Going camping…in style

You remember when you were a kid and they had those convertible style beds where under the bed, you can pull out a drawer and there is a mattress in there. Well let’s take that concept and apply it to an RV. RV technology has I guess advanced in the past decade or so (frankly, I have no clue) but this was too cool not to write about. This new RV has the ability to store a small roadster under main cabin so that when you get sick of driving around the huge clunky house on wheels, you can go ahead and hop into your 2 seat roadster and speed away. I plan to see this being used in some sort of Fast and Furious movie or something. Check it out below:

That…is pretty cool. I assume that if you can afford this RV, you can probably snag that SLK in there as well.

Just my $.02

–SD

New York to LA in 2 hours…

When was the last time something in the aviation world truly excited us? After 9-11, it doesn’t seem that things dealing with airplanes really astonish us, in fact, it’s almost the complete opposite. In the past couple of years, I can point to a couple of advancements in airplane systems that have really made an impact on our lives. For instance, remember when you realized that on business class, everyone gets their own TV’s with their own channels. Or remember when Airbus was going to produce the largest plane to date with 2 complete levels of seating (yet to be produced).

Though these were great advancements, they served a simple purpose. It was to place a remedy on the long and arduous flights that people suffer through. Yet, we’ve yet to really see any advancements in the speed of an airplane. Sure the ride may be more comfortable, but the time it takes me to go from SF to London has been the same all of my life.

Well…soon that may not be the case. Remember that anything dealing with aviation is always going to be expensive so when I describe this new technology…let’s remember that there always is a price-tag.

Lockheed Martin is developing a new technology for planes to be able to travel at Mach 1.8 speeds and provide very little noise while in the air. This would feasibly be able to make speeds like going from Seattle to Tokyo in 5 hours or as the title suggests, New York to LA in 2 hours.

Here is what the jet would possibly look like (taken for only 12 passengers but eventually scaled):

The inside snapshots are pretty amazing. I could definitely see corporations using this as means of jetting to a meeting quickly across the US.

The cost of this badboy…a cool $80 million…

Just my $80 million…

–SD

Lexus says “BMW..I can do it too”

A little while ago, I posted a video of self parking cars which definitely got a lot of attention among readers across the Internet.  Well Lexus has decided to step up the ante by releasing the most technologically savvy car out there, included with full self parking capabilities…shown below:

Pretty amazing stuff…I’m interested to see when this becomes ubiquitous on the market.  The technology is there, now it’s simply the adoption.

Just my $.02

–SD

Let the recall’s roll….

Apple Computer has just announced a recall of over 1.8 million lithium ion batteries…which puts the grand total recalled batteries at 5.8 million.

Apparently, Dell, Lenovo (formerly IBM Thinkpad), and Apple met at a summit regarding these batteries and realized “HEY!…we all get our batteries from the same supplier…so I’m pretty sure our computers are affected as well.”

Well…it makes sense that Apple calls the recall at this time since there was one report of a powerbook exploding versus the 6 dells….but isn’t that interesting….that’s probably the ratio of people that have a dell computer to an apple.

In any case – go to apple.com and support to determine if your computer is affected.

Here is what msnbc reported:

“Apple’s recall covers 1.1 million lithium-ion batteries in the 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 and 15-inch PowerBook G4 laptops sold in the United States from October 2003 through August 2006.”

New batteries = longer lifespan…so it’s probably a good idea to get one anyway.

Just my $.02

–SD

YouTube’s first step to making money

The big news in the tech world today is that YouTube has teamed up with none other than queen of publicity, Paris Hilton, to launch her own channel on YouTube. Since Paris is promoting her debut album sometime next week, this channel will serve to play her music videos, an inside look at her life, and also will be the launching point for all of her new singles that she debuts.

Apparently, YouTube pays around $1 million per month for bandwidth usage due to the high level of traffic on their site and the high level of data transfer required for streaming videos. Many people thought that if YouTube kept going down this slippery slope of having cost after cost, they would eventually go down under. Though this model is unique, they are capitalizing on two key aspects:

• They have an audience, the biggest audience on earth essentially and stretches to almost all demographics – the Internet is much more easily accessible than any cable tv
• The demographics on YouTube are perfect for a young popstar like Paris Hilton. As we all know, whatever Paris does, people follow suit

In my opinion, this is a huge win for YouTube as they’ve finally realized a method of determining how they make money on an advertising model which is outside of google Ad Sense.  Hopefully we’ll begin to see more players follow suit.  Fox has launched a huge prison break advertising campaign (which is my new favorite show btw…if you like 24…you’ll love prison break…just bought the first season…and i digress) and the impact of that will perhaps cause others to follow suit.  If they can make this into a strong revenue generating model, we will begin to see some huge new possibilities for these ex PayPal boys in San Mateo.

Just my $.02

–SD

update:

Hi everyone,

I apologize about not updating my blog recently – I’ve been a little under the weather.  I should be good to go by tomorrow.

