New Florence. New Renaissance.

What's next in Car Safety

Consumer Reports on what's showing up in cars

Computer Vision, Thermal Cameras, Radar-based motion detection, adaptive driving beam headlights, driver monitoring systems and more

Here is Mercedes latest version of its ESF (Experimental Safety Vehicle)

 

The iPhone's widening net

A chart created by longtime Apple pundit and Relay Ventures partner Horace Dediu shows just how much Apple's lineup of phones has widened over the years. This broadening of the product offering reveals Apple's casting a wider and wider net to convince more people to buy iPhones and then purchase the apps and services on them.

Fast Company

Click twice on image to expand

Electric planes take off

In September, Rolls-Royce announced it had completed a 15-minute flight of its first all-electric aircraft, as part of its Accelerating the Electrification of Flight program. This marked the beginning of the company’s extensive testing to better understand the performance potential of the new aircraft and part of its broader aim to support the net-zero carbon emissions national target.

The company announced that its Spirit of Innovation plane used a 400kw electric powertrain “with the most power-dense battery pack ever assembled for an aircraft.” The aim is to eventually achieve speeds of over 300 miles an hour. In addition, the aircraft’s three electric motors allow it to achieve a 90 percent energy-efficient flight.

Oil Price

 

 

Vending machines and the COVID impact

To ease their concerns, she ordered a vending machine where shoppers can choose their steaks, sausages, or salami, pay with a card or cash, and retrieve their meat after it drops into the bin—without having to queue inside or interact with a salesperson.

Now, her coronavirus rescue is a growing part of her business. Most stores in Germany must close on Sundays and public holidays, but no such restrictions cover vending machines, leading to an upsurge of sales when the shop is shuttered. Thanks at least in part to a billboard Marx put on a nearby Autobahn, customers who haven’t sufficiently prepared for their Sunday at the grill come from as far as Hamburg to pick up bratwurst or barbecue. Once, when Marx’s husband saw a police car stopping by in the wee hours, he feared something was amiss, but the officers simply wanted breakfast supplies.

BusinessWeek (sub required)

Of course, nothing can compare to Japan which has more vending machines per capita and consumers are comfortable buying everything through machines

Potty-training cows for lower emissions

"Indiscriminate voiding of excreta by cattle contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and soil and water contamination. Emissions are higher in animal-friendly husbandry offering cattle more space — a trade-off we call the ‘climate killer conundrum’.

Using a backward chaining, reward-based training procedure, we here show that cattle can control their micturition reflex and use a latrine for urination."

Current Biology

 

Smart tugboat

Sea Machines Robotics, a Boston-based developer of autonomous vessel software and systems, announced on Tuesday that it is readying a tugboat for a 1,000-nautical-mile autonomous journey (that’s roughly 1,150 miles) around Denmark.

Crafted in the Netherlands, the tug will employ long-range computer vision and a “sensor-to-propeller” system called the SM300. Together, Sea Machines says these features allow for “path-planning, obstacle avoidance replanning, vectored nautical chart data, and dynamic domain perception.” In other words, it is designed to follow along a predetermined path safely, identifying and avoiding any obstacles that might appear along the way.

Popular Science

More on Sea Machines autonomous navigation

Megacomet

Scientists briefly estimated that Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, as it's now known, was the largest such icy body identified to date, perhaps more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) across. Additional observations have cast that into doubt, but given the "megacomet" a new distinction: it sprouted a tail remarkably far from the sun, suggesting more revelations to come. All told, the object offers astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to watch the antics of a comet.

Space

 

Amazon's largest fulfillment center

BFI4, located in exurban Kent, Wash., is Amazon’s flagship fulfillment center and regularly hosts senior company leaders—Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy dropped by recently—who want a better understanding of what happens after a shopper clicks “Buy Now.” It was the first facility of its kind capable of processing more than 1 million items a day, three times what was possible at the company’s state-of-the-art warehouses a decade ago. Improving technology means Amazon can stay several steps ahead of brick-and-mortar rivals Walmart Inc. and Target Corp., which are now adopting many of the practices Amazon has worked on for years.

More than the physical robots, the stars of Amazon’s facilities are the algorithms—sets of computer instructions designed to solve specific problems. Software determines how many items a facility can handle, where each product is supposed to go, how many people are required for the night shift during the holiday rush, and which truck is best positioned to get a stick of deodorant to a customer on time. “We rely on the software to help us make the right decisions,” says Shobe, BFI4’s general manager.

