Walking back to my London hotel to pick up my things, I pass by the Monocle Shop (24 George St. a few steps off Marylebone High Street). I've always been a fan of the magazine but had no idea they had a store. I bought the Nov.'10 edition which comes with a 24-page city survey on Sao Paulo - a guide covering business, design, architecture, culture, media, retail and why Sao Paulo has become one of the great cities of the world.I'll have some fun reading for the flight back home.
A member of my innovations team was taken at gunpoint by two men while she was parking in her grandmother's garage. She was then taken by two men and held hostage in a deserted area of São Paulo for an hour, while one of the assailants drove off to an ATM machine with her card. The terrible incident made me realize that there is a tremendous opportunity for mobile operators, police officials and banks to collaborate in the development of GPS applications that could potentially minimize the risk of something like this happening. I recently read an article in Wired about a service in the U.S. called SafetyNet, built to be used on the Android Platform. You select bad neighborhoods in the SafetyNet's map, so in case you end up in a sketchy part of town, your phone automatically switches into what they call 'watchdog mode'. In case you feel threatened, you just shake the phone and an alarm goes off sending your location to friends and family. It sounds like an interesting concept. However, in a city like São Paulo where you can run into a dangerous situation practically anywhere, I'm sure the service would need to be redesigned.
With the proliferation of location-aware phones, it's only a matter of time for someone to develop a killer application that can provide a better sense of safety.
It has been a long time since I posted something on my blog. I was out of the country for the past two weeks. So, now I'm back to one of my favorite evening activities... sitting in front of my MacBook recalling a few things that made my day or week special.
So here goes today's little story...
I have always struggled to find out what demographic group I belong to. So much has been written and said about the millenials and the Boomers. But what happens when you're in the middle not belonging to any of these groups. Last night, flying out of Miami International I read a great article by Jonathan Pontell in USAToday entitled "Stuck In The Middle". The article talks about the 'Generation Jones' - the cohort born between 1954 and 1965, which includes President Obama (reason why we're probably going to hear more about this demographic).If you were also born in the 60's, it's worth reading. I particularly enjoyed when the author speaks about the space between ".....Dylan going electric and Nirvana going unplugged." Brilliant. If you feel you're also kind of stuck in the middle, click here to read the full article.
Walking back to my London hotel to pick up my things, I pass by the Monocle Shop (24 George St. a few steps off Marylebone High Street). I've always been a fan of the magazine but had no idea they had a store. I bought the Nov.'10 edition which comes with a 24-page city survey on Sao Paulo - a guide covering business, design, architecture, culture, media, retail and why Sao Paulo has become one of the great cities of the world.
