I happened to catch this article today while reading on the net.  To me, this is truly impressive in two core ways:

New solar cell material achieves almost 100% efficiency, could solve world-wide energy problems

Columbus (OH) – Researchers at Ohio State University have accidentally discovered a new solar cell material capable of absorbing all of the sun’s visible light energy. The material is comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum and titanium. The team discovered it not only fluoresces (as most solar cells do), but also phosphoresces. Electrons in a phosphorescent state remain at a place where they can be “siphoned off” as electricity over 7 million times longer than those generated in a fluorescent state. This combination of materials also utilizes the entire visible spectrum of light energy, translating into a theoretical potential of almost 100% efficiency. Commercial products are still years away, but this foundational work may well pave the way for a truly renewable form of clean, global energy.

The first thing about this that I find impressive is the use of supercomputers to solve these problems.  Our advances in raw compute power are often talked about, but what is the real value delivered to us by all of this compute power?  Well … massively efficient solar power would be a heck of a reward.  From the article:

Supercomputers are enabling an entire new area of materials. No longer do scientists have to physically create samples of every possible material in the lab, only to test and document everything they find about it. Today they can set up a series of parameters and instruct a supercomputing machine to find the one that best aligns with their desires, wants and wishes. And while such computations often takes many days or even weeks for each trial material, it’s more economical and feasible than the old route. Plus, it enables materials like these which were, in this context, accidentally discovered using computers.

It is this ability to simulate and iterate – at incredible speeds – that allows us to evaluate the massive numbers of permutations and combinations to discover these types of solutons.

The second impressive aspect of this discovery, to me, is that we are now finding new uses for common foundation materials.  We are now beginning to discover the unique ways in which materials can be combined to create just the right conditions to product energy from something as common as sunlight.  If we can now rapidly transform this type of discover into an actual commercial material – which might take years – it could have immeasurable impacts of the lives of humans all over the globe.

With the growth of the Internet, and wireless extensions of the Internet (via Wifi and broadband wireless), it is inevitable that we are going to see our abilities to participate in remote events enhanced through telepresence.  There are numerous companies working in this area for “high-end” solutions … Cisco being one of them.  But what is now facinating is the growth from the bottom up … the small, inexpensive “toys” that are beginning to show up in the market.

Telepresence is the ability to be present somewhere else … so that you can interact with the world at that remote location without actually being there.  Companies like Cisco are working on this for various communications solutions … so that you can have virtual meetings or present at a conference when you are not actually there.

Last week I found the iRobot ConnectR which is an impressive start.  The ConnectR is referred to as a Virtual Visiting Robot and is built on the same iRobot Roomba vaccum platform.  It is able to leverage all of the features of that platform, including the transport, navigation, and auto-recharge/dock features … but probably without the vacuum.  What has been added instead is a tilting webcam, microphone, and speakers … along with a Wifi wireless radio.  Once you have purchased this unit, you can put the charging station in a corner, and then remotely – either from your home, or across the globe – connect to the ConnectR.  You can then “drive” it around your house … looking through the webcam, and listening through the microphone … and then even talk to anyone or anything that might be around.  You could be using this to check on your house, your pets, your children, or even your parents.  And yes … iRobot is already exploring the various issues of security, and how you control access to the ConnectR remotely … and also how you can locally disable the robot.  This robot is currently in pilot/beta, and is estimated to cost $499.99 … so not the cheapest … but as an owner of a Roomba I can guess the quality will be there.

Yesterday on my way home from Oakland, California I was flying on Southwest Airlines and found yet another iteration of the commodity telepresence robot … and this one is also very impressive.  It’s being promoted as a “toy” byt Erector … yes, the folks that used to make Erector Sets.  Erector has since been bought by Nikko, an innovative manufacturer of electronic toys … which are growing rapidly in capabilities.  The Spykee Robot is a base platform with treaded tracks containing a Wifi radio and basic processor.  This basic platform is designed to allow the owner (uh … not just kids … I want one!) to build a “torso” using Erector Set parts.  There are supposed to be three models coming … with slightly different parts … and I’m sure a bunch of add-on kits.  On the torso is again a webcam, speakers, a microphone, and various lights.  The Spykee also has a PC “control panel” application that allows you to remotely – in your house, or across the globe – connect to the Spykee and cruise around interacting with the world.  There is also a “security” feature which allows the Spykee to be watching via it’s webcam, and to e-mail you photos when motion is detected.  The Spykee appears to be close to shipping in the UK … Amazon says that the US availability is November 15th … list price of $299.99.

