GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Unexplained problems caused major disruptions in service for BlackBerry smart phones in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for much of Monday. The company said late Monday night 10 October that much of the e-mail, messaging and Internet service had been restored, without providing more information about the cause of the problem, reports Canadian Business.
BlackBerry is a product of Canadian company RIM (Research in Motion).
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Carol Bartz, the woman who promised to turn around Yahoo after replacing founder Jerry Yang as CEO in 2008, has been fired, apparently for failing to live up to that promise. Bartz sent an e-mail to all employees, via her iPhone, saying she had just been told over the phone by Chairman Roy Bostock that she was fired. The company later issued a news release confirming the information, with Bostock thanking her “for her service to Yahoo during a critical time of transition in the company’s history, and against a very challenging macro-economic backdrop.”
The company’s shares rose on the news.
Links to other sites: BBC, Beacon Equity Stock Market Watch, Bloomberg, Wired
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Apple is making headlines this week for bypassing Exxon, if briefly, as the largest publicly listed US company, in the chaos of stock markets this week. In May 2010 it bypassed Microsoft as the largest tech company.
Big doesn’t necessarily mean everyone loves it, however, and in particular Apple is facing fights with the Financial Times, Wal-mart and Amazon, among others who are refusing to put their new iPad apps through the Apple iTunes system because of Apple’s insistence on taking a 30 percent bite.
The Atlantic calls it the beginning of the end of the Apple App Store, noting that “Amazon and Walmart have challenged Apple to a duel with the release of the Kindle Cloud Reader and Walmart’s Vudu streaming site.”
Links to other sites: the Globe & Mail, Reuters
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Facebook had to face up to thousands of angry users of its iPhone app for weeks, with regular crashing just one of a multitude of problems. The latest in a series of fixes, issued 23 July, has drawn only 1,200-plus comments, compared to more than 5,000 for earlier fixes, with a heavy percentage of them complaints. But five days later the big Facebook iPhone question is not, will the app work now, but rather, is there hidden iPad code in there, after Tech Crunch bloggerMG Sieglier says that’s what he’s found. The New York Times tech blogger says the release date for the new app hasn’t been provided by Facebook.
Links to other sites: New York Times, Tech Crunch
One rider's bike, from the 15% who cycle to EPFL
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – EPFL, the federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, is pushing bicycles and will continue to do so until the end of June, in every sense, with its Bike to Work 2011 programme, which kicks off 23 May.
The school wants “to reduce by 10 percent by 2014 the 30 tons of CO₂ emitted daily by commuting vehicles on normal working days” and its previous Bike to Work programmes have made a good start: 15 percent of commutes are currently done on bikes, compared to 11 percent five years ago.
EFPL is registering Bike to Work riding teams until 31 May and will be giving out an electric bike to a winning team. The goal of this year’s programme is to get people used to riding bicycles for work. “To take part, you have to form teams of four people who are prepared to make 50 percent of their journeys to EPFL or to return home by bicycle, during the month of June”, the call for teams says.
The project is part of the larger Swiss Bike to Work programme, where companies register teams by 31 May, and the teams then ride at least part of the way to and from work 1-30 June, preferably combining this with public transport for the non-cycling part of the trip. The national programme has several prizes that include a weekend for two in Hamburg, to bicycles and bike accessories. Details
Engineers from Switzerland's famed watchmaking area in the Jura have created this eco prototype, Consomini Evo, that has done more than 2,000km on a litre of petrol
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - All roads in Switzerland lead to Geneva starting today, for one of the biggest events on the Swiss calendar, the Geneva Motor Show.
Happily, compared to a few years ago, a growing number of car enthusiasts are willing to take advantage of good offers from the CFF rail company, and the roads are less congested than in the past.
The CFF is putting an extra 15 trains on for the show.
Some 70,000 people are expected to visit the car show, widely considered the most independent of the major auto shows because it takes place in a country with no major car manufacturers.
Iran has an electric car world premiere, the IEFCV Aryana 800, at the Geneva show
Expect Green: environmentally-minded drivers, once considered a fringe group, are now the target group for scores of new models.
The Green Pavilion this year features 17 world premieres, including some of the most unusual cars you can expect to see at the show.
Migros, which has been backing a number of electric motor projects recently, has a strong presence at the show. It announced Thursday morning 3 March that it is opening 45 new electric recharging stations in Switzerland, as part of its push to encourage electric motors.
Rinspeed's BamBoo
Swiss concept car company Rinspeed, noted for many years for James Bond-style flash cars, is showing green vehicles for the second year running, confirming the growing industry move away from guzzlers to planet-friendly vehicles. Its super-sophisticated waterproof electric urban beach buggy includes a foldup bicycle, but under the icing on the package are some sweet futuristic technical design features.
What to expect, how to find your way around the Geneva Motor Show
Where Palexpo, next to the airport, in Geneva
When Starting Thursday 3 March: 10:00-20:00 weekdays and 09:00-19:00 Saturday, Sunday. Closes 13 March.
