I moved in to my current apartment in July 2011 and when I signed up for my utilities, one of the mandatory fields was my social security number.  I left it blank.  (In fact, I think I wrote “no way!”)  They still sent me a bill and they still get paid.  My old energy company in Minneapolis was the same way.  I always refused to give them my social security number and every time I talked to them, they told me it was required.  I never once gave it to them and they never once cut off my service.

The point is – don’t give people your social security number, even if they “require it.”

Let’s take a look at their letter

Now, I’ve attached a PDF of the letter below.  I’ve even run it though OCR so Google can find it easier.  I want to quote a line from their document:

While we have no evidence that such data has actually been misused, or that there was any malicious intent..

WTF is that?  The data were just stolen.  I’m not surprised that no one has confirmed that it hasn’t been misused yet. Let’s count the steps that you would need:

1. Your data has to be sold to someone willing to commit identity fraud.
2. They have to setup a line of credit in your name.
3. It has to be approved.
4. It then they have to draw on that line of credit.
5. The account then has to become delinquent.
6. The bank then has to send a warning letter to the victim demanding payment.
7. The victim has to figure out that their identity was stolen
8. find the source of the leaked information
9. definitively prove that it was NYSEG that lost the information and they have to admit what happened.

OF COURSE IT HASN’T BEEN PROVEN YET.

The second half of that quote states that there was no malicious intent.  This is even more ludicrous than then first part. Do people steal SSNs because they like collecting strings of 9-digit numbers?  They steal them because they have value!  What kind of moron PR firm wrote that statement?  That is as dumb as saying that someone steals money because they like the look of it, not because they have any malicious intent.

From the day that the data were stolen until the day that every last NYSEG customer dies, someone will be at risk for identity theft.  This will be a perpetual problem for everyone involved.  We don’t get new SSNs when there is a data breach.  Instead we get a SINGLE YEAR of credit monitoring service that costs maybe $30/customer.

Do you know what I would do if I stole these numbers?  I’d let them age for a year.  Most of the victims will still be alive but you’ll get a higher yield once this monitoring service is over.

And NYSEG is a monopoly so they don’t have to care.

The letter:

NYSEG RG&E PO Box 483 Chanhassen, MN 55317-9678 Dear Valued Customer: January 23 , 2012
We take our responsibility to protect your personal data very seriously. For this reason, we are writing to inform you that earlier this month we discovered that an employee of an independent software development consulting firm (contracted by NYSEG and RG&E) allowed unauthorized access to one of our customer information systems. The customer records contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth and, in some cases, financial institution
account numbers. While we have no evidence that such data has actually been misused, or that there was any malicious intent, we are notifying you out of an abundance of caution so that you have the information and tools necessary to help detect and prevent any misuse of personal information. We have consulted with law enforcement and engaged computer forensics experts. Our investigation is ongoing and we will continue to provide law enforcement with our full assistance. Credit Monitoring Assistance Above all, we ask you to be vigilant in monitoring your credit and bank accounts for any sign of unauthorized activity. If you suspect any incidence of identity theft, please contact your local law enforcement agency or the Federal Trade Commission. As a precautionary measure, NYSEG and RG&E have arranged for Experian to offer you the option of a year of credit monitoring free of charge through ProtectMyIDTM. If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, you must enroll by April 30, 2012. You can activate your membership in two easy steps:
1. Visit the ProtectMyID website: www.protectmyid.com/NYSEGandRGE or call 1.877.736.4495 (toll-free) or 1.479.573.7373 (for international callers) to enroll. 2. Provide Your Activation Code: Your complimentary 12-month ProtectMyID membership includes: • Credit Report: A free copy of your Experian credit report. • Daily Credit Monitoring: Alerts you to suspicious activity including new inquiries, newly-opened accounts, delinquencies, or collections found on your Experian credit report. You can elect to receive alerts bye-mail, text message, or first class mail.
• Identity Theft Resolution: If you have been a victim of identity theft as a result of this situation, you will be assigned a dedicated, U.S.-based Experian Identity Theft Resolution Agent who will walk you through the fraud resolution process, from start to finish. • $1 Million Identity Theft Insurance*: As a ProtectMyID member, you are immediately covered by a $1 million insurance policy that can help you cover certain costs including lost wages, private investigator fees and unauthorized electronic fund transfers in the event of an identity theft incident. Support If you have questions, need help enrolling in the credit monitoring program, or feel that you may have an identity theft issue, assistance is available at 1.877.736.4495 (toll-free) or 1.479.573.7373 (for international callers), Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Eastern Time), and Saturday through Sunday, II a.m. to 8 p.m. In addition, you are entitled under U.S. law to order one free copy ofyour credit report every 12 months from each ofthe three nationwide credit bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call 1.877.322.8228 (toll-free). Additional information about this matter is available on our websites – www.nyseg.com and www.rge.com. If you wish to learn more about ways to limit the risk of identity theft, such as fraud monitoring and security freezes on credit accounts, consider contacting the Federal Trade Commission or your state Attorney General. Federal Trade Commission: 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20580 1.877.IDTHEFT (1.877.438.4338) wwwftc.govlidtheft We take pride in serving you and apologize for any inconvenience or concern that this incident may cause. Please be assured that we take the privacy of customer data very seriously, and we remain dedicated to using our best efforts to regularly assess and adapt our physical, administrative and technical security measures in order to protect such data. Sincerely, Mark S. Lynch President NYSEG and RG&E • Identity theft insurance is underwritten by insurance company subsidiaries or affiliates of Chartis, Inc. The description herein is a summary and intended for infoImational purposes only and does not include all teIms, conditions and exclusions of the policies described. Please refer to the actual policies for tenns, conditions, and exclusions of coverage. Coverage may not be available in all jurisdictions.

