November 2008 Archives

Somebody told me recently how electric vehicles pose an unexpected problem for car manufacturers, The internal combustion engine is a capricious piece of technology, but it allows you to make many design choices which give it a specific character (number of cilinders, bore/stroke, tuning, exhaust and so on). We consumers have gotten used to this, even more so it has become a part of our lifestyle. Car manufacturers differentiate themselves with it.

Who says electric minicars cannot be fun to drive? 

How to explain what economists call externalities? The costs not visible in the pricetag of the product you buy but incurred to another part of society?

For all of you who think that you can monitor and control users on the Internet: don't read on.

Big numbers lose their meaning quickly. The "kazillions" of euro's and dollars that governments allocate to dampen the effect of the current credit crisis just sound like "a lot".

Today I had a discussion about ratio's (numbers). A lot of people are searching for simple formula's and ratio's that give perspective to a new technology or idea. Like full electric vehicles.

Person-to-person lending (a kind of microfinancing) has grown fast with the growth of the Internet.

"Triple-A status with the A of Arrogance" 

The limited capacity of accumulators is one of the major hurdles for the introduction of electric propulsion of vehicles. A lot of energy and intellect and money is thrown at the problem, with promising results.

It is very sad to see how mentall walls between sectors of society prevent us from learning. It is possible to see how all the learning that has resulted from introducing (and sometimes rejecting) new concepts in industrial environments apparently is unknown to other sectors.

"Every one of us does things in the course of a day that adversely affect the health of the planet. We don't decide to, we just don't give it a thought.

Surprising, though, how many habitual practices we can - and do - change once we give them some thought. We can all name environmental habits we've changed and more we intend to. This has to be done, and more often by more of us. The impact of an unexamined life is far more serious than it once was - deadly so.
Here we'll examine Patagonia's life and habits as a company. The idea is to give more of our practices some air and thought, and to change habits often played out on an industrial scale, with concomitant effects. We've been in business long enough to know that when we can reduce or eliminate a harm, other businesses will be eager to follow suit." 

On gas2.org an interesting viewpoint was published on Nissan being the only car company who "just gets it" with respect to Electric Vehicles. The reason for this being that they came up with a clear strategy for the next years at the recent 2008 LA Auto Show. Although their focus seems to be heavily US oriented, there are some interesting developments. First of all Electric Vehicles seem far from dead, as I was thinking. Secondly Nissan is opening up proprietary information to selected partners. Open Source coming to the very closed car industry. Thirdly the author of the article sends a nice message to the troubled US car makers: if you would do like Nissan your future would look better, public opinion would be more in favor of you and you would have better change at government money. Food for thought I think.

"Walking the Gemba" is an expression used by practitioners of Lean Management. You have to get of your chair and walk to the "floor", observe without interfering the actual processes as they are executed. Walking the Gemba on a regular basis will give you the deep understanding of reality which is needed to guide improvements. This week I heard one bad and two good examples from different industries.

The new management of a merged healthcare institute prides itself that they visit all locations. The reality is that they have meetings in these locations, staff sees them walking in...and walking out. No contact what so ever. The bitterness in the staff rises because they get chastised about their performance based on (in their opinion totally wrong) reports out o the new IT-system.

The surgeons of a hospital that is being scrutinized for quality issues have to take a training where they physically follow and comment on all steps a patient will experience. All 35-40 steps from intake to release after surgery, including the support processes  preparing everything for surgery.

A contractor who builds fiber networks experienced serious overruns on costs and time while integrating existing duct networks (50 mm HDPE tube). The management "walked the gemba" and spent a day or two in the trenches. To their utter shock they saw that their subcontractors had developed a quick and dirty method to identify the right duct in a bundle you have dug up. Just close one side of the tube , put pressure on the tube on the other end, take a drill and drill a small hole in each tube where you have dug. If the tube starts hissing it is the right one. Unfortunately the drilled tubes now are damaged. They have a leak, take in water, it may not be possible any more later on to blow fiber through the tube. But hey, whose problem is that?

In the last months of 2008 appear a great deal of lists with greatest persons, best inventions or most innovative projects on it. Estonia's most innovative person is Rainer Nõlvak.  After selling his company Microlink he devotes his time to appealing projects and stood up for renewable energy systems. The project that resulted in him being most innovative is Let's Do It! 2008.
 With the help of special software based on Google Earth they mapped more than 3000 illegal waste dumping sites and on May 3rd 50.000 volunteers cleaned up 10.000 tons of waste on one day!

