Sleeping like a Log may be difficult for every one, especially for those with sleep disorder, but..(Read...)

Selon Angela McIntyre, Directeur de recherche au Gartner, "Les lunettes connectées avec Réalité Augmentée (AR) et caméra intégrée peuvent augmenter l'efficience des techniciens, ingénieurs et autres travailleurs sur le terrain (maintenance, santé, fabrication). Dans les trois à cinq prochaines années, l'industrie devrait obtenir les profits les plus intéressants dans ces domaines en augmentant sa marge d'un milliard de dollars par an. Les domaines d'application les plus intéressants devraient provenir de l'accélération du diagnostique et de la réparation de problèmes, sans nécessiter le déplacement d'experts supplémentaires sur les sites distants."

Toujours selon Gartner, si moins 1% des entreprises américaines ont implémenté des lunettes connectées, ce taux de pénétration devrait monter à 10% dans les 5 années à venir, toujours concernant les collaborateurs qui oeuvrent sur le terrain. Le développement du marché grand public devrait accélérer cette tendance, au point que 50% des entreprises pourraient les utiliser dans les 10 années à venir.

L'adoption des lunettes connectées reste faible en raison du manque d'applications dédiées à ce stade, mais cette situation ne peut que changer.

Si l'industrie lourde devrait être la plus rapide à adopter cette technologie permettant la formation sur site des collaborateurs, la grande distribution et la santé devraient être un peu plus lentes, bien que les lunettes connectées puissent apporter une aide intéressante dans le domaine de la recherche d'information visuelle.

L'industrie des services (banque, média, assurance,...) devrait être encore moins rapidement concernée, même si l'on peut imaginer des applications intéressantes, liées soit à la recherche d'information pour les assureurs (la valeur d'un bien par exemple) ou l'information quasi temps réel pour les métiers de la finance.

L'assistance et la formation semblent être à ce stade les applications les plus évidentes. 

Alors que les collaborateurs utilisent déjà des montres connectées, il ne faudra pas attendre longtemps, désormais, pour que les lunettes connectées entrent dans le périmètre de réflexion des règles concernant le BYOD (Bring Your Own Divice). 

Lire aussi : 

- Gartner says Smartglasses will bring innovation to Workspace Efficiency

[Via NA | Cheezburger]

Vous souhaitez rejoindre l'aventure Aldebaran ?

• Technicien mécatronique : montage mécanique et électronique + tests
• Acheteur hors production et transport : gestion des achats
• Ergonome : interface entre l'équipe de développement et l'utilisateur final
• Strategy and development fleet manager : support client
• Rédacteur technique : documentation des APIs C++ et Python
• Community developer : communication et gestion des communautés en ligne
• Ingénieur certification : veille réglementaire
• Ingénieur firmware : programmation des microcontrôleurs

Il y a quelques choses que l’équipe derrière la smartwatch Pebble voudrait nous dire, et un événement en live streaming est prévu le 6 novembre prochain, c’est-à-dire demain, où apparemment certaines « Big News » seront partagées. Pour confirmer l’événement, Pebble est retourné sur ses racines, Kickstarter, où la firme a affiché une nouvelle publication pour ses backers, comme le souligne PhoneArena.

La publication de Pebble mentionne : « nous savons que le temps a été long avant de vous apporter une mise à jour de la Pebble, mais nous avons eu la tête dans le guidon en se concentrant sur certains développements passionnants et de grandes nouvelles qui se préparent ». Il est ensuite souligné que quiconque lié au développement d’applications pour la Pebble sera particulièrement intéressé par l’événement, puisque la firme devrait indiquer quelques nouvelles fonctionnalités qui peuvent être ajoutées dans une mise à jour logicielle à venir.

La Pebble est l’un des projets financés par la foule le plus réussi qu’il y ait eu jusqu’à présent, avec plus de 68 000 backers, et bien que n’étant pas la seule smartwatch sur le marché, le moment de son arrivée signifiait qu’elle a profité de l’intérêt général pour cette technologie portable . Depuis son départ de Kickstarter, la Pebble a évolué et est désormais vendue en ligne, ou encore sur des boutiques marchandes.

