Category: Tech News

Gamma Risk strengthens UK presence with launch of retrofit calculator solution

Gamma Risk, the property risk technology company, today announces that it is strengthening its UK presence with the launch of a retrofit calculator solution, EPCWOW. The company – which has an office in Manchester and has previously rolled out other products in the UK market – is hoping to replicate the success it has had in its home market with BERWOW.

Since launching in 2020, the BERWOW application has enabled over 100,000 people across the country to explore retrofit projects, resulting in millions of euros being invested in residential retrofit. For SSE Airtricity alone, BERWOW has resulted in a 60% increase in retrofit conversion rates. Last year, AXA became the first insurance company offering the BERWOW tool to Irish homeowners, using it to support its new Go Green web platform.

Specifically developed for the UK market, including Northern Ireland, EPCWOW is a new web tool which can be customised for each client and is particularly relevant for customers of banks, insurance companies and energy providers.

The white-label offering helps these organisations to better support their customer bases by enabling homeowners to understand both the financial and energy savings benefits of home upgrades.  Furthermore, it enables these organisations to affect real change in their customers’ properties, reducing their Scope 3 CO² emission levels in the process. This results in the reduction of CO² emissions across properties and therefore improves the green credentials of providers.

To enable EPCWOW to calculate the energy efficiency of specific property types and potential cost savings for homeowners through selected retrofit measures, Gamma Risk has partnered with EPC specialist, Quidos.

Homeowners simply enter their property type details into the online platform, which prompts EPCWOW to suggest retrofit improvements based on the specific house type along with estimated costs, bill savings, grants, and other benefits.  The user can then select and deselect measures until the desired bundle of upgrades is satisfactory and affordable.

The rollout of EPCWOW comes as Gamma rebrands as two entities, Gamma Risk and Gamma Labs. Gamma Risk assesses both physical and transitional risks to property assets for the entire UK and Ireland through the use of cutting-edge technology, operating the largest and most complete property risk database for the region. Gamma Risk will also aim to deliver innovative solutions – including EPCWOW – and data insights which enable businesses to make more sustainable business decisions, adapt operations to reduce CO² emissions and uphold compliance with regulatory requirements.

Commenting on the launch of the new service, Feargal O’Neill, CEO of Gamma Risk, said: “This is the first interactive energy calculation tool of its type in the UK market, regenerating net savings as different measures are selected. By simplifying complexity and delivering high-quality data insights through cutting-edge solutions, we can help businesses across the UK to enhance their customer experience and enable sustainability. Through EPCWOW specifically, this means empowering homeowners and supporting retrofit journeys.

“This solution will not only help to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency for individual properties but for society as a whole – driving towards a greener future and showing the future impact of current actions. It also allows the businesses involved to boost their standing from both a sustainability and profitability perspective.”

AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon Q

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced the general availability of Amazon Q, the most capable generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant for accelerating software development and leveraging companies’ internal data. Amazon Q not only generates highly accurate code, it also tests, debugs, and has multi-step planning and reasoning capabilities that can transform (e.g., perform java version upgrades) and implement new code generated from developer requests. Amazon Q also makes it easier for employees to get answers to questions across business data such as company policies, product information, business results, code base, employees, and many other topics by connecting to enterprise data repositories to summarize the data logically, analyze trends, and engage in dialog about the data. Today, AWS is also introducing Amazon Q Apps, a new and powerful capability that lets employees build generative AI apps from their company’s data. Employees simply describe the type of app they want, in natural language, and Q Apps will quickly generate an app that accomplishes their desired task, helping them streamline and automate their daily work with ease and efficiency. To learn more about Amazon Q, visit aws.amazon.com/q.

“Amazon Q is the most capable generative AI-powered assistant available today with industry-leading accuracy, advanced agents capabilities, and best-in-class security that helps developers become more productive and helps business users to accelerate decision making,” said Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Artificial Intelligence and Data at AWS. “Since we announced the service at re:Invent, we have been amazed at the productivity gains developers and business users have seen. Early indications signal Amazon Q could help our customers’ employees become more than 80% more productive at their jobs; and with the new features we’re planning on introducing in the future, we think this will only continue to grow.”

Amazon Q Developer

Today, developers tell us that only 30% (or less) of their time is spent on coding, while the rest is spent performing tedious and repetitive tasks. This could be researching best practices from various parts of the web or learning how things work through documentation, forums, and conversations with colleagues. Developers also have to manage infrastructure and resources, troubleshoot and resolve errors, and understand operating costs. When they switch projects, they have to spend time learning the existing code base to understand its programming logic. Finally, there is all the work of testing and refactoring code, upgrading applications, debugging and optimization, and ensuring security by having to carry out vulnerability scanning and applying appropriate security fixes in a timely fashion. Companies want to empower their developers to spend less time on this coding muck and more time on creating unique experiences for their end users, while being able to deploy faster.

