One of the hobbies i have taken up is patent troll watching. Thanks to Flowing Data for pointing out work by Mike Bostock which visualizes the data of who is suing who in the mobile patent warfare battles. To see a live version of this data network go to the bl.ocks.org website here.
The data on this chart indicates that Apple is at the heart of mobile patent warfare. Apple (AAPL) has been involved in 9 patent lawsuits. Other prodigious mobile patent litigators include Microsoft (MSFT) with 8 lawsuits, Kodak (KODK) with 7 suits, and newly created Google (GOOG)/Motorola union is involved in 5 mobile patent warfare skirmishes.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
I recently noted from the Bach Seat that the manufacturer of all things digital, Foxconn was moving production to Brazil from China because of rampant wage inflation. Now it seems that the Taiwanese technology giant has decided that to drop people from production altogether. TechEye reports that Terry Gou, founder, and chairman of Foxconn (2038), toldXinhuanet that the firm will replace up to 1 million people with robots over the next three years.
Mr. Gou told Xinhuanet that Foxconn now has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years. The manufacturer now has over 1.2 million employees with one million of them based in China.
Foxconn needs to automate more of its manufacturing processes in order to make up for labor shortages and stay ahead of its competitors, said Amy Teng, an analyst with research firm Gartner (IT), toldPCWorld.
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Mr. Gou told employees that he wanted to move the company’s workers “higher up the value chain, beyond basic manufacturing work,” according to a company statement cited by PCWorld.
If political leaders like former Gateway Computers CEO and Michigan Governor Dick Snyder and President Obama were truly interested in creating jobs in Michigan, they would be welcoming this announcement and pushing hard for Foxconn to build its robot factory in Detroit, where land is cheap and skilled robotics technicians cast off by the auto-makers can tend to the Foxconn robots.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
While having a bagel and coffee at a Panera the other morning, I read an article on my iPad (See I’m as pretentious cool as someone in California) from the fount of tech reporting, Men’s Health that Detroit is full of Luddites because there are not enough Best Buys in Michigan. The article made me put down my iPad and picked up my laptop so I could write this blog.
The Men’s Healtharticle looked at ad impressions from mobile ad network Chitika, the number of Apple (AAPL) and Best Buy (BBY) stores per capita, and the percentage of households that own tablets, notebooks, or laptops according to Mediamark Research.
David Zinczenko, Rodale EVP and editor in chief of Men’s Health observed in the article that iPad adoption correlates to proximity to a high-tech center, but also education levels, Mr. Zinczenko gets it right when he suggests that consumer iPad adoption is mostly about income levels.
“Let’s look at who was in line when the iPad 2 went on sale: affluent, well-educated people who had $800 bucks to throw around in the middle of a deep recession,” Mr. Zinczenko toldMashable. “It’s not that [college-educated people are] smarter than the people in Toledo, it’s just that they were fortunate enough to have the dough to attend college. As their educations progressed, their choice of leisure interests migrated toward words, narratives and research-driven pastimes,” all of which the iPad accommodates, he argues.
In case you did not notice the article started out as a study on consumer iPad adoption which incorrectly morphed into an overall ranking of tech friendliness. This is just more Detroit bashing by Men’s Health. In the past, they have called Detroit one of “Worst Cities for Men” and “The Angriest City.”
Related articles
Insights’ “Top iPad Friendly Cities” Study Picked Up by Men’s Health (insights.chitika.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Tablet adoption is reportedly outpacing the take-up rates of smartphones, computers, mp3 players, or game consoles. Adoption is underway in a variety of sectors beyond the consumer segment, into retail, industrial, education and business. The demands for mobility and real-time access to data are driving the tablet market. Sales are expected to exceed 147 million by 2015.
The financial geniuses at Citi (C) that brought us the housing bubble also believe that Microsoft (MSFT) can still win the tablets wars. The BusinessInsidercites a report by Citi that says despite being late into the market Microsoft can become “#2 behind iPad” for these reasons:
Tablets are too expensive – Citi notes gadgets need to fall below $300 before they really take off. Until they reach that cost, Microsoft has time to reach people who haven’t jumped on the iPad bandwagon.
Android tablets are not very good – Citi believes that Android tablets won’t take off like Google’s (GOOG) Android Smartphones.
