Gadjimatronics

The God of Toys

2012-01-20T01:34:00.000-05:00

The RedPad will probably become a much sought-after item for people who want to cash in on the "status" that it confers. How long before there is a copy of it for sale to people who want to pose as a state-sanctioned bureaucrat?

Megaupload is Gone and the Rest Are Sure to Follow

2012-01-20T01:26:00.000-05:00

This is a fairly chilling and significant event in the history of the Internet, at least in terms of what it means for people who do business on the shadier side of things. It is certainly going to cause a number of people to continue doing business overseas and to resist the temptation of traveling to the United States for business purposes. What's even more significant, perhaps, is the reaction delivered by Anonymous, which has knocked several major websites offline.

The landscape is changing, and it will now begin to change very quickly. Time to brush up on fair use rules and all of that.

Target Already Sells iPods, So Why Not?

2012-01-09T18:29:00.000-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

These Apple "stores" really don't amount to much. Apple products, in and of themselves, are engineered and designed to be operational almost immediately; sure, some people do have customer service requirements, but an Apple product is something that, for as long as I can remember, you can use as soon as you turn the thing on.

Target already sells iPods, so what's the big fuss here?

Ground Penetrating Radar Finds Nothing

2012-01-06T05:56:00.000-05:00

Well, what do you know. Three million dollars later and there's no evidence of what some dude said he buried there in 1978. Does that mean, definitively, that it never happened? No, but what are you going to do? Ask him to pay it all back? Call it a wash, then.

The ground penetrating radar device is one of the neatest things ever, though. I'd love to have one of those things. No rinky-dink metal detector for me. I'll use that thing and I'll find treasures all day long.

Solar Power, Social Networking, and Google+

2012-01-01T16:16:00.000-05:00

I love how this sort of thing happens. I check my feed on Google+, and one of the great people that I follow has a fantastic piece about German solar power statistics.

Bam! Instant post.

Google+ is a quality piece of social networking, but you have to follow great people. That's the key.

The Vita is On the Way

2011-12-17T17:23:00.000-05:00

If you follow this link, and watch the demonstrations that accompany the product launch of the Vita, you'll see why this device has so much to offer. And yet, I can't help but wonder why people would willingly allow themselves to waste time playing games. A little distraction now and then is all well and good; a gaming device of this magnitude will take many hundreds of hours to master. Is that time well spent? Bah humbug and all that, I guess.

Someone has gotten the idea of using a smaller version of the iPad to play games on, and that's really all I can say about this gadget. As these things get more and more sophisticated, I find myself wondering what the fuss is really all about. Perhaps that is just the old man in me wondering why I don't get it.

Apple TV is On the Way?

2011-12-01T08:49:00.001-05:00

Well, where's the surprise here?

These are just a few of the bullet points from the article, but I wanted to go straight to the top one here because, well, that's the Apple way. Obscene profit margins? Absolutely. You are paying top of the line and you are getting what they say is top of the line, so, relax. Your neighbors? They can't afford it. You'll be sitting on top with your Apple TV.

In my mind, though, these are little more than gimmicks. Where is the content? Oh, that's right--Apple doesn't have enough content to deliver. So, what you're paying for, are a few innovations that would be nice for lazy people. Saying "ESPN" out loud and then having the television take you there is all well and good, but any other TV manufacturer can embed voice recognition software into their product and give you that. And, I would be willing to wager, these manufacturers aren't going to allow Apple to waltz in and take over. They will have to copy these innovations and fight to the death for what market share is left.

Now, will the Apple TV look great and function as a great status symbol? Sure. But, at what cost? Well, they're telling you up front--twice what a regular television would cost. Are you going to fall for it? Again and again and again?

When Was Wikipedia Ever Friendly?

2011-11-24T18:18:00.000-05:00

There's one website that I will never join, never support, and never contribute to, and that's Wikipedia. The idea may have had merit, but allowing the user generated content to end up being policed and moderated by that same group of users has resulted in an interesting form of fascism--the belief that amateurs can remove or edit the work of other amateurs.

This entire episode encapsulates exactly what is wrong with Wikipedia. Read the whole thing. It is an astounding tale of a bureaucracy gone completely mad.

A lot of great work and a lot of great pages (none of them mine) have been deleted over nothing by nothings. No thanks, man. No thanks.

How Fake Is It?

