Best Pogue's Posts

Marketers determine what the masses want, product managers guide the design, engineers bring the thing to life - it’s a lot of cooks. No wonder so many people across the country are, at this very moment, staring at newly unwrapped electronic holiday gifts in utter bewilderment.
Even so, brilliant ideas sometimes make it off the drawing board, past the layers of lawyers and onto store shelves. Sometimes, a delicious idea is part of a triumphant overall product. Other times, the flash of greatness is wasted on a turkey.
Here, then, is my second annual Top 10 List - not of the greatest tech products of the year, but of the greatest ideas, individual features, that surfaced. It’s a little tip o’ the egg nog to the great thinkers whose ideas made it out of committee.
THE FLASH-DRIVE FUEL GAUGE You gotta love those U.S.B. flash drives. They’re cheap, shiny and tiny, and they offer a practically perfect way to transport computer files.
On the other hand, you gotta hate it when you plug in a flash drive to receive a file you need - and discover that the darned thing doesn’t have enough free space.
That’s the beauty of Lexar ’s Mercury flash drive, whose case has a “fuel gauge” - a bar graph that tells you, without even plugging the thing in, how full it is. Thanks to a technology called E-Ink, this graph is always on and stays visible indefinitely, without requiring any power whatsoever.
THE MAGNETIC POWER CORD Somewhere there’s surely a support group for people who have dragged their $2,000 laptops to the floor by tripping on the power cord.
That doesn’t happen with Apple ’s 2006 laptops, whose power cords connect with a powerful magnet rather than a pin or a plug. If someone trips or yanks on the cord, the magnet detaches and drops harmlessly to the floor. The laptop switches seamlessly to battery power, saving your data, your money and months of therapy.
Better yet, this magnet has no “right side up”; it works no matter which way you slap it on. Oh, and it lights up to confirm that you’re plugged into a working outlet.
THE TWO-STAGE FLASH It may seem counterintuitive that the more expensive the digital camera, the less likely it is to have a built-in flash. The manufacturers assume that if you’re that much of a professional, you certainly own an external flash unit.
Among other virtues, an external flash can be aimed upward so the light bounces off the ceiling, rather than blasting into your subject’s face. The result is more even and flattering light.
Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-L1 and LC1 cameras, though, offer the best of both worlds. If you push the open button for the built-in flash firmly, it pops up and faces forward.
But if you push lightly, it pops up to a different position, angled 45 degrees upward - yes, in bounce-off-the-ceiling position. Great idea, cleverly done.
A RECORD RADIO BUTTON Samsung Helix is a regular music player, like an iPod (though smaller). But it’s also an XM satellite radio receiver.
That’s already a good idea, but here’s the clincher: When you hear a song that you like on one of XM’s 70 themed, ad-free music channels, one button-press records that song from the beginning - even if you were a little late hitting record. In all, this gadget can hold about 25 hours’ worth of recorded radio.
Long-suffering music fans could probably have predicted that XM would be sued over this glorious idea, and, well, sure enough. Maybe what’s so great about this idea isn’t so much its ingenuity as its bravery.
MUSIC BEAMING The Zune, Microsoft ’s new music player, does something amazingly well that its rival, the iPod, doesn’t do at all: It lets you beam songs or photos wirelessly to another Zune. It’s easy and fast, and it could be a great way to discover new music recommended by your friends.
In practice, there’s more to the story. To avoid lynch mobs from the record companies, Microsoft designed the Zune so that beamed songs self-destruct after three plays or three days, whichever comes first - even, idiotically, your own recordings like college lectures and garage-band demos.
The Zune, therefore, is that classic case: a killer idea diluted by a ham-handed execution.
THE VIDEO-GAME WORKOUT Nintendo’s Wii game console, on the other hand, is a stellar product that succeeds precisely because its central idea is unencumbered by corporate baggage - and is tons of fun.

