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If you are an expert in computers and can decode a programme without much effort, give a thought to working with the Indian government or a multinational company to secure their websites from cyber attacks.
As internet hacking has in recent years become a common occurrence, nervous government agencies and corporates are seeking ethical hackers in large numbers to secure their critical data, thus opening a lucrative career opportunity for youngsters in the field of ethical hacking, say experts.
According to data by Cyber Media Research, the domestic spending on BPO-ITeS and IT services in 2012 is expected to grow by 16.6 percent over 2011 to cross Rs.43,600 crore and spending on software will grow 19.5 percent to touch Rs.18,800 crore.
“Both the private and public sectors have realised the importance of deploying suitable security solutions to protect sensitive organisational and national data, as well as engaging or employing information security professionals to actively monitor and manage threats,” Kamal Vohra, lead analyst, software and IT services and tech advisory practice, at Cyber Media Research told.
“Security is the most essential thing when it comes to internet. Today every single technology company is establishing its dedicated team of hacking experts, thus providing huge opportunities to youngsters to take this up as a career,” cyber security expert Ankit Fadia told.
According to data by the national nodal agency CERT-IN – Indian Computer Emergency Response Team – the number of phishing attacks has risen from over 102 cases in January 2010 to 1,053 cases in May 2011.
During 2011, the phishing attacks till May totalled 3,458 compared to 5,432 cases in 2010 and a mere 549 cases in 2009.
According to Fadia, it is a matter of rising concern that due to the lack of awareness many youngsters function from the wrong side of the law. This tendency needs to be curbed by introducing ethical hacking courses at various levels in reputed colleges and institutions on a large scale, he stresses.
Fadia works as a cyber security consultant with various companies, government agencies and security firms both in India and abroad, and has provided customized cyber security training and solutions to companies. Among these are Google, Citibank, Bank of Thailand, Wipro and Infosys, and many other government organizations, police forces, and corporate sectors.
However, slamming the industry for ignoring internet security to their own peril, he says most companies do not hire hackers and woo trainers from abroad only after an incident occurs.
“We need skilled people in this field 20 times more by 2015,” Narayanan Ramaswamy, executive director with consultancy firm KPMG, told.
Ramaswamy said the requirement for ethical hackers is not limited only to IT companies but such experts are also required by financial service providers, retail chains, hotels and several government agencies.
However, in the recent years the demand has outstripped the available supply of such hackers in India because of shortage of skilled hands.
“According to NASSCOM, demand for ethical hackers is estimated at over 77,000 in India every year. Against this, India is producing only 20,000-25,000 ethical hackers,” says Fadia.
The courses available in India include six-month and one-year post-graduate diploma programmes. The only prerequisite is that the person should be computer savvy and gadget friendly.
After completing the courses, students can join the government as well as private organisations as cyber security experts. The initial salary would range anywhere between Rs.25,000 to Rs.30,000.
According to Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) – the international professional association that deals with IT governance and had 95,000 members across 160 countries as of March 2011 – about 65 percent Indian companies expect to increase their spend on information security in the period April 2011-March 2012.


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When I walk into a business, I often try to guess how much it generates in sales each year. One of my favorite places to do so is Costco (NASDAQ: COST), which offers a peerless volume of products and services from its cavernous warehouses.
The Nation's Second-Largest Retailer
It's fair to say that Costco has cracked the nut when it comes to attracting throngs of customers to each of its nearly 700 locations. Using a membership-based retail model, it has matured into the second-largest retailer in the world's largest economy when measured by annual sales.
But this isn't enough for the Washington state-based retailer, which is aggressively expanding its store count. Costco has opened 10 new locations so far this fiscal year, and in the fourth quarter alone plans to open an additional 14 in cities including Wichita, Kansas; Mobile, Alabama; and Rochester, New York.
Costco is also laser-focused on increasing sales at its existing locations. "We believe that the most important driver of increasing our profitability is sales growth, particularly comparable sales growth," the company said in its latest annual report. It accomplishes this by seeking to increase "the shopping frequency from new and existing members and the amount they spend on each visit."
Sales At An Average Costco
How does all of this translate into sales on a warehouse-by-warehouse basis? As Costco's chair and CEO wrote in their most recent letter to shareholders, the average annualized sales of the 30 warehouses opened last year was its highest ever -- $108 million per location. Meanwhile, the average annual sales of all warehouses also reached an all-time high in FY 2014 -- $164 million per warehouse.
There are a couple things to keep in mind when you think about sales volume at a typical Costco. First, the longer a store has been open, the larger its sales are likely to be. Costco's 454 locations opened in 2005 and before had average annual sales of $178 million in the most recent fiscal year while warehouses that had been opened in 2014 recorded average annual sales of $108 million in FY 2014.
This positive relationship isn't perfect, as stores opened in the run-up to the financial crisis are still struggling to catch up to both earlier and later vintages. However, having once managed a retail store, I can attest to the fact that this relationship is valid.
The second thing to keep in mind is that there are outliers. For instance, 165 Costco locations generated annual sales greater than $200 million last year. Of these, 60 warehouses exceeded $250 million in annual sales, and two recorded sales in excess of $400 million. Thus, while the average sales figure is both impressive and revealing in and of itself, it hardly matches the chain's highest-grossing locations.
In short, Costco's stores are huge businesses in and of themselves. In fact, it is the only national retailer in the history of the United States that can boast of average annual revenue in excess of $160 million per location.
The Next Billion-Dollar Apple Secret
Apple forgot to show you something at its recent event, but a few Wall Street analysts didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering Apple's brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors!
John Maxfield has no position in any stocks mentioned.

domain: news


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Whole Foods Market Inc. started selling organic private-label coffee pods that fit into Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc.’s Keurig machines, providing more competition for the single-serve coffee company’s K-Cups.
Starbucks Corp.’s juice unit Evolution Fresh will quadruple capacity with the opening of a new factory as the coffee company seeks to increase its share of the $1.6 billion super-premium fruit drink industry.
U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a five-week high and within 1 percent of a record, after Lawrence Summers withdrew his bid to be Federal Reserve chairman and tensions over dealing with Syria’s chemical weapons eased.
Trader Joe’s Co., the closely held grocery store chain, will end health benefits for part-time workers next year, directing them instead to new insurance marketplaces as companies revamp medical coverage to fit the U.S. Affordable Care Act.
Stock splits are losing their allure with American executives amid one of the broadest rallies ever, sending the number of shares trading above $100 to a record and showing the rising dominance of institutions in equity markets.
U.S. stocks rose, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed above 15,000 for the first time yesterday, as earnings forecasts from Whole Foods Market Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. beat analyst estimates.


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Category → Broadband
Broadband customers rejoice! Broadband speeds at the close of 2011 averaged out at 7.6Mpbs. That’s an increase on 6.2Mpbs. Overall, broadband speeds are up by 22%, according to consumer magazine Which? Ofcom cites the main reason for this as being that many customers have upgraded to faster broadband packages. Fibre optic and cable services still offer the fastest speeds (you can check out your broadband speed with a broadband speed test.)
However our average speeds are still slower than countries such as Latvia, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. Estonia tops the list with an impressive average speed of 40.91Mpbs and South Africa has the unhappy honour of being amongst the countries with the slowest broadband. Within a population of 50 million, the penetration of broadband facilities is estimated to be at about 10 per cent.
The British government is aiming to improve the situation by 2013. The plan is not simply about making entertainment more easily available on people’s home computers, but increasing access to government-published information. Industry spokespeople still criticise the persisting divide between rural and urban broadband utilities.
Other critics cite the disparity between advertised speeds and what customers are actually getting. New guidelines suggest that the advertised speeds must be achievable by 10% of the service provider’s customers. Others have commented that companies must be pressed to advertise an average speed alongside their highest speed capacities. Download speeds are rarely ever as high as advertised but upload speeds are usually closer to the truth.
It will probably come as a surprise that Britain lags behind less wealthy nations in the broadband speed stakes. However the cost of rolling out high speed broadband to an entire country has as much to do with existing communications infrastructure and the willingness of providers to invest in expanding their services where they might see less profit.


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Robots now able to assemble furniture in Singapore
Updated : April 19, 2018 09:21 AM IST
The team at NTU were looking to work with artificial intelligence experts to try and hone the process.
Singapore has been pushing businesses to invest in automation and robotics.
Some restaurants and hotels in the city-state use robots to deliver food.
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It’s amazing with all the advancements in technology and the increased competitive climate of the retail industry how much our shopping habits have evolved in the past years. Andrea Woroch is a consumer and money-saving expert and she shared these 8 shopping trends learned from the 2011 holiday shopping season with us:
1. Clicks Beat Bricks
This was the year e-commerce beat the pants off brick-and-mortar retailing. Although traditional stores did better than expected — up an estimated 3.8 percent — online shopping surged 15 percent over 2010.
2. Free Shipping Was Everywhere
Consumers clamored for free shipping offers and often abandoned their online shopping carts when such deals weren’t offered. That explains why nine out of 10 retailers provided free shipping during the holiday season. This prosperity no doubt will spill over into 2012, as websites like FreeShipping.org continue to attract bargain shoppers.
3. Free Return Shipping the Next Big Thing
Zappos and several shoe stores began offering free return shipping years ago, but this year even Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus got in on the trend. According to a MarketLive study, 73 percent of respondents named free returns as a deciding factor in their online purchasing.
4. iPads Rule
Laptop shopping is so passé! More than 18 percent of all e-commerce hits were initiated from a mobile device. That’s up of 8.4 percent from Christmas Day 2010 and an astounding increase of 117.8 percent. Yes, that figure is 117.8, not 11.78.
5. Dumbbell Shopping
Americans weren’t flocking to weight lifting; they were shopping early and late and avoiding the in-between, creating a dumbbell-shaped graph. As expected, buying surged on


