The Next Net

Disruptors Video: One Laptop Per Child

In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, I visit One Laptop Per Child, the non-profit building $176 laptops for children in the developing world.  I think they are disruptive for many reasons, but foremost is that by trying to design a laptop that initially was supposed to be under $100 they had to rethink many things about computers that most of us take for granted, like the display, the networking, the power consumption,  and the durability.  (There's no hard drive in this thing).  It's also one of the greenest computers on the planet. 

CTO Mary Lou Jepsen explains to me in the video how getting the power consumption down to a fraction of what a normal laptop needs was one of the main challenges.  (It turns out they do this by turning things off when they are not in use to a greater degree than conventional computers do).  Don't be surprised if you start seeing many of these features copied in regular laptops soon.

Watch the video.

Disruptors Video: Tomorrow's Light (Cree)

If there ever was a disruptive technology, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) certainly fit the bill.  They are slowly but surely taking over more and more lighting applications, from cell phones and signs to street lamps and indoor lighting.  Only in recent years, though, have LEDs that produce white light come into their own.  Since LEDs are semiconductors, they are still climbing a technology curve that will make them brighter, cheaper, and more energy-efficient.  One day, they may even replace the lowly light bulb.  And that would be a good thing, snce lighting consumes about 22 percent of all of our energy.

In this week's episode of The New Disruptors, I visit John Edmond and John Palmour, the co-founders of LED-maker Cree in Raleigh, NC (see earlier post here) to find out how far these little lights can go.  I also talk to the mayor of Raleigh, which is replacing all of its outdoor municipal lighting with LEDs to save on the city's energy bills (Toronto is following suit).  Watch the video.  Full transcript after the break.

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Time Warner Cable Tries to Turn Back the Clock on DVRs

  Please, just give me back that one hour... 
  Originally uploaded by SylV - like Sylvie...

Cable companies may hate TiVo, but at least they've come to accept that digital-video recorders are here to stay.  Or have they?  Time Warner Cable is introducing a DVR-like service called Look Back that lets viewers time-shift shows but doesn't let them fast-forward through the ads.  (Time Warner Cable is a sister company of my employer, Time Inc.).

From a viewing-experience point of view, Look Back is a step backwards compared to a full-throttled DVR like TiVo.  You can only watch shows from earlier the same day and you are forced to watch the ads.  The whole point of DVRs is that they allow you to watch shows when you want to watch them, which might include catching up on a  whole week's worth of The Daily Show at 3 AM on a Saturday.  Being limited to one day's worth of TV sort of defeats the purpose.

And don't underestimate the appeal of being able to skip through the ads.  It makes the TV-viewing experience both more enjoyable and more efficient (you can watch more actual TV when you strip out the ads).

So what are the folks at Time Warner Cable smoking?  They are betting that people will put up with their hobbled, networked version of a DVR because it will be free. (TiVo, in contrast, charges an extra $13 to $17 a month for its service).  It's amazing what people will put up with if they think they are getting something for free. 

But this is a stop-gap measure at best.  If the cable companies really want to counter the threat of TiVo, they are going to have to come up with a service that is better than TiVo.  Not one that is worse, but free.

It's Time For Open-Source Hardware

Open-source software has proven that users are sometimes the best designers with products like the Linux operating system and the Firefox browser.  The next logical step is open-source hardware, a movement that is gaining ground in design circles.  For instance, Chuck Messer at Tackle Design in Durham, North Carolina has developed an open-source jaundice light for developing countries using blue LEDs that can be manufactured for $75 (versus $3,000 to $5,000 for a similar piece of hospital equipment). And he is also involved with the Open Prosthetics Project, which is trying to bring back an updated version of the popular World War One-era Trautman Hook.  Similarly, there are efforts to create open-source computers, cars, telephones, and 3-D printers.  There is even a venture-backed company called Bug Labs trying to apply the concept to the commercial realm with what sounds liek open-source consumer electronics.  As Fred Wilson, an investor in Bug Labs, cryptically puts it:

The thing about Bug is that it's not anything like the iPhone. It's closer to Ning. It's all about what people will make with a Bug, not what a Bug is when it comes out of the box.

