Chu also announced the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will receive $100 million for infrastructure projects. The largest is the development of an energy efficient LEED Platinum certified office, constructed at the same cost as that of a low efficiency commercial office building. The others are to use solar and other green energy sources to reduce the labs carbon use and to upgrade the integrated bio-refinery research facility used to develop commercial scale cellulose to ethanol technologies.

During his visit to the Golden, CO facility Chu stated that $26 billion of the more than $100 billion in the Recover Act for renewable energy projects had already been authorized with the goal of 70% being authorized by early September. He also discussed streamlining the DOE loan approval process with the goal of reducing the time to getting a loan application approved to a few months. It has been known to take years under the current process.

It is great to see some of this huge spending bill is being directed to innovation and more importantly that this is being coordinated with private industry. There continues to be a gap in funding for the commercialization of proven technologies. Until this gap is filled, the great innovation from the labs and universities will be delayed in helping solve our energy issues.

Metcalfe gave an optimistic view of the environmental challenge suggesting not only are we in a Global Warming Bubble but that cheap, clean energy will be so abundant, it will easily be squandered.

He suggested the best place for research is in the research universities and not in government labs which are “nothing more than local earmarks”. In this model, professors along with their graduate students, will commercialize innovation with the help of entrepreneurs and venture capital.

Metcalfe warned that energy and environment are two overlapping issues and they should be viewed as two things. Otherwise, we may solve energy without solving the environment or vice-versa. Oh, and he offered a new color for clean energy, blue.

McKinsey

Economists Nicholas Stern and Michael Grubb, along with European Commissioner Janez Poto?nik, agree that the United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009, marks a critical juncture for addressing climate concerns. And they all agree the United States must take serious action to back up the serious language currently coming out of Washington, D.C.

Why the interest in algae? The primary reasons is it grows fast, very fast. In fact, with ample sunlight, CO2 and the right nutrients, algae can double it’s mass in a few hours. And under the right conditions, algae can also be coaxed into producing a large percentage of its mass into fuel rich lipids. With no need to reach toward the sky algae spends little to no energy building the complex cellulosic structures found in land plants. This means a higher percentage of the plant can be converted to fuel. Some companies are focusing on genetically altering fast growing strains to directly produce hydrocarbons, in effect, eliminating the refining step.

Today companies are able to produce biofuel from algae for somewhere between $9 and $36 per gallon. Not barrel, per dollar. Huh? Yes, algal biofuel science still has some work to do. Algae grown in ponds get a free source of energy from the sun, but require a lot of water and the associated energy costs of moving it around and filtering the final product. These open ponds also have to be protected from natural strains which do not produce the desired lipids. Closed bioreactors are great at controlling the environment and preventing contamination, but require a lot of energy either via artificial light or in the case of GreenFuel, sugar.

Algae has advantages in addition to its ability to grow quickly. Acre per acre, algae outperforms any other biofuel source around. Compared to 60 gallons of diesel per acre from soybeans or 600 gallons per acre from oil palms, algae can produce 1850 gallons per acre and some experts are claiming 5,000 gallons per acre is feasible.

Algae also consumes a vast amount of CO2 and produces lots of oxygen. Three quarters of the oxygen in our atmosphere is produce by algae. Experimental sites are often located at coal fired utility plants in order to use the vast amounts of CO2 produces by burning coal to feed the algae. While this certainly does not sequester the CO2, it lowers the total emissions by recycling the CO2 and gaining energy from it twice.

There are forms of algae that grow in lots of types of water that we would find difficulty using for ourselves or our food supplies. This allows algae farms to use water that will not impact scarce water sources. These add up to a crop that can be grown on land not used for food, using water that would not be used for human consumption or food crops and suck up a lot of CO2 in the process. We simply have to find ways to do it more cheaply.

Between 2012 and 2020, nearly $645 billion could be raised from the sale of emission allowances, the budget outline says.

According to Point Carbon (subscription) estimates, that would assume around 80 per cent of the economy would face caps on their greenhouse gas output starting 2012 at 2005 levels, or roughly 7.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

This means the budget is banking on carbon prices of nearly $13.70 per tonne by 2012.With the cap declining around 2 per cent per year after 2012, Point Carbon estimates the price of carbon in 2020 would go up to $16.5 per allowance.

Worldwide over 27 gigawatts (GW) of wind capacity was added. China doubled capacity to 12.2 GW and is on tract to double capacity again in 2009 and may reach its goal of 30 (GW) by 2010, ten years ahead of plan. All of Asia added about 8.3 GW with Europe and North America adding 8.9 GW each.

In the US, the financial crisis hit the wind industry and orders for turbines and components has slowed to a trickle. This needs to be reversed quickly if the US is to stay ahead of schedule to reach 300 GW of wind capacity, or 20% of our electricity needs, by 2030.

1) Increased number of observation points to improve accuracy.
2) Independent evaluation of low profile observation instruments, such as LIDAR and SODAR, to increase adoption by the industry
3) High quality global and regional forecasts
4) Improved mathematical prediction models

It was the clear consensus that the US Labs are critical to providing the data needed to help wind projects successfully plan and use wind energy AND that the US Labs could do a lot more to help the forecasts being provided to the project operators. Today the European forecasts are often better at predicting weather over the western states than the forecast generated here. To insure the US meets the predicted increase in Wind Capacity from about 20 GW today to more than 300 GW by 2030, better information about the weather is critical.

“America, in the face of our common dangers; in this winter of our hardship let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brace once more the icy currents. An endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s chirdren, that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end. That we did not turn back nor did we falter and with eyes fixed on the horizon and god’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

• Solar is real – now
• Investment in Policy and R&D are priorities
• Cutting time from lab to manufacturing is key
• Significant increase in science and technical workforce is needed
• Balancing near and longterm R&D must be maintained

The highlight of the evening was a story from Kazmerski’s early days at NREL. A local newspaper reporter seemed uninterested in his description of the energy conversion properties of some of the PV cells they were testing. When the talk turned to the government officials visiting from Saudi Arabia, Kazmerski convinced the reporter the Saudi’s were investing heavily in solar energy and that they planned to sell the US sand for silicon production at $40 per barrel. This appeared in the the paper the following week and Kazmerski claims he still holds the record for fewest seconds between arrival at NREL and a summons to the director’s office.

