Google TV service launches in UK with Sony tie-up

Sony and Google have announced a tie-up that will see Google's interactive TV service made available outside the US for the first time.

The set-top box allows users to browse the internet through their television, as well as access a range of specially designed applications.
The device, which will cost around £200 when it is released in July, will compete with Apple's own TV box.
Apple TV is already available in the UK, currently priced at £99.
In a press release, Sony said their Google TV product, the NSZ-GS7, will also soon be made available in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil and Mexico.
Dual-sided remote
"Entertainment content is available through so many channels and sites, and Google TV helps consumers easily find what they want to watch, listen to or play with the freedom of the internet and using the familiar Chrome search engine technology," said Gildas Pelliet, Sony's European head of marketing.
The device will be followed with a Blu-ray version expected to cost around £300 when it is launched later in the year.
The box will be controlled by a dual-sided remote control with a full QWERTY keyboard.
Like Apple's offering, Google TV can be controlled via a smartphone.
Google's foray into television has faced some hiccups since it first launched Google TV in the US in 2010.
Its devices were criticised for being too expensive, and several TV networks blocked the US-only service from accessing their web content.

Sourced: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18555538

UK waterways to become active routes on Google Maps

At the moment, waterways in England and Wales are not listed as routes on Google Maps

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Google Maps users may soon find it easier to plan a trip on one of UK's waterways.

The US search engine has teamed up with the Canal and River Trust, a charity that will be in charge of UK's water network from July.

The deal includes updating Google Maps to include 2,000 miles of canal and river paths across England and Wales.

Currently, waterways are not listed on Google Maps as active routes people can use to move about.

"Say, I'm by a canal in Paddington and I want to go to Camden, and I put this information into Google Maps as a walking route - it wouldn't send me to the canal, even though it's a nice green route to get there, it would send me by road," the Trust's spokesman Jonathan Ludford told the BBC.

The charity will be working with Google to identify all the access points to the waterways, as well as all the bridges and tunnels, he added.

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“Start Quote

A lot of people live by canals, and we want them to use these canals - so to have Google promoting the waterways is a really exciting initiative”

Jonathan LudfordCanal and River Trust

Traffic-free

"It's a very exciting project - Google is basically putting the canal network of England and Wales on the map, and people will be able to put in a route and if it's appropriate to go by canal, they would go by canal," he said.

"A lot of people live by canals, and we want them to use these canals - so to have Google promoting the waterways is a really exciting initiative."

Once the data is on Google Maps, waterways will become alternative, possibly traffic-free, routes through towns and cities of England and Wales.

"Canal towpaths offer green routes through our towns and cities, and by working with the Canal and River Trust we're adding towpaths to Google Maps and encouraging people to discover their local waterway," said Ed Parsons, geospatial technologist at Google UK.

In early June, Google demonstrated new mapping technologies at a conference in the US.

But a week later, as Apple unveiled its latest mobile operating system, iOS6, which runs on its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, it emerged that it will no longer include Google Maps software.

Apple instead decided to run its own mapping app, which has a high-quality 3D mode, on the platform.

Sourced: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18510205

BMW to build hybrid car engine in UK

Hams Hall near Birmingham, the German carmaker said on Tuesday.

The UK factory will be the sole supplier of the three-cylinder, high-tech petrol engines for the car, which BMW will assemble in Leipzig and begin selling in the second half of 2013.

The announcement is the latest of several by global carmakers – including General Motors, Nissan, and Jaguar Land Rover – who are expanding their operations in Britain despite the festering crisis in the eurozone weighing on the industry’s main export market.

BMW’s choice of the highly automated plant, which produced its three millionth engine last week, will entail no new investment or job creation.

The engine is part of a pledge made by the company last year to invest £500m over three years in the UK, including at its Mini plant near Oxford and at Rolls-Royce in Goodwood.

Ian Robertson, BMW’s head of sales, said that the premium carmaker chose the UK over its plants in Munich and in Steyr, Austria primarily for currency hedging reasons.

“We have a lot of sales in pounds and we manufacture a lot in pounds, which gives us a natural ability to balance these things out,” Mr Robertson said. “We see the UK market as a very strong one going forward in terms of sales.”

Separately, BMW said it would open the first showroom worldwide for its BMWi hybrid and electric car brand on Park Lane in London on Wednesday.

The sub-brand, devoted to “sustainability”, is targeting drivers in big, densely populated megacities – like London – where BMW thinks 70 per cent of the world’s population will live within the next 20 to 30 years. In addition to the i8 hybrid, the carmaker plans to make the i3, an all-electric model.

BMW made the announcement at the International Automotive Summit, organised by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders lobby group, where several speakers sounded a positive note about the industry’s prospects despite the bearish mood in the broader economy and on world markets.

The SMMT said this week that UK-based carmakers could break the industry’s previous production record of 1.92m cars reached in 1972 by 2015, when output could surpass 2m for the first time.

Carmakers have cited the UK’s relatively flexible workforce, large domestic car market, and currency as reasons for expanding their investments in the UK.

Vince Cable, the business secretary, said that BMW’s decision to choose Hams Hall represented “more good news for the UK automotive sector and underlines its growing competitive strength”.

While BMW is one of Britain’s biggest carmakers, employing more than 7,000 people directly, it does the research and design work for its Mini and Rolls-Royce cars in Germany.

Mr Robertson said that this was unlikely to change.

“The core engineering – and particularly as we go forward with a multiplicity of products – that is likely to remain in Germany,” he said.

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Image sourced from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/9326915/Cable-calls-for-strategic-vision-for-manufacturing.html