Tech Talk

You don't have to ride a horse to play polo. This Sunday, at the 23rd annual Polo in the Park festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Segway riders will compete for the Woz challenge cup. That's Woz as in Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, an avid Segway Polo player.

The Segway Polo follows the rules of the traditional sport, but riders mount two-wheeled Segways, two-wheeled self-balancing transporters first unveiled by inventor Dean Kamen back in 2001. Segways have become popular transportation devices for police officers, disabled people, tourists on guided tours, and my neighbors in Silicon Valley. And, it turns out, for polo players.

Woz himself will play in Sunday's event, as a member of the Silicon Valley Aftershocks, competing against the Junkyard Dogs from Oakland, Calif. and the Pole Blacks from New Zealand. (Switzerland and Dubai also have teams.)

Admission to Polo in the Park is free; the Segway games start at 2:30 pm. The Bay Area Segway Enthusiast Group plays in Sunnyvaleâ''s Ponderosa Park the first and third Sundays of every month, weather permitting.

UPDATE: Latest word is the Woz will not play in the final games on Sunday, but will be playing in the preliminary games at Ponderosa Park Saturday afternoon.

Meet Zeno, a humanoid robot built by the founder of Hanson Robotics. Hanson Robotics is famous for their robotic humanoid faces -- among them Albert Einstein -- but many folks (including yours truly) find them pretty darn creepy. Despite the amazing technological achievement of detailed facial expression, Zeno is no exception to the uncanny valley.

Continue reading at Spectrum's robotics blog, Automaton...

Last month, Mexican engineering students gathered in Puebla to participate in the 4th Mexican Cleaning Robot Contest (Torneo Mexicano de Robots Limpiadores). The robots competed in two categories: the â''Coke can fetching categoryâ'' and the "mine retrieving category". The goal was to investigate ways to collect garbage dumped in terrestrial and aquatic environments -- a problem that unfortunately is way too common not only in Mexico but in many other places. In fact, if these prototypes become products one day, I'd love to send one to my hometown, Sao Paulo, in Brazil, to help clean the ultrapolluted Pinheiros and Tiete rivers.

To see a video of the competition and a report from the organizers, continue reading at Automaton, Spectrum's robotics blog...

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is selling a 2005 Nissan 350Z Anniversary Edition here. Any proceeds in excess of what was paid for the car will be donated to the IEEE engineering lab at the University of California, Berkeley. Bonus: if you buy the car, you get to have lunch with Woz at his house.

Have you ever wanted to write an article for the business press? It's never been as easy as it is today. Take a top headline topic and find a way to mention the iPhone, even if you have to search desperately for a source or invent the connection itself — and even if it's preposterous on the face of it. It's that simple.

Business Week followed this new formula earlier this week when it reported that Apple might bid in January's 700 MHz wireless mega-auction. Let me say this as simply as possible: it would make absolutely no sense for Apple to bid on the spectrum and build a nationwide wireless network from scratch. And so they won't do it. And BusinessWeek knows this. Watch how the story goes from headline:

Apple Eyes the Wireless Auction

to qualification (by the second paragraph!):

Two sources tell BusinessWeek that Steve Jobs & Co. have studied the implications of joining the auction, which will be held Jan. 16. The winners will get rights to use the spectrum that analog TV broadcasters are handing back to the government in 2009, given their mandated move to digital television.

to repudiation (by the fourth paragraph):

At this point, says one of the sources, Apple is leaning against participating in the auction.

Of course Apple has looked at the auction, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Apple invest in a bid that would lead to a new nationwide wireless broadband network. Keep in mind that any network using that spectrum is going to take years to build - a timing that could work well for Apple, which is locked into AT&T as the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the U.S. for five years. But that's a far cry from bidding.

Naturally, once BusinessWeek opened the door, the story quickly spun out of control, not just among bloggers but elsewhere inf the business and trade press, where, sadly, independent reporting and even, sometimes, thought, is becoming a rare commodity. Typical was Katherine Noyes's http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/59256.htmlstory in MacNewsWorld:

Spectrum Gets Nibble From Apple

Apple reportedly may be a bidder in the Federal Communications Commission's January auction of the 700 MHz wireless spectrum.

If you're thinking of following the new formula and becoming a business story writer yourself, note some of the standard tricks of the trade — "nibble," a word that has essentially no meaning, and "reportedly may be," which lets you say pretty much anything about anything: all you have to do is find one person who says something might happen.

