New Nikon D3300 Redefines 'Entry Level'

There are two types of bloggers: those who do it as a hobby and those who do it professionally. Many blogs start off as an outlet for writing and self expression while holding down full time jobs. With the allure of the blogging industry, there is always potential to turn the blog from hobby to a new career choice.

To blog with a someone else adds to the fun of sharing in the experience of blogging. Not to be a killjoy but, when entering a partnership with a friend or colleague, legal representation needs to immediately take place. We cannot assume that the partnership will always be amicable. And yes, contracts need to be written up and signed so everyone is on the same page.

I found out the hard way that a partnership is like a marriage. And like some marriages it ended in divorce. I realized how important it is to plan for the possibility of divorce before the honeymoon ends. Get a legal 'pre-nup' with details on the setup of the business, resolution process, dividing assets (money, samples, etc), job descriptions and, god forbid, the exit strategy. I know what you are thinking, that this will never happen to you. Well, I did not think it would happen to me either and it did. I essentially lost control of eight years of my articles, my position on the blogosphere and essentially had to reinvent myself.

Here is why bloggers need lawyers. I went into a partnership of a very popular blog with my best friend of 18 years. We never had an agreement in place although orally we made an agreement to split every thing and keep a percentage of what we made in the coffers for the blog. Never thinking that we would ever not be friends we thought nothing more about the business side and enjoyed being professional bloggers together.

Well, it happened. We had a disagreement and, because my partner created all the email accounts and the Word Press site, all of my access was blocked. Passwords were changed. Word Press and my email address were blocked. I could no longer get access to any of our social media platforms. Not only my livelihood was stripped from me but also my reputation was at jeopardy.

No one would ever think of starting any other business without a contract or seeking legal advice. You need to register the business, possibly trademark the name, open bank accounts, get signing authority, and set up other legal documents. Each person should have their own legal representation and both sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The bottom line is, it cost money to start a business. Blogging is a business. Period. As the boy scout's motto states, "Be prepared." ]]>

The tech detox conversation started three weeks prior to lift off. In fact, this weekend over dinner, my daughter joked about how she planned to smuggle her iPhone into camp this year. Unfortunately for her, those plans were squashed by yours truly. You see, a few months ago, her camp sent out a letter of agreement that campers needed to sign prior to leaving that pretty much vows that they will not bring their phones, mp3 players, Gameboys or anything else that resembles an electronic device with them to camp. In fact, if they are found with any technological contraband, that could be grounds for sending them home early. Unbeknownst to my daughter, she signed that document a few weeks back when I handed her a pen and said "Here. Sign this," which she did without ever reading the document.

According to Lauren Kasnett, co-founder of Summer 365, a free, year-round summer camp resource for parents nationwide, these days, camps are instituting hard core technology bans so that kids can truly unplug and get back to basics. "One of the best parts about sleep-away camp is the social interaction kids have with one another," she says. Kasnett says that as gadgets have become more pervasive in the lives of our kids, the electronics policies at camps have continued to evolve and become more stringent. As a result, these days, most camps do not allow electronics or devices with wifi capabilities -- but there are still a few camps that do allow handheld video games. Thankfully, my kids' camp is not one of them.

Instead, for the next four and seven weeks, it's time for them to go back to basics. Read a book. Play sports. Have a Scrabble or checkers match or master jacks. Talk to your friends. Or, pull a prank on your camp counselor. OK, maybe not that, but wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we could all unplug for two whole months?

I can only imagine what my life would be like without having my phone crazy-glued to my side every day of the week. No more spam messages and sales updates from places I don't even remember subscribing to. No more Facebook status updates from friends, relatives, distant relatives and strangers who somehow have become my friends too. No more tweets or Instagram photos. Just real conversations with real people in real time. What a concept.

Cutting our kids off from technology is the least we can do for them. From the time they are toddlers, they have been connected to the Internet and year after year, it seems that many are becoming more and more detached from society. Some lose themselves in violent video games. Others Snapchat for hours on end or share silly six-second Vines with one another. They Instagram all day long, watch YouTube videos, binge watch their favorite shows on Netflix and on and on and on. It truly is time for a technology detox and I am thrilled that the camp my kids are attending are enforcing a "no tech" policy this summer. Sure, it will be hard to part with their devices, but it will also be refreshing to have my kids experience life as it used to be.

