Monday, March 20, 2006

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP): Fortune 500, investment bankers plan for Global Warming

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) site has been set up which tracks and reports research results performed on global companies, institutional investors, and other large economic concentrations in regards to their actions and planning models to address Global Warming. The CDP's intent is to explore the world's significant economic private market players’ going forward assumption of an environment where global warming (GW) is a significant factor in logistical and capital decision making processes. There are reports and results easily downloadable off the site. I am sure there are plethoras of tie-ins to our course curriculum at EMSMOT.

In a sensational statement related to this site on NPR's Market Place, a spokesperson from CDP touts GW as bigger than the Internet; veritably "the Next Big Thing". If GW does prove true, then Global warming is unstoppable and inexorable. GW will affect every single entity and organism on our planet, and will change everything. One thing the investors are trying to derive is how to find the plays on the markets going forward.

The respondent companies are devoting their resources in an attempt to understand how their assets and operations are exposed to GW. For example, if we hypothetically allow that Hurricane Katrina may be directly correlated to effects of Global Warming, then all manner of effects may also be traced from this event. These lasting effects, the configuration of corporate response protocols, the re-evaluation of actuarial factoring for insurance underwriting, etc would fall under the scope of this research.

The participants in this project are economic titans. If for no other reason the stature of the participants, CDP and its resources should be on our radar. Given that the operating assumption of the entire project is that GW is present and growing in its significant effects on global economics, the science must be conclusive to a point where global financial and corporate leadership consider the matter actually relevant. In short, for their planning purposes, GW is here.

There are potential business opportunities related to this matter. We should integrate more fully the subject matter into our curriculum so we may better address the eventual business cases as they arise after our graduation from the program.

This site (http://www.cdproject.net/)


Sincerely,

Bryan "Beau" Grant
Commercial Real Estate Broker
Convivia Group
(404) 348-4759 x701 office

"I would also like to applaud the very high response rate from British companies. I am delighted to see that corporations in this country are aware of the economic implications of global warming and are taking a lead internationally– and indeed seizing the business opportunities of early action to address these important issues.

I hope the Project goes from strength to strength."

-Excerpt from Tony Blair's letter to the CDP
17 February 2003

Thursday, March 16, 2006

FINAL RESULTS- Injured Dog fundraising: Great news!!! Adoption Party next Sunday March 19th 2pm

This is the final update. This is GREAT news! Apparently over $1250 was raised in UNDER 7 DAYS. You guys are INCREDIBLE!

Check out the photos attached that were taken after her surgery. She is now convalescing and her mobility has to be restricted for one week, but she is fired up and ready to play despite her surgery.
She is very appreciative, giving lots of kisses, and trying to play and get on your lap!

This amount covered the Femur Surgery, all the shots, heartworm meds, flea prevention medicine, and set aside money for Spaying.

This weekend we will host a ADOPTION PARTY at John’s clinic from 2pm – 5pm Sunday afternoon, March 19th. Refreshments will be served.. Please come by so we can say thanks and you can meet the pup!

If you have any dog toys or other accessories and wish to donate them, please bring them to the party!

If you know anyone who wants a sweet Bull Terrier to adopt, please SEND THEM THIS EMAIL so that they know!

Yours,

Beau Grant
home: 404.351.0905

PSSS: GOOGLE MAP to the ADOPTION PARTY
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=1709+Ridgeway+Ave+%23A+atlanta+30318

UPDATE: Injured Dog fundraising: Great news!!!






This is an update on the dog’s status. Within 24 hours of the last message
being sent, nearly $525 had been raised. AMAZING! Thank you for your rapid
support. The vet clinic offered a 20% discount, bringing the surgery bill
to somewhere around $800-$1000. Right now, we have around $850. So there
may need to be just a little bit more donated. ALMOST THERE!

If there is extra money, we would like to give it to the vet to place on
hold so that the dogs shots and neutering can also be covered. If you would
not like this, please let John know how to handle your donation. Otherwise,
we will assume this is OK. Almost everyone has already dropped off the
donations at John’s office at 1709 Ridgeway Ave (30318). If you have not
already done so, please just head on over or put it in the mail.

As for the pooch - She is in surgery right now. She will be under
observation until Thursday. Afterwards, she will be convalescing for another
1.5 – 2 weeks.

