TED Talks: Debunking myths about the "Third World"

This is a fantastic presentation made by Prof. Hans Rosling at the TED Talks last year. Prof Rosling is a global health visionary and a professor at Sweden's Karolinska Institute. He is also the founder of GapMinder, a company that "unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations."

In this presentation, Prof Rosling uses these beautiful animations to disprove some myths and misconceptions about the state of the "Third World countries". What I love about this presentation is the incredible amount of energy that this guy has. He mixes in humor, excitement and drama to capture the attention of the audience. Good stuff :) Check it out here...



Btw, if you are looking for some great speeches and presentations by visionaries, you should check out TED - Technology, Entertainment and Design. It's an annual conference where thinkers and visionaries from around the world come down to share their thoughts. These are some of the TED Talks I found powerful and inspiring:

U2's Bono on Poverty in Africa
Steven Levitt, Author (Freakonomics)
Richard Dawkins, Author (The God Delusion)
Jeff Han, Inventor of Multitouch Technology (a la iPhone)
Al Gore on Global Warming
Majora Carter on community building in the Bronx

Prashant.

Interactive mirrors! Now we're talking :)

Wow, I can't believe that no one thought of this until now!

Bloomingdale's New York has just debuted the first interactive mirror! No, I'm not talking about a Snow white kinda mirror which talks back to you when you ask questions... This, in fact, is even better :)

This new mirror actually functions as a high-resolution digital display which shows images of selected clothes on it... which means... you don't have to keep changing clothes again and again at the shop when you wanna try them on! All you have to do, is choose the outfit you like and stand in front of the mirror. It'll show you how you would look with those clothes on. Neat!

Well that's not all. It will also upload a digital image of you 'in' those clothes to a website where you're friends can comment on it and tell you whether it looks good or not... Hmmm, not bad. But then again, as Josh Spear points out - 'Women go shopping together for a reason! What woman would want to sit behind a computer screen and give her friends fashion advice?!' True, but I really can't comment on that coz I don't fit into the target demographic (I hope...).

In any case, the basic idea is cool. Not having to repeatedly change up to try clothes on at a store may just be a need that's strong enough to propel this technology on. If this test turns out to be a success, Bloomingdale's plans to install similar setups in its other stores across the US as well.

This kinda reminds me of TryEmAll... Wondering what that is? Well, don't worry, you're not supposed to know anyway :)

Prashant.

Image courtesy: www.joshspear.com

Business vs. Technology

From Young Singaporean Entrepreneurs are not Pop Idols by Bernard Leong on sgentrepreneurs:

The next problem that I see in Singapore is that everyone wants to be the business people and no one wants to be an inventor. Singapore are short of good technologists and geeks...oftentimes, there are a lot of money but no good ideas... Actually, the reason is simple. Any fool can learn business lingo, marketing and financial stuff...The technologists have an unique selling point that will always tip them in the stronger position. So, lack of innovators make up most of the problem in young entrepreneurs.

Well said, Bernard! That is sooooo true!

Every other day, I see my friends joining the leading banks as IB. And these guys are all engg students - brilliant ones in fact. But I guess the lure of money and a “work-hard-party-harder” lifestyle is just too strong!

The other possible reason for this is the fact that technology and engineering is no longer cool! I mean, for some odd reason, over the last 30-40 years, business graduates and business schools have been given this unfair advantage over their technology counterparts. We all know that a biz school grad (who partied his/her way through college) gets paid much higher than someone who slogged his/her feet through a PhD. Hell, its probably easier for them to get girlfriends too!

But then, just looking at the statistics tells us that Silicon Valley was almost entirely built by technologists! From the Fairchilds to the Apples, from M$ to Google… it was all done by geeks! Noone is claiming that these guys are good at running businesses. But they are good at giving birth to innovations that can change the world.

And that is precisely what we need in Singapore. Innovations.

Prashant.