i3

2012-01-12T07:59:00.001-08:00

How to sell land in Google Earth

2011-12-02T12:07:00.001-08:00

42°43'58.74"N 83° 6'57.66"W

DEAR TAXPAYER - a short film - Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-29T07:01:00.001-08:00

Marveo, Portugal

2011-11-18T19:42:00.001-08:00

Beautifully executed 3-D buildings of hilltop castle town Marveo, Portugal. It takes a little while for the 3-D buildings to load. 39°23'39.78"N 7°22'40.32"

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Steel Mill in Jiuquan, Gansu, China

2011-11-18T12:13:00.001-08:00

I love Chinese industrial structures. They have a kind of dystopian sci-fi nature about them that your don't get in the west anymore - all coal dust and desert sand, with no apparent sign of human habitation. Until, that is, you scroll around a bit and find beautiful empty freeways, hundreds of apartment blocks and spacious urban plazas.

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This part of China is filled with fascinating stuff...

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/07/huge_scale_mode.html

http://gizmodo.com/5859081/why-is-china-building-these-gigantic-structures-in-the-middle-of-the-desert

Your Taxpayer Dollars on Google Earth

2011-11-14T19:26:00.001-08:00

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Majove Desert near Goldstone, California. Monthballed fighters sitting inside large earth berms in the middle of a very remote airfield in the sagebrush desert. Go figure.

Tuscon, Arizona. See the B2s and Strato Fortresses. Everyone should look at this on Google Earth. The mind boggles. This is just a tiny section of what must be the largest collection of mothballed military aircraft in the world.

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Dear new HP CEO: Bring the TouchPad line back | ZDNet

2011-10-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

Dear new HP CEO: Bring the TouchPad line back | ZDNet:

'via Blog this'

I bought mine a few days ago (admittedly with a steep employee discount), so I'm so excited to get my hands on it. I want Apps, which is the thing I'm a little worried about.

Oracle skewers HP with alleged Autonomy 'shopping' gaffe | ZDNet

2011-09-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

Oracle skewers HP with alleged Autonomy 'shopping' gaffe | ZDNet:

'via Blog this'

29°17'22.65"N 94°58'4.98"W

2011-08-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

Whether you believe in the cloud or not, it’s coming.

2011-06-09T07:25:00.000-07:00

The article from Barton George originally appeared here

Whether you believe in the cloud or not, it’s coming. That being said, it’s not a phenomenon that will fill skies of IT departments tomorrow, but rather, it is starting out as another tool in IT’s bag of tricks. As time passes over the next three to five years however, cloud computing will increasingly become a greater part of the portfolio of compute models that IT departments manage, sitting alongside traditional computing and virtualization.

Cloud Computing Today

If you were to graph the distribution of compute models being used today by IT departments in large enterprises, it would look something like the chart below. Today, traditional computing and virtualization are where most of the distribution lies, with a little bit of flirting with the public cloud in the case of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications for areas like human resources (HR), customer relationship management (CRM) and email. Additionally, to ITs consternation, public cloud usage can also be found in the form of the unsanctioned use of third-party cloud sites by various business functions. On the private cloud side its existence in large organizations is presently negligible.

Over the Next Three to Five Years

Over the next three to five years the above distribution will flatten out and shift to the right and will resemble the graph below. Private cloud will represent the largest compute model utilized, but it will be equally flanked by virtualization and public cloud. You’ll notice there will still be a decent amount of resources that remain in the traditional compute bucket representing applications that are not worth the effort of rewriting or converting to a cloud platform.

Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary

One of the things to note with this new distribution is that the lines between virtualization and private cloud will start to blur (there will also be a blurring between private and public clouds, as hybrid clouds become more of a reality in the future, but that’s another story for another time). There are two ways to go about setting up private clouds, or really any type of cloud: evolutionary and revolutionary.

The evolutionary approach starts with virtualization and is appropriate where large investments in that area have been made and when you are talking about traditional enterprise applications. With virtualization serving as the foundation (see the graph below), additional capabilities are then layered on, such as usage-based billing/chargeback, workload life cycle management, dynamic resource pooling and a self-service portal for users.

One of the key aspects of the evolutionary approach is that at every step along the way, every capability added brings greater efficiencies and agility. You do not need to wait until you meet the full definition of a private cloud to derive value and you can stop anywhere along the way.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

The other way to get to the cloud is the revolutionary approach. This is appropriate for Greenfield opportunities within organizations, and is targeted at nontraditional, Web 2.0 applications that are "cloud-native" — applications written for deployment in the cloud. These revolutionary solutions will often be delivered as an integrated, turnkey unit (see graph below).

You Don’t Need to Choose

Rather than adopting one or the other, most organizations will use both approaches to get a private cloud. At this stage the evolutionary approach will be the predominant way of getting a private cloud. As more and more "new world" applications are developed for the cloud, the balance will begin to tip in favor of the revolutionary approach.

Whether evolutionary or revolutionary, over the next three to five years cloud computing will become a greater part of IT’s compute portfolio. In the longer term however, the elements and characteristics of cloud computing will be absorbed into IT and it will simply represent the way computing is handled.

The mystery deepens.. what exactly was the technology used in the Seal-6 helos used in the Bin Laden black Op

2011-05-25T20:05:00.000-07:00

Don't you just love a good conspiracy?

Pakistan has returned the wreckage of the helicopter used by Navy Seal 6 to kill Osama Bin Laden earlier in the month. Notwithstanding the utter embarassment Pakistans military must be feeling about having a couple of huge helicopters fly right up to the doorstep of their premier military academy in the middle of the night, it's also pretty embarassing for the US military that a high tech stealth helicopter had to be blown up as part of the mission.

I'm sure the Seal Team 6 commandos didn't have any issue with blowing up a several million dollars of tax-payers money, they are trained to think on their feet, after all. What interested me more is the actual technology involved. The published picture of the tail of the helicopter sure doesn't look like your standard MH-60 Blackhawk, which is the bird you you expect them to be using.

Look at the very unusual

exhaust port (dark trapezoid shape),

the tapered cover on

the top of the rotor, and the

five rotor blades.

All screams stealth technology.

Supposedly the MH-60 Blackhawk is normally used by seals for covert ops. American Special Ops had this to say. "The MH-60 series of helicopters are a highly modified UH-60 Black Hawks, the U.S. Army's utility helicopter, flown exclusively by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR)"

Take a look at this image instead of the cancelled RAH-66 Comanche. Look at the at the tail structure, and exhaust port outlets around the engine, which appear to be ported right down low by the tail just before the enclosed rear rotor in order to reduce the heat signature. I would say there are a lot more similarities between the tail rotor left in the Bin Laden raid and the Comanche, than the existing MH-60 models. Supposedly the Comance program was cancelled, but it is hard to believe the that military makes do with only the Bell Kinowa Warrior (based on Bell Jet Ranger, proven design by not exactly state of the art) as the only small helicopter used for reconnaissance.

Above Top Secret had some interesting things to say about both the noise reduction technology and the Comanche. They theorized was Eurocopter Blue Edge rotor blade noise reduction. I'm not sure about the credibility of this site, but assuming the technology is as effective as the demo, it does seem credible that these helicopters were indeed very quiet.

Black Ops being what they are, I see no reason why secret helicopter designs couldn't be out there.

Lets keep guessing.

The Cloud that Could

2011-05-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

Cloud Computing has had increased visibility weekly recently, with offers from the major vendors competing for attention on many different fronts, and articles everywhere. It's also taken center stage for me personally, as I'm moving from a decade of deploying corporate IT infrastructure, to a new role within HPs cloud computing delivery group.