Personal atomic clocks.

Seriously.  Hear me out:

There are people who spend tens of thousands of dollars on home audio and call themselves audiophiles.  They buy low oxygen, ancient Western Electric cables to use to connect their speakers.  They buy dedicated amps that offer zero features by modern standards.  And, this market is big enough to support SEVERAL magazines on the topic.

Likewise, there is a market for watches that cost several thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.  Again, everyone has heard of Rolex, Longines and Breitling and these brands regularly advertise in broad interest magazines.

Knowing this, why do people look at me when I say that there is a demand for a personal atomic clock?  The market may not be huge but it is one that is willing to spend money. Even better, they can be made with off the shelf parts for little money. The blunt truth is that someone who is willing to buy used parts and is willing to tinker can make their own for less than $100 from parts for sale on ebay.

Let’s step back for a second.

What is a clock?  Simply, a clock is an oscillator and a counter.  The oscillator moves or ticks at a regular interval and the counter keeps track of the ticks.

An atomic clock is one that derives its frequency reference from some sort of an atomic event.  So, instead of gravity driving a pendulum, you measure the energy emitted from a rubidium source.  Dave Jones of the EEVBlog has a great video on how these work so I won’t go in to much detail here.  Rubidium oscillators are a common atomic reference while cesium standards are the industry standard for precision.

These devices can be small.  The standard rubidium oscillator is a few cubic inches.  Symmetricom has managed to shrink this in to what they call a Chipscale Atomic Clock – a device so small it can be mounted right to the PCB.

http://www.symmetricom.com/csac/

And how much does a rubidium oscillator cost?  About $50 used on eBay.  And how much does a counter cost?  Maybe a dollar if you use a common microcontroller.  The total price may be closer to $30 if you use something prebuilt like an Arduino.

The one last part of the equation that is missing is the display.  If you know me, you already know that I am going to say Nixie tubes.  Nixies would actually be perfect for this application because a modest investment could mean that one manufacturer would own the remaining stock of IN-18s.  Talk about a competitive advantage – no one could produce a similar clock.  There may be one or two popping up on eBay but my rough estimate of the market is that for around $100,000 you could buy the remaining known stock.

Of course, there are dozens of types of nixie tubes and great care must be taken to ensure that there is a sufficient supply for mass production.  Sourcing tubes would likely require several trips to former Soviet countries to meet with dealers and source NOS.  However, initial prototypes could be built with tubes for sale on eBay.

So we now have an oscillator, a counter, and a display.  From an electronics perspective, we now have a minimum viable product.  But we want to make the BEST clock on the market, not just a good one so there are three things that we will do different.   First, we will include a redundant frequency reference.  This will increase both the short-term and long-term stability of the device and will as provide a compelling selling point.

Second, we will include a series of external frequency references – probably 1 PPS and 10 MHz.  Now, if someone has another oscillator or reference that they want to add, they can easily integrate it.  If you’re a lab and have a house reference, this will work perfectly.

Lastly, we will include a bi-directional time reference –ideally both NTP and GPS.  This not only saves the user from having to manually set the time but it also allows them to have an additional frequency reference.  This clock should also act as a frequency reference and output the same 1 PPS and 10 MHz outputs so it can be used as a reference for other devices.

To this point, I’ve only been talking about the electronics.  The last part is the quality of the enclosure.  I am not a fan of the Sony-Black design (I don’t hate it as much as Steve Jobs apparently did) but I am a fan of laboratory or industrial looking test equipment with sharp edges.  I want it to be heavy.  I want people to know that this device is not a toy.

It’s possible to build the BEST clock for the consumer market.  So what?

Well, okay, the point of making a product is to sell it, right?  We would need to perform some market tests but based on anecdotal conversations with serious nixie clock collectors and want-to-be time nuts.  Based on my connection to the nixie clock market as well as to the manufacturers, I believe that a target price is $10k is realistically achievable.  I have been shown proprietary designs of unreleased products that sell for similar price points and personally know many of the buyers who have expressed purchase intent in the unreleased products.

How would one go about building this?  Well, there are two parallel design tasks as far as I can tell.  We will assume that we are using a common development platform like a PIC or an Arduino and that some components, such as the power supply can be built from reference designs or purchase as assembled components.  That leaves the tasks of designing the enclosure and the electronics.

The enclosure can be developed without the complete electronics.  The outline of the major components are known and, ideally, this will be a large enough device to ensure that space will not be an issue.

The electrical engineering task will take some research.  None of the components have particularly obscure requirements.  The nixie tubes require a high voltage current limited power source but that should be relatively easy to engineer.

The biggest challenge will be writing the software.  How does one account for more than one frequency reference?  Do you simply average the outputs?  Do you use one to correct another?  Does one simply act as a backup?  These are not questions with obvious answers but these problems have been solved.  Generally speaking, each frequency reference is used to “steer” another oscillator to produce a more accurate signal.  This synthesized signal is what is used to measure time as well as provide the output reference.