Q assists developers and IT professionals (IT pros) with all of their tasks—from coding, testing, and upgrading applications, to troubleshooting, performing security scanning and fixes, and optimizing AWS resources. Amazon Q delivers advanced and tailored generative AI capabilities, including:

  • Most accurate coding recommendations: Amazon Q helps developers build faster and more securely by generating code suggestions and recommendations in near real time. Customers such as Blackberry, BT Group, and Toyota are already using Q to increase developer productivity and speed up innovation in their organizations. Amazon Q Developer has the highest reported code acceptance rates in the industry, for assistants that perform multi-line code suggestions, with BT Group recently sharing that they accepted 37% of Q’s code suggestions and National Australia Bank reporting 50% acceptance rates. Q also has a powerful customization capability that securely leverages a customer’s internal code base to provide more relevant and useful code recommendations. With this capability, Q is an expert on your code and provides recommendations that are more relevant to save even more time. Q keeps customizations completely private, and the underlying FM does not use them for training, protecting customers’ valuable intellectual property.
  • Amazon Q Developer Agents: Q has a unique capability, called agents, which can autonomously perform a range of tasks–everything from implementing features, documenting, and refactoring code, to performing software upgrades. Developers can simply ask Amazon Q to implement an application feature (such as asking it to create an “add to favorites” feature in a social sharing app), and the agent will analyze their existing application code and generate a step-by-step implementation plan. Developers can collaborate with the agent to review and iterate on the plan before the agent implements it, connecting multiple steps together and applying updates across source files, code blocks, and test suites. Carrying out these tasks, Q has achieved the highest scores of any software development assistant available today, scoring 13.4% on the SWE-Bench Leaderboard and 20.5% on the SWE-Bench Leaderboard (Lite), a dataset that benchmarks coding capabilities.

To save customers months, even years, of time upgrading applications, Q can also automate and manage the entire upgrade process–with Java conversions available today and .Net conversions coming soon to help people move from Windows to Linux. In their IDE, developers simply ask Amazon Q to “transform” their project and the agent analyzes application source code, generates new code in the target language or version, executes tests, and completes all code changes. A five-person team at Amazon used Q to upgrade more than 1,000 production applications from Java 8 to Java 17 in just two days (the average time per application was less than 10 minutes), saving months of time, and improving application performance–previously, many of these applications would each take a couple of days to upgrade.

  • Best-in-class security vulnerability scanning and remediation: Q scans code for hard-to-detect vulnerabilities, such as exposed credentials and log injection. With a single click, Q automatically suggests remediations tailored to the application code, allowing developers to quickly accept fixes with confidence. Q’s security scanning capabilities outperform leading publicly benchmarkable tools on detection across most of the popular programming languages, helping to significantly improve the security and code quality of a developer’s application.
  • Q is an expert on AWS and optimizing your AWS environment: Amazon Q Developer is an expert on AWS and is in the console to help IT pros optimize their cloud environments, as well as diagnose and resolve errors and networking issues, select instances, optimize structured query language (SQL) queries, extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines, and provide guidance on architectural best practices. To further help customers optimize their cloud environments, today Amazon Q Developer includes a new feature that helps customers list their AWS account resources, configurations, and analyze billing information and trends, making it easier for them to manage their accounts. For example, IT pros can simply ask, “What instances are currently running in US East 1?” or “What’s my S3 bucket encryption?” or “What were my EC2 costs by region last month?” and Amazon Q Developer will list the resources and details in a summarized answer with links to learn more.

 

Amazon Q’s conversational interface is available wherever it is needed—in the AWS Console, in Slack, or in IDEs, including Visual Studio Code and JetBrains–to give developers the ability to use the conversational experience of Q within their favorite software development solutions. To extend the Q experience to more places developers work, AWS is announcing new partner extensions from Datadog and Wiz, and an integration with GitLab Duo that will offer joint customers a unified interface—whether working in AWS or GitLab.  By integrating Amazon Q’s generative AI capabilities with solutions that developers know, use, and trust, developers can update and create software faster.

Amazon Q Business

Organizations possess vast amounts of data spread across multiple documents, systems, and applications. Employees across every organization and department spend hours every week searching internal sources for information, piecing together analyses, writing reports, building presentations, gathering insights from dashboards, and adapting content for different audiences. Generative AI can help solve these challenges. However, the offerings available today are not connected to business data or internal resources and are not built from the ground up with security in mind. Because of these barriers, many organizations cannot safely tap into the full potential of generative AI.

