Order 1000, the Smart Grid and Smart Substations

  There is no U.S. power grid as such, at least not in the sense of a consolidated system of nation-wide distribution of electricity. Instead, more than 3200 local and regional electrical utilities produce the more than $400 billion of electricity consumed annually in this country, all pursuant to a long-standing model dominated by local…

The Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, and Carwashes

Searching Google for “Internet of Things” produces 2,090,000,000 results. The Internet is a very big place, but 2.09-billion results is a lot, even from a pool as large as the Internet. By comparison, “Justin Bieber” yields only 793-million results and “Cloud Computing” just 567-million. Yet for many among us, IoT remains a frustratingly vague concept…

Five Advantages of Advantech AVS Video-Wall Controllers

I volunteer to work at a friend’s tradeshow exhibit each year in what is the biggest make-or-break expo of his industry. He manages a magazine-format technology publication that is distributed both in print and online. My friend has decorated his exhibit with the same static banner displays for years now, and the blunt truth is…

Catching Up with Advantech on YouTube

It wasn’t long ago that I disdained YouTube as the place people went to catch up on the latest in amateur videos featuring cat antics, bad rap and, well, worse. Shows what little I know. Now, I count online videos among my go-to sources for information on the latest in tech. L-Tron even has a…

Transitioning to Widescreen, Multi-Touch Monitors for Optimum Efficiency

I’d been a loyal user of Microsoft Office (Word specifically) for years, but somewhere between one iteration and another I hit the “why-can’t-they-leave-good-enough-alone?” wall. I ended up switching to the OpenOffice counterpart, which has since remained the closest thing I could find to that previous, good-enough version of Word. That is, until the announcement of OpenOffice…