Apple’s profit in context.

Mine Kafon, a wind-powered land mine clearing device which costs about 40 euros to be built. | Filmed by Callum Cooper.

Why is the VW group so successful?

The Volkswagen group owns about 12 brands and dominates some markets. Why?

Great piece on the Autoextremist:

We only have to look as far as the VW Group to see how things are dramatically unfolding. As most industry insiders know, the VW Group, led by the maniacal genius, Ferdinand Piech, is on an unbelievable roll right now. The VW Group boasts twelve brands from seven European countries: Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche (and SEAT, SKODA, Ducati motorcycles, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania and MAN).

That’s quite a lineup. Normally, it would be a recipe for disaster leading to a train wreck of monumental proportions, a quagmire of dismal profits, hazy brand images, rampant cannibalism among the Group’s brands in the marketplace, and generally a heaping, steaming bowl of Not Good. But somehow, someway the VW Group is orchestrating the most successful array of brands the industry has seen since GM’s heyday (roughly 1957–1977). And they’re doing it in a similar fashion too.

Instabridge connects you to your friends’ Wi-Fi

This app connects you to your friends’ Wi-Fi in one-click. No more remembering password, and so forth. In beta since August 2012, this Swedish startup will meet success, I wonder why no one thought of that before.

Wired UK:

Instabridge will effectively act as a database of Wi-Fi logins, with users granting their Facebook friends access to their home or office Wi-Fi hub details, or requesting access to theirs. It’s as quick and straight-forward as a friend request, but instead of asking for friendship status permission, you’re requesting to automatically save their Wi-Fi details.

Einstein’s list of conditions for his wife

Albert Einstein wasn’t too happy with his wife in 1914, after 11 years of communal life. He thought it’d be good to stay with her for the sake of his children but he wrote some kind of list of conditions, that she had to accept for them to actually stay together.

Here is the list:

CONDITIONS

You will make sure:

that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;

that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;

that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

my sitting at home with you;

my going out or travelling with you.

You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;

you will stop talking to me if I request it;

you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

His rational thinking might have abandoned him when he wrote that or perhaps, that’s the way it worked.

Creativity guidebook by Google

On another Google-related note, here is the place where they showcase how companies use Google to build efficient marketing campaigns.

How Google plans to make you search more

If Google is to achieve its stated mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible,” says Wiley, it must find out about those hidden needs and learn how to serve them. And he says experience sampling—bugging people to share what they want to know right now, whether they took action on it or not—is the best way to do it. “Doing that on a mobile device is a relatively new technology, and it’s getting us better information that we really haven’t had in the past,” he says.

They’re finding out why sometimes we don’t go on Google to search for some kind of information. Great article on the MIT’s Technology Review.

Humans can’t be empathetic and logical at the same time

A new study published in NeuroImage found that separate neural pathways are used alternately for empathetic and analytic problem solving. The study compares it to a see-saw. When you’re busy empathizing, the neural network for analysis is repressed, and this switches according to the task at hand.

Cool finding and, as Colleen Park writes in Popular Science, this might explain why the cold CEO fires people emotionlessly because he’s thinking analytically—for profit.

What is Touch?

I didn’t know that.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

How apps are changing how surgeons operate and communicate with their patients

In the past, surgeons have turned to pen and paper when sketching out a surgical procedure for a patient. To enhance surgeon-patient communication, Visible Health has created DrawMD, a series of free iPad apps that allow surgeons to more effectively explain surgical processes to their patients. These apps offer digital anatomical images, which doctors can sketch, stamp or type on to explain the procedure in a way that the patient will easily understand. Following the appointment, the surgeon can send a copy of the illustration to the patient and keep one for their own records. DrawMD is available for a growing number of medical specialties including urology, cardiology and pediatrics.

A good round-up of existing apps for surgeons and an interesting insight on how the iPad is entering the medical part of the professional world.