A confusing question unless you been following the stream of posts generated by the Sunday Times of London quoting (or misquoting) Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross‘ study on the energy used by view webpages. IN the story, the Times reporters stated “Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.” This seems to equate to about 7 grams of CO2.

Google immediately responded in a blog post stating “we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal suggesting the number is closer to 0.02 grams per search.” And went on to state the energy used by the PC performing the search is greater than the search itself.

Meanwhile according to Tech News World, Wissner-Gross claims neither he nor the study mentioned Google or had anything to do with Google and certainly not with tea kettles. “They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics,” Wissner-Gross said.

And in response to these back and forth discussions, more than a few bloggers have decided to weigh in:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece

http://www.livescience.com/technology/090112-carbon-internet.html

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/seven-grams-per-google-search.php

So what do you think? How much water could you boil while searching for the amount of CO2 emitted from a Google Search? or something like that?

Globally, wind power installations are expected to triple from 94GW at the end of 2007 to nearly 290GW in 2012, according to BTM Consult, a Danish market-research firm. They will then account for 2.7% of world electricity generation, the company predicts, and by 2017 their share could be nearly 6%.

Well behind much of Europe in percentage of electricity generated from the wind, the US has 18% of worldwide wind power production following a year which saw an increase of 45% in wind power capacity.

Idaho State energy czar Paul Kjellander sees BTUs where other see Cow $#!+ and he hopes to get others to see it his way.  As head of Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otters Office of Energy Resources, Kjellander is pushing a package of income tax credits, property tax waivers and other incentives in the 2009 Legislature starting Jan. 12 to transform Idahos southern heartland into a methane Mecca.

That odor wafting from 550,000 cows that make up Idaho's growing dairy herd smells like energy independence and economic development to state energy czar Paul Kjellander.

 With over half a million cows and ranking 3rd in dairy production, there is definitely a lot of manure.  This contributes greatly to agriculture being the third largest producer of methane in the US.  Methane by volume has 25 times the greenhouse effect as CO2 on climate and is second to CO2 in greenhouse gas contribution to global climate change.

Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc. soon aims to sell electricity from its $8.5 million, 2.25 megawatt digester and generator facility at the 10,000-cow Bettencourt Dairy in Hansen to Idaho Power Co., the state’s largest utility.

This is the agricultural conglomerate’s first such project, but Cargill has another southern Idaho plant due to open in 2009. It’s also exploring similar endeavors in neighboring Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, California, Texas, New York and Indiana, said Craig Maetzold, Cargill Environmental Finance’s operations manager.

“We believe the credits in renewable energy are only going to increase in value in the future,” Maetzold said.

Grove wants to focus on retrofitting a few high volume, low mileage models to test the theory. His goal is to reduce the dependency of our transportation system on petroleum and therefore foreign interests by moving more of our transportation miles to rely on electricity. Arguing that electricity is generated using a variety of fuel sources and a higher carbon productivity rate, this will also reduce GHGs emissions.

His article received a significant amount of feedback encouraging him to prepare a response only a few days after the original was posted. Primary concerns of those writing in were:

Electricity Generation

Electrical Grid Capacity

Small Impact of 1 million Cars

Getting Political Support

and one reader who suggested he stick to his knitting and leave energy to others.

Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a 1997 corecipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, is Obama’s pick for secretary of energy. Lisa Jackson, a former commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection who was trained as a chemical engineer, is nominated for the post as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. And Carol Browner, former EPA chief in the Clinton administration, has been asked to serve as a “high-level coordinator” on energy issues—and perhaps something of a “czar” on climate change.

Department of Energy – Steven Chu
At Berkeley, Chu has strongly advocated research into solar power and advanced biomass, in particular biofuels made from grasses that won’t compete for space with farmland. At a talk this summer in Nevada, Chu said, “In the first eight months of a new research program, we have developed ways to separate out cellulose, and we have already made a yeast [that] makes a gasolinelike fuel. Already within eight months, we are working on diesel and jet replacement fuels. We need to work with making this really scalable so it will outperform the yeast we have to today.” (One potential disagreement with Obama: Chu has criticized corn-based ethanol, which Obama has strongly supported in the Senate and in the campaign.)

Administrator of the EPA – Lisa Jackson
Ms. Jackson had been the head of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection since 2006, and in October, Gov. Jon S. Corzine announced that she would become his chief of staff starting on December. She presently serves as Vice President of the Executive Board of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program organized by northeast states to develop a regional cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy producers. She has a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Princeton and spent 16 years at the federal E.P.A. as a top enforcement officer in Washington and New York. She has led the Obama transition team at E.P.A. and knows the agency inside and out, according to associates.

Coordinator of Energy and Environmental Policy
Browner will work closely with Obama, who pledged his “personal engagement” in these issues, and coordinate the work of the DOE, EPA, as well as the federal, state and local governments. Obamo pointed out that Browner will bring her experience from the EPA of establishing the NOx and SO2 emissions trading programme. On the international stage, she was behind drafting the US’ submission to the Kyoto protocol in 1997, which he said was the “the best framework for carbon policy that has ever been developed.”

Ms. Browner, an acolyte of former Vice President Al Gore, will have forceful support in the new Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, who will be the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who is returning as chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Opposing their efforts will be many Republicans and some Democrats, as well as manufacturers, utilities, oil companies and coal producers who will bear the brunt of the costs of any steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the main culprit in global warming.

The nominees have a record of supporting high levels of federal involvement in energy and environmental issues, both in terms of money invested and regulatory oversight. During the early 1990s, Browner earned a reputation for attempting to uphold water and air regulations in the face of opposition from congressional Republicans. Jackson, likewise, at a congressional hearing last May on mercury emissions, told lawmakers, “Implementing the real maximum achievable protections is simply the only moral and ethical choice available if we are to meet our responsibility as public officials.”