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Darden Restaurants saw off-premises sales grow 123% in the second quarter, and the parent company of Olive Garden said demand for dine-in is exceeding indoor capacity limits put in place amid the pandemic. "Capacity restrictions continue to limit [Olive Garden's] top line sales, particularly in key high-volume markets like California and New Jersey, where dining rooms were closed for the majority of the quarter," Darden CEO Eugene Lee said.
The ongoing pandemic and the online traffic it is driving have become a major focus for retailers now hiring for the 2020 holiday rush. Walmart -- which has announced plans to add 20,000 new employees this season -- and Target say many of the additional workers will be deployed to expand contactless customer service options and boost staffing at distribution and fulfillment centers.
BJ's Wholesale Club is planning to open its first two stores in the Pittsburgh area, with one site southwest of the city and another just north of downtown, according to published reports. Although the retailer did not confirm the expansion, BJ's CEO Lee Delaney told investors at a recent conference that the company's 2021 plans included "one whole new market with a couple of stores in it."
Like many grocers, Barons Market had to shut down its popular salad bars when the pandemic began. Now, Barons is debuting a replacement with seven premade salads, priced at $5.99 or $6.99, featuring choices such as balsamic beet salad and antipasto.
Nonprofit No Kid Hungry recently featured Robert Cuellar Jr., Laredo Independent School District's director of child nutrition, in a video series celebrating people who are helping to curb childhood hunger and highlighted that students know Cuellar as Captain America after he dressed as the character for School Lunch Hero Day. Cuellar says school nutrition professionals in the Texas district are committed to expanding access to food, adding, "This journey doesn't stop because hunger takes no vacation."
Kraft Heinz's fall promotions include next month's delivery of pumpkin spice-flavored Kraft macaroni and cheese to 1,000 consumers in Canada who have signed up for the product. Each package includes a personalized to-go cup, fork and cinnamon sprinkle.
Sephora has partnered with Instacart to provide same-day delivery in Canada and California for more than 300 products with a roll-out to 400 additional locations to follow. Consumers willing to pay an additional fee will receive products from the beauty retailer in less than an hour, according to a statement.
Sales for Coca-Cola's cold-pressed juice brand Suja soared 517% to $18.6 million for the 12 months ending August 18, according to IRI data. Suja's functional cold-pressed juice shot sales have driven much of the growth with consumers seeking an immunity boost during the pandemic, said chief marketing officer Greg Rose.
Giant pumpkins weighing a ton or more are staples at fall fairs in normal years, but this year growers are having to get creative to show off the massive gourds they've grown this year. The Vermont Giant Pumpkin Growers held a scaled-down weigh off last weekend, with 22 growers who typically spend 100 hours or more nurturing a single pumpkin plant.
Romaine lettuce has been linked to E. coli outbreaks in each of the past three years. The leafy green's texture and the fact that it's typically eaten raw make it vulnerable to contamination by the bacteria that lives in the intestines of ruminant livestock and gets onto the lettuce via contaminated irrigation water.
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Social Business transformation
Interesting analysis on why America needs to innovate, quickly : http://www.minyanville.com/articles/economy-innovatation-jobs-unemployment-graduates-PhDs-students-xerox-microsoft-bell+labs-ibm/index/a/26717/from/yahoo
"The future of America is presently in peril, not just because of the shadowy ways of the "banksters," but because of a sputtering innovation engine that's had the fuel choked off"...
And this article in New York Times by Dick Brass who was a Microsoft VP around 2004: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html on Microsoft's creative distruction:
"But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future"...
"No one in his right mind should wish Microsoft failure. And yet it is failing, even as it reports record earnings."
"Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason."
"Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest."
This is quite an interesting list -- top 10 security/quality issues Microsoft should address asap -- per eWeek
"The corporate world is unsure just how well it can trust Microsoft's Windows 7. Windows Vista was a nightmare that most companies didn't adopt. Internet Explorer is in the news, thanks to a security breach. And Windows Mobile is still the also-ran in the market..."
"Microsoft's security woes are troublesome. Not only is Windows not nearly as secure as users would like, but Internet Explorer is causing trouble for users as well. "
"A quick glance around many of the markets where Microsoft operates reveals a staggering issue: the competition is innovating far more rapidly than Microsoft. "
"Microsoft's strategies have focused mainly on the short term. The future of software is, at least by most accounts, centered on the Web. And yet, as the most important software company in the industry, Microsoft is lagging behind the Web software innovators. That's a major blunder"
AntonySatyadas 1100009CNT Tags:  bpos cloud panasonic microsoft lotuslive collaboration 1 Comment 9,242 Views
What is the difference between IBM Cloud and Microsoft/HP Cloud?
- innovations around proven market leading IBM software and hardware capabilities
- Microsoft customers are moving to IBM Cloud - example Panasonic adopting LotusLive
- They recently agreed to agree with a claim of $250M in the next 3 years
- Microsoft customers are moving to IBM Cloud
Stay tuned for more news on this...
Check this out...
380,000 Panasonic users will start using IBM Lotus web mail, cloud software.. Their US users are switching from Microsoft to IBM Lotus.
Short and sweet top 10 list of issues with Windows 7:
To net it out...
1. Too much of a learning curve
2. Upgrade challenged from XP (forget it), from Vista (recent study had 30% of responders having issues)
5. Not value for Enterprise
6. Starter edition a non starter
7. search needs to get better
8. little online integration
AntonySatyadas 1100009CNT Tags:  canonical wsj ubuntu nvidia qualcomm arm smartbook microsoft atom netbook 6,021 Views
This Wall Street Journal article says it all, almost all:
Big week for Smartbook vendors... running Android, Ubuntu, etc.. at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show
Lower price, higher profit margin for vendors...
NO Windows, NO Office,
YES Linux, YES Lotus Symphony, ...
Why almost all?
What they missed is that about 32% of Netbooks are also shipping with Linux...
Stop selling Microsoft Word by Jan 11th 2010.
Pay $290M to i4i
Says U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to Microsoft today, Dec 22nd 2009!
"The company will be allowed to provide technical support to Word customers, but it will be barred from instructing users on how to use the custom XML editor or from marketing copies of Word that allegedly violate the patent."
Customers do have a choice. Switch to Lotus Symphony, adopt IBM Client for Smart Work..
AntonySatyadas 1100009CNT Tags:  icsw client linux technewsworld ubuntu windows microsoft smart work ibm for netbooks 7,223 Views
Good discussion in Technewsworld on adoption of Linux based Netbooks (32%), the predicted surge in 2010 with ARM based Netbooks which will run ONLY Linux...
'Death of the Desktop'
However, "experience with netbooks will kill off the desktop within a few years," Pogson predicted. "It makes little sense unless you need all those drives, noise, heat, space and burning money. Those who really need power will use a thin client connected to a server cluster."
Looking ahead, "expect GNU/Linux to do just as well on notebooks as it did on netbooks," he added. "2009 was the year of GNU/Linux on the desktop as far as I am concerned. 2010 could well mark the death of the desktop and overweight notebooks."
Check out this USA Today print article:
Meanwhile, most U.S. businesses skipped upgrading to Windows Vista after it was introduced in 2007, and stuck with Windows XP. To use Windows 7, most will need to buy new computers. IBM this week launched a marketing blitz touting big savings to be had by switching to Linux.
"Organizations are facing change either way they go," says Sheri McLeish, business software analyst at Forrester Research. "Linux and Symphony are more mature technologies today and can be a viable alternative."
AntonySatyadas 1100009CNT Tags:  microsoft linux enterprise dod army open agreement us 3,210 Views
I am sure that our US Federal Government CIO and CTO are exploring this...
How much can US Army and Department of Defense save if they move from proprietary to open solutions for email and collaboration needs. Try doing some simple math! the implications are quite profound..
Even if you take a very conservative estimate, you are looking at atleast around US$1B savings!!
You would wonder than why RFIs like this are floating around?


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Earlier this month, Chrysler announced it would be calling back 109 of its pickup trucks and 23 minivans from the streets.
Read This Article
How the times have changed.
Last week's Los Angeles Auto Show has kept us busy, even now.
If there's one thing truck owners love, besides their actual truck of course, it's adding more parts on to enhance performance or styling.


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Singularity University is funded by firms including Google, Autodesk and the X Prize Foundation, runs a series of graduate and corporate programs, as well as conferences. Its ten week summer course is hugely popular but it only takes 80 graduates each year.
Each is expected to emerge with the seeds of a groundbreaking start-up that has the power to change the lives of one billion people within 10 years.
The programme has so far spun out about 100 companies, 50 of which have been funded. They include Getaround, a peer-to-peer car sharing scheme; Blue Oak, which aims to extract copper from landfill by using bacteria, and Matternet, which uses drones to deliver vital medicines in the developing world. Matternet may have helped inspire Amazon’s recently announced drone delivery plans.
More controversial are the firms that are already making that crossover between the biological and the non-biological, such as two start-ups growing artificial meat in the lab.
A project to create a glowing plant attracted controversy when it launched on Kickstarter this summer. It grew out of an SU spin-off that allows you to drag and drop DNA from one organism into another – in this case by adding a bioluminescent gene to a mustard plant.
Even Mr Nail finds the idea of manipulating genetic code “super-frightening” and admits that the Kickstarter format was possibly a bit of a “cowboy way” to introduce people to bio-hacking.
Disrupt or be disrupted
SU targets big business. If you have a spare $12,000 to hand you can join SU’s executive programme for a seven-day introduction to the technologies that may one day put you out of business.
You will be told how banking faces the onslaught of virtual currency Bitcoin, the leisure industry faces competition from sharing sites such as AirBnB, manufacturing faces the challenges of 3D printing, and even something as innocuous as the consumer goods packaging industry has up to 80 disruptive start-ups competing in its space.
“The execs that take part go back to their firms and they sound like raving lunatics,” says SU’s global ambassador Salim Ismail
“But you either have to disrupt or be disrupted.”
If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.


