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VR tour around the Gale Crater (on Mars yeah!)

27/10/2015

 
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Click image to launch the VR player of the LA-Times

October 21, 2015 Fuel cell day

22/10/2015

 

The 7th year itch

19/10/2015

 

​The 7th year itch is all about the phycological perception that people want change every 7th year.
​In 1984 I bought my very first house. Soon after my purchase the house market collapsed not to recover until the early 1990's. I was able to sell my house end of 1991 roughly for the same price as where I bought it for.
When in 2008 economic disaster struck, the house prices in the US and Europe collapsed. They recovered beginning last year with an acceleration of the prices this year. A nice 7 years after Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. 

​Austrian philosopher and teacher Rudolf Steiner created a theory of human development based on seven-year cycles that were associated with astrology.
My experience tells me that it looks like there is some truth in the "7th year itch" saying. It looks like people indeed get bored after 7 years and want to change (their lives, their environment, their relationships).  
Maybe we need to develop a new business model based on these cycles ;-) Why not? The world's gone crazy anyway.

#Biometrics2015 in decline

14/10/2015

 

My fist visit to the London Biometrics Show was back in October 2003. It was 2 years after 9/11 and the security world was set on fire. Gartner, Forrester and all the other researchers promised a biometric world with astronomical growth figures. 
​No one could foresee the hard reality of a very long lead-time for biometrics. It was about to lift off ten years later when Apple launched "the biometric killer app", a fingerprint reader in the startbutton of a phone. Simple & elegant and flawlessly working.
During that decade many biometric pioneers didn't survive. 
SAFlink started in 1988 (which company burned roughly $350MLN) eventually went bankrupt in 2009 due to mismanagement, lack of focus and vision. 

​BMF introduced in 2003 a biometric sensor based on TFT-material. It was a so-called pressure sensitive sensor. Through various layers of material an image of the fingerprint was created solely by a simple pressure of the finger on the reader. Big benefit: you could read the fingerprint under almost every circumstances even "under" water (see picture). It was sold in Europe via Hitachi. I was really impressed.
Little did I know know at that time that the layers in the readers only survived roughly 1000x presses. So when I introduced a IP-based variant of the reader for securing a datacenter I ran into trouble a few months after the go-live. Shit happens. But Hitachi promised me the world and came up with the prototype of the finger vein scanner in the summer 2005. It was the death for BMF. The company never had real lift-off.
Nor did Hitachi by the way. Still their finger vein solution needs to lift-off. They are pushing hard on ATM's in banking, but Fingerprint looks to be the winner in this sector. 
Hitachi's business model sucks. It lacks interoperability with the other vein vendors. There is simply no standard for finger vein, which makes it hard for enterprises to invest in. They will never be sure of their investment. It used to be the same for Fingerprint, but those technology vendors (with a little help from the Government) solved the interoperability problem and then it took off.

#Biometrics2015
In my last post I told you my wish-list. I was really looking forward to this year's edition of the Biometrics show. But I was very disappointed.
​#BiometricsXXXX is organized by Reed/Elsevier. When I was exhibiting in London in 2013, I already noticed that the format was in decline. Somehow Reed/Elsevier was not able to attract the new young and hip biometric technology startups and they totally missed out on FIDO and app-builders. Not to speak of Apple, which was a major biometric player with the launch of the 5S that year.
Reed/Elsevier just played safe and did the trick they'd done for a decade. Now in 2015, the #Biometrics2015 is basically diminished to nothing to be part off anymore. There were a few old players (HID, Cogent & Wacom) a 2 mobile biometric solutions and Fujisoft, a vein vendor (old Sony-stuff, but revived)and yes NokNok was there, I said hi to Jamie.
I met old friends now working at Crossmatch, talked business, and basically agreed not to meet at Biometrics anymore but at more inspiring events or locations.

This was my last BiometricsXXXX, goodbye Queen Elizabeth II Centre, Goodbye Reed/Elsevier. I hope life treats you well, but somehow I think this was the last that we've seen from Reed/Elsevier on biometrics too.

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Fujisoft vein technology for physical and logical access

Overtime big is getting smaller

13/10/2015

 

It's funny how the human mind works. It simply gets used to things. When I bought my first iPhone (yes a 3GS), I thought it was big (compared to my Nokia at that time).
When I got the iPhone 4s I was really happy, the design was flawless and innovative with a hardly noticeable increase of size. I really liked that phone.


Picture

The 5S I purchased only because of the fingerprint reader, not of the size at that time. I thought it was way to big.
But now after almost a year working with the iPhone 6 looking back on the previous iPhones; they were so small ;-)
My son just got his iPhone 6s Plus. What a giant. 
I wonder when we start calling with an iPad Pro to our ears :-)
Size does matter, but overtime big things just look smaller don't they?

Biometrics 2015, London

12/10/2015

 

So tomorrow evening I'm off to London visiting the Biometrics2015 the next day and the days after.
I am hoping to be surprised. Here are my expectations and wishes;

- explosion of mobile biometrics solutions
- including multi-modal
- maybe new fingerprint sensors?
- consumerization of Iris recognition technology?
- Finally an affordable vein technology with dito business model

Picture

​
I really love vein technology. It is fast, reliable and user-friendly. Nevertheless the business model of the 2 major vendors sucks. The closed template business models makes interoperability almost impossible and increases costs dramatically. 
That is in my honest opinion the major showstopper for vein tech.
But maybe I'm surprised this week.

Hard choices

8/10/2015

 

So Apple launched it's iPad Pro last month and Microsoft hits back this week with the launch of the Surface book (and Surface Pro 4).
I'm a hugh Apple fan but nevertheless I've got a few Windows operated devices too. I've got the Surface Pro 3, which I really like and does the "
heavy" office stuff in a blink of an eye, but the Apple devices I use for graphic and video related work. Somehow they just operate more smoothly.

So November will be a month with hard choices. I'm in the US that month traveling a few states. As the iPad Pro launches early November, last week I decided to pick one up. My current iPad is 3 years old and doesn't respond to iOS9 that quickly anymore. Yes watching movies, do some surfing and listening music still goes fine, but everything else just sucks.

But since last Tuesday​ when Microsoft presented it's new Surface line, I'm puzzled. Will I choose Microsoft, enjoy the Windows 10 experience across all devices? And they certainly hook me into their amazing Hololens shortly thereafter, or will it be the iPad Pro with the for special for mobile devices optimized operating systems iOS?
​Stay tuned, I'll let you know next month.

The tombstone came in

5/10/2015

 

This summer we successfully sold Authasas BV to Micro Focus. This weekend the closing documents arrived complete with tombstone. I'm very proud of this achievement and happy to share a picture of the so-called tombstone.

Harrogate and hand recognition

5/10/2015

 

This weekend my wife and I were in Harrogate for a wedding. It was a traditional english wedding which we really enjoyed. 
Harrogate is named the happiest place to live in UK. It's a typical english place with stunning parks and beautiful old buildings.

When we tried to fly out of Leeds/Bradford's airport (because of delays we eventually flew out of Manchester), just after the security check I spotted this old biometric time punch system of Recognition.
Once considered hightech but never a real breakthrough in the global biometric market.
Nevertheless it's good to see Harrogaters live in the 21st century ;-)

    Author

    I am Reinier van der Drift. owner of FERGIL. Serial Entrepreneur & Technology Freak. Expert on Strong Authentication.
    Blog on StartUps, Gadgets, Technology in general  and my day to day busy-ness.

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