Google – Page 18

January 20, 2014

On Google’s Smart Contact Lenses

As a diabetic, I had some thoughts on Google’s Smart Contact Lenses and posted about them over on Gigaom. While I think the circuits and chip miniaturization work they have done is laudable, I am not so sure that focusing on contacts-for-diabetics is the right approach. The piece resulted in a lively conversation and the comments are worth reading. There is a whole lot of wisdom and difference of opinion in comments, many from diabetics including those who suffer from Type 1 diabetes. Like I said, it was one diabetic’s take on Google’s contact lens efforts. If you have time, check it out. (In comparison to our thread the Google+ thread is filled with vitriol.)

Musings

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January 19, 2014

What I am reading today

How Technology killed the future. [Douglas Rushkoff]
Can the global Internet survive realism about surveillance. [Matthew Yglesias]
Is search changing? [Mark Cuban]
Beats can’t save the music industry, but this new business model could. [Tyler Hayes]
Move to Dubuque, not San Francisco. [Jim Russell]
Why new features usually flop. [Des Traynor]
Writing is thinking. [Sally Kerrigan]
This used to be a newsroom. [Anna Clark]
Google, the conglomerate: After Nest, no industry is safe. [Michael Mace]
Back to the digital drawing board. [Susan Crawford]
Why car and energy companies have a hard time experimenting like Google does. [Katie Fehrenbacher]

Musings

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January 14, 2014

Tony Fadell on why he sold Nest to Google

Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod and the co-founder and CEO of startup Nest Labs, wants to get back to doing what he does best: being a designer. That’s one of the reasons why Fadell and his team have sold Nest — their young startup that makes smart thermostats and sleek smoke detectors — to Google for an eye-opening $3.2 billion, or roughly 5.8 percent of Google’s total cash.

In an interview with Gigaom following the announcement of the deal, Fadell told us how he wants to refocus on designing product experiences instead of spending his time on scaling and infrastructure — something that’s long been at the core of massive Google. It’s certainly “not about laptops and phones,” joked Fadell; it’s more about a marriage of hardware, software and services, he explained. And the deal has been under discussion for a long time, he noted, Sergey Brin was

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Musings

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December 24, 2013

What I am reading today

Google’s road map to global domination. A great piece about Google building out its maps and going places where no camera has gone before.
We are re-living a traditional Victorian Christmas — of excess for the few and struggle for many. Things never really change, the New Statesman argues.
2014 IT tech predictions from Mike Kail, CIO of Netflix. Great stuff, though serious cloud nerds might want to click through.
Generation X is sick of your bullshit. Mat Honan joint from October 2011 is still dope.
Apple thinks different for Christmas. Ken Segall, formerly of Apple where he did marketing has a good take on Apple’s newest ads.
Google’s Robot army: Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, writes about the coming robot smog
The year in robotic seduction: Anshuman Iddamsetty offered a different point of view on Boston Dynamics and robots.
2013 was the year of