TekTidbits

Solar Technology Takes Wing - New Solar Aircraft Unveiled in Switzerland

Today, everyone is talking about their "carbon footprint' - and many are doing home "staycations" in the name of environmentalism and the new green economy.  The aviation industry has a lot more to lose than high priced jet fuel if flying falls out of favor with the jetset as being green becomes more and more in vogue! 

Two inventors/pilots with a creative solution to this problem are Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg - their new Solar Impulse HB-SIA was showcased at a Swiss Airfield last Friday.  Although this craft joins the ranks of many other such innovations in renewable energy based aviation, it is designed to be able to fly all night.   After this year's test flight, a night flight is scheduled for 2010 to see if it can stay in the air for 36 hours, which is the goal. 

During the day, over 12,000 solar panels installed on the wings charge lithium polymer batteries while supplying the four 10-horsepower electric motors with power for flight.  At night, the battery banks take over.  

With that many solar panels and batteries, one would think that the Solar Impulse would be awkward due to weight.  Not so!  At 1.7 tons, it weighs about as much as the average car.   

The inventors of the Solar Impulse claim that their invention was created to prove that sustainable technology CAN be both profitable and viable for the transportation industry.  According to Piccard (as quoted by CNET):

"If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled solely by solar energy, let no one come and claim that is impossible to do the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air conditioning systems ,and computers."

Lets hope that this technology takes off soon, so we can again enjoy guilt-free vacations!

WisdomTap Makes Comparison Shopping Easy - Adds Spice to Consumer Electronics Sites

India-based WisdomTap has created a wonderful new way for power shoppers to make sure they are choosing the right product; Wisdom Rank.  Consumer retail stores who integrate this technology will save their customers hours of shopping, gasoline, and "shoe-leather".  

The core of this technology is a powerful XML-based engine that combs the latest and greatest blogs, expert sites, and social networks for product specific information, then sorts it by recency, relevance, and the strength of the source.  This is shown as a Wisdom Rank - with better products ranking higher than weaker products. 

This technology is offered both as a downloadable widget, and in a more sophisticated, customizable API form.  Either will serve to keep valuable customers on the site, provide them with credible information, and enhance SEO/SEM by providing keyword rich content. 

For example, the downloadable widgets look like this: 

  

 

When a site visitor clicks on the specific product name, he or she then can access ALL of the contents plus the weblinks from whence they came - broken down by categories such as Expert, Bright Light, Portrait, etc.   For example, here are the expert opinions on the Nikon d300 dx:

 

 

Each shows a simple thumbs up or thumbs down as well. 

 

WisdomTap plans to extend this technology into other areas in the future, but for now, it covers digital cameras and lenses, and cell phones.  What a great way to increase site conversions and drive new traffic to your site! 

 

You can sign up for a free trial at http://services.wisdomtap.com/ .   Personally, I hope it gets deployed for automobiles, car shopping is a real hassle. 

The EPA Finally Calls Greenhouse Gases a Public Threat - Duh!!

On April 2nd, the EPA finally woke up and proposed a ruling stating that greenhouse gases are a public threat.  Nahhh!   Where have they been these past ten years while scientists have documented again and again the effects of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride - to name a few, on human, plant and animal life? 

Am I alone in believing this action is long overdue?

From the content of the ruling:

The Administrator signed a proposal with two distinct findings regarding greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act:

• The Administrator is proposing to find that the current and projected concentrations of the mix of six key greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. This is referred to as the endangerment finding.
• The Administrator is further proposing to find that the combined emissions of CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, and HFCs from new motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines contribute to the atmospheric concentrations of these key greenhouse gases and hence to the threat of climate change. This is referred to as the cause or contribute finding.

Today’s proposed action, as well as any final action in the future, would not itself impose any requirements on industry or other entities. An endangerment finding under one provision of the Clean Air Act would not by itself automatically trigger regulation under the entire Act.

