ImaginativePRO Blog

NIKE REDEFINES BASKETBALL FOOTWEAR WITH THE KOBE 9 ELITE FEATURING NIKE FLYKNIT, $225 A PAIR, FOR SALE ON FEB 8

A first in running, now a first in basketball, Nike Flyknit breaks the rules and brings superior lightweight strength to one of the game’s greatest players.

The first time you slip on a Nike Flyknit--technology that weaves together a shoe’s upper half--you may swear that you’re really wearing a sock.

And so as Flyknit technology makes its way to hightops for the first time in Nike’s newly announced Kobe Bryant’s latest shoe, the Kobe 9 Elite, it's pretty fair to say that Nike has built the first hightop sock.

 

Mark Parker, President & CEO of NIKE, Inc., said.   

“We are just scratching the surface of the potential of Nike Flyknit to transform the way we design shoes to meet athletes’ needs.  The Kobe 9 redefines the basketball shoe by combining power, strength, and flexibility with lightweight materials and a whole new method of manufacturing.” 

The Kobe 9 Elite's aesthetic details that have won us over. Specifically, the sole is shaped after Bryant's own foot, and rear red lacing represents his recent achilles surgery. (Click Image To Enlarge)

The Kobe 9 Elite may fit like a sock, but it's not 100% cozy footwear. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Eric Avar, Nike Creative Director and VP of Innovation, who has worked closely with Kobe on his shoe designs for a decade, said.  

"Nike Flyknit acts as a second skin for Kobe, giving him engineered strength similar to the design of a spider web – tension and strength just where it’s needed."

The Kobe 9 Elite Flyknit upper leads to a Flywire midsole (the firmer, Flyknit predecessor) to lock the foot on the sole. Why? (Click Image To Enlarge)

Kobe reflected when asked about the inspiration for his latest shoes and about getting back into the game. 

"I draw inspiration from where I am as a player, as a person, and where my career is at this moment.  I'm trying to do something that the majority of people think is impossible to do.  I let my emotions out when I step on the basketball floor, it’s always been my escape, and these shoes will touch a nerve on the court in the same way I do."

You can read more about the technology at play here in the slide show above. But honestly, it’s not the unique Flyknit construction that makes the Kobe 9 so fascinating. It’s the highly personal, anthropomorphic detail hiding inside the shoe that make it something more than yet another fancy hightop. The Kobe 9 is a portrait of Kobe himself.

Frankensteinian twist, the nine red embroidered laces on the back of each shoe don’t just mark that this is the ninth iteration of Bryant footwear, they actually represent the sutures from his recent achilles tendon surgery--the repair of an injury that could have ended his illustrious career.

We went back and forth and decided it would be a really unique detail to add to the shoe. To him, it very much represents the journey, from a point of extreme challenge to coming back.

Whereas a Flyknit weave alone may be enough to stabilize a running shoe, Nike tells us that basketball is far more explosive, and requires more tensile support from Flywire. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Then below the midsole, the shoe ends in liberal cushioning and a super light, super strong carbon fiber heel. (Click Image To Enlarge)

In this sense, the Kobe 9 is highly reminiscent of Derrick Rose’s recent comeback campaign with Adidas. But the Kobe 9 goes a step further. It’s not just a cool shoe wrapped in a smart marketing campaign. It’s actually a mass-produced manifestation of Bryant’s battle back into basketball. The Kobe 9 is truly Kobe Bryant in the year 2013. Or at least, his feet.

Look for the shoe on sale February 8 for $225.

COMMENTARY:  Reverting back to a higher cut for the first time since his third signature shoe in 2007, Kobe’s ninth signature shoe features a knit collar for the proprioceptive feel of a low-top with the support of a mid-top.

With the lead colorway dubbed ‘Masterpiece,’ the KOBE 9 Elite uses the intriguing visual patterns allowed by Nike Flyknit to create a piece of art on the upper, nine red embroidered details on the heel give a nod to Kobe’s Achilles sutures. The design on the outsole is based on the pressure mapping of Kobe’s own foot, creating a beautiful pattern while providing traction on court.

DYNAMIC FIT

Nike Flyknit and Flywire technologies are a one-two punch, leading to a dynamic fit for Kobe’s intricate footwork. 

• The single layer Nike Flyknit creates a seamless engineered upper that is the ultimate in superior lightweight performance integrating areas of high breathability, stretch and support where it’s needed most. 

• Nike Flywire technology is strong yet dynamic for lockdown through the midfoot; its cables loosen and tighten with the natural motion of the foot.

• The carbon fiber heel counter provides strong and lightweight lateral stability when moving from side to side, while the heel remains stable.

