Group items tagged

Mark Roberti, founding editor of the publication RFID Journal, writes in an editorial this month that while M2M communication has great potential, the "real value" for sensor technology lies in machine-to-object communication.

"On the other hand, a firm could put passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) transponders inside a container at various levels. Since the liquid would interfere with the ability to read the tags, a company could determine liquid levels by ascertaining which tags can and can not be read...you can't put a Wi-Fi transmitter or a cell phone on every box of Tide detergent, bag of Granny Smith apples or Van Heusen shirt. Low-cost RFID tags will, one day, be put on all of these things, enabling M2O communication."

Leading wireless industry analyst Chetan Sharma detailed a similar vision to us in an interview earlier this year. (How 50 Billion Connected Devices Could Transform Brand Marketing & Everyday Life.) Sharma talked with us about cereal boxes with sensors inside them.

As Groupon prepares for its IPO, critics are circling the daily deals site wondering whether it's worth the hefty $25 billion valuation it currently holds. Key to the future of Groupon's success is its ability to woo merchants, with the promise that participating will boost business and draw new customers.

But recent story in TechCrunch highlighted the hesitation that some merchants may feel about getting involved with the site. TechCrunch revisited one merchant who proclaimed that signing up for Groupon was the "single worst business decision" she had made. Her story echoes other merchants who have claimed that Groupons actually result in unprofitability, administrative nightmares, and, to cap it all off, that they don't result in new regular customers.

Jessie Burke, owner of Posies Cafe in Oregon, first told her story in September 2010. According to Burke, Groupon pushed her to offer a deal that would let users buy $13 of product for $6. Groupon originally wanted 100 percent of the money (what it usually takes when consumers pay less than $10 on a deal), but relented, revising their percentage cut of the deal price to 50 percen

Long-awaited data from an international study have shown no evidence of increased risk of brain tumors associated with mobile phones, except in people who have the most exposure. But design flaws of the Interphone study, which is partly industry funded, suggest that the latest results cannot be taken to mean that cell phones and brain cancer are unrelated, critics say. "I'm not telling people to stop using the phone. I'm saying that I can't tell you if cell phones are dangerous, but I can tell you that I'm not sure that they are safe," said Dr. Devra Davis, professor of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. The study itself, to be published Tuesday in the International Journal of Epidemiology, acknowledged that the findings were not definitive and called for more research. But Daniel Krewski, professor of epidemiology at the University of Ottawa in Ontario and one of the Interphone collaborators, said the study went to "great lengths to make sure that the results were scientifically sound."

At the highest exposure levels -- using a mobile phone half an hour a day over a 10-year period -- the study found a 40 percent increased risk of glioma brain tumors. With adjustments for statistical biases, that turned into 80 percent. But Krewski and colleagues say that there is not enough evidence to show a causal connection, and the group of participants using their phones this much was relatively small.

"HP scientists have made a small breakthrough in the development of a next-generation memory technology called memristors, which some see as a potential replacement for today's widely used flash and DRAM technologies. In a paper to be published today in the journal Nanotechnology, scientists report that they have mapped out the basic chemistry and structure of what happens inside a memristor during its electrical operation."

Last year, he co-founded (with Ed Lucero) a company called Tackable to develop his ideas, and in February, we described here Tackable’s first product: a pair of iPhone apps that Tackable envisions as the basis for a social network that “organizes media on a map.” Now Tackable has rolled out, in partnership with the newspapers of the Bay Area News Group, something much more complex and ambitious: an iPad app called TapIn BayArea, which Stangel describes as “the world’s first location-aware digital newspaper.” TapIn, at launch, is already an impressive, sophisticated product that shows potential to evolve in multiple ways. And its ability to engage users at various levels bodes well for its capacity to generate revenue.

With all the ephemeral and seemingly disconnected data that it holds on us, the company hopes to "one day tell people things they may want to know as they are walking down the street, without having to type in any search queries", reports Scott Morrison in the Wall Street Journal. "Think of it as a serendipity engine," said Google's Eric Schmidt at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference last September."Serendipity" is the latest holy grail in the Silicon Valley software zeitgeist: an ill-defined buzzword that developers use to describe services that will connect people with online ephemera they would not normally find on their own. Yet a website's success relies on delivering successes, and something that tries to predict serendipity will fail almost every time. "If you can plan it, how is it serendipitous?" asks reader ShockJockey on the Guardian's Technology blog. Indeed.

NFC tag scans for connection sharing, social networking and marketing are increasing at a rate of 22 per cent per month, according to new research carried out by Kimtag. Kimtag, a UK based connection hub, analysed the visits to 10,000 selected Kimtag connection pages over a six month period ending in August 2011. The company compared QR Code, NFC tag, direct and referral hits from visitors around the world. 

During the research, Kimtag regarded a successful visit as a user reaching and fully downloading a Kimtag connection page via an address assigned specifically for NFC tags and then subsequently visiting a connection such as a social network or website.  The research revealed that the number NFC tag scans grew by an average 22 per cent month on month. Over the whole six month period, NFC scans increased by over 170 per cent.

Phil Coote, Kimtag’s CEO, commented, "The research illustrates that while a lot of the current focus within the NFC industry has been on payment systems, the use of NFC to empower the new ‘internet of things’ is likely to play an equally important role in it’s growth." 

A research team at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden has come up with a new optical amplifier that can help boost the efficiency of backhaul optical networks, a move that could have a big impact on the overall economics of bandwidth.

Chalmers’ new breakthrough is more efficient and allows optical signals to be sent over longer distances 4,000 kilometers as opposed to 1,000 kilometers – which in turn would make the cost of building and operating the networks cheaper.

“The entire optical telecom industry is our market. But the technology is generic, and scalable to other wavelengths like visible or infrared light, which makes it attractive in areas such as measurements, spectroscopy, laser radar technology and any applications where detection of very weak levels of light is essential”, says Peter Andrekson.

SAS Airlines begins distributing NFC stickers for frequent flyers' mobile phones; Help Alert solution supports mobile-phone app for student and staff safety; Sony Ericsson selects NXP's NFC solution for its Android-based smartphones; Isle of Wight Festival guests sport contactless wristbands; U.K. mental-health facility deploys AeroScout's patient- and staff-safety solution; Secura Key offers updated card-ordering guide, intros Web training; Libelium adds new sensor board to Smart Cities solution.

Craig Mod dreams of a different sort of book: Imagine a future where instead of lending someone a book, you lend them your bookmarks. Where your notes, annotations and references are synchronized across platforms and applications. Where your bookmarks belong to you, and a record of every book you read is saved and stored securely, no matter how or where you read it. Kevin Kelly envisions how the publishing industry will adapt. Alexis Madrigal explores how the New York Public Library has moved beyond books, existing now as a social network with three million active users.

New research by Dr Brock Bastian from UQ's School of Psychology has found evidence that playing violent video games leads players to see themselves, and their opponents, as lacking in core human qualities such as warmth, open-mindedness, and intelligence.

In a recently published paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Dr Bastian and his co-authors looked at whether the experience of cyber-violence had dehumanising consequences for the self-concept of game players and well as their opponents.

Dr Bastian said given his findings, it was not surprising that many people were concerned about the effects of playing violent video games, especially when they appeared to reflect changes in people's behaviour, emotions, and cognitions in ways consistent with a loss of humanity.