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Sanity in phone chargers
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 13:22.
There are 185 million cellphones sold in Europe every year, meaning that at least that many cellphone chargers come with the phones. And it is likely that 185 million old chargers get tossed out or sit in drawers when that new phone is purchased. But over the next four years, cellphone makers of "data enabled" phones will standardize on mini-USB jacks for the chargers. It will reduce the waste, but also should lower the price of phones slightly, as it should be possible over time to skip including a charger with a new phone.
Email--not all it's cracked up to be
Submitted by acohill on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 09:02.
There are two kinds of spam--the obnoxious stuff that is clearly junk, and then what I call "legitimate" spam, although the word "legitimate" is probably not the right word to describe it.
Every morning, I have to wade through a bunch of email from legitimate firms offering legitimate services--business seminars, webinars, conferences, deals on their products. All real stuff, but also stuff I'm rarely interested in.
Email is a powerful tool that really has transformed the way we work, but we still don't have good, well understood rules for using it. In my view, most of these companies are abusing their email privileges by bombarding me with their email promotional offers. They think that sending one email or a week or even one or two a month is no big deal, but every firm that ever glompfed onto one of my email addresses is doing the same thing, which leads to the daily clogging of my inbox. And what that means is that I rarely bother to read any of them.
And in our personal lives, we also still don't have a good grasp of when and when not to use email. Look at this mess with the Governor of South Carolina. Somehow the private emails between him and his Argentine "friend" became public, and they are barely safe for work. What the heck was he thinking? If you are going to have an affair, at least have the good sense not to document it in electronic missives that often end up being backed up in numerous places beyond your control. If anyone thinks that using a Gmail account with a fake name somehow provides some protection, think again. Any electronic service provided by firms like Yahoo, Microsoft, or Google never throw away anything, because those emails can be mined for marketing info.
I don't know if Sanford was using Gmail to correspond with girl friend, but if he was, I can almost guarantee that ads for cheap travel to Argentina were popping up every time he logged into his Gmail account.
I'm reminded of the crusty old sergeant in "Hill Street Blues," who ended the morning staff meeting with the same admonition every day: "Be careful out there." The Internet is a messy place--businesses that want to attract customers need to be careful about spamming--even if they have the best of intentions, and we need to be careful about whom we correspond with and under what conditions. Email, like diamonds, can be forever.
Find an online degree, TED talks
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 07:37.
Here is an interesting site that just started up--it provides a quick way of finding online degree programs. Whoever is running probably hopes to eventually get some advertising income from it, but nonetheless, it's a useful site. The site also has a blog, with only a few entries, but it has a list of 25 TED talks "that will change your life." I don't know about life changing, but some of the TED talks I've watched have been really good. TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design," and is a small, invitation only conference held annually. The conferences tries to have a wide range of interesting people each year that are prepared to share ideas freely, and as I noted above, some of the talks can be quite good--the kind of lectures you wish you had in high school or college but rarely got to experience.
Blogs predict the future of social networking
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 08:04.
A story in the New York Times about the decline in blogging suggests the future of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools. It turns out that only about 5% of all identifiable blogs have been updated in the past 120 days. Put another way, 95% of blogs have been abandoned for all intents and purposes. I have always maintained that blogging is about writing, not about publicity or fame. If you like to write, blogging is easier (though not necessarily easy). If you don't have writing in your blood, blogging is just plain hard work.
Fast backward seven years to 2002 as the blogging craze was taking off, and if you believed all the techno-pundit hype, we were all going to be bloggers. I never believed it, and we are now going through the same overwrought hype with things like Facebook and Twitter. Five years from, both tools will still be around, but most people will have moved on and will use Facebook and Twitter for a few well-defined and generally narrow purposes, and that's it.
The problems with BPL
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 16:38.
I sat through a presentation by an electric utility on their BPL (Broadband Over Powerline) offering. The company is committed to being able to provide broadband connectivity to their rural customer base, which is terrific. They should be commended. But the service starts at 256 kilobits for $30 and ends at 3 megabits for $90. The system requires that the electric company install repeaters at least every 3500 feet, or about every half mile, throughout the entire service area--active electronics spaced more closely than DSL (another copper-based technology). And fiber signals can be transmitted tens of miles before needing repeaters. The firm has been testing the system for more than two years and is still not ready to offer it because it is susceptible to noise, which reduces the available bandwidth (fiber has no noise or interference issues). The representative called the system "very complex," and said, "...it looks simple, but it is very complicated, as we are finding out." What may save the experiment is that the firm intends to roll out smart grid energy conservation and meter reading services, and the savings there may help pay for the equipment and maintenance. But the local region will still have "little broadband" compared to other rural areas rolling out fiber (which also supports smart grid uses).
