| 1. Apple’s new campus: An exclusive look inside the mother ship |
| By Steven Levy, Wired |
| On June 7, 2011, a local businessman addressed a meeting of the Cupertino City Council. Earlier in the year the man had expressed his intention to attend a meeting in order to propose a new series of buildings along the city’s northern border, but he hadn’t felt up to it at the time. He was, as all of them knew, in dire health. More» |
| Why This Matters: I mentioned this yesterday, but here it is again in case you missed it. It’s a definitive long-form meander through the story of Apple Park, complete with some beautiful photographs of the near-finished product by Dan Winters. Also, here’s a fun account of 6 absurd and kinda brilliant design details from the campus. And on a more serious note, here’s CNET asking why a facility with a 100,000 square foot gym can’t have day care for it’s female employees, as if women made kids by themselves (I guess sometimes they do). –Cynthia Wisehart |
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| 2. Dubai set to build $1.7b man-made islands Marsa al Arab by 2020 |
| By Thomas Page, CNN |
| Global investment company Dubai Holding unveiled this week plans for Marsa Al Arab, a four million square feet pair of man-made islands either side of the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah, the city's iconic sail-shaped hotel. More» |
| Why This Matters: Ground breaking is scheduled for next month, and the pair of islands will be home to family resorts, a 2.5 million acre waterpark, and the Middle East’s first Cirque du Soleil theater seating 1700. –Cynthia Wisehart |
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| 3. Google Daydream update: The end of the beginning |
| By Adi Robertson, The Verge |
| Google head of VR Clay Bavor describes the new headset as one point on a spectrum called “immersive computing,” an emerging technological paradigm that “enables our computers to work more like we do.” His team’s been working on this project for two and a half years, and Google is partnering with Qualcomm, HTC, and Lenovo to release a reference design and two commercial products based on it. But the standalone device feels more like a new beginning than a culmination — and it may be healthier for VR if we treat it that way. More» |
| Why This Matters: This article is kind of hard work. But if you make the effort to slog through it (and follow some of the provided links) you will come away a little better educated on an important thing driving upcoming technology: “immersive computing”. This will have follow-on effects for AV at some point—definitely it will co-op a term we have been using in theme parks for a long time—“immersive”—and make it mean something else. It's also important to note that Google Daydream is a standalone headset--untethered from PCs on the high end and phones on the low end. That's a risk, since high end users will want the power of PCs, and low end users might be satisfied with Cardboard. But--regardless, the blending of the real and data/virtual worlds is everything and it will become how we think and work. So keep up. –Cynthia Wisehart |
