Weather, weather everywhere!

I've been away from blogging the last month or so as my free time has been taken with a couple of new projects...not least of which is launching my new weather station! After hours of research, I settled on the Vantage Pro 2 weather station from Davis...purchased from Ambient Weather. Ambient had a great selection and the best web prices I could find.

Unlike the cheaper (and more widely available) systems from La Crosse and Oregon Scientific, the VP2 makes the step up from hobby/curiosity to semi-professional. What separates these two levels is the precision of their instruments. My goal was to get a system that had enough precision that I could join the NOAA Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP). Through this program, NOAA collects data from weather stations all over the country and supplies the data to weather services and homeland security. There are over 4,500 registered stations world wide...and I'm CW5491...the only station in the northern suburbs of Wilmington, DE. A huge collection of historical information is available for, scientists to study trends in our weather, for homeowners to decide if wind or solar energy is appropriate for their area and for planners to prepare for disasters like chemical spills or terrorist attacks.

Besides the hardware investment, it's necessary to find the right software to do something with all the raw data. I chose a package called Weather Display. Not only does this software help you view your data, but it helps you share the data with others. I currently feed the CWOP, Weather Underground, Anything Weather and my own site. This software makes it so easy to share my data with others. I haven't even begun to tap all of its features...like uploading webcam images in sync with the raw weather data and real-time data viewing.

I've got big plans for the future as well. In addition to what I already have, I want to add a web cam that will display the current weather conditions, a lightening detector (already purchased...I'm just working out the deployment) that can detect strikes out to 50 miles, a heated rain bucket so that I can accurately report snow fall and a solar sensor to accurately detect sunlight levels. All of this is expensive, so it'll have to happen over time, but I think that there are some practical applications for the expenditures as well. With all the monetary pressure that rising fuel prices are adding, I'm serious about finding alternate means to provide heat and electricity. We've already gone to a wood pellet stove to heat our home in the winter, so wind and solar are the big two in alternate energy forms left for us to explore. The data I collect over the next months and years will help us decide if either is appropriate to our location.

AT&T---They're Back

AT&T, Cingular and Bell South are set to merge into a new telecom giant that could bring a huge showdown with Verizon. The last few years have seen some real consolidation in the telcom industry...IMHO due to very poor planning during the .com boom that left many telcoms holding huge debt loads when the .bomb hit. Now, the Baby Bells that were formed when AT&T was broken up have mostly found their way back together in one of the two giants.

The whole idea of the telcoms consolidating is a bitter-sweet pill for me. On one hand, the US cell phone industry is third world compared to Europe and Japan. We have too many competing standards that keep us from truly reaching the potential that ubiquitous communications could bring us. As it is, we have telcoms spending huge sums of money to build cell infrastructure two or three times in the same area to support the different standards. Think what we might have if that money was spent on upgrading instead of competing.

On the other hand though, I'm not a fan of big business consolidating to two or three giants. As we've seen this year in the oil industry, there is just not enough competition to keep them honest. Exxon/Mobil raped the American public for record quarterly profits (while crying about the scarcity of oil and the money grubbing Arabs). Drive down the road and look at the gas prices--chances are, they're within a few cents of each other. If that isn't price fixing , it's at least lack of competition. Our government has shown itself incapable of controlling the oil giants (or more likely they choose not to endanger those huge campaign contributions) so I'm not at all confident that they'll control the telecom giants either. We're already suffering the rising cost of heating our homes, driving our cars and price increases due to the higher cost of shipping goods. The last thing we need are raising telcom prices on top of all that.

I'm not convinced that the good out weighs the bad, but if this merger follows recent history, this merger is a done deal. Open your wallets America.

courant.com | Phone Merger Rings Bells

Pain Management

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I have some serious back problems. I had surgery 4 (almost 5) years ago to repair a disc at L5. After the surgery, I never recovered. I now have scar tissue around the spine that causes terrible pain in my lower back and down my legs into my feet. I've tried injection therapy, spinal cord stimulator twice (inserting a series of electrodes against the spinal cord and passing current through them to over-ride the pain impulses) and a morphine pump (drips a tiny amount of morphine directly into the spinal fluid). None of these procedures was successful so the only way that I can function is to control the pain with narcotics.