Maybe it's time that we all start living in the moment. Take a tech break for a day, a week or even a month if you can. Remove the Facebook app from your phone and see how much time it buys you back from wasting needless hours checking for likes on a photo that you recently uploaded (come on, you know you do it). Set an out of office message on your email so people know not to contact you over the weekend or during your vacation. Or leave your phone at home when you go out for a walk. Pretend you're a camper, sign an agreement to part with your gadgets so that you can be more present in your family's life and watch what happens. You never know, you might be pleasantly surprised when you start hearing buzzing and chirping sounds from out your window and not from your smartphone! ]]>

The exhibition, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, will feature over 20 years of Björk, expressed via sound, film, visuals, instruments, objects, costumes, and performance. Her seven full-length albums, from 1993's "Debut" to 2011's "Biophilia," will live alongside collaborations with other artists, fashion designers and directors.


Still from the “All Is Full of Love” music video. 1999. Directed by Chris Cunningham. Music by Björk. Image courtesy of One Little Indian

According to MoMA, "the installation will present a narrative, both biographical and imaginatively fictitious, cowritten by Björk and the acclaimed Icelandic writer Sjón Sigurdsson." A semi-fictional retrospective? Yes, please.

Finally, the show will present a new "immersive music and film experience," a collaboration with "Mutual Core" director Andrew Huang and 3D design leader Autodesk. We're not sure exactly what to expect, but if it's anything like their previous work, expect some technologically warped apocalyptic nature-scapes that will haunt your dreams while seeming oddly adorable.

Klaus isn't the only MoMA front runner with a massive Björk crush. Paola Antonelli, senior curator of Architecture and Design, expressed her love for the experimental artist in a blog post announcing the museum's acquisition of the Biophilia app, MoMA's first ever app acquisition.




"Björk has never ceased to experiment and surprise," said Antonelli. "The multidimensional nature of her art -- in which sound and music are the spine, but never the confines, for multimedia performances that also encompass graphic and digital design, art, cinema, science, illustration, philosophy, fashion, and more -- is a testament to her curiosity and desire to learn and team up with diverse experts and creators."

It's only been a few days since word spread that Björk's 2011 app-album, "Biophilia," will be transformed into The Biophilia Educational Programme, a non-academic school curriculum scheduled to spread across several European countries. The exploration-inducing app aims to "inspire children to explore their own creativity, and to learn about music and science through new technologies." We're glad to see the art world isn't letting the education world hog all the Björk brain magic.

Björk's retrospective will come to life in March 2015, around three years after Kraftwerk's 2012 show, which too explored the effects of experimental music on the future of image and sound. What avant-garde artists would you like to see snag their own art exhibition? Let us know your dream lineup in the comments.



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This story originally appeared on Mother Nature Network.

It's fairly obvious to most of us that solar panels aren't a great investment on a shady roof. Yet even in near-ideal solar locations, partial shade from clouds, tree limbs or dust and debris is pretty much inevitable. And that shade can have a big impact, reducing a solar array's output by as much as 30 percent over the course of a year. Now a group of students has developed a novel solution for this issue — and they've been awarded more than $225,000 in prize money to help get their technology to market.

What's the problem?
Many people don't realize that it's not just the shaded spot on a solar panel that loses output. Because solar arrays are usually divided into "strings" of panels, shade falling on one part of a string can impact the output for that entire string.

Here's how Australian solar company Solar Choice explains the impact:

You can think of a string of panels as something like a piece of pipe, and the solar power is like water flowing through that pipe. In conventional solar panel strings, shade is something that blocks that flow. If, for example, shade from a tree or a chimney is cast on even one of the panels in the string, the output of the entire string will be reduced to virtually zero for as long as the shadow sits there. If there is a separate, unshaded string, however, this string will continue to produce power as per usual.

There are already options out there for dealing with this issue. Many inverters now come with Maximum Power Point Tracking, a capability which basically takes whatever electricity is coming out of one string — even if that string is partially shaded — and adds it to a more powerful string to average output.

More output at lower costs
The team, which includes students from MIT, the California Institute of Technology, and Stanford University, is calling itself United Solar. Touting the catchphrase "shade happens," their technology was developed using a different approach to optimizing output. Instead of trying to balance output at the panel level, the students looked to balance at the individual cell level. The result was both better performance and considerably lower cost. Here's how MIT News explains the development:

The idea is that providing power balance for individual PV cells — instead of for an entire panel — allows for finer tuning of power optimization. “When you’re at the cell level, the improvement in energy capture under partial shading is basically two times better compared to panel level solutions,” Chang said. [Arthur Chang is an MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science.] By using intrinsic parasitic components, specifically “diffusion capacitances” — unwanted electrical charges between two components — Chang was able to eliminate the need for external energy storage and integrate all other necessary components for power balance onto a single chip that can be manufactured at high volume and low cost.

