Rockbridge, Buena Vista, Lexington Broadband Planning

A newly-developed nano-engineered coating that can be applied to solar cells decreases reflectivity and allows the solar cell to use almost all of the sunlight hitting the surface--over 90% efficiency. In comparison, the best previous record for solar cell efficiency is about 60% utilization of light hitting the surface. The coating also allows cells to be mounted in a wider variety of orientations and still generate significant power.

While wind and solar technologies are improving, both have significant limitations. Solar panels don't generate any power at night, and wind turbines generate no power on windless days. Denmark, which generates a lot of power from wind turbines, had a stretch of 57 windless days that precipitated a nationwide power crisis. Long term, coal and nuclear power will have to continue to provide base load capacity in the U.S., and new, smaller nuclear reactor designs (less expensive and safer) will be a key part of reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

It may be benign and even mildly useful, but SEEMS creepy. Google has announced it now tracking the flu by using searches for keywords like "flu," "fever," "thermometer," and so on. It uses information gleaned from your browser and computer (IP address, MAC address, service provider) to identify an approximate location. The data will then be passed on to the Center for Disease Control. A test last year was apparently good enough that they are doing it again this year.

Google swears the data is anonymized, but don't be surprised to see ads for pharmacies and Theraflu (TM) pop up as you search the Web for a flu remedy. Google and the CDC both announced, "...this is just the beginning." What's next? Google dispatches an order of chicken soup to your house? The Feds send you a quarantine order telling you to stay home for three days? Your data is sent to the TSA (Transportation Safety Agency) which then meets you at the airport and forbids you to fly because you might give others on the plane the flu?

The NPD Group reports that the iPhone now has the top spot as the most popular cellphone in the U.S., knocking the Motorola Razr out of first place. NPD also reported that sales of phones with QWERTY keyboards has risen dramatically, indicating what I predicted a long time ago--we are well on the way to abandoning portable phones and are rapidly moving towards portable communication devices that do a variety of things, including text messaging, email, Web browsing, and, of course, making phone calls.

Back in July, I traded in my aging Treo for a 3G iPhone. After using it for three months, it has exceeded all my expectations. I was a bit nervous about doing so, because I had heard so many complaints about poor service from the AT&T network. But I have found AT&T service to be widely available, even in the small towns and rural areas we visit from time to time. The sound quality of phone calls is noticeably better--crisp and clear. My one complaint about the AT&T network is that 3G service, when available (mostly in large cities), does not work very well. According to news reports, this is due to so many iPhones trying to use the company's 3G network simultaneously--the network can't handle the load. But AT&T's slower Edge network is still quite fast--fast enough to handle most Web browsing comfortably and email downloads work very well.

Where the iPhone really shines, though, is with its ability to download and use a wide variety of third party applications. The iPhone App Store, run by Apple, has thousands of useful and inexpensive applications running from the mundane (tip calculators) to very sophisticated apps like Molecules, which displays and rotate 3D representations of complicated molecules.

My main reason for switching was to get improved access to email when traveling, and the Mail application that comes with the iPhone is superb. It is fast and extremely easy to use, compared to the clunky mail app that came with my old Treo. Mail downloads quickly, even on the Edge network, and I can now check mail almost anywhere, at any time.

Some of the other apps I have found useful include JetSet, which the first travel receipts program I have ever used for more than a day or two. I tried out several on my Treo, and they were all so difficult to use I abandoned them almost immediately. JetSet's data entry is quick and easy, and emails a completed trip record to you that is ready to import into a spreadsheet.

The Treo had a Web browser that was notable only for it's constant crashing. It crashed so much that most Treo users never bothered with it, which I think contributed greatly to the Treo's slow decline. The iPhone's Web browser is fast, easy to use, and the large screen makes it very comfortable to read news sites. The ability to quickly magnify the size of the page with a simple two finger pinch means virtually any site can be viewed comfortably.

One little program really shows off the versatility and power of the iPhone. Shazam is a free application that will listen to a song playing on the radio (or any audio you can hear), record a portion of it, transmit it over the AT&T network to the Shazam database, identify it, and send it back to the iPhone. In about twenty seconds, you can find out the artist, the album, view the cover art, and make a one button click to purchase it from the iTunes Music Store.

