Things Change

TW: Where have you gone Mr. Travelers Cheque? The answer is mostly toward the ATM. I had almost forgotten they existed. Getting travelers cheques used to be the a fun ritual in front of an international trip. But it sure is nice not fretting about whether, when and where you need to cash another one.

The Book Tipping Point

TW: This is one of those stories that make me feel old. I yearn for the look and feel of an actual book in my hands. Yet I know such sentiments will increasingly date me as an archaic relic...tis always been so. I do not rue it, in fact on this one I embrace it.

From Reuters:
"Amazon shares rose on Monday after it posted strong growth in holiday season orders and said its customers bought more e-books than physical books for the first time ever on Christmas Day, thanks to its hot-selling Kindle electronic book reader.

The U.S.-based Internet retailer said over the weekend its Kindle reader had become the most-purchased gift in the company's history.

...With electronic readers one of the hottest selling items over the holidays this year, the Kindle also gained ground as both Barnes & Noble and Sony were unable to keep up with demand. The two companies both sold out of their stock of readers more than a month before Christmas.

The Kindle Store now includes more than 390,000 books, Amazon said. The company also provided details on its holiday season sales, saying that Dec. 14 was its peak shopping day with more than 9.5 million items ordered worldwide.

On the peak day of the season, Amazon said it shipped more than 7 million units..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2816898520091228

Naughty Obsolescence

TW: Huffington put together 12 key tech/everyday things which have become at least nearly obsolete since the turn of the century. Would be interesting to predict the coming decade's list. See here.

Porkulicious

TW: Perhaps pollyannish but interesting nevertheless, as evidenced by the Veggie Society's reaction some folks' views of society would be altered.

From The UK Times:
"SCIENTISTS have grown meat in the laboratory for the first time. Experts in Holland used cells from a live pig to replicate growth in a petri dish.

The advent of so-called “in-vitro” or cultured meat could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals — if people are willing to eat it.

So far the scientists have not tasted it, but they believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time.

They initially extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig. Called myoblasts, these cells are programmed to grow into muscle and repair damage in animals.

...The result was sticky muscle tissue that requires exercise, like human muscles, to turn it into a tougher steak-like consistency.

“You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals,” said Mark Post, professor of physiology at Eindhoven University, who is leading the Dutch government-funded research.

Post and his colleagues have so far managed to develop a soggy form of pork and are seeking to improve its texture. “What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue,” Post said.

...At present there is a question mark over the taste as laboratory rules prevent the scientists eating the fruits of their labour.

...The Vegetarian Society reacted cautiously yesterday, saying: “The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.” Peta, the animal rights group, said: “As far as we’re concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there’s no ethical objection.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6936352.ece

"Socialism" In Action

From the Big Picture:
"This is actually terrific news:
“The Obama administration’s push to solve the nation’s energy problems, a massive federal program that rivals the Manhattan Project, is spurring a once-in-a-generation shift in U.S. science.

The government’s multibillion-dollar push into energy research is reinvigorating 17 giant U.S.-funded research facilities, from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory here to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. After many years of flat budgets, these labs are ramping up to develop new electricity sources, trying to build more-efficient cars and addressing climate change.

In fiscal 2009, the Obama administration increased the funding by 18%, to $4.76 billion, to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which oversees 10 national labs and funds research at another seven. The office will receive $1.6 billion in government stimulus spending, as well, much of which it will also channel to these laboratories.”

We have had a series of incremental gains in various alt.energy technology. What we need is a major breakthrough in Physics — on a fundamental level — in solar energy efficiency, battery storage, transfer technology, wind resources, wave/tide conversion, etc."

TW: These are exactly the programs many Republicans would kill. War spending up, prison spending up, science research not so much.

The New New Thing Is What...

TW: will drive economic growth. Perhaps the Tablet described below will be a component of the next bout of economic innovation which feeds economic growth. I believe it may.

I love the IPhone, the "ITablet" to me could be a more robust and larger version of the IPhone. An IPhone the size of a piece of paper. With things like video and data size matters. With constant connection and souped up digital transfer rates, having at one's fingertips streaming video and data in a portable yet handy fashion becomes viable. These are the innovations which make things like the traditional TV set and laptop increasingly obsolete.

