Category: Technology

Many videos of beheadings by the Islamic State and al Qaeda have appeared online lately. The latest was a video published on November 16, 2014 showing the severed head of 26 year old American Air Force Ranger. Authorities are using voice and facial recognition techniques to identify the man behind this video and other previous videos including the highly publicized killing of the American journalist James Foley.

Linguists are using voice prints of the man on videos and compare all available videos of beheadings. So far they have identified the accent to be of a multicultural man from the London area. They are also saying that the man is deliberately paying more attention to pronunciation of p’s and q’s in order to hide his true identity. Even though “Voiceprinting” technologies are not perfect such as finger print or DNA but many Western countries use it to identify suspects when there is no other evidence.

Pictures on Twitter and Facebook are also valuable resources for investigators who are using photo technologies to identify Jihadi John. Estimated height, weight, eye color and others will also be used. Various computer programs and software are assisting investigators with their work.

Huawei Technologies is the biggest Chinese company that makes telecommunication network equipment and a maker of smartphones and tablets. The U.S. government found out that its founder and the chief executive officer served in the People’s Liberation Army and provided customer information to the Chinese government. This prompted the U. S. House Permanent Select Committee in 2012 to issue a report that business dealings with Huawei pose a national security threat. Huawei claimed that the findings are without merits. However, they scaled back their activities in the Unites States since that time and instead increased its activity in Canada, our neighbor to the north.

Huawei provides Canada with 3G and 4G network equipment through Bell Canada and Telus, two of three cell phone operators in Canada. Huawei is the world’s third largest smartphone maker behind Apple and Samsung Electronics and it is steadily increasing its smartphone sales in Canada. It has teamed up with the Canadian pop singer Katy Perry to promote her concert tour and their smartphone business, supply uniforms and equipment to amateur hockey players and soccer players, and donate hardware to remote communities to connect to the Internet. However, Canada ultimately banned them from bidding for cellular networks for the national government.

According to published reports two big auctions of wireless spectrum are scheduled for November 2014 and another in 2016. Four major players dominate the wireless market in the United States. Verizon Wireless is the largest with 106 million subscribers followed by AT&T with 86 million, Sprint with 45 million and T-Mobile with almost 41 million subscribers. There are many other much smaller carriers who are struggling to survive too. Demand for spectrum comes from not just cell phones, tablets and other devices do share services. 3G and 4G mobile services as well as Internet services are putting pressure for wireless broadband. At the November 2014 auction, other players such as Dish are expected to compete for spectrum.

Currently Sprint has the highest share of the spectrum among four players. However, their ownership of 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz requires building more towers and they have yet to develop most of it. They have already announced that they are going to sit out of the upcoming spectrum auction in November 2014. Other three players own lower frequency spectrums that comparatively require fewer infrastructures, more specifically less towers. The planned 2016 wireless spectrum auction expected to carry more desirable spectrum.

The small unmanned global drone market currently estimated around $300 million. The small aerial vehicle is revolutionizing the real estate market by giving the buyers an opportunity to see prospective homes and businesses from a different angle that has not seen before.

Chinese company DJI Innovations, France based Parrot, and Germany’s Microdrones are the three main players in the drone industry. At a selling price of $1,400, many prefer DJI’s Phantom drones for its simplicity and turnkey operation capability. More than 300 retailors in two dozen countries sell DJI products. In the U.S., Amazon.com and Best Buy offer DJI products.

Safety and privacy issues are two main concerns of many. But the most pressing issue for drones is its battery life. Most of the commercial drones are able to fly for about 25 minutes before recharging its lithium ion batteries. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other state regulators are coming up with more and more regulations including licensing requirements to address concerns over commercial use of drones. This is why commercial use of drones is illegal in many U.S. states. However, some estimates that the personal use drone market in the U.S. is growing at 20 percent a year and beyond the hobby market film industry and the agricultural industry could benefits from drones.

Graphene, a super thin material that is touch-sensitive, pliable, transparent, and conduct electricity is revolutionizing electronics industry. The Korean behemoth, Samsung Electronics recently announced that it is introducing a curved screen TV getting one step closer to the graphene technology. The current touch screen material is known as ITO (indium tin oxide) and is subject to brittle and therefore, not suited for bendable devices. Graphene electrical conductivity is 100 times faster than silicon. This quality may help it to be used in TVs, memory chips and many others. Samsung is stockpiling a slew of patents for the technology. Graphene wrapped devices sure to revolutionize the touchscreen technology.

Some US universities including a group from the Cornell University are conducting research on graphene technology. Graphene appears to be more suited for wearables devices too. Imagine a folded tablet that can fit in your pocket or folded phone that fits into your shirt pocket? That day may not be too far away.

Samsung appears to be the early leader in graphene technology but a slew of contenders are closing in. IBM, McAlister Technology, SanDisk, Foxconn Industries, Fujitsu, Teijin, and Xerox all have applied for various patents related to graphene technology. Apple and Google are slowly moving towards it too.