According to a Canadian Pet Market Outlook report, about half of Canadian households without children own pets.
As of mid-2014, more than 2, 000 megawatts of energy storage projects have applied to interconnect with the state s grid, according to recent data from state grid operator California ISO (PDF.
A project-by-project breakdown of all the applications is available in#PDF. What s more, CAISO only tracks projects seeking interconnection to the high-voltage transmission grid,
because the technology and intellectual property has been floated to the public as an open source transportation solution.
Magline further improves on system economics by utilizing apacket switching model that enables offline stops without slowing traffic on the mainline.
next-generation rolling stock and signal upgrades are expected to raise high-speed rail services in the excess of 320 kilometers per hour.
The product, known as Bag2go, can be tracked via a smartphone app. It also allows for self-service check ins
AT&T unveiled a similar concept at a demonstration of itsnext-generation technologies in May. The company envisions integrating the product with standard suitcases
About ten years after the commercial debut of the Internet, America s newspapers posted record high advertising sales of $49. 4 billion in 2005.
In spite of the declared determination of most publishers to pivot from print to pixels, the industry s share of the digital advertising market has plunged by more than 50%.
and overall digital data are from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. While newspaper publishers are continuing to gain audience at their web and mobile sites,
their interactive efforts typically trail the level of engagement achieved by many native digital media.
By contrast, Facebook alone attracts 166.5 million uniques per month. Here is the big difference:
While the typical visitor spends#1. 1 minutes#at a newspaper site, the average dwell time at Facebook,
the super-sticky social network, is nearly half an hour. Weekday print circulation dropped 47%from an average of 54.6 million papers a day in 2004 to an average of 29.1 million papers per day in 2014,
according to my analysis of a random sample of data from the Alliance for Audited Media. Sunday circulation in the same period fared somewhat better,
sliding 40%to an average of 34.7 million papers per week in the period ended in March,
NAA data show that the industry s total advertising and audience revenues across all categories shrank 35%in the last decade, wilting from $57. 4 billion in 2003 to $37. 6 billion in 2013.
The International News Marketing Association provided the historical data and I compiled the current data at Yahoo Finance.
One major consequence of the industry-wide contraction is that newsroom staffing dived by 31%from 54,700 journalists in 2002 to 38,000 in 2012,
The so-called Fingerreader, a prototype produced by a 3-D printer, fits like a ring on the user s finger, equipped with a small camera that scans text.
A synthesized voice reads words aloud, quickly translating books, restaurant menus and other needed materials for daily living, especially away from home or office.
Special software tracks the finger movement identifies words and processes the information. The device has vibration motors that alert readers
Developing the gizmo has taken three years of software coding, experimenting with various designs and working on feedback from a test group of visually impaired people.
including making it work on cellphones. Shilkrot said developers believe they will be able to affordably market the Fingerreader
and offices offers cumbersome scanners that must process the desired script before it can be read aloud by character-recognition software installed on a computer or smartphone,
the new device would enable users to access a vast number of books and other materials that are not currently available in Braille.
Users also had to be alerted at the beginning and end of the reading material. Their solutions?
Audio cues in the software that processes information from the Fingerreader and vibration motors in the ring.
The Fingerreader can read papers, books, magazines, newspapers, computer screens and other devices, but it has problems with text on a touch screen,
said Shilkrot. That s because touching the screen with the tip of the finger would move text around,
producing unintended results. Disabling the touch-screen function eliminates the problem, he said. Berrier said affordable pricing could make the Fingerreader a key tool to help people with vision impairment integrate into the modern information economy.
because corrupt politicians threaten innovation and a fair Internet. We have no protection for network neutrality because of the enormous influence of cable company s money in the political system
Intel s latest chips have transistors with features as small as 14 nanometers, but it is unclear how the industry can keep scaling down silicon transistors much further or
A project at IBM is now aiming to have built transistors using carbon nanotubes ready to take over from silicon transistors soon after 2020.
transistors at that point must have features as small as five nanometers to keep up with the continuous miniaturization of computer chips.
New york. Nanotubes are the only technology that looks capable of keeping the advance of computer power from slowing down,
In 1998, researchers at IBM made one of the first working carbon nanotube transistors. And now after more than a decade of research, IBM is the first major company to commit to getting the technology ready for commercialization.
