Ivy Tech Boosting IT Revenue

Ivy Tech Community College is getting $2.5 million from the federal government to train workers in information technology and cybersecurity, the Obama administration announced Monday.

The grant will help expand and improve the community college system’s School of Computing and Informatics, which launched this fall.

“A well-educated workforce is essential to strengthening Indiana’s economy, and this generous grant will help us continue to provide educational opportunities in career fields showing large growth across the state,” Ivy Tech President Tom Snyder said in a statement.
The funding will help pay for laboratories, data centers and professional development and will help create a career advising system.

Ivy Tech, one of the nation’s largest community college systems, is among the almost 270 community colleges sharing $450 million in competitive grants announced Monday. The schools must partner with businesses, labor groups and others to educate students in skills needed for in-demand jobs in such industries as health care, information technology, energy and advanced manufacturing.

“This is not some kind of gift,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “This is an investment in school leaders, in businesses, in people who are trying to do things in a very, very different way.”

Ivy Tech, which has campuses throughout the state, announced in June the Indiana Commission for Higher Education had approved seven new degree programs to meet the growth of Indiana’s IT industry. Those degrees were combined with an existing computer science program to create Ivy Tech’s new School of Computing and Informatics.

A task force of representatives from businesses and industries provided guidance on developing the school, and Ivy Tech said Monday it will continue to collaborate with the business community to review the curriculum, assess student performance and help graduates find jobs.

The school said it expects more than 4,000 students will get at least one credential and get a new job during the next four years.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said the old paradigm was “train and pray” — the government would create training programs and pray there would be jobs.
“Today, we are totally demand driven,” he said.

The grants come from a $2 billion Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training program to help schools expand and improve education and career training programs that can be completed in two years or less. The programs must be suitable for workers who are eligible for the federal program that retrains U.S. workers who have lost jobs because of foreign competition. And the programs are supposed to prepare graduates for high-wage, high-skill jobs.

Vice President Joe Biden said the nation is going to need 1.4 million information technology jobs in the next decade. Although a software developer, who makes an average $60,000 a year, typical needs a four-year degree, a computer network specialist, who makes almost the same amount, may need only a two-year degree, he said.

“We need to rethink how we’re helping more folks move toward the opportunities that already exist and the ones that are coming,” Biden said.
Ivy Tech, which serves almost 200,000 students annually, was the only Indiana recipient in the latest round of TAACCCT grants.

Last fall, Purdue University Calumet got $2.7 million to provide advanced manufacturing training for at least 300 people.

Indiana institutions received $10.7 million in previous grant announcements.
Perez said the grants are not easy to award because the proposals “keep getting better and better.”

“What we are in the middle of is an unmistakable revolution and a transformation of how we are educating our people to compete for the jobs in the 21st century and punch their ticket to the middle class,” he said.

Alibaba Going on TOP

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA), the Chinese e-commerce giant that holds more than an 80% market share, has purchased a 15% stake in Beijing Shiji Information Technology Co Ltd for $457 million. The deal will boost Alibaba’s travel-booking business, Taobao.

Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall online marketplaces, similar to Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) and eBay Inc (EBAY), attract millions of customers on a daily basis. Taobao allows customers to make online reservations and bookings, and provides various other travel-related facilities. It was launched in 2010 to compete against Ctrip in China.

Alibaba has employed an aggressive strategy of acquisitions and alliances. Other than partnering with online businesses, it is also entering agreements with traditional brick-and-mortar companies to gain access to their huge client bases. More than a dozen deals have already been signed this year, with Alibaba engaging in expansion efforts to attract existing customers of the businesses it partners with.

The e-commerce giant has been trying to grow its Taobao business since last year. It had previously made an investment in Qyer.com, for an undisclosed amount, to allow Taobao to get more services from the website, as well as a higher number of customers. It also made investments in SINA, the online media company that has over 400 million customers.

The recent investment comes after Alibaba raised over $25 billion from its initial public offering (IPO) in the US. Beijing Shiji provides a wide range of technology and software services to over 6,000 hotels in China. It is the preferred vendor for International Hotel Groups like Hyatt Hotels Corporation (H), Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc (HOT), and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc (HLT).

The deal will give Alibaba access to back office services, and will allow the transfer of Beijing Shiji’s huge client base (of hotel customers) to Alibaba’s online shopping and travel-related services.

With a huge amount of money available from its IPO, it seems Alibaba will continue its aggressive strategy. It will try to further expand its network, and increase influence over various diversified markets.

Currently, Alibaba stock is trading at $90.46 on the New York Stock Exchange, up from its starting price of $68 at its IPO earlier this month.

Technology of 2022

The IEEE Computer Society released a report this week detailing its predictions for the state of computing technology in 2022. No, the Singularity is not part of it: no downloaded personalities or post-human artificial intelligence. It nonetheless sounds a lot like “the future” should, with wearable, implantable nanotechnology and batteries that hold charges for months on end, just a more comprehensible future, one that doesn’t involve sudden innovative inflationary periods or out-of-the-blue discoveries.

Technology follows a trajectory.

"Predicting the future in the computer industry is even harder and riskier due to dramatic changes in technology and limitless challenges to innovation," the IEEE CS report begins. "Only a small fraction of innovations truly disrupt the state of the art."

