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#Top 10 biggest landowners in the U s. No. 1: John Malone 2. 2 million acres in Colorado, New mexico, Wyoming, Maine and New hampshire.
With its up and down-down fortunes and constant threat of being outflanked by the next ipad-delivered Internet service the media business can be very nerve-wracking.
He also formed a partnership with the Southern Co. to build a 364-acre solar site in New mexico that produces 30 megawatts at times of peak sunlight,
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#The U s. now uses more corn for fuel than feed! Using corn as fuel is Madness!
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#Tapping into the Secret Language of Plants Futurist Thomas Frey: Over that past week I ve had the great honor of working with both the good people at the North dakota Bankers Association in Bismarck, ND and the good people at Rabobank in Napa,
Our mobile communication systems are just beginning to make these connections, and on a certain level, this back and forth information flow becomes a rudimentary form of language between us and our plants.
I ve written extensively on the topic of smartphone peripherals and how the use of smartphones will expand by over 1, 000%in the coming decade.
We now have over 1 million mobile apps available for download. Putting this into perspective,
the whole mobile apps revolution began in March of 2008 when Steve jobs announced the software developer s kit for the Apple iphone.
When Apple s App store officially opened on July 11, 2008 there were a whopping 552 apps to choose from.
To say the apps were an instant success is a gross understatement. Over 60 million apps were downloaded within the first 3 days
and tech companies around the world began to sense a market shift. Little did they know how much,
and how many industries would be affected. As of today, over 20 billion apps have been downloaded and there s no end in sight.
But the piece getting very little attention is the exploding field of smartphone peripherals that extend our current communication systems far beyond simple person-to-person communications.
While there are literally thousands of peripheral devices either in existence or being contemplated for the marketplace, I ll focus on just a two pieces of technology smart dust
and smart contacts to illustrate the transformations about to take place. Early visions of smart dust technology Smart Dust In the 1990s, Kris Pister, a researcher at UC Berkley dreamed up the idea of sprinkling the Earth with countless tiny sensors, no larger than grains
of rice. These smart dust#particles, as he called them, could be used to monitor everything.
Acting like electronic nerve endings for the planet and fitted with computer processors, sensing equipment, wireless radios,
and extended life batteries, smart dust would have the capabilities of providing huge volumes of real-time data about people,
Data streams coming from these plants with give them a voice#that will help us better understand the idiosyncrasies of plant life.
or augmented-reality overlay that requires no glasses, screen or headset. The first iteration of smart contact lenses are already on the market.
Technology imbedded in smart contacts Photo credits Fast Company Our demand for information is growing on a daily basis. Using devices such as smartphones
and tablet computers to display what we are looking for is slow and clunky at best. With a constantly surging trend line towards creating a seamless and invisible interface between the information world and our brains,
and send/receive capabilities of a nearby smartphone, the very real possibilities for smart contacts being used as a replacement for current handheld displays suddenly comes within reach.
By Futurist Thomas Frey Author of Communicating with the Future#the book that changes everything Via Futuristspeaker. com Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati i
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#Electronic gardening kit A whole new way to garden. If there ever was a product that best demonstrated our increasing disconnect with nature,
all reduced to a series of sensors, processors and software, which surround the seeds in the disposable cartridge#All the user has to do is add batteries, light and water.
The company s FAQ implies that it may push out a USB-powered version later on, but we re probably going to have to pass on that one.
#10 best iphone apps for gardening Whether or not you ve got a green thumb, these apps will help your garden grow.
Timing is everything as those who garden are well aware. And a bountiful crop requires planning and organization.