[ADDED: While Noyes's article is typical, the award for goofiest has to go to CNet blogger Don Reisinger and his "Could Apple destroy the cell phone industry?" in which he speculates, among other things, that Apple could spend tens of billions on spectrum and infrastructure all to create an otherwise fallow wireless field for iPhone users to graze on. Thanks to Sally Adee here at Spectrum for the link. ]

Of course, the door had already been opened by all the stories that Google may bid on the spectrum. Again, reporters are underestimating the difficulty of building a new network. Take Clearwire, just about the only effort along those lines that we can point to.

Clearwire is building precisely the sort of network Google has in mind, a 1.5 Mb/s cellular broadband service. It was formed in 2003 by arguably the smartest guy in wireless, Craig McCaw, who build the country's first nationwide cellular network before selling it to AT&T for $11 billion. Even with $1 billion in financing over and above the costs of spectrum, Clearwire cannot go it alone, and it will be teaming up with Sprint, which is using the same technological foundation (WiMax, that is, IEEE 802.16) for its own wireless broadband network.

When it comes to a 700 MHz network, like Apple, Google may invest, but it's not going to build it. It hasn't even tried to build the modest city-wide Wi-Fi networks that it's involved in — the job of creating infrastructure falls to Earthlink and Google's other partners.

I'll have more to say about Clearwire and Sprint in future postings and in a January feature article. They are, after all, building the perfect iPhone network. But in the meantime, let's all take a deep breath and think logically about the 700 MHz auction and the iPhone. Unless the goal is simply to crank out bylines. In which case, look to the formula, and carry on.

Fake iPhones are all over the news this week, thanks to a Bloomberg story about China's booming counterfeit iPhone trade, which has come a long way since Semiconductor Insights picked apart a laughably shoddy pretender back in August. The aiFeng is the best knockoff to date, and along with the meizu miniOne, they are prompting dire warnings from all corners of the internet that knockoffs could soon surpass the real thing.

Analysts blame the surge of counterfeits on Apple's decision not to release the iPhone in China until 2008. But the argument doesn't hold up under even passing scrutiny. The first "tPhones" were available in April, a generous two months before iDay. Also, Lewis Vitton, Burrrberry, and Prado retain their popularity despite the nearly limitless availability of the real thing.

In honor of the aiFeng and the subtle alterations that (sometimes) protect counterfeits from litigation, here are the ten worst electronics brand knock-offs I have seen to date. (Click the pictures to see the original images in their native habitat.)

1. Suny Ericssom

I've also heard about a Snog Ericcson, but I haven't managed to find any pictures.

2. iBob

3. SONIA

4. SQNY

5. PenesamiG

6. PowerStation 3

7. POPstation Value Pack

8. Microalert

9. Micrart

10. And the winner: Super Tangent.

I'm sure these are far from comprehensive-- if you've seen better, please post them.

from the desk of IEEE Spectrum executive editor Glenn Zorpette:

Here's the UN being even more clueless than usual. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will convene in December to demand that everybody in the world stop using so much darned energy. And the meeting will be on the resort island of Bali, in Indonesia! Forget about the spectacle of grossly overpaid bureaucrats feasting on rare delicacies in air-conditioned comfort while they demand that everybody cut their energy use radically. Think about the bazillion gallons (oops, sorry, cubic meters) of jet fuel needed to get all those pampered, overweight desk jockies to the other side of the world and back. And to keep them comfortable and well-fed in tropical heat.

And this is the body that Congress thought John Bolton wasn't good enough to join.

Voluntarily paying for somebody else to reduce carbon emissions to compensate for something youâ''re doing to increase themâ''few other subjects have aroused so much controversy in the last year, inside and outside the environmental community. Climate change skeptics naturally see the whole idea of carbon offsets as silly and pointless. But even those who see carbon reduction as an urgent necessity wonder whether offsets really help.

How do you know whether you're getting real value when you purchase a carbon offset?

Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, thinks on balance that offset programs help individuals see that they â''are neither blameless nor helpless, and can really make a difference.â'' But Daniel F. Becker, director of the Sierra Clubâ''s climate program, has compared offsets to papal indulgencesâ''the get-out-of-hell-free cards that were being peddled in Germany in the early sixteenth century, when Martin Luther launched the Protestant reformation.

