iOS app opportunity in Iceland

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A problem that occurs in small island nations:

There are only about 320,000 people living in Iceland. A small island nation, it’s also isolated from the rest of the world, so you don’t have a lot of immigration, historically, and therefore, you don’t have a lot of genetic diversity. In some sense, the vast majority of Iceland’s population are branches from the same family tree.

Software that interprets your facial expressions

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When you are in a face-to-face conversation, the person on the other side is constantly reading and interpreting your facial expressions, looking for feedback. If you offer a puzzled look, they might rephrase their words, without you having to ask.

Drone feasibility analysis

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Thoughtful analysis from MIT Technology Review that slices through the hype and paints a realistic picture of the limitations Amazon will face in bringing drones into service.

Drone delivery service in China

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Interesting article on the emergence of drone delivery in China. With fewer regulatory hurdles to overcome, Chines drone delivery is being explored by a number of companies.

Point device at food, it tells your phone food’s ingredients

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Spectrometers have been around a long time, but the TellSpec proposes to be a pretty fascinating implementation. Point it at your food and it runs a spectral analysis, sends details on its findings to an app on your phone. Pretty cool. If it really works.

Debugging a live Saturn V rocket

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Brennan Moore’s grandfather was an Apollo engineer. This is from his personal memoirs. It’s the story of a problem he helped fix during the launch of an unmanned Saturn V rocket on November 9th, 1967.

Tesla takes on lawmakers with loaner cars and star power

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Tesla is a non-traditional automaker and faces a constant battle against lawmakers protecting the existing auto sales infrastructure. This article lays out the Tesla strategy to battle that entrenched mindset.

Microsoft takes on Google Chromebook in this tin-eared ad

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If you are going to create an attack ad, it better be either irrefutably in-the-right or incredibly clever. This ad makes the case that the Chromebook is not a real laptop, that when it is not connected to the internet, it is “pretty much a brick.” I don’t own a Chromebook, and I’m not necessarily a Chromebook fan, but fair is fair. A “brick”? It took me all of 2 minutes reading reviews to dispel this myth.

I get the fact that the Chromebook might not be as useful when you are not connected to the net, given that it was designed with Google’s online suite of apps in mind. But not one review I read implied that the Chromebook is useless when off-line.

iPhone compatible hearing aids

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I have a number of close friends and family members who use hearing aids. This is a huge step forward.

How Apple might incorporate PrimeSense 3D tech into its products

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Juli Clover’s take on the 3D object sensing technology Apple just acquired when they purchased PrimeSense. As much as she sees, my guess is, Apple sees much more. Object sensing technology has been around since the 1970s, when Patrick Winston first wrote about computer vision and described the artificial intelligence algorithms needed for a computer to distinguish the corners that make up a room.

The amazing river ice break lottery

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Back in the early 1900s, locals in Canada’s Yukon Territory placed bets on the exact moment when the river ice would melt. The stakes started as a round of drinks for the winner. Last year, the winner took home about $318,500.

Nirvana live performance, miming the instruments and mugging the vocal

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Back in 1991, Nirvana was asked to perform on England’s Top of the Pops. Problem was, they were told they had to play off a backing track (pre-recorded instrumentals) with live vocals. As you might expect, Kurt Cobain and the band did not take things as seriously as the show would have liked.