This last paragraph confuses me - why do a ruling if it will not create any requirements or sanctions?  It is my not-so-humble opinion that if there WERE sanctions, auto makers would have already put the best engineering minds to work such that we would all NOW be driving vehicles with zero greenhouse gas emissions.  As a side benefit, we would also no longer be dependent on people halfway across the world who hate us and would love to see us wiped off the face of the earth. 

The ruling does go on to state that the climate changes resulting from increased greenhouse gas emissions have serious national security implications.  Hopefully this phrase will grab the attention of lawmakers, and something will be done about adding some regulations with teeth. 

In my opinion, this ruling is just stating at length and in legal language something that most intelligent people have known for years - we are in deep doo doo and we needed to do something about it yesterday.

Those who think nothing can be done are insulting the collective intelligence of the world's science and engineering community - WE are who own this problem and we will find creative, new ways to solve it.  

I'm Baaaack!

After a long break, I am back at tech blogging.   My last meaningful post was in December - which is when my husband was diagnosed with liver cancer.  He passed away in March, and I am now working towards reestablishing my typical routine, which included blogging.  Watch for more meaningful and informative posts to come!

A GREAT Letter to Obama, From a Startup Guy

As originally posted on The Packet Rag December 7th - let's help Praveen get enough exposure so that Obama actually reads this well written letter! Perhaps some of his suggestions will even be taken, who knows?

Yet another memo to the president from a startup guy

With all the advice that our President-Elect is getting, I couldn't resist adding my favorite for his kind consideration. My request is shaped by what I see as an opportunity for America to retake the lead in telecom/datacom and dominate it for years to come.

Before I propose my idea, I wanted to take a shot at first figuring out how much you have to really spend on stimulating the economy. My guesstimate is that you'll need at least $1.1T/year of capital injection for the next couple of years to make up for what we have lost! Here is the un-scientific method I used to come up with this number:

As we all know, much of our economy in the past few years was driven by mortgage spending, military spending, and tax cuts. It is not easy to figure out how much money was really behind the mortgage market because of the multiplier effect (and the fact that we don't know the real decline in mortgage asset prices). So I took a short cut - According to Fannie Mae's numbers their ARM-based mortgage originations was over $750B in 2006 (this was as high as ~$900B in 2005, but came down to $400B in 2007 as the meltdown started).  I took this ARM-based financing component as a proxy for the bad mortgages in the recent past, and therefore assumed that this source of funding will be non-existent under the current tight-credit conditions. As a result, the $750B+/year inflow of money from the ARM-based financing market is all but over. Note that I am only looking at the spending at the top of the mortgage food chain - there are a lot of multiplier effects that result from this - i.e. the loans result in new houses being built, which creates demand for home builders/contractors/home equipment/kitchen equipment/ garden equipment/realtors/finance companies/etc.etc. So the true loss to the GDP from the mortgage disaster could be much more. For the sake of simplicity, I am ignoring Freddie Mac.

The rest of the $1.1Trillion/year was made up of  $200B/year in military spending and about $150B in tax cuts, both of which are slowly being clamped down. So we have to really make up for $1.1T+/year - Granted, my math is approximate - but I think it is in the ballpark of prviding a "baseline" to the minimum injection we need.

Clearly, this will become a huge debt burden if we invest in the wrong sectors. Furthermore, investments have to be made such that the resulting opportunities cannot be outsourced. One of the ways this can be done is by investing in technologies that are physically tied to this country. Also, we need to invest in sectors that will have a huge multiplier effect in creating jobs for multiple industries and across multiple regions within the US.

The creation of the Internet was a classic example of this - America pioneered the creation of the Internet by creating the ARPANET to interconnect our government/military and educational institutions, and as a result we reaped the rewards via high-tech growth in the 90's. We need something similar now. So here is the suggestion from my vantage point, and it will only cost a few billion and will have huge multiplier effects in multiple industries within the US.