Q Business is a generative AI–powered assistant that can answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and securely complete tasks based on data and information in your enterprise systems. It empowers employees to be more creative, data-driven, efficient, prepared, and productive:

  • Q unites more data sources than any other generative AI assistant available today: Amazon Q Business easily and securely connects to 40+ commonly used business tools, such as wikis, intranets, Atlassian, Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)–more than any other generative AI assistant available today. Simply point Q at your enterprise data repositories, and it will search all of your data, summarize logically, analyze trends, and engage in dialog with end users about the data. This helps business users to access all of their data, no matter where it resides in their organization.
  • Built from the ground up with security and privacy in mind: Amazon Q Business seamlessly integrates with a customer’s existing identities, roles, and access permissions to personalize the interactions for each individual user, while maintaining the highest levels of security. It generates accurate responses based on enterprise information, and customers can restrict sensitive topics, block keywords, and filter out inappropriate content. Q also does not use customer content to train the underlying models for anybody else. Amazon Q Business outperforms all published results for other assistants on correctness, truthfulness, and helpfulness for general Q&A (using the MultiHop-RAG dataset), as well as industries like finance (using a FiQA dataset sample) and technology (using a LoTTE dataset sample).
  • Inventive generative BI allows analysts to build detailed dashboards in minutes and business users to get insights fast: Amazon Q brings its advanced generative AI technology to Amazon QuickSight, AWS’s unified Business Intelligence (BI) service built for the cloud. With Amazon Q in QuickSight, customers get a Generative BI assistant that allows business analysts to use natural language to build BI dashboards in minutes and easily create visualizations and complex calculations. It is also the only BI product where business users can get AI-driven executive summaries of dashboards, ask questions of data beyond what is presented in the dashboards, and create detailed and customizable data stories highlighting key insights, trends, and drivers. Business users can ask to “build a story about how the business has changed over the last month for a business review with leadership;” and in seconds, Amazon Q creates a narrative with specific insights and supporting visuals, including specific ideas of how to improve the business. Users can choose to layout the content produced by Q in an easy to share document or presentation where they can customize text, images, and themes, and use Amazon Q to rewrite and improve the text.
  • First-of-its-kind capability that helps every employee go from conversation to generative AI-powered app in seconds: Today, AWS is announcing the new Amazon Q Apps capability (in preview). Amazon Q Apps allows employees to easily and quickly create generative AI-powered apps based on their company data, without requiring any prior coding experience. With Q Apps, employees simply describe the app they want, in natural language, or they can take an existing conversation where Amazon Q Business helped them solve a problem, and with one click, Q will instantly generate an app that accomplishes their desired task that can be easily shared across their organization.

For example, creating employee onboarding plans for new recruits can be a long and laborious process. They require many hours of searching through different data stores and documents to find the appropriate content for the new employee; and often, the content is out of date or not specific enough to their role. With Q, an HR professional could simply describe they want an app that will create an onboarding plan for a new employee that utilizes the company’s existing best practices, and has an input field for employee ID that personalizes the onboarding plan to their role by drawing from internal data sources specific to their job family.  In a matter of seconds, Amazon Q Apps will build an app that can automatically generate a personalized onboarding plan tailored to the employee, their role, and the department using the latest best practices. The HR professional can then share the app with hiring managers across the company to instantly build personalized onboarding plans for their own teams.  Now, with Amazon Q Apps, business users can easily, quickly, and securely build an app based on enterprise information to improve their work productivity.

What Amazon Q customers and partners are saying

GoDaddy helps millions of entrepreneurs globally start, grow, and scale their businesses. “Amazon Q in QuickSight allows us to ask our data contextual business questions without having to constantly rely on ad-hoc dashboards. For example, now we can much more easily discover and drill into anomalies in business performance across the company,” said Ed Sarausad, senior director, Data & Analytics, at GoDaddy. “This shift not only streamlines our processes, but also elevates our analytical capabilities. What excites us most is the opportunity to unlock insights with profound, previously unasked questions. That allows us to respond more swiftly and with greater depth, enhancing our data learning journey.”

National Australia Bank is one of the largest financial institutions in Australia. “At NAB, teams across the bank are excited about how generative AI can transform our work, and we’ve found a great solution in Amazon Q Developer, a powerful generative AI-powered tool for our engineers and developers,” said Andrew Brydon, executive chief engineer at National Australia Bank. “The tool has seamlessly integrated advanced generative algorithms and tools into our development process, delivering unparalleled benefits like completing tasks faster, increasing productivity, and minimizing repetitive actions. So far, our developers have accepted 50% of the code suggestions made by Amazon Q Developer, and that number continues to increase as we scale. We look forward to seeing how Amazon Q Developer will continue to empower and inspire our engineers to upskill their technical expertise, delivering better service for customers.”

