Star Wars zooming down the highway!
If an 18-wheeler could ever be described as sleek, this is it. Walmart challenged several manufacturers to design a highway transport that could sluice through the air with a minimum of resistance. The outcome? A design reminiscent of something you might expect in a Star Wars movie. A collaboration of several manufacturers including Peterbilt, Great Dane and Capstone Turbine, the trailer is composed of 53-foot carbon fiber panels. The driver sits at the cab’s center which features flat screen electronic displays that monitor engine and other functions. Contained within the cabin is a full sleeper.
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Think about this – next time you pass by or shop at Walmart, consider how those shelves of products got there. In a white paper produced by MWPVL International, specialists in supply chain and logistics consulting, the firm analyzed the evolution of Walmart’s United States infrastructure since the company’s first warehouse operation opened in 1970.
“Walmart’s U.S. distribution network is, for lack of a better word, massive,” notes the MWPVL paper. Combined, its 721 million square feet of distribution and retail real estate would be nearly 1.3 times larger than Manhattan!
(chart by MWPVL International)
Be the media!
Increasingly, we are watching police activity through the eyes of smartphone video captured by citizens using their mobile devices to record law enforcement.
Software developers have grabbed this opportunity to develop apps that automatically upload the video to an online site, live-streaming the smartphone images as they are recorded.
According to an Orlando, Florida TV station report, as soon as smartphone users open an app called Cop Watch, users can create and upload videos about police-citizen interactions, using settings to have the app begin recording as soon as it is launched and upload video to YouTube automatically. WKMG TV adds, “When the record stop button is pressed, the video can automatically be uploaded to YouTube for safekeeping.”
The FiVo Film app uploads video to the user’s Dropbox account. According to the description, the upload feature will protect the video even if police seize the phone or erase it.
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Other apps, like the Bambuser, allows users to stream their camera’s video live as it is recorded.
WKMG reported that the courts have found almost unanimously that citizens have the right to record police in public.
“Citizens are free to record any public activity. They just may not interfere with law enforcement,” said Capt. Angelo Nieves, a spokesman for the Orange County sheriff’s office. “The presence of a camera in and of itself is not interference.”
Photography Is Not a Crime, a website which advocates for the rights of citizens to record law enforcement, posts hundreds of videotaped police interactions. “Launched in 2007 after Miami multimedia journalist Carlos Miller was arrested for taking photos of Miami police during a journalistic assignment in order to document his trial, he quickly learned that citizens from all over the country were being harassed, threatened and arrested for recording in public, so he began documenting these incidents on his blog as he waited for his trial to begin.”
According to the site which documents police abuses, by the time Miller went to trial more than a year later, “the blog had developed a significant following who not only began learning about their rights, but also exercising those rights, many of them equipped with newly introduced smartphones which allowed them to record and upload videos instantly, something that had never been possible before.”
Photography is Not a Crime, which became known as PINAC, helps hold police accountable “better than the mainstream media, politicians or the police themselves” and comprises writers, researchers and correspondents in almost all 50 states.
Video below may contain offensive adult language.
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Whew!
There’s an app that will flag your offensive tweets before your future employer sees them. It’s called Clear and you can read more about it here and here. It’s been written about in several publications, including New York magazine, Mediaite, Talking Points Memo and The Hill, all of which explain how and why this app was developed. Hint: Jeb Bush.
Fun treats!
What is laughing squid? And why is it so funny?
More laughables! Watch this preschool tap dancer go rogue!
