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Archive for December, 2007

Dec 12

UPS saved 3 Million Gallons of Gas– By Not Turning Left

Mapping out routes for its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.

It seems that sitting in the left lane, engine idling, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so you can make a left-hand turn, is minutely wasteful — of time and peace of mind, for sure, but also of gas and therefore money. Not a ton of gas and money if we’re talking about just you and your Windstar, say, but immensely wasteful if we’re talking about more than 95,000 big square brown trucks delivering packages every day. And this realization — that when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall — is what led U.P.S. to limit further the number of left-hand turns its drivers make.

The company employs what it calls a “package flow” software program, which among other hyperefficient practices involving the packing and sorting of its cargo, maps out routes for every one of its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make (taking into consideration, of course, those instances where not to make the left-hand turn would result in a ridiculously circuitous route).

Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons. So what can Brown do for you? We can’t speak to how good or bad they are in the parcel-delivery world, but they won’t be clogging up the left-hand lane while they do their business.

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Dec 11

Apple Forecasts: Not Just Hype

From BusinessWeek: Unusually aggressive guidance didn’t stop analysts from making even more optimistic predictions for the iPhone maker in 2008.

There’s a guessing game that goes on with Apple’s quarterly financial reports which goes something like this:

Apple (AAPL) gives realistic yet understated forecasts for sales and profit in the coming quarter. Analysts, knowing Apple usually predicts lower results than it delivers, then read tea leaves to give clients the real deal on what to expect.

Was Apple taking a new tack and giving aggressive numbers closer to the “real” target or still giving the understated outlook? The consensus among analysts seems to be the latter, and they’re back to making predictions for the coming year that may send the minds of even longtime Apple watchers reeling. Even some of the most optimistic among them may be right.

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Dec 4

Verizon Embraces Google’s Android

It is premature to remove Verizon from the list of anti-tech companies, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

In yet another sudden shift, Verizon Wireless plans to support Google’s (GOOG) new software platform for cell phones and other mobile devices. Verizon Wireless had been one of several large cellular carriers withholding support from the Android initiative Google launched in early November.But given the stunning U-turn Verizon Wireless made Nov. 27, announcing plans to allow a broader range of devices and services on its network, Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam says it now makes sense to get behind Android. “We’re planning on using Android,” McAdam tells BusinessWeek. “Android is an enabler of what we do.”

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Dec 3

The Most Anti-Tech Organizations in America

History is replete with examples of products, companies, and industries that fail to adapt and adopt to new technology.  An article @PCWorld by Mark Sullivan on the 5 most anti-tech organizations in America.

Their names keep coming up over and over again in courtrooms and corridors of power across the country–those groups whose interests always seem to run counter to those of technology companies and consumers. They come in many forms: associations, think tanks, money-raising organizations, PACs, and even other tech-oriented industries like telecommunications.

The tech issues that they’re concerned with are what you might expect: digital rights management and fair use, patent law, broadband speed and reach, wireless spectrum and network neutrality. I talked to a good number of tech and media policy insiders in Washington, D.C.–mostly off the record–to find out who these groups are, how they operate, and who pays their bills. We’ll start with the biggest offenders first and work our way down.

  1. RIAA
  2. The Pharmaceutical/Biotech Industry
  3. Big Telco Companies, Industry Group USTelecom
  4. Verizon, AT&T, Progress and Freedom Foundation
  5. Large Wireless Carriers and the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA); TV Broadcasters and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)

Ok, I buy the RIAA argument. I can even see how one can make an argument about big telcos and their industry organizations are slow to adopt new technologies. But the RIAA’s biggest crime, as it were, was not being anti-tech, but being out of touch with consumers–it’s customers.

Opposition to “net neutrality” is not by definition anti-tech. Case in point broadband. Take the MSOs and the introduction of cable modems. The cable industry moved at “broadband speed” to develop, test and deploy cable modem technology to the market. Why? They understood upcoming technology and bandwidth requirements and they anticipated customers demand. The cable industry took a risk and made investments assuming returns on those investments.

I’m not sure where net neutrality got off track.  The initial mantra was equal access to information flowing over the Internet.  Sounds great.  Unfortunately proponents call for government to enforce equality.  If you follow the major tech press you’ve undoubtedly heard the pro net neutrality arguments.  For a look at an opposing viewpoint, The Cato Institute has prepared a policy analysis document which can be found athttp://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-507es.html.

Such rhetoric and calls for preemptive regulation are unjustified. There is no evidence that broadband operators are unfairly blocking access to websites or online services today, and there is no reason to expect them to do so in the future. No firm or industry has any sort of “bottleneck control” over or market power in the broadband marketplace; it is very much a competitive free-for-all, and no one has any idea what the future market will look like with so many new technologies and operators entering the picture. In the absence of clear harm, government typically doesn’t regulate in a preemptive, prophylactic fashion as CBUI members are requesting.

Moreover, far from being something regulators should forbid, vertical integration of new features and services by broadband network operators is an essential part of the innovation strategy companies will need to use to compete and offer customers the services they demand. Network operators also have property rights in their systems that need to be acknowledged and honored. Net neutrality mandates would flout those property rights and reject freedom of contract in this marketplace.

The regulatory regime envisioned by Net neutrality mandates would also open the door to a great deal of potential “gaming” of the regulatory system and allow firms to use the regulatory system to hobble competitors. Worse yet, it would encourage more FCC regulation of the Internet and broadband markets in general.

waterslidesGovernment regulation of the Internet or broadband providers is a proverbial slippery slope–or in this case maybe better described as a slippery water slide.

The rest of the original article can be found at PCWorld