Month: October 2016
The need for innovation and longevity in technology
Thirteen seems to be the unlucky number for Apple, with a decline in iPhone sales leading to the first revenue decline in 13 years. This has been attributed in part to the struggling Chinese economy, still the second-largest market in the world for Apple products behind the USA. The iPhone accounts for nearly two-thirds of Apple’s revenue. However the company sold 16% fewer iPhones than it had during the same period in 2015 and made 18% less profit from them. The total tally for the device was $32.9bn from 51.2m phones sold; the year previous Apple brought in $40.3bn from 61.2m phones.
So what is exactly driving the first annual revenue decline since 2001? Perhaps the entry price of the smartphone in the developing world is still a barrier, even among very inexpensive devices. The iPhone smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. run Apple’s iOS mobile operating system with the first generation iPhone being released on June 29, 2007. Followed by the iPad, and both were constantly updated with new, highly-anticipated iterations which sold in their hundreds of millions around the world, sending the company’s sales to ever soaring heights. A year ago Apple sold $58bn worth of gadgets, this equates to nearly $650m a day in the first three months of the year.
The Apple Watch has been publicized by the company as a multi-billion dollar business, rivaling many classic watch brands. Thus So far Apple has not delivered a breakout detailing the number of units sold per quarter. Instead the Apple Watch revenue has been combined with other products including the iPod, Apple TV, and Beats. Samsung shipped 0.4 million of its Gear and Gear2 watches in both 2015 and 2016. However Garmin was the only brand to show growth with shipments of 0.6 million in the third quarter of 2016 compared with 0.1 million in 2015.
Apple has promised some “amazing innovations” in the pipeline. Such as new headphone ports which are dust-proof and waterproof, and the redesign of key buttons. Are these innovations going far enough and will the brand achieve longevity? Many see Apple’s iPhone 7 objective as a premium product and not innovation. The products no longer have their unique appeal and a point of mental saturation has been reached.
Google self-driving car project
In the battle for longevity, constant new ideas and innovation sees one stand out diverse innovation are the Google self-driving cars, this represents a new breed of autonomous cars, developed by Google X as part of its project to develop technology for mainly electric cars. The vehicles are taught to navigate through many complicated scenarios on city streets.
These cars use their sensors and software to sense objects like pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles and more and are designed to safely drive around them. The cars use sensors and software to detect objects like pedestrians, cyclists, other vehicles and more (e.g. How to navigate through construction zones), and are designed to safely drive around them. The development has been initiated since 2009 and the work is building towards vehicles that take you to a destination at the push of a button. Components have been added to existing cars like Lexus SUVs, the next step sees designing of a new prototype from the ground up to better explore what should go into a fully self-driving vehicle. This includes removing the steering wheel and pedals, and incorporating software and sensors which will handle the driving.
FTI and innovation
At the heart of the range of products Falcon Technologies International L.L.C., FTI offer is Innovation. Innovation is the key driving force behind our product diversity. FTI has always believed that a strong culture of innovation, in all areas of the company, is an essential contributor to business success. High quality R&D has historically been at the foundation of FTI since it’s inception in 2005, and the company has consistently invested in extensive and innovative product R&D, and in acquiring a world-class, in-house knowledge base at the forefront of the optical digital media technology landscape. With the aim of market longevity and creativity today FTI continues to engage in cutting-edge R&D, internally and in collaboration with partners in academia, research and commerce.
FalconMedia SOUND suits both professional and amateur recording requirements, whether mass producing an audio CD, recording a concert master copy, or facilitating the amateur musician who wants to produce and sell his music on a smaller scale.
FTI’s culture of R&D and innovation go hand-in-hand, with our central commitment to new product development, process and manufacturing improvements, segmented market research and advancements in the science of Optical Digital Media key indicators of how innovation runs through the fabric of FTI’s operations.
GITEX Technology Week in Dubai
In search for future technologies that can enable companies to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness for business? Well, the 36th Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (Gitex) provided just that.
This 5 day event opened its doors from Sunday 16th October, 2016. It was the largest ICT exhibition in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, that took place at Dubai world trade centre. The event was inaugurated by Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council.
So, what was the Gitex technology exhibition all about? This event showed live demonstrations of future generation technology solutions from various government and international companies that can transform Middle East businesses. Key industry verticals of marketing, healthcare, finance, intelligent cities, retail, education and energy were discussed by industry leaders.
Over 200 investors and influential tech investment companies from Silicon Valley, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, including SoftBank Group International, 500 Startups, and many other venture partners arrived in Dubai to explore, evaluate and potentially fund start up businesses with talent. These ventures also included globally giant investors like Facebook, Dropbox and Spotify.
