Recently in Technology Category

Yes, it is that time of year again. The time of year for college basketball when I have to wrangle with television and think about cable TV.

We dropped cable TV maybe six months ago and for the first time ever, I have not missed it at all.

Major networks broadcast HD TV for free to those with an antenna. Got it.

Hulu offers a wide selection of network shows, cable shows and oddball shows, all for free to anyone who can hook a computer to their TV. Check.

Netflix streaming is fantastic. We can watch on the PC, PS3, the Xbox and the iPAd and they have a huge library. Much better than getting a DVD mailed to our house, Netflix provides access to a huge library of kids programming for Claire.

It used to be that I needed cable to watch the Sci Fy channel and sports but not anymore. SciFy no longer has a single show I want to watch (Ghost Hunters? Really?) and ESPN is now available online through ESPN3.

So that leaves me with Michigan State basketball games. Looking at the schedule, every game is televised but 9 of those games are only on the Big 10 channel.

Now if I wanted to watch women's basketball like Gavin, I would be set because Big10 has pay per view web broadcasts. I think that is the ideal way to watch sports but NCAA Mens basketball is not available that way. To see the men's games you need Big 10 (on Comcast), ESPN and CBS.

This year the decision is harder than ever. Is it worth the hassle of dealing with Comcast and paying $60 a month just to watch 9 basketball games on the Big 10 channel? My feelings are mixed.

Unfortunately, my experience with ESPN3 has been pretty bad lately. For months the service was both free and fantastic. A few weeks ago (round about the time I installed ESPN on my Xbox 360), the video quality of the games in a browser went to shit. ESPN's tech support was (surprise!) not any help so now it seems that if I want to watch any basketball in HD (or even decent D), I will need to pay the Comcast tax.

Five years ago, there weren't any online options. Now it is clear that TV and movies are moving towards digital downloads.

You could get 500 channels of stuff you wont watch, but wouldn't you rather just get the content you actually want? Pay per view streaming and Netflix-style all you can eat streaming have made huge strides. Eventually sports will follow suit too and consumers will rejoice. (Assuming they can get a decent Internet provider, which is a different story.)

While internet TV like Hulu is terrific for consumers, it is much more significant than just a new way to be a couch potato.

Broadcasting and Television are in trouble. They have been living high on the hog for decades and like San Francisco's Bay Bridge, the media empires are showing cracks.

Internet TV is surviving and it totally changes the game.

First off, it allows content owners to reach viewers directly. They no longer need intermediaries like Comcast and possibly even broadcasters like the major networks.

The problem for content producers is finding money. Eventually, small content producers (who dont need much to survive) will start making money with direct-to-consumer fair.

The problem for traditionally media companies is keeping enough money flowing to support their massive overhead. (Prognosis - cloudy.)

Internet TV fundamentally breaks up the business structures that have made companies fat, dumb and happy. For decades.

ipTV is to TV what Google is to newspapers. A new technology that requires new business models.

There is are actually a lot of similarities with Google so I think there should also be some money in this for someone who can think in the new model and get the content contracts to make it work. That is the big problem right now holding everything back - restrictive legal contracts held by monopolies that want to stay that way.

Content delivery companies like Comcast get money from users for putting a pipe in every house. The content itself is largely paid for by advertisers though.

And ipTV is MUCH better for advertisers.

I create an account with Hulu (or whoever). They know my name, my address, my email. (Never had that before.)

I gladly tell them what shows I like to watch and which episodes of those shows I enjoy. I can select, rate, post comments, and share. (Definitely never had that before. Advertisers can direct-message customers of specific shows.)

They can then observe the hell out of me. They already have a name and address. They can then see how much I actually watch. When I watch. How many sittings it takes to get through an episode or a series. Do I pause or watch straight through? Do I channel flip? Do I watch kids TV during the day and porn at night? Am I 100% cooking shows? Or dancing shows? or sci-fi?

For decades, advertisers have had to totally guess about TV audiences. Ridiculous monopolies like Neilsen's exists (and profit handsomely) just to "inform" advertisers about user behavior using lame survey techniques. The resulting guesses drive billions of dollars of advertising and TV content decisions even though the data is so shallow you couldn't wash a bird in it.