While most CIOs realize that successfully executing a shift to some degree of cloud based compute will save money, the question of what will occur with the savings is one not often addressed. This is a hypothetical scenario, to illustrate some of the potential cost and transformation issues.

Lets say you are CIO in of a company that outsources 1000 servers to a hosting provider. You currently purchase all the server hardware, the outsourcing provider installs it an runs it for you. Typical problems with this model include time to provision hardware, keeping patching up to date, standards and application design consistent, and underutilization of capacity.

The cloud provider convinces you that many of these servers can be hosted within a provider private cloud. The increased server utilization efficiency of the cloud means that the number of physical servers can be reduced by 30%, a substantial cost saving. The new billing model is a pay-per-server image model, where instead of buying hardware, the number of active server images is billed based on daily, automated daily usage statistics.

Over a two year time frame, you move to the provider cloud instead of refreshing end of life servers in your existing outsourced server hosting operation. Indeed the savings work out, and IT capital budget reduces because of reduced purchasing of new servers. Operational costs go up, but this was to be expected due to the transition from spending money on hardware to spending on a pay-per-server image model.

Your CFO starts to ask you

if you are reducing headcount in

your IT operation because

the costs of providing the

infrastructure required by

your business applications

has reduced.

Your CFO starts to ask you if you are reducing headcount in your IT operation because the costs of providing the infrastructure required by your business applications has reduced. However, business groups are still demanding many changes to their applications, and the pipeline of backlogged project work for IT is as great as ever. In fact, many of the application groups quickly grasped the new flexibility offered by the cloud computing environment. The number of requests for approval of new development and test environments has risen substantially as these business groups realize they can get a new server image stood up within hours after approval instead of the previous months.

Possibility one - CFO loves this option. Cut IT staff numbers, because you are saving money on hosting and don't need all those guys that used to be supporting hardware installs.

Possibility two - HR director loves this option. Retrain former IT staff that used to be working on supporting hardware installation, standup and support, to address more of the project pipeline. You know this is a difficult option, it's debatable whether retaining will be effective, especially as many of the staff were previously to low cost offshore locations, have narrow, low level skill sets, and a pretty poor track record of showing innovation or autonomy.

Possibility three - you as CIO love this option. Cloud computing has enabled a rethink of the role and structure of your whole IT shop. Instead of an embattled operational focus and constant hardware refresh struggle, you've got staff that can be directed towards working with business groups on increasing the innovation and response times for their new ideas. This is a challenging cultural change, but judging by the new motivation that you are seeing from many staff, it's one worth pushing for.

Cloud computing might be still sky high in terms of turning vision into reality, but if we think it through, the possibilities for organizational change, culture change and cost saving are huge.

Ellison and Hurd play hardball against HP

2011-05-04T07:24:00.000-07:00

The Itanium debacle has Mark Hurd and Larry Ellison in a spite filled rampage against HP.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mapping-babel-10017967/itaniums-not-dead-say-parents-intel-and-hp-10022057/

Places not to visit in the World...Anthrax Island

2011-02-24T18:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/060299anthrax-island.html

A brief history from a post on the Google Earth Forum:
The base you have found is a former USSR Biological Weapons Research Facility..

The facility to the south of the airfield is the actual facility, which was named PNIL-52.. To the east of the airfiel is the housing for doctors, soldiers and families, known as Aralsk-7..

The facility was built in the 1950s as a secret location for testing microbiological warfare on animals.. It was finally abandoned in 1992, but still remains under close watch from both the american and russian military, because vast amounts of anthrax are buried here. Although the soviet doctors tried to kill the antrax spores before putting it in the huge steel canisters and sealing them, part of the spores are still deadly..

It is speculated that most of the people living in Aralsk-7 were actually women, because of numerous inscriptions and panels in the baracks, which bear the distinctions of women.. Also a large number of gynecological chairs and exam-rooms have been discovered inside the PNIL-52 facility, which has lead to speculations that the soviets were conducting experiments on unborn infants and pregnant women, although this has never been confirmed or otherwise proven.

A large number of doors are welded shut and many of the exam-room doors were only able to be opened from the outside. The welded doors have not been opened because of the fear of some remaining biological spores, which could contaminate the area.

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Hot new Sedan from KIA

2010-11-24T06:54:00.000-08:00

And the surprise auto maker in recent years...has got to be Kia. Kick-ass styling, pricing to win recession era pocketbooks, and quirky, original advertising.

This is new Kia Optima, available with a 274HP turbo! Looks a little bit like a Chevy Cruze on steroids. Detroit, you are doing, well, but still need to go more aggressive with styling...

Gartner's Top 10 Technologies for 2011

2010-11-15T08:48:00.001-08:00

October 20, 2010
Larry Dignan

1: Cloud computing
This group of technologies has been on the top 10 lists for a few years. Now everything as a service will alter business models and IT procurement. Gartner analyst David Cearley said what has changed is that there are multiple services. Companies will probably need cloud computing brokers. Things to watch:

Where does the public cloud fit? IT is generally scared of the public cloud, but select workloads are fine.
Beware cloud washing. IT execs are comfortable with the vendors cloud washing but may not get real capability.
Limit access to specific clouds based on community and groups. That approach would minimize security risks. Gartner has exclusive clouds and community clouds as services to watch.
Private clouds are custom and packaged.
My impression: A safe pick for sure, but the cloud is getting more granular as it matures. Think cloud washing magnified.

2: Mobile apps and media tablets
Tablets and touch aren't new. Claunch said that the selection of applications changes the game for businesses. "Apple has leveraged the ecosystem of the iPhone," Claunch said. "And Apple has created consistency." In addition, Apple's iPad is the poster child for how consumerization is affecting corporate IT. Things to think about for enterprise IT:

Enterprise apps will need to be designed for the tablet.
Delivering these apps gets complicated due to the selection of platforms.
Context-aware computing can connect to customers better.
Marketing will drive a lot of projects to utilize tablets, but these devices can be used for inspections, surveys, image capture, documentation, and training.
Cearley added, "The PC era is over. Think of mobile design points."

My impression: It's stunning how many iPads are in this crowd of 7,000-plus IT execs and managers. Another thread: Almost all of these IT execs are carrying PCs not Macs. Typically, CIOs and the like are the last to get on board an early adoption curve for a new device. There's a frenzy over tablets.

3: Next-gen analytics
Companies need to develop "operational analytics" to make predictions and use data mashups. "There's value in very current information. We are now shifting our focus to start doing simulations and modeling to predict the future," Claunch said. These simulations would ultimately be run on smartphones and other devices. Algorithms will really matter to companies to support the right type of prediction.

Gartner didn't advocate doing a lot of analytics investment yet, but be ready to invest.

My impression: Analytics is largely untapped ground for many companies. Claunch's key point: "This is just being enabled now." Another key item: A show of hands revealed that the entire room had business intelligence software. A show of hands also indicated that no one thought those applications were delivering real value.

4: Social analytics
This concept revolves around taking social networking data and incorporating it into enterprise analysis. Sentiment, context, and influence are key areas for companies. "We're starting to see the tipping point," Cearley said. "It's moving from bleeding edge to mainstream activity." For now, look at communities you have to support and analyze an entry.

My impression: CIOs should be watching this stuff, but given the crowd response to business intelligence, I'm not seeing much progress on the analytics-social intersection.

