Technology Effect

   NEW YORK, USA: Latest global telepresence and videoconferencing equipment market forecasts from ABI Research show that the value of the telepresence, video infrastructure and endpoints market is set to reach $5.5 billion by 2016. In 2010, the market registered greater than 15 per cent year-on-year growth to reach $2.3 billion. During the year, the spotlight shifted to emerging applications such as desktop video, personal telepresence, video integrated within unified communications environments, mobile videoconferencing, and video-over-virtual-desktop infrastructure (VDI).According to a ABI release, the higher end of the telepresence spectrum, the telepresence experience is becoming more immersive with the integration of hologram and 3D technologies.  At the lower end, the emergence of personal telepresence products will make adoption more pervasive. Vendors are also taking the telepresence experience to the consumer market with the launch of home tel...

Bangalore: Renjith Menon wants his cell phone to do much more than just calling and sending SMS. He wants every possible means of entertainment in it, apart from the functions that can manage his everyday affairs. Renjith is the user of today's smartphones. These demands from the users have paved the way for a plethora of applications (apps as we call them) that have been created for various platforms. Have you ever wondered what kind of apps are the most popular among the users? If you own a smartphone as well, you know the answer. It's the social networking apps, and they are gaining more popularity in smartphones than in PCs. A global study by Nokia has showed that social networking apps are the most popular in India, and they are followed by music, business, utilities and games apps. What has given rise to this trend? Well, there are some reasons that are responsible for making social networking such a popular mobile web activity. The explosion of smartphones...

 Shanghai: Visitors to a fast-food restaurant in Shanghai may be pleasantly surprised when they are served food cooked by two robot chefs. The robot chefs at the Wishdoing restaurant on Shanghai's Nanjing Road can cook delicious Chinese cuisine within three minutes. They can serve customers eight popular dishes, including "crowd-puller dishes" like Kung Pao chicken, spicy diced chicken with peanuts and Mapo Tofu, bean curd with chilli sauce. The workers only have to press buttons on the robots to choose a dish and they will display the name of the ingredients and their quantities, the Shanghai Daily reported. In appearance, the robots look like huge kitchen surfaces equipped with iron pots. It only takes three minutes for a robot to clean the pot from a previous meal, stir the ingredients, finish cooking and then move the food onto a plate for serving. Although the robots cost 200,000 yuan ($30,350) each, the fast food chain is planning to install the...

 Britain may either rent or buy high-speed bullet trains manufactured by a Chinese firm, an official said. The high-speed bullet trains are produced by the CSR Corporation, China Daily Thursday quoted the 21st Century Business Herald as reporting. Gao Hucheng, China’s international trade representative, said British Prime Minister David Cameron has showed willingness to cooperate with China in Britain’s infrastructure construction and high-speed railway construction. The media report said that CSR will lend a batch of train equipment to Britain for their high-speed railway reconstruction. Thereafter, a joint venture may be established when the cooperation is further strengthened. This is the first time that China’s high-speed rail technology will enter the British market. Britain plans to develop high-speed railways in the country over the next 15 years and promote high-speed bullet trains with a highest speed of 362 kph, the daily said. China last year prod...

   Bangalore: Tokyo, Japan based Renasas Electronics, provider of Microcontrollers and semiconductor solutions, incorporates India in its global strategy for its market expansion. It announces the official inauguration of Renesas Electronics Singapore, India Branch Office in Bangalore in the presence of attendees from Japanese embassy in India, customers and industrial partners. Renesas is aiming to increase its overseas sales ratio to 60 percent by FY2012. Renesas Mobile Corporation, subsidiary of Renesas Electronics, through the acquisition of Nokia's wireless modem business offering semiconductor solutions for mobile devices, started its operation in December 2010, with R&D facilities in various regions including India. The company is engaging Indian market is a part of their overseas business expansion strategy. Choosing Indian market might work in favour of the company as India is a growing economy and it's growing in almost all sectors- Industrial, C...

  NEW YORK, USA: Global telepresence, video infrastructure and endpoints market is set to reach $5.5 billion by 2016, forecasts ABI Research. In 2010, the market registered greater than 15 percent year-on-year growth to reach $2.3 billion. During the year, the spotlight shifted to emerging applications such as desktop video, personal telepresence, video integrated within unified communications environments, mobile videoconferencing, and video-over-virtual-desktop infrastructure (VDI). Also Read: Interoperability network concerns spur innovation At the higher end of the telepresence spectrum, the telepresence experience is becoming more immersive with the integration of hologram and 3D technologies. At the lower end, the emergence of personal telepresence products will make adoption more pervasive. Vendors are also taking the telepresence experience to the consumer market with the launch of home telepresence products. The emergence of newer video compression s...

MUMBAI, INDIA: Telecom service provider Reliance Communications announced that it has signed a deal with Radio Netherlands Worldwide, a multimedia broadcasting company. As per the deal, RCom's mobile portal R World will live stream (24/7) Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW WAP) news feeds. “News plays an important role in our day to day lives. Be it a college student, a young executive, a corporate chieftain or a small town entrepreneur; being in the know of what’s happening across the globe at push-of-a-button is essential for our customers irrespective of segments”, said Prashant Gokarn, 3G Head, Reliance Communications. “We are extremely delighted about our collaboration with Radio Netherlands Worldwide to offer live news to our 125 million customers at touch of a button on R World. Jan Hoek, RNW’s Director General, said: “Interestingly, this is the first telecom company with which we have a partner relationship and we are looking forward to many more on a global...

 According to a systematic review published in The Cochrane Library, zinc supplements reduce the severity and duration of illness caused by the common cold. The findings could help reduce the amount of time lost from work and school due to colds. The common cold places a heavy burden on society, accounting for approximately 40 per cent of time taken off work and millions of days of school missed by children each year. The idea that zinc might be effective against the common cold came from a study carried out in 1984, which showed that zinc lozenges could reduce how long symptoms lasted. Since then, trials have produced conflicting results and although several biological explanations for the effect have been proposed, none have been confirmed. The review updates a previous Cochrane Systematic Review, carried out in 1999, with data from several new trials. In total, data from 15 trials, involving 1,360 people, were included. According to the results, zinc syru...

 Washington: University of Florida's supercomputer Novo-G is the world's fastest reconfigurable supercomputer and outperforms the Chinese supercomputer touted as the world's most powerful. Novo-G is about the size of two home refrigerators and consumes less than 8,000 watts, unlike conventional supercomputers that can consume up to millions of watts of electrical power, generating massive amounts of heat. In November, the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers, for the first time ever, listed the Chinese Tianhe-1A system at the National Computer Centre in Tainjin in China as Number 1. "Novo-G is believed to be the most powerful reconfigurable machine on the planet and, for some applications, it is the most powerful computer of any kind on the planet," said Alan George, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida University. Reconfigurable computing is an innovative form of computing, whose architecture can a...

Though no adverse health effects have been established for mobile phone use, excessive use by children should be discouraged In December 2010, Matt Parker, a British mathematician, tabulated the number of mobile phone masts in each county across the United Kingdom and then matched it with the number of live births in the same counties. He discovered that the correlation was so strong that in areas above normal numbers of mobile phones, he could predict how many more births above the national average occurred. Parker concluded that for every additional mobile phone base station in an area, the number of births goes up by an average of 17.6 babies! In reality, mobile phone masts have absolutely no bearing on the number of births. Masts do not make people more fertile. There is no causal link between the masts and the births despite the strong correlation. The number of mobile phone transmitters and the number of live births are linked to a third factor, the local pop...