Diamonds are not forever

Entrapping of Icosahedral Metallofullerenes in Carbon Nanotubes: (CsC60)n@SWNT Nano-Pea pods

Bao-Yun Sun, Yuta Sato, Kazutomo Suenaga, Toshiya Okazaki, Naoki Kishi, Toshiki Sugai, Shunji Bandow, Sumio Iijima, and Hisanori Shinohara*


Abstract:

Icosahedral C60-based metallofullerenes, CsC60, have been synthesized and successfully encapsulated into single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in high yield by reducing C60 molecules into anions. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images and in situ electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) indicate that Cs atoms and C60 molecules align within SWNTs as CsC60 icosahedral metallofullerenes, and that the formal charge state of encaged CsC60 is expressed as Cs+1C60-1. The present pea pods with the icosahedral metallofullerenes provide a new insight and the possibility to fine-tune the electronic and transport properties of carbon nanotubes.



J. Am. Chem. Soc., 127 (51), 17972 -17973, 2005.

Well, we know to produce those fullerene from more than 1700 Years, for swords as you have seeing in previous post. For the people the use of Seeds of Time is more difficult.

EPA will now consider nanosilver used in washing machines as
pesticides
Susan Morrissey
Silver nanoparticles from Samsung's SilverCare washing machine will soon have to be registered with EPA as a pesticide.
Silver-claimed to be nanoparticles-employed to kill bacteria in washing machines will now be regulated as a pesticide, EPA announced late last month. Currently, washers that generate silver ions are classified as devices and are not required to be registered with EPA.
The products at issue are Samsung washing machines that are advertised as using silver ions to kill 99.9% of odor-causing bacteria. This technology,
called SilverCare, generates ions by applying current to two silver plates housed next to the machine's tub. The ions are then directed into the tub during the wash cycle.
"EPA has determined that the Samsung silver ion-generating washing machine is subject to registration requirements under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act," according to an EPA statement.
The agency decided to change the classification of the washer because it releases silver ions into the laundry "for the purpose of killing microbial pests," the statement explains.
For its part, Samsung has pledged to comply with the change of policy. "Samsung has and will continue to work with EPA and state regulators regarding regulation of the silver washing machine," the company says.
Several groups concerned about the environmental impact of nanoparticles of silver had asked EPA to reevaluate the way products containing such materials are regulated. For example, environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted in a letter to EPA that there are currently more than 40 products on the market in addition to Samsung's washing machine that have made or implied claims of using nanoparticles of silver to kill bacteria. NRDC praised EPA for taking what it called a "step in the right direction" by reclassifying nanosilver generated in a washer as a pesticide. The group also said this revised policy should lead to EPA reassessing other products that use
nanoparticles of silver for their biocidal qualities.
Chemical &
Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347

Well, the Indian maharajah's know from more than two thousand years this!

Visualizing the rise of the Long Tail or The World is Flat

Mouse-clicking individuals can be as tasteless, in the aggregate, as entertainment professionals.

The key word there is "aggregate". Popularity is simply a place where many roads--each one a single consumer's path through culture--intersect. Each road is different, but for a brief moment many crossed that point. Hits are products that reflect the coincidence of our collective tastes, and the reality is that most of the things that we agree on are relatively banal (that's why they call it the lowest common denominator).

Individually we may have excellent taste, but collectively we're as low-brow as they come. This is simply an artifact of the statistics of the Long Tail--when demand is spread over a huge number of products, most things won't be popular. And the things that are popular won't necessarily define their consumers.

T'was ever thus: Yogi Berra's quote in the title reflects the reality of minority taste. We're as likely to avoid doing what everyone else is doing as were are to join them. For the discriminating, popularity is often a curse, even if it was their early embrace that kick-started that popularity in the first place.

Once the most popular fare defined our culture. Now a million niches define our culture and the few blockbusters are the exceptions that define none of us, even through many of us brush by them.

David Foster Wallace, writing about television, said it best:

"TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests."

PR titan Richard Edleman has a great post of media trends and their implications for PR. Two stats in particular caught my eye: "
1) Every dollar coming out of print advertising revenue for newspapers is replaced by only 33 cents online.
2) The largest 50 Web companies are attracting 96% of the ad spending on line, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, with the majority going to AOL, Google, MSN and Yahoo."
That second stat sounds like a very short head indeed, until you realize that half of the ad revenues for Google and its ilk are actually redistributed to thousands of smaller sites, via such affliate models as AdSense. It's actually a quite good long tail example.

Everyone With His Communist

This guy definitely isn’t from the same planet as bankers.

Tell them customers first and profits- whatever, is like spitting their face.

