Connectivity, Communications & Cloud News - Page 17

Computex 2015 - There's no doubt that every company is racing to integrate USB 3.1 into everything they produce - laptops, cases, motherboards and accessories are all being announced with USB 3.1 support and ASUS is helping lead the charge.

As part of its Computex 2015 display, ASUS has shown off a myriad of USB 3.1 ready products and what you are about to learn about is the extensions and accessories line of products on offer.

Firstly is the USB 3.1 UPD panel and the USB 3.1 enclosure, with ASUS' UPD panel providing up to 100W of power as per USB Type-C limitations and the enclosure providing a USB 3.1 Type-A experience for all consumers.

Computex 2015 - Analogix always has something to impress me wherever we are, but it was their various demos and prototypes of USB Type-C products that had me impressed at Computex this year.

The company was showing off its new chips in the ANX7428, ANX7816+, ANX7418 and ANX7688 which provide DisplayPort, USB 3.0 and Power Delivery all over the same, tiny little cable. That tiny little cable we mentioned, is thanks to a tiny little chip, which is pictured above.

Analogix was showing off the Apple MacBook Air, which will see future cables using their technology to output to various other outputs or devices.

NVIDIA has just upgraded its GRID cloud gaming service, which is now capable of streaming gamers 1080p at 60FPS. NVIDIA took to its official blog to announce the "public release of a new SHIELD Hub beta".

This has allowed NVIDIA's GRID to become "the first game-streaming service that can instantly stream games at 1080p60". The beta is available now, but the official release will be arriving "near the end of May" according to NVIDIA. As for the games, there are over 35 games in the GRID library that support 1080p60. These games include Batman: Arkham Origins, Devil May Cry 4, and Dirt 3 Complete Edition.

NVIDIA has also announced that it has just turned on two new data centers, with one of them covering the southwestern United States. The other, will be covering gamers in Central Europe, and will go online later this month. This brings NVIDIA up to six data centers across the world, pumping out games over GRID to Shield devices in 20 countries.

Google wants to offer a wireless service to people in the United States, but it looks like their plans of unveiling this as a semi surprise have been popped.

A recent look at the firmware image for the Nexus 6 has teased that there will soon be a service that offers consumers the option of paying for only what they use, with the future service provided with a logo, and a temporary name: Project Fi. Android Police noticed an app called "Tycho" that housed numerous clues to Project Fi, with the app looking to provide the option of activating the service, but giving consumers additional options, too.

These options include putting the account on hole, resuming it, or closing it down completely, without needing the consumer to call a customer care number. Project Fi users can also port their own number to the service, or they can use their number from a separate Google Voice system, too.

Following in the footsteps of the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB), it looks like the National Hockey League (NHL) wants to provide a wider variety of statistics to hockey fans.

The league is currently in the process of digitizing statistics that go back almost a century, hoping the effort will keep hardcore hockey fans more engaged. There was a belief that trying to collect hockey statistics is a bit more difficult, as the game is fast-moving and players are able to move onto and off the ice constantly, but the NHL wants to prove that isn't necessarily true.

The stats have been renamed and the NHL wants to deploy a new algorithm in time to collect data on every game during the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs - with data related to home and road records, goals against, special team statistics, and other data collected and sorted.

Smart appliances connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) could help businesses cut energy consumption, yielding financial savings that can be used for other business ventures, supporters say. A growing number of connected sensors, which are dropping in price, provide more choices for business leaders when embracing smart technology.

Businesses can embrace smart tech that is able to provide additional details regarding energy consumption, where and when it is happening the most, and how to save money. New offerings provide minute-by-minute metering, a unique metric that holds great potential for the future.

"Energy costs for businesses, particularly small businesses, are always a big challenge - especially if that business is energy intensive," said Rob McNamara, executive director of SmartGrid GB, in a statement published by The Guardian. "So any technologies, products and services that can help them reduce their energy costs are typically going to be welcome. And things like smart metering, in particular, can provide them with tangible benefits."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has big goals for his company's Internet.org campaign, designed to bring affordable, reliable Internet access to people across the world. Ideally, the organization will be able to shorten the technological gap of citizens, especially in developing nations where there are plenty of mobile users - but unreliable Internet access.

Zuckerberg launched Internet.org in 2013 and Facebook has largely worked behind-the-scenes with Samsung, Qualcomm, Ericsson and other corporate partners. A free mobile app has been released in a number of nations, giving users access to Facebook, Google Search, AccuWeather - creating opportunities for first-time users to benefit from connected services.

"Yeah, our team is in contact with them frequently, and I talk to a number of folks over there," said Zuckerberg, in an interview on Studio 1.0 on Bloomberg Television. "When we launched in Zambia, Google was actually one of the services that was in the Internet.org suite, and that's valuable. In addition to health services and education, jobs and different government services and communication tools, people need to be able to search and find information. And whether we work with Google or others on that in all of these other countries, I think that is an important thing. I'd love to work with Google. They are a great search product."

Well, my 100/40Mbps fiber connection has just become quite slow compared to what researchers over at the University of Oxford have been playing around with. These researchers have reached a new milestone in networking technology by reaching bi-directional speeds of 224 gigabits per second (Gbps) using light fidelity (Li-Fi).

Considering 100Gbps fiber optic core networks have only just come into play, achieving 224Gbps over an LED light bulb is simply amazing. This connection would be capable of downloading a gigantic 27GB/sec, capable of blowing through terabytes of data in seconds. This new technology is being worked on as a possible alternative to Wi-Fi, as Li-Fi uses the visible light spectrum to transfer data. When mixed with a high-speed fiber Internet connection, researchers believe that we could see speeds far higher than anything Wi-Fi has on offer.

This means that the future of Internet connectivity could be delivered through light, which doesn't pass through walls, to most areas. We could have light bulbs providing super-fast Internet connectivity, with one of the pioneers behind Li-Fi, Harold Haas, stating that the future of every LED lightbulb could be used as an ultra-fast alternative to Wi-Fi. During a TED Talk, Haas said about Li-Fi: "We have the infrastructure there. We can use them for communications. All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission. In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fi's deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener and even a brighter future".

The Internet of Things (IoT) has great potential to be a truly disruptive infrastructure, with expectations of 20+ billion "Things" just around the corner. Consumers will enjoy smart technologies in their homes and in the workplace, opening up a large number of potential vulnerabilities that cybercriminals will exploit.

There is a mix of privacy and security concerns related to IoT products that must be addressed by manufacturers. Consumers were outraged when Samsung confirmed its smart HDTVs had the capability to listen in using the TV's built-in voice command features.

Meanwhile, cybersecurity experts are worried about hackers able to target smart technologies - especially newer products in which security may not have been a priority - that will complicate things long-term. IoT product vendors must keep in mind that consumers will be reckless with security, and it cannot be an optional feature.

Intel isn't sure what will happen with the booming Internet of Things (IoT) market, but the Silicon Valley company wants to make sure it is involved.

During CES last month, Intel unveiled the Curie chip designed for wearables and other connected technologies - which it hopes will be introduced in a variety of different future products. Intel predicts there will more than 800 million Web-connected homes over the next three years, and that number will only grow higher.

"What we see in that segment of the market, the Internet of Things, there's lots of innovation going on," said Stacy Smith, CFO of Intel, in a statement to CNET. "If anybody tells you they know who's going to be the winner three years from now, they're making it up, because nobody knows."