I have been wanting to write this article for months so today is the day…  As I follow the election campaigning and hear all the issues addressed, I am amazed that once again, we have candidates that seem to only deal with whatever the hot topic is of the day.  If the economy is in the doldrums, we here about fixing that.  If we are stuck in a war, we here about resolutions.  We always and forever seem to hear about “change” in each election.  As if this is some magic word that is going to make us all rush to vote for yet the next leader that will get to Washington and run into an impenetrable wall of inertia.  I am actually sad that neither candidate really offers a deep agenda to support the concept of change.  Alas, I am not a politico, but just a technology guy so I will only deal with my little corner of desired change – that being my desire to see to new and dramatic structuring of a technology oversight position on the cabinet.  We added a person for national security, why not to oversee technology expansion?

A cabinet level CTO position would be perfect in order to assure that the US does not fall behind other countries in the use, and support, of the most important utility invented in the last 30 years.  I will submit that running water, and electricity are probably more important, but certainly the country’s technology infrastructure is third.  Depending on whose statistics you believe, we are either 12th or 21st in the world with high speed bandwidth penetration and speed.  We are way behind Japan and a few other Asian nations with wireless capabilities and handheld device usage.  China has just passed us with the total number of citizens using the Internet.  This was bound to happen because of their scale, but should they also have faster access than us?  And what will it mean that there are more Chinese able to use the Internet as a tool to succeed in the business arena? Or to have the ability to educate themselves to a higher degree than our citizens?  Sure, we have the majority of the powerful software and hardware companies based in the US economy, but all that means is that we are the number one tool maker, it does not mean we are the artisans.

Over the long haul, being the provider of technology will only take us so far, eventually the users of technology will out innovate us and we we will be simply the next centuries “manufacturers”. In the US, we have taken a free market approach to providing technology infrastructure.  We depend on the Telco’s and and others to supply what is needed.  Many other countries do not view technology infrastructure in this way.  They see it as a strategic imperative and invest government funds into assuring speed and access to citizens.

A national CTO needs to have an agenda that coordinates providing high speed access everywhere, all the time, but that is only the first step.  Once access is a given (like electricity is now, except in most airports where we all huddle around a few outlets) we need to focus on training more developers, and building our massive cloud computing facilities that can provide cloud services at low prices.  We need to put tax dollars to work building the technology infrastructure that will allow our economy to once again dominate – much like what we did with projects to build roads and highways decades ago. I suspect that while our next president will focus on the pain of the day,  we are at risk of slipping farther behind.  And at the point that we realize we have made a mistake, it will be too late – or at best, take years to get back on track.

We need a technology policy worse than a health care policy, because the truth is, technology could help solve the health care crisis, along with economic woes and the rest.  As I always say, technology is just a tool.  However, it can be like a magic tool in the right hands, with the right palette.  By the way, we actually have an ability to impact this.  Tell everyone you know that you think we need a cabinet level CTO – write it in articles and blogs.  Leaders react when we raise good ideas – if we will just say them loud enough.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

First, let’s take a little time to investigate some of the offerings.  At the high end we have systems like the  Macbook Air from Apple.  While the Air might not have the smallest form factor, it is slim, sleek, and nearly weightless compared to most laptop computers on the market today.  One of the reasons it can be so small is that Apple has moved the CD/DVD drive out of the laptop, allowing for a much thinner base.  On the high end version we also have a tiny, energy efficient, 64GB solid state hard drive.  You can think of the hard drives in an iPod for comparison.  The reason that Apple knows it can get away with such a small hard drive is that they offer their me.com as an alternative to your storage needs.  Me’s storage is built into the Mac OS as the ‘iDisk’ and it looks just like any other hard drive on an Apple.