Bankers reaction would have truly been a kodak moment

Craigslist is definitely a leader of the Open source movement: but this is an open source business model, not open source software. Craigslist is hardly communist: just think of all the transactions it has enabled! By removing the profit margin of the intermediary, Craigslist has expanded the number of participants in the market and increased the relative power of the individual. Milton Friedman would be proud.

Then again, providing targeted AdSense advertising DOES help your buyers find relevant information so you could make a few billion AND help the users.

Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, caused lots of head-scratching Thursday as he tried to explain to a bunch of Wall Street types why his company is not interested in “monetizing” his ridiculously popular Web operation. Appearing at the UBS global media conference in New York, Mr. Buckmaster took questions from the bemused audience, which apparently could not get its collective mind around the notion that Craigslist exists to help Web users find jobs, cars, apartments and dates — and not so much to make money.


Wendy Davis of MediaPost describes the presentation as a “a culture clash of near-epic proportions.” She recounts how UBS analyst Ben Schachter wanted to know how Craigslist plans to maximize revenue. It doesn’t, Mr. Buckmaster replied (perhaps wondering how Mr. Schachter could possibly not already know this). “That definitely is not part of the equation,” he said, according to MediaPost. “It’s not part of the goal.”

“I think a lot of people are catching their breath right now,” Mr. Schachter said in response.

The Tech Trader Daily blog ponders this question: “If YouTube was worth $1.65 billion, who knows what Craigslist would be worth if Jim and [site founder] Craig Newmark ever considred becoming — what’s the word? — capitalists.”

Craigslist charges money for job listings, but only in seven of the cities it serves ($75 in San Francisco; $35 in the others). And it charges for apartment listings in New York ($10 a pop). But that is just to pay expenses.

Mr. Schachter still did not seem to understand. How about running AdSense ads from Google? Craigslist has considered that, Mr. Buckmaster said. They even crunched the numbers, which were “quite staggering.” But users haven’t expressed an interest in seeing ads, so it is not going to happen.

Following the meeting, Mr. Schachter wrote a research note, flagged by Tech Trader Daily, which suggests that he still doesn’t quite get the concept of serving customers first, and worrying about revenues later, if at all (and nevermind profits). Craigslist, the analyst wrote, “does not fully monetize its traffic or services.”

Mr. Buckmaster said the company is doubling in size every year, as measured by page views and listings.

Larry Dignan, writing on Between the Lines blog at ZDNet, called Mr. Buckmaster “delightfully communist,” and described the audience as “confused capitalists wondering how a company can exist without the urge to maximize profits.”

Bloggers Vs Internet Marketers - Which One Are You?

What is the fundamental difference between a blogger and an Internet marketer? Is there any difference at all to begin with?

Since I had nothing better to do today, I decided to take the risk of being flamed by hate mail by telling you exactly where the line is drawn. While these are examples from the extreme ends of the online publishing spectrum, I believe you'll see my point by the end of this article.

Nowadays, almost every Internet marketer I know has a blog. However, none of them like to be called a blogger. Most bloggers on the other hand think they're Internet marketers. Those poor misguided souls.

Here's what fundamentally different between a blogger and a real Internet marketer making a living online:

1) Living on Search Engine Traffic

The most obvious trait I've seen in a blogger is their over-reliance on search engine traffic. In fact, probably the only way they know of getting visitors to their blogs is by getting a "degree" in Google, and spending all their time trying to please Big-G.

Internet marketers on the other hand see search engine traffic as just one component of their entire marketing campaign. They have access to a wider range of tools such as articles, joint-ventures, pay-per-click advertising and email marketing to mention a few. They have the knowledge to use them and they do so regularly.

2) Lack Of Control Over Their Mailing List

Another common trait of a blogger is the dependence on RSS subscription services like Feedburner to build a database of potential customers. they're content with the fact that by doing this they will never be able to send messages to their loyal readers other than what they post on their blogs.

When you get to a blog maintained by an Internet marketer, instead of seeing a "Subscribe by Feedburner" form, you'll see a "special offer" or reason to optin, followed by a customized form using Aweber or a similar service. By doing this, the Internet market captures the full details of his visitors and is free to send them emails that were never intended to be published on their blogs.

The Internet marketer also analyzes his list to determine their interests, and provides more value based on this findings. He masters his list and knows that they're his most important asset; not the blog.