While investigating the Spykee, of course I came across the Wow Wee Rovio.  This is another $299.99 remote telepresence robot, with a browser based control panel.  The three wheeled unit contains the processor, Wifi radio, webcam, microphone and speaker, along with some sort of optical tracking – similar to the iRobot units.  There is a docking station for recharging, and optional tracking beacons that canbe bought – I’m guessing – to enhnace the navigation of the robot around your house.  This unit appears to be available now in the US, and I’m surprised I haven’t seen one in the stores yet.

What is impressive is that these last two units are now below $300 for a complete – basic – telepresence robot.  The example videos provided by both companies demonstrate both home and office uses, and begin to move into the home security space … and even the home video surveillance space.  As we saw with the prices on Wifi Access Points, and other hardware … I can only expect it to continue to fall.

The next area that I am going to look at for these robots, and something that I believe will be important for success, will be the “hackability” of the control protocols.  How easy will it be for hackers to begin to enhance the controlling applications, and for the robots to be integrated into more extensive applications?  Imagine when someone has created the automatic search and mapping application for the Rovio or Spykee that allows someone to release dozens of these into an unknown building and have the robots quickly survey the inside and report back what they find.  What other applications are going to emerge?  Maybe I can rent a remote Rovio to explore a remote location that I otherwise might never visit!  Explore the Louvre after hours?  Visit underground caverns on the other side of the planet?  Hmmm … maybe there is a interesting business model in there somewhere …  🙂

ngs have been busy lately on the development front.  Our College Football site is doing well, and growing steadily.  We now have launched a new website this month called GoHUD.com that is a resource for home buyers and investors to search the portfolio of HUD Homes that are currently available through the US Federal Government.

HUD Homes are an interesting opportunity for home buyers, and also investors, who want to purchase a home in almost any state across the country.  A “HUD Home” is one that is being sold by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  When someone with an FHA-insured mortgage can’t make the payments, the lender forecloses on the home and HUD takes ownership.  It is then offered for sale at market value, based on a recent AS-IS appraisal, meaning, the market value in its current condition.  Obviously with the current financial market, the number of available HUD properties has doubled over the last 6 months, and some states have thousands of available properties.
HUD properties are made available in a variety of ways, with an emphasis on “Owner Occupied” purchases that include the “Good Neighbor Next Door” buying opportunities for “Law enforcement officers, pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade teachers and firefighters/emergency medical technicians.”  This last group of individuals can get incredible discounts on the purchase of a HUD property.  The prices on HUD Homes tend to be very price competitive in the areas where they are located, and each will have an associated Property Condition Report.

When watching the prices on the homes, you might notice a common pattern as a particular home stays on the market.  The home will be listed, and be available to “Owner Occupants” … meaning that you must live in the home as your primary residence if you purchase it.  If the home is not sold in a week or so, then the status will change to “All Bidders” … meaning that anyone can now bid to purchase the property for any purpose.  If the home still does not sell, it is common that the price will then be reduced by a full 10%, and the status will return to “Owner Occupants” again.  This process will repeat until the home sells.  Owner occupant, all bidders, price reduction … and on and on.

Our current website aggregates the details of all available HUD Homes across the country, and provides a variety of ways to search, map, and “favorite” any property in the database.  We’re continuing to add features to automate your monitoring of a property and the status changes, and also to engage with a HUD Authorized Real Estate Agent, who can assist you with navigating the various issues in researching and eventually purchasing a HUD property.

To me, it has been a fun project to learn more and more about HUD Homes, and how they work … and the opportunities that exist.  I’m not yet sure if the real estate market is close to the bottom yet, but I’m watching homes in a wide range of cities across the nation for an eventual investment opportunity.

Check out the website and let us know what you think!

Wow … I really haven’t paid attention to how long it has been since I have blogged.  I have been absolutely heads-down on two major Internet projects … my SMS/Text Messaging platform, and a new partner site – CollegeFootball.com.

CollegeFootball.com has become an interesting experiment that involves a social network with news and information services. We are now evolving that platform to see what gains traction with the fan base, and what features the average College Football fan is after.  Thee are, of course, the fans wanting to find out game information, standings, ratings, and othere team related information, but then there is also all of the “social” aspects of College Football that we are wanting to support and promote.

