Paris launches world-first electric car-share scheme


Paris launches world-first electric car-share scheme | Physorg.com

A Bluecar is pictured in Paris, on the first day of a test session of the Autolib electric car pick-up service. Self-service electric cars appeared on the streets of Paris Sunday, as a French group launched a public car-hire scheme modelled on the capital’s popular bicycle-sharing system and designed to become the world’s largest of its kind.

Self-service electric cars appeared on the streets of Paris Sunday, as a French group launched a public car-hire scheme modelled on the capital’s popular bicycle-sharing system and designed to become the world’s largest of its kind.

via smarterplanet

climateadaptation: Urban Renewal These 10 global infrastructure and tech companies are among the early leaders in smart-city programs. “Like Siemens and ABB, most of the beneficiaries of urbanization will be infrastructure and technology outfits that provide or utilize smartphones, sensors and software and services to track the use of a city’s assets and commit resources when and where they’re needed. Cloud technology, which can cut costs while boosting computing capacity, will play a big role. Even social media will participate, as cities multiply the ways a citizen can spot a problem–anything from a water-main break to a traffic snarl–and then alert others to avoid it or do something about it. Technology researchers at IDC estimate the size of the smart-city information-technology market is now $34 billion annually and will gain 18%-plus a year to $57 billion by 2014. That’s not a huge amount to global giants, but certainly enough to help drive growth. (The companies don’t break out earnings related to these projects.) The market has broadened to include items like broadband connectivity, green belts, renewable energy, green buildings and other intelligent-city systems. “You are talking about smart water, smart transportation, better public safety,” says Jennifer Bélissent, a consultant at Forrester.” Source: Barron’s “Dawn of the Smart City” Related articles “The bias lurking behind every large-scale smart city is a belief that bottom-up complexity can be…” (underpaidgenius.com) Those Pesky Humans: Urban Planning and its Discontents (blogcritics.org) Why The U.S. Government Should Embrace Smart Cities (fastcompany.com)
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climateadaptation:

Urban Renewal

These 10 global infrastructure and tech companies are among the early leaders in smart-city programs.

“Like Siemens and ABB, most of the beneficiaries of urbanization will be infrastructure and technology outfits that provide or utilize smartphones, sensors and software and services to track the use of a city’s assets and commit resources when and where they’re needed. Cloud technology, which can cut costs while boosting computing capacity, will play a big role. Even social media will participate, as cities multiply the ways a citizen can spot a problem–anything from a water-main break to a traffic snarl–and then alert others to avoid it or do something about it.

Technology researchers at IDC estimate the size of the smart-city information-technology market is now $34 billion annually and will gain 18%-plus a year to $57 billion by 2014. That’s not a huge amount to global giants, but certainly enough to help drive growth. (The companies don’t break out earnings related to these projects.) The market has broadened to include items like broadband connectivity, green belts, renewable energy, green buildings and other intelligent-city systems. “You are talking about smart water, smart transportation, better public safety,” says Jennifer Bélissent, a consultant at Forrester.”

Source: Barron’s “Dawn of the Smart City”

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More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.

Marc Andreessen on Why Software Is Eating the World - WSJ.com

(via smarterplanet)

I think that all of the most successful companies of the next 20 years will be software-driven, and will act like software companies, not like energy, media, or finance companies of the last economic era.