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It’s got to feel damn good to be Elon Musk.
Because sure, he disrupted an otherwise blasse and unchanging car market. And he gets to say chippy things like his “solar shingles will cost less than a dumb roof.” But also he gets to blow the doors off of ‘em all.
The Tesla Model S P100D is officially the fastest accelerating production car to date. And it gets better. This outrageous jump-off is due to something called a “Spaceballs-inspired software update.”
Besting the 0-60 mph in 2.3 second record, in a Motor Trend test, the Model S P100D bolted 0-60 in 2.275507139. More than fast, that’s a helluva a lot faster than the 2.5 seconds that Tesla promised.
It’s still not supercar status, what with makes like the LaFerrari clocking 70 mph with a tenth of a second shaved off, and the Porsche 918 and McLaren P1 reaching 80 mph in an equivalent time.
And it’s kinda jerky. As in: “Launching a Model S P100D (weighing 5,062 with gear and driver) in full-on Ludicrous Easter-egg mode snaps your body in a manner that is utterly impossible to replicate in any other street-legal production car on normal tires and dry asphalt at a mid-$100,000 price point,” Motor Trend said.
And if that doesn’t blow your hair back enough. After seeing the numbers, Musk claims the S P100D could jet even faster if you remove the floor mats and front trunk liner.
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Get the latest news from the Vale Resort right here on a regular basis.
The Vale Resort expresses their sadness and offers sincere condolences at the passing of Wales Manager Gary Speed
The Vale Resort, Wales’ highest rated 4* hotel is unveiling its new spa just in time for those all-important, body beautiful, summer months.
The Vale Resort at Hensol has further established its reputation as a UK leader within the hospitality industry after receiving maximum points in an AA review for the second year in a row


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Nintendo is finally releasing its first mobile game next year
For a company that revolutionized gaming, Nintendo is finally entering the digital age with its first mobile game. Unfortunately, it’s not a Super Mario Bros. app.
It’s called “Miitomo,” a free-to-play game that revolves around its popular Mii characters in what more closely resembles a messaging app than a platform or racing game. In the game, due out next March, players communicate with their friends using their Mii avatars, à la The Sims without the carnage, as seen here:
Miitomo will connected with user’s home consoles through its new cloud-based service and it’s being monetized through the sale of Mii accessories.
“You might dig up some previously-buried topics of conversation, learn about a surprising side of your friend you’ve never seen before, find things you never knew you had in common,” Nintendo’s president Tatsumi Kimishima said at press conference in Japan this morning.
Miitomo is the first of five smartphone apps Nintendo plans on releasing over the next two years. Yet, it’s weird that its first game isn’t an instantly recognizable brand that could quickly make Nintendo tons of money and have instant recognition, like Donkey Kong or The Legend of Zelda. For now, buying an Nintendo 3DS is the only way to play these titles while on-the-go.
Faced with uneven 3DS sales, Nintendo is slowly realizing that exporting its games to other platforms that it doesn’t manufacture might inject some revenue and life into the company.
Images via Nintendo.
More in Marketing
Women’s sports are having a moment. Brands, media companies and agencies are looking to get in on the action.
The Hollywood strikes were supposed to be a game changer for many of them, but the situation hasn’t quite lived up to the hype.
Given the rise of short-form video, agencies that focus on the format, rather than specific platform expertise, will reap the rewards.


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EA foregoes EA Play press conference for E3
EA Play will begin the Friday before E3 and focus on hands-on demos, livestreams
Today, EA announced its plans for its yearly pre-E3 Los Angeles event -- plans which did not include the company's usual announcement-filled press conference.
This year, EA Play will take place from June 7 through June 9, and will begin on the Friday evening with multiple livestreaming events to show off gameplay from upcoming titles.
On the Saturday and Sunday, EA will hold its usual free-for-everyone Fanfest event at the Hollywood Palladium. The event will include hands-on demos of upcoming games, and will also allow content creators to stream live gameplay on location.
EA's announcement still contained mention of "exclusive gameplay reveals" and "breaking news," indicating that the company foregoing a press conference does not mean the event will be devoid of announcements. Rather, EA indicated that the shift in the event to "less talk and more play," was to focus on the player communities for its games.
Though EA Play isn't a part of E3 by definition, the company missing an annual press conference traditionally held around E3 makes it effectively the second company to do so this year, after Sony decided to skip the event entirely.


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Euro-area retail sales unexpectedly increased for a fourth month in August as demand rebounded in Germany, Europe’s largest economy.
Sales in the 17-member euro area rose 0.1 percent from July, when they also gained a revised 0.1 percent, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. Economists had forecast a decline of 0.1 percent, according to the median of 17 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. From a year earlier, sales dropped 1.3 percent.
European households are tightening their belts as the region’s economy shows signs of a deepening slump. Euro-area unemployment held at a record 11.4 percent in August and economic confidence fell last month after the fiscal crisis and budget cuts forced at least five euro nations into recessions.
In Germany, retail sales rose 0.3 percent from July, when they fell 1 percent, today’s report showed. France reported a drop of 0.8 percent, while sales rose 2.1 percent in Spain.
The statistics office didn’t report data for Greece, Cyprus or Italy.


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Samsung has announced that the very affordable Champ Duos (E2652) with dual-SIM support will be launched on April 9 i.e. tomorrow and soon sell in Singapore and Indian market.
Champ Duos (E2652) has a 2.6-inch QVGA touchscreen display, 1.3MP camera, music player, Wi-Fi, FM Radio with RDS and recording, Bluetooth and microSD card slot supporting up to 16GB.
While we don’t have the price for the Singaporean region, Indians will be able buy the phone for a price of around Rs. 5,080.


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SAN JOSE, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- Picture this: Luxury accommodations on a world-class cruise ship. Free dinner for two. Free drinks. Las Vegas-style entertainment and dancing.
Sound too good to be true? You bet it is.
A bogus e-mail, purportedly sent by online auctioneer EBay EBAY, -0.84% is making its way to visitors to the company's site. The e-mail breathlessly tells recipients that they are winners of a weekly drawing that entitles them to a luxury cruise aboard a ship owned by a renowned carrier.
It also states that the e-mail isn't spam.
Kevin Pursglove, senior director of communications at EBay, disagrees with that assessment.
"EBay has not authorized this e-mail," Pursglove told CBS MarketWatch.com "We will take appropriate steps to identify the source of the spam," he said. Pursglove declined to comment on whether legal authorities have been enlisted to help.
It's not the first time the auctioneer has had to take steps to shut down spammers who have wrongfully obtained users' e-mail addresses.
Last summer, EBay had to take action against a company called Reverse Auction, which was trying to lure EBay users to its site by sending unsolicited e-mails to users' addresses. Reverse Auction agreed to a $1.2 million settlement in a suit brought by EBay.


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The Inter Miami left back, who wasn't able to play in the team's final due to injury, showed up wearing a very pricey tee made by Acne Studios.
Inter Miami were reeling both Lionel Messi and Jordi Alba's injuries at the US Open Cup final versus Houston Dynamo. Both former Bara players were forced to watch the game from a DRV PNK Stadium Suite. Both arrived in street clothes, and Jordi Alba stood out for his bold and expensive fashion choice.
At first glance, the t-shirt featuring a rainbow hamburger and the words 'Kiss Me' may seem ordinary, but it's far from it. The oversized white tee is made by Acne Studios, a brand known for its «experimental take on Scandinavian minimalism».
Jordi Alba's 'Kiss Me' shirt, called the Enrik Tee, has a retail price of $220. While the former FC Barcelona and Spanish National Team has made considerable earnings throughout his soccer career, the cost of the seemingly simple shirt is surprising.
The retailer's site describes the shirt with the following caption: «Printed centre stage is a rainbow tinged burger and the Swedish 'Face' mascot flies the flag. It does so while looking like he needs cheering up with a good pickle — cheesy pun intended.Read on marca.com


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Poker Club delayed to 2021 on Switch, gameplay video
Posted on October 29, 2020 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch eShop, Videos
Poker Club was announced for Switch in September. Originally, the game was on track to launch later this year on the system. That’ll no longer be happening with Ripstone confirming that the Switch version has been pushed back to 2021.
Aside from the delay, Ripstone also published a new gameplay video. We’ve included that for you below.
We have more on Poker Club here. We’ll report back with a new date for the Switch version once it’s announced.


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Rivian, an electric truck maker backed by Amazon and Ford, has caused its investors huge losses in 2022 as the company’s stock collapsed amid a brutal market selloff. While Amazon has reaffirmed its confidence in Rivian and called it an “important partner,” Ford has decided to unwind its stake in the startup, a move suggesting the Detroit automaker is shifting focus to own electric pickup, the F-150 Lightning.
Ford unloaded a total of 15 million Rivian shares, worth about $400 million, in two rounds of transactions last week, according to regulatory filings. The sales left Ford with about 87 million shares, or a 9.7 percent stake, in Rivian, down from 11.3 percent in April.
Ford sold its Rivian shares at a terrible time, by any financial measure. Rivian stock has plummeted nearly 75 percent this year to a record low. Some analysts believe Rivian’s share price (and, more broadly, tech stocks) has hit bottom and is primed to rebound soon. Its sharp decline has already attracted major investors, including George Soros, whose fund recently bought 6 million Rivian shares.
But Ford apparently didn’t want to wait, despite having logged a $5 billion loss on its Rivian investment in the first quarter. The company began selling Rivian shares as soon as its IPO lock-up period expired on May 10—a move suggesting the company is increasingly optimistic about its own prospects in the fledgling electric pickup market. A Ford spokesman said the company believes “it’s prudent to monetize” some Rivian shares, but declined to comment about future transactions.
Ford began investing in Rivian in 2019
Ford is an early backer of Rivian, first investing in the company in 2019 as part of a strategic partnership to co-develop an electric truck. That project was later scrapped, and Ford began working on a direct competitor of Rivian’s R1T pickup, the electric F-150 Lightning.
R1T and F-150 Lightning have a similar development timeline and specs. Both vehicles received raved reviews even before reaching the market. Rivian began shipping its first batch of R1T in October 2021, and Ford began the delivery of F-150 Lightning in early May.
Both companies have tens of thousands of pre-orders of their electric pickups to fulfill. Volume production is expected to remain challenging for the foreseeable future, a result of chip shortages and supply chain woes. Rivian plans to manufacture 25,000 R1Ts in 2022. Although it has made only about 5,000 units year to date, confirmation of the 25,000 target last week helped the company’s shares rebound a little from an all-time low.
Ford had about 2,000 F-150 Lightnings in stock as of late April. It aims to produce 40,000 units this year and ramp up annual production to 150,000 by 2023. CEO Jim Farley has vowed to “challenge Tesla and become No. 1 in the world.”