It seems a lot of people are excited about this innovation, with United Solar taking home both grand prizes — the DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Clean Energy Prize ($100,000) and the NSTAR MIT Clean Energy Prize ($125,000) — at the seventh annual MIT Clean Energy Prize competition. Having already built a successful prototype, the plan now is to complete lab testing in 2015 and start piloting the technology in outdoor solar arrays. ]]>

Physicists have used the quantum nature of matter to obtain a highly precise value for the universal gravitational constant, the 'big G' that appears in Isaac Newton's law of how gravity pulls together everything, from planets to apples. Although the technique still needs refinements, physicists believe that in the future it will beat the precision of conventional methods — and hopefully solve apparent discrepancies between measurements that have long puzzled physicists.

In a study described today in Nature, researchers measured the minuscule gravitational tug between rubidium atoms and a 516-kilogram array of tungsten cylinders. The uncertainty in the latest measurement is 150 parts per million, or 0.015% — only slightly larger than that of the conventional method of determining G, which is to quantify the mutual pull of two macroscopic masses.

The measurement is “a marvellous experimental achievement and an important contribution to the knowledge of G”, says Holger Müller, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study.

Constant issues

The technique, which exploits the ability of matter particles such as atoms to behave as waves, could provide fresh insight on a problem that has frustrated physicists for years. The conventional method measures the torque caused by gravitational attraction on the weights attached to a rotating balance, an experiment that was first conducted by English scientist Henry Cavendish in 1798. But despite the increasing precision of some 300 modern-day experiments using Cavendish's set-up, different labs have found slightly different values for G, and in recent years the discrepancy has widened rather than narrowed (see 'G-whizzes disagree over gravity').

Researchers have been unable to identify the source of errors causing the disagreement in the conventional measurements. The set-up of the latest measurement is unlikely to contain the same errors as the torque method. And as its sensitivity improves it could help to pinpoint the true value of G, says study co-author Guglielmo Tino of the University of Florence in Italy.

Tino and his colleagues relied on an atom interferometer, a device that exploits the wave-like nature of matter, to precisely measure gravitational acceleration. Another team, led by Mark Kasevich at Stanford University in California, first demonstrated in 2007 that such an interferometer could measure G (ref. 2). Tino's team has “achieved a more than ten-fold improvement in measurement accuracy” of G with the interferometry technique, says Kasevich.

Cool method

In the experiment described by Tino’s team, pulses of laser light tickle a cloud of rubidium atoms cooled to nearly absolute zero, driving the atoms to rise and fall like a fountain under the influence of gravity. The pulses split the 'matter wave' associated with each atom into a superposition of two energy states, each of which has a different velocity and reaches a different height — 60 or 90 centimetres — before falling back. The matter wave that rises farthest has a greater separation from the tungsten cylinders, and thus senses a slightly different gravitational pull. The difference in force imparts a measurable shift in the final state of the two matter waves when they recombine, creating an interference pattern.

The team used two atomic interferometers to cancel out the effects of Earth's gravity and of the tidal forces from the Moon and the Sun, which change with time. Because the masses of the atoms and cylinders and their separation distance are known to high accuracy, the researchers could tease out the value of G from multiple measurements of the clouds' accelerations.

Although the discrepancy between the different values of G might indicate an unknown or overlooked error in the torque method, it is also possible that Newton’s law of gravitation does not accurately describe the interaction of masses at the length scales of a lab, notes Peter Mohr, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Having a new and independent way of measuring G could therefore enable physicists to redefine how the law of gravitation works.

This story originally appeared in Nature News. ]]>

No, the Fed isn't making Bitcoin the national currency. Something even more American is happening: Bitcoin is getting its own college football bowl game.

Online Bitcoin payment company BitPay announced on Wednesday that it's paying an undisclosed amount to name an annual college bowl after the currency through 2016. Yes, the Dec. 26 game held in St. Petersburg, Florida, will now be called the "Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl." R.I.P."Beef O'Brady's Bowl."

The hope is that some good old college football branding will help spread the gospel of Bitcoin beyond the money launderers and illegal drug dealers with whom the untraceable digital currency has been most often associated.

