The Future Is More Than Facebook

The frenzy over Facebook is unprecedented.  There are many interesting dimensions to the story; the most interesting to me, is how the insiders are upping the number of shares they plan to unload on the public.  This does not give one confidence — that those with the most information have decided to reduce their long-term holdings the day before the company becomes public.  I am sure there will be a lot of coverage about that in the days ahead.  The more interesting story was presented by Rich Karlgard in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning (See Rich Karlgaard: The Future Is More Than Facebook). Rich believes that the tech bubble is large, but more importantly he believes that social media is not the most important area of innovation.  He doesn’t ditz social media, but urges consideration of more important areas needing innovation including transportation, energy, electricity, food production, water delivery, health care, and education.  Great list! Rich poses the question for those who need to go places, which they most value: An iPad, a Facebook membership, or a car.  By 2050 there may be 9 billion people and 3 billion cars.  Will we have the right fuels and road access? Perhaps the Google driverless car is more important than Facebook groups.  In the world of manufacturing, a lot of smart money is going into 3-D printing, which can make physical objects from an artisanal model.  Rich believes that “Made in the USA” is about to stage a major comeback.  In the area of energy, who would have predicted that North Dakota would overtake Alaska in oil production.  Horizontal drilling technology is changing the world.  Rich poses a second choice: If America could have only one, would it choose Facebook, Twitter, or horizontal drilling? I agree with Rich that America remains the world’s innovator and is a country without limits.

Tags: 3D printing, bubble, energy, facebook, Google car, horizontal drilling, IPO, social media, technology, venture capital

Spectacular High-Res Image of Earth

The iPhone 4S takes great pictures, but nothing like this spectacular high-hes image of Earth. NASA Goddard oceanographer Norman Kuring gathered images from six different orbits of the satellite over an eight hour period last month. He stitched the six photos together to create the final masterpiece. I suspect it will be famous. The images were taken by a new instrument aboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) Earth observing research satellite called the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). It collects and distributes remotely-sensed land, ocean, and atmospheric data to the meteorological and global climate change communities. Among the data collected are atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, humidity sounding, land and ocean biological productivity, and cloud and aerosol properties.  As for those four vertical lines: that’s the reflection of sunlight off the ocean, or “glint”, that VIIRS captured as it orbited the globe. See Spectacular High-Res Image of Earth: The Other Side | Wired Science | Wired.com for the full story.

Tags: earth, nasa, NPP, photograph, satellite, space, suomi, virs

Connecticut’s Power Woes – Epilogue

We got power restored at 5:17 PM on Monday night after an eight-day outage. As of 10 AM today (Thursday) there were still 1,124 customers in Connecticut not yet restored with electricity. Although that is less than 1% of the customers in the state, it represents several thousand people who are without power for a twelth day. No doubt there are some extreme and extenuating circumstances that are making it difficult for the repair crews to get back to 100%. The power company has offered to pay for an independent consulting study to examine disaster preparedness. That seems like a good idea. I hope they look carefully at the role that technology could play in the logistics of identifying the outages with precision and planning the optimum priorities for restoration. If every transformer had a sensor that could continuously report its status could that help? There are more than 100 million Apple iOS devices out there that, if their owners chose to activate the “Fine Me” feature, can have their location be identified by Apple’s iCloud. Does the electric company have a real-time display of their entire network that shows what is up and what is not? Can they deploy repair crews in a way that maximizes the restoration of power in the shortest time? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I hope they do. It seems to me that sensors could help a lot. The sensors would be powered by the electricity at the pole. The data could be sent using BPL technology that has been around for many years. If a pole or transformer stopped reporting, that would mean it has lost power and that would be reflected in the overall map of the electricity network. Analytical models could be used to create the repair strategy that makes best use of available resources. This might work better than having the need for 196 Connecticut politicians all calling for priority to their towns.