5: Social communication and collaboration
Social collaboration is "inevitable," Cearley said. "Over the next few years, it will be impossible to ignore this," he added. By now, companies should have policies, high value social uses identified, and have experiments to link social with CRM systems. Meanwhile, unified communications will merge with social. Expertise location will probably be the best use case.

My impression: Gartner makes a good point, but I'd be willing to bet that enterprises are way behind the curve on social communication and what it means for collaboration and productivity.

6: Video
Corporate use of video is going mainstream. Low-cost video recorders are everywhere. Companies will need video content management systems and better design skills, and they'll need to address privacy issues and policy concerns. Will all conference rooms be recorded by default? E-learning, merchandising, marketing, webinars, and telepresence will all be key video uses. The tipping point will come in 2011 to 2013. In addition, video will be needed to reach younger employees.

My impression: Video has hit mainstream, but networks haven't. Will Vlogs really be the best use of employee time? One other key point: How will business intelligence systems digest video content?

7: Context-aware computing
The idea here is that social analytics and computing leads to knowledge about preferences. User interfaces would change based on context. Today, it's all reactive. By 2011 to 2013, there will be more proactive alerts. By 2014 to 2018, you'll have context integrated with enterprise systems. Ultimately, there will be a context platform. Portals, mashups, mobile, and social will combine. Vendors will offer "user experience platforms."

My impression: I have a hard time seeing strapped enterprises going all contextual. Look for business units such as marketing to launch these projects to drive sales. Companies will need to deliver context-aware services to businesses. Can't wait for all of those user experience platform pitches.

8: Ubiquitous computing
This topic has been discussed in previous years on Gartner's lists. In a nutshell, computers melt into objects. There will be machine-to-machine connections, portable personalities, and connectivity changes across multiple devices. There will be thousands of computers for each person on the planet, and you'll have multiple devices.

My impression: Ubiquitous computing is more a guiding principle for projects than something you think about in terms of budget. The timeline here is decades. What's also notable: Everyone has punted on getting one device to consolidate them all. We're doomed to carry a bunch of devices.

9: Storage class memory
When Flash meets RAM, there are differences in speed and costs. Persistent storage will also alter management. Claunch said that storage class memory goes beyond solid state drives. This new class of storage will lead to software where operating systems determine where data goes. Storage class memory will become more important over the next two to three years.

My impression: It's a bit experimental, but storage class memory will ride shotgun with analytics. Companies will have to define what data goes into fast memory.

10: Fabric based infrastructure and computers
Every vendor will talk fabric computing, so get ready for fabric-washing. The overall idea here is that you'll have infrastructure that manages resources in an integrated fashion. Cisco UCS and HP Matrix are examples. New ways of building servers will mean you buy pools of processors and memory instead of physically swapping boxes.

My impression: Forming your own flexible servers sounds appealing. The fabric thing sounds way futuristic for now, but the seeds are being planted.

This article reprinted courtesy of TechRepublic.

I'm sorry, who did HP hire as their new CEO again?

2010-10-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

Well, he would now something about technology.

The name of the actual new HP CEO, Leo Apotheke translates as 'pharmacy' into english. A poisen pill for HP, or just the perscription needed?

Normally I'm a car guy, but this motorcycle made me gasp

2010-10-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Usually, my opinion about motorcycle design is kind of critical, mainly because I've never subscribed to the macho Harley mythos, and don't ride myself, so I think I should keep my mouth shut.

However, I saw several Victory Vision touring bikes over the summer here in Michigan. Of course, Michigan is very much the spiritual home to many things macho (hunting, fishing, V8s, Bob Lutz, drunken snowmobiling on frozen lakes, etc) so I was somehow not surprised that a) this beautiful piece of design didn't come from a traditional motorcycle maker, and b) it's made by a snow-mobile company.

Long and short of it is that the pictures don't do it justice. This bike is just sensational. Swooping, flowing, tight design. Widely expressionistic, beautifully engineered. The industrial design team got away with so much here, its a wonder. My favorite feature is the huge V shaped tailight that would give the Vision huge road presences as it glides past you in the night. The bike is huge. It's hard to grasp the size from the pictures below, but the website has better pictures of the bike in its element - rolling hills and forests of the North American summer.

This is the sort of design language that I've been waiting on for years from Harley Davidson, but they are staying true to their deliberately noisy exhausts, and hopelessly nostalgic retro design language, despite the fact that their core market now is 55 year old baby boomers who probably would appreciate a little more comfort and style.

At $23K, this is a pricey ride, but one which every owner would regard as a personal Victory, I'm sure.

Photos: Victory Motorcycles

Another good reason to bring you children up Atheist?

2010-09-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

From The Real Stuff White People Like

HP Prayer for Relief against ex CEO

2010-09-17T12:11:00.000-07:00

I had never heard of this quaint legal terminology before, found in the civil complaint against former CEO Mark Hurd. The irony suggested by the wording is that the HP board is in desperate straights over the escalating Hurd debacle and has resorted to worshiping the Palo Alto money gods.

Having just paid about 2 million dollars per employee for ArcSight, I don't think the powers that preside over Silicon Valley's indulgences will consider this prayer happily. Rather a reprimand for stupidity is probably in order.

Not only did Hurd fleece the HP board of 25 million to avoid further scandal, he delivered a follow up scandal within days, seemingly out of sheer spite, as he walked straight into the waiting wallet of Larry Ellison spoiling for a fight against his biggest competitor.

Maybe prayer is the best strategy right now after all.

HP ranks number 10 in Interbrand Global Brand Survey

2010-09-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

Kudos to HP, it's global strategy of awe-inspiring bigness seems to be working. It's rated as number 10 on the list of world's most well known brands, pushing Toyota out of the top 10 with a rise in brand value of 12%.

The top 10 is remarkably dominated by tech companies, with IBM, Microsoft, Google, Nokia and Intel all within the top 10.

Source: Interbrand Best Global Brands 2010

HP Acquisition Rampage continues - ArcSight in the sights

2010-09-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

HPs seemingly monopoly-like buying spree continues with ArcSight being the next billion dollar purchase.

Obviously because of the embarassing bidding war with Dell over 3PAR that I commented on in an earlier post, HP was keeping a low profile on the ArcSight acquisition. It wasn't even announced on the company intranet, I had to dig it out from the public internet site after reading it in the paper. Perhaps given that this is "cybersecurity, cyberdefence and cyberwarfare company", it was thought a little cloak and dagger understatement was in order, although it appears from the stock chart, that someone got a whiff of the transaction in late August based on the huge one day jump in stock price prior to the official announcement today. Oh to be part of the Silicon Valley rumor mill...

You have to wonder what the market thinks of these aquisition. HPs share price has fluculated quite substantially for a big tech stock in the last months. Much of this was due to the volatile swings in the overall market since May, but the all knowing stock market is supposed to price in all known pricing factors such as multi-billion dollar acquisitions.

Maybe I should start trading these swings (see my Daily Income for Life blog). Its probable that I would make more money trading HP stock that I will in HP bonuses this year, given how much cash has been flying out the door to the moneyed mansions of Los Gatos, and not to mention the embarassing pay off of Mark Hurd. Oh, sorry Peter, we just spent our employee bonus pool on paying a huge premium for 3PAR, ArcSight, legal bills fighting our ex-CEO and trips to Hawaii for our Sales Team. Because, umm, our executive team gets their bonus based on how much market share we grow, and well this pile of cash is not growing market share unless we buy market share with it right?

