*michael parekh on IT*

ON RE-DEFINING THE ISSUES

SHARP CURVES AHEAD

This article from the Atlantic, titled "No Country for Young Men", focuses on the issues surrounding an important trend that'll drive our economy, social fabric, and politics for a long time to come.  The sub-title of the article clarifies:

"The Baby Boomers’ retirement will change the texture of society in ways we’ve scarcely begun to contemplate. A dispatch from America’s coming silver age."

The article starts by showing how productivity can be a double-edge sword with this demographic:

"As the Boomers age, they will consume fewer of the things that we produce efficiently, and more of the things that we provide relatively inefficiently. Productivity is notoriously difficult to pro­ject, but many forces will be pushing it downward as the Baby Boomers age."

It explains:

"Since services are labor-intensive, and the number of service-consuming seniors will grow rapidly, we’ll need a lot more workers (that’s bad news for those who favor restrictive immigration policies, particularly the kind that keep low-skilled workers out).

And, of course, the mix of service workers that we’ll need will be different from what it is today. In effect, the next 20 years will require a massive transfer of resources and people away from the care of children, who will decline in relative number, and toward the care of old people."

And gives some stark numbers:

"This rebalancing should have already started, but it hasn’t. Consider that approximately 29,000 pediatricians now work in the United States, caring for roughly 75 million children.

To care for roughly half that number of patients over 65, the American Geriatrics Society reports, the country has only 7,128 board-certified geriatricians. Just 468 first-year fellowships in geriatric medicine were available in the 2006­–2007 academic year; nonetheless, almost half of them went unfilled.

It’s not just doctors: according to the John A. Hartford Foundation, which promotes (among other things) geriatric-nursing education, fewer than 20,000 registered nurses and nurse-practitioners are certified in gerontology.

Lower-skilled jobs in long-term care, such as certified nursing assistant positions, should theoretically be easier to fill, but several states report that shortages exist in these areas as well."

As of today, we have exactly 365 days to go before we choose a new President, and the current President leaves the White House. 

The campaigns of candidates from both parties focus on issues like the Economy, Security and Immigration, amongst others as if they are separate, unconnected issues.

But they're inextricably tied together, as just this little zoom-in on our evolving demographics shows so vividly.

Most of the leading candidates already understand these trends, but can't really talk about them in the current cut-throat, political season, where very vocal minorities can dramatically influence the tenor of the debate*. 

What may be of more concern is that most of mainstream citizenry may not.

*  As is the case with immigration, which ranks towards the bottom of the concerns of most voters, according to recent polls, with 4-5% of the voters citing it as a leading concern.  See this op-ed piece titled "Ronald Reagan is Still Dead" by Frank Rich in the New York Times for more.

ON CELLPHONE NOVELS IN JAPAN

FAST-FOOD OF READING

A must-read article in the Sunday New York Times on how "cellphone novels" are up-ending the traditional book publishing business in Japan:

"Until recently, cellphone novels —"composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago.

Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels.

What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere."

Pictured above is a 21 year old author Rin, whose first-time cellphone novel sold 400,000 copies in hard-cover.

The article goes onto describe the social, technology, cultural and business model drivers that have enabled this phenomena in Japan.  One of the factors apparently was the availability of mainstream priced unlimited wireless data packages made available by Japan's wireless operators.

Contrast this to the different state of affairs on electronic book publishing in the U.S. with innovative efforts by companies like Sony, with it's Reader and Amazon with it's Kindle (my personal favorite), have so far met with slow and limited success in the mainstream marketplace.

It was notable than in another New York Times interview this week by John Markoff, Apple's Steve Jobs had this to say about electronic books:

"...he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Being an eternal optimist, I take that to mean that Apple will likely introduce something in this arena some-time soon, given how they introduced innovative products after pooh-poohing the prospects for everything from music players, to video players, to cellphones to media downloads.

As long as it isn't cellphone novels, I can't wait.  I don't think my aging eyes can handle the cellphone novel innovation anytime soon.

ON A GOOD COMPETITOR TO THE MACBOOK AIR

INTO THE FRAY

It's clear four days after the announcement of the new Apple MacBook Air, there are quite a number of folks who are focused more on what the unit doesn't have than what it does have. 

Typical complaints have included:

• no optical drive
• no Ethernet port
• no stereo speakers
• no Express card slot
• no built-in wireless broadband WLAN option
• too small a hard drive
• non-expandable 2GB of RAM
• sealed battery that's not owner replaceable (have to send it into Apple for $129)
• only one USB port
• no fire-wire port
• no standard VGA port

I'm probably missing a few more, but those are the biggies.

