iPhone leads business telecoms technology conference
December 7, 2009
140 Irish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) participated in a business telecoms conference to look at technology used in smart phones, particularly the Apple iPhone.
The Enterprise Ireland event, which took place in Dublin, Irleand, was intended to give an overview into the technological possibilities that smart phones offer to SMEs from both a business telecoms and management point of view. By giving a broad outlook, it is hoped more organisations will begin to utilise these smart phones in future.
With features like mobile broadband internet access, GPS (with real time mapping) and bespoke applications (i.e. Apps), devices like the iPhone have a wealth of opportunities available for the SME business industry. This is all supported by the fact that newer smart phones are increasingly boasting features like high colour and resolution touch screens, which are also capable of multitouch processing. Multitouch allows more gestures and commands to be recognised than single touch screens, which are limited to taps and slides in one place on the screen at a time.
The exhibition took a look at the requirements and costs involved with developing the aforementioned applications and their benefits to SMEs as a whole and individually. It was attended by over 140 people from different Irish SMEs and development industries.
Think twice before you think of stealing this LAPTOP.
March 10, 2009
Scientists have developed a laptop which can shout `stop thief! when stolen. It seems to be the latest remarkable technological fete. A team of scientists working at a leading soft ware company, Front Door Software Corporation, has designed a soft ware programme, called Retriever, that can make the laptop speak out when it has been reported missing. Read more
Control your iPod by just blinking.
March 9, 2009
Believe it or not when a wearer sticks his tongue out, it can stop or stop music. Soon you will be able to change music on your iPod or even start up your washing machine thanks to a new Japanese gadget. Read more
Device for hearing by touch is on its way
February 28, 2009
According to the researchers, the devices they are working on will particularly be an important tool for hearing impaired people who generally rely on lip reading. For those who can’t afford cochlear implants, the device will be a boon.
Ted Moallem, a graduate student said: ‘Most hearing impaired people will not have access to that kind of technology in our life time. Tactile devices can be several times cheaper than cochlear implants.” Researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology( MIT) are working on developing a new generation of tactile devices, which will translate sound waves into vibrations so that people with hearing impairment may feel them by their skin, and thereby read lips more accurately.
Moallem is working together with Charlotte Reed, a senior research scientist in MIT’s Research Lab of Electronics for developing a soft-ware programme that can be compatible with current smart phones, allowing such devices to be transformed into unobtrusive tactile aids for the hearing impaired.
The devices that have at least two vibrations ranges, one for high-frequency sounds and one for low-frequency sounds are being tested by the researchers. Several studies taken up reveal that human ear can perceive frequencies up to 20,000 hertz, but for touch receptors in the skin, optimal frequency are below 500 hertz.
Reed’s study conducted 20 years ago showed that the deaf-blind subjects could successfully understand speech with the Tadoma Technique method.
Physics Nobel for subatomic research shared by three scientists
October 10, 2008
Yoichiro Nambu of the University of the Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute will receive half of the 10 million kroner prize (approximately $1.3 million) awarded by the Royal Swedish Accademy of Sciences. Macoto Koybayashi, of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshibhide Maskawaa of the Yukawa Institute for The oretical Physics (YITP), Koyoto University, will each receive a quarter of the prize.
The shared Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to an American and two Japanese physicists for their work exploring the hidden symmetries between elementary particles that are the deepest constituents of the nature. Since Galileo time, physicists have been guided in their quest for the ultimate laws of nature by the search for symmetries, or properties of nature that appear the same under different circumstances.
Michael Turner of the University of Chicago, describing his colleague as the most humble man of all times, said: “You have to look for symmetries even when you can’t see them.”
In 1960’s, Nambu, suggested that symmetries in the laws of nature might be hidden or “broken” in actual practice. For example, a pencil standing on its end is symmetrical, but unstable and will wind up on the table pointing in only one direction or the other: The principle is now embedded in all of modern particle physics.
Big Bang machine shut down until April`09
September 27, 2008
According to the officials at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, the world’s largest and newest Hardon Collider, a particle accelerator, will not begin operations again until April. Only two weeks ago, the centre for nuclear research sent the first beams of protons around the machine’s 17 mile-long under ground race track. LHC is built to speed the subatomic particles called protons to nearly the speed of light and then smash them together in search of new forms of matter and energy. This state cannot be produced in smaller machines.
Last Friday, liquid helium, which is used to cool the magnets to superconducting temperatures of only about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit about absolute zero, leaked into the ‘collider tunnel’ due to a faulty electrical connection between two of the superconducting electromagnets.
For repairs, it will be necessary to warm the magnets up and then cool them back down again which will take at least two months. Scientists say this means scant time is available to run the Collider before it has to shut down for the winter in early December considering saving money on electricity.