Via: NextWeb.com

It is my personal belief that Chinese cars will be coming to Europe in the next couple of years. Although their first attempts to enter the European market were not successful (remember the Landwind) they will return and strike hard at the weakened Western automobile industry. As an example consider the cars presented at the Guangzhou International Motor Show. First of all there is the Brilliance BS6 Hybrid. This car is equipped with nickel-hydrogen batteries and an electric motor and reduces fuel consumption by 35%. It will come to the market in 2009 or 2010. Secondly, and already available across China in the coming days, is the BYD F3DM (the Chinese only need to reconsider their naming). This Hybrid plug-in car can reach 160 km/h and can drive 100 km in electric mode, which is a considerable distance. When attached to a rapid recharge station it can regain 50% of its electric capacity in 10 minutes, when plugged in at home it takes 9 hours, i.e. overnight. I definitely wouldn't mind having that car in Europe, and it doesn't even look so bad! If you want to read more check out leblogauto (in French) or, if your Chinese is up to standards, the autohome site.

Oxford University Press has recently chosen their word of the year: hypermiling. According to their definition "Hypermiling" or "to hypermile" is to attempt to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to one's car and one's driving techniques. Rather than aiming for good mileage or even great mileage, hypermilers seek to push their gas tanks to the limit and achieve hypermileage, exceeding EPA ratings for miles per gallon.

Although I think this is quite a silly word, what is interesting is to look at the other words that made it into the finals:

• frugalista, a person leading a frugal lifestyle;
• moofer, a mobile out of office worker;
• topless meeting - a meeting in which the participants are barred from using their laptops, Blackberries, cellphones, etc.
• toxic debt, mainly sub-prime debts that are now proving so disastrous to banks.

So the total score is: money 2, hyperconnectivity 2 and environment 1. If we include the shortlist (go look at the website for yourself) hyperconnectivity clearly wins, with the environment taking second place. Not bad for Change.

Published on Yanko Design, see how designers Yoon-Hui Kim & Eun-Kyung Kim have turned the old idea of solar power into an at least entertaining concept: the Solar vertical lamp. During the day when the light is strong you close the blinds, fitted with miniature solar pads. The blinds block the rays of the hot sun, while the pads are being charged on the back of the blinds. Once the sun goes down, the energy stored can be used to let the mood lighting shine. This is achieved by having an array of LED-pixels project on the wall the image of a lamp. This image is currently available in a floor/table lamp or a stylish chandelier. Although I am not fully convinced of the real lighting power of this lamp, it is certain to attract attention and discussion. And hey, even if it is not a lot of light, there is no charge on the energy bill. Only real question is: what is the cost of the blinds?

The credit crisis is fueled by lack of trust. Which bank can you trust with your billions nowadays, is the question.

In one of his pieces Mark Pesce (Hyperpeople blog) remarks that nowadays a classroom is an anomaly to kids. It is the only place where connectivity is low, where connectivity is not used for the primary process. Everywhere else they use mobile phones and the Internet to connect and share.

Just this weekend I visited a newly built high school. The school was designed with a specific guideline, based on an old saying amongst teachers " if you hear a name mentioned of a pupil and you have no idea who it is, the school is too big". So the architect and the management divided the space into seperate area's (age groups and education) no bigger than 200 students. Teachers and students "live" within this area most of the time and get to know each other by name and face. Great idea !

In the last million years, as our brains grew explosively - as one scientist put it, "perhaps the most improbable event in all of evolution, anywhere" - much of the potential of all that new gray matter was put to work for social benefit. The "new brain" or neocortex, which is the most dramatically enlarged portion of the human brain, seems to be the area dedicated to our social relationships.
We know this because, in 1992, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar compared the average troop size of gorillas and chimpanzees against the average tribe sizes of humans. He found that there was a direct correlation between the volume of the neocortex in these three species and their average troop or tribe size. This value, known as "Dunbar's Number", is roughly 20 for gorillas, who have the smallest neocortex, about 35 for chimpanzees, and - for us lucky human beings, who have the greatest selection pressures on our social behavior - just under one hundred and fifty. We may not be entirely exceptional, but we're doing quite well.
Essentially, inside of each one of our heads, there are a hundred and fifty other people running around. Yes, that sounds a bit crowded (particularly when they're up partying all night long with their mates), but it's actually imminently practical. These "little people" inside our heads are models of each person we know well: our family, our friends, our colleagues. For each of these people we build mental model which helps us to predict their behavior. (It isn't really them, but rather, our image of them.) This predictive capability smoothes our social interactions. We know how to interact with people whom we have in our heads; with others we remain demure, reserved - in a word, predictable. Only with intimacy do we express the quirks of behavior which make us unique, only with intimacy do we take note of them in others.

