers, whenever incurred. Kodak and its U.S. subsidiaries will honor all post-petition obligations to suppliers in the ordinary course.

“Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation,” said Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003. Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core IP assets. We look forward to working with our stakeholders to emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company.”

“After considering the advantages of chapter 11 at this time, the Board of Directors and the entire senior management team unanimously believe that this is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak,” Mr. Perez continued. “Our goal is to maximize value for stakeholders, including our employees, retirees, creditors, and pension trustees. We are also committed to working with our valued customers.

“Chapter 11 gives us the best opportunities to maximize the value in two critical parts of our technology portfolio: our digital capture patents, which are essential for a wide range of mobile and other consumer electronic devices that capture digital images and have generated over $3 billion of licensing revenues since 2003; and our breakthrough printing and deposition technologies, which give Kodak a competitive advantage in our growing digital businesses.”

Mr. Perez concluded, “The Board of Directors, the senior management team and I would like to underscore our appreciation for the hard work and loyalty of our employees. Kodak exemplifies a culture of collaboration and innovation. Our employees embody that culture and are essential to our future success.”

Kodak has taken this step after preliminary discussions with key constituencies and intends to work toward a consensual reorganization in the best interests of its stakeholders. Kodak expects to complete its U.S.-based restructuring during 2013.

The Company and its Board of Directors are being advised by Lazard, FTI Consulting Inc. and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. In addition, Dominic DiNapoli, Vice Chairman of FTI Consulting, will serve as Chief Restructuring Officer to support the management team as to restructuring matters during the chapter 11 case.

More information about Kodak’s Chapter 11 filing is available on the Internet at www.kodaktransforms.com. Information for suppliers and vendors is available at (800) 544-7009 or (585) 724-6100.

Kodak will be filing monthly operating reports with the Bankruptcy Court and also plans to post these monthly operating reports on the Investor Relations section of Kodak.com. The Company will continue to file quarterly and annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which will also be available in the Investor Relations section of Kodak.com.

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Taken from here.

In an effort to better understand how trees in the U.S. store carbon, a group of environmental scientists has created what seems to be a comprehensive map of every tree in the country.

It took scientists from Woods Hole Research Center, the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey six years to assemble the national forest map from space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models, and ground-based data, according to NASA's Earth Observatory (via Gizmodo).

By taking inventory of the nation's trees, scientists hope to better understand the effects of deforestation.

The map below includes around 5 million trees; areas in darker green have a denser biomass.

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Taken from here. "I have been feeling a bit sick today so my wife made me an awesome blanket fort. What do you think?"

We think someone has an extremely thoughtful wife (+1 for Elder Scrolls: Skyrim on the screen).

Read More...

Taken from here.

Certain life milestones signal the inauguration of adult life. Among them: filing taxes, buying a home... and of course, finally figuring out how to read your electric meter. It's a skill you should know, along with these 9 other household tech fixes and troubleshoots.

Read More...

Taken from here.

Even with the safety risks of wearing an iPod while running and the the dangers of damaging your hearing, more than half of you told us that you wouldn’t think of working out without your headphones. It can be easy to shrug off the supposed dangers of these devices while running until there is something more concrete to go on. Well, now there is. A new statistic reveals just how terrifying it is to wear headphones outdoors, and it may just motivate you to leave yours at home from now on.

According to new research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, serious injuries to pedestrians listening to headphones have increased by 300% in the last six years. What’s worse, 70% of the people in these accidents were killed. That’s a number that’s hard to ignore. Not only do we have a greater chance of getting into an accident while running–or walking or biking–if we’re listening to our iPods, chances are we won’t survive if that happens.

Lead author Richard Lichenstein, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine says headphones should be considered just as dangerous as texting while driving:

Everybody is aware of the risk of cellphones and texting in automobiles, but I see more and more teens distracted with the latest devices and headphones in their ears. Ever since the iPod and earbuds have become indispensable school or commuting accessories, warnings of hearing loss have been prevalent from doctors, parents, and caretakers alike.

In many of these cases, oncoming cars or trains were sounding horns that the pedestrians couldn’t hear. In other instances, people were just too distracted to notice what was happening around them.

I don’t know about you, but even though I am a devoted music-listener while running, this statistic really bothers me. As it should. Are my tunes really more important than my life? Definitely not.

