©2011 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – It’s raining in the Lake Geneva region today, but that’s not the only reason we are scanning the sky.
To love or not love it, that is the question haunting reviewers around the globe since Apple’s announcement Tuesday of its new iCloud, a kind of digital pie in the sky that will house all our (Apple) device storage needs.
The cloud up there will make life easier for Apple, whose, according to its guru Steve Jobs, is having a nightmarish time trying to keep all our Apple devices synched. And for Apple product owners, it should make our computers lighter and at some point cheaper because they won’t be weighed down by all those operational systems that lie behind our everyday computing.
But the best news in the short term, it appears, is that Apple’s move could put the music industry back on stronger financial feet, with our personal cloud data holding all our music, available to us anytime, anywhere (thereby making us more willing to pay iTunes to get it in the first place). Wired doesn’t entirely agree with this, but it does say Apple’s move could well be an “industry changer” despite not inventing anything and being only for Apples.
For those owners, another bit of good news is that our mobile phone bills could drop, as Apple clouds gather up our instant messages, texts, photos and videos included, on a new system called iMessage, available this autumn, and let us send them for free.
Better yet: for once, all our devices might really be synched, quickly, easily.
There are a few sore losers, starting with mobile phone manufacturers and phone companies, who stand to lose millions. Data privacy protection missionaries are asking uncomfortable questions about the security of the skies above us.
Reviews and comments on iCloud: CNET (video of Jobs presentation), The Daily Record, Scotland, 27/7 Wall St, USA
Mathematical invention part of the future shrinking of our electronic devices
EPFL infograph, Pascal Coderey, 2010
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL is boasting its 1,000th invention 3 November, with the official arrival of Kandou, a new system based on mathematics whose daunting task is to try to reduce the world’s computer electricity consumption, currently 150 billion kWh per year, which translates into a monthly bill of several billion dollars. The university is boldly predicting that Kandou “could equip most of our electronic systems within a few years.”
Kandou is the 1,000th invention to arrive in the university’s Service of Industrial Relations. It was invented by Harm Cronie and Amin Shokrollahi of the EPFL algorithm laboratory and in a nutshell “enables processors to communicate more rapidly—while using less energy—with their peripherals”: memory, printers, monitors, an EPFL press release notes. The system has already sparked strong interest from large companies in the computer field, it adds.
Most electronic appliances today use ultra-rapid processors that communicate with other processors or other peripherals by using electronic buses, a kind of information highways.
Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Medtronic, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of cardiac stimulators, including pacemakers, is celebrating production of its three millionth device at its Tolochenaz plant. The research centre and manufacturing plant opened in 1996-97 and the first pacemakers made in Switzerland came out in May 1997. The company added a major global training centre in 2002 at the site. Medtronic’s devices also include neurostimulators.
