When the pandemic forced millions of teams to embrace remote work, tools like Dropbox, Zoom, Slack, and Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence made it possible to transition almost overnight. But the switch was rushed, and now we’re starting to see cracks in the foundation. The next step is replicating the human interactions and connections we’re accustomed to in the physical world in a digital one. The metaverse presents a massive opportunity here. New people are joining our
Ho-ho-holy cow, we made it through another crazy year! It was a time of insurrections, the continuation of the pandemic, and the introduction of an entirely new COVID-19 variant as a parting gift. And the bad news? Another new year is right around the corner. While we can’t predict what 2022 will have in store, you can get your year off to a slightly better start by performing a digital detox on your smartphone by deleting apps that are no longer working for you. Everybody’s wants
Every so often a toy comes along and gets its fuzzy grip on the public’s attention. Cabbage Patch Kids, Teddy Ruxpin, Furby, Beanie Babies, to name a few, transcended mere popularity with kids (and, yes, adults) to become full-blown crazes, complete with bemused media coverage, wiped-out shelves, and even in-store scuffles. As with any craze, however, the fervor cooled and those toys receded into nostalgia. But Squishmallows creator Jonathan Kelly is banking on his plump and indelibly sof
You just tested positive for COVID-19. Do you really have to spend 10 days in isolation? Experts are calling for new isolation guidance that takes into account whether a sick person is unvaccinated, vaccinated, or boosted. COVID-19 is spreading across the country fast. Cases are up 20% over the past 14 days, according to the New York Times data. That is mainly due to the spread of two highly infectious variants, omicron and delta. Anthony Fauci, head of The National Institute of Allergy and Infe
With the new omicron variant of the coronavirus on the rise, ordinary office gatherings may not be coming back any time soon. That’s why a New York startup called Luna Park—named for the famed Coney Island amusement park—is creating a massive library of human-hosted online games that companies can play together to allow employees to bond outside of regularly scheduled meetings and awkward Zoom and Slack small talk. “What we’re trying to do is bring games to the
A half century in astronomy has earned Garth Illingworth a front-row seat to several rocket launches bearing his fingerprints. But he’s particularly ardent about the one coming up on December 25. That’s when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) blasts off from Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, to an orbit 1 million miles away, where it will glimpse the infant universe. At $9.7 billion, the four-story, 14,000-pound space observatory is NASA’s most ambitious scien
The holidays are here and presents are arriving at doorsteps. But for delivery drivers in some states, the season is anything but festive as missing packages could have serious repercussions for them. As researchers at Data & Society conducting ongoing research on delivery drivers, we have found that they are often implicated when a package is missing or stolen. Accounts of goods being stolen off doorsteps are now commonplace in local newspapers, neighborhood forums, and Facebook groups, g
This past July, before he was banned from Wikipedia, Techyan was one of dozens of volunteers preparing to speak at the free-knowledge movement’s annual conference, Wikimania. Born in China’s northeast, Techyan, as he’s known in the Wikipedia community, had been editing Chinese Wikipedia since his early teens. As one of its three dozen elected administrators, he hoped his presentation would put a more positive spin on what, lately, had become Wikipedia’s ugliest battle
For years, people have been using the web-based collaborative platform Figma to brainstorm raw ideas, roughing them out in visual form as one might do on a conference-room whiteboard. They did so even though Figma—officially an interface design and prototyping tool—was never meant for that particular purpose. But when the company saw its customers embracing its product for whiteboarding, it put creating something optimized for the task on its to-do list. And for a long time, t
Online holiday shopping is expected to reach a peak of $910 billion in 2021—a cybercriminal’s jackpot after a record-breaking year of cybersecurity breaches like Colonial Pipeline and Kaseya. Shoppers overwhelmed by stress, and retailers distracted by supply chain challenges and staffing shortages will undoubtedly be more susceptible to phishing attempts and other social engineering attacks this year. Cybercriminals don’t take time off—and neither should your cy