Is it worth spending what's probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to advertise an Internet thingamabob? Especially one meant to replace one of the world's most trusted currencies -- the dollar? And will Bitcoin even be around in 2016?

These are the questions the "Bitcoin Bowl" raises. And as if you needed to be told, the origins of a Bitcoin-themed football game can be traced back to Reddit. ]]>

If you're in the corporate world, chances are you have an affliction like I do. Five hundred emails, 24 hours a day, two means -- portable devices and your desktop -- to receive them. Email has effectively beaten the telephone as a preferred way to communicate. And if you think I'm exaggerating, consider this: Intel recently noted that in exactly one minute's time, more than 204 million emails are sent. That means more than 12 billion emails land at their destination within an hour!

Email may currently be our number one means of communication, but it is flawed. The world of email has become impersonal and sometimes even hostile. How many of us have received the dreaded "all caps" emails where you can feel the sender screaming through your screen? Often people seem too comfortable saying things in an email that they would likely never say in person or via live video.

And, while email ensures that we are in constant contact with colleagues and clients, for just some of the reasons I've just stated, it doesn't necessarily mean it is better. We're a mobile business force -- one that enjoys the comforts of a work-anywhere lifestyle, whether from the train, the back porch, you name it. And our consumer technology like virtual meetings, video conferencing and other telecommuting technology allows us to do this. We also rely heavily on social media platforms -- ones with video chats, picture exchanges, and 140 characters that tell the whole story. So while just eight percent of the workforce is using these tools currently, this is the future of collaboration. We see it every day in the way our future workforce -- teenagers -- keep in touch. It isn't through email or voicemail, it's Snapchat, Instagram and Whatsapp. The younger generation uses video daily in their communications, suggesting that today's CIO needs to be thinking about opening up the corporate intranet for such video collaboration that is device and technology agnostic. Not only is it the future, it's good for business and promotes global teamwork.

As video collaboration becomes more mainstream how global companies connect offices will impact mobility in a whole different way. Consider this: by 2017, our country's government is expected to reduce its travel costs by 50 percent across agencies. Why shouldn't video conferencing tools encourage enterprises across industries to follow suit? And, while some are currently connecting on devices tethered to their desks, the world is becoming more mobile. Ericsson sees the mobile market at 6.4 billion subscribers and 50 percent of those are smart phones. With those numbers only expected to grow, more devices will enter the market with video capability -- leaving video as the major contribution to mobile data traffic by 2018.

With most consumers buying mobile devices for their bigger screens and HD video capability how can CIOs replicate quality consumer experiences and ensure employees have what they need to be successful?

They've tried. Believe me. But one of the biggest obstacles to integrating an employee's workflow -- and making it more of the consumer experience they desire - is the use of proprietary solutions. For the last 20 years, we've seen different communication channels - everything from telephony and instant messages to the email and voicemail we get today. We've made improvements, but we often bind ourselves because of separate platforms that cannot co-exist. Proprietary technology is costly, often not scalable and thus, IT departments cannot make it customized for their needs.

My suggestion? Let's open it up! Open APIs -- like WebRTC -- offers CIOs and employees an option that appears to be traditional video conferencing without being tethered to a desk or platform. WebRTC also brings new social media and other collaboration tools, providing an abundance of options which ultimately reduce costs while increasing productivity. In short, WebRTC may just turn your browser into a collaboration version of Grand Central Station.

Phone calls are a thing of the past. And I would wager email is on its heels. We're on video now. We're on social media now. It's a multimedia, multiplatform, multidevice world.

Today is already tomorrow; video and social media use -- most prominent already in the consumer industry- - will become as natural as picking up the phone or sending an email thanks to increased use of WebRTC. And that's good news. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to respond to the 147 emails I've received while writing this... ]]>

Recently Elon Musk announced that Tesla is applying an 'open source' philosophy to their vast patent portfolio (pictured above, now taken down) and that they will not initiate legal action against anyone using them in good faith.

The motivation is simple -- the Tesla mission is to accelerate the shift of humanity's reliance on fossil fuels towards sustainable, renewably powered transportation. They clearly understand that if they tried to hold on tightly to the knowledge and protection of ideas and intellectual property that is enabling this race to gain momentum, they would just be holding the world back from getting to where we all want it to be.


Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.