UK firms lead bidding shortlist for building Galileo satellite system
September 25, 2008
UK companies are leading the shortlist of firms, which bid for the contract to build the Galileo Satellite System for Europe. The list of bidders, made public by the European Space Agency (ESA) and European Commission, has 11 contenders. According to the Commission, bidders were short listed based on pre-defined exclusion and selection criteria. It reported the exclusion of 10 applications for construction of Galileo satellite system.
The UK company Logica is pitted against Thales Alenia Space of France for the ground mission system contract. The ground-control system contract would see competition between two UK firms, G-Nav grouping and Astrium represented by IS&S and Lockheed Martin respectively. Germany’s DLR and Italy’s Telespazo are pitted against G-Nav group for the right to run operations.
According to Logica’s director of space and satellite communications Stuart Martin, Logica has the unique advantage of bringing together experts from different disciplines to assist private and public sectors in fulfilling business and technical requirements of building Galileo system. He claimed that Logica’s pan-European space team had rendered its expertise to the industry and European Commission in defining and developing Galileo and its applications. Galileo’s construction has already commenced with the initial investment of 1.3bn out of total budget of 4bn for the entire system.
Google phone will be available by November in British stores
September 22, 2008
On 23rd September, a mobile telephone tailored to run on Google’s Android software will debut in New York City. US telecom carrier T-Mobile is set to unveil the ‘Google phone’ built by Taiwanese firm HTC. It will have the device available for sale in the month of October. The mobile will hit the British stores by November.
THe phone is one of many smartphones due to launch this year. These kinds of phones tend to be popular with gadget-lovers and business users, as opposed to simpler phones like the Sony Ericcson K850i and the Nokia 6500 Classic.
The GI – dubbed as the ‘G-phone’ – which will run on Android software, is expected to cost $199, which incidentally is around the same basic cost as the basic 8GB version of the iPhone. The GI is designed to improve the speed and quality of using the Internet on handsets.
Android is being developed as an ‘open source’ platform, meaning any one is free to use the technology to make mobile telephones compatible with the networks of multiple carriers.
Open Handset Alliance, a group of 34 members, was announced by Google in November 2007 to develop Android. Among the companies that demonstrated Android phone prototypes at the Mobile World Congress were China Mobile, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, Telefonica, LG and eBay. It remains to be seen whether it becomes the dominant operating system for mobile phones.
Big Bang experiment pitches Hawking against Higgs for a face off
September 12, 2008
Two of the world’s leading nuclear physicists, both of which are in line for Physics Nobel, are engaged in a public argument over CERN’s Large Hadron Collider experiment.
Professor Stephen Hawking and Professor Peter Higgs, the man who gave his name to the Higgs boson, the particle at the centre of LHC, are both contenders for the Noble Prize and the winner will eventually be the one who is proved correct.
Hawkings, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, in an interview, remarked that ‘it would be more exciting if CERN’s £2.6 billion project did not find the ‘God Particle’ that it had set to identify. That will show something is wrong, and he will need to think again.’ This remark led to the row between the two world-famous scientists.
Professor Higgs, 79, who is apparently not pleased with Hawking’s comments and says in his reply:
“ I have to confess I have not read the paper in which Stephen Hawkins makes this claim.But I have read one he wrote, which I think is the basis for the kind of calculation he does. And frankly I do not think the way he does is good enough. From a particle physics, quantum theory point of view, you have to put a lot of more than just gravity into the theory to have a consistent theory and I do not think Stephen has done that. I am very doubtful about his calculations.”
Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain, the experiment is bound to open doors for new kinds of study in Physics that will eventually benefit the mankind.
Big Bang, world’s biggest experiment conducted
September 8, 2008
Conditions not seen since the birth of the universe almost 14 billion years ago will be recaptured. The Large Hardon Collider will fire particles around its 17-mile tunnel. Next step will be to smash protons-one of the building blocks of matter- into each other at energies up to seven times greater than any achieved before.
Alas, as human race is an apprehensive one, the scientists behind the world’s biggest ever scientific experiment have received death threats from critics who claim it could cause the end of the world. Some of the scientists, working on the project, who include a Welsh miner’s son and a pop star, have already received threatening emails and been bombarded by telephone calls from worried members of the public who fear the machine could cause earthquakes and tsunamis that will destroy the world.
Actually, experts are attempting to recreate the forces that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. The ₤4.4 billion machine at Cern, the European nuclear research organisation based near Geneva, will be activated on this Wednesday. There will be others who believe in the saying “there is always a ray of light at the end of the tunnel” will be anxiously looking forward to the results of the experiment.
