Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com - Green Archives

Hyperlapse Takes Street View to Next Level

2013-04-09T18:10:05Z

The most fascinating demo I have seen today which seems to have no immediate use is Hyperlapse – a service which works with Google Street View to generate movies based on coordinates you enter on a map by dragging and dropping pins. To be fair, the service does allow the user to become familiar with a road or course before traversing it. It is more useful for this purpose than Google Street View because you don’t have to traverse the map a few frames at a time by hand.

The service seems to work best or perhaps only on Google Chrome as it requires WebGL and it requires what it calls a “decent” machine which apparently I have. It is a fun site and worth checking out. Hopefully you can come up with something useful to do with the videos it produces.

Photoluminescent Paint Markers Could Save Taxpayers Billions

2013-02-07T18:21:43Z

Earlier today I discussed how governments can likely save billions of dollars by consolidating their overlapping digital library efforts. While on the topic of saving – this video below shows a new technology which allows roads to take advantage of photoluminescent paint markers which could eliminate the need for streetlights in many areas. I’d estimate the savings from this technology in the billions as well and there is an additional benefit related to not needing to replace light bulbs which burn out.

The downside? There would be an additional cost related reapplying the paint when a road is resurfaced – an event which takes place more frequently on roads damaged by snow plows, salt and sand.

Apple to Launch a Pandora Competitor Next Week?

2012-09-07T00:39:29Z

Apple is said to be getting into the music streaming business and there’s a chance we’ll hear more about it at the iPhone 5 launch event next week. As you may recall I surmised Apple would get into the home streaming market when it purchased LaLa in December of 2009. At the time I thought they would likely compete with Sonos and moreover mentioned there would be obvious implications for Pandora and the rest of the group.

Integration with iOS and possible tight links with iTunes were some of the areas of differentiation I pointed out we may see.

Now reports are surfacing that Cupertino is in talk with record labels to potentially get better licensing terms than competitive services which pay for content based on pricing set by an arm of the federal government.

The point is that Apple is potentially going to take the $80M it spent on LaLa and come out with a service which could potentially wipe out competitors who are already struggling to make money. This could result in the industry trying to renegotiate terms or perhaps the landscape will be cleared leaving just companies with other businesses to subsidize their streaming activities. You know, Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Although there is no news about Apple getting into the home entertainment streaming market – if you couple this service with AirPlay you have a similar offering to Sonos. Moreover, Apple will likely parlay this offering with Genius integration to provide users with video entertainment based on user preferences. Of course they desperately trail YouTube in terms of content but they have the relationships with the studios which will allow them access to virtually all professional video content out there.

Liter of Light Turns Plastic Bottles into Solar Light

2012-07-30T19:53:06Z

What is one of the most ingenious, low-tech inventions you never heard of but which has the potential to brighten the lives of not only people in the third-world but the west as well? Liter of Light of course - the organization founded by 10 Swiss grad students from University of St.Gallen in Fall 2011. Now at 20 people and counting the organization takes a simple 1.5 liter plastic bottle, fills it with water and bleach to keep algae from growing and uses a special adhesive to bond it in a hole of the ceiling of a third-world shack for lack of a better term.

The result is the equivalent of a 55 watt light bulb with no electricity, wiring and of course the obvious downside - no light switch.

My sources tell me the company will bring this to the UN General Assembly on August 3rd. It just goes to show you that sometimes the most compelling new technologies are the simplest.

What may be even more impressive is how the organization makes buildings out of plastic bottles. Check it out:

Are Switch Lighting's LED Bulbs the Future of Lighting?

2012-03-08T16:27:13Z

With a heat dissipating aluminum heat sink as well as a proprietary liquid which not only cools the bulb but throws light in a very natural manner, it could be that Switch Lighting will be the GE of LED lighting. My editorial team and I were very impressed with what the company showed us at this past CES. One point worth making is these LED lights can work fine when hanging upside down making them useful for corporate/industrial applications. Other LED solutions have had overheating problems when they hang upside down and as a result the bulbs burn out quickly. At a price of around $30 and 25,000 hours of useful life, the first market for these bulbs which come in clear and frosted versions will be hospitality and restaurants. After 25,000 hours or about 25 years, the bulb should start to dim over time - as long as the electronics don’t burn out.

