Helping you live in a connected world.
Steve Jobs
I am profoundly saddened by Steve Jobs passing. His vision and unique ability to execute changed the world many times over. Some people say that no one ever truly dies until they are forgotten. I believe that this is true. If it is, Steve will live in the hearts and minds of all of loved and respected him forever.
Amazon announced four new Kindles: three e-ink models and one extraordinary 7” color tablet-style device called the Kindle Fire. The e-ink models are noteworthy because of their low price points. Amazon now owns the low-end of the market. The Kindle Fire is noteworthy because it is not a piece of hardware, it is a portable user interface to over 18 million books, songs and movies on Amazon.
Kindle Fire
Is the Kindle Fire an iPad killer? No. It’s not really a tablet-computer. It lacks cameras, access to a wireless 3G network, screen size and a wealth of other stuff that make the iPad 2 stand alone. However, the Kindle Fire/Amazon ecosystem is the first viable competitor to the iDevices/Apple ecosystem, and I think Jeff Bezos and company is going to give the House that Steve Jobs built a run for their money.
I don’t think it’s fair to compare the Kindle Fire to an iPad 2. It should probably be compared to the first iPod that had access to the iTunes Music Store. The hardware was over-pretty, over-priced and under-featured. But … and it was a big but … the iPod was simply a portable user interface to the iTunes Store. Steve Jobs took your hard-earned money and, in exchange, he put you in Apple prison. Granted, it was a gorgeous prison with lots of music and bells and whistles, but it was still a prison.
The Kindle Fire is $199. For $79 more, you get Amazon Prime which gives you free shipping and access to the Amazon streaming library. I’m sure if you calculate the revenue per unit, Amazon could afford to give it away for free – just like they give away cell phones. Why? Because after you buy it, you are going to be in Amazon prison. This is not a bad thing; it’s just what it is.
Which begs for the question: “Is Amazon prison going to be greater than, less than or equal to Apple prison?”
Before you sentence yourself, you should know that the jury is still out. Amazon’s technological approach to the Kindle Fire is non-trivially different from other tablet-style devices.
First, even though the Kindle Fire runs Android, you will not know it. Amazon has completely taken over the user experience. So much so, that even the web browser is conceptually new. Amazon calls it the “Silk” browser and it takes advantage of Amazon’s vast storage and computing clouds to deliver content in a technically different way than other browsers do. I won’t bore you with the geek-speak, but Amazon has control of the content you browse in ways that are, well … non-trivial. Do you care? No. Remember, you’re in Amazon prison.
The Kindle Fire only has 8GB of internal storage. According to Amazon, that’s enough for 80 apps, plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books. I know that sounds like a lot. It is. But, what do you do with the 10 movies once you’ve watched them? The answer is Amazon’s “free” Cloud Drive. Amazon says that you will be able to store everything you purchase from them in the Amazon cloud for free. That’s your virtual footlocker while you are in Amazon prison. What do you do with the content you want to store that you didn’t buy from Amazon? Ahh … glad you asked. You purchase storage space from Amazon Cloud Drive. How much is it? How long will the prices stay this low? Good questions. We’ll know soon enough.
Speaking of Apps, the Kindle Fire only allows you to purchase Apps from the Amazon marketplace and, as with all magnificently designed correctional facilities, Amazon will curate your selection. This is actually a very good thing because quality control is an oxymoron in Google’s Android Marketplace. I believe that you will be better off having Amazon mind the store for you. But, gorgeous as it is, it’s still a prison.
Unlike the iPad, the Kindle Fire is supposed to play Adobe Flash files. How well? You will have to judge for yourself.
From my perspective, none of the hardware issues, nor he price, matter with the Kindle Fire. The device is awesome. It will improve over time and Amazon is sure to keep working hard to lower the prices and give more value to its customers.