Black humor aside, like 3PAR, HPs ArcSight acquisition does make commercial lsense. It gives HP some valuable intellectual property in the area of cyberthreft, cyberwarfare, and cyberespionage. Maybe it could even be used to keep tabs of the expense accounts of future CEOs? I think $1.2 billion is cheap to make sure the next one hired is honest. The HP board has already been through a spying scandal, so

Hang on, a guy in a trench coat and hat has just walked into my cube... later.

Does HPs 3PAR acquisition give a new tilt to the Tech playing field?

2010-09-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

HP has 300,000 employees and counting. Add to that another another multi-billion dollar acquisition of 3PAR to fuel the meglomanical expansion of the worlds biggest technology company. Can HP really handle all these ideas and cultures with a corporate version of feature bloat?

Does this remind anyone of IBM in the early 90s?

We've known a while that the best HP Labs can produce is off the wall solutions for manure powered data centers. Could be a boon for Wisconsin and New Zealand, but it certainly doesn't showcase HP Labs.

So it looks like the HP executive suite in Palo Alto has given up on actual innovation, they just go buy it at whatever price they need to pay. If you can afford to blow 25 million on shutting up a dishonest CEO, then you can reward yourself lots of really neat other stuff as well.

What is HP really trying to do here? Even a 'in the trenches' HP salary slave like myself (I nearly slipped and said 'in the firing line', which off course wouldn't be far from the truth given HPs record of downsizing employees of it's acquisitions) can't really figure it out. The media and blogosphere is where I go for accurate commentary on HP, certainly not our intranet or standard sanitized internal corporate announcements.

Surely if it's all about the cloud, IBM is running circles around HP with it's quiet stranglehold on the mainframe market. I agree with the ZDNet article on that topic, that it's big iron that will allow IBM to dominate the corporate cloud computing space.

So, my bets on the new IT landscape.

IBM: Corporate cloud dominance
Apple: Consumer apps, device and media dominance
Google: Analytical dominance and cash machine ohne ende.
Facebook: please, please die a grim death at the hands of government privacy watchdogs before something really, really bad happens with all the data you are collecting.
HP: Services dominance with all that cumbersome cross-selling within the feature-bloat-cloud
Microsoft: Windows and heathcare (it's Bill's passion now anyway)

Oops..even less complimentary commentary about HPs disgraced CEO

2010-09-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

From Newsweek, further confirmation that public opinion is flowing strongly against disgraced HP CEO Mark Hurd.

Spunkiest small car in the world headed to the USA

2010-08-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

I've seen a few Cincociento models around Rochester Hills recently...with blacked out body panels and so on. Not so unusual for our area which is full of big three auto engineers. Confirms Chrysler is ramping up their plans to bring Fiat models to the USA. This article provides a little more detail.

I'm particular excited about the Alfa Romeo Mito, which I consider the spunkiest small car in the world.

After my Alfa love affair with my 156 in Germany, I'd love to own another Alfa. Doesn't everyone that owns an Alfa call it a love affair?

Words

2010-08-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

Make sure you watch at least twice...this is more subtle than it looks

Oh dear oh dear. We will not miss you Mark.

2010-08-07T17:40:00.000-07:00

Our dear leader leaves in a scandal worthy of his karmic debt to 40,000 laid off employees.

You have to admit, a salary of 30 million while you lay of that many people reeks of a certain lack of integrity. That is without a doubt how Mr Hurd was perceived by myself and many other HP colleagues.

So somehow it doesn't surprise me that he's been caught with his hands in the HP till, and by all reports, all over the executive event greeter he hired to polish HPs image with fellow overpaid CEOs.

Mark, we look forward to your replacement. May he or she be a better man or woman that you have proved to be.

Good luck with your undeserved millions, and repairing your conscience.

HP Acquires Melodeo - targets set on iTunes users

2010-06-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

Hewlett-Packard confirmed on Wednesday that it had acquired Melodeo, its second recent acquisition in the mobile market.
Melodeo offers a service, called NuTsie, that essentially lets people stream songs that are in their iTunes collections to a mobile phone. A user first exports iTunes playlists to NuTsie online. After downloading an application to their phone, they can start listening to their playlists.
My sense is that HP is moving aggressively as possible into the consumer cloud. With it's strong new touch screen models, and Palm acquisition of WebOS, HP is looking to create an entire WebOS based hardware and cloud based consumer services ecosystem to rival Apple.

- Printers will use WebOS on their inbuilt touchscreens.
- HP printers will migrate to wireless, and be internet enabled as standard. Connect your printer, connect to wifi, and print from any wireless device to the printer through cloudprint
- HP will start to use WebOS on it's Slate tablet device, just like Apple uses the iPhone OS on the iPad.
- Possible conflicts with Microsoft could arise as it becomes more and more obvious that Windows may not be the user interface of choice for the new mobile computing paradigm
- HP touchscreen PCs may migrate to a WebOS/HP Touch combination

What is key in this new ecosystem, is that the interface becomes completely transparent to the user. iPhone users like myself already understand this: Reading the iPhone manual is a waste of time, because the OS is so utterly intuitive that a manual is largely uncessary.

Windows is still a far cry from user interface intuition, and Microsoft is appearing less and less able to close this gap. If you've every used the interface on a Windows mobile device, you'll understand why. My windows mobile work phone sits in the drawer at home - I use my iPhone for work calls if necessary because its just so frustrating to use the clumsy, menu based system.

Peter is an HP employee, but not involved in printer/web/PC strategy.

Jing Screen capture software test

2010-04-02T20:39:00.000-07:00

Nice software. Very cool graphic interface. Free. Captures screen shot or video.

Allows sharing via a link on Screencast.com

Saab Sold to Spyker..so what does this mean for Saab

2010-03-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

First a Swedish supercar maker wants to get SAAB on the cheap...now a Dutch one does. Well, there must be something special about SAAB.

You might recall I was pretty excited in a previous post about the Saab deal with Konigsegg, given the interesting connection between the design arm of Konigsegg, Ecker design. Admittedly I am biased, having studied industrial design long ago.

Maybe Spyker Cars is an even better fit. With over one hundred years of history behind them, Spyker to me epotimises everything european about the car industry. Instead of building itself to a global comglomorate like Ford and GM, Spyker has quitely made unusal performance cars since the birth of the automobile industry. Merging with an aircraft maker prior to world war I, Spyker represents the long term view of European vs US business. I hope helps to keep SAAB alive.

SAAB was never a fit in the GM stable, so lets hope Spyker can get the brand out of it's blandness and back to the quirkly, interesting and well engineered vehicles that built the reputation in the first place. Maybe, like FIAT, SAAB will now thrive having escaped the corporate death sentance that belonging to the (old) GM entailed.

I'm sure the aeronautical connection will endear Spyker to all those quirky SAAB engineers (admitedly rumored to behind of SAABs, notorious cost overuns).

Perhaps some of the extravagent Spyker design will also rub off, making the SAAB brand interesting for the designers, architects and educated professionals that tended to be their traditional buyer demographic. Below is the gorgeous if slight outlandish Spyker Aileron. How many car companies are confident enough to put their companies latin corporate tag line actually on their car. ‘Nulla tenaci invia est via:’

‘For the tenacious no road is impassable’. Lets hope this holds true for SAAB as well.

Way to go GM! Camaro, Cadillac, Corvette Test drives for HP employees....

2010-03-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

My colleague Bill, and I strolled up on a brilliant spring day in Michigan to our HP Pontiac Facility carpark.

The lot was full of the latest GM vehicles.

"What's the deal here?", asked Bill as we spotted a dozen HP employees milling around. "Oh, we're all waiting to drive the Corvette. But you can drive anything here"

"You mean I can just take the Camaro for a spin?"