"Some [innovations] not practical or cost-effective, some are ahead of their time, and some simply do not have a market," the report continues. "There are numerous examples of superior technologies that were never adopted because others arrived on time or fared better n the market. Therefore this document is only an attempt to better understand where technologies are going."

The report is the product of nine technical leaders within the IEEE Computer Society surveying the current states and progressions of 23 different technologies, including,

3D printing, big data and analytics, open intellectual property movement, massively online open courses, security cross-cutting issues, universal memory, 3D integrated circuits, photonics, cloud computing, computational biology and bioinformatics, device and nanotechnology, sustainability, high-performance computing, the Internet of Things, life sciences, machine learning and intelligent systems, natural user interfaces, networking and inter-connectivity, quantum computing, software-defined networks, multicore, and robotics for medical care.

This authors took the above listed technologies and examined them in light of different drivers and disruptors.

So, what does it all add up to? A key projection of the IEEE report is the “seamless intelligence scenario. Computing devices—from the very small, such as wearable devices and chips embedded under the skin, to the computers inside our mobile devices, laptops, desktops, home servers, TV sets, and refrigerators, to the computing cloud that we reach via the Internet—are interconnected via different communication and networking technologies,” the report explains.

"Together, they form an intelligent mesh," the authors continue, "a computing and communication ecosystem that augments reality with information and intelligence gathered from our fingertips, eyes, ears, and other senses, and even directly interfaced to our brain waves." It’s the internet of things, where we ourselves become a thing.

Predictive Tech

Over at the NY Times, Anna North asks if we can become more creative by using an unusual search engine called Yossarian that purports to help us see things in new ways—ways that go beyond the predictable associations we’re inclined to make when thinking about people, things, ideas, events, etc. What fascinates me about this possibility is that in order for it to be true, prediction needs to be the antidote to predictability. Without inferring where your mind is prone to wandering, neither a person nor an algorithm stands a chance of presenting something to you in a new light.

In everyday life, predictability is associated with consistency. In many cases consistency is a good thing. If your friends are so reliable that you can confidently predict they’ll stay loyal and true, you’re in with a good crowd. If you can predict how long it will take you to drive to work, you can reliably arrive on time without needing to get up earlier than necessary or feeling rushed.

Prediction has become an important feature in information and communication technology. Auto-complete makes searching on Google GOOGL +0.41% such an efficient experience that it can feels like mind-reading. Prediction also enables recommendation engines on services like Amazon and Pandora to determine what we’d like to purchase or listen to. And, prediction makes it possible for fitness trackers to recommend when we should take a nap and Google Now to anticipate the weather we’ll encounter when travelling. Looking towards the future, some are hoping that when the Internet of Things matures, our refrigerators will recognize when we’re running out of groceries and contact stores to replenish our stock before it runs out.

While inferring what we want can save us time, make it easier for us to accomplish goals, and expedite finding things we expect will bring us pleasure, predictive technology also can create problems. Privacy scholars like Ryan Calo note that if marketers can use big data to predict when we’re susceptible to lowering our guard, they can capitalize on our vulnerabilities. A related concern was expressed when Facebook ran it’s infamous emotion contagion experiment. If social media companies can predict, with ever-finer precision, what makes users eager to engage with their platforms, they can design features that will manipulate us accordingly.

On a more fundamental level, Cass Sunstein and others who discuss filter bubbles have expressed concern that algorithms which present us with personalized information customized to fit our expectations of relevance can be bad for democracy: the echo chambers they create can incline us towards embracing narrow—if not extremist—worldviews, eschewing diversity, and favoring conformity.

I’ve recently joined the cadre critics by arguing that there’s a significant cost involved by predictive texting—as exemplified by QuickType, a new feature on Apple AAPL +2.94%’s iOS8 operating system—removing friction from communication by having algorithms guess what we’re likely to say. When your devices do the work of being you, you’re susceptible to becoming a predictable, facsimile of yourself who gives others your second best.

Unison Partner Platform - HP Update

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has enhanced its Unison and demand generation platforms to help partners grow their businesses, the company announced this week. New platform tools include redesigned registration, quoting and pricing processes, additional program management tools and revised lead and opportunity management portals.

The platform restructuring was spurred by partner feedback and a recent Canalys survey, in which partners rated rebates, deal registration and lead generation among the most important aspects of a partner program, according to HP.

“Partners want to work with vendors that make it easy to do business together,” said Heather Murray, vice president, Product Marketing, HP Solutions Group at Tech Data, in a statement. “The HP Unison Platform has helped our partners effectively navigate all aspects of the selling cycle, from developing joint business plans with HP to demand generation and compensation management.”

Among the new platform improvements, HP has redesigned its registration, quoting and pricing processes within the HP Discount Now and HP QuickQuote solutions to help partner close sales opportunities, according to the company. A new MyComp Optimizer tool is also expected to provide partners with a single source to view and monitor payments and simulate performance to optimize compensation, improve predictability and maximize their payments. Additional features in the new platform include enhanced lead and opportunity management, a new market development fund tool, a Co-Marketing Zone and joint business planning processes and tools to support shared growth and collaboration between partners.

HP is rolling out the new tools and resources worldwide and will continue to expand the program to new regions throughout 2015, according to the company. All of the new tools will be available through the updated HP Unison Partner Portal.

