We have a problem - fitting PRT to India

We have a problem.

I have a startup for making light weight PRT transportation, and India is supposed to be a main market. Today, when walking the streets in Mangalore, I realized the solution won't fit for two reasons.

( A little disclaimer first: Mangalore is not really suffering from too much urban growth or traffic congestion. Currently, it is not in a need of PRT. But some parts of India (i.e. Bangalore) desperately are and these issues might abound there as well. )

#1 - Electric wires *everywhere* in the air

We cannot think of putting traffic at 3,5m if there are electric wires at 5. This sometimes occurs is western cities as well, but much, much less since there cables are more underground. I.e. city lighting is done with underground cables.

#2 - Movement patterns are different

We have been riding around the center with rickshaw. The problem is that at least in Mangalore, there are no suburbs or other "natural areas of movement", as I like to call them. No "city within city" but in order to get stuff and go places, people travel here and there, seemingly randomly. I guess the lack of city planning has caused this. Anyways, it's a fact. No suburbs.

That means two things: gradual introduction of PRT is a doomed idea. In order for a system to be usable, it must reach places. A track covering some particular part of a homogenous city is useless.

Second, an introduction to a whole city (which I think is utopian anyways) would cause major havoc among rickshaw drivers and others losing their livelyhood. Not so with gradual introduction (if that were possible) since the drivers could continue business nearby.

Solution?

I cannot see a solution to these issues, which is okay in itself. PRT should not be pushed into places where it does not fit, or brings little additional value. We must be careful with that once the hype stage of these tracks comes - it is a disgrace if they end up destroying local life instead of enforcing it.

The air wires probably will be put into cables eventually - at least that is what happened in the west. Maybe in a monsoon climate it's actually better to have wires in the air?

At least in bigger cities, rich people are getting their own "suburbs", but they are not large enough for an internal transport network. And for such rich people walking wouldn't normally hurt. The idea of a PRT track connecting such apartment islands with selected malls and selected workplace feels like a disgrace as well.

If you have a solution to this, please comment or send a tweet to @bmdesignhki.

Thanks. 

What does 3D printing and exploration of Moon have in common?

A lot.

There's a second Moon race going on, among (at least) China, Russia, India, and EU. But the whole concept of getting "man" back to the Moon has kept me thinking. Isn't it an era already where robots can be doing much more, and much cheaper. I think so.

Now, the work robots should be doing on the Moon is for example Helium-3 extraction (see for example this documentary for "why?"). So how to do that?

Machines that build machines

That is precisely what 3D printers are, and based on this video plain desert sand will do as a raw material.

Now, instead of sending dedicated Helium-3 harvesting machines from here to the Moon, figure out a way to harness the solar power to build those machines in-situ - and download the blueprints.

Heck - once "factories" (ehem - regolith-printers) are up and running, one can even download new build instructions to them. Have all the necessary parts waiting for you, on Lunar surface, when the people arrive. And only the printer needed to be sent.

Beautiful, isn't it?  :)

With this approach, multiple factory sites can be established in different maturity levels. Some would enter production while others would be only "seeded". Exploration of the Moon becomes akin to gardening.

...and the year is?  That depends on us. Progress is not something that happens by stating a year. It needs a lot of hard work to proceed. All I'm saying is that hard work would better be used on 3D lunar printing experiments. With or without human involvement in the picture.

-asko

What happened to the West (too much security blocking our spirit)?

I noticed this advertisement in Bloomberg Businessweek today:

Reminds us of this iconic picture of construction of the Empire State Building:

Now - what happened. Work security happened. Less workers needed happened. But... did also stagnation happen?

Is it because of the safety equipment, both seen and unseen that the current western societies have lost their agility and - partly - their innovation.

Then there's a third picture playing with this theme on the internet:

Since human life is so precious (it costs companies to lose lives, otherwise they might not bother more than before) should test dummies build the skyscrapers?

I'll leave it here. Don't have answers but I think the one-man-in-harness is a lousy picture for an add. To me, it underlines inefficiencies and structural limitations. How on Earth is the guy supposed to move up there! The harness will kill him!

Maybe that is exactly what is happening for us in the West (Greece, USA, UK, Finland). Harness limiting and killing us. Slowly but steadily.

Twitter: give "RT" references "for free" (suggestion)

There's been pleeeenty of discussion on the internet about the way Twitter is subtly changing its mechanisms (regarding retweets) but with not-so-subtle consequences. In short, I feel the current situation is a bit crooked, and at fault.

Short summary of current situation:

- you can either do "official" retweet which means the original tweet is unmodified and shows with the original tweeter's icon, but also to your followers. Essentially, you're giving the tweet more publicity.

This is good, but it lacks making even trivial corrections (s.a. fixing typos or formatting, or making the tweet slightly easier for the readers). Often, such changes are desirable.

So you have the "unofficial" RT characters. Mark "RT @someone" anywhere in a tweet and it's taken that this is a retweet (maybe edited) from that user. The new tweet will show under your "colors" at your followers only, like it came from you (which it did). The "RT" is just a social convention, though some (non-official) tools happily support it.