Following are 10 great gardening apps that serve that very purpose, and can help yield juicier tomatoes, more fragrant rosemary,
and brighter hydrangeas. 1. Landscaper s Companion Although the cost of this app is high,
This app serves as an encyclopedia of more than 1, 400 plants across 16 categories, including perennials, shrubs,
There are also approximately 5, 700 photos within the app for visual reference. Cost: $9. 99 2. Fruit Garden Fruit Garden focuses on the harvesting of 22 different fruits,
Note, the harvesting schedule in this app is specific to the UK, but even if you are not in that region,
$4. 99 4. Bugs and Insects Speaking of bugs, with a database of more than 900 pests, the Bugs and Insects app is a great resource for gardeners looking to determine the culprits who have been nibbling on their harvests,
or just flip through the entire database to satisfy a curiosity about entomology. Cost: $0. 99 5. Botany Buddy Botany Buddy focuses solely on trees
Despite this, the app provides very detailed information and also enables registered users to share collections with fellow tree and shrub enthusiasts through the Botany Buddy website.
Cost: $5. 99 (Reduced from its usual $9. 99 price for a limited time) 6. Botanical Interests Botanical Interests is another information-laden app that includes harvesting advice
on approximately 287 varieties of vegetables. There are beautiful illustrations to accompany each entry and avid gardeners will appreciate the myriad varieties of vegetables it covers,
$5. 99 7. Herbs+This is a great app that provides valuable information on 25 different herbs.
$1. 99 8. Garden Pilot Garden Pilot combines a directory of more than 14,000 plants with a comprehensive article database.
A recent update to the app also shows which plants are available for purchase at local app-participating retailers.
A lite version of this app is available for free, but only contains a listing of 150 plants.
$2. 99 9. Gardens If you prefer more visual gardening instruction, this app features informative videos on topics such as Small Gardens, Big Ideas,#Novice Knockout Gardens,
please note that the download time is much longer than others. Cost: $5. 99 10.
The Plant Doctor is a free app that provides a listing of the ten most common plant ailments.
a form can be filled out within the app and sent directly to a plant pathologist for an official diagnosis and treatment options#each one costing $1. 99.
With a simple and easy-to-use interface, this app provides one-click calling functionality and relies on Google maps to identify locations nearby.
Cost: $0. 99 Photo credit: Download Atoz Via Mashable Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati b
#Orange festival in southern France (Photos) Orange Festival in France In the south of France they actually grow citrus
and as you will see they are very creative. These images from the Orange Festival in France will lift your spirits
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#Top 10 Photos of the Week Few people realize the Smurf s cartoon series was based on an actual race of tiny blue people living in Cleveland
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#Top two foods linked to weight loss: Surprising study results This is one of the foods that is linked to weight loss.
Many factors can be adjusted remotely using an iphone interface. Their LED lights can change spectrum slightly over the course of day to stimulate different growing phases in the plants.
they keep you updated with the latest in computer controls and recipes for crop production, and they may even buy the lettuce you produce
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#Kinze Manufacturing develops â autonomousâ##tractor Kinze Manufacturings autonomous row crop technology. Kinze Manufacturing hopes to do for tractors what Roomba has done for vacuum cleaners.
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#Top 10 Best Space Food If you were in space what would you get to eat?
#Marc Andreessen explains why software is â eating the worldâ##Groupon, Facebook, and Linkedin investor Marc Andreessen.
Hewlett-packard announced this week that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software,
Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Hewlett-packard and Googles moves surprised the tech world.
Marc Andreessen (board member at Hewlett-Parckard) explains why software is eating the world. Both moves are also in line with a trend Ive observed,
one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies,
In short, software is eating the world. More than 10 years after the peak of the 1990s dot-com bubble, a dozen or so new Internet companies like Facebook and Twitter are sparking controversy in Silicon valley,
due to their rapidly growing private market valuations, and even the occasional successful IPO. With scars from the heyday of Webvan and Pets. com still fresh in the investor psyche, people are asking, Isnt this just a dangerous new bubble?#
which has invested in Facebook, Groupon, Skype, Twitter, Zynga, and Foursquare, among others. I am also personally an investor in Linkedin.
We believe that many of the prominent new Internet companies are building real, high-growth, high-margin, highly defensible businesses.
which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy. More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software
and delivered as online services#rom movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading
and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software,
with new world-beating Silicon valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not. Why is this happening now?
Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works
and can be delivered widely at global scale. Over two billion people now use the broadband Internet, up from perhaps 50 million a decade ago,
when I was at Netscape, the company I co-founded. In the next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones,
giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day.
On the back end, software programming tools and Internet-based services make it easy to launch new global software-powered start-ups in many industries#ithout the need to invest in new infrastructure and train
new employees. In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud,
the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150, 000 a month.
Running that same application today in Amazons cloud costs about $1, 500 a month. With lower start-up costs and a vastly expanded market for online services
the result is a global economy that for the first time will be wired fully digitally#he dream of every cyber-visionary of the early 1990s,
finally delivered, a full generation later. Perhaps the single most dramatic example of this phenomenon of software eating a traditional business is the suicide of Borders and corresponding rise of Amazon.
In 2001, Borders agreed to hand over its online business to Amazon under the theory that online book sales were nonstrategic and unimportant.
Today, the worlds largest bookseller, Amazon, is a software company#ts core capability is its amazing software engine for selling virtually everything online
Amazon rearranged its web site to promote its Kindle digital books over physical books for the first time. Now even the books themselves are software.
Todays largest video service by number of subscribers is a software company: Netflix. How Netflix eviscerated Blockbuster is an old story,
but now other traditional entertainment providers are facing the same threat. Comcast, Time warner and others are responding by transforming themselves into software companies with efforts such as TV Everywhere,
which liberates content from the physical cable and connects it to smartphones and tablets. Todays dominant music companies are software companies, too:
Apples itunes, Spotify and Pandora. Traditional record labels increasingly exist only to provide those software companies with content.
Industry revenue from digital channels totaled $4. 6 billion in 2010, growing to 29%of total revenue from 2%in 2004.
Todays fastest growing entertainment companies are videogame makers#gain, software#ith the industry growing to $60 billion from $30 billion five years ago.
And the fastest growing major videogame company is Zynga (maker of games including Farmville), which delivers its games entirely online.
Zyngas first-quarter revenues grew to $235 million this year, more than double revenues from a year earlier.
when it debuted the popular game on the iphone in late 2009). Meanwhile, traditional videogame powerhouses like Electronic arts and Nintendo have seen revenues stagnate and fall.
The best new movie production company in many decades, Pixar, was a software company. Disney#isney!#
#ad to buy Pixar, a software company, to remain relevant in animated movies. Photography, of course, was eaten by software long ago.
Its virtually impossible to buy a mobile phone that doesnt include a software-powered camera, and photos are uploaded automatically to the Internet for permanent archiving and global sharing.
Companies like Shutterfly, Snapfish and Flickr have stepped into Kodaks place. Todays largest direct marketing platform is a software company#oogle.
Now its been joined by Groupon, Living Social, Foursquare and others, which are using software to eat the retail marketing industry.
Groupon generated over $700 million in revenue in 2010 after being in business for only two years.
Todays fastest growing telecom company is Skype, a software company that was bought just by Microsoft for $8. 5 billion.
Centurylink, the third largest telecom company in the U s.,with a $20 billion market cap, had 15 million access lines at the end of June 30#eclining at an annual rate of about 7%.Excluding the revenue from its Qwest acquisition,
Centurylinks revenue from these legacy services declined by more than 11%.%Meanwhile, the two biggest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have survived by transforming themselves into software companies,
partnering with Apple and other smartphone makers. Linkedin is todays fastest growing recruiting company. For the first time ever, on Linkedin, employees can maintain their own resumes for recruiters to search in real time#iving Linkedin the opportunity to eat the lucrative $400 billion recruiting industry.
Software is also eating much of the value chain of industries that are viewed widely as primarily existing in the physical world.
In todays cars, software runs the engines, controls safety features, entertains passengers, guides drivers to destinations and connects each car to mobile, satellite and GPS networks.
The days when a car aficionado could repair his or her own car are long past, due primarily to the high software content.
The trend toward hybrid and electric vehicles will only accelerate the software shift#lectric cars are controlled completely computer.
And the creation of software-powered driverless cars is already under way at Google and the major car companies.
