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‘Wonders of the Universe’ Lets You Explore Space On Your iPad

HarperCollins released a new iPad app Thursday that will set you off on a 3D exploration through space using high-resolution visuals specifically optimized for the new iPad’s Retina display.

Called Wonders of the Universe, the iPad application incorporates 210 full-color articles, hundreds of photos and two and a half hours of video from Brian Cox’s award-winning series of the same name into a single space discovery app.

Matt Walton, Digital Product Consultant for Harper Collins told Mashable, “Wonders is the first iPad application to make use of two innovative technologies developed by the OTHER media: a 3D rendering engine used to create a truly amazing interface and a revolutionary publishing platform that provides a new reading experience for tablet and mobile: Glide Publisher.” Walton added, “The 3D engine is capable of handling high-resolution textures and complex animations. Created exclusively for iOS5, it takes full advantage of iPad’s graphic engine and the superior display and processing power of the new iPad.”

With Glide, navigating through the app and reading the articles is different from what you might be accustomed to –- in a good way.

You scroll through each article by sliding your finger from the bottom on the screen to the top. Images and video are embedded within the text, and when you get to one or the other in your reading, the app automatically makes them full screen. Photos are occasionally slideshows that can be swiped through, and when you reach a video it immediately starts to play. Swiping up or down on the screen will then close the photo or video and allow you to continue reading.

“Instead of following the page metaphor, Glide creates a simple, scrollable column of text that introduces rich media elements — video, image galleries and interactive infographics — at appropriate moments in the narrative,” says Walton. “Whereas many applications entice you away from the story causing distraction, Glide weaves multimedia into the narrative leading to a deeper engagement.”

The app is divided up into sections that offer content in seven different realms: Subatomic, Atomic, Solar System, Stars, Milky Way, Galaxies, and Universe. Each section contains its own unique visuals in the form of 3D graphics on the screen, as well as individual chapters on different topics pertaining to the realm. The goal behind the app is one of discovery.

“We wanted the user experience to be one of unconstrained discovery, so we gave them the option of jetting off on their own through the 3D Universe, to a Black Hole for example, where they could call up related content on arrival. But, if they preferred, they could take Brian Cox’s guided tours of the Solar System and the Universe for a more curated experience,” says Alex Gatrell, Digital Publisher for Collins.

The $6.99 app is available now from the App Store. While definitely on the pricey side for an app, the graphics and content make the experience well worth it for any space enthusiast.

Have you checked out Wonders of the Universe? Let us know what you think of the app in the comments.

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com

Extreme Craft: Marbled Eggs Are Actually Made Of 2,000 Paper Slices

Via FastCoDesign: http://www.fastcodesign.com/

Infographic: 2.6 Billion People Don’t Have A Safe Way To Poop

Via FastCoDesign: http://www.fastcodesign.com/

10 Important Trends to Survive Digital Darwinism

Digital Darwinism is a phenomenon when technology and society evolve faster than the ability to adapt. And, it threatens rigid and traditional practices everywhere. It’s no longer just survival of the fittest, but also survival of the fitting.  Businesses must earn relevance and to do so requires much more than adoption of the latest technologies or launching endeavors in the latest social or app flavor of the month.

Indeed, this post requires not only your pinterest, but your dedication and creativity. What we’re about to review requires depth not tweeting thoughts.  Contrary to the beliefs of those who push the tenets of a social business as a matter of survival, we are not competing for the moment nor are we merely competing in real-time. We’re competing for the future and at the heart of this (r)evolution is relevance and innovation.

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer for a moment. Do you know them? I mean…do you really know them? What about your employees? Have your tracked how behavior, preference, and decision-making have transformed or in some cases splintered from current mainstream activity?

To survive Digital Darwinism takes understanding of course, but more importantly, it takes leadership…it takes courage. It takes the ability to see what others don’t and do what others won’t. The future of business and customer and employee engagement is built upon a foundation of vision, trust, significance, and relationships. Set on this foundation are 10 pillars for which transformation is braced.

