Fine Dining from the Assembly Line

With Thanksgiving approaching, traditional home cooking is on a lot of people's minds. It's one thing to pull out the stops for a special occasion... but who has time to cook like that on a regular basis nowadays?

For families who are pressed for time yet refuse to settle for fast food or frozen dinners, "mass assembly retail kitchen outlets" offer a solution. Chains such as Chicago's Dinner By Design provide food and kitchen facilities for customers to prepare up to 12 family-sized meals in a single two-hour session. Customers can rediscover the joy of cooking without having to worry about the shopping, tedious preparation or the cleanup... and socialize while they're at it. By controlling the ingredients, customers can also prepare food to family members' preferences (low fat, low carb, vegetarian, food allergies, etc.) Best of all, they leave with solid, nutritious and delicious meals... and don't have to cook again for a week! Dinner by Design's price of $200 per session is only a bit more than most families might spend for groceries each week, and certainly less than the cost of eating out regularly.

Dinner assembly lines are one of many services that seek to bridge the gap between people's desire to take back control of their hectic lives and the reality of busy schedules. In the days when most women were homemakers and meal preparation was a big part of their daily routine, such an idea would have seemed absurd. But in a world where time is a precious commodity, it's just one more quality-of-life service that makes sense.

Source: Ubercool

A Mighty Pen

This holiday season's must-have toy is supposedly the Fly Pentop Computer from LeapFrog, essentially a giant ballpoint pen with an on-board computer. Designed for pre-teens, the Fly has interchangeable educational modules that allow it to read what is being written, provide audible feedback, and even play games and music.

David Pogue of the New York Times provides some examples of what the Fly can do:

Staggering possibilities await a pen that can read software right off the page as it moves, and the Fly package comes with a sparkling sampler. For example, as you tap countries on a world map, the pen pronounces their capitals or plays their national anthems. On a glossy, fold-out mini-poster of a disc jockey's setup, you can tap buttons to get music samples, or tap turntables to produce record-scratching sounds; then you can record your own compositions or compete, memory-game style, against other players. There's even a sheet of stickers that, when tapped, produce appropriate sound effects. (For my two elementary-schoolers, the belching mouth alone was good for 20 minutes of hilarity.)

The Fly, however, has much greater potential than as a mere toy, or even as an educational tool. Able to save reminders and perform calculations, the Fly can, in effect, serve as a PDA. (Actually, that's what Gizmodo said when it reviewed the Fly back in August). It will also be interesting to see if and how users hack the Fly, and whether third-party developers will create software for it. The current model has its flaws, but that's to be expected. Could a 2.0 model contain a wireless interface so that Flies could "talk" to one another, or even download data and tagged files from the Internet? Teachers could use it to deliver assignments and study aids to students. Kids could recommend music downloads to their friends (just what the music industry wants to hear, I'm sure).

A pen-based computer might not make much sense to adults, but kids who have tested them reportedly find them endlessly fascinating. Even though the Fly has a bit of a learning curve and -- like any good computer -- crashes occasionally, the kids don't seem to mind. As these kids grow up and enter the workforce, they'll bring their experiences with pen-based computing with them... and perhaps foster a new generation of computing devices.

Source: Business Week

Is Google Base a Killer App in the Making?

The recent beta launch of Google Base -- an XML/RSS classified advertising portal in the vein of Craigslist -- positions the Internet juggernaut to disrupt not just one business, but many.

The most vulnerable victim is the newspaper industry, which has taken its share of lumps recently. Local papers, after all, derive as much as 80% of their income from classified ads. But they can't blame Google Base for their woes, as the Internet broke the business model for newspaper classifieds long ago.

Rather, Google Base is a threat to the established Internet classified sites that have carved out niches for themselves. Some believe that Google Base could even pose a threat to other Internet giants such as eBay and Monster, which became killer apps themselves by allowing individuals to market products and services on a wider scale than was ever before possible. One enormous incentive for using Google Base is that its entries appear to come up very high in Google searches, thereby becoming, if nothing else, a powerful search engine optimization tool.

The biggest immediate problem for Google Base is that, with all the hype surrounding it, it will surely attract spammers and could quickly be filled with junk, suffering the fate that befell Usenet newsgroups. But, assuming that users continue to find value in the tool, at least a couple of solutions could emerge. One, Google could simply charge a small fee for each posting; even a fee of a few cents per posting would deter serial spammers. Another is that third-party developers will see huge opportunities in developing filtering tools and mashups for easier, more accurate parsing of Google Base data. This will be even easier as Google issues open APIs for Base.

It's important to remember that Google Base is still a beta app and has a ways to go to catch on with the average user. In fact, Bill Burnham speculates that classified advertising is just the beginning for Google Base, that it's capable of aggregating and relating a wide variety of XML and RSS feeds... becoming, in essence, a giant SOA hub where anyone -- or any computer -- can access all forms of structured data. "With the database assembled," Burnham writes, "Google will be able to deliver a rich, structured experience... because Google Base will in fact be a giant XML database it will be far more powerful than a structured directory. Not only will Google Base users be able to browse similar listings in a structured fashion, but they will also ultimately be able to do highly detailed, highly accurate queries."