Sick $.02

–SD

Zune out in the open…

Apparently Gizmodo just found the Microsoft “Zune” player – aka IPod Killer – out in the open and took photos to prove it, shown below:

Apparently, every photo you’ll be seeing is going to be in black and white because the Zune will come with 150 color combinations.  That at least beats your standard black v. white iPod choice and the occasional red with the U2 collectors edition.

They also have magnetic earphones to make it easier to manage.

Looks pretty good msft….now launch it.

Short $.02

–SD

Coolest product in the world – The slingbox

If you haven’t heard of the slingbox yet, be prepared to be amazed. This is perhaps the greatest invention for those people who are always travelling or feel extremely homesick and just want to watch some good ol “home tv.” Slingbox is the coolest new toy since sliced bread and can completely revolutionize the TV market worldwide. Here’s what you need to know.

What is a slingbox?

A slingbox is a hardware similar in size to a TiVo which is hooked up to your cable/direct TV at home. From that you hook up your Internet connection and wah la! you’re done. The slingbox sits on top of your TV, almost like a silver candy bar (as they say on their website) and looks like this:

This is a relatively small hookup that you do on your television and now that you’ve done it, you can access your channels anywhere that you get an Internet connection. I’m totally serious, you can be a rural village in India and if it has a broadband Internet connection, you can make sure to watch the A’s game at pretty much crystal clear quality.

Not limited to a computer

Here is the best thing about a slingbox, it’s not just limited to your computer at home…rather you can use it wherever you have an Internet connection, including your PDA or your cell phone that is wifi enabled. I’ve put a video of someone using a slingbox on their dell axiom connected to their Internet.

This combined with access to your tivo means that you will always be connected and will never miss your favorite tv shows.

Pretty cool huh?

It’s yours for only $200….I think I know what I want as an early xmas present.

Just my $.02…

–SD

RECALL – Dell Laptop Batteries

After people began to realize that their dell might just explode on them, Dell did something most people would do – sit there and do nothing….well it seems as though after this explosion happened to six different people, they’ve decided to take a stance.  This is going to be probably the largest recall ever and affects a lot of people – especially those that have bought a dell in the last 2 years.

Here is what you need to know.

• If you own a Dell Laptop which is of the Inspiron, Latitude or Precision family and you bought it between April 2004 and July 18, 2006, your battery is being recalled.
  

Obviously this will affect almost 4 million laptop units worldwide and will probably affect yours…the computer I’m using was shipped on 7/21/2006 *phew*.

Go to: http://www.dellbatteryprogram.com which should be up by tomorrow, or call 1-866-342-0011.

Definitely not my $.02….

–SD

Mobile Payments – good “call”?

An emerging sector in the market recently has been the rise of mobile payments – P2P transactions predominantly using cell phones. The current interface is making payments using SMS – sending a transaction over a text message, pinging the server/bank, then going back to the other user. This is not too complex of a transaction and has began to gain some acceptance among users, but how far can this go – and what can we really do with mobile payments.

PayPal was the first large e-commerce platform to launch their mobile payments. Currently, with their protocol, you can send payments to anyone in the world using SMS. Obviously, it is necessary for you to have a PayPal account with a stored balance, but the concept is definitely very cool. Like any other market, however, early adopters can only take it so far. It needs a much stronger backing than simple P2P transactions and here’s what I think they can do.

• Create a barcode system similar to RFID tagging – where people can see products around the stores and purchase them individually – this can also be true with advertisements and such. Since PP and other payment platforms have address verification pre-payment – this is easily a possibility
• The cell phone wallet system will work well with verification from credit card systems. Currently with PP mobile you can add a funding source as a credit card – but for users that don’t have a PP account – you should be able to sign up using your phone as well – a functionality that may not gain large acceptance but convenient
• Create a recurring payment model for adding minutes on your cell phone or adding a limited number of text messages – good for US phone companies? – not at all but can be huge internationally when people have to refill their sim cards

PayPal is not the only player in the market right now and will not be in the near future. This market has a lot of possibility but the key question is how to really make money off of something like this. Service based charges? Per use based charge? I don’t think anyone really has the answer yet.

 

Who else?

PayPal is obviously not the only player in this market. In fact, it hasn’t been companies in the US that have been challenging paypal, but rather small start-ups in countries like China and India. “Ji Grahak” is an Indian based phone company where you can download the software and begin to make payments over the phone. Here are some pro’s and cons of a competitor like this though:

Pros

• Higher market potential – India and China have phone capabilities where you buy the sim card and then the handset separately (a significantly better model than the US one I might add). Therefore, refilling your sim card using online payments only makes sense
• The number of handsets in these countries are significantly larger – your growth potential based on the number of people using cell phones is significantly higher than in the U.S

Cons

• The golden rule for any web-based payment company is FRAUD. This is the number one concern and to make it so simple to send money – people will find out ways to hack into other people’s cell phones. Once you lose the trust of the users in a business dealing with your money – it’s very difficult to get it back

Future?

Well – I think there is a high upside to this market but we may not see immediate usage. Like any other technology the world around it has to develop before it reaches ubiquity. Nonetheless – the convenience of being able to transfer money at dinner when you owe someone is incredible. We’ll have to see what happens in the future.

Just my $.02

–SD