Mr. President Elect, I request you to fund federal/state agencies and universities to deploy tele-presence voice-video infrastructure interconnected via high-speed networks. This has several benefits:

1. It will drive job growth in the telecom/datacom service industry in retooling networks for VoIP and Video readiness. This job growth will be broad-based across the entire countly.
2. It will drive the creation of more MPLS-capable networks, which drives the creation of jobs in the US service provider space
3. It will drive faster adoption of VoIP and Video in a business-to-business environment, which drives the creation of new business models in the service sector, and new startups that pursue these opportunities
4. It will drive new forms of government-to-people communication which will reduce wasteful spending and create new business opportunities (like how the Arpanet eventually led to e-commerce and B2B-commerce)
5. It will give certainty and confidence to VCs (who are sitting on hordes of cash) to invest in new/existing US-based startups to pursue opportunities in this space. The VCs will invest for opportunities that span the next 5-10 years, thus creating jobs in crucial hi-tech areas.
6. It will reduce the need for business travel and therefore help bring down our dependence on oil as well as reduce global warming
7. Most importantly, the build-out of such a US-based infrastructure will create and keep jobs in the US!

Thanks!

Praveen

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With all the advice that our President-Elect is getting, I couldn't resist adding my favorite for his kind consideration. My request is shaped by what I see as an opportunity for America to retake the lead in telecom/datacom and dominate it for years to come.

Before I propose my idea, I wanted to take a shot at first figuring out how much you have to really spend on stimulating the economy. My guesstimate is that you'll need at least $1.1T/year of capital injection for the next couple of years to make up for what we have lost! Here is the un-scientific method I used to come up with this number:

As we all know, much of our economy in the past few years was driven by mortgage spending, military spending, and tax cuts. It is not easy to figure out how much money was really behind the mortgage market because of the multiplier effect (and the fact that we don't know the real decline in mortgage asset prices). So I took a short cut - According to Fannie Mae's numbers their ARM-based mortgage originations was over $750B in 2006 (this was as high as ~$900B in 2005, but came down to $400B in 2007 as the meltdown started).  I took this ARM-based financing component as a proxy for the bad mortgages in the recent past, and therefore assumed that this source of funding will be non-existent under the current tight-credit conditions. As a result, the $750B+/year inflow of money from the ARM-based financing market is all but over. Note that I am only looking at the spending at the top of the mortgage food chain - there are a lot of multiplier effects that result from this - i.e. the loans result in new houses being built, which creates demand for home builders/contractors/home equipment/kitchen equipment/ garden equipment/realtors/finance companies/etc.etc. So the true loss to the GDP from the mortgage disaster could be much more. For the sake of simplicity, I am ignoring Freddie Mac.

The rest of the $1.1Trillion/year was made up of  $200B/year in military spending and about $150B in tax cuts, both of which are slowly being clamped down. So we have to really make up for $1.1T+/year - Granted, my math is approximate - but I think it is in the ballpark of prviding a "baseline" to the minimum injection we need.

Clearly, this will become a huge debt burden if we invest in the wrong sectors. Furthermore, investments have to be made such that the resulting opportunities cannot be outsourced. One of the ways this can be done is by investing in technologies that are physically tied to this country. Also, we need to invest in sectors that will have a huge multiplier effect in creating jobs for multiple industries and across multiple regions within the US.

The creation of the Internet was a classic example of this - America pioneered the creation of the Internet by creating the ARPANET to interconnect our government/military and educational institutions, and as a result we reaped the rewards via high-tech growth in the 90's. We need something similar now. So here is the suggestion from my vantage point, and it will only cost a few billion and will have huge multiplier effects in multiple industries within the US.

