By 2009 he was selling a stand-alone system that delivered wireless Internet access complete with antennas, base stations and other gear, all running on proprietary software.

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With a VESA mount, you can hang it in your bedroom and use Windows Media Center to pull in content from your main PC or even plug in a digital cable tuner and use it as a stand-alone entertainment system.

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Such deeper integration could mean Facebook is no longer a stand-alone mobile app but part of the operating system's building blocks.

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Two weeks ago Striiv released a free stand-alone iPhone app to make its social motivation system accessible to everyone, including people that don't require the advanced tracking capabilities of the Striiv Smart Pedometer or Striiv Play.

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In December, when it becomes a stand-alone company, AOL will begin to tap a new digital-newsroom system that uses a series of algorithms to predict the types of stories, videos and photos that will be most popular with consumers and marketers.

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The new technology platform can be embedded in an existing design or operate as a stand-alone unit, with options to compute the location locally or transmit the information to a remote system which can process the data before visualising it on a smartphone app.

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