Though DEMOfall just finished a few weeks ago, the push is already on to get ready for the next Demo in early 2010. And the first step took place in Boston on Oct. 22.
The Boston Demo meeting was the first of a string of Demo Meetups. These meetups, which will be held in cities across the world in coming weeks, bring together Demo alumni companies, VCs, press and new startup companies that could be showing at future Demo shows.
At the Demo Meetup in Boston, eWEEK Chief Technology Analyst Jim Rapoza spoke to Demo Executive Producer Matt Marshall about how the Demo Meetups work.
When one thinks of engineers, especially engineers on standards bodies, the last thing that comes to mind is legendary glam and punk rockers.
James Williamson is a member of the Standards Association Board of Governors at IEEE and was also until recently a Vice President of Technology Standards at Sony.
James Williamson was also the lead guitarist for Iggy and the Stooges and played guitar on Raw Power, one of the most legendary rock and punk albums of all time (and a personal favorite).
Here are the emerging technologies stories for the week of July 27th.
4G Network Tests - Verizon announced that they will launch tests of their 4G LTE network in Seattle and Boston later this year. The 8 to 10 Mbps speed sounds nice but we'll see.
Robot Firefighters - The London Fire Brigade has been using robot firefighters to deal with high-risk situations such as fires involving acetylene tanks. According to the report, the tests of these robot firefighters have been very successful.
Aluminum Goes Transparent - Scientists at Oxford University were able to turn aluminum invisible (for a very short time) using a high-powered laser blast. The scientists claim that this could have a huge impact for future technologies such as nuclear fusion. Though it doesn't sound like it would work as a Romulan cloaking device.
Here are the emerging technologies stories for the week of January 19th.
Zero-Watt PC - Fujitsu has announced that they will unveil a PC at the CeBIT show that uses zero watts of power while in standby mode. This should be the one of th first of many PCs in the future with this capability.
More Progress in E-Ink - Flexible computer screens technology continues to progress, if somewhat slowly. Researchers are developing a new semiconductor ink that should accelerate the development of bendable screens.
Advanced Micro Motors - Nano motors have long been the goal of nanotechnology but most of those shown so far are fairly basic. According to this report, researchers have made significant strides at developing more advanced nano motors which could greatly improve nanotechnology in many areas.
It has been in many ways a tough year for the One Laptop Per Child project. Several of the original team that made the XO laptop possible left the organization, a new chief operating officer and president, Charles Kane, was brought in, some orders by some countries never went through and (worst of all, to some people) the OLPC agreed to run Windows on the XO.
But whatever one thinks of the OLPC or some of the personalities involved in it, its goals still remain laudable, and even a year after its launch the XO laptop is still one of the most interesting pieces of computing equipment available today.
"Yes, I know. We are once again menaced by that evil villain, Bad Economy. He'll stop at nothing to crush technology spending, humble powerful technology companies and kill all innovation."
"But what will we do sir? I don't think technology can take much more of this!"
"There is hope. In the past when Bad Economy has struck, a hero has come forth who has fought back to protect technology, a hero called, Emerging Technology. In the early 1990's, Bad Economy struck hard, using his evil recession ray to rain woe on all. But Emerging Technology fought with the powers of improved PC technology, powerful networking and email applications, and, most effectively, the early World Wide Web. These technologies helped boost businesses and drive Bad Economy back to his hidden lair."
OK, I have a great idea for a new business method patent. It's a system by which customers can select among a prebuilt list of goods or products, and then choose how they would like these products customized and enhanced.
The system is extremely flexible and can be applied to everything from computers to hamburgers. I call it the "Have it your way" method.
I can't wait to get this patent, and I fully expect to get it. After all, if it's possible to get a business method patent for a way to use a playground swing, this should be rock-solid. And, once I get it, I can send out the legal notices to all those computer manufacturers, burger royalty and others violating my extremely innovative idea.
Back in 2002 I wrote a column titled "It's time for next Internet." In that column I bemoaned the fact that we were still stuck with an aging Internet infrastructure and urged more progress in next-generation Internet initiatives such as IPv6 and Internet2.
At that time, while I was unhappy with the progress of these initiatives, I was pretty sure of one thing: By the end of 2008, we would definitely have made significant progress toward a new Internet infrastructure.
Boy, did that guess turn out to be wrong.
In the six-plus years since I wrote that column, advancement toward a new Internet has been glacial, at best. Come to think of it, given global warming, glaciers are probably moving faster than next-gen Internet initiatives.
Yesterday I attended the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT (also known as Technology Review EmTech 08). This conference looks at many of the new technologies and the issues surrounding them today and in the near future.
The first day of the conference was heavy on discussion panels, which were impressive for the luminaries from across technology and academia who participated in them, and in the important areas that they addressed, such as green technology and cloud computing.
Yesterday I attended the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT (also known as Technology Review EmTech 08). This conference looks at many of the new technologies and the issues surrounding them today and in the near future.
The first day of the conference was heavy on discussion panels, which were impressive for the luminaries from across technology and academia who participated in them, and in the important areas that they addressed, such as green technology and cloud computing.
I have to admit though that the conference was probably too weighted toward panels. I found the panels I attended to be interesting but, in general, I tend to think of discussion panels as the Lite beer of technology conferences. They do tend to be enjoyable to watch (tastes great!) but they also tend to be low on actual information to digest (less filling!).
Here are the emerging technologies stories for the week of August 11th.
Cars that Collaborate - The EU is reserving a section of spectrum to be used for cars to communicate with each other and with roadside installations. The idea is to protect against collisions and hazards, and I'm sure it would never be used for law enforcement.
Fast Internet to Go Slow - Researchers are looking at the use of metamaterials to slow down fast Internet connections without the need for electrical conversions, something that could speed up the overall Internet.
USB 3.0 Spec Released - Intel has released a nearly complete specification for the next generation of USB 3.0 connections.
Back in 2002 I wrote a column titled "
