business

“The promise of virtual reality in higher education” + 6 other items re: VR

On 03/24/2016, in art, business, corporate / business world, creativity, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, interactivity, media/film, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, virtual field trips, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The promise of virtual reality in higher education — from er.educause.edu by Bryan Sinclair and Glenn Gunhouse

Excerpt:

Just as hypertext, digital publishing, and other digital media have transformed the ways in which we engage with documents and collections, the technologies surrounding virtual reality (VR) may ultimately transform the ways in which we teach, learn, engage with each other, and experience the world writ large. In a not-too-distant future, as VR technologies advance at a steady pace and become embedded in our lives, we may one day look back with a sense of amazement at students once bound to a physical classroom, campus setting, locale, or even place in time.

VR may be seen as the next logical extension of cyberspace.

Five ways virtual reality is reshaping industries — from by Daniel Terdiman
Gaming is only the beginning.

Excerpt:

It’s rare that a consumer technology is a giant leap forward rather than the next iterative step. Virtual reality represents just that kind of leap. With the spring launch of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, as well as the imminent release of Sony’s PlayStation VR, high-end virtual reality has arrived. Add to that lower-end headsets like Samsung’s Gear VR, Google’s Cardboard, and many other players and it’s clear that 2016 is the year the technology goes mainstream. While none of the hardware makers are promising to sell millions of units this year, estimates peg the VR market—hardware and content—at $30 billion by 2020. It’s not just gaming and entertainment that are poised for transformation. Here are some of the most interesting—and potentially lucrative—ways VR is being deployed.

Why you should try that crazy virtual reality headset — from wsj.com by Joanna Stern
VR isn’t just for gamers—take a journey through the virtual experiences that will make the real world better

Excerpt:

You’re going to own a virtual reality headset one day.

Yes, you’re going to put those funny-looking goggles on your face and your eyes won’t be rolling at me like they are right now.

I’ve been there. My interest in gaming stops at Monopoly. The promise of virtual reality meant little more to me than a funny photo opp.

But the buzz! It’s the future, they say! So I went on a journey to find virtual reality’s practical uses.

You can take a class of fifth-graders across the world without needing permission slips. You can inspect the countertops in that dream house you’ve been eyeing. You can feel your heart pound as you practice your big speech in front of a room of people who aren’t actually there.

John Carmack calls ‘Minecraft’ for Gear VR ‘the best thing’ on Oculus — from uploadvr.com by Ian Tingen

Excerpt:

After a hands-on with Minecraft VR – an in-development title for the Samsung Gear VR – Oculus CTO John Carmack gave a speech where he proclaimed Minecraft VR to be, “the best thing to come out on Oculus…Not just for the Gear VR but everything”.

Virtual reality headsets are roaring in 2016 : What’s your pick? — from unimersiv.com by Sanjay Bojan

Excerpt:

In 2016, although still in their infant stages, VR headsets are advancing thick and fast. On that note, here is a selection of the best VR headsets you could buy at the moment.

How virtual reality will democratize learning — from readwrite.com by Jacob Tempchin

Excerpt:

Still, I am confident that virtual reality will revolutionize how we learn, and the reason is simple. Virtual reality is not just a technology, it’s a medium. And I’ve seen how powerful that medium can be.

Jaunt’s ‘cinematic VR’ tech will take you around the world — from engadget.com by Mariella Moon
First stop: Machu Picchu.

Addendum on 3/25/16:

Step Inside a Salvador Dali Painting in Virtual Reality — from vrscout.com by Jonathan Nafarrete
.
Academia Tackles Storytelling in Virtual Reality — from edtechmagazine.com by D. Frank Smith
The University of Southern California’s School for Cinematic Arts is studying how virtual reality can be used to tell stories in the next generation of movies.
.
Virtual Reality Headsets are Roaring in 2016 : What’s your Pick? — from unimersiv.com by Sanjay Bojan

“How the ‘Internet of Things’ will affect the world” plus 3 other items re: the Internet of Things

On 03/24/2016, in 21st century, business, communications, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, innovation, internet, machine-to-machine communications, Near Field Communication (NFC), trends, usability, user experience (UX), user interface design, wearables, workplace, by Daniel Christian

How the ‘Internet of Things’ will affect the world — from businessinsider.com by John Greenough and Jonathan Camhi

Excerpt:

Here are some key points from the report:

In total, we project there will be 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020, up from 10 billion in 2015. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.) will comprise 10 billion.
Nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years.
Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions. They see three ways the IoT can improve their bottom line by 1) lowering operating costs; 2) increasing productivity; and 3) expanding to new markets or developing new product offerings.
Governments are focused on increasing productivity, decreasing costs, and improving their citizens’ quality of life. We believe they will be the second-largest adopters of IoT ecosystems.
Consumers will lag behind businesses and governments in IoT adoption. Still, they will purchase a massive number of devices and invest a significant amount of money in IoT ecosystems.

