"Red Bull Stratos" - record-breaking advertising

On 14 October, 2012, millions of viewers watched with bated breath the actions of the Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, who after five years of thorough preparations jumped from a height of more than 39 km to finalize the Red Bull Stratos project. The sky jumper beat three records: the highest manned balloon flight, jump from the highest height, and the one most exciting people's imagination - the speed record during free fall. Reaching a speed of 1342.8 km/h, Baumgartner broke two barriers, the sound barrier and the limit of human potential.

The Red Bull itself can add a few more records. The most remarkable one is the "best ever" marketing campaign. Only the specially prepared Youtube channel was watched live by over 8 million people. There would be even more viewers, but the demand exceeded server capabilities of the world's largest service. This is an absolute record, leaving far behind all sporting events, not to mention U.S. presidential debates.

Next to this amazing human achievement, other extraordinary things involved in this project were the technologies of capturing, recording, and transmitting the coverage of the event. The whole happening was recorded using a system consisting of over thirty cameras. Those at the top had to work in conditions of low temperature and pressure, those on the ground - had to capture images of objects located a few dozen kilometers away.

The whole event was recorded using a system consisting of over thirty cameras. Most of them had been designed for space missions. Five cameras were placed on the spacesuit of the skydiver.

 
Two ground based optical tracking systems JLAIR (Joint Long-range Aerospace Imaging and Relay), used for the first time in a commercial venture. Each of them was equipped with two HD cameras recording 60 frames per second and 4K camera (4000 x 2000 pixels) recording 120 frames per second. The set of the cameras connected with dedicated telescope systems had a focal length equivalent of 8000 mm. For comparison, the largest lenses available on the market provide focal length 10 times lower, 800 mm. To track the skydiver falling at the speed of sound there were also used infrared cameras which allowed for the reduction of the negative impact of the radiation on image quality. [source: redbullstratos.com]

It might seem that the whole Stratos project has been a no-return investment of Red Bull, which will be forgotten in a few weeks. However, as mentioned at the beginning, the project is now considered to be the best advertising in history. The $ 20 million spent by Red Bull within 5 years of preparations for the jump is nothing in comparison with the money allocated by major corporations e.g. on the Olympic Games. What is also undeniable is the fact that the experience gained during the project will be used by the scientific community and armed forces. Conspiracy theorists may even suspect that the name "Stratos" - meaning "army" in Greek - shows the main purpose of this experiment. It is said that every moment pilots of reconnaissance aircraft operating at high altitudes could use the spacesuits developed for this project. In the case of an accident or shooting down the plane, the suit could save the life of the pilot.

$1,000,000 for "the Internet of things"!

At the October conference Demo Fall 2012, the People's Choice Award winner and owner of $1,000,000 for promotion in IDG Media became Ube, an American startup company, for developing a new concept of a smart home.

The award-winning company presented a universal application capable of remote control of home appliances, including "ordinary" devices that are powered from AC line voltage. In the first phase of the project they plan to integrate 200 products from various manufacturers, by providing remote control via TCP/IP protocols. The users of smartphones will be able to control not only TVs, STBs and other modern electronic devices, but also thermostats, shutters, garage doors and lighting - all the components of the connected homes that will be really "smart".

In addition to software, Ube has also developed three IP devices. Their task is to control all the electrically powered devices or installations that do not have network interface and which should be included in home automation systems, such as lighting. Their biggest advantage is the simplicity of implementation due to direct connection to the existing wiring in the home or office. Other solutions offered so far for building automation have usually been expensive and not very intuitive.

Ube at Demo Fall showed that the rise in popularity of smartphones and the potential of Android and iOS provide new possibilities for applications in this area, making them much cheaper, versatile and most importantly - extremely easy and intuitive for users, by a significant reduction of human involvement in common processes which can be based on the "Internet of Things" - interconnected machines with specific functions. Just imagine, when you are approaching your home, your smartphone will turn on the coffee maker to brew a fresh cup of coffee, switch on the TV on the channel with your favorite series, adjust the temperature in the room depending on the atmospheric conditions...

From the left to the right:

• Smart Plug can be plugged into any wall outlet to control a wide range of appliances from a smartphone and measure the consumed energy
• Smart Dimmer based on a 32-bit ARM processor and Android OS changes light intensity and the energy consumption according to the needs of the user
• Smart Outlet used to replace an existing outlet - identical functions as the Smart Plug - for higher loads

In the past, home automation devices were expensive, unintuitive and difficult to use. The advent of Apple and Google platforms on mobile devices allows for the dissemination of this kind of technology due to wide accessibility and ease of use.

