As the Internet of Things (IoT) has gained popular attention in the five years since we first published on the topic,1 it has also beguiled executives. When physical assets equipped with sensors give an information system the ability to capture, communicate, and process data—and even, in a sense, to collaborate—they create game-changing opportunities: production efficiency, distribution, and innovation all stand to benefit immensely. While the consumer’s adoption of fitness bands and connected household appliances might generate more media buzz, the potential for business usage is much greater. Research from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that the operational efficiencies and greater market reach IoT affords will create substantial value in many industries.2 (For more, see the video “What’s the one piece of advice for a business leader interested in the Internet of Things?” And to see how experts believe the Internet of Things will evolve, see “The Internet of Things: Five critical questions.”)

Have you ever felt like you were being pulled in two directions while working on your resume? Almost like you are getting two different opinions. As if, for instance, you had an Angel sitting on one side of your keyboard and a Devil on the other? Yeah, us too. Check out the video above for some great tips on what to put in your resume, what to definitely NOT put in your resume, and what might cause a heavenly creature to throw up.

Millennials are giving up, putting off or simply choosing not to buy cars — a blow to the $10 trillion automotive industry, but a boon for people like John Zimmer.

Lyft’s 31-year-old president launched the ride-sharing service with CEO Logan Green three years ago as part of a larger service then called Zimride. Lyft is now a standalone business, letting users hail a ride with its mobile app. It employs more than 400 people and services more than 65 U.S. cities.

In a recent study, restricting dietary fat led to body fat loss at a rate 68 percent higher than cutting the same number of carbohydrate calories when adults with obesity ate strictly controlled diets.  Carb restriction lowered production of the fat-regulating hormone insulin and increased fat burning as expected, whereas fat restriction had no observed changes in insulin production or fat burning. The research was conducted at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health. Results were published August 13 in Cell Metabolism .

Image: http://scienceblog.com 

I don’t know if I broke a law of computing or committed heresy.  But I installed Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro. I had feared that this would condemn me to purgatory in the gates of computing hell.  But it has been an incredibly positive experience: my favorite Microsoft Office applications — Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint — work faster than ever before, and I can still use Apple peripherals — a Thunderbolt Display and Thunderbolt external hard drives. The best part is Windows 10 itself: it is a beautifully designed operating system that gives me the best of the past and present — maintaining the usability and familiarity of the old Windows operating system, and letting me download slick apps designed for tablets.

Image: There’s no reason to regret installing Windows 10 on your MacBook. (Bobby Yip/Reuters) 

The beautiful white sand beaches and reefs of tropical areas around the world exist largely thanks to parrot fish droppings.– Benjamin Meyers, Julia Rosen, Eliene Augenbraun 

Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com 

Boston's Seaport gets praise as a leading "innovation district," while many cities are trying to slap that label on a neighborhood. Never mind its lack of public transportation, roadway infrastructure, parking or (ahem) interesting architecture: In Boston, the Seaport is where tech networking events happen. That could change, and the change can't come too soon.

Image: CIC Boston is working on an event space at 50 Milk. Soon, Boston's downtown will have more startup and tech-company activity than the touted Innovation District.  - http://bostinno.streetwise.co

WASHINGTON — President Obama signed an executive order Monday making the Presidential Innovation Fellows program permanent, bolstering White House efforts to use technology to improve government efficiency and transparency.

The order institutionalizes a program the White House has fostered since 2012, recruiting 96 technology experts from the private sector into government, where they serve as "embedded entrepreneurs-in-residence." The idea, Obama said, was to bring the techonology-driven culture of his 2008 presidential campaign into the federal government to make it more innovative, transparent and responsive.

Defense spending isn’t as big of a driver for the U.S. economy as it was a few years ago, when U.S. troops were still engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But $600 billion a year is still a lot of money, and defense spending remains a major contributor to the economies of some states, such as Virginia and Hawaii. Plus, the Department of Defense funds a lot of research and development, much of which has led to technologies with widespread commercial applications, such as lasers and the Internet.

