BlackBerry’s Bad Timing Buries Its Own Flicker Of Good News On BBM Android/iOS Downloads (10M In A Day)

Timing is everything. Too early and your product will shrivel; too late and it will be overlooked no matter how shiny. Just ask BlackBerry — a company with spectacularly bad timing in recent memory. A string of hesitations and bad decisions made the BlackBerry maker too late to the mobile party again and again. Clinging stubbornly to old QWERTY keyboard habits left its hardware out of touch — literally — when it came to competing with Android and iOS, and allowed RIM to delay the necessary refocusing of its mobile platform for too long. That next-gen platform arrived eventually in BlackBerry 10, but the BlackBerry faithful had already mostly departed for pastures new, leaving the company with a load of unsold...

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Posted in: ICT

IBM creates liquid-based transistors that can process data like the human brain

For decades, the transistor has been the building block of electronic devices, from computers to smartphones. It has seen little change, but a team of researchers at IBM has given the transistor a major makeover, and it may enable the company to build computers that function more like the way the human brain works. If it pans out, IBM could use the technology to build chips that are highly efficient and use much less electrical power. That could lead to a revolution in mobile devices, which today are bound by short battery lives and electrical inefficiency. The whole process is not unlike the charged electrical fluids sloshing around in our brains. If the brain can do it, an artificially crafted material might be able to do it too. The...

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Posted in: ICT,smart city

Lessons from the Smart Cities Challenge

In 2011, IBM announced the Smarter Cities Challenge, worth $5 million in consulting services, to 100 cities with big problems and big goals. IBM sent teams of three to six to each city for three weeks to address issues ranging from healthcare to pollution and traffic to energy poverty.  Both IBM and the selected cities learned several lessons from the engagements that all cities can employ. Key technology was developed and deployed during and immediately following the engagements that can be utilized in other locations in the future.  Although the 2012 engagements have just completed, and the 2013 recipients have just been announced, the results of 2011 have shown promise, and demonstrated the value...

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Posted in: smart city

Why oil-rich countries are investing in solar

This week, the world’s largest concentrated solar plant went into operation. Shams 1 is a massive 100-megawatt power plant in Abu Dhabi with some impressive numbers. The $750 million project produces enough energy to power 20,000 homes and stretches across an area  of desert, west of the United Arab Emirates capital, the size of 285 football fields. “With the demand for energy rising exponentially, the region is undergoing a major transformation in how it generates electricity,” said Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of Masdar, the state-owned company behind the power plant. “In fact, the Middle East is poised for major investments in renewable energy, and Shams 1 proves the economic and environmental advantage of deploying large-scale solar...

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Posted in: smart city

Living Lab: Urban Planning Goes Digital in Spanish 'Smart City'

Cities around the world aim to become "smart cities," but in Santander,Spain, the goal has already become a reality. Thousands of sensors help alert residents to traffic jams, regulate the watering in city parks and dim the street lamps. Cities all around the world have set the same goal for themselves. Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, Dubai, Helsinki, San Diego, Stockholm, Nanjing, Vienna, Yokohama -- they all share an aspiration to become "smart cities." That sounds like an appealing aim, yet when urban planners try to explain more precisely how they plan to lead their cities into the digital future, their answers are less convincing, with each proposing a different plan. Despite the many symposiums that have been held on...

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