Broadband power cables have played a role in telecommunications giant BT posting a rise in core profits.

The organisation revealed an increase in cash generation for the three months to the end of 2012, with 146 retail broadband customers added in this time, the Scotsman reports.

This represented 56 per cent of all new business in the market and placed it alongside BSkyB as Britain's main internet provider.

In addition, it was shown that increasing numbers are being attracted by the firm's super-fast BT Infinity offering.

Around 95,000 customers decided on this product during the final quarter of last year, which meant the total number benefitting from the internet connection has now climbed to more than 400,000.

Ian Livingston, chief executive of BT - which serves customers in over 170 countries around the world and currently has in the region of 24,300 employees - said: "We have delivered another quarter of growth in profits and cash-flow despite the economic headwinds."

The industry figure added: "We're seeing further cost reductions and that's despite very significant investment we're making in the business ... We are becoming a more efficient and better business, but we’ve still got more to do."

Following on from the positive figures, the provider announced it is also set to focus greater attention on the expansion of its broadband offering in the near future.

Power cables are therefore likely to soon be delivering improved web connectivity to a much larger number of people throughout the UK.

As such, customers may find they are benefitting from broadband speeds of up to 300 Mbps as early as spring 2013 - with the company's infrastructure division Openreach installing faster fibre cables along streets and into homes.

And the quicker lines will not be limited to just BT customers, as they are to be made available to other providers such as Sky.

See our selection of high quality cables, including all the standard coaxial groups with a wide range of multiwire and equipment wire cables.

(via TechNet study)

Some say the mobile device "app gold rush" is over. Both the iOS and Android markets have the better part of a million applications each, how can there be room for more? I disagree. I think the field is flush with possibilities. So far, 466,000 jobs have been created in the "app economy" business. There is room for more.

The App Economy generated $20 billion USD in 2011 alone, according to the TechNet study on the industry. The revenue includes app sales, in app advertising gains, virtual and physical goods sold due to apps. The major contributors to the app markets are not surprising: iOS, Android, Blackberry, Facebook site apps, and Windows Mobile/Phone. (I would say Blackberry may be a dwindling market for the developer, beware.)

(Left) App jobs per state  (Right) App jobs per city (via TechNet study)

Geographical location was also obvious in the report. California state, USA, takes the crown having 23.8% of the jobs. New York, Washington, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Georgia, Virginia, and Florida round out the top 10 in order. Being close to the OS company in Silicon Valley is a popular choice for app developers, while others want to be near advertising/media concentration in New York.

Growth is predicted, by the report, to be significant in the coming years. Between 2010 and 2011, an increase of 45% was seen in the job want ads. If you have the skill, the jobs are plentiful.

App career growth chart (via TechNet study)

With feature phones (dumb-phones) outnumbering Smartphones 4:1, globally, as of 2011, the app market has the potential to grow 400%. Take $20 billion and make it $80 billion to give another perspective. There are 82.2 million Smartphone users in the USA(2011), those numbers will only grow over time. I liken this to the adoption of computers in the home. At first slow, now every home has several.

Want to get started? Try the Goolge/MIT App Inventor. No coding needed.

Cabe

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See the full TechNet study, attached to this post

(Left) Software interface. (via Google) App Inventor book by David Wolber (via Amazon)

Not being able to find an app, that can perform a specific task, can be frustrating. The only option is to develop it yourself. Google and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) joined forces to help you get started.  The two came up with the "App Inventor" for android software toolset. The software allows your imagination to go wild in the Android app world as quick as possible.

If you have an idea for an app, but not very code savvy, don't sweat it. The App Inventor was invented for the pure purpose for users that have no prior knowledge of programming. They created easy to use developing app software for everyone.

Do not start whipping out your wallets yet, App Inventor is, according to MIT’s website. However, they said they will one day accept contributions for the software. The MIT team explained the goal, "[We] hope to nurture a robust and active open-source project but for now we don't want to distract the MIT developers from their efforts to complete and deploy the large-scale public server. In the meantime, we'll update the code periodically to match what's running at the latest MIT experimental system."

Google decided to shut down their App Inventor service due to recent service call, but the MIT team is still in full force. Download the App Inventor initial free (open-source) release at the project's main page. Not much support is available at the moment, but expect a deluge of examples and help to come in the next few months.

App Inventor uses the Apache License 2.0, which does allow for the selling of apps created with the software. Other restrictions may apply. Despite all this, App Inventor looks like an easy way to get started in the app-creation world.

Cabe

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I`m a bit too old now to say "I`m in Love", so I`ll temper that a little and say I`m certainly Infatuated with my latest item to hit the bench.

and I`v not "lost" so much time since the Internets were created as I have with this DuinoMite board!

Being quite New, I found it a little hard to find usable info about these, esp when it came to upgrading the firmware from the Factory standard.

but Having worked it out eventually as my Enthusiasm precludes the reading of manuals etc... (until something goes wrong of course!), I probably could have saved myself some time, probably... perhaps... maybe?

