NIKE Goes Gaming, Social Data From a Superstorm, and Harnessing Digital Disruption – The Week’s Top Tech Stories

Another week gone by and this one was quite a doozy. We hope all reading the TopCoder Blog weekend edition are safe and have the power, food, and fuel they and their families need. We’d encourage our readers to consider a donation to Sandy relief to help those impacted by the “superstorm”.

The TopCoder “weekender” is your chance to catch up on select stories in tech and innovation that you may have missed. Here’s the week’s top 3 stories that caught our eye – enjoy!

Can YOU Harness Disruption? – Disruption, it cuts both ways and the physical form was certainly on display this week due to the weather in the Northeast of the country. But digital disruption is another ballgame, one, if you are in any type of business, that you should be looking at with a keen eye. Whether it’s creating pleasure or eradicating a frustration from a traditional experience, digital disruption changes the game. This SerachCIO article from TechTarget does a nice job setting the landscape for digital disruption while offering some tips that can help you and your enterprise achieve it. 

NIKE Goes Gaming - If you are new to the TopCoder Blog then you might not know our penchant to cover innovation in both gaming and sensor technologies, especially as they impact what is known as the quantified self movement. Before enjoying this video from NIKE below showcasing their new NIKE+ integration with XBox’s popular motion-sensor KINECT gaming platform, it might be worth your while to better understand the quantified self movement. Here are two articles that were featured on the TopCoder Blog that set the stage for this important and disruptive movement.

What is the Quantified Self Movement?

Big Data + Mobile + Sensors + Visualization + Gamification = Quantified Self

Enjoy the XBox/NIKE video featuring U.S. Olympian and gymnast Shawn Johnson.

The Social Data of a Disaster Named #Sandy – We are all well aware of the hardship and loss that many have faced (and continue to face) due to this storm. This Idea Lab article from PBS showcases some of the social innovations that were born before, during and after the hurricane and how some of these in the moment digital innovations, tied to real-time social data, helped people in myriad ways. What is interesting is that some of the simplest solutions were also the most impactful.

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