2011-11-04T07:36:00.000-04:00

Did they use hidden cameras to record everyone fighting over the girl with the big boobs? And how does this square with the people who are convinced that manned missions into space are faked anyway?

A mission to Mars that takes over 500 days? How feasible is that? How do you store enough food and water for a crew and how do you compensate for what that will do to them physically? It sounds like they're finding out the answers. Would it be worth it, though?

How Many of Those Users are Spammers?

2011-02-15T04:40:00.000-05:00

Take this with a grain of salt:

Back in late December of last year, we noted a huge milestone for photo-sharing app Instagram: a million users. As we noted at the time, remarkably, it took them only three months to hit the mark. That’s crazy when you consider it took Foursquare a full year to hit that mark. And it took Twitter two years! Well now Instagram’s insane growth has also been made to look small: by Instagram.

The service has just hit 2 million users. They tweeted the milestone earlier, and I’ve confirmed it with the company. This comes just six weeks after the million mark milestone.

Instagram’s size leading up to the important SXSW conference (which starts in a few weeks) has to intimidate rivals. But their rate of growth is now even more intimidating. And it’s crazy when you consider that they’re still iOS-only. And when I say that, you might think I mean they don’t have an Android app or a BlackBerry app, etc. And that’s all true. But they don’t even have a web presence that you can sign up at!

I watched Twitter explode in real time. I'm one of the "older" users of Twitter (but by no means an original Twitter user). It went up in numbers so quickly because of two factors: one, the Spammers, and two, the confused and inarticulate who created accounts and abandoned them. Spam has hit Posterous, but not so much Tumblr, and that's a good thing. One of the next big moves that professional Spammers will make is towards photo Spam, where they'll blast out marketing images in order to get people to look at ads. I could be wrong on that, but oh well.

The numbers given for the "size" of these services should be adjusted to reflect the number of Spammers. As always, good luck getting anyone to throw cold water over their own marketing hype.

The Battle of the Aggregators

2011-02-07T17:29:00.001-05:00

The Huffington Post is just an aggregator. Nothing more.

So why is it worth so much?

Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington hosted a conference call with analysts this morning to discuss AOL’s announced $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post. The Huffington Post is expected to contribute $50 million in revenues this year, and quickly ramp up to a $100 million revenue run-rate. That still represents a tiny portion of AOL’s $2.4 billion in revenue, but it is Armstrong’s largest acquisition to date, and his team believes it will help put AOL over the top in terms of putting the company on a growth track again by 2013 in terms of adjusted EBITDA.

It is clear that the deal is as much about buying into the new publishing model that the Huffington Post represents (which is in keeping with AOL’s acquisition of TechCrunch and emphasis on blogs like Engadget on the tech side). And it is about buying talent, both at the top and throughout Huffington Post on the editorial and sales side. Asked how long she plans to stay, Huffington says, “I told Tim I want to stay forever. This is my last act.” She has a multi-year contract at the very least, and AOL typically likes to structure deals with financial incentives that keeps top talent on board for at least two to three years. “Our only thing when we do acquisitions,” says Armstrong, “the price has to be fair, it has to fit the strategy, and the entrepreneurs have to stay.”

If you wanted to make your company about content, which is what Armstrong keeps saying, then why would you buy a website that doesn't make anything original?

Would you continue to post on the Huffington Post for free, knowing the amount of money being thrown around? Would you surrender your 'content' to America Online, which has a poor reputation in the tech world and in the world of just basic common sense?

Of course not. And many of the celebrities currently using the Huffington Post to self-promote their wonderful selves are now going to have to reconsider. Celebrities working for free? Please.

The first real aggregator was The Drudge Report. It is still a low-tech, but high traffic affair. What is "created" there? Nothing.

The Huffington Post was a lefty aggregator. Sure, there is some content there. Much of it, however is stolen. And what isn't stolen is reproduced on other sites. It generates a lot of traffic because the people who are lazy gravitate to it for ease of use. If that's what you want, fine and dandy.

Here's what I do--I take what I like and make it fit on one of my blogs. I try to add value, I try not to steal anything, and I try to have fun. I often fail. I think what I have here is acceptably above the level of most of the crap out there. And my blogs are worth $500 million dollars. Why? Because they are not for sale. And something that is not for sale is either worth nothing or a fortune, take your pick.