Deutsche Bank believes EU emissions in 2009 could be 10% below 2007 levels. This would push emissions below allowances for 2009. The excess allowances for 2009 can be “banked” for use through 2012 and the forecasted emissions for 2009-2012 remain slightly above the EU carbon allowances. As a result of reduced emissions and smaller shortfall, UN-approved Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) which EU industry can import from developing nations to meet compliance, may be able to meet the entire shortfall. Price estimates for EUAs and CERs clearly indicate analysts believe CERs will set the pricing for EUAs for the next few years.

The good news is EU will be able to meet the allowances under phase 2 with a small “carbon price” in this recessionary period. This is also the bad news, as the lower price reduces the investment per ton of CO₂ available for carbon abatement projects. The net is by 2012, the European Union will have done less and perhaps much less to lower the Green House Gases (GHG) they produce per unit of energy they consume than anticipated when the allowance allocations were set.

Chu heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, stamping his imprint on the lab with an aggressive focus on developing new alternative energy technology. “If I were emperor of the world, I would put the pedal to the floor on energy efficiency and conservation for the next decade,” Chu stated in an interview last year.

Chu’s experience in advanced technology and renewable energy and lack of background in fossil fuels signals Obama expects the energy department to concentrate on new fuels, experts said.

“I believe that the selection of Steve Chu suggests that President-elect Obama is quite serious about reordering the energy sector and executing his vision of a green economy,” said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at Cato Institute.

The good news is that carbon based energy will be lower as petroleum consumption and electricity demand decrease. And with an increase in wind, nuclear, natural gas and petroleum fueled electricity generation, electricity produced by burning coal should fall 0.2% in 2009. Unfortunately, these changes do little to alter the GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions forecast from the “Business as Usual” scenario (See Increasing Carbon Productivity Tenfold).

According to the The Carbon Productivity Challenge published by McKinsey & Company, the world has 50 years to increase carbon productivity from $7,300 GDP per ton of CO₂e to $740 GDP per ton of CO₂e. Some big steps are needed with a cost for GHG emissions via a cap and trade system at the top of the list.

Van is correct that the Green Economy can provide opportunities for a people of all walks of life.  And that we have to move and move quickly.  The need to conserve, use renewables and offset Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) will create many jobs where there have been few.  (i.e. Building Nuclear and Wind power stations.)  There will be many jobs that come from the need to reduce GHGs throughout the rest of the economy starting with our own actions to conserve energy.  And while the US does need to move toward better family balance sheets, the picture painted here is overly bleak.

General session audience, originally uploaded by Alex Dunne.

The inaugural Cloud Summit held in Mtn. View, CA, was well attended with attendees representing many of the California technology companies and their suppliers of money and advice.

The Generation WE movement is the largest generation in history, they are independant – politically, socially, and philosophically – and are spearheading a period of sweeping change in America and around the world. Check it out.

All of this is from McKinsey & Company in a report on how the US can cut GHG emissions by 3.0 to 4.5 gigatons at a marginal cost below $50 per ton using tested approaches and high-potential emerging technologies.

Key findings are both encouraging and at the same time, highlight the effort facing the US and the world in dramatically cutting GHG emissions.

• Carbon abatement opportunities are highly fragmented and widely spread across the economy.
• Almost 40% of abatement can be achieved with a positive ROI.
• Abatement costs, potential and mix vary across regions of the country.

Investments of about $50 billion annually through 2030 are needed to cut 3.0 gigatons of emissions. These investments are highly concentrated in the power and transportation sectors. This number will increase if the nation chooses to mandate higher-cost options and/or if some energy efficiency gains do not materialize.

Five abatement potential sectors from least to highest average cost:

• Improve building and appliances efficiency – 710 to 870 megatons
• Increase fuel efficience in vehicles – 340 to 660 megatons
• Industrial sector – 620 to 770 megatons
• Cargon sinks – 440 to 590 megatons
• Reduce carbon intensity of electricity generation – .8 to 1.57 gigatons

Across all sectors, greater energy productivity can reduce the need for abatement investment and in many instances provide net economic gains. Energy efficiency in buildings, appliances and industrial uses could offset up to 85% of incremental electricity needs cutting most if not all of the incremental coal-fired power plants used in the baseline.

Bottom line is things need to start soon around these themes:

1. Stimulate action through strong, coordinated policies to capture GHG reductions effiently across all sectors and geographies.
2. Quickly pursue energy efficiency and positive ROI options.
3. Accelerate low-carbon energy infrastructure development.

Acting soon, we can reach these goals at an acceptable impact to lifestyle and quality of life. Delay will increase the cost greatly and is likely to lead to significantly larger impact to those least able to absorb it.

A daunting task for sure, yet the study highlights that current technology allows us to get there provided investments, significant investments, begin soon.

Porter suggests employers adopt four principles for providing healthcare to employees:
First, the best way truly to reduce health care cost is to improve its quality. Quality, defined in terms of outcomes, is the secret to success in health care.

Second, high-value care is delivered by integrated practice units including all the needed specialties that care for the patient’s medical condition over the full cycle of care.

Third, prevention and screening can dramatically improve value, as does ongoing disease management to prevent recurrences and setbacks.

Fourth, the only way truly to drive value is to measure patient outcomes for each medical condition.

Screenshot

Tags: technology

Subject: “Very Important, Please Read ASAP.”

I want you to read carefully and please kindly get back to you asap; it’s very urgent and important. I am currently out of states for a personal business trip in London. Unfortunately, I misplaced both my wallet & my ATM card, maybe at the hotel where i lodged or somewhere else I can’t really say exactly.

You can read the rest of their message below along with a few responses to me and the fake reply to email address.

I’ll write in a later post what I think the ramifications of this may be for both those whose contact data was stolen and me. I’ll include in that any additional lessons I discover regarding this. And if I discover it the gmail bot detection system has been tricked, I’ll let you know that too. But for now here is the rest of the message and my favorite response.

