$200 Billion toward a hydrogen economy

As the total cost of the Iraq war approaches $200 Billion, it is sobering to think about what else this money might have purchases for the US.

For example, with about 200,000 gas stations around the US, this is $1 million per gas station. Wouldn't that have been enough to install hydrogen refueling equipment at every gas station in the country? Now that BMW and others have announced cars that can run on hydrogen or gas aren't we just waiting for the production and distribution infrastructure? $200 billion could have solved that problem.

Pot vs. Crack

Maybe it will turn out to be true. Maybe, as the Feds allege, the folks running medicinal pot facilities in San Francisco were really fronts for organized crime.

But on the other hand it might just be an excuse for the Feds to spend time arresting 61-year-old Iris Lai Hung Tam, of San Bruno, who is likely to put up a lot less of a fight then gun-toting gang members in Richmond.

The government is focused on cracking down on aging hippies with terminal diseases trying to smoke pot in the privacy of their own homes while drive by shootings and drug related gang activity have made Richmond one of the most dangerous cities in the country.

2005 SDForum Visionary Awards

As some may recall, I posted an entry last year after attending the 2004 SDForum Visionary Awards. Last year I was very impressed with the event, the awardees, and the speeches.

Last night I attended the 2005 version of this annual event which was again hosted by Heidi Roizen at her Atherton home. While the party was just as nice, and the hostess just as gracious, I have to say that I was dissapointed by the awardees and by their speeches.

Last year awards were given to four individuals who truly oversaw the creation of each of their respective companies. John Chambers of Cisco, Craig Barret of Intel, Scott Cook of Intuit and even Marc Benioff of Salesforce are all amazing entrepreneurs well deserving of the SDForum Visionary award.

While this year's honorees were all interesting valley players, only Carol Bartz of Autodesk could really claim to have built her company and even Carol joined Autodesk after it was a public company and already had $285 million in revenue. On an inflation adjusted basis that is almost $400 million in today's dollars. With $1.2 billion in revenue this year, that means that Carol merely tripled her company's revenue in 13 years. Nothing compared to the growth of Cisco, Intel, and Intuit.

And the other winners? Bill Draper (a venture capitalist), Carly Fiorina, and Ray Ozzie. Of these three, perhaps you could say that Ray Ozzie is deserving of the award -- certainly he is a visionary, although of a technology rather than entrepreneurial variety.

But the more dissapointing aspect of this year's awards was the speeched themselves. Sure, it was funny to hear Scott McNeally's story about firing Sun's VP of Marketing just to keep Carol Bartz from quitting. It was hilarious to have the very carefully worded introduction of Carly Fiorina by legal eagle Larry Sonsini. But nowhere this year did we hear the rousing call to action from the Silicon Valley community to be bigger than ourselves -- to focus on the world's problems not just on our techology and profits.

I left last year's event feeling inspired and wanting to do more for my country and my fellow man. I left this year's event feeling full of good food and interesting ideas -- but far from inspired.

Air travel SUCKS

So I flew out from California to Kansas today -- meeting with Sprint tomorrow and Thursday (Orb Networks' latest partner) -- and I am reminded of how truly terrible air travel has become. Flew on United from San Francisco to Denver, and then switched planes to fly from Denver to Kansas. All they fed us was peanuts -- 6 hours of travel and all we got was peanuts.

But the funniest/saddest moment was when I got up to see what kind of magazines they had on board. Nothing. I said to the flight attendent "kind of slim on the magazines today!" She replied with a bitter tone, "we are BANKRUPT you know."

OK, so its been awhile since I have done any business travel. But this is crazy. Why are business travellers putting up with this?

As a side note, its GREAT to be able to write in my blog that I am out in Kansas meeting with our partner Sprint. Back when I worked for Borland (public company) I could never write in my blog where I actually was and who I was actually meeting with. SEC regulation FD and all that...

Cokie Roberts on Ted Koppel

I was listening to the radio last night (the actual radio, not Orb Media...) and NPR had a program from the World Affairs Council where they interviewed Cokie Roberts. She is an interesting person, having had a long career at NPR in addition to her ABC career. But I found it especially interesting to hear her talk about Ted Koppel's decision to leave Nightline -- because of the attitude she displayed about how the broadcast industry thinks.