Russell Beattie suggests that Google Base could ultimately evolve into a singular personal information aggregator:

Imagine in your aggregator you could receive not only Posts but forms as well. And calendaring info, and images, etc. And this stuff wasn't just HTML formatted inside the Description tag, but actually processable by the aggregator itself. I guess then the Aggregator becomes a Universal Data Reading Client instead. On the other side of the equation, I currently have a weblog which has only one way to create new items, a button called New Post which has just two fields, Title and Content. Now what would happen if I added more ways to create items: New Calendar Item and New Review and New Classified, etc. Each one of these extra types of posts would all have Title and Content, but they'd also have fields filled with additional arbitrary information which was included in the RSS also. If your aggregator didn't understand these fields, they could just display them.

Even if Google Base isn't this killer app, it will help us better understand how to ultimately build it... and whether or not we truly want it in the first place.

Source: EMERGIC

$100 Oil: Not If, But When

Here in New Jersey, gas prices spiked up during Labor Day weekend, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to a peak of about $3.40 per gallon for regular unleaded. But prices have fallen ever since, and are now below $2 per gallon -- approximately where prices were this time last year.

So the crisis is over, right? Hardly, say some oil industry analysts. At the beginning of the year, some warned of a "super-spike" that could push oil prices well above $100 per barrel. But as it happened, prices peaked at $71 per barrel after Katrina, and will likely continue to fall over the short term.

However, we may be seeing a "perfect storm" of circumstances that could lead to oil shortages and sharp price increases over the long term:

• According to an estimate by Gold & Energy Advisor, a Florida-based energy consulting firm, the US only has about 11 years of oil reserves remaining. Most of the world's remaining oil -- about 1 trillion barrels -- is contained in volatile Middle Eastern countries, shifting price and production power to these countries as well as to OPEC.


• Alternative energy sources will likely not ease demand for oil anytime soon.


• Even in countries with large oil reserves, politics is keeping output down.


• Global demand will remain high for the near future.


• The world's oil supply remains vulnerable to disruption through terrorism or severe weather.


• Refineries may have to resort to using lower quality crude oil that's more difficult and costly to refine, thereby driving up prices for consumers.

With all this in mind, commodities expert Kevin Kerr says that we could see $100-per-barrel oil within the next 30 months -- or sooner in the event of a catastrophic terror attack or weather event. So instead of $1.98 gas prices being a return to stability, it could be simply a temporary dip in the "new normal."

Source: CBS MarketWatch (via Excite)

A Generation Gap in the Workplace

We've previously speculated on the impact that "Generation Y" employees will have on the workplace. Now we're starting to see the reality... which, in many cases, involves friction between young workers and their elders.

Generation Y, a.k.a. millenials, are generally agreed to be the generation born between 1978 and 1989, comprising today's teens and twentysomethings. However, some demographers include younger children (born as recently as 2002) in this category.

Independent, self-confident and self-expressive, Gen-Y workers are far different than their predecessors. They're smart, have no problem questioning authority, both expect and demand change, and truly believe the cliche that rules were meant to be broken. The first generation to grow up with the Internet, they take electronic collaboration for granted. Already they're challenging workplace norms such as dress codes, flex time and employee-supervisor relations.

Most importantly, they're hard and ambitious workers... but unlike the Baby Boomers, they're not workaholics. Having seen their parents burned by layoffs, their priorities are with friends and family, not the boss. In a workplace that is not prepared for them, their arrival can be a shock. And because they're not followers by nature, if they're not happy, they're outta there.

Naturally, this causes friction with Boomers and even Gen X co-workers. One survey showed that 60% of employers questioned are experiencing conflicts between generational groups. Employers especially report tension in cases where Gen Y-ers are managing people twice their age.

Much as employers might not like it, they need to get used to this trend. Gen Y workers now constitute 32% of the workforce, and will grow as the younger legions get jobs and Boomers begin to retire.

Source: USA Today

Marines 1, Building 0

US Marines in Iraq have reportedly begun using a new generation of shoulder-held urban combat weapons that use thermobaric principles. When launched, the warhead ignites the air around it, producing a shock wave capable of leveling an entire building.

The sheer destructive power of the NE ("novel explosive") weapons make them controversial, with critics citing the risk to surrounding noncombatants. Human rights groups took the Soviet Union to task for using thermobaric weapons in Afghanistan. Now, the Marines are remaining low-key about their NE warheads. However, supporters of the weapons claim that they are highly effective in extremely dangerous areas such as Fallujah, and ultimately help save Marine lives.

Sources: Boing Boing, Defensetech

Could Universal Broadband be a New Political Issue?

A 21st Century version of the "chicken in every pot" political rallying cry might be "broadband Internet in every home." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is unveiling a new Democratic "innovation agenda" that, among other things, aims to guarantee broadband Internet access for all Americans within five years.

The idea is not new; during last year's presidential race, President Bush proposed universal broadband by 2007. The proposal didn't gain as much attention as it should have -- and Bush's plan had few specifics -- but with the President's sagging poll numbers in mind, Republicans may revisit it during next year's election if the Democrats appear to be gaining traction with the issue.

Government support of technology can yield impressive dividends; without Uncle Sam's bankrolling, there likely would be no Internet. And with PCs now cheap enough so that nearly any American who wants one can afford one, the time might finally be right. But with every intriguing political proposal comes hard questions, such as, who will pay for it? Will access be completely free to users, or will the cost be subsidized? Can carriers handle the influx of millions of new users? What special interests will feel threatened enough by this proposal to fight it? What are the unforeseen technical challenges?

One powerful special-interest group that might balk at universal broadband is the television industry, which might worry that streaming content would disrupt their business models. But broadcasters don't see the Internet as much of a threat... yet... even though Internet services are beginning to offer "on demand" episodes of classic sitcoms and other TV shows.

Source: eWeek