IT Bridging Gaps in Education

Information and communication technology (ICT) first made an impact on the life of Fernando Botelho when he was in his late teens. Then, Botelho was a recent high school graduate suffering from increasingly impaired vision. Now, he is the founder of F123, a non-government organization developing low-cost open-source assistive technology for the blind.

 “In high school I was ranked 11th in a class of 43,” Botelho recalls. When he entered college he was given access to assistive technology and it instantly impacted his success, “instead of 11th I was fourth, and instead of a class of 43 it was a freshman class of 904.” The qualitative impact that the right technology can have on someone’s education and life left a lasting impression on Botehlo, “same person, same brain, same level of education, but suddenly you are in the top percent”.

Although Botelho was granted the assistance of ICT’s in education, he does not represent the majority of disabled people. Eighty percent of people with disabilities around the world live in developing countries and even in wealthy economies such as the U.S., many cannot afford the software.

While working for the United Nations Agency in Switzerland, Botelho realized he wanted to take what had created opportunities in his life and make it more financially accessible to others. He addressed the issue of cost by developing an open-source version of this technology.

His organization, F123, has created a software that can be customized to any computer. “We identify free and open-source technologies that are effective and we adapt them for use by the blind in the context of school and work,” explained Botelho. The system includes common software applications, an electronic reader and screen magnifier, educational materials for teachers, and training instructions all costing 2 to 5 percent of the price of a standard e-reader.

Open-source software is technology produced and distributed including its source code. The source code acts as a recipe for the product allowing any person or entity to understand how the software operates and make improvements to it. According to Botelho, “there are clearly monopolistic practices going on in the software world,” and rather than build his product on top of a monopoly, he wants it to be freely accessed.

F123 has had great success in producing a low-cost, trilingual software used by people all over the world.

Tech Inferiority Complex

Whenever Apple launches a new iPhone something interesting happens: Many Android users hang on every word of the unveiling, and quickly take to online forums to denigrate the new Apple device, and let the world know why their Android smartphone is superior. The phenomenon is not limited to Apple vs. Android, or even technology per se, but the inferiority complex and need to lash out against other products seems to be much greater in the world of tech.

Case in point. I recently wrote an article about why the Surface Pro 3 is the laptop that can replace your tablet, and one reader felt compelled to take the opportunity to slam Microsoft. The entire premise of the post was based on the fact that the Surface Pro 3 does a good enough job filling the role of mobile device, that carrying an additional tablet like an iPad is unnecessary.

A reader chimed in to say, “I respectfully disagree. It’s made by [Microsoft] (they need to stay with software). Terrible price/performance ratio. Their proprietary stuff is losing on all fronts. Linux rules on the server side and they rule on the toys. My box costs less than that running several distros of FREE Linux and any one of these OS’s will blow that thing completely out of the water.”

It is immediately apparent that the reader has a seething dislike of Microsoft, and that he is a fan of the Linux operating system. Fair enough. It’s a free country, and he is entitled to his opinion. The part that doesn’t make sense is why he felt the need to share those thoughts in the comments of this particular article. I’m curious why someone who is inherently anti-Microsoft would invest the time to read an article about the Surface Pro 3 in the first place, and Linux simply doesn’t enter the equation at all.

He begins by stating that he respectfully disagrees—assumedly with the premise that the Surface Pro 3 can replace other tablets like the iPad. But, he then goes on to simply rail against Microsoft as a company, and assert that Microsoft should stick to making software—like the Windows operating system for instance—but follows that by claiming that Linux rules.

Another example is the fact that some Android users seem to pay more attention to Apple than Apple fans, and more than they pay to their mobile OS of choice. When Apple announced the features of iOS 8, or unveiled the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, these Android users with self-esteem issues rush to online forums and comment threads to spew venom about why Apple sucks, or how Android is superior.

Closure of Canada Science and Technology Museum

The Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa will remain closed for the rest of the year as it deals with the discovery of mould in the building’s south wall.

The museum was forced to close earlier this month after maintenance workers discovered a leak in the roof that had spread to the building’s south wall. Subsequent tests revealed high levels of airborne mould.

The museum said in a statement an initial assessment showed that the work will take at least several weeks to perform and that it won’t reopen before January 2015.

Staff at the museum are being redeployed to other facilities, including the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum.

Museum CEO Alex Benay apologized for the closure in a statement but said the health of the museum workers and customers remain a top priority.

"We want to assure all those who support the Museum we are working with determination towards a complete, permanent solution to this unfortunate issue," said Benay.

Education Technology

Education technology is trendy. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t read an article or have a conversation in which someone makes the familiar argument that “education is the one industry that hasn’t embraced the technologies of the 21st Century.” The world has changed–so the story goes–and while business has adapted, school hasn’t.

It sounds convincing. We should certainly embrace tools and technologies that will help educators become more impactful. But we should do it because it works, not for the sake of modern humanity’s obsession with progress, newness, innovation, and disruption. These buzzwords of the industrial age, let’s remember, paved the road that led to the current landscape of education.

The very notion of education as an industry is problematic. School is about transmitting values and principles from one generation to the next, not skillfully organizing labor toward productivity. Education is the child-rearing activity of civilization. We nurture our young into reflective citizens by teaching them the social and epistemological agreements of an increasingly global collective. Educators need to understand that reading, writing, and arithmetic are primarily just mutually agreed upon languages through which we make meaning out of human experience. These disciplines are essentially useful, but only fashionably industrial. That is to say: the languages themselves have much more longevity than the current applications.