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Friday, August 17, 2012, 12:46 pm PT (03:46 pm ET)
Apple closes at new high of $648 on rumors of iPad mini, Apple TVApple stock surged upward before reaching an all time closing high of $648, boosted by continued rumors of both a smaller iPad and a new Apple TV capable of presenting live broadcasts.
Apple's stock rapidly escalated early in the year after the company announced the results of a blowout winter quarter with the launch of iPhone 4S. After April however, the stock headed downward, reaching a trough of $530.
The stock has only inched up slightly since, gaining ground after the company's most recent quarterly earnings were announced, but never regaining the momentum seen earlier in the year.
Yesterday, the company distributed $2.5 billion in cash to its shareholders as its first dividend payment since the late 1990s, but rather than seeing its market capitalization drop by the same amount, the company's stock valuation gained over $11 billion today, reaching $607.54 billion.
While it's impossible to accurately explain the often seemingly irrational movements in stock prices, the company seemed to benefit from rumors surrounding an expected iPad mini and new forays into living room entertainment with an enhanced Apple TV offering support for live broadcasts.
Both products could extend Apple's lead in the tablet and Internet set top box markets, both of which have very distant second place competitors.
On Topic: Investor
- Carl Icahn's praise should help create a floor for shares of Apple, RBC says
- In response to Icahn, Apple reiterates plans to review share buyback program annually
- Carl Icahn says Apple should buy more of its 'dramatically undervalued' stock, reveals valuation of $203
- Carl Icahn teases 'interesting' open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook
- Apple reportedly withheld $139M payment to GT Advanced ahead of bankruptcy filing


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Another RIM reality check
It says a lot about Research In Motion’s current situation that the company’s shares can rise on an analyst upgrade to market perform announced in a note entitled, “RIMM: Things Can’t Get Worse in the Foreseeable Future.”
But after a near 40 percent decline in share price since the beginning of the year, RIM and it’s investors are taking anything they can get–even a disdainful, back-handed upgrade from Bernstein & Co.’s Pierre Ferragu, a longtime RIM pessimist with a particularly bleak view of the company.
RIM: Could Be Worse, Could Be Raining | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD
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AppleInsider reported on Monday that Apple and Google working on "many more" projects together. According to AI Schmidt made the comments at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference "while responding to a question concerning rumors that the two firms were working on a tablet-style personal computer."
I've been a vocal critic of the lack of productivity since the Eric Schmidt appointment to the Apple board both here and on the PowerPage podcast and it's about time that two of the biggest tech brands in the world develop some synergy.
Some great potential Google/Apple mashups:
- Google Docs and Spreadsheets for Safari
- Google Apps for Leopard (Mac OS 10.5)
- Offline Google Apps
- Apple's Spotlight search technology powered by Google
- Google Maps/Google Earth support in iPhoto and Aperture (iLife? iWork?)
- Full Google Video and YouTube support on the Apple TV
- Full Google Video and YouTube support on the iPhone
- Google Photos integration with iPhoto and Aperture
- Google Talk client for Mac with full video and voice support
- Tighter Google Calendar/iCal integration
- Migrate .Mac to Google and make it free
- A sub-$500 notebook
- A tablet computer
- A special lightweight Google OS for the above two portables
What would you like to see from a Google/Apple mashup?


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Popular image sharing app Instagram has recently launched IGTV (Instagram TV) with a ready-made audience of the individual’s followers and the ability to upload video up to an hour in length, could this be a big element of the already popular platform?
Could you become an Instagram TV star?
Everyone will be able to upload videos for IGTV – which will display full-screen, in another move forward for content that is specifically for mobile the videos will be vertical. To start uploading content, click on the cog icon once you are in the IGTV section. Much like the incredibly successful Youtube, you’ll be prompted to create a channel then a place for your videos linked to your account will be created. In the long term, Instagram wants to let all users post videos of unlimited length; the idea is that IGTV will one-day host full-blown ‘shows’ that can challenge traditional TV.
Money and branding.
YouTube for a while now has been a place where the talented can earn a living –with some dedicated Youtubers turning a very good profit from advertising. At the moment there is no way to do the same with IGTV; Instagram is not paying for any content in the short-term, and the service will launch with no ads. But the company has said that it does plan to eventually see rewards for people making more popular videos.
At the moment we’ve not seen many hour long videos on IGTV but the feature is still young, as it grows in popularity It will become a good place for brands to share longer content, this will be especially effective if they already have a large Instagram following. With 60 per cent of Instagram’s users being between 16 and 24, this longer video format could prove very valuable to those trying to get a message to a young audience.
IGTV is something that Q-Online will be keeping an eye on, it’ll be interesting to see if the views reach that of the already successful feature ‘Instagram Stories’ and to see any emerging new IGTV stars!
Are you using IGTV? Tweet us and tell us how you’re finding it.


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Shares of Tesla Inc (TSLA 4.53%) were even more volatile than usual in April as investors went back and forth on whether to be bullish or bearish on the company. At the end of the month, shares had risen 10.4% in April, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, and the surge has continued in May with shares climbing another 4% as I'm writing.
Shares were depressed early in April as investors worried that Tesla's Model 3 production wouldn't hit its 2,500 unit per week plan by the end of the first quarter. Indeed, Tesla missed that mark and was only producing 2,020 Model 3s in the last week of March, but that wasn't as bad as some investors had feared and CEO Elon Musk said the goal was still to produce 5,000 cars per week by the end of June 2018. The news was interpreted positively and sent shares higher early in April.
Late in the month, Tesla released first-quarter earnings that shed some more light on the company's revenue ($3.4 billion) and net loss ($709.6 billion), but that was overshadowed by a bizarre conference call in which Musk called an analyst's question "boring" and instead took questions from YouTube. Despite being an unconventional call, shares have risen slightly since earnings were released.
Whether you're a Tesla bull or bear, I don't think April or early May has proven either side of the Tesla debate to be correct. The company still has a long way to go before it's making 500,000 vehicles per year, as planned, and could need billions more in cash to complete Musk's vision for the company. But there was enough progress on increasing production to keep the bulls happy and there aren't many investors abandoning ship yet. Of course, that narrative could change quickly depending on manufacturing at Tesla's factories in the next few months, so stay tuned for more volatility depending on how the ramp-up goes.


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Juniper Research has published a new report that shows annual retail payments on mobile handsets and tablets are expected to reach $707 billion (£430 billion) worldwide by 2018. This means mobile retail spending will account for 30% of all online purchases in 2018, compared with the $182 billion (15% of e-retail) spent last year.
The report found that the size and scale of purchases via smartphones and tablets was increasing, thanks to retailers using mobile technology for payment, product discovery and customer retention.
However, it also noted that consumers with both tablets and smartphones tended to browse on the mobile phone and complete their purchase on the tablet. In fact, global monthly retail spend on tablets had overtaken spending via handsets by the end of last year. There was also a warning that increasing numbers of retailers were optimising their web sites for mobile handsets but only a small minority had done this for tablets.
Dr Windsor Holden, the report’s author, highlighted the trend towards in-store mobile browsing for similar products (‘showrooming’) and said retailers needed to adapt their strategies to incorporate this activity by price matching and deploying their own mobile Point of Sale devices throughout the store.