I guess this has all made me especially sensitive to politicians who try to portray legal narcotics as a scourge to make political hay. I ran across a like mind recently in Radley Balko, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute. Radley writes on many civil liberties issues, including the governments intrusion into the use of legal narcotics. I found this blog entry regarding a district attorney for Middlesex County, Mass who is crusading against the use of legal narcotics because users might get "accidentally" addicted. Radley's response was well thought out and right on the money--so much so, that I had to write a thank you. There is a long way to go, but we have to keep fighting the good fight to keep our civil liberties--glad to see someone fighting on my side.

British Robbers Trained by Hollywood

Well ok, not really. But a break-in to a security depot in Great Britain seems to follow the plot of "Firewall"--the new Harrison Ford thriller. Just like in the movie, the robbers held the depot manager's family to force him to aid their caper. The crooks posed as police and stopped the manager on his way home from work. Another group went to his home and took is wife and young child into custody.

At 1:00am, they forced the manager to open up the depot for them. They spent 75 minutes loading up a truck with a boatload of money and made off. So far, I've heard estimates of 25($59.23) and 40($94.78) million pounds. If confirmed, this would be the largest bank robbery in UK history.

Unfortunately, the depot manager was no Harrison Ford and he hasn't tracked down and disposed of the criminals behind the robbery. I guess the robbers are training with Hollywood, now we just need the good guys to get the same training.

• Top News Article | Reuters.co.uk


• The Age: Fake Police Grab Huge Haul


• The Courier-Mail: Armed Gang Steals $59.6m

UPDATE: The police in GB are now saying that as much as 50 million pounds were stolen and that the cash would weigh around 900 lbs. ABC is reporting that an arrest has been made an more arests are coming shortly.

$118m stolen in Britian's biggest heist

Space Elevator Progress

Space Elevators have long been the purview of science fiction authors, but maybe the reality isn't too far from catching up. The LiftPort Group conducted a second round of tests this month in the Arizona desert where their prototype climbing machine was able to top more that 1500 feet. That's a long way from orbit, but a definite step in the right direction.

The idea of creating an elevator that would allow easy, cheap access to Earth orbit is very compelling. Instead of spending thousands of dollars per pound to push materials to orbit via rocket boosters, thousands of tons could be lifted in via elevator for a tiny fraction of the cost. This could be the true gateway to the stars for humanity. Prices could drop far enough to make space tourism something besides a rich mans distraction. How about a hotel and casino with an Earth view?

There are, however, a number of obstacles to be overcome. First, the tensile strength of a material capable of holding up under its own weight from such a height is beyond most of our current materials. Some materials, such as carbon nanotubes, look good for this application, but creating sufficient quantities in a reasonable time is still beyond our current science. Beyond materials, we must consider the social barriers. All too recently, the tallest buildings in the US came under attack and were brought down by terrorists looking to make a statement. What better target could be had than a space elevator? Fly into it, shoot rockets at it, smuggle bombs into the cargo--whatever the method, a space elevator would be at extreme risk.

I'd like to believe that this could all come to pass within my lifetime. I'm 37 (almost 38) now and can expect to live 40 or 50 more years (assuming no accidents or illness cuts it short). Will we be able to hop on an elevator to hotels and casinos in orbit before I'm gone? I sure hope so. Go LiftPort!

LiftPort: News

Office 2007 due by years end

Microsoft has another version of its cash cow franchise--MS Office--due out by years end. The prices are $399 for standard and $499 for professional. There will be a $149 home edition for those who are on a budget.

In another shot across Rim's bow, they also announced that Groove software that they acquired last year will be available as a 'run-it-yourself' option or via subscription for $79/year. RIM is getting hurt whether or not they finally get shutdown. The uncertainty has many corporations looking for an alternative should the worst happen...and when you start shopping, you often buy.