For industry, however, applicability is always prioritized over ideology. Thus, running schools according to the wisdom of the business world is precisely the thought paradigm which led to the high stakes testing procedures that currently plague the United States. We account for learning outcomes as if they were profit margins. We measure the dividends returned on technology and infrastructure investments. We see children as industrial resources evaluated according to their ability to download ‘workplace skills.’ And for some bizarre reason–and despite all evidence to the contrary–we continue to expect that these metrics will somehow correlate with intelligent, ethical, and responsible adult individuals. We’ve chosen the wrong perspective.

Implicitly arguing that the problem is poor implementation of industrialization, education pundits around the world often blame inefficient government infrastructures for preventing schools from embracing the appropriate technologies. But when I look at the multi-national corporate world, I’m thankful that bureaucracy provides a necessary filter–it keeps us from moving too fast. After all, the global economy is itself evidence that the hastiness of the digital revolution has been as tumultuous as it has been beneficial. Popular technologies have, in many cases, increased corporate productivity and profitability at the expense of the humans who operate them.

Stopping Smartphone Thefts

Just minutes after he bought the new iPhone 6, thieves attacked a man in Towson.
Jessica Kartalija reports the theft of smartphones is growing worse, while new technology is aimed at stopping violent thefts.
He camped out all night to get his hands on the new phone.
“I thought I have to get it; I have to have the 6 Plus,” said Braden Myers. “I wanted to get 6 Plus, too.”

But Myers never imagined that within minutes of buying one at Towson Town Center…

“A fist straight across my face in the jaw, knocking me down into the ground. Him grabbing my phone and trying to grab it out of my hand. I held onto it with all my might,”

Myers said.

It happened right outside the Stony River Restaurant.
“I swung back, hit him, which ended up pushing into the street, then the other guy hit me from the back of the head,” Myers said.
“They tried to take the victim’s cell phone. They did not succeed in taking it,” said Elise Armacost.
It happened in broad daylight. When people ran to help, the thieves took off.

Myers was lucky. Last year, more than 1.5 million Americans had their smartphones stolen—and many of the thefts were violent. In an effort to crack down on the number of thefts, the new iPhone 6 comes with kill switch technology. Now with an activation lock, if a thief tries to turn off “Find My iPhone” or even if they wipe the device entirely, they will not be able to reactivate it.

“You don’t really see that coming but immediately it hit me and I was like, `Wow, this is actually happening,’” Myers said.
The thieves weren’t able to take his phone and, aside from a few bruises, Myers is fine.

“Little sore but I’ll be fine by tomorrow,”

he said.
Police say it’s always a good idea to stay alert and, if possible, walk around with your cell phone in a purse or in your pocket.

SmartChips in Sport Tech

Devin Harris says he was unfazed last season when he and his Mavericks teammates were asked to wear tracking devices during practices.

Nor was Harris surprised when the Mavericks became the only NBA team to implement Readiband sleep-monitoring watches.
“They just want to collect data,” Harris says with a shrug. “We’ve got a lot of stuff that we do that’s a little bit different, but if it helps us get better, I don’t think anyone will object to it.”
When your boss is tech innovator Mark Cuban and you play for probably the most cutting-edge team in America, sports science is ingrained in the culture and data collection is deemed essential to deriving a winning equation.
Therefore it is small wonder that the Mavericks have an athletic performance director, 34-year-old Jeremy Holsopple, who says, “We are constantly beta-testing several technologies.”
To Cuban, it’s just common sense. Amid a microchipped society that has transformed our phones into GPS navigators and motion sensors and enables us to find beloved lost pets, why wouldn’t sports teams tap science and technology’s ever-evolving possibilities?
Mavericks training camp begins in nine days. The team’s American Airlines Center basement practice court gleams in wait, thanks to a resurfacing and repainting.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the locker/weight room area, Holsopple is already tinkering in his makeshift laboratory.
This is the second season in which the Mavericks will utilize beeper-sized devices that were conceived by Australia-based Catapult Sports. The technology monitors and assesses players’ training loads, with a primary goal of limiting soft-tissue injuries — muscle, ligament and tendon.
The device emits and receives GPS and accelerometer signals, weighs about one ounce and is worn under practice jerseys, tucked into a pouch positioned near the top of the spine. The device emits real-time data on accelerations, decelerations, changes of direction and jumping (height and frequency).
Using the data, which Catapult calls “the world’s first bio-analytics platform,” sports teams monitor daily and weekly leg-loads and adjust workouts accordingly. The data also helps quantify the progress of players who are rehabbing from injuries.
Catapult says its clients include about one-third of NBA teams and half of the NFL — including the Cowboys. Baylor and at least two other Texas schools that Catapult declines to name are among the company’s roughly 25 college football clients.
“Anything that makes us smarter about our players’ health is a win for us,” Cuban says. “Catapult certainly has helped.
“Data acquisition is critical to being proactive with every element of player health and performance, and Catapult is a key product for us in that area.”
How strongly does entrepreneur and Shark Tank personality Cuban feel about Catapult’s merits? In March he purchased a minority share of the company and became an advisor, saying his dual purpose was to “make some money and beat somebody’s ass.”
So where does Cuban draw the line between maximizing his investment and preserving the Mavericks’ potential competitive edge?
“Winning comes first,” he says. “I’m here to answer questions for Catapult and give them guidance. But they know I’m not calling any other NBA teams to make introductions.”

