Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
2007--The Year of Too Much Information
I have been on the 'net since the late 1970s. In the seventies, what passed for the 'net was small groups of bulletin board systems, with the amazing FreeNet and the later FidoNet cobbling together small groups of mostly local users.
In the early eighties, the precursor of the Internet was Usenet, a small conglomeration of volunteer system administrators borrowing machine cycles from AT&T servers (with the company's tacit blessing) to run a set of discussion groups. These machines also supported email, and so Usenet was arguably the first multi-user, multi-machine network accessible globally, although most users were in the U.S. and you had to have some sort of access, direct or indirect, to a Unix machine. It was a messy kind of system, loved by geeks but Usenet lacked friendliness of the sort that arrived later with the World Wide Web and its point and click links.
In 1982, the entire Usenet hierarchy of groups was a list that fit on two single-spaced pages. Today, the Usenet hierarchy has hundreds of thousands of groups. With each passing year, the amount of information available to us has continued to expand.
With the rise of blogs and the sophisticated content management systems used for Web sites, it gets easier and easier year by year to place more information online. In 2007, for me anyway, I found it more and more difficult to keep up. The daily flow of email into my Inbox, the phone calls, the Web site links, the mailing lists, the userids and passwords needed just to manage routine chores like placing an order online or checking a bank account balance became more and more difficult to manage.
I regularly try out new applications designed to help manage such information--password storage software, outliners, databases, information managers, address books, and the like. The problem is that each of these programs and devices (cellphones, iPods, GPSes, etc.) also require additional skills, time, and maintenance. But I find that few of them simplify my work or give me anymore time. Instead, they take time and effort away from real work.
Over the next five to ten years, I think there will be a growing trend to look for devices and software that break this cycle, that are truly revolutionary, and that make information management simpler. Products that work will be very valuable, and we will be less and less patient with technically complex products and software that use as much time as they save.
Technology News:
Walmart kills movie downloads
Walmart has killed its movie download business, which is not even a year old. There were many problems with it:
- It was not compatible with video-capable iPods.
- It was over-priced.
- It had a lot of clumsy DRM (Digital Rights Management) attached to the movies.
A more general problem with movie downloads is that they are still very slow, compared to things like songs, which download pretty quickly even over a DSL line. The movie download services, including the movies offered on iTunes, have to reduce the quality to speed up the download or force buyers to wait hours to download a high quality version.
DVDs still are very competitive because we do not have fast broadband connections and because the studios are still attaching too much DRM to movies.
Technology News:
Knowledge Democracy:
Colorado throws out e-voting machines
Following on the heels of Ohio, Colorado has de-certified the voting machines used in some of the most populous parts of the state. Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S machines were among those found to have problems. The state found that the machines were easy to tamper with, and that the machines lacked any audit trail capabilities, meaning there would be no way to detect tampering if it happened.
Knowledge Democracy:
465,000 new businesses every month
A new report by the Kaufmann Foundation indicates that 465,000 new businesses are being created every month in the United States. This probably represents a million jobs or more being created by small businesses every single month. The growth in start ups demonstrates why a community or regional economic development strategy has to include not just business attraction as a strategy, but also business creation.
Technology News:
Show them the numbers
Here is an interesting analysis done by Stuart Mease, who works for the City of Roanoke, Virginia. Mease's job is trying to recruit young people to live and work in the Roanoke area. He has provided a cost of living comparison between Roanoke and some of the bigger towns and cities that are more likely to attract younger workers.
Roanoke compares very favorably; you can make less money and still live as well or better than you could in some bigger towns. Most smaller towns and cities would also fare very well with this kind of analysis, and could be an important factor when trying to convince a business to relocate to your area. The ability to pay lower salaries but still offer employees a great standard of living could be very attractive.
Technology News:
Community news and projects:
Electronic voting may be banned in Ohio
New studies of electronic voting machines in Ohio has led a top official there to call for a ban on the machines. The Ohio Secretary of State noted "critical security failures" on the machines that made it easy to tamper with vote counts.
Community news and projects:
Knowledge Democracy:
Doom and gloom for 18% growth
There are numerous news reports on the "awful" sales figures coming on from online vendors--it looks like "only" 18% growth for the Christmas season, compared to last year's 27% growth.
Eighteen percent growth is pretty good by any measure, since most retailers would say a good year is one that averages 4-5% growth. Any other business in America would be delirious with 18% growth, but somehow the news media wants to spin this as the world coming to an end.