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Amazon Plans to Layoff more than 18,000 Workers: CEO
Amazon had said before that it would lay off nearly 10,000 people around the world, but now that number has gone up. In his most recent post, the CEO of the company, Andy Jassy, said that the company will lay off more than 18000 people. Jassy says that one reason for the mass layoffs is that they hired a lot of people quickly. “This year’s review has been harder than usual because of the uncertain economy and the fact that we’ve been hiring a lot over the past few years,” the CEO of Amazon said in an official blog post.
Read More: Amazon will Close
“We’re going to cut just over 18,000 jobs. Several teams are affected, but most of the job cuts are in our Amazon Stores and PXT departments, the CEO wrote in a blog post. He also said that Amazon would start talking to the affected employees on January 18. Jassy also said that someone on the internal team had told other people about the layoffs, so he had to write the blog post to make sure everyone understood.
“Most of the time, we don’t talk about these results until we’ve talked to the people who are directly affected. But because one of our teammates told the outside world about this, we thought it would be best to tell you earlier so you can hear the details from me. “We plan to talk to affected employees (or, in Europe, employee representative bodies) starting on January 18,” Jassy wrote in the blog post.
Read Also: How to Lay Herringbone Tiles?
The CEO of Amazon promised that affected employees would get severance pay, health benefits, and any other help they might need. “S-team and I know that eliminating roles is hard for people, and we don’t make these decisions lightly or underestimate how much they might change the lives of those who are affected. We are working to help those who are affected and are giving them packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and help to find work outside of Amazon,” the company’s CEO wrote in a blog post.
Jassy also gave hints that Amazon might stop hiring for a while. “Amazon has survived in the past in uncertain and hard economies, and we will continue to do so. These changes will help us pursue long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure. “I’m also hopeful that we’ll be creative, resourceful, and determined during this time when we’re not hiring as many people and getting rid of some roles,” the company CEO said.
Also Read: Amazon Prime January 2023 Schedule
This is the second time Amazon has said it will lay off people. In November, some employees in the company’s Devices and Books businesses were let go. Jassy also said, “Amazon announced that some employees in our People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization can take a pay cut if they want to.”
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Revolutionizing Agriculture with Smart Spray Technology: SmartCow's Innovative Solution
ST. JULIANS, Malta, Sept. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The agriculture sector faces unprecedented challenges in the form of climate change, labor shortages, and rising food demand. To address these issues head-on, SmartCow, a leading player in AI engineering, is introducing a groundbreaking smart spray system. This system is designed to transform conventional farming into a more efficient and sustainable practice.
Traditional agriculture relies heavily on manual labor and imprecise methods for tasks like irrigation and pest control. With the average age of farmers increasing, and a shortage of young talent entering the industry, there is a pressing need for innovative solutions that can boost productivity and reduce operational risks.
SmartCow has partnered with a U.S.-based customer to develop a state-of-the-art smart spray system that seamlessly integrates with commercial-grade tractor boom sprayers. This cutting-edge system offers precise liquid delivery, efficient coverage, and the ability to treat vast agricultural areas swiftly. It also reduces the reliance on manual labor and enhances operator safety.
The smart sprayer solution integrates MARS, SmartCow's in-house NVIDIA Jetson AGX OrinTM embedded IoT system, and 12 camera sensors with the original spray system. The new solution enables accurate data collection and sophisticated analytics for intelligent decision-making based on plant condition measurements. The heart of this innovation lies in the AGX Orin platform, which offers exceptional computing power of up to 275 trillion operations per second (TOPS). It can seamlessly operate multiple high-resolution cameras in real-time, allowig precise monitoring and control of agricultural operations.
MARS is available with Wi-Fi and 4G/5G connectivity. This enables the integrated smart spray system to efficiently communicate from the field to the farmer's control center. Also, the system supports out-of-band (OOB) power cycling and OS recovery, eliminating the need for manual maintenance during network disruptions. This innovation optimizes spray conditions for enhanced crop production. It also offers up to 20% computing performance improvement compared to the previous idea of using NVIDIA Jetson AGX XavierTM as core computing platform, resulting in cost reductions of up to 40%.
Smart farming is a viable solution to the challenges of climate change and labor shortages in agriculture. The smart sprayer integration between SmartCow and their U.S. based customer is a significant step towards a more productive and sustainable agriculture industry. As computing power grows, the potential for smart farming to revolutionize agricultural production becomes even more promising.
For more information about SmartCow and its transformative smart spray technology, please visit https://www.smartcow.ai/.
Established in 2016, SmartCow is an end-to-end AI engineering company that builds both hardware and software products for AI applications. Our specialty lies in developing software-defined hardware with field programmability and flexibility, which is optimized by the most efficient software for elevated performance. SmartCow's AI applications are widely used in smart cities. The company location is in Malta, India, Taiwan, Singapore, and France and is expanding to the USA.
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/revolutionizing-agriculture-with-smart-spray-technology-smartcows-innovative-solution-301934594.html
SOURCE SmartCow AI Technologies
A Better Way To Prevent Robocalling


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RT – 24 May, 2021 16:10
Bradley Blankenship – is a Prague-based American journalist, columnist and political commentator. He has a syndicated column at CGTN and is a freelance reporter for international news agencies including Xinhua News Agency. Follow him on Twitter @BradBlank_
China’s move to regulate crypto is the only way to avoid an almost inevitable disaster for the environment, investors and the financial market in general if cryptocurrency markets are allowed to remain a digital “Wild West”.
Recently, Chinese regulators released a statement saying that the country would effectively ban any financial institutions and payment companies from doing business related to cryptocurrencies. This ban refers specifically to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and not China’s official digital yuan, which is in development right now.
Though many have been critical of the move for interfering in what appears to be a flourishing market, it was justified – and long overdue.
“Recently, cryptocurrency prices have skyrocketed and plummeted, and speculative trading of cryptocurrency has rebounded, seriously infringing on the safety of people’s property and disrupting the normal economic and financial order,” three industry bodies, the National Internet Finance Association of China, the China Banking Association and the Payment and Clearing Association of China, said in a joint statement.
Crypto is a complicated subject since not every cryptocurrency is the same. There are genuine innovations happening in some ecosystems, like Ethereum and other platforms using blockchain technology that introduce, for example, smart contracts and decentralized finance. I personally find these interesting, though in serious need of regulation due to the ‘Wild West’ nature of the market that leaves the door open for scams and financial fraud, something commonly called ‘rug-pulling’ in crypto circles.
In general, however, most mainstream crypto proponents believe that it has some intrinsic value through its actual usage. It’s actually pretty difficult to measure exactly how much people ‘use’ bitcoin since there are scant reports on the subject and perhaps also the semantic hurdle of defining what ‘using’ bitcoin actually is. But if we’re talking about using it in a normal, everyday transaction, it’s clear that this really isn’t happening.
READ FULL ARTICLE ON : RT


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DORAL (CBSMiami) – A Palmetto Bay resident, after expressing concern over a Lobster Zone game at a local restaurant, has been awarded a Lobster Defender Award from PETA who believes the game “belong(s) in the book of bad ideas.”
Cristina Fernandez, according to PETA, will receive a congratulatory note along with a framed certificate for her efforts in getting the Carolina Ale House in Doral to rid the restaurant of a game that allows players to pay in attempt to catch a spiny sea creature to eat.
The Lobster Zone is a filtered tank which holds live lobsters that resembles the popular arcade style claw game. Customers interested can pay $2, according to the machine’s website, to drop a mechanical claw into the water to catch the lobster. If the customer succeeds, the animal is then prepared in the kitchen for the customer to eat.
Tracy Reiman, the Executive Vice President of PETA says Fernandez is, “a shining example of how simply speaking up can help stop animal suffering,” Reiman said, adding, “Whether the lobsters who are caught are taken to the kitchen or returned to the tank to be tormented anew, these cruel devices belong in the book of bad ideas.”
PETA, in the statement, said that lobsters kept in the Lobster Zone tank suffer stress from confinement, low oxygen levels and hunger. According to the Lobster Zone game website, the game features a “state of the art filtration system” which keeps the animals, “very content with the nutrients in the water.”
Lobster Zone, also according to the game’s website, supports over 480 machines nationwide.


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Ever since Apple released the iPhone SDK and began pushing the platform as ideal for mobile gaming, people have been wondering just how much power developers will be able to squeeze out of the hardware. The phone gaming proposition thus far has left rather much to be desired.
Happily the game demonstrations presented at Apple’s SDK rollout event showed real promise and early comments from the game development community show the iPhone to be a gaming platform much closer to a console than a smartphone or the typical portable media device. Underscoring this sentiment is the recent demonstration of id’s classic Quake 3 ported to the iPod touch, utilizing its integrated accelerometers for control.
While it’s true that Quake 3 does not represent the bleeding edge of today’s 3D engine technology, it is no trivial chunk of code to run; it demands sufficient performance from both the CPU as well as on-board 3D graphics hardware.
iPod Hacks recently pointed out that the ARM processor core of the iPhone and iPod touch runs at nearly twice the clockspeed of the Sony PSP’s CPU — but CPU isn’t everything. The specs concerning the capabilities of the PSP’s powerful graphics hardware are easily found, but scant are the details of those surrounding the iPhone’s 3D chipset. The fluid framerate apparent in the iPod touch Quake 3 video, however, should lay to rest concerns that the 3D capabilities of the iPhone and iPod touch end at throwing a bit of album art around in Cover Flow.