MileStone by Austrailian Solar Tech

Novatec Solar – a company majority owned by Australia’s Transfield Holdings – has commissioned a solar thermal energy demonstration plant in Spain that is based on a new type of molten salt storage technology.

The Germany-based Novatec Solar says the new plant uses a process called direct molten salt or DMS technology – where inorganic salts are used as a heat transfer fluid rather than oils.

This means that the plant can operate at temperatures well above 500°C, resulting in a significant increase in power yield. This means that costs are lowered significantly and the solar plants can act as baseload generators if required.

Andreas Wittke, CEO of Novatec Solar, which is 85% owned by Australia’s Transfield Holdings, says this means that the technology will be able to operate on a “commercial” basis.

“The successful commissioning and the initial results of the DMS demo plant have confirmed our expectations of the technology,” he said in a statement.

“We are delighted that we can now offer solar thermal power plants with molten salt technology and thermal storage on a commercial basis.”

The use of DMS technology is being used at the 110 MW Crescent Dunes power tower unit nearing completion in Nevada, which will be the largest solar thermal plant with storage in the world.

Novatec Solar will use DMS with its linear Fresnel technology, which has been deployed as a demonstration “solar booster” at the Liddell coal generator in NSW (pictured), and is being mooted for a renewables-based replacement for the Collinsville coal-fired power station in Queensland.

Photosynthesis Tech

Two down, one to go. Researchers have completed the second of three major steps needed to turbocharge photosynthesis in crops such as wheat and rice, something that could boost yields by around 36 to 60 percent for many plants. Because it’s more efficient, the new photosynthesis method could also cut the amount of fertilizer and water needed to grow food.

Researchers at Cornell University and Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom successfully transplanted genes from a type of bacteria—called cyanobacteria—into tobacco plants, which are often used in research. The genes allow the plant to produce a more efficient enzyme for converting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into sugars and other carbohydrates. The results are published today in the journal Nature.

Scientists have long known that some plants are much more efficient at turning carbon dioxide into sugar than other plants. These fast-growing plants—called C4 plants—include corn and many types of weeds. But 75 percent of the world’s crops (known as C3 plants) use a slower and less efficient form of photosynthesis. Researchers have been attempting for a long time to change some C3 plants—including wheat, rice, and potatoes—into C4 plants. The approach has been given a boost lately by novel high-precision gene-editing technologies that are being applied to the C4 Rice Project (see “Why We Will Need Genetically Modified Foods”).

The Cornell and Rothamsted researchers took a simpler approach. Rather than attempting to convert a C3 plant into a C4 plant by changing its anatomy and adding new cell types and structures, the researchers modified components of existing cells. “If you can have a simpler mechanism that doesn’t require anatomical changes, that’s pretty darn good,” says Daniel Voytas, director of the Center for Genome Engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Instead of mimicking C4 plants, the researchers borrowed a three-part photosynthesis mechanism from cyanobacteria. First, proteins form a special compartment within a plant cell that concentrates CO2; second, the compartment contains a speedy enzyme for converting that CO2; and third, the cells use special pumps in their membranes to usher CO2 into the cells.

Earlier this year, the researchers engineered cells to form the special CO2 compartments. The new research takes care of the second part—the speedy enzyme. They’re collaborating with other researchers on the third part, the pumps. Ultimately the researchers will need to put all three parts together in the same plants.

Maureen Hansen, a professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell, says the advances won’t be seen in commercially grown food crops for at least five or 10 years.

To do that won’t be a simple matter of transplanting one or two genes. It will require transferring 10 to 15 genes, and making sure the genes are stable, says Dean Price, a professor of medicine, biology, and environment at Australian National University. Price was not involved in the current research. Only then can extensive field testing begin, along with the regulatory process for genetically modified crops.

The approach will likely be limited at first to a few plants that researchers are particularly good at genetically modifying, such as potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. However, Price says, there are genetic workarounds that could quickly make it possible in a wider range of crops.

Tech for Democracy

Information is more available and accessible than ever before, and we are witnessing the power of the crowd to respond to news events with greater impact. As technology continues to play a larger role in our everyday lives, we must ask ourselves what ultimately is the responsibility of technology when it comes to the dissemination of information?

At Fundly, we see thousands of campaigns daily, from a small-town parent raising money for her kid’s school to massive fundraising efforts by some of the world’s largest charities. We also see polarizing campaigns such as the one started by a teacher from North Carolina that raised over $150,000 in a few days to help feed the children of Ferguson, Mo.

The Role of Technology

While the campaign to feed the students of Ferguson was mostly well-received by the public, there were a string of complaints from individuals who felt that supporters of the campaign were making biased, and in some cases offensive, comments on our site. Their upset was understandable, but when you look at the role of technology you see that it facilitates democracy, including the good and the bad that goes with it.

We receive angry emails every day demanding that we take down specific campaigns. Our job as a technology platform, however, is to remain un-biased and allow everyone to have an equal voice. It would be irresponsible of us to take down campaigns based on the demands of a vocal minority, unless there is a clear violation of our terms of service.

