Author: Eva Glass

Eva Glass first rose to prominence in The INQUIRER. She continues to work behind the scenes to dig out the best stories.

IBM predicts future of the car

Posted on January 15, 2015 by - News

IBM logoInternational Business Machines (IBM) has commissioned a survey which predicts what cars will be like in 2025.
And unlike other IT companies, such as Google, IBM doesn’t think we’ll have fully automated or autonomous driving.
However, after surveying 175 executives from car manufacturers and other sectors, we will see some pretty big changes when we’re driving up the A34 out of Oxford.
For example, by 2025, a car will configure itself to a driver and passengers.  In addition, it “will learn, heal, drive and socialise” not only with other cars but with the environment too.
Fifty seven percent of those surveyed believe vehicles will be part of a social network sharing weather and traffic conditions, as well as communicating with other vehicles of the same kind if problems develop.
Despite optimistic claims for driverless cars, only eight percent of those surveyed think it will be commonplace by 2025.
But partially automated driving will be pretty common.

 

Google takes aim at five billion people

Posted on January 15, 2015 by - News

330ogleSoftware giant Google will introduce a modular mobile phone that it says will be affordable for the five billion people who don’t yet have a smartphone.
Google is increasingly moving into the hardware business.
It will build the machines in Puerto Rico.
According to the BBC, the Google modular phone will include a 3G chip, with a pilot arriving in the second half of this year.
There will be between 20 and 30 clip on modules that connect to a frame, with modules including screen, batteries and cameras.
The modules will connect to the frame using magnets.
There’s no news yet on pricing, but to appeal to the five billion people that don’t have smartphones it will have to be cheap.

 

Tablet market faces further woes

Posted on January 15, 2015 by - News

tablet-POS-cash-registerThere’s more research data on the tablet market out today and the latest report suggests gloom for 2015.
Digitimes Research said that total shipments of tablets worldwide will fall by 11.8 percent this year, accounting for shipments of 244 million units.
The logic behind the forecast is that demand for high end and entry level units is saturated, and smartphones with bigger screens are further eroding the tablet marketplace.
The seven inch segment, in particular will see a sharp drop in shipments because of smartphone competition.
However, it’s not all bad news. The report said demand for tablets with 10-inch screens and above will grow by 20 percent, fuelled by enterprise interest.
Digitimes Research also thinks Windows tablets will grow by 50 percent this year – which if true – is encouraging news for both Microsoft and Intel.  Both behemoths have introduced subsidies to encourage vendors to use their kit.

 

Boffins claim 3D breakthrough

Posted on January 15, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-01-15 at 14.36.20A group of scientists at the Vienna University of Technology, claim their invention will lead to the next generation of outdoor displays.
Startup Trilite and TU Vienna said the new kind of display sends beams of light straight into viewers’ eyes and have made a prototype that they said will scale up to big displays.
The prototype contains so-called “trixels” made up of lasers and moveable mirrors.
Ulrich Schmid,, a professor at TU Vienna, said that the mirror moves the laser beams across the field of vision from left to right.
While 3D movies show only two different pictures for each eye, this display is claimed to be able to present hundreds of pictures.
The researchers are optimistic that new footage will be created for the displays with a larger number of cameras.
The researchers believe commercial units will be for sale by next year.

 

Tesco takes Google Glass plunge

Posted on January 14, 2015 by - News

Google's Eric "Google Glass" SchmidtUK megagrocer Tesco said it has developed an application that lets the few people with Google Glasses shop until they drop.
The Tesco Grocery “glassware” allows you to browse groceries, check out their nutritional value and add them to your shopping basket.
How does it work?  According to Tesco, it works alongside customer accounts and adds products to an “online basket” to be later reviewed and ordered using your computer, your tablet or your smartphone.
Pablo Coberly, an engineer at Tesco Labs, said: “We don’t envisage Glass becoming the new platform for shopping as its functionality is different, and more immediate.”
He continued: “Instead, it complements other devices and integrates shopping into everyday life because products can be ordered or added as and when customers realise they need replacing.”
Coberly said that the future of its app will be driven by customer needs and Tesco has kept the functionality “very basic” given the early stages of customer use.

