Johns Hopkins' drone flies straight from an underwater station

Crazy. This thing could be "hidden" in any body of water, anywhere. Wonder how long the battery lasts in a dormant state. They are staying they stuck it in salt water for 2 months with no sign of damage. LINK

NPR forbids promoting podcasts or its NPR One app on member stations

This is a super strange state of affairs. Say what? One solution... Teach your sponsorship folks (ad sales) how to move/sell podcast impressions? Another solution... Twice a year... pull the static content and force everything to a stream to solicit money? An out there solution... Fund the thing like the BBC and grow it 10x! Doing so might influence a change the media context such that a candidate for office would have a difficult time getting a unbalanced portion of attention by being crazy.  Might it change the dynamics around clicks and impressions we have today? If not, then what might? Or, is it too late? LINK

Cloud Makes For Strange Bedfellows: Apple Signs On With Google, Cuts Spending With AWS

Say What? And Steve is...? And Walmart and Target be like, "Wait up for us. We're coming too." LINK

One Wall Street Firm Says Amazon Is About to 'Feast' on the Food and Beverage Market

A new Whole Foods just opened in the neighborhood. I've been there 5 of the first 6 days. It has a bar and grill inside and is a really unique experience.  However, we also are among the 11% of people that order groceries from the internet. What does that mean? Not sure. LINK

Domino's will use robots to deliver pizzas in New Zealand

Companies don't need driverless cars if they have robots! LINKS

Driverless lorry convoys to be trialled in the UK

This is awesome! The ultimate trailer is one that drives itself behind you efficiently? Where did the jobs go? LINK

Microsoft mulled an $8 billion bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

The service is 2 years old. It Integrates with many other services and has a quick onboard to chatting. 8B is woah. Lots of growth prospects in workplace communication tools. There are gaps out there to be found and filled. LINK

The SkyWall 100 bazooka captures drones with a giant net

It'll be a crazy day when you decide to acquire a t-shirt gun on steroids to take down the drones in the backyard! LINK

U.S. Chamber of Commerce sues Seattle over Uber, Lyft ordinance

At what point will the "public" start to notice that the fight is not about the humans driving? When the car goes autonomous there will be no like kind "driving labor." LINK

NiftyX:LifeSaving Leather Charging Cable Bracelet | Indiegogo

An extra battery for your phone. LINK

McDonald's Is Now Making Happy Meal Boxes That Turn Into Virtual Reality Headsets | Adweek

Your Happy Meal in Sweden just turned in to a Virtual Reality box too. LINK

Tio: connected toys & inventions anyone can create by Tio — Kickstarter

Animate your world! Looks like fun to build a robot to control with a phone. LINK

Snapchat's Spiegel to Investors: We Have 8 Billion Video Views a Day - Bloomberg Business

Snapchat's app has more than 100 million daily users who spend an average of 25 to 30 minutes on the app each day, Spiegel told the audience. LINK

Better than meditation — Better Humans — Medium

When the author got to the 750.com comments I was reminded of the reasons we built Wonderment. LINK

Test Like You Fly | Wayne Hale's Blog

I found this a fantastic example of the Build, Test, Learn sequence. Prototype more. Build the first version faster. The second even faster. Etc. LINK

CowTech's $99 3D scanner captures detail from small objects

I've never meet a 3d scanner that works well enough to care much less one that is only $99. Hope it works. LINK

Calendar Watch by What? Watch — Kickstarter

The dark portions of the watch space represent when you have meetings. Really cool. LINK

Nissan’s self-parking office chair is here to make your Monday better | The Verge

For real. It's not likely worth the $$$ but so few people clean up after themselves in mtgs and office environments. LINK

Apple Watch Sales Estimated at 5.1 Million in Holiday Quarter, Swiss Watch Sales in Trouble - Mac Rumors

This is astonishing growth. What a "failed" product. LINK

Amazon Prime: 38% Of Households Are Members - Fortune

This is unreal. Wow.