Google Squared still has rough edges
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 07:57.
Google Squared is an odd little Google experiment that the company just released, probably to try to counter the even odder Wolfram Alpha search tool.
Each tool is different from each other, and each tool tries to apply analysis to search requests, as opposed to the "old fashioned" search that just dumps a list of unfiltered results in your lap.
Wolfram Alpha comes from the company that developed Mathematica, an extremely powerful piece of software used by mathematicians, scientists, and math teachers and students. Alpha tries to provide quantitative analysis to search requests. This works quite well if you enter things like math formulas or chemistry formulas. But if you enter something like "Blacksburg Virginia" it decides you must be interested in two places: Blacksburg, Virginia and Virginia, Minnesota, and computes the distance and straight line flight time between the two places. Huh?
Google Squared tries to take search requests and turn them into a tabular format. This seems to work quite well if you are shopping for something, but many other search terms I tried seemed to confuse it.
Kindle competitors on the way with more tablets
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 07:44.
The CrunchPad may be available soon, and it is likely to be just one of many competitors to the newly emerging tablet market. The Amazon Kindle will be remembered as the first, but like many first to market devices, it may not outlast the competition. The CrunchPad is an inexpensive (projected to sell for $299) tablet designed primarily for Web browsing, but it is likely it can or will do more over time. The obvious other application would be viewing PDFs, which would put squarely in competition with the Kindle, which was designed primarily for ebooks.
We are all going to end up with a tablet, and the big loser will be laptop makers. I don't really need to lug around a five pound laptop while traveling. I need to check email, access the Web, and do presentations--all things an inexpensive tablet can do with low power processors and no hard drive.
Expect to see lots of new business models emerge around the tablet as well. AT&T got the religion early with the enormous success of the iPhone, which has captured an enormous segment of the mobile Web traffic out of all proportion to its market share--because it does a great job as a Web browsing device. AT&T is planning a tablet device that either has 3G wireless connectivity built in and/or simply accesses the AT&T wireless network via a companion AT&T cellphone.
Amazon's business model is based on selling books. And I'd be amazed if there are not some news publishers looking at including a tablet as part of a newspaper (newstablet?) subscription. In fact, a smart newspaper would look at selling newstablets at a lost (e.g. $99) and then drastically cutting the cost of a daily news subscription.
We're still only baby steps into the Information Revolution and the Knowledge Economy, but low cost, high performance broadband access is going to make the world go round. Communities that lack the telecom infrastructure to enable these emerging devices are going to see their business and jobs growth head into negative numbers.
Hulu Desktop is the future of "TV"
Submitted by acohill on Sun, 05/31/2009 - 07:56.
I downloaded and installed Hulu Desktop this weekend, and I have seen the future of TV. The folks that designed this paid careful attention to the user interface, and the overall look and feel of this software is terrific. It is easy to browse, and you can drill down quickly into a specific area (e.g. Movie Trailers, TV Shows). I have a feeling the designers spent a lot of time looking at the iTunes Store and Apple's Cover Flow interface, because there are not only similarities, but improvements.
If I was a cable company senior manager, first I'd spend some time curled up in a fetal position bawling for Mommy. Then I'd call an emergency meeting of my staff and create an emergency task force to find a new business to get into, like becoming an open access digital transport provider. Once I did that, I'd call Hulu and make a deal to carry their "TV" programming.
Other losers: Google. Google senior execs should also visit the curled up fetal position, because Hulu has completed short-circuited the Google game plan. Hulu has cut out the Web browser, meaning Google will never see a single penny of ad revenue from Hulu Desktop. YouTube, which is a Google company now, is also a big loser. Compared to the stunning quality and ease of use of Hulu Desktop, YouTube looks like some old TV show from the sixties in black and white. In other words, YouTube looks old and tired.
Will the iPhone save Sirius XM?
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 14:41.
Sirius XM has released screen shots of its iPhone app for the radio service. The iPhone software will be free, but there will be a $3/month fee to listen to a select group of Sirius XM channels. In other words, for a very modest $36/year, you get Sirius XM on your phone.
Some pundits are pooh-poohing the development, but the iPhone software opens up new possibilities for Sirius XM subscribers without the requirement to buy the specialized hardware. The most likely new subscriber base will come from home-based listeners who want access to Sirius XM in the house but don't want the bother of buying the radio add-ons. If you have an Internet connection, in home WiFi, and some sort of iPod/iPhone stereo (there are hundreds of them), you can drop your iPhone in the base and listen to your favorite Sirius XM channel. This is already being done, using some of the Internet streaming services, but Sirius XM's paid content brings a lot of content you can't get for free.