Tags: connecticut, electricity, generator, power, storm

Connecticut’s Power Woes Nearly Over

We got power restored at 5:17 PM last night after an eight-day outage. As of 2 PM on Monday there were still 53, 103 customers not yet restored with electricity. That is 4% of the customers in the state. Someone today told me the average household is three people. If so, that means there are more than 150,000 people without power for a ninth day.

Tags: connecticut, electricity, generator, power, storm

Connecticut’s Power Woes – Update

This eveining marks the end of the eighth day without power for a large number of people in Connecticut. As of 5 PM on Sunday there were 89,629 customers not yet restored with electricity. That is 7% of the customers in the state. If there are just two people per customer account, that is nearly 200,000 people. In the town where I live, there are 2,063 customers (19%) still without power. The electric company had projected 99% restoration by tonight. They have now revised that estimate to noon tomorrow for most towns. That will be nine days. One thing for sure is that there will be a lot of finger pointing about why it has taken so long. When two feet of wet snow falls in eight hours on trees that still have their leaves, it is no surprise that thousands of trees were damaged. We estimate 15 on our property. Many of the thousands of trees that came down were sharing narrow New England roads with 20,000 miles of electric lines. There are many questions to be answered. What is a reasonable expectation to clear the roads and repair the thousands of wires, transformers, and other equipment? Was the state adequately prepared? Is there anything that could have been done to minimize the damage from such a storm? If we had known two weeks in advance, what would have been done? It seems to me the issue may be logistics. How do you organize the crews, set the priorities, and execute the work in the fastest possible way? Europe invested in putting electric utilities underground decades ago. To do that now in this economy and with the regulatory approvals that would be needed seems impossible. If that is the case, then it comes down to logistical planning for the next storm.

Tags: connecticut, electricity, generator, power, storm

Connecticut’s Power Woes Outshine Rest

Hurricane Irene was devastating to Connecticut, but the storm this past weekend is said to be five times worse. That has been the case for me and my family. I feel very fortunate to have a propane generator and I empathize with the one million people in Connecticut who were without electricity painfully long. Now in the sixth day since the storm, more than half of the people in the town where I live are still without power. It was no consolation to see a story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday saying no state had gone dark like Connecticut (See Connecticut’s Power Woes Outshine Rest – WSJ.com) The article said there were three factors contributing to the extreme situation. First is that the electric company has cut their staff and outsourced their line crews. Second is that there is no county level coordination, leaving all 196 towns hounding the governor and the electric company for priority. The biggest factor is that Connecticut has 20,000 miles of electrical lines attached to poles that share space with a state densely populated with trees. Priority went toward providing access to the hundreds of roads that lost access with fallen trees.

Since the generator was installed ten years ago, it has served us at least a half-dozen times. I got some more education about generators this time. The generator went into action late Saturday night. Around 10 AM on Sunday it stopped. When I got through the 15 inches of snow to the generator, I found the Fault Indicator light on. What was the fault? The newer generators have a wireless option so you can connect them to a local area network and see what is going on. After an hour or so, I got to our service provider who suggested I check the oil. It never occurred to me that oil might be the problem, but sure enough, the oil was low, and of course I did not have any oil available. My son and his family were on the way to stay with us–their town nearby was 95% without power–and he brought some oil. We added two quarts plus some antifreeze and the generator roared back to life. Things returned to semi-normal. Four days later the generator stopped again. Two more quarts of oil brought it back to life.

I thought I had planned the emergency power distribution well, but not so. The refrigerator and freezer, heat, well pump, home automation, network infrastructure, office lighting and TV, were all covered. Somehow, I overlooked kitchen receptacles. A few extension cords here and there enables all the essentials. The only problem remaining would be AT&T.

AT&T is consistently ranked as having the worst customer service. I always thought Comcast was the worst (many stories about them here in the blog), but AT&T has taken over as my favorite worst! The iPhone and iPad have had weak signal for some time and today it deteriorated to barely useable. Tech support said the tower closest to us has been failing for 15 days! They expect to have a status update in 48 hours. That is the wireless story. The wired story is worse. At 10 AM Tuesday morning, the TV in my office abruptly changed from CNBC to “Television signal has been lost”. The telephone dial-tone and Internet service went dead at the same time. The advantage of AT&T U-Verse providing all three services through one connection turned in to a disadvantage. I suspect the problem was that in the process of dealing with the thousands of downed trees and electrical wires that some collateral damage occurred during the repairs.

