Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Why the FCC Broadband Plan Matters

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On Tuesday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is delivering their Broadband Plan to Congress. Most of us in the tech community are anticipating the plan and are eager to read it in its entirety when released.

Within this plan, the FCC has the unenviable task of encapsulating the complexities of the markets, technologies, other country’s use of broadband as a competitive advantage, possible use-cases for broadband (e.g., telemedicine, distance learning), demand for rural use (a market segment seen as horrifically expensive to build-out with wired broadband) and determine the possibilities for broadband in total, whether wired or wireless. Ensuring the public good, and that the internet remains a conduit for innovation and entreprenurialism, is a vital part of their mission.

In conferences I’ve been to, discussions I’ve had with broadband experts, and interviews I’ve held with internet-centric startups and entrepreneurs, all are adamant that nothing is more important to internet innovation and entrepreneurialism than ubiquitous and fast broadband (except for startup funding, of course).

But moving from a Plan to Congressional action in the way of law is another matter entirely. …  [Read More…]

Comcast’s Oscar Fail Followup “We Dunno”

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Mary Beth Schubert, VP of Corporate Affairs, Comcast

This morning’s post, “Comcast’s Oscars Fail in MN” was one that’s received a fair amount of traffic today and in it I promised I’d update you, so here you go.

Moments ago I got off the phone with Mary Beth Schubert, Vice President of Corporate Affairs for Comcast in Minnesota. While pleased to receive an apology and that my squeaky wheel was getting greased, essentially there’s no identified cause and I came away from the call not knowing anymore than I did before receiving it.

“The particular incident that you mentioned I can confirm and that it was in isolated spots in Minneapolis and the southwestern suburbs and was intermittent. We cover 111 different cities — and you’d mentioned Chicago or something — but it was isolated to small areas of the Twin Cities,” said Ms. Schubert. She then mentioned feedback she’d received from Comcast engineering staff and that, “It appears the problem was first identified at approximately 8:15pm (CST). We immediately began researching the cause of the interference and it appears that it cleared itself about 11:15pm late last evening. We continue to look in to the cause of it.”

The anecdotes I, and others on Twitter, had about this stuttering and video pixelation going on for at least two days wasn’t formally acknowledged and not addressed. “Again, we have recognized, our engineering area, that the interference was identified approximately 8:15pm on Sunday and gone late that evening.”

Perhaps it was record viewing of this year’s 82nd Annual Academy Awards, too many people tangling up the series of tubes by sending their internets, or some internal infrastructure fail as Comcast does away with analog signals over cable so the tubes don’t get filled up (you know, like with trucks), I received no hard data on why the Oscar telecast was a disaster for so many of us and what they’re doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Ms. Schubert was very gracious and listened patiently to my additional concerns — and I do appreciate her reaching out — but I think Comcast needs a blog to talk to customers, some transparency, and especially system updates that tell us what’s going on and what they’re doing to fix technical issues since it’s highly likely we’ll see more of them. Perhaps, since they’re literally across the river from the upcoming light rail depot in downtown St. Paul, they’ll be able to easily catch the Cluetrain.

Comcast’s MN Oscars Fail

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Though the problem seemed to begin on Friday with our Comcast cable TV service, we didn’t much care until the family sat down to watch the 82nd Academy Awards and the video stuttering and audio dropouts were so horrifically bad that it was almost unwatchable.

Rebooting the device during a commercial break was a mistake since it took forever to come back up and didn’t fix the problem, so I grabbed my iPhone and did a search on Twitter for the word “comcast” to see if it could possibly be a network issue rather than our cable DVR failing.

I was stunned to see that there were dozens of people tweeting about the “stuttering” and “pixelation” of video and audio and it appeared that most of the problem was in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the surrounding metro area (see SheilaBird; KeinKernMusic; DFRevert; CSWebGrl).

But in further investigation this morning, I’ve discovered that many of the people tweeting were in Illinois (e.g., JoshMeans) so this might’ve been a regional problem. During the Oscar telecast I reached out to Frank Eliason via Twitter (@ComcastCares and he’s Comcast’s “Twitter man” according to BusinessWeek) and he was, with his typical Johnny-on-the-spot follow up, checking into the issues but nothing has come of it yet. I’ve reached out to him this morning to ask for a statement about what went wrong, what Comcast did and is doing about it, and Eliason responded by asking for a private, Twitter direct message (DM) with my email address in it, so we’ll see what Comcast says about the issue and I’ll update this post if-and-when I receive something.