The buzz around open-source hardware is just going to keep getting louder because it is an idea whose time has come.  Bringing the culture of participation to physical products is a natural evolution of the open-source, DIY world we are now living in.

What open-source hardware/products would make the most sense to build a business around?  Comments are open.

 

Sell Apple, Buy Google

After all the buildup over the past couple months to last Friday's launch of the iPhone, the clearest winners are Apple's shareholders, who have seen a 35 percent jump in the stock since April.  In fact, Cowen and Company estimates that the price jump has added $24 billion  to Apple's enterprise value in that time period (when the stock went from $90 to $122, as of the close on Friday), meaning that the market thinks the iPhone alone is worth two-thirds the enterprise value of Motorola and one-third that of Nokia.  (Enterprise value is slightly different than straight market value because it takes into account debt and other liabilities).  To put that into perspective, Apple hopes to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008.  Nokia and Motorola together are expected to sell a combined total of 650 million cell phones.  In a note technology Cowen sent out on Friday, it cautions:

We smell a lot of retail participation in this process.

That is code for the average investor, suckers like you and me who have been watching too many iPhone ads on TV as opposed to the Wall Street pros who supposedly look at the market dispassionately through the cold logic of their spreadsheets.

The analysts at Cowen also made another observation.  Over the past two years, Apple's stock (AAPL) and Google's stock (GOOG) have tracked each other very closely) see chart at right).  But there's been an extreme divergence since April (see chart above).  Since Wall Street always assumes that stocks revert to the mean, Cowen suggetsts this is a great signal to dump the overhyped Apple shares and pick up more Google shares, which deserve at least the same mobile Internet premium as Apple.  As the note puts it:

Today's Appple Announcement Wishlist

Keynote Bingo - WWDC 2007, originally uploaded by jflint.

 

Steve Jobs is about to give a keynote speech to software and hardware developers at Apple's (AAPL) World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) today in San Francisco.   Here's roundup of speculation surrounding what he may or may not say:

—A Google Webtop partnership
—Opening up the iPhone to outside developers

—Video rentals on iTunes
—Full details on the next Mac OS,  Leopard
—A new brushed-metal look for iMacs

Any of the first three would be a big deal.  I guess we'll just have to wait a few hours to find out what he actually decides to announce.  But, in the meantime, you can play Keynote Bingo.

Update: And the winner is . . . opening up the iPhone to outside developers.   The development platform for the iPhone will be the same as Apple's Safari Web browser, which is now also available for Windows.  A lack of third-party software widgets for the iPhone was previously one of its major drawbacks.  Don't expect too many non-Apple iPhone widgets by June 29, but now it shouldn't take too long for the menu of options to fill up.

Jobs spent most of his speech talking about Leopoard (one cool new feature is called Stacks, and it lets you organize all the icons normally cluttering your desktop into a launchable stack from your dock).  No mention of a Google-Apple Webtop combo or iTunes movie rentals.  No new hardware. 

Can Private Equity Save Palm?

  Palm Foleo 
  Originally uploaded by KlausNahr

Private equity firm Elevation Partners agreed to buy a 25 percent stake in Palm (PALM), the struggling handheld computer company behind the Treo.  The price: $325 million.  Palm was earlier rumored to be looking for a buyer for the whole company, but apparently could not find any takers.  Elevation Partners' Roger McNamee and Fred Anderson will join Palm's board.  As will Jon Rubinstein.  Both Anderson and Rubinstein are former Apple executives—Rubinstein ran hardware and introduced the iPod under Steve Jobs; Anderson was CFO, until he left amidst the stock options scandal.

How Elevation hopes to turn around Palm is unclear, especially when  it  will soon be facing competition from Apple itself when the iPhone hits stores at the end of June.  Palm's announcement just last week of a new Treo companion ultramobile laptop called the Foleo garnered a ho-hum response.