BusinessWeek (sub required)

 

Bird Watching took flight during the pandemic

eBird, which allows birders to note which species they’ve spotted—and where—had a more than 40 percent increase in sightings in April 2020 over the previous year. That’s more than double the app’s normal annual growth, according to data provided by Farnsworth. This February, 140,000 users logged on, to date the greatest number of users in a single month and a 50 percent increase over last February. Now, there are over a billion entries.

Farnsworth says this citizen data is crucial. Scientists can monitor migration using weather surveillance radar, and they’re experimenting with acoustic sensing that uses microphones to record bird calls. (Machine learning can identify which species are migrating, based on the captured songs.) But there are still no devices that can replace in-person observation. “We actually really want humans involved,” he says. “Going out and using your ears and eyes, and your own sensory abilities—we want people doing that because it engenders a much, much closer relationship with what’s happening around you.”

But this flood of new data presents a conundrum: Scientists can’t always tell whether changes in the data are due to animal behavior or just an increase in the amount of information available. Take the data about how many birds are injured or die after flying into buildings. Twice a year, millions of songbirds, raptors, hummingbirds, and shorebirds travel through New York City along the Atlantic Flyway, from their summer homes in Canada and the northeast to their winter habitats in Florida and the Caribbean. They can get disoriented by bright lights or by window glass, which they often can’t perceive as a barrier. Last year, the count of dead and injured birds in New York rose precipitously during the fall—but so did the number of bird-watchers.

Wired

This video discusses the analog way - birding books - that many enthusiasts use

The God of Silence

According to the U.S. National Park Service’s Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, which has sent researchers to measure the acoustics of more than 600 outdoor American sites for the past 15 years, noise pollution is growing faster than the U.S. population and is more than doubling every 30 years. One writer’s calculations even show that more than 145 million Americans—roughly 44 percent of the population—are exposed to noise exceeding the recommended limits. Anything over 85 decibels can harm a person’s ears, like lawn mowers (90 decibels), trains (90 to 115 decibels), the wail of a siren (120 to 140 decibels), and loud concerts, at around 110 to 120 decibels. All told, more than 97 percent of the U.S. population is constantly exposed to noise from planes and highways at around 50 decibels—comparable to the buzz of a humming refrigerator—but the loudest sounds appear most frequently in low-income neighborhoods.

Though noise really is all around us, from rustling leaves (20 to 30 decibels) to a thunderclap (120 decibels), it is this man-made noise that affects human health, leading to hypertension, stress, and heart disease. Alarmingly, according to Hempton, there are now fewer than 10 places in the U.S. where you can avoid noise pollution for longer than 15 minutes.

Afar

 

 

Rural broadband options evolve

To augment coverage, Aristotle is turning increasingly to Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), a wireless spectrum historically used by U.S. Navy aircraft carriers for radar transmissions. In recent years the Federal Communications Commission has opened a slice of this spectrum for commercial use, enabling Aristotle to beam broadband as far as 6 miles to distant Arkansans over signal stations—installed atop cell towers, barns, even a prison—that are sort of like massive Wi-Fi routers. The network is fast enough to stream movies and costs a fraction of what fiber costs to build. “We are one of the poorest states in the country, and the Delta is the poorest area of the state,” Bowles says. “If we can solve the problem here, we can solve it anywhere.”

BusinessWeek (sub required)

 

The race for cobalt

BusinessWeek (sub required) on mining and lab based alternatives to cobalt, a critical metal in making EV batteries

KoBold’s 35 employees come from places like Google, Microsoft Corp., and Slack and tend to be coders who also have doctorates in the physical sciences. Asked why they joined the startup, they mention the satisfaction of speeding the energy transition, of course, but they also mention the opportunity to see if they’re really right about something. KoBold isn’t making software to sell to someone else. It’s staked claims, either solely or in joint ventures, in around 20 areas across Australia, Canada, the Central African Copperbelt, Greenland, and the U.S. In early September it announced an exploration alliance with BHP Group Ltd., the world’s second-largest mining group. Those ventures will either turn up ore or they will not. “What I love about KoBold,” says Jef Caers, a Stanford geophysics professor who is a research partner and shareholder in the company, “is that they will face the consequences of their machine learning.”

A century of aircraft carriers

The service is planning to build three more flat-tops after Ford: John F. Kennedy, Enterprise, and Doris Miller. At the same time, the service is planning to introduce the MQ-25A Stingray aerial refueling drone in the late 2020s and the Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet starting in the 2030s. At this rate Ford-class carriers will replace the existing Nimitz-class carriers currently in the fleet, in a process that will stretch to 2050--and beyond.