Oh dear. What a choice. Cadalliac CTS, Buick Lacrosse, Enclave, Acadia, Terrain, Malibu (OK, so who would really want to test drive a Malibu?) All the vehicles that prove GM is more than back in the game in terms of design, functionality and style.

First up: 426-hp 6.2L V8 SS Camaro. This car puts a smile on your face. Slide in to the deep bucket seats, retro dash and dials, red leather, broad fat bonnet. Throaty howl. Loads of fun. Macho through and through. The window down and the elbow hanging out just happened, honest.

Need a bigger ego...

Next up: Cadillac CTS Estate. Slide in to walnut, the most beautiful set of instruments I've ever seen, luxury everywhere. Makes Audi, BMW, and Mercedes seen, ah, well, Teutonic. This is really how luxury should feel like. Drives smooth as silk, no feeling that this is as good size estate with slick styling to boot.

Need a payrise...

Last up: 2010 Corvette Coupe V8. The line for the Corvette was down to four people, and the GM folks were starting to lock up cars. The cherry red coupe slunk up, V8 burbling. "Anyway want to drive the stick shift?" the guy from GM called out. "Last drive of the day". Murmurs of nervousness from those waiting. "I'll drive it" I called out. " You can tell I didn't learn to drive in the USA!" I added... More sliding in to deep leather buckets. Surprisingly, my 6ft frame had 3 inches of headroom to spare. I eased it out to the main road, gettting the feel for the angled, leather shifter, then stepped on the gas.. First gear 40mph, second, 60mph a second or three later, the headup display flickering higher in fluro green over the sweeping bonnet. Ah, whoops, speed limit is 45 mph ... The drive was way too short, with my colleague Bill riding shotgun, in between the laugther at how good this car made us feel, worried about the Pontiac police catching the guys in the red Corvette doing 15 over the limit in second gear...

Need to stop smiling like an idiot...

Lutz Leaves the Stage at GM

2010-03-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times

The Great American Bubble Machine

2009-10-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

Article from Rolling Stone

Google Wave

2009-10-14T13:30:00.001-07:00

Fantastic new concept Google Wave coming out of Googles skunk works

The video demo is long but if you have the time will give you a system reset about what the next generation of email/instant messaging/collaboration is going to be like.

2009-10-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

Concept motorcycle

2009-07-14T18:48:00.001-07:00

One of the nice things about having two young sons, is that you get to relive your childhood through their toys. I was admiring one of my sons fighter jets recently, and started to wonder why modern motorcycle design is well, so old and boring.

Why don't motorcycle riders demand that their bikes look as styled as modern cars? Or even look like a fighter jet?

The result of these musings was a design for a reclining, aerodynamic, agressive motorcycle concept. New market segment - new generation of riders that want more security than traditional motorcycles, wouldn't be seen dead riding a baby-boomer sixties throwback Harley (it's only pot-bellied retires that buy Harleys these days), still want excitement, but also want double the fuel economy and three times the acceleration of a Prius.

Some of the design ideas (hard to read the scribblings on my sketch)...

- Supercar style (or fighter jet intake) air intakes either side of the rider

- Aluminim rollcage goes provides visual cue of strength and safety

- Fuel tank at the back above the wheel

- Very low CG due to the rider being reclining in front of the engine.

- Utilize existing bike mechanicals as much as possible

- Lockable, integrated storage behind drive and in front of the fuel tank

- Aluminium box frame gives visual cue to strength

- Optional 'Targa' top fits over driver for more enclosed feel

- Partial door gives sense of security while maintaining a bike feel

As far as I know, only the Swiss have been venturing into this market niche with the slick and very expensive Monotracer. The Monotracer actually has quite a long history, most of them horrifically ugly from design perspective. The new one is very contempory, but priced way out of range except for possibly the Knomes of Zurich on their weekends.

My design is a lot more close to existing motorcycles - semi exposed rather than completely enclosed. Exposed engines and mechanics are really part of motorcycle magic, as is fresh air. Also, having the rider be able to put their feet down gets around the tricky problem of retracing stabilzer wheels that fully enclosed motorcycles will always need to solve.

New life for GM, new car for Buick, new job for Lutz

2009-07-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

The new GM yesterday, a new old job for Bob Lutz, the new Buick Lacrosse today.

Being in Michigan has some benefits...like seeing the latest GM and Chrysler vehicles before everyone else does. I live in leafy Rochester Hills, home to lots of auto engineers,managers and so on, so you see a lot of new vehicles that they are getting to drive on their discount schemes.

So when a spotted a nice new car by the gym the other day, I thought, oh, nice new Lexus. Not a Lexus. Not a Hyundai Genisis even. A Buick? I did a double take, then walked around it.

Then walked around it again. Now, when you have loved cars and good design for years, you create a little protocol for checking out new cars. Walking right around a new car twice, is something that I think I did the last time in Germany when I first saw the Mercedes SLK. And that was a good eight year ago.

It's special, this car. Everything is tight. The curves are tight. The chrome swoops, the bonnet slices, the interior makes the even the S-Class (my usual standard for luxury interiors) look dated and fusty. The historic references like the air-intakes on the bonnet add to the overall design, not detract.

With the Cadillac CTS, the Lincoln MKX, MKZ, and the new Chevy Camaro, US auto design is finally showing it can blend design elements from the heyday of US auto design, into relevant 21st century cars.

Hopefully, bringing back Bob Lutz into the new GM will make sure we keep getting great American design like this.

Solar Powered Paraglider

2009-07-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

Interesting idea for solar cells on paragliders that caught my attention while researching paragliding near HP locations globally.

My wife and I are trying to figure out where the best location in the world for us to live is. Not that we don't love our classic colonial in Rochester Hills, Michigan, its just that we are ever on the search for perfection...And, there is no local paragliding site. The closest place to fly is 3.5 hrs.

I'm thinking of crowdsourcing the search for the perfect place to live.

Konigsegg sets up Saab deal

2009-07-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

What a curious turn of events. A Norwedgian industrial designer and a Swedish financial whizzkid pull of an audacious coup to convince the Swedish government to invest hundreds of millions of dollars/crowns/euros to pick up one of the world's more interesting auto brands at a firesale price.

Check out Baard Eker's design company. He owns 49% of Koenigsegg. As an trained industrial designer long ago, this outfit makes me drool. Small creative studio set in the sylvan Norwegian countryside, turning out the design for one of the world's fastest production cars (although it is debatable whether 18 cars a year can be called production), and other cool products and now presumably to play a big part in the remaking of Saab. Perhaps they might even persuade Saab to productionize the cool AeroX concept car.

In another curious turn of evens, 350 million in stimulus for Tesla motors was announced from our physicist in chief, Stephen Chu. Lets hope Better Place has filled out their application form too.

Maybe Gen-X is finally starting to wrench control of the world away from the insane and greedy industrial politics of the twentieth century baby boomers, and towards the world I've been dreaming about seeing for the last twenty years.

Testing out the cloud

2009-05-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

Today's cloud test. Google docs vs Microsoft Skydrive. I wanted to know how realistic it would be to start storing all my personal data on the web using free products. I assumed security wasn't an issue, so long as I went with a major known provider.

Criteria:

1. Upload multiple files at one time

2. View files in browser

3. Easily move files between files and folders

4. Unlimited folder depth

5. Contemporary look and feel

Analysis

1. Skydrive lets you easily upload multiple files, Google docs doesn't.

2. Guess what, Skydrive completely wrecks .pdfs. That's almost a show stopper, as I would really like to file a lot of old bills online using .pdfs. Google docs uploads .pdf very unpredictably, do both fail miserably in this area.

