An oft-repeated comment heard at tech trade shows is how easy it would be to spend all one one’s working time in exhibit halls and conferences. There seems to be at least one relevant technology conference per week that one could attend and, in Silicon Valley, there are often two or three at any given time. With constraints of time and travel, the smaller service providers can only afford to attend a fraction of these conferences. Reading about and watching videos after the fact is good, but it doesn’t replace being there.
Trade Show Without the Travel
The next best thing to being there, might be via a mobile virtual presence. Echoing the theme of their conference, last week’s Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara enlisted the help of Event Presence to allow attendees to participate in the conference from the comfort of their desk. In this interview, Event Presence CEO, Steve Ernst explains how his companies is helping conference organizers and exhibitors remove the barriers of time and travel by utilizing devices that made their TV debut as “Shelbots”.
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The Bills Will Go Up
“Compliance issues, paperwork and much higher legal budgets for us,” are some of the repercussions that Susan Daniel, president of Horizon Cable, sees with the imposition of Net Neutrality rules. In the above interview, Daniel explains that the new regulations will burden her family owned, 5 person company with higher costs of doing business.
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Making Sense of the Cybersecurity Framework
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework and its 98 subcategories can appear daunting to the typical resource constrained, independent telecommunications company. Fortunately for its membership, NTCA has been working with NIST, the FCC and its members to make sense of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. They have also been tracking and providing input to the FCC’s cybersecurity working group, which recently issued a report about how the NIST Cybersecurity Framework relates to communications providers.
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Making the Community Smart and Attractive
One of the bigger challenges for rural communities is creating career opportunities for young people; particularly those who leave for college, as many times never come back to their hometown. Clint Carter, Director | New Technology and Service Introduction for North Central Telephone Cooperative (NCTC), lived this reality as his options when he started his career were away from home. As he explains in the above interview, [he] “always wanting to come back home to make a difference to his community.”
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300 Gbytes of Data Per Month Per Car
300 Gigabytes of data per month per car is what Cisco Systems projects when connected and autonomous vehicles.fill the roadways. Speaking at the TIA’s Connected Car Workshop and in the above interview at that event, Andreas Mai, Director of Smart Connected Vehicles for Cisco Systems, discusses the impact that this much connectivity will have on infrastructure, as well as the more nuanced aspects of data ownership.
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Rethink Your Business or Get Left Behind
The difference between the “connected” and “smart” home is self-learning, according to Farooq Muzaffar, VP, Corporate Strategy & Development for Verizon. The smart home learns and adapts to the behavior of the individuals (e.g. TV shuts off when no one is their to view it). Practically speaking, the smart home is also connected to the Internet, as much of the intelligence for the self-learning will take place in the cloud.
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Tweets and Short Thoughts
- The announcement of Nest’s integration of Dropcam’s WiFi cams (now, both part of Google), makes the idea that Google could automatically summon a car based on a person’s behavior even more likely (e.g. person picks up her purse and walks out the door triggering the car to be unlocked and ready to carry her off). But, can we trust Google?
- If
#uber drivers are defined as employees, will drivers be able to work for multiple ridesharing services, like the one Josh and I met? Of course, some people are already suggesting that any employment redefinition will cause Uber to accelerate their automation plans. - Shared mobility and
#autonomous vehicles could help electric cars make a comeback” according to @MorganStanley via StreetInsider.com
The Korner – The Digital Coach – AKA, The Internet Connected Basketball
A teacher recently ignited a firestorm of controversy with his essay suggesting the common sense argument that the odds are stacked against any of his students becoming a professional sports star. He pointed out that, in addition to great work ethics and genetics, professional athletes typically had great coaches growing up. As he alludes to most kids don’t have NBA fathers as coaches nor can most families afford personal coaches.
Enter InfoMotion Sports Technologies and their connected basketball, the 94Fifty® Smart Basketball. This basketball provides a player both visual and audible feedback on shooting arc, dribble intensity and speed, shot release speed and shot backspin. When combined with their smart net, shooting accuracy can also be measured.
This combination of adding sensors to a dumb, everyday object, combined with connectivity, cloud computing and a smartphone/wearable interface exemplifies the so-called Internet of Things. Still, it probably wouldn’t be smart enough to teach this uncoordinated wanna be to shoot like the NBA World Champion Warriors’ Steph Curry.
Click here to view and read more from our interview at CES2015 on this “game changing” product.
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