The belief is inspirational -- often as an entrepreneur when pitching to analysts or investors, I have found they become obsessed with what is going to 'protect' you, what is your 'unfair advantage... IP... patents...' etc, etc. Mostly fair points, but mostly bullshit. The 'unfair advantage' 99 percent of successful companies have is their people and passion -- this is something that analysts and investors find really hard to quantify and therefore often dismiss businesses or opportunities because of it. As he says in his statement, Elon's belief in Tesla's people and engineers is what gives him the brazen confidence to make a move like this, which again puts them head and shoulders above the fray of 'business as usual' leaders running most companies.

It's not only becoming increasingly clear that Elon Musk is our generation's Thomas Edison, but also that he is becoming an emerging icon for business' role as a driver of well-being for people and our planet.

In 20 years, nobody is going to remember anything that any of the major automotive manufacturers or CEOs did to get 7 billion people off fossil fuels that pollute the world, hack up our planet and are a root cause of war after war costing billion after billion. They will remember Tesla, Elon Musk and the solitary voice and commitment he has been in the face of all odds to usher in a new age that is slowly but surely on its way.

I know which one I'd rather be.

Photo: Steve Jurvetson ]]>

On the quest for beauty people will try just about anything. There are so many tech gadgets out there now -- how do you know if they actually work? In this week's episode of Hardwired 2.0 I tested out some new products and made sure to get some actual spa time in.

I first visited the M Day Spa in Beverly Hills to find out what the professionals are using. Make sure to check out the slideshow below! Their most popular treatment includes diamond microdermabrasion, which exfoliates your skin with diamond flakes.

While it was great to get professional treatment there's plenty you can do from the comfort of your own home. The Agave Healing Vapor Iron conditions your hair with agave while straightening it. It leaves it shiny and soft while reducing heat damage.

The TRIA Hair Removal Laser is like a sniper -- it finds hair follicles and completely disables them. Definitely make sure you want that hair removed because this works! Also, please make sure to read all of the instructions before using any of the products featured in this episode. If you have any questions you can check out the product pages online.

What beauty tech gadgets are you using? Join the conversation by tweeting @aoloriginals, @ijustine, #AolHardwired #gethardwired!

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While the Canadian case deals with the sale of counterfeit products, rather than privacy, it embraces on the same logic to make its sweeping censorship demands.

At the least, the case may confirm widespread fears that the ruling by Europe's highest court, which applies even to links that are factual and in the public record, could spread a newfound "right to be forgotten" across the globe, opening the door for disgraced politicians, sex offenders, and malpractice-burdened doctors to wipe their slate clean.

But in some ways, the British Columbia decision poses a threat even more dangerous than the fear that courts would pave the way for a fragmented, balkanized Web and lay the foundation for what the Wall Street Journal editorial board warned would be "an Internet with borders." The Canadian case arguably establishes a precedent of national and even local courts handing down dictums that affect freedom of speech around the entire world.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist explains on his blog:

The ruling in Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack is unusual since its reach extends far beyond Canada. Rather than ordering the company to remove certain links from the search results available through Google.ca, the order intentionally targets the entire database, requiring the company to ensure that no one, anywhere in the world, can see the search results. Note that this differs from the European right to be forgotten ruling, which is limited to Europe.

The Canadian court's ruling favorably cites the ECJ ruling in Google v. González, which I wrote about in detail here, and relies heavily on it in its effort to assert jurisdiction. If Google does business in Canada by advertising there, then logically, the Canadian court system has jurisdiction over Google's global search results.

Of course, the court isn't simply asking Google to remove specific links. Having determined that "deletion of individual URLs is ineffective" like "an endless game of 'whac-a-mole,'" the court instructed Google to prevent similar content from showing up anywhere for any reason -- indefinitely.

But what happens when a takedown order in one country conflicts with the law in another? This happened in the French court case of Yahoo! Inc. v. LICRA. The case concerned the sale of Nazi artifacts on Yahoo's auction site, which ran afoul of a French law banning the display of Nazi paraphernalia.

When the French court made the bold claim that it had authority over Yahoo's servers in the United States, Yahoo asked a U.S. court to block the ruling on grounds it conflicted with its First Amendment rights and to "confirm that a non-U.S. court does not have the authority to tell a U.S. company how to operate."

While the U.S. court agreed with Yahoo, the company also had substantial business activities in France that could be brought to a halt if it didn't comply. The end result was that Yahoo banned the sale of these objects, even though the French court's decision was ultimately reversed on other grounds.