We previously worked on it as a sandbox type of thing, says James Hannon, head of IBM s molecular assemblies and devices group.
Hannon led IBM s nanotube work before Haensch, who took over in 2011 after a career working on manufacturing conventional chips.
Wilfried joined with a silicon technology background and our focus really shifted. Haensch s team chose the target for commercialization based on the timetable of technical improvements the chip industry has mapped out to keep alive Moore s Law
This is the point IBM hopes nanotubes can step in. The most recent report from the microchip industry group the ITRS says the so-called five-nanometernode is due in 2019.
IBM has made recently chips with 10 000 nanotube transistors. Now it is working on a transistor design that could be built on the silicon wafers used in the industry today with minimal changes to existing design and manufacturing methods.
IBM s chosen design uses six nanotubes lined up in parallel to make a single transistor.
The IBM team has tested nanotube transistors with that design, but so far it hasn t found a way to position the nanotubes closely enough together,
Last year researchers at Stanford created the first simple computer built using only nanotube transistors. But those components were bulky and slow compared to silicon transistors
says However, for now IBM s nanotube effort remains within its research labs, not its semiconductor business unit.
says IBM s Hannon. If nanotubes don t make it, there s little else that shows much potential to take over from silicon transistors in that time frame.
Although IBM hasn worked t out how to make nanotube transistors small enough for mass production, Mirta says it has made concrete steps,
#Advances in emotional computing will give businesses an unfair advantage Pepper will understand human emotions.
They've developed software that can detect 400 different variations of humanmoods. They are now integrating this software into call centers that can help a sales assistant understand
and react to customer s emotions in real time. Better than that, the software itself can also pinpoint
and influence how consumers make decisions. For example, if this person is an innovator, you want to offer the latest and greatest product.
Mary Czerwinski is a cognitive psychologist at Microsoft Research doing pioneering work in Affect Computing.
a small wireless device on her wrist was monitoring her emotional ups and downs (through heart rate monitoring and electrical changes in her skin).
Other technologies monitor how hard you're pounding on your keyboards (another possible indicator of mood.
Imagine if your computer flashed you a message: Don't send that e-mail! What does it all mean?
and will be summonable with a smartphone app. The system s automated nature, transit expert Joe Dignan told#BBC News,
Benches can now be added to the list of things like watches, cars, phones, and everything else that comes in a smart variety.
the benches will feature plugs to charge your smartphone, and will also wirelessly connect to the internet to provide location-based information, like air quality data.
Your cell phone doesn't just make phone calls Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said in a statement Friday, the Globe reports.
and designed by three female engineers working with the MIT Media Lab spinoff startup Changing environments, according to Yahoo Tech.
one of the three inventors of the Soofa, told Yahoo Tech. One trait we have is we run around with our phones all the time,
and they die every five minutes. So for us it s really important to be charged up all the time
covered by Cisco systems at no cost to the city, the Globe says. And while the first wave will only occur in the Soofas hometown,
and New york too, Yahoo Tech says. Via Business Insider Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat t
#Banking with startups a growing trend Majority of the people in the U s. could bebanking with startups in the next three to five years.
It s for these reasons, among others, that the biggest opportunities in the financial world revolve around the disintermediation of these banks and core financial services.##
At the core of this emerging market was the desire to take banks out of the equation
(and other startups) by adopting a model that has been used by many other successful tech companies, like#ebay#and#Amazon, for example.
Mobile and the Disintermediation of Bill Pay, Processing & More Of course, the opportunities for disruption at the hands of disintermediation extend beyond lending.
The smartphone and increasing mobility of our world is changing the game. The consumerization of the enterprise and thebyod (bring your own device) trend within businesses mean that phones
and tablets are entrenched becoming features within the corporate and consumer worlds. Companies like Intuit, ebay/Paypal,
Mint. com started the ball rolling when it comes to disintermediation, and today a new generation of companies like Square, Braintree, Dwolla, Simple, Venmo, Indinero and Check are taking it to the next level.
