Watch Mark Zuckerberg speak Chinese
In case you missed it, here's Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaking Mandarin Chinese at Beijing's Tsinghua University.
Zuckerberg surprised the audience by speaking and answering questions in Mandarin for almost 30-minutes.
His heavy accent caused a few moments of misunderstanding - like when he tried to say the word "billion" but it came out as "eleven."
But no matter. It was an inspiring effort!
Life a little less 2D
Forget what you know about conventional printing – and start thinking three-dimensionally.
3D printing – once considered niche – is now becoming more mainstream. UPS, for example, just expanded its 3D printing services to locations across the United States to keep up with demand.
But Bre Pettis and the folks at Stratasys are working to bring 3D printing to your home.
Pettis is the co-founder of Makerbot, the company that pioneered 3D printers for consumers. Now at Makerbot’s parent company, he’s part of an innovation workshop called Bold Machines.
“We’re exploring the frontier of what’s possible,” Pettis says. “Imagine Iron Man’s workshop. We’ve got all the 3D printers in the Stratasys lineup – from Makerbots to wax printers – that make wax 3D models that you can then take into a foundry and make beautiful customized jewelry.”
So how does it work? FULL POST
The rise of Xiaomi
Executives in wigs dancing and singing on stage. Hundreds of fans clad in the same orange shirt cheering them on. Fans racing on stage to win plush toys.
I wasn't sure what to expect from my first Xiaomi fan event. But I didn't expect this.
Zuck: Facebook's code to success
Ten years ago, only students at Harvard University could use "The Facebook."
Today, Facebook has more than 1.2 billion monthly active users and, according to Alexa, is the second most popular website in the world after Google.
So how did the social platform achieve such incredible success?
Founder Mark Zuckerberg offered this insight (on Facebook, of course): "We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today."
But "The Facebook Effect" author David Kirkpatrick goes one step further, crediting Zuckerberg himself for the company's stellar performance.
Kirkpatrick, then a journalist with Fortune magazine, first met Zuckerberg in September 2006 at a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.
"He walked in and I said to myself, 'I'm wasting my time. He's so young. He's a baby,'" Kirkpatrick recalls. "But then he opened his mouth and I started listening to what he said and it was so extraordinarily big picture, long-term, visionary, and confident.
"I realized I seldom heard anyone with such a big picture, positive, and long-term view of what he engaged in. And it made me confident he would have extraordinary success."
Looking back at 2013
News Stream usually brings you stories about the power of technology to improve our lives. But in 2013, the top tech story was more ominous.
Since June, revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency's surveillance programs have come to light. The fallout has been felt in Washington and the rest of the world.
Tech companies have expressed outrage over the U.S. government's spying practices. Listen to Google's chairman Eric Schmidt in Part 1 (above).
In Part 2, hear from Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and examine the new generation of gaming consoles.
Finally in Part 3, astronaut Chris Hadfield speaks about his popular videos from space. And we ask what the future holds for mobile technology.
We hope you enjoy these highlights from 2013. We look forward to the year ahead!
The NSA fury of Google’s Eric Schmidt
The Google Chairman is one angry dude.
Eric Schmidt expressed clear outrage during our interview here in Hong Kong about the revelation that the National Security Agency had spied on the company’s data links.
"I was shocked that the NSA would do this,” Schmidt tells me. “Perhaps it’s a violation of law, but it is certainly a violation of mission.”
Nintendo unveils the 2DS
It's safe to say few saw this coming: Nintendo's latest version of the popular 3DS handheld game console is ditching the 3D screen.
The Nintendo 2DS will play all 3DS (and DS) games - they just won't be in 3D. The upside? The 2DS will cost just $129 in the United States, $40 cheaper than the existing 3DS.
Kristie Lu Stout spoke to Nintendo of America's Reggie Fils-Aime about the 2DS, the Wii U's struggles, and Nintendo thinks you should swap Nike FuelBand for Wii Fit U.
Wikipedia in the wake of Snowden
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is in Hong Kong for Wikimania, the annual gathering that charts the future of the popular website.
Speaking at the conference this morning, he addressed another high-profile visitor to the territory – Edward Snowden.
Wales called the NSA leaker “awesome,” and that “he’s done something remarkable and really important.”
Jimmy Wales said Snowden’s leaks led to Wikipedia’s decision to encryption more quickly.
But why is it important to keep what we’re reading on Wikipedia a secret?
Click on to hear his response… as well as his thoughts on the Lavabit shutdown and efforts to bring more contributors into the Wikipedia fold.
Will people flip to make their own magazines?
Want to be a magazine publisher? There's an app for that.
Popular news aggregator Flipboard has launched a new version with a "curation" feature that allows anyone to run their own magazine inside the app.
Sounds cool. But why would an average joe with a smartphone want to do that?
"A lot of people have a lot to say. There is a desire to curate and organize content," says Flipboard co-creator and CEO Mike McCue.
"They don't want to create a blog, it's too technical. This gives them a very easy way to do that."
McCue says there have been "hundreds of thousands" of magazines created so far by Flipboard readers around the world on topics ranging from profesional equestrian sport to the latest research in cancer genetics.
It's a development that's prompted one media commentator to call it a major threat to established publishers akin to "a giant iceberg lurking in the path of the media."
But McCue insists he wants high quality journalism and content to thrive online, adding that "the future has never been brighter for publishers."
The Flipboard chief says the company works with over a thousand different publishers to help them reach a new generation of readers on mobile devices to "take their media operations into a new realm."
But could the smartphone-wielding news junkie supplant the publisher in both news creation and spinning money from the business?
"We are thinking about how to let individuals, the people who are curating magazines, to be able to generate revenue," admits McCue.
"But the first priority is to enable publishers whose content can get curated inside these magazines to get revenues. That's priority one, and then we will look at how individual readers can participate in that economic scenario."
Traditional media execs, you have been warned.
Looking back at 2012
Technology isn't just part of News Stream, it's also something we love to cover.
So when we were asked to put together a special edition of the show with the top tech stories of the year, it was both very easy to pick the stories we thought were important... and very hard to leave out stories we loved but just couldn't fit.
You can watch the whole show here, divided into six parts.
PART 1: Breaking down the smartphone Patent Wars with The Verge's Nilay Patel; Microsoft launches Windows 8
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