While mobile communication (voice+text) has seen incredible growth in India, broadband connectivity hasn’t been taken as seriously. Last year, India announced a National Broadband Plan with the intention of connecting close to 160 million households compared to an estimated 10.3 Million connections as of now.
Testing iPod Touch-Based Checkout System The system, called “ZipCheck”, appears to be a modified form of the iPod Touch-based mobile EasyPay system Apple started using last year at its retail stores. The device is wirelessly connected to printers around the store as well as mini-printers the staff can wear on their belts, for easy receipt printing. The software in use at Mac stores allows staffers to process cash transactions, credit and debit cards, and even returns.
Wireless charging system for electric cars | Environment | guardian.co.uk
New technology from HaloIPT allows electric cars to be charged wirelessly by parking over a transmitter pad in the road.
Mount Everest now ‘wired’ for Internet, ready for Starbucks — Engadget
TeliaSonera subsidiary Ncell has just completed installation of a 3G base station at 5,200 meters (17,000 feet) that will reach the 8,848-meter peak of Mount Everest. Mind you, we’ve already seen a cellphone call made from the world’s highest peak using a temporary base station in a Motorola publicity stunt. This time, however, it’s permanent and faster allowing climbers to surf the internet or make 3G video calls. Why would Ncell want to build a base station in such a sparsely populated area? Because it is there.
A powerful whitespace system could transform, say, a university campus from a clutch of disparate Wi-fi hotspots into a campus-wide wireless signal field. But Genachowski’s bigger thinking may seem atypical to cynics used to line-toeing government officials: He notes “this will also be a platform for innovators and entrepreneurs. There is every chance of this leading to the development of one or more billion-dollar industries.”
What’s he talking about? Things like:
Wireless technology: It is already possible to send electricity without wires. Can devices be powered using ambient radiation from existing broadcasts?
“The contemporary convergence of mobile phone, camera, wireless Internet and satellite communication — the key ingredients of the digital handheld — accelerates the reconstitution of place from real, occupied space to a collage of here and there, past and present. But digital technology’s effects do not only blast us out of place; they also bore us into the sights right in front of us — those in our viewfinder. Our sense of place is augmented by information wired from the World Wide Web.” (via MobileBehavior)
High-Speed Wireless Transforms a Shipyard - WSJ.com
But over the past few months, Hyundai Heavy deployed a high-speed wireless network across the yard, one of the first such installations in an industrial setting anywhere in the world. Data zips around the complex at four megabits per second, about four times as fast as on a cable modem that is common in U.S. homes. Now, the company can use radio sensors to track the movements of parts as they go from fabrication shop to the side of a drydock and onto a ship under construction. Workers on a vessel can also access plans via notebook computers or handheld phones and hold two-way video conversations with ship designers in the office more than a mile away.
“The use of light waves could be a convenient high-speed alternative to present-day WiFi networks. Researchers in Germany have set a new speed record in the race to send data across light waves. The breakthrough heralds the day when domestic light fixtures will double as broadband transmitters. “The advantage is that you’d be using light that is already there,” says Dr. Jelena Vučić, a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institute, in Germany. The use of light waves could be a convenient high-speed alternative to present-day WiFi networks. Work to hammer out a standard in this field is being carried out by the IEEE 802.15.7 task group. The lights used are not the common incandescent and fluorescent bulbs of today, but LED fixtures that are widely expected to become prevalent in the future. Data is transmitted by modulating or flickering the blue spectrum of the light very quickly—so fast that it’s invisible to the eye.”
Purdue University researchers have developed a miniature device capable of converting ultrafast laser pulses into bursts of radio-frequency signals, a step toward making wires obsolete for communications in the homes and offices of the future. (via Purdue Newsroom — ‘Microrings’ could nix wires for communications in homes, offices
The wireless house of the future might use a system being developed at Purdue University that could eliminate wires for communications in homes, businesses and cars. The researchers designed and built a miniature device capable of converting ultra fast laser pulses into bursts of radio-frequency signals using innovative “microring resonators.” Such an advance could enable all communications, from high-definition television broadcasts to secure computer connections, to be transmitted from a single base station.
Wireless Electricity Delivered Over Distance
Imagine a future in which wireless electricity makes everyday products more convenient, reliable, and environmentally friendly.
Haier’s Completely Wireless TV Hands On: No Cables For Video… or Power
Wireless power has gone from lab prototype to working product in a little over 18 months, and Haier stuck MIT’s WiTricity into a TV along with WHDI wireless video for complete wirelessness. Complete. Wireless. Ness.
Sure, there’s a big power unit on the wall, radiating (totally harmless) RF into the back of the TV, which has a coil inside to receive the juice. It only delivers full strength if it’s parallel, so you have to plan ahead and somehow setup the TV in front of the wall that has the power module. Because of all the hocus pocus, the TV itself is a chunkster, and that power transmitter is no slim jim either.
Still, the idea is a good one, and the promise—as both MIT and Intel work their asses off getting wireless power up to snuff—is real.
WHDI is a lot further along in development. Wireless HDMI isn’t exactly household, but the tech is now supported by basically all of the biggest CE companies except Panasonic. I’m not going to buy this Haier TV—it might not even be for sale this year—but it’s a concrete sign of what’s to come.
In a couple of years, crossing the 1Gbps threshold with a WiFi access point will be routine. That access point will likely have two radios, one for each major spectrum band, and support a host of older flavors for compatibility. Eventually, WiFi will approach the robustness and speed needed to make it a completely viable replacement for Ethernet for most users.
In today’s pipeline are optional enhancements to 802.11n that have been in the works since the standard stabilized at the IEEE engineering group nearly three years ago. These enhancements will increase range and performance by up to a couple orders of magnitude, offering raw data rates of 450 Mbps and 600 Mbps.
The slated improvements will also correct for black holes, where current 802.11n gear’s signals don’t reach unless an excessive amount of overlapping devices are installed at relatively high expense. Even better, the boosts to 802.11n are just the start. A new IEEE committee is working on fast WiFi that will hit a raw encoding rate of 1 gigabit per second (Gbps).
» via ars technica
The latest games console arms race – to perfect hands-free, full-body game control – just got more competitive.
Sony has unveiled just such a system called Interactive Communication Unit or ICU, at the Vision 2009 trade fair in Stuttgart, Germany. It uses stereo cameras to watch a player and, like a pair of eyes, to judge depth.
Microsoft unveiled its own full body controller in the summer summer, Project Natal, due to be released for the Xbox 360 games console late in 2010.
New Scientist
Take Two Digital Pills and Call Me in the Morning - WSJ.com
Proteus Biomedical Inc., is testing a miniature digestible chip that can be attached to conventional medication, sending a signal that confirms whether patients are taking their prescribed pills. A sensing device worn on the skin uses wireless technology to relay that information to doctors, along with readings about patients’ vital signs.
