billso.com

Segway inventor Dean Kamen has his own take on water purification, the Slingshot. His machine weighs 45 kg and can produce 1000 liters of clean water a day from really dirty water. The machine is a vapor compression distillation system that is powered by a Stirling engine. Stirling engines are small, efficient, and can use a wide variety of fuel sources. The engine produces waste heat that can be used to boil processed water, cooking or other purposes.

He also demonstrated a prototype Slingshot on The Colbert Report on 20 March 2008. The prototype cost at least US$100,000, but Kamen hopes to lower the production costs to US1000. The video is available at the show’s web site, Wired and Gizmodo, with a brief article about the machine. There’s more information at Wikipedia, Sentient Developments, RexResearch and sfgate.com

Pedal power

The video below describes the Aquaduct, a bicycle that also filters 8 liters of water. It’s an interesting concept that addresses transportation, fitness and public health concerns in developing countries.

The bicycle is designed for women, but anyone over the age of 12 could ride it comfortably. I have no idea of the tires are solid rubber or inflatable. Solid rubber tires would be much more durable on trails, of course.

This ZDnet article has some more information

Business Week discusses the design process behind the Flip video camera, which has become an unexpected hit. Engineers started with the most basic design they could imagine, and added little else. Users who want a cheap, simple camcorder and who don’t want cables or complicated documentation are buying Flips. It’s the best selling camcorder on Amazon.com.

David Pogue of the New York Times discussed the Flip a few weeks ago, also.

• There’s no power adapter or rechargeable battery. Regular AA batteries are used.
• Want to expand the onboard memory? You can’t. There’s no memory card slot. Flips are sold with either 30 minutes and 60 minutes of storage.
• Downloading the video is easy: an on-board USB jack plugs directly into computers, and built-in editing software pops up to help the user.

Howard Owens has posted a brief review with two videos he shot with a Flip.

This morning’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin has a great feature article on the Ball aluminum can plant in Kapolei. Manufacturing beverage cans takes more technological capability than most consumers would believe. It’s good to see a mainland company that is still producing products on Oahu for the state of Hawaii.

I still don’t understand why Frito-Lay closed its chip plant in 2006. See this Pacific Business News article for more details. It makes much more sense to bring the raw materials to Oahu in bulk on container ships. Why is Frito-Lay making its chips on the mainland and shipping them here when the finished product is fragile and filled with air? We can fit many more potatoes than potato chips in a cargo container.

From tomorrow’s New York Times comes a sobering examination of the dominant blogging business model.

“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”

“This is not sustainable,” he said.

I discussed blogging for a living on 27 March 2008, but I didn’t discuss stress. Two prominent technology bloggers, Russell Shaw and March Orchant, have died in the last 5 months.

Some bloggers have decided to chase the headlines, and post up-to-the-minute comments about news events. For a solo blogger who is also managing their own comments and web site, the duties can pile up. Another blogger mentioned in the Times article, 22-year old Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo, sleeps about 5 hours a day, and drinks protein supplement lattes to stay buzzed.

“There’s no time ever — including when you’re sleeping — when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Mr. Arrington said.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific time and dawn? Then we could all take a break,” he added. “But that’s never going to happen.”

One advantage of blogging in Honolulu is that I can check the news later in the day, before the East Coast bloggers really get rolling.

Exercise also helps me a lot. I go running early in the morning, partly to get away from the computer as the US news cycle is full swing.

On Tuesday, 8 April 2008, I’ll post an article about how I manage billso.com and avoid some of the issues I’ve discussed in this article. When that a

One strategy that telecommunications companies have adopted is bundling, or selling a combination of services at a reduced price. The goal is customer lock-in, a situation in which the buyer is more or less trapped in their purchase. In many cases, lock-in happens when the customer satisfices or compromises to gain value or convenience. Customers might grow dissatisfied over time, but they are unlikely to leave because alternative services are not available, or their perceived switching costs are too high.

A variety of US cable television and telecommunication companies have offered bundling programs. The usual items include television service and broadband Internet.

Companies that offer cable modems usually offer these services through the same “pipe” or connection – the coaxial cable drop found in many homes.

Local exchange carriers (LECs) offer POTS (traditional or “plain old telephone service”), and the final connection to the home is the familiar RJ-11 modular phone jack found in most US homes. Some LECs also offer mobile phone plans in their bundles.

Landline connections may be offered through VoIP or POTS, depending upon the carrier’s technology.

Agonizing over savings

Alina Tugend of the New York Times provided a great example of this decision-making process in her article last week. Customers sometimes obsess over lock-in when their friends brag about how much they saved by switching. Yes, lock-in also works well for insurance companies, too!

In Honolulu, Oceanic Time Warner, Clearwire and Hawaiian Telcom each offer bundles. Oceanic has a standard cable television package that includes cable modem service, long distance calling and VoIP calling plans. Oceanic staff can connect the customer’s RJ-11 telephone jacks to the company’s network, so customers can continue to use their existing landline handsets and equipment.

Clearwire offers broadband Internet service, long distance calling and VoIP telephone numbers through its WiMax network. Customers can hook their landline phone into Clearwire’s modem. The Clearwire service does not require an installation visit, but the coverage areas are somewhat limited. This article at DailyWireless.org has several interesting diagrams of business telephone systems.

Hawaiian Telcom keeps struggling

The HawTel package includes a POTS landline, long distance calling and DSL. HawTel is still working on its IPTV offering, which has been delayed by implementation problems. IPTV would let HawTel offer television service through the same RJ-11 telephone drop used by its landline and DSL offerings.

As a side note, I hated HawTel’s obnoxious “Savers Unite” advertising campaign, and am glad that it has been replaced. Was the tagline a call to action or an insult? It was hard for me to tell. The radio and television ads reinforced a stereotype of the “thrifty local” who clips coupons, hoards travel-size toiletries and wears old clothes to pay the “price of paradise”. Then again, telecom marketing campaigns usually strive for the “common touch”, in an effort to hold the average customer.

Telecom bundles are subject to a host of Federal, state and local regulations. Pricing is often controlled by government agencies and franchise agreements. On 18 August 2007, I discussed HawTel’s naked DSL option, which let consumers order DSL service without a voice landline. HawTel was late to act, as thousands of subscribers adopted mobile phones and dropped their landlines. These customers switched to Oceanic, Clearwire, or other broadband Internet services.

Customer lock-in is difficult to achieve when companies fail to implement their industries’ key success factors well. On 16 November 2006, I discussed HawTel’s billing problems after the company was purchased from Verizon. Mike Ruley never overcame these earlier issues and lost his post as HawTel’s CEO earlier this month, as I mentioned on 5 February 2008.