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Internet of Things should deliver consumer experiences that were not possible 2-3 years ago. These new experiences not only deliver consumer value but awe and delight as well. Products that tap into these human emotions will become the corner stones of tomorrows connected reality.

Based on the data the we have collected and analyzed there are three interesting questions to ask when approaching consumer based IoT products:      Does the product leverage ambient intelligence as the consumer interface?What is the unprecedented consumer experiences created from the product? How does the product connect with other products to deliver unique consumer services? 

A thoroughknowledge of the community is required to be able to understand the group, as well asunderstand the individual’s place in the whole. This knowledge allows a group to build asocially imagined concept of communal belief. It creates a method for demarcating who is and isnot an insider, and allows the group to come to terms with their shared ‘canonical’ text(s).

The PR firm, which surveyed 3,000 consumers in the UK, US and China through its Edelman Berland research arm, found that the percentage of US consumers who binge-watch has “increased significantly” in the past year – rising from 86% in 2013 to 94% this year. In China the figure was found to be an “almost universal” 99%.

72% of respondents watching so they ‘know what happens next’ and 57% noting that they do so to ‘feel caught up

Half of respondents said they were likely to use an app or website to interact with the content if it was designed by the creator (US 56%; UK 46%; China 81%) or not designed by the creator (US 52%; UK 44%; China 71%).

The survey included 150 advertisers, media companies and agencies across the U.S. and Canada and was designed to explore the hypothesis that the evolving combination of data, technology and cross-device viewing would lead to holistic, platform-agnostic planning of linear television and digital video advertising

consumer engagement with content on a second screen will increase moderate or significantly

Another key finding is that while all parties agree that technology will be a differentiator, there are still multiple views on what this technology should enable and the capabilities that it should offer,”

Live and weekly DVR ratings have plummeted for most broadcast programs, as many viewers can now catch their favorite shows on demand via Hulu or illegal torrents.

Neither of these represent the biggest problem facing TV – that would be Netflix. More specifically, it’s the streaming giant’s foray into the original programming game that should cause all couch potatoes’ skin to crawl.

Both have established impressive track records leading Pandora’s strong team of technologists.

“I’m excited to promote two top technology leaders to these important positions.

Mr. Conrad has led Pandora’s engineering and product organization from the product’s inception and has guided the team as they delivered increasingly sophisticated playlist techniques, mobile, consumer electronics and in-car listening technology, as well as sophisticated advertising solutions

About 99% of U.S. households (the total of which are in the 115 million range) have a TV, and 56% have cable. Compare that to Netflix, which has more than 48 million members worldwide. That means its entire global viewership is still not even half the U.S. However, that's not bad for a company founded in 1997, tackling a nearly 64-year-old industry.

In the summer months, it's easy to assume Netflix usage would go through the roof, thanks in part to younger students who now have three free months of time.

While Netflix doesn't share specific data on its viewers, spokeswoman Jenny McCabe said the site doesn't acquire more subscribers during the summer months. Rather, it picks up more viewers in Q1 (January, February and March) and Q4 (October, November and December).

BERLIN — The European Commission is planning a legal change next year that may prompt U.S. Web giants like Google and Facebook to rethink how they store and process consumer data, raising the prospect of a trans-Atlantic dispute over Internet privacy.

The European law gives individuals more control over the use of data they enter on free Web services, but it has not been revised since 1995, when the Internet was still in its infancy.

Facebook and Google have signed the Safe Harbor Agreement, a 2000 pact between the United States and the European Union under which U.S. signatories promise to handle the data of European citizens according to E.U. rules.

Bilateral relations between China and Nigeria will likely take one of two paths in the long term: either China will remain the overwhelmingly dominant actor or Nigeria will become a regional superpower, evening out the playing field. If China remains the stronger player it will shape Nigeria in its own interests (commonly referred to as "Chinese Imperialism").

During the first eleven years of its independence, Nigeria and China had no diplomatic relations. The Nigerian government's view of China grew especially sour after Mao officially supported the secessionist state in Biafra by supplying the Biafran administration with weapons.

During the period of General Abacha's military rule (1993-1998), Beijing's no-strings-attached development projects were increasingly well received. Nigeria's leaders grew resentful of Western conditions for aid and investment, and many Nigerians began to question what a generation of economic dependence on the West achieved for Nigeria.

Teach students that the act of writing in any setting is defined by both form and content. I don’t let my students cite Wikipedia in their academic papers (GASP!) because I don’t believe it to be proper academic form. I don’t let them cite the Britannica or dictionary either. In an effort to shape informed consumers of information I teach them how Wikipedia should and should not be used. I agree with Proffitt when he says it’s a great place to start and a terrible place to finish. Though in some academic circles, the tide is turning.

We know, from Japanese scientists, that dolphins and small whales are heavily contaminated by mercury.  No one should be eating meat from dolphins and small whales.

Yet the Japanese government, fully aware of the dangers of mercury contamination, ignores this problem and allows mercury-poisoned dolphin and whale meat to be sold in markets.  Japanese consumers are exposed to danger but not warned.

Mercury is the second most toxic poison in the world, second only to plutonium.  Mercury attacks the brain and the nervous system, causing horrible damage to eyesight, hearing, and motor-skills, as well as interfering with memory and thought processes leading to dementia.

with an enormous population of plankton, a few whales and a few krill, and slowly but surely the whales will multiply, pooping more iron into the ocean to produce more krill, which produces more whales, then more krill, then more whales, then more krill, until you could support an ocean teeming with whales

He found that on average whale faeces had 10 million times as much iron as Antarctic seawater

." Basically, that's iron concentrate. And strategically emitted — which would have to be up near the ocean surface, where the sun shines — that extra iron would create blooms of phytoplankton, which would then be eaten by krill, leading to a boost in the krill population, leading to ... yes ... bigger whale dinners!

WB: Technology and forecasting are forever joined together. Retailers demand trend information at a moment notice, while manufactures are in search of key selling silhouettes.  Forecasters are open to new technology and have fully embraced new tools for tracking and monitoring the consumer.  Technology continues to unlock new explorations from aviator societies to new technology driven materials.

"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages: The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct, that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order". The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we come to believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance—it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery", a regime of semantic algebra where all human meaning is conjured artificially to appear as a reference to the (increasingly) hermetic truth. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "hyperreal" terms. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.