Another free program is provided by Apple. The Remote application lets you use your iPhone in your house or office to control music playing via iTunes on your desktop or laptop computer. This little program hints at a whole new category of remote control software that will allow the iPhone to control a whole variety of devices. Indeed, AT&T is already talking about being able to use the iPhone to do things like starting your car on a cold morning to warm it up.

The iPhone has now taken second place in global cellphone sales, ahead of RIM (the Blackberry) and Microsoft. It's a great device that is troublefree and easy to use.

This article warns that usable bandwidth in the UK will actually decline in the next several years without a major push to get homes and businesses connected with fiber. As more and more business and residential activities rely on broadband delivery (e.g. telepresence, gaming, movie and TV downloads), current copper-based and wireless systems will not be able to meet demand.

According to this news report, Google's YouTube subsidiary has reached a deal to make full length movies available online. The deal proves that competition works. When YouTube refused to work with the movie studios a couple of years back, that gave rise to Hulu, a competing video site designed specifically to support full length movie and TV show downloads.

Hulu has been wildly successful, and YouTube has been forced to sit down and work with the studios or risk being marginalized by the competition.

The impact on the Internet, though, will be continued pressure on bandwidth. The cable companies have had to continually increase their "up to xxx megabits" to keep pace with what their users want to do, and DSL, which is not upgraded quite as easily, is already being described as "dial up" by some folks in communities we are working with. But neither cable modem or DSL is capable of meeting the demand that is growing month by month, and fiber is the only long term solution.

Up in New Hampshire, a new electric vehicle is undergoing road tests. New Hampshire is not normally counted as one of the big auto-producing states, but the move to electric vehicles is likely to bring some new players into the field. As a side issue, the government might have more impact by giving a few million dollars to every firm in the U.S. working on electric vehicle technology rather than trying to bail out the high cost Detroit manufacturers.

Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway two wheel electric vehicle, is now road-testing a small electric car powered by batteries, with a Stirling engine that recharges the batteries as needed and can also run the heater and defroster. The Stirling engine runs on almost any kind of combustible fuel, including gas, diesel fuel, and biofuels. Kamen has stayed away from the more complicated hybrid designs that use both a gas engine and an electric motor to propel the car. In Kamen's design, the electric motor does all the propulsion, just like Chevrolet's Volt design.

It is a bit difficult to take any article seriously that claims in the title that "this technology will change your life." But Twitter, a strange cross between blogging and text messaging, may "a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/136443/2008/10/twitter.html">finally be growing up. Twitter may actually have some real value with respect to public safety, because you can have lots of people subscribed to a Twitter feed that can then quickly send a message to a lot of cellphones all at once. Twitter may also have some uses as an internal messaging systems for businesses and organizations, both for some kinds of routine messages ("the staff meeting starts in 5 minutes") and non-routine messages ("fire in the supply room, evacuate immediately).

Long term, it is hard to guess just how many different communications channels we A) want, and B) can manage. Most of us already suffer from email fatigue. It has taken nearly one hundred years for the automobile to evolve into the trouble-free, powerful transportation systems we take for granted today, and they are still changing and improving. We are barely out of the Model T era of computer and communications technology.

Electric utilities and electric car manufacturers are beginning to sit down and talk to each other. At the Austin Alt Car Expo, representatives from the two groups shared opportunities and concerns. One very big concern is how the electric grid will handle the additional power load represented by electric cars. The electricity does not come out of the air for free, and a few solar panels on the roof of such cars will not keep the batteries charged up if you have a commute of more than a mile or two each way.

The biggest problem is managing the time of battery recharging. If everyone drives their electric car home and tries to plug it in at 5:15 PM, the power grid would melt down. So what is needed is a smart grid that can talk to the car and schedule charging at a time when the electric grid can handle the load, like later in the evening.

And that means you need a very reliable and robust community broadband network that enables two way communications between smart house power controllers, smart car power controllers, and electric utilities. Design Nine is working with VPT Energy Systems to design this system.

This short video has been around in various forms for several years. This new version has been updated with current data, and should be required viewing for all educators, economic developers, and elected leaders.

An article from DSL Reports suggests that BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) has died. Many of us have been skeptics from the beginning, with concerns about cost, RF interference, and bandwidth. It would appear that all three were problems This particular technology should just be taken off the table as an option.