Moreover, once you have an intelligent light bulb, what other sorts of things can you do with them? Hint (WiFi and apps – think about the possibilities),

TMC’s Erik Linask has written about the company in detail in the past and below are two video interviews with the company I was involved in and worth sharing.

Brett Sharenow, CFO Switch Lighting being interviewed by Rich Tehrani (me)

Tracy Bilbrough, Switch Lighting being interviewed by Rich Tehrani (me)

Sun-Believable: a Solar Paint Advancement

2011-12-27T20:01:35Z

A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive "solar paint" that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy. The advance was made with nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide, which were coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide. The particles were then suspended in a water-alcohol mixture to create a paste.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for researchers is to get the efficiency levels to be as great if not greater than typical solar cells which means around 10-15%. So far the paint is at 1% efficiency in the best-case scenario.

The paint has been deemed Sun-Believable by its creators because it can be made cheaply in large quantities. Certainly one distinguishing characteristic of solar paint is it is a lightweight and potentially inexpensive addition to something which is already being used in mass quantities throughout the world.

In other words, you don’t need to get permits and spend millions or more on wind harnessing equipment or buy solar panels which require sophisticated installation. This advance can basically yield increased energy with little work and minor changes to homes, cars,buildings and perhaps even concrete and pavement.

More information is available on TMCnet and for a fee at ACS Publications.

American Superconductor and the Case of Chinese Industrial Espionage

2011-12-15T15:18:56Z

Last year I had a chance to sit down with Jason Fredette of American Superconductor about their state of the art technology which allows wind turbines to be more efficient. Moreover the company talked about its strong focus on superconductor wire which is a small fraction of the size of traditional copper wire. I was intrigued – I figured this is the sort of company that becomes the next major tech innovator… One that will do very well for investors.

Fast forward a year and a company trading at more than $30 per share a year ago is now trading at around $3.82 and just had another round of layoffs.

Turns out the company is in a major lawsuit with Chinese Sinovel – the country’s largest wind turbine manufacturer and once American Superconductor’s largest client. On a recent conference call this past November 9^th, 2011 the company detailed its lawsuits, shared that they caught a past employee sending proprietary information to Sinovel and the fact that this employee is in a European jail for economic espionage and fraudulent misuse of data.

Company President and CEO Daniel McGahn said the company is seeking nearly $1.2B for contracted shipments and charges. Moreover, AMSC has filed 2 copyright infringement lawsuits. He said, “We believe the strength of our cases are undeniable.” He continued:

We have hundreds of e-mails and messages between senior-level Sinovel staff members and our now incarcerated former employee. These messages give a detailed account and timetable of the crime. They demonstrate that Sinovel requested this stolen IP. They show that certain senior-level Sinovel employees knew that this IP was obtained illegally. And they provide evidence that Sinovel employees were aware of the damages that the theft could potentially inflict on AMSC. We have the contracts that were signed by our former employee with Sinovel and parties related to Sinovel, promising to pay him in excess of $1.5 million. We also have the e-mails containing the actual IP transfer. And we will share with the courts evidence from multiple wind farms in China demonstrating that Sinovel has been utilizing the stolen software to upgrade its wind turbines in the field with LVRT functionality that we developed.

We believe the case is clear cut and the evidence is very damning. We have confidence that the Chinese courts and arbitrators will consider all of these facts and that we will achieve a favorable outcome. While we acknowledge that this is a commercial matter, many have pointed to this case is an important litmus test for future energy cooperation between China and the West.

How China deals with this issue which has been going on since this past March will determine the fate not only of both companies but send a signal to the world about how serious China is about protecting intellectual property.

Of course, it is too soon to condemn China or Sinovel but it does seem the evidence is damning if what McGahn says is accurate.

