Want to meet your friend, but you’re worried they’ll get lost on the way? A solution introduced by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) yesterday will solve such problems.
The “Open GeoSMS” is a platform that allows cellphone users to text the meeting point to their friends — with a map included.
For example, the platform will help users of the “Papago” portable navigation device to text the map details to iPhone users. The iPhone owner just needs to open the text and tap on the URL link which will instantly connect to Google Maps, pre-installed on the iPhone, ITRI manager Chuang Kuo-yu (莊國煜) told reporters.
“This is a standard platform that we have created for different phones to easily access maps via a simple text message, despite the different operating systems and map software used in the phones,” he said.
Users who don’t have a smartphone will also benefit. They can subscribe to location-based services from the four telecoms operators with monthly fees ranging from NT$50 (US$1.50) to NT$99. Or they can still click on the URL in the text message they receive and connect to the map via GPRS.
Maction Technologies Inc (研勤科技) — one of Asia’s leading e-map navigation software developers which owns the Papago-branded devices, Internet phone service provider EVERY8D Co (互動資通) as well as telecoms operator Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) are some of the partners to offer related services.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained