RattlerGator Blog

Super Bowl Sunday is Almost Here!

I'm looking forward to a fantastic football game between the Broncos and the Seahawks. The commercials might be pretty nice too! Hulu AdZone IV helps to celebrate the event:

Hell yeah. The quintessentially American sports event combined with a uniquely American appetite for advertising.

Google+ Auto Awesome Photos & Movies

Google has added a new feature that I wish I had more time to play with -- Auto Awesome Photos and Movies:

Auto Awesome creates fun new versions of your photos and videos. Your photos will be combined into short animations, wide panoramas, or merged into group shots where everyone looks good. You'll know when an Auto Awesome photo or movie has been created by the  icon.

Here is a basic picture I took last night:

And this is a link to the picture as displayed with the Auto Awesome feature (I don't know how to embed the gif so that it displays the twinkles within this blog).

Simple, but a nice twist. Me thinks I'm going to like this tool and the extensions it enables.

Interesting Opinion on the Media

I have a lifelong fascination with "the media" -- when I entered the University of Florida, I thought I knew that I would major in some form of Journalism and get into television news. Like many a college student, I changed my mind while on campus but media remains a deep interest. At this moment, I don't know how I stumbled upon The Collapse of CNN (probably some tweet in my Twitter timeline -- yep, Jim Treacher, retweeted to my timeline by Stephen Kruiser) but it was an interesting piece with some fairly typical and predictable comments to the opinion of John Ellis, the writer.

One, however, was certainly not typical or predictable. Identified as "WigWag" (I originally typed WigWam for some reason). Clearly a leftist (anyone asserting that CNN's left-wing bias is open for debate is a clear leftist), WigWag nevertheless delivered some worthy opinion. Here it is in full:

The only thing more shallow then CNN’s news coverage may be the assertion that CNN’s problems stem fro liberal bias. Even if CNN has a left slant (a debatable proposition), the idea that this accounts for it’s problems is simply ignorant.

Fans of Fox News or MSNBC may take some delight in CNN’s failures but they shouldn’t celebrate too long; their favorite purveyors of bloviation are headed for the dust heap of history too.

The major challenge facing old media in general and television (especially cable television) in particular is the looming massive wave of disintermediation that is about to strike it with the destructive force of a massive cyclone. CNN as the weakest link may fail first but Fox News and MSNBC won’t be far behind.

News Corp, the parent of Fox News seems particularly vulnerable because it is an old media company that seemingly has no clue about how to operate in a new media age. Remember, Fox and News Corp recently performed the remarkable feat of turning a billion dollar investment in My Space into a loss of $900 million when they sold the company for pennies on the dollar. But for News Corp/Fox that’s not the worst of it.

To get a sense of foreshadowing for what is soon to hit one needs only to examine what happened with Fox News and Glen Beck. After Beck and Roger Ailes (the man that John Ellis naively thinks could rescue CNN) had a falling out over Beck’s extraordinarily popular Fox show, Beck realized he doesn’t need Fox. After all, he had an incredibly loyal audience willing to pay to hear him rant; why cut an intermediary like Fox into his action.

Beck set up his own subscription based show on the Internet and it is incredibly successful, profitable and growing by leaps and bounds. Producing a high quality show that looks as good as a television show takes capital that Beck doesn’t have so he partnered with Premiere, Inc, a subsidiary of Clear Channel radio. Premiere and Beck each own 50 percent of Beck’s show. Premiere also owns 50 percent of Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s radio shows.

The irony is that the CEO of Premiere’s parent company, Clear Channel, is Bob Pittman. Bob Pittman was the founder of MTV and a former chief operating officer of AOL and later AOL-Time Warner. After Steve Jobs, he may be the greatest marketing genius of his generation. Stupidly, CNN’s parent, Time Warner passed him over to hire the bland and diffident Dick Parsons to run the Company.

The irony is that the CEO of the parent company which partners with Beck and owns 50 percent of Limbaugh and Hannity’s shows is himself a rabid liberal who has raised millions for Obama and before that both Clintons. Whatever their political differences, Pittman shares a common passion with his right-wing partners; they all love making money. Beck is delighted to work with Pittman; Pittman is delighted to work with Beck. All that matters is that everyone is drowning in dollars.

