James Andrews: February 2011

Monday, February 28, 2011

Commercial Space Business May Be the Answer for Russia

Russia space

Russia's deputy prime minister just denounced his own nation's space agency as "childish" in the wake of errors and a canceled rocket program. Is it time for Russia to embrace new commercial space businesses, just like the U.S. has?

Sergei Ivanov spoke to Roskosmos today to officially rebuke the space agency (the Russian equivalent to NASA) for a succession of failures that have resulted in the wasting of billions of rubles and the loss of several key space assets.

In December a fuel miscalculation meant that three Glonass satellites (part of the constellation of navigation satellites that form Russia's own GPS-equivalent system) didn't make it to the correct orbit...or in fact into space for any period at all. The rocket, unable to power itself to the right altitude, tumbled back through the atmosphere and fell into the Pacific Ocean. The asset loss was placed at about $86 million, and Ivanov specified this figure.

Earlier in February, an error in the Rokot third-stage firing resulted in the Geo IL 2 military satellite aboard being inserted into the wrong orbit, rendering it useless for its intended purposes. The satellite has now been abandoned, denying the Russian military access to its services (whatever they may be). Today it was revealed that the entire Rokot class of light launchers, a three-stage system developed nationally from the RS-18 two-stage intercontinental strategic ballistic missile, has been grounded until an inquiry by government-led bodies has solved why the third stage misfired.

Ivanov noted "the recent failure with the Glonass satellites is a characteristic example. I won't go into details, this was a mistake, but a childish one and a mistake that had serious consequences." He also complained that Roskosmos had failed to produce enough spacecraft in 2010, completing just five out of the 11 it was supposed to produce. Six vehicles destined for civilian contracts also failed to launch last year, thanks to production delays. Ivanov also highlighted "systematic" delays in the space program that resulted in endless launch delays.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, the U.S. commercial space business is continuing to grow apace. Just the other day the entrants to the Google Lunar X-Prize were announced (coming from all over the world, but mainly relying on American money and technology to get themselves into orbit) and today the promising new enterprise XCOR revealed the first international partners it's signed up who are chasing research and educational payload missions aboard its sub-orbital Lynx vehicle--a similar system to Virgin Galactic's space plane, except Virgin's effort is primarily aimed at passenger transportation. JeffManber, chief exec of NanoRacks (one of XCOR's first tranche of customers, and an existing ISS payload customer) explained that the XCOR solution "is a solid first step for many of our customers to validate experiments that will go on to the Space Station. The ability to fly, test, learn, then adjust payloads on the ground and re-fly is extremely useful when perfecting a payload."

Meanwhile, Orbital Sciences is poised to launch its own Taurus rocket, carrying a satellite it was contracted to build for NASA dubbed Glory, which was designed to measure polluting aerosols in the upper atmosphere, and measure long-term variations in the sun's brightness.

With fee-paying passengers poised to fly aboard a number of sub-orbital vessels like Virgin's, and SpaceX in late stages of developing a capsule that can ferry cargo to the ISS in low Earth orbit (and ultimately to fly astronauts there too), the commercial space business in the U.S. is booming. Is it time for Russia to trim Roskosmos' wings, and try to encourage a new national commercial space industry? With the rise of China's space agency, and Iran and India continuing to push their own space programs, Russia may risk falling behind, and failing to live up to its impressive space heritage.

To read more news like this, follow Fast Company on Twitter: Click here.

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Intel Shows Off MeeGo Tablet User Experience

While I was scheduling my Mobile World Congress meetings I got an email request from Intel. It wanted to give me a quick tour of the latest MeeGo UI for tablets. MeeGo, as you may remember, was the combination of Intel's Moblin OS and Nokia's own efforts. While MeeGo isn't completely abandoned by Nokia, it's looking unlikely that Nokia will be a major player in it going forward considering the fresh partnership with Microsoft.

