47290399
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
Cisco has teamed up with robotics firm iRobot to create their own enterprise version of the 'Sheldonbot' from US comedy series The Big Bang Theory. The robot, known as Ava 500, brings together iRobot’s autonomous navigation with Cisco’s TelePresence system to enable a remote worker sitting in front of a video collaboration system to meet with colleagues in an office setting or take part in a facility tour.
46086943
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
A student at the University of Central Lancashire has created a telepresence robot which mimics human behaviour. Known as MAKIIS, the robot is inspired by the Sheldonbot from US comedy 'The Big Bang Theory'. Moving on wheels and projecting a live video of the user's face via an iPad, MAKIIS can allow an office worker in London to chat with a colleague in Paris as if they were in the same room.
44186337
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
Silicon photonics is driving the development of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), enabling much greater I/O bandwidth density and reducing power consumption, according to Cisco. Speaking at the Cisco Tech Editor's Conference in San Jose, Rob Lloyd, President of Sales and Development, said that one of the things that makes Cisco believe that it can lead in the development in the Internet of Everything is that it makes ASICs – the processors that sit underneath the products it delivers.
41150109
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
Despite the obvious enterprise shift towards mobility, Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and president of Dell's Global Operations and End User Computing Solutions, is adamant that Dell has no plans to start making smartphones. “We've been really clear about smartphones – we're not going to do smartphones. We're not going to be in the smartphone hardware business,” he said at the Dell World conference in Austin. Instead, the company plans to focus on bringing Windows 8 laptops, tablets and convertibles to the market, and building a BYOD platform with its acquired Kace, Wyse, SonicWall and Quest technologies.
39710945
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
Age UK has teamed up with Cognatel MVNO CyCell to develop a no-frills mobile phone for the elderly. According to research by Ofcom, over half (52%) of people aged 75 plus own a mobile phone, but these devices are often relegated to a drawer due to their technological complexity. Age UK hopes to change this with the launch of a new £55 device, known as the Age UK My Phone. The device comes with a maximum of eight buttons which can be customised to call pre-programmed numbers with a single press.
39679855
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
... but retails for $130 more. Teardowns of the Apple iPad Mini and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD have revealed that the two devices cost almost the same amount to manufacture, despite the retail prices being significantly different. Andrew Rassweiler, senior principal analyst of teardown services for IHS iSuppli, explains that Apple is sticking to the premium brand strategy it has always used for its media tablet and smartphone products, whereas Amazon is banking on content. Could Amazon's strategy pose a competitive challenge to Apple’s media tablet dominance?
38952451
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
The UK government is in discussions with Cloudera – a distributor of Hadoop-based software and services for the enterprise – to determine how it can best make use of big data technologies. Speaking to Techworld at the IP Expo in London yesterday, Doug Cutting, creator of Hadoop and chief architect at Cloudera, said that he had met with the UK government's Policy Exchange team earlier in the week, to discuss how it can use big data without becoming Big Brother. “That is the primary concern actually of how they roll this out – how they can do that without freaking people out and becoming Big Brother,” he said.
38946213
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
Oracle customers are facing a big data problem, and Hadoop is the answer – reluctant as Oracle is to admit it. Speaking at the Oracle product and strategy update in London yesterday, Oracle president Mark Hurd said that the company's customers are growing their data up to 40% a year, putting tremendous pressure on IT budgets. Oracle offers a range of products to help customers shrink their data, such as Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Oracle Exalytics, said Hurd. However, when it comes to dealing with real Big Data problems, Oracle still relies on Hadoop, the open-source software framework licensed under the Apache v2 license.
38047123
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
Virgin Media Business has announced plans to launch a wholesale small cell network that will enable UK mobile operators to deliver faster and more robust internet connections than current 3G services or Wi-Fi. The company intends to offer metrocells as a hosted managed service, so mobile operators can simply add their own radio heads onto Virgin's infrastructure. Kevin Baughan, director of wireless at Virgin Media Business, said this “small cells as a service” concept should appeal to mobile operators because it is more cost effective than each operator building their own small cell infrastructure.
37554783
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
The Information Commissioner Christopher Graham has questioned the effectiveness of the EU cookie directive, suggesting that it was “dreamed up by politicians in Brussels” without the appropriate market research to back it up. Speaking at the launch of a new report called The Data Dialogue by think tank Demos, Graham said that policies around the use of personal data by companies and public sector organisations need to be evidence-based.
37286461
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
Visitors to graveyards in the UK may soon be able to learn much more about the people buried there, with the introduction of quick response (QR) codes on headstones. Chester Pearce in Poole is the first funeral director to offer families the option of interactive gravestones with embedded QR codes. The £300 QR codes are etched on to small granite or metal squares before being embedded or glued on to the gravestones. When scanned using a smartphone or tablet, the code launches a personalised web page dedicated to the deceased, complete with pictures, videos and contributions from family and friends.
36088783
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
The European Union's proposal to give internet users the “right to be forgotten” is unfeasible, according to Bob Plumridge, chief technology officer for EMEA at Hitachi Data Systems. Plumridge believes that the people who are coming up with ideas to improve privacy do not understand the limits of today's technologies. He said that, for the right to be forgotten to become a reality, all of these individual records would need to be linked together. However, having links between all copies of the data means that if one copy is corrupted, all the others are at risk of being affected.
36088577
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
Mekong Development has become the first bank in Vietnam to launch fingerprint authentication enabled debit cards. Fingerprints are captured by Mekong Development at the point of opening an account, and then can be used, instead of a pin, to access funds. Not only has Mekong’s account base tripled through the use of fingerprint technology since its launch in June, but the deposit balance per debit card account is two times higher than a regular account.
35639555
submission
sweetpea86 writes:
A consortium of ICT standards development bodies has set up a new global organisation to ensure the efficient deployment of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications systems. The specifications developed by the new organisation, called oneM2M, will provide a common service layer that can be embedded within various hardware and software, and connect the myriad of devices in the field. Andrew Brown, director for enterprise research at Strategy Analytics, said the lack of standards in M2M has been repeatedly flagged as a key barrier to the development of the M2M market, but warns that establishing a common service layer will not be easy...
35639199
submission
zacharye writes:
Another day, another Apple (AAPL) vs. Samsung (005930) trial. The two consumer electronics companies are preparing to do battle in San Jose, California next week, and now-public court documents shed light on the positions each firm is taking. On Tuesday, Apple told Samsung exactly what it thinks its technology patents are worth (spoiler: barely anything at all), and subsequent filings from Samsung reveal that the South Korea-based company has a few choice words for Apple as well...