This case foreshadows some of the strange scenarios and chilling effects that could emerge when regional courts claim jurisdiction over the whole Internet. Geist imagines a few of these:

The implications are enormous since if a Canadian court has the power to limit access to information for the globe, presumably other courts would as well. While the court does not grapple with this possibility, what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database? Or if Iran orders it remove Israeli sites from the database? The possibilities are endless since local rules of freedom of expression often differ from country to country.

As western democracies find ways to limit content online, it gives more heavy-handed governments like Russia an excuse to jump on the global Internet censorship bandwagon.

The Russian Public Chamber has already submitted a recommendation to the Russian Parliament calling for the introduction of a right to be forgotten that would affect not only Russian search engines, but also foreign ones like Google and Yahoo. Countries like China and Korea are also seeking to assert their right to censor the global Internet.

It's hard to imagine why Internet censorship would be the first, best option in any legal dispute. Particularly where other legal remedies seem obvious.

People depend on search engines like Google and Yahoo to be an accurate and open gateway to the web. Allowing any country to leverage privacy or other legal claims to limit search engine content globally will leave us with the lowest common denominator for free speech rights. And that could do a lot of damage to our free and open Internet. ]]>

The trove of 11,000 games sold on June 15 at online auction site GameGavel for $750,250, which rounds out to about $68 per game, according to Gamespot. The winning bid came from a user going by the handle “peeps_10091970.”

According to Kotaku, previous owner Michael Thomasson put the collection up for sale. Thomasson was awarded the Guinness World Record for his collection last year, when his hoard totaled 10,607 games.

CNET reports that Thomasson has been collecting since 1983. He apparently keeps his games in excellent condition: 2,600 of the games in the recently sold collection are still in their original shrink wrapping, and more than 8,300 still have their boxes and instruction manuals.

Why did he sell? Apparently, he did it to help out family.

"I simply have an immediate family and extended family that have needs that need to be addressed. While I do not wish to part with these games, I have responsibilities that I have made to others and this action is how I will help meet them," he said in a statement published on GameGavel. “No worries, I’ve sold my collection many times in the past and still managed to capture Guinness’ attention, and it is entirely possible that I may again”

According to a previous profile Gamespot did with Thomasson, he sold his first collection in 1989 to raise money for a Sega Genesis and sold another collection in 1998 to pay for his wedding. ]]>

-- Oyster.com

Fingerprint Scan Room Entry at Alma Barcelona



A smartly designed luxury boutique hotel, the Alma Barcelona has 72 quiet, upscale rooms with flat-panel TVs and free Wi-Fi. Unlike the nearby Majestic, the pool here is indoors, but the rooftop terrace has first-rate views of the Eixample and Sagrada Familia. Style here has a starring role: design elements include fingerprint swiping instead of room keys, and architectural features such as a minimalist light-filled atrium.
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The Yobot at the Yotel, New York City



If this futuristic hotel wasn't cool enough, the folks behind Yotel in New York City took their technology to new heights by introducing Yobot, a 15-foot automated luggage handler. Essentially, the robot selects and moves luggage from a very large luggage rack in order to organize all of the pieces received each day during check-in.

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Touch-Screen In-Room Consoles at The Halkin, London



This 41-room boutique hotel exudes luxury -- and spares no expense when it comes to catering to their guests. Sumptuous and spacious rooms literally offer convenience at the touch of a button, as all have wall consoles for calling the butler and other services including light switches and temperature controls.

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Retinal-Scan Room Entry at Nine Zero Hotel, Boston



While the Cloud Suite at Nine Zero could set you back a whopping $20,000 for a two-night stay, the hotel makes sure your every wish is taken care of and that no stone during your stay is left unturned. Private jet transportation is offered, champagne and caviar are always at beckon call, as is the on-site chauffeur. And you never need to worry about losing your room key -- the retinal scan ensures you (and only you, besides the staff, duh) have access to your pricey space.

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Infrared Body Scanners at Hotel 1000 - Seattle



Upon entry into a room at Seattle's Hotel 1000, the electronic doorbell silently scans the space with infrared sensors to detect body heat so that the staff knows when you're in and out of your room -- and thus never disrupts you during your stay.

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Smart Room Service Carts at The Jefferson, Washington D.C.



Hello, room service carts of the future! When, after you're done eating, you place your cart outside your door, a microchip inside the cart alerts housekeeping to come collect it.