She said "I don't know what the networks have decided to do with the time slot," speaking of the likelihood that Nightline would be cancelled. When asked what viewers who enjoy programs like Nightline can do, she said something about how "we now have minute by minute polls that show that people click away when a TV program covers issues outside the US..."

This is the fundamental problem with the broadcast industry. Because it has to think in terms of "time slots" it worries about how to build the biggest (and/or most valuable) audience in any given slot. Thus if you can get a bigger audience share for mud wrestling, international news goes out the window.

I believe that we are on the cusp though of a monumental change in media. Just as the print media has been radically transformed over the past decade by the Internet, the broadcast industry wil be transformed over the next one. Web news sites and blogs have been the dominant forces changing print media. It will be interesting to see whether Orb Networks (where I work) will provide the model for the change in the broadcast industry.

But whatever the vehicle is, I believe that consumers will make a fundamental shift in their viewing pattern -- from asking "which channel should I watch" to asking "which SHOW should I watch" and that they will increasingly want to watch that show when, where, and how they want. While it may mean that more people watch mud wrestling (because it will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) it also means that those of us interested in international news will have access to thoughtful programs on the subject.

And this will be a boon to producers of content because they will have access to an audience of faithful viewers who can be counted and analyzed and monetized independent of a "time slot" in a broadcast schedule.

A new renaissance for "broadcast" media is upon us.

Om Follow Up

Om posted a nice item on his blog titled Orb dials-up Sprint and with this we are back in communication. It seems that he wasn't getting my emails for some reason. We have agreed to get together soon to update him on Orb Networks, which I am looking forward to as there are a number of things to talk about....

5 million local telephone customers being marketed to by Sprint for one, not just the 500,000 DSL customers. And our distribution agreement with ADS, also announced today... and some interesting upcoming announcements.

I also agree with Om's observation about place-shifting becoming an important technology for a lot of different kinds of players -- cable companies, CE companies, content companies... but will they all have the right mix of technologies and services? In addition to the market traction that Orb is getting, we have an interesting take on what the media portal of the future will look like... not necessarily a vision that is absolutely unique -- but rare in that it is grounded by what customers actually want, not by entrenched business interests.

DRM and Exotic Inefficiencies

Very interesting reading over on Curt Van Inwegen's blog on DRM and Exotic Inefficiences, a term Curt picked up from Moneyball. Here is a short excerpt from Curt's post

After a long business trip across the country this week ruminating on some of the discussions Orb Networks is having with various partner prospects, my laptop ran out of batteries and frankly I just needed a book to read on the way home. Without thinking about any correlation to Orb, I picked up Moneyball, a fantastic book by Michael Lewis, where I came across the term “exotic inefficiencies.” The essence of the book is how the Oakland A’s, one of the “poorest” teams in baseball manage to win so many games in contrast to the rest of the league, who have sky-high payrolls and, so it is assumed, the best players. But against the prevailing wisdom, the A’s keep winning.

As I got deeper into the book, the similarities to Orb and our own conversations with both technology and content distribution partners was stunning...

More on Curt's blog...

Sprint and Orb

I finally get a chance to shoot back at Om Malik who has some reason to promote Avvenu and wrote about the two of us recently.

In his article, Om states that Avvenu is "a polar opposite" of Orb Networks in that Avvenu is partnering with big companies, and Orb is not. Well, today we announced our partnership with Sprint so that should change the way that Om thinks about us... of course he hasn't responded to my emails and hasn't agreed to talk to us -- though he has met with the Avvenu team... ?? (CORRECTION -- OM Just Answered my email...)

LA - Why do people live there

Just got back from a vacation to Joshua Tree with the family. The desert was wonderful. Still some spring flowers blooming, nice cool days to hike... But we flew in and out of LA which was a mistake. The traffic, the smog, the craziness... The kids loved going to the entertainment museum and walk of stars (we stopped for one night in LA) but for the adults it was a huge chore. Its hard to understand why people put up with that traffic every day! I guess they get used to it, just as I have gotten used to our milder (but still bad) traffic in the bay area. But the smog?? Perhaps it was just a bad day or two when we were going out and coming back in... but LA is looking more and more like Mexico City. You can hardly see anything anymore -- you don't notice the tall buildings in downtown or the mountains until you are right on top of them. Why don't people who live there do something about this?