I’m not advocating for racist remarks on crowdfunding sites. In fact, our terms of service prohibit this, and I’ve had to remove racist comments from the “Feed Ferguson” campaign. However, beyond our basic terms of service, people have the freedom to raise money for the things they care about, no matter what they are. We may not like some of their campaigns or positions, but if we want to protect all of our democratic rights, we must allow them.

Tech Investment

A few years back, Nick Carr and others predicted information technology would become so commonplace that it would cease to be a competitive differentiator.

Well, it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. A new survey finds that enterprises that dive into technology investments tend to come out ahead in the end. Furthermore, those enterprises that embrace DevOps are proving to be a step ahead of the competition.

These are the takeaways of a study of 1,450 executives, commissioned by CA Technologies, which finds that technology-driven enterprises who are investing in new innovation and development capabilities are growing revenue at more than twice the rate of those not-so-technology inclined.

The survey data also indicates that enterprises are backing away from IT outsourcing, and bringing more software development back in-house. Over a four-year period, the percent of software development done in-house will have increased 11 percentage points, from 33 to 44 percent. This maps to another industry survey by Computer Economics that also finds a reduction in IT outsourcing.

As the survey’s authors put it: “Bringing more software development back in-house is a recognition that these skills need to be a core part of enterprises’ DNA, but sometimes the pressure to expand your application footprint means you can’t grow skills organically fast enough. When this becomes an issue, enterprises are turning to software acquisitions as a way to get the talent and technology they need.”

A surprisingly high level of software acquisitions — presumably meaning buying a software developer or the rights to code — point to the evolution of businesses of all types to software companies. Fifty-two percent report that they have either made a software acquisition or plan to in the next 12 months. Only 19 percent say they have no plans to do so.

It’s not clear how cloud factors in this equation. One school of thought would suggest companies would be less intimately involved with application development, since they may be using cloud services. However, it’s also likely that many enterprises — from outside the software industry — are becoming cloud service providers themselves.

Guide to Blind

At the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Guadalajara, Mexico, researchers have developed special lenses for the blind.

The idea is to turn traditional glasses into a navigation device to allow users to freely move from a specific point while avoiding both static and moving obstacles. It uses ultrasound technology, sound sensors, GPS and an artificial voice to guide the user.

Similar “smart” glasses have already been developed, but what sets this Mexican-made device apart is their use of ultrasound technology to detect translucent objects.

Researcher Alfonso Rojas Dominguez explained:“The “Smart Guide” project is trying to develop intelligent glasses to help visually-impaired people in their everyday lives; recognising documents, recognising tickets, colours, and also to help them with their mobility, recognising obstacles, directions to get to their destination via GPS, ultrasonic sensors and via a pair of cameras that process images through the lenses.”

Bouncing ultrasonic waves off surrounding objects, the technology can also read different colours and writing on objects and surfaces.

The aim is to sell the device at a retail price between 800 and 1,200 euros.

Learn Tech

Learning professionals are often the first to admit that when it comes to technology, they love the idea of the newest shiny product. But successfully implementing the latest toys for mobile learning, video streaming and social collaboration may be another thing altogether.

Practitioners and vendors alike say even the best thought-out rollouts can have problems, including getting employees to actually use the tools. And sometimes the latest fad can be just that — a passing fad.

Take the idea to build an entire curriculum in the online virtual world Second Life, which was all the rage a decade ago, said Rob Lauber, chief learning officer at McDonald’s Corp. “What everyone thought was going to become a cottage industry overnight actually died overnight.”

Even established technologies such as learning management systems are still not being fully used, and most of the reasons why are often out of learning leaders’ control: budget constraints, learning’s low position on information technology’s totem pole, bandwidth issues and inadequate resources to keep up with the necessary data input.

Budget constraints and integrating data from multiple systems still rank as some of learning leaders’ top technology challenges, according to the 2014 Chief Learning Officer Learning Technology Report.

Coming to Grips With Today’s Hottest Trends
Alicia Shevetone, vice president of strategies at Clarity Consultants in Campbell, California, said less than 5 percent of her clients are making a sincere effort to develop mobile learning, partly because they are stymied by budget constraints or they do not understand what it takes to introduce a new technology.

Some get too excited and buy first before doing their homework, said Katherine Guest, co-founder and chief marketing officer of OnPoint Digital Inc., an online and mobile learning company. “We’ve heard learning professionals say that their company just bought hundreds — even thousands — of tablet devices, with no real plan as to what they would install on them, and no thought as to how they might be used to enhance existing learning programs.”

In that sort of situation learning leaders should find out first which, if any, employees are allowed to access proprietary company information on their personal devices, she said. If they have corporate-owned devices, IT may only allow apps from their corporate app store or mobile device management platform.

Some practitioners prefer to get senior leaders excited about technology-related possibilities by developing something tangible before asking for an investment. Leah Minthorn, acting director of North American operations learning at Boston-based Iron Mountain Inc., recently designed a mobile learning app, even though not all workers have company-owned devices and there are security issues with using their own devices.

“I do things backwards, because I think it makes them more apt to approve things,” she said.

Governmental entities in particular are less inclined to be early adopters because it’s a very slow process to get people comfortable. Kevin Bruny, chief learning officer for Virginia’s Chesterfield County, likened it to turning a steam ship. However, Bruny said in his situation there isn’t much need to roll out mobile learning because most county employees in the field can complete their duties without additional performance support tools.

