What’s In This Issue?
This Week’s Main Stories
Story 01Fender Uses eLearning To Help Guitarists Not Give Up So Easily
Story 02KFC’s Surprising Reason For Launching Its Own Mobile Phone ...
Story 03Famous iPhone Hacker Creates Tool To Let You Hack Your Car
Story 04Fully Automated Toothbrush Helps Lazy People Be Lazier
Story 05Louis Vuitton Creates New Luxury Watch To Connect World Travelers
Story 06MIT Shares Theory On Why Some Neighborhoods EvolveFender Uses eLearning To Help Guitarists Not Give Up So Easily
For anyone who has ever aspired to play the guitar, taken a few lessons and then given up … Fender has a new solution to try and keep your passion for the guitar alive. In a perfectly strategic new move, the brand is launching an eLearning platform with videos to help people more easily learn how to play the guitar and some of their favorite songs. The entire effort is a perfect example of unselfish thinking. The brand understands that the longer someone sticks with the guitar, the more likely they are to buy a Fender at some point in the future.
KFC’s Surprising Reason For Launching Its Own Mobile Phone ...
On the surface, this announcement that KFC is partnering with Huawei to launch a new smart phone may seem like a random move. The phone will be branded in KFC signature red with an engraving of Colonel Sanders on the back to celebrate the brand’s 30 year anniversary in China, but that’s not really the most interesting part. There will only be 5000 of these phones released and apparently the phone “also comes with a KFC-branded music app preinstalled, which lets you create and share playlists at a KFC restaurant.” Scarcity combined with this unique music feature will likely make this phone a hit with KFC’s super fans.
Famous iPhone Hacker Creates Tool To Let You Hack Your Car
The more technology gets baked into things that we once enjoyed in simpler formats ,the more people will choose to “Strategically Downgrade.” Many farmers, for example, have turned to new ways of hacking the software on their tractors themselves. This story is about a new tool that allows anyone to hack into their car and change the settings. I am anticipating more efforts like this from consumers hungry to fight back against the draconian rules and usage limits imposed by companies on products and services they have already purchased.
Fully Automated Toothbrush Helps Lazy People Be Lazier
If you are one of those people who thinks that brushing your teeth properly takes too long, this new product will help. A startup called Amabrush has launched a toothbrush that will clean all your teeth in 10 seconds. It looks like a futuristic gag used to keep criminals quiet, but watching how this works it’s easy to imagine that this is one type of household space where we will see lots of innovation and new solutions in the future.
Louis Vuitton Creates New Luxury Watch To Connect World Travelers
The intersection of luxury products and personalization will continue to bring interesting new ideas and this watch from Louis Vuitton called the Tambour Horizon is a perfect example. The watch “is built to be a companion to the traveler. A feature within the watch allows users to view recommendations in big cities from Louis Vuitton without having to leave the connected watch screen.” A luxury watch has always been an extension of personality for those who wear them, and the idea that exclusive content can be an element of what you actually buy access to seems like a sign of the future that other luxury brands will rapidly look to explore for themselves.
MIT Shares Theory On Why Some Neighborhoods Evolve
Why do some neighborhoods evolve and gentrify while others don’t? This fascinating story is about a joint research program between MIT and Harvard to identify what causes urban change. The early results are already surprising: “Contrary to popular belief, raw income levels and housing prices do not predict change in a neighborhood. Instead ... the density of highly educated residents, proximity to central business districts ... all lead to improvements in the physical condition.” This is the kind of research that we all should hope city planners and local governments will actually read and act upon.
