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Social media could transform the NHS and other public services in the same way that file-sharing changed the music industry, a conference has heard.Growing use of tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, offered an opportunity to reinvent services, delegates heard. “It’s happened to the music and travel industries and it’s going to happen to public services,” said Dr Paul Hodgkin, founder of the Patient Opinion site that organised the MyPublicServices conference. He said that conversations about people’s experiences with public services were going on all over the web and needed to be taken into account.“This is about turning things upside down so the thing that looks like a deficit, your experience, becomes the gift you have to give to other people.” “I’m not sure that the government can re-engineer itself from the inside out,” he said. “It’s going to take the demands of people to force it into shape.” Read more at news.bbc.co.uk

“it’s interesting to see how large a company that provides an actually useful service can get bigger than one who’s apparent key reasons for existing are for you to share embarrassing photos of yourself and tend a virtual farm. Skype has also not felt a need to try to weasel its way into every corner of the Web with questionable tools that track your movement from site-to-site, or manipulate your profile because you click a “Like” button somewhere. Skype just exists. If you choose to use it, great, but if you don’t, they aren’t in your face about it.”

Some might say it’s like comparing apples and oranges as one is a social network, and one is not, but it’s still interesting to see Facebook is not the biggest thing out there despite what that company might like to have you thinkGigaOm provided some stats that Skype gave out at the recent eComm ConferenceSkype added 39 million registered users in the fourth quarter to end the year with a total of 560 millionSkype in 2009 accounted for 12 percent of the world’s international calling minutes, a 50 percent increase over 2008

36 percent of Skype-to-Skype calls as of the end of the fourth quarter included video — in other words, Skype is going to figure prominently in the video conferencing business, challenging more established players with its no-cost solutionlike Facebook, there are people with multiple accounts, and there are also spammers, but those accounts get shut down pretty fastSkype has also not felt a need to try to weasel its way into every corner of the Web

The Internet Has Been a Force for Good” No. In the days when the Internet was young, our hopes were high. As with any budding love affair, we wanted to believe our newfound object of fascination could change the world. The Internet was lauded as the ultimate tool to foster tolerance, destroy nationalism, and transform the planet into one great wired global village. Writing in 1994, a group of digital aficionados led by Esther Dyson and Alvin Toffler published a manifesto modestly subtitled “A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age” that promised the rise of  “‘electronic neighborhoods’ bound together not by geography but by shared interests.” Nicholas Negroponte, then the famed head of the MIT MediaLab, dramatically predicted in 1997 that the Internet would shatter borders between nations and usher in a new era of world peace. Read more at www.foreignpolicy.com

Currency: A formal system for shaping, enabling, and measuring currents (or flows)Currencies involve a number of functions, each of which can be modified independently: unit of measure, store of value, token of status, medium of exchange, etc. Monetary Currency or Money is just a common way of bundling those functions as a medium of exchange for a commercial economy. It is a minuscule part of the full spectrum of possible currencies. In this expanded sense, currencies are tools for seeing and changing flows.One specific way we use them is to create collective intelligence at the level of our social entities and institutions. At the individual level, we see humans born, growing, learning, walking around and dying. However, the state “sees” humans created through birth certificates, their activities and accounts woven together by social security numbers, their communication patterns via cell phone bills, and their discorporation via death certificates.Read more at newcurrencyfrontiers.com 

Metaio thinks that tablets will become increasingly important devices for AR, describing them as "the perfect enabler for augmented reality" as it published a video showcasing its Junaio AR technology running on slate devices.

Metaio's bullishness is about more than just the iPad: the company thinks the new wave of tablets running Google's Android 3.0 operating system – starting with the Motorola Xoom – will create new opportunities for innovative AR applications.

It also cites dual-core processors as a key factor enabling tablets to be used for AR applications including instructional guides; product information; e-commerce; entertainment and gaming

Post-revolution Egypt is in a state of flux overlooked by outsiders. New political parties are forming while various factions hustle for power. As Egypt gears up for free elections, tech-savvy geeks are betting that their projects will have a major impact on how people will vote.

A combination of academics and entrepreneurs recently worked with Egyptian activists on a “Hackathon for Egypt” that provides some interesting--and fascinating--clues.