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By Elizabeth Palermo for LiveScience: It was a good year to be a robot.
In 2015, researchers in Korea unveiled a robotic exoskeleton that users can control with their minds, a four-legged bot in China set a new world record by walking 83.28 miles (134.03 km) without stopping and 3D-printing robots in Amsterdam started work on a new steel footbridge.
But these smart machines are capable of so much more. Researchers around the world are now designing and building bots that will complete more noteworthy tasks in 2016 and beyond. From exploring other planets to fighting fires at sea, here are a few skills that bots could pick up in the new year. Full Article:
By Will Knight for MIT Technology Review: The robots didn’t really take over in 2015, but at times it felt as if that might be where we’re headed.
There were signs that machines will soon take over manual work that currently requires human skill. Early in the year details emerged of a contest organized by Amazon to help robots do more work inside its vast product fulfillment centers.
The Amazon Picking challenge, as the event was called, was held at a prominent robotics conference later in the year. Teams competed for a $25,000 prize by designing a robot to identify and grasp items from one of Amazon’s storage shelves as quickly as possible (the winner picked and packed 10 items in 20 minutes). This might seem a trivial task for human workers, but figuring out how to grasp different objects arranged haphazardly on shelves in a real warehouse is still a formidable challenge for robot-kind. Cont'd...
By Lulu Chang for Digital Trends: We’re going to rewrite Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, because now, it’s robotic dogs that are pulling Santa’s sleigh. In a rather frightening video, Google-owned robotics design firm Boston Dynamics has shown us the future of Christmas, and it’s plenty progressive, complete with machines and female Santas. I can get behind that sort of holiday, I think.
Of course, the Internet wasn’t so sure. And to be fair, the dog-like robots are a bit frightening. Large and, well, headless, these machines seem to hearken more to the Thestrals (the skeletal winged horses visible only to those who’ve witnessed death) of Harry Potter’s universe than the adorable reindeer that are supposed to transport jolly Saint Nick to and from the North Pole.
By Mike Wheatley for SiliconAngle: Google is planning an organizational reshuffle that will see its secretive robotics department and drone business folded into its Google X labs.
Google’s robotics division, and the drone group it created when it acquired Titan Aerospace in 2014, will both fall under the Google X umbrella when the reshuffle takes place some time next year, Re/Code reported.
Google X is the secretive part of Google that develops some of its most futuristic, bleeding edge technologies. These include its famous self-driving cars, Project Loon (Wi-Fi hot air balloons), and its airborne wind turbines. Google X operates as a standalone company under Google’s parent Alphabet Inc., which was created following Google’s corporate restructuring earlier this year.
Google X’s projects are largely experimental and extremely uncertain in terms of a business model. Nevertheless, Google obviously deems it the best place to be for its robotics division, which has been left leaderless ever since Andy Rubin quit the Web giant last year. Previously, there was speculation that the robotics division may become a standalone company under Alphabet, but today’s news would indicate that’s not going to happen any time soon. Cont'd...
Richard Mahoney for TechCrunch: As 2016 approaches, robotics is poised to traverse from a narrow set of industrial and military use cases to broader market applications that include commercial drones, telepresence robots, delivery robots and, of course, mobile vacuum cleaners.
But, are robots ready to be a part of our daily life?
Gill Pratt, a visionary who served as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and oversaw the DARPA Robotics Challenge, postulated earlier this year that robotics might soon be headed for a “Cambrian Explosion.”
The term refers to a period of time roughly half a billion years ago when the numbers and diversity of animals became critical to evolution. Pratt offered that technology developments are ushering in a similar upsurge in the diversification and applicability of robotics. Cont'd...
From RT.com: Governments should examine the effects of robotics on human civilization before automated machines leap “out of factories to automate all aspects of our lives,” a group of scientists warns.
The Foundation for Responsible Robotics, launched on Friday in London, aims to persuade governments and industries to look at the ways robots will impact on society. They want organizations to look at the way robots could disrupt the job market, and believe policymakers have so far failed researched the issue.
Robotics professor at Sheffield University and Chairman of the foundation Noel Sharkey said the potential problems must be considered.
“We are rushing headlong into the robotics revolution without consideration for the many unforeseen problems lying around the corner. It is time now to step back and think hard about the future of the technology before it sneaks up and bites us.”
Sharkey said growing numbers of robots are being used in the service industry, whereas historically robots have usually been used to automate factory work. Cont'd...
By Sam Byford for The Verge: Nearly half the jobs in Japan could be performed by robots in a decade or two, according to a recent study by Nomura Research Institute. If that's the case, then the International Robot Exhibition — IREX for short — is going to be the best place possible to get a glimpse of Japan's future.
Held in Tokyo once every two years since 1973, IREX is the biggest robot show in the world, and it features everything from cute communication bots to immensely powerful industrial machinery. Companies like Fanuc, which makes robot factory equipment used by Apple and Tesla but generally stays out of the spotlight, take center stage at IREX to demonstrate how effortlessly their articulated arms can pick up entire cars.
It's a show where online video companies' dancing idol robots rub shoulders with government-sponsored androids designed to save lives in natural disasters. As you might imagine, it's quite the place to walk around. Cont'd...
Joseph F. Engelberger, an engineer and entrepreneur who pioneered the robotics field, died peacefully at his home this morning, December 1, 2015, in Newtown, Connecticut. Engelberger - widely known as the "Father of Robotics" and creator of the world's first industrial robot - revolutionized modern industrial and automotive manufacturing processes and went on to establish robotics in human services. Engelberger was 90 years old.
Billion-dollar drone company DJI is expanding from consumer and camera drones into the agriculture industry.
The Chinese firm's latest model is a crop-spraying drone, which it claims is "40 times more efficient" than manual spraying, despite having just 12 minutes of flight time.
It will be released in China and Korea where hand-spraying is more common.
DJI made $500m (£332m) in drone sales in 2014 and some analysts predict the firm will hit $1bn in sales this year.
The Agras MG-1 has eight rotors and can carry up to 10kg of crop-spraying fluids per flight.
The foldable device is also dustproof, water-resistant and made of anti-corrosive materials, the firm says on its website (in Chinese).
Jim Lawton for Forbes: Peter Drucker said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” and in my experience there’s no industry where that wisdom holds more true than manufacturing. I’m not a hardened cynic, just a pragmatist, having spent the majority of my career bringing technology that disrupts the status quo – from inventory optimization and managing risk in the supply base to collaborative robots. Manufacturers are among the most skeptical buyers and for good reason – what they do is hard, complex and things are done the way they are done because it’s been proven to work. There are times though when the opportunity to transform the business is so compelling that – as Drucker said – executives need to spend whatever time is necessary to tear down the cultural barriers that are getting in the way of the strategy that capitalizes on the moment.
In the category of robotics and industrial automation, now is one of those times. It’s been more than 50 years since Unimate went to work at a GM plant unloading heavy parts and welding them onto automobile frames. Manufacturing has changed a lot and today is on an evolutionary path toward the 4th industrial revolution. Unfortunately, while executives may be ready to move quickly toward the factories of the future for first mover advantage, many automation engineers remain entrenched in 20th century thinking about robots — when they were highly customized solutions, designed to perform one task over and over again, with a price tag to match. Cont'd...
MIP robotics is a startup founded in 2015 and based on research conducted for many years. The company aims to provide accessible, industrial robots, especially for SMIs (small and medium industries). In other words, like 3D printing in recent years, MIP wants to democratize industrial robotics.
The robots can be used to automate repetitive, arduous or dangerous tasks; indeed it is possible to set the standard gripper arms: suction cup, hook, screwdriver, blade etc. Application examples are numerous: storing goods in cartons, checking the tightening torque, making the automated cutting, removing non-compliant products etc. MIP allows its customers to increase their productivity (and hence margins) in order to improve the quality or reduce the hardship. The investment can be made profitable in only 6 month.
The "Junior " is a robot called "SCARA" (that is to say a horizontal arm) operating on a range of 600mm and fixed on a vertical axis in a standard 400mm high. These dimensions can be adjusted on demand. Its speed reaches up to 250mm/s with an accuracy of 0.5mm and can move up to 5kg. Junior is also characterized by its ease of use: for instance you can teach the robot the movements to be carried out by manually moving the robotic arm. Finally, the robot stops in case of impact, enabling collaborative applications if all safety conditions are met. While prices often start around €20,000 on the market, Junior is available from €8000. Full Press Release:
ABB has introduced its highest payload, multipurpose industrial robot, the IRB 8700. The robot has a reach of 3.5 meters and is capable of handling a payload of up to 800 kg (1000 kg with the wrist down; 630 kg with LeanID). Designed for the ultimate in uptime, reliability and reduced maintenance, the IRB 8700 provides the lowest total cost of ownership among competitor high payload robot models. The new robot is targeted for material handling applications in the automotive, transportation and other heavy industries.
“When designing the IRB 8700, we focused on combining ABB’s largest ever model with an unusually long reach for a robot in the high payload class,” said John Bubnikovich, vice president, sales and marketing, ABB Robotics North America. “Utilizing ABB’s superior motion control technology at high moments of inertia, the new robot automatically adapts and adjusts its speed to accommodate heavy and wide parts. With a compact footprint, optimized counterweight, parallel linkages, stiff axes and fewer drive motors, the IRB 8700 keeps its momentum down and speed up, providing unmatched agility and performance.”
The IRB 8700, ABB’s largest ever robot offers all the functionality and expertise of the ABB portfolio in a much bigger package. The robot has only one motor and one gear per robot axis, while most other robots in this size class use dual motors and/or gears. In addition, there are no gas springs; only a reliable counterweight and mechanical springs for counter balancing. Together these design elements mean the IRB 8700 has fewer components and is able to deliver shorter cycle times and higher accuracy – making it 25% faster than any comparable competitor robots in its payload range. Full Press Release:
By Gary Robbins for the San Diego Union Tribune: UC San Diego is creating a robotics institute that will develop machines that can interpret everything from subtle facial expressions to walking styles to size up what people are thinking, doing and feeling.
The “See-Think-Do” technology is largely meant to anticipate and fulfill people’s everyday needs, especially the soaring number of older Americans who want to live out their lives in their own homes.
Engineers envision robots that are so good at sizing up people, places and situations that they could help evacuate crowds from dangerous areas and pick through the rubble of an earthquake to look for survivors.
The newly created Contextual Robotics Institute will be formally announced on Friday when some of the nation’s top scientists meet at UC San Diego to discuss the future of robotics. The campus has already lined up support from such San Diego companies as Qualcomm, which needs new markets for its computer chips, and Northrop Grumman, which develops unmanned aerial vehicles.
“Our plan is to do the research and development that’s needed to realize robots of the future — robots that are safe, useful and autonomous in any environment,” said Albert Pisano, dean of UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering. Cont'd...
Suryansh Chandra claims the affordable robotic arm his company Automata is developing could lead to robots becoming as ubiquitous as desktop 3D printers.
"Today, every design studio has a 3D printer," Chandra says. "Soon, we hope to get to the point where every design studio has a robotic arm."
Chandra founded Automata together with Mostafa Elsayed five months ago, after they became frustrated by the expense and complexity of industrial robots while working at the research division at Zaha Hadid Architects.
"If you're out to get a robot today, you'd have to spend 50 or 60 thousand dollars," Chandra explains. "Our goal is to democratise robotics through a low cost hardware platform and easy to use software."
Automata's first product is a plastic six-axis robotic arm called Eva, which weighs 2.3 kilograms and will cost $3,000 (£2,000).
"Unlike industrial robots that are heavy and expensive, Eva is low cost and lightweight," Chandra says. "She can pick up 750 grams when fully outstretched and about a kilogram in a more recessed position." Cont'd...
Dutch Design Week 2015: Delft University of Technology graduate Rob Scharff has created a soft robotic limb that can shake hands with people.
The hand was created as part of Scharff's Soft Robotics research project – which focuses on the ways robots can be integrated with more tactile materials, and so improve robot-human interactions. Cont'd...
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Huaxia Film Distribution recently held a grand launch in Beijing to formally introduce the Cinity Cinema System, which was unveiled earlier this year in Las Vegas at CinemaCon. A trailer of Gemini Man, the new film by Oscar award winning director Ang Lee was shown. Lee used the Cinity Cinema System to produce his latest film, Gemini Man in 4K stereoscopic 3D at 120 frames per second. He screened a trailer of the new film and made a video address to the audience gathered for the event.
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B&B Theatres, the sixth largest theatre chain in North America, is adding five additional CJ 4DPlex ScreenX auditoriums across the U.S., for a total of seven by 2020. The companies partnered last year to introduce the largest ScreenX system in the world, a screen that is more than four stories tall and seven stories wide, offering moviegoers one of the most premium, immersive viewing experiences in history.
THX has released a new Deep Note trailer to commemorate the company’s 35th anniversary. In addition to the visual celebration and surprises, the trailer offers a deeper immersive audio experience with THX Spatial Audio three-dimensional sound over headphones or earbuds.
The Star Cinema Grill in Richmond, Texas, a Houston suburb, made history in June when it installed the largest Samsung Onyx LED Cinema Screen in North America. Now that a few weeks have passed, I wanted to get a sense of how the screen was working, how moviegoers were responding to it and, also, to learn more about the challenges that went into installing such new technology. To do that I spoke with several of the key players involved in the selection, purchase, installation and operation of the Onyx screen.
French multiplex company CGR Cinemas has announced that the first ICE Theatre in the United States will be debuting this fall at Regal L.A. Live: A Barco Innovation Center in downtown Los Angeles. The ICE (Immersive Cinema Experience) Theatre concept launched two-and-a-half years ago, combining state-of-the-art design and excellence in sound and image technologies with the revolutionary ICE sensorial experience.
The Star Cinema Grill of Richmond, Texas has become the second movie theatre in North America to install a Samsung Onyx LED Cinema Screen. And in true Texas style at 46-feet wide, it’s the largest Onyx screen in North America.
Odeon Cinemas Group is adding new Dolby Cinema auditoriums at two locations: Odeon Manchester Trafford Centre and Odeon Luxe Birmingham Broadway Plaza.
Samsung has announced four new locations to be opened in Europe, two in Spain, one in Ireland and one in Romania. Two screens will be installed at Odeon Multicines in Spain. The company’s Plaza de Armas, Seville location will be the first to open in September with a 10-meter screen, followed by the CC San Vicente, Alicante location with an Onyx 14 meter, opening by October. This will be the first 14 meter screen installed in Europe. Both installations will be completed by Ingevideo and Equipo de Cine.
ScreenX, the panoramic format from CJ 4DPlex, has grossed $22 million in the worldwide box office in five months, surpassing its own box office record from the same time last year. This marks a 85 percent surge in box office gross and the fastest record-breaking milestone in the history of the innovative format. Spider-Man Far From Home is scheduled to release in ScreenX on July 5th.
Sony Pictures has announced that Spider-Man: Far From Home will be released in the 270-degree panoramic ScreenX format on July 2nd. It marks the first Sony Pictures film to be converted into ScreenX. Previously Sony Pictures released Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 4DX, another immersive cinema technology from CJ 4DPlex. The new Spider-Man will also be available in 4DX.


