A ton of news stories discussed this week but The Gang goes on a bit of a rant over luddite Joe Soucherays’ column involving iPads in St Paul public schools.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson and Julio Ojeda-Zapata.
Music: “My Eyes” by Uncle Seth. Brought to us by the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:11:03 — 40.9MB)

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Discussed During the Show

Minnesota’s Top Stories:

• Aides Rebelled After CEO Tweaked ‘Tar-zhay’ Formula 
• Target further incentivizes customers to shop online
• Joe Soucheray: An iPad for every kid is just an expensive toy for every kid
• St. Paul school board gives student iPads the go-ahead 
• CoCo expands to North Dakota
• SmartThings in Time magazine: This Startup is Trying to Create—and Control—the Internet of Your Home
• SmartThings becomes a lot more visible
• Smart Home? I’ll Keep My Dumb One for Now 
• Apple Said to Be Developing Smart Home Products for HomeKit Integration
• Should We Trust Google With Our Smart Homes?
• Software firm Sport Ngin raises $25 million in venture capital 

Last Week’s Other Big Stories:

• Supreme Court: Police need warrant to search cell phones
  • The scary part of the Supreme Court’s cellphone ruling
• Speaking of cell phones…
  • Do you keep it in your pants? Researchers warn mobile phones in pockets leads to infertility in men 
• Aereo loses copyright fight at Supreme Court
  • Aereo’s likely demise makes me sad 
  • Aereo Alternatives: Tips From a Cord Cutter 
• Google I/O Keynote announcements in a list
  • Android TV hands-on: Google makes a new play for the living room
  • Moto 360 Hands-On: This Smartwatch Will Make You Swoon
  • Google’s Chromecast to get Android mirroring, ‘Backdrop’ slideshows and casting from nearby devices
  • Google’s Redesigned Drive Focuses On Speed, Office Compatibility And Security
  • Google announces Drive for Work with unlimited storage at $10 a month
  • Google launches a new Gmail API as it outgrows IMAP
• When iPhone met world, 7 years ago today (Dan Farber, CNet)

Other Links to Topics Discussed During the Show:

• Rise of robot reporters: when software writes the news

Upcoming Events:

• INVESTyR’s Fundraising in the Digital Economy, 1st Tue of each month 3:30-4:30pm
• MinneHour (for Community Supporters and Sponsors), July 2nd
• Educelerate TC: Identifying Transformative Opportunities in EduTech, July 10th
• Mobile Twin Cities, July 14th
• MinneDemo 17, July 31st
• MinneDemo 18, September 11th
• Cyber Security Summit 2014, Oct 21st

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson (Tim Elliott is off this week). Music: Muddy Water by Adam Traum. Brought to us by the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:06:24 — 39.0MB)

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Discussed During the Show

Minnesota’s Top Stories

• Verizon Wireless Connected Tech Tour
• Ernst & Young (EY) Entrepreneur of the Year Awards Winners
• Medtronic Wants to Implant Sensors in Everyone 
• Apple
  • Inside Apple & The Mayo Clinic’s New Partnership
  • Tech and Biotech: Epic teams with Apple on HealthKit
• Kidizen app taps into recycled kids clothes
• Healthcare startup founder (Thompson Aderinkomi, Retrace Health) insightful takeaways from Health Datapalooza 2014

Last Week’s Other Big Stories

• Apple
  • The “Apple doesn’t get the cloud” era is officially over
  • Meet the new Apple
  • The Post-Jobs Era Blossoms With Apple’s New Retail Sweetheart
• India, Indonesia to Get $25 Smartphones
• Tesla will use patents to subvert patent system

Other Links to Topics Discussed During the Show

• We’re recording this show on Flag Day
• Google I/O is coming

Steve’s Security Tip of the Week

• Prey Project device tracking software enables you to find a stolen or misplaced Windows, Mac, Linux, Android or iOS device.
  • FAQs
  • Pricing plans (Note: it is free for three devices)

Upcoming Events

• INVESTyR’s Fundraising in the Digital Economy 1st Tue of each month 3:30-4:30pm
• Hack for MN 2014 at the Nerdery June 21st-22nd
• TreeHouse Health: Business Formation and Employment Issues – June 24th
• Cyber Security Summit 2014 Oct 21st

The boys tease Borsch (again) about wearing his tinfoil hat during this week’s show. Are they right to call him paranoid when he does his security tip of the week?