The press has been quick to identify cases in which carbon offsets have been purchased to dubious effect, no doubt leaving the environment-minded consumer more confused than ever about whether thereâ''s any way of doing this right. Last week, for example, the Los Angeles Times reported that the makers of Al Goreâ''s film â''An Inconvenient Truthâ'' paid a broker, Native Energy, to purchase offsets to compensate for carbon emitted in making the documentary. If the paper got the facts right, the film makers paid $12 per ton to purchase the credits, but Native Energy sold them to fund a methane collector on a Pennsylvania farm and a small Alaska wind turbine complex, at $2.40 and $4.00 per ton. In both cases, the projects would have gone ahead without the carbon credits, and the offsets provided only a small fraction of their costs.

An obvious moral is that if youâ''re thinking of buying offsets from a broker, try to make sure that the broker isnâ''t skimming two thirds or three quarters of what you pay. But thereâ''s also a larger message, which is that you also shouldnâ''t buy your offsets at too low a price, if you want to really accomplish something. Though it may sound counter-intuitive at first blush, if you look for too good a bargain and end up spending too little for something, the thing youâ''re buying may not be any good.

It helps to think of carbon offsets in the larger context of carbon trading because, after all, when you buy offsets youâ''re doing essentially the same thing that a large coal-burning utility does when it buys emission allowances from some party that has found a way to cut emissions economically. In the carbon trading system that Europe has set up, the initial carbon allowances were made too liberally, and carbon pricesâ''at around $5/tonâ''were much too low to have much impact on corporate decision making. The result was a windfall for the big carbon emitters that got most of the allowances.

For carbon trading to have a really strong impact on investment decisions, says James Cameron, vice president of the trading firm Climate Change Capital in London, prices would have to be in the vicinity of $20 or $25 per ton.

So hereâ''s a rule of thumb: if somebody offers you a carbon offset at less than $20/ton, donâ''t buy it. What you want is something that will prompt somebody to do something good that otherwise would not have happened. At less than $20, you probably wonâ''t be getting that.

Three years ago (in Fall of 2004 to be exact) I authored a report for PIRA entitled â''The Future of Nanotechnology in Printing and Packagingâ''.

Needless to say, when discussing nanotechnology in the printing and packaging industries you have to cover product tagging. I compiled information on nanobarcodes and companies like, NanoInk and Oxonica, Inc, formerly Nanoplex Technologies.

Jumping ahead to today, Converting Magazine has just reprinted an article that is available online and comes from one of PIRAâ''s publications , Brand Protection News, that catalogues many of the companies and technologies I had identified in the report.

But there was a crucial omission. In the Fall of 2004, Singular-ID had not yet been formed so it was not included in the report.

But the company exists now and absolutely, positively needs to be included in article entitled â''Role of nanotechnology in brand protectionâ''. Unfortunately, it was not. It should have been.

Indiaâ''s Economic Times have just reported on research that indicates that Indiaâ''s nanotechnology spending is below global levels.

The operative word here is â''Spendingâ''. It seems they allocate the money they just canâ''t get around to spending it.

This is particularly perplexing given that the current president of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, is a great proponent of nanotechnology.

This lack of spending prompted the president to note in January of this year that "more than 20 per cent of the funds [for science spending] had remained under-utilised during 2005â''2006," as reported in the Indian newspaper, The Hindu.

While the original article in the Hindu is no longer available online, TNTLog has a crucial quote from the piece:

"One may be tempted to ask what prompted the President to make such a remark now. It is quite likely that, having looked at the 2005-06 expenditure figures, he must have discovered, to his utter despair, that the Rs.200 crores allocated for the national Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Mission (Nano Mission), of which he was the prime moving force, had to be surrendered entirely unspent. The total amount unspent by the DST is 14.68 per cent of the total allocation in the 2005-06 budget, and the Nano Mission alone accounts for 12 per cent."

From an outside perspective it appears to be just bureaucracy gone awry.

India has an annual production of engineering graduates five times higher than the United States, and industries from textiles to automotive already taking advantage of nanotechnologies for both domestic and export markets. It has the scientists, the industries that can exploit nanotechnologies, and even the allocated funds for researchâ''they just canâ''t spend it. A real headshaker.

As previously noted on this blog, there is a lot of concern among Western nations that the rest of the worldâ''primarily Asiaâ''is leaving the West behind in the nanotechnology race. Maybe this news will allay some of those fears.