Quite frankly, our media system is retarded and due for a tumultuous change. Which will probably be good for everyone but the traditional players.

If the Internet gets sports, game over.

If Comcast buys NBC, and shuts down Hulu, we will have to wait longer. But that only puts more pressure on illegal providers of bittorrent to give the people what they want - free content.

Free is a painful product to fight but internet TV is just a better product for customers and eventually companies will have to adjust, one way or another.

It has been a few months since we cancelled Comcast. And I am enjoying TV more than ever.

At first we just tried to live with the free broadcast HD channels from the basic networks. This content is free and I can record it with our DVR but it is filled with commercials and there are some niggles with the antenna.

Then I started to really use Hulu. Much like Amazon's MP3 store, when Hulu first launched it was lame because they did not have much content. Now they have a great catalog.

Stargate Universe (syfy), Fringe (Fox), Modern Family (ABC), 30 Rock (NBC), Everything is Sunny in Philadelphia (USA)... All the major networks and some cable channels are showing full episodes on Hulu for free.

Forget the overpriced, crappy "on demand" stuff Comcast (and Apple and Amazon) wants you to purchase. Internet TV on Hulu is what you really want.

You create an account and add subscriptions to shows you want. When a new episode comes out, it shows up in your queue. Watch what you want when you want where you want. It works from a browser on any computer. It is a true on-demand system.

But wait! There is more to love...

The shows have commercial breaks but there is only 1 commercial. ONE!!! It is such a trip to stop the show for just 15 seconds. I love it and it really makes you aware of how much crap you are used to paying to see on cable TV.

The commercials are really different. First off, they are short. The longest I have seen is 30 seconds; the shortest is 5 seconds. Each show has very different types of commercials. SyFy was only showing me adverts for Google's Chrome browsers. The other channels often show public service announcements. The selections is pretty ghetto now but that adds to its charm.

The only complaint I have with Hulu as a user is that it relies on Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash kind of sucks. The image quality is good and the player interface is fine but it requires a powerful PC to show properly, especially HD.

Even though I have a nice video card with hardware acceleration for movies, Flash does not support hardware acceleration. (Adobe says "maybe next year" which is rather insulting at this point. What the fuck have you been doing all this time, Adobe?)

Hulu looks good on all of our Mac's but, ironically, my 3-year old HTPC (which is only for movies like this) cannot handle it without lots of annoying skipping. (By comparison, Netflix uses Silverlight and it works flawlessly on all our machines.)

If you arent yet, you should check out Hulu and show the market that you are tired of paying Comcast thousands of dollars a year for commercial-laden content that you dont really want anyway.

As I have said for a while, the only reason to pay Comcast is for sports. Sports over the Internet, especially for college, is an enormous untapped market. I still cannot believe that no company is out there making that work yet. Seriously.

I have been astounded by how cheap computer memory has gotten.

A stick of 2GB DDR3 memory is only $45. That is amazing. A few years ago that much memory would have cost hundreds of bucks.

If you want to put 4 GB in your iMac, you can get 2 sticks for $90.

But the iMac only has 2 memory slots. If you want more than 4GB, then you need to get a larger stick. The next size up from 2GB is 4GB.

And it costs?

A minimum of $240. Ouch! That is a price I am more used to. Looks like it will be a while before we upgrade our Macs with more than 4 GB...

In business school, I did a summer project. Our task was to take a technology patent from the University and create a business plan around it.

Our plan was to take gold nanocubes and use them to treat cancer.

The nanocubes are small, like 40 nanometers per side. They are so small, they can easily float through the cell membranes of your body and go just about anywhere in you. Gold is inert, so it wont make you sick and your body will quickly flush them out naturally.

The most important thing is that gold is metal and metal resonates with radiation. Using a harmless UV light of the correct frequency, you can heat the gold cubes up. As in really, blistering hot.

To make the treatment work, you attach the gold nanocubes to a targeting agent like a protein which will attach itself to your target, a cancerous tumor. You inject the particles into a person, give them time to find the cancer, and then you apply the UV light to the area of treatment. The light is harmless to you but those nanocubes melt and in the process they burn tiny holes in the cell membranes of the tumor.

Chemotherapy injects a poison into your body that kills cells, healthy ones and cancerous ones, all over your body. It is incredibly destructive and painful.