Let's bear in mind that American Online still charges old people (yes, I'm old) who are not very savvy inordinate amounts of money for access to the Internet through a dial-up service. These same old people have cable providers, but don't use the broadband they have access to because no one has explained to them that if they bundle their Internet and television and telephone services, they won't need America Online anymore. And, yes, there are, in fact, people who have broadband through a cable provider and still pay America Online for access to...what, exactly?

To the stellar products America Online owns?

Jeebus.

Anyway, good riddance to the Huffington Post in its current annoying format. It cannot, and will not, remain a "lefty" sort of franchise. America Online cannot risk offending the blue hairs.

Facebook Exists Just to Sell You Crap

2011-01-27T05:27:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately, I cannot walk away from Facebook:

A new Facebook advertising product, "sponsored stories," plans to pull content out of members' posts for use in advertisements that will appear on their friends' Facebook pages.

Designed to build brand buzz, the ads draw on Facebook's "like" and "check-in" features, which site members can use to comment on restaurants, Web sites, events, products and other items they interact with throughout their day. Facebook plans to pull content from those dispatches to display in "sponsored story" segments that will show up in the site's right rail, where it often displays ads.

They can try that with me. I have no problem with it. But, once they realize how weird I am, they'll probably panic and throw things at my Facebook wall. Nothing will stick to it.

What's Going on in the Health Care Industry?

2011-01-20T03:31:00.000-05:00

Someone isn't being forthright:

According to Reuters, Deloitte said that the healthcare and retail sectors alone could purchase 5 million tablets this year.

At Dreamforce late last year, we had breakfast one morning with the team from Appirio, a services company that helps companies integrate Salesforce.com into their enterprise environment.

At the table sat an IT executive from a healthcare organization. He talked about the transition to an enterprise running on Apple hardware. The company now has 800 iPhones, 8,000 iTouches and is ramping up with 200 iPads. Our guess is that next year the company will have bought at least double that number.

That runs counter to the narrative that is out there right now--and that narrative is this: the new health care reform laws, passed by the Obama Administration, are supposed to have killed innovation and investment in the health care industry.

So what gives?

So Long, MySpace

2011-01-14T03:22:00.000-05:00

What's it worth now? Fifty bucks?

Even as MySpace (NSDQ: NWS) has floundered in recent years, it’s hung on to an important user base—artists, particularly musicians, who have relied on the site to provide them with a digital home on the web and a place to showcase their work. Now that the site has laid off half its employees, some folks are wondering if the site is in its death throes. If MySpace’s downhill slide continues, where its small but most-important constituency—musicians—will head?

The most logical destination would seem to be the truly dominant social-networking site: Facebook. But Facebook just hasn’t caught on among musicians in the same way MySpace has, at least not yet. And it doesn’t have the same tools to play or discover new music that made MySpace so popular for music fans, even though the latter’s own tools were far from perfect.

Doesn't every band have a MySpace page, created in 2005, and last updated in 2005? Technically, you're not a band unless you have an abandon, spammed MySpace page.

Ach

2011-01-12T05:01:00.000-05:00

When I try to look at Gizmodo.com, I end up with the German version.

Manually changing it does not help. I feel like an idiot.

Wah.

My comment:

Es wäre schön, wenn dieser in Englisch anzuzeigen, aber die deutsche Version von Gizmodo.com standardmäßig Gizmodo.de.

Ach ...

My German remains awful.

Is HD Radio Really the Way to Go?

2011-01-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

I will put on my old fart hat for a moment:

Is HD Radio the next big thing for in-car audio? Well, it’s not like the transition from AM to FM (that was a big leap), but it’s an interesting improvement. And it has a big advantage over satellite radio — it doesn’t cost anything. As long as you have an HD-equipped radio (3 million have been sold by Ibiquity, which is owned by big-league radio chains) you can listen to the digital signal for free, without a subscription, and at the same frequencies, too.

HD’s claim to fame is that it just sounds better — existing FM stations sound like satellite radio or CDs, and AM sounds like FM. But it’s unclear if there are a lot of audiophiles around, given the popularity of the high-fidelity-challenged iPod for listening to music. There is also, as with satellite, supposed to be more diverse programming on new HD2 and HD3 stations, but there doesn’t seem to be much of that yet in my listening area. (Check out your own airwaves here.) Stations available in some markets offer dance/electronic, bluegrass, comedy and “chill/coffee shop,” which sounds like an endless loop of mellow Starbucks CDs.

