Corporate Headquarters

Have you ever seriously thought about a company's corporate headquarters, the way it's designed and set up?

For most people, the answer to this question is usually no, "I have more important things to think about." But for some reason, this is something that has caught my interest lately. Especially with the advent of recent articles pertaining to some of the greatest company offices around the world; to name a few, these include Google's office (of course) in Zurich equipped with a slide and free gourmet meals three times a day, Facebook's office in Palo Alto, which includes its very own DJ booth, and YouTube's office in San Bruno, where indoor put-put, Segway riding, and swimming is not uncommon.

But to those of us who don't work there, this means nothing to us, right? I would have to disagree. A company's headquarters and the way it's set up is actually a lot more important than one would think. The way in which different departments are set up and the flow of information is crucial for a company to consider.

According to the late Steve Jobs (I know, I'm going on an Apple rant again), the power of space is pressing when it comes to enhancing the work of groups. In 1999, when Jobs was planning Pixar's headquarters, he had the building arranged around a central atrium, so that Pixar's diverse staff of artists, writers, and computer scientists would run into each other more often. He soon realized that simply creating an airy atrium  isn't enough, he needed to force people to go there. He began with the mailboxes, which he shifted to the lobby. Then he moved the meeting rooms to the center of the building, followed by the cafeteria, the coffee bar, and the gift shop. Finally, he decided that the atrium should contain the only set of bathrooms in the entire building... Until the women had a complete uproar. He was then later forced to compromise and install a second pair of bathrooms. Darla Anderson, a producer of several Pixar films, said "I didn't want to have to walk all the way to the atrium every time I needed to do something. That's just a waste of time. But Steve said, 'Everybody has to run into each other.' He really believed that the best meetings happened by accident, in the hallway or parking lot. And you know what? He was right. I get more done having a cup of coffee and striking up a conversation or walking to the bathroom and running into unexpected people than I do sitting at my desk."

One of my absolute favorite Steve Jobs quotes comes from "The Lost Interview", a television interview filmed in 1995. He starts out with a story of a widowed old man that lived in the same neighborhood as him when he was young. He got to know him a little bit through mowing his lawn for him. One day the old man invited him to his garage and showed him a can of rocks, just plain old, common, dirty rocks. He closed the can and put it in a motor and told young Jobs to come back the next day. So he did, and they took out the rocks to find these amazingly beautiful, polished rocks; the same old, dirty rocks that went in through rubbing against each other, creating a little bit of friction and a little bit of noise, thus producing these beautiful rocks. "This has always been my metaphor for a team working really hard on something that they're really passionate about. It's through the team that you've got really talented people working together, bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and polish ideas, so what ends up coming out are these beautiful and innovative ideas."

So, the importance placed upon the people is huge for a company to really get great ideas flowing, thus the layout of the office is critical. So what is Apple's office like then? In fact, this was one of Steve's last projects that he was determined to make come true. On June 7, 2011 Jobs stood before the Cupertino City Council to present plans for the new corporate campus for Apple. The headquarters is intended to accommodate more than 12,000 employees in a single, circular building. It would look a little bit like a spaceship and two-thirds the size of the Pentagon. The budget for the Apple Campus 2 originally was planned at $3 billion, but has recently ballooned to nearly $5 billion, which would eclipse the spending on the new World Trade Center complex as well as many top-of-the-line downtown corporate towers. Jobs passed four months later and the move-in date was pushed back from 2015 to 2016. The multibillion-dollar budget for Campus 2 could add fuel to the debate about what Apple's doing with all its money. Shares have fallen 38% since September amid rising competition and critics are sure to question whether curved glass is the best use of funds. Although this is a legitimate question, Jobs has clearly proved that the people come first, thus the office is important. Nonetheless, I wouldn't mind working at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California!

With the Help of an iPad

The amount of technological advancements, in some American's eyes, may be hindering the social setting or just over-complicating life in general. I take the opposite point of view; technology has helped us in a vast amount of ways and may even be one of the most important advancements of the 21st century.

One of the most important ways technology has helped us, in my opinion, is in the education arena. The ability for information to travel instantaneously and across borders has enabled us to know so much more and in such a less amount of time. Specifically, I have been intrigued by the amount of work done with children with disabilities and the iPad.

There are several stories out there about the iPad helping disabled children around the world, but one in particular caught my eye. SNApps4Kids, a community of parents, therapists, and educators, taps into a burgeoning trend for people with disabilities. Touch devices are revolutionizing the lives of children, adults, and seniors with special needs. An estimated 40,000 apps have been developed for this demographic.

Take for example, Noah Rahman, who has moderate Cerebral Palsy. The disease affects his communication, cognition and upper and lower body movement. When he turned two, his language, cognitive ability and fine motor skills were diagnosed by a developmental specialist as being at least 12 months behind...Then he got an iPad.