Intel is still trucking away with MeeGo and unfortunately appears to be retaining the less-than-ideal name despite the recent shakeup with its partner (at least Moblin sounded respectable, MeeGo sounds like something you say before using the bathroom).

MeeGo is designed to be a mobile OS that can be used across a wide variety of devices. Cars, netbooks, smartphones, tablets and even TVs are supposed to be built around the totally open OS. Intel hopes that MeeGo will be the truly open alternative to Android. It's a lofty goal to say the least. Google officially introduced Android 3.0 earlier in the month and devices based on it are expected to be shipping in the next couple of months. The version of MeeGo Intel demoed for me however is a meager 1.2. While I know that comparing version numbers isn't the most scientific thing in the world, it's the easiest way for me to point out that MeeGo is no where near the maturity level of Android.

The point of today's demo was to showcase the foundation of MeeGo's tablet user experience. Intel's focus here is multitasking. What Intel wants to do away with is the concept of going back to an app launcher to do something else with your tablet. Instead, Intel believes you should be able to launch apps based on what you're doing. It's a subtle difference, but one that's best described by a screenshot.

This is the MeeGo tablet user experience. The screen is treated as a viewport into an infinitely wide and infinitely tall desktop. You scroll from left to right to view more panels, and up/down to view more information within a panel.

Each panel is grouped according to an overall function. The My Tablet panel includes your top applications as well as device settings for when you absolutely need to do something the old fashioned way. The Friends panel aggregates all of your communications between you and your friends. This could be in the form of tweets, Facebook status updates as well as emails and other messages. Everything appears in this one view. If you tap on any of the items in the view, the associated application will launch (e.g. tap an email you received from one of your friends to fire up the email app).

There are also panels for music, photos and websites.

Intel believes that launching applications to later access data with them is silly and you should instead be presented with the data you want and it should launch any necessary application for you. It's a shift from the app centric model of today's smartphone/tablet OSes to a data centric model. Intel feels that this approach will reduce the number of taps necessary to efficiently multitask, which will obviously encourage heavier usage models and ultimately require faster SoCs to run everything.

If the infinitely wide/tall viewport sounds a lot like Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 UI then you're not alone. The concept seems very similar, although it's not nearly as pretty/polished in MeeGo today. For not supporting full blown multitasking out of the box, Microsoft's WP7 UI is very efficient at moving between apps. If MeeGo can duplicate that efficiency and expand upon it, I'm interested.

Microsoft's Metro UI

The bigger issue I see with MeeGo is the huge disconnect between Intel's aspirations and the current state of affairs. If Android is the target, MeeGo needs to make a great deal of progress in a relatively short period of time. These consumer facing smartphone/tablet OSes have to be ridiculously polished, they need to make mechanical toasters look difficult to use, and MeeGo just isn't there yet.

MeeGo currently supports Swype

I like the concept. A truly open OS that allows for infinite customization and supports everything from smartphones and tablets to PCs and TVs. We need unification. The last thing I want is to have a HP tablet that can't run the same apps as my iOS smartphone and my Google TV. Unfortunately for Intel I feel like the deck is stacked against it on this. Intel does an amazing job executing on its microprocessor designs, but its extra curricular activities are rarely met with a similar amount of success.

I'm all for more competition so let's see where MeeGo takes us over the coming years.

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Developer shows off iOS notifications that don?t suck [video]

Simply put, Apple’s iOS notification system is horrible. Terrible. In fact, in our opinion it’s the worst smartphone notification system on the planet. We’ve written as much in the past on numerous occasions, and we’ll continue to harp on the issue until Apple fixes the problem. Of course many iOS users share our opinion, and some developers have even gone as far as offering up their own solutions. One such developer is Peter Hajas, who built MobileNotifier for iPhone and iPod touch users with jailbroken devices. MobileNotifier is a complete rewrite of Apple’s system, and it certainly represents a far superior solution compared to the current official implementation.�Apple is expected by many to unveil a revamped notification system this summer

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Tehran Begins To Panic, Ctd

The latest crackdown on opposition leaders and their family members is only energizing the Greens: Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, the progressive cleric and supporter of the Green Movement has issued a statement and condemned the arrest of Mousavi, Karroubi and...