Clear Channel and News Corp/Fox are heading in opposite directions. It won’t be long before the likes of Hannity, O’Reilly and Van Sustern figure out that they can make far more money by emulating Beck. When they do they will tell Murdoch and Ailes to take a hike and they will sell their wares directly to the public with the Internet as the vehicle. MSNBC will collapse when Madow and colleagues follow suit.

Clear Channel and News Corp/Fox are heading in opposite directions. Murdoch’s company makes mistake after mistake after mistake; Pittman’s company is on a roll.

For a long time Clear Channel represented the oldest of old media. After print, what could be older or duller than radio. Clear Channel had taken on truly massive debt to build an 850 radio station Empire. Several years back, Bain Capital (after Romney had left) took Clear Channel private in a leveraged buy-out. Clear Channel was owned approximately 50/50 by it’s founding family and Bain.

The founding family in question was quite right-wing. Some may remember the controversy Clear Channel stirred up when their stations boycotted the Dixie Chicks after members of the band criticized George Bush. The other owners, the partners of Bain Capital are also a relatively conservative bunch. But after the highly leveraged company continued to flounder, that didn’t prevent the owners from hiring the uber-liberal Pittman to save their company.

Pittman is turning Clear Channel from a stodgy old media company to a highly successful new media company so fast that it makes your head spin. Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio site which let’s you listen to all 850 of their radio stations on line (or importantly on a smart phone) gets more than 10 million hits a month. They have a listening platform identical to Pandora that is used by more than twice as many listeners who use Pandora. Ominously for the Time Warners and News Corps of the world, Clear Channel is contracting directly with recording artists like Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift: record labels are almost a thing of the past; television networks will be following them into oblivion. Clear Channel owns 50 percent of Ryan Seacrest; if Seacrest gets an anchor job on the Today Show or if he hosts American Idol, NBC and Fox have to pay not only Seacrest, but also Clear Channel. The Company is even getting into the business of promoting concerts such as the iHeart Festival in Las Vegas or the Jingle Ball concerts in cities throughout the United States.

While Clear Channel is prospering by using it’s old media platforms as a bridge to a new media world, less nimble companies like Fox, Disney (owners of ABC and ESPN), Time Warner (HBO, Time Magazine Group, CNN) and Comcast (NBC) are being left in the dust.

Just as CNN is dying; Fox News and MSNBC are also about to experience a near death experience. Technology induced disintermediation means producers of entertainment or news can sell their product to consumers without cutting Fox News, MSNBC or CNN in on the deal. It also means that subscribers/consumers will be able to purchase only product that they want rather tan paying for a lot of product that they don’t want just to get a small amount of product that they do.

Disintermediation is going to kill television as we know it. Smart companies like Clear Channel are likely to thrive. Dinosaurs like News Corp/Fox and Time Warner are likely to go the way of Kodak.

Anyone who thinks that political bias is what will kill content providers like news outlets doesn’t know what they are taking about.

It’s capitalism and it’s hand maiden; creative destruction.

Adios CNN. Sayonara MSNBC. Bye bye Fox News.

Now -- say what you will, that's a very interesting comment that is going to give me quite a bit to think about over the next month or so. Kudos to you, WigWag.

 

Incredible Animation from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Thanks to Michael Yon, I was prompted to watch this incredibly good animation from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that does an outstanding job presenting a visual display of what makes NASA's Curiosity Rover so amazing -- including how it got to Mars, and what it will be doing there. Check this out if you haven't seen it:

 

If you aren't geeked by that you must be working far too hard at ignoring what it takes to get from the initial idea to the reality on the ground.

Congrats to all involved who made this happen.

UAV Crop Copter

The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at U.F. has developed an interesting new unmanned aerial vehicle tool that may have serious implications for American agriculture. I pulled the explanatory video from the Orlando Sentinel on the remarkable invention of Dr. Reza Ehsani (apparently a native of Iran with a Ph.D. from Cal-Davis):

A miniature UAV Crop Copter, huh? Well done, Dr. Ehsani.

Good Perspective about Japan's Fukushima Problem

Because I found it extemely useful, I'm re-printing in full Galrahn's latest post at Information Dissemination about the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power facility in Japan, that nation's oldest nuclear site:

There is a lot of hype and even some stupid nonsense being thrown around in the media about the nuclear situation at Fukushima. If you don't understand nuclear power, seek out discussions on the topic from the retired Navy communities, many of whom work on civilian reactors today and are discussing this issue in numerous places all over the web. A good place to start is the comments of this post at Bubblehead. Also see Dr. Josef Oehmen's comments here, a very useful read for context and perspective.

