Saturday, February 07, 2009
TED 2009: Three ideas
Spending a few days at the TED conference simultaneously taxes the brain and inspires the mind. The world's most pressing problems are on constant display, counterbalanced by mind-boggling innovations.
It's a marketplace for ideas. A place where issues are discussed and consensus formed. And while it's impossible to summarize all the various ideas bubbling up from TED, here are three trends or developments that jumped out at me:
1. The green movement is heading inexorably toward efficiency, rather than manufacturing. The constraints of the economy are leading investors toward ideas that will provide an immediate return. People are more interested in smart sensors that regulate energy use than building solar panels in large factories. The capital is just not there for the latter.
2. The age of robots is fully upon us. And that poses both great risk and reward. On one side you have military killing machines that can be operated from half a world away, changing the core premise of war. On the other, you have robotic surgical tools emerging that hold untold promise. It is clear we are pursuing both destructive and productive technologies at a dizzying pace.
3. Genomics is the undisputed future of medicine, creating yet another situation that holds great promise and peril. Scientists are creating life in petri dishes. Lab workers are growing human organs using stem cells. And the ethics and responsibilities surrounding this groundbreaking science are abundantly unclear.
As the 25th TED comes to a close, I come away floored by the wonder of human invention. And I wonder whether we're moving too fast.
TED
A wall of ideas: TED speakers
| Feb 07 at 10:00 AM
Friday, February 06, 2009
TED 2009: Best in show
TED / James Duncan Davidson
Some of my favorite gee-whiz moments from this year's TED conference:
UC Berkeley biologist Robert Full blew everyone's mind by outlining his efforts to create the perfect robotic "distributed foot." He studies the feet and legs of geckos and cockroaches and transfers their design to robots, allowing them to scale walls. One such machine, the Spinybot, can climb glass walls.
TED / Asa Mathat
Robert Full and Spinybot
As part of a talk on eradicating malaria, Bill Gates showed off his funny bone by opening a container full of mosquitoes on stage. Said Bill: "There's no reason only poor people should have the experience."
TED / Asa Mathat
Bill Gates with TED curator Chris Anderson
P.W. Singer, an academic who studies war, terrified the crowd with a detailed look at modern, robotic warfare. Something I didn't know: You can sit in a room in New Mexico and pilot armed drone airplanes in Iraq and kill people. Then you go home and have dinner with your kids. Somewhere, Aldous Huxley weeps.
TED / Asa Mathat
P.W. Singer talks about virtual war
Polish newspaper designer Jacek Utko told how his revolutionary designs have actually grown circulation and revenue at papers all across Eastern Europe over the past few years. For this ink-stained wretch, truly an unbelievable moment.
TED / Asa Mathat
Jacek Utko redesigned Warsaw's Puls Biznesu newspaper in 2004
Stanford's Catherine Mohr displayed the robotic surgical arm she's working on that could change medicine. Among the amazing possibilities are surgeons in the U.S. performing advanced surgeries in remote parts of the world.
TED / James Duncan Davidson
Catherine Mohr is both an engineer and a doctor
Entrepreneur Shai Agassi introduced his plans to make driving a subscription service of sorts. Through removable batteries that you buy at future fueling stations, you will essentially purchase miles like minutes on a phone.
TED
Shai Agassi's electric dream
Film producer Jake Eberts told us about filmmaker Jacques Perrin's new film, Oceans. Then he showed us an early cut. Simply put: The best undersea footage ever shot. You have to see this.
TED / James Duncan Davidson
TEDsters at full attention
Infosys founder Nandan Nilekani talked about his new book, "Imagining India," in which he tackles the massive issues facing a country that has one foot in the 17th century and the other in the 21st. This will be a must-read for the business world.
These are just a handful of the amazing innovations and disclosures made at TED this year. In the coming weeks and months, videos of all of these talks will be made available to the public at www.ted.com.
TED / Asa Mathat
| Feb 06 at 03:26 PM
TED 2009: The Winners
Deep in the heart of the TED conference lies an awards show.
Every year, the conference organizers pick three "TED Prize" winners to honor. And the winners get to make a wish that the TED community is supposed to help them realize.
Here are this year's winners along with the wishes they made.
TED/Asa Mathat
Venezuelan music Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu was chosen for his lifelong work with "El Sistema," a program he founded that teaches disadvantaged youth to play classical music. The system he created has helped thousands of kids, seeding orchestras around the world with Venezualan musicians.
Here's his wish: "I wish you would help create and document a special training program for at least 50 gifted young musicians, passionate for their art and for social justice, and dedicated to developing El Sistema in the U.S. and in other countries."
TED/ Asa Mathat
Oceanographer Sylvia Earle was honored for her lifelong work to save the world's oceans.
Here's her wish: "I wish you would use all means at your disposal -- films! expeditions! the Web! more!-- to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet."
