Workplace Learning in the Digital Age
Dr. Donna Murdoch
Another end of year story. This is a compilation of the stories Wired thinks were most important, or as they say “hardcore.” Good choices.
“The rise of deep learning. The fall of bitcoin. The moxie of Satya Nadella.”
via WIRED’s 10 Most Hardcore Tech Stories of the Year | WIRED.
It’s that “list” time of year, where we see predictions and “best-of” articles everywhere. This prediction of tech advances from TechRadar is good, and includes
Battery tech (hoping!)
Galileo
Virtual Reality (it’s time!)
HTML5 (I would argue that was last year, but still good choice)
Retina Macbook Air (hoping!)
Smartwatches
Fast Charging Tech …and more. Link below.
“2015 is going to be even better, what with virtual reality, shiny new satellites, and even a few tweaks to the very fabric of the internet itself. Here’s our list of the tiny tech advances that we think will make 2015 a year to remember…”
via 10 tiny tech advances that will make 2015 awesome | News | TechRadar.
Using a neural network, Google can identify street numbers on houses in France. Fascinating article in MIT Technology Review this year about how their engineers did it.
“Google Street View has become an essential part of the online mapping experience. It allows users to drop down to street level to see the local area in photographic detail.But it’s also a useful resource for Google as well. The company uses the images to read house numbers and match them to their geolocation. This physically locates the position of each building in its database.That’s particularly useful in places where street numbers are otherwise unavailable or places such as Japan and South Korea where streets are rarely numbered in chronological order but in other ways such as the order in which they were constructed, a system that makes many buildings impossibly hard to find, even for locals.
via Best of 2014: How Google Cracked House Number Identification in Street View | MIT Technology Review.
Yes, it makes us smarter –
“It is sometimes difficult to reconcile the internet’s amazing contributions to society (Google search, Wikipedia, email, messaging) versus its dark side (YouTube comments, anonymous message boards, celebrity photo hacks). But overall, it seems the internet is indeed making us smarter.”
via Most Americans say the internet is actually making them smarter – Quartz.
Battery power has always been the holy grail of electronics, and the more we carry the more we notice. Battery life is always a complaint when we talk about our devices. There have been no real advances in battery power technology. The only thing that makes them last longer is size – which is why an iPad can last so long. When I first heard about wireless charging and its potential, I thought it sounded like a fantastic solution. Get a pad, place devices on it to charge without plugging in – so easy. That was years ago, and we haven’t really seen it offered. There have been some efforts, but they require special cases for devices and the charging pads are small. Seems there is no standard. We’ll all continue to wait, and this article seems promising. Maybe we are almost there.
“The technology is there. Whether it’s inductive or magnetic resonance doesn’t matter one bit to most people. What entices consumers is the notion of being able to toss down a phone, tablet and pair of wireless headphones on the bedside table and have them all fully charged by the morning.”
via Why isn’t wireless charging a thing yet? | News | TechRadar.
Glad to see others doing this! Good app to add to home screen.
“Despite Dropbox, Photostream, Reminders, and all other manner of cross-platform sharing options, I still find myself emailing important links, images, and documents to myself on a regular basis. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but it’s a hard habit to break.”
via Use This iOS Shortcut to Quickly Email Yourself Notes | WIRED.
Workplace Learning in the Digital Age 