Participants in the hackathon were organized by Cloud to Street, a project dedicated to aiding Egyptian activists through technology. Cloud to Street is headed up by a loose group of primarily Canadian scholars and diplomats. Approximately 75 programmers took part, as well as Egyptian activists who attended both in person and via teleconference

I was especially interested in commentary on the Chinese market by Robin Goad, Hitwise UK’s research director, who adds some sharp focus on the huge growth in micro-blogging in China – and the tool of choice isn’t Twitter: [...] Chinese Internet users are primarily interested in micro-blogging when it comes to social media.  Sina Micro blog (China’s alternative to Twitter) accounted for 1 in every 158 Internet visits in China for April 2011. This makes China one of the most voracious micro-blogging nations worldwide, with a greater market share of visits going to micro-blogging sites in China than in the UK, US, France, Canada, Australia or India. Twitter is by far the most dominant micro-blogging platform in the UK and US, but Twitter accounted for 1 in every 250 visits online in the UK and 1 in every 555 in the US during April 2011, much lower than Sina Micro’s dominance of the online market in China. What’s more, this data doesn’t take into account mobile or 3rd party applications, so the actual usage of micro-blogging in China is likely much higher than our statistics suggest. The metrics Robin posted underline the sheer scale of what’s happening in China in terms of connecting people. Add that info to other metrics such as Royal Pingdom’s The incredible growth of the Internet since 2000. It shows China as clearly the top country on the internet with 420 million users (compared to 22.5 million in 2000).

People Don't Care about PCs...the Buzz is All About Mobile To paint an image of the very large scale of the mobile ecosystem, Jacobs talked numbers: There are 1.3 billion 3G connections worldwide, and there will be 2 billion more connections by 2015. Mobile data use will increase 10 to 12 times over the next four years. There are over 120 HSPA+ mobile networks and 180 commercial EVDO networks offering mobile broadband. There are 200 LTE networks planned, 20 of which have launched now.

Mobile Unleashing the "Greatest Wave of Creativity in History" And what is that? Only that mobile is going to unleash the "greatest wave of creativity in history." Dr. Jacobs said he knew that sounded like a "heady" proposition, especially because many mobile developers are just trying to build an app people like, he says. "But your app could reach hundreds of millions of users!" Now is the time to "think and act globally," Jacobs said. "Mobile is now the dominant computing platform, and it's never going back."

Augmented Reality Demoed as Marketing Tool AR, or augmented reality, was also at the forefront of today's keynote, with a sobering presentation from John Batter, Co-President of Production, Dreamworks Animation SKG. He produced data showing the decline of DVD sales over the years.

Source: http://enipedia.tudelft.nl Enipedia is an active exploration into the applications of wikis and the semantic web for energy and industry issues. Through this we seek to create a collaborative environment for discussion, while also providing the tools that allow for data from different sources to be connected, queried, and visualized from different perspectives

Dorai Thodla, CEO of the US-based iMorph Inc. (http://bit.ly/F4TThodlaD), speaks frequently on the emerging trends in IT.

This Internet of things will cause another fundamental shift. The shift will be at several levels – at the chip level (hundreds of cores), at the device level (smart phones more powerful than your current laptops), at the interaction level (smart devices talking to each other), application level (smart applications leveraging all these sensors for different uses), and interaction level (caused by touch, gestures and voice inputs).

In which areas of emerging IT do you see India playing a major role? India can play many roles both as a consumer of the technology and a producer.

While the focus of this post is not specifically Apple or the iPad, it’s almost impossible to talk about successful mobile strategies without recognizing that the iPad has created a transitional moment for the Learning & Development world. The reasons why have been the subject of countless blog posts, but I think DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, in this video from TechCrunch, says it best:

“[The iPad] it’s the first device that actually is a reflection of me – or us. It’s so revolutionary that it’s no longer about me adapting myself to somebody else’s set of programmings or the way in which a device is going to engage. It is the reverse. It is as though I’m looking in a mirror.”

While it took the iPad to make learner-controlled content a reality, this level of flexibility is now the gold standard for delivery to any device, be it tablets, smart phones or any number of performance support devices.

Workers who don't trust the boss to keep track of their wages can now do it themselves with a new smart phone application from the Department of Labor. But employers worry that the time sheet app, along with other new initiatives, could encourage even more wage and hour lawsuits. The app lets workers calculate regular work hours, break time and overtime pay to create their own wage records. Department officials say the information could prove valuable in a dispute over pay or during a government investigation when an employer has failed to keep accurate records. "This app will help empower workers to understand and stand up for their rights when employers have denied their hard-earned pay," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said. The app is the latest example of the Obama administration's push for more aggressive enforcement of wage and hour laws. The agency has hired about 300 more investigators to probe complaints of unpaid work time, lack of overtime pay and minimum wage violations.

Microsoft's Kinect has been the fastest-selling consumer electronic device in history, has over 10 million owners, and connects nearly 35 million users through Xbox Live--all of whom are capable of online sharing. "This type of experience is really an untapped market because these devices already live at home," says Dawson. KinectShop is primed to seamlessly integrate with real-life shopping experiences. "With an experience like KinectShop, a shopper can easily scan a QR code or swipe their NFC smartphone to take their experience with them and use wayfinding tools to locate the product in-store," Luke Hamilton, Dawson's Razorfish colleague, writes to Fast Company in an email.

