August 9, 2012
‘Irrational exuberance‘ is a phrase used by the then-Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Alan Greenspan, in a speech given at the American Enterprise Institute during the Dot-com bubble of the 1990s. The phrase was interpreted as a warning that the market might be somewhat overvalued.
Greenspan’s comment was made in late 1996: ‘[…] Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?’
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August 9, 2012
Elastic therapeutic tape, commonly referred to as ‘kinesiology tape,’ is an elastic cotton strip with an acrylic adhesive that is used with the intention of treating athletic injuries and a variety of physical disorders.
Numerous studies have failed to show that elastic therapeutic taping produces clinically significant benefits. A 2012 systematic review found that the efficacy of Kinesio Tape in pain relief was trivial.
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August 6, 2012
Girls’ games and toys are a large yet difficult market for the children’s toy industry. Nancy Zwiers, an industry consultant and former head of worldwide marketing for Mattel’s Barbie doll line, has pointed out the male-centred bias that makes development of girls’ toys difficult: ‘When I tour different company showrooms and look at what they’re doing, many times it’s a bunch of guys making decisions about what girls would like, and they miss the mark.’
‘Age compression’ is a toy industry term that describes the modern trend of children moving through play stages faster than they did in the past. Children have a desire to progress to more complex toys at a faster pace, girls in particular. Barbie dolls, for example, were once marketed to girls around 8 years old, but have been found to be more popular in recent years with girls around 3 years old. The packaging for the dolls labels them appropriate for ages 3 and up.
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August 3, 2012
The Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects (things) and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. The term ‘Internet of Things’ was first used by British technology pioneer Kevin Ashton in 1999.
The concept first became popular through his Auto-ID Center at MIT, which created a global standard system for RFID (radio-frequency identification) and other sensors. RFID is often seen as a prerequisite for the Internet of Things. If all objects and people in daily life were equipped with radio tags, they could be identified and inventoried by computers. However, unique identification of things may be achieved through other means such as barcodes, QR codes, and advanced computer object recognition.
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August 1, 2012
Project Glass is a research and development program by Google to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD). The intended purpose of Project Glass products would be the hands free displaying of information currently available to most smartphone users, and allowing for interaction with the Internet via natural language voice commands, in a manner which has been compared to the iPhone feature Siri.
The functionality and physical appearance (minimalist design of the aluminium strip with 2 nose pads) has been compared to the EyeTap (developed by Steve Mann at the University of Toronto), which was also referred to as ‘Glass’ (‘EyeTap Digital Eye Glass’). Though head-worn displays for augmented reality are not a new idea, the project has drawn media attention primarily due to its backing by Google, as well as the prototype, which is smaller and slimmer than previous designs for head-mounted displays.
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July 31, 2012
Kinect is a motion sensing input device released by Microsoft in 2010 for the Xbox 360 game console, and in 2012 for Windows PC. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral, it enables users to control and interact with software without the need to touch a game controller (through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands).
The project is aimed at broadening the Xbox 360’s audience beyond its typical gamer base. Kinect competes with the Wii Remote Plus and PlayStation Move with PlayStation Eye motion controllers for the Wii and PlayStation 3 home consoles, respectively. After selling a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days, the Kinect holds the Guinness World Record of being the ‘fastest selling consumer electronics device.’
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July 30, 2012
Tough Mudder is an adventure sports company that hosts 10-12 mile endurance event obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces to test all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie that are billed as ‘probably the toughest event on the planet’ and regularly attract 15-20,000 participants over a two day weekend.
Tough Mudder events are a new type of team endurance challenge. According to ‘The New York Times,’ the events are ‘more convivial than marathons and triathlons, but more grueling than shorter runs or novelty events (for example, ‘Warrior Dash’ courses are 3-4 miles). Contestants are not timed and organizers encourage ‘mudders’ to demonstrate teamwork by helping fellow participants over difficult obstacles to complete the course. The prize for completing a Tough Mudder challenge is an official orange sweatband and a free beer. It is estimated that 15-20% of participants do not finish. Each event is designed to be unique and incorporates challenges and obstacles that utilize the local terrain.
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July 30, 2012
Po Bronson (b. 1964) is an American journalist and author who lives in San Francisco. After attending Lakeside School in Seattle, he graduated from Stanford University in 1986 and briefly worked as an assistant bond salesman in San Francisco.
He abandoned finance to pursue writing, publishing short stories and eventually a comedic novel based upon his bond trading experiences. ‘Bombardiers’ was an international best seller in 1995.
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July 30, 2012
Machine-to-machine (M2M) refers to technologies that allow both wireless and wired systems to communicate with other devices of the same ability. M2M uses a device (such as a sensor or meter) to capture an event (such as temperature, inventory level, etc.), which is relayed through a network (wireless, wired, or hybrid) to an application (software program), that translates the captured event into meaningful information (for example, ‘items need to be restocked’).
Such communication was originally accomplished by having a remote network of machines relay information back to a central hub for analysis, which would then be rerouted into a system like a personal computer. However, modern M2M communication has expanded beyond a one-to-one connection and changed into a system of networks that transmits data to personal appliances.
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July 27, 2012
Participatory culture is a neologism in reference of, but opposite to a Consumer culture — in other words a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (‘prosumers’). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.
This new culture as it relates to the Internet has been described as ‘Web 2.0.’ In participatory culture ‘young people creatively respond to a plethora of electronic signals and cultural commodities in ways that surprise their makers, finding meanings and identities never meant to be there and defying simple nostrums that bewail the manipulation or passivity of ‘consumers.”
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July 27, 2012
Counter-economics is a term originally used by libertarian activists Samuel Edward Konkin III and J. Neil Schulman, defined as ‘the study and/or practice of all peaceful human action which is forbidden by the State.’ The term is short for ‘counter-establishment economics.’
Counter-economics was integrated by Schulman into Konkin’s doctrine of agorism (a philosophy that advocates the goal of the bringing about of a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges). The first book to portray counter-economics as a strategy for achieving a libertarian society was Schulman’s novel ‘Alongside Night’ (1979).
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July 26, 2012
The Hidden Wiki is a website that uses hidden services available through the Tor network. The use of Tor to provide anonymity allows the site to advertise links to a range of other sites, including ones offering illegal drugs and child pornography. The site provides a range of links in a wiki format to other hidden services and sites on the clearnet (sites that can be accessed in a standard browser).
These include links to child pornography sites, sites selling drugs and other contraband such as the Silk Road. Scot Terban, an independent security researcher, commented: ‘It’s kind of like any black market operation except this one was in cyberspace and pretty much completely anonymous. Because it was anonymous, people felt free to trade openly in illegal things, mess around by putting up ads for services like hired assassins, and in the end, became a haven for pedophiles and their content.’
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