I suspect that this sort of “fail” is going to become more frequent, rather than less so, since more of us are maximizing the use of our wired and wireless internet connections and the cable companies are accelerating the services they’re trying to shove down an internet broadband pipe that — while admittedly fat and robust with seemingly high capacity — is still a finite resource.

Jonathan Zittrain on Minds for Sale

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One of the thought leading places I follow is the Berkman Center at Harvard University and their podcast/webcast delivery vehicle called MediaBerkman, whose focus is to “…feature conversations with and talks by leading cyber-scholars, entrepreneurs, activists, and policymakers as they explore topics such as the factors that influence knowledge creation and dissemination in the digital age; the character of power as the worlds of governance, business, citizenship and the media meet the internet; and the opportunities, role and limitations of new technologies in learning.”

One of the key players there is Jonathan Zittrain, a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and a guy who served as its first executive director from 1997-2000. He’s also the author of “The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It“.

I came across a 1.5 hour talk called “Minds for Sale” on the commercial side of cloud computing that was posted a few days ago and I’ve been listening to it in starts-n-stops whenever I had some time. It’s worth your time to listen to it closely if you are at all involved in commercial cloud computing, a startup in the web hosted space, or are a strategist or business leader in any thought leading capacity for your organization. In it you’ll hear “…why cloud computing is not just for computing anymore and how a new range of projects is making the application of human brainpower as purchasable and fungible as additional server rackspace.”

Listen by hovering over the speaker icon or download the mp3: Minds for Sale

Podcast: Download (62.5MB)

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Pew Internet’s “Future of the Internet IV”

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If you rely upon the internet in any way for your startup, business, learning or to feed your addiction to World of Warcraft, you’ll be interested that Pew Internet has released their fourth report on the internet’s future entitled, “Future of the Internet IV“.

It’s a survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders which reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered.

The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. In this report, Pew covers experts’ thoughts on the following issues:

“Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge,” said Janna Anderson, study co-author and director of the Imagining the Internet Center. “There are still many people, however, who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools.”

Yeah…like my former boss (now 69 years old) who insists that the internet is just a fad and that we’re destroying civilization with it. Or a former teacher I know who still believes that all relevant information we need must be stuffed in to our brains vs. looking it up via Google.

Curation Station…Sweeping the Nation?

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Ah, the web… a veritable treasure trove of knowledge, an endless stream of news and information. Actually, it’s more of a flood of facts and opinions that would make even Noah a might uncomfortable. How is the average web surfer to keep up if they want to…let alone the media marketer that must keep up because they have to?

Fear not, oh noble marketer. The folks at Uptown (Minneapolis) marketing firm Hello Viking have spawned Curation Station to provide you with a bucket to help you bail the endless deluge of web content into smaller pools. (Minnov8 colleague Tim Elliot gave me a peek at the private beta.)

As you might know, collecting the flood of online information isn’t the problem. News readers, RSS feeds, email newsletters, blog subscriptions, and bookmarking services all help you see every drop of data coming from your favorite online tributaries. The issue has always been separating the clean water from the black or grey water. (Those who have ever spent anytime emptying the water tanks of an RV know what I mean.)

According to it’s creators, “Social media have forever changed the way that brands connect with customers. In a non-stop trail of Tweets, blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube videos and Flickr sites, customers discuss products and services.” They say, “Curation Station was created by marketers for marketers to harness these conversations and share participants’ best insights and experiences.”…  [Read More…]

Visions of Tomorrow, Yesterday

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From Matt Novak's PaleoFuture blog (click on image to see Matt's post)

If you, like I, follow the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) Twitter feed (@MNHS) then you might already have stumbled across an interesting lecture which may also have led you to a delightful St. Paul blog.

Stumble indeed.

It was pure happenstance that I came across a compelling MNHS lecture called, “History of Hip: Yesterday’s Tomorrow” and features historian Brian Horrigan and blogger Matt Novak (the guy with that cool St. Paul blog called “Paleo-Future“). In it they highlighted some of their favorite trends in science fiction of the past while they shared their own thoughts about the future of this genre.

With only three lectures posted (on a WordPress blog in a new category called Minnesota History Lectures), the innovative thing is that MNHS, like many historical societies around the country, are exposing more of their content and compelling attractions digitally and online. Most of the MNHS efforts succeed — like my favorites Family Search and the great images of Minnesota digitized and available through the Collections — but I must admit feeling a profound sense of disappointment that this particular lecture was delivered in video as a 320 x 240 window in M4V format. Perfect for an iPod or iPhone, but unacceptable for how I usually watch long-form video (through my Mac mini on my HDTV).