But it s not just startups#alone. Consumer brand giants are leveraging both startups and the reach of the new mobile phone network to edge into territory that has traditionally been controlled by banks.#
#Starbucks partnering with Square#to be the main processor at thousands of locations is just one of many notable examples.
While banks have owned traditionally the small business space platforms like Square, Intuit and Paypal and even Amazon and Groupon are playing thedisintermediator
and are putting credit card processing in the hands of SMBS (small and medium businesses) and consumers.
and manage all of their critical banking information and bills in one place on their smartphones.
Rather than consumers being forced to go to their banks websites, their utility company s website and so on,
and a digital currency of record could become the micropayment system for the web, allowing publications, for example,
both areas are being reinvented today through the availability and abundance of new data types. From the rise of peer-to-peer lending models, mobile wallets, digital investment advisory, to the bitcoin revolution, today s digital disintermediation comes in many forms##all of
Retail UPS stores carrying pay-peruse printers, Makerbots in every school, a new brick in the Great Wall,
As noted futurist and self-proclaimed technology oracle Ray Kurzweil said at Google S i/O conference last week, the hype,
In less than ten years, you're probably going to be able to print your own open source clothes for a few cents,
it costs about $700 to build your own Openknit machine, with both the hardware and software still in the do-it-yourself stage.
There's also an online repository for open source digital patterns already up and running. Called Do Knit Yourself,
refinement, and much better printers and software. Eventually, printing clothes is going to be as easy as ordering a burger and fries from your smart watch.
Print green t-shirt, wear for a day, throw in the recycler, print blue-t-shirt (with recycled clothes matter) for tomorrow.
The cheap printing of socks and underwear doesn t look that far off, except that, unsurprisingly,
After all, just because I can build a computer (and I have built in fact every desktop I ve owned),
it doesn't mean I m going to have the time and resources to build some of the bleeding edge mobile computing hardware available today on the cheap.
So too for fashion. Printing socks and underwear may go on to reduce the difficulty of making jeans to making toast
#Google announces Google Drive for Work with unlimited storage for businesses Google Drive for Work#will cost $10 per month
Google just announced a new product that will offer business users unlimited storage for a set monthly fee per user.#
##Google Drive for Work#will cost $10 per month and come with unlimited storage, as well as a full license for Gmail and Google Apps.
It s a huge change for Google, which previously had a maximum storage limit of 30gb per user for Google Apps,
with extra storage tiers starting at $1. 99 per month for 100gb and going up to 30tb for $300(!)
per month. No more. Now every user will have unlimited storage, with no catches. Google is also increasing the maximum file size to 5tb larger than the largest hard drive on any PC available today.
I asked Google Drive product manager Scott Johnston what type of file could possibly run into the previous 1tb limit,
and he suggested high-defintion video (like 4k from a Gopro camera) or exceptionally large data files the kind of files usually stored on servers.
The move to unlimited storage was inevitable Box CEO Aaron Levie predicted this day on Twitter#back in March
and Microsoft just increased its storage limit for Onedrive business customers from 20gb to 1tb#on Monday.
But now that it s here, competitors like Box and Dropbox will have to step up and offer significant value beyond storage.
These competitors can no longer rely on cross-platform compatibility as a selling point, either. Johnston told me that Google absolutely intends to offer feature parity between mobile and web,
and between all different platforms. You ll see the gaps between mobile and web close significantly,
Johnston told me. We ll march in lockstop with Android and ios . I don t see where any competitor has a better story in terms of cross-platform.
We recognize the importance of that to users. Johnston also emphasized that Drive is not exclusively for Google Apps customers,
but will be catered to all companies, including those with heavy investments in Microsoft office. We want to remove all barriers to entry on getting efficiency out of these cloud tools.
Drive is a way to get started, you don t have to change your existing workflows. To that end,
Google is also addressing some longstanding complaints with Google Apps and Office file compatibility by integrating Quickoffice, acquired more than a year ago, into the suite.
Now, users will be able to edit Microsoft-formatted files directly within Google Apps without converting them to Google s file formats.
Some features like real-time commenting, will still require files to be converted, but Google Apps director of product management Ryan Tabone promises that round-tripping will be more reliable in these cases.
Google Apps is also getting revision tracking and commenting, another long-overdue feature inherited from Quickoffice.
