Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts

Friday, 13 June 2014

Starbucks to offer wireless phone charging in the US

Starbucks plans to install Powermat's wireless charging stations at its coffee stores across the US. After a small pilot run with these "Powermat Spots" — small circles that are seamlessly implanted in tables and counters — the larger rollout will kick off within Starbucks and Teavana locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Eventually the charging stations will make their way to the company's coffee and tea shops nationwide. "2014 will be focused mainly on the west coast, but 2015 will see expansions to major metropolises across the United States," said Powermat President Daniel Schreiber. On average, each store should receive 10 or more Powermat Spots.

"Devices will come out with compatible technology, and we'll see an industry that's been hamstrung a bit with standards issues and conflicting implementations coalesce a common ground," Schreiber said. If you don't own a supported device, you'll be able to purchase a tiny, inexpensive receiver "ring" that plugs into your phone and lets you toss it onto the pad for recharging. (Schreiber wouldn't reveal whether Starbucks plans to sell these directly.)

During the early trials in Boston and San Jose, Schreiber said people typically used the Powermat Spots for an average of 15 minutes — not quite topping off the battery, but giving them enough of a boost to get them to their next destination. Battery technology isn't evolving at the same rate as the processor in your smartphone. And one reason for the gains we've seen is obvious; the huge displays on many phones result in more space for a battery.

"The way we interact with power today is unchanged since the time of Thomas Edison," Schreiber said, returning to the overall goals of wireless charging. What Powermat and Starbucks have managed to do, according to him, is help customers move beyond "sticking two pieces of metal into a hole in the wall." They've created "something invisible and part of the furniture in the most literal sense of the word."

Source: The Verge

The increasing adoption of wireless power technology across a wide range of applications is one of the major trends witnessed in the Global Wireless Chargers market, which is set for a massive 55% annual growth to 2018. Wireless chargers enable mobile devices to charge without making physical contact with the charging surface, providing a much more convenient experience for consumers.

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Friday, 6 June 2014

The robots are coming

Who would have thought we'd ever see the day that robots will exist in the human world, interacting with us on a daily basis. But with rapid advancements in technology, that day is closer than ever.

Japanese telecom Softbank and its CEO Masayoshi Son have never been afraid to push the boundaries, and have now presented their latest invention, a robot that recognises human emotions.

It's not quite I,Robot yet but one thing for sure, it is certainly a step towards that direction!

Presented at a press conference this week in Japan, it's called ‘Pepper’ and uses technology acquired from the French robotics company Aldebaran.

Aldebaran CEO Bruno Maisonnier credited Son for believing in its vision, saying robots that can recognise human emotion will change the way we live and communicate - and this is a big step towards getting bots into daily lives, at least if you live in Japan. The robots will debut at two stores in their customer service capacity, but Softbank is planning to put them on sale to the public next year, priced around $2,000.

Pepper can communicate through emotion, speech or body language and it's equipped with both mics and proximity sensors. Inside, it will be possible to install apps and upgrade the unit's functionality, the plan being to make Pepper far smarter than when you first bought it. It already understands 4,500 Japanese words, but perhaps more impressively, Pepper can apparently read into the tone used to understand its master's disposition. Maisonnier claims this will be the start of a robot revolution that rivals the rollout of the PC and Smartphone. According to him, "With Pepper, the future begins today."

Source: Engadget

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Thursday, 29 May 2014

Sit back and relax

Google has been building self-driving cars for years, but what we've seen so far has always been retrofits of existing cars — until now. The search giant unveiled on Tuesday a fully autonomous self-driving car, built from the ground up by Google and its partners.

Google unveiled this self-driving car prototype Tuesday in California. The car doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals because, Google says, "it doesn't need them."

Company co-founder Sergey Brin revealed his plans at Recode's Code Conference in southern California. He told the media that there's a safety benefit in a custom-built self-driving car. Because the car doesn't have a steering wheel, accelerator or brakes, it has more sensors in strategic spots than is possible in a regular vehicle. It is also equipped with a big "stop" button. In addition, Google's autonomous car even includes internal power steering and power brakes.

As for when the cars (which are significantly smaller than traditional cars and include couch-like seating)—might actually make it to real highways, Google will soon test them with drivers and hope to see them on the roads "Within a couple of years.”

What do you think of Google’s latest creation? Could you trust a driverless car on the road? Would this ever realistically make it to market or is it another publicity stunt?

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Thursday, 24 April 2014

The Future Is in the Cloud

Competition is a wonderful thing. And the increased competition in cloud services – especially the intense battle among Amazon, Google, and Microsoft – is resulting in services and pricing that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

The personal cloud business includes virtual storage services and data sharing. In the past couple of years, adoption has ballooned: the global number of personal storage accounts reached almost 1.25 billion at the end of 2013, racking up 60% annual growth since 2011.

For the past several years, it's become common to consider cloud services as an alternative to on-premises applications and internal data centers. But with the new levels of pricing, controls, and options, it's now getting to the point where most organizations can assume cloud first, and only use internal applications and datacenters when they have a compelling reason to do so, at least for new applications. We're moving from a world where cloud services are no longer just an option, but are instead becoming the default.