I am sure there were some very smart hard-working crews on the case, away from their families, and without all the resources they needed to get the network back up and running. My disappointment with AT&T is that their support structure does not gather status information nor projected repair times. The electric company website shows a map by town with how many customers there are and how many are out of service. The status by town is updated every 15 minutes. They also post a projected time when electricity will be restored. Not AT&T.

I think AT&T is trying hard but they are a long way from getting it right. They answer quickly and then ask you the usual questions about account #, name, address, and security code. After telling them the problem is that you have been without service for 8 hours, they transfer you to tech support who then asks you for your account #, name, address, and security code. Then after waiting for a half-hour they tell you that service is out in your area, people are working on it, and when they have fixed it, your service will be restored. That is the deepest insight you can get. No estimates, no causes, no explanations. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” One rep said the problem may be that I am using a generator! They all end with “Thanks for using AT&T”, even though you are not using it! Urerse was restored after 32 hours.

Connecticut Light & Power said that their target for restoring service is 11 PM Sunday night. That will make the outage eight days. We are thankful that the town is able to provide water and shelter to those who need it. We are also blessed with a great hospital and dedicated staff that provided care to record numbers of patients in the emergency room.

Tags: connecticut, electricity, generator, power, storm

Wired Disruptions – 2011

The train ride early Tuesday morning from Connecticut to Grand Central was followed by a subway ride to Bowling Green with a stop at Wall Street. It was then a short walk along Battery Park to The Museum of Jewish Heritage to attend the WIRED Business Conference: Disruptive By Design. Attending technology conferences is a good way to keep connected with the latest trends and developments that are changing the world. The Wired Business Conference–they call it Disruptive by Design–was very well organized and loaded with interesting speakers. I missed the conference last year due to a calendar conflict, but comments from the first year’s conference are here.

Chris Anderosn, editor of Wired, kicked off the conference with a string of good sound bytes: the end of physical media, embracing change, disruption is the ultimate change. He used the tablet computer as an example. He didn’t say iPad, perhaps becuase the first speaker was Bill Gates. Another tangible example of disruptive change is the iPhone.  He gave Apple credit for re-imagining  what a phone could be and cited Google for having opened up the idea to huge numbers of innovators with Android. Chris said that one of the biggest dangers of cars today is texting, and Google’s autonomous cars may be the solution. Chris’s favorite topic is the decomcritizatin of production, and this came up in detail with other speakers.

A nice feature of the conference was that each attendee received a keypad to answer instant polls throughout the day. The first poll was to predict where the Dow would finish at the end of 2011. 63% said 14,100.

I have seen Bill Gates at many conferences over the years, but this is the first time that he never mentioned the PC. He was there to talk about about energy, mainly nuclear energy. He knows an incredible amount about the subject and is an investor in dozens of energy companies. He started by saying that the status quo is unacceptable. Energy is fundamental to just about everything. Reducing the cost of energy through technology could have more positive impact than anything a political leader could do. He discussed three key factors: cost, environment, and security. The good news about nuclear is that there hasn’t been any innovation and that very modest progress can make a huge difference. The 40-year-old designs did not have the benefit of computer simulation and simulation changes the game. New designs can permit a total and safe shutdown, no matter what catastrophe might occur. There are 400 reactors in the world: 100 in U.S., 70 in France.  Japan, China, and Russia growing their nuclear capability aggressively. There are 4 or 5 new 4th generation designs — one of them by a company Gates is an investor in. “Coal-based energy kills very large numbers of people, but only a few at a time, which politicians prefer.” Solar electric and solar chemical have the most long term potential but further breakthroughs are needed. Wind has to be subsidized by a factor of 2 and solar by 5. The amount of IQ working on energy is night and day more than years ago. An exception is ethanol, which has nothing to do with emissions — it is a farm subsidy. China works day and night to solve very difficult engineering problems and they likely will use robotics in making batteries for electric cars. If the entire U.S. was powered by nuclear, the waste could all be stored in one place for hundreds of years. Hydrogen doesn’t make sense. No mention of computers or software or tablets.

