Fast Company

Monday’s alert asked New Yorkers to be on the lookout for suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami with little information. What can be done differently?

Monday’s alert asked New Yorkers to be on the lookout for suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami with little information. What can be done differently?

New Yorkers had a particularly rude awakening on Monday morning, when phones across the city blared with the earsplitting tone of an emergency phone alert, which until now have been reserved for extreme weather notifications and Amber Alerts. But this time, phones displayed the following banner message—the first of its kind—urging people to look out for the suspect behind the bombings in NYC and New Jersey:

Read Full Story

Remember that movie where De Niro plays an intern? Paul Critchlow decided to try it.

Remember that movie where De Niro plays an intern? Paul Critchlow decided to try it.

Paul Critchlow had earned his retirement. It was May of 2015, and he’d worked very hard over a long life, and as a young man, he had even fought in Vietnam. He went on to report for the Philadelphia Inquirer and served as spokesman for Pennsylvania’s governor. Finally, he’d spent the last 30 years at Merrill Lynch, half of those as its head of communications. Now that he was turning 69, it seemed like time for a rest.

Read Full Story

When you work at Microsoft, everything looks like software—even cancer and other threats to human life.

When you work at Microsoft, everything looks like software—even cancer and other threats to human life.

Microsoft’s researchers don’t talk about “curing” cancer. Instead, they are aiming to “solve” it.

Read Full Story

Looking out for your team members is great, but not when you’re so overworked that you stop looking out for yourself.

Looking out for your team members is great, but not when you’re so overworked that you stop looking out for yourself.

It’s pretty much a given that as a manager, you’re going to have more high-level responsibilities than the employees you oversee. But feeling chronically overworked and stressed is not something you should just live with as a condition of your job.

Read Full Story

A little bit of San Francisco history becomes a setting to get people to think of AT&T as something more than a phone company.

A little bit of San Francisco history becomes a setting to get people to think of AT&T as something more than a phone company.

There’s absolutely nothing remarkable about the AT&T store near my office in San Francicso. Once you’re inside, it could be any neighborhood AT&T shop, anywhere in the country.

Read Full Story

Leveraging everything from advanced hardware engineering to AI, this startup wants to give you control over your world’s sounds.

Leveraging everything from advanced hardware engineering to AI, this startup wants to give you control over your world’s sounds.

I’m trying to listen as Doppler Labs cofounder and CEO Noah Kraft walks me through his company’s new smart earbuds over the din of a crowded restaurant, but the cacophony of chattering diners and clanking silverware is overwhelming. I can’t make out a word. Then, all of a sudden, the background noise disappears. Kraft’s voice comes in loud and clear.

Read Full Story

The author of Where Am I Now? talks about her emergence as a writer after years of being known as a former child star.

The author of Where Am I Now? talks about her emergence as a writer after years of being known as a former child star.

Every single day, somebody tells Mara Wilson she’s ugly. As a former child star, it’s an unfortunate, inevitable reality. On the positive side, her hard-earned immunity to this kind of abuse has saved some shock in dealing with the internet bristle worms she may attract in her new career as a writer.

Read Full Story

The camera maker wants to take on DJI, its former partner and now rival, but upending the consumer drones market won’t be easy.

The camera maker wants to take on DJI, its former partner and now rival, but upending the consumer drones market won’t be easy.

The chatter started two years ago: GoPro was getting into the drone business.

Read Full Story

With spin-off investments Grail and Helix, and a new software-savvy CEO, Illumina is poised to make DNA an even bigger part of your life.

With spin-off investments Grail and Helix, and a new software-savvy CEO, Illumina is poised to make DNA an even bigger part of your life.

It would raise the stakes even higher, but that didn’t stop Jay Flatley, Illumina‘s then chief executive, from sending in vials of his own saliva and blood to the company’s newly opened lab. It was January 2009, and Illumina’s scientists were about to embark on their first mission to sequence a whole human genome.

Read Full Story

With technology tightly entwined with business, transportation, and government, lawmakers need to work closely with the tech community.

With technology tightly entwined with business, transportation, and government, lawmakers need to work closely with the tech community.

During my 35 years of covering the technology industry, I have seen firsthand how companies have tried to keep an arm’s-length relationship with the government. With some rare exceptions—the Pentagon’s cooperation and collaboration with industry brought us the internet—Silicon Valley has generally tried to avoid federal and state bureaucrats. After all, the less the government knew about what tech companies were doing, the fewer legal and legislative issues the industry would have to deal with.

Read Full Story