There is now a Wikipedia for schools. It is a selection of 5500 articles and 34,000 images that fit on a DVD. The articles have been vetted for content so that teachers and students can rely on the material being accurate; this solves a longstanding complaint with Wikipedia, is that it is difficult to gauge the accuracy of any given article. With the material on a DVD, it can be used offline, so Internet access is not required. The DVD will be particularly useful in developing countries where schools do not always have Internet access, or have a very low bandwidth connection that cannot support many students browsing at the same time.

The Blandin Foundation is hosting their annual Broadband Conference - Connected Communities: Making the Net Work for Minnesota on December 3 - 4, 2008 in Eden Prairie.

This year the Blandin Foundation will also be hosting a Minnesota Intelligent Communities Award. The Blandin Foundation along with DEED will be partnering with the national Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) to recognize the top Intelligent Communities in Minnesota. Conference Highlights include:

• Pre-Conference Webinars: Fiber to the Home - Wireless Technology - Interactive Policy Session
• Minnesota Intelligent Communities Award Competition
• Pre-Conference Workshops Design Nine: Andrew Cohill, Intelligent Community Forum: Robert Bell
• Keynote Speaker: Robert Bell, Intelligent Community Forum

Note that I will be doing an extensive "Planning for Broadband" workshop just before the conference. If you want a thorough introduction to the challenges and opportunities of creating a community broadband project, my workshop will cover financing, technology, infrastructure, operations, and management.

Here is a brief video report on the broadband fiber network already in use in Danville, Virginia. The system has been operational for 10 months, and all services on the network are offered by private sector service providers (Disclaimer: Design Nine has helped Danville design and deploy the network).

A firm in Japan is rolling out gigabit broadband services to residential customers for $60/month. Back in April, FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate gave a talk and noted that the 100 megabit fiber connections in Japan were already showing signs of "congestion." The GigE service ought to improve throughput.

Meanwhile, we still have lots of people in the U.S. talking about DSL (at around 1 megabit) as "broadband."

We finally dumped our last analog phone line, which we had kept around in case we needed to send a fax. We decided to get rid of it because we've been using an efax service. We replaced it with an additional VoIP phone line, and our monthly charges for that phone went from an average of $100/month to $35/month.

With a communitywide broadband network in place, every local business would see similar savings on business phones. And with the right business model and network design, those lower cost services could be provided by the incumbent phone company, so the incumbent does not necessarily lose customers.

Cisco has announced a new marketing effort to expand the availability of high quality videoconference facilities, or telepresence rooms. What is the difference between these rooms and older videoconference systems? Three things:

• HD quality cameras and monitors provide real "you are there" interactivity. No more grainy television monitors or YouTube style images blown up on an LCD projector.
• High performance, high capacity broadband connections that can carry multiple live HD video streams. How much is enough? Figure about 10 to 15 megabits per location, so if you have are having a conference with two remote locations, you need as much as 45 megabits of bandwidth.
• Dramatically improved audio. No more "I'm talking from the bottom of well" sound quality, where you can't really hear half the people in the room. Multiple microphones and sophisticated sound processing software make it easy to carry on conversations without shouting.

If you are trying to attract businesses to your town or region, you should have at least one well-equipped facility available for rent by the hour. It may be just the thing to get startups and entrepreneurs interested in more rural locations for their businesses. Every business park should have a telepresence facility, and every public library should have a meeting room available for both business and community use.

YouTube has inked deals to start offering full length TV shows. The Google-backed company intends to go head to head with Hulu, which has several deals with networks to carry TV shows.

These kinds of alternatives are quickly making it quaint to sit down in front of the TV at a certain time on a certain day to watch a particular show. I'm a fan of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, but I could not tell you what network it is on, what day new shows air, or what time it plays. I simply go to the iTunes Store when I have a little extra time, pay $2, and watch the show at my convenience. For that $2, I enjoy it without commercial interruption.

Cable and satellite TV are rapidly becoming anachronisms.

Here is an absolutely spectacular picture of Mercury from a new NASA space probe. It pretty much confirms that Mercury is not a place anyone would want to live, and it is an amazing example of technology in action. The physics of getting a space probe to travel across hundreds of millions of miles to be in exactly the right place at the right time is exacting and difficult; it's nice to know, in midst of this economic downturn, that we still have the capacity to get some very hard stuff done and done right.

Google now has its own satellite, or at least exclusive access to one. The firm made a deal with the U.S. government to help finance a new image mapping satellite in return for exclusive commercial rights to the images. It was probably cheaper than paying for images from other commercial and government satellites.