The Social Network
The site is built around a foundation of a social network and user-generated content.  Anyone can come and join the site, they are then able to invite friends, search for friends, and form on-line relationships.  One area that we expanded on is the relationships.  Instead of just having “friends” we chose to implement multiple levels of relationships – Close Friends, Friends, Family, and Acquaintance – so that you can more precisely control who is able to see your content, and how they interact with you.

The User Content
The user contributed content is currently in the form of posts, or articles, photos, and events.  We’ll soon be adding videos also.  On all contributions the fan is able to specify the “visibility” or who is able to see that particular piece of content. The choices are Close Friends, Friends, Family, Acquaintance, and Public … with Public being the default.  With the additional levels of relationships and the visibility flags, a fan could share posts, photos, or events with Close Friends and no one else.  They could also share them with Family, which would then make them visible to Family, Friends, and Close Friends.

The other important attribute that can be assigned to any post, photo, or event are a Primary and Secondary School.  This allows the fan to relate their content to schools or teams so that other fans can search and locate content related to their favorite – or not so favorite – teams.  These assignments also allow the site to associate content with particular school pages, and also make it more visible to our “governing users” … which I’ll touch on later.

Posts
Posts, or articles, are like very simple blog posts.  Right now we do not offer a rich-text editor (which is coming) and inserting images in posts is a manual process, but we’ll be improving this in the coming weeks.

Photos
Fans are able to create Photo Albums and then upload images to their albums.  Again, the visibility features allow very fine grained control of who is able to see what photos.  Within an album, individual photos can have different visibility settings allowing some photos to be seen only by Close Friends, and others by Family.

Events
With all of the activities surrounding College Football, events are a way for fans to announce tailgate parties, other pre-game events, post game celebrations, and even places where games can be watched together.  As with the other content types, the visibility can be set, and the events can also be associated with a school or schools.  We’ll also be adding some invite and reminder capabilities to the events.

Commenting
All of the content types on CollegeFootball.com can be commented on by registered users.  The commenting system provides for two levels of commenting … comments being made directly on any piece of content, and then replies to comments.  The replies are only one-level deep, meaning that you can not reply to a reply.  When comments are made, the content owner is notified via e-mail, and when replies are made both the content owner, and original commenter are notified by e-mail.

As of this coming weekend we’ll be deploying a new build which will add Profile Commenting, or writing public comments on other fans profiles.  We haven’t nailed down what we’ll call this feature … writing on a fan’s what?  Feel free to comment below with suggestions if you have any!

From the Fans
As fans contribute content, all of the content marked as Public can then be viewed on our From the Fans page.  Registered users can then also rate (Cheer!), and comment on the content.  There are a number of filters that can be modified on the From the Fans page to customize the view and assist fans in finding what they are interested in.  The first level is “Most Recent” or “Most Popular”.  The default is Most Recent and shows the content most recently contributed on the site.  The Most Popular sorts the content based on the number of Cheers (votes) that a piece of content has received.  Additional sorting and filtering are by the content type, allowing for only viewing posts or photos or events, and also the timeframe of contributions.

A fan is also able to view the contributions by school or team.  By making this selection they can drill down to user content that is only related to a team they are truly a fan of.

Governing Users
Also core to the design of the platform is a concept that we call Governing Users … these are “editors” or users who can be given control of “promoting” certain content to school pages that are under their control.  When we grant Governing User privileges to a user we also pick the pages they have authority over.  For example we might give one user authority over the University of Utah page, and another user authority over the Army and Navy pages.  From then on, as they explore the site and the fans content they see a small icon that allows them to “promote” that piece of content to a public school page.  The governing user, when they click that link, is presented with the list of pages they have authority over along with date selectors on when they want that content to appear and be removed from that page.

Governing Users are then able to use the From the Fans page to also look for interesting content, and promote the content that they feel would be the biggest contribution to fans of a particular school or team.  It is this feature that then splits the site into two completely different “sides” of the site – the general public user contributions, and content that is deemed as being worthy of showcasing.  Both sides are always visible and accessible, and then both serve different purposes.

What’s next?
There is a lot more that I could talk about … and a lot more coming … but it’s been fun so far.  The one thing that we did is make the entire platform independent of the specific content.  So although this is currently College Football related, we could use this same platform for any type of social network that comes along.  We already have some leads on additional domain names where we might apply the platform … it’ll be fun to see how it goes.

