Mary Meeker, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, has for years released an annual report on where she sees the internet going.
Things have changed since she started it. In 1995, the first year of the report, mobile phone penetration was 1% of the population. Today, it's 73%.Latest report
The latest report has just come out and within it she's collected pages of fascinating snippets of data and factoids related to changes in our internet-driven lives. She talks of new forms of e-commerce, smartphones, and how Millennials see things differently than older folks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We've been hearing about speed trials over fiber for years. In 2009, researchers in Denmark were the first to beat the one-terabit mark. For comparison, today's commercial fiber usually runs at 100 gigabits per second.This year's real-world tests, by switch-maker Alcatel-Lucent over existing long-distance fiber, have obtained 400 gigabits per second, or 50 gigabytes in one second.That's especially good because it's real-world and four times better than the current, normally available pipes.Bits are used to measure rate of transfer, and bytes to measure capacity, by the way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple's App Store was launched on July 10, 2008 with 552 apps. The first weekend saw 10 million downloads."Stunning," was Apple CEO Steve Jobs comment at the time, according to Macworld.Well, as we know, apps have since taken off and app stores have spread to different devices. The latest of which is the connected car's first app gallery, just announced.Dongle
It comes from Automatic, a company that makes a proprietary dongle for the car that grabs data from the vehicle's On-board Diagnostics II System (OBD-II). Automatic merges that data with other sensors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you think stop-and-go city traffic can be bad around rush hour, just wait until connected cars get in on the act and start bringing mobile networks to a standstill too. There isn't enough capacity, a new report says.Market intelligence strategist Machina Research paints a gloomy connectivity picture of excessive growth from M2M, which includes connected cars.Growth in that area threatens to disrupt all mobile data traffic.Parking lot
UK-based Machina Research analyzes Internet of Things (IoT), M2M and Big Data. Its report says that mobile data will double in certain cells at rush hour. The report predicts a 97% increase over 10 years. The big driver will be cars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you think stop-and-go city traffic can be bad around rush hour, just wait until connected cars get in on the act and start bringing mobile networks to a standstill too. There isn't enough capacity, a new report says.Market intelligence strategist Machina Research paints a gloomy connectivity picture of excessive growth from M2M, which includes connected cars.Growth in that area threatens to disrupt all mobile data traffic.Parking lot
UK-based Machina Research analyzes Internet of Things (IoT), M2M and Big Data. Its report says that mobile data will double in certain cells at rush hour. The report predicts a 97% increase over 10 years. The big driver will be cars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What do cable company Comcast and furniture seller IKEA have in common, other than that one of them requires the other's birch veneer entertainment center to hold its cable box?Both are using fuel cells to power some of their buildings.Social currency
Bloom Energy, which makes fuel cell generators, is seeing interest in its carbon footprint-friendly electricity fuel cell systems as the corporate world clamors to obtain brownie points from the public looking to do business with socially aware companies. Fuel cells are clean, sometimes renewable energy sources.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Remember that road surface being tested in the Netherlands that acted as a giant solar panel converting solar energy into electricity? Well, guess what? It actually worked.Six months into the test, the engineers say they've generated 3,000kwH of power from the 70-meter bike path test track. That's enough power to run a one-person household for a year, and more than expected of the project, according to SolaRoad, the company behind the experiment.Energy-neutral mobility
Data centers are heavy users of electricity, and SolaRoad's better-than-expected electricity generation will be interesting news for those designing data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung is getting serious about Internet of Things (IoT). Following up on its 2014 purchase of startup SmartThings, Samsung has just unveiled a set of modules called ARTIK, which it hopes companies will adopt in order to build IoT into their products.SmartThings is an app-controlled remote control for a smart home.ARTIK
Three tiny circuit boards make up the ARTIK collection. They're about the "size of a ladybug," says Don Clark, writing about the technology in the Wall Street Journal. The smallest is 12 millimeters on each side.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung is getting serious about Internet of Things (IoT). Following up on its 2014 purchase of startup SmartThings, Samsung has just unveiled a set of modules called ARTIK, which it hopes companies will adopt in order to build IoT into their products.SmartThings is an app-controlled remote control for a smart home.ARTIK
Three tiny circuit boards make up the ARTIK collection. They're about the "size of a ladybug," says Don Clark, writing about the technology in the Wall Street Journal. The smallest is 12 millimeters on each side.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here's a question: who remembers the pre-broadband days of web? You'd use a voice line, acoustic coupler, and a modem, right?Well, believe it or not, huge swaths of the global population might be about to revert back to this old method for sending data. Only this time it will be over mobile 2G networks instead of dial-up copper twisted-pair—and you won't have to wrap your acoustic coupler in a pillow to prevent stray noise corrupting the data transmission.Modulated sound wave
Startup Pangea Communications, presenting at Disrupt NY, reckons that the answer to a lack of data infrastructure for consumers in places such as Africa is to simply convert data into a modulated sound wave and then send the audio down existing 2G pipes to and from mobile devices. Any mobile device would work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here's a question: who remembers the pre-broadband days of web? You'd use a voice line, acoustic coupler, and a modem, right?Well, believe it or not, huge swaths of the global population might be about to revert back to this old method for sending data. Only this time it will be over mobile 2G networks instead of dial-up copper twisted-pair—and you won't have to wrap your acoustic coupler in a pillow to prevent stray noise corrupting the data transmission.Modulated sound wave