OK I`m Male! we DO things like that

so back to the chase, these things are Arduino/ credit card sized SBCs, at least the Mini version is, and the standard version isn`t much bigger, that you can jack a VGA monitor and a PS2 KBD into, give it some power (Adaptor/wall-wart or USB), and get playing Straight Away in BASIC!

the entire this IS Open Source, and you can slap all sorts of OS` into the thing, I`m happy with BASIC, but C, C++, MM Basic are all there to be had at.

it`s based on Microchip`s PIC32, so you can even code in Microchip if you wanted to as it has an ICSP port (0.05 pin spacing though).

there`s a micro SD card slot built in as a sort of HDD, and formatted in FAT32, will take any size you want to put in it! the lang supports data logging to this drive as well the internal A: drive (the PIC 32`s own memory of 256k Avail).

I bought 4GB cards for my Duinomites, I can`t really see me Ever using that much! but then again, it`s better to Have and not Need, than to Need and not Have!

so yeah, I`v spent the last 3+ days in the land of BASIC again, and it`s been the best waste of Time I`v had for years!

and of course it`s kinda nice to have in effect an Arduino (I have the add-on arduino card that fits on the GPIO port), that doesn`t need an external PC and IDE, only a KBD and Monitor, and programs in Directly, that you can do ALL the arduino stuff and more with.

I give it a good 9/10, there Are mistakes in the documents and help files, the S/ware is still New and being worked on and upgraded regularly, it has an active userbase although maybe not as much hype as RaspberryPI has currently (I`ll get one of those eventually too), but it`s a Good product and you`ll have Plenty of fun with it, and like me... lose Loads of Hours!

so where was I, ah yes!

10 print "Love Ya`ll ";

20 goto 10

> run

I stumbled across this video on Youtube highlighting the exciting work life of a typical computer/software engineer. It what most of us do sat at our desks but it's strangely entertaining and makes you think.

Is this your typical day at work? You could post a small video in reply to this and show everyone your typical day.

(via AT&T)

It is easy to forget that there was a time when data communication was vastly an unknown and abstract topic. A relic of the start of this digital era was found in the AT&T archives. It was recently released so that those who were not around to experience the paradigm shift, could at least marvel at the primitive history that was robotics in the 1960’s.

Jim Henson, a movie director who eventually would work on Sesame Street and the Muppets, created a short film of a little industrial robot to reify the concept of data transfers and communication to business people attending Bell System’s, Bell Business Communication Seminar.

Ted Mills of AT&T, at the time, sent Henson a memo describing the concept he wanted for the film. It read, "He [the robot] is sure that All Men Basically Want to Play Golf, and not run businesses — if he can do it better." Henson went a little deeper.

In the short film, titled "Robot," Henson communicates the immense potential of computerized systems in a slightly dark comedic tone surely to intrigue any one attending the seminar. The robot explains its affinity for “digesting vast oceans of information” as well as its contempt for emotional humans, which, in its view, serve little purpose for the new robotic race.

Apart from its technological hubris, the robot explains that his potential is shortened by man’s incompetent imperfect design. I wonder if the message resonated among ambitious business folk, of the day. It was only the beginning of our industrial exploit of a digital age. Luckily, it did not turn out to be a robot controlled dystopian future.

Element14 User Jim Hayden suggested another Jim Henson - AT&T gem. I find it interesting that the AT&T hierarchy of the time felt that puppets were the only way to get CEO accustomed to computerized technology. I suppose it worked. See below:

Cabe

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Practicing a musical instrument takes a lot of time, preceded by the loss of a sizable pile of money. To parents, they can be a double edge sword as they can be expensive and loud but also a considerable skill and hobby to acquire if their child is truly interested. This is the case unless the parent is a tech-savvy engineer. In which case, the perfect solution has already been built for kids that want to practice the drums.

Ian Cole was able to make an electronic drum set using the "Drum Kit - Kit Ai" all included (DKKAI) from SpikenzieLabs and some misclanious hardware from IKEA and the corner-store. The Spikenzielabs drum machine is an ATMEGA168-based kit that includes piezoelectric sensors. These sensors can be placed on any makeshift drumhead. Using the SpikenzieLabs DKKAI Roadie, programming the sensors becomes even easier. This DKKAI Roadie is a daughterboard add on that allows the user to designated a MIDI output sound to each sensor and store it in the ATMEGA eeprom directly from the connected MIDI device.

Cole opted for using Tupperware from IKEA as the drums. He attached the Piezos on to aluminum plates, which were the placed under the lids of Tupperware containers. The PVC piping structure holds the drums in place, and it also doubles as electrical conduit for the wiring.

His son is now able to play quality electric drums with the use of a MIDI capable iPad and the Garage band software connected to an amp or headphone. Lets hear it for tech-savvy parents.

Everything you need to know about the SpikenzieLabs drum kit can be found after the link.

Cabe

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