Lastly, and this is a major consideration, the insides of the device must look nice.  After I finished Steve Jobs’ biography I had a new appreciate for the level of design that went in to every product.  I want to carry that same level of detail in to my product.  I want users to be able to open it up and I want them to be able to see the inside workings of their ultimate clock.

So what’s next?

Nixie clocks are inherently limited by the number of tubes on the market.  It may be possible to manufacturer new ones but eventually other display technologies will need to be used.

Aside from the display, it may be possible to create variations of the product.  For example, what about a $1000 alarm clock that is based off of the Symmetricom Chipscale device?  There are many other options and those will be the subject of another blog post.

How rubidium oscillators work

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you use this image elsewhere, please link back to this post.

An hour ago I got an invitation to their launch party.  They are ready for them to start rolling off the assembly line.  They received their first batch of pens in from the manufacturer and passed quality control and the earliest backers should have their pens any day.

I’ve seen many nasty comments on the Kickstarter page and it bothers me people are so harsh or critical of the team.  The fact is that they have been open with the backers about what the delays are, the problems they’ve had with their first few manufactures, and they genuinely care about the quality of the final product.  They have an insane attention to detail and the product that I wish more companies would adopt their method.

Sure, a little more experience may have helped speed up the process but I don’t care. I want to see what their second product is.

Congratulations CW&T!

• Kickstarter Project
• CW&T

The Cornell Venture Challenge (CVC) is Cornell University’s prestigious Business Plan Competition. On April 19, 2012, during the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration event a select group of applicants will get the chance to pitch new and exciting business ideas to a panel of professional investors and entrepreneurs. The winners of the competition will earn a $10,000 cash prize (non-dilutive funding) to push their ideas forward.

This competition provides a way for burgeoning entrepreneurial ideas/teams to gain experience, exposure, and financing to help launch successful ventures. The teams selected to compete will receive pitch experience including preparation and feedback from seasoned professionals. In the past this unique exposure has led to follow-on investment and formal advisor relationships.

The competition is sponsored by BR Venture Fund (BRV), a student-run venture capital fund at Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Awards

• 1st: $10,000
• 2nd: $2,500
• 3rd: $1,000

CCTEC (Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization) may double the prize money by applying the Cornell Technology Transfer Prize to winners who use intellectual property developed at Cornell and disclosed to CCTEC before CVC application submission.

Please visit the CVC homepage for timeline and application details!  Feel free to email Zach Casavant at ztc5@cornell.edu with any questions.

Applications are due by March 2nd, 2012!

Read Part 1

The other day I posted an article about my aversion to using outsourced software development firms for new product development. Well, I got a few private emails and comments (which didn’t make it past my filter) telling me that I was wrong. So I thought I would take a minute to respond. My video response is below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

My main argument is this – yes, outsourced development may work for back-end non customer facing work or common tasks like setting up a WordPress blog. I still assert that it is a horrible idea for you to build your business on their work.

• Product development is nearly impossible – you can’t write the perfect specifications in a vacuum
• Incremental improvements are difficult – every change or modification generates a change request and billable hours
• Responding to bugs is slow – ideally, your technical lead would be able to identify and fix problems in an early stage company. Instead, you have to document the bug, assign it a priority, have the developers generate a change request and bill, agree to the terms, and THEN fix the bug.
• Your incentives are not aligned – You need someone who will be up at 3 AM worrying about the product. They will watch your site at 3 AM and bill you for the privilege. If the product fails, they will move on to another client. If the product fails, you will have to deal with angry shareholders.

The video was shot at AOI’s office in Minneapolis and the above photograph was taken in my office by Amanda.  Bill is one of the lead authors; he is the one in green.

Go have a laugh at my expense and watch the video

Click here to view the embedded video.

Believe it or not, a lot of people want to be involved with a start up.  Of those, most people don’t want to take any of the risk.  Of course, they still want to take all of the credit for success and that creates a problem for you.  You will find many people, generally middle-aged men, who want to help out.

Free labor – awesome!  Not so fast.  You’re idea may be cool but you have to keep the perspective that if they could have done a start up, they would have.  I think the expression goes “success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.” In other words, people want to be associated with something cool but will only want the upside.

Okay, so the worse case scenario is that people help you only when times are good.  That’s not so bad, is it?  Well, when times are good, sure.  But dependable people are incredibly valuable to a company and especially an early stage venture.  You, as the CEO, need to know whom you can count on.  When people do not have a vested interested in your success beyond bragging rights (which they are going to claim regardless of their effort) they do not have the proper incentive to work as hard as you do.  The net effect is exactly what happens at the Salvation Army – they have way too many volunteers, but only on Christmas and Easter.  The rest of the time they are understaffed.

And there is a darker side to this equation.  Some people do want to take an equity stake in your business in return for their work.  Be careful here.  I encountered many people who were more than happy to help me come up with a “fundraising strategy” where their payment was in a percentage of the cash and an equity stake.  Oddly, they still wanted a ton of cash (on top of the percentage) for me to fly them out to California and were even reluctant to help me pitch.  Needless to say, I didn’t engage people like that.

But sadly, it does get worse.  I found another group of eager people who were happy to help you with your business.  This group of people was generally made up of has-been traders from third tier shops looking for any work they could find.  These people tried to sell me on their “industry experience” and their ability to raise money.  Of course, they wanted a huge equity stake for their token efforts and provided little real value.

