Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Manure + methane = Energy Economy profits
USA Today has an article on dairy farms that are becoming energy providers. Cows generate about 100 pounds of manure a day; in the old days, this manure sat and released methane directly into the air for a while, and then was typically spread onto nearby fields, which created a bit of an odor for a few days.
Dairy farmers are now installing anaeroboic digesters that accelerate the decomposition of the manure. Methane from the digesters is used to power a generator that produces electricity for the farm, and excess power is sold to the local electric utility. Some farms are actually net energy producers, meaning the methane generated is enough to handle all of the farm's electrical needs and then some. Excess heat from the generator can also be used to keep barns warm, improving efficiency even more. But wait--there is more! After you extract the methane and liquid from the manure, you are left with a peat-like, odorless mulch that is better than straw for bedding in the cow barns, reducing or elminating the farmer's cost of straw.
The article notes that power from manure is not likely to be a significant contributor to the nation's electric needs, but from the dairy farmer's perspective, it is revolutionary, since it adds a complementary business (electric power) to traditional farming that makes the overall business much more profitable. Economic developers in rural dairy farming regions: How about finding a local entrepreneur who could start a business installing and servicing these systems? How much electric power could your region generate if you got a significant percentage of your dairy farmers to install these systems? What could it mean to your local economy? The Energy Economy won't be just about big power--"little" power is going to create lots of new business opportunities as we move away from dependence on traditional fossil fuels. Is your region ready?
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Is Muni WiFi "stalling"
This article from mid-summer just came to my attention. It discusses some of the current municipal WiFi projects and the problems they are having. WiFi vendors tout the low cost of wireless and the "easy" installation--stick up a few towers and you are done. What they tend to leave out of the sales pitch is that current WiFi systems often have trouble penetrating trees with leaves on them, don't penetrate walls well, and the signal does not go around corners. Here is a portion of the article:
A successful economic model for running municipal Wi-Fi networks has yet to emerge," notes from the city's director of IT, Chris Mead, acknowledge.
The city also noted that while subscription models for Wi-Fi have been a flop, advertising-based revenue "cannot be taken for granted", either.
"It may be that municipal Wi-Fi is a passing fad that will be left behind by economic reality and new technology," advised Mead.
Vendors also often provide an unfair cost analysis. The claim that wireless is cheaper than fiber is bogus because wireless vendors compare the one time installation cost of wireless systems with the 30 year amortized cost of fiber systems--an apples and oranges comparison. If you look at the 30 year cost of providing wireless and compare that to the 30 year cost of fiber, guess which one is less expensive? It is fiber!
Our communities need good, reliable wireless broadband coverage for mobile devices. We want our phones and PDAs to work wherever we are in town. But particularly from an economic development perspective, wireless is an incomplete solution. If you are having trouble sorting out vendor claims, call us--Design Nine can provide a complete set of broadband planning and implementation services, and we will help you sort out conflicting and confusing vendor claims and put together a broadband strategy for your community or region.
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The iPod tax
Universal Music, the world's largest music publisher, successfully arm-twisted Microsoft into paying UMG a dollar for every Zune Microsoft manufactures. UMG did so using the dubious theory that MP3 players are just "repositories for stolen music" (an actual quote from a UMG exec). Microsoft apparently gave in to the extortion because the company was desperate to get enough music to sell on its Zune music Web site. Excited over the successful effort to blackmail Microsoft, UMG is now ready to go after Apple to impose an iPod tax.
Hopefully, Apple will have a little more spine than Microsoft. If not, expect to see this kind of tax on any product that is capable of recording or storing music, because the music industry has declared war on its customers--we're all just a bunch of crooks and thieves to them.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Zune takes a drubbing from critics
Microsoft's Zune music player is taking a drubbing from reviewers. The list of things that don't work or are awkward is so long that it is hard to imagine how it could have happened.
Most of the problems have to do with the desktop computer that one might use to load music onto a Zune. Microsoft requires a certain OS configuration (minimum of XP with SP2) and a fairly hefty hardware set up (e.g. 1.5 gig of memory). There are a lot of home users that may not have the right box before they get started. Microsoft also forces you to use IE 7 to download the music--you can't use Firefox, which according to one reviewer, eliminates 40% of users in Germany and 20% in Australia, and about 10% in the U.S. Why on earth would a company deliberately alienate tens of millions of customers that way?
