The importance of measurements in 2010 by Steve Sidney, National Laboratory Association
It is an unfortunate reality that in the modern era in which we live, young and old alike have to a large degree forgotten the importance and role that measurements play in our lives... (more) |
Pursuing the champion of digital terrestrial television standards by Gerhard Petrick, Sadiba
The International Broadcasting Convention is widely recognised as the premier event on the broadcasting calendar. More than 45 000 professionals from at least 140 countries attended the event in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, September 2010... ( more) |
Tomorrow's engineers excel at SATNAC
by Hans van de Groenendaal, EngineerIT
A highlight at the Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks & Applications (SATNAC) conference was the papers and poster sessions presented by students - tomorrow's engineers - covering research projects at the Telkom Centres of Excellence... ( more) |
GSM base stations for rural and low density areas
by Richard Smuts-Steyn, Multisource
While most of us take mobile phone access for granted, with GSM coverage almost ubiquitous, there still remains worldwide an estimated 1,2-billion consumers who live in areas not covered by the mobile operators... ( more) |
SATNAC 2010 - Customer experience the next magic marketing tool?
by Hans van de Groenendaal, EngineerIT
Customer experience is becoming a top priority in efforts to reduce churn and increase customer retention. Is it the new magic marketing tool?... ( more) |
Cloud computing - a perfect storm, or a storm in a teacup?
by Chris Norton, VMware Southern Africa
Every decade or so, the IT industry goes through a step change. This step change is brought on by a positively disruptive technology that makes it onto the IT manager or CIO's agenda... ( more) |
How to cut costs in legacy data centres
by Rachel Cooke, HP
Our research shows that the average South African data centre is over ten years old. A lot has changed since that initial design, which leaves plenty of headroom for improvement... (more) |
Ground rules for high-speed circuits
by Don Brockman and Arnold Williams, Analog Devices, USA
This article covers the elements of good practice for high-resolution "video speed" converters, i.e. converters of 10-bit or greater resolution, operating at word rates above 1 MHz... ( more ) |
More efficiency for 3-level inverters
by Norbert Pluschke, Semikron, Hong Kong and Thomas Grasshoff, Semikron, Germany
Use of renewable energy is a key issues when it comes to creating a new basis for worldwide energy supply.
Wind power has been in use for over 20 years now, with technical advances in this area leading to improvements in efficiency... ( more) |
Reducing unaccounted-for or non-revenue water
by John Alexander, Krohne Changes in metering technology have shifted the focus to monitoring and management systems. It seems the heart of the management systems is being overlooked and a revisit to the heart is necessary to help reduce non-revenue water (NRW)... ( more) |
In defence of wireless field devices
by Eugene Horak, Automation Ocean
Data networks, maintenance data, trip data, historical data, stress and strain data, alarms, duty and standby systems, incoming and outgoing material flow rates - must all be at the manager's fingertips... ( more) |
Solutions for M2M applications
by Ronaldo Robl, Cinterion Wireless Systems, Germany and Zeljko Maric, Cinterion Wireless Systems, CroatiaJava is crucial for developing successful M2M technology, as it is one of the most widely used programming standards in the world with billions of installed devices and a large and devoted developer community... ( more) |
IP camera for additional safety
by Doron Kowensky, H3iSquared
Traditional CCTV systems were analogue-based and required a control room for viewing camera feeds. The control room operator would attempt to view and analyse camera feeds - a time-consuming and laborious process... ( more) |
Roadmap for industrial Ethernet
by Jason Jenkinson, Dimension Data Middle East & Africa
With industrial Ethernet successfully establishing a solid position at controller level, implementation at device level is now entering a rapid growth phase. End users are compelling automation suppliers to introduce more and more Ethernet-enabled products... ( more) |
Amateur radio: Amateur radio's contribution to satellite technology
The story of amateur radio and satellites is in many ways a repeat of when radio was first invented. In the early 1900s radio amateurs pioneered the use of short-wave for world-wide communications, enabling countries to broadcast to their distant colonies... ( more) |
Telecoms developments in Africa compiled by Matthew White, Iona Press Services
- New sub-marine cable to link Africa and South America
- East African consumers benefit from mobile call rate war
- Accesskenya to lay own metro fibre cable
- Namibia - wind to power MTC reception
- More Nitel, Mtel employees to be laid off
- Bharti Airtel to extend partnership with IBM to Africa
- Malawi's regulator revokes G-Mobile's licence
- Mozambique mobile firms suspend text messaging
- Somalia - amid the chaos, money transfer is booming business... (more)
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Gadgets for geeks
We bring you the latest in gadgetry: the Echo smart pen now even smarter; BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone; and a Bluetooth headset that works... ( more) |
Industry and institute news
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