Si l’événement concernant la Pebble partage des nouvelles d’une mise à jour logicielle et une sélection de nouvelles fonctionnalités, celui-ci devrait être accueilli avec joie par les fans de la montre connectée, qui, si l’on en croit les commentaires sur le forum officiel, ces derniers étaient plutôt inquiets par le silence total de la société. Une « lettre ouverte à Pebble » publiée cette semaine indique que tandis que la montre est intéressante, « le logiciel laisse beaucoup à désirer », et celle-ci se plaint d’un « manque d’informations » quand il s’agit de nouvelles concernant de nouveaux développements.

Est-ce que les nouvelles de demain vont calmer les propriétaires existants, et être assez spécial pour attirer des nouveaux ? Pebble pense clairement que celles-ci vont susciter la discussion, et que deux membres de l’équipe iront sur Reddit de suite après l’événement. Elle commencera à 10 heures, et sera diffusée sur le site de Pebble.

Une infographie nous présente les caractéristiques du nouveau smartphone de Google, le Nexus 5, face à l'iPhone 5S commercialisé depuis le 20 septembre dernier.

Lire la suite

The long-awaited French IPO has arrived – Criteo will start trading today, and the word around the IPO is positive. The company initially expected to raised under $200 Million in their Initial Public Offering at a $28/share price is now expected to clear $30 per share by the end of the day, according to a source close to the IPO.

AdTech IPO’s have been quite popular this year – more than half a dozen IPOs in the last 6 months, according to Business Insider – among the largest was Rocket Fuel, which had previously been called the most successful AdTech IPO of the year (AdAge); however, a source from the NASDAQ, here at the Dublin Web Summit to announce their new offering for private tech companies, says that the Criteo IPO has been more highly anticipated, and the closing trade price may very well be north of $30, valuing the company at around $2 Billion.

Criteo has done a phenomenal job at creating investor confidence, staving off worries about their performance on mobile with the acquisition of mobile retargeting company AD-X. The Paris-based company continues to see exponential YoY revenue growth, and, for now, it looks as though they will go down as one of the more successful AdTech IPOs, unlike Tremor Video & YuMe, which are currently trading below their IPO share price after going public earlier this year.

This guest post is part 3 of “The Amusement Park” blog series written by Mark Fabian Henkel (@mrkhnkl) Co-founder and CEO of Paymill, a young startup that offers the fastest and easiest way to integrate credit and debit card payments in websites and mobile applications.

Oh man where am I? Where is my wallet? – Okay, I’m at home and my wallet is on the nightstand. But why do I suffer from headaches so badly ? Oh the memory comes back slowly: Yesterday was D-Day at the office. D-Day, for non-Bavarians is the day where you are forced to wear a Dirndl (that’s where the D comes from) as women and Lederhosen as men. This day usually comes with the company’s visit to the Wiesn. So, that’s what happened yesterday : I have been to the Oktoberfest and came home late after a couple of beers and schnapps.

But what does the Oktoberfest visit have in common with the “amusement park”-blog and more importantly with start-ups ? Let me tell you where the link is. Overall, the Oktoberfest is the largest amusement park you can imagine. Just to give you some numbers:

• 6,9 million visitors
• 7,5 million litres  of beer
• 520.000 chicken
• 118 oxen
• and exactly 172 rides, exhibitors, carneys

So, I guess this is enough proof that the Oktoberfest is like an amusement park and everybody who ever visited the Theresienwiese in Munich at that time will testify that.

And how does it relate to start-ups? Well, I could state the low hanging fruit, if you do something do it right – if you go to the Oktoberfest, get drunk and don’t stop after the first Maß (1 liter of Munich beer). However, there are more similarities around Oktoberfest and start-ups.

Know your Target Market

If you go to celebrate with friends, you need to decide in which tent to go. There are 14 big tents just to drop some names: Hofbräu Festzelt (wanna see Australians), Schützen Festzelt (wanna see the Munich youth) or Käfer’s (see VIPs like in a zoo). You see, no tent is like the other. They are different in the music they play, they’re different in the type of beer they serve and they differ by the people inside. That reminds me pretty much of target groups.

