The fact that a firm that produces mobile devices is now more valuable than an oil company is the most powerful repudiation of the sprawling, exurban, oil-dependent old economy
mobile devices are suited uniquely to the urban environment. They are such powerful connectors of people that they are literally replacing their need and desire for cars.
As Steve Pendleton pointed out in a New Statesman piece about Britain reaching peak cars: But young people aren't simply swapping cars for buses or bikes;
they are choosing to own and use other technology instead, such as smartphones and tablet computers. It's not merely that the two trade off economically;
both, after all, can be prohibitively expensive. It's that young people are addicted so to their mobile devices
and always-on connectivity that they would sooner give up driving. Pendleton continues: Significantly, the use of these technologies while driving is not only against UK law, but also difficult.
A recent survey of college students in Colorado (where sending messages from smartphones while driving is not illegal) found that
while 75 per cent of users said they often used their phones while travelling by bus, train or as a passenger in a car,
only 10 per cent of them said they did so while driving a car. Now think about where mass transit works best--where young people,
retirees and even families are able to simply abolish their use of cars. Especially in the U s.
nowhere else but cities is this even possible. As young people turn away from cars--a phenomenon so powerful that it has had the marketing departments of car companies running scared for years--they are left with no other option than mass transit,
and that means increased density, urbanism, walkability and everything else required to bring our way of life in line with planetary boundaries.
Millennials aren't just fleeing the automobile; they're also explicitly fleeing Mcmansions and the suburbs.
As S. Mitra Kalita and Robbie Whelan reported in the Wall street journal: Gen Y housing preferences are the subject of at least two panels at this week s convention.
A key finding: They want to walk everywhere. Surveys show that 13%carpool to work, while 7%walk, said Melina Duggal, a principal with Orlando-based real estate adviser RCLCO.
A whopping 88%want to be in an urban setting, but since cities themselves can be so expensive,
places with shopping, dining and transit such as Bethesda and Arlington in the Washington suburbs will do just fine.
The ascension of Apple, a company in the vanguard of firms that make devices you don't need until you have one
and become hopelessly addicted, literally represents a wealth transfer from the old economy--cars, oil, long commutes--to a new one built on a desire to capitalize on virtual connectivity by recapitulating it in the real world.
The mechanism of this wealth transfer are consumers themselves, who are making decisions every day to buy an ipad instead of a new car,
or to move closer to work so that they don't have to drive at all. And before you write this off as the frivolity of youth--silly kids,
they like Facebook more than having a big back yard! --it's worth recognizing that the ability to maintain our always-on connectivity,
and to be close enough to the job opportunities represented by America's urban cores,
constitutes a real competitive advantage. Experts have been asserting that the suburbs are America's new slums for some time,
and Apple v. Exxon is just one more data point in this accelerating trend. Apple and all of its competitor's products are both conducive to
so you can be underwater on your mortgage, have a two-car garage and enslave yourself to lawn care?
Who's aspiring to that t
#Why is Apple working on wind turbine technology? Filing a patent for a new energy storage and generation system,
it seems Apple may be looking at new ways to add clean energy to its manufacturing processes.
First discovered by Apple Insider, an application filed with the U s. Patent and Trademark Office in June 2011 details an alternative wind turbine design that generates electricity from converting heat energy instead of rotational energy made possible by the movement of blades.
In standard turbine design, wind energy is used to turn the unit's rotors, which then converts this type of power into electricity through powering machinery
or sending it to generators. However Apple's patent design takes this one step further, and accounts for a problem faced by any system reliant on wind energy--the natural element's variability.
Described as the on-demand generation of electricity from stored wind energy, the patent application details a mechanism in
which rotational energy created by the turbine is used to generate heat, which is stored then in low heat capacity fluid.
This energy is transferred then into a working fluid which creates steam, which replaces electricity in order to power mechanisms or generators.
As the energy is being stored, heat can be transferred selectively whenever there is a lull in wind activity,
keeping machinery going and reducing reliance on backup power systems. Apple describes the benefits of the system within the patent application,
where the firm says such designs could reduce costs related to wind variation: The variable nature of wind may interfere with on-demand generation of electricity from wind energy.