This is a curated content play and it is a brilliant move on Amazon’s part. Like many of you, I am already in Amazon prison with my Kindle. And, I am none the worse for wear. I love my Kindle and the Kindle Apps on my MacBook Air, iPhone, Droid Bionic, iPad 2 and even on my Motorola Xoom. Amazon consistently gives me great service, great products and great consumer experiences all at competitive prices. If you’re looking for a 7” (1024×600)-sized color e-reader with web browsing and 18 million files to choose from – the Kindle Fire is your new portable interface. If you’re a loyal Amazon customer, Jeff Bezos made this just for you!
I love my 17″ MacBook Pro. It’s practically new. I bought it about six months ago to replace my slightly older MacBook Pro, which I bought about a year ago to replace my slightly older MacBook Pro. My current model is the latest and greatest. It has a 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 8 GB of RAM, an Apple OEM 512 GB SSD and I replaced the optical drive with a third-party 7200 rpm, 1TB Hard Drive. It weights just under 7 lbs. It is the very top of the line Apple Laptop, there’s nothing else to buy. Well … almost nothing.
This past weekend I was window-shopping at Tekserve, one of my favorite stores in NYC, and I started to play with the new MacBook Air. It has some impressive features: a 1.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 4 GB of Ram and an Apple OEM 256 GB Flash Storage. It has a 13.3″ screen and weighs less than 3 lbs.
The big question: “Could I ever replace my top of the line $5,000 MacBook Pro with a top of the line $2,000 MacBook Air?”
I took the plunge and walked out of the store with a new all-singing, all-dancing MacBook Air and padded slipcase, $29 USB to Ethernet adaptor and an Apple Care service contract. (You must buy the Apple Care contract because when this computer malfunctions, the cost of repair will far exceed the cost of the Apple Care contract. Just make sure you don’t visibly damage the case or crack the screen – that’s not covered and voids the warranty.)
I am happy to report that after a week of hard-core road warrior computing, I’m never going to open my MacBook Pro again.
What changed?
First, life in the cloud reduces the amount of local hard drive space I actually need. It does so in two ways. 1) I use several cloud-based programs such as salesforce.com, Microsoft Exchange, etc. 2) I use several cloud storage services as well as my own server farm (which today people would call a cloud).
Second, I really don’t use as many programs as I used to. I’ve got Microsoft Office running all of the time, Adobe CS5.5, QuickBooks, Omnifocus, TextExpander, Wallet, Final Cut Studio and Logic Pro. A few utilities such as Skype, Transmit and Telestream’s Episode and that’s about it. All in, I have about 190 GB of flash drive space available for file storage. It’s more than enough.
Battery life on my MacBook Pro is measured in minutes … as in 90. No matter how I dim the screen, manage the power consumption, put the drives to sleep, shut off features, I’ve never been able to get more than 90 minutes of battery power.
Conversely, I’m typing this article on my MacBook Air. I have 34% battery life left and the computer has been in use for over six hours. Did I mention that I love my MacBook Air?
I was afraid that the 13.3-inch screen would actually be too small and that I would yearn for the much bigger 17-inch screen on my MacBook Pro. Nope. The small size is a plus. Lion OS X 10.7′s window management tools, more than make up for what the MacBook Air lacks in screen real estate. It took me an hour or so to master the new Lion touchpad gestures, but now it’s like I’ve been doing it my whole life, and I’m never going back.
The graphics card in the MacBook Air is not as good as the one in the MacBook Pro, so serious video editing is not as easy on the eyes. But the Air weighs 3 lbs and it’s not built to be a desktop video-editing computer. On the road, for a fast edit, it rocks!
I have not needed the $29 USB to Ethernet dongle I bought. WiFi has worked just fine. I have a Verizon 4G Hotspot, so being on the road is like being in an 802.11n WiFi environment with a fast broadband connection.
Is there a downside? Of course there is. Because the MacBook Air is a solid-state computer, there is nothing else to buy and no way to upgrade or expand the it. The MacBook Air will always be what it is. For me that puts the cost of ownership at about half the price of the MacBook Pro. And, when the new MacBook Air comes out, I’ll just pass this one down to someone in my organization who doesn’t abuse computers the way I do.
All in, if you have been waiting for the right time to make the transition from a luggable road warrior laptop to the sexiest, lightest, thinnest, killinest, most awesome laptop ever built – now is the time.
