Alternative Energy Options

As part of an Economist survey on Oil, an article discusses alternatives energy sources (in the context of automobiles):

The current favourite is biofuels, typically made from renewable resources such as agricultural crops or waste. They are attractive not only because they are green, but because they can be blended into conventional petrol and used in today's engines. Brazil has a huge market for ethanol made from domestic sugar cane. Car companies are equipping vehicles with “flex-fuel” capability, so they can run on either petrol or ethanol blends.

Another intriguing alternative to oil comes from natural gas. Gas-to-liquids (GTL) is the clunky name given to a set of fuels that can be blended into conventional diesel and used in today's engines. They have the advantage of being super-clean, as well as boosting the potency of diesel fuel. Though they can be made from coal or biomass, the most likely option is natural gas.

The emerging combination of hydrogen fuel and fuel-cell engines [is another option]. Fuel cells are essentially big batteries that combine hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air to make electricity that can power anything from a laptop to a home or a car. The hydrogen can be made from any primary energy source, be it fossil fuels or wind energy.

The beauty of this combination is that it produces no local emissions, and if the hydrogen is made from renewables or coal with carbon sequestration technology (which captures the carbon emissions from hydrocarbon use and stores them underground), no greenhouse gases either. That is why, says GM's Mr Burns, “fuel cells will finally take the automobile out of the environmental debate.” And because hydrogen can be made anywhere by anybody, no OPEC would hold sway.

Real-time Collaboration

Tech Target has a Q&A with David Marshak, who is with IBM Lotus Software as senior product manager for collaboration. Excerpts:

New models of collaboration, like activity-based computing, while supporting existing technologies like presence. A lot of current collaboration technologies have become highly commoditized. Like Web conferencing -- unless you add tight integration with audio, there's very little differentiation between the products that are out there.

Still, we can do a lot more with presence. Presence is not just for people but for objects and expertise. For instance, at IBM right now, if you have a question about collaboration, you don't have to know who to ask. You can simply find out everyone who has expertise in the area who's online at any given moment.

The next really big application is going to be mobile presence. But presence can be scary from a privacy perspective. For instance, two winters ago here in Massachusetts, the state's snow plow drivers threatened to strike because they were told they were going to have GPS systems in their vehicles. But there are positives to GPS too. Parents are giving GPS cell phones to their kids, and their teenage kids love them. Why? Because it's an alternative to them being called every hour.

My computer knows if I've been away from it because I've gone a certain amount of time without touching the keyboard. My Blackberry knows the last time I looked at it, and whether it's in the holster so it can't receive IM. Verizon knows whether I have the ring of my cell phone set to vibrate or be silent.

What we're not sure yet is how people are going to use this presence information. In today's world, all our messaging devices represent different personas to different people (i.e., phone, email, IM, etc.) who are trying to reach you in different ways. There are times we want to be available to one person and not another. In the old days, a secretary made that decision, to let people know if you were in or out. If it was your boss, you were available. If it was your wife, you were available. If it was someone else, maybe you weren't available.

We need a learning system that does this with all our devices and lets them know who can interrupt us. If you and I are going into a meeting at 3 pm and you call me at 2:30, there should be a learning system that can recognize the urgency of your contacting me based not so much on who you are but on the fact that we're going into a meeting.

Mobile Advertising

The Pondering Primate writes:

... your cell phone will be the remote control of your world.

Here's another way to look at this. See if you can how ubiquitous this will be.

Imagine if Apple had the ability to sell advertising on every iPod screen. People would say WOW!. All those screens out there, it would be huge.

Now, replace every iPod screen with a cell phone. What you have is a 6 ounce TV that you can carry everywhere and it is tuned into only one TV station. Would you like to be the company that sells advertising on that?....I thought so.

Now you see why mobile advertising will be enormous.

Another post adds: "Mobile content is 'snack media' - short, snappy, entertaining and engaging content - it is meant to be on-the-move and is viewed when mobile users have a minute or two to spare. It has very wide appeal and might be sports or news highlights, movie trailers, music videos or even Mobisodes of existing television programmes, which are short episodes that are either unique or add to the broadcast experience."

Future of Retailing?

The Pondering Primate writes:

I’ve been pondering the fight that will be coming up between retailers and brands once the physical world is connected. Huh? Well it won’t be long before you will be able to click on a barcode and be directed to a targeted site. The question is whose site should it be based on where you click.

This will be, in my opinion, revolutionary. It will also create access to more information than some would like.