Just like a visitor, an entrepreneur has to decide which target group he wants to approach and in the beginning, it’s one target group. Only later, once you have more resources, can you start to deal with more. So choosing you target group well is the same decision you face on a Saturday in Munich around October before you enter one of the famous beer tents.

Know your Barriers to Entry

But choose well where to go, cause entry barriers at the Oktoberfest are high, especially during peak times. Nobody wants to go to the tents on Wednesday at noon, just like nobody opens a start-up without a target group.

It’s hard to get in when the tents are crowded on the weekends and everybody wants to be one of the crazy guys standing on the wooden bench and singing with the marching band. You need to be the first on that day (same as with start-ups) or you need to know somebody to get in or your party starts in a place where there’s nobody and you need to get it started (see all these Oktoberfests around the world).

In the start-up world, that means either you know a huge supporter, investor or company, or you need to be the first who comes up with an idea or you look for a spot, area where your party doesn’t exist.

It’s all about Building Relationships

Once you’re in, you need to find a place to sit down. Usually you have a reservation but if you don’t, you need to talk to people and ask them to share some space on their bench.

In any case, after two or three beers you start chatting with people, whether you know them or not. Certainly after 3-4 Maß you start approaching people you don’t know. And that’s where it’s similar to start-ups: you tried hard to get in, you got your position and know after a certain time (2-3 beers) it’s time to step out of you comfort zone to start mingling with others.

Oktoberfest is just like any other networking event, although not as serious as some tech conferences, it’s the perfect place to build relationships. Networking plays an important part when trying to grow your startup, because it just makes doing business easier with people you already know. And you never know who you’re going to bump into!

Know your limits

Drink too much and you’re going to have a bad time! Just like in a startup, you need to know your limits, because if you push yourself too much you’re going to go crashing. At Oktoberfest, you’ll be thrown out of the beer tent, in the startup world you’ll run out of steam in the market you invested so much time and capital to penetrate.

Case in point, you need to pace yourself! You can’t drink all the beer in the world, just like you can’t ship dozens of new features every week. Do too much and you’ll literally lose focus!

Oktoberfest is always a crazy time, but it’s also loads of fun – just like life in a start-up. And in case you’re wondering, yes I visited the haunted house and a tiny rollercoaster as promised, although the rollercoaster of start-ups just might be even better than the real one.

Check out Mark’s other posts:

• The Haunted House: Overcoming the Fear Factor of Running a Startup
  
• The Ups & Downs: How Startup Life is Like a Rollercoaster

Yep, you read that headline right: a Firefly board game, and apparently, the game is really fun!

In Firefly: The Game – based on the popular Firefly television series created by Joss Whedon – players captain their own Firefly-class transport ship, traveling the ‘Verse with a handpicked crew of fighters, mechanics and other travelers. As a captain desperate for work, players are compelled to take on any job — so long as it pays. Double-dealing employers, heavy-handed Alliance patrols and marauding Reavers are all in a day’s work for a ship’s captain at the edge of the ‘Verse. Firefly: The Game is a high-end thematic tabletop board game from Gale Force Nine (GF9) and the first in a series of tabletop hobby board games and miniatures games from GF9 set in the Firefly Universe.

The game will be released in just 2 days, and if you pre-order, you’ll get 5 Big Damn Hero cards (Malcolm, Zoe, Wash, Jayne, Kaylee) that are not usually included in the base game.

[Firefly: The Board Game @ Amazon.com]

Blood-sucking insects may be the bane of your summer picnics, but they've been around for far, far longer: according to new research, mosquitoes that feed on blood have been around for at least 46 million years. Researchers led from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History made the discovery by studying fossilized mosquitoes. Eventually, they came across one that appeared to still be filled with its final meal of blood — though that may not sound like a rare phenomenon, it is. The researchers write that such a finding has never been described before.

Continue reading…

The October edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, app creators, coding resources, productivity tools, testing tools, and some really great new fonts.

Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.

Appmaker

Appmaker, from Mozilla, is a drag-and-drop mobile app creator that works right in your browser. It’s in pre-alpha release, so expect some bugs, but it looks promising.

