Mark Albertson
Latest from Mark Albertson
Will tech tools give us cooking superpowers?
When the first Internet-connected refrigerator was introduced, it cost $20,000 and consumers greeted the new product more as an oddity than a practical device for the home. But now that price points have come down and home technologies are becoming standard, consumers are warming up quickly to what the digitized kitchen can provide. “Our research ...
Embrace IT, say food and agriculture experts
A recent restaurant association study forecasts a shortage of 200,000 line cooks over the next 10 years. The average age of the American farmer is 65, but a younger, tech-savvy generation is coming. These are just two of the trends facing the food and agriculture industry as a new wave of innovation, involving Internet of Things, ...
You are what you eat, and throw away, at Google
After a lengthy career working for Westin and Starwood Hotels, Michiel Bakker (pictured) suddenly got a call from Google Inc. six years ago asking whether he might be interested in a conversation about its food program. “That piqued my interest,” said Bakker. “I’d never heard of their food program and how they were running it.” The ...
Tech-enabled consumer will drive food producers, say analysts
The balance of power in the food industry is shifting to tech-driven consumers, a major theme that was on full display during the opening day of this year’s FOOD IT: Fork to Farm event in Mountain View, California. “It’s really now the tech-enabled consumer and what they want to eat, like everything else that’s being so ...
Hotels.com embraces data-driven culture
Whether you are looking for a luxury hotel on a secluded beach or a place to stay in midtown Manhattan that won’t break the bank, the process of sorting through options and booking online can seem pretty straightforward. But behind most travel websites today is a complex data engine that pays close attention to what ...
Author goes beyond the bells and whistles of big data buzz
As big data and machine learning tools become essential for modern business, the primary goal is no longer predicting the likelihood of making a sale. It’s now a matter of increasing the likelihood that a customer will buy. This key distinction forms the essential thesis behind former Columbia University Professor Eric Siegel’s book, “Predictive Analytics: ...
Spark doubles down on streaming, data warehousing and deep learning
The Apache Spark community has been wrestling with a wide range of big data challenges in information technology, and Databricks Inc. (which was founded by Spark’s creators), is taking steps to address the enterprise need for machine learning and speedier data processing. “Rather than giving people the fish, you give them the tools to fish,” ...
Major tech transition fuels subscription economy, says analyst
Digital transformation became a hot topic nearly three years ago as the focus on it moved from the halls of Silicon Valley companies to the boardrooms of firms such as General Electric Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Ford Motor Co. Non-tech companies began to consider how to get products to be more like services, how to ...
Subscription model allows Surf Air to expand in Europe and Texas
Surf Airlines Inc., known as Surf Air, is gaining liftoff for a business model attempting success in one of the most capital-intensive, cutthroat enterprises there is: airlines. The California-based company, founded in 2013, uses the recurring revenue from monthly memberships to compete with commercial carriers through a completely different approach. And as the fledgling airline has ...
Caterpillar’s story of connecting half a million machines
Is Caterpillar Inc. becoming a platform or software services company? While some of its executives maintain that the mission is still to sell big iron, the company’s visible presence at the Zuora Subscribed event in June highlights a continued push to provide construction and mining customers with new digital tools. “There’s a lot of software ...
