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innovation is coming from private companies. These companies are starting to have better insights about how a city works compared to local governments.

Cities should be collecting all the data these companies are generating — Airbnb, Uber, drone delivery, Google self-driving cars. You can run analytics and look at the efficiency of the city

The startup is building a platform so that all the companies can send their data to this platform using an API approach.

If you create something with the Rift, the Terms of Service say that you surrender all rights to that work and that Oculus can use it whenever it wants

Oculus can collect data from you while you’re using the device

Furthermore, the information that they collect can be used to directly market products to you

Livehoods clusters this data into what becomes a collection distinctive neighborhoods--places filled with people who enjoy going to the same restaurants, coffee shops, and music venues

In other words, the digital map lined up with many residents’ own mental maps

Its latest purchase is Nest Labs, a maker of sophisticated thermostats and smoke detectors: on January 13th Google said it would pay $3.2 billion in cash for the firm. Google’s biggest move into hardware so far is its $12.5 billion bid for Motorola Mobility

With Google’s collection of hardware businesses, the common factor is data: gathering and crunching them, to make physical devices more intelligent.

Packed with sensors and software that can, say, detect that the house is empty and turn down the heating, Nest’s connected thermostats generate plenty of data, which the firm captures.

. The future of identity lies in digitizing the physical world, and the context in which we collect data about identity needs to become transparent.

Will consumers understand that better identity data equals higher-quality messaging to them throughout their lives? Context will allow us to exchange value better and build deeper networks in physical world data collection.

We need better systems to understand and provide access to individuals’ identity by service and by object

The popularity of wearable health trackers, such as Fitbit, Jawbone UP, and Nike FuelBand, have created a problem

Hardly anyone has developed algorithms that derive actionable insights from the data that your body generates, and the dashboards are separate

Samsung is not planning to release a wearable health monitor to consumers, but expects other developers to build on the reference design shown today.

But thanks to the internet, that hasn't stopped Bernie Sanders from putting up a serious fight. He was able to leverage his online support to raise $73 million from 1 million donors in 2015 — most of whom gave small amounts. He raised another $20 million in January and $40 million in February, with an average contribution size of $27.

But one safe bet is that the media of the future will be even more decentralized than today's media. It will be easier than ever for voters dissatisfied with the status quo to find each other, organize, and back political outsiders willing to champion their concerns.

the political process finally feels the full impact of the internet revolution, it will be "more like a phase change than just an incremental shift." The Trump and Sanders campaigns might seem like a dramatic change from the status quo, but the internet's political revolution is just getting started.

'Snooper's charter' bill becomes law, extending UK state surveillance

The new surveillance law requires web and phone companies to store everyone’s web browsing histories for 12 months and give the police, security services and official agencies unprecedented access to the data.

“The government is clear that, at a time of heightened security threat, it is essential our law enforcement and security and intelligence services have the power they need to keep people safe. The internet presents new opportunities for terrorists and we must ensure we have the capabilities to confront this challenge. But it is also right that these powers are subject to strict safeguards and rigorous oversight.”

A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google's search and voice assistant technology, akin to the Amazon Echo

a portable speaker with voice assistant tech

voice search and intelligent personal assistance will occupy center stage at the company's splash show

“Wait,” I asked, “so it’s supposed to delete my personal files from my internal hard drive without asking my permission?” “Yes,” she replied.

through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users’ computers. When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn’t recognize—which came up often, since I’m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself—it would then download it to Apple’s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted.

What Apple considers a “match” often isn’t. That rare, early version of Fountains of Wayne’s “I’ll Do The Driving,” labeled as such? Still had its same label, but was instead replaced by the later-released, more widely available version of the song. The piano demo of “Sister Jack” that I downloaded directly from Spoon’s website ten years ago? Replaced with the alternate, more common demo version of the song. What this means, then, is that Apple is engineering a future in which rare, or varying, mixes and versions of songs won’t exist unless Apple decides they do.

Gimenez’s take is “shoppable Instagram:” an app that uses image recognition and a large collection of retailers — 400-500 merchants selling over two million items from upwards of 15,000 brands — to create a more engaging and ultimately more fruitful social commerce experience.

Social commerce, the idea of buying products listed on social media sites, is huge in Asia.

“When you see anything online or on Instagram, the frustration is that you can’t shop even when people are using it as merchants,

Many cities are now facing impacts such as water scarcity, flooding and heatwaves, which are expected to become more frequent and intense than they are used to. Cities need to start investing in adaptation measures using ideas and best practice from around the world.

Climate change adaptation should be flexible to accommodate uncertainty

Adaptation should work with nature, not against it.

The City Council's Housing and Buildings Committee heard testimony Tuesday from residents, housing advocates, city officials and companies about the effects of the growing industry on the city.

In November 2014, about 15,300 New York City listings were entire homes or apartments representing about 59% of the available listings on the site that month, according to Slee. There were also 9,704 listings for private rooms, and 753 listings for shared rooms. The analysis also showed that 2,764 users were renting out two or more units, which opponents have cited as evidence the service is helping illegal hotels. More than 200 users were renting out five units or more

Airbnb is calling for "smart regulation," which it has had success with in cities including Portland, Oregon; San Jose and San Francisco, California; Amsterdam; and Paris. Airbnb collects lodging tax directly from hosts in those cities, and several local governments have passed laws that allow short-term rentals in some form.

Still, most parenting wisdom continues to portray television as an evil mind-rotting demon. The fear of ‘screen time’ is so deeply ingrained in our collective imagination that an irrational opposition between outdoor play and media consumption is taken for granted. Many parents believe the choice is either/or: indoors or out.

most storytelling is interactive. We consume most of our media through internet connected devices. And technology is so adept at providing ‘adaptive feedback’ that it proves to be an exceptionally effective teaching tool. In fact, a recent SRI study shows that game based learning can boost cognitive learning for students sitting on the median by 12%.

Joint media engagement refers to spontaneous and designed experiences of people using media together, and can happen anywhere and at any time when there are multiple people interacting together with digital and traditional media.

Imagine a world where the narrative, background music, colour grading and general feel of a drama is shaped in real time to suit your personality.

Visual Perceptive Media is a film which changes based on the person who is watching the video. Rather than drawing on sensor data to profile the environment, it focuses on the user themselves. It uses profiled data from a phone application to build a profile of the user and their preferences via their music collection and some personality questions.

companies will be able to order the scanning of suspected copyright infringements and also target Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

“If you are an entity and feel you have IP rights and are the subject of piracy, what the law allows you to do is to start collecting suspected Internet addresses.  At the point when you have enough evidence you can then approach the court to get the ISP to reveal their identity

Once the entity has that address it’s up to them whether they want to bring a copyright case to the court or write to the person behind the website

The Obama administration has called for a new era of "personalized medicine," which relies on collecting a vast amount of genetic information from American volunteers to bolster the development of genetics-based treatment.

. Medical schools did not pay much heed to genetics until relatively recently

Studies have also found that most patients don't actually change their behavior for the better once they learn about a genetic predisposition to a disease. But he also argues that primary care physicians shouldn't simply ignore genetics.

Meditation, Ms. Guler said, is an antisocial way of interacting with the world. She views astrology as a form of collective wellness, with Co-Star helping people relate to each other based on star signs. Another big difference between astrology and meditation’s practitioners: Astrologers are not allergic to making money.

Co-Star promotes its use of artificial intelligence and data from NASA to track movements of the stars.

the selfie-loving nanoinfluencer generation is eager to hear that they’re unique and special, no matter how woo-woo it seems