Nerd Stalker

WIRED asks a group of seniors what they think about Amazon's Alexa   Senior reacts to Alexa Senior's reactions to new technology always is entertaining. The WIRED channel at Conde Nast Entertainment's  The Scene  films senior reactions to Amazon's Echo and Alexa technology. It isn't what you expect. Check them out!

Nerd Stalker Supports Casual Connect as Media Sponsor  2016 Casual Connect is coming July 18 to San Francisco Casual Connect , game industry conference, is coming back to San Francisco on July 18-19 and Nerd Stalker is on board. We loved the event the last two years and we decided to become a media sponsor of the event.  With three days and nights of lectures, workshops, and networking parties to give you the edge in today's evolving games industry.  Inspiration comes from the most respected thought leaders in the games industry. King, Playtika,   Kabam , Glu, SGN, Scopely,  Zynga , The  Walt Disney Company ,  Blizzard Entertainment , Google, Fig, Wargaming and Facebook. Join 300 speakers over 11 tracks representing the leaders in the next generation of games. Register here .

This Year's Maker Camp is supported by AT&T Aspire and opens July 11 Maker Camp Comes July 11 Make:, home of the Maker Faire,  announced last week as part of the National Week of Making initiative its plan to engage over 1 million kids nationally over the next 12 months in hands-on, project-based learning through its Maker Faires, School Maker Faires, and online Maker Camps. Launching for the season on July 11, 2016, Maker Camp -- the free virtual summer camp for young makers interested in DIY, making, creating, crafting, hacking, tinkering and learning -- returns for its fifth year, helping to kick off a full Summer of Making. With the support of AT&T, through AT&T Aspire, as a presenting sponsor of this year's program, Maker Camp remains a free resource for teachers, educators, parents, and kids. Make: founder and CEO Dale Dougherty comments "We're excited to be able to offer Maker Camp again this summer. At Maker Camp, kids work with complex c

We Believe In Tech, Startups, Design & You The Nerd Stalker Weekend Update A weekly summary from our picks in tech, startups, design. Oculus quietly drops DRM from its # VR systems Bad Drivers Are About to Be Outed by a Dashcam App First Electric Road in Sweden Inaugurated Twitter now supports 140-second videos UX Maturity: Establishment — Prototyping: From # UX to Front End Rabobank Announces FoodBytes! San Francisco Award Winners # UX Lessons In Game Design When Bad # UI Design Kills: Is Poor Shift Lever Design to Blame for Death of Star Trek Actor?"

We List the Cannes Short List of Innovation Awards Grid of the 2016 Cannes Innovation Short List Cannes isn't all about films. Still a budding category, the three-year-old Innovation category had entries up to over 380 this year from around 220 in 2015.  The Cannes jury shortlisted 39 and we show 15 in the innovation category, and those finalists each made brief in-person presentations to the jury at the beginning of the week. In addition to the Grand Prix, the jury awarded eight Innovation Lions. The category was dominated by the U.S. and Europe, with the U.S. and the U.K. each winning two Innovation Lions. From non-surgical circumcision to edible six-pack rings, check out the videos of each award winner.

#FF Summaries from Our Retweeters and Followers Enjoy Tweets from our #FollowFriday list. Have a great weekend! - The Nerd Stalker Team

Entrepreneur Taffy Williams Discusses Four Ways to Reduce a Leader's Tunnel Vision  Picture by Taffy Williams This month, we talk in depth with entrepreneur and author, Taffy Williams on " 4 Ways To Reduce Tunnel Vision " based on the same article he wrote for his blog -  Startup Blog . Taffy draws on his years of experience(aka bumps and bruises) to discuss the four ways entrepreneurs and startup CEOs can make better decisions on product development. Check it out.

DC's  1776 & Dell Announce Online Platform to Help Entrepreneurs Home Page of 1776 You have to admit, when you hear the words "union" and "federation", my geek and nerd friends would say Star Trek and not startups. Today, at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit  (GES), 1776 and Dell in partnership with Microsoft and Capital Factory have announced a new platform for startups called "Union." The premise of "union" is " to enable the next billion entrepreneurs by supporting and connecting them and removing barriers to innovation regardless of location."