Dell has released their version of a netbook with the Inspiron Mini 9.  It is small by any standard, the screen is 8.9″ compared to the 13″ display on the Macbook Air, but the draw here is not just its small form factor, but also the small price.  Where the Macbook Air comes in two flavors, from $1799 to $2598, the Inspiron Mini 9 is only $349 for the Linux powered model with 4GB of hard drive, and $399 for the Microsoft Windows version sporting an 8 GB hard drive.  Those low prices could drive the market to adopt the Mini 9, from parents grabbing them for the tweens, to the college crowd snapping them up for the perfect laptop for the party/study/travel/social computing platform.  By the way, the gang at NotebookReview.com did an excellent review of the Mini 9, and you can find that here.

Besides the native Linux operating system offered on the Mini 9, another feature that has attracted me to this netbook is that it comes bundled with Box.net’s online storage solution.  Dell is offering 2GB of free online storage with every Mini 9 they sell, and you can easily up that by spending a little extra at Box.net.

I spent some time with Sean Lindo from Box.net this afternoon.  I had some questions about where Box.net’s cloud storage stood today, where they are headed and how they will handle the growing adoption of online storage in the market.  The following is part of our exchange via email.

MW: With more hardware providers offering online storage solutions as real-time storage alternatives, will we see the reintroduction of a network based computer, like the one Oracle offered a decade ago?

SL: Most definitely. We’ve already witnessed a host of truly web-oriented computers come to market from the most established players in the business. As an example, Dell recently partnered with Box.net to provide Inspiron Mini 9 users with our online file storage and collaboration services. When Asus introduced the Eee PC, many thought it was a nice toy for the gadget crowd. But then HP introduced the Mini-Note, and Dell’s come out with the Mini 9, which looks like a fantastic product. And let’s not forget, while it doesn’t play in the same price range, Apple’s MacBook Air is a computer that relies heavily on accessing data and content via the web and wireless networks at home and on-the-go.

I think the difference today is that the industry is providing consumers, both in the home and the enterprise, with a more complete solution than before – web connections are accessible wherever people go, sleek and powerful web-based applications are in place to help people access their data wherever they are and online storage has become more secure, reliable and inexpensive. Of course, there’s more work to do. But because of these trends, PCs don’t have to rely so much on data stored on a local hard drive. It can simply tap into information and applications that are reliably hosted online.

In addition, I think open standards have really helped move this notion of a network-oriented computer forward. More consumers can take advantage of innovative solutions from so many companies out there. Box.net, through our OpenBox platform, gives consumers the power to use files stored on Box.net with applications they like. We make it really easy for third party developers to write apps that seamlessly access data our customers store on Box.net. It’s a very user-centric approach we take pride in promoting.

MW: How is Box.net planning to scale in the coming years as we shift from a desktop based storage society, to the Internet cloud based, storage seeking society of the future?

SL: Box.net has been successfully scaling its service over the past 3 years we’ve been in business. We have a competency around managing large amounts of data, while ensuring that data is stored redundantly and securely. Our growing base of 2 million users reflects how well we’ve been able to keep up. We’re certainly excited to see this massive shift of users to web-based storage, and we’re ready for it.

MW: Do you personally see storage becoming a commodity in the new computing paradigm? By that I mean will storage become less of a thought in our minds when we think of computers? With online storage being a cheap and ostensibly limitless alternative to local hard drives, will we cease to worry about how big our hard drives are, knowing we can simply rent more storage as needed?

SL: Yes. In many ways, online storage on its own is already a commodity. Box.net has been successful because it’s never been about storage for us. The company was founded to address a problem, which is how can people access and collaborate on all their data wherever they are, in the simplest, most reliable and secure way possible.

While I couldn’t use the entire conversation in this article, I wanted to include most of it because Sean’s words are foreshadowing where we are heading in many ways. Sean tells us that it has never been about the storage, and that makes complete sense.

How soon until the computer on my lap has GSM built in and offers me a history of where I have been?  How long until I can record every conversation and store it online for later retreval?  Soon, all of that and more, especially as the price for storage falls into the basement.  Google gives me 17 GB just because I use a lot of their services.  It just makes sense to offer me free storage so that they can show me ads wrapped around the services I like to use.