Swiss retailer Migros proves that the Geneva Motor Show is about more than cars: electric bike El Moto goes up to 45kph and the Vectrix-VX1 is the world's first electric Maxi-Roller
How to get there By far the best option is the train if you’re from out of town, or public transport if you’re going from Geneva.
If you take the train, go to the top of the steps as you leave the CFF/SBB station and take bus number 5 or 28 to Palexpo (2 stops). The CFF Swiss train company offers special deals to encourage people to use public transport and bus passes are included: 10 percent reduction on the train ticket and discount on the car show. You can buy the combined tickets in most railway machines or order online.
If you’re taking the train only one way the special offers won’t do you any good, and you’ll need to buy a bus pass: note that you have to have the right change for the bus. Consider a CHF7 (after 09:00) or regular CHF10 day pass for public transport if you’re planning to see something of Geneva.
The Motor Show site provides a good “how to get here” page with tips for drivers and those taking public transport.
Entry fee: CHF16 for adults and CHF9 for children; group discounts; tickets can be ordered online.
Number of people who attend each year About 70,000 during the 10 day-event.
What you can expect to see More than 700 car models shown by 260 exhibitors, more than in 2010, from 31 countries. An added plus for many visitors: some of the longest legs in the world, on the young women who show the cars.
Highlights of the 2011 car show
Pagani Huayra, for those who like air
The show is huge and, for first-timers, confusing because there are simply so many cars. Some of the odd and special highlights to look out for this year:
Hyundai: a green routing for navigation as well as the traditional shortest and fastest route options
Ferrari is giving us a station wagon, the FF (four wheels, four seats) which bends the rules of what station wagons are all about
Carlsson is making just 25 of its ultra-sumptuous burgundy C25s, at about half a million euros each
Saab has a new hyrid PhoeniX that showcases technology we can expect from the Swedish company in the future, for the more down to Earth driver.
VW offers a retro car, with a new version of the much loved VW van once so popular with hippies.
Fiat‘s hugely popular 500 model arrives this year with an award-winning engine and a double-bubble top from designer Zagato,who always puts these on his special cars, including Ferraris and Aston Martins.
Rolls Royce, not to be outdone in the Green game, has a one-off 102EX Phantom Experimental Vehicle that carries 640kg of lithium batteries so the electric car can make it 120 km without recharging.
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.
Other programmes will be slowed down to accommodate cost cuts, no Cern accelerators to run in 2012
Aerial view Cern - Photo Cern
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will continue to operate at its current budget level, but several other programmes will be slowed at Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in order to save CHF343 million between 2011 and 2015. Member states will contribute CHF135m less than originally budgeted and a “consolidation” of social security systems.The budget plan, presented to Cern’s Council in June, was revised it the council’s request, with cost-saving measures.
“The plan protects the flagship LHC programme, achieving cost savings by slowing down the pace of other programmes,” the organization said in its official announcement. “Cern management considers this a good result for the Laboratory given the current financial environment.”
Cern’s Director General Rolf Heuer, commenting on the cuts, notes that “it reduces spending on research and consolidation through careful and responsible adjustment of the pace originally foreseen in a way that does not compromise the future research programme unduly. The reductions will be painful, but in the current financial environment, they are fair.”
Details of the social security system cost-saving were not published with the announcement.
The world will have to wait a little longer to read People magazine on the new iPads, reports Reuters, as Time Inc., the parent company of the most widely-read magazine in the US, battles paparazzis’ photo agencies for the rights to republish their images. The agencies are fighting for additional money. Time Inc. has been in the front lines of magazine publishers moving to iPad and it has been talking of a People delivery date of August.
Google is phasing out internal use of Microsoft Windows, reports the Financial Times, based on information from the search engine company’s staff. Google reportedly began to make the change, for security reasons, in January, after it experienced problems with hacking from China. The staff of 10,000 is being moved towards other operating systems, notably Mac OS.
Great excitement at Cern just after first collision occurs 30 March 2010
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Beams collided at 7 TeV in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at 13:06 Swiss time Tuesday 30 March, a successful physics breakthrough after 20 years of preparatory work that marks “the start of the LHC research programme,” notes Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in a press release. “Particle physicists around the world are looking forward to a potentially rich harvest of new physics as the LHC begins its first long run at an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator.”
The mood at Cern was clearly one of high excitement.
“‘It’s a great day to be a particle physicist,’ said Cern Director General Rolf Heuer. ‘A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their patience and dedication is starting to pay dividends.’”
It took three attempts Tuesday morning before a collision occurred, but overall the process was relatively smooth and quick, several Cern scientists remarked.
Background, GenevaLunch and webcast, Cern
Shared Internet news ok, but not on radio and TV
Geneva / Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The merger of TSR, public television in French-speaking Switzerland, and RSR, public radio, is meeting some resistance from cantonal governments, which insist the two editorial teams must remain separate and independent. Vaud and Geneva, in a joint statement released Monday 23 November, say they would also like to see the traditional roles maintained of Lausanne as a radio centre and Geneva as a television centre. The statement was made in advance of today’s presentation of the merger project to the board of SSR, the parent company.