Making matters even worse – when someone has an equity stake, no matter how small, they feel entitled to exert significant pressure in how you run your business.  (As an aside – if they have options, they technically have zero say until they exercise them.)

So, we have three groups of people:

• People who want to say they helped
• People who want to help but take no risk
• People who want to take advantage of a young and dumb entrepreneur

Okay, so take the population of people who want to help and filter these three groups out.  Who is left? Well fuck.  Pretty much no one.

Don’t misunderstand me – there is value in having someone help you with fundraising or to give you advice as a new entrepreneur but be careful who you choose.

So how do you pick your first few founding members?  Try this exercise – go on a car trip with them.  In my case, that is a drive from Ithaca, NY to NYC.  It is about 4 hours and I can guarantee that within the first 20 minutes you will know if you can work with this person.

LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WORK WITH PEOPLE YOU DON’T LIKE

What to look for in your first few employees

• Do you like them?
• Are they do-ers or delegate-ers?
• Would you trust them to watch your house?

Seriously.  That is the primary criteria that I would use to find a short list of potential co-founders.  The people in the first group were automatically weeded out by the very nature of their person and the three questions above.

Technical ability or business is important, but they are worthless if the above three criteria are not met.  You can correct a poor corporate structure.  You can recover from poor product decisions.  You cannot recover if your team splits.

The reality is that you probably already know your co-founders.  You probably have someone in mind.

My (bad) Advice:

If you have a great idea but you cannot execute it by yourself and you don’t trust your team – DON’T DO IT.

In a previous post I talked about the perils of outsourced software development.  I mentioned that in one case we worked with a development team who took an equity stake in our company and they were, for all intents and purposes, co-founders.  And, I hated their founder from day one.  I actually got in a large argument with my to other “real” co-founders and adamantly stated that I would rather not start Rovrr than to work with this firm.  In the end, I was convinced to use them (primarily because of the lack of other options) and all I have to show for it is a few wasted years of my life and an ulcer named ******* *****.

Founding a company is like a marriage.  If you don’t think the partners are going to get along, don’t do it.

The headline might sound like a bit of an exaggeration but in the last 8 years of my life working on and with startups, I’ve found plenty of examples why fully outsourced IT has failed but no good example of when it has worked out as planned.  Sure, there will be bias in my analysis but, ceteris paribus, it is a recipe for disaster.

I’m not going to preach or try to give logically reasoned arguments.  I like to tell stories so that is the approach I am going to take. I may fudge details slightly to hide identities but I have first hand experience with the anecdote below.

Hear me out:

First Story:

I was looking at a company for a potential investment and we all agreed that the market was sufficiently large and that it appeared, at least on the surface, that the company had a minimum viable product.  They had some people with domain expertise which to us, seemed like a critical factor.  So far, so good.

Then they drop a bombshell.  “We have outsourced our software development.”  Let me see – they are selling a software product and do not actually engineer it.  But it gets better.  “We don’t currently own the exclusive rights to the code.”  Okay, now, not only has this company invested time and money in to developing the software, they don’t explicitly own it.

It is true that the work-for-hire principles will provide them some protection but they are missing one key element – EXCLUSIVE rights to it.  In other words, they are fucked.  Based on their contract, the development firm has as many rights to use the code as the company we were looking at.  The development firm can rebrand the product, use the same code base, and sell a competing product.

To make matters worse – the development firm was “negotiating” with the company that we were looking at for the exclusive rights to the code.  You don’t need to do a Porter’s Five Forces analysis to see who has the upper hand here.

PASS

Second Story

This event takes place a few years before story one but this happened to me.  I was developing an advertising platform (Rovrr) and we did not have the funds to hire an in house developer.  We did not have the sex appeal of Facebook so we couldn’t attract developers that way.

After much debate, we decided to go with a software firm that would end up taking an equity stake in our company in addition to cash payment as we received funding.  We though that the equity stake would align our interests and ensure that the software firm would be working with us.

Again, big fucking mistake.  The abridged version is that as we were raising funds, the software firm was worried that we would dilute them and they weren’t happy with our payments to date.  They knew the risks of the venture and yet they wanted an investment with a low Beta and a high return.  It doesn’t work like that.

So what did this firm do?  They held our code hostage.  That’s right.  They locked us out of Subversion and threatened to take our servers offline.  I personally walked over to the firm unannounced and convinced the moron in charge that turning off the hosting was a bad idea.  That solved the immediate problem but the long term problem was that they were asserting ownership over the code.

Believe it or not, VCs are somewhat risk averse.  They want to minimize risk as much as possible and a company where ownership of the intellectual property and assets are disputed is, not shockingly, unattractive.

The development firm’s halted our institutional funding and eventually killed the company.

Final Story

I was working at a company where the substantial portion of the IT was outsourced and no one was ever happy with the work we received.  The majority of my time was spend overseeing and reviewing their work and creating painfully explicit documents with pixel-level precision to prevent any unintended interpretation of my instructions.

I used still screen captures, screen recordings, videos, audio notes, thick decks with notes and diagrams on every page.  I tried writing out long Word documents explain what we were doing.  I had nightly phone calls with the developers to make sure that they were on track.  And in the end – things still weren’t right.

This wasn’t specific to any one firm; it happened with everyone we hired. It was a huge waste of time and, sadly, on two occasions we decided to kill projects instead of finishing them because of the cost overruns.  The budgets were always exceeded because the developers never got anything right the first, second…. or thirtieth time.  They kept accruing billable hours and taking their sweet time.