RESPONSIVE RIDE

Eliminating bulk and distraction was a focus for Avar. The idea of ‘simplifying without compromise’ helped shape the design of the KOBE 9 Elite.

• Nike Lunarlon cushioning insert provides responsive cushioning that keeps the foot connected to the court.

• The pressure mapping designed, minimal rubber outsole delivers durable traction and mimics the natural contours of the foot.

DESIGN WITH A PURPOSE

Nike Flyknit technology introduces a new way to construct a shoe upper by knitting strands of yarn. Nike Flyknit is better for the planet because it drastically reduces waste and materials from typical upper construction. The KOBE 9 Elite upper reduces waste by nearly 50% compared to traditional high-top basketball shoes that use multiple segments and cuts of material in the construction process.

Courtesy of an article dated December 5, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

THREE MARKETING TACTICS TO TAP INTO THE EMERGING APPLE DEMOGRAPHICS

Apple customers are emerging as an important new demographic, accounting for a massive 89% of mobile commerce sales.

When Orbitz admitted that it ranks products differently for Mac users, citing 20-30% higher average order values, much comment was made about the difference between Mac and PC customers.

But that is only half the story. When you factor in mobile devices, the new Apple demographic begins to have significant implications for marketers.

Apple mobile customers dominate mobile commerce, especially on tablets. Analysis of 21 million mobile ecommerce transactions by SeeWhy in February and March (2013) found that Apple customers are fundamentally different from Android customers: 89% of mobile ecommerce sales were on iOS, with 70% of total mobile sales coming from iPad alone.

Remember that there are significantly more Android devices than iOS devices, so if Android customers were the same as Apple ones, those figures shouldn't be so: In essence, Android should drive more mobile sales.

Digging into this in more detail by looking at Web traffic sources, it becomes clear that Android usage is higher than iOS over cellular, but iOS usage is much higher over Wi-Fi, suggesting that Android users have less access to WiFi—or aren't using it.

In fact, Android device usage patterns suggest they are used more as utilitarian devices, helping to achieve tasks when out of the home, such as finding stores and accessing the web using cellular. Those patterns are what we normally associate with smartphones—many fewer purchases with a much smaller average order value than tablets.

Tablets are used in a fundamentally different way from smartphones. Used primarily at home, on the couch and in bed, tablets are a recreational device with dramatically higher average order values than desktops or smartphones, generating three times more revenue for e-commerce merchants than phones.

Are Apple customers really different?

Apple was first to market with the iPad and has a larger market share. Could that account for the difference, or are Apple customers really different?

In a survey (SeeWhy, April 2013) of 1,500 US consumers, we found clear differences in the demographics of Apple phone owners. They tend to be younger, better educated, living in urban areas, and are more affluent than Android users: 60% of Apple phone users earn over $75,000 per year, compared with 44% of Android phone owners.

As for market share, 10.3% of US online consumers own an iPad, whereas 8.9% own an Android tablet. That means there are a lot of Android tablets out there not being used for shopping.

Apple customers are spending more on mobile for three fundamental reasons:

• Premium customers. Apple customers chose to buy the premium product in the market, attracted by style, fashion, and form. They are prepared to pay extra. Their demographic profile is different, and they are more affluent. This is a sophisticated market that chooses high-end products, and a market that most marketers will want to tap into.
• Tablets. Although there are slightly more Apple tablets in the market than Android ones—and, therefore, we should expect more Apple conversions—Android tablets are not being used for shopping at anything like the same rate. By comparison, Apple tablets are shopping machines, being used late into the night as part of an evening's recreation.
• Usability. Some evidence suggests that Apple tablets are easier to use and somehow more engaging. Easy Wi-Fi connections may be part of the story, coupled with more apps and a consistent app experience that encourages user engagement. If users spend more time on the device and are using Wi-Fi to surf recreationally on a big screen while sipping a glass of wine on the couch in the evening, then purchases follow.

How can marketers tap into the Apple demographic?