Right now I’m totally confused, as I don’t know what to do, I went to the US Embassy to report the issue and also seek for their financial assistance for me to get back home and also pay the hotel bills but unfortunately me nothing could be done to assist me financially at the Us Embassy, I didn’t have my phone here since my traveling was outside the country, I would have prefer discussing this with you over the phone, but since I have no access to phone I decided to contact you by email because its the only avenue I can use to send you this urgent notice..

I’m totally stranded and have no dime with me here, can you please do me a favor? I need a loan worth of $2000 from you so that I could pay the hotel bills and also book a return ticket back home. Will you be able to get me the loan and how soon, cos I will need it ASAP? I promise to pay you as soon as I get home. I need to pay up the hotel bills so that I could be free to pack my luggage and leave to board a flight back home without further delaying. The hotel management here is not taking it easy with me, just because I’ve not been able to pay their bills since I’ve lodged in. I have been restricted from using so many facilities of the hotel including the uses of the telephone services.

Write back to me ASAP and let me know how you could assist me with the loan, then I can give you further instruction on how to send it to me. Please keep this confidentially, as I wouldn’t want anyone to know about this since I never told anyone about the trip because all my plans was that its going to be a successful one and I will be back without any cause for alarm.

Thanks.

Here is my favorite response to the perpetrator:

I am very kindly getting back to you asap. I’m very so sorry for your urgent need of monies. How so sad that you may lost your wallet and your ATM card. You should be looking where you lodged and then may find it there.

I’m sure the embassy would not want to give you many monies like $2000 US dollars. Maybe you can be asking them for a loan on behalf of the tax rebate from our esteemed President Mr. Bush.

Good luck with your problem, I’m sure as you are so smart you will find many good ways to be making enough monies to come back. And GOOD NEWS! If you are earning British Pounds you will only need 1000 instead of 2000, this is being a good deal for you.

Here are some messages sent to me:

Hi Dwayne -
I got this email message today (text below). Either you’ve been hacked, or you’re having a very difficult trip…
Cheers, Andy

OK – what bogus web site have you been frequenting?

Check this out. I just received it. weird huh?

Looks like we are all getting strange emails from you.

Dwayne: Don’t you love the electronic age?

Looks like someone has got hold of your Gmail address…. That and his grammar is really bad.

And of course, it is a proposal that few in Congress support and President Bush will veto. So, it’s a non-starter and perhaps in the eyes of two candidates a safe proposal aimed to win voter favor without having all the downsides. And there are several.

First of all, the tax generates revenue to pay for roads and bridge maintenance, which if anything is too small for our aging infrastructure. Of the three ways to pay for this, Clinton suggests taxing the windfall profits on Oil Companies while McCain says cut other spending. Let’s start with McCain. Congress has shown little appetite for cutting spending and the Whitehouse seems to agree that deficits matter not to voters. So, he is really offering the third option of borrowing to pay for this when we need to do the opposite.

Clinton wants to tax the Oil companies with a Windfall Profit tax which would do two things. First of all, it would diminish the expected returns on oil production and over the long term would decrease supply. It would in the short term put higher price pressure on Oil and with more demand coming during the summer driving season, it is more likely this added tax expense would be passed on to consumers.

If you want to help consumers and the retailers they visit, there are better ways to insure the money get to the right people. The stimulus package aims (many would argue aims poorly) to get $600 to those who need it most and are most likely to use it. The gas tax suspension would do no such thing.

And now here is the real catch. The realities of market economics cannot be suspended. Demand will increase to a point where it meets supply. Fiddling with the gas tax will not change this and the US Fuel Retail system has very little slack capacity. Therefore, supply is relatively inelastic and prices will move with demand. Bottom line, the gas tax will be eaten by the Gasoline Value Chain and consumers will be left with little in their pocket other than a higher debt and nothing done to solve the longer term energy issues. It’s bad policy, bad economics and it is time for us to show politicians, that pandering for votes is bad politics.

She is now leaving her position as co-executive director of the Colorado Youth Program to pursue her career in counseling. But we all know that the organization is stronger and better able to continue the goal of connecting kids with their community and the environment because of her leadership.

Thank you for all that you have done, Robyn!

Here are a few excerpts from a letter I received from Robyn yesterday.

My final day at Colorado Youth Program has arrived!

I joined the Colorado Youth Program staff in 1999 as a part-time program coordinator. I had found my ideal job at an organization that combined working with underserved youth and teaching about the environment and volunteerism, all while playing in the outdoors.

While I am now leaving CYP to pursue a career in counseling, I will stay connected to the Colorado Youth Program as a volunteer and donor. The Colorado Youth Program occupies a unique space in our community, making summer camp an affordable option for all families and providing free after-school and weekend programs that teach children to understand, respect and enjoy nature.My time at the Colorado Youth Program has been beautiful. I have worked with delightful children and teens, loving parents and families, visionary community members and leaders, dedicated volunteers and staff…I have enjoyed working with each and every one of you!

]]> http://dwaynenesmith.com/blog/archives/2008/05/thank-you-robyn/feed/ 0 http://dwaynenesmith.com/blog/archives/2008/05/apple-making-it-easy-im-not-so-sure/ http://dwaynenesmith.com/blog/archives/2008/05/apple-making-it-easy-im-not-so-sure/#comments Sat, 03 May 2008 18:46:45 +0000 admin http://dwaynenesmith.com/?p=108 I recently decided to purchase the January 2008 iPod Touch upgrade. I thinking about getting an iPhone and have decided I’m willing to part with the 20 bucks to test out the email app so there is no need for me to repeat what others have said about this already. Great products overcome bad decisions in other areas. A few bad decisions anyway.

Back to my attempt to purchase this upgrade. Two days ago I decided to get the upgrade and quickly found the place where current iPod touch owners were directed. Up pops a nice little advertisement within the iTunes store inside iTunes and confirming I have met the requirements for software versions and iTunes store account I try to click the Upgrade for $19.99 big bold blue letters. It’s not a link, ok, so I go to the bottom and click the OK button.