Startup Pangea Communications, presenting at Disrupt NY, reckons that the answer to a lack of data infrastructure for consumers in places such as Africa is to simply convert data into a modulated sound wave and then send the audio down existing 2G pipes to and from mobile devices. Any mobile device would work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's been talk for years of a more accurate Global Positioning System. The current GPS system tells you roughly where you are, but it's only accurate to within a few feet. That vagueness means that although it's fine for mapping, it isn't good enough for narrowly targeted proximity or geo-fencing that can be used in e-commerce.Existing GPS has been used in toll-road billing, and has been fine-tuned for surveying with large, expensive antennas, but it's currently not much good for tracking customers as they choose a concert seat, for example.Galileo
The European Space Agency is building a new, highly-accurate system called Galileo that they say will be fully functional by about 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's been talk for years of a more accurate Global Positioning System. The current GPS system tells you roughly where you are, but it's only accurate to within a few feet. That vagueness means that although it's fine for mapping, it isn't good enough for narrowly targeted proximity or geo-fencing that can be used in e-commerce.Existing GPS has been used in toll-road billing, and has been fine-tuned for surveying with large, expensive antennas, but it's currently not much good for tracking customers as they choose a concert seat, for example.Galileo
The European Space Agency is building a new, highly-accurate system called Galileo that they say will be fully functional by about 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The United Kingdom, which is ranked on a GDP basis just behind France, Germany, and Japan – which in-turn are out-ranked only by the U.S. and China – is going to run out of internet soon, and might need to ration it, according to Andrew Ellis, a professor in optical communications at Aston University in Birmingham, England.
The web will collapse because existing fiber optic cables can't accept any more data, and telcos can't afford to keep laying more fiber, Ellis has said recently.
In any case, pumping data through cables is using up the country's power supply, Ellis says. At the current rate of growth, the web will consume the country's power supply within 20 years, he reckons.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You may have read about furniture retailer IKEA's plans to introduce wireless smartphone charging in some of its furniture. Its Selje nightstand includes a Qi-compatible charger, for example. Charge your phone wirelessly while you slumber, and only for $60.
Well, that's just the beginning of the future for the 315-store, 9,500-product company. IKEA's future kitchen ideas include networked devices, shelves that act as refrigerators, tabletops that cook, and instant food delivery by drone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's an inherent problem with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites of the kind used for remote observation, such as border security and disaster monitoring.The problem is that because of their low orbit—they're a few hundred miles above earth's surface, rather than 22,300 miles as found with Geostationary (GEO) satellites—they can't see their ground station at all times.They can see the earth more clearly, so they are good for monitoring; they are cheap to deploy because they don't need such a big rocket to get it up there; and they don't suffer from as much packet latency as GEO satellites because the distances are shorter.However, they aren't visible from any given point on earth at all times—they're not stationary, and they're low-down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Major delivery firms are experimenting with drones for deliveries. If you've started to experiment with drone flying for fun, you'll know that it isn't easy. There's a steep learning curve, and they crash quite a lot, I've found.However, it doesn't have to be like that. Collision avoidance is technically feasible. The drone senses objects and diverts.One of the issues with that, though, has been that developers only have a certain amount of time and money to develop new features. Those features have, thus far, been the tempting, seductive ones, like "follow-me" where the hobbyist drone follows the pilot like a dog on a leash. It's the latest thing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If your place is larger than an apartment, there's a good chance that you spend a bit of time, periodically, going around changing lightbulbs.It's one of those things. Like cutting the grass and placing the garbage cans at the curb, it's the price you pay.Replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs can go some of the way towards solving this onerous time-absorber. GE claims its screw-in LED light bulb replacements last 25 years, for example.They cost a bit more, but they do save on work. You shouldn't have to change them as often—if at all.Multifunction light bulbs
Well, one Chinese LED light bulb manufacturer reckons it has solved this, and a couple of other home issues too. It has a solution to the problem of expiring bulbs, Wi-Fi dead spots in the home, and also the issue of trailing wires for audio speakers—all within the light bulb.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If your place is larger than an apartment, there's a good chance that you spend a bit of time, periodically, going around changing lightbulbs.It's one of those things. Like cutting the grass and placing the garbage cans at the curb, it's the price you pay.Replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs can go some of the way towards solving this onerous time-absorber. GE claims its screw-in LED light bulb replacements last 25 years, for example.They cost a bit more, but they do save on work. You shouldn't have to change them as often—if at all.Multifunction light bulbs
Well, one Chinese LED light bulb manufacturer reckons it has solved this, and a couple of other home issues too. It has a solution to the problem of expiring bulbs, Wi-Fi dead spots in the home, and also the issue of trailing wires for audio speakers—all within the light bulb.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As Apple ships its first pre-order smartwatches to customers this week, a new people-analytics survey indicates that more than half of workers would consider wearing an enterprise-supplied smartwatch if it provided a better work environment.PricewaterhouseCoopers, also known as PwC, surveyed over 2,000 adults in the UK and found that 40% would wear technology supplied by their employer.However, the number rose to over half, at 56%, if the information gathered was used to make the work environment better.Big Brother
As one might imagine, trust was a big sticking point for the idea of an enterprise-supplied smartwatch. There was resistance to sharing data, in part because employees think the data will be used against them "in some way." A significant 41% of respondents said they were worried about this.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Nelson