For example, fluctuations in wind speed may hamper the adequate production of electricity from wind power during periods of peak demand,
or conversely, may produce excess electrical power during periods of low demand. In turn, such variability may limit the ability to incorporate large amounts of wind power into a grid system.
How might this kind of technology relate to ipad and iphone maker Apple? The patent application is not a huge indicator,
but as the firm is using clean energy in North carolina--where it plans to build a 20-megawatt solar farm covering 100 acres--it may be that the company is keen to add additional,
renewable energy sources to power its manufacturing chain. Image credit: Apple Insider Related:''Cliff'bill winners: wind, rum,
electric scooters and more Can this polystyrene pedal-powered plane break world records? Solar group to World bank:
Give us gas and oil's $12b, and we'll cool planet Siemens: 880m euros'worth of wind power orders since July Google invests $75 million in U s. wind far r
#Why more U s. companies are generating their own power From technology companies like Google and Apple powering their data centers with solar panels
and wind farms to retailers turning to rooftop solar and biogas to power their big box stores and distribution centers,
the number of U s. companies generating their own energy on-site is soaring. According to Wall street journal, since 2006 the number of electricity-generating units at commercial and industrial locations has quadrupled from about 10,000 to 40,000.
The strong growth can be explained partly by the falling prices of solar panels. Take Walmart for example:
Since 2007, when the first solar arrays went up on its store roofs in California, the installed costs of Wal-mart Stores Inc. s solar systems have dropped from $6
or $8 per watt of capacity to about $3. 50 per watt, said David Ozment, the company s senior director of energy management.
He said he expects the retailer to be paying as little for solar power as utility power in less than three years,
opening the floodgates to solar expansion. Even though on-site electricity generation accounts for about 5 percent of U s. electricity production
a trend towards a more distributed electricity grid is challenging the current business model for utilities. And as prices continue to fall for solar panels
and other energy sources it looks like utilities will be forced to innovate e
#Why no one can be a'passive consumer'in today's API economy Increasingly, innovative businesses are being built around application programming interfaces (APIS)
--which provide pre-built cloud resources for the underlying forms and functions for new businesses and concepts.
This is helping to accelerate the time new businesses and new concepts get to market, versus reinventing the wheel every time someone gets a new idea.'
'APIS represent the second digital revolution, 'says Ross Mason, Mulesoft founder: Photo: Mulesoft. A small business or startup can now build its entire operation on public online APIS,
which provide every conceivable function from credit card transactions to finance to procurement to human resource management--whatever it is there's an API for that.
Ross Mason, founder and vice president of Mulesoft, outlined in a recent webcast how the rise of the API economy can be considered to be second digital revolution.
Currently, there are about 13,000 open APIS businesses can tap into, and millions more being created internally within enterprises.
It's notable that larger organizations--including the Fortune 1 000--also are taking part in the API economy,
Mason observes. Nike, Coca-cola, Target, and even the National Basketball Association are leveraging APIS to open up new markets and advance product innovation.
If you think about it, none of these companies need to be innovative--they ve got very sturdy brands on their own,
Mason says. Coca cola really doesn need t to innovate; why are they even investing in this area?
It's simple. The old business models are starting to erode. People are moving to newer channels of engaging with their suppliers.
Both the United states and United kingdom governments have stated that they will be making data and transactions available via open APIS.
APIS are key to unlocking legacy applications and data that may have been locked away for years,
Mason says. To a large extent, because they are so accessible and provide enterprise-class functionality,
Everyone in the API economy can start springing up and start creating new businesses. For example
when the payments world was dominated by Mastercard and Visa. API technology has opened up this restrictive market,
In this API economy, anyone can do it, Mason continues. Once someone exposes an API, your competitive advantage is how you can stitch all these APIS together to create new advantages.
There is another element of the API economy that separates it from the status quo, Mason adds.
Producing APIS will not be the exclusive domain of software companies or large enterprises. The key thing about the API economy is you can't just consume APIS.