Netsmart is a leading technology provider for community-based care. “The demand for community-based care has grown exponentially, and Amazon Q Developer is helping us meet that demand by fueling our efficiency and innovation,” said Paul Snider, vice president of engineering at Netsmart. “Amazon Q Developer can transform the way our engineering team approaches research, design, and coding. Since using Amazon Q Developer, our team has seen a strong code suggestion acceptance rate of 35%. This has allowed our engineers to efficiently generate high-quality code and documentation, implement new features, which can accelerate development cycles, and significantly reduce manual effort. We are excited about the impact of Amazon Q Developer on our development processes.”

Novacomp provides a diverse range of IT products and services while specializing in Quality Assurance Automation, Software Testing services and Nearshore Outsourcing. “Modernizing applications at Novacomp has historically been a time-consuming task that is often de-prioritized against other development initiatives,” said Gerardo Arroyo, CTO of Novacomp. “Our team turned to Amazon Q Code Transformation to help upgrade a project running in Java 8 to Java 17 with over 10,000 lines of code. This is a task that would typically take an expert over two weeks to manually complete, but Amazon Q seamlessly modernized our project in a matter of minutes. Since adopting Amazon Q across our organization, we have realized a 60% decrease in average in our tech debt.”

Persistent Systems is a multi-national technology services company that builds software that drives digital transformation. “Amazon Q Apps has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach generative AI,” said Praveen Bhadada, head of generative AI at Persistent Systems. “We can now empower everyone on the team to quickly build and integrate applications with a no-code approach, using enterprise data sources while carefully aligning with existing identities, roles, and authorization levels.”

Smartsheet is an enterprise software as a service offering for collaboration and work management. “Amazon Q Business is streamlining knowledge management and accelerating employee productivity at Smartsheet,” said Bani Bedi, senior vice president, corporate development and strategy at Smartsheet. “Previously, it was too difficult for our 3,300 employees to find the information they needed across public help documents, training courses, and hundreds of all-employee Slack help channels. We have consolidated our organizational knowledge into a single AI engine to give our workforce immediate answers, significantly boosting employee productivity. Now, employees can simply tag @AskMe in any Slack channel, ask a question, and Amazon Q will instantly give them an answer. Our CEO uses Amazon Q Business to obtain answers and conduct research, getting the information that he needs without interrupting an employee’s workflow. We accomplished all of this in a couple of weeks and without writing a single line of code, using our existing identity system. Additionally, our engineering teams use Amazon Q to summarize incident statuses, identify action items, access API documentation, and troubleshoot technical issues more efficiently, so they can focus on delivering exceptional products to our customers.”

Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization. “Together with AWS, we’re leveraging generative AI to help our people work more efficiently and deliver superior digital experiences to our clients,” said Laura Money, EVP & chief information and technology innovation officer at Sun Life. “Adopting Amazon Q Apps will enable our teams to build secure and seamless solutions that create value and differentiation across our business. For example, empowering our teams with access to Amazon Q in just a few clicks will streamline the creation and sharing of applications tailored to their respective needs.”

Shure Debuts Nexadyne Dynamic Vocal Microphones with Groundbreaking New Revonic Technology

 Today, Shure has introduced a new era of vocal precision: the Nexadyne dynamic microphone platform with Shure Revonic Dual Transducer Technology.

Available now in cardioid and supercardioid polar patterns, Nexadyne vocal microphones achieve state-of-the-art polar pattern consistency, unparalleled noise reduction, and best-in-class professional touring performance, so sound engineers and performers can confidently provide front-row vocal clarity to every corner of the venue, every time.

“Nexadyne is the next chapter of Shure’s storied history as the leader and innovator in dynamic microphone technology,” shared Nick Wood, Senior Director, Professional Audio Products, at Shure. “With built-in acoustic signal processing, the Nexadyne platform ushers in a new era of modern live performance that engineers and vocalists can trust on stage night after night.”

VIVID, EFFORTLESS CLARITY WITH REVONIC™ TECHNOLOGY

To deliver these revolutionary benefits, the Nexadyne platform is built on Shure’s patented, groundbreaking Revonic Dual Transducer Technology. This meticulously implemented technology minimises the amount of time and effort required by sound engineers to make performers’ live vocals sound exceptional and cut through the mix.

Most dynamic microphones are designed with only one transducer, the part of the microphone that converts sound into an electrical signal. Breaking from the mould, Shure’s innovative Revonic Technology implements two precisely matched transducers.

These transducers work together to provide a greater range of acoustic optimisation, maximising specific frequencies and minimising unwanted noise, especially handling noise and mechanical vibration. This built-in signal processing delivers a stronger output than traditional single transducer designs, while subsequently removing the need for a traditional pneumatic shock mount and time-consuming, corrective audio editing.