We tried mitigating the issue by instituting milestones and checkpoints.  We would review the developers work with the head of the firm and still, the problems kept happening.  We could never (with any firm) get a fixed price per project to mitigate our risk and even with the signoff procedures in place, things still look longer than we could afford.  Launching a product a year late is not a great start to any business or new product.

Epilogue

Outsourced developers serve a purpose and not all teams are equal.  Some are intuitive and produce great work the first time.  Other firms need 500 revisions to get anything usable.

The problem stems from misaligned incentives.  When you have someone who gets paid by the hour – you are paying them to make mistakes and paying them to fix this mistakes they created.  There isn’t the same level of accountability that there is with internal employees.

I want to clarify that this is NOT a rant against developers.  It is about misaligned incentives.  For brevity I omitted many of the things that I tried to do to address problems.  I have had positive relationships with some development firms but by central argument that a firm should not wholly depend on third party developers still stands.

Lastly, if you do outsource your IT, you – and no one else – must own and control the software version control and the hosting.  You don’t want to be taken hostage so don’t give anyone else that power.

Update: Read Part 2

• GPS (1.57542 GHz, 1.2276 GHz)
• GLONASS – Russian GPS-like service (1602 Mhz +/- 4Mhz)
• WiFi (2.4Ghz)
• Voice & Data (800, 850, 900, 1800, 1900, 2100 Mhz)
• Bluetooth –(2400-24800 MHz)

That’s an impressive collection for such a small gadget.  Now let’s think about what else is in your apartment.

• WiFi router b/g/n  (2.4 GHz)
• WiFi router y (3.6GHz)
• WiFi router a/h/n/j (5GHz)
• Digital Broadcast Television
• Analog Radio (AM)
• Analog Radio (FM)
• XM Radio
• Satellite television
• Baby Monitor
• Cordless phones
• Family Radio Service (462.5 MHz)

But why stop at that list?  There are tons more things streaming though your house even if you don’t use them.  For example

• GOES satellite communications
• Police/Fire/Ambulance radios
• WiMax
• Microwave radio
• Military communications
• HAM radio

I spent 5 minutes writing this list and I am probably missing 90% of the wireless spectrum in use.  If you notice that I stopped listing frequencies it is because some of these use large swaths of spectrum and operate on hundreds of channels (digital television).

Okay, so what is the point of this?  Well, I believe it is inevitable that we will have to start investing in alternative forms of wireless communication.  If you don’t believe me, consider this example:

AT&T was willing to pay $39 Billion for T Mobile.  Sure, the customers were part of the value but AT&T really wanted T Mobile’s spectrum.  In other words, AT&T was willing to pay $39 Billion to enable it to expand its wireless data offering.  Since the deal has fallen though, AT&T has stated that it is competitively disadvantaged and will look for spectrum licenses from other sources.

Right now, few people hit their 2 or GB data cap from their wireless provider. But that will change and it will change quickly.  Pandora’s major growth is from wireless subscribers. (Source: Pandora’s S-1 ) Do you think that Netflix will have similar trends?  Probably.  What about older sources of data use – has your email box gotten smaller in the last 5 years?  Have you started browsing the web less?  Have you cut back on your YouTube use?

So what’s the solution?  There are two large and under-loved areas of investment.

Radio Technology – When I say radio technology it usually conjures up sepia toned images of Marconi in his lab surrounded by large loops of wire in a crude setup.  Of course, that is only tangentially what I mean. Specifically, I am talking about devices like software-defined radios.

Software-defined radios are devices that have minimal hardware requirements and replace much of the signal processing with software. (Wikipedia Overview)  This means that you can switch frequencies, modulation techniques or even offer improved radio capabilities with a simple software update.  Imagine a device that intelligently selects a slice of spectrum with minimal interference based on its physical location.

Another area of radio technology that needs more attention are, what I will call, precision radios.  These are devices that intelligently filter out noise and can operate within a strict slice of the spectrum and are not subject to interference from neighboring broadcasts.  Right now, the spectrum is allocated and buffers are built between frequency ranges to prevent one device from interfering with other devices.  In practice, this means a huge percentage of usable bandwidth is just discarded because manufacturers want to use cheaper radios and poorer quality designs.

A great example of this is the whitespace debate.  The National Association of Broadcasters hired world-renowned physicists like Dolly Parton and the Dixie Chicks to talk about how allowing unused frequencies will ruin live performances.  The NAB lost, the frequency was reallocated, and concerts and theatrical shows everywhere continued on without problems.

Optical Networking is one more area that needs more attention.  More specifically, I mean cable-less optical networking.  The proliferation of LED lighting has enabled manufacturers to introduce data transmission capabilities in to overhead lighting.  They operate at a modulation frequency too high for humans to see but provide enormous bandwidth potential.   For a great overview, see this MIT Technology Review article.

The basic principle is that your laptop may have a few LED’s and receives on it.  They would likely be infrared and invisible to you.  In fact, they can be hidden behind a layer of black glass (think about your MacBook bezel) and completely hidden.  The receiver/transmitter would be the overhead lighting in your office and the communication would be largely local.  In other words, you would not be broadcasting to everyone in a 1,000m radius – only devices nearby could receive the signal.  Not only does this increase security but it enables bandwidth optimization.  You are no longer competing for 50Mbps WiFi bandwidth with 100 other co-workers.  You are now just competing for a slice of 1,600Mbps of bandwidth among 10 users.