What does it mean? It means that you can't have 27% percent growth forever. What is amazing is that people fall for this over and over again, dating back hundreds of years to the Dutch Tulip craze, the first well-documented market bubble. The "collapse" of the housing market was fueled by a naive belief that somehow, housing prices could appreciate at 10% to 20% a year indefinitely, when the historical annual appreciation for a home is more typically around 2-3%.
The good news hidden in the 18% growth rate is for bricks and mortar retailers--the slow down in online buying means we are finding out what people are likely to feel comfortable buying online, and what they would rather go to a real store to shop for. The past seven or eight years has been a turbulent time for retailers, but the news this Christmas is that we probably close to figuring out what the new "normal" is for retail, and that's a good thing.
Technology News:
Clash of the Titans
Microsoft and Google are each prepping for a fight to the death over ownership of users. This SlashDot article discusses the approach each is taking and what the consequences may be for both users and the two firms.
Google has a more clearly defined strategy; the company thinks most applications like email, word processing, spreadsheets, and graphics will be hosted by Google computers, and users will access the applications over an ever fast broadband network.
Microsoft still makes most of its money from software like Windows and Office, which run on the desktop, not from the network. To counter Google, Microsoft has been experimenting with network-based services and applications, but has not had the same success as Google.
The business models are different as well. If you look at Microsoft's net-based services, many of them rely on subscription fees. Google prefers to offer its services for free, although you can upgrade some of them for a fee, which unlocks more features.
For users, the real issue is not where the service resides, but whether or not you can trust a third party with your data. The end user license agreements for free services usually give the firm supplying the services the right to change the terms whenever they want, along with the right to rummage through your files. Google wants to read all your mail and files so it can find out what you buy. They then use that data to deliver targeted ads to you. If Google notices your email includes lots of references to camping, you may see more L.L. Bean ads popping up alongside your "free" word processor.
Hosted services offer many benefits, including access away from the home or office. But I am more inclined to pay for those services. If you want hosted email, why not buy it from a firm like Webmail, which simply provides you with email and is not trying to make a buck reading your mail at the same time?
Technology News:
The Wired Road
Down in southwest Virginia, in the heart of bluegrass country, right along the route of The Crooked Road, The Wired Road is under construction. The Wired Road is an integrated fiber and wireless, open, multi-service network that intends to bring high performance broadband services to Carroll and Grayson counties and the city of Galax.
The effort is led by the Blue Ridge Crossroads Economic Development Authority (BRCEDA) and funded in part with the assistance of the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. A highly energized management team of elected and appointed officials, business people, and community leaders have taken the project from a one page vision statement to putting the first customer on the network in ten months, with the long term goal of taking fiber to most homes and businesses in the 20,000 home region over the next four to five years.
Disclaimer: The Wired Road planning and implementation is being managed by Design Nine. Call us if you want this kind of network for your region.
Wiring homes for electric power
The Energy Economy continues to generate some of the most innovative new ideas we've seen in a long time. University of Delaware researchers have proposed V2G technology (Vehicle to Grid). A home and automobile designed to support V2G would be able to send electric power stored in the battery of an electric vehicle back up the grid--making your electric meter spin backwards and reducing your electric bill.
Why would you do this? You can recharge your electric vehicle at night, when the cost of electricity is lower, and sell some of that cheap power back to the electric company during peak demand periods when electric rates are higher. This approach turns electric cars into electric generation facilities.
The V2G system requires some changes to the onboard electronics of electric cars, and the home would have to have AMR/AMI (Advanced Meter Reading/Advanced Metering Infrastructure) installed so that the electric company could tell the car to send electricity back up the line.
Cities like Danville, Virginia are already designing AMR/AMI (Smart Grid) services to be part of its multi-service open broadband network. Danville's combination of a high performance, open "digital road"system combined with resilient and reliable electric power make it attractive for high tech businesses (Disclaimer: Danville is a Design Nine client).
Here is a question for local and regional planners: Do your building codes requires a separate 240 volt electric circuit to the garage to charge electric vehicles? Do you require a separate 240 volt plug in the garage for each bay (one plug per vehicle)? If not, why not?
Communities that work with developers to add the broadband and electric infrastructure to new homes to make them "Internet ready" and "electric vehicle" ready will have some real marketing advantages when promoting their communities to relocating businesses.
Technology News:
Pages
