Why Apple Pay Is a Huge Milestone in Payments
Breakthrough A service that makes it practical to use your smartphone as a wallet in everyday situations. Why It Matters Credit card fraud damages the economy by raising the costs of goods and services. Key Players Apple Visa MasterCard Google When Apple Pay was announced in September, Osama Bedier was unimpressed. Yet when Apple Pay launched just a few weeks later, Bedier was a convert. Momentum for mobile payment technologies was building even before Apple Pay debuted last fall. None of the individual technologies is novel, but Apple turned them into a service that is demonstrably easier than any other. But even if Apple didn’t invent mobile payments, it has significantly enhanced them. That doesn’t mean most of us will be ditching our wallets and waving phones in every store in 2015—far from it. Still, Apple has done a lot of things right, suggesting that Apple Pay will turn out to be a milestone. As a result, Apple is now cementing standards for the payment industry. —Robert D.
George Lakoff
George P. Lakoff (/ˈleɪkɒf/, born May 24, 1941) is an American cognitive linguist, best known for his thesis that lives of individuals are significantly influenced by the central metaphors they use to explain complex phenomena. The more general theory that elaborated his thesis is known as embodied mind. He is professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. Work[edit] [edit] Although some of Lakoff's research involves questions traditionally pursued by linguists, such as the conditions under which a certain linguistic construction is grammatically viable, he is most famous for his reappraisal of the role that metaphors play in socio-political lives of humans. Metaphor has been seen within the Western scientific tradition as purely a linguistic construction. He suggested that: "Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." Linguistics wars[edit] Embodied mind[edit]
Five routes to more innovative problem solving - McKinsey Quarterly - Strategy - Strategic Thinking
Rob McEwen had a problem. The chairman and chief executive officer of Canadian mining group Goldcorp knew that its Red Lake site could be a money-spinner—a mine nearby was thriving—but no one could figure out where to find high-grade ore. The terrain was inaccessible, operating costs were high, and the unionized staff had already gone on strike. In short, McEwen was lumbered with a gold mine that wasn’t a gold mine. Then inspiration struck. Attending a conference about recent developments in IT, McEwen was smitten with the open-source revolution. McEwen intuitively understood the value of taking a number of different approaches simultaneously to solving difficult problems. This article presents an approach for doing just that. The flexons approach Finding innovative solutions is hard. Obviously, people do not always have think tanks of PhDs trained in various approaches at their disposal. Networks flexon Imagine a map of all of the people you know, ranked by their influence over you.
Networks of Genome Data Will Transform Medicine
Breakthrough Technical standards that let DNA databases communicate. Why It Matters Your medical treatment could benefit from the experiences of millions of others. Key Players Global Alliance for Genomics and Health Google Personal Genome Project Noah is a six-year-old suffering from a disorder without a name. A match could make a difference. In January, programmers in Toronto began testing a system for trading genetic information with other hospitals. One of the people behind this project is David Haussler, a bioinformatics expert based at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Haussler is a founder and one of the technical leaders of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, a nonprofit organization formed in 2013 that compares itself to the W3C, the standards organization devoted to making sure the Web functions correctly. The unfolding calamity in genomics is that a great deal of life-saving information, though already collected, is inaccessible. —Antonio Regalado
AIDA
Disciplines > Sales > Sales methods > AIDA Attention | Interest | Desire | Action | And... | See also AIDA is a simple acronym that was devised a long time ago as a reminder of four stages of the sales process (Strong, 1925). It is, in modern terms, a fairly simplistic model. Attention First get their attention. When you are talking to them, the first few seconds are essential as they will listen most then and rapidly decide whether you are worth giving further attention. It is generally better to open with something that pulls them towards you rather than something that scares them (as this may push them away). Good openers address their problems and begin with such as: Have you ever...? Bad openers give them something to object to, demonstrate your disrespect, or just bore them to tears, and may begin with such as: I've got just the thing you want...? Interest Once you have their attention, sustain that attention by getting the other person interested. You can get interest by: Desire Action
Olika trender och tips
Google Ventures is coming to Europe with a $100 million fund for startups
Google has confirmed that it is launching a European arm of its Google Ventures VC fund, following media speculation last week. The company’s first European fund is $100 million and it will be used “invest in the best ideas from the best European entrepreneurs, and help them bring those ideas to life”. The company has an initial team of four general partners at its European office in London, which the Financial Times reports includes Google Europe exec Eze Vidra, entrepreneur Tom Hulme, angel investor Peter Read, and Code.org UK head Avid Larizadeh. In addition, they are joined by existing Google Ventures partner MG Siegler, who will remain involved with the US arm but serve as a temporary “liaison” to Europe, Google says. The team will be based in Clerkenwell, a stone’s throw from London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ startup district, but it will invest across Europe. ➤ Google Ventures invests in Europe [Google]
Tidningen Kulturen - nyhetstidning med kulturell prägel - Angående humaniora. En intervju med Svante Nordin
Svante Nordin Vad är historia bra till? Det frågar sig Friedrich Nietzsche 1874 i essän ”Om historiens skada och nytta” (Otidsenliga betraktelser, del II). Nietzsche urskiljer tre grovt tillyxade sätt att betrakta historia, genomlysta som ett spel mellan glömska och minne. Dessa synsätt kan sägas aktivera humanioras grundproblem. Idéhistorikern Svante Nordin svarar kort via e-mejl på några frågor som direkt (eller indirekt) kan kopplas till denna problemställning. I en intervju i DN (2011/12/29) beskriver du ett tillstånd, där en hel yngre generation antas reducera världskrigen till spännande berättelser. - Poängen är att den moderne västerlänningen och kanske allra mest de unga som fötts efter det kalla krigets slut lever i en i viss mening posthistorisk verklighet. Föreställningen om ett historiens slut är gammal. Svante Nordin preciserar: DN-intervjun innehöll tyvärr en hel del missuppfattningar. I dagens samhälle – åtminstone vad gäller Sverige – har humaniora en svag ställning.
