2010

Will Google Experience Control Data’s Fate?

October 14, 2010 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

An early Control Data system with supercomputer genius Seymour Cray at the controls

Google’s recent announcements about their focus on wind energy and these five initiatives bring up the possibility that they’re following in the footsteps of Control Data, a Minnesota corporation that took its eye off the ball and lost their lead as one of the nine most influential computer companies and are now out of business.

Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc. (CRI). CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywell, RCA, and UNIVAC. CDC was well known and highly regarded throughout the industry at one time. –from Wikipedia

William Norris, founder and CEO of CDC, was a computer visionary but also a social activist. One of his key initiatives was computer-based learning, an initiative that took an increasing amount of his time and made many people who worked there (and I know dozens and am related to many former CDC employees) continued to be befuddled over the lack of focus on core competitive moves and what seemed like an acceleration in “cause related” investments over the years. Yes, losing Seymour Cray was devastating but there was so much more to the core business than chasing the supercomputer end of it.

Sadly, those of us in Minnesota who looked up to CDC watched it slowly fade away and sell off bits and pieces of itself until it was non-existent.

The Google Self Driving Car

Google’s stated business mission? To, “…organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Beyond the mission they post items like this “Ten Things We Know to be True” manifesto which outlines core beliefs like, “Focus on the user and all else will follow” and when it comes to their primary business, search, that “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.“

So help me understand Google: How do windmills and self driving cars fit in to the focus of Google and everything you stand for and believe? There’s a lot of buzz in the tech community about the “Google brain drain” as people bolt to go to Facebook and other startups and I’m not the only one that wants to see them focus, and I’d hate to see you haunted by the ghost of William Norris who’d hate to see another leading company lose its way.

Filed Under: GreenTech, Innovation

Your Mileage May Vary

September 26, 2010 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

Technologists, “greenies” and (hopefully) mainstream consumers are anticipating the release of many new hybrid and electric cars, none the least of which is the soon-to-be-shipped Chevrolet Volt. The issue I see coming is one of potentially profound disappointment by the general masses due to the current state of energy storage in batteries.

I am a somewhat disappointed owner of a Neuton rechargeable lawnmower with nickel metal hydride (NiMh) batteries (I bought an extra battery for $99). After the first season the batteries weren’t holding a charge so I couldn’t finish my relatively small lawn with both batteries. Neuton agreed I’d “conditioned” them properly over the winter by storing them inside and charging ‘em once per month, so they gave me two new ones. They’ve also have recognized the initial failings of these first batteries and have since done a deal with Duracell for newer technology they ship with the current generation of mowers, but reviews I’ve read show people still disappointed with the lower-than-gas-mower power and how as the stored energy drains, the mower’s power weakens right alongside it.

Since I have a Toyota Prius in the garage—a car I may still upgrade to a plugin hybrid (PHEV) using Minneapolis-based ReGo‘s technology for $5,000—I am trying to keep up on the current state of electric storage technology (i.e., batteries) and how far we have to go. No question I see that it’s closer to mainstream but the jury is still out on whether or not it’s yet commercially viable.

That’s what General Motors thinks too.

On page 154 in their most recent SEC Form S1 filing (PDF) they state, “On a fully charged battery and tank of gas, the Chevrolet Volt has a driving range of hundreds of miles. When powered only from electricity stored in its 16-kWh lithium-ion battery; the Chevrolet Volt has a typical range of 25-50 miles depending on terrain, driving technique, temperature and battery age. Advanced lithium-ion battery technology is the key enabling technology for the Chevrolet Volt, although this technology is new and has not been proven to be commercially viable.“

All that said, I do believe in the brilliance of GM’s approach by leveraging battery storage along with a small internal combustion engine that will do nothing but charge the batteries when they fall below a threshold. It means that I could hop in the Volt and drive to Chicago…something I would never do in a purely electrical vehicle like the widely anticipated Nissan Leaf which this New York Times article states, “…has a range of about 100 miles before it needs recharging. But that range can vary a lot — to as little as 62 miles to as much as 138 — depending upon factors like weather, traffic, accessory use, load and driving style.” I’d be very nervous driving a Leaf for a full weekend day…let alone out of the Twin Cities metro area.