Todays leading real-world retailer, Wal-mart, uses software to power its logistics and distribution capabilities, which it has used to crush its competition.
Likewise for Fedex which is thought best of as a software network that happens to have trucks, planes and distribution hubs attached.
And the success or failure of airlines today and in the future hinges on their ability to price tickets
and optimize routes and yields correctly#ith software. Oil and gas companies were early innovators in supercomputing and data visualization and analysis,
which are crucial to todays oil and gas exploration efforts. Agriculture is powered increasingly by software as well,
including satellite analysis of soils linked to per-acre seed selection software algorithms. The financial services industry has been transformed visibly by software over the last 30 years.
Practically every financial transaction from someone buying a cup of coffee to someone trading a trillion dollars of credit default derivatives, is done in software.
And many of the leading innovators in financial services are software companies, such as Square, which allows anyone to accept credit card payments with a mobile phone,
and Paypal, which generated more than $1 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year, up 31%over the previous year.
Health care and education, in my view, are next up for fundamental software-based transformation. My venture capital firm is backing aggressive start-ups in both of these gigantic and critical industries.
We believe both of these industries which historically have been highly resistant to entrepreneurial change, are primed for tipping by great new software-centric entrepreneurs.
Even national defense is based increasingly software. The modern combat soldier is embedded in a web of software that provides intelligence, communications, logistics and weapons guidance.
Software-powered drones launch airstrikes without putting human pilots at risk. Intelligence agencies do large-scale data mining with software to uncover
and track potential terrorist plots. Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming.
This includes even industries that are based software today. Great incumbent software companies like Oracle and Microsoft are threatened increasingly with irrelevance by new software offerings like Salesforce. com
and Android (especially in a world where Google owns a major handset maker). In some industries, particularly those with a heavy real-world component such as oil and gas, the software revolution is primarily an opportunity for incumbents.
But in many industries, new software ideas will result in the rise of new Silicon valley-style start-ups that invade existing industries with impunity.
Over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic. Joseph Schumpeter, the economist who coined the term creative destruction,
#would be proud. And while people watching the values of their 401 (k) s bounce up and down the last few weeks might doubt it
this is a profoundly positive story for the American economy, in particular. Its not an accident that many of the biggest recent technology companies#ncluding Google, Amazon, ebay and more#re American companies.
Our combination of great research universities, a pro-risk business culture, deep pools of innovation-seeking equity capital and reliable business and contract law is unprecedented
and unparalleled in the world. Still, we face several challenges. First of all, every new company today is being built in the face of massive economic headwinds,
making the challenge far greater than it was in the relatively benign 90s. The good news about building a company during times like this is that the companies that do succeed are going to be extremely strong and resilient
And when the economy finally stabilizes, look out#he best of the new companies will grow even faster.
Secondly, many people in the U s. and around the world lack the education and skills required to participate in the great new companies coming out of the software revolution.
This is a tragedy since every company I work with is starved absolutely for talent. Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon valley can rack up dozens of high-paying,
high-upside job offers any time they want, while national unemployment and underemployment is sky high.
This problem is even worse than it looks because many workers in existing industries will be stranded on the wrong side of software-based disruption
and may never be able to work in their fields again. Theres no way through this problem other than education,
and we have a long way to go. Finally, the new companies need to prove their worth.
They need to build strong cultures, delight their customers, establish their own competitive advantages and,
yes, justify their rising valuations. No one should expect building a new high-growth, software-powered company in an established industry to be easy.
Its brutally difficult. Im privileged to work with some of the best of the new breed of software companies,
and I can tell you theyre really good at what they do. If they perform to my and others expectations
what we can collectively do to expand the number of innovative new software companies created in the U s. and around the world.
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#Worldâ##s forests absorb 40%of manmade fossil fuel emissions Forests are absorbing almost 40 per cent of the 38 billion tons of carbon dioxide created by mankind every year.