Alternatively, companies like LightPointe are building optical data bridges between buildings.  Imagine a University campus or a company with multiple buildings nearby using devices that look like small microwave transmitters to connect across campus at multi-gigabit speeds.  You would no longer need to acquire the spectrum license and you would not need to dear up any ground to lay optical networking cable.

Neither of these optical technologies are new but they have not been positioned to reach consumer and small/medium businesses.

I am not in a position to develop an investment theme (I’m currently a student) but it strikes me that alternative data communications and radio technology could be a fruitful technology given both the bandwidth superiority and the impending bandwidth crunch. If I were starting a new fund, this is an area I would seriously consider investing in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Official site: http://joesparks.com/radiskull/episodes/e01/playback.htm

The logo idea came from Robert Rudelius and I were at a whiteboard sketching out a few designs, capturing them with a camera phone, and sending them to the designer.  (The Metadata for the original sketch below show it was taken at Friday, December 21, 2007).  The original version was a knockoff of the old Engadget logo

There are still some critical issues to overcome – for example parsing images to tell what people are talking about is a major challenge.  Services like TinEye may be able to help with that but the core concept is still valid.  People talk about products, influence their friends, and create value.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(For reference, here is a demo video we made for Rovrr.  More can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/Rovrr/videos)

Click here to view the embedded video.

I did not purchase from BismuthCrystal.com but they do have some of the nicest ones that I’ve seen for sale.  Click on the read more link for photos.

[Show as slideshow]

(Edited for formatting – not for spelling)

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.

PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe – but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:

The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers.  The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world – because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

Original: http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/sopa.txt

Click the Read More link to see part of his Wikipedia entry

Shortly after graduating from high school, he was arrested for possession of cocaine.[7]

While recording Doggystyle in August 1993, Snoop Dogg was arrested in connection with the death of Phillip Woldermarian, a member of a rival gang who was shot and killed by Snoop’s bodyguard, McKinley Lee; Snoop was charged with murder along with Lee as he was driving the vehicle from which the shooting had commenced. Snoop and Lee were defended by Johnnie Cochran.[97] Both Snoop and Lee were acquitted; Lee was acquitted on grounds of self-defense, but Snoop Dogg remained entangled in the legal battles around the case for three years.[98]

In July 1993, Snoop was stopped for a traffic violation and a firearm was found by police while conducting a search of his car. In February 1997, he pleaded guilty to possession of a handgun and was ordered to record three public service announcements, pay a $1,000 fine, and serve three years’ probation.[99][100]

In May 1998, Snoop Dogg was fined and arrested for a misdemeanor of marijuana possession.[101]

In October 2001, Snoop Dogg was arrested again for a misdemeanor of marijuana possession.[101] In 2002 he pleaded no contest and was fined a total of $398.30 and received a suspended 30-day jail sentence.[102]

Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound, and The Game were sued for assaulting a fan on stage at a May 2005 concert at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Washington. The accuser, Richard Monroe, Jr., claimed he was beaten by the artists’ entourage while mounting the stage.[103] He alleged that he reacted to an “open invite” to come on stage. Before he could, Snoop’s bodyguards grabbed him and he was beaten unconscious by crewmembers, including the rapper and producer Soopafly; Snoop and The Game were included in the suit for not intervening. The lawsuit focuses on a pecuniary claim of $22 million in punitive and compensatory damages, battery, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[104] The concerned parties appeared in court in April 2009.

On April 26, 2006, Snoop Dogg and members of his entourage were arrested after being turned away from British Airways’ first class lounge at Heathrow Airport. Snoop and his party were not allowed to enter the lounge because some of the entourage were flying first class, other members in economy class. After the group was escorted outside, they vandalized a duty-free shop by throwing whiskey bottles. Seven police officers were injured in the midst of the disturbance. After a night in prison, Snoop and the other men were released on bail on April 27, but he was unable to perform at the Premier Foods People’s Concert in Johannesburg on the same day. As part of his bail conditions, he had to return to the police station in May. The group has been banned by British Airways for “the foreseeable future.”[105][106] When Snoop Dogg appeared at a London police station on May 11, he was cautioned for affray under Section 4 of the Public Order Act for use of threatening words or behavior.[107] On May 15, the Home Office decided that Snoop Dogg should be denied entry to the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future due to the incident at Heathrow as well as his previous convictions in the United States for drugs and firearms offenses.[108][109] Snoop Dogg’s visa card was rejected by local authorities on March 24, 2007 because of the Heathrow incident.[110] A concert at London’s Wembley Arena on March 27 went ahead with Diddy (with whom he toured Europe) and the rest of the show. However the decision affected four more British performances in Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow[111] and Budapest (due to rescheduling).[112] As of March 2010, Snoop Dogg has been allowed back into the UK.[1]

On September 27, 2006, Snoop Dogg was detained at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California by airport security, after airport screeners found a collapsible police baton in Snoop’s carry-on bag. The baton was confiscated but Snoop was allowed to board the flight. He has been charged with various weapons violations stemming from this incident. Donald Etra, Snoop’s lawyer, told deputies the baton was a prop for a musical sketch. Snoop was sentenced to three years’ probation and 160 hours of community service starting on September 20, 2007.[113]