If you’d like to watch a video that gives a solid overview of the current state of the marketplace, this one from the recent World Energy Expo in Austin, TX will give you a good sense of what’s going on right now. When it comes to vehicle energy storage, I anticipate that consumers will become disillusioned unless they completely and totally understand the limitations and the variables that comprise the statement, “…and your mileage may vary.“

Filed Under: GreenTech, Technology

How to Dial a Rotary Telephone

September 22, 2010 By Steve Borsch 3 Comments

While on the hunt for something completely different I came across this video on YouTube and offer it up as a public service. Just in case you are befuddled by that new dial on your telephone:

We can laugh about this all we want now, but I remember my grandparents talking about having party lines out in North and South Dakota and what a big deal it was when the rotary dial came in to being and they had an actual phone number they could give out to people, “Hey! You can now ‘direct dial’ me?“

Filed Under: Technology

SixApart Lost Its Way

September 21, 2010 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

VideoEgg is acquiring SixApart, maker of Movable Type and the hosted service TypePad. Normally I wouldn’t care about a small time buy like this one, if it wasn’t for the fact that TypePad was where I started blogging in 2004.

The TypePad hosted service was the best out there in 2004. Great features, good themes, and a rock solid infrastructure. But in most ways they didn’t keep pace with the capabilities of WordPress, the emergence of microblogging platforms like Tumblr and Posterous, and I know I often hammered on them to add features and even got engaged in emails with CEO Chris Alden, who promised many new things that never materialized. As an aside, Alden’s joining SixApart was announced by co-founder Mena Trott in this blog post—her most recent—from three years ago.

The original iPod

In my view, SixApart lost their way. TypePad was the service as blogging was exploding and they rested on their laurels and didn’t do much while others were innovating all around them. I got so fed up I exported all my content in 2009 and, with great effort to fix their goofy attempts to keep people from migrating away, did so with great delight since I was finally on a platform (WordPress) that gave me great flexibility (and yes, I see the irony with yesterday’s post).

As an analogy, imagine if Apple had introduced the first iPod and then didn’t make any material changes for several years. Or, like Alden pointed out to me many times when he mentioned how many wonderful things they’d introduced, it was if Apple added a bunch of features to an iPod that no one cared about (“Look at our new Notes functionality! Now you can listen to music and twirl your click wheel to select letters and type notes!“).

The other thing that always bugged me about SixApart was how opaque they were when they were in the business of transparency (i.e., blogging). When they had service outages they never talked to their customers publicly. When the heat got turned up they appeared to hide from view. Alden, the chief evangelist Anil Dash, Mena Trott (with whom I talked at Web 2.0 Summit) and others with whom I interacted over the years would initially engage and then shut down and go radio silent.

This behavior was polar opposite from other interactions I’ve had with companies whose leadership embrace and appreciate a customer trying to help and suggest ways to make their product better. SixApart folks always seemed to take customer feedback as a personal affront and go in to defensive mode instantly vs. seeing it as an opportunity to improve.

It’s no wonder they failed.

Filed Under: Blogosphere, Web/Tech

Why WordPress is in Danger of Dying

September 20, 2010 By Steve Borsch 9 Comments

Though I’m sure I’ll hear from one guy in particular rolling his eyes and giving me a bad time about yet another WordPress attack, this time I metaphorically left one of my car doors open with the keys in the ignition (you know who you are PXLated!). Even so, this constant hacking is getting tiring and, in my opinion, will kill WordPress unless measures are taken to step up its security.

Today I awoke to an email from an social media acquaintance, David Erickson, kindly giving me a heads-up that my site had been hacked. Seconds after his email arrived I received another email notification from WordPress File Monitor that several core WordPress files had been changed on my server along with a beta “designer” plugin I was running.

