All posts tagged: Pioneer

‘Shop Different’: Apple Retail Pioneer Ron Johnson Shares the Inside Story

‘Shop Different’: Apple Retail Pioneer Ron Johnson Shares the Inside Story

Published by skeptic

Back in 1999, unhappy at how Macs were being positioned in traditional computer retail stores, Steve Jobs decided that Apple needed to make its own push into retail. The man he brought on to lead the initiative was Ron Johnson, previously the vice president of merchandising at Target. Johnson and writer Zander Nethercutt have teamed up for a new book entitled Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius, releasing next Tuesday, September 22, and I recently had a chance to read through the book and chat with Johnson about it. Shop Different covers Johnson’s background including his time at department store Mervyn’s and at Target, but the bulk of the book unsurprisingly focuses on his work at Apple as his biggest success story and a topic of significant interest for legions of Apple fans and others in the business world and beyond. Johnson started at Apple on February 1, 2000, and he worked hand-in-hand with Jobs and other Apple executives to develop a vision and buildout plan for Apple retail stores, leading to the opening …

Net Art Pioneer Olia Lialina on the Practice of Preservation

Net Art Pioneer Olia Lialina on the Practice of Preservation

Published by Jenni Sidey

Editor’s note: This story is the latest edition of Link Rot, a column by Shanti Escalante-De Mattei that explores the intersections of art, technology, and the internet. Olia Lialina has been distributing herself online since 1994, counting her among the first artists in the net.art scene. 30 years worth of her fascination with the poetics of servers, browsers, and GIFs is now on view in “Network Portraits” through October 3, at Berlin’s Panke Gallery. (Elsewhere, at the Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen in Stuttgart, she is the subject of “online since 1996“, on view through mid-October). Related Articles Alongside her practice as an artist, Lialina is an archivist of GeoCities websites: personal websites that were made using the web hosting service GeoCities in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 1999 an archive team saved 50,000 GeoCities websites that were about to disappear when the company shut down. The archive, now titled, One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age, is stewarded by Lialina and artist Dragan Espenschied. Lialina’s practice as an artist and archivist revolves the uneven promises of …

E-quipment highlight: BLUETTI Pioneer 5000 E-Generator

E-quipment highlight: BLUETTI Pioneer 5000 E-Generator

Published by skeptic

BLUETTI says its new Pioneer 5000 E-Generator is built for the “Next Generation of Real Work,” as the brand expands into professional job site power delivery with a battery-backed and noise-free alternative to conventional ICE-powered generators. Portable power experts BLUETTI unveiled their new Pioneer 5000 professional-grade E-Generator at IFA 2026 yesterday, marking the brand’s transition from portable battery power to genuine job-site generator alternative with enough power to run electric drills, grinders and cut-off saws, air compressors, and water pumps with a 5.12 kWh LiFePO₄ battery pack that’s expandable up to 35 kWh for clean, capable, and quiet off-grid operation all day long. “Compared with fuel generators, the Pioneer 5000 E-Generator produces zero tailpipe emissions, operates at ≤ 50 dB, and eliminates routine refueling and engine maintenance, enabling operation indoors, at night, and in noise-sensitive environments,” reads the official launch copy. “It delivers a cleaner, quieter power experience with less operational hassle, and redefines what professional power can look like.” That’s a lot of power for a typical job site – more than enough power to …

Where Are Today’s Brave Pioneer Women? – OpentheWord.org

Where Are Today’s Brave Pioneer Women? – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

Women’s suffrage headquarters in Upper Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Credit: Wikipedia, Public Domain By J. Lee Grady In the oil country of western North Dakota I met a brave woman pastor who is blazing a spiritual trail. Barb Becker is one tough lady. Raised by alcoholic parents in a mining camp in Wyoming, she lived a rough life that included drugs and promiscuity. People continually told her she was good for nothing. She hated herself and became suicidal. But in 1985, on the same day she planned to kill herself, she bought a little book called Power for Living for 25 cents at a second-hand store, read the Christian testimonies in it and prayed to receive Jesus as her Savior. She became so hungry to know God that she read the Bible straight through four times in three months and ended up getting baptized in the Holy Spirit. “My prayer is that a whole new army of women pioneers will arise in this hour to win the lost, heal the broken and claim new territory for …

Lee Daniels, Nadine Labaki, Marina Abramovic Liberatum Pioneer Awards

Lee Daniels, Nadine Labaki, Marina Abramovic Liberatum Pioneer Awards

Published by Daniella Wilson

Empire creator Lee Daniels, Capernaum director Nadine Labaki, and avant-garde artist Marina Abramovic will be honored at this year’s Venice Film Festival with the 2026 Liberatum Pioneer Awards. The awards, presented by Pablo Ganguli’s Liberatum cultural diplomacy organization, recognize artists whose work “has challenged convention, broken down systemic barriers, expanded artistic boundaries, redefined the possibilities of their respective fields and promoted the importance of preserving human dignity.” The awards presentations will take place in Venice on Sept 6 and 7 as part of the inaugural Liberatum Art & Cinema, a new multidisciplinary programme staged to mark the cultural group’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Announcing this year’s winners on Wednesday, Liberatum said it was recognizing Daniels, director for the “bold, uncompromising filmmaking that has consistently brought subjects largely absent from mainstream American film and television into major public view, including Precious, The Butler and Empire.” Daniels’ focus on the depiction of “Black life, trauma, sexuality and family with candour, at scale and without dilution,” the group said, “has opened space within the industry for narratives previously considered commercially …