This gets Sirius XM out of the car and into homes, at a reasonable cost. And it begins to move the company away from dependence on the satellite distribution model, which has always been a limiting factor.
Disintermediation: Who loses in the TV wars?
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 13:19.
Hulu continues to push the envelope. The popular streaming video site has a lot of TV shows on it, and it just released a Macintosh application so that you can watch TV shows on Hulu without the bother of using a Web browser. It means a better viewing experience with higher quality.
It also means that the disintermediation of the TV business is well underway. The Internet is forcing out costly middle man businesses that were vital and necessary parts of the distribution chain in the old days, ten years ago, but are no longer needed. The rise of broadband and Apple's iTunes store was the end of the music store on Main Street--there are hardly any left.
In the TV business, the cable and satellite TV companies are the middle man. They don't own the content, they just pass it along. But if you can watch American Idol on Hulu via your Internet connection, why pay $60/month for cable TV service? We've been here before. The Internet is relentless, and the new is forcing out the old. The cable TV companies could remain viable, but they can only do so by changing their business model and becoming an open access transport system. They could actually make more money by doing so. But so far, none of them seem willing to even consider it. So they will likely go the way of the music store. In ten years, cable TV will be completely gone.
The coming boom in server farms
Submitted by acohill on Sun, 05/24/2009 - 11:01.
Here is a story about the state of North Carolina trying to entice Apple to place a 100 job server farm in the state. With unemployment in North Carolina nudging 11%, state officials are smart to try to attract Knowledge Economy businesses, and server farms are a growth industry. The massive amounts of data being stored "online" have to reside in a physical place, and the companies that are making a business out of this (e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and many smaller firms) have several requirements.
They have to spread these data centers out for security reasons--fires, floods, and terrorism can happen almost anywhere, so no reputable firm wants to store all its data in one place. So they have multiple data centers, each storing complete copies of all the data. Second, spreading the centers out helps speed data to and from its destination. Different data centers will deliver data to customers based on customer location.
When picking sites for these server farms, these companies are, of course, looking for tax benefits, but your community won't get on the short list unless you have local fiber, good fiber routes out to major Internet switchpoints, and reliable electric power.
All things that are relatively easy to get started on if you want businesses of the future.
Let the netbook wars begin
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 05/20/2009 - 08:42.
Connectivity via the cellular network is also appealing, as the long hyped vision of massive WiFi clouds everywhere and universal net access via WiFi has never materialized. Airports are particularly aggravating, with a range of options--at one end, you have the excellent free WiFi in the Roanoke airport to places like Atlanta where you have a choice of several overpriced commercial WiFi services that offer poor service. And hotels are another trouble spot for travelers, with budget hotels offering free but often slow service and high-priced hotels charging extra for service that is often worse than the their competitor's free service. I'm still trying to figure that one out.
But it all adds up to using the cellular phone network for Internet access. The iPhone has spiked a huge increase in mobile access because of the excellent design and great software, and one of the nicest things about the iPhone, compared to a laptop, is that it works almost everywhere because of the cellular data connection.
But as more and more users migrate to the cellular data services, the cellular networks will overload quickly. AT&T's heavily advertised 3G network is nearly useless, and I don't even bother to turn it on, because I usually get dropped calls and slower data speeds than the slower but more reliable Edge service. Wireless remains an expensive business, with steep operating costs. But we all want mobility access to the network. Communities planning broadband infrastructure have to be thoughtful about wireless investments, because it's possible to spend a lot of money on wireless broadband and not have very much when you are finished.
Sprint WiFi hotspot solves a lot of problems
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 05/13/2009 - 13:02.
Sprint's new mobile hotspot is cool. It is a little credit card size data only cellular data modem. Cellular modems have been around for awhile, but they typically have a USB port and you plug them into your laptop. This one has no ports. Instead, it creates a WiFi hotspot that can be used for Internet access by any WiFi device--your laptop, your iPhone, your iPod Touch, even your home network. It comes with a two year contract for $150, and it will likely be popular for business travelers who often get stuck shelling out $7-$10 a pop just to check email while sitting in the departure lounge of the airport. And don't get me started on the hotels that charge you $250/night and then expect you to pay another $10/day for Internet access. If you used it just once or twice a month instead of having to buy daily access, it would be a good deal.
North Carolina anti-broadband bill sent back to committee
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 08:44.