Microsoft in Office 2007 shocker | The Register

Incredible Homeless Home

Police in San Diego have uncovered what I think is one of the most amazing makeshift homes I've ever seen. Inside a culvert designed to handle floodwaters during San Diego's infrequent storms, a homeless couple had made themselves at home by damming off the flow with a waist high masonry wall. In the walled off space, the couple had a TV, VCR and DVD hooked up to battery power, kitchen and pantry and mirror over the bed. Less fancy were the (un)sanitary facilities. But you have to give them credit for ingenuity.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Metro -- Furnished home found in storm drain
(via Boing Boing)

UN backs terrorists---again

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has released a report that accuses the United States of "torturing" prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay holding facility. They are recommending that the US immediately close the facility.

This would all be meaningful if it didn't come from a council led by Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe. These countries are poster children for human rights violations. Murder, rape, genocide, terrorism...Their list of violations read like a list of man's inhumanities to man. Even now, the UN is requesting US military forces to try and stop the genocidal killing in Sudan's Darfur region.

Now, the UN, led by these paragons of virtue, wants to tell the world that prisoners who are "shackled, chained, hooded, kicked and stripped" are being tortured. Or that prisoners who are on hunger strikes and are force fed are being treated inhumanely. Perhaps these do gooders should be forced to spend some time in the prisons of their own homelands? Or perhaps, they should be subject to questioning by their own police or military? Of course, they probably wouldn't survive to write nonsense like their report.

Once again, the UN would rather take a pot shot at the US than seek justice. The prisoners still held at Guantanamo Bay are enemies of the US...enemies behind acts of terrorism around the world...but largely targeting Americans. As such, they're lucky to be held in an American facility where they're taken care of, given food, medical care and religious freedom. If we treated them the way they treat Americans they capture, they'd all have been beheaded after the first week. In the meantime, perhaps the UN should look to clean their own house before trying to clean ours.

• U.S. Wants Rights Abusers Barred from U.N. Human Rights Council


• UN report recommends closing Guantanamo jail - Yahoo! News


• Annan needs U.S.help with UN force for Sudan

Google (i)Tunes

According to the investment analysts at Bear Stearns, "Google is in the midst of creating its own iTunes competitor." Google has been using the money it raised in last year's IPO to blitz the Internet with new services that have included a news feed reader, desktop utilities, video search, instant messaging and now a competitor to Apple's award winning music download service. With the incredible amounts of cash that Apple is pulling in from iTunes, and with the number of competitors snapping at their heels, it was only a matter of time before Google set their sights on grabbing a chunk of that revenue.

I think that just as important is the huge amounts of publicity and good will that Apple has been garnering from iTunes. Google has been getting the 'darling' status themselves from their dominance in the search market and it puts them in a unique position to attack the 'hearts and minds' of iTunes users. While other music download sites seem to have the "johnny come lately" feel, it seems like a natural extension to Google's push to provide a "complete" web experience.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it's enough to support Bear Stearns' $550 target for Google's stock. How many web companies have been able to hold those kinds of numbers? Not many.


Google May Be Close To Developing iTunes Competitor - Forbes.com

Eminent Domain - Phooey

Governments have historically used eminent domain to re-vitalize areas that might otherwise slip into dis-repair, but recently that same law has been used to let governments throw low to middle income people out of their homes so that private developers can profit.

When I was a kid, my father and I hiked through the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and it wasn't an infrequent occasion when we came across the ruins of a family farmstead or cemetery deep in the park. I later found out that the US Federal Government had moved families out of homes that had been in their homes for generations so that they could set aside the area for a park. Those remnants of peoples lives left a bad taste in my mouth.

Now years later, that same law is being used to let wealthy developers build golf courses, ocean front condos and one national discount brand uses eminent domain to make sure their stores are located in prime locations. I can't imagine that they'd get away with doing the same thing to a wealthy neighborhood where the residents could afford the fees to battle in the courts, but funny enough, I'll probably never find out, because the developers target the low to middle income neighborhoods where folks can't afford the big dollars a court battle would cost.