I like both. They serve different uses.

Now, let's take this tweet today from @TheEconomist.

#Audio: A Greek entrepreneur discusses the difficulties of doing business in the country due to bureaucracyhttp://econ.st/k5Dk7A

I like a different way of highlighting there's audio involved. Not at the very front, but subtly just before the link. Also, I like to inform readers if flash is required (which it is for the link above). So:

A Greek entrepreneur discusses the difficulties of doing business in the country due to bureaucracy. (flash audio) http://econ.st/k5Dk7A RT @TheEconomist

That's it - and send. No - you cannot. Too many characters.

I could send it without the "RT" part but that's kind of stupid. I want to give @TheEconomist the glory. Worse still, if someone re-retweets this (the "RT way") she'd be adding my twitter id at the end, "@bmdesignhki". Now we're truly out of the 140 character bounds. This is very known problem.

The cure

What if any "RT @someone @another" mentions in tweets would be handled not as part of the 140 characters but "free", as metadata of the tweet. Twitter could do this. The implications would be:

- Allowing any tweet to be RT'ed any number of times, without bothering people with the 140 char limit
- Settling the official/unofficial retweet discussion. Hopefully.

The user experience would not really change at all (at least, not for worse). Any "RT" tweet would be shown in *my* colors, so that I cannot mess with the reputation of someone else, by malign modifications or fakes of their tweets. I guess this is behind the official policy of unmodified-retweets-only.

Better still, Twitter could actually link metadata to the earlier tweets this one was based upon (as a chain), not only the twitter id's. This way, I could "wind back" to earlier tweets if needed (s.a. the @TheEconomist original).

In short, I see this pretty easy to do. It's more of a political issue than technical, most likely. Please - do it.

If Apple was Twitter, they'd do this. :)  Give us modifiable retweets Done Right.

Addendum

Actually, give also '#tags' free of char-charge. In other words both retweeted id's and tags of a tweet (especially if at the end of a tweet) should be freely addable. If someone tweets a full 140-char masterpiece, I can then "RT" it but also add tags of my liking - i.e. "#masterpiece" - to it. The only place where the 140 char limit really stands on my way is these two issues.

Should be easy to fix, right? :)

What is my future tablet (as in 2012-13) like?

I've bought two electronic books (Making Things Happen and Beautiful Visualizations) that simply won't get read without a tablet. (the woooorst excuse for new gadget, ever?)

Anyways, while I've been keeping a curious eye on the HP Touchpad, I'm beginning to doubt I'll actually buy one. The resolution is still the same as in iPad and the #1 sales argument for me would be 'paper crisp' readability. I do want color, also, so Kindle is out.

SO, here are the specs for making a tablet - just for my taste and need.

- paper crisp, FUN readability of electronic books and/or magazines
- ability to 3G-roam via my iPhone (I don't want another SIM card in the tablet)
- Great presentation skills ~ ability to run Keynote presentations on the tablet, to an HDMI (or similar) adapter (-> video screen)
- price around 399..499 eur

This should serve mainly as a reminder, in case I feel tempted to still get the HP touchpad. I shouldn't. Come 2012, there'll be an iPad matching these specs. Until then, back to my paperback. :)

Addendum:
Some links to what other people expect:
http://www.huliq.com/10177/analysis-designing-tablet-future

To me, storage is not an issue. Anything goes, and the OS should use cloud integration to essentially provide you with "unlimited" storage. Treat the local (flash) storage as a cache of sorts. (seems the article actually agrees with this)

Addendum II:
Viewing the Windows 8 video on Youtube made me think of adding "16:9 aspect ratio" to the list. It would not hurt, but I doubt iPads will be changing their aspect ratio anytime (soon/ever). And maybe for reading books that would actually be sub-optimal as well.

Btw, the usability of Win8 on tablets seems to be Right There. I'd be fine without the whole traditional desktop layer. Windows without Windows, eh? :)

New 3DConnexion "10 beta 10" drivers - still not usable under VMWare > Win7 32-bit > Inventor 11

I tried the 3DConnexion (Logitech 3D mouse subsidiary) "10 beta 10" drivers today. Great improvement on both Windows 7 (32-bit) and OS X side. At least it feels way swifter, now.


However, one homework remains for 3DConnexion and one for Autodesk.


The backdrop (shortly)
I'm running things on a Mac Mini, and Inventor 11 is almost the only reason (Solitaire being the second) for having Boot Camp and Windows 7 (32-bit) on this machine. I can use the Boot Camp partition either via dual boot or via VMWare (as a virtual machine running under OS X).


While this sounds like a complicated setup, it really isn't. I presume it to be rather common for OS X users, really.


The problem (3DConnexion's homework)

The SpaceExplorer USB 3D mouse works splendidly under VMWare, but the Inventor driver for it is useless under the VMWare Fusion > Inventor 11 setup. Response times are in seconds. If it weren't for this, I'd be using Inventor as a virtual machine.