Ted is 39

Today is my birthday. Today around 8:00 PM (the time I was born) I will begin my 40th year on this planet. 40 years. That's the longest assignment I've ever taken! But this planet seems to be OK in most regards, so I don't mind sticking around for another enlistment term...

I told my daughter (now 1 1/2) this morning that it was my birthday and that I was now 39. I said "Can you imagine being that old? 39?" She said "yeah." Ahh youth. Of course she often says "yeah or nah" seemingly at random... so who knows what she thought I asked her.

Yesterday at dinner time I asked if she wanted some Indian food, she said "yeah." I said, do you want it to be really spicy, she said "yeah." I said, do you want it to be so hot it burns the roof of your mouth off, she said "yeah." I think she trusts me too much.

Every year on my birthday I try to think about resolutions for the year ahead. Birthday resolutions ARE "new year's resolution" -- MY new year... Last year my resolutions included spending more time with my family, writing more, and continuing to lose weight and get in shape. I am happy to say I have achieved all three goals. Now I have to think about what I can do this coming year...

New Orb Blog

Rather than continue to fill this blog with Orb related news, we will now return to our regular scheduled programming, and direct you to the new OrbCasting blog for news about Orb by a range of folks from the company...

Orb International

One week ago we announced that Orb Media would be free and it has been a tremendous week of activity for us. Tomorrow we announce that Orb is available internationally! Most of the great Orb features will work everywhere in the world -- streaming video, streaming audio, photos. The only thing that is still US-centric is live TV -- because we have to license the TV guide in each country and it takes us awhile to find someone to license the data to us and then to integrate it into the user interface... But in the meantime everything else works, whether you are in Singapore, Baghdad, Rome, or anywhere else...

And tomorrow we will unveil our first foreign language UI -- mon.orb.com gives you the entire Orb interface in French! Any user can go to this URL instead of my.orb.com and see their personal media world with a French accent. Japanese is next, later in April...

There are a lot more exciting changes ahead to support the international flavor. For example, we are working to expand the Internet TV and Radio listings sections to include content from all over the world. So I can't wait to hear from all of you outside the U.S. that are trying Orb.

Orb is FREE

As of today, Orb is free.

Our philosophy is simple -- if you own it, either because you created it or because you have already paid for it, then you should be able to enjoy it anywhere, anytime, on any device. Orb makes it possible.

When we announced Orb at CES, we told the world that it would cost $9.95 per month. We were worried about the bandwidth requirements on our servers to host the service, the support requirements for our users, and we were unsure of the revenue models beyond subscription.

Today, many thousands of users later, I am happy to say that we have put all of these fears to rest and can now offer the core Orb service for free.

Yes, there will be advertising in the future -- but we know that this must be done the google way -- advertising that is unobtrusive and adds value without inhibiting the core use of the service. And more importantly there will be content subscriptions coming soon -- all kinds of new content that you can purchase through Orb...

But even if you never click on an advertisement and never purchase content, our core philosophy will guarantee you free access to your own TV, your own videos, your own audio, and your own photos... anytime, anyplace, any device.

Save Biodiesel in Berkeley

I have just emailed mayor Tom Bates and I urge you to do so as well. The City of Berkeley is considering abandoning its leadership in utilizing 100% biofuel for its fleet of diesel vehicles. Here is the call to action from Berkeley's Ecology Center:



The Ecology Center, Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, and BioFuel Oasis urge you to email and/or call the Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and tell him that the city should continue to run their vehicles on 100% biodiesel (B100).

The City of Berkeley has been running it's vehicles on 100% biodiesel (B100) for 1-2 years. They have recently switched to B20 (20% biodiesel, 80% diesel). There was an article in the Daily Planet that blamed it on the quality of fuel they were getting. On closer examination, we believe that it's not the quality of the fuel, but that the city hasn't always done the proper maintenance on their storage tanks and on their vehicles to run biodiesel. Plus, a key proponent of biodiesel in the Public Works Dept. retired, so there is not the support there to take the precautions and maintenance around running an alternative fuel (biodiesel is probably the easiest alternative fuel compared to CNG, electric, etc.).

The Ecology Center recycling trucks and the City of Berkeley vehicles have pioneered the use of 100% biodiesel (B100) and have won awards for it. The rest of the country looks to them for advice and the lead. We need to keep them on B100, the only petroleum-free, renewable vehicle fuel, so others will continue to follow.