Probably the biggest travesty to come out of the Supreme Court in recent years was the Court's 5-4 decision to uphold governments rights to use eminent domain to benefit private developers. In response 40 States are looking to limit eminent domain. Now is the time to call or write your State Senator and Congresscritter and tell them that eminent domain for private development has to go.

40 States Re-Examining Eminent Domain - Yahoo! News

MMOGs Meet Hollywood

James Cameron is one of the finest directors in the history of film, and arguably the best Sci-Fi director ever (with some stumbles). Now, he's looking to meld the big budget Hollywood spectacle with a big budget online game. At first, this seems like a big nothing. Afterall, video games based on movies have been around for-ever and usually with poor results (think Cat Woman....ahhh...maybe don't think). But this may be different. Cameron wants to launch the game universe months before the movie even hits the theatre. If he pulls it off, players will be able to thoroughly explore the world before Cameron uses the world for the back-drop of his story. It has the makings of a cult classic.

Ron Howard is taking a similar path with a new reality show he's developing. Called XQuest, the show will place players in a small spaceship-like module that simulates a trip around the galaxy. Not only will they experience cramped conditions, they'll feel the motions of the craft...including 6G thrust. MMOG players will be able to interact with the players during the show, and winners in the online game will be invited to play in reality the next season.

All in all, these could be some really neat advances in how reality and games interact, but I'm not going to hold my breath. To often, the promises don't come near the reality of what's delivered in the end.

Business Week: James Cameron's Game Theory

Spacesuit does EVA without Astronaut

So what do you do with your clothes when you're done with them? If you're on the international space station, you stuff them in an old spacesuit, add a radio, stuff it out the airlock and call it science. The guys on the space station are going to do just that. The empty suit will float along in orbit, sending several code works in six different languages with the intent that school children all over the world will tune in. What a wonderful opportunity for teachers to introduce all kinds of science and math topics. I only wish that things like this were available when I was in school.

You can track SuitSat-1 on the NASA website or tune your radio to FM frequency 145.990 MHz.. In the US, SuitSat-1 will pass once or twice a day between midnight and 4 am.

Washington Post: Students to Track Disgarded Spacesuit

Signs of the Times

In another sign of the times, Western Union won't be sending telegrams for the first time since 1851. It's not much of a surprise given the wide spread of easily available and cheap long distance---not to mention that cell phones let us do the same thing from just about anywhere. Now that Internet access and email is just about as widely available, it doesn't make much sense to drive to a WU office to have them do the same thing for you. Even though they're stopping the telegraph service, WU is going to stay in business to keep doing money orders.

LiveScience: Era Ends

Doctor Rx

Dr. Merrill, a former Air Force doctor, was convicted on 98 counts for illegally dispensing controlled substances. This seems to be happening a lot recently. Doctors are finding out that they can trade a couple swipes of the pen for big bucks, and with the insurance companies pushing back on Doctors, its probably a very real temptation to try and 'get back' at the system.

But this has more victims than the people directly involved. I'm a chronic pain patient due to Failed Back Surgery syndrome (that's right...they have a name because it happens so frequently). This means (in my case anyway) that the scar tissue around my spinal cord presses against the cord and causes extreme pain in my lower back, legs and feet. I tried several procedures to control the pain including a morphine pump (which is surgically placed in your abdomen and drips small amounts of morphine directly into the sac of fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord) and spinal cord stimulator (which is surgically placed in your abdomen and pulses electrical charges directly to the spine via a small wire and electrodes that are threaded through the vertebrae and along the spinal cord)--and had no success. Unless some new treatment comes along, I'm left trying to control the pain via narcotics.

So how am I affected by what Dr. Merrill did? Glad you asked. First, my surgeon changed the narcotic I was taking from Oxycontin to morphine because of the negative press surrounding Oxycontin. No medical reason...just a political one. The morphine made me sick. It took months to sneak up on me, but I was always feeling slightly off and the feeling grew. Towards the end, I was miserable all the time. Why? Because my doctor felt pressure to change the drugs because some idiots like Dr. Merrill were abusing them.