It's not just about consuming data, connecting to Amazon or Salesforce. You publish your own APIS as well.
This is a key part of the economy--you re not just a passive consumer. Innovation starts with an API strategy,
says Mason. That s really the place you can open up opportunities, and trade with customers and partners.
#Why open source may win the electronic health record market Electronic Health Records (EHRS) are the trend of the day.
the Obama Administration has been pushing EHRS as the solution to all that ails health care. The idea is that the data they collect can drive change,
change can drive efficiency, and efficiency can reduce costs. There are literally dozens of EHRS to choose from.
and was not a real EHR through a group it funded called the Certification Commission for Health Information technology (CCHIT).
The new National Coordinator for Health IT, David Blumenthal, put together committees that defined meaningful use, eligibility for stimulus money, in terms of
first developed in the 1980s and released in this decade as open source, was falling. The Bush administration starved Vista of development funds, preferring a system of contracts and contractors who used HIMSS-approved gear.
At the peak of the fight the VA even lost control of its own lab software system to Cerner
and its open source approach. Suddenly, it seems, Vista has the advantage. This was proven for me today, through an interview with Paul Hensler (above), CEO of the Kern Medical center in Bakersfield, California.
Kern, a county hospital, has needed an EHR for some time. But getting a commercial system meant writing a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a consultant who would write an RFP for a system,
and a complex process of analysis to make sure what they ordered would be needed what they.
Plus millions of dollars for the software. Enter Medsphere a commercial supporter of Vista software.
Their Openvista is open source. Kern could download it, call it free, and then sign a professional services contract with Medsphere for support.
Suddenly, a two-year contracting process could be squeezed into six months. And with the first deadlines for getting stimulus money coming in 2011,
Hensler found he could suddenly get in line for some of that money, thanks to open source. It was an incredibly short decision time frame for a county.
A lot of our doctors did their training at the VA. We knew we could download it
but we didn't have the expertise to deal with our OB/GYN and other issues the VA software doesn't support.
I think we came across Medsphere in late April. We had a half day meeting,
and talked it through, and decided this was for us. Suddenly we had a path we could get to meaningful use in time for the first phases of the stimulus. Then we fast tracked it.
We decided to talk to other users in September, looking for a fatal flaw, ansd at the same time started working on a contract.
By October we had a contract for the board which we signed in Mid-november. Hensler had his first kickoff meeting last week
This is the way open source is supposed to work. The software is free, but you need help,
and the support contract also gives you control of the final result. You also get help from all the other users of the same software.
But this is an advantage I had not been aware of. Since you don't buy open source, you can sign a professional services contract with an open source consultant
and clear through several bureaucratic processes at a stroke. If the Obama Administration has done nothing else
it seems, it has transformed the market for EHR software. Open source, which had been left for dead a year ago,
is suddenly in the lead d
#Why people need robot journalism in the Google era Kristian Hammond quit artificial intelligence 10 years ago,
but that is exactly when he created an intelligent machine. Hammond is a professor at the Intelligent information Laboratory at Northwestern University,
who has built a computer that can create movie reviews by curating text online found on blogs and on Twitter.
The machine can also produce original sports stories from data. And what's surprising is that the sports stories aren't actually that bad.
Local news stations could find this kind of news generation useful, but Hammond's personal goal is to create content for every little league player in the country so the team member's family can read about their performance.
Enter the world of robot journalism. What made you think a machine could generate news?
Our lab works on personalized information systems. They take the form of whatever the task is
We are looking at computer generated content. We got to a point where we were generating from existing text online,
we could generate from existing data. The reality there is a ton of data, but it's numerical data. its not that compelling to most people,
but a story can be. We can do it automatically. We are generating content where it didn't exist before
because we can get to the data and generate these stories. We think we can generate into any sport where there is numerical data.
We are generating college level softball stories. If you go to the Bigtennetwork. com to see the Stats Monkey stories of women's softball.
