1. 81Ghz Diamond CPUs
That's right, diamonds... the hardest material known to man. Not only does it make perfect sense, but these diamond semiconductors have actually already been experimentally developed and clocked at speeds at ~81Ghz. The only problem is that DeBeers controls the price of these gems and they are obviously extremely expensive to use in a desktop computer.
However, there's company, Gemesis, that has already released a process that has been able to "culture" diamonds in a lab at a fraction of the price for the modern day natural gems. The estimated cost is somewhere around $5 a carat. So obviously, its only a matter of time before these diamonds are used for numerous manufacturing applications.
2. Magnetic memory (MRAM)
As you may know, the problem with the RAM in your computer today, is that it's "volatile" and can not directly store data when it is powered off. However, various companies, such as Micromem or Freescale have been spearheading the recent development of "Magnetic RAM", a memory technology that promises to provide non-volatile, low-power, high speed and low-cost memory by being able to simply store memory directly on these semiconductors, the same way a hard disk does today. Although this technology has been around since the 90s, due to some recent breakthroughs, the time may be coming soon were this could eventually replace, Flash, DRAM, and even Hard Disks.
For all you investors, all the companies behind this technology are here: http://www.mram-info.com/companies
3. Mesh networking
Wireless Mesh networking is basically the networking concept that each node or router would act as a repeater, which would be expanding its infrastructure as more nodes are added to the mesh. It may sound a little socialistic, but imagine that instead of you going to Comcast or AT&T for an internet connection, you simple hopped on your neighbors connection and so and so on. Of course, the great thing about this technology, is that it is inherently FREE, as it should be...like going to the library.
If anyone has more info on these topics, please post a comment...
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Follow the money...at Google for instance
If you ever need some free tools to lookup politicians and see who's backing them financially, try out these sites.
www.maplight.org
www.politicalbase.com
www.opensecrets.org
They each give a different search method for looking up contributors and who they are supporting. Politicalbase, is the most recent website and does a majority of the things you need to "Follow the money".
For instance, if you go here: www.politicalbase.com/money/ and type Google in company field you'll notice that they lean very strongly to the Democrats and if you search for "exxon" you get more towards the Republican side so you get the idea.
More interestingly, if you Search for "David Drummond" (an Executive at Google), you will see he made a $1000 contributions to a Republican Senator in Alaska, Ted Stevens. This is not only odd because Mr. Drummond is clearly a Democrat, but if you Google "Ted Stevens", you will find that he is notoriously known for calling the internet "a series of tubes" . Very funny indeed, Mr. Drummond, but it must be nice to be able to donate $1000 to a politician simply as a practical joke.
David Drummond, you're my new hero, and my paypal address is: bradoyler AT gmail com. So feel free to paypal me $1000 anytime, I'll call the internet whatever the hell you want!
www.maplight.org
www.politicalbase.com
www.opensecrets.org
They each give a different search method for looking up contributors and who they are supporting. Politicalbase, is the most recent website and does a majority of the things you need to "Follow the money".
For instance, if you go here: www.politicalbase.com/money/ and type Google in company field you'll notice that they lean very strongly to the Democrats and if you search for "exxon" you get more towards the Republican side so you get the idea.
More interestingly, if you Search for "David Drummond" (an Executive at Google), you will see he made a $1000 contributions to a Republican Senator in Alaska, Ted Stevens. This is not only odd because Mr. Drummond is clearly a Democrat, but if you Google "Ted Stevens", you will find that he is notoriously known for calling the internet "a series of tubes" . Very funny indeed, Mr. Drummond, but it must be nice to be able to donate $1000 to a politician simply as a practical joke.
David Drummond, you're my new hero, and my paypal address is: bradoyler AT gmail com. So feel free to paypal me $1000 anytime, I'll call the internet whatever the hell you want!
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Internet Marketing tips for small businesses
My topic for today is to talk about Internet marketing and how it has changed in the last 1-2 years.
