HP uses rack level monitoring to track power consumption and temperatures across the data center floor and adjust settings on cooling equipment and servers to conserve power. They’re trying to use information from various sensors and system analytics for right-provisioning of infrastructure components based on the current demand and service levels. (This is not a novel approach as many other companies are doing the same thing).

A few practices that can reduce the overall energy footprint of a data center:

• Provide the right amount of power for compute, cooling and storage resources
• Allocate workload based on need
• Take out unnecessary redundancy
• Minimize material use to reduce amount of discarded waste
• Monitor components for intermittent errors

Cisco CEO John Chambers, who was live on the Bangalore stage, ‘beamed up’ Martin De Beer, the Senior Vice President of emerging Technologies, and Chuck Stucki the General Manager of TelePresence, live from San Jose, California. Chambers was then able to have a ‘face to face’ discussion with De Beer and Stucki on the future of Cisco TelePresence, demonstrating first hand the potential capabilities of the system in front of the watching audience.

Made possible by the Musion Eyeliner holographic projection system, fast network connectivity (and an open bar in the lobby of the conference for error correction). The system uses a single high definition camera to capture the image and a single HD projector to project it onto a special foil. According to Musion, “All the images used on a Musion Eyeliner system appear as three-dimensional images, but are projected as two-dimensional images into a 3D stage set. It is the mind of the audience that creates the 3D illusion. This means that production costs are minimal, needing only the single camera lens single camera lens for filming and a single projector for the playback.”

Here’s the follow up presentation in March 2007 @ TED.

Learn more at Gapminder

Do you ever take a familiar road and get to a destination without remembering the individual steps and turns of your route? This brain on auto pilot time is my favorite time to think about a current challenge or a problem I am trying to get through.

Sent from BlackBerry

Sirtris and its research got widely noticed in November 2006 when anti-aging properties of resveratrol grabbed media attention.

Resveratrol molecule is produced by certain plants. When it enters the cell it engenders new mitochondria in tissues resulting in a boost to the body’s metabolic rate. The benefits are similar to slow-aging benefits of a calorie-restriction diet - but without calorie restriction regimen. New mitochondira produced this way seem to be more efficient than the originals they replace - they create a fewer free-radicals that could damage DNA and other parts of the cells.Studies indicate low level of blood glucose and insulin, little weight gain during middle age and low body temperature as predictors of longevity.

Sirtris is now clinically testing its first resveratrol-based drug, 501, aimed at keeping diabetic patients’ blood sugar under control.

I found mindmaping very useful in collecting and organizing ideas and managing large amounts of information in a single place. Periodic Table of Visualization Methods created by folks at Visual Literacy organizes many more visualization methods by type of content and the purpose they are intended for: separate tools for visualization of data, information, concepts, strategy …

You can also grab a related paper, “Towards A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management” (pdf file)
(via Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki)

Buy Organic:

• Apples, peaches, bell peppers, strawberries, imported grapes, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, carrots
• Milk and dairy products
  Free of the growth hormones that are given to conventionally raised cows.
• Meat and poultry (free of growth hormones and antibiotics.
• Baby food (Free of pesticide residues found in vegetables and fruits
• Foods you eat a lot of
  

Conventional will do:

• Broccoli, bananas, frozen sweet peas, frozen corn, asparagus, avocados, onions
• Seafood (No USDA organic certification yet exists for seafood).
• Some processed foods such as breads, chips, pasta, oils
• Foods you eat only occasionally

(Another similar list) 

by Carl Stromer via Creative Think

Highline is a 1.5 mile elevated railway that runs along the West Side of Manhattan, hovering over the streets and passing through buildings. It’s currently closed to the public but there are many plans for it’s rehabilitation - including a park project and a possible expansion of the Whitney Museum. Fred Wilson at AVC points to the upcoming Highline Festival that will be hosted by David Bowie.

iPhone is a pretty good step forward in the mobile phone appearance and user interface functionality. Dave Pouge of New York Times writes about its beautiful design and an innovative touch-interface. It’s also a long awaited iPod upgrade - although still closely tied with the desktop and iTunes. David Kirkpatrick, senior editor at Fortune, thinks that the iTunes dependence is “based on the ideas of the past” and favors the model where users pick from a giant online library and listen to whatever they want wherever they are. Tom Evslin, criticizes the phone’s service provider lock-in and lack of support for software-based VOIP applications like Skype that would allow free calls over WiFi.

In my opinion, iPhone does very little to challenge the status quo, change the mobile phone service business model or meaningfully extend functionality to enable users to do something new and useful. Apple spent a lot of time making incremental improvements and creating a sexier package for a pretty standard set of features: phone with a music player and a web browser.

I think that the device that aims to “revolutionize” needs to do much more. It’s got the looks, now let’s add some brains too. Here’s my wish list:

1. Work anywhere / everywhere without dropping a call
   Recognize, auto-configure and securely utilize whatever network exists transparently - across technologies and service providers. It should allow the user to pick between the most economic coverage and the best performance but not require any technical knowledge. (Apple could also “virtualize” charges across providers based on usage to make this economically viable).
2. Change the way we meet and interact while on the go
   A lot of integration related to location based services and social networks could be done here - e.g., check out a map to see who from your LinkedIn circle of interest (not the whole network!) is close-by and ping them to meet.
3. Change the way we collaborate and manage work / life activities
   Build smarts that emulate a good executive assistant that knows who to let through and who to route elsewhere based on what you’re doing, where you are and what are your priorities. Calendar, contact info, project notes, tasks, priorities, GPS, and a lot of other things are already there - what’s missing is the context and some common sense to connect the dots …
4. Keep us informed and entertained anywhere
   Cache multimedia content subscriptions without need to “plug-in” or manually synchronize everything (newspapers, lectures, eBooks, magazines, movies, music, rss feeds, podcasts, …) What I use on the web should just be on my phone too.
5. Synchronize all data with an online vault in real time
   The phone should not live in bubble - it should know about and use the data where it lives without having to get its own copy of everything. Master copy of any user files, PIM data and pretty much anything else should be updated at its main location without the user having to do a thing. (Master location is what’s versioned, backed-up, archived, indexed …)
6. Integrate all existing communication channels into one - with no mods required
   
7. Keep data safe and under your control regardless of who’s got the phone
   Integrate security features that allow users to disable, locate and/or permanently erase the phone by accessing an online portal. Staying up all night trying to remember exactly what personal & business data was exposed on a lost PalmPilot is not the experience I’d like to repeat.

Admittedly, some of this this stuff could be accomplished in software on top of the iPhone hardware (lack of 3G speed notwithstanding). As of right now, there’s no iPhone dev kit and no 3rd party apps can be loaded onto the device. While all this may sound like a huge mashup of opensource code and existing APIs, it should probably be managed and done by a company with Apple or Google sense of control and attention to detail in oder to ward off bugs & reboots that would make the whole thing just a pile of metal and plastic (Treos loaded with 3rd-party hacks is far from reliable).

If you still want the pretty new iPhone, try waiting a bit longer after the initial introduction: there’s a lot of room for price incentives. AP quoted an iSuppli estimate that Apple built in a 50% gross margin into the device MSRP. According to the report, the 4-gigabyte version of the iPhone, with a retail price of $499, will cost Apple $245.83 to make. The 8-gigabyte version, priced at $599, will cost Apple $280.83.

I’ll wait for the gPhone and keep my trusted BlackBerry & iPod for now.