DEMO is a series of conferences organized around the world by IDG Enterprise and VentureBeat. For 22 years, the DEMO stage has witnessed presentations of over 1500 companies and 20 000 technological solutions. Regular meetings held in the United States, China, Brazil and Singapore concentrate on the promotion and financing of the development of the latest technologies and innovative products, which according to the organizers have the best chance of success and global adaptation. Among the projects and companies that benefited from the participation in the conferences there can be found such well-known brands like Sun's Java, Adobe Acrobat, Netscape Navigator, VM Vare. So, Ube won not only a million dollars ...

Contactless payments also with mobile phones!

Samsung Galaxy S III is the first mobile phone running Android OS which supports Barclaycard contactless mobile payments with Quick Tap from Orange. So far, the services are available in Great Britain only.
Each owner of any UK Visa or Mastercard debit or credit card and Samsung Galaxy S III from Orange is given a contactless way to pay for purchases 20 GPB and under. By activating the Barclaycard payment app by October 5, 2012, the users got 50 GPB rewards.

The unprecedented growth in sales of smartphones has created a unique opportunity to use their capabilities in the field of non-cash transactions. So the largest software companies are making efforts to support implementations of software solutions in this application segment.

Google has come up with a solution called Google Wallet, which is a typical application for Android system. The users can make payments using virtual versions of their payment, discount, and gift cards. They can also use additional Google Offers at the same time.

The card and transaction information stored on the phone is isolated from potential malware. The payments in shops accepting Google Wallet are made immediately after the phone is moved close to the reader at the point of sale. They use Near Field Communication (NFC) technology - high frequency communication standard for wireless exchange of data over distances up to 20 centimeters.

According to Gartner, the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, we will see rapid development of "mobile" payments. Currently this market is worth $172 billion, but by 2016 it should exceed $600 billion.

In mid-2012, there were 34 million NFC-enabled phones. According to the company estimates, by 2015 every other phone will be equipped with components supporting this technology. Currently, the leading provider of NFC solutions is NXP Semiconductors. NXP chips are installed e.g. in Nexus S supporting Google Wallet, in tablets running Windows 8, and in Sony smartphones.

 

Mobile payments are made by bringing the phone to readers embedded in POS terminals

NFC is a radio technology that enables data exchange with bit rates 106 kbps to 848 kbps, using the carrier frequency of 13.56 MHz. It is based on inductive coupling, where loosely coupled inductive circuits share power and data over a distance of a few centimeters, typically up to 10 cm.
The NFC technology allows two communication modes: active and passive. In active mode both devices participating in the exchange of data emit electromagnetic fields. In passive mode, one device generates electromagnetic field to power the second device (passive), enabling the exchange of information. Examples of passive devices are RFID tags, poster tags, contactless smart cards.

 

A major breakthrough in technology for photonic computers

The construction of a logic gate in which the logic state can be changed by a pulse of light instead of applying a voltage can mean the beginning of the end of current electronics and high chance of the Nobel Prize for scientists who developed the new technology.

The essence of the development is a logic switch created through the use of cadmium sulphide nanostructures on silicon substrate.

To make the switch, the scientists used a pair of nanowires; two such switches formed a NAND gate. During the test, pulses of laser light changed the output state in accord with the logic of the gate.
The most difficult and spectacular achievement was the 1,1 -> 0 state, when two "1" input signals resulted in "0" output - one light pulse blanked the other!

The basic switch is made of two nanowires, two such switches form a NAND gate

 Possible combinations of logic states

NAND gates enable realization of all logic functions. The development of "optical" NAND gate may open the way for the construction of advanced integrated circuits, operating with optical signals, instead of electric charges.

The new technology may revolutionize ICT industry. Optical integrated circuits used in photonic computers should use less energy, be almost completely resistant to electromagnetic interference, and - perhaps most important - be much faster.
The introduction of photonic computers will also accelerate the development of optical fiber technology, currently hampered by comparatively expensive and inefficient media converters (from electrical to optical and optical to electrical form).

One of the scientists, professor Ritesh Agarwal, University of Pennsylvania, said that the research brings us closer to "a future where consumer electronics become consumer photonics."

 On-chip laser light source made of CdS nanowire

source: www.upenn.edu

Photonics is a field of science that combines electronics, ICT and optics to develop techniques and devices that use light for information processing. Photonics can be understood as analogous to electronic science, with photons as the basic information carriers, instead of electrons. The origins of this field of science are associated with the invention of laser in 1960, development of the first semiconductor light emitters in the early 1960s, and emergence of fiber optic technology in the mid-1970s.