 

Internet of Things promises analytics boom

Posted on January 14, 2015 by - News

Internet of ThingsThe growth of devices with internet protocol (IP) capabilities will generate a boom in big data and analytics revenue.
That’s the prediction from ABI Research which said in a report that integrating, analysing and storing data from the internet of things (IoT) will be worth as much as $5.7 billion this year.
That figure will expand over the next five years and represent a third of all big data and analytics revenues, the research outfit predicts.
Analyst Aapo Markkanen said that trying to make sense of data from machines and sensors has its own challenges, including deep domain expertise in analysis and time series databases held in storage.
That is leading to the birth of many startups aiming to exploit a gap in the market.
Some existing vendors including Datawatch, Informatics, Software AG and Splunk are ready for the IoT world.

 

Tablet Windows faces uncertain future

Posted on January 14, 2015 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseBy 2018, tablet sales will reach 540 million units, despite 2014 being a quiet year for the sector.
CCS Insight introduced its annual look at the marketplace and bullishly predicts the market will grow 28 percent this year to reach 283 million units.
While people in established markets will look to upgrade their existing systems, emerging markets will play an increasing role in buying units.
CCS expects that Android will retain its position as the operating system of choice in tablet sales.  But it also expects Windows to increase share over the next two years.
That’s down to Microsoft spending more on marketing, establishing Surface as a brand, and bundling hardware with its software.
Marina Koytcheva, Director of Forecasting at CCS Insight said: “We expect Android to continue dominating the low end and midrange market, with Apple taking the lion’s share at the high end.  But Windows is gaining a bigger slice of the pie, albeit from a very low level, and should not be overlooked.”
She said that the Microsoft move to scrap charging for licences for Windows devices under nine inches will help Microsoft.
She said that move has encouraged vendors to launch better devices at lower prices.
She warned that Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows 10, will “take time to make its mark”.  It will have little impact on sales before the end of 2016.
Enterprises will help Apple, specifically the deal it forged with IBM late last year.

 

Semiconductor spending inches up

Posted on January 14, 2015 by - News

nand-chipsCapital spending by semiconductor companies grew by 12.9 percent last year, but will only grow by 0.8 percent this year.
That’s according to market intelligence company Gartner which said capital spending will generate revenues of $65.7 billion this year.
Bob Johnson, a VP at Gartner, said that equipment spending outstripped capital spending last year and will do the same this year. 2016 will be a different kettle of fish. Manufacturers will exercise caution this year.
This year, chip foundries will outspend logic device manufacturers but there’s a danger of the mobile market being saturated and that will dampen the need for new capacity.
Memory manufacturers are likely to switch their manufacturing from NAND to DRAM because the market is more favourable for the latter than the former. But that will switch net year, because DRAM will be in oversupply.
Demand for solid state drives will mean more capacity shifts during the next three years.

 

IBM intros big mainframe

Posted on January 14, 2015 by - News

IBM Z13Big Blue said it has built a mainframe which is the most powerful and secure system ever.
The Z13 can churn 2.5 billion transactions a day,  and includes embedded analytics.
IBM said the system took five years to develop costing $1 billion, includes 500 new patents and is a collaborative venture with over 60 of its customers.
The machine allows real time encryption of mobile transactions that uses some of these patents.
The Z13 embedded analytics allows it to give real time insights on transactions including fraud protection.
IBM said that the Z13 also includes the fastest microprocessor in the world, is twice as fas as Intel microprocessors and 300 percent more memory.
The Z13 also includes native support for Hadoop and includes improvements to the IBM DB2 analytics accelerator.

China steps up internet censorship

Posted on January 13, 2015 by - News

chinaflagIn its continuing move to restrict access to internet content the government doesn’t like, China shut down dozens of websites and social media accounts today.
That’s according to Reuters, which said the prohibited content applies to political news, pornography, and other perceived violations.
The “office of the central leading group for cyberspace affairs” said violations not include pornography or writing political material, but material related to gambling.
The cyberspace censors have closed close to 1.8 million accounts on social networking and messaging sites, and the “office” plans to publish a list of those who have violated its strictures.
China already operates a policy to preclude a number of websites and services including YouTube, Google, and any site which dares to mention Falun Gong.
Other countries also restrict access to the internet for political reasons, but it’s widely recognised that China’s so-called “Great Firewall” is the most effective.