After nine months of hype, the Verizon Moto Droid Bionic is finally here. It is the biggest, baddest, killinest, coolest, fastest, awesomest 4G LTE phone available on Verizon. For $299 with a two-year service agreement, you can enjoy the very best features Android-powered smart phones have to offer.
Should you buy one? If I were in the market for a phone today, I would not hesitate. This phone will absolutely last you two years and, if you are an Android fan, you will be very, very happy.
What’s so good about it? First and foremost, it is a fast phone on a fast network. Forgetting the geeky part (dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor), this phone has enough power to search my 24,000 person contact list almost instantly. By comparison, searching the same contact list on my iPhone 4 is about a 10-12 second experience. Like I said, this phone is fast.
It is also on a fast network. Verizon’s 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) network is six-10 times faster than its 3G EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) network. Six to 10 times faster access to the cloud, your data, dropbox, movies, music, photos, etc. Network speed makes a very big difference. You will become addicted to 4G speeds. I guarantee it.
The Bionic shoots true 1080p HD video. It is not an important feature, but it’s a great spec for self-described geeks to throw around. In practice, because the lens is, well, a plastic lens in a phone, HD quality is illusive unless you are under the very best of lighting conditions and your subject is perfectly placed – but, I shot and edited some 1080p HD video with the camera and it’s better than anything I can shoot with my iPhone 4. If you decide to use the HD video feature, stock up on memory cards. The Bionic comes standard with 16GB internal storage and there’s a slot which will take up to a 32GB memory card.
The handset is a Moto Masterpiece! It is well built, feels great in your hand and, most importantly, it sounds great. The speakerphone feature is loud, clear and usable in a crowded Starbucks!
The Bionic runs Android Gingerbread, the latest Google Android operating system. Woo woo! The 4.3” screen is big and bright and the phone is slightly larger than the Motorola Atrix, which has been out on AT&T all year with almost the identical feature set.
Verizon sells a laptop-like interface for the Bionic which is also $300 and fun for about 10 minutes. Then you will wonder why you bought it. There is also a docking station and some other stuff you can buy. Will your AT&T Motorola Atrix accessories work with your new Verizon Motorola Bionic? Of course not.
Almost every article I’ve read makes a big deal about the price of the phone — $299 with a two-year commitment. Is that too much for a device that replaces an 8MP camera, and 1080p Video camera, an HDMI-enabled video playback system (just take a cable and plug your Bionic into your HDTV set and watch videos in HD on the big screen), a WiFi 4G Hotspot and is a full-featured smartphone on America’s best network? You decide.
I will only offer one bit of advice. If you choose to get the phone, do not walk out of the store without the extended battery. This is not optional. It’s going to make the phone even more expensive, but without it, you will have to plug your phone into a charger by noon every day. I don’t know where the engineers got the 11 hour battery life spec from? It’s just not true. Make three 10-minute phone calls, check your email three or four times an hour. Respond to five text message an hour, send a few, and your battery will be 50% depleted by noon. I’ve done this test everyday for seven days — real world use without an extended battery, half a business day.
Can you eek out more battery life? Yes, turn off everything, location services, background data, email push, notifications, Facebook, Twitter, Bluetooth, WiFi and the 4G radio … kill it all, and you can get seven to eight hours of talk, txt and standby time. However, if that’s how you’re going to use the phone, why buy it? Just get the extended battery and enjoy.
The bottom line? If you’re an Android fan, the Verizon Motorola Droid Bionic will make you smile from pixel to pixel!
I’ve never worked at Apple and I’ve never met Steve Jobs (other than a driveby handshake at some Apple events), but I’ve been repeatedly asked to comment about what Steve Jobs retirement will mean to Apple and the media business over the past few days. I have asked every reporter the same question: “Steve Jobs, a man who has changed the world several times during his career, is stepping down from a job he loves because he feels he is too sick to continue doing it well … why don’t you just send him positive thoughts (and prayers, if you pray) and concentrate on all of the wonderful things he has accomplished and all of the ways he has added meaning to literally millions of lives?”
