Supermarkets using customers' Facebook accounts as simultaneous discount/surveillance platforms? Vending machines where you can pay by iPhone? Ordering luxury cars and private jets via iPad-like interfaces and sidestepping the salesman? They're all here.
Car drivers can't react fast enough to bumps as they approach. The only way to ensure a smooth ride: Enable the car to know (and respond to) what's coming ahead.
More than 250 brand partners from Audi to ESPN have signed on for StumbleUpon's redesign, in part inspired by the service's 800% growth in mobile. With the addition of brand channels, StumbleUpon hopes to drive more user engagement and attract more advertising partners.
Given the weather, the traffic, and the general attitude of the drivers, you can now measure how annoying it will be to get on the road at any given moment.
Do "likes" and retweets add up to sales? Who knows? And who really cares? We're in the "I Love Lucy" era of social-media marketing, a golden age of unaccountability.
You get the feeling that innovation contests have hit the mainstream when one is sponsored by Tony (Iron Man) Stark, but these contests are making real-life superheroes out of young entrepreneurs around the world.