Please go and check out the site … use the Feedback button on each page to give us feedback (being nice of course, and understanding that we built this – from scratch – in 8 weeks!) … I really want to hear from fans what they like, what they don’t, and what needs to be added!

aw this amazing Stabilized Video Collage this morning while reading … this is really impressive.  You have to see it to really appreciate what is being done.  As the author writes:

While some people are still endlessly yelling at Flickr for the new video features, some others are experimenting around it. Especially the one that were already experimenting with pictures, doing collages, blanding, panoramics or any kinf of litle planets. On of my contact on Flickr is PaintMonkey, a very inspired photographer when it comes to photocollages. His photostream is really amazing and creative. He recently explored around the concept of “long photos” (as Flickr calls its videos) and quickly came with some collages experiments. As I was by my side discovering Motion 3 and its stabilization features, I came up with this Stabilized Collage experiment.I am really impressed about the simplicity and the quality of Motion’s stabilization features. It’s really quick and simple to work with. The first time I really got the stabilization concept was when I saw the stabilized version of the JFK assassination Zapruder’s video. At this time, I guess this has been done by hand, frame after frame, but now it’s as easy as click-and-process.

He has posted several other examples of his work – HipHop By The Canal, Skatepark At The Canal, Late Sunday Morning At The Farmers market, Stabi Portrait B. v4 – along with his Stabilized Video Collages, How-To.  All of these make me think about what could be possible with this … as an art form, and other possible uses.
There are the immediate thoughts about using several cameras to record at the same time, and then sync up the videos … versus one camera recording the same scene (slightly offset) at different times.  The creation of huge panoramic videos becomes possible as very affordable prices.  I also started to think about the creation of a collage of an outdoors scene that would be made up of video taken from the four different seasons … mixing the beauty of each season into one field of view.
Amazing … “click-and-process” … compute power, and the complexity of software is ever increasing … and amazing works like this show up!

The wrap up of the Gilder Telecosm conference is always one of my favorite presentations. For the last number of years, it has always been Carver Mead speaking … and he is an incredible man. It’s not only his accomplishments, but his presentation itself … his presence … his speech … his wisdom.

Carver Mead, Internationally known author and educator; Holder of the National Medal of Technology; Founder of twenty-five companies; Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering Emeritus, California Institute of Technology

Some of his work includes the foundation technology behind Foveon, “a world innovator in the design and development of image sensors and image capture systems for a wide range of digital capture products.” If you aren’t familiar with his company, you can read about the Foveon technology … it is amazing, and well know to extreme photographers. In additional this year another company with his involvement Audience presented here … creating sound processing silicon modeled after the human ear and brain.

Part of the introductory presentation was by Louisa Gilder, who wrote the book The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn. She gave a brief history of the debates that go back to the 1930’s about quantum theories, and the various experiments up through the work of John Bell.

Carver was introduced by Lloyd Watts, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Audience. Lloyd had been a student of Carver’s at CalTech. He did a wonderful introduction and thanked Carver for the impact that Carver has had on so many people’s lives … including his won.

Carver begin his presentation by talking about research that has shown the inaccuracy of perception and reality … and how that relates to human behavior. He had one study that showed where the bottom quarter of a class, who had taken a test and were in the bottom 10 percentile, tended to think they had not done that bad … even above average. While the best and brightest who were in the top quarter … scoring in the 90th percentile … tended to question how well they had done … and were unsure of their ability … and tended to guess lower than they had done. His point was how real genius is often able to question their own knowledge, and to be open to what they do not know … to always question their own knowledge, and to “push the limits of human knowledge.”

He ventured into a philosophical conversation about creativity and genius. He questioned where ideas come from … true inventions or innovation. He touched on eastern thoughts where they believe that all things undiscovered, and un-manifested, exist in the “darkness”. They exist, but have not yet been found by us … and will only be found when we choose to explore the darkness searching for them. He expressed that this is only one way to view this phenomenon, and that we each have our own ways to clear our minds, to explore the darkness, and to create. I enjoy thinking about this as I find the most powerful way for me to “explore the darkness” is to break my usual patterns, and to do those things that i wouldn’t usually do … do go and do things that I usually wouldn’t.