Basically, the marketing landscape has drastically changed in the past few years. If you think about the old days of product branding, (ie. Coca-Cola & Pepsi), things have REALLY changed. The fact is, every legitimate business out there has a website. Simply putting up a website with a phone number and address is simply pointless in this day and age. Companies really need to think about how they are going to drive a lot traffic to there site. The ideal way to do this, is to build valuable content on your site, that's related to your business. The general concept is called "Link Baiting", which involves creating attractive content on your site, such as a blog, for example. However, you can do this in many numerous ways.
First, here are a few techniques the build the content.
1. Advertising Copy content: adding professional sales copy to you website is the most common
2. Press releases: this is really a form of creating "news worthy" content that will add a buzz to your company's services. Publishers are always looking for news to publish, so why not take advantage of that often "free" publicity.
3. Blogs: these are a great way to create a large amount of content by frequently discussing topics that are relevant to your business and of interest to the author. However, you want to focus on quality versus quantity.
4. Product reviews - people often use Google to do research on products\services, so why not do it for them and make you customers refer to you as a "expert" in the field. Even if you know very little on a topic, if you know more than the reader, they will refer to you as knowledgeable in that field.
5. Expert opinion and\or customer testimonials - yet another way to build content that will reinforce your product. I great way to close the deal on a potential customer.
Now, that you have created all this valuable content, you need to make it widely available as quickly and as simply as possible.
1. RSS(really simple syndication): RSS readers are becoming very popular for Internet users, so make sure your content is provided as a RSS feed, so users can subscribe to it. You defintely also want to checkout feedburner.com to help you mange these feeds for you.
2. Pay-per-click Ads: Although not free, you can use services like, Google Adwords, Yahoo Ads, and now Facebook ads to drive traffic to you site. Definitely worth giving it a try since you can easily control how much you want to spend on you ad campaign .
3. News aggregators: sites like Digg.com, and del.icio.us are a free service that will syndicate your content and therefore increase the amount of impressions.
If you're not doing any of these techniques, than that would explain the flat traffic you are experiencing. At the end of the day, no matter what business you are running, you want customers to come to you, because that is the least costly and most often results in the best customers.
Basically, the marketing landscape has drastically changed in the past few years. If you think about the old days of product branding, (ie. Coca-Cola & Pepsi), things have REALLY changed. The fact is, every legitimate business out there has a website. Simply putting up a website with a phone number and address is simply pointless in this day and age. Companies really need to think about how they are going to drive a lot traffic to there site. The ideal way to do this, is to build valuable content on your site, that's related to your business. The general concept is called "Link Baiting", which involves creating attractive content on your site, such as a blog, for example. However, you can do this in many numerous ways.
First, here are a few techniques the build the content.
1. Advertising Copy content: adding professional sales copy to you website is the most common
2. Press releases: this is really a form of creating "news worthy" content that will add a buzz to your company's services. Publishers are always looking for news to publish, so why not take advantage of that often "free" publicity.
3. Blogs: these are a great way to create a large amount of content by frequently discussing topics that are relevant to your business and of interest to the author. However, you want to focus on quality versus quantity.
4. Product reviews - people often use Google to do research on products\services, so why not do it for them and make you customers refer to you as a "expert" in the field. Even if you know very little on a topic, if you know more than the reader, they will refer to you as knowledgeable in that field.
5. Expert opinion and\or customer testimonials - yet another way to build content that will reinforce your product. I great way to close the deal on a potential customer.
Now, that you have created all this valuable content, you need to make it widely available as quickly and as simply as possible.
1. RSS(really simple syndication): RSS readers are becoming very popular for Internet users, so make sure your content is provided as a RSS feed, so users can subscribe to it. You defintely also want to checkout feedburner.com to help you mange these feeds for you.
2. Pay-per-click Ads: Although not free, you can use services like, Google Adwords, Yahoo Ads, and now Facebook ads to drive traffic to you site. Definitely worth giving it a try since you can easily control how much you want to spend on you ad campaign .
3. News aggregators: sites like Digg.com, and del.icio.us are a free service that will syndicate your content and therefore increase the amount of impressions.
If you're not doing any of these techniques, than that would explain the flat traffic you are experiencing. At the end of the day, no matter what business you are running, you want customers to come to you, because that is the least costly and most often results in the best customers.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Silicon valley has been renamed to Hafnium valley.
