Hand Robotics

Was This Year’s Super Bowl the Twitter Bowl?

Brayden Baskerville — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:55:03 +0000

DM CONFIDENTIAL - While it might seem anachronistic to spend millions of dollars on 30 seconds of air time, and while it might seem completely illogical to do so in this internet era, the big investments and big bucks continue. We’re talking about the Super Bowl of course, and whether illogical or irrational on the advertiser’s end, their commercials provide more than just entertainment value (which is often high). The ads are a gateway into how the world of advertising is thinking and what influences those who spend their time trying to influence. The average person might not notice or care. The Find more…

Itron to acquire SmartSynch for $100M for smart grid tech

Dylan Bini — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:40:32 +0000

Meter giant Itron has made a rare smart grid acquisition. On Wednesday afternoon Itron announced that it plans to acquire smart grid cellular networking company SmartSynch in a deal worth around $100 million. SmartSynch has championed the use of cellular networks for utilities’ smart grid projects and says it has 130 customers, including nine of the top ten utilities in the U.S.

By my calculations the 12-year-old company, based in Jackson, Miss., raised its first venture capital rounds from Nth Power, Siemens Venture Capital and Kinetic Ventures back in its first couple of years of existence, and by 2003, had raised $35 million in venture funds. T

Find more…

Talking to an Emptoris Exec Post-Empower 2011 (and Pre-IBM 2012)

Ella Willoughby — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:32:22 +0000

I recently published a TEC article about my attendance of this past fall. What follows now is my deep-dive interview with Terrence Curley, Senior Vice President (SVP) of Product Strategy and Development at Emptoris, with the idea of developing some of the main messages from the conference.

During this past year, with the acquisition of Rivermine, the telecom expense management (TEM) solution provider, and of Xcitec, the supplier lifecycle management (SLM) solution provider, Emptoris remained focused and opportunistic on expanding in ways that should benefit its global customers and expand its solution capabilities in strategic supply management (SSM).

Find more…

Fancy Master Detail or how to Highlight Related Detail Records

Ella Willoughby — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:55:34 +0000

Last week I a had a rather interesting question: Is it possible to highlight related data that is in different af:table components ? Sure you can, so I decided to write a simple example application, and share the knowledge in this post

The use Case. After selecting a row in one table I need to highlight related rows in another table.

The implementation. To implement this, I create a page based on ADF Business Components for Countries and Locations, both from the HR schema. Note that, in order to make these tables behave independently, I do not use a viewlink between countries and locations.

Find more…

Zeebox Searches For Money In TV’s Social Second Screen

Brayden Baskerville — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:52:42 +0000

After quickly gaining a warm reception and a rapid post-launch investment from BSkyB, the social TV app startup co-founded by ex BBC iPlayer head honcho Anthony Rose is making its first real play at monetisation.

From Thursday, Zeebox is starting to include “click to buy” slots in its iPad and iPhone app and to sell second-screen ads to brands, so that each generates money from people watching TV shows with Zeebox on their laps.

It works like this…

Thanks to speech-to-text, subtitles and other metadata, the Zeebox iPad app already shows users a live stream of info “tags” corresponding to material in shows they are watching on their lounge TV. Right now

Find more…

Best Tech and Gadget Gifts Under $200

Ella Willoughby — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:18:18 +0000

Our gift guides are chock full of awesome tech, gadgets, and accessories. And I poked through all of them to find the best products under $200.

The Kindle Fire isnt the only worthwhile gadget to be had at this price point. Whether the people on your list love media, want to organize a vast photo collection, aim to get slim after the new year, or just play games all day, theres a gift for them here.

You should also check out our other Best Gifts Under guides for accessories and gadgets under $25, $50, $75, $100, and more.

Amazon Kindle Fire

The Kindle Fire wants to steal the iPad 2s thunder with its $199 price tag.

The Kindle Fire became a best-seller the moment Amazon opened up for pre-orders, making it one of the most popular devices of the season.

Find more…

Nokia Sold 1.3 Million Lumia Phones in 2011: Will it Save the Company?

Dylan Bini — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:31:49 +0000

Nokia, once a top handset manufacturing company, is now struggling to maintain its position in the market. The Finnish company is looking to regain its lost glory with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 handsets and it seems its strategy may eventually pay off. Reportedly, Nokia moved about 1.3 million Windows Phone powered Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 phones during 2011.