3. Skydrive has much more sophsticated look and feel, and moving files is easier.

4. Folder depth is really important to me because I'm a disciplined organizer of files. Google docs allows to create folder depth, but once you do, it's almost impossible to follow. Skydrive wins easily.

5. Come on Google, the interface is really dated, and actually, just plain bad. I know the Skydrive gui is all Vista/Silverlight smooth, but it just looks better, has less clutter, and shows that more thought was put into it. Google obviously gave Google Earth an unlimited budget, it's clear they are not seeing the revenue stream in docs with an inteface this dated and poorly thought through.

Verdict

Overall, Skydrive would win, but fails the .pdf test so badly that it blew it's chance. Google displayed them seamlessly, but uploaded them only when it felt like it. So neither product got past five or six user actions without show-stopper functionality breakdowns. So it looks like I'm hanging out with my hardrive for a little longer.

The Million Server Data Center

2009-04-29T18:27:00.000-07:00

Interesting article about trends in data centers

The greed of the rich comes under attack

2009-03-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

The public outrage over the greed and incompetance behind AIG's disasterous credit default swaps is mounting. This article from the NY Times captures the moment.

Well, you reap what you sow, guys. Maybe we will start seeing corporate and personal greed as an addiction that is undeserving of allocades and social grace, and redefine these robber barons as destructive, rather than constructive.

Scenes from the Recession

2009-03-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Global photo essay on the world financial crisis and its impact on everyday life around the world.

Is HP still a technology company, or just a profit center for Wall St?

2009-03-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

One of the HP-EDS executive team managed to speak for an hour today without once alluding to anything except costs, cutting costs, making more profit for the corporation, growth, saving, increasing revenue, increasing margin for the corporation, getting the forecast right...ad naseum.

Hello? Is HP a technology company anymore? The entire hour was so generic and contentless that it could have been an MBA textbook speech designed to present to the wage slaves on day 90 of the 100 day corporate integration plan.

Where is the vision? Where is the discussion of the convergence of RFID chips, mobile phones, GPS systems, and location based advertising using internet marketing and on virtual servers purchased from Amazon web services. Not to mention the competivtive pressure HP is experiencing from Googles cloud algorithms or the Sun merger with IBM, that could profoundly EDS's general leaning towards Sun as a hardware supplier for thousands of client data centers, and create enormous competitive pressure for HPs blade offering. These are the topics that I want my executives to be conversant in, and use to prove their credibility to be running a global technology company.

Maybe the EDS acqusition was the tipping point for HP. Maybe HP under first Carly and now Mark, has become so big that all it's executives are capable of taking about anymore is the bottom line. And basically the bottom line means their bonus check.

Congratuations, Mr Hurd. You've sold out to Wall st. I have to admit it, $42 million is a pretty good price for your soul.

Just please, please don't sell out me. I love working with technology. I love feeling like the work I do is cutting edge. I love feeling that when I read 'Wired' magazine, I actuallly understand the articles. But, if recent HP-EDS executive performance is anything to go by, it's already too late.

HP Pay Cuts - an unfair act of economic opportunism and greed.

2009-03-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

Suffering, suffering. Buddists have a belief that life is suffering. Sure feels like it at the moment.

Thousands of hardworking employees take pay cuts while executive continue to reap millions in bonuses.

Reading Damien Saunder's post about the recent HP Pay cuts (disclosure: I'm one of those taking them, and have experienced the corresponding % drop in job motivation), I believe we are really experiencing not only a financial crisis, but a corporate leadership crisis as well.

Software for Mindmapping on a blog

2009-03-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

Trying to find software to bring mindmapping into my blog.

I created this mindmap about cloud computing using Webspiration. This took about 5 minutes to sign up to this service, 15 minutes to create the mindmap, and 2 minutes to figure out how to imbed it into this blog. The link above goes direct to the website, and the imbedded version is below.

The embedded Webspiration mindmap is very clean and easy to scroll around, but allows no scaling and easy scrolling allowing clear navigation.

A little more fiddly to get started with and embed, but more attractive results and vastly more sophisticated editing is Xmind.

The free version of Xmind involves a download, installation, and then the upload didn't work through my corporate proxy server.

The editing tools are sophisticated, and in the free version everything you create is public. Editing is intuitive and fast to learn, although the added functionality also makes it more time consuming to learn. I created a mindmap in about 30 minutes. Using the website enables full screen viewing and a host of collaboration tools.

Xmind creates a very nice embedded map, with options to see the outline and author. But the scaling creates problems when maps are small. You'd really need a completely separate page to have this work in a blog.

Los bikers Kiwis

2009-01-31T19:07:00.000-08:00

I love hearing about mad adventures. Here is one from a Brazillian friend who is just starting a motorcycle ride through Patagonia.

Finally, a leader revelant to the USA and the world

2009-01-22T13:36:00.000-08:00

Watching Obama's inaugral address, I believe the USA, as the only real global superpower, finally has a leader who is capable of being a leader the world needs, as well as the leader the USA needs.

Two things really moved me. I've lived in four different countries around the world, with very different cultures. So I feel pretty global in my outlook on life. So Obama's global viewpoint really strikes a chord. His global perspective, environmental awareness, respect for the role of both religion and science, clarity that the middle way is really the only way to bring people together, opposition to crude brute force , a stern clarity about the damage that greed and unrestrained market forces will bring to the world - all of this mirrors the experiences that my own evoution has led me who I am.

The second thing was that Obama clearly has crystal clear values. The USA is founded on inclusivity, crafted as a place of opportunity for those that wanted freedom of belief, religion, commerce and self-expression. As articulated by Obama, these values made me realize why I instinctively always wanted to experience living in the USA .

For the last eight years, we saw a massively corrupt Republican cabel cynically manipulate many of these values in order to justify political power and orchestrate the transfer of trillions of dollars in taxpayer wealth into the private fortunes of a narrow elite. Obama's message of new challenge, of creating a new country that improves on the old, of a 'more perfect union', these things speak to the timeless attraction of life in the US, rather than cynically created fear and war-based patriotism that the Bush white house cynically rammed down the throats of a vulnerable public after September 11, as part of their calculated campaign of theft of public money and misuse of power.

Obamas message, in contrast, articulates the the essence if freedom that US citizens so often feel deeply - but often fail to describe clearly. These values are much more clear when you move to the USA from another country where they are not as present. The USA is a land where people don't apologize for who they decide to be, where ideas can be tried on, spoken aloud, reconsidered and abandoned for better ones when you have grown beyond them. This is the attraction of living in this country, and through Obama's clarity of communication, I've leapt forward in understanding this.

He is a very much the consumate leader for our time, a leader for my generation of intelligent, discerning adults in their 30s and 40s who are sick of the hypocrisy and greed that so often characterised the powerful adults that supposedly served as our role models as we grew up. Instead these adults became the figures of our ridicule, digust and disillusionment.

We waited a long time for you Obama. Your time has come.

GM, please, please build this car

2009-01-20T07:49:00.000-08:00

GM is not dead yet. Just returned from the Detroit autoshow, and can feel the change coming.

Why?

GM introduced the Converj, a kick-ass, razor sharp, Cadilliac plug in hybrid. And unlike the utterly gorgeous Lincoln concept C car, the Converj looked like it was production ready, already.

The converj uses Volt technology, which catapults the Cadillac brand into the future of eco-geek tech, as well as making it the must have status symbol for those who would otherwise be lusting after a BMW hybrid.

