I Hate to be an Alarmist but...

...there are some smart people making some very scary predictions about future oil prices. Check out the article and accompanying video. In short, several prominent analysts are predicting $12-$15/gal gas prices starting somewhere between 2010 and 2015--a mere two years from now.

I'm not familiar with these fellows' names or employers, so I'm a little hesitant to jump on the doomsday-er bandwagon. But these guys certainly seem to have the credentials.

What I find a bit disturbing is not the oil shortage by itself, but rather along with an oil shortage we may face any number of other similarly complex problems in the next few years including: global warming and/or climate destabilization, a possible water crisis, a major natural disaster, another war or terrorist attack, or a continued recession. We won't have to confront all of those problems, but you can bet we're going to have to cope with at least one of them.

Dust off your bike...thoughts?

Tsk Tsk Comcast

It looks as though Comcast is still throttling BitTorrent traffic. According to the article, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems found that Comcast and Cox Communications were disrupting BitTorrent traffic by at least 30% at any given moment, and as much as 80% at peak-use hours.

I don't know what to say Comcast. It seems like a futile battle you're fighting. You can't possibly think that this sort of model will continue to work, can you? The only reason people use your service is because you're the only option. I get the feeling that as soon as any attractive alternative comes along, people are going to jump ship pretty quick.

Thoughts? Frank?

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it

A great lecture by Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain popped up on my Google Reader today. I encourage anyone curious about internet economics, or internet trends to watch. It's a bit long, but well worth it, in my opinion. If you're worried about being bored, he manages to work in more than a few good jokes and makes it entertaining--throw it on while eating dinner or something.

He uses websites and internet trends as examples for defining what he calls 'sterile' and 'generative' technologies. Sterile technologies are those which discourage third party involvement--the only person to provide any new content or upgrades to the device or service is the initial creator. He uses the iPhone as one example of a sterile technology. His examples for generative technologies include Wikipedia or early PC's, where the user generates the content.

Using this as a foundation, he argues that we tend to cycle between these extremes and that, by themselves, they are each self defeating. Purely sterile technologies screen content from users, only allowing users to use or see what the creator deems appropriate (think iPhone and the limited applications). But on the other hand, generative technologies always suffer from clutter, vandalism, or both (think YouTube or Wikipedia). At some point users tire of the uncertainty (is this something I've seen before? can I trust this information?).

Are we cycling back to a sterile period? Given the recent rise in popularity of Apple products and service-centric devices like Comcast On-Demand, I'd say so.

There is a ton of great historical knowledge and geek-culture worked into this lecture. Anyone semi-familiar with the internet should enjoy it immensely.

MuxTape

I saw one of the coolest websites I've seen in a long time. Both the idea and the implementation are deceptively simple. MuxTape is a site where users upload .mp3's and create a mix-tape. That's it. There's no social networking, no embeddable applications or cool widgets. No friend lists. No embedded Google Maps, no rating system.

It is amazing how clean and simple this site is. It is the most user friendly site you could possible conjure. The front page displays a random set of mix-tapes. Users click a link and are taken to a playlist page, written in a massive, beautiful, easy to read font. Clicking a song causes it to play. User's can add mixes to their favorites. That's it.

My one complaint is that there is no search function. It's a bit of a pain to sift through tape after tape to find songs you like. A third party has created MuxSeek. MuxSeek queries will return the mix tapes containing your searched song or artist.

OSX users, check the video tutorial. Using one of the site-specific browsers I mentioned in the previous post (Fusion), you can enable Coverflow and get a nice preview of each of the mix-tape playlists.

Site-specific Browsers

Site-specific browsers. Don't feel bad, I didn't know what they were until today either, or at least I thought I didn't. A site-specific browser is simply a web browser that only views one web page. So what good is that? The browser portion is embedded into a standard executable, making it look and act like a program that lives on your hard drive--it can be set to run on startup, minimized, etc.

An example: Fluid for OSX. Upon opening Fluid, you're given a setup window. Simply enter the URL's of the sites you use most often and it creates an application for each URL. After the initial setup, you're finished. You can run them like any other application, giving the look and feel of a desktop application to a website or web application.

These have been around for awhile. The gOS installed on Walmart PC's utilized SSB's. It featured an OSX-like dashboard populated with nothing but SSB applications (Gmail, Google Docs, Meebo, etc.), possessing very few installed applications. If you're interested, I recommend downloading a SSB and playing with it. You might be surprised how cool they are. I mentioned Fluid for OSX, but there are a couple for Windows as well: Prism and Bubbles.

More Android Hype

I really really really wish an Android based phone would come out soon. CrunchGear has a write up on several applications created by MIT students for the Google owned mobile OS. The applications were created as part of a class called "Building Mobile Applications with Android" and were built over the course of four months. While only speculation, the screenshots certainly make them look slick.