I'm now in the hands of a pain clinic in Philadelphia...a wonderful group of doctors--you couldn't get me to leave. When I began, I could make the trip into Philadelphia every three months. I'd get a checkup to make sure there were no unexpected side-effects and then get scripts for the next three months. Now, I have to make the trip into Philly each month. Why? Because idiots like Dr. Merrill abused the system and the FDA makes everyone come in every month to make it 'harder' for those abusing the system to get away with it.

One of the things about taking narcotics is that they loose their effectiveness as your body accommodates the drug better. Between lost effectiveness and general adjustments to pain levels, my doctor wanted to try me on a higher dose. I take 5 pills per day--150 per month. He wanted to raise that to 10 pills per day--300 per month, but he could not because that number would cause a problem and likely FDA investigation. So I got 150 pills per month---but of a higher dose---more medicine than if I'd taken the 300 per month. But 150 pills can't be sold to 300 people so it's a safer dose? Right and I have a bridge I'll sell you in Brooklyn.

I hate the drugs I take for what they do to me. I have to take 10 laxatives a day to stay regular. I feel dopey most of the time. I'm not as sharp as I was before the meds. I feel like a criminal every time I have to get them from the pharmacy. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't function without them so it's a Love/Hate relationship, but I'd gladly trade them for a cure. That people like Merrill have abused the system and made it harder for me and thousands of people just like me, to get what we need to function makes me sick. Thanks Doc...too bad you can't repay me for the trouble I have to go through so you can make a few extra bucks.

Fla. Guilty of Overprescribing Pain Pills - Forbes.com

Watch Out, obesity be catching.

A study at the University of Wisconsin has found a link between a human adenovirus and obesity in chickens. It seems that chickens that are infected with this particular virus have a higher visceral fat and total body fat than chickens eating the same food who were not infected with the virus. This is a long way from saying that obesity has nothing to do with what you eat and how much you exercise, but it may be an additional factor.

What's particularly interesting is the fact that obesity world wide is on the rise and does not directly correlate to the way people are eating and exercising. If this were just a phenomenon in the US, I'd be ready to believe the whole thing could be blamed on our terrible diets--lets face it, we supersize to more calories than some people eat in a day. But since this is a world wide phenomenon, I'm more likely to believe that some other factor may be at work.

There's more work to be done on the issue, and I'm not going to stop watching what I eat, but I think everyone should be watching this.

Contagious obesity? Identifying the human adenoviruses that may make us fat | Science Blog

DIY Mousebot

Make Magazine from OReilly is a great magazine for the Do-It-Yourselfers who can't help but look at consumer products and think 'I could do it better.' Printed quarterly, the magazine has projects to help you learn some DIY wisdom, educational articles and interviews with true geeks. They've also got a Blog that's updated regularly and points to great DIY across the web.

One of the first projects I built was Mousey the Mousebot. One of the magazines readers has expanded on Mousey...check it out.

Mousebot Revisited

Paper Models

One of my favorite pass times is model building. While most of my time is spent building injection molded plastic or resin models, I've fallen pretty hard for paper modeling. Unlike plastic models, paper models start out as 2-dimensional representations printed on heavy card-stock. A few swipes of the X-Acto knife and a dab of glue here and there and those 2-dimensional parts become beautiful 3-dimensional scale models.

One of my favorite sites for paper models is Fiddlers Green and check out the wonderful Saturn V. There are hours of fun to be had with paper models and what's more, the cost can't be beat. Many of the models are available free, and many more at are very low cost. Fiddlers Green sells their entire line-up for $25 and that's dozens of models.

Here are some links to get you started...

• Fiddlers Green


• Digital Navy


• Card Modelers


• Paper Models

Back to the Moon---with the Russians?

A few years ago, there was an article in The Planetary Report, the magazine of the Planetary Society, discussing a return to the moon by the Japanese Space Agency for the explicit purpose of mining the Helium-3 that has been deposited on its surface by solar winds. H3 can be used in nuclear fusion, is non-radioactive and the load that would fit in a single shuttle would provide the energy needs of Tokyo for an entire year. An incentive for success if ever there was one.

