The Network Podcast

Web designers have long been aware of the need to make things easy for Internet users. Now usability is increasingly an issue for other technology areas.

The two-mile six-lane Charilaos Trikoupis bridge in Greece links the town of Rio on the Peloponnese peninsula to the mainland, spanning the Gulf of Corinth. Its 300 or so sensors monitor its condition, alerting operators when, say, high winds call for shutting the bridge to traffic. Soon after going live about ten years ago, for example, the technology detected unusual vibrations in the bridge’s cables and, in response, engineers added more weights.

Anyone who has suffered a break-in knows just how awful it feels. Even in cases where the damage and financial loss are minimal, the feeling of violation and fear caused by a theft can be overwhelming. The good news is that mobile technology is making home security easier and better than ever before and the technology is only getting better. Alarm systems that send signals and images over the mobile network can be placed almost anywhere you want.

Filling the Funding Gap for Women Entrepreneurs A look at the growing ecosystem of support aimed at helping women in business.

A look at how activists are harnessing mobile technology and big data to fight poverty and the food crisis.

Experts have plenty of ideas about what will constitute the next wave of the Internet and mobile communications. But in the ‘Pervasive Computing’ department of City University London in the UK, Professor Adrian Cheok and his team are certain this will involve a fuller sensory experience – involving smell, taste and touch.

Despite 200 years of development, train accidents are still a cause for concern in the rail industry. Sensor technologies are helping make things safer, though.

Clearly, the IoE is colossal, and growing. According to a January 2014 research report from Raymond James & Associates, there were 12.5 billion devices connected to the Internet in 2011, including nearly every computer in the world and over a billion smartphones. By 2020, that number will grow to 50 billion. To put this into perspective, today 80 “things” – including consumer electronics, machine tools, industrial equipment, cars, and appliances – connect to the Internet for the first time every second. By 2020 this will expand to 250 new devices every second.

For one week in February, 25,000 plugged-in people around the world paused from their tweeting, posting and pinning to rub elbows in the real world. The venue: Social Media Week, a sprawling twice-yearly conference that takes place in multiple cities simultaneously Then again, ‘pause’ may be a strong word: conference attendees generated thousands of tweets, instagrams and vines, and tens of thousands of people who could not attend physically tuned into the conference online.

Internet entrepreneurs have created a global sensor network for collecting and sharing radiation measurements to empower people with data about their environments

#67 What To Look Out For At Mobile World Congress by The Network Podcast

Bitcoin can seem like a strange toy for computer geeks, but it may ignite the biggest change in the way we pay for things since the first credit cards in the 1960s. Much of the publicity has focused on Bitcoin as a currency, showing it as a bizarre form of money that comes from no country and can be “mined” by computers. But the currency angle misses the deeper point. Underneath, Bitcoin is actually an extremely clever payment system much more suited to an era of digital transactions than anything that’s come before.

Museums and art galleries are hardly the first places that spring to mind when you think of technological innovation. Unless you have been to the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), that is. Step inside the century-old building in University Circle on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, United States, and even though some of the exhibitions on display may date from hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the experience you have is pure 21st century or beyond.

As any pet owner knows, dogs are a little like babies: You often have to judge how they’re feeling based on behavior. Wouldn’t it be great to have a technology that would provide a lot more insights, perhaps allowing you to measure your pet’s activity over time and track the level of walking, playing and resting?

As much as we love our devices, it’s doubtful anyone has actually fallen in love with Apple’s Siri or Google Now. But with their ability to perform and anticipate myriad tasks through natural language recognition, these applications are the early incarnations of far more intelligent—and perhaps more lovable—personal assistants to come.