This takes me to the iTunes store home page filled with all sorts of music, movies, games, TV shows, podcast, audio books, all sort of content. But no upgrade, in fact no software. So I look and I look and I know I must just be missing it, so I look some more.

Now, two days later, I have emailed a support person 3 times, tried to chat with Wanda who disappeared once I asked my question and spoke on the phone with Benjamin. I’ve been given links to articles about verifying your upgrade installation and how to contact customer support. I’m currently waiting (15 minutes and counting) for an email which he claims has the correct link (the one on the Apple Store website has not worked for a few weeks, I was told.)

I still waiting for the highly praised Apple support, I’ve heard so much about. Oh, and I’m still waiting for that email.

“We do not expect to see significant declines in investment levels in the coming year,” said NVCA President Mark Heesen.

Is this additional evidence that media outlets lean toward a doom and gloom outlook or are they just following the current sentiment of their readership? Just be sure to read past the headlines.

Developed by Daniel Sheridan, now a British student at Coventry University, the Springwise: See-saw power for schools generates electricity while kids play on it. Brilliant!

The basic design of the auction has received some criticism. Mike Giberson at Knowledge Problem wrote about this last November and believes the issues may easily be corrected. He cites Peter Cramton’s report on behalf of North East power markets that recommends a simultaneous ascending clock auction design.

Technorati Tags: carbon credits, energy, environment, auction, RGGI

Like or dislike Mr. Gates and Microsoft, I find it difficult to reason that any wealth he accumulates at this point will go anywhere other than in support of the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  And while it is always important to point out staunch philanthropists like Mr. Peterson, it is disingenuous to suggest anything less from Bill Gates.

is a must read and this one is no exception.  Continuing last year’s scolding of the sub-prime mortgage banking industr, my favorite lines included these:

John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, aptly dissected the recent behavior of many lenders: “It is interesting that the industry has invented few ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine.”

You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight.

I certainly agree, the company’s shareholders have a right to decide the control structure they want to have after a public offering.  At the end of the day, people can always choose not to be a party to it.  And the average investor (not the same as the average dollar invested) has little voice in the actions of a company.  But I still don’t like it.  I guess it comes down to creating value for all shareholders and when you remove options – and putting control in the hands of a few does just that – you lower value to the group as a hole.

In this case the interesting thing will be how Gore is viewed in this debate (not that I’m trying to pull Barak and Hillary into this).   In Al Gores Convenient IPO the comparision with Google focused on Gore’s holding public office and being a voice for many of the institutions who are currently fighting against these type of control structures.  I don’t think we should hold Gore or any other ex-public official to any higher standard than we hold each other.  And he should not try to tell us to do what he thinks is better for others unless he is willing to do that or more himself.

“People think demand is elastic and that volume falls in a straight line as price rises, but the truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another. In many cases, that’s the difference between a great market and none at all.

“The huge psychological gap between “almost zero” and “zero” is why micropayments failed. It’s why Google doesn’t show up on your credit card. It’s why modern Web companies don’t charge their users anything. And it’s why Yahoo gives away disk drive space. The question of infinite storage was not if but when. The winners made their stuff free first.”

Foggy Sunrise, originally uploaded by Dwayne Nesmith.

Running to a breakfast meeting, I was forces to pull to the side of the road and snap a few shots of this mornings brilliant sunrise behind a foggy frosted field.

Looking at campaign tactics, The Clinton Campaign has Increased the Attacks on Obama which you can judge for yourself via the video here.

Colorado Youth Program also offers a ten day summer camp in the Mountains near Ward focused on environmental education. Most campers would not be able to enjoy a summer camp experience with the generous scholarships made available by contributors. Check out this great group.

MDN_1679

Originally uploaded by Dwayne Nesmith

Another brutal cold winter has hit the Front Range. Mother Nature has used her powers to create some frosty items or great beauty.

Where might you be today if you’d never met the most influential teachers in your life, past and present?

How would your options be affected if you could never again read a book, menu, or sign?

Check out LitLiberation: Scalable Education Revolution

Technorati Profile

Using real life examples including Sothwest Airlines, Zales Jewelers, Juicy Juice () and Curves, Bloom describes his process for creating and defending a sustainable market position. In short define your customer as one individual person, create an uncommon offering for this person, describe how you will define your uncommon offering to your customer and then Own It through a series of Imaginative Acts.

Geoffrey Moore followed with a discussion of some new models for defining where shareholder value can best be improved. Moore began with a discussion of Net Free Cash Flow and suggested the best way for early stage companies to increase valuation is to improve the long term prospects by focusing on increasing “Power” where you can get the biggest bang for the buck.

Moore talked about five types of Power and described how these match to marketing activities as shown in this table:

He went on to suggest small companies should focus on Product Marketing which leads to Offer Power.

Then we were employed to maximize the ethical influencial power afforded us through the laws of human nature as studied and described by Robert Cialdini. He outlined six primary areas that afford us influence:
Reciprocation – I scratch your back; you scratch mine
Consensus – What everyone else is doing
Authority – Trusted, knowledgable source

Adoption is driven less from personal passion and more from significant corporate pain points. Others are looking to provide internal tools for employees that provide the means of communication found in the student/consumer markets.

Stowe claims the Internet is increasingly becoming the Third Space, our primary place for discovery and third behind home and work for our favorite place to go. There we find people which is a means to help us find ourselves “at the still point of the turning world”.

The biggest issue for providers raised in the session was building the need for users to create content for enterprise purposes. Using social networking for business connections provides an easy to use profile creator, while generating little if any valuable information beyond the profile. Incorporating the content creation from the normal business activity is critical to succes with these tools.

Stowe is an early and continuing user of Basecamp. He describes it as a very good web app, while not necessarily a good Web 2.0 application. The inability to aggregate projects under one user name limits it’s use as a networking tool. Tying the id to a project is a poor design principle.