In addition to making storage size irrelevant, Google is also offering features designed to reassure IT managers who might be nervous about moving files to the cloud,
including much more granular permissions, with support for groups stored in existing directories. Within Apps, we have the concept of organizational units.
Those sync with Microsoft Active directory or with any generic LDAP framework, Johnston said. There will also be much better visibility into
what users are doing with files, and an API into the audit log for developers, who will be able to build special-purpose apps for industries where compliance is critical, like banking.
On the security front, Google will offer encryption at rest on its servers. In addition to encryption in transit and between data centers,
which was already in place.)Overall, the improvements are an important indication that Google has given not up on the enterprise.
The Apps suite has been pretty static for the last couple of years, and it seemed that Larry page was satisfied to keep the product around as a decent side business (advertising still makes up 90%of Google s more than $40 billion in annual revenue) and a thorn in Microsoft s side,
but didn t think of it as a core part of Google s larger strategy. Today s announcements,
along with the improvements and aggressive pricing for the Cloud Engine#announced in March, show in fact that Google won t cede any part of its enterprise cloud business to newcomers.
You shouldn t expect Google to get into verticals like CRM or HR management, but as far as broad-based infrastructure and horizontal Saas offerings go,
Google is in the enterprise game to stay. Photo credit: Cruxial CIO Via Cite World Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat d
#New recyclable plastics discovered by accident A collection of new plastics that are recyclable and adaptable have been developed by researchers
Dr Jeanette Garcia, from IBM s Almaden Research center in San jose, stumbled upon the first new class of thermosets in many years when she accidentally left one of three components out of a reaction.
who was in charge of the research at IBM, is excited by the possibilities. When a large or expensive component is damaged
allowing the printer to lay down more material with the same number of movements. But thicker layers means sacrificing the printer s resolution,
because the place where one layer ends and the next begins becomes obvious. So a national lab and a corporation set out in the past year to completely reinvent the concept of the 3d printer.
Oak ridge s monster machine Oak ridge National Laboratory decided to make a faster printer by embracing thicker layers.
which reported that BAAM is capable of printing objects as large as tables and chairs by extruding plastic in layers 0. 3 inches wide.
Chairs recently on display at the RAPID conference each took about 2 hours and 30 minutes to print.
On a normal printer, a chair would take days to print and need to be printed in pieces.
The site also reported that Oak ridge is considering processing 3d printed objects after they are printed so that they appear smooth.
highly customized modules that will go into Google s Project Ara phones, 3d Systems turned to an old concept:
The printers deposit different colors and types of materials on phones whizzing past them on an oval-shaped track.
or a few nozzles to switch back and forth between colors. 3d Systems does make a line of color printers,
but even the largest units would have trouble keeping up with the volume of phones Google expects to need.
which have driven heavy interest in the 25 year old professional printer industry, only appeared 10 years ago.
Blinding lasers Desert Wolf s website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets
the Defence Web news site has published a photo of the drone after it was unveiled at a security trade show near Johannesburg in May.
Guy Martin, the editor of Defence Web, said he believed the drone was unique. The Skunk unmanned aerial vehicle with its four paintball guns, loudhailer and cameras is only a logical next step in the development of UAVS,
but slightly faceted aesthetic you might equate with their Jawbone headsets or Jambox. But it s also recognizably influenced from the Nike+Fuelbandwhen you tilt the cup,
and displays that information right on the outside of the cup. In a perfect world, you adjust your exercise intake accordingly.
phones are typically in our pockets. We wanted to make sure there was something right in front of you,
That display is also customizable. In addition to calories, you can track, say, caffeineand make sure you re not ODING in the morning,
At its core lives a molecular sensor, the specifics of which Lee refused to provide for competitive reasons,
Over a Skype demo, Lee let me choose from maybe 60 different beverages he had on the table.
Presumably, this analysis time is of little concern to the user. It's certainly neat to watch as a machine reverse-engineers the liquid poured into it
but any long-time user of the Vessyl should, theoretically, forget that the Vessyl is doing anything special at all.
##Results from the latest clinical trials of his#smartphone-linked artificial pancreas#suggest he might just make that deadline.