These 10 principles serve as the framework for an adaptable business model where opportunities are readily assessed and innovation is regularly practiced. The reward is relevance, affinity and advocacy. As Leon C. Megginson once said in paraphrasing Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

10 Tenets to Survive Digital Darwinism

Vision: The stated outlook of organizational direction needs review. When’s the last time you read your company’s vision or mission statement? If you did read it recently, would you Tweet it proudly? In a time when brands are not created, but instead co-created, if vision is unclear or underwhelming, alignment, community and camaraderie will prove elusive.

Strategy: With new media and emerging technology creating a groundswell of customer empowerment, new strategies must focus on the alignment of objectives with meaningful experiences and outcomes. All too often, emerging technology is confused with either disruptive technology, where is impacts how companies work or how customers behave, or that of yet another channel or platform for traditional marketing or selling. Far too much emphasis, budget, and time is placed in new media channels without an understanding of why or what it is that customers expect or appreciate.

Culture: This is a time of change, which requires coalescence and solidarity. We can’t change if the culture is rigid or risk averse. We can’t innovate if those who experiment are not supported. Organizations need to focus on cultivating a culture of adaptation rooted in customer- and employee-centricity and more importantly, empowerment. Culture is everything. It is and should be intentional. It should be designed. Those companies that invest in the development of an adaptive culture will realize improved relationships that contribute to competitive advantages.

People: The 5th P of the marketing mix, “People,” will take center stage. Organizations that embrace the spirit of intrepreneurialism will empower employees to experiment through failure and success to improve engagement and morale. And, by embracing customers, insights will inspire relevant products, services and processes.

Innovation: The ability to recognize new opportunities is perhaps the greatest challenge rivaled only by the ability to execute. Emerging and disruptive technology is now part of the business landscape and customer lifestyle. Innovation, trends, and hype is not going to stop. In fact, it will only amplify. The capacity to identify and consider new solutions and responses is critical. It must be supported by innovative collaboration and decision-making processes and systems to assess and react. Innovation must be perpetual.

Influence: Digital influence is becoming prominent in social networks, turning everyday consumers into new influentials. As a result, a new customer hierarchy is developing forcing businesses to identify and engage to those who rank higher than others. There is no future in any business model that is cemented in reactive engagement. Organizations should identify and engage all connected customers to extend reach outside of problems. Businesses must engage when touchpoints emerge, during decision-making cycles, when positive experiences are shared, or to proactively feed the results who search for insight and direction.  Contributing value to people and investing time and energy into networks of relevance will also earn any organization a position of equal or greater influence.

Localization: For global organizations hoping to connect with customers around the world, localization & contextualization are king in any engagement strategy. This is also true for any engagement strategy regardless of local. Many companies are jumping on every bandwagon imaginable, syndicating content, thinning resources, and investing no more in each network than what’s necessary to maintain a pulse. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube, Foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora become broadcast channels for one-to-many strategies and programs that do very little for cultivating dedicated and engaged communities.

Intelligence: One of the biggest trends in 2011 was the development of social media command centers. At the heart of these sophisticated data gathering silos were conversations and tools that allowed community managers to listen, respond, and promote engagement within the company. While social media is introducing the art & science of monitoring to marketing and service teams it is the organizations that invest in technology, teams and processes that will translate activity into actionable insights.

Philanthropic Capitalism: Customers expect values to match their own core values. What used to be a necessary checklist of community focus, such as corporate social responsibility or CSR is now rebooted. Philanthropic capitalism is a business model where companies contribute to worthwhile causes on behalf of customers as part of the transaction. Additionally, customers are expressing that they will also invest in companies where employees are “treated well,” pledging trust and loyalty as a result. The empathetic business model on the horizon requires charitable and sustainable decisions as part of everyday business where customers naturally become stakeholders.

An ode to leadership:

The answers you seek lie in intelligence and empathy. Leadership unfolds in how you translate what you learn and feel into appreciation and understanding of the state of customer sentiment and how that correlates to the state of customer relationships.

