24/7 interesting

Making sense of the world together - these are all the things we're reading on the internet and sharing. People and this planet: technology, current affairs, parenting, healthcare, the future.

[247interesting]

A Better A&E project by London design firm PearsonLloyd, trialled for a year, aimed to tackle the problem of aggression in Accident & Emergency hospital wards. In their research, PearsonLloyd found that most aggression stemmed from frustration at not knowing what was going on. Part of the solution was to introduce highly designed signage and digital communications that better explained waiting times and processes to patients, which resulted in a reduction of aggressive behaviour by 50% .

(via LifeStyle:News:Global)

[keyholeco]

The Social TV Ecosystem in 2013

[247interesting]

Around one in five internet users say they have ever signed an online petition.

stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/telecoms-research/Internet-Citizens-Report.pdf

[247interesting]

(via An Average Monday in the UK: PCs for Lunch, Tablets for Dinner)

[247interesting]

"At the end of the day, the true value proposition of education is employment," Thrun says, sounding more CEO than professor. "If you focus on the single question of who knows best what students need in the workforce, it's the people already in the workforce. Why not give industry a voice?"

[helloyoucreatives]

[247interesting]

(via All Aboard the First Starbucks on a Train with SBB | Starbucks Newsroom)

[247interesting]

The cashew nut, which is really a seed, is a $4bn (£2.5bn) global business that provides jobs for millions, particularly in Africa and India. While half of the world's crop is grown in Africa, more than 60% of the cashews consumed are processed in India. Half of the world's crop is grown in Africa.

More than a quarter (27%) of India's processed cashews are sent to Europe, and the majority of these are sold through supermarkets, often having had value added in the west through roasting and salting. Germany, France and the UK account for about 50% of salty snack consumption.

[peterspear]

Netflix is this nontelevision entity producing television, making a blockbuster bet on a handful of shows in a given year now in the hopes of making their business model work, is almost the best proof you could have that the blockbuster strategy works.

Anita Elberse “The case for blockbusters” HBR (via peterspear)

[explore-blog]

It’s part of the nature of man to start with romance and build to a reality.

November 12, 1971: Ray Bradbury, Carl Sagan, and Arthur C. Clarke in cosmic conversation about Mars and the mind of man (via explore-blog)

[247interesting]

"I use it whenever I go to other cities. Generally, as soon as I have wi-fi, I get on Tinder to see who's in the area," says Jenny Levy, a subscriber who travels regularly for work.

"When I was in Los Angeles, I met up with someone and we went for a drink. It wasn't successful, but now I know someone that lives in LA," she explains.

"Tinder makes your experience of traveling less intimidating, because the second you land, you can start making new social relationships in that area," Rad says. "Traditionally for business travelers, if they want to meet people they might go down to the hotel bar. These young people are doing it very differently."

[247interesting]

Advice columns.

[247interesting]

She said she viewed her role, and the role more generally of CEOs, as “playing defence”, while the team is offence.

Mayer added: “Your job is to say we’re going to run in this direction, then clear a path, get the objects, bureaucracy, the naysaysers out of the way and help people run as fast as they can.” 

[247interesting]

James Watt had a problem. The man erroneously known as the creator of the steam engine (he actually just added a small condenser to the existing steam engine which made it more efficient) needed a way to sell his new machine. While there were plenty of ways to measure how one steam engine compared with another, there wasn’t yet a good way to compare the power of a steam engine with that of less technologically-sophisticated alternatives.

So Watt came up with horsepower, which was based on this simple estimation of an average horse’s strength:

1 Horsepower = 745.699872 watts

With this new conversion factor, Watt was able to make the utility of his machine more marketable. Watt’s engine eventually replaced horses and water wheels as the primary power source for British Industry and was one of the most crucial factors in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.

The great irony in all of this though was that Watt’s main innovation was increasing the efficiency of the steam engine, not simply its raw power. Ultimately, he made a trade-off between the degree to which horsepower reflected reality and the degree to which it could be interpreted by a lay-person. In the end, he assumed that people would take the price of coal into account, and therefore make their decisions according to two metrics: resources expended and power generated.

[247interesting]

Amazon Expanding Its Own Private Label Offering to Supermarket Goods

[247interesting]

Our main yardstick for the health of the economy is G.D.P. growth, a concept devised in the nineteen-thirties by the economist Simon Kuznets. If it’s rising briskly, we know that the economy is doing well. If not, we know it’s time to worry. The basic assumption is simple: the more stuff we’re producing for sale, the better off we are. In the industrial age, this was a reasonable assumption, but in the digital economy that picture gets a lot fuzzier, since so much of what’s being produced is available free. You may think that Wikipedia, Twitter, Snapchat, Google Maps, and so on are valuable. But, as far as G.D.P. is concerned, they barely exist. 

[247interesting]

Mu, the folding plug is now available for £25. (via The Mu | The Folding Plug)