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Now is Now by Dan-O. Brought to us by the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:49 — 36.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Discussed During the Show

Minnesota’s Top Stories

• Graeme’s Gluecon recap (his post on Gluecon)
  • Graeme’s posts on Programmable Web
• Target
  • Target names new digital advisory council, will hire 50 software engineers
  • Target Enters Digital Book Market With New Partnership
  • Target Rolls Out Online Same-Day Delivery In Mpls
• St. Paul schools dumps Dell platform; students to get iPads by 2015
  • Intel NUC
• Podcasting (Julio’s articles)
  • Professional podcast trend 
  • Behind Tom Barnard’s growing podcasting operation
• SmartThings Updates Mobile App And Developer Tools In Its Bid To Power The ‘Internet Of Things’
• MacBreak Weekly snippet (1:19 long) – Leo Laporte plugs SmartThings

Other Big Stories

• Apple
  • Apple’s WWDC
    • 13 things to expect from Apple at WWDC 2014
    • Here’s how Apple’s smart home program will work
  • Apple Bought Beats Because “Music Is Dying”
  • With Beats, Apple Has Its Next iPod
• Edward Snowden, the NSA and Your Privacy
  • PBS Frontline’s United States of Secrets
  • NBC’s Brian Williams Interview w/Snowden
• Microsoft Surface Pro 3 review
• Mary Meeker’s Deck On Key Internet Trends
  • The Most Important Insights From Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends Report
  • Mary Meeker’s Annual Rapid-Fire Internet Trends Talk (Video)

Steve’s Security Tip of the Week

• Minnov8: Your Digital Fingerprint or “SuperCookie”
• ArsTechnica: Surprise, surprise: my online metadata actually reveals where I’ve been
  • (Note: read this article and you will see why, for those in-the-know, mass vacuuming up of metadata is very disturbing and why the tech community is so up-in-arms over the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs)

Upcoming Events

• INVESTyR’s Fundraising in the Digital Economy 1st Tue of each month 3:30-4:30pm
• Educelerate Twin Cities – June 3rd
• Integrated Marketing Summit June 5-6th
• Twin Cities Geekettes + Surescripts Present: Intro to Agile – June 10th
• Hack for MN 2014 at the Nerdery June 21st-22nd
• TreeHouse Health: Business Formation and Employment Issues – June 24th
• Cyber Security Summit 2014 Oct 21st

The Minnov8 Gang Podcast will be back next week on May 31st. We are having time with our families this Memorial Day weekend. In the meantime, enjoy this post that has some intriguing, and surprising, factoids about the origin of the holiday.

Civil War Veterans in Ortonville, Minnesota, on the Fourth of July, 1880 – also called 
“Decoration Day” prior to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act almost a century later.

We all know what Memorial Day is all about, right? “That is obvious,” you might say. But if you are like us then it is likely you haven’t spent much time learning about the origins of this holiday (and your education on it was probably like ours: one chapter in your American History course in high school). Also, unless you have loved ones who have served and fought in the United States military—and died in that service to our country—Memorial Day is often one when most of us play and don’t think too much about what the day means.

We must admit to being surprised about all the competing origin stories about how Memorial Day began.

What is Memorial Day?

This Wikipedia article about Memorial Day starts out with a straightforward overview of what the day is all about:

“Memorial Day is a US federal holiday wherein the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces are remembered. The holiday, which is celebrated every year on the final Monday of May, was formerly known as Decoration Day and originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War.

By the 20th century, Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans who have died while in the military service. It typically marks the start of the summer vacation season, while Labor Day marks its end.”

But how this remembrance holiday began is not straightforward.

How Did Today’s Memorial Day Celebration Begin?

The March of Time, oil on canvas. By Henry Sandham (1842-1910)

This is what was most surprising about that article and other items we read: That there are several competing claims of ‘ownership’ of the beginning of what is now today’s Memorial Day:

• In 1863, the cemetery dedication at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was a ceremony of commemoration at the graves of dead soldiers. Local historians in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, claim that ladies there decorated soldiers’ graves on July 4, 1864. As a result, Boalsburg promotes itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day.

• A claim that African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina:

The first widely publicized observance of a Memorial Day-type observance after the Civil War was in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. During the war, Union soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held at the Charleston Race Course; at least 257 Union prisoners died there and were hastily buried in unmarked graves. Together with teachers and missionaries, black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers.

• Another claim was made in 1906 that the first Civil War soldier’s grave ever decorated was in Warrenton, Virginia, on June 3, 1861, implying the first Memorial Day occurred there.

• On May 26, 1966, President Johnson signed a presidential proclamation naming Waterloo, New York, as the birthplace of Memorial Day.

The kicker? The article goes on to discuss several other views on what led up to the formalization of a holiday to remember soldiers who died in wars. While the competing claims and variety of perspectives is a bit of head-scratcher—aspects we had no idea was the case as we’d always thought the remembrance day was straightforward and its path to today clear—it really doesn’t matter.

To us the origins (or possible origins) of a national holiday are intellectually interesting, but it is the meaning of the day we celebrate now that matters: Honoring the sacrifices of those who have given their lives in war. So while we are all enjoying the holiday with family and friends, let’s pause for a moment and reflect on the meaning of the day and on those who have fallen.