Consumer Technology World Brief

The arrival of Intel Haswell process microarchitecture brings a whole new wave of electronic devices into the market. It is an upgrade from the previous Ivy Bridge version which promises better performance and longer battery life. With the recent market focus on ultrabooks and tablet computing the Haswell chips could not have come at a better time. The introduction of the Haswell chip definitely is changing the landscape for mobile computing making tablets a more practical and mainstream device than they previously were. For desktop users however the move from Ivy Bridge to Haswell is less clear. A performance gain of up to ten percent is expected, but in most cases, it might be lower. Power usage is lower, of course, but that’s really not enough to drive the cost of a motherboard and processor swap. The gain for mobile users look to be more substantial than desktop users, which is certainly key to Intel’s future, since laptop and ultraportable PC sales is the one bright spot in the PC growth arena.

Continue reading Economic & Innovation World Review Report – June-July 2013 →

Consumer Technology World Brief

3D printers are all the rage now with much discussions happening over the ramifications of being able to print virtually any device and in particular the ability to print homemade weapons such as guns. NASA however has taken a different approach toward the interest in 3D printing with an idea that it can be used to print food. They have announced a grant to develop the world’s first 3D food printer. Most economists believe the current system to produce food is unsustainable and in the near future it is inevitable that food prices will cost more. The idea is to change what we conventionally see as food. The food printer is suggested to be able to utilize proteins, carbohydrates and sugars to create edible food products. One proposed alternative is that it will be able to provide a customized nutrition level on an individual scale based on their personal requirements. One possible application of this concept for NASA is food for long space travel, where food has to stay edible for periods as long as 15-30 years.

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Consumer Technology Regional Brief

Instead of relying on a bog-standard bulb to beam light out over a darkened road, car headlights in the future would use something more akin to a projector. A camera sits nestled beneath that projector, keeping an eye on drops of rain as they enter the headlights’ beams. Information from that camera is sent to a processing unit, which identifies raindrops and makes a guess as to where each droplet is headed. The projector then blots out the bits of its projection where the rain drops are. The result is a light that shines out from the front of a car in the dark, but doesn’t highlight any rain. This would increase the visibility of driving at night as the view of the driver would not be inhibited by the lights being reflected off the raindrops. This is being jointly developed by Intel and Carnegie Mellon University.

Continue reading Economic & Innovation World Review Report April – May 2013 →

Mobile Payment is not a new concept in the commercial world, in the early 2000s when European mobile operators started launching GPRS-based data services they had targeted payments as a key opportunity. But, as with a lot of innovations that come before their time, the infrastructure was not fully developed, the services not completely streamlined and most importantly the customers’ behavior and mindset had not yet adapted to this concept. By the mid-2000s the mobile payment services were reasonably successful in Japan and South Korea – markets that are known to be early adopters of ICT and mobile technology.

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Facebook shook up the tech world in recent days with the announcement that it is launching a Facebook “home” software package that will provide a “wrapper” for Android based phones and place Facebook live streams and information directly on the home screen. Facebook has already come under fire in recent months for its data mining practices and user privacy issues. Now, many experts are claiming that Facebook’s “Home” software could lead to even more (legal) invasions of privacy.

Continue reading Facebook Launches Assault On Google’s Android With “Home” Software →

Consumer Technology World Brief

What was once a form for companies to protect their intellectual property is now involving countries as they form their own patent-acquisition companies with the goal of helping domestic technology firms and possibly making some money in the process. Countries that have taken such steps involve South Korea, France, China and Japan. The beginning of state-sponsored intellectual property dealers adds a fresh geopolitical element to the debate about patent trolls and how to protect legitimate inventions without stifling innovation. It could also complicate efforts to improve global cooperation on trade-related matters such as online piracy and computer security.

Continue reading Economic and Innovation World Review Report March-April 2013 →

While Silicon Valley and other entrepreneurial hotbeds have long been dominated by Venture Capital firms, traditional investment companies are now looking to cash in on the profits made by start ups. Hedge funds, private equity firms, and other asset management based investment companies are now challenging VC firms and their dominant place as the capital source of choice for young Start-Ups.

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Consumer Technology World Brief

Mobile World Congress was hosted in the Mobile World Capital Barcelona where more than 72,000 attendees from 200 countries were treated to a wealth of learning and networking opportunities, product showcases and announcements. More than 1,700 companies showcased their organizations through exhibition halls which provided glimpses of exciting new phones, tablets, mobile devices, back-end solutions, technologies, applications, accessories, and more. With a slew of new phones and devices being unveiled; Mozilla Firefox released its own mobile operating system (OS) competing head-on with Android and iOS. The OS is a HTML5 web-based browser sitting on top of Android kernels and all apps are delivered through the browser – similar to how the iPhone used web apps when it was first launched in 2007. Initially, Firefox Mobile OS will run on low-end devices with processors of 1GHz or less and Mozilla has said that Firefox will eventually be modified to work with more powerful handsets, but for now it is concentrating on the low end.

Continue reading Economic & Innovation World Review Report Jan-Feb 2013 →

It’s no secret that Microsoft’s Windows 8 Phones have been selling poorly, along with their tablets and the operating system as a whole. This was expected on Microsoft’s part and the company acknowledged from the get go that it would have to fight an uphill battle. Now Microsoft is looking to blitz Africa before its rivals Google and Apple come to dominate the market. Will this tactic help Microsoft finally gain the market share it desperately needs or is this simply a last ditch effort of a failed undertaking?

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Consumer Technology World Brief

Raspberry Pi is definitely in the news again with Google Inc. donating 15,000 units to schools in the U.K. “This is a brilliant way for us to find kids all over the country whose aptitude for computing can now be explored properly,” wrote a Raspberry Pi Foundation representative in a blog post. “We believe that access to tools is a fundamental necessity in finding out who you are and what you’re good at. We want those tools to be within everybody’s grasp, right from the start”. There has been a lot of debate on the purpose and how sufficient is the current computer knowledge being taught to the younger generations as the whole world progresses towards a more technological centric approach to live our lives. There is a definite lack of structure to encourage students to explore their creativity and expand their experience with computer programming and modeling which is proving to be an important skill in the demands of today’s computer based innovation industry.

Continue reading Economic & Innovation World Review Report – January 2013 →