DARPA Grand Challenge

It looks as if the MDV sponsored Stanford Racing Team will win the DARPA Gran Challenge -- a desert race sponsored by the Defense Department to help develop autonomous vehicles. The Stanford vehicle finished the 132 mile course in 7 1/2 hours. Here is some terrific footage of the unmanned vehicles rolling by...

No winner has been declared yet because there are still two vehicles on the course. Start times were staggered, so there is a chance that one of these vehicles will still complete the race in a shorter time...

UPDATE: Stanford declared the winner, with a race time of 6 hours, 53 minutes. Dan posted a comment complaining that the video isn't "terrific" -- hey folks, remember these are driverless cars!

Fuel Cell Bus

Driving down to San Hill Road yesterday in my gas guzzling (25.6 mpg average) automobile, I saw an interesting freight item loaded on the back of a flat bed truck. An AC Transit bus emblazoned with the words ZERO EMISSIONS across the top. A handwritten note in the windshield read "FC Bus #3, Deliver to Oakland, CA." Today I found an article that appears on the "Fuel Cell Works" website, describing this amazing bus:

"When we integrate hybrid-electric components with fuel cell power, we get a vehicle that is quiet, fuel-efficient, and zero-emission," said Dave Mazaika, President and CEO of ISE. "We’ve taken this bus up to 70 miles per hour on the freeway, and in our testing phase, we have achieved twice the energy efficiency of diesel."

Here's a modest proposal -- when the current administration in Washington talks, as they did this morning, about "diversifying" away from the current high level of dependence upon the Gulf, instead of thinking about offshore wells on the California coast perhaps we should be working harder on developing a hydrogen economy.

United Airlines is Evil

Wow. Just tried to log onto the United Mileage Plus membership site and received the following error:

We're sorry, but we're currently unable to provide access to the My Mileage Plus web site without a valid e-mail address in your online profile. In addition, you must have opted in to the category of Mileage Plus Communications within your profile e-mail selections.

That's right. You have to agree to be spammed by United if you want to access the Mileage Plus website. This has to be a new low.

Of course, maybe it is an error - part of their site not working properly... Here is a link to the "validation error" page...

United Airlines is Doomed...

Dear United Airlines, have you noticed that your customer prevention department is the only part of the company that seems to be operating at maximum efficiency? First of all, I think you should probably test your website on something other than Internet Explorer. At least I hope it works on IE! On Firefox, trying to navigate to different sections often results in an error that I have never seen before -- "Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. Unable to load the requested page."

Since your website doesn't work, I tried calling your 800 number. Well that was a mistake. You have a new "voice recognition" front end -- which is *ok* if your caller wants to do something simple. But you don't make it easy to get to a live operator. Of course, when I finally did get to a live operator, the person had (a) a very bad phone connection and (b) a very thick Indian accent and (c) DIDN'T HAVE ANY CLUE ABOUT HOW TO DO ANYTHING RELATED TO UNITED.

As a result I am a very frustrated and unhappy customer. I can't imagine that other people calling are having any better experience. Customer service on a budget is not impossible! CALL JET BLUE. They have it figured out. Even Southwest is a good experience. On the other hand, just go out of business already.

Silicon Valley Traffic

Traffic in Silicon Valley has been my barometer for the economy since the early 1990s. When times are good, the freeways on the Peninsula back up with commuters headed from San Francisco down to tech jobs stretching from Redwood Shores to Cupertino... During the bubble the traffic on 101 and 280 (and even 880) through Silicon Valley became horrific.

This morning, for the first time since 2000, headed southbound on 280 through Woodside, there was a backup... no accident, just tons of cars headed South to consumer Internet jobs... Now all we need as a final indicator is for every billboard on 101 to be purchased by a dot com...

Party like its 1999: Bubble 2.0

The phrase "Bubble 2.0" is taking off at an incredible pace in the blogosphere. Accotding to a Google Search there are already over 70,000 references to the exact phrase "Bubble 2.0." Here is a typical one from Fred Wilson at Flat Iron Investments in New York City. Fred writes in part:

You went to a great party, had too good of a time, woke up with a terrible hangover, and promised yourself you wouldn't do that again.