Data is becoming universally accessible (one can access live video of just about any sporting event at this point), yet we have remained somewhat tethered to either a set top TV, tiny IPhone or bulky laptop (with shaky connections). Once a well-connected, easily portable device becomes real, folks behaviors will be greatly altered. New industries and firms created.

From Newsweek:
"Apple is supposedly working on a tablet computer.. Rumor has it that the "iTablet"..will be announced in January and released in June...this device may actually warrant the hype. Not because of the tablet itself but because of what it and others like it could do to the way we tell stories. Veteran editor Tina Brown, who now runs The Daily Beast, says we are about to enter "a golden age of journalism."

These devices will play video and music and, of course, display text; they will let you navigate by touching your fingers to the screen; and—this is most important—they will be connected to the Internet at all times. For those of us who carry iPhones, this shift to a persistent Internet has already happened, and it's really profound. The Internet is no longer a destination, someplace you "go to." You don't "get on the Internet." You're always on it. It's just there, like the air you breathe.

Now imagine a larger form factor, with a screen big enough to hold multiple panes of information. It has no lag time and lasts many hours on a battery charge. Here, then, is your new morning newspaper, with videos next to stories and the ability to customize the panes to deliver what you want and leave out what you don't. This device is also your TV, your stereo, and probably your telephone too.

For people like me, who produce content, this change is both great and scary. Great because the techies in Silicon Valley are giving us powerful new tools for telling stories. Scary because the old ways of telling stories are about to become obsolete, and if we cling to them, we'll be washed away. In the past we've all worked in silos. "Print people" had one way of describing the world. "Video people" had another. But the silos are getting crunched together...

The Internet today is a lot like TV circa 1950. But we are about to take an evolution-ary leap. That's why all this hand-wringing over the dying newspaper business is so misplaced. In 10 years the print newspapers we have today will seem as quaint and primitive as those old Uncle Miltie shows. Heck, the Internet we have today will seem quaint and primitive too...

..Look at how people have turned their creativity loose on the iPhone. In just 16 months, thousands of developers have created 85,000 applications for that device. The same will happen with tablets. These powerful devices with constant Internet access will enable us (and force us) to rethink media. What is a newspaper? What is a book? What is a movie? What is entertainment?..."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/217683

Evolution Of Media and Communications

TW: h/t Ezra Klein, this is a very cool Economist production surveying how our media and communication landscapes are evolving at amazing rates.

Which One Is the Robot?

TW: Boston Globe has a great photo site (see below) they did a feature on robotics, worth a look.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/more_robots.html

The World Of Netflix

TW: We are big Netflix fans. Huge library, relatively cheap, and we like the pacing, having movies totally on demand as opposed to spaced out in the mail almost seems like overkill. This piece describes the strange world of Netflix fulfillment. I have more than a passing interest in logistics, it is what makes the world go round, wins wars etc.

From Chicago Tribune:
"... Its biggest secret remains the warehouses themselves -- for two reasons. No. 1, each holds several million DVDs, not to mention expensive mail-sorting gizmos and dry-board posted statistics on how many discs were recently returned damaged, placed in the wrong sleeve or scratched. And No. 2, Netflix has grown leery of what happens when customers learn the location of a warehouse -- they drop off DVDs at the door. This will not help get your next disc out faster -- and neither will dropping a disc in the mail early in the morning. (Even Netflix employees are asked to use the post office for Netflix returns.)...

The building is intentionally disguised, dumpy and drab, the warehouse tucked behind another office building closer to the street. There is also not a single identifiable piece of Netflix signage on anything out front -- not a nameplate or a flash of Netflix red, and certainly not any corporate logos. Unmarked trucks roll up, then roll out. Employees (called "associates," in Netflix-ese) enter through a less-than-obvious door.

...Forty-two people work here, nearly every one in a red Netflix T-shirt, nearly every one in constant motion. Indeed, I was asked not to disturb their groove and hit them up with questions. The busiest sat in wide rows, flanked with post office cartons stuffed with Netflix envelopes.Six nights a week, a truck leaves for the post office and picks up cartons full of these return-address envelopes; pickup is at 3 a.m.