Guest blogger Will Price offered a sound plan for building value in a post on Ask The VC.  Responding to a question regarding how to prepare for an acquisition exit, Will provided details around these three items.

1) Plan for Independence

“The company’s operating plan, technology road map, and executive team should not focus on unnatural acts, in the hopes of attracting a buyer, but rather on building a company with the potential for independence. Companies built to “flip” often flop.”

2) Be prepared for acquisition

“…acquirers tend to believe that successful partners make the best acquisition targets. “

3) Keep the house in order

“good record keeping makes for good diligence and good diligence makes for expedited outcomes.”

Maximize your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement” (BATNA) and your will be well on your way to delivering value to all your stakeholders.

Pikipimp is a good place to start and this may get your attention.

Another example is Dave Cohen who was the target of 5280Angel.

It is interesting, if not surprising, that these measurements were passed down from other uses and definitions that date to the earliest points in civilization. Pardon the pun… Time and time again we’ve had the opportunity to change the system to one which would be much more comfortable, that is to use a decimal system.

And of course we could ask the same about the US sticking to our short history of the English measurement system when our British brethren were able to kick that habit quite easily.

Today, when I see our dedicated, hardworking teachers struggle to escape from the bonds of top down driven curriculm, I think there must be a better way.   Here is one alternative.
Future School
You’re talking about customizing the educational experience.

“Exactly. Any form of diversity that we can introduce into the schools is a plus. Today, we have a big controversy about all the charter schools that are springing up. The school system people hate them because they’re taking money from them. I say we should radically multiply charter schools, because they begin to provide a degree of diversity in the system that has not been present. Diversify the system.

In our book Revolutionary Wealth, we play a game. We say, imagine that you’re a policeman, and you’ve got a radar gun, and you’re measuring the speed of cars going by. Each car represents an American institution. The first one car is going by at 100 miles an hour. It’s called business. Businesses have to change at 100 miles an hour because if they don’t, they die. Competition just puts them out of the game. So they’re traveling very, very fast. Then comes another car. And it’s going at 10 miles an hour. That’s the public education system. Schools are supposed to be preparing kids for the business world of tomorrow, to take jobs, to make our economy functional. The schools are changing, if anything, at 10 miles an hour. So, how do you match an economy that requires 100 miles an hour with an institution like public education? A system that changes, if at all, at 10 miles an hour?”

The other theory is that the substorms start about 100,000 miles above the equator with the spontaneous conversion of magnetic energy into heat. Particle acceleration then triggers the substorm energy.

To test each theory, two satellites will be lined up a sixth of the way to the moon, and two others will placed respectively about a third and halfway to the moon. The fifth satellite will be on hand “to replace a brother or sister if they get into trouble,” said Angelopoulos.

Once you get past the somewhat confusing configuration boxes and understand the tool does a very good job of parsing urls whether feeds, news or others, it is quite simple to collect a group of sources, sort, order, eliminate duplicates and publish them.  Publishing comes complete with a standard set of feeds and your own your way.  My next step will be to check out some of the more interesting mash-up concepts.

Let’s hope this does not set-off a series of copycat advertisers. I can envision groups in conference rooms all along Madison Avenue trying to find a way to imitate the program in a way that leads no one to believe they are in danger. I prefer the way New York treated the campaign. Just grab the blinking thing and toss it.

It is these regular, yet surprising scenes of our wonderful state that reminds me, long before I forget, what brought me here in the first place.

Today, we painted the cars in preparation for Wednesday’s weigh-in and Friday’s Derby. We cut them Thanksgiving week and sanded them in early December. Since then we’ve been waiting for some warmer weather so we could finish them in the garage. Yesterday, we decided we would have to risk the kitchen and hope the enamel paint did not get applied to anything that mattered. Other than hands and pajamas, only a few spots on the chairs have been painted so far. Oh, and the cars. It seems Lightening McQueen is this year’s favorite model as we have two red speedsters to go along with a black caddy and a blue and orange rocket.

So, today it was time to get it done. Only about 8 inches of snow remains in our front yard, but it was the two inches of frozen snow / ice which held firmly to the electical cords. Each had to literally be dug down to the grass and pried out of the snow pack. The extension cords remain buried under the snow while my neighbors can now rejoice that our lighted deer will no longer meet them morning, noon and night.

In any event, both men are suggesting there will be capital required to grow these companies going forward.  Those who are putting their business plans together without consideration for this cost increase will at least have some tough funding questions or worse some serious costs overruns. 

The true value of a CEO is her ability to improve the value of the company.  The best way to measure this is to compare the value increase to other similar companies in order to remove the value increase or decrease that impacted all companies in the sector.

The cost of the CEO should be market driven with significant portions based on performance.  What is the market rate for a CEO with these skills and necessary experience?  Just as the top performers in movies or baseball games are paid many multiples the salary enjoyed by their peers due to the short supply of “stars”, CEOs are short in supply as well.

What is surprising here is that private companies with active investors on their boards are offering higher compensation for these talents than the generally less active boards of public companies?  I would suggest that the backlash of the “compensation scandals” have the compensation committee of public companies swinging too far in the conservative direction. The swing was needed, let’s hope it does not continue so that public companies become the minor league training camps for CEO destined to play in the private company major leagues.
Public CEOs take to private firms in order to get top dollar as shown in Private Firms Lure Chief Executives With Top Pay – New York Times

Back to Hawking: He stated he was eager to get into space himself as he described how the 50,000 year trip at today’s speeds could be achieved in a human lifetime.
“Science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination,” he said. “Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light.” However, by using “matter/antimatter annihilation”, velocities just below the speed of light could be reached, making it possible to reach the next star in about six years. “It wouldn’t seem so long for those on board,” he said.
Where do I sign?

Are you sure you have the right board members?

“We had a bunch of VCs talking to us about potentially putting more money in,” Sternberg said. “We said no. A lot of things happen when you raise a VC round, and they really slow you down.”