A few details that folks might want to note:

The reactors that are being discussed in the news were successfully shut down. The problems are related to post shutdown safety.

People who compare Fukushima and Chernobyl don't know anything about Fukushima or Chernobyl. This is like comparing the safety, survivability, and resilience of row boats and battleships. Everything that made Chernobyl a disaster - lack of safety, redundancy, etc.. - is what is making Fukushima a successful containment of a serious problem.

This event in Japan is the worst case scenario. First you have a 9.0 earthquake, then you have this massive tsunami, then you have the freezing weather that compounds your water problems. In the case of Fukushima the earthquake knocked out the power, forcing them to move to generators. The tsunami came along and knocked out the generators, forcing them to move to battery power.

The battery power has very limited life, somewhere between 8-24 hours, and we are somewhere north of 54 hours on battery power now at the nuclear plants. Obviously that creates a serious problem with these old reactors that require electricity for cooling. BTW, worth noting, the new nuke tech does not require electricity to cool.

Observing that this is the worst case scenario and that Fukushima is Japans oldest nuclear power plant; worth highlighting that there is still no evidence that there has been loss of containment or a leak that represents a public health concern. The leaks to date have been controlled and regulated as part of the safety procedures. Keep your head on folks, all of the public safety being done from iodine to evacuations is part of the stated Japanese nuclear safety plan which can be found online (I have not seen an English version).

The Fukushima plant situation is serious, but it is not some emerging catastrophe some are making it out to be.

Good points, all. The extensive (and well-worded for the layman, such as yours truly) response by M.I.T's Dr. Josef Oehmen was absolutely phenomenal!

Bill Whittle: The End of the Beginning

A great Gator, Bill Whittle, frames things nicely in this video:

Amidst all the inflammatory and over-the-top hate speech hurled at the Tea Party, the truth will out. The lies are increasingly losing their force. And these unions can stomp around and chant as much as they want, history is against them. Their time has passed. The end of their beginning is near. And it isn't politics that is demanding the end, technology is. The politics, like a meandering river, is simply following the demands and contours wrought by the development of the technology. That is the fact of the matter.

Governor Scott on his High-Speed Rail Decision

This is a release from the Governor's Office:

As you may know last Wednesday, I informed U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood of the state’s decision to reject President Obama’s costly Tampa to Orlando high-speed rail project. Here are the facts about the project, and I ask you take action today to support this decision by sharing the facts [].

My decision to reject the project comes down to three main economic realities:

1. Capital cost overruns from the project could put Florida taxpayers on the hook for an additional $3 billion.

2. Ridership and revenue projections are historically overly-optimistic and would likely result in ongoing subsidies that state taxpayers would have to incur, which could cost from $300 million – $575 million over 10 years.

3. If the project becomes too costly for taxpayers and is shut down, the state would have to return the $2.4 billion in federal funds to D.C.

The truth is that this project would be far too costly to taxpayers and I believe the risk far outweighs the benefits. It is my duty to make sound investments in areas where we will experience a positive return for the shareholders – Florida’s taxpayers.

Let's get to work,

Governor Rick Scott

I agree with the Governor. The ridership numbers are wildly optimistic, as they always are in these instances, and the impetus behind high-speed rail doesn't fit with an American mindset -- no matter how much our supposed betters wishes this fact wasn't so obviously correct.

Then there's that other component; President Obama's expansion of spending obligations that unnecessarily increases the federal government's involvement in our daily life and the life of our progeny.

The Path Forward in Egypt

What can one say about the upheaval in Egypt? These are dangerous times, yes. But conservatives and Republicans make a mistake when lapsing into doom and gloom. This is a tremendous opportunity for the United States of America and should be seen as such. For example, Wretchard highlights Sandmonkey's advocacy of an "Egyptian Unity Party" as a way to keep liberty advancing within Egypt:

There is nothing wrong with the core idea; it is in fact the same idea behind the primary challenge process, interstate compacts, and even the Constitutional amendment process. In all of these, the Internet plays a major part. The U.S. Tea Party, for example, lives on Facebook. Because form follows function, the Internet is going to play a major role in any subsequent Egyptian shakeup — unless we leave it to the moustache Petes.