...a seemingly disproportionate number of local grandparents; they have full medical benefits and a 40-hour workweek.They inspect each returned disc. They rip open each envelope, toss it, pull the disc from its sleeve, check that the title matches the sleeve, inspect the disc for cracks or scratches, inspect the sleeve for stains or marks, clean the disc with a quick circular motion on a towel pulled tight across a square block of wood, insert the disc into its sleeve, and file the disc in one of two bins. The bin to the right is for acceptable discs, the bin to the left is for damaged discs or discs not in the proper sleeve.To a casual observer, this all seems to happen in a single motion, a flurry of fingers. Employees are expected to perform this a minimum of 650 times an hour. Also, customers stuff things into the envelopes. Scribbled movie reviews, complaints, pictures of dogs and kids. That needs sorting too. After 65 minutes of inspection, a bell rings. Everyone stands up.Calisthenics!The team leader leans back, and everyone leans back. The team leader leans sideways. Everyone leans sideways. And so on.

This pattern of inspection and exercise repeats every 65 minutes, until rental-return inspection is complete. Swasey, who drove in from Columbus, Ohio, where there is an even larger hub, pointed to a photocopy taped to the wall -- a picture of Disc 4 of "Rescue Me" Season 4 alongside a sleeve that promised Disc 4 of "Rescue Me" Season 3. It's a kind of Netflix perp walk. Some diligent associate caught the mistake before it shipped. "To me, I see it as a goose bump moment,"...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-0804-netflixaug04,0,6424990.story

The Bots Are Coming...Albeit Slowly

TW: Folks have been hailing the dawn of the robot era for decades. We are still waiting mostly. But they do exist, we saw our friends use one with the pool recently to clean the pool bottom, pretty nifty although the bot cannot skim the surface debris. Slowly but surely the bots are entering everyday life and again like other technologies at some point a tipping point will be reached and their use will soar. Then a couple of decades from now kids will ponder how their predecessors functioned without them (of course folks have been making this prediction for about forty years).

From Economist:
"...Floor-cleaning machines capable of responding to their environment were among the first commercially available domestic products worthy of being called robots. The best known is the Roomba, made by iRobot, an American company which has sold more than 3m of the frisbee-sized vacuuming robots. The latest model, the fifth incarnation of the Roomba, has more sensors and cleverer software than its predecessors. Press the “Clean” button and the robot glides out of its docking station and sets off across the floor.

Domestic robots are supposed to free up time so that you can do other things, but watching how the Roomba deals with obstacles is strangely compelling. It is capable of sensing its surroundings, and does not simply try to adhere to a pre-planned route, so it is not upset if furniture is moved, or if it is picked up and taken to clean another room. Its infra-red sensors enable it to slow down before nudging up to an obstacle—such as a dozy cat—changing direction and setting off again.

It steadily works its way around the room, figuring out how to get out from under the television stand or untangle itself from a stray Game Boy recharging lead. Watch it for long enough, and you can sometimes predict its next move. The machine has a “dirt sensor” and flashes a blue light when it finds things to clean up. Only when it detects no more dirt does it stop going over the same area and, eventually, conclude that the whole room is clean. It then trundles back to dock at its recharging station. On the whole it does a good job.

So the first observation of life with a domestic robot is that you will keep watching it before you trust it completely. Perhaps that is not surprising: after all, when automatic washing-machines first appeared people used to draw up a chair and sit and watch them complete their wash, rinse and spin cycles...

...Sweden’s Husqvarna recently launched a new version of its Automower lawnmowing robot. Before it can be used, a wire must be stapled around the perimeter of the lawn to define the area to be cut. The Automower does not collect grass, but chops it up finely and leaves it behind as a mulch. If toys and other obstacles are not cleared from the lawn before it starts work, the robot will steer around them, leaving uncut areas. The latest version can even top up its batteries with solar power, or send its owner a text message if it gets into trouble trying to climb a mole-hill.

But there is still only a limited range of domestic robots. Machines that mop the floor, clean a swimming pool and clear muck from guttering are made by iRobot. Several surveillance robots are also on offer. The Rovio, made by WowWee of Hong Kong, is a Wi-Fi-enabled webcam, mounted on an extending arm, which rides along on a nimble set of wheels. It can be remotely operated over the internet via a laptop or mobile phone. The idea is that Rovio can patrol the home when its owner is away, either automatically or under manual control. Two-way communication allows the operator to see and talk via the machine. So you could, for instance, shout at the dog if it is sleeping on your best sofa..."
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13725803

Using Data To Enhance Quality Of Life

TW: So many things in life can be improved through enhanced information. This Fortune piece was partially its usual puffery for a big company in this case IBM, but the article also frames so of the opportunities out there to greatly enhance our energy efficiency and enhancing quality of life concurrently. The free market will drive so of these initiatives but governments will need to participate as well to burn through vested commercial interests and prime the investment pump at times.

