InsidEPR

Google Glasses: More than a neat way to share photos

By Mike Tomlinson

Google’s recent unveiling of Google Glasses (oh, how futuristically absurd they look) marks a distinct shift toward the mainstream consumer appeal of augmented reality. The product itself is amazing, but think about this: we now have a major tech player investing large amounts of money to manufacture and market a wearable augmented reality device—no more Sharper Image or Sky Mall gadgets that never live up to their hype. Sebastian Thrun, a Google Fellow and computer scientist, released a picture last week showing some of the capabilities the Project Glass eyewear will feature. Yet however many times Google wants to show us new ways to take snazzy photos, I’m surprised they don’t dive deeper into how this eyewear can revolutionize entire industries. Here’s where I see the biggest areas for disruption:

Police/Fire/EMS and Military applications: The raid against Osama bin Laden’s compound last year was broadcast live to the White House situation room where key decision-makers were paying close attention. Now imagine an entire military equipped with this technology. Everything a soldier sees or hears can be recorded and reviewed later for intelligence. Throw in some thermal overlay to reveal hidden dangers. Transpose a map of the battlefield onto the glasses to assist navigation and prevent troops from getting lost or confused during intense situations. Use avatars, just like in video games, to hover above fellow troops indicating their health, rank, mission, or destination. Enhancing these features for police, fire, and EMS emergency situations will undoubtedly follow.

Medical applications: Combine Google Glasses with IBM’s Watson and what do you get? A doctor who not only has the compendium of human knowledge available to answer any of his or her questions, but also a visual element enabling Watson (in the future) to make judgments on what it is seeing, not just what it is being asked with words. If a patient is on the verge of dying, AR specs will keep the doctor focused. Watson will give the recommended action and the doctor will perform it. If anything goes wrong during surgery, the recorded video from the specs will be reviewed by the hospital and insurance companies to determine whether there was malpractice or the patient couldn’t be saved.

Automotive applications: Take the Google Glasses concept and build them into a car. For commercial vehicles, the ability to record an automobile’s journey and document poor driving will result in fewer accidents, lower insurance costs, and better customer service. Perhaps once the technology improves, Google will integrate their glasses with their autonomous vehicles, offering self-driving and self-aware cars whose windshield will be running a variation of the Glasses software.

What industries do you think will be most disrupted by Google Glasses? Comment on the blog or on Twitter @EngagePR!

The Cable Show: That's a wrap

By Roya Pakfetrat

To some, The Cable Show might just be another trade show in a long list of trade shows, but for a few of our clients, it’s one of the most strategic shows of the year. Here is a wrap-up of the most discussed news from this week:

Cable & Wi-Fi: For cable operators today, Wi-Fi is viewed as a technology that not only boosts the value of their high-speed internet offerings, but also helps increase reach. This week at the show, five major MSOs (Cablevision, Bright House, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable) announced they have signed Wi-Fi roaming deals that will enable their customers to tap more than 50,000 wireless hotspots. The operators have come together and created a shared, uniform Wi-Fi network identifier called, “CableWiFi.” The purpose of this network is to allow customers to move from one hotspot to another without having to log in each time. This is just one more step toward making our mobile lifestyle even simpler – and we appreciate it!

Comcast’s X1: In other exciting news (especially for Boston residents), Comcast is officially launching Xfinity TV on the X1 Platform to Boston based triple-play customers (deployment in other major markets will be in the coming weeks). The X1 Platform is a “cloud-based” service that provides single-click access to a visual display of entertainment options, unified search across TV listings, DVR recordings and VOD using a new smart remote. IMHO – the remote seems like one of the coolest features of this launch. Since I’m a Comcast customer myself, gone are the days (or soon at least) of frantically and unsuccessfully trying to pause, fast-forward or rewind my DVR recordings and VOD choices. According to Comcast, the new enhanced remote offers greater responsiveness and does not require a line-of-sight connection to the set-top. Oh, and can’t find your remote? Now you can also use your phone or tablet. The new companion X1 remote control app will use motion and gesture controls to control TVs through the touch-screen of an iPhone or iPod touch! Luckily, I’m a loyal Apple customer; but I do wonder what the plan is to enable this feature in other smartphones and tablets.

TiVo: There was a lot of TiVo talk this week. The two biggest takeaways are TiVo’s new streaming to mobile capabilities and a new IP set-top box offering. Now, TiVo users can stream TV to tablets and smartphones both in – and outside – the home with ‘TiVo Stream.’ Additionally, TiVo’s IP set-top box delivers live and recorded TV, a cable operator's video-on-demand, plus broadband-delivered content. Both products will be available to cable operators and retail in the coming months. TiVo has not yet named a price for either product, so stay tuned!

The Next Big Thing: The show wasn’t just about major vendors and operators, but also emerging startups. During the “Next Big Thing: Ideas, Inventions and Emerging Tech Innovations” session, four startups were given the chance to discuss and pitch their “billion-dollar ideas” to the cable world. The companies included: Blue Jeans Network, Fastback Networks, Scality and Celeno Wireless Communications. You can learn more about what might be the “next big thing” here.

Besides all of the interesting news from this week, did you happen to catch this video of the flash mob at Imagine Park? It even includes a number to the theme song of True Blood (sorry non-vampire lovers – you just can’t appreciate this for what it is!). Enjoy -- see you at The Cable Show next year!

