8 Stories in Connected Spaces

Due to our interest, you may even say fascination, with the future of work and connected spaces, we wanted to share some of the big stories that those of us who are at the cross-section of technology, culture and work will enjoy.

Shoppers don’t like beacons

A new study by Nielsen shows that while we all love self checkouts we aren’t so keen on QR codes or even using social media to aid our shopping habits. Is this surprising? Probably not. Technology adoption is actually far slower than we think and the entry to barrier for QR codes and further emerging beacon technology is very high for consumers. Picture this: to successfully use a beacon your customer would have to download an app, enable push notifications and accept that notification each times it pops up. Likely? No likely.

How the humble notification came into being

We all love to hate the notification and despite heading into an “anti-notification” era, how and why we use them is actually incredibly interesting. Plus, you get to find out how the notification was first invented which always makes for an interesting dinner party story.

The smart city competition

This article was a really interesting look at the different cities across the world and how they are looking to adapt to a smart city model. They all seem to have their niche. From Amsterdam investigating “smart canals” and London fixating on data sets and making these accessible for government officials and technology entities. Which poses the question: what smart city would you be?

“Hey Google, what’s Argos?”

Argos is a UK store which allows customers to order an item through a kiosk and then have it bought out of a warehouse. A little like a physical Amazon if you will. While its retail model may be more old-fashioned, it’s adoption of voice technology isn’t. This week Argos unveiled its new technology service that allows customers to ask Google to reserve an item from Argos without having to do much heavy lifting.

An elevator pitch

According to VC Michael A. Eisenberg, there are plenty of things you can make smarter but your average elevator? Not one of them. This insight shows the three big problems the space economy faces in the future and why elevators are actually pretty important to making our lives easier and not harder.

Smart office security

You know those awesome smart devices that make your work life oh-so much easier? Well they also come with some not-so-good security risks. Without being too much of a negative nora, this article is a good reminder to take note of the risks of your BYOD policy and microphone-enabled everything and then develop an IoT policy that helps protect you and your company.

The machine learning guide from Google

If machine learning is something you think your future product or company could benefit from, this is a good place to start. A few good examples help show how we can use ML to benefit the end user with tasks such as searching for a piece of information or recognizing a specific photo amongst thousands. And the end user is, after all, the most important person.  

Swings, dogs, and meditation rooms

We may be on our way to the smart offices of the future but turns out swings, dogs and meditation rooms still come up trumps when it comes to America’s most successful companies. Which begs the question: when will the features become more important than the branding in offices? Potentially, this is only when we’ll begin to see the idea of smarter offices take hold.

What top stories have you found interesting this month?