?Google Chrome Ad?

There’s marketing and there’s marketing. Embedded below is a made-for-tv commercial Google will be running advertising their Chrome browser. How the hell can TCMITS (The Common Man In The Streets) ascertain from this ad what Chrome even is, yet want to run and and buy it – which BTW, you can’t do. It is a free download. Marketing cool – NOT. Hank

Food Waste To Juice (Electricity)

For my Maymester Intro to Entrepreneurship & Innovation class, we are going to concentrate on the business opportunities becoming available in the waste-to-electricity arena. West Lafayette, Indiana’s Wastewater Treatment Plant is the first facility in the State of Indiana to set up a biodigester system to capture methane from fermenting waste and convert it to electricity for their own use. The video below follows food from consumption at Earhart Dining Hall @ Purdue to garbage cans, to the West Lafayette facility, to methane, to sludge, and back to farmer’s fields where the food cycle starts anew.

I used our iMac to edit the video with iMovie 2008. I was so impressed with the software that I popped for the $99 upgrade to the 2009 version and eventually will re-edit the video. The camera used is an off-the-shelf $150 hand-held Samsung that really gets the job done. You be the judge. I’m very impressed with it. It uses an SD card which really makes pulling video simple. Enjoy. Hank

Wi-Fi 2 Go

I suggest my traveling and/or geek associates read the linked article below and watch David’s video. It’s about the newest Wi-Fi service. The article states:

“imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi — without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go?Incredibly, there is such a thing. It’s the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It’s a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot.” The article is here: Hank

Grins>Friday

Windoz 7 RC1

Yesterday Windoz 7 Release Candidate 1 became available to the unwashed masses for download. I downloaded both the 32 & 64 byte versions, and burned the resultant ISO file to DVDs no problem. I then installed the 32 byte version on the multiboot Toshiba P35 I use as a test mule. The installation went without a hitch, unattended after the initial question asking. Still has the beta fish, and only the trash can on the desktop when complete. However, No audio drivers were installed so no tunes, various USB drivers were not installed, and although “it seys” wireless is working, it is not. Without an internet connection it’s impossible to update/check for other drivers. I’ll have to plug it in to a network and troubleshoot from there.

Not what I would call an out-of-the-box-ready product. BTW, installation of Windoz 7 Beta did NOT have these “problems.” An Ubuntu 9.0.4 ran in its full glory on the same P35 without a glitch. Go figure. FWIW. Hank

Google Using Goats As Lawnmowers

Already known as one of the greenest companies on Planet Earth, Google recently started using goats to mow open spaces on their campus. Techcrunch visited the goat-eating exercise, and shot the video below. I guess this is what entrepreneurs with too much money and time on their hands do. How about rolling out something useful? Hank

Mission Match Up Against The Best

I recently received this email from Kristeen Hudson, the cofounder of MMU:

Worth A Look: Empressr

From here: “Empressr is a web application that lets users create, share and store presentations online. Developed by Fusebox, a web based integrated marketing firm, Empressr is another entry to the crowded space of online office applications. As an obvious competitor to Microsoft’s Powerpoint, Empressr’s presentations are Flash based and can be accessed at anytime online. Users can also export presentations into Flash videos (.flv), while a feature to download Powerpoint compatible files is in the works.Competitors includes Zoho, Transmedia, Thumbstacks and Google Documents”

Entrepreneurs present. And moving your presentations out of the PowerPoint clutter to something that stands out is central to getting the attention you need. While Empressr doesn’t have all the answers per se, it is a move in the right direction. Take a look at the embedded Empressr below. Hank

iPhone As A Glucose Meter For Diabetics

Back in March 2009 Apple announced that they would be releasing the 3rd generation of iPhone software. iPhone update to  3.0  and perhaps some new phones are expected around the first of Jun 09. While there is lots of “stuff” in the future, the one of most interest to me is the opening of the iPhone hardware to application developers. Henceforth, developers can build apps along with supporting hardware making the iPhone a much much more flexible platform.

Back in the old days [couple of years ago] I used a Handspring Visor with a FreeStyle Tracker added into the CF port to read and record my glucose readings. This was a really really slick way to take, record, and graph glocuse readings. Fairly expensive at the time, it soon went the way of technology without a significant market following into the dead bin. With Apple opening up the iPhone, they are changing their business model greatly and in so doing being disruptive – again. There is a demonstration in the embedded video below taken during the iPhone keynote announcement that supports the iPhone’s reading of glucose levels and extends the functionality to include logging the entries, charting trends and a method to backup the data, what I had years ago with the Handspring. I will be in for one as soon as the device becomes available. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: He Didn’t