The principal difference is that Tea Party USA can move between the online and real worlds seamlessly. There are no  secret police with whips mounted on camels on Main Street, no dark torture chambers or thugs wearing cheap suits awaiting Tea Party USA members down at the local convention center. Egypt is different. Nevertheless, without getting too wild-eyed about the prospects of Sandmonkey’s program, common sense says that something ought to be done to nurture and assist the spontaneous component of the Egyptian revolution that sprang from activity online. Online is where young and largely secular youth live, much more than the mosque, and it would be remiss not to recognize it.

Two things in particular would help the Egyptians greatly.

1. First, one can lobby the U.S. government to tell Egypt not to shut down the Internet again;
2. U.S.-based developers should create applications which will help online Egyptian groups organize themselves. Mobile apps, new features to FB, Twitter, etc, data conforming algorithms. These are the most obvious.

Besides, online tools have already played a major role in the Egyptian drama, as they did to a lesser extent in the Iranian unrest against the ayatollahs. That is an historical fact.  To assume online tools are a fad is as dangerous as battleship admirals thinking airplanes are a fad.  The balance of probability is that online tools will play a bigger, not a smaller, prospective role. Far from being a fluke, the role of self-organization in Egypt may simply be a harbinger of things to come throughout the region.

And fortunately for America, this action is happening in the one place where the USA is still unquestionably the champion of the world; the one place where access to actual participants is possible, though on a distributed basis. If there is one single thing that the American political and developer community can do to affect the course, not only of the Egyptian revolution but of changes in the Third World to come, it will be to act in this sphere.

Wretchard, just a quibble: that's not the one place where America is still the unquestioned leader in the world, or "champion" of the world -- but, hey, that's just a quibble. I know what you were getting at. The whole world taps to this beat and the autocratic world is especially threatened by this American technological advance. Acting within this sphere seems practical, possible, hopeful. In fact, it's do-able.

Because it is so clearly capable of success, it is the path forward in autocratic societies all over the globe.

Beyond Sabetha's Snow

I've returned from what must have been a solid week on the road that involved travel to South Florida, a flight out to Kansas through DFW, driving through major snow on Kansas roadways back to the KC airport, flight back to South Florida via DFW, and then a welcomed and leisurely seven-hour drive back home to Tallahassee.

Readers of this blog may remember me briefly discussing my contemplation of efforts to get involved with an organization trying to help Haiti move forward. Well, that's been done via a start-up. Thus the trip to Kansas. One highlight among many: we saw a fascinating presentation revolving around extrusion technology that has the potential to seriously impact malnutrition in Haiti.

But. Kansas in January?

Oh my goodness was it cold (eight degrees on the morning of our departure). On the drive into Kansas, my brain literally started sending signals to my entire body: prepare to hibernate, hibernate, hibernate. Must hibernate! Bundle up!

But our host family was warm and couldn't have been more gracious to us. That helped.

Still, this was the scene that greeted us at our hosts' home. I call it "Beyond Sabetha" as this could have been the theme for our visit, focused as it was on Haiti:

Sabetha had a certain charm to it (trust me, it truly did), and -- covered in a serious blanket of snow -- the white stuff probably transformed the winter landscape. The snow was quite dry and danced across the roadway when the wind blew. Luckily, the wind didn't really blow until Saturday night on our way to a fantastic steak place (the Country Cabin) in Hiawatha, Kansas. My 18 ounce prime rib, as I had been assured, was absolutely outstanding.

Why Kansas in January? Because we are endeavoring to implement an agricultural and economic development strategy in Haiti that actually moves the needle, so to speak. Something practical and away from Port-au-Prince. Something that isn't primarily governmental but private sector.

I'll close with a photo of one of my best friends. He's a driving force behind our efforts and a proud Haitian who aches to try and improve conditions in the land of his birth. I love this photo; it seems to capture so much. But, what can you do with a Black Man in the snow . . . hmmmm?

Trust me when I tell you this, we didn't stay out in the snow for long. No sir, buddy! I was just happy to not get crushed with a snowball.

Please wish us Godspeed and good fortune. Haiti needs it.