Radiotherapy uses lethal radiation to kill cancerous cells and it too generates a lot of collateral damage to your body.

In comparison, nanocube therapy is like magic. It is lethal to the target and harmless to the rest of your body. It is painless with no side-effects.

Nanocube therapy is a miracle.

Al least that is what I wrote in our business plan for "Nano Therapeutics" and that is what I still believe. Unfortunately, we had no way to implement or benefit from the idea. We wrote our plan and all moved on to other jobs.

So imagine my surprise to see nanocube therapy on 60 Minutes last night.

Kanzius Machine

Lesley Stahl reports

Sunday, Oct. 18, 7 p.m. ET/PT.

John Kanzius fought his leukemia by inventing a machine that may someday offer effective treatment for cancers without side effects.

The story itself is rather sad and they give less detail on the treatment than I just did but it is some measure of personal validation. I have no doubt these treatments will come to pass. It was my brush with fame to have learned about them so early.

Every day I drive myself to work. Its about a 15 mile round trip. As I sit in traffic and at lights, I look at the other, newer cars longingly.

You see, I am cursed. In 1996, when I bought my last new car, I chose a Toyota. 12 years and 100,000 miles later, I have the same car. And there is nothing wrong with it. All I do to it is oil changes and routine maintenance, and it runs tirelessly for me. Unlike our VW, which needs a repair and/or a recall every year we have had it, the Toyota is simple but flawless.

Which is to say, I have no real argument for getting a new car. Mine still runs fine. There are conveniences it doesnt have but those are, well, conveniences not necessities. The only significant problem with it is that it does not have the LATCH system for child seats. Something that has only recently become an issue.

All the same, I periodically dream and shop for a new car. But even that has become increasingly hard to do.

If you have read my blog, you already know that I think science is real and so is global climate change. Pollution from billions of human beings is affecting the planet and those changes are enormous.

As the years have gone by, I have found it increasingly unconscionable to buy a car that gets less than 25 MPG. On some days I think traditional cars at all are a crime but even I am not at the point of giving up my personal transportation.

So I look at fancy new cars from BMW and VW and Audi and Lexus. I check out the stats and prices and then I get to the MPG...

18 MPG? That is a crime.

My Toyota from a decade ago gets 25. Even if I had the money, I dont think I could allow myself to purchase a new luxury car because of the MPG. Cars have gotten too darn heavy. It makes me angry.

Then I start to think about what my alternatives are and I get even more angry. As a kid, I watched the Jetson's skim around in flying cars. This is a new millennia and we still have two basic choices: car or motorcycle using gasoline or diesel fuel.

Go to KBB.com and you will see 10 categories of cars. That is it. All cars fit into 10 buckets. Pick any car and you will then find 3 or 4 vehicles that are virtually identical. Capitalism has brought us superficial choices in brand, color, style but no real choice.

Where are the 1-person vehicles that fit between a motorcycle and car? Where are the funky, space-ship vehicles? The alternative fuel vehicles? The plug-in electric vehicles?

Where is the fucking human ingenuity? Where are vehicles like this?

What we have is the confluence of capitalism and manufacturing to produce the most similar, cost effect vehicles for the market.
What we dont have is any real choice or anything that deals with global climate change.

The more I think about it the more it annoys me. I want a $15,000 emission-free vehicle for my 15 miles commute. Where is it?

A hint comes in recent articles like this one.

Debate Arises on 3 Wheeler

By STEPHEN POWER

Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- Is a three-wheeled vehicle an automobile? That question is at the center of a vigorous lobbying effort in Washington.

The vehicle in question is the Aptera 2e, a machine that looks like a cross between a Cessna plane and a tricycle. It's the brainchild of Aptera Motors Inc., a three-year-old, closely held car company in Vista, Calif.

The DOE ruled last year that the electric 2e didn't qualify under the $25 billion loan program. A three-wheeled vehicle doesn't meet the definition of an automobile under federal law as being "any 4-wheeled vehicle," according to a letter to Aptera last December from Lachlan Seward, the loan program's director.

The government set aside research money for alternate fuel vehicles but the law is written is such a way that only traditional incompetents like GM can get the money. Even when we throw money at a problem, we do so in a way that prevents any real change.

I know things will get worse and change will come. But I am tired of waiting.