Carver then talked about the power of words. The importance of words. How the words that we choose to use define the context that we operate within. He talked about the ways that people begin to create models of new concepts … and that the language that they use to define these new models automatically begin to limit themselves. I have also been taught this same idea from numerous sources … that as we grow up we begin to become “loose” with our language, and underestimate the power of what we say … and don’t say. We often use “weak” words, and express disbelief and disappointment. We hear stories about the power of positive thinking, but fail to realize how much of this is expressed in our speaking. If we are not always thinking and speaking in a positive way, it can poison our whole way of being. This includes how we talk about ourselves, others, and what we are up to in life.
The next area of conversation that Carver explored was the extension of our senses. He expressed that when he is working on his research, and looking at an oscilloscope connected to some semiconductors, he is not looking at the waveforms but instead using that as a way to visualize in his mind the individual electrons flowing through the semiconductor. He related this to using a hammer … talking about when you first started using a hammer for the first time, it was awkward and you fought to control the direction and impact. But as you become better and better with using a hammer, it actually starts to become an extension of you … and you begin to gain control over directing the impact, and also sensing if you made good impact with your target. Likewise he said that as you gain skill at using any tool, you can allow that tool to become an extension of you … and and to allow that tool to give you new ways to see what is going on.
As he wrapped up, he posited that all matter is waves … there are no particles … no points of energy. All matter is waves. Nothing but waves. The energy of matter is it’s frequency, and it’s wavelength is one over the momentum … the vector of momentum. I had to stop taking notes to focus on what he was saying, but it was an incredible way to visualize matter. He talked about electron not being in “shells” or “orbits” around the nucleus, but instead to consider that electrons take on different “wave functions” wrapped around the nucleus. He then also discussed how due to the charges, and the electrons wanting to avoid each other, they are forced to take on different wave functions in avoidance. Some of these wave functions can become more and more convoluted, and then can become “smoothed” when these atoms get near other atoms … creating molecules. And that the binding nature of molecules is formed by the more natural wave functions that are formed through the combination of atoms.

There is so much more that he said that I didn’t get down in notes … I really wish that Gilder would post the podcasts and vidcasts of these presentations … they are an outstanding source of new perspectives. Carver Mead is an amazing man … what a contribution to society.

There were a number of cool presentations today with a focus on the semiconductors and optical components … and various network processing units and multi-core general purpose processors for high-speed backbone networking. It’s actually a fascinating subject area that few people seem to really be aware of. We all take the bandwidth to our homes as a given … and to our businesses, and to our hosted servers, blogs, flickr, twitter, and YouTube and on and on. But how is all of that backbone bandwidth … running over the fiber that connects us to our favorite sites, services, applications, and videos … actually built out?

Well … there are a number of vendors that provide the bulk of the equipment, and within that equipment there are providers of the subcomponents and silicon behind the massive amounts of bandwidth provided by the Internet. Cisco, Juniper, and Alcatel add up to 90% of the market for the really high-end backbone switching and routing gear.

The dominant solution in this space is using DWDM – Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing – to place multiple colors of light on the same fiber, with each color carrying it’s own data. The current “commodity” speeds that are being sold are running at 40Gbps per link, and these are then installed in 4, 8, and 16+ slot chassis providing up to 1.2+Tbps packet switching speeds. Yes … that is 1.2 Terabits per second … 1.2 trillion bits per second … or about 120 billion characters per second. Kinda’ fast.

Some of the presenters today were Infinera, Luxtera, Photonic, and BroadLight. If you want to learn more about DWDM … Infinera has some cool videos that provide some details about their products on the Infinera Videos page. Their first video demonstrates how DWDM works …

During the presentations, there were a few stats that really stood out to me. One of these was the current average backbone bandwidth, per US carrier. Here is the US, although the presented admitted that it varies, the average was pegged at about 400Gbps+ on their backbone links. The key is that the estimates are an average of a 75% growth in the next year!

One of the examples of the calculations was based on taking this forward for 10 years … so if the internet grows at 70% per year for 10 years … using the current 40Gbps DWDM optical technologies:

• 15 million DWDM transponders will have to be added
• 165 million mechanical fiber couplings will have to be installed
• 4 GigaWatts of additional power will be required
• AND … In 10 years, they would be installing 4000 DWDM transponders PER DAY …
• … requiring 2000+ more technicians!

Infinera was presenting on their upcoming 100Gbps optical technologies, and also mentioned their eventual 400Gbps product, followed by 1Tbps, 2Tbps, and 4Tbps chipsets. Obviously as they – and other companies – are able to deliver these higher capacity solutions, there will be smaller numbers of units required to keep pace.

To me it’s impressive to see that people are working on creating these next-generation solutions to boost the capabilities offered …. to ensure that the Internet backbones can keep pace with the demands for bandwidth being created by us users.

There is a lot going on in the industry to cope with Internet bandwidth demands …