Snoop Dogg was arrested again on October 26, 2006 at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California while parked in a passenger loading zone. Approached by airport security for a traffic infraction, he was found in possession of marijuana and a firearm, according to a police statement. He was transported to Burbank Police Department Jail, booked, and released on $35,000 bond. He faced firearm and drug possession charges on December 12 at Burbank Superior Court.[114]

He was again arrested on November 29, 2006, after performing on The Tonight Show, for possession of marijuana and a firearm.[115]

Snoop was arrested again on March 12, 2007 in Stockholm, Sweden after performing in a concert with P. Diddy in Stockholm’s Globe Arena after he and a female companion reportedly “reeked” of marijuana. They were released four hours later after providing a urine sample. The results on urine determined whether charges would be pressed. However the rapper denied all charges.[116][117]

On April 26, 2007, the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship banned him from entering the country on character grounds, citing his prior criminal convictions. He had been scheduled to appear at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards on April 29, 2007.[118] Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship lifted the ban in September 2008 and had granted him visa to tour Australia. DIAC said “In making this decision, the department weighed his criminal convictions against his previous behaviour while in Australia, recent conduct – including charity work – and any likely risk to the Australian community … We took into account all relevant factors and, on balance, the department decided to grant the visa.”[119]

Snoop Dogg’s many legal issues forced San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom to withdraw his plan to issue a proclamation to the rapper.[120]

Snoop Dogg was banned from Parkpop, a festival in the Netherlands on June 27, 2010, where he was scheduled to perform. The mayor and law enforcement officials asked organizers of the festival to find an artist more “open and friendly” to play the event.[121]

Snoop Dogg was arrested again on January 7, 2012 for posession of Marijuana charge after Border control agents discovered a small amount of marijuana on his tour bus. Snoop Dogg was stopped at the same Sierra Blanca, Texas, checkpoint on Saturday where country singer Willie Nelson was arrested for marijuana possession in 2010. The agents conducted a routine inspection of his tour bus at the U.S.- Mexico border checkpoint, east of El Paso, Texas and thought they smelled marijuana. Snoop Dogg was issued a citation for possession of drug paraphernalia, released and given a court date of Friday, January 20, 2012.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Broadus#Legal_issues

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Best Billfold

Ettinger Purple Billfold (£146 – $230)

These guys are a Royal Warrant holder.  They regularly supply the Prince of Whales and they produce some of the finest leather goods that I’ve come across.  You can buy their work domestically – they have stores in NYC and LA.  Link http://www.ettinger.co.uk

Best Umbrella

James Smith & Sons Solid Stick (£225 /  $350)

A man’s umbrella instantly tells you about his social status and his financial well being.  This is a solid stick umbrella; the entire umbrella is a single piece of wood for durability.  Each umbrella is handmade and cut to the owner’s height.  The are finished with a rubber or metal (you better order the metal) ferrule (the tip of the umbrella).  Link: http://james-smitj.co.uk

Best iPhone Case

Hard Graft Leather iPhone Case / Heritage ($72)

Hard Graft is a haberdashery based in Austria that makes predominately leather goods.  This design hand crafted from the best hides they can find.  It is vegetable tanned Italian leather that has been hand finished in florence using traditional artisan techniques.  It features a natural skin structure and patina which give this a subtle depth that is missing from all other leather iPhone cases that I’ve found.  Be sure to check out their other goods too.  Link http://www.hardgraft.com

Best iPad Case

Vaja iVolution Top SP ($180)

I like Vaja.  Some of their designs may be a bit over the top but sometimes a streak of color isn’t bad.  I really like the work that Hard Graft does but the color options on the iPad case here win out.  Like with most Vaja products, you can select the colors and they will hand make one to your specifications.  It takes about 25 days to build your new case and once you get it, you will have something that is uniquely you.  This model has a cover that is completely detachable and can be used as a kick stand.  This also has the dubious distinction on having one of the worst product names I’ve ever heard.  Link http://www.vajacases.com

Best Wool Tie

J.CREW faded herringbone tie ($60)

So this is the least expensive item on the list and it is nowhere near the most expensive tie that I’ve seen but I love this one.  I have a few wool ties from J.CREW and every one is well made, travels nicely, and looks great.  The Vaja case won the award for worst product name.  This tie wins the award for worst website copy: “A ruggedly handsome interpretation of a classic. Expertly hand-finished in English wool hailing from the Abraham Moon mill—world famous for their fine fabrics.”  Please fire that copywriter.  Link http://www.jcrew.com

Best Suit under $1500

Hickey Freeman Grey Solid Suit ($1,395)

This is a two button, single breasted suit.  N’uff said.  Link http://www.hickeyfreeman.com

Best White Shirt

Banana Republic BR Monogram white poplin dress shirt ($130)

Don’t overlook the white shirt.  A $40 white shirt is great at times but it is hard to beat a well crafted dress shirt.  I have a few of these and they are hard to beat.  They fit great and look clean.  Even if you’re not wearing a suit, or, especially if you’re not wearing a suit and you need to look sharp, this shirt plus the J.CREW tie above is a hard to beat.  Link: http://www.bananarepublic.com

Best Art For Your Workspace

Luke Chueh ($100 – $10,000+)

Yes, this is the most subjective one on the list.  Luke Chueh is a California based artist whose recurring themes include the macabre, surrealism, and alienation.  He is generally classified as a member of the lowbrow / pop surrealism art movement.  I own two giclée prints of his: Possessed (shown above) and I Asked For Scrambled. If you are interested in buying his work you will need to go through a dealer.  Black Market, Gallery 1988, Copro/Nason, and Munkey King generally sell signed prints and original works.  Link http://lukechueh.com

Any thoughts or ideas?

