Is the future of search engines going to be contextual search?

In other words, in the old days, if you wanted to do something—navigate to the restaurant where you’ve got a dinner reservation—you might open a web browser and search for its address. But in the post-search world of context—in which our… Continue Reading

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From the ‘we’ve come a long way’ file: an African-American man in Mississippi currently has a shorter life expectancy than an average American did in 1960. Whoa.

However you choose to slice it, the health care situation in the United States is a bit of a wreck, to be sure. The Commonwealth Fund just released some detailed rankings of health care performance state-by-state, and then the main… Continue Reading

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People will tell you “the last jobs report was good!” Show ’em these two charts re: unemployment rate and labor force participation.

Chart 1: Chart 2: Both charts are via here. The easy headline for the jobs report is “288K new jobs created!” or “Unemployment rate drops to 6.3 percent, lowest in years!” An even more robust header for it might be “The U.S. is… Continue Reading

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Let’s say you shifted your organization to people working 4 days a week, 10 hours a day. Every weekend is a three-day weekend. Could this help employee engagement?

People already do this — the video above is an example, and there are pockets of big companies (like ESPN) where people can get 4 x 10 shifts as opposed to the standard 5 x 8 shift model for office/white-collar… Continue Reading

Brief thought exercise: while the answer varies for every person, is an organization better if the jobs offer a different experience every day, or a similar experience?

A common refrain you’ll hear in networking/job interviews is someone telling you that one of the best parts of their job — “and of course, also one of the worst (laughter)” — is that every day is something different. I heard… Continue Reading

The two “next big things” for tech are the mobile space and data. As such, is Facebook about to overtake Google?

You can certainly make a case that the Internet/tech world is shifting a bit. Mobile is “the next big thing,” and that space hurts Google — phrased simply, there’s less space for ads; phrased in a more complicated way, Google does know what… Continue Reading

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Brief thought exercise: when you really think about it, isn’t the hiring process set up in a way that completely disregards the idea of learning?

I’m finishing grad school right now and have been on a series of different interviews over the past few months, so this is just something I’ve observed that’s a little curious. By no means am I an expert on any… Continue Reading

Honda (a car company) and UC-Davis just built a smart home together. Wait, why?

Our homes + our cars = 44 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. So what if the two were synced up — as part of the emerging “Internet of Things” or “smart grid” — in an effort to get to zero-carbon… Continue Reading