Zenhabits. You are what you click. People have traditionally used the touchstones of job, religion, age and occupation to form their view of who they are and where they fit in the world. Not so much any more. Increasingly, we are shaping our identities via our activity on online social networks like Facebook and gaming, according to the Future Identities report commissioned by Britain's chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, the BBC reports. "Near continuous access to the internet, termed 'hyper-connectivity,' will drive profound changes to society over the next 10 years," the story states. Beddington told the BBC that such hype-connectivity is "the most dynamic trend" in determining identity.
The article notes that: "The changing nature of identities will have substantial implications for what is meant by communities and by social integration. "Instead, particularly among younger people, their view of themselves is shaped increasingly by online interactions of social networks and on online role playing games. Can Yerdle redefine consumerism? Some day, the word Yerdle may morph into a verb. You might mention to a friend that you need to buy a saw or some other hand tool for a house project. "Well," she would reply, "You should just Yerdle it. " Yerdle launched today, Black Friday, in an effort to kill retailing. Sort of. Yerdle would like to change the very nature of retailing and the ways individuals think about how, where and why they acquire things.
It provides a web-based platform for friends to loan or give away things they've been holding onto but no longer use. The Yerdle website and mobile applications are formally launching today –- timed symbolically to thumb its nose at the Black Friday buying spree. Yerdle is the brainchild of Adam Werbach, chairman of consulting and communications firm Saatchi & Saatchi S. The idea struck pay dirt with co-founder Andy Ruben last fall, at his kid's soccer game. Until, that is, you no longer require their services. By how, you are likely wondering, how will Yerdle make money? For the well-heeled, the rise of the ’sharing economy’ As I neared the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge and traffic opened up, I pressed a wee bit harder on the accelerator pedal in my BMW ActiveE, and sped through the S-curves. Yes, it was my ActiveE.
At least, it was for a few hours. In September, the German automaker brought its carsharing program, DriveNow, to U.S. soil with a fleet of 70 ActiveE's -- an electric iteration of the carmaker's 1-series coupe and its first foray into electric vehicles. The sharing economy, which carsharing, bikesharing, whatever-sharing and services as diverse as Airbnb and Netflix all fall under, accounts for a growing portion of the national economy. To some degree, this isn’t new. "We're moving to a world in which access to goods, services or talent triumphs over ownership," says Lisa Gansky, whose 2010 book The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing examines the ways that the Internet, new business models and technology are fostering the sharing economy.
Enter The Napa Valley Reserve. Adobe’s social media maven. Deep within the maze of Adobe's Time Square office stands a long work table, designated for mobile employees. An 18-in. high partition divides the table up into temporary desk spaces. At 2 p.m. last Tuesday, the only occupant is a man in his thirties. He sits with noise-cancelling headphones, intent on his computer. A couple of the other partitioned spaces house flat screen monitors or laptops, but lack any personal details. Then there's the spot Marjorie Kase has claimed as her own.
Items on Marjorie Kase's 2-ft. by 4-ft. desk space: A computer monitor.Twenty-six rubber ducks, each imprinted with a different costume, the mascots of a prior employer. “I guess I'm a fangirl at heart,” Kase admits. “Even as a child I'd read the business section,” Kase says. Kase interned at Sassy magazine, Scientific American, and Rolling Stone Australia. Her first job out of college brought Kase to Yahoo headquarters. Yahoo's stock skyrocketed. And then the crash came. He doesn't answer. Photo: Avi Bonime. The future of publishing is micro. Technology taketh away and technology giveth. The rise of digital media has killed the business models of newspaper and book publishers and booksellers. But it is also providing new venues for authors and smaller publishers who would have never had a chance in the old order. Micropublishing, for one, is providing a low barrier to entry for many new types of publications and works.
But the disruption in publishing doesn't stop there. As described by Pandodaily's Hamish MacKenzie, micropublishing is a lightweight approach that doesn't require a lot of technology, or even resource-intensive add-ons such as pictures or graphics: "Publications can be distributed on the open Web or via apps. Micropublishing doesn't have to be all-digital, either -- it can incorporate the best efficiencies of digital and print. "In the old days, life for small publishers was a hassle. MacKenzie points to other trends shaping the publishing world. (Thumbnail photo: Joe McKendrick.) Car-sharing service RelayRides halts service after cease-and-desist letter. In recent months, many companies forming the new "sharing economy" have come up against regulatory hurdles as they become part of the formal business landscape.