Wired's Brent Rose Goes Deep Into Frozen Nitrogen  Brent Rose Does the Frozen Gallagher (Photo Courtesy of Conde Nast Entertainment) What happens when you turn a writer like Brent Rose loose with 20 gallons (75.7 liters for everyone else) of liquid nitrogen. Shot with a Phantom high-speed camera you can see why a baseball does not shatter. Thanks to our friends at Conde Nast Entertainment for preview Wired's latest  Out of Office series segment. Check it out!

FoodBytes! Announces Judges Choice, People's Choice and Highly Commended Awards FoodBytes Award Winners (Photo by SF New Tech) Rabobank, a premier global food and agribusiness bank, has announced that  Seamore ,  Imperfect Produce  and  Foodfully  took home the top awards during  FoodBytes! San Francisco , a pitch competition meets networking event that brings food, agribusiness and tech startups together with investors, executives and industry leaders. The finalist demo companies that presented during FoodBytes! San Francisco included Salty Girl Seafood, HarvestPort, Soliculture,  Chapul , New Wave Foods, Olakai, Byte, Imperfect Produce, The Salad Bar and Seamore. The event also featured 60-second pitches from nine companies – a group that was hand-selected from 200 applications to open FoodBytes! San Francisco. These companies included MeWe, Six Foods, Willow Cup, Foodfully, ShopWell, Hazel Analytics, Charborn, genuine grub, and Waiakea. “We are continually amaze

EIA Becomes First Government Agency to Make Data Available On Google Sheets as Add-On EIA Spreadsheet courtesy of US Energy Information Administration Today, the  U.S. Energy Information Administration  (EIA) has released a free data add-on for Google Sheets. The new Sheets add-on allows users to browse EIA's energy 1.2 Million data series API data categories or search keywords to find domestic and international energy data for the production, consumption, and price of different fuels, as well as EIA's short-term forecasts and long-term projections. This means the data is very mobile friendly.  EIA's Google Sheets add-on provides access to easily updateable energy data for users who do not use or may not have access to Excel. This add-on is the first government add-on developed for Google Sheets and was developed in coordination with Google to ensure compatibility and usability. The free add-on is available through the  Chrome Webstore through the Add-Ons table i

We Believe In Tech, Startups, Design & You Microsoft’s M&A: Ranking The LinkedIn Deal Alongside The Tech Giant’s Other Acquisitions http://bit.ly/23jC75L Meet the 9-year-old iPhone app developer who’s better at coding than most adults http://bit.ly/265jkjN  Open Letter from Buffer Executive Team Shows Transparency bit.ly/1UT8d4K 9 Secret Google Search Tricks bit.ly/1V4Ekf4 Honey, They Shrunk the AC Unit bit.ly/263MbFj How Would You Incorporate Robots Into Your Daily Routine? bit.ly/1YyZOqu Driverless bus harnesses IBM's Watson to shoot the breeze with passengers bit.ly/21soEXM Circle of Life – Products life cycle visualization bit.ly/1sHkmkh Promoting a design system across your products bit.ly/1sHkWyu

Sunport is the Airbnb of Solar Sunport Plug (courtesy of Sunport) Do you know what TRecs, SRecs or Green Tags are? Also known as  Renewable Energy Certificates(REC).  These certificates are what enables you to use Solar without panels.  Kickstarter alumni, Sunport , has just started shipping this spring and will allow you to use solar energy without solar panels using RECs.   When RECs are purchased in combination with non-renewable electricity this constitutes the legal purchase of renewable energy. This is how  electrical grid  connected renewable energy is traded in the U.S. This is how companies like Apple can claim to be green energy users. We talk with Paul Droege of Sunport about his product and how you can be a slick solar user like Apple. Paul also shares some Kickstarter wisdom. Check it out.

Live Video Feed Empowers Users to Track and Improve Oral Healthcare To be honest, the last thing I need is to look in my mouth (scary). But fears aside, we bumped into this Dental tech startup - ONVI which introduced the first electronic, live video feed toothbrush called Prophix. Yes, we did say live video feed. The Prophix system works with your smartphone and connected to the toothbrush via bluetooth.  Prophix claims to encourage better dental hygiene with savable photos to help you interact with your dental professional. The first video gives you an intro to Prophix and next we have an in-depth talk with Dr. Craig S. Kohler, CEO and founder on the concept and journey to bring dental tech to the next century.

