Technology Futures

Zap electric cars will be built in Kentucky. They have been built in China, but the cost of hauling them from China has become too expensive. So manufacturing is moving closer to customers, and the Energy Economy is going to unfold much like this--getting energy and energy saving devices as close to customers as possible.

3M may finally be the first to market with a real pocket projector. Numerous companies have pre-announced these gadgets for several years, but the sticky note company may grab an early jump in this emerging market space with their $359 device.

It does not have the light power to provide a good image for a large room full of people, but for desktop use, impromptu small group presentations, and even cheapo home theater use, it is likely to be very popular.

Slate has an article about a phenomenon that network administrators have known for many years: a handful of Internet users gobble up a huge portion of bandwidth. Five percent of users typically consume 50% of a service provider's total capacity.

This may sound like bad news, but after toying for years with really poorly thought out policies like just cutting users off without notice, some of the providers are beginning to implement bandwidth pricing changes. For a basic DSL or cable modem subscription, you get so many gigabits per month. If you use more than that, they turn the meter on and start charging you by the gigabit used.

This is the first step towards a more rational approach to charging for network use. Instead of punishing their best customers (the old policy), the service providers are finally implementing price policies that communicate the real cost of bandwidth to users. So users can have all the bits they want, but they have to pay for them.

Eventually, most networks will move away from this model and towards a service oriented model, which is already happening in places like Danville, Virginia and the Blue Ridge Crossroads area of southwest Virginia. Businesses and residential users are really only interested in services, and forcing them to calculate how many bits a phone call or a YouTube video will use up is an inconvenience. What would work better is simply placing a price on the service, rather than on the bits used by that service. This is already beginning to happen with things like VoIP phone service, and as IP TV availability increases, charging by the bit will gradually disappear. For now, it is a step in the right direction.

With the release of Chrome, the new Web browser from Google, a side story has developed, as it appears that the End User License Agreement (EULA) for Chrome gives Google an irrevocable right to use any content you might post using the Chrome browser. As it turns out, the legal language in the Chrome EULA is cut and pasted from Google's other EULAs, including the Google services like their word processor and spreadsheet.

So anything you write using the Google word processor, Google immediately has a license to use, in perpetuity. That would include novels, short stories, business plans, school reports, news stories, blog postings, podcasts, videos--everything becomes the property of Google. It's a nonexclusive license, meaning you can still do whatever you like with it, but if you write the great American novel with the Google word processor, they can print it and sell it in direct competition with you. They can make a copy of your company business plans and sell it on the Web to competitors.

There is still no such thing as a free lunch.

Update: Google has amended the Chrome EULA to remove the clause that gives them the rights to content. But the problem still remains with other Google apps and services.