The rail cars that once carried iron ore around Republic Steel’s sprawling plant at the edge of downtown Buffalo, New York, were plowed under when the steel company abandoned the location in 1984. They were recently discovered when excavation began for the so-called gigafactory to be operated by SolarCity, the country’s leading supplier of solar panels. Now the rusted cars and a scattering of other relics from the days of Republic Steel greet visitors to the construction site, a reminder of the city’s past manufacturing might and a testament to the dream that North America’s largest solar-panel manufacturing facility can help revive it.

Mistakes are inevitable. Not only are they an essential part of being an adult. They are also responsible for some of the most brilliant inventions known to mankind. When you find yourself facing the occasional slipup and experiencing some failures at work, instead of getting frustrated, let this lift you up taller and help make you a better person.

As an angel investor to startups, I’m still surprised to find entrepreneurs who expect investors to give them money, and assume no strings attached. Would you do that if it was your money? If the entrepreneur wants total control of their own venture, with no one looking over their shoulder, they should work within the limits of their own resources, a process called bootstrapping.

It has been 6 months since I moved from Pulsar VC to its portfolio company VENDi. Many people asked me why I left this prestigious VC/accelerator job to dive deep into the startup environment — the quintessence of extreme uncertainty, psychological roller coasters, and everyday challenges. Sure, my work was great but I felt something was missing. I felt like a fish out of water and desperately needed some changes. So I quit.

Image: https://www.techinasia.com 

Healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing remain the bread and butter of the private sector in Madison, WI, and the surrounding region, but healthcare IT has arguably become the area’s most buzz-worthy industry.

Today, Xconomy is adding to the conversation about healthtech’s ascent in the local economy. A new analysis of data gathered by the Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) found that there are at least 43 healthtech companies in Dane County employing around 10,000 people. (The list may not be comprehensive, so e-mail us if we missed any companies.)

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/56708607@N04/6787263468 

The European Commission—the executive body of the E.U.—wants to supercharge its sluggish startup scene and cultivate a generation of Skypes that don’t emigrate to America.

But that also means wresting control of the European tech market back from Silicon Valley’s biggest power players, which have dominated the region for decades with little local competition. Google, for example, controls nearly 93% of all online searches in Europe. Compare that to the U.S., where Google faces some competition from Yahoo and Bing and accounts for 80% of searches.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

In my most recent episode (watch the video above) I went Behind the Brand with Global CEO and president of Epson, Minoru Usui to find out the secret formula to their recent breakthrough success with the game-changing EcoTank printer technology.

The Maryland region is one of the richest sources of health care knowledge and research innovation in the world. Here you can find more than 800 life sciences companies, 70 federal labs, regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and elite academic, medical and research institutions. Most of these resources are unique to our area and cannot be replicated anywhere else in the U.S.

“By and large, visual art has always been defined as static,” the abstract artist Frank Stella observed to me in 1998, “but the tradition has always been to use illusion to create a sense of motion.” He was quite correct, historically speaking. From the days of the cave artists of the Cro-Magnon era, tens of thousands of years ago, artists have attempted to make images of a world that is constantly rushing, drifting, rippling, and shifting. Or as Stella put it: “If something moves, that’s how you can tell it’s alive.”

Unfortunately, much of the recent outcry against artificial-intelligence weapons has been confused, conjuring robot takeovers of mankind. This scenario is implausible in the near term, but AI weapons actually do present a danger not posed by conventional, human-controlled weapons, and there is good reason to ban them.

The emerging conventional wisdom is that America's post-recession recovery was dominated by the rise of low-paying, part-time service jobs. But a new analysis challenges that narrative, finding that 2.9 million of the 6.6 million jobs added in the recovery were "good jobs" providing high pay and, in many cases, benefits.