A solar powered robot shows the strength of the energy of the sun during the day.
Author Esther Polak: "Spiral Sunrise is intended as a visualization of our environment as one that is ruled by balances of energy. The work seeks an association with the hour glass - an age-old symbol of "vanitas", and the progress of time."




















Link: Make: Blog:

Time published a video of the best inventions of the year. The Tesla roadster, sky windpower, the Aptera Hybrid and the Peraves Monotracer show that renewable energy is a hot topic in 2008. One invention one wouldn't expect on this list is Dr. Horrible's sing-along-blog. Joss Whedon and some of his friends made this low budget internet sequel during the writers' strike earlier this year. You could watch a stream for free during the first week, or you could download the episodes on iTunes for a few dollars. The marketing and distribution was in the hands of the producers, sidestepping the major studios and networks in the process. It has been a huge success, and a smashing example of a new production businessmodel.

Thanks to one of our favorites bloggers, James Enck, this pointer to Oblong.   
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

We humans create simplified simulations of reality in our minds, patterns of behaviour. We use them daily so we can reduce the amount of information we have to digest and to predict what is going to happen "  if.......".

Magicians and spin doctors  can be effective by manipulating our assumptions. They try to trigger us by words en visual clues into assuming that reality fits a pattern we know. They often succeed in locking us into a perception of reality that is more governed by our internal  simulation than what is actually happening. So much we actually do not perceive some inputs any more, as shown in a previous post.

So it pays to be very carefull when words are used that trigger emotions and assumptions, like in advertisements. Look in the opposite direction.

I got triggered by Project Better Place .   

It is a venture to get all-electric cars powered by renewable sources on the road in many countries, starting in Denmark and Israel and Australia. 

The nomer " Project Better Place"  (PBP) has strong connotations with an altruistic goal to improve the world. But venture capitalists who invest over 200 mio USD are most likely interested in high returns. So  where is the beef?

In the Ecogeek blog questions are raised about the business model of the cars of PBP.

A recent presentation by their European Business Development Executive Hans de Boer      gave some indications of a  plan how PBP could make a fortune.

For each country a local company is set up with local partners and local financing. The local company sells or leases the cars, leases the batteries to drivers, sets up a network of charge points connected to the grid. PBP manages how and when the cars are charged up, cuts deals with suppliers of (renewable) electric energy.

The key remark for me was that the business case for a user of the electric car was great....because no taxes were levied on electric cars.

This is not sustainable. Most governments raise a lot of income out of taxes on cars and gasoline If electric cars will become mainstream the governments will need to get compensation for this lost income.

So could this be the plan? Local companies bear the financial riscs of both the batteries and a business case that is highly dependent upon a tax advantage which cannot be sustained in the long run. The local company raises the money to build the infrastructure (charging points). PBP only contributes intellectual property (which they continue to own and control) but controls the grid and the charging. They are the exclusive middle man between suppliers of energy and consumers, making money out of every Kwh sold. And cars consume a lot of Kwh's.  If the number of charging points is high enough other EV's will have no choice but to use this infrastructure, creating a de-facto monopoly for PBP.

Pretty shrewd. As a working hypothesis on how to assess PBP until more or contradicting facts become public this is my favorite.

Together with Barack Obama's election into the White House, Californians approved Proposal 1A. The proposition allocates $9.95 billion to the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Of that $9.95 billion, $9 billion will be used to construct the core segments of the rail line from San Francisco to the Los Angeles area and the rest will be spent on improvements to local railroad systems, which will connect locations away from the high-speed rail mainline to the high-speed system. Travelling time from SF to LA will be reduced to some two and a half hours and it is far more sustainable than car or plane.

However, the project still requires federal matching funds, since a $9.95 billion bond issue only covers at most half of the estimated cost of the initial core segment. But don't we all agree that Obama needs some 'lighthouse projects'? And wouldn't this be a great one? In the mean time, watch some amazing animations on the nc3d.com website, a 3D visualization consulting firm specializing in transportation, architecture and urban design projects.

 

Planned for the end of next year: the Fisker Karma, a four-door, plug-in hybrid car. The Karma has a 50 mile all-electric range and more than 350 miles of total range. Fisker claims that the Karma "will have the potential for a fuel economy of over 100 miles per gallon on extended drives." The car is expected to cost around $80,000. And the best news is that Fisker recently announced the opening of a new Engineering and Development Center in
Pontiac, Michigan. The 34,000 square foot facility will house up to 200 engineers and
designers, who will support the development and production program of the Fisker Karma. Looks like there are some companies surviving the credit crisis!