The rename isn't official yet, but that's what I'm calling it from now on since Intel has finally launched there long awaited chip "Penryn", which is a hafnium based chip.
Which, by the way Gordon Moore has touted as "...the biggest change in transitor technology in 40 years". So this basically means that this technology will either be the biggest blunder for Intel or will vastly change the way the processors are made forever. I'll put my money on Gordon Moore though.
In a nutshell, this hafnium material supposedly allows a much more efficient power consumption and can allow devices to run cooler and therefore allow for smaller devices. This is really good news for handheld device makers like Apple, Nokia and not to mention all the "Go green" advocates. This is very bad news for competitor AMD, since this puts them way behind the curve and highly dependent on their quad-core "Barcelona" chip which hasn't been living up to the hype.
These horribly named chips, "Penryn" are expected to hit the mass market in the first quarter of 2008.
For more info, see Intel's article: http://www.intel.com/technology/architecture-silicon/45nm-core2/index.htm
Which, by the way Gordon Moore has touted as "...the biggest change in transitor technology in 40 years". So this basically means that this technology will either be the biggest blunder for Intel or will vastly change the way the processors are made forever. I'll put my money on Gordon Moore though.
In a nutshell, this hafnium material supposedly allows a much more efficient power consumption and can allow devices to run cooler and therefore allow for smaller devices. This is really good news for handheld device makers like Apple, Nokia and not to mention all the "Go green" advocates. This is very bad news for competitor AMD, since this puts them way behind the curve and highly dependent on their quad-core "Barcelona" chip which hasn't been living up to the hype.
These horribly named chips, "Penryn" are expected to hit the mass market in the first quarter of 2008.
For more info, see Intel's article: http://www.intel.com/technology/architecture-silicon/45nm-core2/index.htm
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Tech Boom 2.0??
Let's take a look at some of those big gainer, Large-cap, tech stocks from 2000:
EMC, CISCO, Nokia, Nortel, Terra Networks, Cavion, Watchguard
Equivilant stocks today:
Google, Apple, Vmware, Baidu, Synaptics, Nintendo, RIM, Expedia, Amazon
Although EMC and Nokia have come back very strong in the past year, you can defintely see the difference in the tech companies that are booming today.
In 2000, it seemed to be driven by mainly hardware innovation and now the hype is more around the software. I suppose this is a very good thing if you happen to run a software company.
So, the question is...when and how will the bubble pop? As we already know, what goes up, must come down. I'm going to make a prediction that if the Fed doesn't get a little more conservative with it's money, it will be soon.
There are some very scary factors, like; the national debt being way out of control, the banks busting because of there careless mortgage lending practices, and the Federal reserve printing money like the Germans after World War I. I feel like these factors could really make this bull market go to sleep fast. Maybe I should invest in gold...?!? However, no one thought the real estate boom would last as long as it did, so why not take a chance before you miss the boat.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to be or think I am an expert on the stock market. I'm just making an obtuse observation based on working in the tech industry since ~2000.
EMC, CISCO, Nokia, Nortel, Terra Networks, Cavion, Watchguard
Equivilant stocks today:
Google, Apple, Vmware, Baidu, Synaptics, Nintendo, RIM, Expedia, Amazon
Although EMC and Nokia have come back very strong in the past year, you can defintely see the difference in the tech companies that are booming today.
In 2000, it seemed to be driven by mainly hardware innovation and now the hype is more around the software. I suppose this is a very good thing if you happen to run a software company.
So, the question is...when and how will the bubble pop? As we already know, what goes up, must come down. I'm going to make a prediction that if the Fed doesn't get a little more conservative with it's money, it will be soon.
There are some very scary factors, like; the national debt being way out of control, the banks busting because of there careless mortgage lending practices, and the Federal reserve printing money like the Germans after World War I. I feel like these factors could really make this bull market go to sleep fast. Maybe I should invest in gold...?!? However, no one thought the real estate boom would last as long as it did, so why not take a chance before you miss the boat.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to be or think I am an expert on the stock market. I'm just making an obtuse observation based on working in the tech industry since ~2000.
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