• Optimize for Apple tablets. E-commerce sites should focus on getting a full website experience (product range, product detail, functionality, etc.) optimized for tablets. Customers have shown that they prefer a tablet version of the full site over a shopping app. Accordingly, a priority for e-commerce businesses should be to optimize natively for iPad first; since the device alone accounts for 70% of mobile sales, that should not be a hard decision. Case studies show that where merchants have built device-optimized experiences, significant increases in conversions, average order values, and revenue have followed.
• Treat Apple customers differently. Orbitz has shown that presenting a different product mix, more suited to a particular segment, can drive incremental revenues. Just as you may already segment high value traffic sources and show different content, if you make it easier for your Apple customers to find the types of premium products they are more likely to buy, then sales will increase. Be wary, though, of offering differential pricing on different devices.
• Adapt (or implement) remarketing strategies. If you're not already remarketing with retargeted advertising and browse-based email campaigns, you need to. Now that you can recognize high-value customers easily, giving them a nudge will drive more to purchase. You should test adjusting your retargeting strategies to recognize the higher value of Apple customers and adapt your emails so that they display well on mobile devices (though Apple is very good in general with emails). Perhaps more important is to recognize that an iPhone shopper is unlikely to buy now but is probably a high value client. Remarketing can deliver great personalized service to bring them back on a different device to purchase.

We've reached a point now where, for the immediate future at least, tablet-based commerce is big and growing bigger fast, and it is dominated by Apple customers. It's time to apply this knowledge and accept that we now have a new demographic.

COMMENTARY:    I will be frank.  For the life of me I have never come to the point where I can honestly say to myself,

"It's time to switch to Apple.  Damn it, I have had it up to here with Microsoft Windows, Google Chrome, Samsung, LG or BlackBerry smartphones, HP printers, Android, McAfee, Kapersky, Google+, Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger, AOL, etc."   

I don't think I can rememeber ever hating any of those brands or their products.  

It was an Apple evangelist who introduced me to that term "Android Hell," after I told him that I thought he paid too much for his iPad Mini and that the Nexus 7 2nd generaton was a much better tablet.  He matter of factly told me that I was easy to please.  But that it was quite okay by him if I preferred to use "junk."   Dude, those are multi-billion dollar companies.  They don't make junky products, or as Steve Jobs once referred to the shoes Nike was producing as "crappy" stuff.  I am sure that Steve would've taught Nike CEO Mark Parker how to make great atheletic shoes.   

Needless to say, I looked into "Android Hell", and can say with true conviction and honesty that I have never personally experienced anything close to "Android Hell."   My non-Apple high-tech devices work just fine.  I own or have used the numerous Windows-compatable PC's and laptops, the new Nexus 7 2nd generation tablet,  LG Lumia 900 smartphone running the Windows 8 mobile OS, and Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone running Android and before them several BlackBerry phones.  If the BlackBerry is okay with the U.S. Secret Service and POTUS himself, it was good enough for me.  

Never once did I experience "Android Hell" or "Windows Hell," for that matter.  Did I experience perfection with those devices?  Of course, not.  There is no such thing as perfection.  But, you would think that from listening to several Apple evangelists, that they have attained Nirvana or a kind of state of holy grace approaching near perfection with their Apple devices.  And they talk about Steve Jobs like he was some kind of God.

According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, over 600 million iOS devices have been sold by Apple.  And some technology analysts believe that there may be 1 billion iOS devices by the end of 2018.   So HELL YES, if you are a marketer, you need to pay attention to the iOS device consumer market. As a marketer you must understand that they are different than Android device consumers in several ways.

• There are more iOS consumers that earn more than $75,000 than Android consumers.
• iOS consumers are more likely to have a college degree than Android consumers.
• Are ravenous early adopters of the latest in technology.
• More Americans own an iPhone than any other Android smartphone brand. 
• iOS consumers consume more online digital content than Android consumers.
• iOS consumers spend more money online than Android consumers.  

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And more importantly, marketers need to understand that Apple evangelists have been brainwashed into believing that Apple makes the greatest products on Earth, even if this is not entirely true.   If you mention to them that SIRI was not perfect, that Apple maps was a flop (even Apple CEO Tim Cook recommended Google Maps), that the iPhone 4 had a serious defect and crashed if you held it a certain way, and that the display easily cracked, Apple evangelists will not flinch. Apple products are still better.        

Click Image To Enlarge

Having said this, your marketing message, and your products, for that matter, better meet their high expectations, and reinforce their beliefs of what product perfection is.  You need to target them where they spend their most time--social networks, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter (thanks to Apple baking Twitter into iOS).  By all means, tell them how great Apple products are, even if you are an Android user.  Tell them and show them how much better their product experience will be if they buy your product.  That's how you grab their attention and make them your brand evangelists.  

Courtesy of an article dated November 25, 2013 appearing in MarketingProfs, and an article dated June 13, 2013 appearing in MarketingProfs,

THE WORLD'S 24 LARGEST SOCIAL NETWORKS, AND WHERE THEIR NEXT WAVE OF GROWTH WILL COME FROM

social media transcends geography, and the sheer scale and diversity of audiences on the sites makes them tremendously important.

