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Optical equipment and network testing firm JDSU has bought the British location-aware software outfit Arieso, which helps carriers precisely site their small cells so they can better offload heavy users’ mobile data.

Mobile networks are based on cells, which can only support so many local users at once before performance starts to head south. A really heavy user will speed up this process, so operators are increasingly looking at ways to pinpoint problem locations. The idea here is to deploy cheap equipment (such as femtocells, small cells or even Wi-Fi hotspots) exactly where it is needed, so someone with high data requirements doesn’t spoil the mobile internet experience for other customers in their vicinity.

Arieso’s software does this by analyzing vast amounts of mobile connection events in a geolocated fashion, right down to building-level resolution. The firm is also, along with the likes of Intucell, one of the companies leading the emerging self-optimizing network (SON) trend, which will see radio access networks (RANs) dynamically adapt on a geographical basis so each cell is optimized for the levels of usage found at its location.

The Arieso purchase, worth $85 million in cash, brings Milpitas, CA.-based JDSU new engineering expertise and technology based on proprietary algorithms, such as the AriesoGEO network monitoring and optimization package and the AriesoACP network-planning product. JDSU said in a statement that it would integrate these with its own portfolio, notably with PacketPortal – a cloud-based data-capture tool that can be embedded in carriers’ networks.

Here’s what JDSU communications test and measurement chief David Heard had to say:

“Arieso’s mobility expertise, market leadership and culture of innovation are directly in line with our strategy to deliver unmatched network visibility and intelligence to our customers. They are a recognized mobility leader and, as part of JDSU, create new, unique opportunities for innovation in one of the fastest-growing segments of the market.”

According to JDSU, the RAN optimization and SON markets are worth around $700 million today, and will be worth over $1 billion by 2015.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Self-optimized networks: solving the capacity crunch
• New solutions for the evolving mobile network
• The mobile backhaul market, 2011-2012: more innovation, greater competition

This blog comes directly from a UK aid-supported project on the frontlines. The Ni Nyampinga project is a magazine and radio show for teenage girls in Rwanda that focuses on empowering young women. It reports on issues and stories that matter to them and enables women to become journalists themselves. It is now one of Rwanda’s largest media organisations. This report comes from a Ni Nyampinga journalist.

KIGALI, RWANDA – A thin woman hunches over in a marshland near the river in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. One by one, she washes a pile of clothing and blankets.

The 28-year-old woman, who requested anonymity for fear of her safety, says she suffered many years of harassment and violence at the hands of her husband. Money problems were usually the trigger.

“Every time I asked him for money to buy foods for our kids, he responded by beating me up and hurling insults at me,” she says.

She says she decided to find employment so she wouldn’t have to rely on her husband for money.

“I maintained a wise silence and decided not to ask him for anything so that our kids sometimes spent a day without food,” she says.

Today, she works as a casual laborer washing clothes. She earns 3,000 francs per day ($5) to buy food and clothing for her children.

Women say they accepted domestic abuse by their husbands as gender-based violence was long considered the norm here. But now, community members are breaking this cultural silence as government-trained mediators resolve domestic disputes as part of a multipronged initiative. Up to 93 percent of victims of physical and psychological abuse in Rwanda are women, according to 2011 statistics from the Isange One Stop Centre, a government centre that provides free services to survivors of domestic abuse.

“I am old, but I will never forget the violence I experienced when I was living with my husband,” Therese Nkirankima, 96, says.

She became the victim of violence for the simple reason that she had given birth to all daughters in a culture that favored sons.

Nkirankima says it used to be that a woman couldn’t report domestic violence. “A woman was treated as an object or a slave,” Nkirankima says. “She had no say in her life and was deprived of her rights.”

But this culture of acceptance and silence toward gender-based violence is changing.

Antoinette Nyirasafari, 41, is a member of one of the anti-gender-based violence committees set up by the government, called Abahuza, which means “mediators” in Kinyarwanda. Nyirasafari says that violence against women was rampant some years ago, but it is declining each year. Most of the cases reported to the committee involve physical violence, with drunkenness as a routine culprit.

Claudine Iribagiza, a 32-year-old mother from Kicukiro, says that her husband used to physically abuse her and her daughters. “He returned home whilst drunk and attempted to beat up our first-born child, so that I personally intervened to prevent him from doing it,” she says, “and he broke my arm.” Iribagiza says a Abahuza committee member in her area intervened and helped her to reconcile with her husband. “I am on good terms with him now,” she says, “There are no issues with him.”

In 2010, the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion established a team to develop a national policy against gender-based violence, says Christiane Umuhire, a gender mainstreaming officer with the ministry. “Gender-based violence and child-protection committees have been put in place from grass roots to the national levels,” Umuhire says. Police throughout the country have also received training on domestic violence prevention and response.

