Category: Tech (General)

If it’s geeky, and no other category will take it

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Tech (General)

Microsoft Goes Carbon Neutral

From the giant itself:

Beginning in fiscal year 2013 (which starts this July 1), Microsoft will be carbon neutral across all our direct operations including data centers, software development labs, air travel, and office buildings. We recognize that we are not the first company to commit to carbon neutrality, but we are hopeful that our decision will encourage other companies large and small to look at what they can do to address this important issue.

This is actually rather impressive as Microsoft is a rather large company with a large data center operation. Back in 2009 they were looking at hitting 300k servers. Now with Windows Azure and a larger cloud presence, presumably that’s climbed quite a bit.

I’m sure it’s not purely a good dead, Microsoft notes in their blog post:

  • A smarter buildings pilot on Microsoft’s Redmond campus that uses software solutions to make our buildings more energy efficient, projected to achieve energy savings of approximately $1.5 million dollars in fiscal year 2013, and earn back our investment in only 18 months.

Google has tried a power meter and failed. Microsoft is dogfooding it’s effort and is seemingly doing well. I could see Microsoft expanding beyond the PC in a larger effort than in the past with solutions for businesses and perhaps eventually homes. I suspect that’s what Microsoft is really doing here. Forcing themselves to to be ahead of the curve.

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Politics Tech (General)

Innovator’s Patent Agreement

Twitter today announced the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, their attempt to help defuse the patent chaos currently going on in the tech world. The real meat of the post is this:

It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

I do like the GPL like virility of this. The one thing that I questioned was the term “defensive purposes”. That sounded vague. The IPA itself defines this:

(a) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, threatened, or voluntarily participated in an intellectual property lawsuit against Assignee or any of Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors;

(b) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, or voluntarily participated in a patent infringement lawsuit against another in the past ten years, so long as the Entity has not instituted the patent infringement lawsuit defensively in response to a patent litigation threat against the Entity; or

(c) otherwise to deter a patent litigation threat against Assignee or Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors.

This sounds like a big improvement to me. I’d still like to see something more explicit that deters Assignees and Inventors from agreeing to claims other than defensive purposes. While it says Assignees must get written permission from Inventors “without additional consideration or threat”. I question if that’s practical given the Assignee is generally the employer and controls the Inventors paycheck, medical benefits, and possible bonus.

Still, it’s an improvement over the current state of things. Kudos to Twitter for innovating and getting some dialog going. This still doesn’t get rid the need for some patent reform.

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In The News Tech (General)

Was Instagram Worth $1 Billion Dollars?

Value Curve

I think the question “was Instagram worth $1 billion Dollars?” is incorrect. Any form of that question is. The value of any singular thing is in the eye of the buyer, not the market as a whole. The correct question is “was Instagram worth $1 billion Dollars to Facebook?” To that, I think the answer is yes. To any other company, no.

Value is the relative worth of a good. Water is worth nothing when it’s plentiful. It’s priceless when it’s in short supply. This is supply/demand. Companies are slightly different as they aren’t a commodity, there is only one Instagram. The supply is a constant meaning demand is what dictates value. The demand is based on how much another company (or companies) wants to buy it. This decision is based on how well Instagram’s assets, product line, employees, etc. would benefit them. It’s also based on how much it’s worth keeping away from a competitor, and how much it’s worth avoiding having another competitor. Distractions are costly for businesses. Mitigating them has difficult to quantify but significant value.

Product/Value Curve

A basic company works like this: it creates a product with value that it obtained by customers (freemium products make things slightly more abstract, but this still applies). At some point the product runs out of potential customers either because the entire world who wants it has it (think: Facebook, Google), or customers just grow tired of it (think: Yahoo). The way a company keeps up growth is to introduce new products to add value to the company.

In a perfect world every product would achieve maximum potential and a company’s growth would be at worst a diagonal line, consistent and upward moving. or a curve moving upward at an accelerating rate. We know that’s not realistic.

The reality is most companies have lots of overhead when diversifying the product line. Not every product is a winner. The most notable example of this is Google. They have many products, to the point where I bet few if any Googlers know them all. Most however aren’t generating substantial revenue. Sergey Brin has been putting some effort into reducing Google’s product complexities because of this. Google. Apple famously reduced it’s product line when Steve Jobs took back the company and is highly profitable. Facebook has scaled reasonably well as it’s product can essentially be broken down to: communication (direct messaging, broadcasting), photo sharing, contact organizer. This on a graph looks something like this:

Value Curve

Avoid Distractions

Getting back to the topic on hand, what is Instagram worth to Facebook? Facebook needs to keep on or above the line. That means they need to keep rapidly developing and improving products There’s a reason Zuckerberg put an emphasis on “Stay Focused & Keep Shipping“. Instagram was a distraction to Google. It was the only viable competitor to Facebook’s massive photo sharing business.

Flickr stalled long ago, Google can’t figure out Google+ or Picasa. SmugMug et. al. are to small to matter to Facebook. Instagram was the only photo sharing business with growth that could concern Facebook. Avoiding the distraction that Instagram would be is worth a substantial amount to Facebook.

