Photos of the month: April 2007

Driverless cars, RFID bookshops, wi-fi on the wing plus a dash of India...

This month's photo stories have featured some cutting-edge tech innovations - including driverless cars and bookshops crammed with RFID tech.

Above, a traveller on his way to the airport accesses the wi-fi now available on all Heathrow Express trains running to and from Paddington.

The service provides broadband access - at speeds of up to 2Mbps - to passengers on the 15 to 20 minute journey to the world's busiest international airport.

Find out how else business people can take advantage of the wi-fi service now being offered by the train company.

Photo credit: Gemma Simpson

Earlier this year silicon.com's Steve Ranger visited Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore to investigate the Indian technology industry.

This is a view across the Wipro campus in Bangalore. Around 20,000 people work at this site, which has basketball courts and other facilities including shops and a gym to keep the staff happy.

See more pictures from Bangalore's Electronics City, which is home to dozens of other high-tech companies.

For more news from India visit the special report.

Have you visited India to check out the outsourcing options? Or have you been affected by offshoring here in the UK? We want to hear your stories about India. Leave your comments below or email editorial@silicon.com.

Photo credit: Steve Ranger

This is one of the RFID scanners used in the Selexyz Maastricht BGN bookshop. The shop, housed in a striking 12th century church, is one of the first and most extensive rollouts of RFID tracking technology in the world.

Staff can use the handheld scanner - the beige box shown here - to read the tags held on the books. The titles are then displayed on-screen.

Find out more about how the bookshop is taking advantage of RFID.

Photo credit: Jo Best

This display shows the information used by a driverless car on show at London's Science Museum.

The car - developed by Hamburg-based Team-Lux - will take part in a driverless car rally towards the end of the year.

The coloured dots represent solid objects picked up by a number of laser sensors, which the car uses to avoid obstacles in the road. The car uses this information along with GPS data received by an antenna on the roof to locate itself and its immediate environment.

See what other smart tech is being used to bring driverless cars closer to reality.

Photo credit: Tim Ferguson

While on his India trip silicon.com's Steve Ranger spent a weekend in the country's tech capital Bangalore, where he attended the grand finale of Wipro's 'Sparks 2007' programme at the city sports stadium.

Staff from offices in Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin, Gurgoan, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune were divided into three groups to compete in activities from cricket, badminton and table tennis to chess and general-knowledge quizzes.

Have a look at more pictures showing what Bangalore tech workers get up to at the weekend.

For more news from India visit the special report.

Photo credit: Steve Ranger