It's no longer all about Facebook. Instead, users in some of the biggest countries are gravitating to regional sites. Others are heading en masse to U.S.-based networks, meaning that some of the largest social sites are global communities first and foremost.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we compare the world's largest social networks in two ways. First, we evaluate the biggest properties side-by-side in terms of total audience size. Then we analyze the markets where each has the most growth potential, and their demographics in terms of country-of-origin.

Click Image To Enlarge

Here are 10 of the most surprising facts from our first annual global media census: 

• Facebook still has the largest user population at 1.16 billion monthly active users. But it's seldom-discussed that YouTube is close behind with 1 billion MAUs.
• China's giant social media network, Qzone, is running in third place at 712 million total users. It's twice as large as global social messaging app WhatsApp, and nearly three times as large as Twitter.
• Three of the world's top 10 social properties are messaging platforms: WhatsApp, LINE, and WeChat.
• Post IPO Twitter is smaller than many of its less-known rivals, including Tumblr, WhatsApp, and LINE.
• Eighty-six percent of Facebook's users are outside the United States.
• Facebook has 95 million users in China (despite the fact that it's officially blocked), 68 million in India, 42 million in Brazil. Taking these population together, they're twice as large as Facebook's U.S. population of 100 million.
• Nearly 25% of LinkedIn's users are in India. In fact, there are more Indians than Americans on LinkedIn and Google+.
• Despite being blocked in China, the major social networks still have many millions of Chinese active users who use various stratagems to access these services. Google+ has 100 million users in China, Twitter has 80 million, and YouTube has 60 million.
• LinkedIn, the only major social network that is not blocked in China, has over 20 million users in the country.
• Asia-Pacific overall has more active social media users than any region, and Southeast Asian markets are off the charts when it comes to mobile social media usage. Eighty-two percent of Thai smartphone owners access social media daily on their phones.

In full, the report:

• Provides a census comparing social networks to one another in active audience size
• Examines the nuances of how each of the largest social networks shape up on a global level and where their audiences are coming from
• Posits where the major social networks might next build their audience
• Takes a regional look at how social media usage has developed in the biggest markets, and how behavior is shifting
• Zooms back out to take a broad look at where the biggest social audiences reside

COMMENTARY:  While social media growth around the world has slowed, certainly in the U.S. and Western Europe, it’s far from stopped, with the huge opportunity to recruit new users in less-developed markets ensuring that the social networking uptick will continue for years to come.

Indeed, some 200 million users globally were added in the past 12 months, with 1.61 billion people now active in social media. This is expected to advance to 1.82 billion next year before breaching the 2 billion mark in 2016.

This data comes courtesy of eMarketer, who forecast consistent, albeit slowing growth in social media usage worldwide over the next 5 years.

Click Image To Enlarge

While the user penetration rate in leading countries such as the U.S., UK and Japan won’t see significant gains by 2017, the huge populations of India, Indonesia and Mexico, and the social media growth rates expected therein, should more than offset the slowdown elsewhere.

Doing the math, India is tipped to have a 17.2 percent social networking penetration rate within four years – against its current population figures, that’s 212 million users, up from about 70 million now.

Click Image To Enlarge

Courtesy of an article date November 29, 2013 appearing in Business Insider and an article dated November 19, 2013 appearing in All Twitter

U.S. ECOLOGIST CLAIMS HUMANS DID NOT COME FROM EARTH, BUT WERE PUT HERE BY ALIENS MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO

Did extra-terrestrial beings engineer our DNA to create modern man or did they bring us here from another planet similar to Earth. (Click Image To Enlarge) 

A U.S. ecologist has claimed that humans are not from Earth but were put on the planet by aliens tens of thousands of years ago.

• A U.S. ecologist says conditions such as bad backs and sunburn suggest humans did not evolve alongside other life on Earth
• In a new book, Dr Ellis Silver says aliens put humans our planet as recently as tens of thousands of years ago
• He suggests the Earth might be a prison planet, since humans seem to be a naturally violent species and are here until we learn to behave ourselves

Dr Ellis Silver points to a number of physiological features to make his case for why humans did not evolve alongside other life on Earth, in his new book.

They range from humans suffering from bad backs - which he suggests is because we evolved in a world with lower gravity – to getting too easily sunburned and having difficulty giving birth.

Dr Ellis says that while the planet meets humans’ needs for the most part, it does not perhaps serve the species’ interests as well as the aliens who dropped us off imagined.

In his book, Dr Ellis Silver points to a number of physiological features to make his case for why humans did not evolve alongside other life on Earth. (Click Image To Enlarge)

In his book, HUMANS ARE NOT FROM EARTH: A SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE, the ecologist writes the human race has defects that mark it of being ‘not of this world’.