And though there are several Windows ultra-portables out there in the same weight class (3 lbs), most of them involve other compromises, especially in the area of screen size (typically 11 or 12 inches diagonal vs the 13.3" LED back-lit screen on the MacBook Air, and the lack of a full-size keyboard.

For instance, even though I own the competitive Sony TZ series laptop with a 32GB SSD drive, I find that it's smaller screen and keyboard do hamper extended use, especially with this user's aging eyes.

And the bigger LED screen and full keyboard are among the key reasons why I ordered a MacBook Air.  They were the two biggies for me.

I'm not too bothered by the absence of most of the items in the list above, with the possible exception of the no built-in wireless broadband option. 

That's the only one that gave me any reason to pause before hitting the Buy button on the Apple online store. Especially given that the unit doesn't have an Express card slot that would accept a plug-in external wireless broadband modem from Verizon, Sprint or AT&T.  There are however USB options, but they make for a clunkier solution.

However, Gizmodo reports that there may be good alternative coming for all those who think the MacBook Air asks for too many compromises (see Techmeme discussion). 

It has the two biggies in my book, the 13.3" LED back-lit screen and a full keyboard, in the under 3 lb weight-class.

And it comes from no less a venerable laptop company than the Thinkpad unit (formerly of IBM fame) of Lenovo.

"It appears that Lenovo have themselves a new ultralight X300 series Thinkpad—and outside of the price and release date, we have all of the specs that you need to know.

At a glance, some of the major features include: a 13.3-inch LED backlit 1440X900 screen, an ultralight 2.5 pound form factor, and Intel Merom Santa Rosa Dual Core CPU (2.0 Ghz / 880 Mhz ), a 64 GB SSD, up to 4GB of DDR2 PC2-5300 memory, and 4 hours of battery life."

The story has lots of additional pictures and specs on the device. 

But the bottom-line is that the unit has an equivalent 13.3" LED back-lit screen, with a full (Thinkpad) keyboard.  Not to mention other features missing on the MacBook Air:

• a built-in optical drive
• double the RAM
• faster 2 Ghz processor than the 1.6-1.8 Ghz available on the MacBook Air
• stereo speakers (maybe...conflicting info in the spec sheets)
• built-in camera
• an express card slot, built-in broadband wireless options from either Verizon EVDO or AT&T HSPDA
• replaceable and presumably expandable battery
• full complement of ports including Ethernet, 3 USB ports, and a VGA port
• Gigabit Ethernet capability
• both GPS and Wimax capabilities
• fingerprint scanner
• lock port for security
• a touchpad AND a Trackpoint for mouse input.

The last one is a biggie for me, since I'm one of the few folks who likes those eraser-head Trackpoints in addition to a touchpad.  It's also important to point out that the Thinkpad won't have the multi-touch Touchpad features available uniquely on the MacBook Air.

The system offers an integrated Intel graphics chip solution as in the MacBook Air.

And it weighs 2.5 lbs.

It isn't as thin as the MacBook Air though, with a width range of .73 to .92 inches as compared to .16 to .76 inches on the MacBook Air.

And you can choose either Windows Vista or XP as your OS.

It's not clear if it  comes with  only the 64GB  SSD  (solid state  drive) option, or if  it's available with a regular hard drive.  That'll certainly make a big difference in the pricing. 

At this stage, most  SSDs typically offer about a 10-20% improvement in boot-up times vs. mechanical drives, with a similar improvement in performance in most applications, along with a 10-15% improvement in battery life.  It makes a big difference in price at this stage, with the MacBook Air 64 Gb SSD drive unit going for a thousand dollars over the $1700 for the unit with the regular 80 Gb hard drive.

No word on pricing on the X300 Thinkpad.

So with this new Thinkpad/Lenovo unit, we now we have a horse race, with more entrants sure to come from other PC vendors.

Now if it could only run Mac OS X Leopard, an increasing biggie...

ON A GREAT MACBOOK AIR ACCESSORY

JUDGING A NOTEBOOK BY IT'S COVER

There's already a cool accessory available for Apple's new Macbook Air, as Engadget reports:

" Sure, we all got a chuckle when Steve casually pulled the MacBook Air out from within a manila envelope on stage, but we didn't exactly expect to-be owners to snag one from the supply cabinet and put it to use.

