Crowdsourcing creativity in the cloud

Betterific is the attempt to harness the power of the web to improve on the concept of a suggestion box and on just about everything else. It is intended to give people a chance to not only voice their ideas for improving what is already out there, but to be heard as well. Read more in 

Crowdsourcing the Corporate Suggestion Box

Big data for dogs of all sizes

Devoted as people are to their dogs, they can’t watch them every minute of the day. But now there are devices that do for dogs what Fitbit does for people. Some have launched, and some are still working on funding through Kickstarter.  Read more in 

The Quantified Canine

Don't leave earth without it

Whether it will be in just a matter of years or of decades, the possibility of regular people taking trips into space the same way they travel to the far reaches of the globe could become a reality within our lifetime. The question is: when you set off for such a trip, what do you pack along for money?
While previous generations may have packed travelers’ cheques, such paper relics just don’t seem to fit in with the space age. The only feasible solution to the problem of payments in, to, and from space, is a digital one. PayPal believes it will handle that problem with its introduction of PayPal Galactic.  But that answer raises a number of other questions. Read more here

Related post: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2013/05/star-trek-and-final-frontier-of-currency.html

3D printing really takes off with the help of big data

The only thing holding GE back from fully integrating 3D printing was insufficient data to assure uniform results. "A part is made out of thousands of layers, and each layer is a potential failure mode," Prabhjot Singh, head of the GE lab working on such processes, told MIT Technology Review. "We still don't understand why a part comes out slightly differently on one machine than it does on another, or even on the same machine on a different day."Now GE has come up with a big data solution to that problem.

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Big Data Helps 3D Printing Take Off

How green is my internet?

The late Ed Koch, who served as mayor of New York City for multiple terms in the 1980s, was famous for asking, “How am I doing?” Extending the question to the impact of its operations on the health of the planet, eBay has developed a way to get an automatically updated response. And the online auction powerhouse hopes to encourage other businesses to ask the same question, too.

In March, eBay released Digital Service Efficiency (DSE) -- http://dse.ebay.com/ -- a dashboard designed to reveal the company's datacenter energy efficiency in the style of a car’s MPG rating. The metric is based on “four key areas: performance, cost, environmental impact and revenue,” eBay said. Quarterly performance reports are measured against the yearly goals.

On May 24, eBay posted its first quarter results on its DSE blog.

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Everybody Wins in eBay's Eco-Friendly Bid

Promotions on the spot

Serendipity at the supermarket occurs when you spot your favorite cereal and have the coupon in hand. More likely, though, you have to hunt for your coupon, only to discover that it expired last week. At that point, you can either pay up or settle for the cheaper generic -- unless, that is, you're able to get a coupon on demand.

This third option, available at some stores by a company called VisibleBrands, is one made possible by analytics.  Read more in 

'Clipping' Coupons as You Need 'Em 

Data and the Deep

Google Maps Street Views have been used to showcase countries and art museums around the world in the Google Art Project. The data gathered from camera captures around the globe contributes to the Google Earth project, which allows people to view "any location in the world," including the sky, the moon, and Mars. It also offers views of the ocean, on both Google Earth and its Wonders of the World Project, through its partnership with The Catlin Seaview Survey. Read more at 

Data & the Deep Blue Sea