Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How?

A not so sophisticated

electronic bag tracking system

Steve Rogerson’s round-up of last month’s news and events, including some which may have slipped under the radar

I had a nightmare journey to Munich in February. I was travelling from East Midlands Airport via Brussels and atrocious weather at both Brussels and Munich delayed my flights in both directions involving overnight stays in Brussels on the way out and Erding near Munich on the way back. Both were compensated for slightly by beer, with a couple of nice glasses of Belgian beer on the way out and on the way back, of course, Erding is famous for the Erdinger brewery, beer from which was served at the hotel bar. At one point, I was told, I was one of

6000 passengers stranded at Munich and given that chaos I was not overly surprised when my luggage did not appear on the carousel back at East Midlands, where a member of staff told me not to worry and then excitedly bragged about their new sophisticated worldwide electronic bag tracking system that will locate my bag in no time, and I’ll be able to follow its progress online. This looked like fun, so I keenly got

back home on the Friday afternoon and logged onto the site. It had all my details correct but the bag status merely said: “Tracing continues, please check back later.” OK, fair enough, I thought, it’s only been a couple of hours. Saturday lunchtime came and I

logged back on only to find exactly the same status message. So I rang up and a nice man told me that Lufthansa had sent my luggage to Leeds Bradford Airport and it would be arriving at East Midlands this evening. Still no update that day at all on the sophisticated

online electronic tracking system. Sunday came, and the same status

message appeared on the web, so again I rang and was told it would be on a flight from Brussels this evening. Er, but I thought it was in Bradford. Whatever gave you that idea, she said. The man I talked to yesterday, I replied, using your sophisticated electronic tracking system. Monday morning, and the

sophisticated online electronic tracking system had still the same message so I rang again and was told it had arrived and by early afternoon the courier delivered it, though it had lost its strap somewhere; they probably used it to

In one sense, I quite like this menu system in the Mojo restaurant in Taipei. No finger clicking to get a waiter’s attention or searching around for a menu, just turn on the table and a touch sensitive screen appears allowing you to select whatever meal you want. But, and it is a big but, I am sure some restaurants will use it as an excuse to cut back on staff, which means less people to check that a table had been properly cleaned after the previous users have left and therefore what might look like the meal you want, when you press it you might find it is actually the real remains of the meal from the last person to use the table. Yeuk! The touch technology, by the way, comes from Zytronics.

handheld gaming devices to portable music players and digital cameras. ARM has over 1700 employees worldwide including China, India, Silicon Valley and the UK. Commenting on the company’s

ARM celebrates 10 years in Sheffield

ARM celebrated 10 years of operation in Sheffield last month, highlighting the city’s growing importance as a technology hub. ARM, which is a FTSE 100 company,

licences IP to a network of Partners including 200 semiconductor and

42 April 2010

systems companies, with more than 18 billion ARM processor-based chips shipped to date. The company’s ongoing success has resulted on its processor designs powering over 95 percent of mobile phones and over 25 percent of all electronic devices from

Components in Electronics

operations in Sheffield Mike Inglis, executive vice president and general manager of processor division, ARM said: “The high tech sector in Sheffield is growing fast and ARM is a large part of that growth. Internationally the city is often associated with traditional industries and manufacturing but it’s quickly developing into a hub for next generation technology innovation. Many processor technologies lying at the heart of the latest electronic devices are conceived here in our Sheffield design lab.” The Sheffield office is home to one

of ARM’s processor design teams, and has grown four-fold in the last ten years to employ 40 people. In addition

to helping drive the development of cutting-edge high-performance, low- power electronic products, the centre is responsible for driving the technology behind the ARM AMBA technology. AMBA is an industry standard that enables ARM Partners to optimize the development and shorten the time to market for ARM processor-based chip designs. ARM‘s Sheffield operation can trace

its roots back to start-up business Infinite Designs which was acquired by ARM in April 2000. Infinite Designs previously went through the start-up process at business incubator Sheffield Technology Parks. Now there is a new breed of

technology start-up bidding to do the same. Gene DePrez, Director of Innovation and his team at Creativesheffield, the UK’s first ever city development company, are helping to encourage further growth.

www.cieonline.co.uk

mend the sophisticated electronic tracking system, the online version of which had at last been updated to say they had found the bag. Isn’t technology wonderful? The reason I was going to Munich

was to attend a press briefing by Sharp Microelectronics on its advances in automotive displays. As part of that, the company’s Hartmut Heske told about plans for solar power technology in cars. To illustrate diverse applications for solar power, he said that a Japanese company had even developed a solar powered bra. I am not sure I want to think about what electricity would be used for in women’s underwear. Maybe the solar panels are held in

place by the latest range of Oxley PCB connectors that Aerco is stocking and go intriguingly under name Kinky Pin.

Meanwhile, they have been having

some fun at the University of Chichester where Acal Technology challenged students to create amusing promotional videos for its chips and other electronic components. You can find the results at youtube.com/ acaltech. My favourite is “The Machines are Talking”. YouTube actually came seventh in a recent poll by Offers Supermarket of the top inventions of the noughties. Not surprisingly, Facebook came top followed by the IPhone and Twitter, but at ninth was GHDs, which apparently are hair straightners. I wouldn’t have voted for that, but then I haven’t got much hair. A certain sophisticated electronic bag tracking system didn’t feature at all. Maybe its votes got sent to Leeds Bradford Airport by mistake. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60