InstallRails

InstallRails is a step-by-step guide for installing Ruby on Rails. It uses standard tools, but explains them in a way that makes them easy to understand.

BitBalloon

BitBalloon is a static hosting service that’s perfect for simple sites like landing pages, surveys, and the like. Just zip your website files (or use one of their templates), drag and drop the zip file onto their website, and they’ll optimize and deploy it, complete with functioning HTML forms.

Hiro

Hiro is an online notepad where you can safely store your ideas and notes throughout the day. It always opens where you left off, securely syncs across your devices, and it’s free.

Sagan Ipsum

Sagan Ipsum is a lorem ipsum generator that gives you Carl Sagan quotes about the universe.

WP Test

WP Test is a set of data for testing the integrity of your WordPress plugins and themes. It’s based on the WordPress Theme Unit Test Codex data, to give you a mix of quirky, simulated user content.

Business Card Maker

Business Card Maker is a web app for quickly creating simple business cards that you can then download to print.

Mobile Web Best Practices

Mobile Web Best Practices will help you ask the right questions and solve problems you may encounter when designing for the mobile web. It’s broken down to cover strategy, user experience, visual design, and development, and has additional resources and a FAQ section.

UICloud

UICloud is a huge database of user interface elements. You can search through over 38,000 elements, and over 1200 UI sets.

Google Web Designer

Google Web Designer is a new responsive HTML5 website creator from Google that lets you design in a WYSIWYG environment or dive right into the code.

DiagnostiCSS

DiagnostiCSS makes it simple to visually detect inaccessible or invalid HTML markup, highlighting inline styles and event attributes, invalid links, empty and deprecated elements, and more.

Listify

Listify is a simple little app that makes it easy to turn a group of lines into an HTML list, saving you time and effort.

Flexing Pagination Arrows

Want to add a neat little effect to your pagination? These Flexing Pagination Arrows are a simple way to add a bit of extra flare to an otherwise incredibly basic and simple UI element.

Harpoon

Trying to figure out how much money you need to make? Harpoon simplifies that, giving you financial planning advice and metrics for managing your income. It’s not ready yet, but you can sign up for updates.

Formstone

Formstone is a collection of jQuery plugins focused on interface structure and customization. It includes plugins for pickers, scrolling, zooming, and more.

StackEdit

Need an online Markdown editor? StackEdit lets you write and edit Markdown files, as well as save them to Google Drive or Dropbox to have your documents available in the cloud any time.

Breeezy

Breeezy adds multilayer export functionality to Photoshop, so you can export multiple layers from your PSD files in a single click. It saves layer transparency, passes layer names to files, and more.

Raw

Raw is an open source web app that lets you create vector-based visualizations in vector and raster formats to embed on your website. It’s built on D3.js, and has a simple user interface.

Font Combiner

Font Combiner is a web app for creating your own custom font that can be used online alongside your other media content.

Semantic UI

Semantic UI empowers front-end developers to create conversational code that makes sense to humans, not just machines. It’s based on natural language patterns for describing elements, rather than short-hand or codified naming conventions.

NoJPEG

Have clients who insist on using JPEG files for their logos, etc.? NoJPEG will explain to them why a JPEG isn’t the right file format for logos, and introduce them to EPS and PNG file formats.

Start Bootstrap

Start Bootstrap is a collection of free, open source HTML starter templates for Bootstrap. They’re ready to use, even with Bootstrap 3.

Bento

Bento is a collection of programming lessons from around the web, organized by language.

Annyang!

Annyang! is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to add voice recognition and control to your website or app.

Custom Elements

Custom Elements is a gallery of web components you can use for modern web apps. They have a boilerplate to get you started creating your own components to share, too.

Flexbox

Flexbox is a framework for creating hack-free CSS layouts, including better grids, sticky footers, vertical centering, and more.

HTTPFlies

HTTPFlies is a gallery that beautifully showcases different HTTP status codes, everything from the common codes like 404 to more obscure ones like 402 or 431.

Battersea (£30)

Battersea is a distressed typeface perfect for signage or other display uses. It comes as an .otf file, as well as two .ai files for scalable detail.

