Hollywood-based, high-quality camera manufacturer ‘Red’ has surprised the tech world by producing a holographic, virtual-augmented and mixed-reality-ready smartphone.

Hydrogen One

Red, a developer and manufacturer of high-quality cameras used in Hollywood blockbusters like Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and others, has just unveiled the Hydrogen One stand-alone, full-featured, unlocked multi-band smartphone, with an Android OS and holographic capabilities!

The idea of the phone is that it can form the basis of a modular, multi-dimensional media system, where parts can be added to enable it to do many different things.

World First?

The Hydrogen One is being positioned by Red a ‘world’s first’ holographic media machine that you can fit in your pocket, and that you don’t need to use special glasses with in order to experience the special effects.

The price tag for the Hydrogen One is $1,195 for the model with aluminium casing and $1,595 for a titanium-cased model. You can place an advance order for the Hydrogen One now but the devices won’t actually be shipped until sometime in the first quarter of 2018.

Features

According to Red, the features that make the Hydrogen One so “retina-riveting” include the fact that it uses nanotechnology that allows the user to switch between traditional 2D content, holographic multi-view content, 3D content and interactive games.
Another key feature of the Hydrogen One is that its operating system also has an algorithm that can reportedly convert stereo sound into the kind of multi-dimensional audio that is like 5.1 on headphones, and is intended to be a great match with holographic H4V.

Some Scepticism

Some technical commentators have been sceptical about the Hydrogen One because they believe that Red has yet to prove itself as a popular electronic device manufacturer. There is also some scepticism as to whether the products can / will actually deliver the level of feature quality that lives up to the current hype. Critics of the product have also said that it may be a bit too niche and that it caters to a very affluent audience.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The fact that this device is being positioned as a media machine that is simply the foundation of a future multi-dimensional media system helps the avoid product being simply classed as another phone (to compete with the big phone manufacturers). It also shows how businesses are combining technologies to create new offerings that are potentially more adaptable to the fast-changing requirements of tech-savvy new generations of customers who have very specific requirements and value customisation in their products.

The long-expected launch of the UK government’s plans to improve broadband speeds for homes and businesses by replacing copper phone wires with fibre-optic cable has been launched with a £400 million investment from the Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund.

Not Full-Fibre For Most Properties

Although the aim is ‘full-fibre’, this first stage is intended to replace the copper cable that runs from individual properties to the roadside cabinets / green boxes at the end of the street. This means that most of the infrastructure for broadband, for the time being, will actually be ‘hybrid fibre’.

Full-fibre (where cables from the box are fibre-optic too) could potentially deliver multi-Gigabit speeds faster than 1000Mbps, but full-fibre is currently only available to 2% of UK premises (despite 89% of UK premises now being within reach of a fixed line superfast broadband service). This does not compare well to other European countries. In Spain for example, 80% of premises have full-fibre access.

Even Faster

The government’s focus until now has been to provide ‘super-fast’ broadband speed (24Mbps or more), but the government’s plans to start replacing copper with fibre-optic is intended to produce ‘ultra-fast’ broadband (anything over 100Mbps).

Two Technologies Together

There are in-fact two technologies which are being deployed to help the UK to work towards ultra-fast broadband. One is fibre, the other is BT’ Openreach’s G.fast which can get high speeds (330Mbits) using a copper wire system. It is cheap to install because it can simply piggyback on existing cables, but it can degrade through too much contact with water.

The Money

Most telecoms commentators agree that the £400 million initial investment from the government will be nowhere near enough for the scheme to reach its aims. It is thought that lots more private money (private investors will bring the current total up to £1bn) and tax money will have to be used to bring about the desired updating of the UK’s telecoms infrastructure.

Criticism

There have been many criticisms of the government’s big plans for boosting broadband speeds with the widespread use of fibre-optic cables including:

1. Even if you have a fibre-optic cable to your home / business premises, there will still be shared traffic points in the network which will slow down your broadband at certain times.
2. The scheme will need a large number of construction workers. This could mean disruption, logistical challenges, and high costs.
3. Full fibre-optic, ultra-fast broadband is not likely to be a reality in the UK anytime soon. At the current rate, BT Openreach has stated that only two million premises will have access to ‘full fibre’ by the end of 2020.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

With so much of business (with customers, suppliers, and internal communications / collaboration) now conducted over the Internet, a fast connection is essential to help UK businesses to remain competitive. It is disappointing, therefore, that UK businesses don’t have, and look unlikely to have any time soon, access to kind of speeds that overseas companies (e.g. competitors) enjoy. While it is good that funding and momentum for the task of delivering faster (fibre or fibre/G.fast) broadband for UK businesses looks to be increasing, the UK has a long way to go. The reality is that we may only have 7% full fibre coverage by 2020.