Our byline is Narrative Science. We get the scores. The system looks at the score, figures out
We can create personalized medical information. Anywhere there is data and there is interest. Our hope is to be able to do something for the 2010 census
and provide every local newspaper with information about their town and how they compare to the rest of the country.
what people are striving for in artificial intelligence. We were able to create experiences that are compelling and every once in a while, a little amusing.
Artificial intelligence has rested on the foundation of vary deep representations of events and the control of inferences.
What do other AI researchers think of your work? We get more feed back from journalists. People really like the stories.
it enriches their websites without taking people away from more traditional tasks. People are hungry for genuine content.
If we can get hold of data, we can generate a story in a quarter of a second.
As more data comes online we will be there to generate the stories. Here is a movie review.
While pursuing his JD/MBA at Pepperdine Jason Nazar was the guy in the study group who always had the documents.
Whatever document you needed it was most likely that Jason had it in a folder on his hard drive.
and then after consulting many startups he raised money from some saavy investors and launched, Docstoc. com. Docstoc has quickly become the web s largest destination for sharing
and finding documents online. As a frequent user, I love this site. In fact when setting up my own LLC
I followed the post on Jason s blog entitled 10 Incredibly Awesome Docs to help you Start a Company.
So with some success under his belt and new innovations in the world of Docstoc,
I thought it was a good time to check in with Jason and see how Docstoc can be helpful to all of us.
and is likely one of the fastest growing sites on the web. Over 11mm unique visitors a month use the site
and we recently launched our Docstore, the premier marketplace to buy and sell documents online. How can we participate?
In addition we work with partners like Legalzoom who sell their content through our site. What has taught Docstoc you about consumers and their needs?
On the publishing side, there are so many potential contributors that need a platform to share their documents both on our site
and to embed on their own websites and blogs. On the other hand, we get hundreds of thousands of downloads each month,
so obviously there is a very compelling need to find valuable professional documents fast and easy.
business forms, financial models, worksheets, conference presentations, diagrams, templates white papers, and legal contracts just to name a few.
The huge advantage of launching businesses on the web is that you can get instant feedback
and they are meant to be works in ongoing progress. Too often people take too long,
and spend way too much money before they get their web product online. As a rule of thumb, don t spend more than 3-6 months building your web product before you put some version of it online,
even if it s just a beta of a private demo. Let your users guide where the product development needs to come from.
What s next for Docstoc? Docstoc is building out the largest repository in the world of professional documents
You Have to Always be Raising Money; The Sales Relationship with Your Investors Does NOT end when you Raise Money;
Be attached to the Problem You Want to Solve not the Solutions You Come up with to Solve Them;
SWING BIG the same effort it takes to do something small is the same raw effort it take to do something revolutionary You ve done a wonderful building and helping a community
Click Here To visit Jason's blog, Click Here To Check out The 10 Totally Awesome Docs to Start a Company, Click Her r
the world's largest crude oil exporter, is launching an ambitious multi-billion-dollar plan aimed at creating an industry around its other abundant resource,
But an increasing amount of that crude is staying in the country where it's used run to desalination and power plants.
The majority of Saudi arabia's fresh water comes from desalination, the process that turns saltwater into a drinkable supply.
the price of desalinated water rises with the price of crude. The King Adbullah City for Atomic and Renewable energy, the government organization also known as Ka-care that was set up in 2010 to oversee the country's renewable energy strategy,
estimates the country's peak electricity demand will hit 121,000 megawatts in the next two decades.
With demand for electricity and fresh water increasing, Saudi arabia is seeking out other sources of power including solar, geothermal, wind and nuclear.
The government plans to install about 16 GW of solar photovoltaic power plants. Another 25 GW of capacity would come from concentrated solar plants,
which use thousands of mirrors to concentrate the sun onto heating liquid, which creates steam that turn power turbines.
The solar PV will meet total day time demand year-round, according the al-Sulaiman's presentation.
geothermal and waste-to-energy plants will meet baseload demand up to night and the CSP with storage will meet the maximum demand difference between PV and baseload technologies.