Ford-class carriers are also equipped with technology that will allow the platform to grow with the times, such as electromagnetic aircraft catapults that allow for the launch of smaller, lighter, unmanned drones. Additionally, the ships are built with increased power generation capability to handle elec with increased capability to generate increased electrical power for weapons such as defensive lasers and railguns.

Popular Mechanics on a century of these giants on the waters

 

The giant space telescope

The launch, which will propel the (James Webb Space Telescope) to nearly a million miles away, is now scheduled for December 18, 2021. When it fully deploys in space, the Webb will usher in a new age of astronomy, scientists say, and show humanity things it has never seen before.

“The Webb represents the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomy,” says Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and astrophysicist at MIT. “We’ve been waiting for this a very long time.

Vox

 

Soviet decadence revisited

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the decadent Georgia spa town of Tskaltubo fell off the map. Once an elegant Soviet destination that attracted the elites of the Communist Party, including Joseph Stalin himself, for its natural springs, Tskaltubo is now an array of crumbling hotels, bath houses, and sanitoriums—ornamental health resorts designed for both rest and medical treatments. But 30 years after the resort town’s closure, photographs of these abandoned buildings are attracting new travelers.

Conde Nast Traveler

 

Tech in Amazon department stores?

Amazon.com Inc.’s planned department stores will aim to boost its apparel sales by offering shoppers a chance to try on clothes from its own private-label brands in technology-fueled dressing rooms, according to people familiar with the matter.

One idea that has been tested is for customers to scan QR codes of items they want to try on by using a smartphone app and for associates in the store to gather the items and place them in fitting rooms.

Once there, customers could ask for more items using a touch screen, which might be capable of recommending additional clothing based on the pieces shoppers liked. The rooms could use sliding doors for associates to bring more clothes without seeing shoppers, the people said. Robots or other forms of automation could eventually be deployed in the stores, one of the people said.

WSJ (subscription required)

 

Ag Marketplaces

In 2018, the company announced what would become one of its main ventures: an online grain marketplace that would connect farmers with crop buyers, such as agricultural exporters, livestock operations and biofuel makers. It was a way for Indigo to enter a U.S. grain market worth around $100 billion annually.

Typically, farmers raising corn, soybeans, wheat or other major crops sell to nearby grain elevators owned by farm cooperatives or to big agricultural companies such as Cargill, ADM and Gavilon, along with ethanol plants or animal-feed processors.

Indigo’s system aimed to expand the network of buyers for farmers by opening up the market geographically. It also added food processors and ingredient makers looking to buy specific varieties of crops, who typically buy farther down the chain, from large grain companies. Indigo said that connecting farmers to those end buyers could secure higher prices for farmers and lower prices for buyers.

A few months later, it added another platform, this one focused on transport logistics, linking farmers with trucking companies or other farmers with spare trucks.

WSJ (sub required)

 

Cloud-Based Logistics

With his co-founder and CTO, Jacob Boudreau, what Henry envisioned wasn't so much a supply chain company as it was a supply change company--a single distributed network that would allow customers of all sizes to shape-shift, to expand or contract their warehouses on demand, for example, without having to build their own or enter into long-term contracts with third-party logistics companies. Essentially, Stord can form an orchestra from scattered soloists.

In many industries, disrupters com­pete against the established order. Such order didn't exist in the logistics space. "More than anything, they were competing against no one," says Daley Ervin, the managing director of Engage Ventures, a venture platform for some of the largest corporations in Atlanta and an early investor. "When you go into an industry that has nothing, whatever you build is better than sheets of paper and faxes. They were competing against sticky notes."

Inc Magazine

 

Logi Dock

Logitech is simplifying personal workspaces and improving the video meeting experience for remote and hybrid workers with the launch of Logi Dock, an all-in-one docking station with one-touch meeting controls and a built-in speakerphone, targeted to be certified for Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom.

Water from Air

Tampa, FL based Genesis Systems LLC, the latest startup touting a contraption that sucks water out of the air, says it has found a way to do it in a cheaper and more scalable way than rivals.

Closely-held Genesis’s portable machine -- called Water Cube -- makes 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of fresh water a day at costs below competitors, said Stuckenberg, a research fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and a former combat pilot.

“Water scarcity, hunger: These are dragons we can slay with technology,” he said. “We’re not in a race against a competitor. We’re in a race against conditions.”