There seems to be incredible potential for superconducting cable to make wind turbines more efficient and moreover to dramatically increase the efficiency of the power grid. As with any new technology - it will likely have unforeseen benefits in many areas. It is a shame these lawsuits and espionage have distracted American Superconductor as they continue to develop leading-edge technology.

I reached out to Daniel McGahn for more and did not hear back immediately - I will update the post when or if I hear back.

My past blog posts on related topics:

AAA Will Now Jump-Charge Your Electric Car

2011-06-23T00:15:31Z

I ran out of gas once - and I swear the gas gauge said I had a quarter tank. But those days are over as gas is well - so last century. Well that's what I hear anyway. Turns out in order to get ready for a world where cars don't accept gas, you need to be able to charge them via a mobile truck. And that is where AAA comes in with their new mobile charging station. Check it out.

Home Automation Could Be Next Tech Bright Spot

2011-06-22T14:50:39Z

The future looks bring for home automation and energy management vendors

Hold onto your hat tech investors – we already have some hot sectors like consumer electronics, wireless, the cloud, VoIP, collaboration, healthcare automation and security to name a few. Now, home automation is looking like it could be the next big thing as evidenced by this great article by TMCnet’s Peter Bernstein who goes through seven reasons why we are at a home automation/energy management tipping point. What got him started down this path is the fact that iControl Networks just received a $50M cash infusion and has impressive investors and partners.

I don’t want to steal any of his thunder but my personal thoughts are we are getting to a point where disparate products need to start working better with one another. For example, I can watch Netflix on my TV directly via the Samsung widget or via Xbox – but each has a different interface and neither is really pleasant to use. Moreover, consumers have music, photos and videos strewn throughout their devices and bringing them together to accessible by all devices is what consumers want. Apple will give you an iCloud but what happens when you want to tap into it with an Android device?

Earlier today I wrote about how Facebook is integrating deeply into smartphones – if the companies who play in the space aren’t careful they may watch the leading social network becoming the digital hub for all their rich media as well.

Facebook Opencompute.org Disrupts Data Center Market

2011-04-08T09:08:56Z

And just like that, the vanity server gets decapitated

Google continues to suck the life out of profits in industry after industry for the benefit of consumers. For example, sure Garmin is worth $7B but it was once worth $25B! Why? In-part because you can now get free turn-by-turn GPS of excellent quality with your Android phone. In the cloud-based email space the company has given away capacity ahead of others like Yahoo, challenging them to increase the amount of storage they provide. The company was one of the firs to provide open APIs for mashups - like for Google maps.

But some areas where the company is not so open is where they consider themselves to have secret sauce which they keep more secure than crown jewels. Case in point is data center design, their virtualization middleware and search algorithms.

But Facebook on the other hand isn't bound bay the same parameters and as such they just released their opencompute.org design for what they call the most efficient compute at the lowest cost. They say this new design is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other designs. They looked at electrical design, power distribution, thermal and mechanical design. The company removed components which weren't needed and they call it a vanity-free design which is devoid of plastic bezels. As a result, the company says the servers are efficient, cheap and reliable while the power supply is over 94.5% efficient. It is worth noting at this point that Google too made a big stink about power supply inefficiently some years back but and even put out a paper (PDF) on the topic in 2006.

Another interesting twist is the data center is used to cool the servers so they use less fans per server. This results in servers which weigh about six pounds less each.

The company says they have opened up everything they can from motherboard specs to server chassis to power supply specs and CAD drawings. They are looking for feedback so they can improve. Moreover they request users take what they have done and implement and adapt it.

A big benefit to Facebook is further entrenching themselves as a cool place to work for younger workers and others who care about energy efficiency and green designs. But perhaps the most important benefit of all is legitimacy - the company just changed its perception as a group of college kids who stumbled onto a great idea and who have trouble keeping data private to one which could potential save corporations, carriers and governments billions of dollars in the near future.

And if you're Google, you aren't very happy already as the company recently told its workers their 2011 pay relies on getting better at social and the company has already paid off employees with tens of millions of dollars to keep them from defecting to Twitter. When management wakes up this morning, expect them to be taking an extra dose of Tums.