The Girls’ Voices blogs series is a platform for young women to voice their opinions about issues girls face in their country. All the young women have been trained by the Global Press Institute. The series is produced by DFID and Girl Hub. Girl Hub is a collaboration between UK aid and the Nike Foundation to help transform the lives of adolescent girls living in poverty by engaging girls themselves to be part of leading that change. You can learn more about how UK aid works with women and girls here.

 

 

My name is Vida W. I am 19 years old. I am the middle of 8 children. I should be in form 3 but at the moment we don’t have the fees for me to continue secondary school. I have been helped by Family Health Options Kenya (FHOK) to build the strength to tell my story. I was first approached by their community mobiliser and received counselling because of what happened.

My father is a drunkard. He comes home drunk and will beat our mother. He chases us out of the house. This is how it was and has been for a while. But then one morning, after breakfast, mum went to town. Her entire body was swollen from the beatings. She said she would be back soon but after 3 days we found out that she needed space and healing from this last beating she’d had.

While mum was gone my father became a terrible monster. One morning I was unwell so I stayed home from school. I was watching cartoons and he was in his bedroom. He angrily called me. When I went in he told me there is something he wanted us to do but I have to promise never to tell anyone else about it.

I was scared. He told me to undress. I refused but then I was naked on the bed with him on top of me. He covered my face with an orange cloth. Afterwards I was bleeding so badly. He went away leaving me in great pain.

I cried myself to sleep and woke up at night. My sister was waiting for me to have dinner. I couldn’t stop crying and she asked me why. I told her that I was crying because I missed mum but it was really because of the pain. I will never forget that day in 2002. I was 7 years old. A week passed and dad started doing it again, anytime he would feel like doing it. Then one day my sister peeped inside the room and saw my dad on top of me. She came with me to tell grandmother what happened. But she said her son would never do such a thing.

Mum came home a few weeks later and I was happy. But I never told her what happened. I was scared she would also defend my father like grandmother had done. I just loved her so much and I didn’t want to do or say anything that might make her leave. So I said nothing.

Eventually my sister told my mother what happened. She was so upset and she asked my dad if it was true. He said I was only his step-daughter so there was nothing wrong with what he’d done to me. That night he beat me until I was unconscious.

We reported it to the police and my father was arrested but then he was freed and our lives were hell. My mother got depressed because my dad and grandmother bribed the police officer. We never got any help. I went to a nearby hospital where I found out I was HIV positive.

Our family started discriminating against us. We lived on our own. Mum struggled to send us to school because she didn’t have the fees for me or my siblings. My father refused to pay my final exam fee in primary school. He said it would make no difference because I was a dead person.

I had no friends. They all ran away from me. I felt like nobody in the world loved me. But I was introduced to a support group and they introduced me to Family Health Options Kenya, the organization has really helped me and my mum. I have overcome the stigma through continuous counselling, acceptance by the youths at the centre despite of my status and treatment. This has enabled me live positively.

So I speak about my life twice a week for 40 minutes. Coming out of stigma is not an easy thing. You have to do it over and over again. I’m trying to show them the positive side of being positive – that you can smile every day.

Most women are scared of speaking once they are violated because of the stigma associated with it. The UN women should educate the women about Gender Based Violence.

The advice that I would give to women who are in similar situation is that everything happens for a reason. They should also be strong for their children as my mother stood by me and that’s why I came to accept everything that happened to me. I have my mother as my role model having the heart to forgive her husband despite what she and I have gone through.

I have moved on with my life, I have forgiven my dad and forget what he did to me. I have friends again – a lot of friends. The counselling I’ve had has helped a lot.

DFID is backing a campaign to call on the UN to take action on violence against women and girls. You can add your voice by taking the pledge here. UK aid supports the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which funds Vida’s support group, Family Options Kenya. IPPF is the second biggest NGO in the world and provided sexual and reproductive health services to 33 million people in 2011 alone. You can learn more about DFID’s work on women and girls here.

