Tag: technology

Reducing the size of computer components is a process that never stops surprising us over the past few decades. But IBM managed to shock even the biggest tech enthusiasts, announcing that it has managed to read and write data into a single atom. Although the achievement is still far from its practical application, it is a clear evidence that the concept of atomic data storage is more than accomplishable in the near future. Today’s hard drives take about 100 000 atoms to store a single bit of data, but IBM’s experiment just showed us how much more we can work to improve the computing and storing processes we know now. According to the company, when the technology of atom storage is fully developed, the entire Apple music catalog will be stored in a hard drive with the size of a coin. Тhis has the potential to drastically change the way we see our computing devices. Few years ago we could not imagine that one phone can store hundreds of gigabytes of information, but now this is just one of many remarkable features of the top products on the market. In the near future our wearable gadgets like smartwatches or rings could carry all our personal data. That kind of advance will be really big for the industry, that is expected to generate 17.6 trillion gigabytes of data by the end of 2017. In order to store and analyze all that information, enterprises are going to have to increase their spending. IDC predicts that worldwide revenue for big data and business analytics will grew from nearly $122 billion in 2015 to more than $187 billion in 2019. That is a 50% increase over five years. More than half of that spending will go to services providers, while companies will spend about $55 billion on big data software and $28 billion on hardware in 2019. Sectors like utilities, resource industries, healthcare and banking are likely to see their big data spending rise the fastest, while manufacturing will remain the biggest big data spender overall. If you want to keep up with the hottest trends in the world of data usage and analytics Webit.Festival is the right place for you. During the Big Data & Cloud Summit, you can listen to top level speakers such as the VP for Cloud and Mobile Technology Strategy at IBM Jonas Jacobi and the CTO of Intel Security for EMEA region Raj Samani. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

The massive development of digital technology in recent years increased the pressure on the local government officials to invest resources in the integration of multiple information and communication technology and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in secure fashion to manage their city’s assets. Urbanisation processes and the proliferation of private automobiles create huge problems for the old infrastructure and have unwanted side effects, such as air pollution and heavy traffic. And although we can’t deal with them all, today’s technologies provide multiple solutions to create a better and more comfortable future for all of us. By the end of this year, 75% of cities worldwide will fail to take full advantage of Smart City Data and digital assets due to lack of process, project management and change management skills. According to IDC by 2019 30% of urban consumers will use bots or intelligent assistants for multimodal route planning to manage costs, carbon impact and other travel preferences. At this year’s Webit.Festival you can listen to some of the top experts in this innovative field of digital industry. During the Smart Cities Summit they will share their thoughts on Smart Administration, Smart Mobility and Transport, Smart Energy, Sustainability, Cleantech, Cities' Digital Transformation and City innovation through collaboration with the startup world. The Summit will be chaired by the Mayor of Sofia Mrs. Yordanka Fandakova. It gathers mayors, municipality administrations, EU Commission and European Committee of the Regions members, Cities Council members, Cities' Agency heads, Smart City solution providers and selected innovative startups from around Europe and aims to address all of the crucial factors that are facing urban administrators in today’s digital world. At Smart Cities summit you shall meet mayors from Bulgaria, including from Burgas, Varna, Stara Zagora, Gabrovo, Vidin, Yambol, Lovech, Shumen, as well as from the region, such as the mayor of Tirana, Mostar, Rijeca, etc. Among the partners of the Summit are Sofia Municipality, Oblak.bg, MasterCard, Cisco, The Bulgarian Chamber of Architects, Basscom, BAIT and major Bulgarian and International media. The event gives unique opportunity for direct access to mayors, deputy mayors, top level municipality administrators and all interested parties within the city administrations responsible for Smart City Solution implementations. The CIO of the City of Palo Alto Dr. Jonathan Reichental will tell us what happens when we begin to build intelligence into the fabric of how our cities operate and what opportunities present themselves when we are smart about connecting the right things together. The Director of Technology Evangelism at Built.io Kurt Collins will share his vision about a future, where AI creates and maintains integrations between SaaS services and hardware is a requirement for smart cities. The CEO of Amyx+ Scott Amyx will explain how to innovate and execute in IoT and how to turn disruption into innovation. Innovate UK’s Interim Head of Urban Living & Built Environment Mike Pitts will talk about the challenges before urban populations around the world and how cities can satisfy the needs of their citizens. The Global Managing Director for Smart Cities of Cisco Systems Amr Salem will share his expectations about the growth opportunities driven by improving the quality of life for citizens, and therefore technology functions as a mere enabler to create added value in efficiency. International Telecommunication Union's Deputy Secretary General Malcolm Johnson will explain his organization's role as the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies. The Director of Communications and Marketing at Xerox Richard Harris will explain the latest trends in the implementation of intelligent transport systems. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

