Five Interesting Things: Today’s Scan Hits
Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.
- Writer Chris Mims at Quartz posits an interesting future for smartwatches–as sensors for smartphones. He cites proposed updates to the Pebble smartwatch OS as an example of how this could work.
- NameTag is a facial-recognition smartphone app the allows the user to take a picture of anyone and match it against available social media profiles/services (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) as well as public databases such as sex offender registries. As expected, the app is raising a host of privacy concerns.
- Never want to clean a dirty dish again? Swedish designers have created prototype dinnerware made from nanocellulose and treated with a hydrophobic coating. The result is dishes that make it near impossible for food or water to cling to.
- Analysis reveals that Twitter growth is mostly happening in languages other than English.
- A new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says that 16 of the largest US food and beverage companies sold 6.4 trillion fewer calories in 2012 than in 2007, far exceeding their pledge to remove 1 trillion calories over this period. It should be noted that while some of this decrease results from product formulation changes, another significant portion comes from a slow decline in sales.