Virtualize Your Life: 3D modeling and medicine
3D models of the human body are being laid out on the slab to be “dissected” by med students all over the world. Would you want your doctor trained virtually? The initial reaction might be no, but Jack Choi shows us in this Ted Talk, how going virtual could make better doctors. 3D does it again!
Watch here: http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_choi_on_the_virtual_dissection_table.html
The Reality in Virtual
At Hyperfair we say it all the time; the world is constantly becoming more virtual. As sad as it may be, we will never move back to that simpler time everyone remembers. You know, that place you think back to that’s stress free and untouched by cell phones, where everyone is smiling. Today we’ve moved far from that sepia bathed memory, we have HD!
The virtual nature of our individual lives is obvious, however here Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman takes the discussion further, insisting that it isn’t our world that is becoming more virtual; it is the virtual world that is becoming real. In fact, it’s really a balance that is occurring. Companies are finding that combining real world and virtual aspects to their product offering can be the key to success, offering more to the customer and growing in the process. “What we’re learning is that operating in the real world lets us build better software.”
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Gaming is here to save the world! And I don’t mean the virtual one this time.
“Gaming can make the world better.” Sound like an oxymoron? I thought so, and then I watched Jane McGonigal’s 20 minute Ted Talk on the subject. The girl makes a great point. With all the gamers in the world spending hours and hours trying to save the day in virtual reality, why not apply those minds to real world problem?
Find out more about this not so crazy idea by watching or, as I did while working, listening to Jane’s Ted Talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
Virtualize Your Life: Take your commute to the next level
Thanks to head sets and voice activated apps like Siri for iPhones, the commute has become safer for us who like to chat with friends or respond to texts behind the wheel. Has it become more fun though? I say no. Having the option to fill my commute with mindless chatter isn’t that much of an improvement from the radio and people watching.
Insert Jeff Chen and James Zhang here. The pair launched Joyride yesterday and they have big plans for your commute. This voice activated app will keep you engaged and entertained throughout your commute. In fact the start up’s first application for Joyride is a game leading many to presume this app will take your commute to the next level, literally!
Ok enough with the cheesy lines. It is safe to say though, that this app will have a very positive effect on peoples day to day commute.
“The most important thing is that people are suffering in their cars,” Chen said. “They are these tiny little boxes with tiny little windows and we are going to turn cars into starships and make it fun and interesting and even safer. This is just the beginning. It is a cool, untapped area that has a lot of potential.”
With your commute moving online in Joyride, it’s clear that virtualization is on the rise. ”What’s next” you ask? We’ll keep you updated in our new Virtualize Your Life segment.
Event Attendance: Getting the people in the door (physically or otherwise)
We are officially big fans of Andy Crestodina’s web marketing advice. In today’s round up we want to get the word out on how to get people on board for your next event be it of the virtual variety or not. In this post, Andy runs down the key’s to driving traffic to your social media and web marketing efforts. What does that have to do with event attendance? These days, EVERYTHING! Unless you have a captive audience such as an internal company conference, you are going to need to engage people via the internet if you want to get large attendance numbers day of. So give Andy’s post a look, we are positive you will learn something, we did!
16 Event Promotion tips to help us all avoid the post posting crickets.
With people connected to the internet almost constantly, events promotion has never been easier. You can now have your event, be it a massive industry event or dinner party, in front of your entire audience within seconds. Why then does it so often happen that we find ourselves after a huge email blast or an array of posts across the major social media platforms with no response? Those hours of silence, hearing nothing, but crickets from your targeted audience can be painful for any organizer. This unfortunate happenstance is, however, a direct result of a general miss understanding of the “how it works” of web marketing. Here Andy Crestodina, Strategic Director at Orbit breaks it down for us dividing events marketing on the web into three categories: Social Media, Email Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization. His 16 Event Promotion Tips are a great place to start if you are dreading those pesky crickets when promoting your next event be it a live expo or a more virtual solution.
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SXSW drains downtown San Francisco: will this last forever?
If you work in downtown San Francisco you may have noticed that the last week or so things emptied out a bit: fewer people on the bus, shorter lines for coffee. You may have even noticed a certain demographic missing. WHERE DID ALL THE STARTUPERS GO? Before any of us got too worried everyone was back again and the wait for the morning dose of caffeine was back to usual. But where did they go? Why?
This mass exodus happened for South By Southwest, a yearly film, music, and interactive festival in Austin, Texas. The interactive portion of this years event was set to highlight the start up scene outside our beloved Silicon Valley. With major groups coming in from New York, Chicago and Mexico City. I cannot attest to the start up exodus in these cities, but I imagine the line at Starbucks was ever so slightly shorter there too.
This diffusion of the Innovate itch is telling. The world has taken notice of the Bay Area startup fever and is recreating those dynamics at home. What does this mean for our beloved Silicon Valley? Will we see a permanent mass exodus of entrepreneurs being lured by incentives in more up and coming locals?
Most people out here will tell you, no. Flat out, no. We got the knowledge, the history, the big VCs all out here! The likely hood that SV will keep plugging along in the city by the bay is high. So what about those other guys? How will they connect with the industry’s home out on the best coast? At Hyperfair we think its simple. Let’s take this meeting virtual. See you in 3D!
More time savers for the wannabe social media marketer in us all
Last week we highlighted some very useful tools to keep us all using our time efficiently in “Social Media: Who’s got time for that?”. This week we move to high lighting the most important social media tool in any business’s arsenal: people!
A company is always only as good as its people. And whether it’s a team of 2 or 2,000 having the whole group on board for a social media marketing campaign is the easiest way to get the ball rolling fast. However, the original question remains: recruiting all employees to push your company through social media, “who’s got time for that?”
Ask and you will receive. Dynamic Signal just launched a new product called VoiceStorm that addresses this very problem. Tech Crunch laid out the basics of the new technology in this post last week; it is a platform, “which encourages, manages and measures employees’ efforts to promote a company on social networks.” It’s as simple as that. So what are you waiting for? Get the team tweeting!
Sources:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/dynamic-signal-launches-voicestorm/
A Salute to Women in Tech
Today being women’s day, Hyperfair wants to not only celebrate the women in our company, but all women in tech. Traditionally the industry has been more of a boy’s club and currently only 3% tech startups are owned by women. However, many are making the inclusion of women in tech more of a priority and the field is opening up to women in many ways. In this article Usa Today covers the recent upswing of female led start-ups and in this article ScriptEd, highlights some of the women making computer science education a priority. Hyperfair is happy to see this new trend of women’s involvement in tech world wide and is excited to see what the future has in store.
To learn more about IWD:
http://www.internationalwomensday.com/default.asp#.UTolOqVRvbc
Source:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-06-04/female-tech-executives/55382536/1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maurya-couvares/women-in-tech_b_2831248.html
3D featured on LinkedIn
Many remember Second Life and the entertainment side of that virtual environment, but not everyone saw the potential application of that environment to other fields.
This article featured on LinkedIn delves into the applications of 3D beyond Second Life. Read on to learn more about 3D in everything from education to business:
