Politics make for strange bedfellows, but the pursuit of a common goal often makes an unthinkable alliance come to pass. AT&T and Verizon Wireless jointly deployed a Distributed Antenna System at the University of Oregon Autzen stadium. A joint venture like this makes sense for probably three reasons.
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A new kickstarter project is due to launch called 4SeTV, which brings multiview capabilities to anyone for both a tablet and your TV.
Gizmodo published a nice write-up about Netflix's OpenConnect, available at: http://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592590450
Zero-days, the bane of organizations worldwide, is the golden goose of cybercriminals, jealously guarded and highly prized, serving to feed top-tier exploit kits and financial and political cyberespionage campaigns. Zero-days allow any number of exploits to be created, and are particularly popular for targeted spear phishing attacks. The effectiveness of such vulnerabilities has had a major disruptive impact on the security industry, rendering signature-based solutions effectively useless. The scramble has since been on finding alternative methods of dealing with zero-days. The catch of course is how to protect systems against an unknown threat?
Recently I was asked about biometrics and the potential shift that some people see, not just for fingerprint readers, but also iris and retina scanners in mobile devices. Of course, this could easily extend to other devices but mobile is so big, and smartphone adoption continues to grow so quickly, that it is the most obvious entry point to consider when looking at the launch of new technologies.
Siemens and Streetscooter have announced that they will work cooperatively to equip a new class of modular electronics and software technologies into Streetscooter’s short distance electric vehicles. The technologies themselves were developed as part of the RACE project (Robust and reliable Automotive Computing Environment for future eCars), a German business/academic/government partnership dedicated to the development of advanced electrics and electronics for cars (automotive E/E). The companies expect to incorporate the RACE architecture into a Streetscooter electric delivery van by December 2014. Testing of the RACE system will take place at the Siemens' research center in Munich.
With its earlier acquisition of ThingWorx, PTC made it very clear that it sees the Internet of Things to be at the core of next-generation product (PLM) and service (SLM) lifecycle management. To further deliver on this vision, the company has now added another key piece in Axeda, which it has agreed to acquire for approximately US$170m in cash. This compares to the $112m PTC paid for ThingWorx.
Remote sensing services provider Agribotix recently posted a blog entry entitled Agribotix Takeaways From the 2014 Precision Aerial Ag Show in Decatur, IL”. The title, while not exactly clickbait, aptly describes the topic of the entry. More importantly, in the blog proper the authors make several valid points concerning the use of small aerial drones for precision agriculture work, as well as for other commercial applications.
NVIDIA officially announced its SHIELD Tablet, with a July 29th release date in the US – the SHIELD Tablet is also NVIDIA’s first gaming device (end-to-end product) to ship outside North America (August 14th in Europe and later in 2014 for other markets). Priced at $299 and $399 for the 16 GB (Wi-Fi) and 32 GB (Wi-Fi + LTE – compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile but no announced carrier certifications at time of writing) respectively the SHIELD Tablet is priced competitively for most premium 8” tablets, other specs and features below:
Founded by Cynthia Breazeal, Jibo is exactly the type of robot that will usher in the age of personal robotics. The reason for this is simple - the price will be about $500. This is in line with a task robot like an iRobot Roomba. It combines many of the features that are important to robotics - cloud robotics, social robotics that adds an emotional level to communications, and the leveraging mobile device trends that have drastically brought down the cost and increased the capability of mobile processors, sensors, and other components. Think of these simple personal robots as embodied smartphones - they are embodied in that they have moving parts for a purpose. In this case the purpose is to aim the camera sensor and communicate with emotion. Adding mobility adds more complexity and cost. Adding manipulation adds even more complexity and cost. All these things will be commercialized, but they will start with personal robots like this that are much more affordable. Mobility will be built off platforms that telepresence robots use, and manipulation added onto that. As the personal robotics market progresses, people will see the value in them. The value in Jibo and other products to come like it will be family-wide communications and reminders around the home, telepresence, something to automatically take pictures and videos or do so on voice command, and more. A completely stationary device could do much of this but wouldn't be able to aim the camera sensor(s). Jibo combines functionality with a new UI (social robot) to create a product that is fun and useful.
