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Broadcasters Circle the Wagons

by Andrew McCaskey
The Coming Wireless Avalanche

Broadcasters are starting to circle the wagons. And this time there are more Indians attacking than ever.

The CTIA – The Wireless Association, and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)CTIA predicts that mobile data usage could grow by 66 times between what it was last year and 2013. BY 2015, a single smartphone users’ data consumption could be 450 times the amount of data consumed in 2005. The FCC predicts total wireless consumption could grow from six petabytes a month last year to 400 by 2013—a petabyte being a thousand terrabytes.

In the late 1980′s I remember a conversation with a broadcaster who was seriously suggesting that since 80% of his viewers were on cable, how they could justify the antenna, transmitter, tower and operating expense for the remaining 20%. Even then, he joked if the tower blew down his business results would improve once he cashed the insurance check, as long as he did not have to rebuild and had 80% of his business – the profitable part – left over.

Broadcasters will be fighting every step of the way, but it’s a losing battle. And smart broadcasters are or should be moving as fast as they can to figure out what their online presence and strategy might be.

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Senster Robotic Sculpture from 1969

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Google Power Meter

by Andrew McCaskey
Ready for Holiday Giving

The partnership announcement between Google and Energy, Inc for sale of devices that will interface directly with Google Power Meter is great news. For $200, a home owner can get a device that attaches to the common 200amp service panel, contains it’s own web server, and measures the power consumption for the household.

The system is more or less real-time, as opposed to the overnight batch processing reporting that power company provided “smart meters” provide with a 24 hours lag.

This is going to be snapped up by geeks all over the country – as it’s a way to get control of the power consumption in the home, and at the same time have some geekly fun. And with the price point, it won’t take too many months of monitoring and gaining geekly cred with friends and colleagues to break even and turn it into a money saving machine.

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Mint CEO Aaron Patzer on Startups from Techcrunch on Vimeo.

Mint CEO Advice on Startups

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Brain Chemistry: That Explains a Lot

by Andrew McCaskey
hat Explains a Lot

The article in Slate Magazine reports that the brain is hard wired to love Google, Texting and Twitter. The conclusion is that it’s not called the Crackberry without reason.

The research goes back fifty years, probing rat’s brains searching for an elusive pleasure center. What they found was a section of the brain that appeared to mimic some pleasure reactions, associated with food or sex – but to be perversly affected by dopamine. It generates not pleasure or satisfaction, but what has been termed “seeking” In fact, it produced a sense of restlessness,anticipation, seeking and exploratory behavior.

Our internal sense of time is believed to be controlled by the dopamine system. People with hyperactivity disorder have a shortage of dopamine in their brains, which a recent study suggests may be at the root of the problem.

Now the only thing missing is to figure out where caffeine fits in.

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Big Bang Theory Explained

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Politics and Unintended Consequences

by Andrew McCaskey
Use a Proxy, Do the Time

It’s always dangerous when politicians are using technology to show how tough they are on crime.

An example is the New Federal rules that could count the use of Proxy servers in a computerized crime as “sophisticated”. The ruling calls for a 25% longer jail sentence, using the line of reasoning that judges use in stiffer sentences when a gun is used in a robbery.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is on top of the case, for a number of reasons: Reasons of privacy online. Secondly, unintended consequences for corporations when employees abuse VPN’s, or the situation where someone could use a proxy without their knowledge,as an ISP or cell phone provider could use proxies without users’ knowledge to reroute traffic.

TOR, the Internet anonymizer that is promoted by EFF, is also targeted in the new legislation. Some activists believe this legislation is an effort to stop leaked US Government information from reaching outside sources, such as Wikileaks.

Much like the recent Boston College incident where students were found with “alternate operating systems” where commands could be directly typed in at a prompt and were suspected cybercrooks at best and cyberterrorists at worst – it’s a good thing the EFF is speaking in a language understood by politicians.

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CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network

Cellular Book Demo

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WiFi Necessities

by Andrew McCaskey
Connectivity is Key

Mike Eagan at Computerworld notes that a new survey says that a majority of respondents would avoid a hotel in the future if they had bad cell phone reception. And nearly half would make the same decision for office space, meeting facilities and even hospitals. Lack of WiFi is an even bigger problem . The article speculates that by the end of the year – as business travel becomes tighter and tighter – properties that don’t provide good connectivity are going to be on the very bottom of the list.

Nobody wants to be lashed to a wall anymore by some fat Ethernet cable. And nobody wants to be unable to make calls. And the laptop and smartphone need WiFi

More importantly, a good laptop/wifi and Skype will beat a cellphone for convenience, audio quality and dial-out cost every time. And if that’s not in the room – solid and dependable – then different choices are going to be made.

I personally travel with the tiny Apple Airport express for the ethernet pipe, and the Cradlepoint PHS-300 to turn EVDO into a WiFi cloud. If the hotel wifi doesn’t cut it, the Airport comes out – or if the LAN cable’s a mess then at least you have a chance with the EVDO cloud.

Smart hotel management is going to pay attention – and some of the more modest hotels are among the smartest.

All the revenue from Pay per View video left the building a long time ago .

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TED Talk – Kite Power Generation

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FCC Official Moves to Agriculture Department
Skype Adds SIP Client
Obama Commits to Plug-In Hybrids

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Missing the Boat

by Andrew McCaskey
Nuclear Power is Getting Shorted

In all the green enthusiasm, it’s a shame that we are not keeping up with the technology in nuclear power that has a lot more promise of safe and clean power than the imagination of “Clean Coal” lobbyists. It’s time that we put some effort and political capital into this technology.

