Google, Sustainability, And Global Warming

Okay, if you ask the folks on the East Coast, they'd say what global warming.  Us folks in the West Coast are experiencing dry mild weather.  Great if you like the outdoors but bad for some if you have allergies and even worse for all if you need water to stay alive.  Which we all do.

I think it's climate change, global warming of the oceans if you will.  Why deny it?  This is why I'm so glad we have Google, flushed with billions, that will do something about it.  Slowly but sure, Google is investing billions in solar and other renewable energy sources. 

Case in point is this new $300 million contribution to Solar City's fund for residential fund of $750 million to put solar panels on 25,000 homes.  It may not sound like a lot but this is cumulative and we have to start somewhere, right?

The issue is that while we have companies like Apple investing in solar plants, they're largely for its own use.  That is good but I think Tim Cook and Apple can and should do more. 

Of course, Google does get something out of this.  My goodwill and I'm sure the goodwill of millions of Google users.  On top of that, they get a tax break as well.  (It has something to do with a business model called "yieldco" - Bloomberg.)

Personally, I've been looking into solar for my home but for various reasons, have not had much success.  Hopefully with Google involvement, I'll be able to get Solar City to work with me to get solar panels on my roof. 

Telsa Pulling Back Production To Create Illusion of Too Much Demand?

Source: Yahoo Finance.

Telsa's latest woes is feeding into Bank of America's assertion that Elon Musk's luxury electric car company is trying to hide falling demands for its cars by parring back production.  Of course, when Telsa's financial shortfall last quarter was blamed by management, of all thing, on customers going on vacation so they could not receive their Model S vehicles.

So, which is it?  Consider Tesla to be the Apple of the auto industry and Musk obsessed with being synomyous with Steve Jobs, I'm willing to give Tesla the benefit out of the doubt.  Plus, Tesla has more going on than a simple bad quarter.  If demand picks right back up and those vacationing customers take reins of their Telas, the SUV Model X ships on time, and everything else runs smoothly, then all will be as it was - sky high stock prices. 

What will be interesting to watch from Tesla is the announcement of the home battery system that Elon Musk teased (GCR).  Of course, the devil is in the details.  Musk promised production in "six months or so".  It probably means twice that.  But if 12 months or less from now Tesla can ship affordable battery storage systems for the home and business markets, it could be a huge win as the Apple of the auto industry shows investors that it can move beyond making money through government subsidies and carbon credits.

Loving, Not Quit So Anymore, and Loving Android Again

I like my Android devices all the way back to the G1.  I would wager most of you reading this have no idea that the G1 was the very first Android device to go on sale in the United States (possibly the world).  Since then, I've gone through variants of the Galaxies and a couple of Nexus tablets.  Now, I'm back on the Asus Memo Pad 7 after my Nexus 7 met an unfortunate end.

I like the fresh setting up process but I had assumed that my previoius profile on the Nexus 7 was backed up.  It was but when I tried to get that downloaded onto my Memo, it didn't work. That was fine.  I still enjoyed the whole set-up, doing a fresh profile and all.

I've used it all weekend and barely touched my iPad Air unless it was to harvest my fruits and vegetables on the Smurf game, do revenges in Star Wars Commander, and send a squadron of level 4 dragons against hapless cities in my clan war in Clash of Clans. 

As I started downloading apps from the Play Store, I suddenly realized I went through similar feelings about it:  making sure that I only downloaded apps from trusted companies like Google itself, Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo.  I was hesitant about experiment and testing out interesting apps from smaller developers because I fear the security level between that of Android and iOS just are not the same.

Honestly, I don't have the same apprehension I did with Android as on iOS.  If anything, I would like to see Google place greater controls over its app reviews and maybe put up some fences around the Android ecosystem while not quite going as far as Apple's walled garden. 

Just today, I learned that even if you're able to deny apps access to location datas, some apps can still get that information through usuage and charging of the battery.  It's quite brilliant but also scary. 

So, I hope that Google will address security issues more frequently and better communicate it with users.  Personally, I have no issues with entrusting Google with some of my information.  I just like for Google to better protect it even more.

Cord-Cutting: New Trick By Cable Networks To Squeeze New Ad Revenues And Speed Up Cord-Cutting

Source:  Insider.

Apparently, cable companies and networks are not happy with how much money they're making so someone, who probably thinks he or she is pretty brilliant for coming up with this idea, decided the way to generate more money is by putting more ads into our shows.  But how are they doing that within the 30 or 60 minutes framework?  Slow time down, perhaps?

Nah.  They simply speeding up shows with compression technologies.  This has been documented, among other things, higher than normal voices due to speeding up some sequences.

As you can probably guess, viewers have noticed and more will.  I simply cannot imagine zombie moans to become shrills in The Walking Dead, can you?

This will only accelerate cord-cutting and make matters worse for the current TV model.  Personally, if these old media guys want to accelerate their own demise for short-term gains, I could care less.

The Disney Way: Surprises Shoppers With An Impromtu Performance With Live Characters

You only have to watch this brilliant bit of marketing from Disney in the forming of Disney magic on unsuspecting shoppers.

Enjoy.

Man Or Robot

Here is a short video clip of an actor pretending to be an a robot.  With the sound effects, he really hit it out of the park.

I'll say this much.  We are a long way from androids let alone robots.  And for AI in human forms to have fluid human like motions, it will be even further into the future.  Perhaps after Apple is done with the iPhone and the iCar, maybe we can have the brilliance of Cupertino bring us the iRobot.

Or will it be called "Siri"?

Phone Cases That Serve As Wallets Underscore How Badly We Need Mobile Payment and ID

Even before the smartphones were integrated into our daily lives, before Blackberries, the original iPhone, and the HTC G1, there was the Palm Pilot.  And I could not be more excited by it when Dave the Mobile Warrior showed me his Palm from US Robotics.  It was an eye opener.  Prior to that, I was using Casio made personal digital assistants (PDA) with black-and-white screens.

But the Pilot was a competely innovative device that was the future.  If you consider just how forward thinking the Palm was, even with its ancient input with the plastic stylus, you knew this was the future.  And let's be honest, be it the iPhone or a Galaxy Note, they owed their DNA to the Palm. 

And when I upgraded to the Palm Zire with an integrated camera, that was the moment when I realized the value of having a mobile computer that you can carry in  your pocket and you take everywhere with you.  The only thing I carried around in my pocket, then and now, is my wallet.  I thought wouldn't it be awesome when we can integrate both the PDA and the wallet into one?

With NFC payment used by Google Wallet years ago and, now, Apple Pay, we are a step closer to that future.  However, upon seeing the number of smartphone cases that has a flip or cover that includes credit card-sized slots, I also realize just how far we are from having a truly integrated wallet in our smartphones.

These wallet cases remind us that we still need to carry around our driver's license, a credit card or two, or reward cards.  So far, there is only one state I know of that allows identification through a smartphone while only a handful are actually looking to integrating driver's identifications into mobile devices.

However, I'm hopeful the momentum for the smartphone to replace or integrate the contents we now carry in our wallets into apps will happen sooner rather than later given the surge in mobile payments in the last few months.