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#Fukushima grows sunflowers to clean up radiation contamination A geiger counter is placed in front of sunflowers in full bloom in Fukushima.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant some 50 km away suffered a series of core meltdowns and explosions after the massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems,
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#Genius 13-Year-Old has a solar power breakthrough Would you believe this could be the new look of solar power?
#Are we ready for a true Cloud Phone? Off on a cloud with your phone.
As we approach the fall, all the rumors of the Apple empire descend upon us. And this year may be the craziest yet because for the first time since the iphones inception,
Apple did not release new hardware in the summer. And there are still whispers of an ipad revamp as well. ios 5 is coming. icloud is coming.
And then there are the ipods which are updated traditionally in the fall timeframe each year. Things are already getting crazy enough that potential Apple announcement dates are topping Techmeme one minute
and then stories debunking those dates are the top story in tech the next minute. This will only get worse
Now its time for me to indulge That one rumor that caught my eye this week was the talk of Apple looking into releasing an icloud Phone#alongside a new iphone 5 this fall.
If youve heard talk about the iphone 4s##this is the same potential device. Its the cheap iphone#that Techcrunch and others have written about in the past.
Given the smoke out there, it would seem that theres something to this rumor. Even Apples executives have hinted at the possibility.
First reported by Apple N Apps, Trevor Sheridan writes: It has come to our attention that Apple is planning to combine ios 5
and icloud with a piece of hardware internally referred to as the icloud iphone. The icloud iphone will rely heavily on Apples new cloud based offering,
and less on internal storage. He continues: Apple is aiming for a $400 final price for the icloud iphone as compared to the typical $600 iphone price,
which the iphone 5 will cost. The carrier subsidization will bring the cost to consumers down to free with a 2 year contract for the icloud iphone with the same $199 iphone cost for the iphone 5. He cites three independent sources on the information,
and notes that a modified iphone 4 design is likely to be used for such a device.
Reducing the internal storage in the iphone is certainly one way Apple could reduce the overall cost of the device.
Plus Apple has spent the past year and a half perfecting the manufacturing of the iphone 4,
so you can be sure costs in that regard have come down. On the face of it, this makes some sense.
But the larger question remains if the world is ready for a cloud-based smartphone?
And theres a side question: what if this cloud phone is a data-only device?
Storage would be needed for apps and perhaps a little for offline usage, but overall, maybe Apple could get away with a device with just a few gigabytes or so of onboard storage.
The second question is different. After we reported on Apples work on a cheaper iphone a few people reached out wondering
if the ipod touch could simply morph into this product? In other words, Apple could upgrade the ipod touch with an iphone 4 body,
including the 3g radio. If thats Apples thinking for this product, it may be the perfect opportunity to create a phone that doesnt offer traditional phone service.
As in, it would be data-only. Now, the carriers probably would have a hard time with this concept.
But if Apple sold it as more of an ipod touch with 3g capabilities, they may bite.
The carriers are currently making no money off of the ipod touch, which is a hugely popular product.
It remains Wifi -Only if they offered a $29-a-month data plan, or pay-as-you-go,
And to consumers, Apple could tout it as more of a lite#phone. It can do everything the iphone can,
except make phone calls. And really, thanks to apps like Skype, Facetime, etc, it can do that too#maybe they just dont play that up as much at first.
Without full $60 or $70-a-month plans for cellular minutes and data, the carriers probably wouldnt subsidize the cost of such a device down to $0.
and allowing consumers to pay for 3g service on the go, like they do with the 3g ipads.
The concept of a data-only phone has been around for a while. In November of 2009, we reported that Google was looking into possibly offering their own Android devices
which would be data-only. This didnt happen, obviously. Instead, Google not only fully hopped into bed with the carriers for their Nexus devices,
they got really close for maximum snuggling and abandoned their broader Android dreams. Whether or not Apple takes this path this year
its pretty clear that this is the future. Eventually, carriers will exist as data dealers. All information, including voice calls will happen over this pipe.
Cellular phone service will just be an optional add-on if youre in an area with a bad data connection.
Apple could kick-start this movement in the coming months. Or they might not. But someone will.
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