Revanche ($29)

Revanche is a distressed font, based on old wall stencils, with a subversive military feel to it.

Polina ($46)

Polina is a family of ten fonts, including textures and shadows, that can be layered.

PR HallowDoodles 01 ($10)

Need some Halloween-themed drawings and ornaments? PR HallowDoodles 01 is just what you need, including things like bats, owls, dead trees, spiders, and more abstract creepy ornaments.

Big Lodge ($15)

Big Lodge is a distressed, vintage style typeface that’s perfect for things like apparel logos.

Lousiane (free)

Lousiane is a decorative display typeface that’s both elegant and beautiful.

Inked Lights ($20)

Inked Lights is a handdrawn, retro-styled typeface with a sophisticated but playful feel.

Rose (free)

Rose is a free font with a feminine, friendly feeling.

Studio ($10)

Studio is a typewriter-inspired slab serif that combines soft curves with linear elements.

Superspitze Grotesk ($10)

Superspitze Grotesk is inspired by bold geometric typefaces, but with a more humanist and detailed style.

Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments.

eBook: jQuery Trickshots (100 advanced techniques) – only $7.95!

My trip to Mozilla Summit 2013 was incredible.  I’ve spent so much time focusing on my project that I had lost sight of all of the great work Mozillians were putting out.  MozSummit provided the perfect reminder of how brilliant my colleagues are and how much of a n00b I really am.  I’m willing to be you’ve not heard of these excellent projects, but you certainly should take a moment to explore them and be blown away!

Shumway

The Shumway project is an effort in parsing and rendering SWF files natively within the browser using HTML5.  That’s right:  the ability to play Flash SWF’s without requiring Adobe’s software.  This project was showcased at Mozilla Summit 2013 and people were standing and applauding.  Flash games were displayed running with Shumway, and while the project is still in its early stages, the demonstration was fluid, elegant, and completely functional.  Keep your eye on this project as it moves forward; it’s a brilliant idea and the execution to this point!

AppMaker

Firefox OS is the exciting new kid on the mobile OS market and for good reason:  no need for another native language, lower cost to developer software, lower cost for hardware, and everything is based on web standards.  To further simplify the process of app creation, Mozilla has created AppMaker, a WYSIWYG open web app creator.  AppMaker allows you to drag and drop app controls, bind them to actions, and export your app.  Just another way Mozilla makes open web app easier!

Mozilla Brick

Mozilla Brick is an extension of the x-tags project.  Brick is a bundle of reusable UI components created to enable rapid development of cross-browser and mobile-friendly HTML5 web applications.  You will find components like appbar, slidebox, deck, tooltip, and more.  Web components are the future of HTML and JavaScript widgetry — why not use them in your apps now by incorporating Brick?

TogetherJS

TogetherJS blew me away at MozSummit.  This excellent JavaScript utility allows for real time collaboration with minimal effort in implementation.   Each user within the shared page has their mouse displayed as it moves, changes form values, clicks around the page, etc.  As TogetherJS promises:  just copy and paste TogetherJS’s JS library and HTML snippet into your site or app to give it out-of-the-box collaboration tools and features:

Start TogetherJS

You can see this feature in action at JSFiddle;  create a fiddle, use the collaboration feature, send the URL to a friend, and experiment away!

Open Badges

Open Badges is a project looking to standardized the way badges are given and stored on the web.  Imagine being able to earn and display badges from all aspects of your life (schooling, gaming, working, etc.) in one standard place — that is a goal Open Badges can help solve in the future.  You can set up your own badge site and start issuing badges today, so check it out!

These projects are incredible in their own ways and make me feel proud to call myself a Mozillian.  As with every Mozilla project, they are all open source and ready for contributors and bug reports.  Which of these projects do you find most useful?  What is most exciting?  Please share your thoughts!

Read the full article at: 5 Awesome New Mozilla Technologies You’ve Never Heard Of

Les imprimantes 3D ne sont plus les jouets de l’industrie. Les amateurs partout dans le monde sont en train de découvrir les joies de l’impression 3D à travers la prolifération des imprimantes à bas prix. Cela signifie que les imprimantes 3D sont maintenant utilisées pour créer plus de choses, mais quelles sont ces choses ?