BUILT-IN RELIABILITY WITHOUT COMPROMISE   

Implementing the benefits of perfectly matched transducers requires thorough attention to detail throughout the manufacturing process. By maintaining and surpassing the highest, stage-tested standards for every Nexadyne microphone, Shure has guaranteed optimum manufacturability for consistent performance.

As the leader in handheld microphones and a pioneer in dynamic microphone technology, Shure continues to set the standard for vocal reproduction and industry-leading build quality with the introduction of Nexadyne and Revonic Technology.

EMPOWERING A NEW ERA OF PRECISION FOR VOCALISTS AND SOUND ENGINEERS

With Nexadyne premium vocal microphones, performers and sound engineers can be confident the entire audience will hear an acoustically honest representation of their performance with vivid clarity.

Vocalists using Nexadyne vocal microphones will immediately experience greater clarity and range of detail, which enables more control of vocal nuance and less time either holding back or pushing the voice too hard, no matter the size of the venue.

For engineers, Nexadyne vocal microphones achieve improved signal quality, delivering a clearer source signal to work with during the mixing process. The higher output of the microphone ensures engineers can accurately reproduce and balance the performer’s vocals in the overall mix with significantly less corrective audio processing.

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

Nexadyne dynamic vocal XLR microphones and wireless capsules are available now for £329 / €379 / $299 (US) in both cardioid (NXN8/C) and supercardioid (NXN8/S) polar patterns on Shure.com and at select retailers. Nexadyne capsules will be available bundled with Shure’s industry-leading digital wireless ecosystems starting this summer, including Axient Digital, ULX-D, QLX-D, and SLX-D.

Globalstar Celebrates 10,000 Rescue Milestone

Globalstar Europe Satellite Services Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Globalstar, Inc. the leader in satellite messaging and emergency notification technologies, announced today that Globalstar devices, including SPOT satellite GPS messengers have to date played a role in over 10,000 rescues worldwide.

This landmark milestone includes incidents, many of which being life-threatening, where emergency support was rapidly delivered precisely where needed thanks to satellite-enabled alerts from economical and rugged Globalstar devices.

Rescues have taken place all over the globe, including over 7,000 in North America. To date, there have been 479 rescues in EMEA (including 376 in Europe and 103 in Africa), and 569 in APAC (of which 462 were in Australia).

Globalstar’s compact and cost-effective SPOT devices provide reliable, near-global coverage thanks to Globalstar’s next-generation Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network. Always-on connectivity and real-time tracking capabilities are assured, even in remote or challenging environments where traditional telecom networks may be unavailable.

SPOT Gen4 was designed for outdoor recreation, and has been embraced by adventure enthusiasts whose activities take them beyond reliable mobile network coverage. Its always-on, ubiquitous tracking and user-centric functionality make SPOT Gen4 an increasingly popular companion for outdoors people of all kinds, delivering peace of mind to users, their friends and family, all over the world.

In an emergency, pressing SPOT’s one-touch SOS button instantly sends an alert including the user’s GPS coordinates to Globalstar partner, FocusPoint, SPOT’s 24/7 crisis response centre. From there, needs are assessed and local first responders are engaged in order to dispatch help rapidly.

SPOT X offers two-way SMS and email messaging as well as GPS tracking and one-touch SOS. SPOT X is the only satellite messenger on the market to give users free incoming messages, easy check-in function and a full, backlit QWERTY keypad for intuitive typing. SPOT X also offers the industry’s longest battery life in both tracking and SOS modes and is priced competitively.

The activities that have accounted for the 10,000 rescues vary widely, but the majority of emergency incidents happened while users were engaging in motorsport/driving (2,503), hiking and mountain sports (2,241), and boating (1,007).

SPOT devices have also seen dramatic increases in uptake by a diversity of organisational customers. For a professional user such as a lone or at-risk worker, SPOT devices can be configured to transmit alerts to an organisation’s operations or security centre.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), for example, uses SPOT Gen4 satellite GPS messengers to track and provide safety for Royal Air Force (RAF) Force Protection personnel during training exercises.

The tracking solution provided by SPOT Value Added Reseller 3S Group is the sole tracking system recommended by the Duke of Edinburgh Award (DofE) to safeguard young people on expeditions. SPOT was chosen for its reach, ease of use and reliability, providing schools, parents, and public and nature authorities, with peace of mind, while enabling good welfare governance.

SPOT devices are today providing communication and safety for solo-working staff, or those who operate in hazardous environments, at an array of commercial and non-commercial organisations. These include disaster relief agencies, utilities suppliers, forestry agencies as well as civil, national and multinational defence organisations.

All these users recognise that whenever their activities take them beyond the reach of conventional cellular networks or other terrestrial communications systems, only satellite technology can provide trustworthy and ubiquitous connectivity.

