The team has been busy again this week - the software team working on some cool designs, the marketing team working on some big ideas, the chemistry team on the road, and our product team cranking on all sorts of testing.
Meanwhile, we've had some time to take excursions to Target to visit their Internet of Things expo in San Francisco. We also have a James Bond marathon this weekend at our offices so that people who have cough never cough seen 007 in action will get all the references.
We also had a giggle over this older video - but what is gluten? No one seems to know in this video. We do, though!
We were inspired by our interns and their War Room "poster." We have a great war to wage, with the first battle being gluten.
Health
We've read a bunch on the microbiome, Scott has gone so far as to have his profiled. The LA Times covers how some doctors may be able to build designer bacteria for therapeutic use. This touches on some of the advances coming from CRISPR, how scientiests test these therapies, and what's happening with the combination of technologies but is still a ways off from human use.
A deeply personal story from William Kremer at the BBC talks about how he had to rid their home of gluten for his son, who is a Celiac. Mr. Kremer delves into the science around diagnosis and the efforts of Dr. Alessio Fasano to expand diagnosis rates. There's also a chart showing that almost a third of US adults are trying to cut back on gluten. Meanwhile, tennis star Novak Djokovic, ate the grass at Wimbledon because it was gluten-free! As for that other green substance, kale, Mother Jones may warn you off it for a while.
The peanut patch, which we've covered before, is now heading into phase III trials. For those with peanut allergies, this may be welcome news!
A wristband that captures chemicals you're exposed to every day is launching. It won't capture what you eat, unless you sweat it out through your pores. It looks like a rubber bracelet and you wear it for a week before sending it back for analysis. The company is running a Kickstarter to trial the product - it's a little under a $1000 to get a wristband and have everything checked.
Food
We can echo that menus are the top things allergen-living folks want to see before they dine out -- menu scanning is critical to knowing if someplace will be able to accommodate their needs. OpenTable acknowledges this and is working to get menus in their products. As you might imagine, this is a tough problem to solve with lots of small business owners who are too busy to go update a website every day with menu updates. For folks in food service, additional transparency is coming with tools like Food Genius. Danielle Gould from Food+Tech Connect covers the latest food tech trends in an article in Food Innovation Program.
What's happening as venture capital enters the world of food? Lots of money to fuel nascent transformations.
We've been brewing cider in our office, so were impressed by a high protein beer being brewed in Boston. Sadly, not gluten-free.
Business
The NYT profiles CVS's transition into a major health care provider. It shows that what you might think of as your local drugstore chain is way more than that.
We love a good infographic and this article is chock-full of ones about how various startups came to be.
Technology
The software team trades inumerable messages throughout the day, including relevant links. Recent reads include exploring dynamic layout in sketch, overviews of ranking items (lots of fun math in that one), and Safari's view controller and onboarding experiences.
A review of the Coin card, now that it's finally shipped. It sounds a little underwhelming.
Nike makes an easy to put on shoe for those who have some physical problems tying shoes. These were inspired by a teen with cerebral palsy. It just goes to show that you have to listen to your customers and that empowering people to live their lives under their own agency is critical Something we fully believe here at 6SL.
Random
- A song about the Whole Foods parking lot.
- Ever need some inspiration for colors? Check out the Wes Anderson color palettes. Quite twee.
- When you give a tree an email address beautiful things happen.
- Our excitement for the PlutoFlyBy led us to dig up this awesome interactive demo by Josh Worth of how far apart things really are in space.
- Does pizza grow on trees? It should.