Mr. President Elect, I request you to fund federal/state agencies and universities to deploy tele-presence voice-video infrastructure interconnected via high-speed networks. This has several benefits:

1. It will drive job growth in the telecom/datacom service industry in retooling networks for VoIP and Video readiness. This job growth will be broad-based across the entire countly.
2. It will drive the creation of more MPLS-capable networks, which drives the creation of jobs in the US service provider space
3. It will drive faster adoption of VoIP and Video in a business-to-business environment, which drives the creation of new business models in the service sector, and new startups that pursue these opportunities
4. It will drive new forms of government-to-people communication which will reduce wasteful spending and create new business opportunities (like how the Arpanet eventually led to e-commerce and B2B-commerce)
5. It will give certainty and confidence to VCs (who are sitting on hordes of cash) to invest in new/existing US-based startups to pursue opportunities in this space. The VCs will invest for opportunities that span the next 5-10 years, thus creating jobs in crucial hi-tech areas.
6. It will reduce the need for business travel and therefore help bring down our dependence on oil as well as reduce global warming
7. Most importantly, the build-out of such a US-based infrastructure will create and keep jobs in the US!

Thanks!

Praveen

Etherspeak Announces Unlimited SIP-Trunking Pricing Plans as AT&T Lays Off Land Line Personnel

A few minutes ago, my friends at Etherspeak forwarded their press release to me, announcing the availability of pricing for unlimited SIP trunking services -their SureTrunk product.  Priced at $32.50/trunk/month for service throughout the US and Canada, SureTrunk is also the only native service designed exclusively for and with the Shoretel platform. 

From the press release:

"This is a sign of our reinforcing commitment towards supporting the resellers and customers of the ShoreTel community. The ShoreTel Unified Communications solution has achieved significant market penetration and we are very pleased to help customers unleash the power and flexibility through SIP-based communications," said Neil Darling, President & CEO of EtherSpeak.

In stark contrast to this news, today, AT&T announced a layoff of 12K workers - all from their wireline business. 

As always, economic downturns serve to sweep out the old and ring in the new.  SIP trunking is destined to move onwards and upwards, and will be especially successful in a down market as a cost cutting method.  Land line phones are doomed, and have been for quite some time.  Hopefully these AT&T workers can rise to the challenge posed by converged networks and find themselves progressive positions in new companies like Etherspeak. 

I am quite impressed with the team at Etherspeak - they are one of those who will prosper in these tough times! 

 

What Will Be the Next New Technology?

On the way to a meeting in San Francisco today, my coworkers and I were discussing what we would do if we suddenly became President of the US.  This will never happen, of course, but it is certainly fun to speculate!  One thing we all agreed upon - outsourcing has been great in some ways and harmful in others.  A country has to be judicious in what it decides to outsource. The key for countries, companies (and individuals) is to outsource weaknesses NOT strengths.  The US has begun to outsource innovation, which has traditionally been one of it's strengths.  Not good. 

How to reverse this trend?  Not easy, as how do you bring back what is already gone? 

The answer is a whole new industry and new technology.  Ah, but what will that be?  Biotech is still the industry of the future, and may always be just that.  New and alternative energy sources?  This is one of them.

What about teleportation?  Could this be a possibility?  I think so, but not in my lifetime.  What about the development of alternative food sources. Another idea, and one that I think has not yet been explored fully.

No matter what, the US most certainly needs a new passion - a new avenue in which to contribute from our strength, innovation.  And this time, we need to hold on to our strength and outsource our weaknesses.  

Voice Mashups, and the Future of Web 2.0 + Voice Apps

I love the word Mashup - I picture in my mind one of those old fashioned potato mashers just pounding a number of concepts in a big Internet bowl until something yummy emerges! 

And at the recent Broadsoft Connections show, the whole pile of new voice mashup apps were certainly innovative, if not yummy. 

A new company called Blue Visor LLC out of Nevada took 3rd place in the Broadsoft mashup competition with mobile voice control apps demo'ed on an iPhone.  Joe "Developer", the companies' spokesman, made use of these apps look so easy that the overhead "text-to-billboard" was full of those claiming Joe should run for President. 

