LinkedIn have released their Q2 results for 2013 and it's good news all round. Revenues are up 59%, compared to Q2 2012 at $363 million (£240 million) while profits are also up to $3.7 million (£2.4 million), compared to $2.8 million (£1.8 million) last year. The professional network now has 238 million users.
O2 Announces it's 4G Offering
Telefonica's UK arm, O2, have today released basic details of their upcoming 4G service which will launch at the end of August this year. For the last few months the only company to offer 4G services in the UK has been Everything Everywhere (EE). Since the auction of the 4G spectrum by ofcom earlier this year the UK has been waiting for the likes of O2, Vodafone and Three to announce details of their offerings. O2 are the first to do so.
Uptake of EE's 4G service has been quite slow with less than 1 million subscribers so far despite a large number of cities having 4G available. This could be due to their high prices and low data caps or people just waiting to see what others offer.
O2's cheapest contract will be £26 per month but they've yet to detail how much data you'll get for this (nobody cares about calls or texts). Hopefully they will learn from EE's mistake.
Importantly, the iPhone 5 will not be available on O2's 4G network unless Apple release version. This could effect uptake too as the iPhone 5 is hugely popular.
Have you been using EE's 4G service or are thinking of getting 4G now that O2 have an offering? Please comment below.
BBC's Record Page Views
News of the arrival of the Royal Baby - Prince George brought record numbers of visitors to the BBC News website. In a blog post the BBC News Online Editor says that the news brought 19.4m unique viewers to the news website, their biggest ever day globally.
Why self-driving cars won't be popular... yet.
Automation has been the theme of the last 10 years or so with many forms of manufacturing being automated, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) becoming the norm for the military and soon to become the norm in the civilian world. Cars, however, seem to have been rather slow in joining the technological band wagon. Cruise control as we know it came in to being in the late 1950s and early 60s and it is only in the last 10-15 years that further developments have taken place with Mercedes-Benz introducing adaptive cruise control in 1998. Again, since then progress has been slow. Automatic parking has only been available on production cars since around 2007 when BMW and VW debuted the systems. Compared to other sectors this progress seems painfully slow. There are still no car manufactures likely to introduce completely automated vehicles in the near future and actually, I don't think we're ready for them anyway. I believe that the entire concept of a car has to change for self-driving cars to really be popular. Interestingly, it is not a car manufacturer that is leading the way in self-driving cars. As I'm sure you're aware Google have been developing their very own car that can drive itself around on public roads with other cars around. Since May 2012 Google have been testing their driverless cars on the roads after several US states including Florida, Nevada and California introduced laws to allow these cars on the road.
This is all brilliant and is a massive step in the right direction but as I've said previously I think the whole idea of the 'car' needs to change for self-driving versions to really take off.
The whole concept of a traditional car revolves around a driver; there's a steering wheel, a gear stick, pedals, a huge dashboard etc. Why would a driverless car need all this?
For these kinds of new vehicles to be successful I think the whole concept of the car needs to change.
Rather than all the passengers facing forward why can't the front seats now face the other way making interaction with everyone else so much easier and nicer. There'd also be much more room if the traditional dashboard and centre console were removed. You could even fit in another seat in the front.
In terms of controlling the vehicle (entering destination etc) there could be a smaller control panel in the centre of the vehicle that any passenger could control.
Of course, for anything like this to ever happen the perceptions and thoughts of the users needs to change too. People need to realise that the traditional vehicle concept and layout would be unnecessary and useless. Travelling in a car could be so much more comfortable and interacting with passengers could be so much better.
The law needs to change too. Does there need to a person 'in charge' of the vehicle? What about insurance? The current system where an individual person is insured to drive a vehicle would need to change, instead I think the vehicle would need to be insured.
There's so many points to make and so many things need to change with governments, vehicle manufacturers and most importantly with users before any kind of driverless car becomes successful.
What do you think? Would you buy a self-driving car even though the layout and concept is still inefficient? What else needs to change for driverless cars to be successful? Please leave your comments below.
Apple's Q3 Results
Apple have released their Q3 financial results and they're not too bad. Profit for the quarter was at $6.9 billion while the iPhone stole the show with sales of 31.2 million, compared to 26 million in Q3 2012. As was expected the growing markets are in developing countries such as India.