GPS devices have become ubiquitous: Millions of drivers rely on them for directions.

The government hopes to construct a new air traffic control system based on GPS navigation rather than the use of radar.

They've also become an important tool in agriculture.

It is the only collaboration application that allows you to engage groups of people with the simplicity of email, the workflow of survey tools and the confidence, flexibility and documentation of a professionally facilitated process.

For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand its place within it. Roboticists have developed tools to accomplish this task, known as simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM. But the sensors required to build that map have traditionally been either expensive and bulky or cheap and inaccurate. Laser arrays cost a few thousand dollars and weigh several pounds, and the images they capture are only two-dimensional. Stereo cameras are less expensive, lighter, and can construct 3-D maps, but they require a massive amount of computing power. Until a reasonably priced, easier method could be designed, autonomous robots were trapped in the lab.

On November 4, a solution was discovered—in a videogame. That’s the day Microsoft released the Kinect for Xbox 360, a $150 add-on that allows players to direct the action in a game simply by moving their bodies. Most of the world focused on the controller-free interface, but roboticists saw something else entirely: an affordable, lightweight camera that could capture 3-D images in real time.

A group from UC Berkeley strapped a Kinect to a quadrotor—a small helicopter with four propellers—enabling it to fly autonomously around a room. A couple of students at the University of Bundeswehr Munich attached a Kinect to a robotic car and sent it through an obstacle course. And a team from the University of Warwick in the UK built a robot that had the potential to navigate around post-earthquake rubble and search for trapped victims. “When something is that cheap, it opens up all sorts of possibilities,” says Ken Conley of Willow Garage, which sells a $500 open source robotics kit that incorporates the Kinect. (The previous non-Kinect version cost $280,000.) “Now it’s in the hands of just about anybody.”

"With a seemingly continuous wave of attacks hitting the public and commercial sectors, there has never been a more prodigious period for hackers, argues PC Pro. What has led to the sudden hacking boom? Ease of access to tools has also led to an explosion in the numbers of people actively looking for companies with weakened defenses, according to security experts. Meanwhile, the recession has left thousands of highly skilled IT staff out of work and desperate for money, while simultaneously crimping companies' IT security budgets. The pressure to get systems up and running as quickly as possible also means that networks aren't locked down as tightly as they should be, which can leave back doors open for hackers."

The internet is a tool which contributes to the "progress of humankind as a whole" and should be available to all.That is the view of Frank La Rue, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

Mr La Rue was tasked with writing a report looking into global access to the internet as a medium for freedom of opinion and expression.

In the final document [PDF] presented to the Human Rights Council this week, he concluded that the removal of an individual's internet access should only take place in "few, exceptional and limited circumstances prescribed by human rights law".

while workers want autonomy and flexibility, they also want social connection. In an interview, Yosh Beier of Collaborative Coaching summed this up, saying, “people want to have control over the where and when of their work experience, but they don’t necessarily want to isolate themselves.” How will this tension be resolved in the future?

Many point to technology to keep people connected across physical distance, tools “that will make the remote less remote,” in Beier’s words. He points to the mania for Foursquare in the consumer space as an example of people who are physically distant but use tech to “locate themselves.” The same is true for Facebook, which provides a virtual social connection and is a bit like a remote social gathering. Beier sees this trend of using tech to overcome the social isolation of web-enabled distance moving from consumers to web workers:

But instead of substituting virtual spaces for real ones (the Matrix model), some folks are focusing on substituting virtual selves for physical presence and meeting in real spaces (the Avatar model). Just look at our recent piece on robot avatars you can send to work or events in your stead and control over the Internet. Commenters on the post were skeptical, but Trevor Blackwell, CEO of Anybots (he’s also a partner in Y Combinator), which makes the robo-avatars pictured above, insisted in an interview that the idea wasn’t science fiction:

In the modern web, Google and Facebook are the feudal lords and people are the peasants — at least when it comes to control of the photos, comments, 'likes' and other data that each person posts online.

"The users contribute their own content to you for free. You sell it back to them with banner ads put on there. And on top of that, you spy on them to gather profiling data," says Michiel de Jong, of the Unhosted project to decentralise user data.

As your friends talk to each other, they feed Facebook data about how information flows between its users. It's likely that your friends will have their own friends and will talk to them as well. Every time these first- and second-level contacts interact, it gives Facebook more pointers to where you fit within your network. To you, it's a bunch of your mates; to Facebook, it's an expanding cloud of data to be harvested.