It was a superb day, featuring interviews and panels moderated by Chris Anderson and other Wired writers. A few more highlights follow. All of the content is available at wired.com.

Poll: Where do you consume most of your news 6% print, 51% web 31 % mobile devices.

Martha Stewart talked about how her company designs products and sells through others. $1.6  billion through Macy’s last year. She has built 21 kitchens of her own. She had some good soundbytes too: “There is always room for improvement.” What things did not work out well for you? “Going to jail.” “I love coming up with ideas.” Martha loves her iPad and doesn’t travel with a laptop anymore. She said you have to be where the customer is. “Always satisfy the customer.” “You must invest in the future if you are going to be in the future. Change is good.” I have heard her talk before and continue to be impressed. She is very progressive.

Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy and he has a vision to tutor billions of people online. He started Khan Academy on YouTube with a few ten minute segments for friends and family. He has now produced 2,100 online videos in math, science and the humanities, and has two million viewers per month watching hundreds of thousands of videos. Students work at their own pace. Teachers can monitor progress. A free world-class education for anyone anywhere. The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. “We are a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.” All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are free.

Poll: 39% said we are in a bubble but only the dumb will be hurt.

Nick Mountz CEO of Kiva Systems talked about networks of robots in warehouses that are part of a network that figures out where to go to pick up one of tens of thousands of products and take it to a packer who is packing packages. Kiva is revolutionizing physical distribution.

Poll: Future of U.S. manufacturing: 41% said high-value goods designed here and made overseas.

Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, and Chris discussed the trend to self-manufacture. Design at home, print it in 3D, or send your design to a company that makes it or makes it into a kit that you put together. TechShop has the machines that can fabricate whet you design. TechShop is a membership-based workshop that provides members with access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a community of creative and supportive people so you can build the things you have always wanted to make. They have three locations open and four more opening soon, including one in Brooklyn. The democritization of manufacturing has many implications. You can capture a 3D image with an iPhone–you take ten phontos and it can be made into a 3D design. You could take a picture of a piece of furniture in a store and then have it made — cheap. Self-manufacturing is at the prototyping stage but Chris and others think millions of people will want to do this.

The Wired conference is definitely on top of the latest trends. They were first to have an iPad magazine. Whether it is iPad or print, reading Wired allows one to know where things are headed. The added attraction of the conference, as always, is catching up with friends and colleagues from days past.

Tags: autodesk, bill bates, khan academy, kiva, martha stewart, self-manufacturing, techshop, wired

Batteries that Breath and Holographic Phone Calls

For many years IBM developed a ten year outlook every year and proudly presented it to executives inside and outside of the company. The TYO was a high-level glimpse into the future of technology. About ten years ago the TYO was stopped because the pace of technology evolution had reached the stage where the future that far out became very difficult to predict. As Yogi Berra said, “The future isn’t what it used to be.” Not that IBM is any less focused on creating the future. The company earned 4,186 U.S. patents in 2008, becoming the first company ever to earn more than 4,000 U.S. patents in a single year. IBM’s 2008 patent issuances exceed those of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google — combined. IBM now issues a five-year forecast annually of five specific technology shifts that 3,000 of its researchers see coming. The International Business Times reported briefly on IBM’s “Next Five in Five” list of five innovations expected over the next five years.