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The Corporate Pursuit of Happiness

ODE TO JOY: Aaker says family time is her happiest. Above, with her husband, Andy Smith, and kids, Cooper, Devon, and Téa Sloane. | Photograph by Gabriela Hasbun

A Stanford marketing professor is teaching her students -- along with AOL, Facebook, and Adobe -- how to find and export joy.

HAPPY HOURS: Aaker's reliably pleasurable moments include time with friends, palm trees, and cocktails. | Photograph by Gabriela Hasbun

Marketing professor Jennifer Aaker stands before a blackboard-size mural her Stanford Graduate School of Business students had created. It is a patchwork of 1,300 snapshots of everyday moments: mangoes, pink Converse sneakers, cupcakes, beer pong, clean laundry, a convertible, and Halloween. With its bright yellow border, the mural is titled "This Makes Me Happy." Aaker points to a photo of a latte, its brown and white foam swirled into the shape of a flower. The froth, she tells me, was her happy moment of that day.

Offering a happiness class to future masters of the universe at one of the country's leading business schools does sound a bit touchy-feely. Yet, last fall, 80 of these type-A students signed up for Aaker's graduate-level course called "Designing Happiness" -- with another 100 clamoring to get in.

But Aaker's work is gaining attention not just in academia but also in corporate America: She has worked with AOL, Adobe, and Facebook, among other companies, helping them figure out how to use happiness to increase employees' productivity and woo customers. If her hypotheses are correct, marketing happiness could be one of the few ways businesses can still appeal to people in a manner that feels authentic. "The idea of brands enabling happiness and providing greater meaning in the world is powerful," Aaker says. "People have an aversion to anything that feels overly manufactured."

Aaker, who studied psychology alongside marketing, has spent the past several years researching her subject: how people find happiness, keep it, manipulate it, and use it as a resource. Her research defines happiness as "a state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy." In 2006, when Aaker was focusing her area of study, happiness seemed, in many ways, an easier goal to attain. People felt more economically secure. The annual unemployment rate was 4.6%. The government urged Americans to buy homes, and access to credit was easy. Now, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, national morale is low; marketers see the appeal of promising happiness along with their products.

Aaker's students and the executives she speaks to are often surprised by the depth and subtlety behind such fuzzy feelings. Aaker asked her students to develop their own plans for incorporating happiness into a fictional company. She also had them use a custom-built smartphone app to take at least one photo of a happy moment every day for 30 days, and then rate each moment on a scale of 1 to 10 to quantify their feelings. Soon, the class saw patterns.

They learned that the anticipation of a pleasurable experience feels as good as finishing an onerous task (like a marathon or an exam). They discovered that a meaningful experience (acquiring a new skill, volunteering, or spending time with family) often makes people happier than moments of pure pleasure. And they learned that happiness shifts with age. Younger people feel happiest when they are excited, while older people equate happiness with peacefulness.

Recognizing these nuances is key for corporations, which are increasingly trying to appeal to people's emotions at a time when consumer spending remains fickle and frugal.

Now, consumers want something different from simply buying a product, using it, and throwing it out. Marketing happiness expands the idea of what it means to buy something. If companies can use nostalgia or other "safe emotions" to create a feeling of happiness, so be it, says John Kenny of the ad agency DraftFCB. In this way, happiness is another commodity deployed to sell something. "The stakes are a lot higher now with social media," Kenny says. "You want people to have an important experience they can talk about on Twitter or Facebook."

The applications of Aaker's research can be startlingly diverse. Aaker lectured at Adobe about the link between happiness and meaningful moments. The company has started to incorporate these ideas into a project called Adobe Youth Voices, which gives teenagers in poor communities Adobe software and encourages them to tell their stories. (The whole thing feels like the teen, global, and company-sponsored version of public radio's StoryCorps.)

