Teknovis

It seems that the Dutch telecommunications regulator is going to allow network agnostic SIMs according to Holland says yes to the network-agnostic SIM card.

I think that is a great move, and it is really going to allow OTT players to get creative!

However, ultimately I think that we need to move to a virtualised SIM environment. I think that we need to dispense with that old piece of hardware :)

Tags: Netherlands

Which country had the most patent applications last year? The US! Which country was next?

Which company was the most US patent applications last year? IBM. What other companies were in the top 20?

To see more interesting, and some fun, US patent application statistics see this excellent infographic from AcclaimIP:

2013 US Patent Statistics (Copyright AcclaimIP)

The original version, including a high resolution PDF, is in 2013 US Patent Statistics Infographic.

Tags: AcclaimIP, IBM

This interactive Submarine Cable Map is very interesting (static version shown below)!

Submarine Cable Map 2014 (Copyright TeleGeography)

You can read more about it in Submarine Cable Map.

Luca Iaconi-Stewart is building a paper plane – but not any paper plane! He is building a pretty excellent model of a Boeing 777!

Read about it in Coolest paper airplane ever and the plane nut who built it (Q&A), and look at the photos in his photo sets!

Tags: Boeing

The 6th National Data Protection Conference is taking place in Dublin next week. I do not know if there are still places available!

It looks interesting, but it is not really my area.

The ISA is organising an interesting event later this week – ISA Techbrew – When Your Market is not Big Enough, Reinvent and Grow.

It look interesting, and if time permits then I will be there!

There was a lot of news coverage of Google‘s announcement regarding smart contact lenses last week! The original Google blog post is Introducing our smart contact lens project, and some of the many reporting articles are Google Unveils Smart Contact Lens That Lets Diabetics Measure Their Glucose Levels, Google unveils ‘smart contact lens’ to measure glucose levels, and Google developing smart contact lens.

It is exciting technology, and it really makes me wonder what else the future has in store for contact lenses! My personal choice – the ability to change the focal length dynamically in order to “zoom in” on objects of interest :)

Tags: Google

For anybody not following the Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank software patent case, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit considered it earlier this year. All ten judges heard the case, and came to seven different conclusions! Hence, the conclusion was inconclusive :) There is a fairly good summary in On key software decision, top patent court grinds to a stalemate.

Now it appears that the US Supreme Court is going to consider the case, according to Supreme Court will take up messy software ruling from top patent court.

This could get very interesting!

FRKelly has produced a nice infographic in Ireland as a Patent Nation showing Ireland’s prowess as a patent filing nation (click to see larger version):

Ireland as a Patent Nation (Copyright FRKelly)

I think that the breakdown between academic institutions, individual inventors, and corporate bodies is the most interesting statistic.

Tags: FRKelly, Ireland

There are some interesting general password observations in The gentle art of cracking passwords, but the list of top 20 passwords disclosed due to the Adobe hack in Analysis reveals popular Adobe passwords is even more insightful! I will include it here for my own future reference:

• 123456
• 123456789
• password
• adobe123
• 12345678
• qwerty
• 1234567
• 111111
• photoshop
• 123123
• 1234567890
• 000000
• abc123
• 1234
• adobe1
• macromedia
• azerty
• iloveyou
• aaaaaa
• 654321

This list really is frightening!

Tags: Adobe