After the recovery period, we will have a “Dog Open House”. The idea being
to introduce her to potential new parents. We will make a subsequent
announce once her status is better confirmed. Meanwhile, if you want to
pitch in, come over, and do some TLC time, I am sure she will welcome the
attention. She really is a friendly dog. If you already have a strong
intention to adopt her, please let us know.

On behalf of John and the dog, THANK YOU again for all your support.

Yours,

Beau Grant
home: 404.351.0905

PS If you wish to call and ask after her status, the clinic number is (404)
873-3771. Just let them know you are calling about the charity dog.

PSS: If you wish to mail in your donation: Make check payable to Buckhead
Animal Clinic, then mail the check to John’s address below.

PSSS: John’s address is :
John Kunihiro
Art of Healing, Inc.
1709 Ridgeway Ave #A
Atlanta, GA 30318
Work: (404) 355-1662
art_of_healing@msn.com

Injured Dog fundraising request




John Kunihiro, who owns and operates the Art of Massage clinic on Ridgeway Avenue in the neighborhood, and his wife found an injured bull terrier dog in the road near Newnan on their weekend getaway vacation. She had apparently been hit by a car. They placed her over at Debbie Jones’ house for two days. Last night, we made a plan to get the dog to the vet.


She is actually well behaved, gentle, and rather sweet. Given all she has been through, it only grumbled slightly when my dog, Conner, tried to make friends. I think I would grumble if someone was nudging my broken leg!

This morning, John and I took her over to Buckhead Animal Clinic. They tested her thoroughly today. She is actually healthy with one large and expensive exception.

She has a broken femur. The vets estimate that it will cost around $1000.00 to perform the surgery. So they are seeing about using a clinical student for the procedure, which will significantly reduce the costs.

I would like to ask you folks if you can contribute something to the cause.

If 20 people give $50, the surgery is covered.

If anyone who contributes money wants to adopt the dog, please let John know, as we also need to place the dog in a home. I am starting this off with a $50 contribution. One of employees just donated $50 as I wrote this. So.. That’s $100 and the letter is not even sent yet.

The alternative here is dire and I do not need to spell it out.

If you also wish to help, simply drop your check in the mail to the address below. Or you could stop by John’s place and put it in his box or hand it to him directly. Make it payable to the Buckhead Animal Clinic. (John’s information is below for your use).

Thank you for your consideration of this matter, and I hope you will be inclined to help.

Yours,

Bryan "Beau" Grant
Commercial Real Estate Broker
Convivia Group
(404) 348-4759 x701 office

“A society is judged by how they treat the least among them.”

PS please forward this to people you think may care and be inclined to help.

John Kunihiro
Art of Healing, Inc.
1709 Ridgeway Ave #A
Atlanta, GA 30318
Work: (404) 355-1662
Mobile: (404) 550-0477
art_of_healing@msn.com



Free your iPOD!! Liberate your iTunes Library!

The French, for once, are on the right track. In the CNET Article - "Liberte, egalite, fraternite--and a more open iTunes?" the French are taking the lead in opening up iTunes. One item should be clarified, the iPod will play various audio file formats. The iPod just will not let you sync with multiple computers. There is a way to “fix” this... read on.

Ths legislative hoopla is superfluous if you are computer capable. As of today, you can simply go download a copy of Tune Transfer from (http://www.valusoft.com/products/tunetransfer.html). I gave this to my brother for Christmas. He wrote me and said it was the most useful gift he has gotten in a long time. This simple and inexpensive XP and Mac compatible applet allows you to take your iPod and plug into any other system running iTunes without risking data loss.

The Disappearing Library - If you have ever tried to connect your iPod to another one your own computers, and you have been using the Sync features between iTunes and iPod, you may have had the nasty experience of losing your entire library. Granted, if you had read the splash screen announcements you might not have proceeded, but who would really imagine a clear and present danger for deleting your entire media library? Heaven forbid you afterwards plugged into the original workstation and accidentally told the sync routine to sync the other way around and thus delete your local library as well.

This begs a question. If the music you have purchased is in fact so valuable as to warrant all these software and usage limitations, should we not as consumers have recourse to have our assets restored to us when they are deleted? As it is, unless you are a very good computer user, have loads of extra storage space, and lots of time on your hands, the back up routines for iTunes are just not present. You have do it manually. Your average computer user has no clue of how to do this, much less that it even needs to be done!