3-D images will not be limited to action movies on TV. A cell-phone call from a friend may be accompanied by a 3-D image of your friend. Videoconferencing is already gaining a lot of traction but when they can be conducted through holographic cameras that fit into cell phones, the virtual reality will become much closer to real reality.
Advances in transistors and battery technology will accelerate — potentially allowing electronic devices to function without charging 10 times longer than currently. Today’s lithium-ion batteries could be replaced by batteries “that use the air we breath to react with energy-dense metal, eliminating a key inhibitor to longer lasting batteries,” IBM said. The amount of energy needed by electronic circuits may be reduced to such a degree that a modest amount of physical motion may create sufficient energy to power them. Wrist watches exist that have no batteries and get their energy from movement of our wrists. Within five years, the same concept may be used to charge mobile phones.
Personalized commutes are another advancement seen by IBM scientists. New mathematical models and predictive analytics technologies will produce the best routes for daily travel. The models will take into consideration the patterns of travelers and various conditions to predict where traffic congestion is going to occur and then give you the fastest and safest route to your destination.
Human beings will also increasingly become “walking sensors,” IBM said. Within five years, sensors in your phone, your car, your wallet plus your texts and tweets will create data that will give scientists a real-time picture of the environment around you. A whole class of ‘citizen scientists’ will emerge using their sensors to create massive data sets for research. The result will be more effective efforts to fight global warming, save endangered species and track invasive plants or animals that threaten ecosystems around the world.
Finally, IBM said, scientists will find better ways to recycle heat and energy from the huge data centers that power the millions of web sites around the world. Up to 50 percent of the energy consumed by data centers goes toward cooling air. Most of the heat extracted is then wasted because it is just dumped into the atmosphere. New technologies, such as novel on-chip water-cooling systems developed by IBM will provide heat for buildings in the winter and air condition them in the summer.

They were not mentioned in IBM’s “Next Five in Five” list, but the company is making large investments in multiple dimensions of healthcare. Breakthroughs are a certainty and technology will play a major role in containing healthcare cost while improving outcomes for patients. Stay tuned at healthdiscussions.net for updates on this topic.

Tags: batteries, data center, energy, green, hologram, holographic, hvac, IBM, research, traffic

The Amazing Maize Maze

Here are a few pictures I forgot to include from the visit to Cherry Crest Adventure Farm. I also made a few minor changes to the mini website which contains the two wordles I created from the The Declaration of Independence and chapter one of Net Attitude. You can create your own wordle. Just visit the wordle page and paste some of your favorite text. Enjoy!

Tags: agri-tainment, grandchildren, maize, maze, pennsylvania, pennsylvania dutch, ronks, solar, wordle

The Amazing Maize Maze

Visiting the grandchildren is always a special treat. This weekend we took them to Ronks, PA in Lancaster County in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. The destination was Cherry Crest Adventure Farm where they specialize in agri-tainment. The huge working farm is a big treat for kids — they can be entertained and also learn. They saw just born baby chicks, learned about various aspects of agriculture, and participated in a number of the more than fifty activities offered. I was impressed with the 180 solar panels on a gentle hill that supplies 90% of the energy of the entire farm. The highlight of the day was the amazing maize maze.

They call it the world’s largest interactive game. The maze has 2.5 miles of trails through more than five acres of corn. Along the way you can find clues to a crossword puzzle and stickers that go on a game board. If you find all the stickers you will see the path to get to the exit. The record is 31 minutes. The maximum was seven hours! This was a very creative deployment that had no flat panels, tablets, PC’s, or WiFi connections.

If you want to make it an even fuller day when visiting the farm you can take an excursion from Paradise, PA to Strasburg, PA on the Strasburg Rail Road, the oldest shortline coal burning steam train.

Another creative idea is wordle. A former IBM researcher had the idea to build software that converts text to an attractive mural. The software examines the text and determines how many times each word was used. It then creates a graphic image of the keywords from the text and each word is sized depending on how many times the word appears in the text. I created two wordles to give you an idea of what wordle does. Give it a try with some text of your own.

The Declaration of Independence
Chapter One from Net Attitude

Tags: agri-tainment, grandchildren, maize, maze, pennsylvania, pennsylvania dutch, ronks, solar, wordle