He told Yahoo.

"Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth's environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more." 

Dr Ellis says that humans might suffer from bad backs because they evolved on a world with lower gravity.

He also says that it is strange that babies’ heads are so large and make it difficult for women to give birth, which can result in fatalities of the mother and infant.

Dr Ellis says that humans might suffer from bad backs (illustrated) because they evolved on a world with lower gravity. He also says that it is strange that babies' heads are so large and make it difficult for women to give birth, which resulted in fatalities in earlier times. (Click Image To Enlarge)

No other native species on this planet has this problem, he says.

He also believes humans are not designed to be as exposed to the sun as they are on Earth, as they cannot sunbathe for more than a week or two – unlike a lizard – and cannot be exposed to the sun every day without problems.

Dr Ellis also claims humans are always ill and this might be because our body clocks have evolved to expects a 25 hour day, as proven by sleep researchers.

He says.  

"This is not a modern condition; the same factors can be traced all the way back through mankind's history on Earth."

He suggests that Neanderthals such as homo erectus were crossbred with another species, perhaps from Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to our solar system, some 4.37 light years away from the sun.

He also believes humans are not designed to be so exposed to the sun as they are on Earth, as they cannot sunbathe for more than a week or two, unlike a lizard, and cannot be exposed to the sun every day. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Dr Ellis said many people feel that they don’t belong and feel at home on Earth.  He said.  

"This suggests (to me at least) that mankind may have evolved on a different planet, and we may have been brought here as a highly developed species.  One reason for this … is that the Earth might be a prison planet, since we seem to be a naturally violent species and we're here until we learn to behave ourselves."

Dr Ellis said the book is intended to create debate, instead of being a scientific study and hopes it will lead to people getting in touch with him with further suggestions of 'evidence'.

While other scientists have said some bacteria arrived on Earth from space, Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA, said that to jump to the conclusion that it is alien life is "a big jump".

Was this home? Dr Ellis suggests Neanderthals such as homo erectus were crossbred with another species, perhaps from Alpha Centauri. Star Proxima Centauri is pictured in the star system, which is the closest to our solar system some 4.37 light years away from the sun. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Professor Wainwright from the University of Sheffield plans to investigate further, and believes that life is constantly arriving from space that did not originate on Earth.

Dr Ellis says that while his idea is an extreme evolution of that idea, it is intended to be thought-provoking and he claims to have had a largely positive response to it.

He is interested in whether humans came to Earth separately, perhaps by arriving on meteors and comets, before evolving into the species we know today.

He says.  

"My thesis proposes that mankind did not evolve from that particular strain of life, but evolved elsewhere and was transported to Earth (as fully evolved Homo sapiens) between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago."

COMMENTARY:   For some time now, I have come to the conclusion that modern man (a.k.a. homo sapiens), was engineered from the DNA of pre-historic Cromagnon Man, the species of humans that preceded Homo Sapiens.  

I also believe that Earth was been visited by intelligent extra-terrestrial beings, many thousands of years ago, and they have been using our planet as a laboratory for their DNA experiments on both human and animal species.  The Earth in effect has become a sort of labratory for DNA experimentation on a planetary scale.  

These alient DNA experiments may account for the physical differences between humans of different continents.  Each continental species was engineered so that they could cope with their local environments. This may help explain why humans from the continent of Africa, Latin and South America are generally darker skinned and have darker hair due to the hotter climates and abundance of sun in these geographic locations   Europeans and North Americans, on the other hand, tend to be lighter skinned and have lighter hair because they tend to have less sun and the climates tend to experience both cold and warm periods throughout the year.  

Personally, I believe that humans experience back problems and other skeletal and neurological illnesses or disorders because of poor posture, lack of exercise and improper nutrition and diet. African humans tend to be known for their physical prowess and ability to excell in physical sports.  They tend to hunt for all of their food.  On the other hand, humans in more advanced cultures tend to overwork, do not exercise sufficiently, sit behind a desk or are couch potatoes who watch too much TV, their diets are full of processed foods with too much fat, sugar and salt, that make us fat and put more weight on our skeletal structures, especially our spine.  The result is a series of back ailements.

Another story that I keep reading about is that extra-terrestrials are using our DNA to bolster their own dying species.  These aliens have created human-alien hybrids, with horrific stories of underground labs where these experiments are conducted.  

Whereever the answer may be or lie, human beings are genetically different from extra-terrestrial beings.  It is thought that aliens have taken an interest in humans because unlike aliens, we have a soul and are able to exist in multi-dimensional levels, but have yet to master this ability.

