Tom Raftery's newsletter - Issue #17

So, lots of international news stories this week from the world of tech, and you can check some of the more interesting ones out below, but as well as that, I have some personal news to share. In the last week I accepted a job offer from SAP to be Global Internet of Things Evangelist. I start on September 1st.

In the meantime, there will still be plenty of news in this newsletter, and even moreso after (!)

The Internet of Things (IoT)

Speaking of the Internet of Things, I spotted several stories this week in this space. The Netherlands are rolling out a nationwide IoT communications network - this is a big step and will prove very useful for any businesses in that space 

Netherlands Has First Nationwide Internet of Things Network — www.digitaltrends.com Leading the rest of the world, the Netherlands is now ready for the Internet of Things with nationwide Long Range (LoRa) wireless network coverage.

then we see news that Microsoft is making available a 'Publish to web" function in its analytics platform Power BI. This functionality will allow users to quickly and easily share insights gleaned form large tranches of data

Microsoft launches Power BI 'publish to web' feature out of preview — venturebeat.com Microsoft today is announcing that it’s making the “publish to web” feature in its Power BI cloud-based business intelligence tool generally available at no additional cost for both free and pro users. The feature lets users take data visualizations they’ve created inside Power BI and share publicly accessible versions with dedicated URLs and HTML snippets that can be incorporated into other websites.

and finally for this section, for anyone interested in the IoT and retail space, this is a really good in-depth piece on where that is headed

Connecting with customers by leveraging Internet of Things in retail — www.business-standard.com Read more about Connecting with customers by leveraging Internet of Things in retail on Business Standard. Devices like Amazon Dash Button shows us that IoT may help to synchronise the supply chain so tightly that we may begin to observe new levels of efficiency, says Alagu Balaraman

Energy

Two big stories in the energy space - in the first we see Amazon - the renewables hold-out finally deciding it needs to get serious about adding some renewables to its arsenal (driven by customer demand, no doubt), and teaming up with Dominion Power to make it so

Amazon and Dominion Power Forge a New Renewable Energy Path in Virginia — www.greentechmedia.com Dominion creates a special rate to meet the needs of one of its largest customers.

while in Hawaii, the mandate to hit 100% renewables by 2045 has the various islands there looking at rolling out offshore wind farms

Hawaii Eyes Offshore Wind to Reach its 100 Percent Clean Energy Goal — insideclimatenews.org A Pulitzer Prize-winning, non-profit, non-partisan news organization dedicated to covering climate change, energy and the environment.

CleanTech/Misc

BMW have announced that it is teaming up with Intel and Mobileye to deliver fully autonomous cars by 2021 - this is a hugely ambitious goal, and it will be fascinating to see how they plan to deliver on this

BMW Teams Up With Intel, Mobileye for Autonomous Car by 2021 — www.bloomberg.com BMW AG is teaming up with chipmaker Intel Corp. and camera-software company Mobileye NV to bring self-driving cars to the road by 2021, becoming the first major automaker to set a specific date to produce a fully autonomous vehicle.

Facebook has published OpenCellular, an open-source way for someone to become a mobile carrier. This is great for regions that are poorly served by mobile carriers, and locals want to have access to mobile and data

Facebook’s OpenCellular is a new open-source wireless access platform for remote areas — techcrunch.com Facebook is clearly very serious about its mission to connect the world and in the process, it has launched solar-powered drones that use lasers to connect..

Climate

and finally two climate-related stories - 1) yet more records being broken - this time arctic sea ice melt, and 2) the Rolling Stone publishes a superb in-depth piece detailing how Exxon lied about the dangers of climate change. The interesting question now is how liable they are for this...

Arctic sea ice crashes to record low for June The changes are altering how the Earth reflects radiation back to space.

Did Exxon Lie About Global Warming? — www.rollingstone.com For decades, the oil giant knew the dangers of climate change and did everything in its power to deny the threat of a warming planet. Will the company

And 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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