The estimated $109 billion plan isn't just about building solar power plants. Instead, the government wants to build a solar industry, according to al-Sulaiman's presentation.
or seek out other established solar panel makers to establish factories there. Photo: Flickr user zigbphotography, CC 2. 0 Related:
The cost of new oil supply Saudi arabia taps China for nuclea a
#Why share and share alike makes a great business model SAN FRANCISCO-The quintessential example of how sharing an asset can be at the center of a business is probably the Zipcar car sharing organization,
but there are three forces accelerating the rise of more and more U s. start-ups focused on the swap, rent, share philosophy.
Three factors are converging to accelerate the penetration of businesses focused on the sharing model that first really gained visibility in Europe in the form of car sharing clubs,
especially big items like automobiles that are used only roughly 8 percent of the time. While it took Zipcar about six years to build up to 1, 000 cars in its network,
it the U k.-based Whipcar about six months to build up to the same number, she said.
The waste for one system becomes food for another system, Gansky said. Stress from the stagnant economy:
People are rethinking the relationship between cost and value, Gansky said. That means things that are considered assets become liabilities
That, in turn, causes people to think at least twice before a big-ticket purchase like a car that sits idle for 92 percent of the time.
Inventors and designers bring their ideas to the site, but they aren't actually brought to life until there is enough interest,
The rise of sensors: Information technology is at the heart of successful share models, and sensors are a critical part of that mix
because they allow us to track and know where physical things are --or will be given--at a moment in time.
I think that the reason Zipcar is winning is that they are in the business of information, not transport,
Technically more of microfinance organization than a sharing model, this site supports the creation of artistic projects.
A site where people can rent designer dresses, gowns and clothing for events, rather than buy them outright.
An inventory of apartments and rooms that travelers can rent as an alternative to hotels s
#Why teaching toddlers Mandarin chinese is a smart investment Now that China is the world s second largest economy,
it s no surprise that a booming language immersion program has seen a 300 percent growth in demand for Mandarin chinese.
Yesterday I spoke with Leslie Lancry, the founder and CEO of Language Stars, which offers full immersion language classes to toddlers, preschoolers and elementary school children.
She currently has 15 language centers in Chicago and Washington, D c, . and offers programs at 140 elementary schools, teaching Spanish, French, Italian, German and Mandarin chinese.
Lancry, who speaks five languages besides English says Mandarin is the most popular first-learned language in the world and the second most popular language on the Internet.
Parents recognize that learning Mandarin and starting early--will help their children, she says, It s an investment in their future.
You have launched dozens of programs in Washington and Chicago. What can you tell me about trends in language education and the demand for different languages in the U s.?
Spanish has consistently been 60 percent of the demand for the Language Stars program. It s not surprising,
because parents realize their children can get reinforcement in the U s. because it s so wildly spoken.
It s an investment in their future. Tell me more about that. Generally China s emerging market standing makes Mandarin an especially attractive language.
And it s the second most popular language used on the Internet. So it s no surprise that parents will want their children to learn This is Mandarin harder for children to learn than other languages?
Often a student enrolled will have more reinforcement because one of the parents or grandparents speaks it.
and educators who support this. When do most students start to learn a language now?
In junior high or high school, which is precisely after the natural window of opportunity to learn a language closes.
Every human brain has the capacity to learn a language the same way we learn our native tongue.
Every child up until about adolescence is capable of learning a second or third or fourth language as long as they have an immersion experience.
and they can pick up on their teacher s native accent. They will benefit cognitively. Kids who learn more than one language young become smarter.
Our teachers know what the goal is that week, but from a child s perspective, they are in an exciting parents
Unbeknownst to them, they are absorbing a foreign language. They are in their formative years. How do you advise a parent on which language is best for their kid?
What language is most likely to have reinforcement outside the classroom? Which language do you think will give your child the biggest advantage in the future?
Relative to 10 years ago, Americans have changed completely their outlook about learning a language. We ve seen a shift about the age that parents want their children to start learning.
Imagine 10 years from now this entire generation of American children, in all kinds of professions, being able to speak Mandarin chinese fluently y
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