After three years of developing a brand new rocket, aerospace startup Rocket Lab has finally transported a finished vehicle to the New Zealand launch pad where it will take its first flight. The rocket, called the Electron, has been tested on the ground over the last year but has never been flown to space before. Over the next couple of months, Rocket Lab will conduct a series of test launches of the vehicle to verify that it’s ready to carry payloads into orbit for commercial customers. Compared to other major commercial rockets like the Falcon 9 or the Atlas V,…

Kodak is bringing back traditional film due to overwhelming consumer demand.  The photography company said that it plans to start selling its Ektachrome film before the end of the year, with others to follow. Ektachrome was phased out in 2012 but among professional filmmakers there has been a 'resurgence' in sales, Kodak said. More stories > > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4163944/Kodak-says-s-bringing-Ektachrome-film.html http://www.telegiz.com/articles/14491/20170130/kodak-ektachrome-film-35mm-format.htm http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=11790937    

Auckland – Technology is at the heart of improving productivity of government services and the second annual NZTech Advance Government and Technology Summit in Wellington on February 28 will play a landmark role in helping New Zealand become a stronger digital nation, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller says. The summit is a high-level event that will host the key players from government, industry and technology to lead discussions on transformative technology aiding the delivery of better public services. The event will offer insights from people working behind the scenes about the government’s ICT strategy framework and the complex issues behind…

Smart sensors offer advanced functions that make setup, maintenance, and troubleshooting machinery and equipment much more efficient writes  Kevin Zomchek of Rockwell Automation for Machine Design Sensors are essential in capturing basic diagnostics from industrial machines and equipment. As the people maintaining the machines are nearing retirement, a new, younger workforce is emerging that is comfortable with technology and the data that comes with it. As a result, manufacturers need to find ways to transfer that domain knowledge from the retiring generation into today’s smart machines to aid the upcoming generation of maintenance engineers. It will be key to manufacturer…

Laser system maker Trumpf has developed a femtosecond laser to weld glass light guides used in its own laser machines. Trumpf is currently building the laser welding system to mass produce glass protective caps for the laser light cables in its production plant in Schramberg, Germany. The caps would traditionally be glued to the cables. Using a femtosecond laser to weld the components reduces costs and increases the durability of the seam. Elke Kaiser, applications engineer at Trumpf, commented: ‘The laser system also serves as a pilot system to demonstrate to potential users that new, innovative laser methods are reliable…

In Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, developers of industrial automation and machine-to-machine systems are increasingly working together as the industry starts to grow, a new report from Frost & Sullivan has found. The analysts says that this collaboration will be crucial to the manufacturing value chain as the Industial Internet of Things (IIoT) inches towards efficient adoption. Currently Singapore and Australia lead IIoT adoption, while other countries are only starting to deploy machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies. Research from the analyst firm shows that the automotive vertical has the highest M2M software and services market revenues, coming in at 35%. Direct…

Porous, 3-D forms of graphene developed at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) can be 10 times as strong as steel but much lighter. A team of researchers at MIT has designed one of the strongest lightweight materials known, by compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon. The new material, a sponge-like configuration with a density of just 5 percent, can have a strength 10 times that of steel. In its two-dimensional form, graphene is thought to be the strongest of all known materials. But researchers until now have had a hard time translating that two-dimensional strength…

The company, known formally as Shenzhen Huiding Technology Co., is among a crop of Chinese companies embracing technology and higher-margin products. Goodix, a supplier of mobile chips to Amazon.com Inc. and major Chinese smartphone makers, plans to begin shopping abroad for semiconductor and software developers to gain an edge in an increasingly competitive market. The company wants to become the world’s biggest supplier of fingerprint sensors, Chief Executive Officer David Zhang said in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. That will help again double its revenue in 2017, matching its pace of growth in the first…

Tesla is now producing lithium-ion battery cells at its “Gigafactory,” the massive plant just outside Reno, Nevada, that the company claims will become the largest factory of its kind in the world. The cells will be used for Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 energy-storage battery packs, at first. The company held a grand opening for the Gigafactory last year, but until now the factory has only assembled battery packs, and not the cells that go into them. Those cells have been imported by Panasonic, which partnered with Tesla on the Gigafactory and has been the sole supplier of battery cells…

Cinch is the brainchild of Jake Jackson, an avid camper and entrepreneur from Lancaster in the United Kingdomwho set out on the mission to find the perfect tent for festival-going. His search was thwarted when he was unable to find one which did everything he wanted it to. Jake’s vision was ambitious, yet simple: a tent should make camping fun, easy and cheap – not suck away your time, money and sanity. He wanted power. He wanted to access his tent from both the back and the front. He didn’t want to trip over guide ropes or tent pegs. And…

While we don't have a magic crystal ball, a combination of what we've seen in 2016, plus one or two murmurs from the supply chains, gives enough clues to be able to make some fairly educated guesses about what's ahead. Samsung will be back with more than one flagship phone Apple is expected to launch at least two new iPhones in 2017 LG unveiled the G5 in 2016 at Mobile World Congress 2016 also saw the arrival of Google's new Pixel phone The smartphone tech of 2017 We may not see a huge leap forward in the evolution of the…