Hubs 3D, une communauté dédiée aux imprimantes 3D, a publié une étude en utilisant les données recueillies au cours de la dernière année à partir de 1163 imprimantes. Grâce à ces données, ils ont mis en place un rapport sur ​​la façon dont les imprimantes 3D sont utilisées.

Pour commencer, regardons comment les gens utilisent les imprimantes 3D et pour quel usage. Sans surprise, la plupart des gens utilisent encore des imprimantes 3D pour réaliser des prototypes. Après cela, des gadgets, des maquettes, des cadeaux et des add-ons pour des téléphones complètent le top cinq. Chose intéressante, les jouets sont parmi les moins cités, malgré le fait que les imprimantes 3D n’ont rien à prouver dans ce secteur.

La catégorie dédiée aux couleurs est un peu plus intéressante car à ce jour on trouve une vaste variété de plastiques colorés disponibles sur le marché. Malgré la variété, les cinq principales couleurs sont le blanc, le bleu, le rouge, le vert et le noir.

Il peut y avoir une variété de couleurs disponibles, mais rien ne peut battre la diversité du matériel concernant les imprimantes 3D qui sont actuellement sur le marché. Dans cette catégorie, vous pouvez voir que les grands joueurs comme Ultimaker, MarketBot et RepRap dominent le secteur, mais il y a beaucoup de gens qui préfèrent acquérir des imprimantes moins connues, et sûrement moins onéreuses.

Enfin, voici un regard sur la distribution des imprimantes 3D à travers l’Europe, Amérique du Nord et du Sud et le reste du monde. Les principaux utilisateurs de Hubs 3D sont basés en Europe, mais l’Amérique du Nord représente une forte présence notamment avec l’imprimante 3D Replicator MakerBot.

Hubs 3D a d’autres statistiques dans son étude que vous pouvez retrouver ici. Avez-vous mis les mains dans ces imprimantes 3D ? Si oui vous retrouvez-vous dans ces statistiques ?

If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human?

Grey Flynn, age 7, Stoneham, MA

Absolutely!

Some things don't work like they do in the movies. Getting shot doesn't really make someone fly backward. The vacuum of space doesn't make your skin explode.

But high wind can definitely pick up a person. In fact, if you were standing in the parking lot, the wind wouldn't just pick you up—it would also peel the pavement from the ground!

It wouldn't be strong enough to peel your skin off. Humans can survive blasts of 500 mph wind, which is important because pilots sometimes need to eject from airplanes at those speeds.

In the 1940s, the US government put pilots in wind tunnels to learn how they reacted to high winds. Have you ever been curious what happens to a person's face in 457 mph winds? Well, you can watch a video of one of those wind tunnel tests here. (That test was conducted at NASA Langley Research Center, where I worked before I started drawing internet comics for a living.)

It doesn't look very comfortable—I didn't know cheeks could flap like that—but the pilot appears to stay alive.

Luckily, he's strapped into that chair. He wouldn't be able to stand up in those winds! If he tried, he would go flying backward down the tunnel.

High wind is really powerful. In a paper in the journal Weather, J. F. R. McIlveen showed how to calculate the force of wind on the human body.[1]McIlveen, J. F. R.. "The Everyday Effects Of Wind Drag On People." Weather 57, no. 11 (2002): 410-413. The calculations on page 2 show how far you'd have to lean to stay upright in wind of various speeds.

When wind speed rises above about 120 mph, it's no longer possible to stay upright no matter how far you lean; you'll start to slide backward across the ground,[2]When Hurricane Isabel hit Virginia in 2003, I had the bright idea of standing on a skateboard with a poncho held up like a sail, so the wind would blow me down the street. But the moment I got the sail up, the wind fell quiet.

Later, I learned that people die from doing that. Oops. then quickly go head over heels and start to tumble.

You wouldn't necessarily be thrown very high. If the wind were perfectly level, you'd tumble along the surface, bouncing against the ground. However, if there were any updrafts, you could easily be lifted up and carried away.