Please email and/or call the mayor of Berkeley and your councilperson. Include your address if you live in Berkeley.

Mayor Tom Bates
mayor@ci.berkeley.ca.us
(510) 981-7100

Thank you for your help!

Here's some points from the Ecology Center about how using biodiesel fuel benefits all of us:

o Using biodiesel in place of petroleum diesel helps prevent
asthma. Studies have shown that emissions from petroleum diesel are
among the leading contributors to asthma. Children living along
transit lines, such as the I-80 corridor, experience increased rates
of asthma and respiratory illness. The City's heavy trucks use main
arteries, such as Sacramento St, San Pablo Avenue, University, and
Gilman. The effects of exhaust have a disproportionate effect on
lower income neighborhoods where asthma rates are highest.

o A report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council
showed that a child riding inside of a diesel school bus may be
exposed to as much as 4 times the level of toxic diesel exhaust as
someone standing or riding beside it. Our kids deserve cleaner air.
Let's keep our buses running on clean burning biodiesel. (For the
full report, go to
http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/schoolbus/sbusinx.asp .)

o Recently, the City of Berkeley passed a resolution to endorse
the Kyoto protocol and to do its part to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Because it's made from renewable plant sources, biodiesel fuel
reduces greenhouse-causing gases like no other fuel. Let's continue
to be a model for other cities to follow.

o Biodiesel contains 80-90% fewer carcinogens than are found in
petroleum diesel, and virtually eliminates sulfur emissions that
contribute to acid rain.

o Domestic biodiesel reduces U.S. dependence on highly
polluting oil products, environmentally destructive oil drilling, and
wars and interventions involving the world oil market.

o In 2004, the EPA recognized the City of Berkeley for
Outstanding Environmental Achievement for its adoption of biodiesel.
It's important that Berkeley continue this award winning program.

BioFuel Oasis
A Worker-Owned Cooperative
2465 4th St
Berkeley, CA 94710
510 665 5509
www.biofueloasis.com

Orb Update

Step one launched today -- a brand new user interface experience for Orb users. Beautiful, functional... a huge improvement... Of course you can only see it if yuo go and load Orb on your home machine (running windows XP) from the Orb website. More majore changes to Orb coming soon!! :-)

Orb absorbing all free time...

Is Orb a blackhole? Scientists and Ted's family members are seeking answers as the Orb continues to suck up everything in it's path...

Now YOU do it

It was nice to be recognized yesterday by Jerry Brown for helping him get started on his blog. But it is more important to recognize a truth in this that Margaret Meade put so well:

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

I am just an ordinary citizen. I didn't know Jerry Brown before I emailed him back in December. But a little persistence on my part, and a willingness to listen on his part has launched a grand new experiment -- the mayor of a large American city, creating a direct channel for communication with the networked electorate. Politics and Government can be changed, for the better.

Now its your turn. Pick a local or statewide politician in your area. Contact him or her and do what I did -- say, I'm just a local citizen that happens to be a part of your electorate, and I think you should have a blog. Create more transparency in government. Connect with us as voters and citizens and let us know who you really are and what you believe. Don't be a press release, be a person.

In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Brown commented to interviewers Matier and Ross:

"As an old talk-show host, I've had some experience in unrehearsed dialogue," said Brown, who hosted a daily program on the Pacifica network in the 1990s. Blogging, he said, is "the logical next step."

As with talk-shows, blogs can be insipid and boring at their worst but insightful and even profound at their best. But the most important thing about both is that they remove all of the middlemen -- the PR handlers, the aides and advisors, and the journalists and editors. These mediums provide an opportunity for the true voice of the individual to be heard clearly. As with the advent of television, this new kind of access to elected officials and candidates will have a tremendous impact on how we think about politics and politicians. Instead of reducing the race to a competition on how witty, attractive, or smooth a candidate might be, hopefully blogging politicians will help surface real issues, opinions, biases, and attitudes. And hopefully it will get us all more involved in our democracy.

Jerry Brown: Blogger

So I finally had an opportunity to meet with Jerry Brown and I really liked him. He was very personable and interested in getting better connected with the electorate. One immediate offshoot -- Jerry is now blogging which I think is great. He has also asked for a set of recommendation to improve his web site.

