Fwd: Shaping Tomorrow Newsletter

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bruce Lloyd <info@shapingtomorrow.com>
Date: 4 January 2012 18:16:12 GMT
To: david.wood@gmx.co.uk
Subject: Shaping Tomorrow Newsletter

MOBILISING HEALTH APPS Mobile health apps are set to change the way individuals can look after their health, doctors can diagnose and monitor patients, and medical research can collect data and develop their research. As health apps go from 'dumb', i.e. use only aggregated or limited personal data to intelligent using personalised health records and genetic data, a revolution may be underway. Sheila Moorcroft, Research Director

SELECTED INSIGHTS		WHAT IS CHANGING?	WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
	Autonomous Transportation for the Year 2030  COMMENT	Autonomo is a fully autonomous vehicle designed for the year 2030 to overcome many of the major problems facing many of the world's major cities like Los Angeles face today. Its main sources of inspiration are drawn from biomimicry, sustainability, artificial intelligence and information technology	Its objectives are to alleviate congestion, maximize access through the already existing road network, improve energy efficiency and create a completely carbon neutral transportation option. It's said we can achieve all of this with minimal restructuring of the existing road infrastructure through the use of advanced smart technologies
	How 'open innovation' is evolving  COMMENT	Partnering with outsiders can help corporations save money by sharing research & development costs & capitalizing on inventions that are already being prototyped. In a Financial Times article, "Innovation Matchmakers" Louise Lucas reports that consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble hopes to triple its sales from such research collaborations to $3 billion by 2015.	Open innovation might make it tough to keep design secrets under wraps, naturally. But the practice might just prompt large companies to develop products and services faster to compete nimbly as corporations and smaller innovation firms increasingly team up. And large companies will also likely to continue to devise imaginative ways of managing the open innovation process itself.
	Education, disrupted: MIT to offer free, online courses to all  COMMENT	The disruption of higher education just got very interesting. It appears that the disruptors — private, online universities — are being disrupted at their own game. One of the pantheons of traditional on-site learning, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has announced it will be launching online courses that will be free and open to the world. And, in the process, plans to offer certificates	Perhaps this may be a turning point for introducing market forces to the spiraling upward costs of higher education — often called the "education bubble. It may also be a signal about the role of accreditation, and the deconstruction of degree programs as the core of university teaching.
	A roving eye: Home health monitoring with robotic systems  COMMENT	The most expensive way to deliver care is in a hospital – but discharging patients too soon can lead to complications and rehospitalizations. That's where robots can help – and sometimes a robot can be as simple as a video/audio system that can roll around under remote control, transmitting communications over a 4G cellular network.	Instead of having to drag kids back to the hospital for frequent office checks after surgery, Hiep Nguyen, a urologist/surgeon at Children's Hospital Boston, can call the family at home and do the check remotely.
	Any GSM Phone Vulnerable to Hijack Scams  COMMENT	Vulnerability in a widely used wireless technology could allow hackers to gain remote control of phones And instruct them to send text messages or make calls, according to an expert on mobile phone security.	They could use the vulnerability in the GSM network technology, which is used by billions of people in about 80 percent of the global mobile market, to make calls or send texts to expensive, premium phone and messaging services in scams.
	Engineers unleash car-seat identifier that reads your rear end  COMMENT	Cars of the future may use the driver's rear end as identity protection, through a system developed at Japan's Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology.	The system performs a precise measurement of the person's posterior, its contours and the way the person applies pressure on the seat. The developers say that in lab tests, the system was able to recognize people with 98 percent accuracy.
	Holographic 3-D looks tantalizingly closer in 2012  COMMENT	Applications like holographic TV have long been relegated as the next big thing in the distant future but a Leuven, Belgium-based R&D lab for nanoelectronics has come up with a process that might bring holographic images closer to realtime.	Imec hopes to construct the first, proof-of-concept moving structures by mid-2012. "Imec's vision is to design the ultimate 3D display: a holographic display with a 60° diffraction angle and a high-definition visual experience," they state.
	Kraft uses Intel technology in vending machine to target customers by age  COMMENT	In a clever mix of technology and marketing, Kraft Foods has teamed up with Intel to create a vending machine, called the iSample, that can dispense free pudding samples to adults only; it's intended target audience for its new product.	Thus, in addition to television, radio, animated billboards and Internet advertising, we will all likely soon be subjected to various machines studying our bodies and faces to discover clues about our gender, age, race, health and perhaps level of wealth based on our clothing, so that those that wish to sell us things can be more discriminating in their advertising.
	Fantastic futures? Technology and business in 2012  COMMENT	Although those of us following the Mayan long calendar may be heading into 2012 with some trepidation, for those taking a longer-term view here is our annual peek into what next year holds. 12 people from across the technology spectrum give their insights to what the next year will hold.	The consumerisation of IT continues apace with more and more of us bringing our own devices to work. Cloud computing seems to be almost ubiquitous and virtualisation no longer sounds like something to do with the transporter in Star Trek.
	The internet gets physical  COMMENT	Low-cost sensors, clever software and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care and food distribution. The consumer internet can be seen as the warm-up act for these technologies. This is the internet of things.	Sensor aware computing is rapidly coming to fruition and is affecting, or will affect, all industries.

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