Bloomberg Green

 

SAP Industries - "Shark Month"

Over the last month, on the Deal Architect blog I have run 8 Analyst Cam episodes of SAP Industry leads presenting trends in their sectors and how SAP and startup partners are delivering to those trends

• Direct to Consumer with Paul Smith
• Circular Economy trends with Natasha Pergl
• Automotive/Mobility trends with Hagen Heubach
• Servitization/XaaS with Torsten Welte
• Utilities with Markus Bechmann
• Retail in 2 parts with Achim Schneider
• Life Sciences with Mandar Paralkar

More to come in December, where Rainer Zinow will profile "micro-verticals" that SAP covers with partners for the SMB segment

More West Coast on East Coast

Recent Instagram galleries (with 10 photos each) of recent weekend trips along the West Coast of Florida

Ballast Point, Tampa Pier, Yacht Club, Equestrian 

Lutz Train depot, car show

Pine Island Weeki Wachee mermaids

Florida Polytechnic U newest state school, STEM focused, gorgeous campus 

Tarpon Springs sponge docks, Fred Howard park

Tampa Riverwalk Armature Works, public art

Lakeland public art

The next US National Park?

A sprinkling of ancient earthen mounds dot the undulating hills of central Georgia, and soon, this historic expanse could be placed in the national spotlight. Ocmulgee Mounds, a forested park in Macon with 17,000 years of human history, is well on its way to becoming the country’s next national park—and the first one in Georgia—a feat that could happen as soon as 2022.

Currently classified as a national historic park, the landmark is basically a 2,000-acre time capsule—it's home to one of the National Park Service’s (NPS) largest archaeological collections with thousands of ancient finds dating back to the area’s earliest inhabitants of the last Ice Age, millennia before Egyptians erected the Giza pyramids.

Conde Nast Traveler

 

Global Lighthouse Network

Launched in 2018, the Global Lighthouse Network is a World Economic Forum initiative in collaboration with McKinsey & Company. The frontrunner companies that comprise this network continue to demonstrate the true potential of 4IR (Fourth Industrial Revolution) technologies to transform the very nature of manufacturing. The 90th lighthouse has recently been recognized, marking more than a fivefold increase since the launch of the network.

McKinsey

Competency-based education

So, after months of discussion, the district switched to competency-based education, a form of personalized learning that emphasizes mastery of skills over time spent in class. At Northern Cass, that means that grade point averages no longer exist. In two years, neither will grade levels. Instead, K-12 students get rated on a four-point scale for each skill, receiving about two new ratings per week. In seventh-grade English, that may mean the ability to hold collaborative conversation. Those who are prepared with questions and open to other viewpoints might receive a three. Leading the conversation and keeping it from stalling out would garner a four.

“We kept coming back to the idea that you couldn’t get world class because the system itself wasn’t designed for that. The system itself was designed to sort kids, to rank kids,” says Dr. Steiner.

WSJ (sub required)

Greener air conditioning

Raman, a materials science and engineering professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, is the co-founder of SkyCool Systems, a startup trying to flip the script on the technology we depend on to create chill. As the world warms, demand for air conditioning and refrigeration is going up. But these systems themselves expel a tremendous amount of heat, and the chemical compounds they use can escape skyward, where they act as a planet-warming greenhouse gas. According to the Birmingham Energy Institute in the UK, these substances and the power involved accounted for at least 11 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. By 2050, more than 4.5 billion air conditioners and 1.6 billion refrigerators are projected to consume nearly 40 percent of all electricity. If it goes mainstream, SkyCool’s tech—and similar approaches in the works from competitors and other researchers—could slow the cycle by naturally lowering building temperatures and easing the energy burden on conventional methods.

Popular Science

 

Life Drawing COVID Renaissance

The standard template for life drawing hasn't changed much in centuries: a musty studio, a model on a dais holding a pose while a circle of artists works at easels. But with Covid-19 lockdowns in effect, studios stood empty and models stayed home, their employment options evaporating. Then, everything changed. Suddenly, life drawing was reborn—filling up video-chat grids the way it had once populated studios. Artists began sketching from home, inspired by models posing live on their computer screens. The methods used weren’t exactly new—video conferencing existed before the pandemic, after all—but the changes they brought to life drawing went far beyond what anyone expected. “Online life drawing was a game changer,” says Diane Olivier, who taught life drawing at City College of San Francisco from 1991 through 2020. It allowed students to keep learning and drawing, and it kept models employed.

