VFlocks.com

Social-Emotional Intelligence + Technology

[psych-facts]

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

Henry Ford (via psych-facts)

[vflocks-blog]

Are you feeling tethered to your tech devices? Overwhelmed by multiple operating systems? ...Do you have lunch plans this Friday? Learn how to jumpstart your "Digital Detox" this Friday, 1/31, at 12:30pm EST on a virtual Google Hangout. No matter where you are on the globe, you can grab a spot at our virtual table by registering here: http://www.ambrosialifestyle.com/hangout-january-2014/

[vflocks-blog]

[vflocks-blog]

Human-Centered Design helps us better understand the latent and articulated needs of users, addressing the question of ‘why we are doing this’ in new ways.

[vflocks-blog]

[theatlantic]

How Are You Feeling? This App Tells You

If you’ve ever been confused about how you’re feeling, and it happened to be the 1970s, you could always count on the mood ring. The jewelry fad claimed to read wearers’ levels of anxiety or ebullience by measuring body temperature.

Today there’s a more reliable—but equally far-out—app that performs a similar function: the clmtrackr, a new emotion-analysis tool created by a Norwegian computer scientist named Audun Øygard.

You turn on your webcam, stare into your screen, and the program will tell you what emotions you’re experiencing, and in what proportions, from anger to sadness to joy.

Read more.

[vflocks-blog]

[vflocks-blog]

[tomemrich]

Forrester Sees 2014 As An Intelligent, Wearable & Highly Fragmented Year 

The internet is a buzz with predictions for next year as we get ready to say goodbye to 2013. Among the crystal-ball gazing is a list of six computing meta-trends from independent tech and market research company Forrester.

Forrester’s computing trends are in context to what they call “The Age of the Consumer”, a period where being customer-oriented is key to gaining marketshare. 

We’ve summarized the six meta-trends here but highly suggest you head on over to the original post written by Forrester VP JP Grownder on the Forrester blog.

Customers will no longer accept brand experiences that do not have  contextual experiences available on any device they are using including mobile and tablets.

Operating systems will continue to be as fragmented as 2013 but despite companies vying for consumer stickiness, users won’t be loyal.

We will see many wearables reach their commercial release next year along with some big players entering the market.

Digital assistants like Google Now and Siri become more useable and more useful and start to change how we interact with devices

Gesture-control will become the new use case for computing with the proliferation of many hardware options and applications from developers.

2014 is the year when we will start to walk into a store and it will know you and customize your shopping experience to make it more relevant (Channel).

Source: Forrester

[vflocks-blog]

It is in our hands...Thank you for your guidance, Madiba.

[vflocks-blog]

Lifehack

[prepaidafrica]

Africa’s Technological Potential: The Next Frontier?

Change is happening in Africa. The continent is booming economically and financially, with a growth rate expected to hit 5.6% in 2013, according to World Bank numbers. The mobile sector alone represented 6,3% of the sub-Saharan African GDP in 2012, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.As the continent slowly aligns itself with the international trail of new technology and digital innovations, it has caught the eye of big names in the industry. Google, Microsoft and IBM are among the biggest names currently launching research centers and initiatives ‘for’ Africa. Consequently, several smaller African organizations tap from these giants to build and enhance their capacities.

The growing African tech scene also daily catches the attention of smaller teams of technology specialists and enthusiasts whose interest in Africa often leads them into adventurous explorations. One of such is AfricaHackTrip. It is a team of European tech enthusiasts who conducted a 5-week journey to survey the East African tech world. The team stopped in Kampala, Kigali, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, four of Africa’s top ‘iHubs’. The reception of the project was positive in all four locations the AHT team has visited. In Kampala, they visited KampaBits, a school teaching underprivileged youths web design, print design and web development and the students were more than grateful for the ideas and encouragement the AHT team brought to them.

(Africa’s Technological Potential: The Next Frontier? via ising.globalvoicesonline.org)

[vflocks-blog]

Tech future in Africa

[vflocks-blog]

User interface symbols explained

[tomemrich]

Unlock Your Car, Smartphone and More with Your Heart

The Nymi uses your unique ECG to authenticate you through a wristband that is then bluetooth connected to devices and applications. 

The device makes the rumored iPhone Fingerprint Scanner look like a skeleton key :P I just ordered one and am pretty excited about this disruptive entrant to the security and password space. 

Read more on BetaKit.com: http://www.betakit.com/unlock-your-smartphone-with-heart-nymi/

[vflocks-blog]

"What I’ve always felt that a team of people doing something they really believe in is like is like when I was a young kid there was a widowed man that lived up the street. He was in his eighties. He was a little scary looking. And I got to know him a little bit. I think he may have paid me to mow his lawn or something.

And one day he said to me, “come on into my garage I want to show you something.” And he pulled out this dusty old rock tumbler. It was a motor and a coffee can and a little band between them. And he said, “come on with me.” We went out into the back and we got just some rocks. Some regular old ugly rocks. And we put them in the can with a little bit of liquid and little bit of grit powder, and we closed the can up and he turned this motor on and he said, “come back tomorrow.”

And this can was making a racket as the stones went around.

And I came back the next day, and we opened the can. And we took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in, through rubbing against each other like this (clapping his hands), creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise, had come out these beautiful polished rocks.

That’s always been in my mind my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they’re passionate about. It’s that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these really beautiful stones.”

[emergentfutures]

Computer Vision Reveals The Remarkable Secret of Flocking | MIT Technology Review

[vflocks-blog]

The study of flocking has suffered from a lack of detailed measurements. Now advanced computer vision techniques that can simultaneously track the movement of thousands of birds are leading to remarkable new insights, say researchers

[gjmueller-deactivated20181226]

5 Ways To Use Video Collaboration For Effective Learning

[vflocks-blog]

There are a lot of video collaboration tools and methods any teacher should know about. Here are some of our favorites.