Despite the fact that over the last century medicine noted significant achievements that led to the increase in life expectancy of more than 20 years, health care remains one of the most inefficient and unreformed sectors. Today, connectivity and information are the hottest words in the world of health technology. The new trends in this extremely important field are improving communication, but still pose some concerns for safety of personal information. Experts predict that this year we will see a big jump in data integration in healthcare. This can lead to simplified processes, health monitoring with mobile apps and will have an overall positive impact on patient engagement. The current medical data systems were designed before the Big Data revolution and need to change for better connection between the various sources of information. All the upcoming transformations will impact the delivery of care that benefits both the patient and the provider. Patients are increasingly accessing healthcare services from home as national health systems and vendors begin to get on board. By the end of 2017 nearly 90% of all large employers in the USA are expected to offer telehealth benefits, up from 75% in 2016 and only 30% in 2015. This dramatic increase is an opportunity for many employees to utilize innovative telehealth services for their families. At this year’s Webit.Festival you can listen to some of the top experts in those innovative fields of digital industry. During the Health & Wellbeing Summit they will share their thoughts on the development of VR in medicine, using cognitive technologies to address today’s most pressing issues and the emergence of medical wearables. The Consultant surgeon and Co-founder of Virtual Medics and Medical Realities prof. Shafi Ahmed will explain how the rise of virtual reality technologies will help for improving surgical education. Last year the professor performed the world’s first VR operation, which was watched by more than 55 000 people in 140 countries and reached 4.5 million users on Twitter. The Deputy Chief Health Officer at IBM’s Watson Lisa Latts will speak about the problems of today’s healthcare delivery worldwide and how artificial intelligence can help for crucial data analysis. She will also explain how Watson is helping pharmaceutical companies speed up the discovery of targets for drug development. Meanwhile, the Founder and CEO of Biovotion Dr. Andreas Caduff will talk about the next wave of healthtech wearables and the emergence of devices that combine the ease of use and design of the consumer world, the intelligence of sophisticated monitoring with the compliance and regulatory requirements from the medical device area. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

We are living in increasingly digital world, but there are several emerging technologies, that will probably be a catalyst for long-term innovation. In 2016 tech like AI, VR, AR, Chatbots and automated cars took major leaps in terms of their adoption and we can certainly say that robots are no longer coming, because they are already here. In the age of digital transformation disruption has become the key word for innovative businesses. And now almost every industry from transport to finance is facing big changes through technology. This year we can expect more connectivity, more automation and more significant impact of technology in investment and business than ever before. Here are the 5 most important technological trends that everyone must watch for: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Artificial intelligence is already a part of journalism, healthcare and even customer support with the rise of chat bots. Many expert believe that 2017 will be the year we embrace the cultural shift and start trusting AI with more and more jobs, that were previously done manually. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed us the best of smart homes innovation with his house virtual assistant, but there is still a lot to come. Gartner defined AI and machine learning as the two most disruptive trends of the year. Virtual Reality (VR) This year virtual reality is finally breaking the limits of digital entertainment and gaming sectors and is going out in the mainstream. The two spheres, that are most likely to benefit from the invasion of VR are Education and Healthcare. But soon the next reality will be found in nearly every aspect of our lives. Now it’s up to the business to find out how virtual reality can add value to its marketing, customization of products and much better customer experience. Immersive experiences with AR and VR are reaching tipping points in terms of price and capability but will not replace other interface models. 3D Printing Although 3D printing can hardly be defined as a new technology, the real advances in this field came during the last 5 years. 3D printing is going to disrupt manufacturing, e-commerce and retail, not only with new method for mass production, but with ways for personalization. Meanwhile, the idea for Tesla’s smart factories, in which machines are building machines, are just a step towards the concept of self-replication robotics, drones and home systems. Digital Identification & Biometrics With the coming age of IoE we are quickly moving to a time, where our personal information will all be stored biometrically. This process has already started with fingerprint sensors on our phones, but soon the biometric identification will spread to face recognition and iris scans. This year will mark the beginning of ”digital twin” representation. This innovation will allow analysis and simulation of real world conditions and improving of operations using data on how the components of a device operate end respond to environment. Automated vehicles The era of automated vehicles is just around the corner. It will affect not only the sector of transportation, but also the labour market, city traffic and air quality and even the way we spend our free time. The driverless cars will offer numerous social benefits, such as better personal mobility, decline in the number of injuries and fatalities and increased productivity, due to the time freed up while traveling. Although we can’t expect a fully autonomous car this year, we will see more and more companies present their concepts about their future models, where the driving is not the focal point of the user experience. In the next few years we will see self-driving taxi services, provided by companies like NuTonomy, Uber and Lyft, while automation giants, such as Ford, BMW and Toyota will continue their work on providing the best product for this new market niche. You can learn more about the newest trends in technology sector by attending to Webit.Festival Europe. During the two-day agenda of the festival in Sofia you can listen to top level speakers from all over the world, who will share their experience on topics, such as Marketing & Innovation, FinTech & Blockchain, Big Data & Cloud, IoE, Digital Transformation, Security & Privacy, Health & Wellbeing and Mobility.

