Finally, a TV for the great outdoors
Samsung has introduced The Terrace, a high-end TV that is weather proof, and features a wireless connection to the set top box(es) that can be located indoors. This QLED TV starts at 55 inches and is available in 65 and 75 inch models. The TV is water and dust resistant, and priced accordingly — up to $6,500 for the biggest model. CNET
dis-rup-shun: As shelter-in-place continues, enhancing the back yard setup is even more attractive, but will Samsung, at premium prices, convince people to pay 3x the cost of a cheap TV that can be replaced every 18 months? Like its Frame flat mounted models, Samsung is drilling deeply into its most premium buyer segments, displacing high-end competitors such as LG.
Microsoft Build — the king of software thrives
Microsoft held its annual Build developer conference virtually this week. 200 thousand people register for the online event. The agenda focused largely on the Azure cloud platform. Microsoft is enhancing Azure’s AI capabilities, and providing a free package to healthcare companies, further investing in vertical cloud infrastructure to help open up the previously closed and proprietary data structure of healthcare companies. In addition, Microsoft is enhancing its popular Teams app with Lists, a task management application. CNBC
dis-rup-shun: Microsoft 3.0 under Nadella is a breath of fresh air, with the company being less of the evil empire it was under Ballmer, but instead making very targeted and strategic enhancements for both consumers and industries, such as healthcare. The company seems more customer driven than in prior decades which is mostly thanks to much tougher competition in today’s marketplace. And to attract 200 thousand people for an online conference — this is a warning shot to the event planning industry. We may not be willing to give up three days to travel to crowded convention centers and overpriced hotels for conferences when virtual works.
Nvidia thrives on coronavirus
This semiconductor company made its name on graphics processors for gamers, which is partially responsible for it outperforming projections for the quarter. Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO, has kept this company nimble, and now it is thriving on a chipset designed for complex computations in data centers — following business to the cloud and powering customers in a more virtual world. The stock is up 50% for the year. CNBC
dis-rup-shun: Nvidia has continued to live on the fringes of giants Intel and Qualcomm, by focusing on niche applications and becoming the premium provider for those applications. Specialization and focus pay off again.
How well did you wash your hands?
Now there is a device, particularly for commercial establishments, that scans hands after washing to determine if any bad stuff remains on them. The PathSpot scanner can be mounted on the bathroom wall above the sink, and uses fluorescent light imaging and algorithms to detect bad things like e. coli. TechCrunch
dis-rup-shun: What is the economic cost of not washing your hands well? It could be zero, or it could be a week of work missed, or a week of work missed for ten infected people, or closure of a restaurant for several weeks, or spreading of a pandemic. The cost of a device seems trivial in light of these possibilities.