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Telefónica and Telenor Sign API Partnership
Currently, BlueVia is focused on mobile payments, particularly the integration of direct-to-billing charges into apps. Telefónica has signed global framework agreements for billing payments with Facebook, Google, Microsoft and RIM this year.
The two companies are intending to work to roll out the payments platform across their mobile customer base, as well as extending an invitation to other global telcos to join.
The partnership is intended to widen BlueVia's reach, however, so the companies say APIs aimed at different areas of the market will follow.
"From the beginning, BlueVia’s aim has been to gather scale and experiment fast on API business, not sticking to Telefonica's footprint but opening our vision to a pure global ecosystem," said Jose Valles, head of BlueVia at Telefónica. "Telenor is leading the industry embracing this vision. We are glad to work with them, initially in mobile payments, but also exploring other innovative APIs."


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Emily Ratajkowski Wants People Talking
Actress Emily Ratajkowski appeared on the red carpet at the premiere of Nelyubov at the Cannes Film Festival in France and it’s clear she wanted to go for a high end fashion piece that would have everyone talking.
Ratajkowski basically rocked a gown version of a catsuit. We can’t knock her for it, as she looked good, but she had to know when wearing an outfit like this it was going to get people talking.
If that was her goal, mission accomplished.


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Data has become the new oil in the digital era, and tech companies are the new barons. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in early 2018 and rising awareness of the Six4Three case, Facebook has attempted to frame changes it made to its platform in 2014 and 2015 as being driven by concerns over user privacy. In statements to media organizations, Facebook has said it locked down its platform to protect users from companies that mishandled user data, such as Cambridge Analytica, as well as apps that spammed users’ news feeds or were creepy, such as Six4Three’s bikini-spotting app Bikinis.
However, among the documents leaked, there’s very little evidence that privacy was a significant concern of Facebook, and the issue was rarely discussed in the thousands of pages of emails and meeting summaries. Where privacy is mentioned, it is often in the context of how Facebook can use it as a public relations strategy to soften the blow of the sweeping changes to developers’ access to user data. The documents include several examples suggesting that these changes were designed to cement Facebook’s power in the marketplace, not to protect users.
The rise of ‘party cells,’ representatives of the Communist Party installed within private corporations, especially in the tech sector, has significantly increased in the past year. This intertwining of profit and politics serves the party’s interests, raising questions about the ethical implications of such practices.
The presence of party functionaries within tech giants like Alibaba has been met with mixed reactions. Some see no danger in this situation, arguing that global trade is a reality and exchanges between democratic countries are preferable. However, they also acknowledge that we do not live in a world where only good exists.
The question arises: Is this merely online trade or a form of Chinese imperialism? After the steel industry’s decline in the 2010s, Belgium’s high unemployment rate made it a prime target for foreign investors. The country is now grappling with the consequences of this economic growth, questioning whether it is worth the price.
In 2021, two of the top 10 tech companies were Chinese, with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, poised to join them. Due to a superior understanding of online behavior and an extensive online community with low digital privacy, ByteDance’s algorithm recognizes user preferences.
However, the Chinese state also significantly influences ByteDance, controlling data and censoring content. The Communist Party’s influence on TikTok is a matter of concern. While the company insists it complies with local laws, the Chinese government remains silent on whether it has access to TikTok users’ data. This uncertainty fuels fear and skepticism about the power of China’s tech companies.
Tech Titans vs. Democracy: The Global Struggle for Control
In April 2021, after an antitrust case, Alibaba was fined 2.3 billion euros, and the state bought shares in ByteDance. The Chinese regime has been tightening its grip on the tech market since late 2020, banning specific business models. The goal is to prevent big tech from overpowering the government, which they believe has led to adverse outcomes in the US and Europe. Meanwhile, in Nevada, tech companies attempt to establish their city independently of local laws.
Cryptocurrency firm Blockchains LLC wants to create ‘innovation zones‘ acting like completely independent local governments. However, this idea has faced heavy criticism and was withdrawn in August 2021. In Washington, the fight against the market dominance of Google, Apple, Facebook, and others continues. However, legal experts are skeptical about the effectiveness of these proceedings. They argue that even aggressive antitrust actions may not yield permanent results, and new monopolies could emerge in a few years.
The outsized power of tech companies, big or small, harms democracy. To rebalance this, we need to prioritize democracy over technology. Some experts call for a ban on the business model of collecting and selling user data. They argue that laws already exist to regulate these practices; they must be adapted to the digital age.
The uncontrolled power of mega-corporations and the growing gap between rich and poor are intertwined. Historically, capitalism worked best in the 50s and 60s when taxes for the richest were high, leading to economic growth and innovation. Today, greed for profit, new technology, and big politics create an opaque world that future generations will have to struggle to control.
With the ongoing battles in the business of our data, there is a need for African countries to develop strong data protection laws and regulations, as well as to build their capacities in data science and technology. This will enable them to harness the benefits of data while protecting the rights and interests of their citizens.
Data: Africa’s Double-Edged Sword in the Age of Digital Colonialism
On the positive side, data can be used to drive economic growth, improve public services, and stimulate innovation. For example, data can help governments and businesses better understand the needs and behaviors of their populations, allowing them to tailor their services and products accordingly.
This can improve efficiency and effectiveness in various sectors, including healthcare, education, and agriculture. On the negative side, there are concerns about privacy and data protection. Many African countries do not have robust data protection laws, meaning individuals’ personal information can be exploited without their knowledge or consent. This can lead to various harms, from identity theft to discrimination.
Moreover, there is a risk of digital colonialism, where foreign tech companies extract valuable data from African countries without providing adequate compensation or benefits.
The data extracted from African countries includes personal information, consumer habits, social trends, and other valuable insights. These companies use this data to train their algorithms, develop new products, and target advertisements, among other things. Data is the new oil, and these tech companies are extracting it in large quantities.
However, digital colonialism is less visible and more insidious than traditional forms of colonialism. It often occurs without the knowledge or consent of the individuals whose data is being extracted. Moreover, the benefits of this data extraction, such as technological innovation and economic growth, are often not shared equitably.
The tech companies reap most of the benefits, while the countries from which the data is extracted see little in return. This form of digital colonialism can exacerbate existing inequalities and hinder sustainable development. It can also lead to a loss of digital sovereignty, as African countries become dependent on foreign tech companies for their digital infrastructure and services.


