Digital technologies under the spotlight

29th March 2013

By: Karel Smrcka

  

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Digital technologies are the main artery through which business and private life flow. The number one event for the digital world – CeBIT 2013 – held in Hanover from March 5 to 9, showcased the latest trends for all sectors of industry.

A Surfer’s Paradise
In the beginning, information was handed down by word of mouth. Later, the first- ever inscriptions were carved in stone, which was subsequently replaced with paper before Gutenberg brought information to the masses. As media has grown, so has content, and new content has brought new media.

A burgeoning volume of information is becoming increasingly easy to access in an ever-increasing number of ways. During CeBIT 2013, German company InterRed, of Siegen, exhibited the ideal way to manage content and publishing in the modern world – the fourteenth edition of its con- tent management and editing system.

InterRed’s MediaSync makes it much easier for users to prepare content for a huge range of media. Whether print or online, the editing tool uses just a single tool and system. As an added bonus, the Responsive Design Web layout ensures that Web pages are modified to suit the end device they are viewed on – and that includes images!

Collaboration with Confidence
Sharing resources, knowledge and experience is the basis of successful cooperation – and the SharePoint plat- form from Microsoft is ideally suited to that. So it should come as no surprise that AvePoint, the world’s biggest supplier of infrastructure management solutions for SharePoint products, exhibited at CeBIT as a Microsoft partner.

AvePoint also showcased the latest version of its award-winning platform, DocAve 6. The solution helps companies around the world to make efficient use of SharePoint, even in heterogeneous environments. DocAve 6 combines optimum collaboration with maximum security, while simultaneously ensuring that existing governence and compliance requirements are met.

Taking to the Skies
The Volocopter, from e-volo, a company based in Karlsruhe, is a purely electrically powered vertical takeoff aircraft. The company wrote aviation history back in 2011, when the first manned flight in the Volocopter took to the skies. Now it was time for the next innovation – the VC200 model. This is the world’s first-ever Volocopter for two occupants and it landed during CeBIT, in Hanover.

Taking to the air with ease, the Volocopter is controlled with a joystick and is incredibly easy to operate. Unlike conventional air- craft, the pilot does not need to worry about flight-path angle, minimum speed, stalls, mixture control, pitch adjustment and many other things that make conventional aviation so demanding.

The propellers generate the entire lifting force and even take care of steering, thanks to an inge- nious system that carefully alters the rotary speed.

Trials for the new VC200 are planned for this year, so you could soon see the lightweight carbon Volocopter taking to the skies near you.

A Bicycle Made for Two?

Microsoft has declared the arrival of the shareconomy with a fictitious cycle hire company. This is nothing less than the dawn of a brand-new era in business, says Dr Christian Illek, member of the management board of the German Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media and chairperson of the management board of Microsoft Germany.

The shareconomy is set to change our lives, as more and more people demand the ability to share things with others quickly. Microsoft came to CeBIT 2913 with fictitious cycle hire company Contoso to showcase an example of how this brave new world might look.

The company uses live scenarios to bring to life the shareconomy and the information technology (IT) processes that underpin it. Contoso customers who want to hire a cycle will be able to use Bing Maps to find the nearest and their smartphone and near-field communication to unlock it and pay for it automatically.

The complex IT processes that Contoso uses were mapped out on a huge screen at the Microsoft stand.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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