As soon as the industry realizes that storage is like good coffee in the diner, you just give it away so that people eat the pie; then we will see a huge explosion of applications that thrive upon large data sets.  We already have some WiFi in major cites, Starbucks, Panera Bread and even some McDonald’s with hotspots – so your online storage is accessible when you are getting coffee or lunch, but we need WiMax before this makes sense for most of our data.  If you store the majority of your documents on the cloud, well, then you need the cloud all of the time.  It isn’t enough to have your Internet connectivity just at home, the office and the occasional public hotspot, we need the wireless carriers to blanket the nation with fast, reliable Internet connectivity.  And I want it now.

Lastly, let’s not forget that we also need some killer apps to usher in the need for more cloud-based storage.  Maybe Twitter will offer me a couple of gigs worth of storage so that I can automatically store any document someone sends me on the service.  They don’t allow that yet, but they will.  Maybe an application that Perhaps an application will offer to catalog all of your media, and then give you a social network of people who like the same movies and music? Techno Mule is doing that to some degree already, but there is more on the way.  A lot more, I hope.

Matt
twitter.com/mattwilliamson

What is much more interesting, and useful frankly, will be the next step.  These marketers have the ability to run your profile through any number of data providers to learn about various pieces of information that is stored on you.  At the point that we can set our phones to advertise who we are in a wireless way, or authorize the phone networks to publish this data along with our geo location, then marketers would know specifically who is in a location.  The result would be the ability to do targeted, proximity based marketing.  This will change everything…

Let’s look at some practical examples.  When I am at the beach in South Florida and the temperature is over 95 degrees, Coke would know about that.  Now their marketing engine could apply simple rules and notice that it might be a good time to send some coupons to me to buy Coke products, with a map that shows the closest vendors.  How about a situation where I am walking through the airport and American Airlines notices that my flight is delayed for two hours, and I am walking through the concourse – so they send me an automated text message with links to some choices for fixing the problem.  The mind boggles at what Wal-mart can do with this concept.  As I pull into the parking lot, a list of specials hits my phone so I can look at them on the way in.  Not just any specials mind you, but items that I have purchased in the past so they know that they are hitting the mark on what I might buy.  Think about restaurants using proximity and time in combination.  It gets to be 5:00 in the afternoon and I am driving around Cleveland, one of the places I eat at frequently (which they know because I pay with a credit card) sends me an invitation and quick map for the closest location in case I am looking for a meal.

This list could go on and on – and will.  In the past, marketing had only a couple of variables to play with in order to try and get to a willing customer.  Now they will have profiles full of data on what we like, where we live, what we do, and will also know where we are at that moment if we choose to let them.  These 2 new variable will dramatically change the concept of marketing as we know it.  This is information you can use if you are on the selling side because you need to be testing out concepts like this.  If you are the consumer, welcome to the new world (being sold)…

Scott Klososky
Scott@Klososky.com

Equipping an everyday item with either the intelligence to ‘know’ about itself and communicate with the Internet, or giving it the ability to be named, and known, by the Internet, will have ramifications that cut across our society.  From the mundane examples of your chair notifying the maintenance staff that it needs servicing, or perhaps your lost book lets you know that you left it in the conference room; to the extreme example of your sunglasses feeding you a constant stream of news from around the world.  The network connected copier-scanner-printer in your corporate mail room already tells the staff when it is running low of paper and ink, but one day soon the bundles of paper might let you know that there are only ten of them left, and now you need to reorder.

As the idea of the Internet expands to include light bulbs, kitchen appliances, and doors; we will see a shift in what we consider the computer to be as well.  Today I can buy a Chumby (see the cute little guy in the picture to the left) and put it on my nightstand.  It’s an alarm clock, an Internet radio, a box with widgets flowing in over the Internet.  I can check my Twitter account, my Facebook notifications and catch up on the latest news, weather and stock prices; and all before I roll out of bed in the morning.  In the near future, this might all be embedded in your bathroom mirrors.  So while you shave or put on your make up, you will read your blogs and watch a web cam pointing at a peaceful lake setting.