The good news is that 500 mph winds are rare. The strongest hurricanes have wind speeds around 200 mph with gusts up to 250.[3]Courtney, J.; Buchan, S.; Cerveny, R.S.; Bessemoulin, P.; Peterson, T.C.; Rubiera Torres, J.M.; Beven, J.; King, J.; Trerwin, B.; Rancourt, K.. 2012 "Documentation and verification of the world extreme wind gust record: 113.3 m s–1 on Barrow Island, Australia, during passage of tropical cyclone Olivia." Australian Meterological and Oceanographic Journal, 62 (1). 1-9. Tornadoes can reach 300 mph.[4]It's difficult to get accurate measurements of surface winds since those tornadoes destroy most measuring equipment! 300 is a far cry from 500; the force from a 500 mph wind is several times stronger than the force from a 300 mph wind.

There are a few ways you could experience wind speeds faster than 500 mph. One is to stand on top of a volcano when it erupts. When Mount St. Helens exploded in 1980, the column of ash was blasted outward at 700 mph, which is close to the speed of sound.[5]Kieffer, S. W., 1981, Fluid dynamics of the May 18 blast at Mount St. Helens, in Lipman, P.W., and Mullineux, D.R., eds., The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1250, p. 379-400.

Another way to experience 500 mph winds is to trigger a hypercane.[6]Limits on Hurricane Intensity A hypercane is an exotic type of hurricane with 500 mph winds spinning in a very tight vortex just a few miles across.

Hypercanes can't exist on Earth right now. To form, they require ocean temperatures of about 50°C. No matter how much we warm the planet, we're not going to get the temperature that high any time soon.

However, there's one way these storms might happen.

When an asteroid or comet—coincidentally, one about the size of the recently-named 4942 Munroe—hit Mexico 65 million years ago, it punched a hole in the crust and left behind a sea of lava.[7]Christeson, Gail L., Gareth S. Collins, Joanna V. Morgan, Sean P.S. Gulick, Penny J. Barton, and Michael R. Warner. "Mantle Deformation Beneath The Chicxulub Impact Crater." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 284, no. 1-2 (2009): 249-257. When water flowed back in to fill the hole, it would have been heated by contact with the molten rock. This might have created the conditions for hypercanes to form, and one paper suggests that these storms could have lifted a large amount of dust and debris into the upper atmosphere—thus contributing to a global winter and extinction of the dinosaurs.[8]Emanuel, Kerry A., Kevin Speer, Richard Rotunno, Ramesh Srivastava, and Mario Molina. "Hypercanes: A Possible Link In Global Extinction Scenarios." Journal of Geophysical Research 100, no. D7 (1995): 13755-13765.

In short, the answer to Grey's question is yes—500 mph winds would send you flying through the air. But don't worry about that. Instead, worry about is the thing that created the 500 mph winds. Odds are, that's what's going to kill you.

Lots of apps have offered the promise of reading text faster, but a Chrome extension called Beeline Reader is using an unexpected tool to get there: colored text. Built on top of the Readability code, the extension works by reformatting the text on a page into a single stripped-down column, then color-coding alternating lines of text to ensure readers never get lost. According to a recent study, that's enough to get the average person through a block of text ten percent faster.

While the trick itself is simple, there's a surprising amount of psychological background to it. The developer tells Fast Company that he was inspired by the Stroop Test in psychology, which shows that readers inevitably perceive the color of the text they're...

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Swedish startup Memoto did well on Kickstarter – well enough to earn the company 11 times its funding goal, or $550,000 to drive the creation of its lifelogging camera. The small camera is designed to be worn on your person, features no buttons and takes pictures constantly while worn, but as of today it’s called the “Narrative Clip,” not the Memoto, as its creators rebrand to Narrative with $3 million in new funding. Both the rebrand and the new money will help Narrative expand on a global scale, the company says.

Memoto was a problematic name for global ambitions because it conflicted with the name of something else in the same market, the company explained in a release, so to make sure it didn’t run into any problems with trademarks worldwide, the Stockholm-based startup made the tough decision to switch to Narrative for their branding, which is pretty fitting, especially since now there’s freedom to develop more products beyond just the eponymous camera.

