cross pond high tech

Tablets have killed the netbook market and are fast transforming the traditional PC.

 

Apple's iPad gets most of the credit for that, but the tablet computer was not Steve Jobs' idea. Tablets actually began decades before the iPad was launched in 2010.

 

Look at all the previous attemps including the Newton, the Palm Pilot, ...

Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs has found a way to go that extreme distance by relying on the basic concept behind noise-cancelling headphones. When the researchers send data across two light beams in opposing phases, they can superimpose the signals and neutralize the distortion that would normally occur at long ranges. Such clean output lets Bell Labs ramp up the signal strength and maintain high speeds across whole oceans: its test pushed 400Gbps through 7,954 miles of fiber.

Apple is going to integrate IAC's video site Vimeo and Yahoo's photo sharing site Flickr into the next version of iOS, the software that runs iPhones and iPads, Mark Gurman of 9 to 5 Mac reports.

Gurman says iOS users will be able to upload video straight to Vimeo from their iPhones and iPads, just like they can currently upload straight to YouTube.

The same will be true of Flickr. iOS users will be able to quickly upload their photos to Flickr straight from their devices.

This is going to be really good for Apple, Yahoo, and iOS users.

Yesterday, Yahoo announced a redesign for Flickr, and an increase in storage to 1 terabyte of data. This means that you can pretty much store all of your photos in Flickr.

Waze and Facebook partnered in October 2012 when Waze released its updated version that allows users to share their drive with their Facebook friends.

This would be Facebook's third acquisition in Israel. It bought Snaptu in 2011 for $70 million and Face.com in 2012 for $60 million.

In the last year, Waze tripled its user base to 45 million and in March alone, 1.5 million users downloaded the free mobile navigation app, Calcalist said.

Loic Le Meur's keynote on the Sharing Economy as he studied the theme for his upcoming conference LeWeb London on June 5-6

Latest research suggests half of employers will, in just four years time, require employees to bring their own devices to work. Should BYOD be a requirement over a personal, optional decision?

 

Some interesting tidbits from the research:

38 percent of companies expect to stop providing workplace devices to staff by 2016. (PCs, such as desktops and laptops, are included in the definition of BYOD.)BYOD is most prevalent in midsize and larger enterprises, often generating between $500m-$5bn in revenue per year, with 2,500-5,000 employees on the roster.BRIC nations, such as India, China, and Brazil, will most likely already be using a personal device — typically a "standard mobile phone" — at work.Meanwhile, companies in the U.S. are more likely to allow BYOD than those in Europe (likely due to stronger data protection rules, see below).Around half of all BYOD programs provide a partial reimbursement, while full reimbursement costs "will become rare."Gartner vice president David Willis says companies should "subsidize only the service plan on a smartphone."

That robots, automation, and software can replace people might seem obvious to anyone who’s worked in automotive manufacturing or as a travel agent. But Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s claim is more troubling and controversial. They believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the United States. And, they suspect, something similar is happening in other technologically advanced countries.

Academic experts at the Fraunhofer Institute and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany has claimed to have set a new world record of the wireless data transmission this week (a week after Samsung’s supposed 5G breakthrough), where they have successfully transmitted 40 gigabits per second over a one kilometre (0.62 miles) wireless link – a speeds that would allow the download of a DVD in a single second. Interestingly, distances of over one kilometer have already been covered by using a long range demonstrator which the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology set up between two skyscrapers.

 

“Millilink” is the name given to this project and the technology has the same speed just like the fastest commercial fibre optic links, and could represent a major breakthrough for carrier backbones, broadband Internet access in rural areas, and ultra-fast last mile access for customers who haven’t had fibre rolled out in their area.

Eesha Khare is the mind behind a super-powerful and tiny gizmo that packs more energy into a small space, delivers a charge more quickly, and holds that charge longer than the typical battery. Khare showed off her so-called super-capacitor last week at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Ariz. In her demonstration, she showed it powering a light-emitting diode, or LED light, but the itty-bitty device could fit inside cell phone batteries, delivering a full charge in 20-30 seconds. It takes several hours for the average cell phone to fully charge.

Khare also pointed out that the super-capacitor “can last for 10,000 charge cycles compared to batteries which are good for only 1,000 cycles.”