TECHNOLOGY: Free Internet for Everyone in Sight
One of the biggest things about our ever-connected world is that we’re speed freaks. And what we mean by that is we want our connected world to be instantaneous.
Have you tried to stream a TV show or load a YouTube clip and been greeted by one of these pesky symbols?
If you have, you know you end up waiting almost as long as the length of the clip for it to load.
Or even worse, in the middle of a clip…the…pic…ture…and aud…io stutt…er and p…ause.
And what makes things worse is leaders of industry and government think we don’t want fast internet! Apparently we have no need for lighting fast internet connections. Looks like Australia just isn’t interested in staying competitive in the future.
Maybe we should follow the lead from the world’s most forward thinking company, Google [NASDAQ: GOOG]. The way Google sees it, everyone should have super fast internet. And in fact, basic internet speeds should be free.
For any technology company it’s better if users have faster internet connections. It means searches work faster, hardware works better, connectivity and innovation move forward.
‘Google Fibre’ rolled into Kansas City late last year. It’s Google as an Internet Service Provider. And over the last few weeks, they’ve tripled that to cover Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah.
Here’s the slam dunk…it’s Gigabit speed. To give you an idea of how fast that is compared the average Australian internet speed. It’s about 232 times faster.
And to make things even more appealing, if you want free internet at current speeds with Google, you can have that too. Let me just clarify that point. Free internet, at current internet speeds. You pay a one off connection fee, then no more internet bills.
We like this concept of free internet for everyone. If everyone had basic free internet we’d all stop getting ripped off by crazy data prices from the major telcos. Then if we wanted it faster, we could have it faster and pay for it as needed.
It’s like going to a park and using the water fountain, it’s free. It’s not purified and filtered and flavoured or anything like that. It’s just basic water.
So why isn’t the internet like that? In today’s world if you want the basic, non-flavoured internet down at the park, then you should have it, free.
If you want the Evian version, then sure, pay for it accordingly. But the foundation and basic right to simple internet should be free for everyone. Particularly if as a nation we want to stay internationally competitive and relevant in the future.
If you’re wondering who would pay for it. The telcos. The incentive to do this would be the potential for people to upgrade to an even faster service, or for the telco to sell other bells and whistles.
With Google Fibre and the track they’re heading down it could just be the start of the internet being as free as the air you breathe.
HEALTH: Happy Birthday DNA
The 25th of April was DNA Day. It’s the annual celebration of the discovery of the double helix structure of our fundamental building blocks. And this year it’s the 60th anniversary. So happy 60th James Watson and Francis Crick.
We’re pretty excited here about DNA. We love the idea that in today’s age of cutting edge technologies we can delve deep into the atomic structures that makes us who we are. What also exictes us is the ability to read our DNA like a story book. That is, we can have our DNA analysed and looked at. And it tells us our own story.
The story it tells is where we came from, why parts of us are the way they are, and potentially what our future could be like. It’s our own personal biological information laid out before our eyes. Now it can’t tell us when our expiry date is, nor can it tell us when we’ll get the flu. But it can tell us if we’re at an increased risk of bowel cancer, or male pattern baldness.
Source: zmescience.com
And with this in mind a few of us here at Port Phillip Publishing are getting our DNA analysed. A couple of weeks ago we signed up on 23andme.com and ordered some DNA kits.
They arrived last week and we’ve sent them away for analysis. All it required from us was a bit of hard earned cash and some saliva. All in all a pretty easy process.
The email came in over the weekend that the lab has our samples. It’ll take 6-8 weeks for analysis.
We know it doesn’t actually take this long to process the DNA. Because we know 23andme uses a DNA analyser called the Illumina OmniExpress Plus. And the company that makes it, Illumina [NASDAQ: ILMN] says one machine can do thousands of samples per week.
But we guess that 23and me have to prepare the data and put the results together in a nice looking package for us. So it’ll do for now.
In 6-8 weeks’ time when the DNA analysis comes in, we’ll tell you all about it. Assuming it doesn’t show markers of some sort of mutant super-powered abilities, you’ll be able to read about our DNA as we see it.
ENERGY: How Human Blood Supply Inspired a Giant Solar Disc
Here we were thinking that IBM [NYSE: IBM] was predominately interested in computing and innovation. But we were wrong.
As it turns out, IBM is getting into the business of solar. And not just whacking together a bunch of Photovoltaic (PV) cells and linking them up to a computer. In collaboration with a number of Swiss scientists they’ve produced a prototype PV System capable of harnessing the power of…2,000 suns! It’s called the High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal system (HCPVT).
We thought that if we could harness the full power of the sun that we orbit that’d be great. Not necessarily 2,000 of them.
Now the reality of it is it’s not 2,000 suns worth of power. Otherwise we’d really only need one of these discs to power the rest of the world, forever. It’s actually the power of our only sun concentrated at the surface of the PV cells over 2,000 times. Hundreds of little 1cm x 1cm PV cells make up the total solar disc.
Underneath every little PV cell is a liquid cooling system which allows the disc to maintain safe temperatures of a solar concentration of 2,000 times. Their inspiration for this cooling technique came from the human blood supply system. IBM used this type of cooling in their supercomputers (Aquasar Computer) so now they’re simply applying their technology to other forms of innovation.
There are two key points that suggest the HCPVT has real potential to contribute to future power;
- It can safely and efficiently harness over 80% of the energy coming in from the sun,
- They can make the system at low cost.
Here’s part of the IBM press release;
‘With such a high concentration and a radically low cost design scientists believe they can achieve a cost per aperture area below $250 per square meter, which is three times lower than comparable systems. The levelized cost of energy will be less than 10 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh). For comparison feed in tariffs for electrical energy in Germany are currently still larger than 25 cents per KWh and production cost at coal power stations are around 5-10 cents per KWh.’
We don’t necessarily think that homes across the globe are going to have a giant IBM built solar disc in the backyard. But it’s not too farfetched to see an array of these discs in an uninhabited area. Maybe put several of them in a spot with lots of sun? Somewhere like…Australia.
It begs the question, with this kind of technology as reality, is the possibility of free power in our future? We like to think that if we can use the elements (sun, wind, water) to provide us with efficient power, then yes we might have a future of free power.
Sam Volkering
Technology Analyst, Money Weekend
From the Archives…
Why Waste Your Time on Gold When You Can Invest in Dividend Stocks?
19-04-2013 – Kris Sayce
A Trader’s Eye View of Gold’s Frightening Collapse
18-04-2013 – Murray Dawes
Why You Should Buy ‘Dirty, Grimy’ Gold Stocks
17-04-2013 – Dr. Alex Cowie
Why this Historic Fall in the Gold Price Equates to a Historic Opportunity
16-04-2013 – Dr. Alex Cowie
Beware the ‘Safety Bubble’, But Don’t Sell Dividend Stocks Yet
15-04-2013 – Kris Sayce