[go read/drool]

Apart from the geek world though, Android isn't really a household name. I'm hoping its these sorts of useful, but fun, social apps create a little hype...the kind of hype that convinces carriers to include it on their phones.

I'm particularly interested in loco and Snap. Anyone else?

Solving Health Care

Every politician has brought a 'revolutionary' new plan to solve health care problems since as far back as I can remember. And when I say health care, I'm referring to health insurance. The American health care system (physicians, surgeons, specialists) is currently far superior to anything on the planet. So if the true issue is health insurance, how do we solve this problem?

In a future blog I will detail the components of the health insurance system. However, for now, I, yes I Mav, have personally found the single flaw that is bankrupting companies across the country and driving the costs of health insurance higher and higher every year...

Relationships.

Roughly 2/3 of Americans receive health insurance through their work place. So the question should be asked, "whom is responsible for selecting benefits for employees?". You might be surprised. CEO? Nope. CFO? Sometimes, but usually not. The majority of the time, health insurance contracts and negotiations are the responsibility of the Human Resources director. Forgive me for speaking in generalities, but often HR directors are more relational than analytical. Despite health insurance being the #1 expense to companies besides payroll, the selection of this service requires zero education and zero knowledge of the industry.

Recently, I was made aware of a deal (ok I was in on the deal) where a company was told by their current broker if they didn't shop the market, they could negotiate a better deal with their current carrier. The group was smart enough to be informed otherwise (by me) and went ahead and shopped the market. What they found was a 20% decrease in overall costs with a better benefit to their employees. They stayed with their current plan and broker.

This company passed on $250,000 in savings to their bottom line because they had a long time relationship with their current broker. And we wonder how to fix health care in America, right?

Business Owners: shop the market, look into partially self-funding, get multiple opinions, and have your broker use competition to drive down costs.

I have many many more issues with the industry that I will go into later, but for now, realize that the #1 problem with health insurance is the people who are responsible for making the decisions.

Twitter as a Unique Opt-in Advertising Model?

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging site--basically the "status" feature of Facebook or Myspace. Users have the option of subscribing to other Twitter users and can receive their updates either on their Twitter home page or via text message. The idea is that with all your friends "tweeting", you could always be aware of what they are doing or where they are. And realize that you can choose which of your friends you want to receive text updates from...it's not an all-or-nothing option. These updates can also be embedded in other pages, like I have embedded in the sidebar of this blog, allowing anyone who reads our blog to see what I'm up to.

It came up in our discussion that in the same way that companies are starting to use Facebook groups and Myspace pages as legitimate advertising, they might also start using Twitter. How? Well that was the truly interesting part...If properly implemented, it would allow companies to offer an opt-in advertising for their customers. Companies currently do this with email, but it's horribly executed. Online transactions typically require an email address, and thus there is no opt-in. Users typically have to un-check a "receive email updates" option in order to NOT receive email. Companies take advantage of this, spamming their customers with coupons and deals, so much so that users have a hard time sorting the bombardment of information.

Twitter is different in that users have to explicitly subscribe AND tweets are limited to 140 characters (can include a tinyurl). An example will help:

If I really liked Macy's clothing, I could subscribe to the Macy's Twitter. When Macy's was having a weekend sale, I'd receive a message, either on my Twitter homepage or perhaps on my phone via text message: "Macy's Super Weekend Sale, starting at 20% off! Show this message and receive an additional 10% off!"

Now if this rolled through you inbox, you might give it some merit but most of us would hit the delete button, or it'd be caught by a spam filter of some kind. But with the opt-in subscription based advertising, only those people who WANT to receive updates or deals would actually receive them. And because tweets are only 140 characters long, it cuts down on the garbage--you'll only ever receive succinct and relevant info. There is the danger that companies adopt a spamming type updating system that sends out hundreds of updates per day, and certainly Twitter is seeing some spam already, but I don't think this would be a successful strategy. Because users have to explicitly subscribe, companies will want to make sure they don't alienate or turn-off any subscribers.

This might have limited use. There are sites already that aggregate deals and coupon information (Slickdeals, etc.). Only die-hard, loyal, customers or followers are going to want to receive updates from companies on their phone. But we're already seeing adoption from a few companies. Woot has an account with 7600+ subscribers. The Dell Outlet also has a Twitter account and 880+ subscribers. Southwest Airlines has an account with nearly 1000 friends. Our friend Frank Eliason (link and link) at Comcast even has a Comcast Twitter account with 800 or so subscribers.

Maybe this model isn't that big of a shock for many, but in the past I chocked Twitter up as a useless, next-gen trend. I'm surprised and delighted to see it's being used for something more useful. Thoughts?