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Tech Butlers at The Ritz-Carlton New York Battery Park



When your technology goes awry on vacation, normally you'd be forced to seek out the nearest electronics store. But at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park, you can just pick up the telephone. The hotel offers a "tech butler" for any hardware or software problems you might have while at the hotel. Bonus: If you're astronomically inclined, most rooms come with a top-notch telescope for catching views of Lady Liberty and beyond.

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iPad Digital Concierge Service at Hotel Beaux Arts Miami



Rooms at Hotel Beaux Arts Miami come equipped with iPads with digital concierge services. Rooms also boast rotating flat-screen TVs, iPod docks, bathrooms with TVs in the mirror, and illy Espresso machines.

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Apple TV at The Geejam, Jamaica



Aside from the 42″ flat-screen TVs, iPod docks, dimmer switches, and DVD players, all rooms in this uber-luxe Jamaican resort feature Apple TVs. Each comes pre-programmed with an impressive mix of reggae and soul music, as well as three dozen movies. Bonus: You receive a pre-programmed cell phone on arrival with all of the hotel's customer service numbers already stored inside.

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All-in-One Entertainment Unit at The Mira Hong Kong



From the pool to the rooms to the spa, everything here has an almost futuristic touch: Think colorful lighting, straight lines, and a sleek design. Most rooms are decent-sized by Hong Kong standards, and all feature Bose iPod docks, LCD TVs, wireless keyboards, and entertainment units that incorporate computers and Blu-Ray DVD players. ]]>

The Daily Dot first reported on the tweet, which was quickly taken down. PoliticMo writer Eli Yokley managed to grab a screenshot of the tweet before it was removed:

#MOLeg --> RT @markparkinson: pic.twitter.com/vBqA9r3PTp pic.twitter.com/AT7nD1fIG9

— Eli Yokley (@eyokley) June 16, 2014


Parkinson followed the awkward tweet up with an apology, saying he'd never seen the image before.

Obviously, I need to change my twitter password. Random pics and tweets are being sent that I have never seen before. Apologies!

— Rep. Mark Parkinson (@markparkinson) June 16, 2014


Parkinson is definitely not the first politician with penis problems on Twitter. Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) was dogged by sexting scandals while both in Congress and running for mayor of New York City.

(h/t Business Insider) ]]>

According to science, it's not that complicated by a long shot. A new study says we're really only capable of four "basic" emotions: happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted.

But much like the "mother sauces" of cooking allow you to make pretty much any kind of food under the sun, these four "mother emotions" meld together in myriad ways in our brains to create our layered emotional stews.

Robert Plutchik's famous "wheel of emotions" shows just some of the well-known emotional layers.



In this post we'll take a close look at each of the four emotions, how they form in the brain and the way they can motivate us to surprising actions.

Happiness makes us want to share

Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott discovered that our first emotional action in life is to respond to our mother's smile with a smile of our own. Obviously, joy and happiness are hard-wired into all of us.

The left pre-frontal cortex of the brain is where happiness traits like optimism and resilience live. A study done at the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience watched Buddhist monks and found that the left prefrontal lobe of their brains lit up as they entered a blissful state of meditation.

Other than making us ... well, happy ... joy can also be a driver of action. Winnicott's discovery of a baby's "social smile" also tells us that joy increases when it is shared.

No wonder, then, that happiness is the main driver for social media sharing. Emotions layered with and related to happiness make up the majority of this list of the top drivers of viral content as studied by Fractl.



Here's what Fractl's study of top emotional drivers looks like overlaid on the emotion wheel:



Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, studied nearly 7,000 articles in The New York Times to determine what was special about those on the most-emailed list. He found that an article was more likely to become viral the more positive it was.

Google's Abigail Posner describes this urge as an "energy exchange":

"When we see or create an image that enlivens us, we send it to others to give them a bit of energy and effervescence. Every gift holds the spirit of the gifter. Also, every image reminds us and others that we're alive, happy and full of energy (even if we may not always feel that way). And when we 'like' or comment on a picture or video sent to us, we're sending a gift of sorts back to the sender. We're affirming them. But, most profoundly, this 'gift' of sharing contributes to an energy exchange that amplifies our own pleasure -- and is something we're hardwired to do."

Sadness helps us connect and empathize

Perhaps fitting if one looks at sadness as the other side of happiness, the emotions of sadness and sorrow light up many of the same regions of the brain as happiness.

But when the brain feels sadness, it also produces particular neurochemicals. A study by Paul Zak looked at two interesting ones in particular.

Zak has study participants watch a short, sad story about a boy with cancer.