Nevertheless, the quick-thinking duo that is Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans had an idea to riff on Apple's and create -- surprise, surprise -- a fully functional case resembling a manila folder.

Reportedly, this sleeve is handmade from "durable upholstery-grade vinyl and lined with fuzzy, soft fleece," which should protect your forthcoming MBA from all but the nastiest of bumps. Supposedly, you can pre-order one now for $29.95 and expect it to arrive right alongside your new micro-rig,.."

Airmail...what a great name for the product!  Not to mention the terrific name for their web-site, Manilamac.

Even Apple's first ad for the MacBook Air features an inter-office envelope, and a great song (New Deal by Israeli artist Yael Naim).

As someone who's long used  inter-office envelopes as a make-shift briefcase at the office, the whole fit a notebook in an envelope thing really hits the mark.

Of course I've ordered an Airmail inter-office sleeve for my pre-ordered MacBook Air, expected to arrive in 2-3 weeks.  I even bought Yael Naim's album to hold me in good over until both the notebook and the sleeve arrive.

After all, the ingenuity, chutzpah and time-to-market drive by these two young entrepreneurs deserves to be rewarded.  I may even order another Airmail, as a backup.

ON "FOLLOW-ME" MEDIA AND 27-HOUR DAYS

HOLY GRAILS

A lot of discussion and debate has ensued following Steve Jobs' 2008 Macworld keynote a couple of days ago, with the new Macbook Air getting more than it's fair share of it (see Techmeme discussion).

But what caught my eye the most was this teeny, unheralded feature on Apple's new digital download rental option for Hollywood movies and TV shows.  It was described by the New York Times' David Pogue as  follows:

"And you can start watching a movie on the computer, and finish it on your iPod or iPhone."

So for three or four bucks, the library or new release movie you just downloaded, could be watched on different Apple devices as you go through your day.  It's the most reasonably priced version of what I call "Follow-Me" media, available to date.

Apple also announced revamped software for it's Apple TV product, so I presume this also means that you could start to watch your rental movie on your big-screen TV via Apple TV, then later watch it on your computer, iPod and iPhone, as you move through your day.

The phone and cable companies have been pursuing the so-called "three-screen" strategy for some time now, whereby digital content can be delivered to a customer on the phone, the PC or their TV.  Witness this AT&T media kit and TV ad for an example.

In fact the AT&T Trickplays TV Ad is a demonstrative visualization of what I'm referring to as "Follow-Me" media, even though the 15 second commercial it not quite the likely way a viewer would watch a movie (sorry, couldn't find an embedded YouTube video clip of the commercial...I tried).

What AT&T doesn't clarify in the commercial of course is that under current "defensive" economics of the media industry, the consumer would likely have to buy each version of the movie, for each of the "screens" separately, in effect paying for it several times over...until of course the Apple service announced this week.

But "Follow-Me" media is easy to dramatize in a TV commercial, but a lot harder to make it really work for mainstream customers in the real world.

It's not just technology, but a lot of business models across a number of industries, and stakeholders that have to come together, before true Follow-me media is really possible at affordable, mainstream prices.

The Apple rental service is likely the closest we've come to this vision, at least on paper.  And it's not just limited to download services.

As part of the new service, several major studios have agreed to bundle an iPod/iPhone version of a movie or TV show in a DVD package a customer would buy or rent at retail. 

So in theory, one could start to watch the DVD on TV, then be able to continue to watch the iPod/iPhone version on the mobile device later.  Not sure how it all works in terms of the ease of transferring the content from one device to another.  I look forward to trying how it actually works in real life. 

And "Follow-Me" media is not just about movies and TV shows.  It could also apply to other media like books.

So imagine you buy the latest Harry Potter best-seller book and it comes with two additional digital versions, the "e-book" version and the audio-book.  And the product is designed to allow you to start reading the physical book at night, fall asleep, wake up the next morning, continue to listen to the book in the car commuting to work, and later continue reading it on your e-book reader like the Amazon Kindle, Apple iPhone or other hand-held device at lunch.  Then of course finish reading the physical book later at night.

Of course ideally, there'd be technology built-in so that the media would "remember" where you left off in each version during the day, in the form of auto-bookmarks.

It's a far different world today of course, where the defensive economics of various industries force the consumer to shell out three times the price of the book (or more), for the physical, audio, and the ebook versions.

And if they could get away with it, the publishers would love to put time limits on each version so that they could keep charging you for the stuff again and again.