A smartphone-linkedpancreas removes the need for people with type 1 diabetes to constantly monitor
Every 5 minutes, a signal is sent wirelessly from a glucose monitor under the user s skin to an iphone app,
sending a signal to pumps carried by the user to administer the required dose via a catheter.
Before eating, people can input data about the type and size of their meal. The artificial pancreas performed well in#hospital-based clinical trials in 2010.
and self-checkout terminals to voice-recognition telephone apps, each year intelligent systems will take over more jobs formerly held by humans;
Dr. Eric Topol, director of the#Scripps Translational Science Institute, describes in a#Youtube#video#how patient-focused technology improves medicine.
and many websites provide free medical advice; and even TV ads often disclose critical data.
The ultimate tool to replace doctors though, could be the nanorobot, a tiny microscopic-size machine that can whiz through veins replacing aging and damaged cells with new youthful ones.
They argue that we should not let computers replace positions such as law makers, judges, or police officers.
I d rather take my chances with an impartial Computer experts estimate that by 2050,50 million jobs could be lost to automation.
Futurist Marshall Brain in his#Robotic Freedom Blog#agrees with the idea. America should create a $25, 000 annual stipend for every U s. adult,
since the Internet exploded into our lives in the mid-1990##s. We now go into a store to figure out what we want to buy only to go home
-and-mortar store to see the colors and hardware for yourself. But you may still have trouble envisioning how the wall color
and matte paint and developed the augmented reality display system from scratch. The cost of each grid room is relatively low,
Customers using the Holoroom first use an ipad app to spec out the room they re remodeling.
which consists of walls with grids on them that the phone uses to track with technology similar to#Google s Tango.
The tablet serves as a kind of de facto goggle a giant monocle, really allowing couples to experience the illusion together.
Now, it feels within reach, Phil Rogers, a corporate fellow at Advanced micro devices, the computer chip maker,#told the New york times#in January.
Once limited to silvery#images#on credit cards, holography#made a splash#last year when University of Illinois computer scientists showed off an immersive holograph room, CAVE2, that projected images on an array of LED screens.
Users wore goggles to get the full 3d effect, and a wand allowed them to interact with the objects on the screens.
One setting they mocked up? Star trek s holodeck, of course. Perhaps the perfect kitchen feels like a dream barely within reach, too.
Well, it may remain a dream for a few more months. Like other computerscreens, the room displays inputs processed elsewhere.
That means Lowe s has to scan every item before it can appear in the Holoroom.
because our phones help us keep a record of what we like e
#The Connected Fitting Room eliminates personal interaction with salespeople The Connected Fitting Room Retailers rely heavily on online shopping.
The Connected Fitting Room uses RFID tags to register the items a customer brings into a fitting room,
This information is displayed on a touch screen in the dressing room, and if a customer desires a different size or color,
they can simply click on the changes on the screen. The system has a real time registry of the store s inventory
In addition, the touch screen can suggest complementary or similar items, which can also be requested for retrieval.
Created by#Accenture,#Microsoft, #and#Avanade, the Connected Fitting Room is currently in use at the department store Kohl s,
which has locations all throughout the US. In addition, talks are in process that would bring the technology to retailers in the UK as well.
#The nanodegree A new type of college degree created by AT&T and Udacity An instructor for Udacity teaching an online Python class.
AT&T and the online education provider Udacity have partnered to create thenanodegree, a new type of college degree similar to the#Micro Colleges that Futurist Thomas Frey predicted.
and Internet billionaires have promised to overhaul the clunky path to a diploma. We need to take
and experience, wrote#Linkedin cofounder Reid Hoffman. Last year, on stage with California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun#announced#a new consortium of businesses, the Open education Alliance,
together with many of the original partners, from AT&T to Autodesk. It s a failure of the community college system, the California state system,
Continuing, the blog explains, Our early nanodegrees will prepare you for a job as a front-end web developer,
back-end web developer, ios mobile developer, Android mobile developer, or data analyst. The first nanodegree will start this fall.
Other online education providers, such as Coursera,#are designing their own certifications, which take about the same amount of time,
depending on the course of study. So, how s the quality of the degree compared to a traditional diploma?
It s completely up-to-date with the latest software, it s problem-based, much (much) cheaper,
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