Everyone takes pause, then says something like, “Well, of course, I wish him well … but now that he’s out, will my iPhone play Flash files?” or “Yeah, yeah … what will this mean for movie and content pricing at the iTunes store?”
Sometimes, I’m embarrassed to be part of the modern media business. It has truly devolved into a shallow, dehumanized troth of sensationalist FUD-mongers.
First and foremost, I am profoundly saddened by the state of Steve Jobs’s health. I hope that he is comforted by his family and friends and wish him all the best.
What’s going to happen to Apple? Ask me some other time. Right now I want to concentrate on what I consider Steve’s most extraordinary accomplishment – in a career marked by extraordinary accomplishments. I call it the “Steve Jobs’s/Tom Sawyer Paint The Fence Paradigm.”
Every modern manufacturer makes use of the division of labor and uses some version of an assembly line to accomplish peak performance. Apple uses manufacturing lines based upon the principles realized more than a century ago by Henry Ford. Circa 1908-1915, The Ford Motor Company created a practical assembly line and demonstrated to the world how progressive assembly with interchangeable parts was “the” way to manufacture at scale.
In the 21st Century, circa 2003-2011, Steve Jobs created a practical platform that enabled third parties to add value to the Apple brand and its products by aligning everyone’s economic interests.
Enlisting an army of brand ambassadors, artists, artisans, technicians, engineers and ordinary tinkerers to build your brand has always been a conceptual goal – Steve just executed it perfectly and has set the gold standard. This “paint the fence” paradigm of value-added partnerships over an end-to-end technology platform has truly changed everything.
I cannot remember a meeting where iTunes, the App Store or simply the Apple iOS platform has not been mentioned as the thing to emulate or the thing to beat. Apple is so far out in front with this idea; they will be hard to catch.
Steve created a culture and a methodology of doing business that is worthy of being emulated and simply defines how to bridge the gap between the digital and physical world.
There are hundreds of anecdotes and stories about Steve’s accomplishments. Accolades are due for so many of the things we now take for granted. But his future-thinking business methods, and brilliant execution is uniquely impressive.
I’m typing this on my 17” MacBook Pro. I stopped to take a call on my iPhone 4 and as I look around my office at my dual 30” Mac monitors, MacPro Desktop, iPads, iPods, iPod Touches, Airport and Apple TV, I just want to say, thanks Steve – we’re all thinking about you.
A good friend of mine just left her job. She’d been with the company for more than 15 years and it was time. What will she do now? Actually she has a bunch of options, but that’s not what this story is about. As we were talking, she said that she needed to “figure out her tech.” And so that’s what we started to do.
She will have to give back her BlackBerry and her company laptop when she leaves. In a few weeks, she will be “techless.” Of course, her company email is only going to be active for a few more weeks. They will not forward her emails, but they did agree to put a “no longer with the firm” autoresponder on her account for 90 days. Sadly, they won’t include an email address link in the autoresponder. It’s just going to say she’s no longer with the firm.
Sound familiar? Here are a few tips to make this transition much easier.
First, set up a professional email account. It should not be an @gmail or @hotmail or, heaven forbid an @aol account. It should be at yourdomain.com. You can still use Gmail or Hotmail as an email client, you just need you@yourdomain.com as your email address. How do you do it? Go to your favorite hosting service, 1and1.com, GoDaddy.com, etc. and register a domain and sign-up for hosting services. They are always running remarkable deals on 1and1.com. I just checked, and today, a complete package is $4.99 per month with three months free. Other hosting services and registrars offer competitive deals, take advantage of one.
Once your domain is registered, set up either an email mailbox or forwarding account @yourdomain.com. 1and1.com has a browser-based, email client. If you like it, use it. If not, set up a forwarding account to your “professional” Gmail or Hotmail account.
Here’s the important part. Make sure that change your account settings so that the “send mail as” reflects your new, you@yourdomain.com address. Otherwise, you will confuse people by telling that your email address is you@yourdomain.com when they are getting emails from you from you@gmail.com.