The Industry Report Store has a brand new report which examines the consumer cloud market from the telecom operator perspective, with an in-depth analysis of the personal cloud storage opportunity. The Personal Cloud: A Strategic Imperative for Operators presents an overview of the role of operators with a look at Orange's cloud services as well as the Personal cloud market trends, players, opportunities and positioning strategies for network operators.Contact us if you would like sample pages or if you want to enquire about any other reports in our library.

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Wednesday, 12 March 2014

The Internet of Things Phenomenon

The UK government is to spend an extra £45m on research for the development of “internet of things” technology as it hopes to lead the new industrial revolution alongside Germany.

Speaking at the CeBIT technology trade show in Germany on 9^th March, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that the UK government would pledge more than double the current funds available to UK technology firms, working on devices that can communicate over the internet. This additional £45m of funding brings the total pot to a whopping £73m!

Providing it with the simplest of definitions, “Internet of Things” refers to devices that can sense aspects of the real world – such as temperature, lighting, the presence or absence of people, etc. – and report or act upon that real-world data. At present, most data on the internet is being produced and consumed by people. It is about making information increasingly produced and consumed by machines. For example - an internet connected water pipe can automatically warn of a drop in pressure. It is hoped that this technology will provide a means of boosting productivity, keeping us healthier, making transport more efficient, reducing energy needs and even tackling climate change.

The Prime Minister hopes for the UK and Germany to lead this new “industrial revolution”:

"I see the internet of things as a huge transformative development - a way of boosting productivity, of keeping us healthier, making transport more efficient, reducing energy needs, tackling climate change," he said.

"Take British ingenuity in software, services and design, add German excellence in engineering and industrial manufacturing and together we can lead in this new revolution."

US research firm Gartner forecasts the market to be worth $300bn by 2020, with nearly 26 billion devices connected to the internet of things.

Sources: Marketing Week, BBC

The Industry Report Store has a newly written report comprehensively covering the Internet of Things market to 2016. The report provides essential insight into the market trends, drivers, challenges and opportunities, as well as SWOT overviews of the major companies operating within the market.

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Wednesday, 19 February 2014

The Latest Samsung Galaxy S5 Leaks & Rumours

The much anticipated Samsung Galaxy S5 is set to be unveiled next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and is likely to be released shortly afterwards. Rumours as to the S5s expected features and specifications have been flying around for months, but with now just a week to go, even more rumours and leaks are appearing in the spotlight.

In a recent leak, a Dutch site dedicated to Samsung’s upcoming flagship phone reveals a screenshot alleged to be from the settings of the S5, boasting a screen resolution of 1440x2560 pixels. In a screen measuring 5.2 inches, that's an incredibly detailed 560 pixels per inch!

Another leak, courtesy of Sammobile, alleges that the S5 is set to come equipped with a fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone. According to Sammobile, people familiar with the upcoming device said the fingerprint sensor works with a vertical swipe of the pad of the finger while keeping the finger flat and swiping at medium speed. In addition to using the fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone, users should also be able to register seven other fingerprints and assign them to various tasks or app shortcuts. Alternative security methods, such as a PIN code, are also alleged to be available on the new device.

One of the most intriguing and recent rumours however, has come from the O2 Germany website, which has put up a webpage that alludes to the release of the Samsung Galaxy S5, and it looks like the device, much like Sony's Xperia Z1 smartphone, may be waterproof! The page, which was found by NDTV Gadgets and is in German, has the headline "High 5 anticipation", and offers users to sign up for more news about the next Samsung flagship device.

Further Samsung Galaxy S5 features tipped for inclusion see a 2.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor expected to line up alongside Google’s latest Android 4.4 KitKat OS, 3GB of RAM and a reworked form factor and TouchWiz interface and a 16MP sensor camera.

Understanding how the smartphone market is evolving directly due to market trends is essential business information. Market intelligence will provide you with the actual market situation, key drivers and trends behind the market and forecasts for the industry so that you can stay ahead of the competition. Browse some of the smartphone reports that The Industry Report Store has to offer to see how we can help with your business intelligence requirements.

Global Smartphones Market 2012-2016

Global LTE Smartphones Market 2014-2018

Global Sensors Market for Smartphones 2014-2018

Global Camera Module in Mobile Device Market 2014-2018

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Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Apple is using location data in a whole new way, and it’s about to transform your life

Apple changed the way we live with the iPod. Then it did it again with the iPhone.

Steve Jobs repeated the feat once again with the iPad, and just as we get used to that, his company's about to transform our lives for the fourth time.

Apple announced its iBeacon technology with iOS7 and it's been built into all the firm's operating systems and devices since 2013. If businesses simply set up some transmitters, they can send messages to nearby smartphones advertising their presence and doing everything from sending special offers to recognising a customer.

