“I was working for Google Maps then as a software engineer,” recalled Tatsuo Nomura in a BBC interview, “and every year Google would do an April Fool’s joke. I did a couple of them and one of them was called Pokemon Challenge. Because I was a huge Pokemon fan when I was a kid… I thought it would be interesting if I put the Pokemon on Google Maps and have the users find them and catch them.” And...
Being an artist always seems like such a lonely job. They always have to work alone, surrounded by half-completed canvases, overturned paint pots and wobbly easels. At best, they’ll have a model to console themselves with at the end of the day – unless they’re painting a still life – but usually, if a painter talks about his ideas, it’s to himself and to his work in progress. Writers are little...
It sounds either horribly confusing or wonderfully psychedelic. Synesthesia is the ability to hear in color, taste words or imagine numbers as shapes. The condition comes in a variety of different forms, with the most common linking numbers or days of the week with a color. “Tuesday” might be red, for example; “3” could always look green. Other synesthetes might associate low musical notes with...
“Think Different” says the slogan of the world’s most creative company — the firm that imagined what would happen if you combined touchscreens with mobile phones then blew them up into the most mobile of computers. With hindsight the success of the iPhone and the iPad looks stunningly obvious but you can have a lot of fun trawling the Internet for those with a lack of foresight. But what does...
There used to be a time when entrepreneurs would dream of building million-dollar businesses. They’d wire together some gear that they picked up in Radio Shack and hope that one day it would all work well enough to give them seven figures and a large house. For techpreneurs today, that amount is barely worth getting out of bed for, and in Silicon Valley a million bucks won’t even pay for a...
Call it courage. Or call it blind obstinacy. But in June 2017, Google surprised the technology world by releasing an update to Google Glass. It was the first upgrade since 2014, and the addition of Bluetooth now allows the device’s users to operate their tiny wearable computers with a mouse and a keyboard. That broadening of Glass’s features is likely to have surprised people less than the news...
For many entrepreneurs, a new business starts with a trip to the bank. They either present their business plan to the loan manager at their local branch and hope for a line of credit or they head to the Bank of Mom and Dad to ask for an advance on their inheritance. But banks these days are holding onto their cash and not all parents are able to write a check to finance all of their children’s...
Open Netflix and you’ll be spoiled for choice. According to Flixable, a searchable Netflix database, the platform has nearly six thousand titles. They’re aren’t yet all about murder or cakes so guiding users to the content they actually want to see has always been one of the platform’s biggest challenges. Blockbuster used to divide its shelves by genres, and each of those shelves could show...
Success at marketing online will demand a talent for copywriting (or at least the ability to hire a good copywriter when you see one), a feel for the market, and the ability to create and offer good products that people want to buy. It also requires math. Lots of math. Some of it, really, really hard math. It’s starts simply enough. Build a website and you’ll quickly find yourself looking at your...
Internet marketing provides a way for companies to reach markets. It lets entrepreneurs build small businesses even from home. It’s a valuable opportunity that generates billions of dollars for people who use it. And it’s a marketplace filled with hype, potholes and inflated claims. There’s a lot wrong with the way that commerce is done online. Here are 31 of its biggest problems. It’s a Battle...
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