As we talked about the Internet and the web I gave Jerry the standard pitch about Cluetrain and pushed an idea that Doc Searls and I had discussed -- the networked electorate. Jerry got it and wants to explore how he could get both elected and appointed officials in Oakland blogging. Now that would be cool.

Orb for XP Beta

A new version of the Orb software which is specifically designed to work on XP is now available from the Orb website. If you already have downloaded the Media Center version onto an XP it should automatically update to the new version. Let me know if you don't get prompted with an update message! And if you have been holding off on trying out Orb because you didn't have a Media Center -- now is the time to jump in! If you don't have a tuner card in your PC the only thing you cannot do is watch live TV -- you can still watch recorded video, listen to music, and view your photos. And we support a growing list of TV tuner cards if you want to upgrade your PC.

Looking forward to hearing from you when you've give it a whirl...

Carly Please Listen

Carly:

HP just lost a $10,000 sale from me. I tried to order from you, I really did. I tried four times. I needed three high-end media center PCs for the company I work for, Orb. But your direct to consumer web and phone ordering service is fundamentally broken. So I am buying from Dell instead.

First I tried to order from your website. You wouldn't let me. I went through a lot of effort to configure the systems exactly the way I wanted them and then when I went to "check-out" of your online store a message informed my that the purchase could not be completed online and that I had to call your 800 number.

So I called. My first disappointment was that there was no visibility from the folks at the 800 number into the order I had just created online. That makes sense though, your online system never even gave me a chance to enter my personal information before rejecting my order. But it was a disappointment.

So I went through the entire process again, over the phone. Your inbound telesales people are very nice, by the way. But they have no power in your system as I was to learn...

Having configured the entire system, the order taker pushed enter and got a message that the purchase had not been approved by my credit card company. This is strange, I thought, I have no balance and a $35,000 credit line. It must be that there is a fraud alert on my card. Perhaps I could call the credit card company, clear the fraud alert, and have HP put the charge through again? Sorry, said the telesales person, you'll have to start the entire order over again when you call back...

OK, well let me charge this to a different card then! Sorry, we still have to start the order over again from the beginning... So I was frustrated, but I did want to purchase from you, so I went through the entire configuration process again. This time I used my platinum American Express. This time we received a different message at the end:

Thank you for your recent order with hpshopping.com. We review all orders according to industry standard practices. We randomly select orders for further review for quality purpose and to ensure the integrity of our order processing system. You will receive an email message containing your order status by the end of the business day.

While this was frustrating, I knew that this was not a fradulent order, so I felt confident that the order would be processed by you. Imagine my surprise later that afternoon when I received a second message informing me that you could not process my order! In the meantime I had called my credit card company (the first one) and discovered that indeed there was a security hold on my card. It was released and they assured me that if you put the order through again, that it would clear. So I called you up again, went through the entire order again and... once again was declined by your company. I asked to speak with a supervisor but was told that none were available (it was, by that time, 10:12 EST so I guess they had all gone home).

This time I called the credit card company very frustrated with them (they operate 24 hours a day by the way) and asked them to explain what had happened. Apparently your system is designed to send a $1 charge through when the order is first created, to "test" the card. Then, when the order is complete, the full charge is sent through. Your service (despite being a telesales operation) is identified on these transactions as an Internet transaction (and thus high fraud risk). This rapid series of transactions - the test and then the full amount - trigger my bank's fraud algorithm and have a security hold placed on the card. A simple phone call to the bank can then release the hold and allow the transaction to go through... but of course your system doesn't allow the transaction to be processed a second time.

Here are some suggestions:

If you are going to run a telesales group, have it work with banks differently -- perhaps you are saving money having these transactions processed through the same mechanism as your online service, but you must be losing more than just me as a customer by doing this...

Give your telesales staff more power! They should be able to keep an order open, process different cards against the same order, rerun a card after a security block has been cleared... while they were very nice, they couldn't do anything for me that I couldn't do for myself on a website (oh, if your website had been working and let me place the order in the first place...)

Tell your supervisors that they need to stay around as long as there are still customers on the phones.

Oh, and one last thing. Dell turns out to have a more powerful computer for less money and a bigger flat panel display as a free add-on to my order... so you aren't even competitive on price.

wishing you and HP shareholders the best,