The winner of this contest - Thomas Howe, created a mashup for disaster relief services that integrated Twitter, Broadworks and RSS feeds to create a dashboard for workers that illustrated real time information that could be critical to their efforts.   Called "Disaster Dispatcher", this was a great real world app that could be very useful, especially if the climate change we are seeing continues.  The interface was pretty clear, and the demo was interesting.  All key info was in one window, and I can see that this could make life and death difference in an emergency.  Digging for data under duress is no fun. 

Voice mashups are the next great thing for the telecom industry - and I can think of about 20 or 30 I would like to see someone actually create.  Voice enabling job search sites with a server based voicemail box for each recruiter would streamline the process for those on both sides of the fence. Many many more possibilities exist - some of which I am NOT going to write about as who knows, maybe I will start creating them myself?

BT certainly has faith in the mashup concept - with its $105M purchase of Mountain View based Ribbit in July.   Who will be next?

VoIP is NOT Plug and Play!

In the early days of VoIP or Voice-over-IP, the industry was full of hype and hope.  We thought that we could just make VoIP phones, plug them into our routers, and have the same service quality that we enjoyed for years with our land line phones at a fraction of the cost.  Then the bubble burst - and we realized that we had firewall issues, NAT issues, bandwidth issues and garbled speech during high bandwidth issues - and phone outages when our Internet service went down. Ouch!

But the cost benefits were real and measurable - so many residences stuck with it.  Now, my home Vonage service is as good or better than AT&T ever was! But businesses have a special challenge, as a missed or garbled phone call can cost customers, time, and money.

This is why I am so happy to be a part of Packet Island - a company that creates a remote monitoring solution that allows enterprises, and service providers who offer hosted solutions to enterprises - an easy way of troubleshooting their networks when problems arise.  

The solution consists of 4" x 5" micro appliances that actually reside in the end customer's network that act as sniffers - so real time, call-by-call info can be easily accessed over a remote Java-based GUI.  

No more do businesses have to suffer to get lower phone prices!  Check out our new blog for more info too.  

What Desktop Computer is Lighter Than a Laptop - And Consumes As Much Power As a Clock Radio?

Stumped?  No, it is not one of the new UMPCs (after all, it IS a desktop) - but a Linux-based ultra-green PC called the CherryPal.

This revolutionary new PC is designed to minimize the impact of old electronics junk on landfills - it is expected to last for 10 years:  an amazing concept in the age of planned obsolence.  It has no moving parts, and instead uses the concept of "cloud computing" - the CherryPal company gives you 50GB of Internet based storage free of charge and hosts the data center your files occupy. This is another solid blow to the traditional hard drive based PC!

Along with your hosted storage, CherryPal offers defense grade security and hosted antivirus and other systems support.  I am excited to receive my new machine for this reason alone.  With five PCs in my home, I spend hours every weekend running antivirus, spyware, and registry maintenance software. I am not sure what I will do with all my new found free time!

As CherryPal is Linux based, it doesn't run the traditional Microsoft Office suite.  It does come loaded with a proprietary instant messenger, iTunes, and OpenOffice.org - a web-based Microsoft alternative. 

A new CherryPal will run you $249 and comes with free 24/7 support - which is another refreshing change from the Intel/Microsoft infrastructure.  And the specifications are respectable, as follows:

Freescale’s MPC5121e mobileGT processor, 800 MIPS (400 MHz) of processing
256 MB of DDR2 DRAM
4GB NAND Flash-based solid state drive
WiFi 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
Two USB 2.0 ports
One 10/100 Ethernet with RJ-45 jack
One VGA DB-15 display out jack
Headphone level stereo audio out 3.5mm jack
9vDC 2.5mm 10 watt AC-DC adapter power supply
Weighs 10 ounces
1.3” high, 5.8” x 4.2” wide

If you visit CherryPal's website and enter the promo code CPP293, you will receive a $10 rebate too!

We all have a responsibility to go green and stop global warming!  Here is one more giant step we can take, without sacrificing our love of technology.