The project financially benefits Adobe by introducing its software to a coveted demographic, while still being philanthropic. "That's becoming an increasingly important factor in how individuals view brands. You can't just do it to be part of the crowd," says Ann Lewnes, Adobe's senior vice president of global marketing.

Coke has also tried to create a link between happiness and its brand. Aaker teaches the case study of Coke's "happiness machine," a vending machine the company installed in the cafeteria at St. John's University during exams. Rather than dispense cans of soda, the happiness machine surprised students by spitting out a box of pizza or a bouquet of flowers. Secret cameras recorded the students' reactions, and when Coke released the videos online, they went viral, scoring more than 2 million views.

Marketers want consumers to share that happy moment and feel as if the product is part of their lives and community. "If you look at what is most influential right now, it's a recommendation from a friend or family," says Kate Sayre, a partner at the Boston Consulting Group.

Aaker herself is quick to recommend happiness tips to her students, past and present, and her close group of friends. Yet, even as she measures and commodifies joy for businesses, she has learned not to spend too much time chasing her own happiness. A day highlighted by a professional triumph can still be marred by the realization that she, well, left her wallet in her car. But that's okay, says Aaker: "The knowledge that happiness shifts doesn't allow you to put a great premium on it."

A version of this article appears in the March 2011 issue of Fast Company.

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What's on the editor's desk competition returns tomorrow

Returning once again, your favourite technology magazine and website T3 will tomorrow be giving you the chance to win a feast of mystery tech prizes in our weekly competition ‘What’s on the editor’s desk?’.

Running across the T3 Facebook and Twitter pages we will be presenting you, the loyal T3 readers with three riddled clues to see if you can guess ‘What’s on the editor’s desk’ and claim yourself some tasty tech treats. From handsets to headphones, games to general gadgetry, each and every Tuesday we will be giving it all away as long as you can solve the puzzle and work out what’s in our mystery box.

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Related Links:
- Editor's desk competition: Winners revealed
- T3 launches new weekly competition 'What's on the Editor's desk?'
- Win some great prizes in the T3 competitions
- Follow T3 on Facebook
- Follow T3 on Twitter
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Last week we went old school, well, sort of, giving away a Rubik's Slide electronic puzzle game, literally a modern twist on a timeless classic. Being very particular about correct spelling we whittled the correct entries, apostrophe and all, down to one eventual winner, Steve Ward of the T3 Facebook contingent.

Kicking off with the opening clue at 10am sharp you will be able to pit your wits against the T3 riddlers and bag yourself some booty. The second clue will follow at 11am before the final hint lands on our social streams at midday. From there you will have until 3pm to get your answers in before we pick the lucky winner.

Entries can be made by either commenting on the Facebook post or by messaging us on Twitter @T3dotcom with the hashtag #edsdesk. A winner will be picked at random from all the correct answers and if no correct answers are received by the 3pm closing the week’s prize will be rolled over until the next edition of 'What's on the editor's desk'.

To be in with a chance of winning today’s great and exclusive prize, sign up to the T3 Twitter and Facebook feeds today so you are primed and ready to follow the clues to the T3 treasure tomorrow.

Previous prizes
- Five Gillette Fusion ProGlide Power Razors worth £65
- Two copies of the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2011 worth £30
- A pair of Pioneer HDJ-2000 Pro DJ Headphones worth £230
- A Sony Ericsson LiveView worth £50
- A Logitech QuickCam Sphere AF webcam worth £65
- A SEGA branded bag worth £30
- A Novero Lexington Bluetooth headset worth £200
- An Exspect iPad Executive Wallet worth £25
- A copy of SuperScribblenauts for Nintendo DS worth £30
- 13 True Utility smart things for keyrings worth £65
- A Speck TuckPack Notebook Sleeve worth £37
- Three Back to the Future Blu-ray trilogy boxsets worth £150
- Two PowerKit Eco Mains Chargers worth £40
- A Powertraveller PowerChimp charger worth £20
- A Griffin FlexGrip case for iPad worth £20
- 15 Free download codes for Angry Robot Rampage on Xbox LIVE worth £15
- Two pairs of tickets to the BT Digital Music Awards worth £500
- Thumb Camera, Audio Spy Bug and Keyshark worth £180
- Two NoHands Stick 'em up smartphone accessories worth £23
- An ECO Kitsound Infinity-X Solar Powered Speaker worth £40
- A powertraveller motormonkey in-car travel charger from Cotswold Outdoor worth £20
- A Doro Prosound hs1910 DECT wireless headset worth £110
- Five pairs of ACS ER20 ear plugs worth £65

