Weekend Digest: The return of Bill and the return to space edition

TV PREVIEW: U.S. REP. STEVE WOMACK
On this week’s TV edition of Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock, which airs Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7:

Changes in Washington. With a new speaker of the House, Congressional leader Steve Womack from Arkansas’ 3rd district joins us via satellite. How will Paul Ryan’s leadership be different? What’s on Rep. Womack’s budget agenda? And should there be more House investigations of Hillary Clinton’s email server?

On the business front, Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) announces a major trade mission to China and Japan. Business editor Wes Brown discusses the globetrotting governor and the latest on the earnings front.

And we’ll talk politics with Robert Coon of Impact Management Group and TB&P’s Jessica DeLoach Sabin. The Arkansas Poll, candidate filing, a Supreme Court race, and could we see a Democratic Senate primary?

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock on KATV Ch. 7, Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

INNOVATIVE CARBON3D
Forbes calls Carbon3D, “one of the hottest startups to come along in the emerging 3-D printing industry.”

“While some of the highest-end machines can precisely print small-batch items such as hearing aids and artificial joints, the vast majority of 3-D printers in use today are slow and capable of making only trinkets and small prototypes. The early hype around 3-D printing peaked a couple of years ago, and now shares of the two big publicly traded printer manufacturers, Stratasys and 3D Systems, are 80% off their highs.”

Carbon3D is reinjecting excitement into the field. Its CEO and cofounder, Joseph DeSimone, a 51-year-old entrepreneur and chemistry professor on leave from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, came up with a new way to print objects in 3-D so quickly and precisely that Sequoia Capital partner Jim Goetz (the sole backer of WhatsApp) led an $11 million Series A round and lured him to Redwood City, Calif. from his tenured chair in Chapel Hill. The company has since raised more than $140 million, including a $100 million round in August led by Google Ventures. Its valuation is already estimated to be above $1 billion without releasing anything more than a product for early customer trials.

So how can Carbon3D “produce objects of higher resolutions at speeds 25 to 100 times faster than traditional stereolithographic printers and several other techniques?”

Go to this link to find out.

ADDICTED TO SMARTPHONES, BUT NOT TABLETS
Smashing Magazine says, “In record time, our smartphones have become indispensable, and as mobile technology has become integrated into nearly every aspect of our lives, our smartphones are shifting from device to dependency.”

But while it’s now clear that we are locked in an intense relationship with our smartphones, one has to wonder why this courtship hasn’t turned into a love triangle with tablets. After all, no matter how sleek our iPhone 6 is, our iPad or Android tablet is equally smooth and packed with life-organizing apps.

So, what is it about our smartphones that makes them so attractive? And why is the addiction we feel toward them so much stronger than to our tablets?

Answers here.

‘QUANTIFYING THE  IMPACT OF MARKETING ANALYTICS’
“Marketing analytics is becoming big business,” reports Harvard Business Review. “With the promise of improved precision and performance, advanced analytics and Big Data have set off something of a buying frenzy.”

Companies spend 6.7% of their marketing budgets on analytics and expect to spend 11.1% over the next three years, according to our most recent CMO survey. Brands plan to boost spending on the category by a whopping 73% over the next three years, according to a recent VentureBeat report. The same report highlighted that more than a billion dollars have been invested in data analytics companies this year while Chief Marketing Technologist Blog’s Scott Brinker has estimated that the number of marketing tech companies has doubled to almost 2,000 this year alone.

Given all the money spent on analytics, there is surprisingly little scrutiny about their impact. In the end, analytics effectiveness boils down to two questions.

What are the questions? Follow this link to learn more about how to quantify the impact.

TECH SUPPLIERS FADING FAST
Fast Company reports, “A new study from research firm IDC predicts massive disruption in the next five years for tech.”

“A new study from one of the world’s most respected research firms says the tech industry is headed for a period of chaos. The International Data Corporation’s new FutureScape 2016 report claims, for starters, that 30% of the tech industry’s suppliers will “not exist as we know them today” in five years because they will either fail or be acquired.”

According to the New York Times’ Steve Lohr, who wrote a detailed write-up of the study, new subsets of the tech sector such as cloud computing, mobile devices, advanced data analysis, and artificial intelligence are changing the business environment. However, IDC says, a lot of companies in the tech world are not making changes to help themselves survive in the long-term. A third of the top 20 companies in each tech industry covered by IDC will suffer either loss of revenues, loss of profits, or a deterioration in their market position, the firm predicts.

For more on this story, follow this link.

BEN CARSON AND THE BLACK VOTER GAP
The rally was in West Memphis, and according to The New York Times, “Sam Hawkins Jr. said he came to a rally here last week for the Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson because he finds Mr. Carson’s social conservatism appealing, relishes his newness to politics and believes that President Obama ‘sold out for the vote’ in supporting same-sex marriage.”