I’m going to use an example of what I mean. I’m walking through a Barnes and Noble store and I see this great book on “Pictures Of History” priced at $45.00. I like the book but $45 seems steep. I take out my camera phone, click on the barcode, and I am taken to Amazon.com where the price is $39.95. I can either order right there through my phone, or wait till I get home.

Barnes and Noble lost “control” of their customer by allowing an outside application in the store. Every retailer is scared at the thought of a price comparison/outside application being allowed in their store via cell phone.

A $45 book is one thing, but imagine a $5000 Sony LCD TV in Best Buy. Think Best Buy might object to a Froogle like application in their store?

How can they stop this?

Whitepaper on RIA Technologies

Jonathan Boutelle points to a white paper by Frank Ramirez Principal, Ramirez Design LLC and Luke Wroblewski Principal, LukeW Interface Designs, comparing the different Rich Internet Applications technologies.

As the Web continues to extend its reach into our daily lives, an increasing number of our interactions will happen online. The practical implication of this for interface designers is lots of Web application projects that cover everything from filing taxes to sharing photos.

“The fundamental purpose of Web applications is to facilitate the completion of one or more tasks”. But depending on the type and complexity of the tasks involved, different technical solutions may be better suited to enable the specific interactions each product requires. Flash, Java applets, DHTML, Active X, Smart Clients, Java Web Start, SVG— what do you choose and why? What types of interactivity and visual presentation does each technology enable? What does each limit?

As Web application interface designers, these are questions we encounter time and time again. As a result, we decided to document what we’ve learned and research what we didn’t know about the opportunities and limitations that characterize some of the most popular Web application presentation layer solutions available today. We evaluated each solution against a consistent set of criteria and described it with a concise definition, set of examples, and references that enable further analysis. We also shared our findings with a team of expert reviewers to ensure we were on the right track. The end result is this designer’s guide.

TECH TALK: Good Books: The Marketing Playbook

The next two books we will discuss are about two dimensions of business – marketing and presentations. Let us begin with the book on marketing. “The Marketing Playbook” by John Zagula and Richard Tong, both of whom honed their skills selling Microsoft Windows and Office and are now venture capitalists at Ignition Partners. The book boils marketing down to five plays for capturing and keeping the lead in any market. It offers a vocabulary for marketing.

Jack Covert reviewed the book for 800-CEO-Blog:

There are two basic types of business books - descriptive and prescriptive. I gravitate toward the prescriptive. I like books that give 10 ways to solve a problem. Many business book readers are the same. They want a "how to" book to get them started. The Marketing Playbook by John Zagula and Richard Tong fits into this category perfectly.

While at Microsoft, the authors noticed patterns in the marketing plans the company was implementing. The main thing was there weren't many variations to the plans. In the book, they describe five "marketing plays" that will works for any situation. They have given them easy to remember names (Drag Race, Stealth, Best of Both, High-Low, and Platform). They describe in detail how to run each play, how to identify which play to run, and what play to run if the current one starts to fail.

Publisher’s Weekly wrote about the book (via Amazon):

This engaging primer contends that all marketing campaigns can be boiled down to five basic strategies, a typology distilled from the authors’ experience as marketing executives at Microsoft and as venture capitalists. The "plays," schematized with football diagrams, are: the "drag race," in which your product squares off against a single competitor in an attention-getting battle for market dominance; the "platform play" (Microsoft’s forté), in which your product becomes the essential infrastructure for an entire industry (á la Windows); the "stealth play," in which you go after markets ignored by larger competitors; the "best of both" play, in which your breakthrough product becomes all things to all men; and the "high-low" play, in which you pit both your deluxe high-end product line and your cheapo down-market line against a rival’s mediocre compromise offering.”

There is a companion blog which the authors have created which offers continuing insights on marketing. This is a book you will find yourself returning to often because it helps provide a framework for thinking about the marketplace and competition. Coming up with a winning strategy requires insights about the situation out there along with an understanding of a product’s strengths. “The Marketing Playbook” offers a language to discuss with others in the team on how one should attack the market. As such, it is a book which will quickly become a ready-reference for all in marketing and allied functions.

Tomorrow: The Marketing Playbook (continued)

Related Entries:  [All]
TECH TALK: Good Books: Beautiful Evidence and More Than You Know [November 3, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: Winning Decisions [November 2, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: The Go Point (Part 2) [November 1, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: The Go Point [October 31, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: In Spite of the Gods (Part 2) [October 30, 2006]