Interesting Comments about the M&A of LinkedIn by Microsoft Photo Courtesy of Microsoft From jokes about reminding you to download Windows 10 in LinkedIn to paranoia about failed Microsoft integrations. Is it Human Capital Management system play? Check out some interesting and funny reactions from around the social world.

Apple Opens Up SIRI, Messages and Maps to Developers Apple moves to open Siri, Messages and Maps to developers. Also, announces Swift Playground for young coders or the young coders at heart. From Watch updates to large emoji...the apple audience reacts. Check out what the twitterverse said about WWDC 2016. 

Microsoft to buy LinkedIn for $26.2B in cash, makes big move into enterprise social media Huge news today in the world of M&A in enterprise and social networking services: Microsoft has announced that it is acquiring LinkedIn, the social network for professionals with some 433 million users, for $26.2 billion, or $196 per share, in cash. The transaction has already been approved by both boards, but it must still get regulatory and other approvals.

Korean Government Has Initiated K-Startup Grand Challenge Program for Foreign Startups to Incorporate in Korea As a supporter of Founders Space, we are happy to announce that  Korean government has initiated K-Startup Grand Challenge program for foreign startups to incorporate in Korea. The website states that "the Korean government has been injecting $2 Billion USD into its startup ecosystem in order to boost entrepreneurship, foster its venture industry and encourage international cooperation. The program is sponsored by the top Korean companies which can give the opportunity interact and work closely with them. Any startups with non-Korean, foreign citizen CEO can apply and aim to expand into the Korean market. There is no limit on the applicant’s business stage. Check out the video below.

Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch stars in AI Generated Sunspring In the wake of Google’s AI Go victory and recent  rematch ask , filmmaker Oscar Sharp turned to his technologist collaborator, Ross Goodwin, to build a machine that could write screenplays. They created ‘Jetson’ ,which the AI system renamed itself Benjamin, an LSTM (Long Short Term Memory) system and fueled him with hundreds of sci-fi TV and movie scripts. Building a team including  Thomas Middleditch , star of HBO’s  Silicon Valley , they gave themselves 48 hours to shoot and edit whatever Jetson decided to write.  The result is  Sunspring , a sci-fi short film starring Thomas Middleditch.  Ars Technica  channel on the  The Scene  has the film showing now. The Nerdy crew screened this nine min short, actually many times, because it was a little hard to get your head around it. In the beginning, the filmmaker - Oscar Sharp, tells the viewer that they fed movies like 2001- A Space Oddessy to Blade Ru

PI Labs Turns the Ducky into Smart Digital Ducky - but should they have? Here is a great story from AP's Yuri Kageyama from Japan about our beloved Rubber Ducky who just went digital. I don't know how many regular Rubber ducky's have been sold but  Sculptor  Peter Ganine  reproduced his sculpture as a floating toy way back when, of which over 50,000,000 were sold.  It brings up a great question - should all toys be updated? Check out Yuri's story. 

#FF Summaries from Our Retweeters and Followers Enjoy Tweets from our #FollowFriday list. - The Nerd Stalker Team

We Go Inside Bitly's Latest Update Good job bit.ly! In case you didn't know, the bitly UX upgrade has been out for almost a month and we just got ours. Very clean design and simple. We gave it our typical Nerd Stalker unboxing. 

Santa Clara University Accelerator and Mentor Program Accepting Applications Through July 31 Franci Gire, owner of Franci Cakes , is an alumna of the California Program for Entrepreneurship at SCU's Leavey School of Business (courtesy of Santa Clara University) Attention Start-ups and Entrepreneurs! Applications are now being accepted through  July 31  for the seventh session of Santa Clara University's California Program for Entrepreneurship (CAPE) –a program for California businesses that is part startup accelerator, part entrepreneur incubator, and part mini-MBA bootcamp.  Unlike most entrepreneurship programs, CAPE is a seven week(over six months), free, and the program takes no equity interest in the businesses it helps to launch. “Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy,” said Daniel Aguiar, executive director of Santa Clara University’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at  S anta Clara University’s Leavey School of Business , which created C

We've Hit Peak Human and an Algorithm Wants Your Job. Now What? Are the humans of finance an endangered species? People are still the lubricant that oils the wheels of finance, toiling at innumerable tasks-executing and settling trades, writing analysis, monitoring risk. That's about to change. Squeezed by low interest rates, shrinking trading revenue, and nimbler technology-based competitors, banks are racing to remake themselves as digital companies to cut costs and better serve clients.