Then the people who threw the party invite you to the next one.

What do you do? Go, of course.

I was at a dinner on Thursday night where the subject came up, and the number one question was, is it 1997? 98? or 99? In other words, how long will this bubble cycle go? With the recent IPO of WebMD (up 26% on their opening day) and others, I'd say 1998. The conditions are similar -- significant macroeconomic issues clouded the horizon (Russian currency collapse, the collapse of long term capital management, the asian economic crises...) and yet, in late 1998 with the IPO of TheGlobe.com an incredible bubble market was launched.

I think we are more likely in early 1998 -- broadbased market speculation in Internet issues is still a little ways off. Also this cycle will be different in a number of ways -- with a number of solid existing large Internet companies, more startups will be acquired rather than go public. Secondly, again because of those existing companies, there are comparables out there that will help value the market. On the other hand, the Internet has grown enormously in the past 7 years -- significantly more people are online, they are using the Internet for more things and for more time, their connections are faster...

I think the key trend to watch is the way in which Internet companies begin to invade rich media (radio, TV, film) industries. If the last decade was largely about how the Internet transformed the print industry, the next decade will be about rich digital content and transforming those industries. I suppose I should include voice and the telecommunications industry in that as well.

It should prove to be an exciting time once again

Failing the Turing Test

One man's online quest to pass the turing test...

That's It!

I was sad to learn this morning that today is my last day with Orb Networks. It has been a fun ride since January trying to make this company a success. I will miss working with the team at Orb, but I wish them all the best of luck bringing this truly incredible technology to market.

Now on to a new challenge!

WVoIP It Is!

Longtime readers of this blog may remember my ranting a little over a year ago about the new acronym for Voice over IP on WiFi networks... Om Malik's "V oWLAN". One suggestion that no one made back then, but is really the most reasonable is WVoIP -- for Wireless VoIP... Along comes a new conference called WVoIP ("...it's on the way, and it's poised to transform the landscape..."). I'm not sure what all the fuss is about anyway. I've been using Skype from my WiFi connected laptop all during the last year... But at least we have a reasonable acronym now.

2 New Downloads from Orb Networks

VoiceMail for Skype (V4S) and a photo screensaver -- demonstrating the power of the Orb API... http://www.orb.com/download

V4S, the Skype download, is quite clever -- install on the same computer you run Orb and Skype on. When you receive a call that you cannot answer, V4S picks up the call for you, plays your greeting, and records the incoming caller's message. This audio file is then stored in a special folder accessible via Orb and you can set the program to notify you of a new call... so you are out running errands and an SMS message beeps on your phone alerting you of a new voicemail. You can then launch your mobile browser, go to Orb, and listen to your Skype voicemail on your handset!

The photo screensaver also shows off how powerful Orb is for moving your personal media around. Install the screensaver on any Windows machine and you can access a shared folder from your home Orb machine. Here is how I use this feature -- grandma always wants to see the latest photos of her granddaughter. I gave her the screensaver and now I can update the photos (just by adding them to the shared folder on my home machine) and they auto-magically show up on my mother's screen!

Get both of these new downloads from http://www.orb.com/download

Orb as Platform

Today marks an important day in the history of Orb Networks. Today we expose to 3rd party developers the platform that Orb is based upon. I wrote about it on my Orb Blog.

There is a new thing happening on the web today. Companies that are promoting specific application functionality are finding that users are taking that functionality and doing entirely new and unexpected things... Google maps is a great example. Flickr is another. To a lesser extent, Paypal and others have provided at least minimal interfaces to a portion of what their products can do. All of these APIs mean that a developer can much more rapidly build interesting web applications that have robust functionality built right in.

But Orb takes this one step further. One of the developer's challenges is still having to host an application somewhere on the Internet to make it accessible to users. Orb makes the user's own home machine into the server. So a developer can build an application and deploy it directly to the consumer -- then Orb makes that application web-accessible from any device.

In the first phase the API is all about personal access to content or applications. But in the second phase (later this year) we will also start exposing a collaborative framework... developers will be able to leverage all of the functionality of orb to build mobile collaborative applications and deploy them to the marketplace through P2P infrastucture. This is what Web 2.0 is all about.

$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?