intelligence

Technology may be making everyday objects smarter all the time, but one of the least likely examples has come in form of something that practically defines low tech: the camping lantern.

The "Intelligent Lantern" would come in handy for emergencies as well as outdoors recreation because it includes a digital clock, built-in speakers, and an AM/FM radio with local NOAA weatherband, as well as a hookup for an MP3 player. And unlike other combo devices we've seen, it doesn't abandon its primary mission: Its lights can be seen as far as a mile away and … Read more

A global leader in commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information has just doubled up.

DigitalGlobe has released photos captured by its WorldView-1 remote sensing satellite launched in September that have twice the resolution of previous images, allowing viewers to see things on the ground as small as 20 inches in diameter. The black and white shots captured with equipment developed by ITT's Space Systems Division are part of a program sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to provide imagery for military, intelligence, foreign policy, homeland security, and civil use.

They include shots of Houston, Texas, Yokohama, Japan, and Addis … Read more

Who do you want to buy from today? Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, or SAP? Those are pretty much the only choices left, now that IBM has announced its acquisition of Cognos for $4.9 billion.

The deal has long been expected, given that IBM had to play catch-up with Oracle and SAP, both of whom have gone on the business intelligence buying binge in the past year. The Cognos acquisition should work financially for IBM by giving it economies of scale in the sales process.

But what does it give customers? One less choice. That is, unless they opt for open … Read more

IBM on Monday announced plans to buy business intelligence software company Cognos in a $5 billion all-cash transaction.

The acquisition, which was rumored for several months, continues IBM's strategy of acquiring companies to fill out its software portfolio and boost earnings growth.

Cognos, a public company based in Ottawa, Canada, provides tools for building business reports and business performance management dashboards.

The software will complement IBM's existing set of products for data warehousing and information management.

Cognos' existing products will "match nicely with (IBM's) middleware and software products," Steve Mills, senior vice president and group … Read more

Natural sound as we hear it in "real life" is pure analog, but recorded sound is, with few exceptions, chopped up into digital bits. So other than live music concerts pretty much every note you hear is digital. Whether you're listening to an iPod, the internet, TV, CDs, DVDs, or the radio, they're all digital in one way or another. We have as a species evolved over the eons to hear analog sound, and it's only over the past 25 years that digital has taken over. And it hasn't been very pretty. The only … Read more

In theory, robots aren't designed to make mistakes. But a University College London (UCL) project team is hoping errors in how software "sees" optical illusions can make robots more like humans--mistakes and all.

Project leaders Dr. R. Beau Lotto and David Corney at the UCL institute of Ophthalmology say the study provides unprecedented insight into how the human eye can be fooled by lighting and shading. Instead of simulating the human brain, the software simulates learning patterns from past visual experiences.

The UCL Institute of Ophthalmology study recreated the vision errors using software that "learns" … Read more

This blog initially misstated what day SAP announced it would acquire Business Objects. It is Sunday.

If you're an enterprise looking for a choice of vendors, your choices just got constrained even further. Oracle has been the primary consolidating force in the industry, but SAP apparently wants to get in the consolidation game, as well. Sunday it announced the acquisition of Business Objects for $6.8 billion.

As Jason Maynard of Credit Suisse writes, this "validates Oracle's consolidation strategy. It will be interesting if this leads to even more SAP deals despite their longstanding assertion that Oracle's approach was flawed."

More interestingly, it also puts SAP on a collision course with Microsoft. Maybe this even means that SAP gets into the Sharepoint game?… Read more

One of open source's Achilles' heels is its lack of true outreach to end users. I'm not a developer. As such, I have very little influence over how OpenOffice, Linux and MySQL develop. I suppose I could request features, but how? And, more to the point, how do I derive maximum business value from the open-source projects that I use?

Actuate may have an answer to this quandary. Actuate just announced the rollout of an innovative open-source community, called BIRT Exchange, focused on open-source business intelligence. I talked with the team today and was impressed by this new community model.

Released in 2004 as a project on Eclipse, BIRT has steadily grown in importance and adoption with Eclipse. Actuate hopes that the BIRT Exchange will focus this adoption even further by improving the end-user community experience:… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and backer of Facebook, has some simple advice for investing in the singularity, or a coming age of smarter-than-human AI: invest in catastrophic insurance.

That's the strategy, however inadvertent, of investment guru Warren Buffet, whose portfolio has shifted in the last 10 to 15 years to insurance and catastrophic insurance companies, Thiel said. "Buffet used to be focused on value stocks like Dairy Queen," Thiel said here Sunday.

Thiel, president of venture group Clarium Capital Management, spoke here Sunday at the Singularity Summit, a two-day conference on the advancement of artificial … Read more