Linked is the title of a groundbreaking book by Prof. Barabasi on the structure of networks (see this previous post).  A network is a broader concept than communication networks. A network is defined by links between actors, such as social relations (the famous " just 6 handshakes away from everyone in the world" ),  the way diseases (or ideas) are disseminated, or links between websites on the Internet. 

The most interesting fact is the way links are distributed. If we would state that most people have a few relationships (links) and some people have many links, everybody would agree. 

As soon as you start to define this distribution more in detail the fun starts. We tend to assume a so-called normal or Gaussian distribution (a bell-curve) . In the graph below a normal distribution is drawn.

The X-axis is the number of links a person has, the Y-axis is the percentage of persons that has this number of links. 

It turns out that in reality many networks follow a different curve, a so-called power law.

The difference is visible : in a normal distribution there virtually no "nodes" with a large number of links, in a power law distribution there are. 

The implication is that in most networks a significant number of supernodes exist with an incredible amount of links (if you assume a normal distribution they do NOT exist). These supernodes turn out to be extremely important for the distribution of information within and the  stability of the network. They are responsible for the fact that indeed you are no more than 6 handshakes away from everybody else, usually no more than 3.

This concept explains for instance the fact that Amsterdam is considered to be an international hub (metropolis) although the city has  less than 10 % of the inhabitants of a midsized Chinese city. Count the links, it is a supernode.

(more to follow)

A modern team of Italian researchers has revisited a device invented in 1833 by fellow Italian G.D. Botto for creating hydrogen. The device is based on the principle that a temperature difference can generated a current. By reflecting sunlight from two parabolic mirrors onto a hollow tube wrapped in metal and filled with water a temperature difference is produced, which then generates enough electricity to produce hydrogen through electrolysis. Simple, yet clever. Unfortunately, as wel all know, the devil is in the details. Can this be scaled up, what are production costs, what is the efficiency compared to current solar cells, are just a few of the questions I would like to see answered. Nevertheless, rethinking great ideas from the past always has my personal sympathy. Read more here.

Started in 2005, online marketplace etsy.com, for buying & selling all things handmade, is now really growing fast. It's a shop and community at the same time. It's mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers. It's vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice: Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.

Etsy allows thousands of private persons and small shops to find buyers for their goods and thus make a real living. Without this website that would not be possible. Moreover, Etsy has some great ways to search their site, e.g. by color, recently sold items or by their time machine. Now if this isn't web 2.0, I don't know what is...

A week ago Herman wrote about the lack of innovation from the big mediaconglomorates.
Matt Mason shows us seven things to learn from pirates. His message: innovate by competing with them.

" Mason is encouraged by the amount of content being generated by users of media, and how it has allowed everyday people to turn business and narrative models upside down as they create what he calls "networked storytelling."


By the way, lovely piracy logo!

From: Pop!Tech

In an earlier post a reference was made to systems that show emergent behaviour.

We are trained to assume  that we can deduce the behaviour of something complex from the study of its components. Just keep on researching for more details, throw more computer power at it and at the end we will be able to predict and control its behaviour.

Alas. Many if not most complex systems show behaviour that can NOT be deduced from its components. Complexity arises and increases when both the number of "actors" and the number of interactions between the actors increases. One example often cited is an ant heap : the complex behaviour shown by ants searching for food can be simulated by  ants with only 3 simple rules. 

1. If you find food go back to the heap while leaving a scented trail

2. If you cross a scented trail of another ant follow it away from the heap

3. If you fail to find food within a certain periode of time start searching in a random pattern.

The amazing thing is how complex and adapative this emergent behaviour can be when circumstances change.

 

This book  gives a nice introduction on complexity and emergent behaviour, and of the men and women who started in the 80's with investigating this new field.

It remains to be seen where the scientific efforts will lead us, but for me the concepts have already enough validity to be used in daily life as "rules of thumb" . Such as:

- Trying to control a complex system in detail has an enormous cost in overhead and in slow/ineffective adaptation to changes in environments (see some parallels?)

- Naieve approaches like changing one parameter and expecting that everything else stays the same always leads to surprises, so-called inpredictable second/third order effects. (as many politicians regularly show)

- A complex system has multiple meta-stable states. Increasing forces in the system can lead to sudden and fast changes to another (meta-)stable state. (and we go on as if this always was and has been the way we do things). 

- When circumstances and the environment change a complex system will find a new pretty good/acceptable  state/solution very fast. (But you might be surpised by the solution.)

- You need a governor who acts when the system goes off-track into an undesirable state. Meta-stability and quick changes has its drawbacks.