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A million Nokia customers have headed to the Ovi Store and downloaded the new Ovi Maps within the first week of its availability, according to the Finnish mobile phone giant.
The free app is being downloaded by someone new around the world every second, according to recently released figures from the world's largest mobile manufacturer.
Owners of the popular 5800 XpressMusic handset have been the most prolific downloaders of the new application, followed closely by those with an N97 Mini and an E72.
The original N97 is fifth in the charts for Ovi Maps downloads at the moment, although it has only recently been provided with support for the service.
Nokia's Executive Vice President Anssi Vanjoki said: "This is great news for our third-party application developers.
"Within a matter of days there is an installed base of more than 1 million active users all potentially hungry for new and innovative location-aware apps."
Many of Nokia's rivals were surprised and perturbed when it announced it would be offering a free navigation tool for pedestrians and drivers. In light of the figures for take-up, it seems they're as well to be worried.
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Stocks opened trading solidly lower on Tuesday and never managed to approach positive territory throughout the session. By the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost 146 points, or 0.8%, and the S&P 500 shed 18 points, or 0.9%:
With dozens of companies announcing quarterly numbers, earnings season is driving significant price swings in individual stocks. Among the biggest movers on Tuesday were Pitney Bowes and RetailMeNot , which both fell sharply.
Pitney Bowes' software strugglesMailing solutions specialist Pitney Bowes dropped 10% after announcing surprisingly weak first-quarter earnings results. The 5% sales decline was worse than the 3% drop that Wall Street was targeting, while adjusted profit of $0.34 per share came in far below consensus estimates of $0.41 per share.
Image source: Pitney Bowes.
The North American mailing segment logged a minor sales decline and a slight decrease in profitability, which is about what management expected. Its presorting business, meanwhile, produced steady revenue and profit gains.
However, the software division underperformed, according to CEO Marc Lautenbach. The segment posted a double-digit revenue decline, which pushed it into an operating loss for the quarter, compared with a slight profit in the year-ago period. "We did not execute in our Software Solutions business, which also experienced weaker technology market conditions," Lautenbach said in a press release.
Pitney Bowes has shaken up the management team in that division and is projecting better results over the next few quarters. In fact, Lautenbach and his executive team reiterated their full year outlook that projects a slight sales decline that should produce earnings of roughly $1.90 per share. Wall Street seems less optimistic that Pitney Bowes can achieve those targets, judging by the stock's sharp drop on Tuesday.
RetailMeNot's light outlook RetailMeNot's stock fell despite Q1 earnings results that beat management's early April guidance. Sales slipped 9% to $54.6 million, compared with its projection of as much as $54.5 million of revenue. Adjusted earnings of $12.3 million fit right into the company's target of between $12 million and $12.5 million.
Image source: RetailMeNot.
The digital coupon specialist's numbers showed stress on the business. Website traffic fell 10%, and visits from mobile devices ticked down by 1%. RetailMeNot's desktop sales, which represent about 70% of the operations, fell 19%.
Yet the company still generates plenty of valuable user engagement from its army of dedicated deal-seekers. It attracted 700 million visitors to its portfolio of websites and apps over the past 12 months. "We have a wealth of information and data on the types of offers that resonate with consumers across multiple categories," CEO Cotter Cunninham told investors. "This information results in insights and best practices we are able to pass along to our paid retailer partners," he explained.
RetailMeNot issued a conservative outlook for the coming quarters, which could be the main reason for the stock sell-off. Sales are projected to fall 6% in its core business. Its new gift-card division should produce strong growth -- but hardly any profits. Altogether, it's likely investors won't become more optimistic about this business unless it can show enough growth on mobile to make up for large declines in the desktop deal-hunting traffic.
The article Pitney Bowes Inc. and RetailMeNot Inc. Dive As Stocks Fall originally appeared on Fool.com.
Demitrios Kalogeropoulos has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


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Google has launched its rival to Amazon's Fire TV 4K – the Chromecast with Google TV – in India. The Chromecast with Google TV comes to India two years after its initial launch in the US in September 2020. Also, it is the second streaming device to ...
Read more at Times of India
The offer is currently available for the US and other countries until August 15! With the purchase of an Apple TV 4K or Apple TV HD, customers can now also purchase a gift card from Apple, which has previously been available only in the U.
Read more at Tech Times
News in tech Category
We're big fans of Hori's Split Pad Pro here at Vooks and happy to report they're working on an entirely new model. Dubbed the Split Pad Fit, this new model takes what we and everyone loves about the Split Pad Pro and just trims it up a bit.
Read more at Vooks
Understanding ice loss in Antarctica has been improved by a range of research into causes of ice shelves and glacier retreat on the frozen continent. Multiple studies have recently shown that increasing ocean and atmospheric temperatures are causing ...
Read more at The Canberra Times
NEW YORK — Today's sharks have nothing on their ancient cousins. A giant shark that roamed the oceans millions of years ago could have devoured a creature the size of a killer whale in just five bites, new research suggests.
Read more at The Westerly Sun
Hori has another JoyCon replacement on the way. After their successful Split Pad Pro controller, Hori has a slimmer Split Pad Fit on the way, designed to be...
Read more at GBAtemp.net
Slime Rancher and its wiggly jiggly spin encapsulated farming and simulation genre fans when it released back in 2016. From the cute slimes that inspired the name to the gizmos and gadgets that add depth and interesting mechanics to the world, ...
Read more at Twinfinite


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Co-op appoints Apadmi as it heads back into health sector
Trafford Park-based mobile technology company Apadmi has been appointed by the Co-op to support with the development of its latest app which will allow customers to manage their repeat prescriptions in real time.
The company has been tasked with delivering the app’s front-end build, working closely with the Co-op Health team to ensure a clear and smooth user journey.
Matt Hunt, chief client officer for Apadmi, said: “We’re thrilled the Co-op has turned to us as a technical partner once again. It’s brilliant to see the Co-op return to strong growth, and it’s a huge compliment to be asked to help them become even stronger.
“This new app will make managing repeat prescriptions easier for people in England, by giving them greater control of their medication.
“Over the last couple of years we’ve helped digitally transform operations for companies like Argos, the NHS and United Utilities – we’re pleased to be working in partnership with the Co-op.”
Apadmi previously partnered with the retailer on the early development of the Co-op membership app, which was released in 2018 for trial.
While the first iteration of this app has focused on repeat prescriptions, Apadmi is working with the Co-op Health team to identify future self-care functionality for customers within the app.
Tim Davies, managing director of Co-op Health, said: “It’s great to be working with Apadmi as Co-op launches back into health, with the introduction of our app.
“The pharmacy sector is at the start of a digital revolution and we’re excited for what’s to come, as people increasingly look for more flexibility and convenience in accessing their medication. The app is just the start for our health business.”
Apadmi operates offices in Trafford Park, Manchester city centre and London. Other clients include the BBC, SailGP, B&M, Lexus, and Land Rover.


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PayPal is being teamed up with Samsung for mobile payments regarding a watch
As a result of of Apple Pay coming to the Apple Watch at the beginning of next year, a mobile payment strategy is being worked on by Samsung. It will not be going its way all on its own, it will have a very eager partner. It will work alongside PayPal in order to bring safe mobile payments to the wrist.
The effort was pointed out by Business Korea and they added Synaptics to the mix. Synaptics whose technology may possibly be used for the authentication of fingerprints. The following is in accordance with a Samsung executive:
We are now in the process developing the smart watch which has technology of fingerprint identification and relevant solutions through cooperation with PayPal, which is the world’s most renowned financial transaction service company, and also Synaptics, which is a global company specialized in biometric verification. The third generation smart watch is set to be released at the beginning of next year, which will have this new system in where payment is immediately authorized when users identify themselves through biometric sensors such as a login or fingerprint.
The system of payment is meant to be aimed at the next generation of Samsung smartwatches due to the fact that the current models don’t have fingerprint sensory features. The current watches of Samsung may still possibly operate with any given system it plans with its partners, although; perhaps when the biometric sensor is linked to a connected phone.
When looked on from an outside point of view, it might possibly seem that this is just one more fight between the two major companies Samsung and Apple, which contends powerfully alongside one another. This is in the same way to do with PayPal as well.
It has worked towards ruling mobile payments for many years, only to see upstarts such as Square begin to infringe its business. Given that Apple Pay is planned to start online now, in apps and in retail stores in the upcoming month, PayPal must be feeling much more pressure to keep up its popularity in this market.


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According to Develop, Nintendo didn’t make any money last year. The company that blew the casual gamer market wide open with the Wii, that aims its products at prepubescents who manipulate their parents’ spending, the company that owns the Pokemon franchise — recorded a loss of $531 million dollars the financial year ending March 31. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment…
Their year-on-year revenue is down 36%, so no more chucking stacks of money at each other in between meetings.This marks Nintendo’s first annual loss for thirty years, the only time it has accounted a year in the red since it began shipping games consoles.
Not even shifting approximately 13.5 million 3DS units across the period prevented their posting a loss. The company dropped the price of its 3DS systems like a bad blind date to bolster the handheld’s shaky start on the market. That price reduction meant each system sold at a loss, but Nintendo predicts that 3DS will again be selling at a profit-per-unit price by September 2012.
The company declared that it “continues to pursue its basic strategy of ‘gaming population expansion’ by offering compelling products that anyone can enjoy, regardless of age, gender or gaming experience.” Will the Wii U capture the imagination of grandmothers and three-year-olds as the Wii did, or will they continue to look to Zynga and Rovio to satisfy their need for success?