As IoT emerges, UX takes on greater urgency within enterprises — from zdnet.com by Joe McKendrick
User experience isn’t just a luxury — emerging Internet of Things, wearable, mobile, and virtual reality-based computing make it essential.

Excerpt:

Perhaps the renowned techno-futurist Mark Pesce said it best in a recent tweet: “I’d like to point out that [virtual reality] is the only display layer with profound UX implications. Fundamental ones. Ponder that,”

Pesce is spot on, of course, but we need to take his argument for heightened, immersive and interactive user experience a step further — not only is VR bringing it to the fore, but there is also the intense emphasis on connecting things — including wearables and mobile devices — into the emerging Internet of Things, as well as the ongoing challenges of the consumerization of IT, to make enterprise computing as intuitive and satisfying as consumer-based computing.
…
A recent survey of 7,725 executives and professionals shows that interest in UX — and UX testing — is on the rise. As summarized by Dennis McCafferty in CIO Insight, “respondents say that multi-device interaction–a.k.a., machine-to-machine tech–will greatly influence UX over the next five years. Which means CIOs and their tech teams should expect to devote more attention to UX for the indefinite future.”

The Internet of Things: It’s not quite here yet, but it’s definitely coming — from edtechmagazine.com by Nicci Fagan
Colleges and universities should take steps now to prepare for the impending barrage of connected devices and for the rise in IoT data.

Gartner warns of coming IoT data management overload — from readwrite.com by Donal Power

Excerpt:

The growth of Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly increasing the amount of data generated, and industry experts warn that the current river of unstructured data will soon turn into a flood. Alarmingly, a recent study highlighted concerns that most proposed approaches could lead to data management overload ineffective for the coming torrent of data.

Enterprise Tech cited a recent Gartner report that examined the impact IoT will have on enterprise infrastructure. The report warned that “due to a lack of information capabilities adapted for the IoT” an estimated 25% of attempts to utilize IoT data will be abandoned before deployment ever occurs.

Cisco’s John Chambers on the digital era: “It’s the biggest technology transition in history.” [mckinsey.com]

On 03/18/2016, in 21st century, business, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, disruption, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, internet, new business models, pace of change, technology (general), workplace, by Daniel Christian

Cisco’s John Chambers on the digital era — from mckinsey.com
How significant is the digital era? It’s the biggest technology transition in history, according to Cisco’s executive chairman—and requires a proportional response from companies.

Excerpts:

If you’re a leader in today’s world, whether you’re a government leader or a business leader, you have to focus on the fact that this is the biggest technology transition ever. This digital era will dwarf what’s occurred in the information era and the value of the Internet today. As leaders, if you don’t transform and use this technology differently—if you don’t reinvent yourself, change your organization structure; if you don’t talk about speed of innovation—you’re going to get disrupted. And it’ll be a brutal disruption, where the majority of companies will not exist in a meaningful way 10 to 15 years from now.
…
This digital age is the connectivity of going from a thousand devices connected to the Internet to 500 billion. It will transform business.
…
Business models will rise and fall at a tremendous speed. It will create huge opportunities—probably $19 trillion in economic value over the next decade, incremental above what we’re seeing today. That’s the size of the US economy, plus some.
…
But it will also result in tremendous disruption. And this is where it’s so important…that you either disrupt or you get disrupted.
…
It’s simple to describe, but it really means you’re dealing with intelligent networks—a next generation of the Internet, if you will. But connecting 500 billion devices doesn’t get the job done. It’s the process change behind it. So you’ve got technologies like cloud or mobility and cybersecurity and the Internet of Things that are very important. That’s actually the easy part. The hard part is how do you change your organization structure? How do you change your culture to be able to think in terms of outcomes for your customers? It’s all about speed of innovation and changing the way you do business. The majority of companies will be digital within five years, yet the majority of their digital efforts will fail, which speaks to what a CEO has to do differently.
…
They have to reinvent themselves. They have to reinvent their company. Not stay doing the right thing too long, if you will.
…
Not enabled by technology—technology will become the company.
…
The first step is merely making it an independent group, because if you do it inside your organization, your existing culture will kill it.
…
Companies fail to understand the implications of how quickly this technology will transform their business. And they underestimate what it really means to their economic growth or that of their competitors.

