The World Economic Forum has released it's Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009, the eighth study conducted by the WEF in conjunction with the INSEAD business school and sponsored by Cisco Systems. The report gauges how 134 economies around the world are prepared to use ICT effectively.
Part 1 contains essays examining different topics related to mobility and ICT. These include mobile telephony and its imact on economic grouth and networked readiness; Internet ubiquity, mobile reality mining, and mobility of human talent and R&D flow.
It also contains an extensive global survey of "network readiness", which provides a useful snapshot of 134 economies' ICT strategies and achievements.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Skype and Enterprise Markets
Global Insight from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC): March 2009
eBay's access-independent VoIP business, Skype, has announced the latest move to penetrate the enterprise voice market with the beta version of 'Skype for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for Business Users'. The service allows users to make low-cost calls over the global Skype VoIP system and receive calls directly from any of the 405 million Skype users without connecting to the PSTN and therefore at no cost to the customer. Enterprises can also buy numbers in over 20 countries to receive calls from local users at lower costs. The Skype application integrates with existing PBX hardware and facilitates call-handling functionality, such as routing and conferencing, statistics, phone menus and voicemail systems.
Significance: Skype is working to convert its massive user base into paying customers with some success, increasing revenues by 44% over 2008 to US$526 million, although this is notably barely US$1.30 per user. The number of users has in fact grown more quickly, up 47% year-on-year (y/y) to 405.3 million. The enterprise market is a key source of valuable customers who are willing to pay for communications services and make high use of international calls while being price-sensitive. There has been some reticence from enterprises with regards to VoIP, largely over an historical perception of reliability issues as it relies on a non-managed internet connection and peer-to-peer capabilities. However, this move will help Skype to tap into the enterprise marketplace, leveraging legacy equipment and ensuring the maintenance of legacy system capabilities.
eBay's access-independent VoIP business, Skype, has announced the latest move to penetrate the enterprise voice market with the beta version of 'Skype for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for Business Users'. The service allows users to make low-cost calls over the global Skype VoIP system and receive calls directly from any of the 405 million Skype users without connecting to the PSTN and therefore at no cost to the customer. Enterprises can also buy numbers in over 20 countries to receive calls from local users at lower costs. The Skype application integrates with existing PBX hardware and facilitates call-handling functionality, such as routing and conferencing, statistics, phone menus and voicemail systems.
Significance: Skype is working to convert its massive user base into paying customers with some success, increasing revenues by 44% over 2008 to US$526 million, although this is notably barely US$1.30 per user. The number of users has in fact grown more quickly, up 47% year-on-year (y/y) to 405.3 million. The enterprise market is a key source of valuable customers who are willing to pay for communications services and make high use of international calls while being price-sensitive. There has been some reticence from enterprises with regards to VoIP, largely over an historical perception of reliability issues as it relies on a non-managed internet connection and peer-to-peer capabilities. However, this move will help Skype to tap into the enterprise marketplace, leveraging legacy equipment and ensuring the maintenance of legacy system capabilities.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
An Update to 3D TV
From Physics.org:
Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Hitachi recently demonstrated TransCAIP, a three-dimensional (3D) TV system that captures a live scene in real time and reproduces it on an autostereoscopic display. In addition to providing 3D images, TransCAIP offers interactive control, enabling users to adjust viewing parameters such as cropping a scene and reproducing an appropriate amount of depth.
The system captures a live scene using 64 video cameras connected via Ethernet cables to a single PC, which converts input from all the video cameras into images for the display. Each camera has a built-in HTTP server, which sends motion JPEG sequences to the PC. "The greatest advantage of our system is to provide interactive control of the viewing parameters," says University of Tokyo Ph.D. student Yuichi Taguchi. "The interactive control is essential for reproducing a dynamic 3D scene with desirable conditions, which depend on the contents of the scene, the viewer's preference, and the display specifications."
The PC converts the 64 images into an integral photography image made from 60 views, which correspond to the viewing directions of the display. The process, called field conversion, is implemented in real time and requires only a few hundred milliseconds per frame. Like other autostereoscopic displays, TransCAIP does not require viewers to wear special glasses. Instead, the display reproduces various viewpoint images, which allows viewers to see a different image in each eye.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Hitachi recently demonstrated TransCAIP, a three-dimensional (3D) TV system that captures a live scene in real time and reproduces it on an autostereoscopic display. In addition to providing 3D images, TransCAIP offers interactive control, enabling users to adjust viewing parameters such as cropping a scene and reproducing an appropriate amount of depth.
The system captures a live scene using 64 video cameras connected via Ethernet cables to a single PC, which converts input from all the video cameras into images for the display. Each camera has a built-in HTTP server, which sends motion JPEG sequences to the PC. "The greatest advantage of our system is to provide interactive control of the viewing parameters," says University of Tokyo Ph.D. student Yuichi Taguchi. "The interactive control is essential for reproducing a dynamic 3D scene with desirable conditions, which depend on the contents of the scene, the viewer's preference, and the display specifications."
The PC converts the 64 images into an integral photography image made from 60 views, which correspond to the viewing directions of the display. The process, called field conversion, is implemented in real time and requires only a few hundred milliseconds per frame. Like other autostereoscopic displays, TransCAIP does not require viewers to wear special glasses. Instead, the display reproduces various viewpoint images, which allows viewers to see a different image in each eye.
Google and Semantic Search
Google has added semantic search to its Web search engine, which will enable it to identify associations and concepts related to a query, thus improving the list of related search terms Google displays next to the results. "For example, if you search for 'principles of physics,' the algorithms understand that 'angular momentum,' 'special relativity,' 'big bang,' and 'quantum mechanic' are related terms that could help you find what you need," according to Google's Ori Allon and Ken Wilder.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