This is easy to do, and it looks so much more professional. My email address is shelly@shellypalmer.com — it’s certainly more polished than shelly.palmer@gmail.com or cutepuppy43@aol.com.
Next stop, the phone store. If you’re trained on a BBerry, and you really love the functionality of the keyboard and email client, there is no reason not to get another one. The learning curve will be zero and you can just continue to do business as usual.
However, if you would like to be fashion forward in the connected world, you must consider an Android device or iPhone. At this writing, the Android of choice is the HTC Thunderbolt with an extended battery. It’s 4G and awesome. That said, it may be too much phone for transitioning BBerry users. Many people I know have returned their Android devices after a few weeks because they were overwhelmed with the features. I don’t fully understand why anyone would choose to not to accept the challenge and embrace the amazing amount of things you can do with a smartphone, but I’m just reporting what my friends and colleagues have shared with me.
If you want an iPhone, the “new” iPhone is only a few weeks away. Wait for it. As I love to say, if you want an iPhone (or any iDevice), nothing else will do. Don’t let anyone talk you out of your Apple love, you will simply be unhappy. In truth, you will be unhappy with your iPhone too, but that’s for a different column.
The last thing on your transition list is a laptop. As it turns out, you’re in luck. It’s really hard to buy a bad computer right now. Pick a price point that suits your needs and knock yourself out. Mac or PC? If you are trained on Microsoft Office, and you want to continue using it, you must buy a PC. Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac is a seriously crippled version of Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows. You will really be unhappy (and screwed) if you purchase a Mac and Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac and think you are going to have comparable features to the PC/Windows version you used at your old job.
If you don’t need to use Outlook, get a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air, they cost more then comparably featured PC’s, but they’re worth it! (Yes, I’m a Mac devotee and no, they don’t pay me to be one.)
There is much more to this story – a lot more. I cover all of it in my new book, Overcoming the Digital Divide: How to use Social Media and Digital Tools to reinvent yourself and your career. It’s a quick read that will help you transition from your old job to your new digital life.
Apple iPhone
There was a pretty funny article on CNN.com entitled, “Do you obsessively check your smartphone?” Duh! Of course I do. So does everyone else I know. Elizabeth Cohen, CNN.com’s Senior Medical Correspondent, cites a study in the journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing that showed that test subjects checked their smartphones an average of 34 times a day. According to the study, we’re all a bunch of compulsive Crackberry addicts, and most of us don’t even use Crackberrys anymore. Once you get passed the fact that research professionals needed to confirm what all of us already know, the study illustrates a growing problem we all have. Here’s how to solve it.
Your smartphone has two sets of controls you should learn how to use. First, there’s the sound controls. Turn off everything. You don’t need your phone to ring, you don’t need to know when you get an email and you certainly don’t need to know when you get a txt message. Second, locate the vibrate controls and set your phone ringer to vibrate only, then turn off the vibrator for every other feature of the smartphone.
If you’ve done everything correctly, you phone will now vibrate when someone calls you, and it will do nothing the rest of the time.
Now, find the alarm feature on your smartphone. Set it to repeat every hour (two hours, if you are brave) and set it to vibrate only.
You’re cured!
If someone calls you, and you are not busy, you can answer it without bothering anyone. Otherwise, you can just enjoy the vibration (don’t go there … I didn’t) and check your voicemail when you have time to deal with it.
On the hour, when the alarm vibrates, if you are not busy, you can check your email and txt. Force yourself not to check between alarms. Like I said, you’re cured.
Now, some of you are so self-important that you will not want to be cut off from the world for an hour at a time. OK, you can devolve into cyber-symbionts. It’s your choice.
Of course, there are some responsible individual who have kids, parents, grandparents, bosses, clients, etc. whose emergent needs are truly important. For these special individuals, I suggest special ringtones. Every decent smartphone allows you to assign a custom ringer to anyone one on your contact list. Do it.
Have the “Theme from Dragnet” play when your wife calls, the “Red Alert” sound from Star Trek (the original series, of course) play when your boss calls, get creative … after all, when it rings you really need to identify it as an emergent issue that commands your immediate attention.