The MIT Technology press had an announcement of a privately funded company with the technology of “Traveling Wave” Reactor, which used the common U-238, a very thin film of U-235 fissile material in a sealed. liquid sodium cooled reaction that ran, converting the fuel into plutonium P239 that grew at about a cm per year as the “wave” moved through the core of the reactor. The units would in theory run for hundreds of years before they would have to be serviced. The first units could go on line in 2020. Why it would take eleven years to commercialize is another question. If the technology questions are solved, the regulatory barriers should be a lot easier to remove.

After all we dumped more than a few $Billion in the Ethanol scam. Why don’t we put some funds into 21st Century nuclear power ? We are going to need every Megawatt we can find.

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CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network

CES2009 – Anybot

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Leapfrogging the Recession

by Andrew McCaskey
Intel Makes the 32nm Move

It’s as much a commentary on the incredible capital requirements of the semiconductor industry as it is on future optimism. Either way, the future technology gets here on schedule, or a little before.

Intel has announced that they are forging ahead on conversion to a 32nm production process, leaving behind the current 45nm. The more normal sequence of events would be to milk a few more years out the the current technology, expanding the production capacity to meet worldwide demand, and then gradually moving to the newer geometry. The problem is that new plant and equipment ordered today in the 45nm process would not go online soon enough or remain online for enough time, with enough demand, to be economically viable.

Forward looking or deciding to not throw good money after bad ? Whichever the motivation, Intel is forging ahead.

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CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network

CES2009 Shure Product Introduction at CES

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People Between Jobs and a Patch

by Andrew McCaskey
The Tweet Saturday morning says it all

1. Never try to make a patch on a Content Management System when you are very tired
2. Backup does not equal restore.

Here’s what led up to the poor judgment demonstration that has kept the SDRNews.com site off the air for the past weekend.

The project began in a rush to get prepared for the new SDRNewsroom live program, People Between Jobs (PBJ). First, news about that, then back to the patch problem.

Everyone has one time or another been between jobs. I’ve decided to add a weekly live SDRNewsroom show to try to showcase listeners who are between jobs and open the floor to other listeners for questions, coaching, and comments.
It’s an out growth of work that I have been doing on a community service basis for the past seven years, adapted to virtual space.

The first edition of the program will be held Wednesday January 21 at 1:00PM Eastern, 10AM Pacific. – details will be on the site at SDRNews.

Back to the patch.

Other than good practice, why would I try to patch my Joomla installation late at night on a Friday ? I needed to add a community site extension (what in the WordPress world would be called a Plug-in).

I wanted to add a Joomla extension called jomSocial to facilitiate the PBJ program. The problem was, my Jooma install was 1.5.6, and the minimum requirements were 1.5. 7 or above.

I am not sure what I did, but I promise not to do it again. The patch went sideways, somehow. The restore that I did from the backup didn’t, and I quickly realized, by Saturday morning, that I needed professional help.

Open Source Support Desk has the ball now, and I expect to be back up by Monday Eastern Standard Time.

So – the PBJ community site may not be up on the PBJ tab at SDRNews, but the live stream and resulting video will be.

Hope you can join us. !

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CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network

Blaupunkt Automobile Internet Radio at CES

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CES Day 1 – Product of the Day

by Andrew McCaskey
Keeping up Appearances

The show may be a little bit smaller, the crowds not quite so pressing, but the CES Show – at least from appearances at the press events on Tuesday and Wednesday – is gamely soldiering on, in spite of the day by day onslaught of bad news in the popular press. Taxi drivers are glad to see CES come to town – the largest of the trade shows, and particularly.

We are all, to a certain extent, agreeing not to discuss the disagreeable. The preparations that were set in motion in March of 2008 are being executed as well as can be. There is some nibbling around the edges – Press bags a bit smaller – although the food and drink seem to be flowing at the same rate. If you have been following the backchannel videos on the site, you will see that – at least for the controlled space where product messages get presented to the press there’s an air of business as usual.

The Consumer Electronics segment of the economy is probably one of the more nible sections – not able to turn on a dime but with relatively short product life cycles and an evolutionary approach to design driven by the underlying technology.

Watch our product videos and pick of the day as they are published Friday and through the weekend. It’s a great way to see where the Consumer Electronic business was in June of 2008, as I feel the show is coasting on the momentum of the first half of 2008.

The real CES to watch will be CES 2010.

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CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network

CES Day 1 Report

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This one Should be in Line

by Andrew McCaskey
One That Should Be There

Here’s one industry that should be at the public assistance line: A consortium to insure that the US has the capability to not only perform basic research and invention of the batteries needed for automotive, wind, solar and other energy sources (and sinks) but the manufacturing capacity to carry it through.

The Obama Administration could not find a better, more highly visible and politically savory initiative for announcement before the end of January. A concerted effort to pull together a variety of researchers, National Laboratories and leading manufacturers to act as the sole target for Federal money offers the best of both worlds: A way to demonstrate decisive action politcally, and a way to focus the aspirations and skill development of workers on jobs that have a future.

The other benefit that such public involvement would bring would be some serious light on the entire subject of energy storage for vehicles. Earlier this year there were a series of articles on the “ultracapacitor” storage cells from EEstor, a Texas startup with heavy funding and links into major defense contractors. The only trouble is, their page is “Under Construction, and if they are making introductions in 2009 as promised, they need to get cracking.The internet abounds with crackpot schemes to run automobiles on water, as Snopes Debunks Various Water Fuel schemes. Some government oversight, funding, and credibility will go a long way towards some serious progress.

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Carbon Nanotube Loudspeaker

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