In other words, Mr. Hawkins resembles many of Carson’s supporters. That is, until he calls Bill Clinton “my guy,” notes that he voted for Obama, twice, and argues that the president has “done a lot of positive stuff.”

Carson, a retired doctor who recently surged to first place in some national polls, is trying to solidify his lead in the volatile race for the Republican presidential nomination. To do so, his campaign is eyeing a group of voters who are traditionally scarce in Republican primaries but who could give him added support the other candidates are unlikely to draw: African-Americans, such as Hawkins.

“Yet if Mr. Carson’s potential for bringing black voters into the Republican primary illustrates a unique possibility, his efforts to win them over highlight his limitations as a candidate. Though he raised over $20 million during the third quarter of this year and primary votes will be cast in less than three months, his campaign operation has not caught up to his standing in the race.”

And why is that? Go to this link for the inside story, plus analysis.

CHRISTIE, HUCKABEE DON’T MAKE IT
To the main stage, that is, for the upcoming GOP debate.

“Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee failed to make the cut for the main stage at next week’s Fox Business Network/Wall Street Journal debate, a particularly harsh blow for the New Jersey governor who has struggled to gain traction in the presidential race after being seen as a rising GOP star in 2012.”

The two Republican candidates failed to meet the 2.5 percent average polling threshold, meaning they’ll both be bumped to a 6 p.m. undercard debate on Tuesday, appearing alongside former Sen. Rick Santorum and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

For more on this story and to find out who else got bumped, connect here for the POLITICO story.

BILL TAKING A MORE ACTIVE ROLE IN HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN
“Bill Clinton comes off the sidelines,” says POLITICO.  “The former president is taking a more active role and is staying calm.”

Eight months into Hillary Clinton’s second presidential run, Bill Clinton is already occupying a more significant private role as a strategic adviser than he did in 2008, when his deployment was as a public surrogate – a role that effectively ended with his angry, politically damaging diatribes in a catastrophic South Carolina primary loss to Barack Obama.

This year, his biggest influence so far has been behind the scenes, a veteran voice who can carry the day during decisive moments in the race, even if he’s removed — by design — from the nitty-gritty of directing the daily operation.

“He’s motivated by his belief that Hillary belongs in the Oval Office, but he’s also eager to undo any negative impact he had on the campaign last time around.”

For an insightful read, go to this link.

PAUL RYAN’S PLEDGE SAME AS BOEHNER’S WAS
“Paul Ryan pledges to reform the House. Just like John Boehner did,” reports The Washington Post.

“It’s a glimpse of how we should be doing the people’s business,” Ryan said, pledging to continue the open process as Congress approaches a Dec. 11 government funding deadline.

It’s a theme Ryan has stressed repeatedly in his first week as speaker: Obey “regular order,” follow the rules, and let the House work its will. That refrain should ring a bell to anyone familiar with the words of another House speaker: John Boehner.

“A few months before he was elected speaker in January 2011, Boehner (R-Ohio) gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on what ailed the House and how he planned on going about fixing it.”

What did Boehner say then, and is Ryan “a Boehner clone”?

Follow this link for the full story.

CRYOTHERAPY TREATMENT GETS NEW SCRUTINY
In a recent post The New York Times describes a cryotherapy chamber.

You step into an upright cylindrical capsule, padded on the inside and open on top. The floor grinds upward, and your head pops out. There’s a whoosh. And suddenly you are encased in gas, below the neck, in a tank that is minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit — colder than the coldest naturally occurring temperature recorded on Earth.

But is “the fast-growing but little-known practice of full-body cryotherapy, which enthusiasts bill as a path to pain reduction, injury recovery and mood enhancement,” actually safe?

Read this post, and you be the judge.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR VIRGIN GALACTIC?
Mashable reports, “One year ago Saturday, Virgin Galactic’s first space plane disintegrated in the skies above Mojave, California, killing one pilot and leaving the other hospitalized.”

In the wake of the tragic accident, it was unclear if the private spaceflight company with dreams of sending paying customers to suborbital space would survive, but now, 12 months later, Virgin Galactic’s founder, Sir Richard Branson, says the company is back on track.

And on track in a big way. Find out what’s next for Virgin Galactic by “flying” to this link.

MOSTLY BAGS OF AIR
Your favorite snacks that is, says Fast Company.

“Nobody needs to eat more snack chips, but it can be disheartening to, in our moments of greatest gluttony, rip open a new bag of Doritos to see that it’s 86% air.”

It’s a phenomenon of prepackaged disappointment, explored by Brooklyn-based photographer Henry Hargreaves in his new series, Waste of Space. It’s another shot at the food industry. For his last project, he boiled down sweet drinks to sugary lollipops. For his latest, he went to his local BP gas station, grabbed some snacks, and brought them back to the studio. Then he dumped out the contents and vacuum-sealed them to compare the volume differences.

Want photographic proof? Click here.