Tom Raftery - Issue #11

A busy week this last week has this newsletter going out a little later than usual - though it is still Friday on the US West Coast as I type this - so still almost to schedule :)

Onto the stories...

The Internet of Things (IoT)

News from the world of the internet of Things this week that more cars are now getting cellular connections than people. AT&T alone has 8m connected cars!

And Beijing is using a combination of social media and the Internet of Things to more quickly detect air pollution problems

A third of new cellular customers last quarter were cars — www.recode.net Most smartphones go to existing customers, with the real growth coming from tablets and other devices.

How Beijing Is Using Data From Social Media And IoT To Boost Air Pollution Forecasting — www.forbes.com The Environmental Protection Bureau of the Chinese capital is working with IBM to improve pollution forecasts.

Energy

Google started Project Sunroof last year in a select few US cities to let people in those cities see how they would benefit by putting solar panels on their roofs. This has now expanded to 42 states, and hopefully it will expand beyond the US soon too

Clean energy is providing more jobs now than fossil fuels, and a new zinc air battery technology has the potential to revolutionise energy storage

Google’s Project Sunroof Expands to 42 States and Millions More Rooftops — www.greentechmedia.com “First and foremost, this is about how Google can catalyze the rooftop solar market.”

Clean-Energy Jobs Surpass Oil Drilling for First Time in U.S. — www.bloomberg.com The number of U.S. jobs in solar energy overtook those in oil and natural gas extraction for the first time last year, helping drive a global surge in employment in the clean-energy business as fossil-fuel companies faltered.

A Battery Made From Metal and Air Is Electrifying the Developing World — fortune.com Is this brand new type of battery the key to clean energy and off-grid electricity?

CleanTech/Misc

Wirelessly charging of electric vehicles is coming very soon - and the ability to wirelessly charge electric vehicles (of all sorts) will totally revolutionise the industry

And Apple are opening their much maligned assistant Siri to developers - it will be fascinating to see what people use it for

Wireless charging: the key to unlocking an electric vehicle revolution — www.vox.com Once electric vehicles can charge without wires, they are going to take off.

Apple prepping Siri SDK and Echo-like home assistant gadget — techcrunch.com Apple is preparing an SDK that would allow developers much greater access to Siri — and the improved assistant will power a stationary hub device like..

Climate

We can't burn all the fossil fuels that we know are in the ground, or we will totally fry the planet

Luckily some sense is starting to prevail and the leaders of the G7 countries have pledged to stop subsidies for fossil fuels by 2025

World could warm by massive 10C if all fossil fuels are burned — www.theguardian.com Arctic would warm by as much as 20C by 2300 with disastrous impacts if action is not taken on climate change, warns new study

G7 nations pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 — www.theguardian.com Leaders of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the EU urge all countries to join them in eliminating support for coal, oil and gas in a decade

Finally

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter. I hope you found it interesting. If you did, you should also check out my blog

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