“We are extremely proud to have played a role in over 10,000 rescues worldwide,” said Mark O’Connell, Globalstar EMEA & APAC General Manager. “As the capabilities, reach and reliability of the Globalstar family of products become ever more widely acknowledged, we look forward to continuing to provide critical emergency support to adventurers, sportspeople and professional users wherever they travel.”

Ferrari and HP Announce A Title Partnership

Today, Ferrari and HP Inc. announced a historic, multi-year title partnership. Connecting two of the world’s most iconic companies, the partnership features a shared commitment to advance sustainable innovation and accelerate purposeful technology across the Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 team, the Scuderia Ferrari Esports team, and the Scuderia Ferrari Driver Academy.

In addition, the HP logo will make its debut on the Maranello F1 cars ahead of Miami Grand Prix scheduled for May 3-5, when the team will start competing as Scuderia Ferrari HP. The Scuderia Ferrari Esports team and the Scuderia Ferrari car driven by Maya Weug in the all-female F1 Academy series, launched in 2023, will also race using the new moniker.

Uniting heritage and purpose for bigger impact

HP and Ferrari are committed to accelerate sustainable innovation whether through technology or sport. The companies will also work together to expand educational initiatives within their teams and communities, and create a lasting impact for generations to come.

Powering the teams through technology

As part of the partnership, the integration of HP’s high-performance products and services, including adaptive PCs and devices, conferencing technology, and printing capabilities, will enable Scuderia Ferrari HP and the other racing teams of the Prancing Horse to turbo charge training precision and optimize strategic decision-making, on and off the track.

Debut at Miami Grand Prix

Ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, representatives from both organisations will be present for the reveal of the Scuderia Ferrari HP livery, which will debut in a unique edition specifically designed for Miami. Ferrari CEO, Benedetto Vigna, Scuderia Ferrari HP’s Team Principal Fred Vasseur, the team’s drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, and HP CEO, Enrique Lores will be in attendance.

“Our founder passed on to us his continuous will to progress. From this stems our drive to innovate on the road and on the track, as well as our commitment to a sustainable future, from carbon neutrality to the education of the younger generation,” said Benedetto Vigna, CEO of Ferrari. “In HP we have found the same values, which make it an ideal partner. We look forward to starting our collaboration and facing new opportunities and challenges together.”

“With technology, performance and exceptional craftsmanship fuelling the future, the partnership between HP and Ferrari is a natural fit,” said Enrique Lores, CEO of HP Inc. “Both brands are built on rich histories that have endured the test of time. Through this unique collaboration, we also have an opportunity to reach new audiences, drive business growth, and create lasting impact for our shared clients and communities. Together we will leverage the global stage of racing to accelerate sustainable innovation.”

Tech innovator Human Mobile Devices (HMD) has today revealed its first line of smartphones under the original HMD line: HMD Pulse Pro, HMD Pulse+ and HMD Pulse.

Tech innovator Human Mobile Devices (HMD) has today revealed its first line of smartphones under the original HMD line: HMD Pulse Pro, HMD Pulse+ and HMD Pulse.

The HMD Pulse collection sets the tone for HMD’s original line: clean lines, calm tones, modern aesthetics, elegant repairability and bold, brazen design at an accessible price.

CMO of Human Mobile Devices, Lars Silberbauer, comments: “We’ve got our finger on the pulse, and recognise consumers’ needs and anticipate market trends; repair is the cornerstone of a fresh chapter in smartphone innovation. Forget the ordinary, this is a new era of smartphone sophistication with substance.”

Ben Wood, Chief Analyst CCS insight, said: “Repairability is a hot topic for consumers, and CCS insight has seen interest in repairing mobile phones increase significantly in both the EU and US over the last year. Approximately 55% of those surveyed in the EU said they would like to have a device that’s outside its warranty period repaired at a reasonable cost rather than replacing it with a new device. In the US interest is also strong, at an impressive 49%. We also note that 47% of EU consumers and 48% of US consumers express readiness to pay slightly more for environmentally friendly products, which underlines an appetite for more repairable products.”1

Wood goes onto say: “HMD has been a trailblazer for more repairable smartphones. It’s encouraging that the HMD Pulse Family is even easier for consumers to repair, and this design decision aligns well with the consumer trends we are seeing in our research”. Ben Wood, Chief Analyst, CCS Insight.

Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, comments: “HMD has just announced its fourth repairable device: HMD Pulse Pro. HMD’s ongoing commitment to designing phones with repairability in mind is an encouraging shift in our throwaway culture, proving that HMD has the innovative culture needed to drive advances in repairability. We’re keen to collaborate as they work towards making repairable phones the norm, not the exception.”