Key highlights included a large indoor VR activation powered by Samsung logo, Game-changing tech from 4,000 solution providers including AR, VR, AI, Wearables, Drones and more. GITEX Startup Movement examined the global startup movement featuring 350+ breakthrough startups from 52 countries. Customized networking programmes were also on offer for startups to discover how global contemporaries have been there, done that and created an impact.
In today’s era of technology, there is an ever increasing need for entrepreneurs to harness technologies that can enable companies to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness. FTI has always believed that a strong culture of innovation, in all areas of the company, is an essential contributor to business success. FTI prioritize R&D and technology over cost, as we firmly believe that these functions are critical to ensure our products represent the best quality within the optical media industry.
In line with new innovation for business and services Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) showcased a smart streetlight system at GITEX 2016. According to Eng Maitha bin Adai, CEO of RTA’s traffic and roads agency, there are three systems showcased at Gitex this year and this combination of systems will help sustain green economy requirements by reducing carbon emissions. These systems include the Central Wireless Road Lighting Control System that sets multiple synchronized timetables for dimming streetlights. “A new feature in the smart lighting system is a tentative WiFi service installed in Dubai Water Canal at Sheikh Zayed Road.
RTA also displayed high-definition pedestrian detection camera systems with a twist. These new generation cameras produce pedestrian statistics in terms of number, sex, and age group.
Dubai Customs‘ Smart Virtual Agent initiative was also showcased at GITEX 2016. This venture represents a smart channel for communication with customers, which allows their queries about customs services, procedures and regulations to be answered more efficiently. Without the need for any physical employee the Smart Virtual Agent is an intelligent tool which operates 24/7. This cost effective measure helps efficiently redirect resources to other duties by reducing support cost. The self-improving platform utilizes Dubai Customs’ database and memory of similar cases to answer customer inquiries.
Many GITEX visitors had the opportunity to try out the Smart Inspection Glasses on display at the Dubai Customs stand. These tech heavy glasses facilitate containers’ field inspection, as customs inspectors can browse the customs declaration and x-ray images of the shipment simultaneously as well as its risk level. Inspectors can submit inspection reports using either the virtual keyboard or voice input feature.
Furthermore Dubai Customs showcased 8 happiness-led initiatives and innovations under the umbrella of Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation pavilion. Other innovations included the Authorized Economic Operator, Smart Inspection Lab, Smart Customs Route, Bags Smart Customs Inspection System and the Endangered Species Exhibition.
Five seminal trends have caught the eye at this Gitex event namely; Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), Biometrics, 3-D Printing, Mixed reality and drones. With artificial intelligence on the rise and the need for huge amounts of data to be stored, the progression and development of cloud storage is on the horizon. Cloud storage is a cloud computing model in which data is stored remotely on servers accessed from the World Wide Web, or “cloud.” Storage servers are built on virtualization techniques all maintained, managed, and backed-up online.
The technology world is increasingly realizing that Optical Digital Media is a safer way to store data compared to cloud technology solutions – this is evidenced by multiple data breaches where personal photographs and other information has been hacked and distributed to the public, and by the fact that Facebook has publicly stated that they have chosen to store their data with Optical Digital Media rather than cloud.
Falcon Technologies International (FTI) leads the way with regard to Optical Digital Media security and memory technology, and is conducting potentially ground-breaking research in this field with academic partners.
Powerful computing and storage implications
Technology has come a long way. We see constant development and growth in terms of computing hardware, software and storage. Although some technologists say, those gains are stalling, perhaps limited in by the physical boundary of raw materials that are used in central processing units.
Recently Microsoft thinks it may have found the solution namely field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). A FPGA is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – thus it is said to be “field-programmable”. To define the behavior of the FPGA, the user provides:
- a hardware description language (HDL)
- or a schematic design.
The HDL form is more optimal for large structures as you can specify them numerically rather than having to draw every piece by hand. However, schematic entry can allow for easier visualization of a design. FPGA allows you flexibility in your designs and is a way to change how parts of a system work without introducing a large amount of cost and risk of delays into the design schedule. Many designers have the false impression that building a system with a modern FPGA means you have to deal with millions of logic gates and a massive amounts of connections just to do something useful. But if that were the case, FPGA use wouldn’t be growing: Instead, there would only be about a half dozen FPGA users left. It turns out FPGA designers have done much of the heavy lifting of adding commonly needed components so all that you have to concentrate on is customizing those functions that are specific to your application. Examples of components produced by designers comprise: clock generators, dynamic random access memory (DRAM) controllers and even whole multicore microprocessors.
This type of computer chip that can be reprogrammed for specific tasks after they leave the factory floor, are adding firepower to Microsoft’s network of on-demand computing power.
What does this mean in real terms?
Using all of the power of Microsoft’s data centers worldwide, the company could translate all 5 million articles on the English language Wikipedia in less than a tenth of a second.