It has been reported that a drone being flown dangerously close to Gatwick airport was the reason why four Easyjet and one British Airways flights had to be diverted.

Runway Operations Suspended

Reports indicate that runway operations at Gatwick for two periods (one nine, and one five minute period) between 6pm and 7pm on Sunday 2nd July were suspended.

The resulting flight diversions during that period meant that many passengers ended up far from their intended destination (West Sussex), in places such as Stansted, Southend (Essex), and Bournemouth (Dorset).

The Drone

Reports about the exact nature of the drone itself are limited, other than to say that it was observed in the vicinity of Gatwick. Sussex Police are reported to be investigating the matter, but as yet the drone pilot has not been identified, and police were not able to recover the drone from the scene.

Certainly Not The First Time

The UK’s safety body jointly funded by the Civil Aviation Authority and the Ministry of Defence known as Airprox has recorded 70 such incidents last year, and 33 so far in this year. In fact, there has been a total of 142 Airprox incidents involving drones since 2010, with 40 of them being recorded near Heathrow, and 6 (7 including the latest) being recorded near Gatwick.

Could Have Been Worse – Has Been Worse

Although this latest incident caused a good deal of disruption, previous encounters with drones have posed more immediate and apparent danger.

In June, for example, a Loganair pilot attempting to land Edinburgh airport had to take evasive action after a drone came within only 20 metres of his plane.

Revised Code

A code (recently revised) exists in the UK to help ensure that drone pilots operate their crafts safely. The code specifically states that drones shouldn’t be flown near airfields or near aircraft, and that they should be flown below 120m (400ft) and at least 50m (150ft) away from people. This latest incident, and the fact that drones have been sighted by aircraft 12,500ft from the ground, show that not all drone pilots have read / abide by the code.

The Civil Aviation Authority has warned that flying drones near airfields carries serious punishments under law, including possible imprisonment.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Drones have found a use in many current business applications e.g. monitoring construction projects, film and TV, and the aerial photography market. They have also been tested and tipped for use in the future by e.g. Amazon for parcel deliveries. A move towards autonomous vehicles and new transport technologies means that drones currently have a bright future when used responsibly and professionally in the commercial world. Incidents such as the one at Gatwick give unwanted bad publicity to technology that has a lot of safe, cost saving, and productive uses in the right hands. It also points to the need for regulations and guidelines to be developed and revised as such new industries grow.

The human rights charity has been given the go-ahead by the UK High Court to make a legal challenge against the so-called ‘Snooper’s Charter, and will be enabled to do so with the help of £50,000 of crowdfunding raised earlier this year via CrowdJustice.

What Is The Snooper’s Charter?

The Snooper’s Charter is another name for the Investigatory Powers Act which became law in November 2016. It was designed to extend the reach of state surveillance in Britain. The Charter requires web and phone companies (by law) to store everyone’s web browsing histories for 12 months, and also to give the police, security services and official agencies unprecedented access to that data. The Charter also means that security services and police can hack into computers and phones and collect communications data in bulk, and that judges can sign off police requests to view journalists’ call and web records.

Why Challenge It?

The charity ‘Liberty’ wants to challenge the Charter on the arguments that surveillance of everybody in the UK may not be lawful or necessary, and that whistleblowers and experts have warned that the powers would actually make it more difficult for security services to do their jobs effectively.

There are also the arguments that the new law puts too much power in the state’s hands, could be and invasion of privacy, and that the government storing large amounts of sensitive information about each of us could in itself be irresponsible and a security risk.

Some critics have also expressed suspicions about the motives of the UK government for introducing the law e.g. to censor and control rather than to protect.

Helped By Recent Judgement

Liberty’s argument has been helped by the fact that last December, the European Court of Justice (in a separate case, represented by Liberty lawyers) ruled that the same powers in the old the UK state surveillance law the ‘Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act’ (DRIPA) were unlawful.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

It goes without saying that, especially in the light of the recent UK terrorist attacks, the UK’s ability to spot and foil potential plots is vital. Although the new surveillance Charter may include measures that could help with that, many people and businesses (communications companies, social media, web companies) are uneasy with the extent of the legislation and what it forces companies to do, how necessary it is, and what effect it will have on businesses publicly known to be snooping on their customers on behalf of the state. The 200,000+ signatures on a petition calling for the repeal of the Investigatory Powers Act after it became law late last year, and the £50,000 crowdfunding raised from the public in less than a week to fight the bill, both emphasise the fact that UK citizens value their privacy and take the issues of privacy and data security very seriously.