All posts by Lisa Baker, Editor

Entertainment, News, Technology

Digital Entertainment Asset Named Champion of Startup World Cup 2024 Tokyo Round

Digital Entertainment Asset (DEA), a leading Singapore-based global Web3 entertainment company that operates the PlayMining GameFi platform, emerged victorious at the Tokyo Regional Round of the esteemed “Startup World Cup 2024”. This competition stands as one of the most significant global business pitch contests worldwide, showcasing cutting-edge innovations and entrepreneurial talent. Hosted by Pegasus Tech Ventures on July 19, 2024, DEA secured the top spot and will now represent Japan at the World Finals scheduled to take place in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, this October.

Founded in August 2018, Digital Entertainment Asset Pte. Ltd. (DEA) has positioned itself as a key player in the Play-to-Earn (P2E) gaming landscape, offering innovative solutions through its PlayMining platform and NFT marketplace. With a focus on addressing societal issues through Web3 gaming, DEA’s mission extends beyond entertainment to drive meaningful impact and engagement. PlayMining, the flagship GameFi platform under DEA’s umbrella, aims to revolutionize traditional gaming mechanics through its Gamified Work model, powered by the DEAPcoin ($DEP) token. 


Innovative Gaming Solutions

DEA’s success at the competition was no small feat, as they stood out among 226 applicants to claim a spot as one of the 11 finalists. Co-CEO Yamada delivered a compelling presentation on DEA’s groundbreaking participatory social contribution game, “PicTrée – Grid Grab: Capture the Current,” alongside a remote-control robotics game, captivating the audience and judges alike.

One fascinating aspect of DEA’s innovative approach is their development of PicTrée, a collaborative mobile game created in partnership with TEPCO Power Grid, Japan’s largest electric power company. This game encourages players to venture into their local communities to capture images of power assets, fostering engagement and awareness while gamifying the experience. The game not only entertains but also serves a practical purpose by facilitating initial infrastructure maintenance and enhancing the early detection of abnormalities—a unique blend of entertainment and social impact.

Furthermore, DEA is actively working on a remote waste sorting game with the potential to address global labor imbalances. Through this game, players can engage in waste sorting activities using their smartphones or tablets, with the sorted waste being managed by robot arms at a distant factory. This initiative has garnered recognition and support, being selected for a subsidy program by Japan’s JETRO, showcasing DEA’s commitment to leveraging gaming for societal benefit.

Appointments, Charity & CSR, Law, News

Laytons ETL promotes Simrun Garcha to private client and charities partner

Laytons ETL, the City of London-based international commercial law firm, has promoted Simrun Garcha to the position of partner in its private client and charities team. Previously an associate partner, Ms Garcha has been with Laytons ETL since joining as a trainee in 2012.

Ms Garcha, who qualified as a solicitor in 2014, specialises in estate planning, probate, trust and charity law. She is a full member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), and a member of the Charity Law Association and the Association of Contentious Probate Practitioners.

Her expertise includes estate planning for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, setting up and administering trusts, and dealing with probate and succession, including cross border estates. She also advises charities and trustees on a broad range of governance issues.

Commenting on her promotion, Ms Garcha said, “The private client and charities team at Laytons ETL is highly respected both by our peers and our clients. We work on some genuinely fascinating, highly complex matters and, as a partner, I am really looking forward to continuing to build my practice and support the team’s work.”

In tandem with Ms Garcha’s promotion, longstanding partner Ian Burman has returned full-time to the role of head of Laytons ETL’s private client and charities team. Mr Burman, who founded the department in 1989, stepped back from the head of department role last year to focus on his own practice.

He has now returned to spearhead growth across Laytons ETL’s private client and charities department, as the firm embarks on an expansion drive.

Mr Burman is a leading authority in private client and charity law, and was chair of the London Central Branch of STEP from 2007 to 2011. He was a STEP committee member for 20 years.

