The 5 Best Things Right Now

ECONOMIC TREND - Collaboration / Collaborative Economy

Our economy is moving from high levels of personalization to increasing degrees of participation with the concept of the sharing economy. Big changes in business are increasing revenues, changing paradigms, and producing positive impacts on social and environmental issues. Car Sharing, Activating idle inventory, and companies renting products instead of selling them! BMW and Toyota for instance are renting cars from their new car lots, high end designer handbags are available by the hour, construction equipment is being identified as idle and shared where needed. Using technology to be more social, efficient, environmentally friendly and all around "smart".

GADGET - Occipital - 3D sensor for mobile devices.

Turn your iPhone/iPad camera into a 3d capturing / interpreting device. Take 3D scans, play augmented reality games, and develop mobile applications with 3D sensing. Currently a kickstarted campaign http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/occipital/structure-sensor-capture-the-world-in-3d

JUST COOL - Climb aboard, this eagles expecting you…

Every day GoPro cameras are used in more creative ways, attached to the end of swords, in the middle of a jumprope, on helmets or cars… My favorites tend to reveal what happens in nature - things you always wondered but couldn't possibly see before. Ive had dreams where Im And what better way to see the countryside of Mer De Glace (Glacier in France) than perched upon the back of an eagle?

TECH - How Siri Found Its Voice

Interesting article covering the mix of science and technology behind making computers produce, and these days more commonly interpret, more natural speech. Nuance Communications, the company who created Siri explains the processes behind perfecting intonation and precision of spoken words - so that any combination of words work together, and the voice and tone sound the same today combined with new words added years later. These also influence text to speech services that sound natural thanks to complex analysis and programatic processing of "speech utterances". Technology is entering an era where it adapts to our voice instead of the other way around.

COMEDY - Reggie Watts

Currently one of my favorite comedians/entertainers is Reggie Watts. I've known of him for about a year, but he's become much more prolific and hit the mainstream recently within comedy programs and beyond. He's more than a comedian. He's a formally trained and talented musician, master of dialects and language, and really funny. With these skills his performances are an amazing blend of mind tricks, incredible impromptu songs (he makes them up as he goes) and genuinely solid beats! Check out his TED talk for a good sampling, you'll want more.