It's going to have to do better than that, and fast.

Microsoft Introduces Surface Computing

Microsoft unveiled a new tabletop computing interface it is dubbing "surface computing."  In the works for five years in Microsoft Research as a project called Milan, the idea is to transform a surface as big as tabletop into a touchscreen in order to be able to manipulate images, paint with brushes, or move digital objects around with your fingers.  (Check out the Popular Mechanics video embedded above). 

Microsoft did not invent this concept.  I've seen it before in high-end custom-hardware mapping applications, and Apple's upcoming iPhone shares some of the "multi-touch" interface techniques (such as being able to make a picture bigger by pulling apart opposite corners with two fingers).  But this may signal that the technology is finally ready to leave the research labs and venture into the real world.

Still, I wonder if this technology is getting ahead of itself, or are we truly on our way to a more immersive, Minority Report-like era of computing?  We are still many years from this going mainstream.  These Microsoft Surface computers will cost $10,000 to start, and are being sold to enterprises such as T-Mobile and Starwood to liven up their retail stores and hotels.  I still want one though.

The Greenest Laptop on the Planet

  Closeup of keyboard 
  Originally uploaded by curiouslee.

The One Laptop Per Child non-profit headed up by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte is coming up against its self-imposed deadline of May 31 to secure three million orders for its little green computers.  Lots of developing countries have shown interest, but none have yet signed on the dotted line.  In a 60 Minutes segment, Negroponte accuses Intel of trying to scuttle One Laptop Per Child's chances of success by pushing its own $400 Classmate laptop to the same education ministries around the globe.

Even at $176 per laptop, government officials in places like Brazil or Cambodia are understandably wary of spending scarce funds on an unproven technology.  Maybe Negroponte should pound the drum harder not just on the affordability of his laptops, but on how they are also much more environmentally friendly than the alternatives.

One Laptop Per Child's chief technology officer Mary Lou Jepsen attended a Disruptors roundtable I held three weeks ago at MIT, where she pulled out a $5 flexible solar panel her team had designed to help power up the laptops.  The day before I had visited her at One Laptop's offices, where she took me through many of the features of the computer. 

If every computer on the planet were replaced with one of these, she calculates it would save at least $11 $8.5 billion in electricity costs alone.  These little laptops are so energy efficient that they are designed to run for 8 to 10 hours on a single charge.  They can do that in part because they are so stripped down—with no hard drives and screens that can use the sun as their light source—and in part because the computer shuts down anything that is not being used at that moment.  So there is no idling, which drains the battery.

In addition to the solar panel, Jepsen's team is also exploring other accessories for charging the laptops off the grid in a pinch, including hand cranks, foot pedals, car-battery chargers, and a pull-string device that looks like a giant yo-yo.  (Sadly, I accidentally broke one of the yo-yo prototypes by yanking it too hard. Yes, I do feel like a total jerk who is now depriving some kids in Cambodia of a way to keep their laptops running.  But, in my defense, that string was pretty flimsy).

So how green is this computer?  In comparison to a typical laptop, the One Laptop design is:

—Half the weight
—Half the size
—Free of any mercury, cadmium, lead, or other hazardous substances
—Easily recyclable
—Uses one third as many parts
—Consumes one-tenth as much power
—Promises four times more total battery life

Take that Intel (and Apple, for that matter).

Steve Talks To the People (Who Own Shares)

  Steve Jobs 
  Originally uploaded by KarlMoore.

Apple (AAPL) held its annual shareholders meeting yesterday.  Here's a rundown:  Steve Jobs:

—addressed some environmental concerns
—read a boilerplate statement when asked about the options backdating controversy
—hinted that iTunes and Apple TV might eventually offer video rentals as well as paid downloads (presumably, these would be cheaper but would expire)
—also hinted that Apple would be beefing up its .Mac online services (possibly with the release of the next  Mac OS, Leopard)
—seemed open to the possibility of distributing the current Tiger OS cheaply to the developing world once he begins selling Leopard in the developed world.