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I followed a link on BoingBoing to this Times of India article: Delhi is getting a 45-kilometer monorail system.

The technology panel will announce their selection for Honolulu’s proposed fixed guideway mass transit system tomorrow, according to this article in the Honolulu Advertiser. The five panel members are evaluating four technologies, including:

1. trains (steel wheel on steel rail)
2. buses (rubber tire on concrete)
3. monorail
4. magnetic levitation

The decision will also be announced on the Honolulu High Capacity Transit Corridor’s web site. The video simulation of the proposed Aloha Tower station is pretty good. Most of the site’s content is trapped in PDF files, however.

As I posted on 6 February 2008, I support the bus option. This option could create a two-lane elevated road that can also be used by emergency vehicles. The buses for this system might also be deployed on surface roads as demand warrants. The other three technologies are less flexible and more expensive. City councilmembers Donovan Dela Cruz and Ann Kobayashi appeared on the byline for this article in the Honolulu Star-Builletin on 26 August 2007. The article includes a picture of one bus model. Below is a promotional video for the Eindhoven bus system.

A few weeks ago, my face-to-face IS 7010 students talked about the high-definition DVD format war. Apple, Sony, Disney and Fox supported Blu-ray. Warner’s defection from the HD DVD camp last month was an indication that Blu-ray was winning the battle, according to this New York Times article.

The rival HD DVD format was supported by Universal, Paramount, Toshiba, Microsoft and Intel, according to this Wikipedia article.

Of course, Blu-ray discs won’t play in a standard HD DVD player, and vice versa. Engadget has a chart that compares the two formats here.

This format war is reminiscent of the Beta vs VHS video tape battle in the 1970s and 1980s.

It seems that this format war is over, and Blu-ray has won. Wal-Mart had been pushing HD DVD in its stores, but the company announced yesterday that they will no longer sell HD DVD movies, according to the New York Times. The shift was announced on Wal-Mart’s corporate blog in this article. Engadget has sounded the death knell, partly because Wal-Mart sells 20% of the DVD in the USA.

Toshiba made one desperate last attempt to promote their HD DVD technology with an expensive commercial during the Super Bowl earlier this month. However, Netflix and Blockbuster had previously announced they would support Blu-ray. Now Toshiba is suspending their HD DVD marketing.

Computer manufacturers have long wanted a single standard high-def DVD format. Software publishers don’t really need high-def DVDs and the moment, and game publishers have to go along with whatever format is used in the game consoles.

From BusinessWeek, here’s an article with 10 tips for delivering effective presentations. this felt like a timely article, as students are starting to deliver presentations in their courses around this time of year.

The author uses Steve Jobs and his product announcements as an example, but many of these tips will work well for any presentation.

My favorite points on the list are:

1) Set the theme. Let the audience know what they will learn from the talk.

4) Use meaningful numbers. Discuss ratios, percentages and results in ways that the audience can understand. Never assume that the audience will do the analysis themselves. I sometimes hear graduate students claim that a company is doing well because it is earning a profit. My follow-up questions focus on their evidence for that claim.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Product announcements sometimes become awkward when the technology malfunctions. Avoid fancy transitions and tools that take extra preparation, support or time to use.

10) Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. A presentation is a performance. Most of the audience members have delivered presentations themselves, but they won’t cut the presenter much slack. The best content and slides cannot save a boring or poorly delivered presentation.

BusinessWeek reports on modu, an Israeli company that has developed a modular mobile phone around the size of an iPod Nano. The Associated Press reports the phone will be launched on 1 October 2008 in Italy, Russia and Israel.

As Reuters pointed out yesterday, telecoms and mobile phone manufacturers will be out in force at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Frankfurt, Germany.  Modu is only one of several hundred manufacturers who will use their booths to show off their latest hardware.

Modu has designed a basic GSM phone that could be used on its own, but the company wants third parties to license the technology and build “jackets”. These are devices like media players, mobile handsets and other gadgets that have a slot for the modu phone. The jackets provide a larger, more comfortable form-factor for everyday use, and provide opportunities to decorate, brand and extend the phone.

Founder Dov Moran has the experience and connections to pull this off, having sold his flash memory business, M-Systems, to SanDisk in 2006 for US$1.5 billion. He’s invested US$5 million in modu, according to Reuters, and believes his new company could generate US$1 billion in sales revenue by 2011. That would rival the largest mobile phone manufacturers like Nokia and Samsung, whose businesses rely on a traditional business model. Consumers buy a handset, use it for a while, and upgrade to a different model.

The modu concept would let manufacturers add mobile connectivity to a wide range of electronic devices. Digital cameras could have a modu slot, for example. Car stereo systems might include a modu slot, as shown in the concept video on the modu website. A modu-compatible media player would be an interesting rival for the iPhone.

Creating a consumer hardware standard is tricky. Video games are a good example. Cartridges and software from one system usually do not work with another manufacturer’s console.

From the New York Times, G. Paschal Zachary presents a brief discussion of the risks of innovation. if consumers are motivated, they may accept tecnological changes more readily. Professor Zachary uses the Toyota Prius and its unusual user interface as an example.

BoingBoing had another post on a similar theme. Joel Johnson is glad his father replaced his old Windows computer with a Mac. Johnson describes how he uses the Mac’s features to help his father by remote control.