Despite of having the lion share of the world’s money, financial markets are among the most conservative fields of business and are usually focusing more on the results than on development and deployment of innovative solutions. But the fast spread of disruptive companies like Robinhood, which allows free stock trading, has made 2016 really amazing for the FinTech industry and led to its moving into the mainstream. Just five years ago FinTech was not something that most people would invest in, but now, it has become one of the hottest industries in the startup world. Why? Just because it gives the chance for a new company to offer services and compete with the big banks. Let’s just think about how easier it has become to make a bank transaction online than it was few years ago. Now every big financial institution is obliged to incorporate online banking in its platform to be competitive on the market. The internet platforms for crowd-funding are just another example of how FinTech has made our lives better and has empowered people to invest in projects on the other side of the globe. This type of technology continues to dramatically change the landscape for several spheres and the process is not going to slow down in the near future. Experts predict that in 2017 we are going to see credit and debit cards becoming more and more useless in the developed world, where cash is quickly giving way to phone financial transactions. The CEO of Vena Solutions Don Mal says that now having a smartphone in your pocket is much more important than your physical wallet. His expectation is that in the next five years the market for contactless cards will double and most of the retailers will accept mobile wallets. Meanwhile the biometric sensors on our phones will work not only for the HealthTech industry, but also for better payment security. In the near future we will see an multistep process for verification, which may include fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition. Of course the better financial technologies will benefit not only the rich. In fact, they can be even more important for people in developing countries. In Kenya the system, that locals call “mobile money”, allows those without access to bank accounts to deposit, withdraw, and transfer cash with a simple SMS. According to Science Magazine’s study the access to M-PESA, the country’s most popular mobile money system, lifted hundreds of thousands of Kenyans above the poverty line. The network was introduced in the country in 2007 by Kenya’s largest mobile service provider - Safaricom. It is now used by at least one person in 96% of Kenyan households. You can learn more about the newest trends in FinTech and Blockchain sector by attending to Webit.Festival 2017. During the two-day agenda of the festival in Sofia you can listen to top level speakers from all over the world, who will share their experience on topics, such as Marketing & Innovation, Big Data & Cloud, IoE, Digital Transformation, Security & Privacy, Health & Wellbeing and Mobility. Among them will be the Executive VP for Global product strategy of Wirecard Christian Von Hammel-Boten and the venture capital investor and CEO of Novus Ordo Capital Liliana Reasor.

An app that can make it possible for you to live stream for a living just raised $25 million Series A funding! We are talking about Next Entertainment, Taiwanese startup, founded by Andy Zhong. Mr Zhong is very popular in the region, he already sold his previous startup FunPlus to Zhongji fo nearly 1 billion dollars. And now FunPlus is one of the investors in Next. Learn more about it here.

Meanwhile, there is information that Amazon is secretly building an app that matches truck drivers with shippers. It's a $800 billion industry, according to Business Insider. More on the matter, here.