As they experienced the story, the participants produced cortisol, known as the "stress hormone"; and oxytocin, a hormone that promotes connection and empathy. Later, those who produced the most oxytocin were the most likely to give money to others they couldn't see.

Zak posits that oxytocin's ability to help us create understanding and empathy may also make us more generous and trusting. In a different study, participants under the influence of oxytocin gave more money to charity than those not exposed to the chemical.

"Our results show why puppies and babies are in toilet paper commercials," Zak said. "This research suggests that advertisers use images that cause our brains to release oxytocin to build trust in a product or brand, and hence increase sales."

Fear/surprise make us desperate for something to cling to

Although those who are prone to anxiety, fear and depression also exhibit a higher ratio of activity in the right prefrontal cortex, the emotion of fear is mostly controlled by a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain called the amygdala (seen below).



The amygdala helps us determine the significance of any scary event and decides how we respond (fight or flight). But fear can also cause another response that might be interesting to marketers in particular.

A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrated that consumers who experienced fear while watching a film felt a greater affiliation with a present brand than those who watched films evoking other emotions, like happiness, sadness or excitement.

The theory is that when we're scared, we need to share the experience with others -- and if no one else is around, even a non-human brand will do. Fear can stimulate people to report greater brand attachment.

"People cope with fear by bonding with other people. When watching a scary movie they look at each other and say 'Oh my god!' and their connection is enhanced," says study author Lea Dunn. "But, in the absence of friends, our study shows consumers will create heightened emotional attachment with a brand that happens to be on hand."

Anger/disgust make us more stubborn

The hypothalamus is responsible for anger, along with a lot of other base level needs like hunger, thirst, response to pain and sexual satisfaction.



And while anger can lead to other emotions like aggression, it can also create a curious form of stubbornness online, as a recent University of Wisconsin study discovered.

In it, participants were asked to read a blog post containing a balanced discussion of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. The body of the post was the same for everyone, but one group got civil comments below the article while another got rude comments that involved name-calling and more anger-inducing language.

The rude comments made participants dig in on their stance: Those who thought nanotechnology risks were low became more sure of themselves when exposed to the rude comments, while those who believed otherwise moved further in that direction.

Even more interesting is what happened to those who previously didn't feel one way or another about nanotechnology. The civil group had no change of opinion:

"Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.

Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought."

So negativity has a real and lasting effect -- and it's evident in how content gets shared, too. In the previously mentioned New York Times viral content study, some negative emotions are positively associated with virality -- most specifically, anger.



Why emotions are important in marketing

What does all this teach us as social media sharers and marketers? That emotions are critical -- maybe even more than previously thought -- to marketing.

In an analysis of the IPA dataBANK, which contains 1,400 case studies of successful advertising campaigns, campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31 percent versus 16 percent) as those with only rational content (and did a little better than those that mixed emotional and rational content).



That makes sense based on what scientists know about the brain now -- that people feel first, and think second. The emotional brain processes sensory information in one fifth of the time our cognitive brain takes to assimilate the same input.

And since emotions remain tied to base evolutionary processes that have kept humans safe for centuries, like detecting anger or fear, they're so primal that we'll always be wired to pay attention to them -- often with surprisingly powerful results.

Like this one: In a twist on the customer survey, Generac, a standby generator manufacturer, asked some of their customers to draw their experience with the generators.

As reported in the Harvard Business Review:

"They saw men drawing their generators as superheroes protecting their family, and women drawing the fear of being without one like sinking on the Titanic. This exercise led them to change their marketing from technical specs to testimonials of real consumers telling their stories of how Generac saved their lives and homes. It has helped their business double in the last 2 years to $1.2 billion."

Emotion -- the feeling of overcoming a primal fear -- was the driver that moved their customers.

That's why Google's Abigail Posner says we can't underestimate the importance of understanding the science of emotion in marketing:

"Understand the emotional appeal and key drivers behind the discovery, viewing, sharing and creation of online video, photography and visual content... In the language of the visual web, when we share a video or an image, we're not just sharing the object, but we're sharing in the emotional response it creates."

P.S. If you liked this post, you might also like "The Science Behind What Motivates us to Get Up for Work Every Day" and "How To Make Positivity a Habit: 4 Simple Steps to a Happier Everyday Life."

Image credits: somegeekintn, Wikimedia Commons, Fractl, Carnegie Mellon, InsideOut Wellness, Moz, Neuroscience Marketing ]]>