Indoor Cloud. Courtesy ‘Where Cool Things Happen.’ com
Before We Called it “The Cloud” … We Still Had “Software as a Service.” We just didn’t know what Marketing wanted to call it.
Back in 1990 – ’91, before we called it “The Cloud,” before most of us used the Internet, when we were young and idealistic, I worked on three systems that offered what we would now call SaaS – Software as a Service.
Image of a limit courtesy One Sage Math Calculus Tutorial
While Amazon Redshift offers “fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service… for just $0.25 per hour with no commitments or upfront costs and scale to a petabyte or more for $1,000 per terabyte per year” (and I can do it for less – see below) there are limits to the cloud.
How not to implement a cloud-based information service.
What’s the Cloud? The Internet is The Cloud. GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail are cloud based information services. More technically, these are referred to as Software as a Service, or SaaS. There are also Platform as a Service, PaaS, and Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS.
From Popular Science (PopSci.com), New Condensation Tech Captures Drinkable Water From Diesel Exhaust, by Popular Science correspondent Rebecca Boyle. 
A new condensation process captures water from burning diesel fuel, and is so efficient that it could theoretically produce a gallon of water from a gallon of diesel, using lightweight materials. As an added bonus, the process removes contaminants, so about 65 to 85 percent of that water could be recovered for drinking water or other uses.
The system could also be used for other applications, such as capturing vapor from power plant exhaust or even adding weight to a new generation of dirigibles to help them land, the Register reports. The trick is a new inorganic membrane that uses capillary action to condense the water from the diesel’s exhaust. The diesel exhaust runs through a series of ceramic tubes, which contain microscopic pores. The pores suck up the water vapor, which passes through to the other side. MSNBC explains the process in more detail.
Original sources: The Register, Cosmic Log and Wikimedia Commons (image).
Lee Valley is offering this Trunk Organizer/Storage Bin for only $13.50 (USD). My personal experience with Lee Valley has always been good.
Lee Valley Trunk Organizer/Storage Bin
From Lee Valley’s description:
This is a product anyone can use. We designed this soft-sided interpretation of the ubiquitous milk crate after finding similar products to be overpriced or poorly executed. This one has hinged rigid panels to give the sidewalls support, while allowing the two-compartment container to collapse into a compact 3″ thick bundle, making it easy to store (and easy for us to ship!).
Made from a tough woven polyester, it has padded handles and piped edges, and measures 23-1/2″x13″x7-1/2″ when open. The coated interior surface helps to contain any spills, and makes it easy to clean. It is ideal for use in a car or truck, holding all sorts of items to keep them from sliding or rolling around as you drive, particularly for keeping grocery bags upright. In the home, it?s as useful as a basket for both storage and transport of anything from woodshop offcuts to children?s toys.
via Trunk Organizer/Storage Bin – Lee Valley Tools.
Some caveats: There’s no lid, so it’s either got to end up on the top of things – or at least without anything on top of it. On the other hand – for quick hauling of anything – perhaps to and from a vehicle, or other hastily assembled packages, one or more might do well kept in their folded state. My calculations suggest about 2291 cubic inches; corrections or confirmations from readers welcome.
And here are some additional images:
These speak for themselves, for the most part. But it might be worth noting that none we’ve noticed have electric assist, either by hybrid electric or solar electric, which are both, we believe, in limited use around the world.
From FrogMob, the mob-sourced section of the FrogDesign Blog ((From the reknowned design firm FrogDesign – where they design everything except frogs)), Work Bikes:
[slideshow id=92]
From the Cool Tools section of Kevin Kelly’s site, kk.org:
XtraCycle - Free Radical - after-market modification/accessory
This is only one of nine variations of the Free Radical Conversion kit. See that – and bicycles with cargo carrying included, at XtraCycle.
Cool Tools also has great suggestions about bicycle repair tools, and other modifications. Check their Autonomous Motion section, their Bikes/Trikes subsection of their Street Use archives for more work bike info, including Velowalla, an archive of bike/trike use for business in India.
In Danger In Numbers, On the Media Host Bob Garfield interviews Noam Schreiber of The New Republic (transcript here).
Are large numbers of journalists displacing rescue workers and supplies, in part by competing for scarce resources on the ground? This is an excellent discussion, and typical for OTM, an outstanding weekly effort to provide feedbacks to inform and correct journalism.
To answer this with regards to Earthquake Relief efforts in Haiti we need to know:
To answer this question, originally posted by OTM listeners, we need a census of journalists and their logistical operations.
It’s true that Haiti needs a lot right now – starting with an airlift of ham radio operators, historically volunteer can-do communications personnel in big emergencies. (We believe that Haiti likely has insufficient local ham operators, but we haven’t been able to fact-check that). The organizations whose members have been doing this for decades are
Finally, there’s Brian Steckler of the Naval Postgraduate School and its exemplary Hastily Formed Networks Research Group.Professor Steckler, his students, and others were able to restore telephone service in Mississippi during Katrina within hours of arrival.
Their after-action reports, (critical documents here) indicate that they were substantially delayed by “celebrity” fly-overs – forcing them to drive
equipment from the West Coast to the East. They still got it done.
Having studied these issues for several years – if I find myself in a disaster with one outbound message, I’m calling Professor Steckler.
We hope to follow this post with additional coverage of communications and logistics issues relating to the current crisis in Haiti.
From an Armed Forced Press Service article by Fred W. Baker III, published on the National Guard website,
Congress must either fund equipment for the National Guard or accept the risks of an under-equipped strategic reserve, the Guard’s top officer said today.
The Guard has only about half of the equipment it needs, Army National Guard Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security’s subcommittee on management, investigations and oversight.
Flanked by three states’ adjutants general, Blum told committee members that having the nation’s only strategic reserve equipped at 50 percent sends a message “that could be miscalculated by our adversaries overseas.”
“It’s really now the job of the Congress to fund the equipment or accept the risk,” Blum said.
The Defense Department has proposed spending $22 billion for National Guard equipment purchases over the next five years, Blum said.
Even so, that would equip the Guard to only 75 percent, its level before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Blum questioned whether that is enough.
“We are in a post-9/11 world, and I am not certain that those levels still apply,” Blum said.
Air National Guard Maj. Gen. Roger P. Lempke, the adjutant general of Nebraska and president of the Adjutants General Association, told committee members that there needs to be better accounting at the Defense Department level for states’ equipping needs.
Currently, equipping the Army and Air National Guard is managed by the respective services, and levels are based on units’ wartime missions. This causes problems when states respond to multiple requirements — state and federal — forcing them to cross-level equipment, or take it from one unit to give to another. In addition, much Guard equipment deployed overseas has not returned.
Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Robert P. French, deputy adjutant general for the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, said that leaves his state falling short. “What happens today because of the war effort … leaves us with substitute equipment at home or no equipment at home,” he said.
Blum conceded that the Guard does not need full equipping of its lethal systems, such as tanks and artillery systems. Units need only enough of those for training. But, he outlined an “essential 10” categories that list 342 dual-service items needed both to respond to U.S. disasters and tovsupport units’ wartime missions. The categories include maintenance, aviation, medical and power generation. States need more equipment such as trucks, helicopters and communications equipment, Blum said.
This makes us all the more curious about the status of pre-positioned FEMA caches – and concerned about local and regional government and NGO stockpiles of critical materiel.