Wired

Here is a virtual exhibition of life art created virtually

High-tech headlights

For much of automotive history, innovation came to headlights gradually. But over the last few decades, the pace has quickened. Now, automakers are using LED technology to create arrays of tiny lights that can cast complex beam patterns. The so-called adaptive driving beams can illuminate an entire road while shutting off any bulbs that would shine in the eyes of oncoming drivers.

Even more sophisticated headlights have such high resolution that they can display graphics or even animations. These could be used to display warnings or other important information in front of the driver. In theory, the technology could enable a car to project an entire movie from its headlamps.

CNBC

 

Cross-country on one gas tank?

A new plug-in hybrid off-road pickup being developed in the U.K. will be available in a version that can travel 7,000 kilometers, or 4,350 miles between fill-ups.

The vehicle is about the same length as a midsize SUV, but weighs just 3,300 pounds thanks to an aluminum frame skinned with the kind of fabric material typically used for hiking boots, which the company says is resistant to damage and easy to repair. It's creators are applying lessons learned from their backgrounds in auto racing, aeronautics and supercar design.

A long-range tank option will provide the maximum range, but the space can be used for water tanks instead.

Fox News

Photo Credit

We all fly

Since the inaugural issue of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine in April 1986, we have published more than 200 short personal accounts of flying experiences. Here you’ll find some of our favorites. Taken together, they show how varied a life the airplane has led since its birth 118 years ago, and how its cousins—the balloons, gliders, and yes, the rocket belt—have contributed to the richness of aviation history.

But even these gems from our archive can’t tell the complete story of flight. That’s why we asked you, the Air & Space readers, to share some of your best memories of flying. More than 400 of you responded, with tales ranging from the suspenseful to the humorous. Find them here.

Air and Space Magazine

The National Air and Space Museum is the largest and most visited of the Smithsonian Institution’s 19 museums and this new gallery is part of the museum’s ongoing transformation of all its galleries at the flagship building in Washington, D.C.

The Thomas W. Haas Foundation founded what will become the “Thomas W. Haas We All Fly” gallery with a $10 million gift. “We All Fly” will include examples of different forms of general aviation, from business aircraft to gliders, and it will be among the first of the new galleries in the museum’s West End to open in 2022.

At the entrance of this new gallery will be Sean D. Tucker’s Oracle Challenger III high-performance aerobatic flight aircraft, according to the museum. Also featured in the gallery will be a Cessna 180, Gates Lear Jet and a Cirrus SR22. The exhibition will feature new educational interactive technology and engaging videos that will explore the valuable impact of general aviation on society and encourage the public to join in.

Newswire

Seeing around corners

The laundry list of features that ARCAS adds to a rifle include features that help a soldier shoot more accurately, like passive range measurement and automatic ballistic correction. With the right sensors, ARCAS can detect where hostile gunfire is coming from, and let the wearer know of any movement seen on its video cameras. By allowing the soldier to aim through a camera connected to a heads-up display, the rifle can be fired from the hip and around corners, two kinds of shooting difficult to pull off with a traditional down-the-barrel sight.

Other features of ARCAS seem more like replacements for the radios and tablets carried into battle. These include a way to “interface with tactical Command and Control,” which is a fancy way of saying “talk to the officer in charge,” and “navigation assistance,” or a map with routes shown on a heads-up display.

Popular Science

 

Paint to reduce air-conditioning needs

The whitest paint in the world has been created in a lab at Purdue University, a paint so white that it could eventually reduce or even eliminate the need for air conditioning, scientists say.

The idea was to make a paint that would reflect sunlight away from a building, researchers said. Making this paint really reflective, however, also made it really white, according to Purdue University. The paint reflects 98.1% of solar radiation while also emitting infrared heat. Because the paint absorbs less heat from the sun than it emits, a surface coated with this paint is cooled below the surrounding temperature without consuming power.

Yahoo News

 

 

Remote Sensing accelerates during pandemic

American Scientist (sub required)

• Satellite images and other remote sensing technologies can provide information about global shifts and tiny phenomena—both the proverbial forest and the trees.
• These methods enable researchers to virtually visit regions that would otherwise be inaccessible, either because of the difficulty of travel or because of potential danger.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote sensing and monitoring technologies allowed researchers to continue their work while maintaining a safe social distance.

Unmanned midair refueling

Boeing said Tuesday it used a MQ-25 Stingray unmanned aircraft to refuel a U.S. Navy F-35C Lightning II fighter jet for the first time.