A decade later, the Japanese are still Earth-bound and the Russians are planning a mining base on the moon by 2015 so that they can---you guessed it---mine H3 from the surface.

I'm a big believer that space will be conquered by corporations--not nations. Besides one-up-man-ship, there is no compelling reason for national governments to spend tax money on exploring space (at least not compelling to anyone but a true believer like me--and we don't rule the purse). However, there are very compelling reasons (read that 'big dollar signs with lots of trailing zeros') for corporations to head out into the big black. Right now, we're seeing that with Space Tourism, but before long we'll see other business moving off planet. Things like orbital solar farms, micro-gravity chemistry, mining resources from the asteroid belt and--yes--H3 mining on the moon can provide big returns for the company (or companies) willing to take the risks. I just hope I'm still alive to see the day that access to orbit is as common as access to Disney World.

But back to the Russians. Much as I'd like to believe that they're going to follow through on their plans, I have great doubts that they have the national will to spend the money necessary for such an operation to succeed when they're having so many domestic economic problems. Until their standard of living lets their people live the life that they've been 'promised' by democracy, I can't see them getting much backing. I wish them all the luck in the world, but I'm dubious.


Russia to open moonbase mine - World Breaking News - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au

WB & UPN Merge

Warner and CBS have decided to fold their flagging WB and UPN networks to form the new CW Network to try and better compete against the 'big four.' Neither network had come up with a lineup that could draw enough viewers to survive on their own, and I have trouble believing that combined they'll be much better. To be fair, I thought the same thing about the early years of Fox, but this new network isn't really new as much as combining two networks that were staggering along. I'm not sure how much combining them will change things. Time will tell, but I wouldn't be surprised to see CW become another exhibit in the museum of television history.

Indiantelevision.com > News Headlines > Warner, CBS team to create fifth US broadcast network

RIM Blackberry Fighting Injunction

Research In Motion (RIM), the company responsible for all those little clam-shell email devices hanging from executive belts all over North America, is fighting to keep a US District Judge from granting an injunction that would see all those little devices go black. RIM lost a patent infringement lawsuit to NTP who currently holds a US Patent on transmission of e-mail to wireless devices. The US Patent Office has begun a review of the patent and their initial findings are that they should be canceled. But until this all plays out in court, the entire RIM network stands on the brink of complete shutdown.

Bloomberg.com: Canada

World's Tallest Towers 2006

The Malaysian Petronas Towers are no longer the tallest buildings in the world...as of 2004. Ok, so I'm not on top of these things, but I don't usually keep up with new architecture in Taiwan which is the home of the new champ--Taipei 101. Standing 1670 feet above the streets of Taipei (duh), it's 187 feet taller than the dual Petronas towers. It has a giant steel ball suspended in the upper floors to help control the sway (yikes!). I've only seen one building in this class--the World Trade Centers--and I was dizzy at the bottom looking up. Standing at the top and swaying back and forth would be quite an experience.

Alas, fame is fleeting. Before long, TaiPei 101 will be surpassed by the Freedom Tower on the WTC site and Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emerits. The Burj Dubai is especially interesting as it resembles the giant Archologies that Science Fiction has written about for years. One could live and work in the tower, shop and eat in tower, be entertained in the tower. How long will it be before some people live their whole life in such a building without needing to leave except maybe to vacation?

World's Tallest Towers 2006 - Forbes.com

Supreme Court upholds Oregon's suicide law - Yahoo! News

I'm usually pretty much in line with conservative politics, but on this one I can't follow the party line. The Oregon law allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to their terminally ill patients. The patients then have the choice to use the drugs to end their lives on their own terms. In my mind, this is a decision that a person should get to make on their own--the government should have no say one way or the other. Life or death is the final decision one has to make and it's a very personal and private decision.

This issue isn't over though. The Court ruled that the Attorney General did not have standing to over-rule the Oregon law...It did not rule directly on the issue at hand. We'll see this one again and again and again till someone acknowledges that we can criminalize doctors for their compassion or not, but the practice will continue regardless.

Supreme Court upholds Oregon's suicide law - Yahoo! News

Tivo Who?