But wait, it gets worse. Zune does not work with Microsoft's own Windows Media Player (WMP). For some mysterious reason, the company chose not to do a simple upgrade of the WMP, but instead created an entirely new piece of hard to install software with FEWER features than WMP. Huh? But wait, it gets worse. You cannot buy music from the Zunes Marketplace (the equivalent of the iTunes Music Store) with a credit card. Instead, you have to buy "Zune Points," which is great for Microsoft (kind of like a gift card, where you have to spend the money up front), but just another road block for customers.
The much touted WiFi only works with other Zunes, and anything you beam to a friend disappears after three days, which kind of makes sense with licensed music, but the Zune will take a free recording--even something you made yourself--and if you beam it to someone else, it also disappears in three days. So Microsoft basically hijacks your own stuff without your permission.
The critics are predicting the Zune will die a quick death. I am not so sure. Microsoft has a long history of releasing poorly designed Version 1.0 stuff and then slowly (and painfully) making changes that improve the product. Time will tell, but so far, the Zune is not getting anyone excited. If the Zune is any indication, it shows that Microsoft is failing to adjust to an expanding marketplace with more competition (e.g. Google) and less reliance on the desktop (e.g. Web apps). Most of the problems with the Zune have to do with what appears to be an intentional plan on the part of Microsoft to force their customers to do things the Microsoft way, in a world where the company no longer has the kind of monopoly power to do that.
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Demand for bandwidth is not made up
In a recent set of broadband workshops, I talked at length about the increasing demand for bandwidth, and that it is necessary to set not the upper limit on our bandwidth needs, but only a lower limit--which I think is 100 megabits/second to homes and businesses.
What was interesting is that the skeptics were not business people, who were actually nodding their heads in agreement; they understand that they do not want their ability to grow their businesses and to create jobs limited by bandwidth.
Instead, the skeptics were most often Internet access providers, who often reacted angrily and with derision. I think the issue with most of them is that their current infrastructure and business models just can't make the transition to an economy where we take unlimited bandwidth for granted.
But the proof is in the emerging systems and applications. Take a look at HP's Halo Collaboration Studio, which requires 50 megabits/second to operate. Large corporations are investing heavily in this product, which costs nearly half a million dollars. As the price comes down, this will become a common business tool.
And if 50 megabit video streams seem like a lot, look at what is happening in the lab. Data visualization scientists are streaming complex simulations of cellular processes at an astounding 7.5 gigabits/second. Fortunately, this specialized content can be handled nicely by off the shelf 10 Gig/second network gear--expensive, but Ethernet cards used to cost $1000 in 1992, and now run about $25 if you buy one, and that $25 card is probably 100 times faster than the $1000 card. That change took place in less than ten years, so there is nothing kooky about looking at these high end applications today and expecting them to be commonplace in business in ten years.
How about your community or region? Are you willing to let short-sighted Internet providers choke off business growth because they are not willing to look ahead? If they are not helping you prepare for future business needs, who is?
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Web 3.0: I did not know we were done with Web 2.0
It must be the rise in the stock market, and/or the trusty old adage that there is a sucker born every minute. This article on Web 3.0 is dense and wordy, so you may not want to spend much time actually reading it, but consider yourself warned that the "next big thing" (tongue firmly in cheek here) is Web 3.0.
Web 2.0 is generally regarded as, well, nobody really knows....it is a bunch of technologies like AJAX (a set of programming tools) and half-baked ideas like "social networking" that are all slopped together into a stew of Web applications that hardly anyone wants. A few companies are actually doing interesting and useful stuff (e.g. Google, Amazon), but 98% of Web 2.0 is hype.
That, apparently, is not enough, so someone has already decided we need Web 3.0. According the article, it will be a delicious concoction of the Web, artificial intelligence, intelligent agents, and semantic webs. Oh, frabjous day! I actually read the entire article, and it does not make a bit of sense to me. Artificial intelligence as a trend seems to pop up every nine or ten years, with the AI folks each time promising that it will be "this time for sure." Except AI has rarely delivered, ever. The Japanese spent billions in the eighties and promised they were going to solve all the world's problems with their Fifth Generation hardware and software. Don't hear much about that, do you?