TED/ Asa Mathat
Astronomer Jill Tarter, director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute's Center for SETI Research, was picked for her lifelong pursuit of finding life elsewhere in the universe.
Here's her wish: "I wish that you would empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company."
Going forward, blogs will be launched and Web pages designed that will track the progress of these various wishes. It's all done voluntarily. And it's all so TED.
If you want to get involved, and lend a helping hand on any one of these wishes, go to www.tedprize.org/2009-winners.
TED, which stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design," is an annual conference attended by many of the world's leading scientists, academics and business leaders. The agenda consists of a series of "talks," during which big thinkers discuss big ideas. The Tech Chronicles will be at TED, which is being held in Long Beach for the first time in its 25-year history, all week.
| Feb 06 at 12:59 PM
Advertisement : Skip 
Thursday, February 05, 2009
TED 2009: Shai Agassi's dream
TED / James Duncan Davidson
Shai Agassi lays out his plans for the TED crowd in Long Beach
Shai Agassi wants you to drive an electric car. And he wants you to like it.
The former SAP executive, who seemed destined to become the software giant's CEO just a few years back, laid out an interesting new vision for the e-car model at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference going on in Long Beach Thursday.
In a nutshell, Agassi wants you to own your car. But not the battery in the car. Instead, you'll stop at refueling stations or parking lots and swap out the batteries. In doing so, you'll basically be buying miles for your car, much like you'd buy minutes for your phone. And he thinks it's going to cost about 8 cents a mile.
We're looking at the emergence of a whole new "car 2.0," Agassi told the crowd. "A whole new model. You'll pay for miles like you pay for your cell phone."
Sound good to you?
Agassi's startup, Better Place, has cut deals with Israel and Denmark to build out infrastructure for such a system. And Nissan-Renault has committed spending about $1.5 billion to build cars that would fit the model. He also said he's talked with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom about getting on board. And, apparently, Newsom's all for it.
Here's how Agassi describes the system on his site:
The batteries of a zero-emission vehicle need three things in place in for optimum functionality: charging spots, battery switching stations, and software that automates the experience.
The charging spots will keep the batteries topped off with power so that they always have 100 miles of driving capacity. They are located where you work, live, shop and dine in parking lots so that an electric car will have the ability to recharge when the software instructs it to top off.
For trips longer than 100 miles (161 km), battery switching stations will be available roadside. Stations are completely automated, and the driver's subscription takes care of everything. The driver pulls in, and the depleted battery is quickly replaced with a fresh one, without anyone having to leave the vehicle. The process takes less time than it does to fill a tank of liquid fuel.
Because most electric vehicles will be charging during the evenings while at home, the batteries become distributed storage for clean electricity. In Israel, for example, excess power from the growing solar industry will be stored in the cars' batteries.
Similarly, in Denmark, un-stored energy from the country's wind turbines will be utilized. Australia possesses wind farms throughout the country, as does California. Hawaii ranked 4th in the nation in renewable energy use in 2007 and plans to continue their efforts. Better Place can help each market identify and develop its own "virtual oil fields" of renewable energy.
This is the idea that led Agassi to quit SAP back in 2007 and embark on saving the world, one battery at a time. Look for the idea to pick up steam now that the TEDsters know all about it.
TED, which stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design," is an annual conference attended by many of the world's leading scientists, academics and business leaders. The agenda consists of a series of "talks," during which big thinkers discuss big ideas. The Tech Chronicles will be at TED, which is being held in Long Beach for the first time in its 25-year history, all week.
| Feb 05 at 03:17 PM
TED 2009: The TED multiplier
Good to see Nick Graham at the TED conference this year.
The Bay Area entrepreneur who brought us Joe Boxer underwear back in the day is a regular attendee here and, in a lot of ways, a great representative of how TED works. We get questions about that a lot. What goes on at TED? How does it help the world to have all these big shots get together once a year?
Well, Graham's story gives you a pretty good idea of how TED fosters ideas and sometimes inspires innovation. The result, in his case, is a couple of projects that marry form and function in a neat way.
First off, Graham's working for a company called Delta North America, as the head of menswear. It's a big apparel company that does underwear and other garments for retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, JCPenney and others. So far, pretty normal.
Now, as part of his job, Graham told me, he started thinking about how apparel fits into the global warming and climate equation. It was a question fostered to some extent by Al Gore's famous TED talk a few years back, when he unveiled his groundbreaking work on our climate.
The answer to apparel and climate lies in the washing process. Graham says 75 percent of a garment's carbon footprint comes from its repeated washing. Think about it: Your dryer is a huge energy suck. To help reduce that drain, Graham is working with some Colorado entrepreneurs on a fabric that is anti-bacterial, dries in half the time, lasts longer than regular cotton and doesn't need to be washed as often. It's called Ecolife and you should go their site and check it out. And considering the size of Delta, and how many clients it has, if Ecolife succeeds there stands to be a significant reduction in energy use.