Posted by Luke Johnson

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More Time for Work? Let the Car Drive Itself

Envision the day when you can video chat or write a report while behind the wheel on your way to work. Not only is the car driving itself, but it communicates with other vehicles and senses the environment, so getting into an accident is nearly impossible.

That sounds like a sci-fi fantasy, right?

Not at all. Several car companies, including Volvo, General Motors, Ford, Audi and its parent company, Volkswagen, are aggressively developing autonomous cars. Even Google has figured out a way to make cars drive themselves.

"Almost all accidents take place because of human distraction," says Sebastian Thrun, a fellow at Google and director of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. "A self-driving car never sleeps and always pays attention so we believe there is a significant opportunity to make cars much safer."

For the small business, using AI for robotic driving means commute time can someday be turned into work time. And, it could mean a fleet of delivery vehicles autonomously controlled.

"The capability of this is absolutely realistic," says Karl Brauer, senior analyst and editor-at-large for Edmunds.com. "There might be a few odd things to iron out but we’re talking years, not decades to finish it off."

The Google car
One of the strangest examples of robotic driving comes from the search engine giant, based in California, who is using their programming prowess to help build AI for cars.

Google announced in October that seven Toyota Prius test cars have driven more than 140,000 miles on California roads with only occasional human control. Considering Google’s penetration into the average person’s everyday life -- whether through search, maps, or apps on Android phones -- it’s entry into the automotive scene almost makes sense.

During the tests, a driver was always on board in case something went awry, but it’s still amazing to think about. Six months ago who would have considered the search engine giant would be letting their robocars roam the California countryside?

Of course, current AI programming is not quite ready for rush hour.

"Construction zones aren’t handled well yet. If the car were to drive on a snow-covered road it would cause problems for us. We also get hiccups, for example, if someone parks and blocks our lane -- then our cars are stopped and the person needs to take over," Thrun says.

That said, Thrun maintains that Google’s accomplishment is remarkable.

"Until recently, there seemed to be a consensus that this was 30 or 40 years off. And I would submit that the progress that we and others have made has stunned all of us in this area," he says.

Self-driving cars and safety
Recently, GM gave reporters (including this one) a ride in a small, autonomous concept car at the Consumer Electronics Show last month in Las Vegas. The two-seater EN-V, which stands for Electric Networked-Vehicle, was designed for use in large cities to help with traffic congestion, parking availability (you can’t imagine a car that is easier to park!) and improved air quality.

According to GM spokesperson Daniel Flores, when vehicles are able to communicate with each other and sense their environment, the accidents that contribute to traffic congestion can be eliminated.

"Urban congestion is a very legitimate problem. If left without new technologies it’s going to become a bigger and bigger issue," he says.

Volvo also is working on autonomous cars and already offers, in its S60 sedan, sophisticated options such as pedestrian detection and collision warning, both with full automatic braking.

The Swedish carmaker is also working on a project backed by the European Union called SARTRE, which stands for Safe Road Trains for the Environment.

Spokesperson Daniel Johnston says the project is all about platooning many vehicles together -- a sort of long-distance game of "follow the leader" in which all the occupants can do other things instead of paying attention to the road.

"The idea is to compact distances between lead and following cars. Compacting space allows for more cars in one lane," he says, adding that platooning also saves fuel by reducing air resistance, resulting in the use of less horsepower.

