For years one of my favorite tools for writing is a website called Coffitivity which simulates the background noise of a coffee shop. I find this little tool a perfect backdrop for writing and use it almost every day. In this article, author David Burkus shares some research behind why having this type of “white noise” in
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In this data visualization, the shift in diversity of both race and gender in newsroom staff and leadership across the country is analyzed with some interesting results. The newsrooms overall, as you probably expect, are overwhelmingly white and skewed toward men. More interesting is the fact that over the past 15 years the Washington Post and NY Times have
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Recently Google engineers tested a Maps feature that equated the distance you walk to a number of mini-cupcakes you would burn off in equivalent calories. The only problem is, their fun little cupcake idea was a trigger for some people with eating disorders and others were just annoyed at the unsolicited suggestion. The feature and
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In this short video of a BBC newscaster reporting about the “Royal Baby” announcement, you see a rare moment of truth where newsman Simon McCoy shows us what he really thinks about reading a relatively unimportant announcement as if it was “Breaking News,” when he knows it clearly isn’t. Which leaves us with the perfect
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It takes some serious Non-Obvious thinking to dream up using discarded chicken feathers as a super efficient home insulation material – but that’s the idea from a London duo who created “Aeropowder” and are testing its fire safety before making it a commercial product. I love these kinds of stories because it takes something we
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It is sadly rare to see a brand that is truly great at self-disruption but IKEA is one worth watching. They made the bold announcement this week that they would pilot test shipping products via other retailer sites instead of only their own. Combined with its recent acquisition of TaskRabbit and their experimentation with augmented reality, the brand
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The last 50 feet is a problem for automated delivery and I have seen lots of solutions, from Amazon’s parachute drones to Mercedes’ delivery truck with drones. What if you could send the drone to a person instead of to a place? If you combined this with a tracking app on your phone or even
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Did you hear Google was buying Apple for only $9b? The story went out over the wires earlier this week and immediately triggered automated investment bots to start trading in Apple stock, jumping the price from $156 to $158 (not an insignificant jump). Then the story was quickly taken down and attributed to a tech glitch.
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What would you do if you had to market a product that is competing with duct tape? Here’s a great 5 step strategy from the team at Adventure Tape … (1) Attack what people dislike about the market leader (duct tape leaves a sticky residue). (2) Get endorsed by media outlet targeting innovators (this story
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Every year in October, I visit Staten Island to participate in the Future of Storytelling Festival (FoST). This week I tried 3D audio recording headphones, watched a performance with music created by artificial intelligence, played a voice controlled sci-fi game and shared ideas with storytellers from some of the biggest brands in the world. This article is a compilation
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