The problem here is not the technology. It is that statement of fact that bothers me, the one that goes "...existing FM stations sound like satellite radio..."

That's all well and good, but the programming content on that medium is no longer acceptable to me as a consumer. I cannot listen to radio as programmed in the lower 48 right now. I don't care how good or how nifty your technology is--if your programming content is trash, I won't listen to it and I suspect I'm not the only one.

Who, in their right mind, makes a decision to purchase a vehicle based on the radio in the car? If your decision between a Toyota and a Ford comes down to the fact that one has HD radio and the other doesn't, I would be shocked.

Cell Phone Stops a Bullet Fired into a Man's Chest

2011-01-07T01:28:00.000-05:00

This is not exactly a great way to market a cell phone. The lesson here is, when you throw someone out of a nightclub in Atlanta, be prepared for them to respond with gunfire.

Sheaffer's Pens

2011-01-04T16:29:00.000-05:00

An old advertisement, Boy's Life Magazine. I believe I had a few of these pens at one time.

We Have the Technology to Entertain You

2010-07-10T17:34:00.004-04:00

There are some things that refuse to die. Me, for example. I've cheated death more times than Peej can count, and I make him count but he gets confused and has to stop. We have a spreadsheet going now. Tabs one through 24 are just the times I have inadvertently nearly been killed in accidents I didn't see coming. How many tabs does Excel 2008 allow? I forget.
Technology is funny, though. Once people get in the habit of using or doing things, they never give it up:
These obsolete technologies didn't get the memo — maybe because someone wrote it on a typewriter and faxed it to them.
Got an urgent message you need to transmit immediately? Sending a telegram is likely not the first option that comes to mind. And when it's time to boogie down, you probably don't shove a cassette into your 8-track player.
Some technologies serve their purpose for a while, then either evolve into cheaper, faster, better forms or simply disappear. Yet others — such as fax machines, landline phones and instant cameras — just refuse to die, despite better digital alternatives.
Here are ten technologies that should be dead and buried, yet still cling to life.
They go on to talk about telegrams, typerwriters, cassette tapes, turntables and things like that. Well, turntables play vinyl records, and those still sound better than anything out there. I am an audiophile; without my records, I'm nothing. If you were to ever find yourself aboard the family vessel, the Admiral Hassenpfeffer, we would entertain you in the community room where the dance floor, the light show, and our DJ booth are well stocked, albeit with titles and equipment that is about forty years old.
I still love talking on the Citizen's Band radio. Did you know my handle is Tenderfoot and I can still make truckers scream and turn off their set? I'm an Original CB Radio Troll, my good man. I love it when I can get on there and do three different voices and have a conversation with myself about someone's wife and a bottle of Wesson oil.
Many people have commented that Father's blog has apparently gone silent. As far as we know, Father is alive; he originally typed every blog entry onto a piece of paper on his Continental typewriter and mailed it to Peej; Peej would then recreate the "blog post" for Father.
The mail dried up; Father isn't speaking to us, but we're hoping to hear from him now that the Census is almost over. It would be nice to go back to the States but I doubt we'll go back this year. Miranda is having too much fun ignoring me here in Germany.

Why Don't We Have the Technology?

2010-07-04T17:05:00.002-04:00

This doesn't seem like the sort of happy news one would expect on the 4th of July:

Hundreds of skimming boats prepared Friday to return to calmer gulf waters in the wake of Hurricane Alex and resume cleanup of the massive BP oil spill, which scientists now predict is likely to reach the Florida Keys and Miami in the months ahead.

Using computer simulations based on 15 years of wind and ocean current data, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report Friday showing a 61% to 80% chance of the oil spill reaching within 20 miles of the coasts of the Florida Keys, Fort Lauderdale and Miami, mostly likely in the form of weathered tar balls.

Shorelines with the greatest chance of being soiled by oil — 81% to 100% — stretch from the Mississippi River Delta to the western Florida Panhandle, NOAA scientists said in astatement on its projections for the next four months.
Who's to say that it won't go further? Who's to say that the Caribbean as a whole won't be affected in some way before the oil is washed out of the Gulf of Mexico and into the Atlantic Ocean? Tar balls and oil balls and dead things and poisoned waters will wash up in unexpected places for years, perhaps. I don't know.
I do know one thing--without figuring out how to contain and clean up these sorts of spills, there's just no way that further deep-sea oil drilling should continue. I get that we need this oil and that we need the jobs. I think that it is well past time to re-design and re-tool and start the long process of moving away from oil with serious efforts. Two billion for solar power just isn't anywhere near enough.