Android faces legal challenges – Android tablet makers are already facing a bunch of intellectual property suits from Apple (AAPL), Nokia (NOK), Oracle (ORCL), and Microsoft. Citi thinks Microsoft is hoping for royalties of $7.50 to $12.50 per unit. That would erase some of the cost-advantage of shipping Android.
Apps – Microsoft has an army of 6 million .NET developers who could start developing touch-optimized apps for Windows tablets. Plus, Citi says Microsoft can make Office an exclusive for its tablet and exploit its Xbox business to offer exclusive big-ticket games.
Enterprise – IT departments already know how to deploy, update, and push apps out to Windows PCs, so a Windows-based tablet should be easier to deal with than other tablets. Microsoft will also probably make Office an exclusive to its tablets and could create a technology where a tablet can “extend” a PC by giving them access to locally stored files. Citi does note that the “bring your own device” trend might favor the iPad instead, but this trend is still in the early days and not proven.
Citi predicts that about 75 million tablets will ship in 2013 and that Microsoft will have a “meaningful share” of those.
GigaTrust Brings Enterprise Rights Management To Apple’s iPhone And iPad
GigaTrust, a publisher of Enterprise Rights Management (ERM) content protection software that enhances and extend Microsoft (MSFT) Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) announced the release of the GigaTrust for iPhone and iPad mobile devices. The product consists of a client and “Mobility Server” that enables persistent content protection for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPad equivalent to that provided by GigaTrust for the Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry smartphone and Windows Desktop according to DarkReading.
Reportedly GigaTrust for iPhone and iPad protects content at rest, in transit, and in use, allowing users to securely deliver and persistently protect emails while they are being read on the device. Additionally, iPhone and iPad users can apply GigaTrust protection to outgoing emails and email responses.
Research from Kaspersky Lab shows that many users feel more secure using mobile devices than PCs to surf the Internet and that most consider the risk of losing personal data higher on computers than on their mobile devices. The report noted by ITnewsLink says there has been a recent increase in the number of attacks on mobile operating systems like Google’s (GOOG) Android and Apple’s (AAPL) iOS, and experts expect to see considerably more in the future. Despite this, users in the Kaspersky Lab survey feel more secure accessing the Internet via a mobile device.
In the survey, users consider the risk of losing personal data lower on a mobile device than on a PC – despite the fact that around a fifth of all smartphone users has already experienced the loss or theft of a mobile device. The majority of users reported they store personal data, such as photos, emails or contact details, on their mobiles. Around one-third also save login information, such as PIN codes or passwords, for services on their mobile devices, demonstrating a large gap between secure reality and user perception
AppScoutsaysNext! For iPad is proof that the iPad can do work The app is a getting-things-done (GTD) styled app that will help keep your projects organized, keep your tasks from overwhelming you, and keep you moving towards your goal.
Next! can help you organize your to-dos and projects. AppScout says it doesn’t have the same features as a project management suite like Microsoft Project, it’s perfect for those projects that are essentially a long series of tasks to be completed with due dates and dependencies for each of them.
You can take notes, store documents relevant to your project, and tag items that you want to review with others, all from your iPad. Next! will even serve as a light document management system, giving you a central place for all of your project-associated documents, images, and files that you’ll need to refer to as you do the work.
Since the app follows the GTD philosophy it allows you to create action lists based on when the tasks will be completed as opposed to an arbitrary priority list. Your tasks can be adjusted as they get nearer or come into focus. You also get overall project status and health bars that show how far you’ve progressed towards completing your tasks and how closely you’re tracking to your schedule.
Next! is available in the iTunes App Store for the introductory price of $9.99.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
A couple of recent articles about greener alternative energy sources for tech caught my eye as I sat in my Bach Seat. First, TES NewEnergy, based in Osaka Japan has come up with a new way to charge your mobile phone by heating a pot of water over a campfire according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Hatsuden-Nabethermo-electric cookpot turns heat from boiling water into electricity The pot features strips of ceramic thermoelectric material that generate electricity through temperature differentials between 550 degrees Celsius at the bottom of the pot and the water boiling inside at 100 degrees. The pot feeds the electricity via a USB port into digital devices such as Apple (AAPL) iPhones, iPods, and Garmin (GRMN) GPS‘s.