Here are outlines two things you need to know about iBeacon:

1. It's based on Bluetooth Low Energy

Bluetooth LE is fuelling the Internet of Things, and the latest version of the 10-year-old innovation was designed specifically so it's not as energy sapping as its predecessors. This is the backbone of iBeacon - despite Bluetooth's location-based technology, it wouldn't work if everyone disabled the feature to conserve battery life.

It also means it's open standard. While Apple's trademarked iBeacon, Android and other operating systems can utilise Bluetooth to do the same thing too. The only thing they'd need to do is develop a similar app - Apple decided to build it into iOS7, meaning each smartphone automatically locates itself by using its own triangulating software.

2. Bluetooth and NFC will go head to head

Near Field Communication (NFC) has co-existed fairly peacefully with Bluetooth since 2004, but many predict that relations will grow hostile as the IoT takes hold. Nine years ago, NFC was very different to Bluetooth, but while the two are based on very distinct technologies, they are growing increasingly similar.

NFC is limited to distances of just a few centimetres, while Bluetooth extends to more than 30ft. But as Bluetooth's location accuracy improves with every update, and as the IoT means close-field communication becomes more important, the question arises: don't we just need one?

Monday, 25 November 2013

Software spending set to increase worldwide

The worldwide software market is expected to experience 4.3% growth in 2013.

Big Data and analytics, as well as Enterprise applications, are expected to boost spending on software at a compound annual growth rate of about 6% during 2012-2017, according to a report from International Data Corporation (IDC).

The worldwide software market is expected to experience 4.3% growth in 2013, a decrease from the earlier estimated 5.7% year-over-year growth in May, the report revealed.

The report revealed that the Collaborative Applications with Structured Data Management Software and Data Access, Analysis and Delivery applications are expected to grow at 8% during for the forecast period.

IDC Worldwide Software, Services, and Executive Advisory Research senior vice president Henry Morris said leveraging the social dimensions of the Internet keeps fueling the collaboration growth, much of which is in the form of software as a service.

"This is complementary to the increased attention to Big Data & Analytics solutions, which help enterprises to understand and act on anticipated customer behavior and provide new insights into product reliability and maintenance," Morris added.

Enterprise Applications including CRM, ERM, SCM, and Operations as well as Manufacturing Applications are expected to record 6% CAGR.

IDC enterprise applications and digital commerce research director Christine Dover said enterprises are starting to implement applications that either didn't exist or weren't needed in the past, such as commerce applications in all industries, not just retail, but also manufacturing, hospitality, food and beverage, and even the public sector.

"IDC is also seeing applications in categories that didn't exist in the past for requirements that may have been met using custom applications or manual processes," Dover said.

During the period between 2012 and 2017, Asia/Pacific region with developing regions like Latin America, and Central Eastern, Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) would increase by 8.2% CAGR, while the mature regions North America, Western Europe, and Japan are expected to experience 5.4% rise.

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Monday, 18 November 2013

Do you have a need for speed? Say hello to the worlds fastest computer.

SX-ACE has the fastest processor core offering 256 GFLOPS speed.

NEC has launched its SX-ACE supercomputer which is claimed to offer fastest processor core performance in the world.

The new supercomputer is claimed to incorporate the fastest processor core offering 256 GFLOPS speed, which is ten times more compared to the current SX-9 models.

The device also has a multi-core vector CPU that provides an ultra high-speed interconnect with a maximum of 8 GB/s in each direction offering highest memory bandwidth per core of 64 GFLOPS.

According to the company, the SX-ACE can have a rack computing performance of 16 TFLOPS (one trillion floating-point operations per second) and a memory bandwidth of 16TB per second.

SX-ACE is said to be equipped with the new LSI technology, high-density design and high-efficiency cooling technology that help in reducing power consumption to one-tenth, while occupying one-fifth of the floor space compared to the SX-9 models.

The vector supercomputers are designed to process large-scale data and to scientific computations.

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UK capital set to get .london web domain name next year

The sites with the new domain will go live in summer 2014.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the UK capital to use .london web domain name, making it one of the first cities globally to have its own domain name.

As per the approval, businesses, individuals and organisations in the British capital would be allowed to apply for web addresses with .london suffix from spring 2014.

Claimed to boost online presences and promote the British capital, the new domain name is set to be adopted by tens of thousands of businesses, including some of London's most esteemed brands including Selfridges and Carnaby Street.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said adopting the .london suffix will enable organisations to more closely associate themselves with the city's powerful global brand.

"This is also an excellent opportunity to expand London's digital presence, which in turn is set to generate funds to invest back into the city," Johnson said.

London & Partners' new subsidiary Dot London Domainsm will be responsible for managing the new domain, while London-based Minds + Machines will offer registry services.

London & Partners chief executive Gordon Innes said that London businesses and organisations are extremely excited about the opportunities .london presents.

"We are already seeing huge interest - not just from London's most prestigious stores and visitor attractions, but also from local businesses and tradespeople," Innes said.

"Applicants will get a domain name that links them with London and is easier to remember and more powerful, potentially resulting in more customers."

Would your business benefit from a .london domain?

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