In New York, half of Airbnb's rentals have been found to be technically illegal, according to state law. Ride-sharing service SideCar is also coming under scrutiny in Austin, Philadelphia, and New York City. Now, the popular peer-to-peer car sharing service RelayRides is the most recent company to face regulatory pressure. The start-up received a cease-and-desist letter from New York State's Department of Financial Services (DFS), which charged RelayRides with "false advertising and violations of insurance law. " In addition to the cease-and-desist, DFS has also issued a "scam alert" because of fine print in New York insurance law that could leave car-sharing users unprotected in the event of an accident.
"We are actively working with the Department to address [its] concerns," Haddad said in the email. Photo: RelayRides. Is social influence the new celebrity? MELBOURNE -- Devin Graham, also known as "Devinsupertramp," has a knack for producing videos that go viral, such as, "World's Largest Rope Swing", "Human Slingshot Slip and Slide", or the occasional video game promo. The 29-year-old Utah resident, who has over one million followers on his YouTube channel, has worked with high-profile clients, such as entertainment giant Warner Bros. and video games publisher Unisoft, to create marketing and promotional content. Graham is representative of a new type of celebrity -- "the social influencer" -- defined by Melbourne social media agency Repless as "anybody producing or curating content in a meaningful way that attracts and maintains a large number of followers, subscribers or fans.
" Product placement and celebrity endorsements are nothing new, but Repless, established in 2012, claims they are one of the first companies to pioneer the connection between brands and social media influencers. Start-up rents out your spare desks online. A start-up has launched ShareDesk, a new online marketplace for companies to monetize idle office space in major cities around the world. It's like a Match.com for office seekers. ShareDesk has been operating in beta since late last year, and now has over 1,000 companies participating in 50 countries - from Argentina to Venezuela. Berlin, New York, and San Francisco are among its most popular cities.
Businesses rent out conferences room and desks, providing an alternative to commercial office centers. Renters can search listing by location or place custom requests with specific requirements. That concierge service is being offered to better target start-ups, ShareDesk's blog noted this month. ShareDesk has to make money too, so it charges a 15 percent commission (paid by renters to ShareDesk to make a reservation) for each engagement. Commercial players like Regus appear to be more focused on virtual companies.
(image credits: David Worthington; ShareDesk) Internet of Everything to generate profit of $613bn in 2013. A new survey suggests business leaders believe the Internet of Everything (IoE) will result in improved job markets, wages and information security. According to the IoE Value Index study released by Cisco, the Internet of Everything -- the practice of bringing together people, process, data, and physical things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable -- will enable global private-sector business profits to reach at least $613 billion in 2013. The study of 7,500 businesses and IT professionals in 12 countries found that many firms could double IoE profits through greater adoption of business practices, customer approaches and technologies that leverage the concept.
Cisco estimates that beyond $613 billion in profit generation, an additional $544 billion could be realized if companies adjusted their strategies to better leverage IoE. The services and manufacturing industries are expected to profit the most with estimated profit levels reaching $158.8bn and $103.1bn. Future of Work Enabler: Flexible Service Delivery - Future_of_Work_Enabler_Flexible_Service_Delivery.pdf. The Future of Work Is Services: So Where Is the Future of Services? - Derek Thompson. The White House likes to talk about manufacturing, and it's easy to fetishize the honor in "making things," but when you get right down to it, it's a services world, and we're all just living in it. The manufacturing sector makes up about a tenth of GDP. It's a crucial, productive, and fiery tenth.
But it's just a tenth. The vast majority of us are working for the government, administering health care, serving food, manning an aisle, or doing something else while sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day. The Services Economy isn't a new development, but it's deepening with each passing decade.
Between 1990 and 2008, we created 27.3 million net new jobs. The next decade will probably look like the last few decades, but even more so. By 2020, these jobs are projected to make up "more than roughly half of all projected new jobs -- 9.7 million, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics projections," Richard Florida writes on our Cities site. Future Planet – The Future of Services. David Tow SYDNEY 15 October 2012. The Director of the Future Planet Research Centre, David Hunter Tow, predicts that the current explosion of new services will trigger the biggest IP treasure hunt in the history of civilisation.