Planning for the Future: Annual WEST Summit factors the environment into business continuity

By Caitlin Mattias

What do floods in Thailand have to do with business in Silicon Valley?

We live in a world that’s increasingly interconnected; the ramifications of a global supply chain faces consumers on a daily basis, whether you’re buying bananas in the produce section of your grocery store shipped from Ecuador or surfing the web. Oceans are warming, polar ice caps are melting and it is widely recognized that the world’s climate is changing and this is having a global impact now and will accelerate in the future. From massive hurricanes to droughts, fires to floods - volatile weather events caused by climate change have a butterfly effect with results stretching throughout the globe.  

In the case of the Thai floods in 2011, one-third of the country was left under water, a truly devastating situation for the citizens of that country. But the Silicon Valley was also hit by the results of this catastrophe. The floods contributed to Intel lowering their Q4 guidance due to concerns about sourcing hard-disk drives, in which Thailand was a key leg in the supply chain. If another such incident resulted in depleting the world’s supply of computing hardware totally, imagine the impact on industry: prices drive up, business expansion could stall and the economy of an entire region could dive.

Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV), a consortium of non-profit, business, government and educational institutions in the Silicon Valley, aims to ensure that businesses quantify the risk attached with climate change and start planning for potential changes that might come over time. On Thursday, May 24, SSV will host the annual WEST (Water, Energy, Smart Technology) Summit at Santa Clara University to educate and evaluate the “Impact of Climate Change on Global Trade and Regional Resiliency.”

Attendees will be challenged to revisit the way their businesses and organizations are planning for the future, quantifying and  factoring  the risk associated with climate change (the past in no longer a predictor for the future ), and the impact that a changing environment might have on their supply chains, sustainability strategies, business plans and budgets. Speakers from Foundation Earth, IBM, SAP, Stanford University, Cisco, Mitsubishi, UPS and HP will join leaders from the Silicon Valley to help businesses take the first step down the road to innovating and planning for a more sustainable future.

The future can never be certain, but by joining together the greatest minds in the Bay Area, solutions leading to substantive change in our environment are possible. Join us at the WEST Summit to find out how you can play a part in effecting true regional change.

Friday by the Bay: Eating Good in this Neighborhood

By Molly Reynolds

“What’s for lunch?”

We are a food-focused bunch here at Engage. If we’re not eating at the moment, we’re discussing our last meal or planning our next one. This may or may not be normal elsewhere, but in the bay area, it’s pretty typical. There’s plenty of fodder for our foodie chats in Alameda.

Our own Harbor Bay Business Park offers walkable spots for Greek (Café Ya’sou), sandwiches and Korean (Wall Street Café) and a bit of everything (Why Cook). A five-minute drive from the office is the Harbor Bay Landing Shopping Center. We go here on Subway or Safeway runs, but also to enjoy sushi outside on a sunny day at Angelfish Japanese.

Slightly farther afield (and also about a five minute drive) takes us over the bridge to Alameda’s other island and the South Shore Center. This is another place for reliable standards like Chipotle, Panera, and Trader Joe’s. We often grab Daphne’s falafel and salads for our company lunches.

Park Street (about ten minutes door-to-door) provides the greatest variety in the area. Downtown Alameda is a vibrant district for shopping and culture, but we go for the food. We suggest trying the piadine (flatbread with salads folded into them like crunchy pita pockets) at Tomatina, curried platha dip and garlic noodles at Burma Superstar, and spicy Pad Thai at Toomie’s. In the mood for something a little diferente? Engage enjoyed a holiday meal of mojitos and cubano sandwiches at Habana’s; we regularly stop into lively La Penca Azul or tiny Taqueria Viva Mexico for our enchiladas fix. New favorites Troy and Burgermeister out our list of Alameda restaurant recommendations.

Now, what’ll it be for lunch?

Outage: Outrage?

By Molly Reynolds

At approximately, 9:40 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, April 17, 2012, the unthinkable happened. Millions of stomachs dropped as people began to realize what was going on. No amount of clicking or reloading was producing the required results. Mild annoyance turned to widespread panic.

A certain social media site quickly buzzed with anxious queries and jokes.

“Is Gmail down for anyone else? Is this a global pandemic?”
“If you’re on Twitter to see if Gmail is down, it is.”
“Gmail is down. The Mayans were right. #endoftheworld”
“#gmail down – internet snow day!”

News outlets from CNN to TechCrunch covered it.

Gmail’s outage lasted just over one hour. It affected ten percent, or about 35 million, of its subscribers.

Why was this news? One hour – who cares? At least it wasn’t down for several days, like Blackberry’s network last year. Amazon’s cloud hosting service went down last year as well. More recently, so did Microsoft’s. Heck, the state of Virginia lost service in 2010, resulting in its hosting company, Northrop Grumman, paying the government $4.8 million in financial compensation for business time lost.

It’s no surprise that time is worth money. If an online business cannot be reached on the web, it looses revenue. The owners of those internet shops will be justifiably angry in this instance. Both businesses and individuals value reliability. Without it, the consumer cannot trust the service.

Gmail hosts businesses, but it’s primarily individuals who use its free email service. That an hour-long hiccup produced such a strong reaction could be said to speak to deeper issues within our connected society. Are too many of us relying on a single service? Ought we to be more mindful of the personal information we share, even in “private” emails? What would happen if we lost that information forever? What does it take to trust a company? Can we deal with unexpected disconnect? Why are people so dramatic?

These may provide food for thought during the next, inevitable outage.