Both Mr Burman and Ms Garcha are co-authors of Tolley’s Administration of Estates, the leading legal textbook in the field of estate administration.

In common with the rest of the firm, many of the matters handled by the private client and charities department are international in nature. In addition to its capabilities in estate planning and administration, contentious and non-contentious probate, trusts and charities law, the team is also able to call on the expertise of the firm’s tax practice, led by head of tax Marc Selby.

Ian Burman said, “The private client and charities team at Laytons ETL has undergone significant expansion and, with stretching but exciting growth targets in place firm-wide, it now feels like the right time to return to the head of department role. We have an incredibly strong team, with a wide range of capabilities, and are in a great position to take advantage of the many growth opportunities we are creating firm-wide.

“I would also like to congratulate Simrun on her well-deserved promotion to partner. I know she will play a key role in the continued development of our practice over the years ahead.”

Business

Infovista Appoints industry veteran Andrew Miceli to lead US market

Joins as VP Sales for US to drive sales and services operations

Paris, France – May 16th, 2022 – Infovista, the global leader in network lifecycle automation (NLA), today announced the appointment of Andrew Miceli as Vice President of Sales for the US, where he will be responsible for the growth and development of Infovista sales and services operations in the region. Building on Infovista’s proven track record with Tier 1 mobile and wireline carriers, Miceli will work with CSPs and Enterprises to help them benefit from Infovista’s network lifecycle automation approach.

Andrew brings over 28 years of Telecommunications industry technical sales and leadership experience to Infovista. He began his career in the US Army before taking on technical engineering roles at Anritsu and Acterna, and gained valuable expertise growing, transforming and leading high-performance US and global sales teams at Superconductor Technologies, Schema, Teoco (including their integration of Aircom), and most recently Ookla before joining Infovista. He is a graduate of LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas, and is a three-time Ironman triathlon finisher.

“The innovation that we’re seeing among US carriers and enterprises to use connectivity and communications to digitally transform their organizations is second to none,” said Faiq Khan, President of Global Networks at Infovista. “Andrew is one of those unique industry leaders who has experience of managing businesses involving all aspects of our network lifecycle automation portfolio: planning, test and measurement as well as service assurance. Equipped with the right mix of know-how and leadership, Andrew will be laser focused on ensuring we provide the most relevant networking products and solutions to our customers.”

“From Open RAN to private mobile networks, and from AI-powered automation to the cloudification of carriers’ networks and operations, the US market is among the most dynamic in the world,” said Andrew Miceli, VP Sales for the US at Infovista. “Infovista’s combination of technology innovation and proven customer deployments means it is perfectly positioned to work with operators and enterprises at every stage of their network lifecycle. It’s a great time to be joining Infovista, and I look forward to working with a talented team delivering, together with our partners, business value to US customers.”

Miceli will be joining Infovista’s executives and technology experts at the Big 5G Event 2022, sharing insights into how Infovista is today helping some of the world’s largest and most advanced networks benefit from the efficiency and business agility gains of the latest industry technology advancements, including 5G SA and Open RAN.

Infovista is a Gold Sponsor of the Big 5G Event 2022 and will be exhibiting on stand 425. To learn more about the NLA use cases and its portfolio of solutions for 5G network planning, testing and assurance, or to meet with Infovista during the Big 5G, please reserve a meeting with the team at the event.

5G

Robin.io to Accelerate 5G and Edge deployment and management at MWC#2022

  • Meet Robin.io at Booth #2E41 in Hall 2, Fira Barcelona Gran Via, February 28 to March 03, 2022
  • Robin.io will showcase live demonstrations on industry-leading use cases to accelerate, Orchestrate, Automate and Operate ORAN, CORE and EDGE at the booth.
  • Robin.io has created and is showcasing high-performing automated solutions that accelerate the path to cloud-native for 5G and Edge Network Service delivery.