Speaking of time-limits, especially when it comes to digital downloads of movies and TV shows, we need to re-think the 24-hour downloads that the industry is offering customers to date, including Apple with it's announcement this week.

A reader to David Pogue's blog captured it best in this statement of the problem and solution:

"The 27-Hour Day

This e-mail message blew my mind with its logic…

Hi David–You know what this country needs? A good 27-hour on-demand viewing time-frame.

Typically, you get 24 hours to watch your on-demand movie. Here’s what happens time and again to my wife and me. We get the kids down, and about 8, we click an on-demand movie to watch. I get sleepy by 9:30 (I work hard, okay?) and turn it off but I want to see the rest of the movie the next day.

Next day, I get the kids down at 8 and—poof—the rest of the movie has disappeared. If it’s free, I have to fast forward through the movie (which is particularly slow and annoying). If I paid for it, then it’s particularly enraging.
With a 27 hours to view the show, all problems solved.

Only you can mount the sort of sensical (sic), nationwide campaign that’s needed."

We can all so relate to this problem, which has totally slipped through the cracks of every industry offering on-demand or digital download services.

I think this is one of the most brilliant innovations I've heard so far in 2008.  Sign me up for the campaign.

We'll eventually get to true "Follow-me" media and 27-hour days...it's only a matter of time.  But there's going to be a lot of false starts and frustrating product/service offerings before then.

Patience. 

Just like the 2-3 weeks I have to wait to get the MacBook Air I pre-ordered* two days ago.

* Yes, the SSD version, I couldn't resist.  Please don't tell my wife...just yet.

ON SCRAPPY SCRABULOUS

SHOT ACROSS THE BOW

The inevitable has happened, with the BBC reporting that "Facebook asked to pull Scrabulous", by Hasbro and Mattel, the owners of one of my life-long addictions, Scrabble.  What are we talking about you ask?  Here's the back-story:

"Lawyers for toy makers Hasbro and Mattel say Scrabulous infringes their copyright on the board-based word game.

The move has sparked protests by regular fans of Scrabulous keen to keep the add-on running...

"Scrabulous is currently one of Facebook's ten most popular applications - little programs that Facebook members can add to the profiles they maintain on the site.

The request to remove the add-on came from both Hasbro and Mattel because ownership of the Scrabble trademark is split between the two. Hasbro owns rights to the game in the US and Canada while Mattel has rights everywhere else in the world..."

"The Scrabulous add-on was not created by Facebook but was built for the site by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla - software developers based in Kolkata (India).

According to the Scrabulous website it has 594,924 daily active users - about a quarter of the total that have signed up to play it."

Hopefully, this legal action is but an opening move by Hasbro and Mattel to negotiate a buy-out and/or a licensing deal with  Scrabulous.

I don't know the parties involved here personally, but would venture to say if Hasbro and Mattel were able to bring this game and it's founders in-house, they'd have a shot at building a more vibrant and successful online franchise for their other properties.

In any case, the game has just begun when it comes to Scrabulous.

ON FLOATING DATA CENTERS

OUT THERE

Ars Technica has an article on one of the newest, most unusual startups I've seen emerge from Silicon Valley in recent years:

"A new Silicon Valley startup called International Data Security (IDS) has sent some big waves through the data storage industry by announcing (PDF) its intent to set up a fleet of data-serving cargo ships.

These floating data centers will come equipped not only with standard storage services like SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network Attached Storage), but also with amenities such as private offices, overnight accommodations, and galley services.

To save money, IDS is purchasing decommissioned ships that were scheduled to go to the scrapyard, then refurbishing them in drydock. According to founder Ken Choi, the first ship—which will also house the new IDS headquarters—is scheduled to come online in April, and it will be parked at San Francisco's Pier 50 along with its sister ships.

Each ship has approximately 200,000 square feet of usable space. The company plans to deploy as many as 22 ships in North America and 50 ships worldwide."

Why go to all this trouble to build data centers docked off of piers, you ask?  Why, because it's cool of course:

"The ships will use sea water for cooling the servers, which IDS says will will eliminate the need for external cooling solutions and shave 30 percent from their total energy consumption."

The Powerpoint for this business plan practically writes itself.

Quite a departure from traditional data center companies of years past. 

It was only a decade ago that we saw the IPO* of Exodus Communications, one of the leading data center companies at the time, based in Santa Clara, California.