And, if you hadn't already noticed, eco-geek is the direction the USA is going as fast as Obama can hire PHD's for his white house staff.

The change in the auto industry is happening faster than most consumers realize. Let's see where this goes.

Through the worst of the crisis?

2009-01-10T19:31:00.000-08:00

Well, it's 2009 and I still have a job.

There was a horrible moment not so long ago, where the only sane thing to do was to sit down and mind-map my own personal worst case scenario.

Which went something like this:
- Lose my job at HP
- Along with the job, lose my visa to work in the USA
- Have to sell our beautiful house at a big loss
- Have to search for a job somewhere else in the world in a global recession
- Spend all our savings moving a family of four around the world
- Move back to NZ or move back to Germany
- In short....start again.

Actually, I've done that several time before in Germany and the USA, so it shouldn't be too bad. Problem is, we really like what we are experiencing right now. Kids are growing up fast and don't keep us up at night, job is OK, house is a delight, Michigan is beautiful whatever season you are in...

But now that Bush did the only thing I ever think was actual a well informed decision in his 8 years of being president by bailing out the Detroit automakers (on which my job depends), at least the mortgage payment seems a bit more safe now. We've had a beautiful snowy winter, and my oldest son is finally potty trained! Life is looking up.

Pulling up to the Boys Club in one of these

2008-11-18T20:05:00.000-08:00

Maybe there is hope for GM after all. Fantastic car, fantastic advertising...

American Football, or Civil war re-enactment?

2008-11-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

Trying to come closer to US culture, one must attempt to understand American Football.

Watching one of the weird spectacles that make up this sport, I concluded that this weird spectacle is a subconscious attempt to reenact the american civil war. I appear to be backed up in this view by Condelezza Rice, who knows much more about football than I do, and described it (Condi, I apologize in advance for misquoting) as a repeated attempt to gain enemy terriority.

Here’s how it goes. There are two opposing armies. Their generals choose a field for the battle. The field is small, and their are lots of players, and even more replacements sitting in base camp, waiting for the slaughter to begin. Safely just off the battlefield are doctors, generals, strategists, armorers, cooks and all manner of other personnel.

Before the battle, the armies line up opposing each other, to the crys of the adoring peasants, who have travelled for miles and braved the dangerous countryside to watch the battle. They are desparate and feverish in their desire for victory.

When the generals agree to attack, the teams charge forward at each other, clad in colourful armor. They make a few feet of progress in each charge. The injured are carried off and tended by the doctors, quickly replaced by waiting soldiers. Those injured are surrounded by adoring relatives, pretty girls and generals complementing them for their bravery on the battle field.

Success in the battle is determined by which army has reached the end of the opposing armies field the most times. Soldiers with a career of many successful battles live the rest of their lives telling tales or their victories and war injuries. The peasants follow their favorite army with partisan fervor, loyal to the very end…

Next-gen In-car Navigation

2008-01-18T19:56:00.000-08:00

What happens when you cross the Google earth satellite image database, an ‘always on’ vehicle internet connection similar to what is used in Apples iPhone, and the vehicles GPS position?

This is the visualization challenge I set myself one day after enthusing about the rapid progress of Google Earth to a friend. If you’ve played with Google Earth for a while, you know that you can not only move around using a ‘birds-eye- view of the satellite image, but you can tilt the image until you are actually at ground level.

Then, with a bit of tricky mouse work, you can actually navigate through a real landscape as if you were driving. When you add some driving directions, a lovely purple line appears, showing you where to drive, and conveniently poping up the driving directions as you progress along your route. I took a short virtual drive from my home to my workplace to test out this concept. It turned out to be way cool…

Actually, hovering about 400 feet off the ground seemed to give you the best mix of clarity of the immediate neighbourhood, without actually sacrificing the sensation of more or less being in that actual location.
How could all of this work? Well, as you drive, your car’s GPS communicates real time information to some custom software. This software in turn logs into the Google Earth database synchronizes the GPS position of your vehicle with the onscreen satellite image, and the zoom and tilt view that you’ve chosen to use. If Google street view was available, it could also be used as an optional view.

In terms of data quantity - a vehicle driving at say 70mph, with a always on internet 3G/4G internet connection like your Droid or iphone users, would provide more than enough time to download the required satellite imagery. Buffering of the images along your route would be done in advance, to either reduce the bandwidth requirement, or make up for potential breaks in the cellphone net that provides the internet data stream. The GPS location of the vehicle would synchonise with the buffered version of the satellite imagery and the data objects, rather than a real time version.

The system could also ‘record’ a journey in real time, in order to give a ‘visual direction file’, that can be saved (ie. the GPS track of an actual or navigation generated journey, and given to friends as a preview of the route to their home or a meeting place. Your friends could download this journey from your car’s online system, and ‘pre-play’ the visual directions of the journey in order to familiarize themselves with the journey they are about to make.

Overlay, overlay
Overlays sourced from the Geographic Web database would indicate key reference points on the route, to make navigation easier.

For a major auto manufacturer to take on this solution, an alliance with the geographic web provider like Google, and a partnership with telecommunications provider that provides realtime data feed to the vehicle for the data synchronization. Ford has partnered with Microsoft with their ‘Sync’ product, I’ve heard its a good product but I’m not sure if it integrates navigation in any way.

A GM partnership with Google could revitalize the GM brand segment with it’s existing proprioritory Onstar offering towards the Google savy generation (late x and y generation).

This generation is the first one that has never known a world without ubiqutous electronic devices, and they are now buying their first vehicles. Thus, the similarity to video game concept is crucial. Current navigations systems are rather ‘adult’ in their approach to map display and functionality. The video game generation needs instant immersion in the system.

When you put directions in the system, it could be even programmed to zoom in on your current location, like Google earth at startup. This intensifies the feeling of ‘globalization’ of the system, and the video game like attractiveness of the navigation interface.

A ‘Safe driver’ view could provide a slightly zoomed out view of the road ahead - alerting to the driver to potential environmental hazards such as hidden driveways or unexpected bends, hundreds of meters down the road. Potentially, a zoomed out, at a glance view of the satellite picture of the road ahead could contribute much more to safe driving that the array of detection type radar systems being developed by Mercedes and other automakers - at potentially significantly reduced cost in on-car hardware and sensors - and significantly more day to day useability

Zooming out, you can search for restaurants in the vicinity of your route, and by using Geographic web content, select the screen to dial the restaurant using the navigation systems inbuilt functionality.

People location: Friends can turn on their ‘find me’ functionality to allow their friends to know where they are. When ‘Find me’ is turned on, their car or phone transmits their GPS location. Another driver can dial in your location to navigate to where you are, using your destination as the location.

Everyone thinks China is about manufacturing…

2008-01-18T19:52:00.000-08:00

Everyone thinks China is about manufacturing. Outsourcing Nike sneaker production and well, just about everything else these days. But lets extend our thinking outwards, to the point where we are contemplating the whole development of civilizations in the last century. Lets zoom out to the point where you can look at the development of industrial nations in the twentieth century,the speed that they developed, and then overlay that with the quantities that China presents will bring to the table in the 21st century.

We start our short historical review with the reconstruction of Japan and Germany, after those countries were destroyed at the conclusion of the Second World War. Both countries benefited from heavy inflows of managed capital from the USA, which had the least rebuilding to do. Both subsequently underwent massive structural adjustment, experienced decades of growth, and successfully leveraged inate cultural resources to guide their success. In the case of the Germans, engineering expertise that is derived from a national culture that prides itself on precision, quality, durability and seriousness. In the case of the Japanese, the national trait was hard work, cooperative corporate structures, the application of familial ties of trust and honour to build business efficency to a new level.

