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: Changing the Face of Business Travel (DayJet)

This week's New Disruptors video is about one of the most promising air taxi startups out there: DayJet.  CEO Ed Iacobucci, the founder of Cytrix Systems, plans to use a fleet of small jets from Eclipse Aviation to offer charter jet service on a per-seat basis for not much more than the cost of a business-class seat on a commercial carrier.  But he's trying to disrupt driving more than commercial air travel, since he is targeting secondary cities on the outer edges of the airline's traditional hub-and-spoke system.

Watch the video. (Full transcript after break).

(For more on air taxis, read the feature I wrote about DayJet and Eclipse last March).

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Disruptors Video: Social Networks for Healthcare (Sermo/PatientsLikeme)

The problem with healthcare is that too often information  does not flow easily between those who need it most: doctors and patients.  In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, I speak with the CEOs of two startups—Ben Heywood of PatientsLikeMe and Daniel Palestrant of Sermo—trying to change all of that.  Both are creating social networks for healthcare. PatientsLikeMe gathers together patients who suffer from the same diseases and compare notes, track their symptoms, and anonymously compare their progress with one another (read our profile here).  On the flip side, Sermo is a social network for physicians to communicate directly with one another about the latest treatments and how they are working with actual patients.  Watch the video.  (Full transcript after the break).

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Check out my weekly video series on CNNMoney and iTunes where I discover startups with the potential to overturn existing industries or open up new markets.

Disruptors Video: Inkless Printing (Zink)

In this week's Disruptors episode, I visit Zink in Waltham, Mass.  Zink is a spin-off from Polaroid that has developed an inkless printing technology.  The ink is in the paper in the form of special dye crystals that turn different colors when heated. By getting rid of the ink cartridges and associated printer heads, this will allow for the creation of compact, mobile printers that can be embedded into digital cameras, laptops, and even cell phones.  Watch the video.

Subscribe to The New Disruptors

Check out my weekly video series on CNNMoney and iTunes where I discover startups with the potential to overturn existing industries or open up new markets.

JibJab's "Starring You" Now Live

JibJab has finally launched its "Starring You" series, where you can upload your head into a JibJab animated video (you can see me and my wife shaking it above).  This an example of giving average people the tools to create high-quality content (see previous post).  I broke the "Starring You" story a month ago in one of my Disruptors videos.

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.

Subscribe to The New Disruptors

Check out my weekly video series on CNNMoney and iTunes where I discover startups with the potential to overturn existing industries or open up new markets.

Disruptors Video: The Future of the Wireless Web (Vanu)

This week's New Disruptors video is up on CNNMoney.  In this episode, I speak with Vanu Bose, the founder of Vanu, about how wireless networks could be more like the Internet if they were open to all devices (as the FCC is requiring in the rules for the upcoming auction of broadband spectrum).  Vanu's technology, software radio, can help connect multiple wireless standard to the same network, whether it's GSM, CDMA, or iDen.  Thus, the open-device rules could really play into its hands.  Vanu is also an investor in Frontline Wireless, which was hoping to use Vanu's software radio technology to build a network that could seamlessly switch to support public-safety radios in cases of emergency.  Frontline's plan looks like it may be in jeopardy now, but Vanu still hopes to cash in on the need for device-agnostic wireless networks.

Disruptors Video: Not Your Typical Rental Car (Zipcar)

Most people associate rental cars with airports and travel.  But Boston-based Zipcar is trying to turn the car-rental equation on its head.  It targets urban dwellers who need a car for a few hours at a time to run an errand, go out on a date, or get groceries.  Using the Web, the cellular data network, and RFID cards for entry into the vehicles, Zipcar has created a self-serve car rental business that is targeting not so much the Avises of the world as it is the very concept of car ownership. 

Since Zipcar members, who now number more than 100,000 in 23 cities, book and pick up their own cars, the company can manage its fleet of cars much more efficiently than incumbent car-rental agencies. (Zipcar can manage nearly twice as many cars per employee as Avis, for instance).  It is on track to make $60 million in revenues this year, and says it is profitable in its four largest established markets (Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.)

The downside to Zipcar's distributed network of cars sprinkled throughout residential neighborhoods is that there might not be a car available on the weekend when you want it.  Or if the car you reserved is broken or dirty, you might be stuck without an alternative.  Zipcar is trying to mitigate against such scenarios by clustering its cars together in denser packs.  I visited Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith to learn more in this week's episode of the New Disruptors (video).  (Full transcript after the break).

(More Disruptors videos).

Disruptors Video: An eBay for Manufacturers (MFG.com)

Remember all of those B2B exchanges that were supposed to change the industrial landscape before they evaporated at the tail end of the last dotcom boom?  Well, at least one of them survived—a small company based in Atlanta called MFG.com.  Today, it is a thriving Web marketplace for manufacturers and their suppliers.  I talk with CEO Mitch Free in this week’s episode of the New Disruptors.

MFG.com is a Website where engineers and purchasing managers from places like Apple or Northrop Grumman can put up CAD diagrams of parts they want manufactured and get bids from suppliers all over the world.  In the past twelve months, over $2 billion worth of parts have been sourced over MFG.com. 

But instead of trying to take a cut of each transaction like eBay does, MFG.com charges a subscription fee of about $6,000 a year to each supplier.    Free says the company is on track to pull in $25 million in revenues this year and is running at break-even.  Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the largest outside investor (he learned about it from one of the engineers at his spacecraft startup, Blue Origin).  Germany’s Samwer brothers—their startup Alando became eBay Germany—also own a stake. 

Free wants to turn MFG.com into an online platform for the manufacturing industry.  Last year, he bought Europe’s SourcingParts (a Salesforce.com for purchasing managers), and launched a manufacturing social network last March called MFGx.com. “We’ve borrowed some of the elements from Craigslist, MySpace, and Wikipedia,” he says.

But perhaps the most potentially disruptive thing about MFG.com is what Free wants to do with his growing database of CAD diagrams for every imaginable fabricated part, metal stamping, and industrial mold.  He hopes one day industrial designers and engineers will be able to estimate the true manufacturing costs of the products they are designing by comparing the parts they need with similar ones in MFG.com’s database.  They could tweak the design and get instant feedback on the likely manufacturing costs. All that Free needs to offer such a service is a geometry search engine for 3-D objects that can work at a commercial scale. (video) (Full transcript after the break):

ABC.com Launches HD Streaming (in Beta)

Ready to watch Ugly Betty in high-def?  Yeah, neither am I.  But if your computer screen can handle HD video (a minimum 1024 x 768 resolution is recommended), you don't need to buy an HD TV.  ABC.com is experimenting with streaming shows over the Web in HD.  You will need to download a new player from Move Networks (that won't let you fast-forward through the ads, sorry) and a broadband connection.  (Move just hired the former CTO of the Disney Internet Group, Douglas Parrish, as a senior VP).

This is a beta, though.  When I tried to install the player, nothing happened.  But it shows that media companies are thinking about bringing HD to your PC as well as your TV.  They just need to get it to actually work (caveat: the problem could very well be on my end).