TechLahore

Now this piece of news was interesting to me at multiple levels. First, since I travel quite a bit I’ve always wondered what the next generation of entertainment and business technologies available in-flight would be. Well, we now have an institution in our own neighbourhood that will be dedicated to improving the travel experience by providing newer media, information and communication tools to us as we are hurtling through the atmosphere in overgrown cigar tubes. Emirates has already rolled out back-of-the-seat USB ports in economy that allow a USB thumbdrive to be plugged in. You can then have access to your own documents and music in addition to the huge multimedia library already available through Emirates’ excellent “ICE” system. I am waiting with baited breath for new and even more useful innovations that might emerge from this lab.

 At another level, Dubai has done a fabulous job promoting itself, and there is a lot of multinational presence there. Thus far, though, most of the companies have focused on sales and marketing presence. There hasn’t really been much in the way of a development center or a true innovation lab. This Emirates/Microsoft joint venture changes that… definitely a good thing.

The Business Recorder reports:

Microsoft, Emirates to set up innovation laboratory in Dubai

KARACHI (February 04, 2008): Microsoft and Emirates announced they will set up an Innovation Lab in Dubai to develop new products and services for the travel industry using Microsoft’s cutting-edge technologies and tapping on Emirates’ expertise and experience in developing IT solutions for the aviation and travel industry.

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