San Jose, California: February 25, 2022: Robin.io, the world’s leading provider of Cloud Native Platform for Service Providers is participating at the world’s most influential event, Mobile World Congress – Barcelona, 2022. At MWC #2022, Robin.io and industry-leading partners aim to demonstrate to customers live use cases and future-ready stack on the new capabilities of 5G and Edge.

Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are facing huge 5G investment decisions over the next few years. Robin Cloud-native, flexible Kubernetes platform offers greater choice and agility to accelerate new connectivity and service options. Robin.io is already helping operators provide the 5G/MEC service promise with unmatched lifecycle simplicity, performance, scale, and advanced workload placement.

Mobile network operators (MNOs) are building their 5G network infrastructure with a new emphasis on cost effective performance. Robin.io is able to quickly bring their platform to deployment and also support 5G vRAN by using Intel Smart Edge – a cloud native based software platform that incorporates advanced Kubernetes networking for Telco deployment, real-time optimizations, 5G acceleration in FPGA or eASIC form factor, orchestration support, advanced observability, and also supports ORAN RIC use cases. Robin.io, as a Titanium level partner at Intel Network Builders Winners’ Circle, has incorporated Intel Smart Edge Open technology in our platform, running Cloud-Native Open RAN and Edge in production today. Robin.io will showcase 5G, ORAN & Edge use cases and demos, running on 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, at MWC.

Partha Seetela, CEO Robin.io, said, “Operators and Enterprises alike are embarking on a path to modernization and containerization of the 5G services including Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN), Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and Packet Core. Robin.io will accelerate these transformations and modernizations. We are excited to collaborate with our ecosystem of partner companies to automate service delivery of integrated Network services and solutions. We are showcasing these solutions with our partners at MWC #2022.”

Book your meeting here – https://www.robin.io/mwc-2022/

“The alliance with Robin.io enables us to provide CSPs with a differentiated cloud-native services portfolio. Multi-cloud orchestration, metal to service orchestration and management, and network function orchestration and management with a faster go-to-market approach are key to success,” said Rajiv Papneja, Head of Cloud & Network Services at Prodapt.

Robin.io has also partnered with industry-leading technology companies including QCT, Lekha Wireless, Blue Arcus, Kloudspot and 6wind that drive innovation across the enterprise and Telco markets. The collaboration aims to build a seamless automated cloud-native platform that brings a new level of automation and efficiency reducing infrastructure and operation costs and minimizing deployment time which boost the time-to-market of diverse 5G services and applications.

Mike Yang, President of QCT, said, “By partnering with Robin.io, we are modernizing 5G solutions and giving our mutual customers improved performance. This partnership significantly reduces the development time for Systems Integrators, CSPs and other strategic alliances by enabling a smooth path to integration and orchestration, which eases the cost and operational effort needed for productization.”

Ramu Srinivasaiah, CoFounder & Director of Lekha Wireless, said, “This collaboration enables us to deliver a turnkey solution to the private enterprise market. As we embark on this journey to integrate the network elements with Robin.io along with Blue Arcus, I see it is a unique partnership that can deliver a much-needed disaggregated 5G network to the market.”

Naren Yanamadala, CEO & Founder of Blue Arcus, commented, “We are excited about our partnership with Robin.io as this is an important milestone achieved as part of the collaboration initiated to address the 5G enterprise use cases.”

Blue Arcus offers a cloud-native 5G core, providing a reliable, scalable, and distributed autonomous network solution that helps mobile network operators and system integrators build their solutions to deploy IoT, Private/Enterprise Networks, MEC networks.

Mehran Hadipour, Vice President of Business Development and Tech Alliances, said, “Intelligent infrastructure and automation technologies is key consideration as the industry prepare to deploy 5G and Edge services along with Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN), Robin.io working with our partners will enable the industry and operators to deliver a significant number of new services with increased speed and lower latency and reduced cost with strict Quality of Service (QoS). Robin.io, along with partners, will bring cloud agility to deploy 4G and 5G RAN (DU, CU, Radio Controller), AMF, UPF, etc., on COTS hardware. Our joint solution brings centralized orchestration and automates deployment in minutes while allowing scaling to a million nodes and automating lifecycle management tasks.”