Eventually, Meebo did raise money from venture investors – about $3.5 million from Sequoia Capital. But that was after the company was well on its way to showing that its service was a hit with consumers. At the time, Meebo had about 200,000 daily log-ins.”

Look, the only reason any investor wished companies to expense options is to reduce the number of options granted. An appropriate goal, perhaps, I question the approach.

There is limited value to investors by adding another non-cash item to earnings. Especially, one so difficult to value or in other words so easy to manipulate. Future cash flow per share is the metric investors desire and the information needed is how many options will vest over time and what is the dilutive impact on cash flow per share. Oh, and make sure you are getting our money’s worth when you grant future cash flows to employees via stock option grants.

• Massacre at Mystic
• Shays’ Rebellion: America’s First Civil War
• Gold Rush
• Antietam
• The Homestead Strike
• Murder at the Fair: The Assassination of President McKinley
• Scopes: The Battle over America’s Soul
• Einstein’s Letter
• When America Was Rocked
• Freedom Summer

After reading the list, I could not help notice the lack of inclusion of events drawing the US into a war. The sinking of the Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin. While all of these lead to war and perhaps one could predict it, the total cost and impact to the country could not have been known by anyone.

Nothing on this list leads to the US declaring its independence from England. I’m not sure I can point to a single day that led the founding fathers to make that decision and the country to make the required sacrifice. The events that come to mind fill today’s elementary school books. The Shot Heard Round the World, seems to fit the bill. However, this was in volatile New England and may have meant little to a New Yorker or Georgian. Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill) is another event following the Boston Massacre that could have set the country on a direction of succession.

Economic events include The Federal Reserve, going off the gold starndard and, my favorite, the invention of the semiconductor which has to rank very high in terms of impact to the US and the world.

The bill requires individuals to provide personal coverage, just like the state’s laws on auto coverage. Massachusetts is the first state requiring individuals to have health insurance or prove they can self-insure.

In addition, the bill provides funds to make sure those eligible for Medicare and Medicaid are enrolled. It subsidies healthcare insurance for those who don’t qualify for government programs and can’t afford insurance. The state expects to pay for the subsidies out of a $1 billion fund set aside for providing healthcare for those who can’t afford it.

The bill currently requires employers to pay $295 per unisured employee. “That’s likely to be adjusted by me,” stated Governor Romney. Will he wield the line-item veto pen?

Joe Klein at Time Magazine describes the Romney Healthcare plan this way:

Massachusetts now spends about $1 billion a year to provide emergency health care for at least 500,000 uninsured citizens. About 200,000 of those are young people, predominantly male, who are making enough money to buy health insurance but figure they don’t need it. They would be required to buy a relatively inexpensive health insurance policy, with higher deductibles and co-pays—that’s where the “mandate” comes in. Another 100,000 are extremely poor people who are eligible for Medicaid; a concerted effort would be made to bring them into the system. The remaining 200,000 are the people who have been most neglected by the system in the past: the working poor, people who have low-end service jobs or work part time for employers who don’t offer health coverage.

According to USA Today, Mass. Gov. Romney’s health care plan says everyone pays , other healthcare proposals have focused on expanding government healtcare coverage for the poor and have largely failed. Romney put distance between his proposal and the Clinton plan, saying “we don’t need Hillary-care.”

In an article by The Washington Post, Mass. Bill Requires Health Coverage, the plan goes much farther than any other state but is by no means finalized. It leaves the task of determining exactly how much some low-income residents will pay for their new, more affordable policies to a new agency that would serve as a liaison between the government, policyholders and private insurance companies.

Because of that uncertainty, some still worry that the residents required to buy insurance would not be able to.

In any event, a creative approach which does not unduly burden employers or tax payers. As long as it does not place too great a burden on the poor, then it is a very good start.

Both drugs target pulmonary arterial hypertension, which affects about 200,000 people and, when untreated, can lead to heart failure.

A survey in America last month by Ernst & Young found that “although corporate America foresees a significant workforce shortage as boomers retire, it is not dealing with the issue.” Almost three-quarters of the 1,400 global companies questioned by Deloitte last year said they expected a shortage of salaried staff over the next three to five years. Yet few of them are looking to older workers to fill that shortage; and even fewer are looking to them to fill another gap that has already appeared. Many firms in Europe and America complain that they struggle to find qualified directors for their boards—this when the pool of retired talent from those very same firms is growing by leaps and bounds.

Why are firms not working harder to keep old employees?

The pressure-melting explanation also fails to explain why someone wearing flat-bottom shoes, with a much greater surface area that exerts even less pressure on the ice, can also slip on ice.

Two alternative explanations have arisen to take the pressure argument’s place. One, now more widely accepted, invokes friction: the rubbing of a skate blade or a shoe bottom over ice, according to this view, heats the ice and melts it, creating a slippery layer.

The other, which emerged a decade ago, rests on the idea that perhaps the surface of ice is simply slippery. This argument holds that water molecules at the ice surface vibrate more, because there are no molecules above them to help hold them in place, and they thus remain an unfrozen liquid even at temperatures far below freezing.

In 2002, Dr. Salmeron and colleagues performed an experiment. They dragged the tip of an atomic force microscope, resembling a tiny phonograph needle, across the surface of ice.

“We found the friction of ice to be very high,” Dr. Salmeron said. That is, ice is not really that slippery, after all.

“It isn’t only CEOs who are making the move to private-equity firms. Fast-rising midcareer folks are lining up, too. ‘The interest has really gone through the roof,’ says Anthony Lando, partner and director of Benchmark Search Group, a financial-executive recruiter in Stamford, Conn. Newly minted MBAs are joining them. Back in the 1980s most B-school students wanted to be investment bankers. In the 1990s it was tech-related venture capital and dot-coms. Now, private equity is hot.”

I’m not saying that strategy isn’t important, just that strategy directly combined with tactical skill is the real killer combo. “Strategy” in the absense of tactical engagement is a loser’s game. If you’re a manager who gets down in the muck to make things happen (not to be confused with “micromanagement”), take heart: tactical is the new strategic.