But that brings up a relevant point. Work tasks, outcomes and infrastructure matter when it comes to technology-motivated learning decisions. For example, Laura Helliwell, senior director of technology for corporate learning at Harvard Business Publishing in Boston, said it’s challenging to develop online content for organizations that still use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, as the older browser doesn’t support content developed using HTML5.

Tech Expo

The fifth annual tech IT out Technology Showcase & Expo, hosted by the Southwest Missouri Chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP), kicks off at 7:30 a.m. Thursday at the Oasis Convention Center, 2546 N. Glenstone Ave. This show offers technology breakout/education sessions, 60-plus technology exhibitors, over a dozen sponsors, and houses around 800 information technology and business professionals from a five-state region.

Technology industry giants such as Microsoft, IBM, Brocade, Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent are among the many high profile speakers, exhibitors and attendees at this year’s conference. It will also showcase a Small Business Education Series as well an in-depth, intimate, by-invitation-only conversation with Jeff Charlson, Vice President of Information Systems Division for Walmart stores who will be discussing “Collaboration.”

Session topics include CyberSecurity, Artificial Intelligence in Action, Event Detection, Warning and Reporting (weather), a briefing on the breach of Community Health Care, Espionage, plus social media and impacts on small businesses.

Sponsored by CenturyLink Business, this conference brings something for everyone interested in information technology, the advances being made across all industries as well as the latest and greatest technology brought to you by local, regional and national IT specialists.

Cost to attend is $40, registration is required; no cash will be accepted at the door.

Doors open at 7:30 a.m. for registration and check-in. Keynote Speaker Neal Tilley, Senior Director, Education Technology-Alcatel-Lucent presents Communication Evolution: It’s about TIME not TECHNOLOGY at 8 a.m. in the Maui Room. The event closes at 6:30 p.m.

iWatch

Apple’s embrace of wireless charging for its new Watch may be a defining moment for a technology that’s languished for years amid competing standards and consumer confusion.

Supporters of wireless charging see a future where people no longer worry about topping up their gadgets, are free from tangled power cords and low-battery warnings and where terms like “outlet” and “plugged in” will be as anachronistic as “dialling” a phone.

Users seem to like the idea too: in a recent survey by technology consultancy IHS, 83% were interested in wireless charging; in China, the figure was 91%.

But, while the technology is largely there to do this, competition to set a global standard is getting in the way of delivery. It’s reminiscent of the Betamax vs VHS videotape wars of three or four decades ago, or the more recent battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD for supremacy in high-definition optical disc format.

For now, there are three alliances, but not much to show. Last year, fewer than 20-million phones were shipped with wireless charging built in, according to IHS – less than 2% of the billion smartphones shipped around the world.

“There are a lot of bees around the hive,” said Omri Lachman, chief executive of Humavox, an Israeli start-up with its own wireless charging technology. “Up to now, we’ve not seen a mass aggregation of wireless charging in devices. There’s a good reason for that: three standards for the same form of technology.”

Own Tech

Die-hard entrepreneurs have to be prepared to turn on a dime, hedge their bets and prepare for all contingencies. These are lessons brought to the business model at Global Clean Energy Inc., a U.S. company with its headquarters in Montreal and offices in Houston, Texas, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

GCE is a “waste-to-energy conversion solutions company,” founded in 2006 by president and chief executive Earl Azimov. It had been developing technology to convert tires and plastics to diesel and gasoline and build and run pyrolysis plants, with minority partners.

But when Brian Levine came on board as chief operating officer two years ago, he realized the business had to make an abrupt shift. Despite initial success in developing its technology, to continue down that path would require at least an additional US$10-million to US$20-million and many months, if not years, to perfect.

As well, the company had been in a development stage for nearly six years and needed revenue to make it more attractive.

“The investment community is looking for no technology risk,” Mr. Levine wrote in an email. “Too many companies have tried to create … their own proprietary technologies. … Rather than waste tremendous time and money … we opted to develop and lockup top North American sites, the precious real estate and feedstock, focusing on those … with proven ‘package’ technology rather than tolerating technology risks as so many have done and failed.”

GM Connected Car

General Motors Co (GM.N) will introduce in two years its first car that can communicate with other vehicles to help avoid accidents and ease traffic congestion, Chief Executive Mary Barra said on Sunday.

In the same time frame, GM also will introduce more advanced technology allowing hands-free driving in some cases, she said.

"I’m convinced customers will embrace (vehicle-to-vehicle) and automated driving technologies for one simple reason: they are the answer to everyday problems that people want solved,"

Auto companies, academics and government agencies globally are working to develop cameras, sensors, radar and other technologies that allow vehicles and surrounding infrastructure like stoplights to alert each other about nearby driving conditions.

The industry is rolling out such features as adaptive cruise control, crash-imminent braking and semi-automated, hands-free driving like GM’s ‘Super Cruise’ feature to make roads safer.

However, GM and other automakers have emphasized that even with hands-free driving, drivers will be responsible and need to maintain attention on the road. Meanwhile, Internet search company Google Inc (GOOGL.O) is working to develop fully autonomous vehicles.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has made developing connected car technologies a high priority, a view shared in Japan and Europe. And when cars can also talk to surrounding infrastructure, the gains will be exponential, Barra said.

However, she said commercializing a fully automated vehicle may take until the next decade.

Congestion causes urban Americans to travel 5.5 billion more hours and purchase an extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel each year, she said, citing outside data.