No longer will we think in terms of ‘getting on the Internet’, but rather the Internet will surround us at all times.  Our cars will be connected via WiMax networks so that the continual stream of information follows us from home, to the office, and back again.  The Cloud that we talk about will grow to include items and places, not just far off remote computing environments.

The Internet Of Things Cuts the Cord

Last week, Intel demonstrated a wireless power system to recharge batteries utilizing a magnetic field, this alone could enable electronic devices to remain connected to the Internet at all times.  If you can remove the tether from the iPhone, from the Blackberry, from any device; they could be online at all times.  Simply putting your phone, camera or laptop near a charging station will one day fill your battery to full.  More than that though, we will see retailers offering charging stations on counter tops and tables as well.  So you get a mocha and charge your iPhone while you enjoy it.

If you just step back and watch how fast technology is changing our lives, and how fast that technology is advancing itself, you will come to this realization: that the shape of things to come is drastically different than we can even imagine; and our imagination is good.   In 1999 I was using Java, an open programming language developed by Sun,  to do a lot of web development.  Even back then Sun was pushing a technology to enable devices to communicate with each other across the network.  That was almost a decade ago, and since then we have seen a huge advancement in these technologies.  Now our devices are smaller, faster, require less power and are more durable.  They are living in our products and contain code that allows them to upgrade themselves when needed.  How cool is this stuff?

Links:

• International Conference for Industry and Academia – http://www.the-internet-of-things.org/
• Wikipedia Internet of Things entry – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things
• MIT Experimentally Demonstrates Wireless Power – http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/wireless-0607.html
• WiPower – http://www.wipower.com/
• Intel cuts electric cords with wireless power system – http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jn6duu12s7ujb6ByZ1wuv389gooQ
• Kevin Kelly and the Next 5000 Days of the Internet @ TED – http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html

Matt
matt at technologystory dot com

p.s.

Did anyone happen to see the movie Terminator? 

XOHM has announced that in September 2008 Baltimore will be the company’s first city-wide hot spot.  This means that XOHMers will be able to stay connected to the Internet, at broadband speeds, no matter where there are.  So pick up your laptop and walk out of the office, sit on the couch or drive down to the park, it won’t matter, because even driving across the city you will have access via the XOHM 4G network.  (The 4G means ‘fourth generation’.)  A seed change is about to happen in America, not over night, but slowly we will see major metropolitan cites joining the rank of the gifted with these city wide 4G networks.

Some very interesting things were mentioned in the press release that Sprint put out:

1. Intel will work with manufacturers to embed WiMAX chips into Intel(R) Centrino(R) 2 processor technology-based laptops and other Intel-based mobile Internet devices, and will market the new company’s service in association with Intel’s performance notebook PC brand.

So this means that Intel will work to expand the number of devices that can connect out of the box to the WiMAX 4G networks.   Cameras, phones, laptop, mobile internet devices and even the ones we have yet to realize we need.

2. Google will partner with the new Clearwire in the development of Internet services, advertising services and applications for mobile WiMAX devices. In addition, Google will be the search provider and a preferred provider of other applications for the new Clearwire’s retail product.

Google, by buying in to this new venture, has made sure that they are in the thick of any advertising agreements with the WiMAX carrier.  I imagine Google is hungry to be the advertiser that has reach to the street level, not just the home PC or the office when it comes to online advertising.

3. Google will partner with the new Clearwire on an open Internet business protocol for mobile broadband devices. The new Clearwire will support Google’s Android operating system software in its future voice and data devices that it provides to its retail customers.

We will have to see how this plays out for Google’s Android, but it doesn’t hurt anything either.

4. Sprint and Google have also entered into an agreement related to Sprint’s mobile services, whereby Google will become the default provider of web and local search services, both of which will be enabled with location information, for Sprint. Sprint will also preload several Google services – including Google Maps for mobile, Gmail and YouTube – on select mobile phones and provide easier access to other Google services.