From DSC:
Some graphics come to my mind:

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

ExponentialNotLinearSparksNHoney-Spring2013

From DSC:
This is the world that our students are and will be graduating into. Are they ready to handle this kind of pace? Of exponential — not linear — change? How can we better prepare them to be successful in the future that they will inherit?

#DesignInTech Report 2016 [KPCB]

On 03/16/2016, in business, career development, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, curriculum, design, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, graphics, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, interaction design, interactivity, interface design, internet, K-12 related, MBA, microlearning, mobile learning, mobile technologies, multimedia, online learning, platforms, professional development, programming, real-world assignments, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, technology (general), training / L&D, trends, usability, user experience (UX), user interface design, using teams, vendors, by Daniel Christian

#DesignInTech Report 2016 — from kpcb.com

Some excerpted slides:

An interesting, award-winning approach from Singapore Management University (SMU)

On 03/07/2016, in active learning, Asia, business, collaboration, education technology, higher education, ideas, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, MBA, pedagogy, smart classrooms, student-related, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

SMU’s pioneering pedagogy, SMU-X, recognised globally for innovation, creativity and impact — from by smu.edu.sg

Excerpt:

SMU launched the SMU-X initiative in 2015 following three-and-a-half years of study and conceptualisation. Through SMU-X, the University introduced across all its six Schools innovative and fresh curriculum that is multi-disciplinary and hands-on, and also created unconventional, flexible spaces for 24/7 use that meet the usage patterns and behaviours of the millennial student.

Four key principles characterise all SMU-X courses:

(i) inter-disciplinary content and activities;
(ii) experiential learning via an actual problem/issue faced by an organisation;
(iii) active student-mentoring by faculty and industry; and
(iv) three-way learning by faculty, student and partner organisation, in the form of a tripartite sharing forum at the end of the course.

Internet of Things (IoT) predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, WEF, Gartner, IDC [Press]

On 02/23/2016, in 21st century, business, corporate / business world, data related items, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, human-computer interaction (HCI), internet, machine-to-machine communications, Near Field Communication (NFC), technology (general), telecommunications, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Internet of Things (IoT) predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, WEF, Gartner, IDC — from forbes.com by Gil Press

Excerpt:

So what’s the state-of-the-IoT and where is it going? Here’s a summary of data and predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, the World Economic Forum (WEF), Gartner, and IDC.

IoT_Forrester

Sources

Forrester

TechRadar™: Internet Of Things, Q1 2016
Predictions 2016: IoT’s Impact Inside Companies
Machina Research Predictions for IoT in 2016
WEF “Deep Shift: 21 Ways Software Will Transform Global Society” (PDF)

Gartner

IDC

EdTech: These four b-schools are exploring virtual reality with Oculus, Google, Samsung — from businessbecause.com by Seb Murray
Elite schools place bets on next big innovation in online learning

Excerpt:

The immersive potential of virtual reality has Silicon Valley’s finest pouring vast sums of money into headsets and other whizzy innovations.

Google, Apple and Samsung are betting that these sci-fi concepts will become a staple of everyday life, with potential uses in gaming, advertising, marketing and increasingly, education.

The hype surrounding VR and the more complex augmented reality, is not lost on universities and business schools, who are eyeing its early pioneers and conducting secretive trials of head-mounted VR displays.

Four of the world’s top-ranked schools have told BusinessBecause they are exploring VR in tie-ups with Oculus, Samsung, and Google, as they place bets on the next big innovation in online learning.

Example slides from their
SlideShare presentation:

and from the PDF:

accenture: Technology Vision 2016 | People First: The Remedy to Digital Culture Shock — from accenture.com

Excerpt:

Winners in the digital age do much more than complete a technology checklist. They know their success hinges on people. Understanding changing customer needs and behaviors is, of course, hugely important. But the real deciding factor in the digital era will be the ability to evolve corporate culture. That means not simply taking advantage of emerging technologies but, critically, embracing the new business strategies that those technologies drive.