Once you listen, not monitor, but truly listen to customer activity and observe online behavior, you cannot help but feel both empathy and harmony. And naturally, the response it begets is only human.

Via Brian Solis: http://www.briansolis.com

Activist Group Says Apple Hired Auditors As PR Move REPORT

Activist group SumOfUs is preemptively contesting the validity of an audit by the Fair Labor Association (FLA), saying Apple’s hiring of the organization is simply a public relations front.

Expect the audit, which will be released this week, to be critical of the factories, but as far as making impactful changes, SumOfUs said it’s doubtful Apple will follow through.

“A critical report from the FLA will not, in and of itself, constitute proof that a new day is dawning in Apple’s supply chain,” SumOfUs said in a memo to journalists. “It will only be proof that the FLA and Apple are smart enough to understand that no one, at this point, is going to be fooled by a whitewash.”

The organization said Apple’s promises to make changes to its factories and working conditions are simply a ploy to bolster the company’s image in the eyes of the public. The memo SumOfUs sent compares two statements Apple made about its commitment to change factory conditions. The first statement was made in 2006 and the second just earlier this year. Both address the company’s commitment to fight back against employees working more than 60 hours per week and tout the fact it hired an external company to screen factories for workplace violations.

Neither Apple or the Fair Labor Association has responded to our request for comment, and we’ll update this story if they do.

The FLA was already criticized for issuing a glowing review of Apple factories after spending just one day with plant managers. Apple voluntarily hired the FLA to conducted audits of its factories after widespread reports of unfair and dangerous labor conditions. In an audit earlier this year — one that Apple had expedited due to mounting criticism — the FLA said the company’s factories were not as bad as surrounding garment factories. CNN reported that Apple doesn’t state how much money its paid the FLA to audit its factories, but is likely its biggest client.

SumOfUs said Apple could view reports by SACOM, China Labor Watch and SOMO, or journalists to see that Apple’s factories were in violation of workers’ rights, rather than hire the FLA. There have been many credible journalists’ accounts from Apple’s factories in China, with the exception of performer Mike Daisy whose popular storytelling of life for workers at Foxconn was partially fabricated. Other legitimate reports show that Foxconn employees are overworked and underpaid.

When the audit is complete, expect it to be posted on the FLA’s website.

What do you think is Apple’s motivation in hiring the FLA? Tell us in the comments.

‪Photo courtesy of iStockphoto/RichPhotographics‬

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com

Boeing Freezes Design With Liquid Natural Gas Powerd Airliner

The next great evolution in airline efficiency could come in the form of liquid natural gas. Boeing recently submitted a proposal to NASA as part of an ongoing effort by several airplane manufacturers to imagine what might be possible in the next generation of airliners, and the use of LNG may be an attractive alternative to traditional fuel thanks to its lower emissions, cost and higher availability.

Boeing’s proposal is a stretched version of an efficient airliner design the company submitted to NASA in 2010 as part of the Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research project (yes, SUGAR). At the time the focus was on an efficient wing mounted higher on the fuselage and fitted with advanced engines, but the concept still used traditional jet fuel. Other participants included MIT’s ‘double bubble’ design with an equally sleek and efficient wing.

For its latest project, Boeing stretched the fuselage to make room for a pair of LNG tanks: one in the tail and one near the nose. Because of the very cool temperatures needed to store liquid natural gas, Boeing is calling the latest project SUGAR Freeze. In 2010 NASA was pushing companies for designs that could reduce fuel burn by 60 percent compared to a typical 737-800 used today. Using LNG, Boeing believes it can get the SUGAR design to 57 percent, and using open propeller, unducted fan jet engines the company thinks it could achieve a 62 percent boost according to Aviation Week and Space Technology.

Not afraid to push things a step further, Boeing also included SUGAR designs with both fuel cell and battery powered electric motors to further boost efficiency.

