Along with the continued bad news from Wall Street, there are three sexy tech stories that caught our attention this week for the Tuesday Sexy Tech Trifecta series.
LinkedIn users revealed: The first study of professional networking site LinkedIn shows “its members span a wide range of ages, industries, job titles, and education and income levels” (AdAge). Such studies are likely to make LinkedIn even more valuable to advertisers. And, it legitimizes LinkedIn. To those who thought LinkedIn was just a bunch of low-level networkers looking for work opportunities, it turns out senior executives make up 28% of the LinkedIn population.
Researchers sampled 70,000 members to create four categories of LinkedIn users and a number of characteristics that defined these users. Read AdAge’s review to find out if you’re a Senior Exec, a Savvy Networker, Exploring Your Options or Late Adopter (and where your income level likely falls as a result).
Minority Report predicts the present! We talk about Minority Report at the Lab all the time. It’s not that it was the first or last movie to show spooky sci-fi technologies in action, but it did bring many concepts under one cinematic roof. And, not surprisingly, many of these technologies are here, or approaching fast. Lab Director Lori Schwartz likes to say the technology at the Lab is “like Minority Report, but in a good way.” While we believe in moving forward here, it does remain to be seen how media, business and governments will utilize these tools for good or evil. Wired.com pulls together a list of six gadgets or tech concepts that the movie predicted correctly–yes, they’re here NOW. Read them and see which one scares you the most. I’m rooting for flexible screens and booing at the identity detecting advertising cams.
How the iPod and 9 other tech products got their names: CIO.com puts together a fun slideshow on how several of the major products that power our lives were named. Alas, it’s all about marketing and branding, but it’s interesting to find out the history behind Blackberry’s trademark name, or why Microsoft will go back to Windows 7 after trying out a softer name like “Vista.” Definitely worth a read.
