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Diversinet Corp was awarded a U.S patent for an encryption method that addresses growing concerns on protecting sensitive personal data stored on a mobile device. The U.S Patent No. 8,051,297 for “A Method for Binding a Security Element to a Mobile Device,” covers the security needs for mobile devices such as for smartphones or tablets. The patented technology prevents unauthorized access to the data on a mobile device via encryption and prevents access to the information if it is transferred to another mobile device. Unlike other methods, it uses characteristics of a mobile device’s unique identity such as its serial number to create the encryption passkey. Diversinet has integrated the patented solution into its MobiSecure® mobile healthcare products to help healthcare organizations quickly and cost-effectively deploy HIPAA-compliant mHealth applications anytime, anywhere on mobile devices. Click headline to read more--
LightwaveOnline.com reported 2 broadband stimulus award winners are moving forward with $9.5 million dollars in funding to serve 200 local businesses and 1,000 individuals in the communities of Nunn and Carr, Colorado.. more here Broadband Stimulus award winners Nunn Telephone Company (Nunn) and Wiggins Telephone Association (WTA) have selected Calix Inc.’s Ethernet Extensible Architecture (EXA) Powered Calix Unified Access platforms and the 700GE family of optical network terminals (ONTs) to bring advanced broadband services to “unserved” and “underserved” communities throughout northern Colorado. Click headline to read more--
Remember Earthlink’s grand plan to bring Wi-Fi to the city of San Francisco? EarthLink never got around to it after leaving the municipal wireless business but the city quietly continued its efforts to bring Wi-Fi access to certain areas, mostly disadvantaged, together with local partners. Now it appears that the city is setting up a Wi-Fi hotzone along Market Street, the main thoroughfare, from the Ferry Building all the way to the Castro. If there’s one city that could use a very good Wi-Fi network, it’s San Francisco. My experience with AT&T’s network in San Francisco, where I lived for three years, has been negative. My calls were dropped every time, the speed of the network was pathetic and coverage was patchy. All this trouble for about $50 per month. After leaving San Francisco in May 2011, I gave up my AT&T subscription with glee. Click headline to read more--
When PayPal went public in 2002, then executive vice president Reid Hoffman, spent some of his winnings on investing in an early round of Silicon Valley’s first solar thin film startup Nanosolar, according to an article in the New York Times. Hoffman, of course, later on founded LinkedIn, which went public in May of his year, but Hoffman hasn’t seemed to continue that sort of interest in funding early stage clean power and cleantech companies. Those early shares of Nanosolar that Hoffman bought are likely worth a decent amount at this point. Other seed investors at the time included Spring Ventures investor Sunil Paul, Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Benchmark Capital. Click headline to read more--
When we consider the potential of the Smart Grid, it’s natural to think in grand terms. We can envision “smart” appliances and home automation tools that enable consumers to respond to real-time fluctuations in energy costs, and fundamentally shift demand. But as I discussed in my previous post, those kinds of changes will require a major cultural shift—a change in the way ordinary people think about energy consumption—that is likely still a few years off. We should realize, however, that apart from these loftier goals, the Smart Grid also holds the potential to deliver major savings right away, just by providing more visibility into the grid. Click headline to read more--
As we are all aware, China is growing into a superpower nation and while they have the ability to produce or import energy, they are initiating the huge deployment of the smart grid, not for ecological reasons, but for two key benefits; health and scarcity of resources. According to a recent In-Stat report, China is due to deploy 280 million smart meters by 2016; staggering figures you may think, until you consider the size of China! China’s smart grid initiative has meant that the likes of Cisco, GE and Intel have been brought into State Grid Corporation of China’s (SGCC) bank of partners, all of who will be collaborating to turn the project into reality. One such area is to find ways in which Intel’s embedded chip technologies can be incorporated into SGCC’s transmission equipment. Click headline to read more--
In the nineteenth century there were no televisions, aeroplanes, computers, or spacecraft; neither were there antibiotics, credit cards, microwave ovens, compact discs, or mobile phones. There was, however, an Internet. During Queen Victoria’s reign, a new communications technology was developed that allowed people to communicate almost instantly across great distances, in effect shrinking the world faster and further than ever before. A world-wide communications network whose cables spanned continents and oceans, it revolutionised business practice, gave rise to new forms of crime, and inundated its users with a deluge of information. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates, and dismissed by the sceptics. Governments and regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. Attitudes to everything from newsgathering to diplomacy had to be completely rethought. Meanwhile, out on the wires, a technological subculture with its own customs and vocabulary was establishing itself. Does all this sound familiar? Click headline to read more--
