Leading women in the tech industry say the Reddit CEO’s resignation shows Silicon Valley still has a woman problem but some feel attitudes are changing fast. READ MORE: ‘What did you expect?’ Women in tech reflect on Ellen Pao’s exit from Reddit | Technology | The Guardian.
Category Archives: Technology
43 #Free Career-Advancing #Courses You Can Take (And Actually Finish) This Summer | Mashable #skills #education #MOOCs
Yes, summer is the perfect time to relax and recharge. But, it’s also the perfect time to pick up a few new skills. Put that relaxed brain (and work schedule) to good use! How accomplished would you feel if, when September rolls around, you could open up your resume and add another skill to it? Very, we’re guessing.
Before you start stressing, know that we’re not asking you to sacrifice your summer nights to a droning professor. Instead, we’re suggesting devoting a few hours every week to advancing your career with an online class. (Online equals your couch and your sweats and an optional glass of wine.)
To make the process easier for you, we did two things. One, we only chose classes you can complete in less than 10 weeks (with some that can be completed in an hour). Two, we hand-curated this list to ensure it’s only courses that are valuable and interesting. The best part? All of them are free. So, without further ado, here are 43 classes you can sign up for today.
READ MORE: 43 free career-advancing courses you can take (and actually finish) this summer | Mashable
Vortex Is A Toy Robot That Teaches #Kids How To Code | TechCrunch #robots #kids #coding #makerspaces
DFRobot, a company that has been building robots for the education market since 2008, this week introduced its first attempt at making a robot accessible to all children, with the debut of Vortex – an interactive, programmable robot aimed at kids 6 and up. The Vortex robot pairs with iOS and Android smartphones or tablets over Bluetooth, and lets kids control its movement by tapping the screen in the Vortex app to initiate commands. It also comes four free, pre-programmed games – “bumping fight,” “virtual golf,” “driving,” and “robot soccer,” which can later be customized by the child to create their own play experience. READ MORE: Vortex Is A Toy Robot That Teaches Kids How To Code | TechCrunch.
The Sexiest (And Last?) Job Of The 21st Century | TechCrunch #careers #tech #datascientist
Data scientist, according to a 2012 Harvard Business Review article, is the sexiest job of the 21st century. Given that its authors are Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil, the declaration is hardly surprising. Nonetheless, the IT industry is besotted with the term, and is expecting huge shortages of skilled workers.
A less well-known paper, “The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerization?,” was published less than a year later by two Oxford academics (data scientists, perhaps). The authors, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, examine 702 detailed occupations in the U.S. labor market and estimate that about 47 percent of total U.S. employment is at risk from computerization “over some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two.” Nearly 100 occupations, covering a wide range of skills from manual to mental, showed a 95 percent or higher probability of computerization. READ MORE: The Sexiest (And Last?) Job Of The 21st Century | TechCrunch.
‘Her Story’ is a Compelling New Type of #Interactive #Storytelling | Ars Technica #video #gaming #transmedia
To anyone who was paying attention to video games in the mid-’90s, the term “FMV game” probably still inspires snorts of derision. The handful of titles that shoehorned simple gameplay on top of highly compressed full-motion video (FMV) usually suffered from low-quality sound and images, poor production values, limited interaction options, and ponderous repetition of a few short video clips through multiple plays. The results ranged from mediocre at the high end to some of the worst games ever made at the low end. By the end of the ’90s, filmed, live-action video clips gave way to polygons and animated, pre-rendered sprites as the gameplay and story-telling engine of choice.
But just as failed ’90s experiments in virtual reality are leading to a resurgence in the form today, the FMV gaming failures of decades past are finally being explored with the technology and game-design advancements of today. Her Story is proof that FMV games don’t have to be awful and that filming actors on a set could be a criminally underexplored form for interactive storytelling. READ MORE: Her Story is a compelling new type of interactive storytelling | Ars Technica.
Connecting #Inmates With Their #Children Through #Books | Marketplace.org #prisons #communication #tech #libraries
As part of our series about technology in prisons called “Jailbreak,” we paid a visit to a new program that uses technology to fill an important role in the development of the children of those who are incarcerated.
Organizers say the TeleStory program the first of its kind in the country. At the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in New York, families of inmates bring their children to a special room filled with toys and books. Even more unique: the room is virtually connected to a prison on Rikers Island. via Connecting inmates with their children through books | Marketplace.org.
Researchers in Japan Show off Super Fast Laser #Holograms You Can Touch | Mashable #lasers #tech #holographics
The dream of being able to touch and interact with holograms was the subject of many science fiction stories, but a lab in Japan has actually accomplished the feat.
Unlike the fictional holodeck on Star Trek, which used force fields to create a sense of touch, researchers at Japan’s Digital Nature Group used a different method: femtosecond lasers.
READ MORE: Researchers in Japan show off super fast laser holograms you can touch | Mashable
For These Girls, #Tech is a Rewarding Challenge | CNET #STEM #genderdiversity #genderequality
An international tech competition targets Silicon Valley’s diversity problem, aiming to inspire girls around the world into taking up — and sticking with — technology. READ MORE: For these girls, tech is a rewarding challenge | CNET.
A Toy Dinosaur Powered by IBM’s Watson Supercomputer | WIRED #AI #toys #IBMWatson @Kickstarter
Image Credit: CogniToy
DON COOLIDGE AND JP Benini are bringing cognitive smarts to the world of children’s toys. Coolidge and Benini just launched a Kickstarter for a toy dinosaur toy driven by IBM Watson, the machine learning service based on the company’s Jeopardy-playing cognitive system.
Developed under the aegis of a company called Elemental Path and a project called CogniToys, this tiny plastic dinosaur uses speech recognition techniques to carry on conversations with kids, and according to Coolidge and Benini, it even develops a kind of smart personality based on likes and dislikes listed by each child.
The toy is another example of online machine learning pushing even further into our everyday lives. This is made possible not only by an improvement in AI techniques, but also by the ability to readily deliver these techniques across the net. READ MORE: A Toy Dinosaur Powered by IBM’s Watson Supercomputer | WIRED.
Build #STEM Skills, but Don’t Neglect the #Humanities | HBR #STEMMA @HarvardBiz
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Instead of just STEM, we should perhaps be promoting STEMMA — raising a new generation that also has greater capacities for managing collective human endeavors and appreciating the arts. Management education – the new “M” in the acronym – has not always been infused with humanistic thinking, but it must become more so. Our goal must be to cultivate the thoughtful enterprise leaders of the future. Meanwhile, regarding the “A,” how could it be beneficial to the future to deemphasize the arts, which inform our knowledge of beauty and meaning in human affairs? All the brilliant discoveries of STEM will not solve the grand challenges of today’s world — ignorance, poverty, intolerance, and political conflict – without the practical wisdom of humanities-trained leaders.
READ MORE: Build STEM Skills, but Don’t Neglect the Humanities | HBR
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