3) Reluctance on Promoting Affiliate Products

I've seen so many bloggers state "That's my affiliate link" right after they post it on their blogs. It's almost as if they're afraid of their readers finding out that they somehow benefit by putting that link up. They feel guilty making money from others with an affiliate link, so they clearly brand it as such.

The Internet marketer however has no issues with this. His job is to promote products he feels will benefit his market, and he is not afraid to get paid for it. In fact, the Internet marketer EXPECTS to get paid for his efforts, or he doesn't bother doing it at all.

4) Just Publishing Vs Real Marketing

Most blogger are publishers. They focus on getting content up, and then wait for people to come and chew it up. "Build it and they will come", says the blogger. You can't really blame them for taking that stand, because they lack marketing and advertising skills. They really have no other option.

Internet marketers on the other hand know that the marketing graveyard is filled with great ideas and excellent content that never saw the light of day. They know that they need to get out there and market themselves, their products and their overall brand in order to survive in the long term.

5) Limited Knowledge on Monetizing Traffic

Bloggers know of only one monetization method: advertising. The easiest is of course some sort of contextual advertising like Google Adsense or Chitika. Some even go for blog advertising networks and selling text links on their blog, but at the end of the day, they're still dependent of advertising dollars.

The Internet marketer has more tricks up his sleeve. He knows that advertising income is as stable as a melting glacier, and he diversifies his income by selling his own products or services on his blog. In fact, most of them don't even bother with contextual ads because they live much higher up the food-chain.

Let me just say that a true Internet marketer can make the same amount of money from 3 pages of his blog that the average blogger does with 300.

This article may disgust you (if you're a blogger) or may strike a chord in your inner melody (if you're an Internet marketer). Bloggers may say "Oh... but I get tons of traffic, I make money from Adsense and I'm doing fine. So what's the problem?"

The problem is that Internet marketing is a volatile business. By observing both type of individuals all I can say is that in the next few years, the blogger will still be blogging. But the blogs they write for will be owned by a savvy Internet marketer.

It's just the way it works!
Want to advertise online without spending a fortune? Get a blog.
If you're an Internet marketer, you need a blog, because:
* A blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines; and
* A blog expands your customer base.

Blogs are often called social marketing tools, because they let you interact with your readers via comments and permalinks (see the glossary below.)

What's a blog? Get up to speed here:

* http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs

Let's look at five ways a blog helps you to market your business.

One: A blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines

In 2003, when Google bought Pyra Labs, the company which developed Blogger, the reaction was Huh? At the time, blogs were seen by most as online journals, primarily maintained by the demented and teenage girls.

How times change. In 2005, companies small and large are using blogs to promote their businesses. This is because Google and the other search engines love blogs because of their constantly updated content.

Blog often, and you'll get more visitors and a good search engine ranking.

Two: A blog expands your customer base – you'll reach people you could reach in no other way

A blog helps you to reach people you can reach in no other way because your frequent updates mean that you'll automatically get niche visitors – those people who have no clue about you or the product that you're selling, but who happened to type in a search engine query that mentioned words you used in a single post.

Those niche visitors can become buyers, and this means that you don’t need to struggle to get top listings in any search engine. Write (or link to) quality content, and your visitors will find you.

Three: A blog helps your site to differentiate itself

A blog is a form of stealth marketing. Therefore a blog doesn’t need to be about the products you're selling. A blog can be about any topic that you're passionate about. Blog about your passion, and mention – in passing – the products you're selling. You can also link to them, but don’t bother selling heavily – that's not what a blog is about.

Four: Like a diamond, a blog is forever

Although the most-visited blogs update often, some of them several times a day, that doesn’t mean that you have post more often than you can fit into your schedule. Your permalinks (see below) mean that since your blog items are standalone pages, they’re indexed by search engines in the same way that any HTML or other page is indexed – your blog items/ pages will continue to bring traffic even if you don’t update very often.

Five: A blog attracts new opportunities

A blog makes your business visible. Your stealth marketing efforts will attract the attention of people who may become joint venture partners, or who will have other opportunities for you.

The time and energy that you invest in your blog can bring results beyond your wildest expectations. Create a blog – it's your hardest-working, and most cost-effective online marketing option.

GLOSSARY:
Blog = Web log.
Permalink = permanent link, an URL for a single blog post.
Comment = blogs have a comments section, where readers can interact with the blogger and others.