Via Ericson

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• City populations grow by 7,500 people per hour and mobile data traffic is expected to grow ten times by 2019, increasing the need for sustainable lighting and enhanced mobile capacity and coverage in cities
• New connected street lighting model solves two issues simultaneously: offering city officials an innovative way to afford next generation energy efficient LED lighting to meet sustainability goals, and enabling network operators to offer improved city-wide mobile broadband and app coverage
• Called "Zero Site" by Ericsson, connected lighting solution integrates telecom equipment into light poles enabling telecom operators to improve mobile network performance while reducing urban clutter
• Citizens will benefit from improved mobile network coverage for data communications and enhanced safety with brighter, well lit streets

Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), the global leader in lighting, have jointly launched an innovative new connected LED street lighting model. The partnership solves two major issues that cities are facing today: providing citizens with improved network performance in dense urban areas as well as high quality, public lighting that is energy efficient.

Philips and Ericsson combine the benefits of mobile connectivity and LED lighting in a ''lighting-as-a-service'' model for cities. It allows city authorities to offer space within their connected lighting poles to network service providers for mobile broadband infrastructure.

Philips will now offer cities LED street lighting that can include mobile telecoms equipment from Ericsson. Mobile operators working with Ericsson for mobile broadband infrastructure will be able to rent space in the poles. In this way, mobile network operators will be able to improve data coverage and capacity for citizens, resulting in enhanced mobile broadband services. The model also accelerates the payback time for city infrastructure, by making the up-front costs of installing and managing these systems more affordable, so reducing the strain on city budgets.

Philips LED street lighting can generate energy savings of 50 to 70 percent, with savings reaching 80 percent when coupled with smart controls - as validated by a study conducted by The Climate Group in 12 of the world's largest cities. The study also showed that citizens prefer the white light of LED lighting, citing a greater sense of safety and improved visibility compared to the orange glow of traditional high pressure sodium systems.

Ericsson President and CEO Hans Vestberg says: "This is a tremendous solution using ICT and partnerships to address the megatrend of urbanization. City populations are increasing at the rate of 7,500 people per hour, but our world is not geographically expanding. Meanwhile, our ConsumerLab research shows that internet connectivity is one of the top five factors for satisfaction in city life. This Zero Site solution is the kind of innovation that offers a way for people to succeed in the Networked Society."

Frans van Houten, President and CEO of Philips, says: "This new connected LED street lighting model is another example of us bringing the Internet of Things to life and demonstrates the capabilities of light beyond illumination. We are offering lighting as a service that scales with a city's needs and enables city officials to offer their citizens a more connected, energy efficient and safer urban environment, while preserving existing budgets and resources to improve the livability of their city."

To meet the demand for coverage and capacity, mobile operators need to improve, densify and add many more radio cell sites in dense areas. The new connected street light pole, designed to house Ericsson's cutting edge suite of small cell products, offers network operators new possibilities to find the right site location. It will also help to scale the deployment of mobile broadband technology beyond traditional sites - a key enabler for evolving heterogeneous networks.

Via Slash Gear

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This week the experimental developer-aimed group known as Google ATAP - aka Advanced Technology and Projects (skunkworks) have announced Project Tango. They’ve suggested Project Tango will appear first as a phone with 3D sensors. These 3D sensors will be able to scan and build a map of the room they’re in, opening up a whole world of possibilities.

The device that Project Tango will release first will be just about as limited-edition as they come. Issued in an edition of 200, this device will be sent to developers only. This developer group will be hand-picked by Google’s ATAP - and sign-ups start today. (We’ll be publishing the sign-up link once active.)

Speaking on this skunkworks project this morning was Google user Johnny Lee. Mister Johnny Lee is ATAP’s technical program lead, and he’ll be heading this project for the public, as you’ll see it. This is the same group that brought you Motorola’s digital tattoos, if you’ll remember.

Via The Telegraph

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The Twitter logo displayed on a smart phone Photo: PA

Scientists have developed the ultimate lie detector for social media – a system that can tell whether a tweeter is telling the truth.

The creators of the system called Pheme, named after the Greek mythological figure known for scandalous rumour, say it can judge instantly between truth and fiction in 140 characters or less.

Researchers across Europe are joining forces to analyse the truthfulness of statements that appear on social media in “real time” and hope their system will prevent scurrilous rumours and false statements from taking hold, the Times reported.

The creators believe that the system would have proved useful to the police and authorities during the London Riots of 2011. Tweeters spread false reports that animals had been released from London Zoo and landmarks such as the London Eye and Selfridges had been set on fire, which caused panic and led to police being diverted.

Kalina Bontcheva, from the University of Sheffield’s engineering department, said that the system would be able to test information quickly and trace its origins. This would enable governments, emergency services, health agencies, journalists and companies to respond to falsehoods.

Via GIGAOM

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Great news for connectivity connoisseurs: the analyst firm TeleGeography just published this year’s edition of its world map, featuring all the submarine cable systems that comprise the arteries of the internet.

The map also shows the cables’ landing points (easier to see if you zoom in on the interactive version), which is handy for those who take an interest in the current surveillance scandal. Why is British intelligence so good at tapping cables? Here’s why – so many of them pass through the U.K.:

The 2014 edition includes 263 cables that are lit (in service), and 22 that should be lit by the end of 2015, so 285 cable systems in total. Last year’s map showed 244 cables, and the year before that just 150, so the cable-laying boom of a few years back has definitely slowed down.