Since all the "little demos" are as fast on VMWare as they are on native boot, I'm very inclined to thinking this is actually some kind of bug somewhere in the Inventor / 3DConnexion code. Something is done wrong and can be fixed.

Homework: try this setup. Analyze it. Getting it "right" will be a relief to us Mac + Inventor users.

The problem (Autodesk's homework - or maybe VMWare's)

Inventor license handling doesn't work with VMWare launching from a Boot Camp partition. The same license should be valid, regardless of running the partition natively or as a virtual machine. It's a one copy, not two.

This has been reported to Autodesk in the forum or bug system, but I don't expect much to be happening on it. I believe, VMWare could fix this on their part independently by reporting the magic thingies Autodesk asks (probably hard disk serial number or something) in a uniform fashion.

This means one must make a decision, either to run Inventor 11 always native or always virtualized. That kind of sucks, don't you think.

With these companies doing the above mentioned homework, life with VMWare, Inventor 11 and Mac would be pretty much perfect! :)

Picture of VMWare Fusion running Inventor 11. The "jet" demo runs as smooth as ever, controlled by the SpaceExplorer USB 3D mouse. The handle in Inventor - well - does not. Notice the "UNREGISTERED VERSION" in the caption. This copy really is registered (but on the native boot side).

The efficiency triangle

Moth's Efficiency is Truly Virtuous: Planning Prosperity blog post made me think about efficiencies. While some of that thinking got to a comment on his post, there was more to it.

If we draw "monetary efficiency" and "resource efficiency" on the same picture, we get the above quad-field figure. Now, it seems this visualization will help understand efficiencies in general and maybe cast them into "good" and "bad" baskets.

The problem is - and this is usually presented by the Degrowth movement - that making something efficient tends to also raise the consumption of the now more efficient (= more cheap) product, thus maybe making the end result worse than the beginning.

But something in me has objected that thinking. And the above figure lets us study the different cases of efficiency change.

The axes

On the horizontal axis we have monetary efficiency. Whatever your starting product or average of technology price point is, defines the "You're here" center (1.0 on the scale). Making things cheaper takes you left; making them more expensive takes you right.

The vertical axis works the same, but in relation to some resource. This can be emissions, energy usage, water usage, practically whatever. The thing is that it is independent from the monetary value of things.

Upper left quadrant

In the upper left quadrant are products (or changes to your existing product) that lead to cheaper costs (left) and less resource usage (up). But it matters which one of these dominates.

If your product is made cheaper more than it's made resource efficient, the likely rise in sales will more than eat up the resource efficiency. The white area of the upper left quadrant is what the degrowth people are worried about. Rise is unit-wise resource efficiency but fall in total.

Note that in real life the price elasticity of products (how much more will be consumed for a drop in unit price) is not linear 1:1 as we expect here. That simply means the white and green areas are not clean triangles. To keep things simple and to propose the overall idea of the figure, we're doing it like this.

The green triangle of the upper left quadrant tilts things from bad (increased total resource usage) to good (decreased total resource usage). This is because here the increase in resource efficiency is greater than the added consumption due to price lowering. Simple.

Products that would be placed in the upper left quadrant are such where prices tend to fall. Computers, monitors and (at least it used to be) mobile phones. The latest low price on PC's is $25 (but that product is extremely resource efficient as well).

Upper right quadrant

This is where prices go up but resource efficiency is made better. LED bulbs. Wind and solar power generation. Electrical or hybrid cars.

I've drawn a yellow triangle here but it works a bit different from the earlier quadrant. Here, the question is more on what the ratio of raised price to better resource utilization is. In other words, is the added price actually getting us anything.

If you're within the yellow triangle, increase in resource efficiency is higher than the increase in price. Seems like a good deal. However, if you're within the white area, you might question if you're making the right thing. I.e. you would be making something twice as expensive as the current status quo technology, but only 1.3 times more resource efficient. It might - or might not - be worth doing.

Naturally, the position within the quadrants changes over time as technologies mature. Hydrogen fuel cell cars have been within the upper right white area for decades. If you know a product or technology will be able to "break loose" from the white, it might be worth developing it within there. Price only matters when the product is out on the market. But consider being on the white at least a warning sign (and study which alternatives there are that would be within the green / yellow triangles).

So where to aim?

One revelation (at least to me) from this quad-field figure is that one should aim at the vertical axis. Trying to keep the product pretty much within the current price range (of existing alternatives) while heavily making it more resource efficient seems like the best approach (from the total resource utilization point of view).

Of course, market conditions may state that you should go for lower price (if you can) to grab market space from existing, not so resource efficient solutions. But beware of going too focused on the price alone. Hopefully, the triangle will give you a compass bearing to keep things in perspective.

That's it!

I'm more than happy to hear how you see this figure and/or start using it. Enhancements are naturally welcome. If you reference it somewhere please credit me (Asko Kauppi) unless I've unknowingly stumbled onto something already out there. Things do get invented multiple times, you know.

And if you're in the resource efficiency business, one way or the other, please drop by at LinkedIn De-Growth Companies forum that I founded some time ago.