This was the third mission in three months for the Boeing-owned aircraft that was built primarily for mid-air refueling missions.

UPI

"Deal of the Century"

The results have been remarkable. Automobiles, telecommunications, energy grids, hospitals and logistics networks have all become digital businesses, producing ever-increasing reams of data that need to be managed and stored. Dell now sits at the helm of the world’s largest infrastructure provider for this activity. “The amount of data being created in the world is just astounding,” he says. “It’s doubling every seven or eight months.”

In turn, Dell Technologies, at $75 billion, is worth more than four times what it was before it went private. Because of all that leverage, Dell, Durban’s Silver Lake and co-investors have done far better, with total gains of more than $40 billion, according to Forbes’ calculations. Dell’s personal net worth has risen to $50 billion. In many ways, he was the architect of the biggest buyout coup of all time.

Forbes

Here's a recent interview with Michael Dell

Chicago's beauty

Chicago doesn't ordinarily get a lot of attention for its beauty, but the ranking (as 2nd most beautiful city in the world and 1st in the US) makes sense when you consider our abundance of public parkland, stunning architecture and famously clean streets (thanks alleys!), plus our proximity to the glittering shores of Lake Michigan.

For proof, look no further than beautiful gardens tucked away in Jackson Park and the South Shore Cultural Center, or the many lovely vantage points to check out views of the skyline or even our most stunning restaurant spaces. It's like our adopted hometown architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said: "Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world."

TimeOut

The Beirut-Damascus Railroad

Inaugurated on August 4, 1895, the Beirut-Damascus railroad became the first major railway in the Levant, preceding the more famous Hijaz Railway by 13 years. The winding, 147-kilometer route took the steam engines just nine hours.

The builders addressed the challenge of the mountains by laying narrow-gauge tracks 1,050 millimeters apart. Where the track became too steep for the iron wheels to keep their grip, they laid a third, toothed rail in the center, with which the locomotive’s rack-and-pinion cog system could mesh and provide mechanical traction.

The civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s brought a halt to the traffic and the track and rolling stock has been neglected since.

In a region that has seen more conflict than stability in the past half century, restoring a historical railroad could seem superfluous. Yet following the August 2020 Beirut port catastrophe, discussions about the railroad may have a new chance.

“There is now an opportunity to rebuild the port of Beirut in a better way,” says Yarob Badr, Regional Advisor for Transport and Logistics at the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. “There is a need to consider railway connectivity in the port of Beirut which is now missing.”

AramcoWorld

Living off the grid

If you're looking to live off the grid — like so many of us have been dreaming about as climate change ravages cities and the pandemic made us crave space — there are some things you may want to consider.

Why do you want to do it? What kind of off-the-grid dweller do you want to be? Can you afford the hefty up-front costs? And do you have what you'll need? Do you have what it takes?

Mashable

Below are two off-grid lifestyles

In a sustainable homestead

And on an island

It's an ad, ad, ad, ad world

For all the talk about digital advertising, it is only now catching up to global spending on traditional TV, radio, newspaper, billboard and other advertising as the chart below shows.

However,  as Fortune reports:

It’s boom times for YouTube and its creators. The Google-owned service, bought for just $1.65 billion in 2005, reported ad revenue of $20 billion last year (plus what analysts say are billions of dollars more from subscriptions to products like YouTube Premium, the financial details of which the company doesn’t disclose). Some context: If YouTube were a stand-alone entity, that would make it the world’s fourth-largest seller of digital ads, after its parent company, Alphabet, Facebook, and Amazon. But what really has Wall Street salivating is the question of just how big it might get. YouTube’s 2020 revenue was up 31% from 2019, compared with a 12.8% increase for its parent, Alphabet.

More on YouTube's impact

SAP Industries "Shark Week"

On Deal Architect, I had hoped this week to have 7 episodes of conversation with SAP lead execs across different verticals. In spite of Stacy Comes' best efforts I will only be able to run 4 this week:

• Direct to Consumer with Paul Smith
• Circular Economy trends with Natasha Pergl
• Automotive/Mobility trends with Hagen Heubach
• Servitization/XaaS with Torsten Welte 

This is SAP at its best. Solving extremely complex problems for complex, global brand name customers. More coming, I promise.

Similar planned for a couple of other vendors who also keep Vinnie Vertical excited!

Smart Parking

A new project involving the State of Michigan, Ford, Bedrock and Bosch will see the launch of a real-world test site for emerging parking technology, the Detroit Smart Parking Lab (DSPL) in Michigan. The group will also test technology relating to the efficient return of rental cars.