How Are Things in Fatass Nation?

2010-07-04T14:53:00.002-04:00

So what is the state of the nation?
Not good, I'm afraid.
If you look at that map, you just want to weep for the shambling bags of meat that used to populate a nation that was lean and hungry for success. We have a population that is bloated and ready to pop sideways out of a defective pair of Wal-Mart shorts. We have entire towns and villages full of howling upright carcasses that are ready for permanent boneyard residency. This was once a nation where strong men and women walked for days on end just to find a piece of land that wasn't screwed up so they could build a life for themselves.
What happened to the American dream? It's dying of neglect. It's a belly full of garbage. It's an over-salted hot mess. It's the end of an idea that I think still has a lot of life left in it.
Fortunately, there are people like me, and I will never let the American dream die. I'll help you get back on track.
All you have to do is walk.
I am an evangelist for walking, you see. I know eating right and exercise matter. I know Oprah has been telling you to eat cookies or bake potato chips in your $5,000 oven or whatever, but look at Oprah. She won't even climb stairs (no idea if that is true or not). I'm telling you--walk. Don't worry about the other stuff. Don't sweat the small stuff. You have shoes? Go walk.
If you don't have legs, or if you can't walk, them amble along any way you can. Use your walker, your wheelchair, your crutches or your hovercraft and just go places. See things. Breathe. Walk. Live your damned life, sir.
What does it cost for me to tell you this? Nothing. I have no books to sell you. I have no "advice" guide for you. I'm Norman Rogers. You should go walk. Okay, our transaction is done. All I collect from you is the moment it took you to consider my advice. I don't want your money. Tell you what--you take your money and you buy walking shoes for you and yours. Take your money and spend it on you. That's what I'm selling--I'm selling you the idea that you should take care of yourself with your money. Don't give it to anyone who can't give you something useful (like a good pair of walking shoes). Don't send me your money because I don't want it and we have no way to accept it.
That's right--you should take your money and keep it. There. How hard was that?
Walk like the dickens. Make that map at the top of the page shrink away. Build a log cabin somewhere. Cut the grass and dig a hole for no reason. Eat something you found or grew or fished out of the water.

I Don't Think You're Getting a Dell, Dude

2010-06-29T17:48:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly happy with the Apple computers that Miranda bought a few months ago. They seem to still be working. Peej seems to think that they are more reliable, and he likes the keyboard that came with one of them. I can't be bothered to work up any interest in debating the merits of an Apple vs a computer that isn't an Apple. Who cares? That was all settled years ago.

We still have a Dell laptop that, after five years, is still kicking around on the Admiral Hassenpfeffer. It's the go-to computer that seems to work best with the satellite system. Nothing else seems to work as well with it. Go figure.

So I don't come at this as a partisan. I don't really think about brands anymore. I do lament the fact that Dell seems to have found a way to end up in the toilet at a company:

After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations.
Dell, however, had actually sent the university, in Austin, desktop PCs riddled with faulty electrical components that were leaking chemicals and causing the malfunctions. Dell sold millions of these computers from 2003 to 2005 to major companies like Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, institutions like the Mayo Clinic and small businesses.
“The funny thing was that every one of them went bad at the same time,” said Greg Barry, the president of PointSolve, a technology services company near Philadelphia that had bought dozens. “It’s unheard-of, but Dell didn’t seem to recognize this as a problem at the time.”
Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the company’s employees were actually aware that the computers were likely to break. Still, the employees tried to play down the problem to customers and allowed customers to rely on trouble-prone machines, putting their businesses at risk. Even the firm defending Dell in the lawsuit was affected when Dell balked at fixing 1,000 suspect computers, according to e-mail messages revealed in the dispute.
The documents chronicling the failure of the PCs also help explain the decline of one of America’s most celebrated and admired companies. Perhaps more than any other company, Dell fought to lower the price of computers.

So sad.

The article goes on to describe Dell as a once-innovative company brought low by incompetence, greed and mismanagement. That's a great lesson for our times. A business model that looks infallible right now can turn into an albatross around the neck of a company that refuses to change or adhere to ethics that it once held.

Was if Fair to Steal Content From Rolling Stone?