Harnessing data-driven digital solutions for CSPs, Ravi Akireddy – Founder & CEO, Kloudspot said, “Kloudspot is a cloud-agnostic Location and Situational Awareness and Location Analytics platform that rides on the Network edge infrastructure. Using AI and ML, Kloudspot will provide experiential insights and report into a lifestyle, workspace, health and safety, asset and infrastructure utilization for customers.”

Julien Dahan, CEO, 6WIND stated, “Our collaboration with Robin.io gives CSPs and Cloud Providers the option to deploy our Cloud-Native Virtual Service Router (VSR) solutions on Robin’s platform. 6WIND provides cloud-native VSR network solutions that deliver the performance and scalability needed by CSPs to fully unleash their agility and flexibility in defining innovative edge and core services, fully automated and dynamically adapted to evolving requirements. We are excited to partner with Robin.io, as we are able to jointly address CSPs and deliver best-of-breed solutions, including among others, a virtual security Gateway (vSecGW), a virtual Provider Edge Router (vPE), a virtual CG-NAT router (vCG-NAT), a virtual Cell Site Router (vCSR), that accelerate the 5G and Edge deployments”.

Robin.io embraces Cloud-Native technology standard deployments for 5G with significant economic and operational benefits for the operators.

At #MWC 2022, book your meeting here – https://www.robin.io/mwc-2022/

5G

Alibaba Nowcasting Delivers Precise Weather Predictions

Alibaba DAMO Academy, the global research initiative by Alibaba Group, has unveiled a cloud-based AI-powered nowcasting platform capable of predicting short-term weather conditions up to six hours in advance.

The Short-term AI Weather Forecasting Platform, now available to Alibaba Cloud’s clients in China, produces high-resolution imagery with one-kilometer grid spacing with updates available every 10 minutes. Capable of tracking rainfall and wind speed, as well as severe weather conditions such as thunder and hailstorms, the platform promises to deliver tangible value to weather-dependent sectors, including agriculture, logistics, transportation and renewable energy.

For farmers, a timely and accurate weather forecast can minimise damage to crops and livestock; couriers can schedule their routes efficiently on rainy days; and photovoltaic power stations can use cloud formation predictions to better prepare their electricity trading plans.

“Nowcasting has proven a critical technology to help various sectors make informed weather-related decisions. Global technology players are working hard to develop technology-based services that utilise reliable climate data from their respective countries,” said Rong Jin, Head of the Machine Intelligence Lab at Alibaba DAMO Academy.

“Using our cutting-edge algorithms and cloud technologies, we have significantly advanced our nowcasting capabilities in China. By doing so, we aim to help businesses meet their climate-related challenges and mitigate the risks of unpredictable weather,” Jin added.

The AI-based forecast platform, co-developed by Alibaba DAMO Academy and the National Meteorological Center in China, incorporates a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to effectively extract features from radar reflectivity and meteorological satellite images.

A trained machine-learning model is capable of performing highly accurate and close-to-real-time local weather forecasting in minutes, while Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) works to generate forecast images with exceptional clarity and detail. This AI-based prediction model outperforms the traditional physics-based model, for example the Global/Regional Assimilation and Prediction System (GRAPES) which requires hours to generate forecasting data, by increasing the speed and accuracy of reporting.

Alibaba is committed to using technology innovation to help solve the environmental challenges for industries that require actionable climate-related insights to support their daily operations. For example, grape farmers in Wuhan are using Alibaba Cloud’s IoT system to analyse data from the surrounding environment – including soil, humidity and sunlight – to better plan their water and fertiliser management, while pear farmers in Anhui province and pineapple farmers in Hainan province are benefiting from “modern digital farms”, powered by Alibaba’s latest cloud and AI technologies.