I’ve fixed everything but, in addition to the faux pas of running a beta plugin, I discovered another embarrassing snafu: The WordPress Database Backup I was running was sending me backups for the last several weeks and—when I went to download a recent one prior to the attack in order to restore—I discovered that each file contained “0″ kilobytes of data. So did the ones on my server (face turning beet red).

I’ve ultra-hardened WordPress, my databases, use highly secure passwords, and SFTP everywhere. Even with all of that I left a door ajar and somebody slipped in and wreaked havoc. I know so many others who are far less technical or experienced with WordPress than I am and there is no way they’d be able to recover by themselves.

So why in the world would I say WordPress is in danger of dying? Because of the volume of people who are running this open source package and the free hosted options available that—while being insecure like any computer or software exposed to outside entry from the internet—are managed, patched and monitored in ways the typical self-hosted user cannot be.

When I began blogging in 2004 I opted to go with the hosted Typepad since I knew myself well enough that if I’d chosen Movable Type (the software on which Typepad is based) and installed it myself, I’d have invested much of my energy in keeping the software up to date and running. Instead, I simply focused on blogging.

Though Typepad basically hasn’t added worthwhile features for several years in my opinion, WordPress.com, Tumblr, Posterous and many other options have exploded on to the scene offering free blogging platforms with amazing features. THAT is why I say WordPress is in danger of dying: if more people like me figure the payoff from self-hosting WordPress isn’t worth the power and control one gets from that and instead move toward a hosted option, I fear the momentum for WordPress will slow dramatically.

Filed Under: Web/Tech

No iPhone 4 for You!

July 7, 2010 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

I’ve got a pretty sad 15 year old son who is using his own money to buy an iPhone 4. Unfortunately, there’s no iPhone 4 for him and here’s why…

When pre-ordering/reservation time came for the iPhone 4, I happened to be at the Mall of America (MOA) Apple store. After an hour of attempting to consummate my order, I gave up thinking I’d try again later that afternoon when I had to return to MOA.

My daughter snagged one as did I that day. My wife was traveling and I ended up ordering one online for her a few days later. When iPhone launch day came I was able to get my pre-order and buy a second phone activated for my wife. Thinking I still had one on order for her—and we’d get that one and activate it for my son—I was dumbfounded to get an email forward from my wife today within which Apple stated there was a problem and they couldn’t ship and to call AT&T.

AT&T was clueless on how to help since the phone number attached to the incoming iPhone was the same as my wife’s…and you know Apple is trying to restrict the gray market or people buying multiple phones and that’s why it was cancelled.

Being reasonable, an Apple fanboy, someone who owns far too many Apple products and once worked for the company, I figured it would be trivial to change the phone number on the order and have that device be “attached” to my son’s phone number.

Not a snowball’s chance in Hades my friend.

After half an hour on the phone with Apple customer service, the “contract” I “agreed to when pre-ordering” was “non-transferable”, even though *I* am the primary account holder for all four of our family iPhones, my son is a minor (without a credit card so I’d have to order for him anyway) and that I could give them whatever they required to switch just the phone number.

Basically telling me to go pound sand, the order was cancelled. So rather than get his new iPhone 4 on July 14th, he’s back in the queue for an August 3rd delivery. I understand that Apple can’t make exceptions when selling/activating millions of devices, but this seemed so easy to do that the end result is me pissed off and my son one sad little guy.

Thanks Apple.

Filed Under: Technology

Adobe “Hearts” Apple? Like a heart attack maybe…

May 13, 2010 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

Like many of his fellow Adobe bloggers suddenly free to support Adobe’s new position on why Flash is so “open” and “good for consumers”, John Nack at Adobe had an interesting post which he started off like this:

“Today Adobe ran a full-page ad in various newspapers articulating key company beliefs, and company founders John Warnock & Chuck Geschke–whose PostScript innovations were instrumental in the adoption of the Macintosh & desktop publishing–posted their thoughts on open markets & open competition:

Adobe’s business philosophy is based on a premise that, in an open market, the best products will win in the end — and the best way to compete is to create the best technology and innovate faster than your competitors.