Unfortunately this year’s edition lacks a neat feature of Telegeography’s 2012 and 2013 maps, which was a breakdown of how much of the cable systems’ capacity is actually being used. It also doesn’t have the 2013 edition’s Olde Worlde appeal. On the plus side, it does offer a good breakdown of cable faults over recent years, cable-laying ships and maintenance zones, if that’s your thing.

One cable system that’s not on the map, probably because it will only go live in 2016, is the Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1) cable that was detailed on Tuesday. AAE-1 will run from South-East Asia to Africa and Europe via the Middle East, and yesterday the backing consortium announced membership including the likes of China Unicom, PCCW, Etisalat and Ooredoo.

Via Gizmodo

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The Kentucky Senate just passed a law that will let students take computer programming classes to satisfy their foreign language requirements. Do you think that's a good move?

What this new law means is, rather than taking three years of Spanish or French or whatever, kids can choose to learn to code. Sure, whether it's Java or German, they're both technically languages. But they're also two very different skills. You could easily argue that it's still very necessary for students to pick up a few years of a foreign tongue—though, on the other hand, coding is a skill that's probably a hell of a lot more practically applicable for today's high school students.

I, for one, have said countless times that if I could travel through time, I probably would have taken some computer science classes in college. Too late now, but not for Kentucky teenagers. So what do you think of this new law?

Image by Olly/Shutterstock

Via PCWorld

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Qloudlab is the inventor and patent holder of the world’s first touchscreen-based biosensor. We are developing a cost-effective technology that is able to turn your smartphone touchscreen into a medical device for multiple blood diagnostics testing: no plug-in required with just a simple disposable. Our innovation is at the convergence of Smartphones, Healthcare, and Cloud solutions. The development is supported by EPFL (Pr. Philippe Renaud, Microsystems Laboratory) and by a major industrial player in cutting-edge touchscreen solutions for consumer, industrial and automotive products.

Europeana is a catalyst for change in the world of cultural heritage. Its mission is to create new ways for people to engage with their cultural history, whether it’s for work, learning or pleasure. Europeana's vision is to make cultural heritage openly accessible in a digital way, to promote the exchange of ideas and information. This helps us all to understand our cultural diversity better and contributes to a thriving knowledge economy.

Key actors are Europeana Foundation, on the one hand, and Europe's cultural institutions, on the other. Europeana Foundation runs the Europeana portal and coordinates the network of contributing cultural institutions, currently around 2,200. On this ecosystem of collaborating national cultural institutions, Europeana brings together private content holders (who are digitising their collections and make them available online), technology firms and research institutes.

In summary, the Europeana Foundation's objectives are:

•    to make Europe's cultural and scientific heritage available through a cross-domain portal (Europeana.eu)
•    to work with museums, archives, audiovisual archives and libraries to deliver the portal and make it sustainable
•    to bring items that have already been digitised into the portal
•    to encourage and support the digitisation of more of Europe's cultural and scientific heritage

Most of the Europeana projects are co-funded by the European Union’s CIP ICT-PSP Programme (Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme).

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Europeana API:

Introduction

The Europeana API allows you to build applications that use the wealth of cultural heritage objects stored in the Europeana repository. The API uses the standard technology of REST calls over HTTP. Responses are returned in the JSON format.

If you wish to get straight to the point of the API you can skip the rest of this section, register, and proceed directly to the description of the API methods: search, record, and suggestions.

Registration

To start using the API you should register at the registration page. Upon registration you will get your individual private authentication key. This key should be used when calling API methods as a special wskey authentication parameter.

Backward Compatibility

The current version of the Europeana API (API2) is fully backward compatible with the previous version (API1). However, we encourage developers to switch to the new naming of the fields that were used in API1. For more information on the mapping between the new and the old fields, please see API1-API2 Fields Mapping.

API Console

There is a method for developers to see how Europeana API works and test it for their needs without getting registered - the API console. This is an interactive tool that allows filling method parameters in an online form and see both the expected results and the exact format of the call that should be used by an application to get these results. The API console has been built by us for developers’ convenience. You are encouraged to use it and provide us feedback about its usability for the developer community.

Discussion

Join the Europeana API discussion group at Google Groups and get regular updates about the Europeana API, provide feedback and discuss it with other developer.

Terms of Use

Please see here our Terms of Use.

Via tom's HARDWARE

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Open Catalog

Welcome to the DARPA Open Catalog, which contains a curated list of DARPA-sponsored software and peer-reviewed publications. DARPA funds fundamental and applied research in a variety of areas including data science, cyber, anomaly detection, etc., which may lead to experimental results and reusable technology designed to benefit multiple government domains.

The DARPA Open Catalog organizes publically releasable material from DARPA programs, beginning with the XDATA program in the Information Innovation Office (I2O). XDATA is developing an open source software library for big data. DARPA has an open source strategy through XDATA and other I2O programs to help increase the impact of government investments.

DARPA is interested in building communities around government-funded software and research. If the R&D community shows sufficient interest, DARPA will continue to make available information generated by DARPA programs, including software, publications, data and experimental results. Future updates are scheduled to include components from other I2O programs such as Broad Operational Language Translation (BOLT) and Visual Media Reasoning (VMR).

The DARPA Open Catalog contains two tables:

• The Software Table lists performers with one row per piece of software. Each piece of software has a link to an external project page, as well as a link to the code repository for the project. The software categories are listed; in the case of XDATA, they are Analytics, Visualization and Infrastructure. A description of the project is followed by the applicable software license. Finally, each entry has a link to the publications from each team's software entry.
• The Publications Table contains author(s), title, and links to peer-reviewed articles related to specific DARPA programs.

Program Manager:
Dr. Christopher White
christopher.white@darpa.mil

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Access to DARPA Open Catalog