Mobile phones turn 40

. Forty years ago Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first mobile phone call by calling a competitor at another telecoms company, telling them he was speaking from "a real cellular telephone". VoR’s Daniel Cinna reports on the legacy of Cooper's first call. The early days: The first mobile phone was around nine inches long, weighed more than a kilogram and the battery lasted for just 20 minutes, but took 10 hours to charge - quite different from what we are used to today. But 40 years ago today, using the first mobile phone, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first mobile phone call. The recipient? His rivals at AT&T in America, to say that he’d beaten them to the discovery, which paved the way to an £800bn mobile telecoms industry. Unheard-of: Dr Mike Short is from the Institute of Engineering and Technology: “It was absolutely amazing because until then there had been police car to police car type communication. But the idea of calling someone on a landline from a radio device was unheard of. It was a major technical breakthrough in the sense that...

Read More........ → December 07, 2014

Golda Meir: 'We don’t like to make war, even when we win'

. Born in Russia and raised in the US, Golda Meir was a leading figure in the movement called Zionism, aiming to create a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1948, she was part of the People's Council signing the vital proclamation establishing the State of Israel.  Meir served as Israel's foreign minister from 1956 to 1966 and became its fourth prime minister in 1969. Country's first and the world's third woman to hold such an office, she was described as the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics years before the epithet became associated with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion used to call Meir "the best man in the government". Her biggest dream was to bring peace to the Middle East but it came to a downfall during the Yom Kippur War, when Syrian and Egyptian forces waged a surprise attack on Israel in October 1973. Israeli casualties were high, leading to Meir's resignation. She never forgave herself for not preventing that war. For us, every single death is a tragedy. We don’t like to make war, even when we win. After the last one,...

Read More........ → March 16, 2014

Radio : IPO Boom

. As investors are showing confidence in cloud-based service providers, Benefitfocus, a leading provider of cloud-based technologies, raised $130 million in its IPO this fall. The company offered 4.9 million shares at $26.50. Originally, the number of shares was 4.5 million, and the additional shares were offered by existing shareholders. Benefitfocus is a Charleston, South Carolina-based developer of benefits software solutions for consumers, employers, insurance carriers and brokers. It currently serves more than 20 million consumers on its platform. With a user-friendly interface and consumer-centric design, the Benefitfocus Platform provides one place for consumers to access all their benefits. The company currently works with 348 large employers and supports insurance carriers such as Aetna Life Insurance, Allstate Corp and the Blue Cross Blue Shield network. Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Jefferies acted as lead managers on the deal. Shares rose as much as 87% in their debut, following the example of niche cloud companies, like Tableau Software, ChannelAdvisor and Textura...

Read More........ → November 17, 2013