You can’t solve this challenge just by consuming more and more technology. Nor, as some fear, by replacing humans with machines. Instead, enterprises must focus on enabling people – consumers, employees and ecosystem partners – to do more with technology. That demands a digital corporate culture enabling people to continuously adapt, learn, create new solutions, drive relentless change, and disrupt the status quo. In an age where tech is grabbing the limelight, true leaders will, in fact, put people first.

But the real deciding factor in the era of intelligence will be a company’s ability to evolve its corporate culture to not only take advantage of emerging technologies, but also, critically, embrace the new business strategies that those technologies drive.

From DSC:
Are we preparing our students to be ready for — and successful in — this changing workplace? Are adults ready for this changing workplace? It appears that some are, and some are left reeling by the pace of change.

What is our role as educators in K-12? In higher ed?

What are the roles of trainers and/or mentors in the marketplace?

How does one help another person to learn quickly?

——–

Addendum:

The Most Digital Companies Are Leaving All the Rest Behind — from Harvard Business Review by James Manyika, Gary Pinkus, and Sree Ramaswamy
Excerpt:
The answer is that a new digital divide has opened up in America. Just about every individual, company and sector of the economy now has access to digital technologies — there are hardly any “have nots” anymore. But a widening gap exists between the “haves” and a group we call the “have-mores”: companies and sectors that are using their digital capabilities far more than the rest to innovate and transform how they operate.

Questions for students studying economics

On 02/11/2016, in business, economics, by Daniel Christian

Questions:

In the article, Goldman Sachs says it may be forced to fundamentally question how capitalism is working,” Goldman lays out the case for the bull and bear sides of the profit margin debate. The profit margins debate could lead to an unsettling conclusion they say. What are your thoughts on this issue and what does data from the last 50 years say?
.
How important is China to what occurs in and to the global markets? How about the impact of oil on the world’s markets? Do recent events point to their power/influence in the markets? Please be ready to display several graphs that back up your perspective. Are there ways to temper the impact of those 2 forces on the markets?
.

We can do nothing to change the past, but we have enormous power to shape the future. Once we grasp that essential insight, we recognize our responsibility and capability for building our dreams of tomorrow and avoiding our nightmares.

–Edward Cornish

From DSC:
This posting represents Part III in a series of such postings that illustrate how quickly things are moving (Part I and Part II) and to ask:

How do we collectively start talking about the future that we want?
Then, how do we go about creating our dreams, not our nightmares?
Most certainly, governments will be involved….but who else should be involved?

As I mentioned in Part I, I want to again refer to Gerd Leonhard’s work as it is relevant here, Gerd asserts:

I believe we urgently need to start debating and crafting a global Digital Ethics Treaty. This would delineate what is and is not acceptable under different circumstances and conditions, and specify who would be in charge of monitoring digressions and aberrations.

Looking at several items below, ask yourself…is this the kind of future that we want? There are some things mentioned below that could likely prove to be very positive and helpful. However, there are also some very troubling advancements and developments as well.

The point here is that we had better start talking and discussing the pros and cons of each one of these areas — and many more I’m not addressing here — or our dreams will turn into our nightmares and we will have missed what Edward Cornish and the World Future Society are often trying to get at.

Google’s Artificial Intelligence System Masters Game of ‘Go’ — from abcnews.go.com by Alyssa Newcomb

Excerpt:

Google just mastered one of the biggest feats in artificial intelligence since IBM’s Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov at chess in 1997.

The search giant’s AlphaGo computer program swept the European champion of Go, a complex game with trillions of possible moves, in a five-game series, according Demis Hassabis, head of Google’s machine learning, who announced the feat in a blog post that coincided with an article in the journal Nature.

While computers can now compete at the grand master level in chess, teaching a machine to win at Go has presented a unique challenge since the game has trillions of possible moves.

Along these lines, also see:
Mastering the game of go with deep neural networks and tree search — from deepmind.com

Harvard is trying to build artificial intelligence that is as fast as the human brain — from futurism.com
Harvard University and IARPA are working together to study how AI can work as efficiently and effectively as the human brain.