From Fortune:
"...[many societal problems are] propagated by a single culprit: a lack of quality information.

Gridlock is what happens when drivers aren't aware of congestion or don't know how to avoid it. How do we stop E. coli? Cut off the bacteria at its source - if only we had a transparent supply chain. The same goes for power outages. If we could accurately monitor power flow across the electricity grid, the location of a short would become apparent. As for the tree that gives us chocolate, well, with a clear fix on its genome, creating a disease-resistant, heat-tolerant supercacao would be as easy as cross-breeding garden tomatoes.

In the parlance of the information technology industry, these situations all represent "dumb network" problems. The term sounds pejorative, but it simply means that we don't truly understand commuter traffic or electricity flow or the inner workings of the cacao genome, and as a result our highways, utility grids, and cash crops are not managed as effectively as they could be.

The good news is that we now have the technology to convert these analog distribution systems into multidirectional "smart" networks. Readily available sensor technologies like RFID chips and digital video can track movements in granular detail. Cheap data storage, powerful analytics software, and abundant computing capacity give us the ability to warehouse and make sense of all that information. With the knowledge we're gaining, we can remake our world in a more efficient way.

...[IBM] is encouraging his employees to think even bigger, to scout out any dumb network that can be made smarter. Because, as any self-respecting capitalist knows, in great pain lies dormant profit. "We are looking at huge problems that couldn't be solved before. We can solve congestion and pollution. We can make the grids more efficient," he says. "And quite honestly, it creates a big business opportunity."

...Swedes pride themselves on an optimum quality of life, so government officials put out a request-for-proposal on a congestion-pricing scheme that would charge vehicles for passing through city limits at various times of day.

...Total traffic fell 35% almost immediately and stayed down 22% - and not just at peak times or solely downtown. Emissions also dropped by 14%. The streets became more pedestrian-friendly, and the buses began finishing their routes so quickly that the city had to rewrite the schedules. "For people working and living here, it was a different city. The government had lots of researchers doing surveys to identify the impact," he says. "That wasn't needed."

...Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to digitize the electricity grid. Recently his economic stimulus plan allocated billions to make that promise a reality, and hardware providers, Internet companies, software firms, utilities, and the media have all rallied around the idea. Much of the hype has centered on installing smart meters - basically fancy thermostats that monitor energy use in real time - in our homes.

Sadly, the only information most of us get about our energy consumption comes in the form of a monthly bill, when it's too late to do anything about our behavior. Seeing real-time usage data on the meters, along with options for cheaper times of day to, say, do the laundry, the thinking goes, will encourage us to stop hogging peak kilowatts just as the Swedes curbed unnecessary rush-hour travel. Certainly that's part of the promise of an intelligent grid. But what if the grid were so smart that it could differentiate types of energy, price them accordingly, and heal its own wounds? What if it could actually think for itself?

...Both IBM and CenterPoint are interested in smart meters. Cortez's team rolled out 5,000 smart meters across the utility's service area in March and plans to deploy 2.1 million more over the next five years. The devices work on open protocols and will report usage information to whomever the consumer allows. The idea is that third parties will build custom applications that enable consumers to regulate usage online, at Google PowerMeter, for example. And it shouldn't be long before an iPhone app links a GPS transmitter to the meter, causing the air conditioning to turn on 20 minutes before the owner walks in the door.

...A digitized grid also makes it possible to upload alternative energies easily, whether from the massive wind farms in West Texas or from all the solar panels popping up on suburban rooftops. Which is nothing but good news for the most polluted city in the country. "Houston doesn't meet the federal air-quality standards or the ozone-level standards. That restricts the ability of the city to grow," says Tom Standish, CenterPoint's group president of regulated operations. "That's not good for us, and it's not good for the economy."
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/20/technology/obrien_ibm.fortune/index.htm

Something Different: Did You Know