Disney Camera Pioneer, Ub Iwerks Son Was 96

Disney Camera Pioneer, Ub Iwerks Son Was 96

Published by Daniella Wilson

Don Iwerks, the Disney legend who spearheaded various camera and projection systems for the company’s parks and films, has died. He was 96. Disney announced Iwerks died Thursday evening. “It is with great sadness that we report that Disney Legend Don Iwerks has passed away at the age of 96,” reads a statement shared on Disney D23’s Instagram. “Iwerks was an innovator whose work brought The Walt Disney Company to new technological heights, aiding in perfecting the sodium vapor process used in 1964’s Academy Award®-winning Mary Poppins, developing the 360-degree Circle-Vision camera used to film America the Beautiful for Disney Parks, and implementing the projection system for the fan-favorite Star Tours attraction, among numerous other advancements. The achievements of Don Iwerks and his family have shaped Disney’s creative ethos and will forever be part of the company’s history.” Born on July 24, 1929, Iwerks was the son of fellow Disney Legend Ub Iwerks, co-creator of Mickey Mouse (alongside Walt Disney himself). Iwerks began at Walt Disney Productions in 1950, when he was a special photographic processes laboratory technician. He …

Julio Le Parc, Argentine Kinetic Art Pioneer, Dies at 97

Julio Le Parc, Argentine Kinetic Art Pioneer, Dies at 97

Published by Jenni Sidey

Julio Le Parc, the Argentine-born artist whose shimmering mobiles, vibrating light installations, and participatory environments helped redefine the relationship between art and its audience, died on May 30 in Paris. He was 97. His son, Yamil Le Parc, confirmed the death to the Argentine newspaper La Nación. The artist had been hospitalized in recent days after a decline in health and died at the American Hospital in Paris. According to his son, Le Parc remained deeply engaged with his work until the end and had been eagerly anticipating a major retrospective scheduled to open at Tate Modern in London on June 11. He had hoped to attend the exhibition, which surveys nearly seven decades of his career. Related Articles For more than six decades, he pursued a simple but radical idea: art should not be something that happens to viewers. It should happen with them. Working with mirrors, light, movement, color, and optical effects, Le Parc became one of the leading figures of kinetic art. His installations often transformed museumgoers from passive observers into active participants, asking them …

Barney Frank, former congressman and gay-rights pioneer, dies at 86 : NPR

Barney Frank, former congressman and gay-rights pioneer, dies at 86 : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

US Rep. Barney Frank,D-MA, chairman of the US House Financial Services Committee conducts hearings on “Financial Market Regulatory Restructuring.” July 10, 2008 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. KAREN BLEIER/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption KAREN BLEIER/AFP via Getty Images Barney Frank, the liberal icon and gay-rights pioneer who represented Massachusetts in Congress for more than three decades, died Tuesday night at his home, according to a close friend who confirmed his death to member station GBH. He was 86 years old and had been receiving hospice care for congestive heart failure. Frank was the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out, and also the first to marry a same-sex partner. He says many of the conventional tactics they took to fight for gay-rights helped make “enormous progress” in a relatively short period of time. Recently asked by GBH if he wished he could do over any part of his career, Frank replied: “I would have come out earlier.” Read GBH’s full remembrance here. Frank’s last message for Democrats Barney Frank speaks …

Carolyn Wood Sherif, pioneer of feminist psychology who foresaw the risks of scientific bias

Carolyn Wood Sherif, pioneer of feminist psychology who foresaw the risks of scientific bias

Published by skeptic

In the US state park of Robbers Cave, Oklahoma, Carolyn Wood Sherif is standing squinting up at the sun. The two wooden cabins before her rattle with shrieks and cries from excited 11-year-old boys. They have been split into two groups of 11 and encouraged to bond. Over three long, laborious weeks in the summer of 1954, Wood Sherif watches as these boys become enthusiastically dedicated to their allocated groups. When instructed to compete for resources, they grow hostile towards their opponents. The experiment descends into inter-group violence and aggression. This research was among the first naturalistic psychological studies to show how group formation can lead to prejudice and intense conflict. It is considered a classic study upon which the subdiscipline of social psychology – how mind and behaviour are influenced by the presence of other people – was born. Wood Sherif should have made her academic career from it. But in many ways, scientific research is a culture, a club. There are people with the power to warmly invite others to participate, and others …

Boise State researchers pioneer portable PFAS detector

Boise State researchers pioneer portable PFAS detector

Published by skeptic

A team led by researchers at Boise State University and Idaho-based Pearlhill Technologies, LLC, has developed a portable PFAS detector that can identify toxic forever chemicals in water samples within minutes. The device was created by electrical engineering professor Kris Campbell and Pearlhill Technologies president Bamidele Omotowa with support from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Small Business Technology Transfer grant. The new system, known as ENVIR-OGT, is designed to detect PFAS compounds at concentrations as low as one part per trillion, matching current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drinking water standards. Unlike conventional laboratory testing, which can cost hundreds of dollars and take weeks to complete, the handheld device delivers near real-time results directly at the testing site. The breakthrough could significantly change how governments, utilities and manufacturers monitor water contamination. By lowering the cost and complexity of testing, the PFAS detector may help communities identify PFAS pollution faster and respond before contamination spreads through public water systems. The growing need for PFAS detection technology PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are synthetic …