The design of the newly remained Narrative Clip remains the same, however, so pre-order customers can expect the same device to ship to them. And Narrative now has even more money in the coffers in addition to its big Kickstarter raise, thanks to a $3 million round led by San Francisco’s True Ventures. True Ventures has previously invested in hardware startups including MakerBot and Fitbit, and Narrative’s aims are somewhat parallel to those of Fitbit, with more of an emphasis on quantifying non fitness data. The round also included LDV Capital and London’s Passion Capital, which has backed photo sharing apps including EyeEm and Loopcam in the past.

The Narrative Clip should ship by November to the first customers, according to Narrative, and the $279 debut product is still available for pre-order in grey, white and orange. The device takes a photo every 30 seconds, and passes along geolocation data as well as date and time information to an online service that keeps track of your logged photos and makes them available to review or share. Photos are 5 megapixels, and the device has a built-in rechargeable battery that lasts up to two days.

Narrative might face a small challenge in terms of building on its existing momentum with completely new branding, but the lifelogging camera is still in very early stages, and hasn’t even shipped hardware yet, so the name switch is unlikely to drastically affect its chances at success. Early sample photos suggest this kind of scattershot approach at social photography could have some very lovely results, too, so I’ll be more interested to see how the Narrative Clip gets used by its first batch of owners as they set out to leave no stone undocumented.

Comme chaque année, la grande kermesse du Web va se retrouver à Paris pour un évènement organisé par Géraldine et Loïc Le Meur, LeWeb, devenu à ce jour incontournable pour tous les amateurs de Web et de nombreux professionnels. Cette année, l’événement aura lieu du 10 au 12 décembre 2013 !

LeWeb’13 sera différent cette année puisqu’il va mettre à l’honneur le dixième anniversaire de LeWeb à Paris, dont le thème va être de penser à l’avenir et d’imaginer « les 10 prochaines années ». L’idée est donc de rassembler les plus brillants innovateurs et visionnaires de la technologie d’aujourd’hui, en explorant plusieurs segments de marché (mobile, matériel, social, etc) et leur trajectoire potentielle, ainsi que la technologie dans son ensemble, et ce que les 10 prochaines années pourraient nous réserver.

Outre le fait d’avoir des conférences, des workshops, vous n’êtes pas sans savoir que LeWeb propose aussi une compétition de startups, qui est l’une des plus médiatisées pour lancer une entreprise en Europe.

C’est donc à seulement moins de 3 mois du début de l’évènement, que LeWeb a annoncé l’ouverture de la compétition de startups. LeWeb poursuit donc sa fière tradition d’offrir aux meilleures startups mondiales un champ de bataille pour cette nouvelle édition. Ainsi, l’évènement est à la recherche de startups les plus passionnantes et novatrices qui façonneront les « 10 prochaines années ».

Après un choix forcément complexe pour les organisations, les demi-finalistes recevront deux billets pour LeWeb et une invitation à démontrer leurs produits dans la Plénière II !

Donc si vous pensez avoir la merveilleuse idée des dix prochaines années, que vous avez moins de 1.5 millions d’euros de chiffre d’affaire, que vous êtes destiné à offrir un service aux utilisateurs grand public ou aux entreprises, et bien sûr que vous avez une annonce importante à faire pour le LeWeb’13, alors cliquez ici !

I really need to get my hands on one of these like right now.

A premium, deluxe edition of the Original D&D® “White Box”!

It’s the original Dungeons & Dragons game, packed with more content than ever before.

The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974 and was the very first roleplaying game, introducing concepts that have persisted throughout later editions. It included three small rules booklets in a white box.

This deluxe, premium reprint of the original “White Box” features new packaging and includes the following seven booklets:

Volume 1: Men & Magic
Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure
Volume 3: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures
Supplement I: Greyhawk
Supplement II: Blackmoor
Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry
Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes

Each booklet features new cover art but is otherwise a faithful reproduction of the original, including original interior art.

-Premium Original Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game (D&D Boxed Game) – $149.99 $101.24 (33% Off)