2010-06-29T11:17:00.007-04:00

Some things take on a life of their own and turn into what those of us in the know call a "viral" situation:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was not the only one who had a tough week at the office.
Last Monday, the word got out that Rolling Stone had a stunning piece about General McChrystal, in which he and his aides were critical of the White House. It’s the kind of scoop that thrills magazine editors, and no doubt they couldn’t wait to get their issue on the stands.
The problem was, nobody else could wait either. On Tuesday morning, a PDF of the piece the magazine had lovingly commissioned, edited, fact-checked, printed and distributed, was posted in its entirety on not one but two Web sites, for everyone to read without giving Rolling Stone a dime.
It was a clear violation of copyright and professional practice, and it amounted to taking money out of a competitor’s pocket. What crafty guerrilla site or bottom-feeder would do such a thing?
Turns out it was Time.com and Politico, both well-financed, reputable news media organizations, that blithely stepped over the line and took what was not theirs.
Both companies said that a frenzy involving a significant national issue was under way and that because Rolling Stone itself did not post the article on its site, they took matters into their own hands. Each said that when Rolling Stone protested, it was taken down, and that when the magazine put up the piece at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, their sites linked to that instead.

I don't know if I can blithely accept that they put it up and took it down when asked without saying, "where are your ethics?"

The entire article contained supposed bombshells that transcended the situation. This was a story involving a 4-star general who gave a reporter far too much access. You can argue that content rules may not have applied, but the fact remains thatRolling Stone (shudder) missed a tremendous amount of web site traffic (money) when these other outlets gave their content away.

What incentive does a magazine have to produce a quality piece of content after this incident? None, really, unless the rules toughen up. Shouldn't everyone who broke the embargo on the piece be forced to give a percentage of their online revenue earned during the period when they had the story up to Rolling Stone?

I rarely, if ever, link to pieces in magazines. They are an entirely different animal from the pieces I normally use, which are news stories that come from major publications and wire services. Even then, I try to limit how much of the story I use and I try to use the stories that are virtually released "into the public domain" which means, the stories that appear in the same format on multiple outlets. For me to blog about a wire story about a news incident (or another blogger, as the case is here) is preferable to going to a piece of content that is specifically for a magazine or behind a paywall.

Separating Oil From Water

2010-06-26T15:41:00.002-04:00

If I was the chump running BP, I'd make a show of buying a THOUSAND centrifuges that could separate oil from water. A THOUSAND! And I would insist that the media write it as A THOUSAND so that fools everywhere could see that I cared. About, well, the oil in the water, I guess.