After months of delays, work is set to resume on a $30 million, problem-plagued project to provide broadband Internet service to a 14-county region in North Florida. Funding was put on hold in July by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Grants Office amid allegations of poor supervision, fraud and waste. Before funding was restored, members of the North Florida Broadband Authority were required to present a revised management plan to assure federal authorities that the project could be completed with no further problems. Click headline to read more--
Q&A With IEEE's Dr. W. Charlton (Chuck) Adams, Jr.Fierce Smart GridIn this interview, Chuck Adams shares his vision of new business models that will emerge with Smart Grid. Click the headline to read the interview--
A smart office is one which uses less energy, where wireless sensors placed on workstations and personal computers "talk" to each and relay information about the room back to a computer or base station, which then "tell" individual LED lights installed on the ceiling how much to light up, dim or switch off. Such a smart grid lighting system can result in energy savings of some 45 per cent compared to conventional fluorescent lighting. Yesterday, the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) announced a tie-up with JTC Corporation and Royal Philips Electronics to develop a smart lighting test-bed that will be the largest of its kind in Singapore. Click headline to read more--
AT&T and the Rural Telecommunications Group (RTG) are trading accusations against each other related to roaming charges.Both organizations sent letters to the FCC last month outlining their positions. RTG, which represents rural wireless carriers, shared both letters with Telecompetitor—and although both had substantial portions redacted for public inspection, the gist seems to be that: The RTG is arguing that AT&T has taken “anticompetitive actions” against RTG’s members that are “contrary to the public interest” by preventing its customers from roaming onto rural carrier networks, even when the customers thereby end up without service in those areas. AT&T argues that RTG’s claims are “baseless.” The carrier says it is just trying to save money and that it is not required to support “home-on-home roaming,” which refers to a situation in which Carrier A’s customers are able to roam on Carrier B’s network in an area where Carrier A (in this case, AT&T) has its own facilities. Click headline to read more--
It’s been a long time since we reported on the largest wind farm in the world, the 845-megawatt Caithness Shepherds Flat project in Eastern Oregon (in Gilliam and Morrow Counties, to be exact). I think the last time we reported on it was in April, after Google announced that it was investing $100 million in the project. While there isn’t any groundbreaking news to report, the project is moving forward according to schedule and Phase 1 (which includes 70 wind turbines) is supposed to be fully completed by the end of November. Construction is on schedule and on budget. Work on the substations, interconnection facilities, transmission lines, and electricity collection systems has been finished. 338 foundations (for all three stages) have been built. All in all, the project is more than 50% complete. By August 2012, all 338 wind turbines are projected to be up and running. Click headline to read more--
Chairman Julius Genachowski, SV Angel’s Ron Conway, Andreessen-Horowitz’ Jeff Jordan, Twilio’s Jeff Lawson, Foursquare mobile VP Holger Leudorf and Lookout founder John Hering all gathered at Founder’s Den HQ this afternoon for the awesomely titled “Desperately Seeking Spectrum” panel, where discussion centered around freeing up broadband spectrum for the US mobile industry to use as it continues its formidable expansion. Genachowski referred to predictions that mobile broadband traffic will increase 35 times over the next five years. Smart phones, which use 24 times as much broadband, are replacing feature phones, and tablets, which are becoming increasingly more prevalent as they continue to displace the PC market, use 122 times as much as smart phones. Click headline to read more and watch video interview--
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The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in partnership with Physicians Interactive recently launched Health eVillages to assist healthcare professionals practicing medicine in the most challenging clinical environments. This is the first consortium of healthcare and human rights organizations that is providing mobile medical technology to challenging regions worldwide. According to Kerry Kennedy, Founding Partner and President of the RFK Center, “The program will provide mobile clinical reference and decision support tools to use for medical training, diagnostics, and clinical references. Currently, more than one billion people live in rural, underserved areas with inadequate access to healthcare and nearly one third of countries are experiencing critical shortages of skilled healthcare workers.” Health eVillages is a consortium of international healthcare advocacy organizations, mobile healthcare solution providers, health information technology companies, communication providers, and public health foundations. Click headline to read more--