I like to think of that as the TED multiplier. Problems are exposed. People are inspired. Change happens. But it doesn't stop there.
The folks at Ecolife also are sponsoring a new iPhone applet that's being launched at TED. It's called iPhorest. You download it to your iPhone for $4.99 and use it to plant a virtual tree on the Internet. You use your phone like a shovel, dig a hole, throw a seed in it and watch it grow. Meanwhile, out in the real world, The Conservation Fund goes out and plants a real tree.
One company that's trying to revolutionize apparel is helping another company that's trying to get trees planted. And Nick Graham's right in the middle of all it, doing business the TED way.
Many (but not all) of the talks you hear at TED take on the world's biggest problems. Global warming, disease, famine, drought. As depressing as it can be to listen to that for hours at a time, the long-term results can't be argued with.
Necessity breeds innovation.
TED, which stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design," is an annual conference attended by many of the world's leading scientists, academics and business leaders. The agenda consists of a series of "talks," during which big thinkers discuss big ideas. The Tech Chronicles will be at TED, which is being held in Long Beach for the first time in its 25-year history, all week.
| Feb 05 at 03:10 PM
Steve Wozniak joins storage startup
Wozniak was named chief scientist at Fusion-io, a startup in Salt Lake City that makes fast, easily managed solid-state storage devices for computers, the company said in a statement.
A co-founder of Apple Computer along with Steve Jobs, Wozniak will act as a technical advisor to Fusion-io's research and development team and work with executives on strategy. The company is already working on storage products with both Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
Fusion-io emerged a little over two years ago. It launched at Demo, a popular conference for startups, in September of 2007, and Wozniak joined its advisory board in October 2008.
| Feb 05 at 02:45 PM
IBM partners with Google Health
People who use Google Health will now be able to automatically stream data from medical devices - such as those used to monitor glucose levels and blood pressure - into their personal health records.
In a partnership announced Thursday, Google Health users will be able to use IBM software to connect their personal medical devices to their health record. That will allow patients to exchange the data with their doctors or other authorized parties in real time.
Sean Hogan, IBM's vice president of Healthcare Delivery Systems, said the new software is designed to offer convenience and help people safety manage their health data - "whether it's alerting a family member, a mom checking her weight or a business traveler who wants to better manage his own fitness."
Google Health, which launched last May, is free and available to users at http://www.google.com/health. It's part of a growing effort to get consumers to put their personal health information online. Google Health's main competitor is Microsoft Corp.'s HealthVault, which is also free.
IBM developed the software based on guidelines from Continua Health Alliance, an organization that supports interoperable health care technology products.
| Feb 05 at 12:00 AM
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
TED 2009: No end in sight
Bill Gates told attendees of the TED conference Wednesday that he sees three to five years of pain ahead of us.
We wondered what other tech leaders thought. So we button-holed Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner John Doerr and asked him how long this thing was going to last.
Doerr took awhile to answer. He stared at the table for a bit, then looked up and said, "I have no idea."
We were immediately relieved to hear we weren't the only ones in the dark.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Pressing onward, The Tech Chronicles asked Doerr if venture capitalists were doing their part by investing into the storm, or whether they were hunkering down and holding their money.
"VCs are still investing, at least Kleiner-Perkins is," said Doerr, who described himself as an optimist. "This is an unprecedented situation. Silicon Valley and entrepreneurs have been a tremendous engine for economic growth. The great wealth of America is based on innovation."
"I might not know when this is going to end, but I think we'll see a huge wave of green innovation that will do for us today what the Internet did for us in 1996."
Spoken like an optimist, indeed. Which is exactly what VCs need to be right now, more than ever.
TED, which stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design," is an annual conference attended by many of the world's leading scientists, academics and business leaders. The agenda consists of a series of "talks," during which big thinkers discuss big ideas. The Tech Chronicles will be at TED, which is being held in Long Beach for the first time in its 25-year history, all week.
| Feb 04 at 05:32 PM
Work-at-home scams on the rise
Spam e-mails trying to take advantage of worried job-seekers were up by at least 500 percent in the last month -- compared to a 40 percent rise for all spam, according to Proofpoint, an e-mail security vendor in Sunnyvale.
Also, more of these messages are escaping spam traps and landing in people's inboxes. The authors use legitimate sounding language and don't try to link to suspicious Web sites, which can fool automated spam filters, said Gary Steele, Proofpoint's CEO. Instead, they ask for resumes and other personal information and may be genuinely interested in trying to recruit you to launder money on their behalf.
On Tuesday, the Internet Crime Complaint Center -- a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance -- said it's received numerous complaints from victims of these scams and warned people to avoid them.
Steele said he expects these e-mails to rise along with the number of people looking for jobs. If you think you've been a victim, you can file a complaint here at the Internet Crime Complaint Center's Web site.
| Feb 04 at 04:23 PM