I admit that these are extreme measures … but let’s face it … we are all addicts. If we were in 12 step programs, they would tell us that we can never own another smartphone. We’d be stuck with flip phones and be carrying around our laptops to check our email. OMG!
How far gone are we? Well, a while back, I was in Hamburg with a colleague and we were having dinner in the hotel restaurant. We were seated close to a couple who were very obviously on one of their first dates. They gazed into each other’s eyes with that look of young love … it was heartwarming … right up to the time that both of them took out their smartphones and started txting – talk about a buzz kill. Five minutes later, they were back on their date, back gazing into each other’s eyes – then about 15 minutes later – you guessed it. Is this the future of dating? If so, I’m glad I’m off the market.
These tools are relatively new, and the have quickly become extensions of our brains and bodies. I don’t think that any of the fixes I’ve offered here will do anything for the truly addicted (like me). I have simply learned which 34 moments are societally acceptable for checking my smartphones (yep, I carry more than one). At some point, as we approach Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity, nanobots will deliver our emails and txt messages directly to our brains. Until then … My name is Shelly. (Group: Hi Shelly) I haven’t checked my email in five minutes (Group: applause). Ugh!
Albert Einstein
Leave it to a bunch of physicists to get all practical on us and publish a paper definitively killing the idea of time travel – one of the great storytelling tools of science fiction. A team at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, led by Du Shengwang, said they had proven that a single photon, or unit of light, “obeys the traffic law of the universe.”
What is the “traffic law of the universe.” According to the University website, “Einstein claimed that the speed of light was the traffic law of the universe or in simple language, nothing can travel faster than light.”
If this is true, and most reliable physicists believe that it is, this research pretty much kills the idea of time travel, warp speed, and transwarp drive. Science fiction lovers worldwide are crestfallen.
Of course there is some good news. Now I can’t go back in time, kill my grandfather and prevent myself from being born. Which is great, because I don’t have to worry about ending up in a parallel universe with a different psychological arrow of time.
Can I still leave the Earth in a spaceship, get very close to the speed of light in my ship and return to Earth in the future? Yep. But that’s not the kind of time travel the physicists in Hong Kong were trying to debunk.
Their research centered around the idea that nothing can travel faster then light. Which means you can’t get far enough ahead of a light beam (or a beam of other electromagnetic radiation) to read its information in the past. Think of it this way. “I Love Lucy” was broadcast in 1951. The television signals carrying the broadcast left the Earth’s atmosphere at 186,200 miles per second (The speed of light in a vacuum) 60 years ago. In order to see them, you would need to travel faster than they are traveling, pass them in space and then receive them on your TV. This would allow you to see into the past.
The new research says that, since you can travel faster than light, you can never pass, or even catch up to, information that has happened before you – therefore, under Einstein’s “traffic law of the universe,” time travel is not possible.
Of course, this experiment assumes that we cannot imagine or create other ways to solve the problem of time travel. As much as I am a believer in the laws of physics, I am also a hopeless techno-optimist. If faster-than-light time travel is not possible, I’d live to think that one day, we will figure it out using another method. And, no matter what physical walls we hit, I hope we don’t lose the inspiration to imagine the impossible.
Atlantis Space Shuttle
Government-funded manned spaceflight is not budgeted or planned in the foreseeable future. Is this a good thing?
Some say that manned spaceflight is too expensive and not scientifically important enough to warrant the expense or the safety risk. This is a pretty good argument. It is much, much easier to construct a spacecraft with a payload environment suitable for non-living things than it is to construct one for human beings.
However, some say that men are made to explore – it’s in our DNA. They argue that the end of government-funded manned spaceflight is wrong. We must explore the heavens, no matter the cost and no matter the risk.
Many who argue that we must press on often cite the wondrous technology that has come directly from trying to keep men alive in the most hostile environment we have access to. Want a great list? Checkout NASA’s Space Shuttle Spinoffs site. There, you’ll find descriptions of heart valve pumps, automotive insulation, medical diagnostic instruments, land mine removal devices and a plethora of technological innovations that are directly attributed to the program.