Thanks to Bill Coleman and Pam Lehmann for sharing a research paper written by students from Gonzaga University on the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) program. The students (Dale W. Hammond and Lyndon Perry) started by looking at a program in the UK where folks in rural areas were offered computer and Internet training. Initially their assignment was to consider how this program could be implemented in rural American but they learned about the MIRC program here led by the Blandin Foundation and realized the programs were similar. So they adapted the assignment to look at how to further the MIRC efforts based on the benefits of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). Specifically, they looked at adding to the MIRC initiative a concerted effort develop local advocates through a Hometown Advocate Program (HAP). Click headline to read more--
Brescia (province: Lombardy; pop. 200,000) has deployed a large outdoor Wi-Fi hot zone in its historic center for video surveillance on public transport, government applications and public Wi-Fi access. The city is using equipment from Aruba Networks; the network was designed and deployed by Lais Brescia, a local partner of Aruba in the region. “We needed a proven multiservice mesh solution with minimal infrastructure and cabling needs, high performance for video over multiple hops and low visual impact,” said Massimo Bianchini, City of Brescia Supervisor of Technological Innovation. “Since we already use Aruba at our university, having a single vendor for multiple projects greatly simplifies deployment and management for us.” Click headline to read more--
The Freedom Rings Partnership is a $25 million federally-funded initiative led by the Urban Affairs Coalition and the City of Philadelphia, with Drexel University as a major partner. The Freedom Rings Partnership is made up of grassroots organizations, government, and universities that will bring Internet access, training and technology to residents in low-income communities. This multi-year initiative officially kicked off on January 17, 2011 by sponsoring the signature project of the MLK Day of Service – refurbishing used computers to be distributed back into the community, assembling digital literacy kits, and hosting a high-tech scavenger hunt called “Race to Connect.” Click headline to read more--
After a significant drop earlier this year, U.S. investment in cleantech companies was on the rise in the third quarter. According to an Ernst & Young survey released yesterday, U.S. venture capital investment in cleantech firms totaled $1.1 billion in Q3 2011, an increase of 4 percent from Q2 2011. Compared to the same quarter last year, the $1.1 billion represents a 73 percent growth in dollars invested with the number of deals increasing by 36 percent to 76. In a positive sign that corporate commitments to managing energy use is reaching a deployment phase, the Energy Storage segment led all cleantech investment during the third quarter of 2011. This segment raised $421 million during Q3 2011, representing a 1,932 percent increase during the same period last year and has raised a total of $865.2 million throughout 2011. Click headline to read more--
Rob Cox, a writer for Reuters, has delved into the disappointing response of some investor-owned utilities in Connecticut following the recent blizzard, noting the better performance of muni power companies. Hurricane Irene recently revealed the similar superiority of muni electrics compared to the investor-owned in Massachusetts, prompting us to note the parallels with Wired West's initiative in Western Massachusetts. They have created an electric light coop to build a next-generation fiber-optic network out to everyone in the area. And on the same day that Longmont embraced locally owned broadband in Colorado, nearby Boulder started the process of kicking Xcel out in favor of an electric grid that is accountable to the public. So let's see what the New York Times has to say about municipal ownership of infrastructure. Click headline to read more--
The Metropolitan Opera recently opened a show that uses cutting-edge 3-D projection technology. Historian Mark Schubin says that's just one of the opera world's many tech-savvy innovations, some of which helped give rise to modern radio and TV. It turns out that having 3-D sets in a live show is just the latest tech-savvy leap for the genre. Historian Mark Schubin lectures about opera's place on the cutting edge of technology. He says opera theaters got the jump on the first telephone patent, Edison's light bulb, commercial radios and more. "The first radio transmission of a complete opera was in 1910," Schubin tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Audie Cornish. "That was 10 years before what people consider the first radio station." Click headline to read more since cable audio service began in New York City in 1880.
