CIS Focal Issue

We can tell a story in 3 minutes. We can tell a story in 6 minutes. But that doesn’t rule out longer-form content -- Netflix is living proof of that

Google Glass just got a whole lot more useful for travel. The connected headset now has official apps for Foursquare, TripIt and OpenTable.

TripIt inserts its trip updates and information in the Google Now cards that already appear on Glass. Your flight status, departure time and gate will all appear on a single card

Open Table has its own command: "Okay Glass, make a reservation...." Once you speak those words, a selection of nearby restaurants will appear, ready for you to scroll through

Google’s project to change transportation by designing cars which can drive themselves is getting less secretive

a trip which will be far less tedious when I can do it while reading, answering email or otherwise being productive.

Sergey Brin has talked about self-driving cars being a reality for “everyday people” within five years–and he said that a year and a half ago, which would suggest he was thinking about 2017

what if there was a kinder kind of high-rise?

PinkCloud.dk entered renderings that showed horizontal neighborhoods flipped on their sides

FLIP/CITY, green space would connect workplaces, shops, and residences for people of various incomes on a vertical scale.

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.

Sproutling promises to use wearable, sensor-driven technology to give parents insight into their child's sleeping patterns. It does this with a wearable anklet, a charging dock with a novel UI, and an app

The app uses animations, not hard numbers, to provide an at-a-glance reassurance that your baby is alive and well ("New parents aren't going to know if 130 beats per minute is better than 90, and without the medical context to understand vitals data it's just going to cause more fear and anxiety and needless calls to the doctor,"

This generation of new parents are millennials. "They grew up with a smartphone in their pocket, so they're looking for technology to solve their problems,"

Sociologists from Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), avoid using the term “middle-class”, explaining that a mechanical transfer of terms used in most developed countries standards only distorts the picture. Other researchers claim that if the middle-class does not exceed 25%-30 % of the population (the highest figures obtained for Russia), it is useless to discuss the phenomenon, since this figure is around 60% and over in developed societies! It is not just a matter of statistics; it means quality difference for middle-class role in society in general and its consumer aspect in particular.

‘The Russian middle-class is growing not due to entrepreneurs and people from free business, but due to government employees or state corporations. Furthermore, gradually this tendency is becoming more vivid and changing the mentality of what the middle-class is

Optalysys, a UK technology company, says it’s on-target to demonstrate a novel optical computer, which performs calculations at the speed of light, in January 2015. If all goes to plan, Optalysys says its tech — which is really unlike anything you’ve ever heard of before — can put an exascale supercomputer on your desk by 2020.

Kindly is his first effort to come up with an alternative solution. With the app, which launched quietly a couple weeks ago, users can share or receive short conversation prompts in categories like "addiction/recovery," "marriage/divorce," "work/business" and "creativity/inspiration." The app then makes use of an algorithm to try and match the person who put out the prompt with another who may serve as a good listener.

The good news is that the citizens faced with this disaster reaped the benefits of enhanced mass communications and early warning systems -- clearly the power of the Internet being used for social good.

citizens already turn to social media for disaster updates to supplement traditional governmental and agency sources. Taken a step further, imagine an app that enables disaster victims and relief workers to view a shared map and see where all the rescue and aid efforts are situated in real time.

Technology is getting smaller, faster, cheaper and more powerful every day. With this phenomenon, sensors in almost everything become the norm -- in our cars, machinery and infrastructure. This evolution, paired with the power of cloud computing and big data analytics, makes it possible for both humans and inanimate objects to communicate valuable information.

When Virgin Galactic finally takes its first tourists to space, it'll just be a a stepping stone to what the company's ultimate mission is: Flying people from one place on Earth to another place on Earth, just like any other airline. Except in this version, you'll travel through space and be able to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in an hour.

He's discussed creating a supersonic passenger plane himself, but why settle for an incremental change when, if it works, "point-to-point suborbital space transportation" promises to be a complete paradigm shift?

Virgin's daring, sometimes insane chairman Richard Branson has long had his eyes on a supersonic commercial airline

The technology, known as UltraHaptics, is a haptic feedback system using ultrasound that provides users with a buzz-like feeling of pressure on their hand.

The technology does not just provide the sensation of flat surfaces, but can also be used to create the feel of 3D objects.

Sculptors could also use the technology to shape virtual objects using just their hands

it will certainly transform our daily routines: imagine driving hands-free while having the luxury of reading a book, taking a nap, or guiltlessly texting on the road. At the same time, something far more interesting - and still unexplored - is the potential transformation of our cities themselves

blurring the distinction between private and public modes of transportation. "Your" car could give you a lift to work in the morning and then, rather than sitting idle in a parking lot, give a lift to someone else in your family - or, for that matter, to anyone else in your neighbourhood, social media circles, or city.

This implies a city in which everyone can travel on demand with just one-fifth of the number of cars in use today