Instagram being bought by someone else could also be a distraction. Keeping it away has a similar value too.

The Future

Facebook has pretty much hit market saturation with its current audience. Facebook is having some trouble in some parts of the world where other social networks have taken hold. To keep growing that means they need to keep growing users. Obviously getting kids to sign up (once they turn 13 thanks to COPPA) is what Facebook needs to keep itself going. Instagram has managed to gain serious traction in the pre-teen market. These are kids who grew up with text messaging and photo sharing. Two of Facebook’s major product offerings. This is a major threat to their future. Why join Facebook and be observed by “friend” parents when you can use your phone (or iPod touch) and remain completely below the radar? Many of them have been doing this for a while now. All they need is WiFi (lots of free SMS apps in App Stores). The incentives to change workflow to Facebook have dropped. Switching over is hard anyway. Just because Child A turns 13 today doesn’t mean all their friends do. Being under 13 on Facebook means fearing being suspended constantly. Facebook purged 20,000 accounts daily in 2011. I’d bet that number is higher now.

These kids have a system of communication that works for them. It’s a very workable system. Facebook isn’t part of that system. That’s a big problem. Buying Instagram means they have a vehicle to convert these new users.

Engineering

Instagram scaled quite well with a dozen employees and managed to build an app that makes photo sharing extremely simple and fun. The app’s workflow for photo sharing makes Facebook look terrible. Buying this up and integrating this is worth a lot to Facebook. Just like FriendFeed gave Facebook some serious engineering chops, this will as well. the Instagram team’s vision and expertise shouldn’t be discounted. Buying a company for its engineers isn’t uncommon these days.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook launches (or rebadges Instagram into) a Messenger like app that focuses on just one of Facebook’s tenets. Instagram’s Facebook integration just needs a little more tweaking and it would work very well. Keeping Instagram communicating with Twitter and Flickr will prevent alienating users.

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Funny Tech (General)

Is That A Cell Phone Name Or A Condom Brand?

Condom Or Android Phone Name

Des Traynor of Intercom came up with a great little infographic

Condom Or Android Phone Name

It’s worth a read beyond the infographic for the comments on that blog post alone.

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Tech (General)

Firmware Updates For Vehicles

It was inevitable this would eventually happen. Ford is “test driving” (pun intended) letting users upgrade the firmware of their entertainment systems via USB drives. Given these are just software driven devices not that different from a mobile phone, it’s obvious this would eventually happen. Overall it’s a good thing since bugs in increasingly complicated systems can be fixed after the car is bought without getting it serviced.

However it does create some complexities. As systems become more integrated and more computerized, you must wonder. Will it eventually be possible to brick your car? Or even worse. Will it be reduced to a cell phone with a 2 year upgrade cycle?

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Tech (General)

DNA Sequencing Via USB

Meet the MinION, a low cost ($900) USB DNA sequencer. Per New Scientist:

The UK firm Oxford Nanopore built the device, called MinION, and claims it can sequence simple genomes – like those of some viruses and bacteria – in a matter of seconds. More complex genomes would take longer, but MinION could also be useful for obtaining quick results in sequencing DNA from cells in a biopsy to look for cancer, for example, or to determine the genetic identity of bone fragments at an archaeological dig.

There is another one by Ion Torrent that’s desktop sized.

There’s competition in the world of desktop DNA sequencing. The future is here.

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Hardware Tech (General)

CES And Reality

CES is always a mixed bag for me. As someone who loves gadgets, CES coverage is addictive (my coworkers at CNET do a great job covering it every year feeding my addiction, however the opinions expressed in this post are solely my own). A select few things fascinate me, a few more interest me. The rest really leaves me wanting more. From my perspective it breaks down like this:

  • 25% – Things that will never come to market – These are ideas that are either just totally impractical for technical or commercial reasons, or just products that are so poor the company comes to their senses early. I don’t mind when products are impractical to bring to market, at least at the current time. CES is a gadget geek’s auto show. Concept cars are awesome. So are concept gadgets. I like love seeing prototypes. Things that just are so poorly received they never materialize… well obviously boring.
  • 50% – Mundane – “OOh, you made a TV 0.5 mm thinner. Clearly the CEO of this company is the next Steve Jobs. A visionary that will change the world. Lets all throw out our TV’s and buy this.” I always wonder what Steve Jobs thought when he read about what was announced and demoed at CES. Lots of what gets fanfare is of the level that Apple releases silently releases with nothing more than taking the Apple Store down for maintenance and a small press release. It’s not just TV’s, phones do the same thing. Being a smartphone in 2012 is just status quo.
  • 10% – Things I’d like to try – I’d be unlikely to justify the purchase, but I wouldn’t mind playing with things in this elite category. They include the MakerBot Replicator, I’mwatch, Fujifilm X-Pro 1, Netgear Range Extender. I’d never be able to justify a MakerBot, but I’d like to play with one. I suspect I may hate the I’mwatch, but it seems like it would at least be fun to try. Teathering is a major turnoff however. The X-Pro 1 seems quite expensive for what it is, but I love this high end non-SLR level we’re seeing now. I don’t have a real (read: $90) need for it, but Netgear’s range extender sounds like a good product for those areas where WiFi signals are a little degraded.
  • 14% – Me too’s – This year’s “me too” category is the ultra portable laptop. The MacBook Air clones. Unfashionably late, and offering little imagination. Next.
  • 1% – Could eventually change the world – I love this elite category. Ion Proton Sequencer is one of these. This particular model may go nowhere, but it’s a great example of where this stuff is headed. It will eventually change and save lives. Read up on it if you haven’t. Amazing. The other device is the Raspberry Pi (they have no booth). I’ve been following it since they announced it. I’ll order a few as soon as I’m able. Being able to make a full computer that small and affordable will change the world. For $25, I can put a computer I can write real software for in a situation where it may not survive or was previously not practical. It’s a giant step forward for computers everywhere. One way or another this will change things. This could change Linux usage.