I think this one is huge for Google, and likewise, for Sprint too.  Sprint has had to sit back and watch the flock of people walk in to AT&T to grab up the iPhones, perhaps this will offer them some more compelling reasons to shop the Sprint network once the Android phones hit the market.  Imagine your Android Google phone being on the 4G network at all times. Your company will not send your a page that the report is done, rather they will email you the entire report and you will have it on your phone.  Perhaps you won’t even have to burn your cell phone minutes to talk, but instead just use some VoIP application to talk.

Add to this the recent announcement that Sprint, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel Corporation, and Samsung Electronics have joined forces to create the Open Patent Alliance to aid in accelerating the adoption of WiMAX standards, and we can see the industry starting to coalesce around a real standard.  The OPA will pool the patents related to the WiMAX technology, act as an education platform for the WiMAX ecosystem and also offer accounting schedules for the memebers.

Hopefully all of this means that we will have devices, from phones and cameras to computers, sitting on the same wireless broadband network.  In fact, I spoke with Susan Johnston at Clearwire and she told me that they have plans to deploy mobile WiMAX service later this year in the following markets: Portland, Oregon; Las Vegas, Nevada; Atlanta, Georgia; and Grand Rapids, Michigan.  While I do not see Oklahoma City on this list, I am still excited.

Matt

p.s. Hey Susan, Oklahoma City is really cool too!

The hope of the Internet world is resting firmly on WiMAX for the foreseeable future. There are several large players in the WiMAX world, and they are finally working together instead of warring. Intel® is building the WiMAX technology into their Centrino® based laptops later this year.  Once that is in place we will hopefully see a wider adoption with other providers jumping into the fray.  I am personally hoping to see some of the cable Internet carriers getting in on the action.

Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX network is in soft launch mode in Baltimore, Chicago, and the Washington D.C. areas with employees currently. Last August Sprint announced they would be investing $5 billion into the WiMAX network, a show of support for the business model in the long-term.  Once more devices are WiMAX enabled there will be a real market here.  According to Sprint this service will be data-centric, meaning that geographic locations with high data use will get the XOHM rollout first. So I read that to say that XOHM will target more urban areas.

Clearwire, taking a different tactic, has already launched many mid-size cities around the nation. According to the company they are slow growing and as such have not moved into any large metropolitan areas yet. I spoke to a Clearwire representative this morning though, she assured me that once they move in to major cities the service will work seamlessly, whether in a large, concrete and steal high-rise, or sitting in your backyard surfing the ‘Net while the kids are swimming.

All of this news is good for the Internet in general: more connectivity, more devices, more information.  As we move from the living room wireless connectivity to the coffee shop and then out into the world we will see things happening that only futurists were talking about before.  Right now when your college kid snaps a picture with their favorite 10 megapixel camera they need to tether it to their laptop and load it into MySpace, or Facebook or Flickr; but soon enough they will snap that picture at their friends house and the camera itself will log into the site of choice and upload it for them.

We may see a proliferation of unedited content hitting the Internet like never before.  Think about a future where every person you know has a YouTube channel with live streaming video uploaded as it happens.   Think about your daughter’s basketball game being broadcast live on a niche video site that catalogs and searches all basketball games across America.  You are in the stands watching the game, but you are also holding your iPhone with real-time stats and rankings provided by Google or some other technology giant that figures out how to catalog, search and index live video.

I could spend the rest of my day writing scenarios of speculative science fiction about the world of tomorrow.  Everything from flying cars to personal rocket packs for every kid, but this is not the world we live in.  Instead I think we will see a linear progression from the Internet as we see it today to one where we have the entire Internet in our hands whenever we wish.  Web sites will be written not for mobile devices, but rather, mobile devices will work with any web site.  The web page you see on your home computer will look and act the same on your iPhone, Blackberry or any other Mobile Internet Device.

Mobile computing will come alive in an atmosphere where we are always connected to the Internet, not at today’s cell phone speeds, but at  cable and DSL speeds.  Once we become accustomed to the technology, and the idea that data is no longer something that we have to wait for, then we will see a real shift.

