The next iPhone will be built in India

FOXCONN has been in talks with Indian Government to set up factories in India for manufacturing iPhones in India. This is a $10B facility that will be set up in the State of Maharashtra in Talegaon-Chakan and Khalapur locations according to Times of India.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Foxconn-nears-deal-to-build-iPhones-in-India-Report/articleshow/52203984.cms

Although the most populous democratic India has a large under the age 25 population the buying power is still not enough. However, if the phones can be manufactured and priced reasonably the market can be big. Forget about $499 etc. That will not fly.

Apple CEO Tim Cook appeared recetnly on CNBC to make the case. 

Remote Labs and Internet of Things - Brief Review

IOT is also invading the class rooms. This article (What remote labs can do for you) in Physics Today April 2016, pp48-53 describes the many aspects of remote physics laboratories using the IOT. If you can monitor, you can also control and this would be a blessing to many places without physical resources to provide physics education. Of course this can be adopted to many other areas of science and technology. All this is possible because of mobile devices and the internet.

This post reviews some aspects of RL and some of the related mostly European resources.

Most smartphones already have a variety of sensors and most of them are connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi or cellular network.

Remote Laboratories (RL) are laboratory equipment connected to the Internet, the main enabler being the Internet of Things. Web applications are frequently used to connect Labs with students (or class rooms). Depending on the type of equipment, anywhere from Electron Microscope or telescope to routine motorized controls, this can be expensive or cheap.

Luis de la Torre, Juan Pedro Sanchez and Sebastian Dormido argue in this article that the remote labs are the most direct application of the Internet of Things in education.

Image from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285549419_Remote_Web-based_Control_Laboratory_for_Mobile_Devices_based_on_EJsS_Raspberry_Pi_and_NodejsThis_work_has_been_supported_by_the_Spanish_National_Research_Project_DPI2013-46665-C2-1-R

This field is expanding as can be witnessed by the number of conferences and meetings in the related area:
Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning

Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation

Experiment International

Internet based Control Instrumentation

However, it remains to be answered whether RL can actually be a good substitute for live learning in schools and universities. As we are transitioning from reality to virtual reality, perhaps this is the way to go.

Watch this European Video

Live tiles lost on Windows 10

Perhaps there was a recent update, but suddenly the Live Tiles on my Windows 10 Pro have completely disappeard. The Action Center is still there and there are some program icons on All Apps, but the Live Tiles display is gone. Microsoft Edge shortcut on taskbar also disppeared but was launched from All Apps which still works.

Here are some screen shots of Windows 10 with missing items. Of course I am using the Insiders' Preview version of the OS.

PS Mode/Tablet Mode works but the Live Tile is gone.

Apple SAP partnership, the right direction to move

I hope this applesa(a)p partnership is going to be as sweet as it sounds. Now that Hardware is going to be hardsell, the best approach is to go after services.

The desktop will be gone before we know and it will all be mobile.
The emphasis of this cooperation appears to be in the development of BI apps for the iPhones and iPads. According to this content Apple apps will use the SAP Hana Platform bankend for data and Apple will come up with appropriate SDK for building these apps that integrate the two company products. You will be hearing a lot about 'SAP Fiori for iOS' design language and the learning resource, 'SAP Academy for IOS'.

In all reality you can get away with apps for the tom-dick-harry kind to get their entertainment and satisfy their narcisstic leanings but to build apps that are enterprise worthy focused on security will be altogether different.

Read more here:
Apple/CISCO (Sept 2015): Business collaboration towards WebRTC

Apple/IBM (2014): Cloud, BigData and Business Analytics

Apple/Tesla (into the future): Siri(?), Infotainment(?), or iOT(?)

Internet of Things: Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition and Arduino

Visual Studio 2015 Community is a one-stop tool by Microsoft for most things and you can use the same tool for working with Arduino/Intel line of IOT boards. However, a default installation of VS 2015 Community does not support these boardss. You need to install an extension available online as shown here:

Launch Visual Studio 2015 and click on Tools | Extensions and Updates...

In the search box for items online, type Arduino and Click search. Arduino IDE for Visual Studio get displayed in the results pane as shown.

 Click Download and the program starts downloading the VSIX (5.55.MB) installer.

It is now ready to install but accept the license terms and click Install.

It takes a little while to install and after it is installed you get the following message. You need to restart for changes to take effect,

Restart VS 2015 Community and there are items in Menu, Tools and Project where you can see that the installation has been effective.

vMicro menu item:

 New | Arduino Project

 Tools | Visual Micro

Now that you have installed the extension you can work with Arduino projects importing the Arduino 'Sketches' or creating from scratch.