So tell us what you think. Will this information sway you to leave your iPod at home next time you go running? Or will you continue to take the risk?

Photo: treehugger.com

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Post from: Blisstree

Taken from here.

You know you’re a rookie mom when you. . .

Last month in Driving Online Without a License, I shared the research project that my 13-year-old daughter was required to complete in order to open her own Facebook account. Along with the successful completion of the project, there were guidelines, or online rules, which she was to follow. All went well at first. She was thrilled to have her project accepted and willing to abide by the rules. However, I had no idea how many more expectations needed to be in place.

One guideline I set for Facebook was to limit the number of friends she accepted. She was okay with this regulation. She felt that friend collecting was a ridiculous attempt to look popular. Agreed. So, we established that she should limit her accepted friend requests to those that came from real friends. I was content that we were in accord -- mother and teen daughter in harmony, a blessing.

Her list of friends has increased to the count of 224. It is difficult for me to believe that she knows this many people. However, I failed to define what “knowing” really means. And I failed to establish a number limit which I now think should be 50.

50 friends are plenty to network with when one is 13-years-old. Management of who sees what can be overwhelming. I do not feel my daughter needs to be placed in a situation where she is no longer in control of who has access to her personal thoughts and information -- material that can be re-shared by people she knows not well enough to trust, communication that can be misconstrued to mean something other than what was intended.

I also chose not to set an age limit on friends because there are adults I feel that are okay on Facebook, like parents of friends, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. However, one day I was spot-checking her computer (a task I will go over in a future blog post) and noticed that displayed in her messages was a profile picture of a young man that looked older than her typical friends. He looked like someone in high school. I think it was the fact that he had his arm wrapped around this year’s Homecoming Queen.

I do not usually read her messages. I feel that would be an invasion of privacy. I simply look down the row of profile photos displayed in the inbox to see with whom she’s been interacting. But this one I read.

The message was innocent from the point of view of a 13-year-old. From the point of view of the mother of a 13-year-old girl, it was manipulative. And he gave her his number -- just in case she "ever wanted to talk."

I was so mad. Mad at him. Mostly mad at myself for not setting a boundary that needed to be set: No private communication with anyone more than two years older.

Communicating with my daughter about this was tricky. I had to tell her I read the message. Whoa, the anger she displayed. But, I understood. I imagine she thought I read all of her messages.

I had to explain that a senior in high school should not be privately communicating with a 13-year-old female. The dangers of girls with older boys are real. She heard, “You were wrong for communicating with him and he is the Big Bad Wolf.”

By the end of the conversation, which to me felt like was happening in slow motion, she understood that she did nothing wrong. The guideline for the age limit of who she has private communication with was set. But I could have avoided causing her to feel as if she had done something wrong by setting the age restriction earlier -- before she got onto Facebook. I feel badly that my oversight caused her pain.

That evening she posted as a status update something like I hate 8^th Grade. I assume it was due to how she was feeling about our conversation, the new Facebook rule, or how difficult it is to grow up. I was not alarmed by her update.

Why?

Because it didn’t say, “I hate 8^th grade and my mom is mean and I can no longer privately speak to John Doe.” So, the research project complete with presentations and discussions about appropriate online behavior has worked. But I’m definitely a rookie mom at this. I am new to navigating as a rule maker and protector of my daughter through the world of social media -- a place she needs to be in order to socialize, and a place I want her to be while she is at home, in my care, and receiving my support.

She has taken a one month sabbatical from Facebook because she has the lead in the school musical and wants no distractions as she prepares. I am the one that shared the article that suggests a social media break as a New Year’s resolution, but it was her decision to remove it from her plate. To show my support, I too am on a one month sabbatical from Facebook.

When we return, I plan to assist her in organizing her 224 friends into lists and possibly cutting the number down to 50. This will teach her more about navigating Facebook appropriately and will offer me an opportunity to get to know her contacts.

Now onto the task that is Google Plus. I understand that users can protect their privacy by creating circles. But yesterday I noticed a gentleman -- whose profile picture displays a moment in time when he decided to lick his shoe -- has added me to his “acquaintances” circle.

Is there any way to prevent others from adding me to their circles? And who will want to add my 13-year-old daughter to theirs?

Kimberly at Sperk*

sperk77.blogspot.com

Black keyboard with blue add as friend button photo via Shutterstock.