The Services Sector is currently in turmoil with thousands of startup companies cashing in on new opportunities to re-engineer traditional ways of doing business- and this is just the beginning. Every process is currently being transformed into a new service- not just in traditional service sectors such as retail, media, education, healthcare, tourism and finance, but also in industry areas such as manufacturing- with made to order 3D printing techniques, medical processing- offering personalised DNA sequencing and diagnostics instantly on an iPhone chip, and inexpensive solar energy and water purification systems cheaply available for domestic use in developing countries. What is catalysing this frenzy and where is it heading? Education Healthcare Finance/Banking. App reports bad parking and gets you paid.
If you've ever been irked by a bad parking job or seen a vehicle parked where it shouldn't be, there's now an app for that -- and you can receive a bounty to boot. A Canadian start-up called SpotSquad has developed an app that crowdsources parking enforcement, in a pilot with the Winnipeg city government. The app automates the process of reporting bad parking jobs in private lots by using GPS and character recognition to collect identifying license plate information. Participants receive a portion of the fine paid if a citation is issued to the vehicle's owner. Fox News reported today that the pilot program would begin in July. None of the evidence submitted by the app will be used in court, the company told Fox. It could be said that we are now our own "big brother," but no one will have an issue if they follow the parking rules. Jeff, the Canadians have you covered. (image credit: YouTube/HBO) Too busy to pick up the takeout? Postmates will deliver.
It was 2006, and Bastian Lehmann was moving from Munich to London. In the arduous process of getting all his stuff from one city to the other, his snowboard was left behind. It would have cost a fortune to forward it with traditional shipping services like UPS or FedEx, but Lehmann checked Yelp and found a cheaper courier service that would handle the job.
Turns out he got the board transported an even cheaper way, when a friend brought it to him, but the seed for Postmates -- a same-day courier service that allows people to get whatever they need to wherever they need it -- was planted. “It’s like ride sharing for items,” Lehmann says. “We thought, 'We can create a network similar to UPS that’s part of your city that merchants can leverage.' ” The problem San Francisco-based Postmates aims to resolve isn’t so much delivering between cities (like Lehmann needed when his snowboard was left behind) as delivering within them. In coming weeks, more merchants will be able to sign up. U.S. cities are building commuter rail, so where are the riders? Last year, demand for public transportation was the second highest since 1957 as Americans took 10.5 billion trips.
Every mode of transportation -- from buses to subways to light rail -- saw ridership increases last year. But there's one mode that lags behind the rest, despite cities increasingly investing in them. Commuter rail -- which connects city centers with suburbs -- had the smallest growth of any transit system in the U.S. at 0.5 percent., with 10 out of 28 systems actually losing riders.
And it's not like there isn't room to grow as it's the least used transit option behind only trolleys. Plus, as Governing's Tod Newcombe points out, cities are building new commuter rail with a number of new lines opening in the last 10 years. Even some of the newer systems -- like Albuquerque, Dallas, and Nashville are struggling to get riders. The biggest problem commuter rail faces is that its customer base lives in far-flung suburbs where cars are used for just about everything. The key? More consumers paying for online news. The Internet has habituated us to expect our online news for free, but that is starting to change as more consumers than a year ago are paying for it and as young people purchase via apps on tablets and smartphones, a study shows. "Since our last survey, we've seen a significant rise in the number or respondents paying for online news - albeit from a low base," said the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Digital News Report 2013.
Reuters reported that 12 percent of U.S. readers said they had paid for digital news in the last year, up from 9 percent a year earlier; 13 percent said they had paid in France, up from 8 percent; and 9 percent paid in the U.K., up from 4 percent. The nine-country survey had exceptions. For instance, the number of people who paid for digital news in Denmark declined. Young people--25-to-34-years old--were "the most willing" to pay across all countries, Reuters noted in the report's "payng for digital news section.
" More digital media trends: Should bus fares be free? Who’s fueling the luxury goods market? Men. The Future of Advertising. The consumer is becoming an algorithm: is this a good thing? With Netflix’s 14 Emmy nominations, web programming is here to stay. The latest SME trend: Adopting a global mindset?