I downloaded the 513MB file and watched it on my iPhone and now wish I’d known about the lecture in advance (it was that good) and also so I could scrub through it and see portions of it again. There is some great content in it and in particular some of the retro future videos Matt shows in his portion of the lecture in the second half are really fun.

The challenges MNHS faces delivering long lectures of this type (and doing so affordably) isn’t lost on someone like me who has analyzed the economics of video. But so many of us now are streaming video over our computers or connecting our Roku (or next month the Boxee Box) to our HDTV’s, the stepping up of the qualitative delivery of video is an imperative and, I believe, will be “table stakes” to be in the game of delivering long form video content going forward.

All that said, I so appreciate the efforts of MNHS and that more and more of the content they hold is available online. I’d heartily recommend you head over to their site and check out what’s going on there and this lecture in specific and, by the way, Matt Novak is launching a magazine in April, you can help him raise the initial dough by donating, and this retro future magazine ought to be a fun one!

The FTC Talks Guides

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Engle Recently I had a chance to join local IP Attorney Ernest Grumbles for an edition of his BP/G Radio Intellectual Property Podcast. Along with his co-host Joe Bennett-Paris we had the chance to talk with Mary K. Engle, Associate Director, FTC Division of Advertising Practices about the infamous Guides for the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising as they apply to bloggers.

As we’ve talked about on past Minnov8 podcasts and as I pointed out in a post on my own blog, these guides are nothing new in the broadcast world, but seem to have a few bloggers and online marketers a bit twitchy. How do you feel about them?

It was good to have the chance to talk with Ms. Engle and get a very clear explanation of the guides straight from the source. Thanks to Ernest for allowing me to join in.

Be sure and keep Ernest’s blog and podcast on your radar. He is a great local and national resource and offers plenty of great info on IP law on a regular basis.

Zipnosis: Healthcare On-the-Go

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Zipnosis is a 2008 Minnesota Cup winner (Student category) and a pre-launch healthcare startup in Minneapolis that is zeroing in on the always-on and always-connected generation with a very interesting and potentially disruptive healthcare business model.

I sat down this week with founder Jon Pearce to discuss Zipnosis and what they were trying to accomplish. “When you’re sick and need to go to a doctor or visit a clinic, you have to take time off work, pay a co-pay, sit in the waiting room, and then just get seen by a nurse,” says Pearce. This occurs even for fairly routine and minor issues such as bacterial infections (e.g., strep throat) or viral ones like the flu, and Pearce has data-backed opinions about the percentages of office visits that are routine like these.

Those are the types of visits that require a considerable time investment for the patient and are low value ones for a clinician, and speeding up that process virtually and online (called a “zip”) is what Zipnosis is making more efficient for both the patient and clinician (minutes for a Doctor to turn around a diagnosis vs. 15-20 minutes of time for that same thing in-office, and undoubtedly 2 hours or so of time for the patient). What if instead you could use your computer or cell phone, answer a series of very structured questions about your symptoms, get fast clinician or doctor feedback and, if needed, a prescription sent to the pharmacy of your choice? …  [Read More…]

Stratasys Inks Deal with HP

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As a longtime fan of science fiction I have always had a fascination with future technology speculation and why I (and most fans) enjoyed Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was on that show that the replicator (first used on the original 1960’s series) began to deliver much more than food and drink: it could create any inanimate matter, as long as the desired molecular structure was on file in the computer.

Eden Prairie-based Stratasys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSYS), the leading manufacturer of 3D printers and 3D production systems, announced this week that it has signed a definitive agreement with HP for Stratasys to manufacture an HP-branded 3D printer. Used by product designers and architects, Stratasys 3D printers create three-dimensional plastic models directly from 3D digital designs. Though 3D printing is by no means even close to a Star Trek-like replicator, the rapid prototyping capability, marked reductions in cycle times in design and innovation, coupled with the capability to manifest 3D computer aided designs (CAD) in to physical objects is poised for a global expansion that is likely to be quite dramatic.

Though this 3D printing category is in its early stages, Stratasys Chairman and CEO Scott Crump stated in the announcement that, “We believe the time is right for 3D printing to become mainstream. We also believe that HP’s unmatched sales and distribution capabilities and Stratasys FDM technology is the right combination to achieve broader 3D printer usage worldwide. HP has made a similar move in this market before, capturing a dominant position in large-format 2D printers. Together we hope to repeat this success with 3D printers.”

Why is this a particularly interesting category and what is the relevance for Minnov8? …  [Read More…]