Kevin Costner is one of my favorite actors, and he's no stranger to scandals involving people hire to give him massages. He and Al Gore share more than that in common (no, I don't think either incident was anything more than a glorified shakedown) because they care about the environment and want to do things.
Costner has a product that--get this--separates oil from water:
It was treated as http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100514/ts_ynews/ynews_ts2081" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; text-decoration: none; color: #c62606;">an oddball twist in the otherwise wrenching saga of the BP oil spill when Kevin Costner stepped forward to promote a device he said could work wonders in containing the spill's damage. But as Henry Fountain http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/us/25clean.html" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; text-decoration: none; color: #c62606;">explains in the New York Times, the gadget in question — an oil-separating centrifuge — marks a major breakthrough in spill cleanup technology. And BP, after trial runs with the device, is ordering http://blogs.chron.com/newswatchenergy/archives/2010/06/bp_says_kevin_c.html" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; text-decoration: none; color: #c62606;">32 more of the Costner-endorsed centrifuges to aid the Gulf cleanup.
The "Waterworld" actor has invested some $20 million and spent the past 15 years in developing the centrifuges. He helped found a manufacturing company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, to advance his brother's research in spill cleanup technology. In testimony beforeCongress this month, Costner walked through the device's operation—explaining how it spins oil-contaminated water at a rapid speed, so as to separate out the oil and capture it in a containment tank[...]
When I went looking for examples of how these things work, I found this one:
Oil and Water Separating Centrifuge
And this one:
Oil and Water Separator
And I probably could have found a few more, but you get the picture. These devices can handle limited amounts of salt water or fresh water before they have to be shut down and maintained. There has to be a plan to deploy them and a place to put the oil. Can they clean up the whole ocean? No. But they could be deployed in areas where the oil is very concentrated and they could remove oil from the water. That's about it. And that's worthwhile. It's not a fix, nor is it something we should get excited about, but it's better than sitting on our asses crying, so I'm all for it.
Oh, and then there's this--six years ago, Clarkson University researches developed a deepwater oil spill modeling program--has that been used so far?
Time is the enemy when combating an accidental oil or gas release, especially when the leak takes place in water a half-mile deep or more. "Knowing where the spill will surface so you can have clean-up crews in place can mitigate some of the environmental impact," says Clarkson University Professor and Researcher Poojitha Yapa.
As exploration goes ever deeper into the world's oceans to satisfy our global thirst for energy, the production of oil and gas from extremely deep wells is increasing dramatically. Yet, until recently oil companies and governments had no way of knowing what happens to gas or oil if accidentally released at extreme depths of 2,500 feet or more. Predicting how the oil would spread and where slicks would surface was pretty much guesswork. Variables like the chemical composition of oil and gas, ocean currents, deepwater pressure, and temperature influence the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic laws that govern the oil and gas spills as they ascend from the ocean bottom to the water surface. At those depths it can take several hours, or even days for a spill to reach the surface.
It was this critical need to understand the behavior of oil and gas released at extreme depths that drove Clarkson University researchers, under the direction of Yapa, to develop a deepwater oil spill computer model. The project took four years and was sponsored by the United States Minerals Management Services (MMS) and a deep-spill task force consortium made up of more than 20 oil companies. The computer model, named CDOG by Yapa and his team, can closely simulate the behavior of oil or gas from a well blowout in very deep water.
Though the industry safety record has been very good to date, Yapa says, "as deepwater oil and gas exploration increases, our models become extremely valuable for contingency planning, ecological risk assessment, and decision making during emergencies."
Or is this simply too old to be relevant? I found a pretty nifty looking one here, and then I found this nutty one here:
Screenshot of an actual comment, ad links disabled
You read that right--six days BEFORE the BP Oil Spill, some panicky son of a bitch was screaming for an oil spill modeling program. So I'm just curious as to why there isn't a more up to date program in use by the oil companies, and if there is, okay, then.

Posted via email from An American Lion is on Posterous

Posterous goes after Tumblr

2010-06-24T02:39:00.001-04:00

We're on TumblrI am a dedicated user of both Tumblr and Posterous. I think that they are wonderful at what they do and they bring me a lot of readers. I think that the benefits of both are about equal, but, right now at least, Tumblr has the bigger audience.

That being said, Posterous is trying to up its game:

Direct attacks and unprovoked hostility are usually reserved for gossip blogs, not the people who make the platforms that power them.

But Posterous, the blog service that lets users post using e-mail, did just that Tuesday, taking a shot at a platform called Tumblr on its company blog. The headline: "Hey Tumblr users: Want comments? Need privacy? Graduate to Posterous."

"Blogging on Tumblr is sort of like being in high school," the statement reads. "But you know deep-down that you can't be in high school forever. Eventually, you have to move on."

Posterous (pronounced either post-er-us or paw-ster-us, you choose) goes on to make some contentions about its superiority that are subjective, at best, and inaccurate, at worst. Contrary to those claims, Tumblr actually has a "real commenting system," though it does require some tinkering with settings to enable. Also, Tumblr has a feature for posting by e-mail.

"The claims they make about Tumblr are obviously false," Tumblr founder David Karp wrote in an e-mail. "I hope they decide to make this right."

I don't worry so much about the claims--I worry about the quality of the service. I want to direct the readers who browse those sites to my site and increase the value of what I do. I don't mind mixing it up and reaching out to people who look at those sites--it's exposure that you normally wouldn't get by simply posting things in one place, hoping a search engine picks you up. I would rather be proactive and making things in other places than resting in one place, hoping people stumble across what I'm doing.

Can you be penalized for being proactive? Sure, but that has yet to happen. I see these sites as increasing the value of the pieces of content I am pushing out (a fraction of my content is reblogged onto other platforms).

Anyway, I like what they do and I like what Zemanta does as well. Twitter? What's that? I haven't messed with Twitter in months. Twitter is such a technical mess right now that, when I went to the site and tried to find my own account, I ran into a time-out message because the platform is, once again, overwhelmed and burping up fail whale. It's dead to me.

Posted via email from An American Lion is on Posterous

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Posterous goes after Tumblr