Robots Are Taking White Collar Jobs, Too We've all heard the predictions: robots are coming for our jobs . And not just factory work, service jobs , or deliveries -we're talking white collar jobs as well. One of the industries the World Economic Forum predicts will take a hit across the world's biggest economies is the legal field.

Fynd.me  Hopes to Refine Product Searches for Your Fashion Taste What is the beauty of e-commerce? - access to thousands of choices. And that is the issue. With the breadth of choices, convenience and ease of fulfillment, fashion e-commerce continues to grow with Amazon.com taking the lead(~ $16B in 2015(est. $52B in 2020), 5% of total apparel sales ). But, even with the Amazon.com search, it can take a long time to zero in on your tastes. That is where New York based fynd.me comes in. The service learns your preferences and becomes your personal "concierge." Their current business model only works with department stores which is quite great. The quality of the photos that mature department stores offer and a solid fulfillment backbone isn't a bad starting point. In the future, I can see a Pepper robot embedded with Fynd.me algorithm to be an in-store salesperson someday.  Last week, we spoke with co-founder Charese Embree of  fynd.me  on what their service is tr

NBC's Harry Smith Talks with Jay Leno on why Leno Looks Forward to a Driverless Future Harry Smith, reporting for   “On Assignment,”  sits down with Jay Leno in his automobile "hanger" and gets Leno's forward looking thoughts on driverless cars(no one told Leno that he has to retrofit his 1971 Pantera). Smith also explores the driverless car revolution with the godfather of the technology, Sebastian Thrun , and Brad Templeton , a Silicon Valley pioneer who has worked on self-driving cars at Google. Smith tracks the movement’s origins from a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenge to current efforts of researchers racing to get self-driving cars on the road. The segment airs on   “On Assignment,” the limited series from “Dateline NBC,” airs on NBC   Sunday, June 5 at 7 p.m. ET /  6 p.m. CT .     Check out the preview below.

Cola Home - Cola Cola is the world's first Messaging OS engineered to bring new interactive experiences into text conversations and to extend the functionality of existing products and services into the Cola universe without ever leaving the app.

NBC's Lester Holt Talks with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky in Cuba Our friends at NBC asked us to share this with you. On  this Sunday’s NBC's  “On Assignment,” Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky speaks to Lester Holt in Cuba of all places. Well, Airbnb has about 4000 listings in Cuba and has some crazy growth in that market. Chesky talks about what he likes to call “the worst idea that ever worked”: the birth and growth of the revolutionary home-sharing website and app, in Chesky’s first network news magazine profile. A billionaire three times over at just 34 years-old, Chesky also addresses criticism that Airbnb faces in cities across the world. Among the others interviewed: the world’s third-richest man, legendary investor Warren Buffett, who paid Chesky the ultimate compliment, saying, “Why couldn’t I have thought of it?”  It  airs on NBC   Sunday, June 5 at 7 p.m. ET /  6 p.m. CT . Check out the preview below.

Enjoy Our #FollowFriday update from our Twitterverse. [ View the story "The Follow Friday Update" on Storify ]

Charese Embree of Fynd discusses the need of Brick and Mortars and e-commerce to co-exist Photo by Greg Viloria / Japantown Merchants Association With all the typical anchor tenants like Macys, JC Penney's and Sears reeling from profit erosion and losses, are Malls dead? Last year, retail intelligence provider PlanetRetail in their " Future of Retail: 10 Trends for Tomorrow " predicted that half of all malls will close. The one's that do survive will look quite different. The report seems to indicate that those who survive become more experiential and mall stores become showrooms with an e-commerce fulfillment backend. Almost back to the old 60's trade centers where centers promoting international trade between countries would carry only a handful of goods to "touch and feel." Brick and Mortar woes isn't all Amazon's fault with ease of shopping, fulfillment and returns as a recent Brandchannel article cites.  Will a shift back to trad