Scheduled to open this September, the lab will enable mobility and smart infrastructure companies, real-estate innovators and startups to test their own parking-related mobility, logistics and electric vehicle charging technologies.

Automotive Testing Technology International

Video of the pilot project last year

Solar Home on wheels

As electric cars catch people's interest more and more every passing day, a team of students from Eindhoven University is taking a big leap into the future and embarking on a Euro trip in a solar-powered vehicle. What makes the project even more interesting is the fact that this vehicle is a full-fledge home with a living area, shower, cooking range, and even an infotainment system.

Dubbed Stella Vita, this mobile home is designed by the Solar Team, a team of ambitious students from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands who, according to their website, "innovate without preconceptions and pressure of market demands".

Interesting Engineering

Geothermal - the unheralded renewable energy source

For decades, Kenya and surrounding countries focused on hydroelectric power and oil-fueled thermal stations, but lately they’ve awakened to the potential of their vast underground energy resources. The region sits astride the Great Rift Valley, an area where tectonic plates meet, bringing the magma at the Earth’s core closer to the surface. It’s one of the world’s most active volcanic zones—Mount Kilimanjaro lies at its heart—with dozens of hot springs hinting at the intense heat lying just below. Kenya gets nearly half of its electricity from geothermal plants, more than any other country, according to researcher Fitch Solutions, and it’s on track to increase that to almost three-fifths by 2030.

BusinessWeek

The video below asks why geothermal is not being publicized and utilized around the world

A Sabbatical in 2024?

Royal Caribbean has announced a 9 month long "ultimate world cruise" to sail in December 2023 on its Serenade of the Seas (see tour of the ship below). COVID should be a distant memory by then and the world should be wide open.

I had two reactions

a) One of excitement - similar to that when I booked my first round the world ticket on Pan Am in the 1980s (in the end, I did 3 of those trips. The tickets were valid for 12 months so I could plan business and short vacations as part of the itinerary)

b) The other of horror - 9 months at sea, lining up for buffets, with patchy satellite wi-fi and rushed excursions at every port? Besides, you have to be retired, and comfortably so given the price, to think about the complete package.

In fact, when I heard about it, I joked it would be better to get on a tanker in Asia and sail to the LA area and get paid to enjoy time on the water as you await a slot at one of the clogged ports there.

However, my wife went through the fine print. You don't have to sign up for the entire 9 months. You can join for just one of the 4 segments: 

• Round the Horn: Americas & Antarctica Expedition: December 10, 2023 — February 11, 2024, 64 Nights, 36 destinations
• Wonders of Asia & the Pacific Expedition: February 11, 2024 — May 9, 2024, 87 Nights, 40 destinations
• Middle East Treasures & Marvels of the Med Expedition: May 9, 2024 - July 10, 2024, 63 nights, 44 destinations
• Capitals of Culture Expedition: July 10, 2024 — September 10, 2024, 63 Nights, 40 destinations

Besides, we happened to be driving by the Port of Tampa today and I found out Serenade is spending the next few weeks making our fair city its home base. I am already feeling a bit more loyal and thinking this may be a bit more manageable, especially on one of 3 segments which only last 2 months. Yes, laugh at the "only 2 month" part, but compared to 9? 

When I joined Gartner in the mid-90s, analysts qualified for a sabbatical for every 5 years of tenure. Of course, they did away with the policy before I qualified. Well, may be I can finally have my sabbatical 3 decades later on the Serenade?

Not so fast.

Royal Caribbean will prioritize those who book the entire cruise. They will also prioritize their elite Crown and Anchor members. The Serenade is one of the their older (20+ years in 2023) and smaller ships. Then there is the sticky issue of a non-refundable deposit 2 years in advance. Lots to think about.

In the end, it may end up becoming a bonus for Margaret more than a sabbatical for me. She has certainly earned it.

Readers, think of similar for your spouses. Even better, find reasons for your employers to sponsor this dream trip!

 

The Infinite Kitchen

Spyce’s new food robot makes both salads and warm bowl food, and holds 49 separate recipes. Serving dishes are placed on a conveyor belt that runs underneath the dispensers, which automatically portion out the proper ingredients for each dish. There is also a plancha searing station to cook and dispense proteins and vegetables as well as a superheated steamer to cook pastas. The Infinite Kitchen can make up to 350 bowls in an hour, with the average bowl costing $11.

The Spoon

Memorializing our National Parks

My daughter gifted me this stunning coffee table book, The Art of the National Parks.

