An orb with a galaxy of uses [Business Week]
Ambient Devices didn’t realise how many different applications people would find for its data-display invention. It’s a lesson in side effects. Read full story
Ambient Devices didn’t realise how many different applications people would find for its data-display invention. It’s a lesson in side effects. Read full story
High tech’s biggest name are keen to set up research operations in India — and not just because of the cheap labor. Sarnoff is one of many Western tech research outfits that have turned to India for its combination…
US teenagers prefer instant messaging rather than e-mail to stay in touch with each other, research shows. A Pew Internet and American Life Project study found online teens are increasingly tech-savvy. Nearly nine out of 10 teenagers say they use…
Mobiles are becoming “media channels” as music, games, gambling and adult content clamour to make the industry worth $42.8bn by 2010. Read full story
That’s due to “near-monopolists” in many areas, says futurist Mark Anderson, whose newsletter is read by the likes of Gates and Dell. Mark Anderson just might be one of the most influential technology futurists around. His weekly newsletter, Strategic News…
The Ambient Experience suite uses Philips’ lighting and consumer electronics to create a welcoming and patient-friendly environment for children undergoing medical scans. Featuring a Philips Brilliance CT (computed tomography) scanner in a room with curved walls, it lets young patients…
CEO Gerard Kleisterlee tells how an emphasis on smart design pushes innovation, makes happy customers — and boosts the bottom line. Read full interview (via Brian Regienczuk)
Cell phones know whom you called and which calls you dodged, but they can also record where you went, how much sleep you got and predict what you’re going to do next. At least, these are the capabilities of 100…
The UK’s largest charity for deaf people and a design magazine are launching an exhibition of futuristic hearing aids to make them more popular. The show, called Hearwear, opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London this week. Read…
The enormous growth of mobile phones in Tanzania is helping to close the digital divide between Africa and the West. Mobile phones seem to have created a new sector of the economy, and some now wonder if the emphasis on…
France Télécom this month offered up its latest version of convergence by tacking on a few useful services to its Livebox home networking product, a “triple play” service combining Internet, telephone and television service. The most interesting of the new…
Three French companies, with an assist from the Finns and the Swedes, have combined their ingenuity to come up with a digital pen-and-paper system called PaperPC that, broadly speaking, digitises anything you can write with a pen. What makes it…
You can outsource product design to a third party, which in turn may use big chunks of external intellectual property; you can outsource physical manufacturing; and now, you can even outsource your research and development. […] What’s left? Not to…
First there were TVs. Then came PCs. Now, mobile phones are becoming the ‘third screen’ for viewing video. Read full story
Sun leads way in telework — working not just from home but anywhere. Sun is on the leading edge when it comes to “telework” — a coinage that nowadays replaces the term “telecommuting” because it encompasses not just working from…
Information overload infects the enterprise as much as the individual, but companies are more likely to pay for a cure. Read full story
The BBC News website reporters attending the TEDGlobal (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford sum up their impressions as the gathering ends. Read full story
A society of virtual “agents†— each with a remarkably realistic personality and the ability to learn and communicate in their own language — is being crafted by scientists from five European research institutes who hope to gain insights into…
As with all previous leaps in technology, cell phones are used to empower organising efforts (just like early campaigns using printed materials, TV, radio, fax, email, web, etc.). The time has come to recognise the power of the cell phone…
There is a perverse hypocrisy about the whole jobs debate, especially in Europe. The colonial powers invaded countries like India and China, pillaged them of their treasures and commodities and made sure their industries weren’t allowed to develop, so…