The decision to eat or not eat the GMO corn is only a small reason behind why I vehemently support the labeling of genetically modified foods and hold deep contempt for the biotech industry as a whole. Monsanto and the rest of the land rapers have desecrated the islands…

It’s strange that environmental journalist/activist Mark Lynas makes a speech confessing his wayward madness for opposing GMO agriculture, and it manages to make it into the New York Times online op-ed section on the heels of the shocking French GMO tumor study. Mark…

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), formerly known as the American Dietetic Association (ADA) has evidently managed to insert enough input into the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to ensure only registered dieticians with the ADA have ultimate…

Microwaves absolutely decimate the nutritional value of your food, destroying the very vitamins and phytonutrients that prevent disease and support good health. Previous studies have shown that as much as 98% of the cancer-fighting nutrients in broccoli, for example…

Organic tomatoes really are better for you, and they taste better to boot, according to the findings of a recent study conducted by researchers from the Federal University of Ceara, Brazil and published in the journal PLOS ONE. Although most consumers assume that…

Officials in the growing country of Bhutan in southern Asia have found that in the pursuit of economic development, people and society lose their culture, environment, and their social systems leading to significant problems. Bhutan has said, “That is not enough,” to…

The black mamba is the longest, fastest, and most poisonous snake in Africa, and its venom is a ferocious neurotoxin that paralyzes and kills small animals. According to French scientists at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology in Nice, though, this venom…

It’s not a zombie apocalypse but it could be the next best – or worst – thing, depending on your point of view, but one thing is for certain: The robots are coming, and with them new laws that will undoubtedly be utilized to protect them. According to the Chillicothe…

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This week, the President urged Congress to resolve harmful budget cuts and reduce the deficit in a way that helps grow the economy and strengthen the middle class, held his first Cabinet meeting of the second term, announced three key Cabinet nominations, and signed the Violence Against Women Act. 

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Microsoft (MSFT), which is seemingly trying to remake itself from a software company into a non-profit privacy advocate on par with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has shifted the focus of its anti-Google (GOOG) campaign to the realm of lobbying. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is pushing a bill in the Massachusetts state legislature that “would prohibit companies that provide schools with ‘a cloud-computing’ service… from using the information gleaned from schoolchildren for advertising or other commercial purposes.” While this sounds innocuous enough, the Journal says that it’s being crafted “to take aim at Google’s growing business of providing basic software like email and word processing over the Internet, which, in turn, is a growing threat to Microsoft’s cash-cow suite of Office tools.”

Continue reading…

We’re pretty familiar with Samsung’s constant legal battle with Apple all over the world, and especially in the US. Samsung, having quite a bit of extra cash to play with, upped their legal spending on US lobbyists last year to $900,000, up from just $150,000 in 2011. That’s a pretty significant jump. The extra spending is an attempt to sway the federal government on many legal issues, including IP copyright and telecommunication infrastructure. Samsung also hired former Sony veteran Joel Wigington to run a Washington office.

The mobile market is expected to be worth $847 billion in 2016, so this is obviously a really sweet pie that everyone wants a piece of, Samsung included. The lawsuits aren’t likely to let up, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see other companies beef up their legal presence to defend against (or initiate more of) those lawsuits.

source: Bloomberg

Come comment on this article: Samsung piles on US lobbying spending after lengthy court battles with Apple

“Well, it’s about time!”, might be what your thinking if you have been anticipating the much anticipated OTA of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on your DROID RAZR or DROID RAZR MAXX. Unlike their little brother, the Droid RAZR M, which received the OTA months ago, owners of these devices have been denied the pleasure of all 4.1′s Jelly Bean goodness…but no more!

We already got an idea of some of the changes with this update, but now it’s officially approved and ready to go. Hit the break for some of the new Jelly Bean highlights along with some demo videos.

• Google Now – Receive sports scores, stock updates, weather reports, and traffic updates without having to search the entire web for them. Google Now will learn what’s important to you and give you the updates you need before you even know you needed them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Expanded Notifications – Get a snapshot of your incoming e-mails, news reader notifications, Facebook updates, chat and more. Swipe them away where your done with them and move on with your busy life.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Improved Voice Search – Ask Google Now a real-world question, and get a real-world answer in seconds.  Want to know what the weather will be like for the motorcycle ride this afternoon? Android 4.1 will tell you, in spoken word!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Want to know more, check the source for a link to Motorola’s new Android upgrade page and get information on the upgrade schedule.

Source:  Motorola

Come comment on this article: Motorola DROID RAZR/RAZR MAXX to Receive Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OTA

If you backed OUYA on Kickstarter, you still have a few weeks to wait before you receive your OUYA console. The good news, though, is that there should be plenty of games on the market for you when you do get your new gadget, as OUYA has opened their game download shop for developers to begin uploading their projects. This is going to guarantee there’s a big enough selection to keep the excitement going for the console on launch day.

OUYA is also running a contest in their shop to spur development. The top three developers based on the first six weeks of availability will be featured in a series of short documentaries. Hopefully we’ll see some positive results out of this. Who’s excited to get their hands on a OUYA console?

source: Gamefans

via: Phandroid

 

Come comment on this article: OUYA game shop is now live for developers to begin uploading games