A grass roots effort in North Carolina to beat back an anti-broadband bill in the legislature has apparently had some effect, as the bill was sent back to a committee for more study. Opponents of the bill think that's good enough for now, although most of these bills continue to re-surface year after year.
Now for some good news: Warp drive may be possible
Submitted by acohill on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 08:55.
I'm not holding my breath, but some scientists think the Star Trek "warp drive" could be possible. They make it sound so easy--instead of trying to accelerate a space ship to speeds faster than light, all you have to do is "move a chunk of space time" with the ship inside the space time bubble. Sounds good to me, but I suspect moving a chunk of space-time continuum takes a lot of energy. So next up: find a source of dilithium crystals.
Kindle: Will it save newspapers?
Submitted by acohill on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 08:51.
The new Kindle DX by Amazon is out. It's a bigger version the older Kindles, and the main feature is a much bigger screen. The gadget cost $489, but some of that goes toward the free connectivity on the Sprint cellular network. You can download books and news via the wireless link, and recent novels start at $10.
While leveraging almost everywhere cellular connectivity is clever, it limits the device's usefulness as a substitute for a full-fledged computer for Web access. The slower cellular data speeds are fine for downloading a book and then reading it offline, but trying to read the New York Times in the morning over a cellular data link is likely to be pokey, and the whole connectivity model does not scale up well once lots of people have the device. AT&T's 3G network can barely handle the still small number of iPhones.
Kindle will pave the way for better devices with color screens and WiFi connectivity to news and books. Kindle may also help publishers finally make the pricing and business model shift to better accommodate selling books in electronic format.
But there is still another shoe to drop: Apple has been making veiled hints about "new and interesting" devices, that many think could be a tablet iPhone. It would not take much to do that, as the iPhone is already a full-fledged computer running a modern, open source version of Unix. If Apple releases a tablet version of the iPod Touch this summer (an iPhone without the cellular phone but everything else), Kindle will fade quickly into obscurity.
Alcatel supports municipal broadband
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 07:54.
From the good folks in Wilson, NC, an excerpt from a letter that fiber equipment manufacturer Alcatel wrote in support of the right of communities to improve broadband services. Good for Alcatel. In part, it is probably a business decision, which makes it even more interesting--the company must know that municipal broadband efforts are good business.
Broadband Properties: Fiber and economic development
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/01/2009 - 10:18.
I am back from three days at the Broadband Properties annual conference. As more communities make investments in broadband infrastructure, we are beginning to get some interesting data back on the economic impact.
In Anson, Indiana, a developer is putting duct and fiber to 1790 homes and 9 million square feet of commercial and retail space--all part of a master planned community. The investment has brought an Amazon distribution center and 1200 jobs to the community.
In Orlando, Florida, the Lake Nona planned community is building one of the nation's largest set of medical facilities, with more than 5 million square feet of specialty clinics, hospitals, and medical facilities. One million square feet of retail is planned, and 5400 housing units are being built. There will be fiber to every single premise.
In the rural Hill Country near Austin, Texas, the local telephone coop is building fiber to the home, and says that the initiative has retained 150 jobs and added 200 new jobs. The coop works closely with local economic developers, who are pushing hard to get the right telecom infrastructure to be able to meet any business need.
Economic developers in other parts of the country need to be asking: "How do our regions compare with these kinds of projects? How will we convince companies to come to our region when these other communities have world class telecom infrastructure?"
Rural broadband is creating job opportunities
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 12:49.
From Beaumont, Texas, an interesting article with some good anecdotal data about newly emerging job opportunities where high performance, affordable broadband is available in rural areas. And where it is not, people are actually renting commercial office space to do jobs that could be done from home--a very sad state of affairs. Nationwide, millions of new jobs could open up in rural communities if the right kind of affordable broadband is available.
Nielsen: 2000% increase in video delivered by the Internet
Submitted by acohill on Thu, 04/23/2009 - 14:15.
A new report by Nielsen says time spent watching video online has increased in the past five years by 2,000%. And the number of people watching video online is increasing by 10% per year, meaning in about seven years, everyone will be watching video on the Internet. TV is dead, dead, dead.
And as I have been saying for years, the Internet business model being used today by the incumbents and smaller providers is upside down and unsustainable--bandwidth by the bucket does not work when users are asking to refill the bucket faster and faster each day, week, and month. And charging to refill the bucket does not scale up, as the bandwidth quickly becomes unaffordable when watching lots of video.
The solution is to change the business model. It's not hard, and the incumbent providers would actually make more money after the conversion. But some of them are going to go bankrupt rather than admit they need to change.