Via Newsday September 25, 2014 article :

“We will love to get more Trinis on board,” says Lawler Kang, director of global people strategy and talent acquisition at Medullan, which describes itself on its website as a digital health innovation lab.

The company is based in Boston, Massachusetts and specialises in providing health care services to a wide range of clients. Seven years ago it set up a local office – Medullan Trinidad Limited and earlier this year it opened an office in Jamaica.

The comment was Kang’s way of saying that Medullan remained interested in hiring Trinidadians despite a disappointing experience last year when it tried and failed to recruit local developers for applications for its offerings to the health care sector. Last October, the company set out to recruit 40 developers in the region but could only find three in Trinidad and eventually went to Jamaica where it found the talent it was seeking. ”

Read the full article at http://www.newsday.co.tt/businessday/0,200855.html

Via a Newsday article dated September 8 2014 :

“CHILDREN in Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, now have free Internet service and can play educational games on a computer, thanks to the international social learning experiment “Hole-in-the-Wall”

Created in India by educational researcher Prof Sugata Mitra, the experiment allows children to explore the Internet on their own and in so doing learn new skills…..

……Mitra explained that Hole-in-the-Wall is a 19-inch monitor and keyboard secured in a booth, which is accessible to the children who would be able to learn and enhance their skills while researching on their own.”

“Mitra was participating in the launch of the Ministry of Tertiary Education and Skills Training and the Youth Training and Employment Partnership Programme’s (YTEPP) Public Access Learning System (PALS) yesterday at the Sea Lots Community Centre.”

Professor Sugata Mitra talked about his “hole in the wall” experiment at a TED talk in 2007

Apple® announced it has sold over 10 million new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models 3 days after the launch on September 19.

Impressive numbers given China wasn’t one of the countries where the new iPhone models weren’t available.

Read the Apple Press release for more details.

According to the Adobe Security Bulletin dated September 9 2014 :

Adobe has released security updates for Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. These updates address vulnerabilities that could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.  Adobe recommends users update their product installations to the latest versions…

So update ASAP!

To determine what version of the Adobe Flash player you have on your Windows, Macintosh or Linux system, visit http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

To download the latest version of Adobe Flash Player without any adware or bundled third party offers, visit
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html

Windows users should note that the Flash Player in Microsoft Internet Explorer v9 and earlier versions of Internet Explorer and the Flash player in web browsers like Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Safari are separate installs.
You should install and update both versions of Adobe Flash.

For Internet Explorer v10 and Internet Explorer v11 (for users for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows 8), these browsers have Adobe Flash Player built-in and users should update their Internet Explorer browser versions.

Google Chrome browser users has Adobe Flash Player built-in and users should update the Google Chrome browser to the latest version. See http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95414 on how to do so.

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog of how Apple registered “Apple Watch” in Trinidad and Tobago in March 2014 and why Apple submits trademark applications in Trinidad and Tobago first. Quoting from the full article  :

“….On March 11, [Apple] the company submitted a trademark application for “Apple Watch” in Trinidad and Tobago……

…..Under U.S. law, a company seeking to register a federal trademark starts to secure initial rights when it files an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. “If your company is the first to file a trademark application, your company is first in line to obtain the trademark registration in the United States,” says Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney in Washington, D.C. It’s what he described as a “first-come, first-served system.”

Here’s where Trinidad and Tobago enters the picture. The nation and the U.S. are signatories to an international treaty allowing applicants to secure rights in a foreign country and then transfer them over to their home country.

Under the agreement, an applicant that files in Trinidad and Tobago has a six-month window to apply for the same trademark in the U.S. without resetting the clock. In other words, if Apple applies for an “Apple Watch” trademark in the U.S. by Thursday, its application would be treated as if it were filed six months ago on March 11. So if another company trying to acquire the same trademark filed its application in the U.S. after that date, it would take a backseat to Apple’s.

So Apple got a head start in securing trademark rights for Apple Watch without the publicity that a domestic application would certainly generate.”

Read the full article at http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2014/09/10/name-of-apple-smartwatch-wasnt-a-secret-at-least-in-trinidad-and-tobago/

Three organisations at the forefront of Information and Communications Technology in Trinidad and Tobago are working together to host a seminar on the issue of Network Neutrality  on Wednesday 20th August 2014,  from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the UWI Engineering Building, ENG 101. Registration for the seminar can be found at https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/27527 or at the Facebook event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/804220909609343/

Network neutrality (or Net Neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and network operators should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites.

The Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society (TTCS), the Internet Society Trinidad and Tobago Chapter (ISOC-TT) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Trinidad and Tobago Section (IEEE-TT) encourage all citizens and stakeholders to attend this session.

The Seminar has been designed as a round table discussion including representatives of various stakeholder groups with the opportunity for attendees to make interventions with respect to how the issue of Network Neutrality in Trinidad and Tobago will be shaped given recent developments of network operators.

The Seminar is FREE! But please register at https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/27527 so we can estimate for refreshments.

Microsoft Research has demoed a method “for converting first-person videos, for example, captured with a helmet camera during activities such as rock climbing or bicycling, into hyper-lapse videos, i.e., time-lapse videos with a smoothly moving camera.”

Very cool, check out the YouTube video:

and read more at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/