Keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. Teenagers aren’t the ones distracted by technology in cars. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett drew a direct link between the rise last year in traffic fatalities and mobile texting. (Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico, and you can bet this adversely affects insurance premiums.)
Safety and efficiency considerations, however, are making cars smarter every day.
The latest subject of controversy: heads-up displays that beam data onto the windshield into a driver’s line of sight. The technology is similar to what’s used by airplane pilots. Still, it’s raising new questions about whether multitasking is really a good thing in the driver’s seat. The New York Times ran a thoughtful feature on the matter this morning. Advocates suggest the displays help drivers keep their eyes focused forward. It’s the potential integration with other applications, such as music playlists or scheduling, that have skeptics worried.
Stay tuned for coverage of the annual Salesforce mega-conference, Dreamforce next week. Also, time is running out to register for the new Executive Insights track at Penton’s IT Dev Connections conference, focused on digital technology strategy. Data Sheet readers get $200 off registration with promo code EXFRTN15.
One last note: At this time 14 years ago, I was in the driver’s seat heading toward Manhattan for a technology executive roundtable. My plans changed when I reached the Lincoln Tunnel. Please join me in pausing to remember those we lost that day, and celebrating their memories this weekend.
TRENDING
Alibaba's response to slowing sales in China? Adding more products to its e-commerce site. (Wall Street Journal)
Tech IPOs at lowest level since 2008. Just 15 startups have entered the public stock market, as of late August. Last year, there were 55 total. (Journal)
New turf for IBM's healthcare analytics group. The team is setting up labs in Cambridge, Mass., near other innovative biotech and pharma companies. (Fortune)
Salesforce unifies corporate app development resources. Its App Cloud combines technology from several previously separate offerings. The aim: simplicity. (Fortune)
eBay tests new shipping strategy in Germany. It needs to address frequent delivery issues that have given rival marketplace Amazon an advantage in this area. (Journal)
Is HP getting its cloud mojo back? Its quarterly sales just pulled ahead of rival data center equipment provider Cisco for the first time in more than two years. (eWeek)
THE DOWNLOAD
Here's what Google's superstar women left to do
Producing superstars like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Google has become the No. 1 incubator for women leaders. The female brain drain has distressed some internally, but the women who have struck out on new paths see it differently.
BITS AND BYTES
No hard feelings. HP CEO Meg Whitman joined SurveyMonkey's board, helping out her former employee Bill Veghte. (Fortune)
Open for business. Google's Android Pay is now accepted at more than 1 million U.S. retail locations. Unlike Apple's alternative, it works on most older smartphones. (Fortune)
This doesn't bode well for Uber. It lost another argument in California over whether drivers should be classified as employees or contractors. (Fortune)
Ellen Pao throws in the towel. She won't appeal the loss of her gender discrimination suit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. (Fortune)
This chip will self-destruct. The technology, from Xerox PARC, is intended for security applications. (Computerworld)
Don't look for drama here. SAP expects to meet 2015 financial targets. (Reuters)
Another day, another IBM acquisition. Its buyout of StrongLoop fortifies the company's BlueMix technology, a development platform for cloud software and Internet of things applications. (Fortune)
Three more cities could get ultrafast Google Internet. Studies have started in San Diego, Irvine, California, and Louisville, Kentucky. (Ars Technica)
MY FORTUNE BOOKMARKS
Is GoPro in trouble? Not so fast, say analysts by Don Reisinger
Apple TV highlights how far AI has come — and how far it has to go by Derrick Harris
Google stomps on ad injectors that rob publishers, bug users by Jeff John Roberts
Add this company to your list of would-be Zenefits rivals by Heather Clancy
Panasonic is quietly selling grid batteries in the U.S. by Katie Fehrenbacher
ONE MORE THING
Would Steve have allowed this? Jobs had a serious distaste for the computer stylus, which makes the Apple Pencil debut all the more notable. (Fortune)
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
IT Dev Connections: New this year: an Executive Insights track focused on digital technology strategy. (Sept. 14 - 17; Las Vegas)
- Executive Insights: Leveraging technology to improve business growth. Data Sheet readers get $200 off registration with promo code EXFRTN15 (Sept. 15-16, 2015; Las Vegas).
Dreamforce: The Salesforce community. (Sept. 15 - 18; San Francisco)
.conf2015: "Get your data on" with Splunk. (Sept. 21 - 24; Las Vegas)
Zebra Technology AppForum: Bar codes meet the Internet of things. (Sept. 21 - 23; Las Vegas)
Cassandra Summit: Largest gathering of Cassandra database developers. (Sept. 22 - 24; San Francisco)
nginx.conf: The modern web. (Sept. 22 - 24; San Francisco)
AppSec USA: Application security principles. (Sept. 22 - 25; San Francisco)
Percolate Transition: Reshaping marketing through technology. (Sept. 24; New York)
BoxWorks: Cloud collaboration solutions. (Sept. 28 - 30; San Francisco)
Workday Rising: Meet and share. (Sept. 28 - Oct. 1; Las Vegas)
Minds+Machines: GE's annual industrial Internet event. (Sept. 29 - Oct. 1; San Francisco)
HP Engage: Big data, big engagement. (Oct. 4 - 6; San Diego)
Gartner Symposium ITxpo: CIOs and senior IT executives. (Oct. 4 - 8; Orlando, Florida)
AWS re:Invent: The global Amazon Web services community. (Oct. 6 - 9; Las Vegas)
Relate by Zendesk: Improve your customer engagement. (Oct. 7 - 8; New York)
I Love APIs: Apigee's annual conference. (Oct. 12 - 14; San Jose, California)
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: World's largest gather of women technologists. (Oct. 14 - 16; Houston)
DevOps Enterprise Summit: Lean principles meet technology management. (Oct. 19 - 21; San Francisco)
Tableau Conference 2015: Tableau’s annual customer conference. (Oct 19 -23; Las Vegas)
Dell World: Global conference for customers and partners. (Oct. 20 - 22; Austin, Texas)
Virtuous Circle Conference: Internet policy in the round (Oct. 12-13, Menlo Park, California)
CX San Francisco: Forrester's forum for customer experience professionals. (Oct. 22 - 23)
Oracle OpenWorld: Customer and partner conference. (Oct. 25 - 29; San Francisco)
TBM Conference: Manage IT like a business. (Oct. 26 - 29; Chicago)
eBusiness Chicago: eBusiness and channel strategy. (Oct. 29 - 30)
QuickBooks Connect: SMBs, entrepreneurs, accountants and developers. (Nov. 2 - 4; San Jose, California)
CMO+CIO: Forrester's summit on strategy collaboration. (Nov. 2 - 4; Sarasota, Florida)
Oktane: Identity management trends. (Nov. 2 - 4; Las Vegas)
FutureStack: Define your future with New Relic. (Nov. 11 - 13; San Francisco)