In the past 2 years Microsoft has quietly been installing FPGAs on the new servers; Microsoft added to its global fleet of data centers. They’re present usage includes ranking results in the Bing search engine and speed the performance of Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing network. Microsoft is alone among major cloud-computing players in widely deploying FPGA technology.
There are also implications for high performance computing and data storage such as solutions for Network Attached Storage (NAS), Storage Area Network (SAN), servers, and storage appliances.
Project Catapult is the technology behind Microsoft’s hyperscale acceleration fabric. The supercomputing substrate is built with the aim to accelerate the efforts in networking, security, cloud services and artificial intelligence.
Project Catapult combines an FPGA integrated into nearly every new Microsoft datacenter server. By exploiting the reconfigurable nature of FPGAs, at the server, the Catapult architecture delivers the efficiency and performance of custom hardware without the cost, complexity and risk of deploying fully customized ASICs into the datacenter. Moreover, the performance gain compared with CPUs is monumental and with less than 30% cost increase, and no more than 10% power increase.
Other FPGA Applications
Due to their programmable nature, FPGAs are an ideal for numerous markets. As the industry leader, Xilinx provides comprehensive solutions consisting of FPGA devices, advanced software, and configurable, ready-to-use IP cores for markets and applications such as:
- Aerospace & Defense – Radiation-tolerant FPGAs along with intellectual property for image processing, waveform generation, and partial reconfiguration for SDRs.
- Industrial – Xilinx FPGAs and targeted design platforms for Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) enable higher degrees of flexibility, faster time-to-market, and lower overall non-recurring engineering costs (NRE) for a wide range of applications such as industrial imaging and surveillance, industrial automation, and medical imaging equipment.
- Medical – For diagnostic, monitoring, and therapy applications, the Virtex FPGA and Spartan® FPGA families can be used to meet a range of processing, display, and I/O interface requirements.
- Security – Xilinx offers solutions that meet the evolving needs of security applications, from access control to surveillance and safety systems.
- Wireless Communications – RF, base band, connectivity, transport and networking solutions for wireless equipment, addressing standards such as WCDMA, HSDPA, WiMAX and others.
The advancement in computing power and storage capability combined with substantial savings and efficiency introduced through FPGA technology mean the world of supercomputing is more accessible then ever.
At the same time, the advancement of supercomputing technologies automatically means more data storage requirements. Every year world produces more and more data and therefore more and more information needs to be stored. Some information needs to be stored for more extended periods of time like 10-20-30 or even 100 years. There is no better long-term data storage mediums than archival discs.
Falcon Technologies International LLC has developed Century Archival product line, which is a cutting-edge technology with built in Gold or Platinum layers to ensure maximum security, longevity and protection for stored data.
Century Archival products are designed to secure data for hundreds of years – FTI’s Century Archival DVD product has been demonstrated in testing to be capable of storing data for up to 200 years, whereas the Century Archival CD product has demonstrated a longevity in excess of 400 years, making the Century Archival line the most durable and secure archival digital media product available in the market today.
Internet of Things: The Next Stage of Social Development
Imagine that you suddenly woke up and it’s autumn of 1916. What type of world would you witness around you? Can you just close your eyes, take a moment and imagine?
Exactly a century ago, telecommunications were in their infancy and still regarded as something from the world of semi-science fiction. Most wide-spread transport means were via railroad and maritime vessels, accountants and bankers carefully kept their records exclusively on paper and the world as a whole still seemed to be immense in size. There were of course ways of transferring the information through relatively fast avenues like telegraph: a message from Europe could be delivered to North America for only 15 minutes with the means of Trans-Atlantic Cable, but this is something that only the selected few can afford.
Who would ever dare to imagine that a hundred years later we will be sending control commands to a robotic rover, that operates on the surface of another planet, taking us same 15 minutes to do it? 15 minutes to get the signal inside the masterpiece of human engineering and artificial intelligence over the distance of 55 million kilometers. It is hard to picture such distance even today in 21st century, but, nonetheless, it is actually happening.
This small example of technical progress makes us think about the future and how it will look like. During last 100 years’ humanity managed to increase the speed of communication exponentially and it seems like this is directly linked to the overall pace of scientific growth.
Recently we started to hear the term “Internet of Things” more often. Some say that this is a phenomenon that will take humanity to the next level of development. At the same time, some have never even heard about it. And this is typical for the brand new concepts. Coming back to the “100 years ago” example, it would be fair to mention that a telephone wasn’t even taken seriously by many people at the very beginning. Some even were making jokes about “how it would look like if a gentlemen and a lady would keep entertaining themselves with wireless telephone boxes instead of enjoying company of each other while walking in the park”. Sounds hilarious, right?
So what is Internet of things? In 2013 the Global Standards Initiative on Internet of Things (IoT-GSI) defined the IoT as “the infrastructure of the information society.”