According to Bloomberg, the Finnish handset manufacturer may have finally found the recipe for success in its Lumia phones. Bloomberg consulted 22 industry analysts for generating these figures. F

Find more…

Why distribution is the answer

Brayden Baskerville — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:00:34 +0000

Distribution has often been painted by its critics as the channel’s unnecessary tier. Few would dispute the value of distribution’s core functions of pricing, availability, credit and logistics on traditional, high-volume products. But when it comes to engagement with smaller or emerging vendors, some have viewed it as the redundant rung in the supply chain.

If a reseller has the technical and marketing ability in-house, why should they be forced to hand over a margin cut to a third party they view as adding little value? And

Find more…

Software for analyzing digital pathology images proving its usefulness

Ella Willoughby — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:34:32 +0000

In bladder cancer test case, a new software tool developed at U-M separates malignancy from background tissue.

In a new study, a program known as Spatially Invariant Vector Quantization (SIVQ) was able to separate malignancy from background tissue in digital slides of micropapillary urothelial carcinoma, a type of bladder cancer whose features can vary widely from case to case and that presents diagnostic challenges even for experts.

The findings by U-M and Rutgers University researchers were published online in Analytical Cellular Pathology ahead of print publication.

“Being able to pick out cancer from background tissue is a key test for this type of software tool,” says U-M informatics fellow Jason Hipp, M.D., Ph.D., who shares lead authorship of the paper with resident Steven Christopher Smith, M.D., Ph.D.

Find more…

Virtual Victuals: A Gamer Turns Video Game Food Into Real Food

Brayden Baskerville — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:46:31 +0000

Food can be transformative, especially if you’re a character in a video game. When Mario ate mushrooms, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ate pizza and CJ from Grand Theft Auto ate fast food, they became better, stronger, sometimes even bigger.

But now one gamer has made that food even more enticing by putting the virtual food of video games onto her very real dinner table.

Find more…

Discover How Smartphones Improve Our Lives One App at a Time

admin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 07:32:10 +0000

Whether you want to impress the family with homemade cookies or find the best possible deal on a flight during peak vacation time, there’s a smartphone app that will make it happen. The different ways how smartphones improve our lives are almost too hard to list—just try remembering what life was like before you could look up everything on search engines and re-watch that funny SNL bit as many times as you like.

Avoid Danger

Image via Flickr

The many ways on how smartphones improve our lives extend beyond entertainment, even if those YouTube videos are pretty enjoyable. Sma Find more…

Woz Says Android has Advantages over iPhone

Dylan Bini — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:03:52 +0000

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has gone on record as saying that Android has advantages over the iPhone. That is an interesting statement to be made by someone from Apple, but Woz has never been shy about saying what he thinks. The comment came in an interview Woz did with Dan Lyons of the Daily Beast.

Woz said, “My primary phone is the iPhone. I love the beauty of it. But I wish it did all the things my Android does, I really do.” I wonder how mad Woz saying things like this make the folks at Apple.

Find more…

Mobile Access: the Latest Rage in Online Fax Technology

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:45:52 +0000

Thanks to the advent of the smartphone, many avenues of communication have gone mobile: Chatting, web surfing, tweeting… and, something we as the new generation wouldn’t ever have guessed — fax technology!

Now wait a second. Faxing? That’s decades ago. We’re talking extinct, like the Jurassic Period. Velociraptors galore. Name any business that still uses those archaic machines with the paper and all that jazz. Seriously, faxing?

Image: courtesy of Flickr

Don’t Knock the Fax Machine

To be clearer, though, fax technology has indeed evolved — like the dinosaurs. You’ Find more…

The Technology of the Drilling Process in the Eagle Ford Shale

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:51:47 +0000

Image by Clinton Steeds via Flickr

Oil production in the Eagle Ford Shale uses a mix of technology to safely and economically produce oil and natural gas in the United States.

Vertical Drilling

To begin the drilling process in the EagleFord Shale, the driller uses are large drill to dig hundreds of feet below the surface. Find more…

Technology Never Rests: The Value of Continuting Education

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:56:34 +0000

A college graduate 10 years ago left school with a head full of knowledge and a desire in his heart to make the world a better place. If this person graduated with a degree in History, today he is still able to use his knowledge to teach students; write academic theses regarding the similarities of Greek democracy to the newly free countries of Iraq and Libya; and even run the board if he gets to be a contestant on Jeopardy.

Another graduate with an IT degree isn’t as lucky. Most of his knowledge is still correct but probably outdated. Cutting-edge computers a decade ago are recycled trash today. Find more…