Predictions of the Day

Thursday, 04/16/2015

Definitely Not Slacking — Rebekah Cox, formerly of Facebook & Quora and now of Super Play World, sounds the alarm for Dropbox on Slack as a competitive threat. Slack, the team communication platform, announced today that it’s raising a fresh $160 million at a valuation of $2.8 billion. It also announced that 750,000 workers are using its product daily, less than 16 months after launching publicly. Meanwhile Dropbox holds a $10 billion valuation, but not without skeptics. There is no doubting that Dropbox’s cloud storage platform is easy-to-use and dependable. What is worrisome is that the cost of storage continues to be commodified. Moreover, its collaboration tools are wanting. Slack puts teamwork at the core of its product, with elegant chat channels and an increasingly deep list of integrations (including Dropbox). How the two companies’ partnership (or potential lack there of) and competition evolves in the coming years will be interesting to watch.

Tech in the Classroom — Owen Williams of The Next Web comments on the debacle the L.A. school district has had using iPads. In 2013, the district committed $1.3 billion to purchasing over 120,000 units of the Apple tablets, a significant portion of which came pre-loaded with Pearson curriculum software. However, only a paltry 2 of 69 total schools in the program are still using the software. District administrators have said the issues are due to a failure of Apple and Pearson to deliver on a certain quality-standard, and are calling on them to make amends or refund the order. Williams offers up an alternative solution: Chromebooks, the low-cost computers from Google. Chromebooks run Chrome OS, a simple yet decently powerful desktop software that has a myriad of Google apps, as well as access to the web. From a financial perspective, Chromebooks would have cost the district less than half as much on a per-unit basis. Yet, without much external data on how well such computers would themselves integrate into the classroom, a financial commitment for L.A. or other cities to Google could be similarly risky. Clearly, there is much to be decided on the best digital tools for K-12 education.

Use the Force — Zac Cichy of Whole & Part bets that the hype surrounding the latest Star Wars film (debuting in theaters in December) will push it all the way to the top of the all-time box-office charts. Avatar, the 2009 science-fiction film from James Cameron, still holds the record at a whopping $2.7 billion. The stars may be aligning for a triumph though. When the Force Awakens opens, it will have astonishingly been over a decade since the last Star Wars film was in theaters, giving the picture unprecedented anticipation. One challenge worth noting: Americans are going to the movies less than years previous. Lucasfilm and Walt Disney will need the whole Force and nothing less to topple Avatar.