The HMD Pulse Collection 

Each device in the new HMD Pulse range is built to be repairable, HMD calls it ‘Gen 1 repairability’, empowering owners to replace a damaged display, bent charging port, or a depleted battery, without an engineering degree. Users can simply pick up a self-repair kit in partnership with iFixit, starting from €19.95

HMD Pulse Pro: Your selfie game is about to level up

HMD Pulse Pro is a selfie-lover’s new best friend. With a market-leading 50MP Selfie Camera, your picture-perfect snaps will be the envy of all this summer. Give your phone the two-finger salute to kick-start all new Selfie Gesture Navigation, capturing core memories with just a wave of the hand, or go hands-free with a finger-heart, thumbs up or two-handed heart sign – perfect for those group selfies. And you can wave goodbye to blurry night-time selfies with HMD Pulse Pro’s AI Super Portrait mode, rendering even the darkest selfie as clear as day. Making it easier than ever to capture memories in high-definition, HMD Pulse Pro makes you look like a pro photographer – without any training.

HMD’s Pulse Pro is a fashion statement that won’t go out of style, available in three stunning shades: Glacier Green, Twilight Purple and Black Ocean. And it doesn’t stop at the handset. Pulse Pro in Glacier Green has its own statement colour-matched charger which is sold separately €24.99. With its timeless design and sleek silhouette, it’s giving major celebrity vibes, without the celebrity price tag at €179.99

HMD Pulse+  and HMD Pulse

HMD Pulse Pro’s little siblings, HMD Pulse+ and HMD Pulse, offer up to 59 hours of battery life and Gen 1 repairability, in the same three eye-catching shades. 3 HMD Pulse+ €159 boasts a 50MP rear camera and depth sensor that lets you snap quality pictures with ease, whilst HMD Pulse, the final part of HMD’s first original trio, strikes the perfect balance between affordability, performance and repairability. With an 13MP camera complete with AI HDR and skin-tone optimisation for naturally vibrant shots, HMD Pulse packs a punch, for just €129

With top-range specs at a mid-range price point, the HMD Pulse Family aims to make the smartphone category accessible to all.

HMD Pulse+ and HMD Pulse are available online at hmd.com from 1st May 2024. HMD Pulse Pro is coming soon along with the Glacier green charger. Self-repair kits available from iFixit starting at €19.95

Swappie – More than 60% of Irish consumers Unaware about the Growing Impact of E-waste

As the world celebrated Earth Day, Swappie, Europe’s largest iPhone refurbisher, has unveiled a dire need to educate people about the impact of e-waste. This alarm bell comes as a study by the United Nations reveals that a record 62 million tonnes of e-waste was produced in 2022, up 82% from 2010; on track to rise another 32%, to 82 million tonnes, in 2030.

Swappie did a pan-Europe community survey to gauge people’s knowledge and awareness about sustainable habits, carbon footprint and the impact of e-waste on the planet. The result was a startling and urgent need for more awareness across all age groups shedding light on widespread ignorance regarding e-waste and its consequences.

Globally, the annual generation of e-waste is rising by 2.6 million tonnes while the documented recycling rate has dropped from 22.3% in 2022 to 20% in 2030 – as recycling efforts fail to match pace with the monumental growth of e-waste generation worldwide.

The key highlights from the survey are as follows:

Awareness Gap:
A staggering 62.7% of Irish respondents were unaware of the projected 82 million metric ton increase in e-waste by 2030, equivalent to discarding 1,000 laptops every second.

Personal Impact on E-Waste:
Around 25% of global respondents correctly estimated their annual e-waste production.

Knowledge of iPhone Carbon Emissions:
22.7% correctly identified that it emits approximately 82 kg of CO2 in its first year of life.

Concern for the Environment:
Despite the lack of e-waste awareness, the majority of Irish respondents expressed significant concern about their carbon footprint and environmental impact.
61.6% rated their concern as 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-5, indicating high levels of worry about their personal environmental footprint.

Sounding the alarm, Luísa Vasconcelos e Sousa, Country Manager for Ireland at Swappie said: “These survey findings underscore the critical importance of raising awareness about e-waste and its detrimental effects on our planet. It is evident that there is a strong desire among consumers to make more informed choices to mitigate their impact on the environment – but the buck doesn’t stop here. We, at Swappie, pledge to inform more and more people about e-waste and how every person can contribute in making the world a better place.”

Swappie remains committed to environmental education and sustainability, aiming to empower individuals with knowledge to combat e-waste and reduce carbon emissions. As part of its Earth Day initiatives, Swappie will be launching educational campaigns and resources to help individuals better understand and address the challenges posed by e-waste.

Majority Audio launches the Majority MP3 Pro

Majority, the consumer electronics brand known for its innovative products, provides the audio solution for music lovers on the go, the Majority MP3 Pro.