SnapStream (the folks who make Beyond TV PVR software) have created the ultimate (well, at least for now) PVR--the Godzilla PVR. While you or I might have a couple of tuners and a big hard disk, these guys take it to the extreme with 11 (yes 10+1, 12-1, 6+5---well, you get the picture---a ton) tuners and 6 hard drives totaling over 1.3 Terrabytes! Better still, four of the tuners are HDTV--over the air and digital cable capable. ...

... Ok, I had to pause there to wipe the drool off my chin, but I'm ok now...well...as ok as I get anyway. To drive the whole system, they choose the Pentium D 840 "Extreme Edition" which gives dual-core, hyper-threaded Pentium 4 processors! Package the whole thing in the Silverston LC16M with LCD display, tons of memory, power and heat dissipation and you've got the king of PVRs--and for the low, low price of $4284.90. Cool!

SnapStream Blog » Blog Archive » Godzilla PVR
via [Gizmodo]

Slashdot | Konica Minolta Quits Photography Market

As I mentioned in an earlier post, film camera's are taking a beating. And now, another nail goes in the coffin as Konica Minolta quits the photography market altogether. Not only are they dropping their film cameras, film and paper products, but they're selling their digital camera line to Sony citing competition in the niche.

Slashdot | Konica Minolta Quits Photography Market

The Big Bank and the Little Consulting company that could.

Harkening back to the Internet boom days when money flowed freely, the domain name 'sex.com' sold for a reported $14 million dollars. That name will probably pay for itself, but what really struck me was how this reminded me of another domain name that sold for big bucks.

Back in the day, a bank that I worked for decided to start an Internet division. Rather than leverage the banks own name recognition, the bank spent thousands to hire the finest marketing folks to do focus groups to find names that would make people feel comfortable and financially secure sending their hard earned cash through the Internet. The focus group finally found a name that made the bank's leadership giddy with delight and they moved to quickly begin buying letterhead, setting up marketing campaigns and all of the other things one does when they start a new company--but not an Internet company. When it came time to actually setup the website for the fledgling company...guess what...www.the-new-bank-name-here.com was already taken. Yes, they'd spent millions of dollars getting ready without doing a simple who-is to make sure the TLD was available.

Turns out that the small consulting company that had been using the TLD for years was based only an hours drive from the bank's headquarters, so up the highway went the bank's negotiators with a command to bring back the name 'at any price'--and that's what they did. It's unclear exactly how much was paid for the TLD, but it was in the neighborhood of the price just paid for sex.com.

The story would be crazy if it ended there, but even better, the new Internet bank was made the 'victim' of a merger and was closed and gone before it really got started. The TLD you ask? A quick look as I'm writing this shows that the little consulting company that held up the big bank for the name is happily using it today. How is this possible you ask? Did they return the money you ask? You ask a lot of questions don't you? Well anyway, the little consulting company wrote into the original sales agreement that should the big bank ever stop using the name for their new Internet bank, the TLD would revert to the little consulting company at no cost. And so it goes.

Slashdot | Domain Name Sold for Millions

Who's Your Daddy?

IBM and Verizon have both added a nail in the coffin of the myth that your company is going to care for you. Both companies froze their traditional pensions leaving older workers scrambling to replace the future income. More examples? Hewitt Associates reported a 60% increase in the employee portion of health benefits from '01 to '04. Other companies are shifting 401k fees to the employees while others are dropping retirees from their health-care coverage.

This article gives some good advice that can be summed up as 'Be your own Daddy.' It's advice to live by. The years when an employee would go to work for a company when they left high school and retire from that same company 40, 50 or more years later are gone. Companies have secumbed to the call of the immediate profit and things will never be the same.

Reuters Finance: Be your own Daddy

Mercedes S-Class: A Car for Rich Geeks

'...packing a bundle of electronics that would make David Hasselhoff green with envy.'