But that's not to say Google is in any immediate danger of being dethroned as the advertising leader. But in the battle of hearts and minds - one in which tech companies compete to be the most cool to employees, customers and the tech space in general - Facebook has won a major victory. Not necessarily at the expense of any other company (for the moment) but the result of this move will be even more openness from tech companies looking to compete more effectively for all the resources available in the market from the most talented workers to free publicity from the media.

Meetings, Earnings Calls and E-Mail

2011-02-23T23:57:42Z

Its been perhaps one of my most productive days - I eliminated 1,500 emails - about 800 of which were in the "important - save for later" bucket meaning they either got zapped or required some action. Generally the latter. I also had a chance to have a zillion meetings and listen to part of a media company conference call - I won't say which one but to me the amount of information a public company shares has always been fascinating from a competitive intelligence perspective.

One thing I found interesting on one of the recent calls I've sat on is how a media company touts an increase in social media sharing as if it is unique to them and isn't taking place across the web.

For the latest news check out the video below from Tammy Wolf in the TMC Newsroom which discusses the new BMW i series of products and Chinese social media company IPO Renren.com.

Skype, FCC and Google News

2011-02-16T23:33:43Z

Rich wearing the TMC hat
(No, I couldn't find any St. Bernard pics)
Apologies for not blogging in some time - I've been wearing my running TMC hat as CEO which means meetings, strategy sessions, mission statement updates, etc. TMC is growing rapidly and it is an exciting time to be in media and TMC is fortunate to have some really great customers partnered in our success and loyal readers like you. I am always amazed - when you become a blogger you have so many ideas, you can't get them all out regardless of how much time you have. I want to spend the rest of the night writing but alas, I cannot. So instead, here are thoughts on news of the day. First off Comcast and Cablevision had awesome earnings - congrats to both companies.

Congress beat up the FCC today regarding Net Neutrality and whether it will be good or bad for job creation. Of course FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski responded by saying it is pro competition. You could make the argument that by ensuring all companies have equal access to broadband lines you ensure competition and subsequently jobs will be created. For example a thriving VoIP carrier market means more companies are founded, etc.

I could also make the argument that if carriers have less incentive to invest in higher-speed broadband, the broadband connections of the future may not exist for a thriving net economy to receive nourishment from. Thankfully the competition between phone companies and cable is pushing both providers to sell ever-faster service.

In Skype news, the company is looking to hire where Nokia is laying off - Finland. We'll see how that goes. The leading Internet Telephony software company also upgraded its iOS app allowing video calls with Skype for TV customers and launched a mobile partner program for global operators.

BTW Nokia - if that whole Microsoft relationship doesn't work out, there is always Google who would love to tie the Android knot after a potential (and I am sure very messy) Redmond divorce. I just wonder if the prenup between the leading phone and OS companies was as long as the one Bill Gates used.

Guess we'll never know.

More to come - check tehrani.com and tmcnet.com for updates.

Electronic Warfare is the Future. Are You Ready?

2011-02-14T15:16:46Z

Stuxnet is Victory at Entebbe 2.0

The Stuxnet worm alleged to be the work of Israel and the US was designed to target and disable Iranian centrifuges by increasing their speeds to dangerous levels while reporting to operators that all was well. The latest report from the New York Times shows this worm has also hit five industrial sites in the land of Ahmadinejad.

It’s no secret most of the world does not want Iran to get nuclear weapons and the best weapon being used to deter the country’s nuclear program was sanctions and if they are working it would be tough to know it as the country are prospering greatly as the price of oil is much higher than what Iran has budgeted.

So electronic warfare is a nice and neat way to disable a portion of the country’s operations without the need to go to war, risk lives, etc.

Because of the nature of this attack some predict the Iranian nuclear program has been set back by two years, making this attack historic in its ingenuity. It is really Victory at Entebbe 2.0. As you may recall, Operation Entebbe was a daring hostage rescue mission pulled off by the Israel Defense Forces in 1976.