While these efforts look good on paper – or more accurately, hard drives – at this point the widespread adoption of natural gas in aviation has several hurdles to overcome. Both safety and design
issues mean that the technology wouldn’t be ready until 2040 or 2050, at the earliest.

It will still require a big appetite for both risk and imagination, something that’s been decidedly lacking in the past few decades. Since the introduction of the first jet airliners in the 1950s, little has changed in the basic design. Most of the efficiency gains have been made with incremental improvements in aerodynamics and engine design.

Getting an LNG powered airplane, a double bubble or a blended wing body will be a massive challenge for companies like Boeing, requiring the proper balance of risk and reward to produce the next revolutionary airliner rather than another 30 years of gradual evolution.

Via Wired Autopia: http://www.wired.com/autopia/

Google’s Autonomous Prius Drives Blind Man to Taco Bell

Steve Mahan is clinically blind, having lost 95 percent of his vision over the course of several years. But on a sunny day in the Bay Area, the Google crew arrived to shuttle him around, running errands like the rest of us and making a trip through the Taco Bell drive-through.

It’s one of the most compelling cases for driverless cars.

Steve’s freedom could be regained when autonomous vehicles make it to the mainstream, enabling other visually-challenged denizens to enjoy the freedoms most of us take for granted.

As we highlighted in last month’s cover issue, the age of the autonomous car is coming up quickly, with Google, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and General Motors all working on new, innovative ways of making the driverless car a reality.

Still, there’s more to this video than Google’s brief YouTube description conveys.

To begin with, the legal hurdles of self-driving cars are numerous and varied. While Nevada has enacted legislation to allow the testing of driverless vehicles on public roads, there are still a myriad of legislative challenges ahead, ranging from how many occupants have to be in the vehicle to who’s at fault if a collision occurs.

Partner that with the fact that destinations have to be pre-programmed and the waters get even murkier, although Google concedes that Mahan’s ride was “a carefully programmed route.”

But even with all that in mind, after watching Steve’s simple journey for a bad burrito, how can you not get behind a technology that enables one of the most quintessentially American freedoms?

Via Wired Autopia: http://www.wired.com/autopia/

Ramen Cups Become Surreal Porcelain Mementos Of Your College Years

Layar Wants To Turn Print Pages Into Augmented Reality Gateways

Is the augmented reality company’s plan for interactive print an augmented fantasy?

The Dutch national post service posts a magazine called “Er is post!” through every household’s letterbox every quarter but this week’s edition has something extra-dimensional to it–augmented reality via Layar. Think of it as scratch-n-sniff for the Internet era.

Layar’s blog post points out that readers can interact with every page in the magazine that has a Layar logo–Layar has pre-programmed the app to deliver specific extra information that relates to every one of these pages. The user simply has to tap at the augmented pop-over and get taken to websites, Facebook like actions, YouTube videos, apps, and so on.

It’s about making a traditional printed page “pop” more, and it’s about adding a long tail to printed advertising–ensuring that the user remains engaged with the brand for more time, and in more meaningful ways than simply absorbing the static information from fixed words and images.

People have tried this for years. There’s the recent and strange love affair with QR codes, for example. You’ll probably remember when it was cool to have red/green “3-D” adverts in magazines. And if you’ve never heard of CueCat then do yourself a favor and look it up–it’s an example of early “augmented” information related to magazines that relied on barcodes and a computer…and it was such a disastrously failed experiment that there have to be several lessons in here for Layar concerning information sharing and audience engagement.

What’s new is how Layar is not just enhancing pages but using the print pages as a way to reveal new layers–Layars, if you will–of hidden information and experience. “I think augmented print, or as we like to call it, interactive print, is the path to mass usage and adoption. It’s how you will use AR without knowing it but millions of people will do it,” Maarten Lenz-Fitzgerald, founder of Layar, tells Fast Company. “It is new, yet print is in the unique position of explaining it to its large readership and then provide a useful and fun experience. Something the reader will want to do again and what the publisher and advertiser can turn into business. Also readers can enjoy the digital action and content without putting the magazine down.”