So that’s my breakdown and what interests me personally so far. I’d be curious what others think of CES announcements this year.

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Rants Tech (General)

Confession: I’m A Touchscreen Snob

Continental Touchscreen

Continental Touchscreen

I’m a touchscreen snob, and I bet you are too. I bet every human being is. We get upset when things don’t react as expected and we get frustrated when things aren’t instant. Statistically this page loads on average under 2 seconds and it’s likely still too long for you. It’s not just touch screens. For example, 100 ms increase in load time of Amazon.com decreased sales by 1%. We’re an impatient species.

I took the above photo on a 757-200 equipped with touch screens on the back of every seat. I remember the days with only a handful of TV’s, or that big projector thing up front on planes, so I appreciate that a choice of entertainment is an upgrade. Lets take a look at it’s sins as it makes a great example:

Resistive Touchscreen

I’m virtually certain based on it’s poor performance it’s a resistive touchscreen. Unresponsive, and it requires a lot of pressure which the person in the seat in front of you enjoys for 8 hours. Resistive touchscreens are much more cost effective, though I wonder that difference is splitting hairs on a $65-80 million aircraft given there are only ~200 seats and the displays are relatively small.

There was a time when nobody would notice, but even a Droid v1’s touch screen is more responsive, and that phone is extensively laggy.

Poor Contrast

Part of this is likely because of the substrate used for resistive touchscreens, but the poor contrast is obviously an issue. Color reproduction is bad, but that’s not a deal killer, it’s a nitpick. Contrast is critical especially on a vehicle where lighting varies from dark to virtually unfiltered sunlight glaring on the display. Contrast controls are minimally helpful here.

Laggy

I suspect these are units are just terminals, so the performance can sometimes lag. It’s forgivable and likely will not be an issue in future generations. Thanks to the mobile revolution low powered ARM chips can be found everywhere. The need for these things to be dumb to save space and power is drawing to a close.

Sound

I’ve yet to figure out why airlines can’t manage to get rid of the noise in the lines. Sure when you use the $0.25 headsets they hand out you can’t tell the difference. But when you use your own higher quality headset you sure can. Given a cheap mp3 player can manage it, I wonder why this is so difficult. Weight?

My second gripe about sound is the volume differences. The movie is set to a comfortable level. If the crew takes over to show a video of your destination or a safety video, it’s uncomfortably loud. If the captain speaks, it’s painful. This is more than a nuisance, this is actually a safety issue.

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Space Tech (General)

Space Shuttle’s Y2K-like Problem

Here’s curious tidbit from someone on reddit.com who identifies themselves as a Johnson Space Center Employee:

The Shuttle suffers from its own Y2K problem. The system computers run clocks that are set for GMT days: I think today is GMT 49. Anyway, when it gets to December 31, it’s GMT day 365. When it moves to January 1, it goes to GMT 001. This screws up the flight computer. I don’t believe there has ever been a Shuttle flight over a new year. A software fix is possible, but it has never been worth the millions of dollars necessary to fix it.

This actually seems very believable. For a little background, the Space Shuttle originally flew a set of 5 IBM AP-101‘s. In 1991 they upgraded to AP-101S, which has about 1 MB of semiconductor memory (as opposed to the core memory on the AP-101) and 3X the CPU speed. 4 run in sync, and 1 runs a separate set of software written independently for the ultimate in redundancy. They sit in two separate places in the orbiter and are quite rugged and power-hungry at 550W. That’s substantial considering the processing power. Since they mainly handle number crunching for the orbiter’s thrusters and run through things like the launch sequence. They just need to be reliable. They are programmed using HAL/S. The original memory limitations are likely why it uses GMT dates, and the reason to avoid upgrading the software is because of the complexity of the environment.

While a software upgrade would likely fix this issue, upgrading something that needs to be this well-tested would be insanely expensive.

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Essays Tech (General)

Number Based Consumerism

Number based consumerism is when a consumer bases their buying habits on one or more numbers typically part of a products specifications. You likely see this all the time, and perhaps even have been guilty of it yourself. It’s most prevalent in technology though it exists in other sectors.

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