My favourite line in the pitch is…. and I guarantee that I\’m not taking it out of context:

because its distributed, its totally secure

Nuts! As someone working for a company where writing connectors into external systems is a constant drain on development resource, leaving data in-place is not a guaranteed best practice.

Still goes to show… You could be building complete and utter nonsense and get a discredited person like Michael Brown to sell it as snake oil.

Oh what a world….

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/08/PID_012101/Podtech_Michael_Brown_on_InferX.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/3766/former-fema-chief-michael-brown-on-data-mining&totalTime=832000&breadcrumb=18aaed5837da4ebead6f094f122e0d88]

He makes some really interesting points on how the environmental- or eco-movement will change over the next couple of decades. The movement will change from a grassroots “nice-to-do” group of Western Industrialised tree-huggers and idealists to a global phenomenon of not just romanticised activisim but cold-hard-fact-based politicking. This change will be brought on by two things. Firstly the internet will enable global organised communication to even the remotest parts. Secondly, day-by-day science is improving the knowledge we have of our own planet and how it is changing. So yesterday’s “moral” debates will turn into debates backed up by stats, that can be proved/disproved with proper scientific rigour.

The second interesting assertion he makes is that global population growth will tail off in the next couple of decades due to, of all things – urbanisation. This year 50% of the Earth’s population will reside in cities (as opposed 3%, 200 years ago). As people move into the cities, women stop having as many children, and this has a profound exponential effect. As one woman decides not to have kids, that “burdon” falls on the next woman who needs to have . Populations get older and aren’t replenished with “new stock”.

All very interesting stuff… recommended!!!

Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results—a bust. It’s déjà vu all over again. And since this moment in time is only the beginning of the cycle, the best nuttiness has yet to emerge. Nevertheless, this is not to say that a lot of nuttiness hasn’t already happened.

I can only partially agree him… Yes, the same copycat, cookie-cutter business models exist. Yes, each startup is some form of ad revenue backed search engine, or social-networking functionality to lock in eyeballs for monetisation at a later date – hopefully before the VC money runs out. Yes, there’s a lot of hype in the investment community, most obviously illustrated by plumbing companies like Cisco buying social networking sites such as Tribe.net – nuts!

I disagree with him on the eventual fall out. Bubble 1.0 is different in economic terms to Bubble 2.0. During 1999-2000, each and every half-baked business idea sought several rounds of investment before launching itself on the stock market via an IPO. We saw lots of Bubble 1.0 companies edging out traditional economic giants that had been build up over a century or more. Then when the floor well out of those startups, the stock markets went with them causing the economic down turn.

Bubble 2.0 companies are different, they seek acquisition buy a Bubble 1.0 survivor instead of stockmarket IPO, e.g. Youtube attracting the attention of Google, therefore we’ll avoid the stockmarket collapses of 2000 and social impact of those events in the years following.

Conference

–> IT Conference

——-> Web 2.0 Conference (people use MacBook’s and blog during sessions)

——-> Enterprisey Conference (people fall asleep in sessions and check their Windows laptop and/or Blackberry during breaks)

Yesterday I was at an Enterprisey Conference. As the taxonomy develops I think I’ll release it under a creative commons license for the public good.

Ok so I admit I was vehemently opposed to the very idea of a Blackberry, six months ago. Then I got one and started to see the plus-side of the device. These days I positively rave about the damn thing.

Although I’m not the type to constantly check for messages, which is I think the definition of a crackberry user and their addiction. I must say the whole experience is pretty slick.

This week I spent two days at a conference in London and decided to leave my MacBook Pro at home. Instead opting to use my laptop bag as a shirt-carrying utensil. The Blackberry was my connection to the internet (something I can’t live without any longer). I used instant messaging to talk to people. Used Google maps and its satellite view to figure out which end of Victoria station I was standing at and how to get to the event. Read emails, made appointments, and spoke to a few folk as well.

The only thing I’d like is maybe a blog writing client because I seem to get a lot of fresh new ideas at events like the one I was at.

Alongside the CS300, Polar provide a personal trainer website, which allows you to setup a training programme after providing it with some vital stats (age, weight, height, fitness, goals, etc.). The whole site is very easy to use and follows the design ethic of CS300, i.e. being very slick.

Polar provides a WebLink SW software utility that transfers the statistics collected during excercise (heartrate, duration, etc) and uploads these to the personal trainer website, so that you can track your planned training against your actual over time. Very slick, once again.

Now… the coolest feature of the whole setup is the manner in which the CS300 talks to the personal trainer website.  If  Sony were to produce the CS300, it would supply a proprietary USB cable,  that is easily lost and costs £50 to replace.  Polar have come up with an old school way of achieving the same thing…. sound modulation.

Yip, the CS300 talks to the WebLink SW using your PC microphone. You launch the WebLink utility and hit the listen button. On the Cs300 watch you select Connect and it starts sputtering squelchy sounds.

One minute later and the personal trainer website contains all your latest training details. Slick, slick, slick.

If you’re into cycling and training, I can’ t recommend the CS300 widely enough. Its a joy to use. The only thing missing from it is a Mac OS X version of the WebLink SW software.