“Lots of people read and use print,” Lenz-Fitzgerald adds. “In a sense it’s a great infrastructure. And what we do is connect the dynamics of print to the traditions of paper. To grow the publishers and advertisers business and to provide a better experience for the reader.”

Layar will still have to warm up users to the idea of holding their phones up to a magazine to use AR–not a natural process–there’s a slightly awkward juggling act required to hold the phone in one hand and aim at the page in front of you. Plus there’s that inescapable sensation that what you’re seeing is a 21st century warm-over of an old idea for improving audience engagement.

But you can’t fault Layar for achieving exposure: Six million people learned about Layar and augmented reality in one swoop with this week’s trick. And in a near future where we’re all wearing Google’s “Goggles” or some even better wearable AR/display tech, then this may ultimately be how AR works… Layar’s just showing us a glimpse of it now, very early, which is why it feels odd. Or are we being hopelessly optimistic?

Via Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com

Education Equality: How Pencils Became Vital to Online Fundraising

 

The World at Work is powered by GE. This new series highlights the people, projects and startups that are driving innovation and making the world a better place.

Name: Pencils of Promise

Big Idea: By adopting the pencil, both symbolically and literally, the non-profit organization builds schools and educates children in developing countries.

Why It’s Working: PoP’s newest campaign, Made With Pencils, engages participants via online art auctions, killer website design and a social media strategy that dates back to the roots of Facebook.

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Pencils of Promise (PoP) is a global project that aims to build schools and establish learning initiatives for millions of children around the globe who lack access to education. The non-profit organization — or as its 28-year-old founder Adam Braun would call it, the “for-purpose organization” — has already helped lower the number of uneducated children from 75 million in 2006 to 67 million today.

The organization’s namesake pencil is more than just a totem representing education. Braun conceived of the idea for PoP while traveling through India, where he encountered a young boy. When Braun asked what the child wanted most in the world, the boy answered, “a pencil.”

“We assume that every child has that,” says Braun. “I had this very direct, firsthand experience with a young boy, who basically illuminated that it’s just not the case. Not only for him, but for millions of children worldwide.”

Since that experience in 2008, Braun launched PoP, the supporters of which have helped raise the funds to open more than 50 schools throughout Laos, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Did we mention that one of his major supporters is Justin Bieber? Not too shabby.

Other celebrities (or “cultural luminaries,” in Braun’s terms) have contributed to PoP’s newest campaign, Made With Pencils. Launched during the 2011 holiday season, the project hosted an online auction where supporters could bid on pencil art crafted by celebs like Coldplay, Mariah Carey and Shaquille O’Neal. The next auction is planned for the 2012 holidays.

The initiative raised thousands of dollars, which goes a long way in global education. PoP can educate one child for an entire year on only $25, and the organization can build an entire classroom for $10,000. How do we know? The Made With Pencils campaign also includes The Pencil Shop, where “everyday philanthropists” can choose among six pencils, each of which costs between $25 and $25,000. Etched into the pencils, you’ll see phrases like, “This pencil educates ten children.”

Think of the pencils as a 2012 take on the Livestrong bracelets. “People said to us over and over, ‘I love Pencils of Promise so much, but I want to have a reason to talk about it. I want people to ask me so I can tell them more.’” says Braun. “I find that the people that are purchasing our pencils are those who want to make a character statement about their personal values.”

Those people also tend to be relatively young, which translates to being very digitally-savvy, says Braun. When asked what earned PoP the largest social media following of any non-profit in the last four years, Braun explains that “we were this lean, scrappy startup in the non-profit space. We didn’t want to spend any money on advertising, so we’ve only put our time and energy into digital. And because of that, I think it’s now paid off.”

With more than 150,000 followers on its Facebook alone, we’d agree.

PoP will use its strong digital presence to help spread the word about its latest goal: to build 100 new schools throughout the world in 2012. We’ll be sure to “pencil” that into our calendars.

 

Series presented by GE

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