 

12-inch Macbook Air ready to roll

Posted on January 13, 2015 by - News

novità-apple-2013Original development manufacturer (ODMs) have begun to make quantities of the 12-inch Macbook Air.
ODMs make machines to specifications created by brand name firms like Apple – and in this case the manufacturer is Taiwanese giant Quanta Computer.
According to a report in Taiwanese wire Digitimes, the 12-inch Macbook Air will be launched in the first quarter of this year, displacing the current 11-inch model.  The 13-inch model will continue to be made and sold.
And Quanta also appears to have won a chunk of the market for Apple’s iWatch, and has hired a large number of workers to make it.
However, there is a labour shortage in mainland China, where the majority of the factories now are, and that position is exacerbated by the advent of the Chinese new year.
There’s no final word on the pricing of the 12 inch Macbook Air, but the screen will be a Retina screen, the wire suggests.

 

Robots learn from Youtube

Posted on January 13, 2015 by - News


Screen Shot 2015-01-13 at 14.28.53It’s not just people that are addicted to Youtube, according to a group of scientists from the University of Maryland.
They are teaching robots by getting them to watch online cooking videos.
The scientists say they, together with an Australian research institute, are developing robotic systems that can teach themselves.
The online cooking videos help them to learn intricate grasping and manipulation movements.
The researchers said they’ve achieved a milestone in robotic autodidactism by combining artificial intelligence, computer vision; and natural language processing.
Yiannis Alimonos, a professor of computer science said the team selected cooking videos “because everyone has done it and understands it.”
But, he continued, “cooking is complex in terms of manipulation, the steps involved and the tools you use”.
The professor said other researchers had tried to copy movements, but the team is copying the goals, letting robots decide how to combine actions.  The algorithm use deep learning neural networks, which are now practical because of the vast increase in computing power and performance.

 

Smart street lights start to make their way

Posted on January 13, 2015 by - News

Internet of ThingsWhile high prices have prevented municipal authorities from investing in “clever” street lights, that’s starting to change.
ABI Research said that the number of installed lights with networking abilities will grow from two million now to over 40 million by 2019, said analyst Andrew Zignani.
LED  lights give energy savings, an increase in lifespan and the ability to be networked, he said. Such networking will not only allow for better control of illumination but lamps will be able to report to a central location when there are defects.
Although networking is now mostly using power line communication (PLC), that dominant position will face competition from radio frequency (RF) and cellular networking.
ABI estimates that by 2020, RF systems will account for two thirds of street lights installed.
Some cities around the world are seeing potential for street lighting infrastructure based on the internet of things, said Zignani.  Street lights will be linked to other aspects of smart grids.

PC shipments edge up

Posted on January 13, 2015 by - News

pc-sales-slumpShipments of PCs during any fourth quarter used to be strong until two years ago.
But figures released by Gartner said that worldwide PC shipments grew by a miserly one percent during the last quarter of 2014.
Shipments amounted to 83.7 million units and analysts at the company think the results are a “slow but consistent improvement after two years of decline”.
Tablets had been responsible for displacing PCs but that peaked in 2013 and the first half of last year.
People are drifting back to PCs, said Gartner, although different regions showed different results.
The US market showed the highest growth and the European region was strong too.
Lenovo is now the worldwide leader in shipments with 19.4 percent of the market, followed by HP and Dell. Acer and Asus were fourth and fifth.
HP showed growth of 16 percent in the quarter, while Lenovo’s growth slowed.
The chief driver for sales were mobile PCs including thin and light.  Prices around the $300 mark helped boost sales.

 

Citrix buys intelligent storage firm

Posted on January 12, 2015 by - News

Citrix HQPrivately owned Sanbolic has been bought by Citrix for an undisclosed amount.
Sanbolic is effectively a company specialising in storage management, whether that be using SSD, flash or hard drives in NAS, SAN, server side or cloud deployments.
The company offers load balancing, application availability and high performance management.
Citrix said it will build the capabilities of Sanbolic into its XenDesktop, XenApp and ZenMobile product suites.
Citrix said the acquisition means that its customers can use virtual apps and VDI across their businesses, guaranteeing workload service level agreements.
It said over 200 of its customers already use Sanbolic to allow availability and clustering of XenApp and XenDesktop.
Momchil Michailov, the CEO of Sanbolic, said that it has 13 years of experience with enterprise customers using server side and converged storage management.
Citrix senior VP Geir Ramleth said the complexities of infrastructure hinder VDI and application delivery deployments. The acquisition of Sanbolic will help Citrix manage the problem head on.  Employees of Sanbolic will now work for Citrix.