On the other hand, as Dr. Silver suggests in his book, perhaps we are the "castoffs" or "rejects" from other galaxies.  The "defective" human beings who can't seem to control their emotions, full of evil and greed, with war-like tendencies, and this make us too dangerous to interact with at this time.  If I were an alien and studied our species, I would wonder deep and hard why we keep hating each other and kill each other.  The 20th century had five major war, and 100 minor wars between countries, and hundreds of millions of innocent human beings were killed by fanatics.    

I know all of this sounds like mumbo-jumbo, or the ramblings of a deranged mind, but I just love to theorize where we came from, and why the aliens are here, and are unable to control us from killing ourselves.  Perhaps they prefer to have us kill ourselves, than having to do it themselves. Afterall, they are technologically superiod in every possible way, and I am sure have the means to destroy our planet, and every living thing on it, but maybe, just maybe, they these aliens have evolved beyond hate, greed, and war, and have embrace peace and love.  Something we have yet to master.        

Courtesy of an article dated November 14, 2013 appearing in The Daily Mail and an article dated September 30, 2013 appearing in Yahoo News

AMAZON CEO JEFF BEZO'S UNVEILS AMAZON PRIME AIR, A PACKAGE DELIVERY SERVICE, THAT USES ROBOTIC AIR DRONES

Amazon Prime Air drones will deliver packages weighing up to 5-lbs using robotic drones like this one. (Click Image To Enlarge)

On a 60 Minutes segment last night, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed a plan that would put all other rapid shipping options to shame: a fleet of little drones that could carry items from a warehouse conveyor belt to a buyer’s doorstep, all within half an hour.  

Hardware limits, safety questions, and FAA rules are all keeping Jeff Bezos' dream from becoming a reality

Like Google’s driverless cars or, on a grander scale, Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, the project — dubbed Amazon Prime Air — seeks to revolutionize how things and people move, offering speed, convenience, and the futuristic experience of a flying octocopter postman.  Suggesting it could be possible in four to five years, Bezos said.  

"I know this looks like science fiction.  It’s not."

Close-up view of Amazon's Prime Air robotic air drones. (Click Image To Enlarge)

But in order to turn its ambitious concept into a reality, Amazon has a lot of work to do. 

Amazon has said that its unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs] should be able to carry a 5-pound package up to 10 miles within 30 minutes. To do that, it’s going to need a lot of battery power. Octocopters on the market today are often built to carry cameras heavier than 5 pounds, but they fly only a fraction of the distance; the SteadiDrone EIHG8, for example, is meant to carry between 2 and 13 pounds, but only for a maximum of 15 minutes and less than 1 mile — the heavier the package, the worse the performance. Aerial robotics company Skycatch, which has been working on a similar drone delivery project, sees the solution as swapping batteries automatically throughout the flight while traveling in an airspace corridor dedicated to unmanned vehicles.

Missy Cummings of MIT’s Aeronautics and Astronautics program thinks an Amazon drone would require a big leap in technology.  She says.  

"Unless Jeff [Bezos] has made some kind of amazing breakthrough in battery life, which I kind of doubt, the flight time is going to continue to be a problem."  

Some have speculated that Amazon is building off hardware and software from Chris Anderson’s UAV company 3D Robotics, pointing to a GPS and compass module in the concept video; 3D Robotics declined to comment on this possibility.  If Amazon is able to build a strong enough battery and account for variables like wind, the octocopters could fly semi-autonomously with a human supervisor, who Cummings suggests could manage up to 20 or 30 of them at a time, though the FCC’s rules are still largely unknown.

 

Once you build an octocopter that can make a 10-mile trip in half an hour and create a system to manage it, you start getting to the really interesting questions. How, for example, would you stop people from taking down Prime aircraft and stealing their cargo?  Ryan Calo of the University of Washington’s tech policy lab. There’s also a more low-tech option: shooting the drones. Cummings says.

"Instead of shoplifting, we may begin to see delivery hacking.  If you saw a drone flying fairly close overhead, maybe you could whip out a gun. Maybe you could whip out a slingshot.  They would have to stay high long enough to basically either be out of sight or not in range of a weapon."

While protecting its drones from hijacking, Amazon has some major safety concerns to work out. Any plane can crash, and the octocopters wouldn’t have the same possibility of pilot error, but they'd also do something risky and virtually unprecedented: drop from a potential height of a few hundred feet, possibly with almost no human direction, right onto your driveway. Or your herb garden. Or, if you’re particularly unlucky, your dog.  The sensors that keep planes from hitting each other in midair aren’t built to avoid tiny obstacles on the ground, though Amazon could use semi-experimental lidar systems like the ones on Google’s driverless cars to avoid obstacles. An Australian company could provide a test case — called Zookal, it plans to let urban buyers order textbooks and then wait outside for a drone to drop its package while hovering above the ground.   Since its pilot program won’t start until next year, though, it’s hard to say how well this plan will actually work.