Excerpt:

Harvard University has been given $28M by the Intelligence Advanced Projects Activity (IARPA) to study why the human brain is significantly better at learning and retaining information than artificial intelligence (AI). The investment into this study could potentially help researchers develop AI that’s faster, smarter, and more like human brains.

Digital Ethics: The role of the CIO in balancing the risks and rewards of digital innovation — from mis-asia.com by Kevin Wo; with thanks to Gerd Leonhard for this posting

What is digital ethics?
In our hyper-connected world, an explosion of data is combining with pattern recognition, machine learning, smart algorithms, and other intelligent software to underpin a new level of cognitive computing. More than ever, machines are capable of imitating human thinking and decision-making across a raft of workflows, which presents exciting opportunities for companies to drive highly personalized customer experiences, as well as unprecedented productivity, efficiency, and innovation. However, along with the benefits of this increased automation comes a greater risk for ethics to be compromised and human trust to be broken.

According to Gartner, digital ethics is the system of values and principles a company may embrace when conducting digital interactions between businesses, people and things. Digital ethics sits at the nexus of what is legally required; what can be made possible by digital technology; and what is morally desirable.

As digital ethics is not mandated by law, it is largely up to each individual organisation to set its own innovation parameters and define how its customer and employee data will be used.

New algorithm points the way towards regrowing limbs and organs — from sciencealert.com by David Nield

Excerpt:

An international team of researchers has developed a new algorithm that could one day help scientists reprogram cells to plug any kind of gap in the human body. The computer code model, called Mogrify, is designed to make the process of creating pluripotent stem cells much quicker and more straightforward than ever before.

A pluripotent stem cell is one that has the potential to become any type of specialised cell in the body: eye tissue, or a neural cell, or cells to build a heart. In theory, that would open up the potential for doctors to regrow limbs, make organs to order, and patch up the human body in all kinds of ways that aren’t currently possible.

The world’s first robot-run farm will harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce daily — from techinsider.io by Leanna Garfield

Excerpt (from DSC):

The Japanese lettuce production company Spread believes the farmers of the future will be robots.

So much so that Spread is creating the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of relying on human farmers, the indoor Vegetable Factory will employ robots that can harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce every day.

Don’t expect a bunch of humanoid robots to roam the halls, however; the robots look more like conveyor belts with arms. They’ll plant seeds, water plants, and trim lettuce heads after harvest in the Kyoto, Japan farm.

Drone ambulances may just be the future of emergency medical vehicles — from interestingengineering.com by Gabrielle Westfield

Excerpt:

Drones are advancing everyday. They are getting larger, faster and more efficient to control. Meanwhile the medical field keeps facing major losses from emergency response vehicles not being able to reach their destination fast enough. Understandable so, I mean especially in the larger cities where traffic is impossible to move swiftly through. Red flashing lights atop or not, sometimes the roads are just not capable of opening up. It makes total sense that the future of ambulances would be paved in the open sky rather than unpredictable roads.

.

Phone shop will be run entirely by Pepper robots — from telegraph.co.uk by Rhiannon Williams

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Creator company SoftBank said it planned to open the pop-up mobile store employing only Pepper robots by the end of March, according to Engadget.

The four foot-tall robots will be on hand to answer questions, provide directions and guide customers in taking out phone contracts until early April. It’s currently unknown what brands of phone Pepper will be selling.

Wise.io introduces first intelligent auto reply functionality for customer support organizations — from consumerelectronicsnet.com
Powered by Machine Learning, Wise Auto Response Frees Up Agent Time, Boosting Productivity, Accelerating Response Time and Improving the Customer Experience

Excerpt:

BERKELEY, CA — (Marketwired) — 01/27/16 — Wise.io, which delivers machine learning applications to help enterprises provide a better customer experience, today announced the availability of Wise Auto Response, the first intelligent auto reply functionality for customer support organizations. Using machine learning to understand the intent of an incoming ticket and determine the best available response, Wise Auto Response automatically selects and applies the appropriate reply to address the customer issue without ever involving an agent. By helping customer service teams answer common questions faster, Wise Auto Response removes a high percentage of tickets from the queue, freeing up agents’ time to focus on more complex tickets and drive higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Video game for treating ADHD looks to 2017 debut — from educationnews.org

Excerpt:

Akili Interactive Labs out of Boston has created a video game that they hope will help treat children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder by teaching them to focus in a distracting environment.