Matt

Interesting Site of the Day:  daylife is a news site that takes the Web 2.0 experience to the extreme.  What I really enjoy about the site is how I can stumble down the news in an organic fashion.  I read an article about the unrest in Tibet and from there I found connections to stories and topic vast and far-reaching.

My second wish is the Microsoft and Apple both figure out a way to build useful third party software as a Service applications into the browser – or even the operating system. Think about how cool it would be if there was a drop down menu that put you one click from backing up your machine, sending a large file, running a CRM program, or the like.

Since software is quickly being delivered more and more over the Web, it would be nice if we did not have to go log into 10 separate websites to get the services. I want them on the drop down box in my desktop. Next, I would like some worldwide standards for syncing calendars, contacts and Web favorites. I am tired of fighting across all the applications and devices I use to get this done. It is simply not that hard to build a set of standards that would let us easily sync the basic databases we all need at this point.

While I am on the standards rant, I want to see standards for widgets/gadgets. Let’s pick one name, and a standard method for coding them so they will work across any platform and device. It is absurd that Google, Microsoft and Apple all use different frameworks for delivering these useful little Web applications. This one is really my pet peeve. I want to see free wireless provided at all public places, hotels, airports, restaurants, etc. There are a few intelligent locations that get this – the Phoenix airport for instance, Holiday Inn hotels, and Panera Bread. Look, if you are too cheap to just spend the few hundred dollars to help your customers have bandwidth, then figure out an advertiser sponsored model and pay for it that way. Geez, how naive can people be in thinking that this is a utility that should be paid for. Starbucks’ silly T-Mobile network comes to mind. Why do you think I will pay for a T-Mobile account to hit the net while you make my latte? Within a short time we are going to have Wi-Max anyway and it won’t matter.

The final wish for 2008 is a general statement. I wish people would invest more energy in learning how to run technology on their own. Technology is such a wonderful tool – there are obscene amounts of valuable things that can be done with it to improve peoples lives, careers and productivity. The problem is it takes time and energy to learn how to put the tools to work. I look around at my family and see some that will make the investment and get the rewards. I see others that like to use the tool, but want others to do all the thinking for them. I don’t wish for the whole world to become geek – I just want everyone to take two steps forward in 2008…

So, from Technology Story,

Have a Happy New Year

The University of Tokyo has something promising in development; a plastic sheet that allows electronic devices to communicate wireless when placed upon it. This plastic sheet is actually fabricated on an ink jet printer in total, but the breakthrough here is in energy needed to communicate via a wireless system is minuscule in comparison with wireless technology today. If the system can scale up to many devices the implications are huge, but let’s step back and look at the retail market for a moment.

Imagine walking in to your house tonight and laying your phone on the desk. The desk, which has the University of Tokyo plastics built in, then updates your home computer with messages, contacts and your calendar all the while charging your phone via another similar technology invented last year by the same group.

A few years ago the Java community was buzzing about refrigerators sending us emails when the milk was low, but just try to imagine a world where we can embed tiny computers in almost anything and then those small devices communicate to either your home computer or each other. Jump forward again to the enterprise realm and consider a server room where many computers are connected by touch alone. No messy wires running here and there, just stack a server on the pile and it lights up with power and connectivity. Breath taking huh?

Delve deeper with these links:

• Smart Sheet Combines Wireless Power Supply and Wireless Communications
• Communicating with Plastic

Microsoft Acquires multiMap

Microsoft has fired another salvo at Google with the purchase of London based multiMap, the second most popular search site in England. multiMap seems a little busy to me, but I’m used to the Google offering, so I will withhold my user interface comments for now. Though multiMap is barely in the black financially, the purchase offers Microsoft some much needed support in the localized search realm. It is expected that the new acquisition will be incorporated into Microsoft’s Virtual Earth team.
The interesting Website of the day is: GizmoWatch, a site devoted to finding the latest and greatest gizmo on the net. I use this one a lot to see what I am missing on the design front in technology. I like it because it is a broad swipe at technology and how it is changing our lives. From the chairs that race around to configure themselves for a meeting to the high-tech Mobility Suit from Toyota.