It is a bound version of posters from Fifty-Nine Parks which "believes that public lands and the art of printmaking are traditions worth preserving. Each of Fifty-Nine Parks’ posters are beautifully screen printed in the United States and represent artists from around the world. The poster series is archived by the Library of Congress, and a portion from each poster sale is donated to support the conservation of American public lands."

Creative Director JP Boneyard is interviewed here and says their posters are inspired by the original WPA (Work Projects Administration) posters of the 1930s.

That inspired me to create my own art - a montage of the posters of the Parks we have been to.

It also reminded me there are so many other ways these stunning parks are memorialized - like the brochures we have picked up from National monuments, national historic sites, national battlefields and national seashores. In addition to the 63 main parks, there are another 360 of these 

And the trusty National Geographic guide, the Parks passport where you can get stamps from the locations you visit and the annual America the Beautiful Pass which makes it so easy to enter any of the increasingly crowded locations

Additionally,  there are gorgeous videos like the one below and Ken Burns' series

America's Best Idea, indeed.

Emirates Virtual Reality Cabin tour

Wondering if it’s worth upgrading to a higher class of service on your next flight? If you’re flying with Emirates, you’ll be able to virtually experience the airline’s cabins to see what they’re like before making your decision.

Boutros Boutros, Emirates’ Divisional Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Marketing and Brand says “In 2018, we were the world’s first airline to introduce advanced web VR technology on our digital platforms, offering our customers an immersive opportunity to learn about the fantastic Emirates experience…We’ve continued to invest and develop that experience, and today we are delighted to be the first airline to launch a fully-fledged Oculus VR app.”

Simple Flying

 

 

Innovations highlighted in Satya Nadella's annual shareholder letter

In the Microsoft annual report, Satya Nadella identifies a handful of examples of innovation he is obviously proud of. I also found videos which provide additional perspective on each.

• NASA’s Mars mission achieved a milestone in space exploration when the small robotic helicopter Ingenuity completed the first powered flight on another planet—a feat that would not have been possible without 12,000 developers on GitHub who contributed code to the open source software that powered the flight.
  

• When a 1,300-foot ship blocked the Suez Canal and disrupted global shipping, our partner Blue Yonder used Microsoft AI technologies to help its customers find alternate sources for more than $500 million worth of products and parts affected by the delay.
  

• Team Rubicon—a nonprofit organization that responds to humanitarian crises around the world—set up 169 COVID-19 response sites across the United States in just 30 days, using Dynamics 365 to manage the deployment of thousands of volunteers.
  

• Surgeons at Mt. Sinai Health System in New York and Kyabirwa Surgical Centre in Uganda have together performed more than 500 surgeries using mixed reality technology that enables doctors in New York to provide annotated recommendations that appear in the field of vision of their Ugandan colleagues—even though they are thousands of miles apart.
  

• Anheuser-Busch InBev—the world’s largest brewer—used Azure Digital Twins to create a comprehensive digital model of its breweries and supply chain. Synchronized with its physical environment, this model replicates the complex relationships between natural ingredients and the brewing process, enabling brewmasters to make adjustments based on real-time conditions.
  

Li-Fi

Li-Fi stands for Light Fidelity and is to Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) as lidar is to radar. That is, Li-Fi uses light to do what Wi-Fi uses radio waves to do: provide "last meters" over-the-air delivery of internet service from a router to a user's computer, handheld device, or other inter net-connected gizmo.

There are many benefits and a few drawbacks. Data transmission is speed-of-light speedy, so the time it takes for messages to go back and forth (latency) is vastly lower than with Wi-Fi (0.5 millisecond versus perhaps 20.0 ms). Huge amounts of data can be exchanged quickly (theoretically up to 14 times faster than Wi-Fi), making the technology ideal for virtual- and augmented-reality applications. Li-Fi can be used where radio waves can't reach or where their presence is problematic some hospital equipment and medical patients can't tolerate radio interference, for example.

Motor Trend

3D printed homes in Austin, TX

A quartet of houses designed by local firm Logan Architecture and built from 3D-printed concrete by construction tech company ICON has completed in Austin, Texas.

The four dwellings have ground-floor walls built using ICON's Vulcan construction system, which uses a robotic armature to layer Portland-cement-based material Lavacrete into striated surfaces.

"3D-printing technology provides safer, more resilient homes that are designed to withstand fire, flood, wind and other natural disasters better than conventionally built homes," said the company.

It took five to seven days to print each house.

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