One can only imagine where data centers will be built a decade from now.

Disclosure:  I was the lead research analyst for this IPO in 1998, at my former firm.

ON MERCURY RISING

RETURN JOURNEY

For the record, I'm a big fan of unmanned space missions, especially inter-planetary spacecraft.  So it's with great interest I read today's New York Times article on NASA's latest probe reaching Mercury, the innermost planet in the solar system.  Here's what the spacecraft, called the Messenger, is expected to do on it's half a billion dollar, multi-year mission:

"The robot spacecraft, the first to visit the planet in more than three decades, was to pass about 124 miles above Mercury’s cratered surface at 2:04 p.m. Eastern time before continuing off on a path that is to bring it back three more times in the next three years before settling into orbit."

Mercury is a fascinating planet, particularly for it's extremes in temperature:

"It also has the most extreme temperature swings of any planet, with heat approaching 800 degrees Fahrenheit in the sunlight while the night side can reach 350 degrees below zero. Yet, radar readings from Earth suggest possible deposits of water ice in permanently shaded craters near the poles."

Reminds you of the planet in Pitch Black, the terrific sci-fi movie from 2000, starring Vin Diesel.

ON DEALING WITH E-WASTE

FULL CYCLE

Every gadget lover should read this New York Times Sunday magazine article titled "The Afterlife of Cellphones", but most won't.  It outlines the evolving solutions to a problem that will only grow with time.  Here're some excerpts:

"Americans threw out just shy of three million tons of household electronics in 2006. This so-called e-waste is the fastest-growing part of the municipal waste stream and, depending on your outlook, either an enormous problem or a bonanza..."

"The Belgian company Umicore is in the business of reclaiming those materials. It extracts 17 metals from our unwanted televisions, computers and cellphones and from more ominous-sounding industrial byproducts like drosses and anode slimes...

"Umicore has roots in actual mining. In the late 1800s, during the reign of King Leopold II, the firm mined copper in the African Congo and shipped it to a riverside smelter near Antwerp. Today the same property houses a sprawling, state-of-the-art $2 billion smelter and refinery. Here, metals are recovered and processed.

Then they are sold, sometimes to Asia, where they are used to manufacture brand-new electronics. It’s a reshuffling of the colonial arrangement: an abundant resource is sent from richer countries to poorer ones, made into goods, then sent back. That resource is our garbage."

The article goes on to list other such private market initiatives, both large and small.

What's remarkable about this whole e-waste recycling phenomena is that much of it has been driven by the free markets, with relatively low government intervention.  No question, growing government regulations on e-waste recycling will be an inevitable byproduct of our global gadget consumption. 

But it's good to see private market solutions that create win-win scenarios around a growing problem.

ON A LOST ISLAMIC ARCHIVE

SEEING THE LIGHT

This page one article in the weekend Wall Street Journal titled "The Lost Archive", had me riveted this morning.  Here's the sub-title:  "Missing for half a century, a cache of photos spurs sensitive research on Islam's holy text", which of course is the Koran.

The story has a beginning that sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie:

"On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.

The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God's word. The wartime destruction made the project "outright impossible," Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.

Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars -- and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave."

Scholars are just now getting their heads around the implications for secular research of these documents, something that could take decades and be fraught with all sorts of personal, social and political risks.

Here's an example of something that could be unsettling to the current interpretation of what happens to Islamic martyrs:

"A scholar in northern Germany writes under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg because, he says, his controversial views on the Quran risk provoking Muslims.

He claims that chunks of it were written not in Arabic but in another ancient language, Syriac. The "virgins" promised by the Quran to Islamic martyrs, he asserts, are in fact only "grapes.""

That could get "Christoph Luxenberg" the Salman Rushdie treatment in a hurry.

The challenge here of course is that Islam is just now getting the secular analysis that other religions like Christianity and Judaism have undergone over the past few hundred years.  And it's something that's obviously a powder keg of major proportions.

A thought occurred to me as I was reading the article. 

What if the entire archive were released on the Internet, say on Wikipedia or Google Scholar? 

What if it was then available to any and all scholars, researchers and interested parties to study, discuss and debate the findings?

What if the participants could choose whether to reveal their true identities or publish/discuss under pseudonyms, like many do on the internet today?

Would it diffuse the  risks of a project like this, or would it exacerbate them?

This is something that obviously wouldn't have been possible a few years ago.  But it could be an alternative approach on dealing with this re-discovered treasure.

Something to think about.