Cyberattacks are not new by any means but the level of sophistication and damage created by this attack make it something bad guys everywhere will be trying to emulate. And this means as we interconnect more systems from smart grids to smart homes… From automobiles to transit systems and full cities, we need to understand the stakes are higher than ever. Rogue countries and terrorist organizations have a new standard to try to beat and it is not out of the question to see countries engaging in more frequent cyberwars in the future. This could be in conjunction with conventional wars like when Russia and Georgia had their recent conflict or full out cyberwars like Stuxnet or when Russia targeted Estonian web servers with DDoS attacks.

For the tech industry this means massive new budgets will be allocated to not only defending against such attacks but developing ingenious new ways of disabling enemies.

And while cyberwar sounds less ominous than having bombs dropped on your head, there is no telling what sorts of damage citizens of the future will be facing if cyberterrorism and cyberwar escalates.

Meet With Polycom's Stefan Karapetkov at ITEXPO

2011-01-28T22:15:56Z

Stefan Karapetkov is the Emerging Technologies Director at Polycom and I've known him as a voice and video expert since I met him at a VON event over ten years ago. I believe he worked at Siemens at the time. I noticed Stefan just posted a page on his Video Networker blog with regards to all of the speaking engagements he has at the show and collocated events. He is very knowledgeable and worth listening to. This is the second web page I've seen today dedicated to ITEXPO schedules from speakers... The other was from Dan York.

I look forward to seeing all the speakers and you at the show next week in Miami. Here is an excerpt from his post:

My next week will be very busy because ITEXPO and other industry events are running in parallel in Miami, Florida. I looked through the schedule and - as of today - I will be presenting in five sessions: three of them are part of ITEXPO while the other two are part of the Ingate Summit.

My first session at ITEXPO is on February 2 at 1:30pm local time and is titled “How Does The Traditional Desktop Phone Fit Into The Evolving Enterprise User Experience?” Frank Stinson from Intellicom Analytics is moderating and I will be sitting next to speakers representing other business phone makers. This session will explore how the trend to Unified Communications impacts the way people access voice services – through telephones but also through soft clients, smart phones, and tablet devices. How should desktop telephones evolve in this environment and how are desktop phone manufacturers planning to increase the value of their products given evolving user expectations?

Then on February 3 at 1pm I will present in the session “Making Telepresence Affordable and Reliable” which will be moderated by TMC Executive Director Paula Bernier and will also include Matt Collier from LifeSize Communications. This session will discuss the perception that telepresence is expensive and will clog your network with HD video traffic. My talk will focus on the reduced network bandwidth consumption (i.e. minimizing or avoiding IP network upgrades) and on the new network architectures that allow for virtualization of conference resources shared within the entire organization or deployed by service providers to serve vast user communities.

Austin, Texas Selected For ITEXPO West 2011

2011-01-27T23:13:32Z

I have some very exciting news to share regarding ITEXPO. I alluded to it a few weeks back and now it’s here. ITEXPO West 2011 will be moving to the Austin Convention Center in Austin Texas, on September 13-15, 2011. ITEXPO was launched in San Diego, CA at the Hotel Del Coronado and moved to Long Beach and eventually Los Angeles. This move reflects the requests of many exhibitors and attendees.

One exciting benefit of the move for the communications and technology community is free WiFi in the convention center. The convention center is also located 15 minutes from the airport and is within walking distance of 6,000 downtown hotel rooms. Moreover, many refer to the city as the live music capital of the world.

It should come as no surprise that with less regulation, fees and taxes, the business-friendly Lone Star State is doing far better than California in terms of business growth and unemployment rates and although I look forward to bringing more events to California in the future, it is worth noting that show organizers want to host conferences in cities and states where the politicians create the most favorable business climate.

Moreover, Austin is surrounded by technology companies and the communications corridor of Dallas/Richardson is within driving distance. The response so far from those in the know has been very positive and we look forward to seeing you there and discussing the move further next week, Feb 2-4, 2011 in Miami at ITEXPO East 2011 and as soon as the show is over, expect the ITEXPO site referring to Austin to be up and running.