The Majority MP3 Pro is available in the UK, US, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain from Amazon for £34.95/€39.95/$39.95.

Never again does running errands or housekeeping have to be boring- The MP3 Pro opens a world of opportunity to take 12,000 songs wherever you go. With expandable storage of up to 128GB, listeners can further enjoy up to 36,000 songs to put a music kick into your next workout, commute, or holiday. Working together with the extensive playtime and 4-hour fast charge means with the MP3 Pro your favourite songs do not need to be interrupted.

Designed for the on-the-go music enthusiast, the MP3 Pro features 5.0 Bluetooth connectivity coupled with 67 hours of playtime means listeners can surround themselves with wireless audio for hours whatever the occasion.

Keeping to Majority’s tradition to deliver high quality home audio products at an affordable price, the MP3 Pro’s integrated speakers prove crystal-clear audio doesn’t have to be sacrificed! Simple connect with the included headphones for a private party or pair with external speakers to fill the room with your customised playlist- either way the MP3 Pro has been meticulously engineered for listeners to immerse themselves in every intricate musical note.

Showing that style and function can work effectively side by side, the MP3 Pro’s zinc alloy chassis encasing delivers a premium touch and sleek design, while the 2.4” colour display guarantees that music navigation could not be easier!

Designed in the UK and with a 3-year warranty, Majority produce products that will last and stand the test of time.

The MP3 Pro is available on Amazon for £34.95/€39.95/$39.95.

Key Features of the Majority MP3 Pro:

  • 5.0 Bluetooth Connectivity
  • 4hr Charging Time
  • 65GB Internal Storage
  • Compatible with SD cards up to 128GB
  • Earphones included
  • Integrated Speaker
  • Dimensions: 4.2cm x 6.6cm x 1.8cm
  • Weight: 33g

 

About Majority:

From a living room in Cambridge to over a million homes across the globe, Majority was born from the idea that there could be a product that is suitable for everyone and enjoyed by all. A consumer electronics company offering a range of radios and home audio products that never compromised on great features and sound quality, Majority is now in over a million homes and has high ambitions to be one of the greenest tech companies on the planet by the year 2023.

www.majority.co.uk

JUSTTIP Flex offers next generation mobile tipping solution for table service establishments

In a move that is set to further transform the hospitality industry, Irish founded company JUSTTIP has expanded its offering with the introduction of JUSTTIP Flex, a new mobile tipping solution developed for restaurants, pubs, and hotels offering table service.

The latest hospitality solution from Dublin headquartered JUSTTIP, co-founded by young entrepreneurs James Fahy (23) and Ciara Walsh (22), saves business owners the 11.8% PRSI liability on every tip managed through the system, reduces administrative burdens, and brings them in line with tipping legislation to avoid on-the-spot fines of up to €1,500.

With the new Flex option, as well as existing Fixed terminals and QR code solutions offered by JUSTTIP, customers can easily and securely tip hospitality staff, safe in the knowledge that everything goes directly to staff. For customers, JUSTTIP Flex allows them to choose their tip amount in a separate transaction from paying the bill, thus increasing servers tips while separating them from the business’ income.

Designed to streamline the tipping process for both businesses and employees, Ciara Walsh, Co-founder of JUSTTIP explained “We launched JUSTTIP to bring transparency to tipping, but found so many businesses didn’t even know the charges they were paying on tips, and requirements with updated legislation. The platform is built to help businesses and employees manage tips, with end to end transaction reports, bringing businesses in line with legislation, and offering complete transparency to their staff. An added bonus is that the customers love it too.”

 

With tipping legislation in Ireland updated in December 2022, companies must now provide clear information to customers on how tips are shared among employees, promoting transparency and trust in the tipping process. Legislation also states that staff should receive a breakdown of electronic tips received and how they are distributed, and guarantees employees the right to receive their tip, protecting them from unfair distribution.  All tips generated through JUSTTIP’s systems are collected and pooled, and distributed weekly directly to the employees’ bank accounts in proportion to the hours they worked, bypassing the employer’s business completely.

With JUSTTIP, employers manage tip distribution thanks to the easy to use employer portal to monitor tip collection and distribution. For employees, tips are paid directly to their bank account every Tuesday, and tax management tools are available to help with calculating liability.

JUSTTIP Co-founder James Fahy added “As the hospitality industry continues to embrace digital transformation, JUSTTIP remains committed to driving innovation and setting new standards for excellence. We guarantee regulatory compliance for businesses and equitable tip sharing for employees.”

JUSTTIP was founded in July 2021, and since then has successfully on boarded 400 establishments and over 7,000 staff across Ireland and the UK.

For further information visit https://justtip.net/.