Visiting the Quantum-class Anthem of the Seas bridge

During our visit to Royal Caribbean's recently launched Quantum-class ship Anthem of the Seas, a number of guests were allowed to visit the bridge to join a Q&A session with the captain. We were one of the lucky few to be allowed access.

The bridge is a nautical term for where the ship is commanded. Typically, on a cruise ship at least, the bridge is located on one of the upper deck levels on the bow of the ship, and is strictly accessible to crew members only. On a Quantum-class ship, the bridge platform provides the crew members with an almost 360 degree vision across the ship.

The wheel

The Quantum-class cruise ships are currently one of the most technologically advanced cruise ships in the world. So it was important for the ship of this size (it is the second largest cruise ship class in the world) to get the bridge right. The bridge itself has been designed by Royal Caribbean captains to allow them more freedom to do their jobs.

Living in the future

Gemalto has come up with an infographic (yay, I love infographics) depicting how living in a M2M connected city in 2025 will be like. Unlike most future predictions which tends to be a tad way out there, the predictions here are pretty sound. Many of these innovations such as charging stations, smart meters and photovoltaic solar panels are slowly becoming the norm in London while others like underground cycle lanes will likely only appear in new cities (we can't even get HS-2 off to a start yet!).

While it may seem crazy to think that we would be getting LTE in underground subways, I don't think the ability to tweet from the Victoria Line is far off. WiFi networks (albeit paid for, and currently limited to stations only) has already been deployed in deep level stations.

via Gemalto

Rewired Reality

Rewired Reality is a new crowdsourcing platform designed to seek and help brands from the industry on coders need. There isn't a lot of information regarding Rewired Reality at the moment and how it works, but they have launched a website that explains a great deal more.

The concept behind the initiative is to highlight the growing need for developers in the country. According to the brains behind the initiative (who are also behind another initiative aimed at creating a network for young developers), there are plenty of unfulfilled software technology jobs in Britain, as coding isn't taught as a skill in this country any longer. This has created a long term problem in this country. Many small business enterprise has no means or resources to employ their own developer as the country has basically ran out of developers, many who has seek pasture abroad.

The idea here is to allow these businesses to seek the brains needed to innovate by creating bounties, which are then passed on to prospective software developers worldwide keen on designing prototypes for them. This is not too dissimilar to crowdsourcing marketplace, Amazon Mechanical Turk, but one more grounded with the needs for coders and small businesses in the UK.