So says Wired's Bruce Gain as he describes the 2007 S-Class. Probably the most amazing feature he describes is the Distronic system which is an advanced cruise control that uses 24GHz radar to sense vehicles in front of you. Set the distance you want to keep between you and the vehicle ahead and your desired speed and the system will take it from there. It'll speed up and slow down to keep you right where you should be. Gain is braver than I though as he put the system to the ultimate test and kept his feet off the pedals while the Distronic system decelerated from 90 mph to a dead stop when traffic stopped ahead--Wow.

The Distronic cruise is the coolest feature, but there are loads of other ohhs and ahhs. A seat that gives you a massage during the long ride home, night vision heads up display, GPS navigation and more puts you (literally) in the seat of luxory.

But don't expect all this to come cheap. Gain says that the estimated price will top out over $100,000 in the US. I guess I'll just have to wait until the really cool features end up on my Ford Explorer. Yeah right...don't hold your breath...but it's cool anyway.


Wired: The Ultimate Geek Car?

Nikon Dropping Most Film Cameras

Digital cameras continue to make in-roads against their film brothers. Nikon has decided to drop most of their manual lenses and film bodies in favor of digital versions. They wouldn't be doing this if people weren't buying (or not buying as the case may be) this way. Some applications will probably continue to be handled by film cameras, but here is one more nail in the coffin.

Nikon - Press room - Press Release

Mac OS on Intel Chips

Along with announcements of record sales, Apple announced that they will begin shipping iMacs that use Intel chips at their core. There have been rumors for years that Apple had secretly made an Intel version of the Mac OS. Now that it's not a rumor, there is nothing to stop Apple from selling it as an aftermarket OS, or even inking deals will Dell, Gateway and others to begin providing PCs preloaded with Mac OS. If I were Microsoft, one of my biggest fears would be that Apple starts making the Mac OS available to the millions of Intel owners. This would certainly give them a run for the money for their dominance of the desktop. The only question in my mind is whether Apple would want to invite competition in the hardware market it currently owns outright. Who knows, maybe Apple will ride the new found popularity it's gained with iTunes and the iPod to a serious chunk of the PC market too.

ABC News: Apple debuts Intel iMac after record sales

Walmart Wants to Start Their Own Bank

The nation's largest retailer has petioned the FDIC for the right to open their own bank. According to the company, they would save millions of dollars by processing their own credit, debit and electronic check payments.

Their request isn't without its critics though. The banking industry is trying like crazy to squash the idea. Not only do they not like the idea of loosing the millions in fees they're currently collecting from Walmart, but the idea of allowing an eight hundred pound gorilla play in their sandbox has them practically catatonic with fear. Right now, Walmart has over 1000 3rd party bank branches in their stores. If they were replaced with Walmart banks, they'd be a huge industry player over night. Walmart claims that they aren't interested in doing this, but I frankly can't believe that they'd be able to pass up an opportunity that good.

Congress has asked the FDIC to put off making a decision until they have public hearings and fill the vacancy left by Chairman Donald Powell who resigned in November so this isn't going to be decided soon. Keep an eye out for more news as this promises to be an interesting battle.

CNN Money: Wal-Mart Bank faces tough opposition

Congress botched digital TV -- Say it isn't so!!

Congress has set the date for switching over from analog to digital TV. On February 17, 2009, all of the analog TVs will go dark. All of the bandwidth being used by over the air broadcasts is being auctioned off to other vendors for things like wireless Internet or (and I can't complain too much about this one) better communications for Police, Fire and the like.

But this all means that 70,000,000 TV sets in this country will become boat anchors. That's where our wonderful elected officials step in. They've set aside $1.5 billion dollars to provide vouchers for people who own those 70,000,000 TV sets to buy a digital converter so that they can view the new digital TV shows. As the article points out, this is the same elected officials who are cutting back on food stamps and other support programs.

This reminds me of nothing so much as the Roman Senate sponsoring games in the Coliseum to keep the people happy while they systematically ran Rome into the ground. The economy is a mess, but you can watch all the TV you could ever want in stunning digital clarity that's degraded to the same old TV you've always watched through a digital converter that is almost guaranteed to cost more than the vouchers you might get. Welcome to Pax Americana.

FORTUNE: Congress botched digital TV - Jan. 4, 2006