Chiayi, Tainan and Taoyuan have been named among the top seven Intelligent Communities for 2018, the New York-based think tank Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) said on Thursday.

The other four nominees in the list are Ipswich, Australia, Hamilton and Winnipeg, Canada, and Espoo, Finland, the forum said.

The Taoyuan government has signed an MoU with Microsoft Taiwan to recruit the latter's technological assistance to help the northern Taiwan city turn into a smart city.

Microsoft Taiwan will provide cloud computing platforms, big data analytics, AI (artificial intelligence) and MR (mixed reality) technologies. Microsoft Taiwan will offer BizSpark, a Microsoft program to help the city government operate startup business parks.

Taiwan’s major urban areas are best suited for advancement as smart cities, Virginia-based public-private partnership MeriTalk reported.

World-famous for its PC and motherboard manufacturing industry, Taiwan is primed for piloting smart city programmes, according to Taiwanese officials who attended MeriTalk’s Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) expo in Washington DC.

A delegation comprised of Taoyuan City Government officials, China Airlines Chairman Ho Nuan-hsuan, and Taoyuan International Airport Corporation President and CEO Shiau Deng-ke, led by Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan, visited the United States from July 4 to July 15 on the “2017 Taoyuan City Trade Delegation to the West Coast USA.”

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—Taiwan's Asian Silicon Valley project aims to foster the nation's domestic startups by offering more resources to entrepreneurs, said Minister of Economic Affairs Chih-Kung Lee (李世光) during the opening of 2017 Asia Silicon Valley International Summit Forum at Taoyuan City on Tuesday.

In addition, to seeking aid from foreign investments and companies, MOEA plans to form three large domestic enterprises, by merging small semiconductor, IoT, and self-driving car companies to compete with global players, said Lee.

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) Singaporean bike-sharing startup oBike launched its services in Taitung City, the seat of Taiwan's southeastern county of Taitung, on Saturday.

oBike, the first public bike rental system in the county, provided 500 bicycles for rent and will provide another 500 in the near future, Taitung County official Yu Ming-hsun (余明勳) said.

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Catching the bus just got a bit easier.

Google Transit, a real-time bus and railway tracking feature in the Google Maps app, officially launched in Taiwan on Tuesday.

Now instead of just seeing bus and metro choices in the Maps app, you can see the bus's estimated arrival as reported by the transit operator in real time.

New York, Oct. 19 (CNA) Five cities and counties in Taiwan -- Chiayi, Keelung, Tainan and Taoyuan cities and Yilan County -- were named Wednesday among the world's Smart21 Communities of 2017 by the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).

Also included were seven communities from Canada, four from Australia and one each from Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Taiwan sets its sights on becoming a global hub of tech entrepreneurship and Internet of Things research and development.

The Asian Silicon Valley initiative, one of five major industrial development plans outlined by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), aims to transform Taiwan into a research and development (R&D) hub for the Internet of Things (IoT) sector as well as a global center of tech entrepreneurship. The project, which will be carried out primarily in the northern city of Taoyuan, will include a raft of measures to boost domestic innovation and international collaboration on cutting-edge technologies and applications.

The Taoyuan City Government is to start its Autonomous Regulations on Developing Taoyuan City as a Low-Carbon-Emission and Green City (桃園市發展低碳綠色城市自治條例) plan next year.

Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) made the announcement during a city council meeting last week, saying that “developing policies to achieve low carbon emissions and ‘green’ city status is a flagship project of the municipal administration,” and the regulations, which were passed by the council at the end of December last year, are to take effect next year.