The game, Project: EVO, is meant to be prescribed to children with ADHD as a medical treatment. And after gaining $30.5 million in funding, investors appear to believe in it. The company plans to use the funding to run clinical trials with plans to gain approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in order to be able to launch the game in late 2017.

Players will enter a virtual world filled with colorful distractions and be required to focus on specific tasks such as choosing certain objects while avoiding others. The game looks to train the portion of the brain designed to manage and prioritize all the information taken in at one time.

Addendum on 1/29/16:

Killer robots are coming but there are no laws about using them — from hackread.com

[Re: micro-learning] Could this same concept be used inside of schools, colleges, U’s, and/or businesses? Instant Communities of Practice. [Christian]

On 01/25/2016, in business, collaboration, communications, communities of practice, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, higher education, ideas, K-12 related, microlearning, platforms, social learning / networks, tools, training / L&D, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From their website:

For Events & Conferences
Much more than a conference app, E-180 works with your team to transform your event into a peer-learning community, using both our matchmaking technology and the onsite presence of our professional matchmakers. Nothing is left to chance, ensuring that your attendees meet and share knowledge with the right people.

Report from Davos: 5 million jobs to be lost by 2020 because of tech advances — from siliconbeat.com by Levi Sumagaysay

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A new report predicts a loss of 5 million jobs in the next five years because of technological advances, but don’t blame it all on the robots.

The other culprits: artificial intelligence, 3-D printers and advances in genetics, biotech and more.

The World Economic Forum, which is holding its annual meeting in Davos this week, in its report details the effects of modern technology on the labor market, for better or for worse. It says “the fourth industrial revolution” will be “more comprehensive and all-encompassing than anything we have ever seen.”

The report actually estimates a loss of 7 million jobs in 15 economies that today have 1.86 billion workers, or about 65 percent of the world’s workforce, but it also expects 2 million new jobs to be created.

From DSC:
If this turns out to be true, how should this affect our curricula? What should we be emphasizing and seeking to build within our students?

E-commerce, m-commerce…now how about “a-commerce?” #AugmentedReality

On 01/16/2016, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Augmented Reality (AR), business, communications, computer science, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, future, global / globalization, Google, ideas, innovation, programming, society, technologies for your home, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Why augmented reality is expected to be four times bigger than virtual reality — from networkworld.com by Colin Neagle
Although virtual reality products like Oculus Rift have attracted more attention lately, augmented reality devices like Google Glass might have more potential in the market.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Among the use cases Merel listed for AR going forward is “a-commerce,” a new term that he called a “cousin of e-commerce and m-commerce” and which Digi-Capital forecasts to account for a significant share of all AR revenues. Presumably, a-commerce would mean that an AR device like smart glasses would project information like promotions in nearby retail stores or detailed product content along with the ability to make purchases directly from an AR app.

…

Don’t make promises you can’t keep when it comes to brain games, or the FTC will come for you [Chang]

On 01/12/2016, in business, corporate / business world, legislatures / government / legal, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Don’t make promises you can’t keep when it comes to brain games, or the FTC will come for you — from digitaltrends.com by Lulu Chang

Excerpt:

Promising to make someone smarter is a bold, bold move, and now, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking a closer look at “brain games” and their purported benefits. Following a $2 million settlement with Lumos Labs for deceiving “consumers with unfounded claims” in ads (hint: brain-training with games isn’t as well backed-up with scientific evidence as, say, strength training with weights), the FTC seems to be on a bit of a roll with this particular matter. In a statement, the Commission said, “Cognitive training products and claims are of significant interest to the FTC,” so if your company is telling consumers that their brains will directly benefit from your product, you better have some pretty solid proof to back that up.

Learning Ecosystems

“The promise of virtual reality in higher education” + 6 other items re: VR

“How the ‘Internet of Things’ will affect the world” plus 3 other items re: the Internet of Things

Cisco’s John Chambers on the digital era: “It’s the biggest technology transition in history.” [mckinsey.com]

EdTech: These four b-schools are exploring virtual reality with Oculus, Google, Samsung [Murray]

Questions for students studying economics

E-commerce, m-commerce…now how about “a-commerce?” #AugmentedReality

Don’t make promises you can’t keep when it comes to brain games, or the FTC will come for you [Chang]

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