Daily news of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Cisco, Spotify, Microsoft, and Hp.
Cisco: It seems every tech-company CEO has raced to the blogosphere to respond to the FCC's National Broadband Plan. Cisco chair John Chambers isn't far behind Google's Eric Schmidt (who recently compared the initiative to the 1960s space race) and others in voicing strong support for the plan. "If the U.S. military ranked 17th in the world, you can bet that as a nation we would make strengthening our armed forces a national priority," Chambers said in a blog post. "The national broadband plan sent to Congress on Mar. 16 by the Federal Communications Commission is critical to our economic and national security. Without a plan, we simply cannot compete."
Spotify: At SXSW today, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek boasted that on certain days the cloud-based music service is "consuming more Internet capacity than Sweden as a country.
Cisco: It seems every tech-company CEO has raced to the blogosphere to respond to the FCC's National Broadband Plan. Cisco chair John Chambers isn't far behind Google's Eric Schmidt (who recently compared the initiative to the 1960s space race) and others in voicing strong support for the plan. "If the U.S. military ranked 17th in the world, you can bet that as a nation we would make strengthening our armed forces a national priority," Chambers said in a blog post. "The national broadband plan sent to Congress on Mar. 16 by the Federal Communications Commission is critical to our economic and national security. Without a plan, we simply cannot compete."
Spotify: At SXSW today, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek boasted that on certain days the cloud-based music service is "consuming more Internet capacity than Sweden as a country.
- 3/18/2010
- by Austin Carr
- Fast Company
The real question facing Haiti isn't whether to rebuild the capital or move it inland; it's how do you build a city that creates opportunities instead of slums?
Haiti isn't just the world's most pressing case of disaster recovery following last month's earthquake. It's the place most in need of some instant city-building.
Port-au-Prince--home to two million inhabitants and a fifth of Haiti's population--is effectively leveled. The United Nations estimates 75% of the city will need to be rebuilt, with 500,000 people still sleeping in the streets. Others have moved out of the city and into emergency tents, lean-tos, and shelters. The International Organization for Migration told The New York Times last week that it could be five years before residents move back into houses, and that they could look forward to living in glorified "garden sheds" until then.
So far, the debate has focused on whether displaced capital-dwellers should permanently relocate.
Haiti isn't just the world's most pressing case of disaster recovery following last month's earthquake. It's the place most in need of some instant city-building.
Port-au-Prince--home to two million inhabitants and a fifth of Haiti's population--is effectively leveled. The United Nations estimates 75% of the city will need to be rebuilt, with 500,000 people still sleeping in the streets. Others have moved out of the city and into emergency tents, lean-tos, and shelters. The International Organization for Migration told The New York Times last week that it could be five years before residents move back into houses, and that they could look forward to living in glorified "garden sheds" until then.
So far, the debate has focused on whether displaced capital-dwellers should permanently relocate.
- 2/8/2010
- by Greg Lindsay
- Fast Company
There was nothing wrong with regular camcorders--at least it didn't seem that way until Pure Digital released the Flip Ultra. Here was a video recorder that solved every problem that you never really knew you had with other camcorders. Like the fact that you forgot to charge your battery most of the time, and usually filmed in low light. And it packed the solutions into a smart, pocket-sized body that didn't trade down in quality or affordability. Pure Digital has gone on to sell 2 million camcorders since releasing the original Flip in May 2007, generating an estimated $150 million in revenue. No wonder Cisco bought the company that makes the Flip, Pure Digital, last month for $590 million.
Luckily, you only have to pay $199 to buy Pure Digital's newest camcorder. For the past week, I've been testing the Flip UltraHD. Trying to improve on a device that is successful because of its simplicity can be dicey.
Luckily, you only have to pay $199 to buy Pure Digital's newest camcorder. For the past week, I've been testing the Flip UltraHD. Trying to improve on a device that is successful because of its simplicity can be dicey.
- 4/30/2009
- by Noah Robischon
- Fast Company
Cisco CEO John Chambers is "healthily paranoid," he told the BBC today. Maybe that's why he's planning to spread sci-fi, panopticon-esque vigilance across entire cities and even ecosystems, in a collaboration with Nasa with the portentous name of Planetary Skin.
"In a nutshell, Planetary Skin is a massive global-monitoring system of environmental conditions that will enable effective decision making in the private and public sectors and in communities, with data that is collected from myriad sources including space, airborne, maritime, terrestrial and people-based sensor networks, analyzed, verified and reported over an open standards based Web 2.0 and 3.0 collaborative spaces for decision makers."
Translation: Electric eyes counting traffic on roads. Rfid tags tracing apples from field to market. Satellites in space tracking ice sheets and tidal flows. All of it connected through wireless networks, monitored, measured and managed with the same kind of software that a Wal-Mart would use to provide just-in-time...
"In a nutshell, Planetary Skin is a massive global-monitoring system of environmental conditions that will enable effective decision making in the private and public sectors and in communities, with data that is collected from myriad sources including space, airborne, maritime, terrestrial and people-based sensor networks, analyzed, verified and reported over an open standards based Web 2.0 and 3.0 collaborative spaces for decision makers."
Translation: Electric eyes counting traffic on roads. Rfid tags tracing apples from field to market. Satellites in space tracking ice sheets and tidal flows. All of it connected through wireless networks, monitored, measured and managed with the same kind of software that a Wal-Mart would use to provide just-in-time...
- 4/14/2009
- by Anya Kamenetz
- Fast Company
Cisco Systems, most commonly associated with business technology infrastructure and networking hardware, is using a chunk of its massive cash reserves to buy Pure Digital Technologies--creators of the highly popular Flip range of cheap digital video camcorders.
If it sounds like the two make strange bedfellows, then think again: Cisco's reasoning is sound. Pure Digital's Flip range was a surprising "revolution" in the photography market--representing a simple, low-end re-think of video tech in light of the popularity of online videos through YouTube and its ilk. The company sold 1.5 million of the "one-button" camcorders in just 18 months, earning a 2008 revenue of 150 million, and that pushed it to the number seven slot on our list of the 50 most innovative companies.
Cisco, which jumped from #37 to #5 on our list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies this year, says Pure Digital has now sold over two million of its cameras in the U.S. and...
If it sounds like the two make strange bedfellows, then think again: Cisco's reasoning is sound. Pure Digital's Flip range was a surprising "revolution" in the photography market--representing a simple, low-end re-think of video tech in light of the popularity of online videos through YouTube and its ilk. The company sold 1.5 million of the "one-button" camcorders in just 18 months, earning a 2008 revenue of 150 million, and that pushed it to the number seven slot on our list of the 50 most innovative companies.
Cisco, which jumped from #37 to #5 on our list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies this year, says Pure Digital has now sold over two million of its cameras in the U.S. and...
- 3/19/2009
- by Kit Eaton
- Fast Company
- It manifests itself in the projects he is attached to (most of the time as writer and/or director) – whether the issue is foreign policy, politics, counter intelligence, international intrigue, George Clooney is a magnate such material. After picking up the screen rights for the just announced Our Brand is Crisis and The Innocent Man recent performances in Syriana, the Smoke House shingle is adding another ‘covert’ operation to its ‘to do’ list. I’m not sure if this will adopt a tone closer to Escape from Alcatraz or Midnight Express, but we can only hope that Clooney and his Smoke House partner Grant Heslov make an interesting true story into an engaging screenplay. Variety reports that Warner Bros. Pictures picked up the film rights to Joshuah Berman's Wired magazine article on the real-life intelligence tale and set it up with Smoke House to produce. Of course, this also
- 5/3/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
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