“We had a bunch of VCs talking to us about potentially putting more money in,” Sternberg said. “We said no. A lot of things happen when you raise a VC round, and they really slow you down.”

Eventually, Meebo did raise money from venture investors – about $3.5 million from Sequoia Capital. But that was after the company was well on its way to showing that its service was a hit with consumers. At the time, Meebo had about 200,000 daily log-ins.”

- Original Nov. 2006 post updated
Is the recent news of tech and media startups needing less capital a trend or a passing fad? There have been some noteworthy articles in recent weeks suggesting it is a combination of the two. I recommend reading both Tom Evslin’s Web 2.0 – Greater Initial Investments Required and Fred Willson’s that the technology cost will remain low, both covered in the Random Connections Web 2.0 – A Bubble, Hype, for the Lucky Few?

SEVEN hundred and forty centuries ago, give or take a few, the skies darkened and the Earth caught a cold. Toba, a volcano in Sumatra, had exploded with the sort of eruptive force that convulses the planet only once every few million years. The skies stayed dark for six years, so much dust did the eruption throw into the atmosphere. It was a dismal time to be alive and, if Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois is right, the chances were you would be dead soon. In particular, the population of one species, known to modern science as Homo sapiens, plummeted to perhaps 2,000 individuals.

The proverbial Martian, looking at that darkened Earth, would probably have given long odds against these peculiar apes making much impact on the future. True, they had mastered the art of tool-making, but so had several of their contemporaries. True, too, their curious grunts allowed them to collaborate in surprisingly sophisticated ways. But those advantages came at a huge price, for their brains were voracious consumers of energy—a mere 2% of the body’s tissue absorbing 20% of its food intake. An interesting evolutionary experiment, then, but surely a blind alley.

“Every US policy maker knows that Medicaid presents vexing budget challenges, but a new analysis suggests that its costs are becoming truly unsustainable. McKinsey estimates that even after economic growth returns to a steady pace, this government health insurance program, which primarily serves the poor, will consume more than 75 percent of all new state revenues in 10 states, including Georgia, Indiana, and Oregon, by 2009. Medicaid will cost 11 other states, including Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania, from half to 75 percent of their incremental revenues (Exhibit 1). In an additional 22 states, this one program will consume 25 to 50 cents of each new tax dollar.”

THE computing industry has been transformed by open-source software, threatening business models while creating lucrative opportunities for some firms. Might the same happen in biotechnology? In a paper published in Nature on February 10th, a group of researchers describe a way to transfer genes into plants that bypasses the now most commonly used technique, agrobacterium transformation, which is protected by hundreds of patents. The new process may provide an alternative method of modifying certain types of crops in order to, say, improve harvests. But what makes the invention particularly notable is that the authors, affiliated with CAMBIA, a non-profit biotech research group in Australia, have made the procedure free for use under a novel “open-source” licence.

This licence allows people to commercialise products based on the procedure. All that is required is that improvements to the technique itself be shared, to the benefit of all users. This should make it easier for companies and researchers in poor countries to use agricultural gene-transfer technology, which today’s patent-licensing approach impedes.

‘The idea is to try to craft a system so that we have a different way to do business,’ says Richard Jefferson, the head of CAMBIA and a co-author of the paper. ‘This is a demonstration of a way forward for an innovation business model,’ he says, which could help unleash creativity in poorer countries. This week, the group also unveiled a website, BioForge.net, to help biotech researchers to collaborate, much as SourceForge.net is a nexus for open-source software development.

Although open-source approaches have already been used in biotech-related computing (called bioinformatics) and database sharing, CAMBIA’s licence represents an actual technique being provided in an open-source form. It is part of a broader push towards open practices in the life sciences. For example, Science Commons, an offshoot of Creative Commons (which provides less restrictive copyright licences to authors), is preparing to develop open licences later this year. “

“SEVERAL of the corporate scandals that took place in the early years of this decade are currently being replayed in courtrooms from New York to Alabama. The trials of top executives at HealthSouth, Tyco International and WorldCom are reminding the public how unethical was the behaviour of some of the nation’s top managers only a few short years ago.

The finger of blame for this behaviour is sometimes pointed at the MBA, the degree offered by business schools from Harvard to Hawaii. Perhaps this is not as odd as it sounds. After all, MBAs lay as thick on the ground at Enron as managerial hubris, and disinterested outsiders are not alone in asking whether there might have been some connection.”

Do we really think the primary place for social and moral teachings is in the management schools teaching twenty and thirty year olds the latest theory on business and economics? Yes, these schools can and are exposing future manager to difficult situations. But, no, it is not the primary responsibility of these institutions to instill the core values of ethical and legal decision making. Here is an article on the issue worthy of a read.

1. Begin your transition before you start the job.
   
2. Travel widely within your organization, listen carefully, and look for patterns in everything you see and hear.
   
3. As you ask questions, look for the rising stars whom you want as part of your team.
   
4. Identify the kind of people who will flourish in the environment you want to establish.
   
5. After you’ve identified the ideal individual, identify the ideal group.
6. Acknowledge what you don’t know. Identify those around you who are the experts and don’t be afraid to lean on them.
   
7. Don’t be afraid to listen to people who disagree.
8. But clean house if you have to.
   
9. Establish a way to communicate with — and listen to — your entire team.
   
10. Don’t trash your predecessor, but don’t be shy about promoting your own agenda.
    
11. Settle on a few major priorities. You can’t fix everything at once.
    
12. Meet the customers. Balance the big picture vision with-front line views.
    
13. Target a few early wins. Momentum counts, and nothing succeeds like success.
    
14. Keep an eye on the clock. Faster is almost always better.
    
15. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes but be sure to fix them faster than you make them.
    
16. Be wary of reckless re-engineering.
    
17. Don’t be afraid to look for ideas in unusual places.
    
18. Finally, ask yourself who do you really want to prevail, you or your organization?