One potential answer is to combine this program with something like the Amazon Lockers deployed at 7-Elevens and drugstores in a few test cities. In a blog post, Skycatch describes what Amazon needs to make Prime Air a reality, including safety and anti-theft measures. After making most of its journey high in the air, it says, an ideal UAV would drop inside "authorized pick-up and drop-off stations" that would prevent theft and reduce the chances of a bad landing. It’s not as charmingly futuristic as a machine delivering something right to your door, though it’s still a lot more convenient than traditional shipping, and it’s probably what we’ll get in the foreseeable future.  Skycatch’s Christian Sanz says.

"No one is going to fly a drone like the [Amazon] video suggests; too many things can go wrong. Props can take someone's eye out, batteries don't last long so you need an automated way to swap them, power issues are the main cause of UAVs falling off the skies, so you need a way to manage that. If the UAV falls from the skies you need a way to soften the landing."

All of this, of course, is making the vital assumption that the FAA will allow the program in the first place. Amazon has been vague about when exactly we’ll see Amazon Prime Air deployed; an FAQ says that it "will be ready" when the FAA’s deadline for commercial UAV guidelines comes up in 2015. But although the FAA is making slow progress towards figuring out how to certify UAVs and their operators, it hasn’t even completed a basic, early step: officially approving a set of six flight ranges to test its rules. From there, it’s going to slowly ramp up a pilot program, and by 2015, it’s not required to do much more than tell companies how to responsibly fly a commercial UAV and help them start testing. Amazon might well be ready at that point, but "ready" won’t mean one-click drone shopping.

Amazon is also taking aim at one of the most sensitive regulatory issues: letting drones fly above our cities and suburbs. Despite all those great cityscapes that filmmakers capture with UAVs, even hobbyists aren’t supposed to fly in populated areas; if you want justification, look no further than the quadrotor that dropped a few dozen stories and barely missed hitting a Manhattan businessman this fall.   While this raises problems for Amazon, though, having a huge company take on the issue is probably good news for other UAV proponents. The company is a lobbying heavyweight in the tech sector beloved by American politicians, and it’s all but certain to push the FAA for faster rulemaking and more permissive policies, as long as it can demonstrate that looser rules won’t pose a significant safety problem. Whether this will actually speed the FAA’s decision is a matter of debate.

For the rest of the commercial drone world, Amazon Prime Air is a huge publicity coup. At best, small UAVs have been seen as potentially helpful novelties in the past; at worst, they’re associated with ubiquitous surveillance or the much larger military craft responsible for bloody airstrikes in places like Yemen and Pakistan. Now, though, Amazon is promoting its octocopters as a convenient and futuristic shipping option for its massive user base. For anybody with serious privacy or safety concerns, meanwhile, the plan is an incentive to speed up work on meaningful regulations. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), for instance, has used the Amazon announcement to promote his UAV privacy bill.  He said in a statement,  

"Before our skies teem with commercial drones, clear rules must be set that protect the privacy and safety of the public."

If anyone’s drones are in a position to teem, Amazon’s are. In 2012, the company said it shipped 15.6 million items on its busiest holiday shopping day; based on Bezos’ claim that 86 percent of packages are under 5 pounds, that could add up to a peak of 13.5 million eligible shipments per day, a number that will likely only grow over the years.  Amazon’s FAQ says.

"One day, Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today."  

But a sky swarming with yellow octocopters is still far, far away, especially in the US.  Cummings says.  

"There will never be a time in our foreseeable lives where we look up in the sky and see a bird-trail of UAVs flying back and forth.  I suspect that within the next 10 years, you will occasionally see one going by."

Within five years, she thinks the FAA might let Amazon send delivery vehicles between approved fulfillment centers; for anything like Amazon’s door-to-door concept, more like 10 to 15 if it happens at all.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we might not be seeing Prime Air drones in the sky sooner — it just won’t be over American soil.  Besides Australia’s Zookal, Chinese company SF Express is reportedly testing a delivery UAV, albeit only in remote areas.   Cummings says.

"Amazon is not stupid.  They’ll go to other countries."

Bezos, meanwhile, has made clear that his company is in this project for the long haul.  He said in 60 Minutes.  

"I don’t want anybody to think this is just around the corner.  This is years of additional work from this point."