In 2016, GM will sell a 2017 model Cadillac CTS sedan standardly equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle technology. However, the car can only communicate with similarly equipped vehicles and it will take time for the industry to introduce the technology broadly, GM officials said before Barra’s speech.

iWatch to use NFC

Apple Inc plans to include near-field communication (NFC), a technology that can be used to make payments wirelessly, in its upcoming smartwatch, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company is also expected to add the technology, which is used to transmit data wirelessly over short distances, to the next version of its iPhone, the paper reported.

The smartwatch will be offered in two sizes and will have sensors to track and monitor health, people familiar with the device told the paper.

However, the smartwatch is unlikely to go on sale this year, the people said.

Apple did not immediately respond to calls and emails for comment.

NFC will allow users to make payments for goods and services with credit cards stored with Apple’s iTunes digital content store, the report said.

Apple has invited media to a “special event” in its hometown of Cupertino, California, on Sept. 9, when the iPhone maker is expected to unveil the latest versions of its best-selling smartphones.

NASA 3D Experiment

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is experimenting with 3D-printing technology and has created complex rocket parts.

Additive manufacturing, more commonly known is 3D-printing technology, is getting very popular in various fields and being lauded by many as a futuristic technology. In the medical field, 3D-printing has helped surgeons reconstruct a person’s skull and scientists are also looking at bio-printing blood vessels. Disney is also experimenting with 3D-printing to create toys for children.

3D-printing is also being experimented in the aviation and space industries and the U.S. space agency has recently announced that it has successfully tested an injector of a rocket engine, which is responsible to direct propellant to the spacecraft’s engine. NASA recently revealed that to create such a complex component it had to input the design details of the part to a computer connected to a 3D-printer.

The 3D-printer was successful enough to build the component layer-by-layer using metal powder, which was put together with the help of laser. NASA explains that this process is normally called selective laser melting.

The injector has 40 different elements and NASA scientists suggest that the 3D-printing technology was able to build the component as one unit rather than being manufactured separately. The space agency indicates that the injector built with the help of 3D-printing technology is identical to the size used in small rockets and also possesses similar design aspects as found in big engines.

Tech for the Hospitals

A child checks in to have a cyst removed at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and the admissions clerk gives her a disposable ID bracelet loaded with her identification, her date of admission and her physician’s name and contact number. Her worried parents get bracelets with smart tracking technology embedded in them, too.

The hospital uses this smartcard ID technology to ensure that only authorized family members remain in the surgical and post-operative areas, and that intruders don’t interfere with the work of doctors and nurses. Medical personnel verify each visitor’s ID bracelet by using a portable LCD monitor display with height-adjustable Ergotron brackets; an optical mouse and a keyboard tray; a Wyse thin client terminal with a wireless PCMCIA card; and scanning technologies.

Rush University Medical Center’s system was built by Vernon Hills, Illinois-based technology services specialist CDW.

The consensus now in the industry is that these kinds of technologies are “critical” to improving healthcare “from both the patient and the medical side of the operation,” said Gina Wilde, national manager, healthcare for Eugene, Oregon-based data collection specialist Datalogic ADC.

Across the country, whether it is in the form of a bracelet ID or smart ID tags affixed to bags of blood, IV bags or surgical tools, hospitals and health care organizations are adding smartcard technology to their IT mix. Hospitals, physicians and clinics are currently implementing smartcards in combination with identity software solutions.

The technologies, part of electronic medical records systems, help manage the overall safety and security of patients, and their deployment “is becoming more mainstream,” said Dr. Dick Wuest, an emeritus professor of pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and an expert in healthcare technology. “For healthcare, it is vital that the information is “accurate, easily understood and easy to access.”

The U.S. has been slow to embrace the smartcard for healthcare, even though it has rapidly become a technological feature in hospitals and clinics overseas, according to the SMART Association, an industry trade group based in Citrus Heights, Calif.

Countries with national healthcare systems – France and Germany – have to date issued over 150 million smartcards that carry health data, according to the association.

But the U.S. has stronger privacy regulations than other countries, and this has slowed implementation of the technologies here. There is also a generation gap in the usage of wireless technologies, favoring the young, not the old, who more often visit hospitals.

Dr. Pedro Reyes, an associate professor of operations and supply chain management at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business and director of the university’s Center for Excellence in Supply Chain Management, said the use of tracking technologies in U.S. medicine is only now becoming a normal solution “because users are now understanding how it can be used.”

Wearable Tech

We use our handheld smartphones for just about everything, but soon they may be a thing of the past.
As CBS 2’s Kristine Johnson reported, everyday technology can now be built right into our clothes and accessories, letting you actually wear it rather than carry it around.
A tennis pro working on his game while wearing what looks like your average run-of-the-mill workout shirt could actually be monitoring his heart rate, respiration and other body functions simply by wearing a new “bio sensing garment” developed by Ralph Lauren.
“The technology is really in the materials that are weaved through the shirt,” said David Lauren, Executive Vice President of Ralph Lauren. “There’s a small box which is like a battery that can transmit to your phone.”
Ralph Lauren’s cutting-edge tops made their debut on the ball boys at this year’s U.S. Open.
“When major fashion designers are getting on board and really making wearables beautiful, and that’s the key. People may get turned on by them and start to adopt them,” Mashable Chief Correspondent Lance Ulanoff said.