John continues on in his post talking about why he loves Apple, how he wants to “…build the most amazing iPad imaging apps the world has ever seen” but “who will decide” if he can get them accepted in the Apple App store? He then goes on to pontificate about innovating, the good of competition, and that his reader should care about this debate, “…because these issues affect your choices as a customer & a creative person.“

No they don’t. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Web/Tech Tagged With: Adobe, flash

Why Is Apple’s Success Now So Bad?

May 7, 2010 By Steve Borsch 6 Comments

I find it ironic when pundits, developers, partners and even customers cry out in seeming anguish when a company gains a successful foothold in any given marketplace — especially when those same people are the ones who lament a company who is not doing well — and this behavior is particularly pronounced in technology, especially when it comes to Apple.

I worked for Apple in the late 1990s after Steve Jobs had returned to the company. In presentations, sales calls and even at family events, I was in MAJOR DEFENSIVE MODE at all times since I was frequently bombarded by negativity from customers, prospects, family and friends. “Apple is about out of business,” was a familiar refrain as was “Borsch…you’re just a Mac fanboy” from my I.T., Windows machine toting friends and relatives. I was even given crap about owning so much of the stock (which, believe me, I’m damn glad I kept!!) and have felt vindicated as those same people have now flocked to Apple computers and “iStuff” in droves. Many rely on me for advice and assistance as well, but the irony of their previous attitudes are lost on them.

The success of the iPod, and Apple’s quick cornering of the market for music downloads, began to cause angst amongst record executives who saw not a savior of their failing business model, but a company now positioning them for success in a digital world.

Exactly the same thing is happening now with the iPhone and the iPad and Apple’s insistence on no Flash and controlling how the applications are developed and deployed on these devices. The iPhone (according to Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker) had the fastest rampup in sales of any consumer device ever. It appears that the iPad’s 1 million in sales in 28 days (which Steve Jobs said, “One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone.“) may make it the fastest ramping product ever.

I’ve read many of the arguments for-and-against the closed nature of the “iApp” marketplace and am not going to delve into that in this post, but all of the recent brouhaha about Apple’s “no Flash in iStuff” policy and their supposed “stranglehold on tools to develop iApps” is an example of the concern of success and Apple’s incredible strategic thinking about the marketplace, technology landscape, and anticipating the direction we’re all moving towards and innovating with devices we’ll need to make that journey more effective. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Computing, Innovation, Technology

When We Run Out of Oil…

May 3, 2010 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

If you pay attention to any of the relevant facts about oil production (i.e., supply), oil consumption, and why it’s likely we’re in the Middle East fighting a “war” (e.g., to deploy a strategic military position to ensure a steady flow of oil), then you probably do like I do: waver between complacency and sheer terror over the prospect of running out of oil.

I’ve been following oil geeks at The Oil Drum for some time, and while they clearly give solid and deep analysis of all the current data and conjecture in the oil industry, it’s this “Crash Course 17A-Peak Oil” video by Chris Martenson (from his Crash Course on economics) that I’ve embedded below and is one that will give you a very concise snapshot of where we are in the world with respect to peak oil.

Having learned more than I ever wanted to know about the looming fate of us all in a world soon hungry for energy, I gave up a 34mpg Mercedes diesel in favor of a Toyota Prius — one I routinely get 48mpg in as an average — since I can see strategically that the world’s dependence on a finite resource is accelerating while that resource is dwindling and getting more expensive to deliver. Not a pretty combination. It’s also why I’ll be buying a plug-in hybrid in the next year or two when I find one that fits my strategic and tactical needs for transportation. Gas prices in the next two years will only go one way….up.

Bottom line? If you’re not thinking about your business and personal life in a world with shrinking energy reserves, then you’re not paying attention and need to be….now.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwNgNyiXPLk

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Earth, GreenTech, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness Tagged With: oil