Ultrasonic Gesture Recognizer developed by Chirp Microsystems
hat tip @HelenSitu

—David Lynch

When factoring in smartphones, tablets and other gadgets along with traditional PCs, Turner estimated that Windows is only on around 14% of them, which is obviously a vastly different reality from the one that Microsoft faced 10 years ago when Apple was mostly known for producing the iPod and when Google was just a very popular search engine.
—Brad Reed, Reality sinks in for Microsoft

Adjust uses the term “zombie app” to describe an app that doesn’t get measurable attention to regularly receive rankings in the top lists on the App Store. In June, 953,387 apps out of the 1,197,087 available ones (or 80%) were zombie apps, up from 75% in December 2013 and 70% in June 2013.

These percentages may seem high, but the low number of downloads is driven by the fact that app discovery is still a major issue for developers. With 60,000 apps added to the App Store every month, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for apps to stand out. With 60,000 apps added to the App Store every month, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for apps to stand out. According to Adjust, only one-fifth of apps were sufficiently visible in June.
—Samantha Murphy Kelly, Report: Nearly 80% of Apps in Apple’s App Store Are Basically Lifeless
George Carlin said, “Kids are like any other group of people: a few winners…a whole lot of losers.”
Same goes for apps.
*The 80/20 Rule aka the Pareto Principle

I’m still on Instagram.

These are awesome.

Beautiful.

—William Gibson

BGR.com headline: Motorola explains why it made the Moto 360 so sexy
The Moto 360 is a sharp looking hardware/software combination, but I can’t get past the fact the display is not actually a circle. No, you see that sliver of black at the bottom of the display? Yeah, that’s where the display ends:

Tell me this: How does a company release a product, where the whole premise is the fact that it’s display is a circle but not actually make the display a complete circle?
That sliver of non-screen is an eyesore, like Christian Bale’s eye wart. Oh, you didn’t know about his eye wart? Now you’ll never not see it.

Everyday Football Fouls

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office took its time: back in February, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department said it had ample evidence that Justin Bieber egged a neighbor’s house, causing what the department estimated at $20,000 of damage. But it took until now for formal charges to be filed. That is expected to happen on Wednesday at Superior Court in Van Nuys, Calif., where Mr. Bieber is to be charged with a single count of misdemeanor vandalism, The Associated Press reported.
—Alan Kozinn, NYTimes.com
I’m just thinking back to all the vandalism I did from age 15 to age 20 and what the cost of my bill would have looked like if I had been charged.
Justin Bieber is a kid and he’s doing a lot of stupid shit. He’ll grow up eventually.
People act shocked. They shouldn’t.

Foxconn has recently confirmed that it plans to deploy a fleet of robots in some of its factories to work on products for Apple, but the “Foxbots” will not be able to replace its human workforce just yet. Quoting a report from Chinese site UDN, G for Games says that robots will only play a supporting role in building devices such as the iPhone 6, as they won’t be able to perform certain tasks that require more subtle assembly or manufacturing procedures.
—Chris Smith, BGR.com

So the Chinese have a thing for sleeping in IKEA stores.
My question is, why don’t we all?

via The Telegraph

I have waaaay too many saved articles in my Instapaper account.
In the next few weeks I’m going to be cleaning this shit out and posting anything that still rings true to me. This is the great thing about truly great insights and knowledge—it doesn’t have an expiration date.
Here’s a great post by Seth Godin from 2011 I found on tips for making a great Powerpoint presentation:

The typical person speaks 10 or 12 sentences a minute.

The atomic method requires you to create a slide for each sentence. For a five minute talk, that’s 50 slides.

Each slide must have either a single word, a single image or a single idea.
I’ve worked at too many companies and seen too many presentations that try to cram in as much information onto a slide as possible. Don’t do that shit. Instead, provide printed out notes (aka, a “leave-behind”), if you need a more in-depth explanation of what you’re presenting.