Posted by Tattletech on Jan 31, 2011 in
Things We've Learned This Week,
Vision 
Yea, this week, we made our week end on January 31 just cause we wanted to. Tough week, tough week. Most of the things we learned surprised us and then again, not really. Between armchair politics of retweeters on Egypt, Android dethroning Symbian and ZenRobotics taking on demolition waste, we don’t know where to start, except here.
1. Free will scuttles in the swamp of fear.
2. Folks like to tweet about current affairs even when they know little about it.
3. Americans really don’t know where Egypt is. (via @jimmus).
4. Google launching a Holocaust Archive makes me have indigestion.
5. Not saying anything, says something (and loudly).
6. You can never have enough handbags or pocketbooks, as us Southerners call them.
7. Outside of the tech industry, most consumers don’t know what a connected TV is.
8. Cable is NOT dead no matter how many emerging tech pubs tell you it is.
9. Sometimes start ups outgrow the publications that got them where they are today.
10. Futility reigns. See Mobile World Congress 2011.
11. Opening a can of whoop ass does make you feel better.
12. Finland produces some great minds and the best example of true innovation in clean tech, eHealth and ICT – see Mendor, ZenRobotics, DealDash, Hermopharma, FeedBackCatalog, Multitouch.
Tags: Android, Cable, connectedTV, dealdash, Egypt, Feedbackcatalog, Finland, futility, hermopharma, Hosni Mubarak, jimmus, Mendor, ZenRobotics
So, the sun.
It keeps us warm, grows our crops, burns our skin, bleaches our hair and it also heats our homes, powers our computers and powers our cars. But the future is in solar and other renewable energies. We got super lucky and had access to one of THE leading solar experts around – Jan Schelling, who currently gives guidance to Hyrdo’s solar direction and despite his PhD, he actually boils the market down for us. You can follow his solar updates on Twitter @janschelling.
Tattletech: What’s the deal with solar (or PV) these days — can you describe the challenges in manufacturing solar panels and how the cost is currently being reduced due to new production methods?
JS: The challenge the PV industry is facing these days is to cut costs in line with reductions in financial support schemes around the world to maintain profitability for both the solar industry itself and investors in PV systems. Some years down the road, the solar industry will have to live without government subsidies in form of grants, investment tax credits, and feed-in tariffs and compete directly against more polluting sources of energy.
There are two main pathways to reduce cost: larger-scale manufacturing and technology innovation. The solar industry will have to do both. The three main technology routes are higher efficency of the solar cells (more power per area), faster processing (higher output per factory) and the use of less or less expensive materials. Tomorrow’s winners will have to succeed in all of these areas.
TT: Is it true that the earth’s supply of silicon suitable for solar is running out ? If so, how much is left?
JS: Silicon itself is not a scarce resource. If someone talks about a shortage of silicon, they mean the highly purified kind, which until five years ago only a handful of companies were able to produce. The same material that is used for computer chips. Silicon as a raw material is the second most abundant material in the Earth’s crust.
Think ‘sand’ which is essentially silicon oxide. There have been and will be periods during which highly purified silicon is in short supply but based on market demand, the silicon industry will increase its capacity and fill the gap in due time.
TT: Why are emerging markets ahead of the game when it comes to solar?
JS: Emerging markets are not necessarily ahead of the game, but solar provides a great opportunity. Well proven turn-key manufacturing plants for PV modules are now available. This allows emerging countries to generate their own solar panels and produce clean power. Similar to the adaption of mobile phones before major investment in land-based telephone systems where made, emerging economies can prepare their power grid for distributed rather than central generation, thus accommodating for a high penetration of intermittent renewable energy sources.
TT: What interested you first in the solar industry – I mean why did you throw your PhD brain around this ecosystem?
JS: Solar energy is the present and the future. Unlike many other sources of energy that are either here now, but gone tomorrow or have and always will be “only 20 more years of research away from commercialization” (fusion, hydrogen) — solar energy finds many great uses already today and it is the only source of energy that is abundant enough to meet the energy needs of an ever growing human population.
For someone who is impatient and gets bored easily, the solar industry is a great place to be in. Things happen and they happen fast. You don’t need to wait for a lifetime to see if your ideas and predictions were right. A year or two is normally enough. Solar energy is also a very interesting mix of technology development and global market dynamics with almost unlimited demand. And on top of all this, it feels good to help save the world.
TT: Why should corporations or municipalities turn to solar instead of wind or other renewable energy sources?
JS: I wouldn’t say corporations or municipalities should turn their back on other renewable energy sources. There are locations that are very favourable for wind, biomass, hydro, geothermal, wave or tidal energy and we should use what is available without putting too much stress on the local eco-systems. Solar energy can be used almost everywhere for power production, heating or even cooling and roofs of buildings are a great place to start. We don’t consume more land and the energy is produced where it is needed.
An investment in solar energy is a great long-term investment: While requiring a significant up-front investment, solar installations provide virtually operating and maintenance-free energy for decades and safeguard against rising energy costs.
TT: Have you seen the movie, Sunshine, where the sun burns out in the near future? What’s the ETA on that?
[note that some PhD's miss TT's misguided attempts at humour]
JS: I must admit I have not seen the movie Sunshine, but I think there are more
pressing issues than worrying about the sun burning out any time soon. The sun is a pretty big ball of gas in which hydrogen is turned into helium by nuclear fusion, thus releasing large amounts of heat. This process is gradually accelerating and will eventually increase the temperature of the Earth so much that all water will evaporate and life will cease to exist. However, it is estimated that this will not happen until 1 billion years from now and that’s pretty long-term on almost any scale.
– JH
Tags: Earth, Energy, Energy development, Hydro, Jan Schelling, Jennifer Hicks, PV, Renewable, Renewable energy, Solar, Solar power, Sunshine, Tattletech
Posted by Tattletech on Jan 26, 2011 in
Location Based Services,
Mobile,
Start ups
Image via Wikipedia
This was supposed to happen with Blue-tooth — see /interact with other Bluetoothers around you, connect if you wanted to and boom! Instant local social. But Blue-tooth was unreliable and gosh-darnit, was just a little too weird and slightly too complicated for the common man to work out. So we waited.
Then all these smartphones came on the scene, we got LBS – now just Location Services (LS) and now this. A new Twitter follower came on the scene today and introduced me to Hob-Knob. They claim to be the only “Locally Based Social Networking Application. Chat, share pictures or files and get deals all with people and businesses located within the same wifi as you”.
Careful, read that correctly…. located in the SAME wifi as you are. That means that if I am say, at terminal 2D at CdG where I usually find myself waiting for a flight to somewhere, everyone using that wifi there and I can connect, share, chat and of course the self-proclaimed savior to LS – get deals from nearby retailers, which in that case, would be Relay and the airport snack shack.
I kinda dig the concept behind Hob-Knob cause it throws narrow and not wide, it takes the basic premise that you are there now, in the moment around those people in that location and why not benefit from it. Although if you are close enough to share photos with someone you know in the same wifi area as you are in, why not just get up and go over and show them one-on-one, unless of course you are in high-school at the back of the class and your BFF is in front of the clase and you must send her a photo of Eric, the new kid that just transferred in from Helsinki. In that case, it would be useful. You can follow Hob-Knob (Knob? really? did they miss the boat on branding or what?) on Twitter @hobknobbers
– JH
Tags: Bluetooth, Helsinki, Hob Knob, local based services, Social network service, Social Networking, Wi-Fi
Posted by Tattletech on Jan 25, 2011 in
MWC,
Mobile Nimbuzz just keeps on rolling and this time into 88 million subscribers in Indonesia with the world’s first push notification option for feature and Nokia phones. (about 400 million (Nokia) Symbian smartphones, which currently lack this feature).
You know what this means? This means that operators (can you tell this is operator news day?) can increase data sales and drive up loyalty with an innovative VAS offering that bring smartphone functionality to this large market of feature phone customers. This also means that Nimbuzz is rapidly becoming an generate new value added services revenue through Nimbuzz, which is rapidly becoming one of the first OTT communications app in the market.
Nimbuzz Ping is a push notification feature that allows feature phone users to appear online to their friends and receive a free SMS alert when someone in their Nimbuzz community wants to get in touch, even when the app is closed.
Nimbuzz Ping is initially available to more than 88 million subscribers across the Telkomsel (Singtel Group network, with a dozen mobile operators throughout the Middle East and Asia Pacific adopting the service over the next few months.
According to Gartner Research, the feature phone market sold 264 million new ‘dumb phones’ in Q3 2010 compared to 62 million smartphones, such as the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, sold during the same period of time.
Ping is free for users to enable inside Nimbuzz and complements Nimbuzz’s “always-on” product nature. While operators provide the SMS alerts, Ping drives up ARPU with a new revenue stream from the additional data use that occurs when customers are prompted to log in to respond to invites, chat messages, or shared files. Pre-paid operators who primarily carry feature phones can also benefit and compete in the market with offers such as Nimbuzz Ping to deliver instant gratification to their customers.
How does it work?
Users appear online and available to their contacts even when the Nimbuzz app is closed. When one of their contacts wants to reach them, Nimbuzz Ping delivers a free SMS message to their home screens, prompting the user to log in to Nimbuzz and start a data session to communicate.
The path to Mass Market
Its not the niche markets that operators and apps are shooting for, its mass market appeal and reach. Nimbuzz Ping is targeted to the mass market of feature phones and optimized to work on low bandwidth networks. Ping also allows feature phone users to stay connected while preserving battery power. — JH
Tags: Mobile VoIP, Nimbuzz, Nimbuzz Ping, Nokia, Symbian, Telkomsel
Posted by Tattletech on Jan 25, 2011 in
MWC,
Mobile,
Mobile industry stats Well finally, a company has decided to step up and talk about what ails mobile operators and they are from the great country of Sweden. Birdstep, which helps mobile operators improve mobile broadband services, has started a blog series - Top 10 relievers for Mobile Operators. Interesting because they seem to be really hitting the sweet spot with the issues that are surrounding operators today – Capex, data caps offloading traffic, etc.
It’s all well and good to talk about the next big app or solution but lets face it, this stuff is really at the heart delivering a great mobile service… today there is some good insight on how mobile operators should take a hybrid approach to data.
You can follow Birdstep on Twitter @birdsteptech. They will be at MWC 2011 in Barcelona in the Swedish Pavilion, Hall 2, stand 2F13, if you wanna check em out. Plus, that Pavilion, always has cava. –JH
Tags: Birdstep, Capex, Mobile network operator, Mobile Operators, Mobile World Congress, Sweden, Telecommunication