Chief executive Kazuhiro Fujita said the invention was inspired by Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami, “When I saw the TV footage of the quake victims making a fire to keep themselves warm, I came up with the idea of helping them to charge their mobile phones at the same time,” Mr. Fujita said.
“Unlike a solar power generator, our pot can be used regardless of the time of day and weather while its small size allows people to easily carry it in a bag in case of evacuation,” said director and co-developer Ryoji Funahashi.
The company says the device takes three to five hours to charge an iPhone and can heat up your lunch at the same time.
rb- The thermo-electric cookpot sells for 24,150 yen ($305) which seems sort of expensive to charge an iPhone when the towers are also put of power and down. TES NewEnergy also plans to market it later in developing countries with unreliable power grids. Their best bet is probably REI for all the extreme suburbanites.
Aussie greener alternative energy idea
According to PCAuthority.com Aussie scientists have developed a way to power electronics by harnessing the energy of the keyboard. Using piezoelectrics, which converts pressure into an electric current, and a thin-film technology found in microchips, researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne believe laptops could become self-powered just by their user’s typing.
The new energy source needs more work before it’s practical for low-cost laptop integration, but Dr. Mandu Bhaskaran, the co-author of the research, believes the development is a step in the right direction. “With the drive for alternative energy solutions, we need to find more efficient ways to power microchips,” said Bhaskaran.
TechEye correctly identifies the biggest challenge to this alternative energy source will be to get the power demands of computer chips down to be able to use the technology. Despite the best efforts of chipmakers like Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD), the power drain for chips is still too high for this sort of technology.
rb- Maybe the Aussies want to bring back WordPerfect and DOS so you have to type all the time otherwise your laptop will run out of power. Image the rush to buy these devices as the green police get credits for taking more computers off the grid.
TV as an alternative energy source
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a self-powered, wireless paper-based device that runs on scavenged ambient energy from the environment. The GATech alternative energy system collects electromagnetic energy transmitted by television transmitters, mobile phone networks, and satellite communications systems. Manos Tentzeris, a professor in the GATech School of Electrical and Computer EngineeringtoldGizmag the new technology can be used to power small electronic devices such as networks of wireless sensors, microprocessors, and communications chips.
The GATech team has been able to build the system by combining sensors, antennas, and energy scavenging capabilities on paper by using inkjet printing technology According to the article, the energy scavenging technology can take advantage of frequencies from FM radio to radar. So far the team has been able to generate hundreds of milliwatts by harnessing the energy from TV bands. Gizmag reports that multi-band systems would generate over one milliwatt, which is enough to run small electronic devices, including microprocessors. The Professor explains that multi-band systems can exploit a range of electromagnetic bands to capture more energy.
The Gizmag article says the system works. The researchers have successfully operated a temperature sensor using electromagnetic energy captured from a television station more than half a kilometer away. They are now preparing another demonstration where a microprocessor-based microcontroller would be activated by holding it in the air.
The researchers say the technology could be used with other electricity-generating technologies like solar. Scavenged energy could help a solar element charge a battery during the day while at night, scavenged energy would continue to charge the battery.
The Georgia Tech team believes that self-powered, wireless paper-based sensors will soon be widely available at a very low cost. Gizmag says the autonomous, inexpensive sensors would be attractive for a range of applications, such as chemical, biological, heat and stress sensing, RFID and monitoring for the military, manufacturing, shipping, communications, and smart grid applications.
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I wrote about something similar here. It is important to realize that this new alternative energy source has so far been wasted.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
One of the hobbies i have taken up is patent troll watching. Thanks to Flowing Data for pointing out work by Mike Bostock which visualizes the data of who is suing who in the mobile patent warfare battles. To see a live version of this data network go to the bl.ocks.org website here.
The data on this chart indicates that Apple is at the heart of mobile patent warfare. Apple (AAPL) has been involved in 9 patent lawsuits. Other prodigious mobile patent litigators include Microsoft (MSFT) with 8 lawsuits, Kodak (KODK) with 7 suits, and newly created Google (GOOG)/Motorola union is involved in 5 mobile patent warfare skirmishes.
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A couple of recent articles about greener alternative energy sources for tech caught my eye as I sat in my 