- Rules and a definition of  "better" are needed. Rules stabilize the system but should not stabilize it to death. "Better" is a high level indicator by which the actors in the system and the governor can judge if a certain new state of the system is in the "right" direction. 

Needless to say that the selection of rules and the definition of "better" are key issues for the governor.  A simple example is the roundabout versus intersections with traffic lights. The traffic lights are the (expensive and inflexible) control solution, the roundabout is an alternative solution in the spirit of  complex systems. Simple, effective, cheap, hardly any control needed.  

But:

- the governor has to take control when the traffic load is too high: the roundabout chokes.

- you have to select the right rule. The first implementation of roundabouts In the Netherlands failed because the rule was wrong " traffic from the right has right of way" .Only when the rule was changed to " traffic on the roundabout has right of way"  it worked as foreseen.

What we call "the market"  is a complex system with emergent behaviour. 

(More to follow)

Yes, you could have seen it coming. In Google Trends it was visible since half 2007. Type in Credit Crisis and you get the graph below. So from now on, check the latest trends regularly. Could save you money...

Nasa gives a great explanation on why black holes can be created in the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. And they also explain why they will not swallow the earth immediately. In short because they are microscopically small and will evaporate immediately after creation. They cite Mark Twain: Reports of the Earth's death have been greatly exxagerated.

The freedom of the press is limited to those who have a press. Our hyperconnectivity allows everyone with a bit of tenacity to become a printer. And some print beautiful litte pieces. (Hat tip Robert)

One of the hot debates this decade is about bandwidth. Owners of existing access networks (copper -> xDSL, cable -> DOCSIS Internet) usually offer the standard self-fulfilling reasoning: if there would be demand, we would build it, but we do not see any use beyond what is offered now. Proponents of Next generation Networks based on fiber say that the demand is there, you just need to build out the networks.

One thing is clear: the amount of data that is generated by normal and cheap digital cameras is increasing exponetially. Most people set their camera to the highest resolution, shoot away at a party, and....send you a CD or DVD with all the pictures, let alone video. Storage is cheap, 500 Gbyte will set you back 100 Euros, but bandwidth....
Curently it is absolutely unthinkable to send a series of home made photos and videos through the Internet. It would take more than 4-5 hours to send all the pictures that you can store on a 10 Euro memory card, unless you are the lucky one with a symmetrical fiber-based access line.

So what is adequate bandwidth, if you are not able to share photos and video's with your loved ones without investing time and effort in serious compression and tedious upload?

The gap is increasing fast. See for instance this HD video (hat tip Dirk), made with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II...a camera designed for taking still pictures, but capable of shooting HD-video as well.
Think about the amount of data this baby generates....

Today in Eindhoven there is a conference organized by/for the dutch " Technical Attache"  network on " Innovative Technologies for road transport and personal mobility" .In both the presentation of PSA and of the Indian utility vehicle company Mahindra & Mahindra one message was clear. The force of the EU in pushing vehicle manufacturers in the right direction is massive.

Tired of the Segway? The Uno must be a (green) dream come true.  It runs for about 2.5 hours on an electric motor.


MotorcycleMojo: "Operation of the 54.4 kg (120 lb) machine is simple, in fact it's so simple there are no controls except for an on-off switch. To go forward you simply push your body weight forward to tilt the machine. To back up, just lean back on the seat to tilt it backwards and back it goes. The farther you lean, the faster it accelerates. The gyro tells the ECU how much to accelerate and that in turn delivers the proper amount of current to the electric motors, one for each wheel."

More about the Uno and its inventor on MotorcycleMojo

They didn't drink the beer, they are buddhists. But they made a wonderful edifice out of the empty beer bottles, combining garbage collection with awareness of recycling.

Transport for London started some months ago a campaign about safety for cyclists in London. They are promoting the use of bicycles in Greater London.

" You can rely on the Americans to do the right thing......after all other options are exhausted" 

An accountant after investigating the balance sheet of a bank in distress:

Nature follows art.

Ars Technica  reports that the infamous "three-strikes" plan  has passed the French Senate so it can be presented to Parliament. The plan has started as a memorandum of understanding between the government, ISPs, and Big Content in France. Essentially, repeat copyright infringers would have their Internet connections revoked. Enforcement will be overseen by a new state agency called HADOPI (High Authority for Copyright Protection and Dissemination of Works on the Internet). The EU has pre-empted this by passing a law where revocation of Internet connections without a court order is forbidden in the EU. 

Now that is fun! Create your own South Park Character just the way you like it. Or create your whole family. Or your friends. Or someone famous. Or..., whatever. Go to sp-studio.de. And yes, this is me.