The chronic disease of IT types is a naive belief that with enough code, they can do anything, including replacing our brains with artificially intelligent code, since "the brain is just a big computer." Uh huh. So as you begin to hear more about Web 3.0, my advice is to grip your wallet just a bit tighter; I see another dot-com bubble starting to form.
Technology News:
Ruled by idiots
In one of the most disheartening and discouraging articles I have read in a long time, Robert Cresanti, the Undersecretary of Commerce for Technology, says, essentially, that Americans are stupid and that we need to import more foreign engineers and scientists.
He apparently visited China recently, and came away so impressed that he has unilaterally surrendered the U.S. economy to China. This man ought to be fired on the spot. Instead of drafting a plan to increase U.S. investments in science and engineering, his approach is to give up and hire more Chinese.
I have a little more faith in America and American workers than that, and it is a tragedy that this guy gets paid with our tax dollars.
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Charleston's Digital Corridor worth studying
Charleston, South Carolina's very successful Digital Corridor program is worth careful study. Ernest Andrade, the manager of the program, understands that economic development today is about making and nurturing relationships, not water and sewer. Here is a short excerpt from Andrade's article that summarizes where economic development should be focused today:
"Three key pieces of statistical data reinforce an argument that communities should spend more of their economic development resources on business formation. First, approximately 80% of all job creation occurs from within the community; second, a majority of the businesses being formed today have five or fewer employees; and third, there is an inverse relationship between high wage, knowledge-based companies and their physical space requirements."
It is the last item that is particularly worthy of careful analysis: high wage knowledge companies don't need a lot of real estate. They don't need vast tracts of empty land. They often don't even want to be in business parks. They often want to be in rehabbed downtown lofts, close to other small businesses, and close to good restaurants, where the deals are so often made. They want to be close to good coffee shops so they can meet casually with co-workers and clients. They want to be near vibrant and active downtown areas.
Charleston is a shining example of what is possible in community revitalization, and if you have never visited the city, it would be worth it to pack up all your economic developers and spend a couple of days there. Give Andrade a call and talk to him while you are there.
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Community news and projects:
Attracting talent, not businesses
I was fortunate enough to have dinner the other night with a very gifted and smart county administrator, who told me this:
"Our job is to attract talent to our region, not businesses. If we have talented people, we can do anything. And to attract talented people, we have to have the amenities that they want and expect, like broadband."
I think he has it exactly right. In the Knowledge Economy, businesses are becoming more and more portable and less and less reliant on traditional infrastructure like water and sewer. It does not mean that infrastructure is now irrelevant or unimportant, but it does mean that we have to think about it in different ways.
I was at a major top tier college recently, and they told me they had a hiring crisis. New faculty were turning down well paying jobs at this prestigious school. Why do you think? It was because broadband was unavailable outside the "downtown" area of this otherwise rural community. Many faculty wanted to live outside town where they could own a few acres of land and really enjoy country living, but broadband was no longer a nice luxury, it was now a life necessity. These prospective faculty were telling the college they simply would not live in a community without broadband.
In other words, these talented people were not attracted to this community because of the lack of broadband in residential areas, not business parks. So you have to have affordable broadband options in your business and industrial parks, but you also have to have it everywhere else if you want to attract talented people to your region.
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U.S. Broadband: Costly and slow
Michael Copps, an FCC commissioner and consumer advocate, had an op-ed piece in the Washington Post last week. Copps says American broadband is too slow and too costly, and that it is going to cripple our economy and our ability to compete in the global economy. I could not agree more.
Copps goes on to say that universal, affordable broadband access would be a major driver of economic development, with the ability to add more than a million jobs to the economy. Lack of affordable broadband is limiting the ability of many businesses to expand into new markets and to just manage the enterprise efficiently. Copps endorses a public/private approach. In most areas of the country, I think the initiative to get this done has to come from local and regional governments, rather than from state initiatives. Neither state nor Federal governments have neither the will to help nor the energy to try new approaches. Communities and regions are on their own, and your community, without affordable broadband available, may not survive economically.
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