As you probably know, there are several distinguished stages of the societal world development: feudal society, which was dominant model in Middle Age, was replaced by the Industrial Society after the Industrial Revolution back in 18th century. Later on, in 20th century the the model got a significant push by overall technical progress, and eventually with the emergence on Informational and Communication Technologies we are now in transition period that is leading us into Post-Industrial Era – a stage of society that is very often called “Information Society”.
The infrastructure of this society will be created by the next generation technologies, that will be connected between each other by the means of Global Network of Internet. And this infrastructure will be there to change the ways of mass-production and global trade forever. Have a look at this short infographic video to understand how it already starts to work:
However, there are some challenges that are coming along this “Informational Revolution”, one of the biggest being data security and safety of communication. Nothing new under the sun, as they say: when the first commercial airlines were launched there was much concern on flight safety (which are still there, even though commercial aviation will soon celebrate 100 years anniversary).
Andrew and Ken Munro of Pen Test Partners (a UK-based IT security company) created a first virus targeted to hit one of the essential parts of any SMART-home technology: internal temperature control system. They later admitted that the malware was specially designed to demonstrate the weak points of the IoT concept. Results of their experiment were demonstrated in August during the Def Con IT conference.
For the experiment, they used one of the most popular models of the thermostat. Tierney and Munro discovered vulnerabilities on the device by means of which they have managed to remotely install malicious software. The hacked thermostat began to change the room temperature from minimum to maximum, and then display the request to transfer money to the account of intruders. Tierney and Munro said that they are planning to transfer all the information about the vulnerabilities they found to the manufacturer of the thermostat.
Internet of Things is shaping today and this process is irreversible. But it brings to the top of the list the data and connectivity security issues. Manufacturers should never underestimate these issues and pay maximum attention to the possible weak points of their products. It may be reached through careful and comprehensive QC/QA procedures.
Falcon Technologies International have never underestimated data security, and this is one of the basic values we put at the core of every single product we develop. Once the data is recorded on Century Archival disc, it is safe for centuries, and we give a 100% guarantee for that.
Cloud Storage Leaks – A Serious Issue Affecting Personal Data Security.
Smart cloud-based storage technologies such as Apple’s iCloud, Google’s Drive, Dropbox and many others available out there have become part of our daily activities, both in our personal and professional lives. It is certainly very convenient to have all your files stored somewhere “in the cloud” and accessible from al the devices connected to the Internet (well, literally any device – everything is hooked up to the web nowadays – right?) It is certainly a great technology that makes our life so easier, but in the euphoria of excitement we maybe forgot about one of the major issues with “clouds” – their security. The area where most of the consumer-oriented cloud-based storages is still very vulnerable.
On August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, were posted on the 4chan image board, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks. The images were believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple’s cloud services suite iCloud, but it later turned out that the hackers could have taken advantage of a security issue in the iCloud API which allowed them to make unlimited attempts at guessing victims’ passwords. On September 20, 2014, a second batch of similar private photos of additional celebrities was leaked by hackers. Less than a week later, on September 26, a third batch was also leaked.
The leak prompted increased concern from analysts surrounding the privacy and security of cloud-based services such as iCloud—with a particular emphasis on their suitability to store sensitive, private information.
Apple reported that the leaked images were the result of compromised accounts, using “a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet”.
In October 2014, the FBI searched a house in Chicago and seized several computers, cell phones and storage drives after tracking the source of a hacking attack to an IP address linked to an individual named Emilio Herrera. A related search warrant application mentioned eight victims with initials A.S., C.H., H.S., J.M., O.W., A.K., E.B., and A.H., which supposedly points to stolen photos of Abigail Spencer, Christina Hendricks, Hope Solo, Janette McCurdy, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, Emily Browning and Amber Heard. According to law enforcement officials, Herrera is just one of several people under investigation and the FBI has carried out various searches across the US.
A more recent incident happened in the UK, where one of the major tabloids reported that it was offered private images featuring the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister Pippa Middleton. It was said that the images also feature Duchess’s children, Prince George (the future King of England) and Princess Charlotte.
The Police are investigating the case, their main lead being iCloud account hack. It is also said that the leak includes approximately 3000 private photographs that were stored on Pippa Middleton’s iCloud account.
As you can see from the facts and the events described above, cloud-based storage solutions are certainly not the most reliable data storage solutions. They are very flexible and accessible from any device, but it is important to keep in mind that sometimes they may be accessed by unauthorised parties, that may use sensitive and private information against its holders.
One of the reasons why offline data storage is still used today is that some information sources are containing data that should be stored offline due to security reasons. Private images, spreadsheets with secret data, classified investigation files and many other kinds of sensitive information will never be accessed by any hacker in the world if it is stored on optical disc that is locked down in the safe. There is no way it could be accessed, unless the disc is in physical possession of the person that wants to access the data. And physical access to the information is easier to control.