Four months later, his language and cognition were on par with his age level. His fine motor skills had made significant leaps. Today, the 3-year-old spends an hour or two on his iPad each day. He switches his apps between reading and writing in English, Arabic, and Spanish -- that's more than I know!! His dad explained that "the iPad unlocked his motivation and his desire to learn because it's fun." For people lacking motor skills, touch screens are more intuitive devices. There is no mouse, keyboard, or pen intercepting their communication with the screen.

An article I found on Mashable laid out 4 ways that the iPad is changing the lives of people with disabilities. First and foremost, they explain how it is changing lives as a communicator. Before the iPad, touch-to-speak technology was incredibly expensive. Now, the relative affordability of the iPad has made the technology more available for children and adults that cannot use their voice. With the simple touch of an iPad, a hungry non-verbal person can easily communicate exactly what they would like to eat. Those apps can then be customized with photos or features to suit an individual's life and needs.And the fact that these are applications and not full-blown software systems, explains the ability to easily update and change things around if need be.

The second reason they lay out is as a therapeutic device. If you're someone with a disability,  having something that other people are using makes you feel like part of the in-crowd. Another co-founder of SNApps4Kids' son, Vincent, a young boy with Down syndrome has found the iPad most useful. While he can walk, Vincent prefers to sit still most of the time. Throughout his life, his parents and therapists have tried to help him be more active. It was not until his physical therapist placed an iPad on a treadmill that Vincent was motivated to walk. He now stays on for almost 10 minutes -- an incredible feat for him -- interacting with his iPad while he's in motion.

The fact that the iPad can be used as an educational tool is also another important reason as to how it is changing the lives of not only disabled persons, but people around the world in general too. A number of apps out there address academic subjects from math to language to reading and writing. In Ocotober 2010, Apple even featured an 'Apps for Special Education' section in the App Store. Even the iTunesU app puts the world's largest online catalog of free education content into an easily accessible form. The iPad is also more intuitive for children, it's like fish to water. I've seen kids being introduced to the iPad for the first time and it is incredible how quickly they catch on and adapt to the new technology.

Finally, the iPad is a great behavior monitor. Several apps out there can take notes, record good and bad behavior to be later reviewed, and then turn this information into visual graphs and charts. It can also be a great way to strengthen and reinforce memory for seniors with Alzheimer's or memory loss. Other apps can tell users and remind them when it is time to take medication. There even has been stories of how hospitals have begun using FaceTime for moms with infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. "BabyTime" as they call it, can help bridge communication with the family and the baby's medical team and is an excellent use of technology to help new mothers bond with their babies, even when they cannot be physically at their babies' bedside.

As you can see, these new technological advances have actually done quite a lot for us. Not just the iPad alone, Androiders I'm including you in here too. Some may look at it as a disruption to the family dinner time but others look at it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to defeat the odds with several different types of disabilities. As time moves on, I believe technology will evolve even more and make more breakthroughs in this area. I believe it is honestly one of the greatest inventions of my generation.

Cars with Attitude- 'Eyes Free' Siri Integration

The geniuses of our generation have done it again-- using technology to make our lives easier.

Honda, Acura, and Chevrolet are now offering 'Eyes Free' Siri integration into some of their new 2013 vehicles to allow drivers to interact with their phones while driving. This could totally revolutionize the way we drive in that, perhaps we could get a lot more done while dealing with the daily commute to work.

As Apple puts it, "with the Eyes Free feature, ask Siri to call people, select and play music, hear and compose text messages, use Maps and get directions, read your notifications, find calendar information, add reminders, and more."

The "Eyes Free" function is a way to use Apple's iOS voice assistant without having to rely on visual cues, or interact with on-screen menus. The functionality, which was introduced last year, works over Bluetooth and connects through Honda's HandsFreeLink setup just like other mobile phones.

Not only would this make driving safer by keeping drivers' eyes on the road more, it could lessen the amount of work that you would have to do by the time you actually get to work. Think about it. The first thing most people do when they go to work is check their email-- meaning boot up the computer, log in the outlook, wait for outlook... What if you were able to check it hands free with Siri, all while driving to work? This would save on time and could possibly even increase productivity.

Could this be forshadowing to an even bigger technology breakthrough in the future? Once Siri, or other voice command software, become more common in cars, what would be the next big breakthrough? The ability to run apps through your car? Should we expect to see iPads being built into cars? A car that can drive itself? It's almost a little scary to think about but at the rate that technology is growing and becoming more commonly used, it may be a realistic prediction. Time will only tell how fast this sort of technology will catch on and what it will mean for our society.

Here's just a taste of what Siri's Eyes Free function will be like in the Chevy Sonic:

All I know is that my next car will have Siri in it :)