As interesting as this all is, it misses the point. In the last half of the last century, the only entities big enough to get a man into space were governments. Although the Cold War space race was a monumental game of missile chicken, we did learn enough about rockets to get a scientific job done too.
Today, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet could personally fund a manned mission into space. And, although, in this case they would know that they wrote the check, they are on a list of about 200 people in the world that could personally cover these kinds of costs. When you add in big business, the list gets much, much longer.
There are also private programs like the space initiative at the X Prize Foundation, which driving innovation in the private sector. The Ansari X PRIZE, won by Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites in 2004, was a $10 million competition to build a privately funded craft that reaches a sub-orbit of 100 km twice in two weeks. The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth.
There are also quite a few private, commercial initiatives. My favorite is Virgin Galactic. If you want to book your flight into space, the ticket price is $200,000 and you only need a $20,000 deposit. They even have “accredited space agents” around the world who can answer questions about your upcoming space flight.
Will private industry do a better job combining the power of pure research and applied engineering, and move us closer to our manned spaceflight goals? Probably. Will private industry do it more economically? Absolutely. Is there any reason for the US Government to be in the space business? Humm … that’s a harder question. Quite obviously, the military needs to be in the space business. Communications, weapons, defensive technologies all require space platforms or satellites. Truth be told, the GPS system needs a complete overhaul and someone really needs to get on that like, yesterday.
That said, NASA will do what it does with a smaller budget and a less captivating charter and, private industry, individuals, consortia and cabals will get to colonize space.
It may be the end of an era, but I don’t think it is anywhere near the end of space travel. If you’re worried, you have the power to do something about it. Get involved with science and math programs for K-12. Help inspire kids about the heavens and do what you can to promote technology as the direct route to space. The list of disciplines needed to take us into space is remarkably long and offers something for just about everyone: math, materials research, aerodynamics, avionics, electrical engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, propulsion, structural analysis and manufacturing, fluid mechanics, astrodynamics, control engineering, solid mechanics, aeroelasticity, software, noise control, thermal control, life support and life sciences, and many, many more.
Let’s keep the momentum going. Now, it’s up to us!
Amazon Kindle
If you go to the Cornell book store and purchase your books (new & used), it is easy to spend $450-$500 per semester. If you have more time than money, you can find most of the books online and get that number down to $250-$300 per semester.
Enter Amazon’s Text Book Rental program.
Jared’s book list for last semester included: “Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach (with Economic Applications, Data Sets, Student Solutions Manual Printed Access Card)” This is the current edition of the book and it has a list price of $215.95. Amazon discounts it to $153.89. A 29 percent savings. However, you can now rent the book for Kindle starting at $50.10.
It’s really easy to do. Click “Rent book” and you’re taken to a special rental page. There’s a calendar dropdown box where in the Checkout area and you simply click the dates you need. The price for the rental shows up dynamically. If he needed this book, this semester, it would cost us $68.40 to rent, a 66 percent savings from the street price of a new hardcover book. This is simply awesome.
Is there a downside? None that I can think of — you don’t have to carry an 896 page hardcover book in your backpack. The book can be read by any device that can run the Kindle app (iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, Android devices, Macs and PCs, etc.) and of course on a Kindle.
Only about half of the textbooks my son need for this semester are available in this program. Hopefully, this program will be successful enough to inspire other publishers to work with Amazon. I think it’s awesome!
Facebook is going public today. The share price is set at $38, which should put approximately $18.4 Billion dollars into Facebook’s treasury, and value the company somewhere in the $104 Billion neighborhood. No mater who you are, that’s big money. People have been asking me for guidance on this IPO for months. Is Facebook worth [...]
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Did Facebook have a successful IPO last Friday? Absolutely. Facebook raised over $16 Billion dollars of public money to use to expand its business. Early investors who chose to cash out received an exceptional return on their investment. And … [Listen Now...]
10/24/2012
Shelly Palmer - Keynote Speaker
(Hartford, CT)
Private Event
11/06/2012
Shelly Palmer - Host
(New York, NY)