China and Germany required nearly fourty years for this transition process. These fourty years were marked by steadily increasing standard of living and wealth levels.

Now look at South Korea. The race to industrialisation started later - sometime after the Korean war - and gathered speed much more rapidly. But it didn’t stop at industrialisation with the Chaebol, it leapfrogged into the silicon chip and the digital economy, as those things were developed when the capital accumulation of industry was at its greatest in the 90’s. Now south Korean cities are some of the most wired in the world, with broadband internet connection standard in new apartment complexes - unthinkable a decade earlier.

And then we come to China. Lets look at the cultural traits the Chinese can bring into play as they accelerate the development model of rural to industrial to information and beyond. The first and overwhelming factor is sheer potential size of the economy. With a population of 1.4 billion, based on just the ‘local’ economy, the potential Chinese economy size is twice that of the USA and the EU combined. Then there is the business savy, entreneurship, hardwork and risk aversity of the Chinese. Their cultural has withstood the rigours of communism, but is now adopting the benefits of capitalism.

After all, capitalism has proven itself in the twentieth century as the most effective social-economic model to increase overall wealth of civilizsations, and longer term, to increase individual freedoms while consolidating power even more effectively in the hands of the elite. Capitalism has serious flaws when for instance environment understanding is ignored. But the Chinese will find it impossible to ignore environmental issues when the numbers of people affected by those issues with be so great due to sheer population density. Also, the Chinese are developing industrially in the information age. The power of the internet to focus international attention on enviromentally damaging practice will mean that corporations that seek to polute their way to weath will simply find they are discovered before they have time to even their chemical dumps and political coverups. It will become easier to leverage the positive attention that deploying new evironmentally conscious technology will give them.

All of this points to the Chinese passing through the industrial development stage straight into the information age at a breakneck pace. The growth and confidence of Chinese information technology companies like www.alibaba.com are just the start.

The thousands of PHDs, engineering, biotechnology and computers graduates being churned out by Chinese universities will be combined with almost unlimited capital generated by their rapid industrial expansion. This capital will be used to build an entirely new type of 21st century infrastructure that will be tailored to the needs of the information and international thoughtsourcing economy rather than the industrial economy. The industrial development of the twentieth century industrial nations was built around the infrastructure constraints of the time.

And here is the real shocker. Post war Japan took about 40 yrs to complete the industrial change cycle to high tech, from post war ruins in 1945 to market domination in previously European and North American industrial strengths of consumer electronics and automobiles by 1985. South Korea, starting around 1970 decreased this cycle time to around 20 years, and by 2000 had more broadband internet connections than almost any other nation.

So China, if you follow this logic, is starting later still, and will advance even faster through this stage. The Chinese communist government is probably an ideal control and guidance mechanism to guide this rapid structural change. Why? Because it is very difficult to agree on massive infrastructure upgrade necessary during this key civilization transition without some central planner making decisions. Not only that, but China's enormous population mean that the leverage and economies of scale available during this period will dwarf anything humanity has ever seen.

Even if you find communisim abhorent politically, relax. As middle class weath increases in societies and infrastructure is fully built out, the majority shifts their attention from becoming middle class, to become free. Communism will stop being tolerated at a certain point, and a Chinese form of democrarcy will spontaneously occur.

To sum up these cycles:
- China is not just about low cost manufacturing
- Ratherm, it's a society on a well trod development path, that ends in a stable middle class and increasing human rights
- Due to its unprecedented scale, the wealth created in this transition will cause the 21st century to be dominated largely by Chinese influence and capital, just as the 19th century was dominated by British influence and capital, and the 20th by North American.

Please enjoy the show, we are watching a civilization transform within a few short decades. This transformation only happens once in a society. Once it's done, there is no going back.

Dubai as Neuroplastic Civilization?

2007-12-12T23:45:00.000-08:00

Dubai is becoming increasingly visible these days. Since my wife and I considered moving there for a while, and had a marvellous holiday checking out what was going on, I've been following what is occuring there with interest. More than any other city in the world, Dubai represents some new in the development of cities and civilizations.

The 21st century city is more likely to resemble an aerotropolis than a metropolis. The metropolis grew from the industrial manufacturing age, with the focus being heavy industry and its associated infrastructure. Now that whole cities like Dubai are being built around information, media, tourism and finance, they are more likely to be conceived as a global hub that centers around intelligence based industry, and the transportation capability of a major international airport. Dubai is developing into such a city. Its built on a baking stretch of featureless sand 100km wide, with the only physical feature aparment from miles of glorious golden sand beaches, being jagged inhospitable mountains in the distance.

Everyone comes and goes through the international airport, with a huge port for goods and services located some distance from the city. Dubai is a city-state built from the perfect storm of globalization, rapidly accumulated oil weath and the control enabled by the city state model (the benevolent dictatorship). Selling the excitement of a new business, finance, media and tourism center using cheap third world labour but marketing it to the rich world luxury tastes.

Why Dubai is an important model for us to study, and use to predict the developments of civilizations in other parts of the world is that its development is so staggering fast. And it represents some concepts that will contribute to the development of a new type of thought based civilization. Without knowing it, this new type of civilization will have the rapidly developing concepts in the field of neuroplasticity as its core meme.

Neuroplasticity is the ability to deliberately rewire the human brain though conscious intention and mental training. This means it has profound implications on our very idea about what our limitations as individuals and societies are.

In Dubai, we see a city state that created itself from little more than audacious vision, concentrated attention, and effective utilization of generous amounts of financial capital. Dubai represents a incredibly pure example of the idea that whatever humanity can dream, it can create. In being a place that was created out of nothingness using sheer power of vision, it has called into being a whole new concept for civilisation - what I call 'Neuroplastic Civilisation'. A Neuroplastic Civilisation is one that is only really limited by the imagination of it creators.

Why this is an important concept is that in completely created cities like Dubai, there is huge opportunity to bring in many new important ideas - like ecological building design, alternative energy (Dubai is ripe for fields of Solar cells just outside the city limits, or wind farms off the coast). The way Dubai evolves is probably going to be one of the most interesting sociological phenomena of the early 21st century.

Keep watching - Dubai is just warming up, and will get to be a very hot place indeed...

I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity

2007-12-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my mother in New Zealand for this…

This is a short poem made up entirely of actual quotations from George W. Bush. These have been arranged, only for aesthetic purposes, by Washington Post writer, Richard Thompson. A wonderful Haiku poem like this is too good not to share.

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!

I am the Decider!

Inspiration, Integrity, Intelligence

2007-03-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

Hi, I'm Peter Hill. I'm a New Zealander currently living in Michigan, USA. Welcome to Inpiration, integrity, intelligence

Why the name? Simply because the values of inspiration, integrity and intelligence are what have guided my life to be interesting, absorbing and very rewarding. So, they seem worth sharing in a blog.

You'll find here a mixture of politics, religion, family, resident alien tales from the USA, a bit of dilbert-like commentary on my job as a project manager in a big computer services company, and probably some raving about my favorite sport of paragliding (or at least a link to another blog that covers that...)

Over the years I've lived in Japan and Germany as well as of course New Zealand, so I've had quite a few interesting intercultural experiences that I might be fun to share. I've always loved writing, I kept a diary religiously as a teenager, but these days, those teenage angst is truely buried and my opinions are probably a little more wise and a little less personal, so I might as well share them with the world.

All the best to all my friends around the world, hopefully I can make this interesting enough that you enjoy coming back ab und zu.