The assertion of jurisdiction by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over any aspect of the Internet ecosystem has raised populist, congressional, and even judicial rhetoric to a crescendo and resulted in a recent vote to defund the boundaries between these regulatory and antitrust camps. Boliek’s article places the current crisis squarely in the context of the long- standing jurisdictional struggle between regulation and antitrust law. Focusing on recent case law, her article examines the jurisdictional framework to classify possible jurisdictional overreach. Click headline to read more--
As the Internet becomes the all purpose global telecommunications medium delivering voice, video, the web and email, cable companies have emerged as the dominant Internet Service Provider (ISP). As Susan P. Crawford explains in this Harvard Law & Policy Review article "The Communications Crisis in America", compared to incumbent telcos and wireless and satellite ISPs, only cable offers sufficiently robust bandwidth and headroom going forward. Telcos can't keep up since they would incur unabsorbable costs to replace their obsolete copper cable plants with fiber -- costs that would also make their generous stock dividends obsolete. The physics of radio spectrum hamstrings wireless ISPs and satellite Internet -- on the verge of obsolescence from the day it was introduced -- has reached its expiration date. Click on headline to read more--
Hitachi, Ltd. , Cyber Defence Institute, Inc. ("Cyber Defence Institute") and Mizuho Corporate Bank, Ltd. ("Mizuho Corporate Bank") today announced that the companies have been selected as contractors for a world-leading smart grid demonstration project on Maui Island in Hawaii ("Project"), spearheaded by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization ("NEDO") as the result of feasibility study which was conducted from May to September this year by Hitachi and other companies. Serving as the project leader, Hitachi will take a leading role and coordinate the entire project. The Project, a joint undertaking by the U.S. and Japan, is based on the Japan-U.S. Clean Energy Technologies Action Plan, which was agreed to following the Japan-U.S. Heads of State Summit held in November 2009. These contractors will cooperate with the State of Hawaii, Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc., the University of Hawaii, and the U.S. National Laboratories in the Project. The Project is expected to be completed by the end of March 2014. The estimated budget for the Project is approximately US$ 37 million. Click headline to read more--
One of the favorite misleading tricks of supporters of more draconian copyright laws is to put out a report each year about the "size" of "the copyright industries," by the "International Intellectual Property Alliance" (a trade group made up of other trade groups, including the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, ESA, NMPA and others) There are numerous problems with this report. First off, it makes the ridiculously wrong assumption that "the copyright industries" exist solely because of copyright law. That is, they use the size of the numbers to suggest that stronger copyright law is necessary. Yet that's ridiculous. They present no evidence that the industries would be any different size, if copyright law were weaker or stronger. They simply present that as the obvious implication. Furthermore, their definition of what makes up "the copyright industries" is insanely broad, and tends to include plenty of operations who don't actually want stricter copyright laws at all. For example, I'm sure Techdirt technically qualifies under whatever measure they're using. After all, we're a publisher, so technically we're in "the content industries." Yet I can tell you right now that exactly zero percent of our revenue is due to copyright law. That's true of many, many of the companies included as being in "the copyright industries." Click headline to read more--
It’s game on for solar power among tech giants like IBM, Facebook, and Apple, and the advanced clean energy investments of these global moneymakers could have some interesting implications for the 2012 presidential contest. Among the recent news, IBM’s new rooftop solar array for its India Software Lab in Bangalore wins out for innovation, with Facebook’s unique hybrid solar plant at its Menlo Park campus giving it a run for the money, and Apple’s unannounced plans for a giant solar farmin North Carolina coming up close behind. Click headline to read more--
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