But it will almost certainly take more than his optimistic estimation of a half-decade before the drones arrive at our doorsteps.

COMMENTARY:    I remember what people were saying when Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon would be producing the Kindle, it's highly successful book eReader.  Then he announced that Amazon would be producing its own tablet, the Kindle Fire.  Well, folks.  Never underestimate Jeff Bezos.  The guy is a genius when it comes to developing great new ideas and products, and I would take Amazon's Prime Air robotic drone delivery service very seriously. Obviously a lot of kinks still need to be worked out, and the FAA has to establish guidelines for commercial UAV's like Prime Air, so I don't see this happening for several years.   Having said this, I can definitely see a company, if not Amazon, using commercial UAV's  to make deliveries of goods or provide services.  

Courtesy of an article dated December 2, 2013 appearing in The Verge

STARBUCKS LAUNCHES A STORE INSIDE A SWISS COMMUTER TRAIN, COMPLETE WITH WOOD TALBES, LEATHER CHAIRS AND HOT JAVA

WHAT IF YOU COULD SIT INSIDE A COZY STARBUCKS DURING YOUR MORNING COMMUTE? NOW, COMMUTERS IN SWITZERLAND CAN DO JUST THAT.

Starbucks locations already seem to be everywhere you look. But starting November 21, the company will take on a new frontier: trains. Starbucks, with the help of Swiss train company SBB, has converted a double-decker car running from Geneva Airport to St. Gallen in Switzerland into a fully functional Starbucks store, complete with wood tables, leather chairs, and, in another first for the company, waitstaff.

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Starbucks is no stranger to new concept stores. Strategically, its train is probably most like its mass-fabricated popup store. It's an idea the coffee giant is putting into the wild to see if it might scale because, while big storefronts represent the core of its business, smaller, niche Starbucks offer an opportunity to expand through unused, underserved cracks.

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Muller says.

"The Starbucks train cafe's goal is to offer commuters a wonderful experience. We wanted to make sure it feels like a club and that you could see a person across the room, so the train feels more spacious.”

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So the challenge was not just to fit a coffee counter into the corner, but to pull in all of the elements we associate with Starbucks into a stock mass-commuting platform. That meant accounting for weight, electrical, and fire-safety requirements, of course, but it also meant attaching all those windowed bar seats, shared tables, and the cozy armchairs to the same skeleton of fasteners that seating inside a typical train car would use. In other words, Starbucks architects had to design a whole new social floor plan using the exact same anchors of an old commuter-centric one.

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Muller says.  

“Just because it’s functional doesn’t mean it can’t be engaging.  So we asked, ‘Why can’t we?’ Just because we’re on a train, why can’t it be more comfortable?”

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(too flammable) and to create solutions (like bucking convention by deploying them anyway). In this case, the solution was opting to treat the wood to be flame retardant, plus use of thinner pieces wherever possible (because less wood essentially equates to less kindling). That approach still sounds simpler than it was, of course: Every table and chair was designed and built from scratch and tested by regulators.

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Muller explains.  

“You design a new chair, maybe one version is light cream and one in dark cream.  You build eight of each, they set them afire, and if you have a high score, you pass.”

In the end, designers were able to seat 50 commuters at once--just six fewer than a stock train car--while also having the same three core seating arrangements you find in a Starbucks store for different customers: Commuters just one stop from their destination may snag a stool at the bar, while those on a longer journey could head upstairs to sit in a plush armchair or at a shared “community table, to use your laptop or have lunch.”

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Furniture aside, it’s all of the small touches that make the project so compelling. The bottom floor was carpeted to absorb noise in the space. Surfaces have clocklike maple inlays to acknowledge Switzerland’s love affair with timepieces. A waiter takes and delivers an order upstairs so that people wouldn’t need to claim their seat, run downstairs to the line, and run back up--which Starbucks designers witnessed happening in their own field research. (A waiter can also serve the ground floor for good measure.) And in a very cool touch, tables are treated to have a textured surface, plus they wobble the slightest bit as a train comes into the station, to prevent spilling your coffee.

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In a world of travel increasingly chasing new ways to charge for a few inches of legroom, Starbucks’s latest concept has certain promise: that travel can still be as much about the journey as the destination--assuming other companies make the effort.

Muller concludes.  

“I wonder sometimes that our customers won’t understand truly what this took.”

And, of course, they won’t, which is a hallmark of any good design, isn’t it?

COMMENTARY:   This is a great idea, but I would've preferred PEET's coffee.  It's just better coffee.   Just the same, it's an idea that makes sense.

Courtesy of an article dated November 13, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design