Written by Jeremy Martin on April 8, 2012.
Engineering company Atkins is to use traffic data collected from TomTom satellite navigation devices in order to plan road improvements.
One of the services that the company offers is to improve road performance for local authorities. In order to analyse traffic patterns, Atkins currently sends a car with a GPS tracker on repeated journeys down the road in question.
This week, the company announced an agreement with the Dutch satnav vendor that will allow it to use aggregated journey data collected from TomTom customers’ devices, dating back to 2008.
Using the TomTom data will drastically cut the cost of analysing road performance, Philip Mendelsohn, data manager at Atkins Transportation told Information Age today.
There are, for example, 12 possible ways to drive through a four-way junction. Sending a driver through the junction enough times to have a sufficient sample of data would be highly time consuming.
“With TomTom we get to see a period over which vehicles have been driven through that junction,” Mendelsohn says.
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Written by Jeremy Martin on March 31, 2012.
Knowing when to update your IT systems can be a difficult business decision. For many SME bosses, changing an IT system is as attractive as root canal work. Charles Black, CEO of Cloud Computing Services company Nasstar plc, describes some of the best trigger points for a strategic IT review.
It’s a truth generally acknowledged that entrepreneurs love doing business. They love making deals, selling things and seeing their thoughts translated into deeds.
But for some entrepreneurs – or indeed most – business tasks like bookkeeping or filing annual returns to Companies House bore them rigid.
Another thing that either bores or baffles entrepreneurs is IT. Yes they know proper IT systems raise efficiency. But as
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Written by Michael Harris on March 30, 2012.
Operators say fuel surcharges on food deliveries — common the first time gas prices reached $4 a gallon in 2008 — are again being used by distributors as they grapple with increasing transportation costs. Bills for many staple commodities, such as beef and corn, are skyrocketing as it becomes more expensive to get them to stores.
Nancy Oswald, co-owner of Atlanta’s Ruth Chris Steak House franchise, said in an email that “since the beginning of March, we have witnessed the following increases in prime beef prices: 6.81 percent on ribeye loins, 11.19 percent on strip loins, and 9.4 percent on tenderloins.
“As these are our three biggest sellers [New York strips, ribeyes and filets], the increase has had a dramatic effect on our food cost,” she said.
Diners, so far, seem immune to the gas price hikes, restaurant operators said. Customer traffic has not slowed down as paying at the pump has become more costly, though restaurateurs admit it is too early to draw conclusions with certainty.
But Bob Amick of Concentrics Restaurants said restaurants like his, which include One Midtown Kitchen and Two Urban Licks, are destinations that attract consumers from greater distances than typical eateries. He could lo
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Written by Michael Harris on March 26, 2012.
Atlanta’s airport, the world’s busiest since 1998, handled 92.4 million passengers in 2011, up 3.4 percent year-over-year.
But according to figures released by Airports Council International, Beijing Capital International Airport saw a 4.7 percent increase to 77.4 million passengers, slightly narrowing Atlanta’s lead. Beijing could eventually become the world’s busiest airport, but the 2011 figures make clear that time is not soon.
London Heathrow came in at No. 3, with 69.4 million passengers, followed by Chicago O’Hare with 66.6 million passengers.
Atlanta did not make the top 30 airports list for air cargo traffic. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has made increasing air cargo traffic a priority since he campaigned for mayor.
“Cargo traffic slowed for most of the year as business confidence deteriorated in light of the looming Eurozone debt crisis,” according to a written statement by ACI World Director Angela Gittens, who previously led Atlanta’s airport. “Despite economic instability and political unrest in many regions of the world, overall, airports continued to experience sustained global passenger growth” over 2010.
Separately, the U.S.
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Written by Jeremy Martin on March 24, 2012.
Asking search engines to censor content that might infringe on a privacy injunction “would be like asking phone companies to listen in on every call made across their networks for potentially suspicious activity,” web giant Google said today.
It made its remarks after a committee of Lords and MPs said that Google and other search engines “should take steps to ensure that their websites are not used as vehicles to breach the law and should actively develop and use technology [to do so].”
“We recommend that if legislation is necessary to require them to do so it should be introduced,” the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions said.
The committee has been investigating the role of online media outlets in the breach privacy injunctions, such as those taken out by footballer Ryan Giggs and F1 boss Max Mosely.
During the committee’s investigation, Google’s associate general council Daphne Keller had argued that company no mechanism to find multiple instances of an image or text on the web, and no capacity to block access to all those instances.
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Written by Jeremy Martin on March 21, 2012.
Chris Hutchings, partner at Hamlins LLP, looks at the potential pitfalls and benefits of using social media sites for business purposes. Business are increasingly learning to exploit the potential of social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for marketing and growth. Information continues to shift from traditional media to the web.
Print media continues to suffer as advertisers slant their budgets towards online campaigns, including through social media. Use of the new media in the commercial context can be an effective and powerful business tool because it gives companies the opportunity to convey information, promote brands or products, or make a sales pitch in a more subtle manner than traditional marketing.
Effective social media campaigns can result from a positive customer response and the viral spread by willing consumers of successful concepts and messages contained in campaigns. With these benefits come legal risks. Successful use of the new medium requires consideration of key underlying legal and regulatory principles. T
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Written by Michael Harris on March 16, 2012.
Georgia Power wants to close two coal-fired units at Plant Branch and an oil unit at Plant Mitchell. By law, the company is allowed to recoup money for materials and supplies that cannot be used once units are shut down.
The Georgia Public Service Commission told Georgia Power to calculate the value of unused parts and that the commission then will decide how long the utility can recoup that money from customers as part of basic electricity rates.
Georgia Power plans to close Plant Branch Unit 2 in October 2013 and Unit 1 in December of that year to help the utility comply with federal environmental rules. Plant Mitchell 4C, an oil unit, hasn’t been operating since 2009 because of an equipment failure.
Environmental groups praised Georgia Power’s steps but continued to call for the utility to get more of its electricity from natural gas and renewable fuels.
“The company’s continued use of coal in lieu of cleaner forms of electricity is costing ratepayers as coal becomes more and more expensive,” the Sierra Club said in a statement.
Also Tuesday, the PSC approved three of Georgia Power’s four proposed contracts to buy natural gas from other companies in 2015. Th
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