Prezumés

For our latest group project, our team decided to use an online presentation tool, Prezi. Prezi is a great alternative to PowerPoint. Our team especially enjoyed utilizing Prezi's collaborative meeting tools.

If you haven't seen or used Prezi, you should check it out. Prezi is not just an online powerpoint, but a completely different way of engaging with your audience.

One of my favorite ways that peope are using Prezi is to post an online Prezumé. Prezumés are a great way to visually present yourself to potential employers. Not only can you list your experience and skills, you can visually show some of your accomplishments--especially great for graphic artists!

Check out how some people are creating there Prezumés.

Snow Shovels

I'm still hurting from the snow shoveling from the last two years. To prepare for the next "worst winter ever", I'm researching my options for snow removal. Check out a few of my favorites:

This beast from Grivel combines the agility of lightweight plastic with the raw ice-breaking power of steel. Verdict: I'll hurt myself.

The Wovel is certainly innovative--but it comes at a price ($150). Verdict: Not manly enough. Too expensive.

The Rolling Shovel sounds too good to be true. Look at that HUGE mountain of snow she's rolling away without even breaking a sweat. Verdict: Yeah, right.

Now we're talking!!! The geniuses at RP Innovations said to hell with manual labor! Enter--the PlowBoat. Why not plow snow from the warmth of your home while sipping a nice hot cup of coffee? Verdict: I'll break it like every other RC toy I've ever owned :(

Who doesn't need a 4WD V8 snowblower? This monster will make short work of my driveway AND my entire street! Verdict: I don't want the EPA paying me any special visits.


Who am I kidding? I already know how my snow is getting plowed this year. Verdict: Another year of back-breaking work.

(Fun) Infographics

I love how the internet has changed how I process data. I like to know a little about a lot--and I sure do know a little!

One of my favorite ways to process and learn data quickly are the ever-popular infographics.

Infographics are essentially graphics used to demonstrate a point or concept. Graphs are always much more appealing to me than spreadsheets. Think: poster--but zoomable and clickable=fun! The infographic above from Lifehacker nearly convinced me to move closer to work.




One of the web's greatest sources of infographics is theoatmeal. Check out their great infographic on how to use a semi-colon. I laugh out loud, but actually learn something too.


Finally, one of the most fascinating infographics I've seen comes from deathandtaxesposter. This clever graphic depicts how our federal tax dollars are allocated. The sizes of each icon (DoD is the biggest) are in proportion to the percentage of tax dollars they receive.

Clever definition of innovation

I met with Art Hurtado, CEO of Invertix, this week and he gave me a
great definition of innovation: creativity + a sale. What a
fantastically simple, catch-all definition.

No Porn Here

Was brainstorming innovative ideas on how to get more traffic to my blog and
found this nifty "adult" option to enable under Blogger settings.

What better way to generate page views than to offer porn?

I don't suppose this tactic will work with a class of IT grad students. . .

Email Posting

I finally spent the five minutes (tops) required to enable posting to
Blogger via email. Email posts are missing all the glitz of graphics,
but for quick easy postos, it's the way to go.

To enable the feature:
1) Log in to blogger
2) Under Settings, choose "Email and Mobile"
3) Choose a secret email address under posting options
4) Any emails sent to this new address will become blog posts.
Subject line is the post title and the email body is post content.

Happy posting!

Government funded innovation

It's interesting how many innovative gadgets began life in a military laboratory. GPS and the Internet are obvious examples, but the T-Shirt? This wired article touches on many well-known gadgets whose roots were in the military. Often, as is the case with innovation, these gadgets were invented for purposes entirely different than what they are used for today. What's more innovative: inventing a new way to track satellites, or realizing that the tracking technology has commercial navigational purposes (GPS)? Each of these innovations show that innovators aren't necessarily inventors-sometimes they just make good things great.

Microsoft Gaming Technology Spurring Innovation

As discussed in class, a key characteristic of innovators is their associative abilities--to be able to link two seemingingly unrelated technologies.

Association is exactly what happened when Microsoft released their Xbox 360 Kinnect for game consoles. Designed to be a hands-free controller for video games, the Kinnect was immediately adopted by non-gamers including roboticists, researchers, and even pornographers.

Perhaps most surprising about the innovation is Microsft's willingness to cooperate.

Following the link HERE to read more.

Tech-unsavy Target?

On the tail of the immensely successful Missoni for target launch, I attended my first Target National Sales Meeting in Minneapolis. Over 5000 Target Team Members were in attendance and high profile guests such as Oprah, Beyonce and Taylor Swift performed. Seeing so many smartphones snapping pictures and capturing video, I logged onto Twitter to see the buzz. Having just discussed the surge in social media, I was shocked to not see a single post from all the attendees!
What gives Target? Or, more likely, I better find a tutorial on how to effectively search Twitter.

Speaking of innovators DNA...

Found this great write-up demonstrating the true innovating spirit. A physicist re-thought the way we board passenger aircraft and proposed an improved, innovative way.

Why it takes so long to board a plane.