Update  via Twitter from Dave Jones (eevblog.com)

“It matches the trace length to the one next to it. For timing. RT @brianstuckey: what is the point of curvy tracks? bit.ly/u8zUX5″

Everyone who has built their own computer (sadly, a dying breed) has wanted to increase the performance of their machine at some time. Sure, you can put in more RAM and switch to SSD drives but ultimately, the CPU has to be swapped out which is rarely a simple switch.

Software engineers face a similar problem. Some tasks work better on single core CPU. Older software, for example, is frequently not optimized for a multi-core, multi-threaded approach. This is not an insignificant portion of the market – lots of companies rely on decade old software for critical services. Besides, single threaded software is easier to program.

Bluntly put, some times it is easier and cheaper to throw hardware at a software problem. Instead of reengineering old code or trying to optimize existing production code, putting it on a faster machine is a cheaper fix.

My idea is this – what if you could magically increase the computing power of your CPU. I do not mean up to 100% of a host computer’s resources, I mean one virtual computer that can span dozens of physical machines. Keep reading; I propose a non-magic solution to this problem.

There are two key technologies that exist today that are widely implemented and key to my solution.

Virtualization – this is a technology that allows a physical machine to be split up in to several virtual machines. Virtualization runs several concurrent instances of an operating system through a hypervisor. The hypervisor takes a virtual machine’s requests, translates the memory locations, network, IO, etc., and passes them to the physical machine. This allows fast execution of code while partitioning virtual machines from interfering with each other.

This website is hosted on a virtual machine at Media Temple and the hypervisor is provided by Parallels. VMWare, Oracle, and Microsoft also offer virtual machine solutions.

The other major technology is Emulation. Emulators allow one piece of hardware to act like another. For example, I have software on my Mac (Intel Core i7 CPU) to emulate a Nintendo Entertainment System (Ricoh 2A03 CPU). The emulator takes commands that were originally written for the Ricoh CPU and translates them in to instructions that my Intel CPU can understand. The result is that my computer can run code that was intended for another machine. The tradeoff for this flexibility is that there is a performance hit.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has combined the two technologies. Emulators provide a virtual CPU. Virtual Machines allow native code execution.

What if these two were combined to create one virtual machine that could span different hardware? The guest machine would simply “see” one CPU much like an emulator does but if the underlying hardware (“bare metal” in industry speak) was the same architecture, then no major machine code translation would be needed.

This combination would have a huge impact on legacy enterprise software. Instead of paying software engineers to rewrite huge applications, all a company would need to do would be to buy a few more host servers to boost capacity. It may not be a “fix” but it would extend the need to update old code.

Now, my solution may not be without challenges. For example, coordinating commands across dozens of physical processors would be a challenge. If a host machine went down, it would likely take down everything. Communication between host computer interconnects would require solutions made for supercomputers (but on a much smaller scale) but things like InfiniBand may suffice.

This is still a work in progress but I think there is something here…

NBA 5110 – Financial Modeling
NBA 5170 – Leveraged Buyouts and Structured Finance
NBA 5320 – Due Diligence in Private Equity Investments
NBA 5590 – The Venture Capital Industry and Private Equity
NBA 5640 – Entrepreneurship and Private Equity
NBA 6560 – Valuation Principles
NBA 6800 – Entrepreneurial Executives
NCC 5040 – Managing and Leading Organizations
NCC 5080 – Managing Operations

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Social media is a two way street.  If you tweet in a broadcast mode, don’t be surprised when a customer or potential customer responds.  Do not be surprised when a customer asks you a question over Twitter.  Interacting with a customer can be a very positive experience but ignoring a customer can have the opposite experience.

In other words, if I ask you a question on Twitter, I EXPECT AN ANSWER.

Yes, this post is a bit of a rant but it is also a warning to businesses who think they need a social media presence but do not maintain it.  You may have setup a Twitter account or a Facebook Page but if you do not monitor it, two things happen.  First, the page stagnates.  If you find a Facebook page that has not been updated in 6 months, what do you think about the business?  Are they still alive?  Do they care?  You may think a lot of things but none of them will be positive.

Second, if a customer posts a question and you do not respond, how do you think the customer feels?  Customers can wait a bit for a response but not days.  By not responding, you are sending the message that you don’t care.  ”I don’t know” is a valid response.  The fact that you responded is what counts.

What prompted this?  I regularly ask small businesses questions online.  Liquor stores, car dealership, and even ice cream shops.  They tweet out from time to time and so it is legitimate for me to expect them to respond.  They accounts are not abandoned – they just appear to be managed by someone who either does not care to respond to paying customers or is not empowered to respond.

So, here is my heterodoxical opinion.  If you have a Twitter account or Facebook Page and don’t update it – DELETE IT.  Seriously.  A customer not finding your page is better than one having a bad experience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Links

• WordPress.com (they host)
• WordPress.org (you host)
• Joomla.org (open source CMS)
• Drupal.org (open source CMS)
• hover.com (domain names)
• godaddy.com (domain names – do not use for hosting)
• MediaTemple.net (who I use for hosting)
• Google Apps (email, calendar, contacts)