Global Wi-Fi shipments reached 5 billion in 2012, will quadruple by 2017

In 2012, total cumulative global Wi-Fi-enabled device shipments reached five billion, according to ABI Research. And the pace of innovation isn’t slowing, with new Wi-Fi protocols rolling out in 2013 and close to 20 billion WiFi-enabled devices predicted to be in the market by 2017.

 

 

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NTSA wants black boxes in cars in 2014

The black boxes will be able to record all sorts of information about a vehicle.

The National Transportation Safety Agency is proposing that all new automobiles sold in the US after September of 2014 will be required to be equipped with event data recorders. The recorders are somewhat like the black boxes that are found inside aircraft.

 

 

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Chicken farms turn to oregano as a substitute for antibiotics

Chickens at Bell & Evans eat feed laced with oregano oil.

Anyone visiting Bell & Evans these days will notice the smell of oregano wafting for Scott Sechler’s office.  The smell is so strong that visitors will wonder whether Sechler has quit the production of chicken and gone into the pizza business.

 

 

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The end of the paper map

The enchanted era of geographic gaffes is coming to an end.

Tens of millions of iPhone users last week found that they could suddenly leave their homes again without getting either lost or cross. Google was finally able to release an app containing its own mapping system. Google Maps had been sorely missed for several months, ever since Apple booted it in favor of the company’s own inadequate alternative—a cartographic dud blamed for everything from deleting Shakespeare’s birthplace to stranding Australian travelers in a desolate national park 43 miles away from their actual destination. As one Twitter wag declared: “I wouldn’t trade my Apple Maps for all the tea in Cuba.”

 

 

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If big data was easier to use we wouldn’t need more data scientists

Data scientists serve as the gatekeepers and mediators between the systems and the domain experts.

There are many articles today about how big data in the U.S. is suffering from a crucial shortage of data scientists.  The 2011 McKinsey & Co. survey pointed out that many organizations lack both the skilled personnel needed to mine big data for insights and the structures and incentives required to use big data to make informed decisions and act on them.

 

 

 

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Mix of hybrid and electric vehicles varies greatly across different regions of the U.S.

15 metropolitan areas have accounted for 41% of all U.S. electric vehicle registrations through the first 10 months of 2012.

The mix of new hybrid and electric vehicles varies as much among the different regions of the United States as does the mix of makes and models, if not more so. The 15 Designated Market Areas (DMAs) with the highest percentage of hybrid powertrains together account for almost 30% of all hybrid registrations nationally, yet these same 15 markets include just 12.5% of all new vehicle registrations. Nine of these 15 hybrid-rich areas have a hybrid penetration greater than 6%, while the national penetration is 2.97%. In San Francisco, the market area with the highest hybrid mix, almost one of every 10 new vehicles sold is a hybrid.

 

 

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Energy company developing home refueling appliance for natural-gas cars

About 112,000 natural-gas powered vehicles are now on U.S. roads.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. said it is working with General Electric Co GE and Whirlpool Corp. to develop a $500 appliance that will allow natural-gas powered cars to be refueled at their owners’ homes.

 

 

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Africa has more cellphone users than all of North America

There are more cellphone users in Africa than in North America.

When you are a developing continent you can skip entire stages of technological progress, like going directly from no phones to cellphones without suffering through land lines in between. Africa, for example, now has more mobile subscribers than the United States or Europe, and that means big things for African economies.

 

 

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Top 15 most dangerous people in the world

Cody Wilson develops software that would allow anyone with the funding to easily build a gun from the comfort of their own home.

There used to be an order to the world and a structure to things. You couldn’t print a gun like a term paper. It was impossible to wreck a nuclear production plant with a few lines of code. Flying robots didn’t descend on you in the dead of night and kill you in your home.

 

 

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