What about people who like driving?
Along with Stanford University and Oracle, Audi and Volkswagen have successfully created the Autonomous Audi TTS Pike’s Peak Research Car which last September completed the 12.42-mile Pike’s Peak International Hill Climb without any driver behind the wheel.

Because some people actually like driving, Dr. Burkhard Huhnke, executive director of the Audi Electronics Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif., says Audi is less concerned about making fully autonomous cars and is more focused on "reducing accidents down to zero. That would be a dream."

He says Audi is working toward that lofty goal by experimenting with its self-driving car and through a new research collaboration with four universities in California and Michigan to bring as much information as possible about drivers and their environments into the vehicle.

Cars that talk to one another
Edmunds’ Karl Brauer says the technology in today’s new cars like Audi’s A8, which is covered from head to toe in sensors, has several cameras and is connected to the Internet, making the prospect of cars talking to each other and automatically averting dangers on the road much more feasible.

"We can put sensors in roadways. We can put sensors in cars. We can put GPS devices in vehicles so that they are aware of where they are and what’s around them. That can already be done now -- it’s largely what the Google car does. But it’s going to cost money and it’s going to require some standardization work," he says.

About that standardization, Ford recently said it is partnering with other auto makers and the federal government to create a single language that ensures all vehicles can talk to each other based on a common communication standard. The company says its involvement is part of a stepped-up commitment to developing wirelessly connected intelligent vehicles.

Steve Birkeland, who owns a Minnesota-based company called Custom Canopy, says he often drives hundreds or more miles to get to a job site and would be interested in reclaiming time spent in the car as long as doing so was safe. "I could easily see a sleeping area where I would leave for Denver after dinner, watch a movie, go to sleep and wake up in the morning in Denver."

Not everyone is buying the idea of cars that talk to each other and drive themselves. Paul Burton, who owns West Point Driving School in Sacramento, says, "Unless autonomous cars are vastly superior to the average teenage brain -- which is pretty sophisticated -- they’re going to make a lot of mistakes."

According to Thrun, the AI is coming along, however. In the next decade (or less), your car might just drive you home. Now if we can just figure out how to make them brew coffee.

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Sonic 4 Episode 2 teased

It’d be fair to say that Sonic 4 Episode 1 didn’t quite live up to heady expectations. The blue critter didn’t look right, the game didn’t exactly flow and it lacked the charm of its early 90s predecessors.

Budget System Builder?s Guide February 2011

With the recent launch of Sandy Bridge, we had hoped to put together some Buyers' Guides covering the changes in the market. Unfortunately, with the recall/bug of the 6-series chipsets, SNB is now on hold. There will always be newer and faster parts just over the horizon, but while we await SNB and Bulldozer, we felt the time was ripe for a Budget Buyers' Guide update. We have three complete system builds, as well as a variety of potential upgrades, with pricing ranging from $400 just for the main box and components up to nearly $800 for a complete system with some worthwhile upgrades.

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Pink Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc incoming

Female fans of the upcoming Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc have much to rejoice: a pink version of the handset will be available. For now though, only in Japan.

Facebook simplifies its privacy policy

Facebook has announced that it has simplified its current 5,830-word privacy policy to make it clearer and easier for users to understand.

While non of the terms of the privacy policy have changed, a new format is being trialled to see if it helps users of the site understand how their data is being used.

Facebook has been often criticised for making its privacy policy far too convoluted, meaning that you would have to be a brave person to read the thousands of words on the site regarding privacy.

Privacy principles

Facebook has come up with three basic principles about the policy.

It should be easy to understand, even when the concepts are complicated, or it is of no use to anyone.
It should be visual and interactive, because that's the way people use the web today.
It should focus on the questions people who use Facebook are most likely to ask, because that makes it relevant.

If you want to take a look at the new-look, less wordy and not-as-scary privacy policy, then you can do so by going to www.facebook.com/about/privacy.