Airfare prediction app Hopper has grown from 1 million downloads to over 10 million in the course of a year – a trajectory that’s allowed it to pull in $82 million CAD (~$61.2 million US) in additional funding to continue to grow its business. The Series C round was led by North American pension fund manager, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and includes participation from existing investors, Brightspark Ventures, Accomplice, OMERS, Investissement Québec and BDC Capital IT Venture Fund.

NextView Ventures, one of few seed-stage venture firms in Boston, is looking to raise at least $50 million for a third fund, shows an SEC filing that was processed yesterday. The firm closed its second fund with $40 million in 2014 and its debut fund with $21 million in 2012.

IBM announced that it would be working with BMW on R&D where Watson sensors and computing will be integrated into BMW cars to pick up car data and help with new systems aimed at vehicles running more efficiently and with more personalisation for specific drivers and passengers.

Amazon plans to totally change the way we go to supermarkets. The company presented a concept for a physical store in a video. The store, called Amazon Go, doesn't work like a typical Walmart or supermarket — instead, it's designed so that shoppers will use an app, also called Amazon Go, to automatically add the products they plan to buy to a digital shopping cart; they can then walk out of the building without waiting in a checkout line. Learn more for this from Business Insider here. German hotel booking site Trivago updated its plans for a U.S. IPO in a filing that came out on Monday. The company expects to price its shares between $13 to $15, a $428 million offering at the top end of the range. For more on this, click here. Uber has acquired Geometric Intelligence, a startup co-founded by academic researchers with AI experience, and its team will provide the core for a new central AI lab being established at Uber’s SF HQ. You can read more about it here. According to a report from Recode, the GV (nee Google Ventures) founder/former-CEO Bill Maris is raising $230 million for the project Section 32 -  new healthcare-focused venture fund. Learn more about it here.  

Electric cars are one of the hottest topics right now in the business world. But there are also hydrogen cars.  A Utah-based startup is trying to revolutionize the trucking industry with hydrogen power.  Nikola Motor Company unveiled its hydrogen-powered truck, the Nikola One. The truck primarily relies on hydrogen fuel cells, but also comes with a 320 kWh battery, to achieve a range of 1,200 miles. Of course, there is a long way to go until hydrogen cars eliminate all the hurdles in front. See more here. A startup that wants to transform insurance 'beyond recognition' has added $33 million to its war chest, according to Business Insider. In December 2015, the insurance startup Lemonade raised $13 million in seed funding — the largest ever seed investment by legendary Silicon Valley firm Sequoia capital. Learn more about it here. Stefan Stokic, a 15-year old high school sophomore from Jackson, Mississippi, is working 130 hour per week for his dream. Stokic already has a startup called Slik, cofounded by fellow 14-year old student Soroush Ghondsi, and is connected with a bunch of high-profile Silicon Valley investors who are closely following their budding careers. Read more about the wonderboy here.

Early-stage venture firm Network Society Ventures has snagged TechShop’s former CEO and co-founder Mark Hatch as general partner. Hatch is recognized as a pioneer of the maker movement, is a current entrepreneur in residence at UC Berkeley, and is a former Green Beret.

 

Sean Parker, the charismatic billionaire and former President of Facebook, hase a new mission. Cancerous tumors carry certain markers called neoantigens and Parker wants to use algorithms to find them in the search for a vaccine.  To do so, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will work with more than 30 public and private pharmaceutical, biotech, cancer research nonprofits and academic institutions through a partnership with the Cancer Research Institute to use predictive algorithms to help uncover new cancer neoantigens found coded in DNA. In other news, A Redwood City, Calif. startup called Neurotrack Technologies Inc. has created a brain health app that is helping scientists unravel the mysteries of memory, and work to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. It can detect signs of deteriorating brain health years before the first symptoms. Read more about it here. Meanwhile, Twitter has a new VP of Product, named Keith Coleman, who was until now CEO of Yes, Inc., startup acquired today by the big company.  Bullpen Capital, a venture firm that specializes in post-seed stage deals, has closed its third fund at $75 million. The company invests in startups that previously closed a seed round of investment and showed solid signs of traction, but have been dubbed too early for traditional VCs. Seismologists at UC Berkeley released MyShake, an app that passively monitors for seismic activity, both watching for earthquakes and warning users if one is underway. In the months since its introduction, the app has outperformed its creators’ expectations, detecting over 200 earthquakes in more than ten countries. Read more about the important app here.