The implementation of DRM in the iTunes-iPods model is much more stringent than the law calls for. The current model prevents the various instances of legal fair use. For example, if you have a Windows XP box and a Mac (because you need to use the XP Internet Explorer for the list of sites that do not work on any browser that exists on Mac or Linux) or just need more than one computer for other reasons then you will have at least two places where you need to store your files. If you own the media, you can, in theory, use your files on up to five separate workstations so long as you own them yourself. You could just share your music folder or park it on a server and share to yourself among your various computers. However, the iTunes library files will overwrite each other or not work at all. There is a way to edit the plist file, but that only works on a Mac in a Mac environment.

The only way to share files among you OWN computers is to stream them over the network between instances of iTunes hogging bandwidth, CPU cycles, and forcing you to have more than one computer turned on. Meanwhile this facet of the model allows anyone on your network to listen to your library and never pay for the use. I am surprised the greedy media goons have not stifled this feature.

So why even use iTunes at all?

1. If you want to use an iPod, you have NO CHOICE.

2. The other media players and devices in the market have just been either ignored by the market, or the products have significant shortcomings. Please read the other blog related to this topic ( http://conviviagroup.blogspot.com/2006/03/ipod-product-on-shaky-ground.html)

3. Personally, I use iTunes as follows, thought I do not own nor plan to ever buy ( out of general principal) an iPod. Yes, I am that stubborn. I use iTunes to stream audio to my home stereo system via Airport Express’ streaming audio feature. The out of the box feature only allows you to broadcast from iTunes (XP & Mac) to the Airport. There is no other significant or affordable offering in the market that performs this task. I am surprised that Linksys/Cisco did not add this two years ago!

Other related components to make this effort really useful:

- Airfoil (ONLY Exists on a Mac), (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/) broadcasts any sound on your Mac to an Airport Express base station.

- Audio Hijack allow you to record audio from any source that plays over the system speakers, a song from Rattle and Hum DVD or a Real Audio file of This American Planet.

- Salling Clicker (http://www.salling.com/) allows you to control iTunes, iPhoto, PowerPoint etc using a Bluetooth connection on your cellphone.

The net result is that I can control my 5700 file music library from my cell phone, stream it over my WiFi network to my wired home audio system. I can then listen to the entire music library using only my Nokia 6600 cellphone as a remote. Sweet.

Now then, if you want to access your entire library and have a centrally accessible repository, follow these steps.

If you have more than one computer in use, you can consolidate your library as follows.
(THIS IS A KLUDGE so be careful.)

1- Delete your local Library file (NOT your SONG FILES) out of your iTunes directories for each of the computers that you want to participate.
2- Move all the song/media files to one centrally accessible folder location on your network. You “could” use a copy of iTunes to automatically reorganize the folder hierarchy on the remote folder, but this is just being way too retentive. Have fun.
3- Open iTunes/preferences
a- uncheck keep iTunes folder organized
b- uncheck copy to Itunes Folder when adding to library.
c- map your iTunes path to your computers LOCAL iTunes directory, or any other local directory. Just do NOT map it to where you store your media. This is KEY.
4- Build the local Library file by selecting (MAC) “Add to Library (XP) “Add Folder to Library”
5- Be sure there are no Library files in or near the shared folder where you now store your media. This will get read by the first iTunes instance, and prevent subsequent iTunes on other systems from seeing the files are present.

There are issues with all of this. So beware and be careful.

When adding NEW songs to your central storage location, you will have to manually drag them over from the place where you ripped them to. Manually.
Once you have done this, you will to go around to EACH and EVERY workstation, delete the local library file, and Redo item#4 above which takes a couple of hours per workstation. In essence, you will have to rebuild the Library whenever you add to the library. If you are going to use one workstation MOST of the time, do all of your importing and ripping on that system, then once in a while go around to the other systems and rebuild the library database when it is convenient.

That we have to go through such tribulation when all of this should be handled seamlessly and automatically speaks to just how broken iTunes really is and how Apple has intentionally made a an otherwise promising product far less useful and revolutionary that it could have been. Not only that, it forces a user to circumvent the DRM features just to legally access their own media. It forces a user to behave unethically. Meanwhile, it allows for sharing via streaming of your library to users who do NOT own your media, which seems counter to DRM legislation.

Just your usual complicated mess in the brave, new digital world!

Enjoy your new ability to control iTunes!!

iPod! a product on shaky ground

I have always thought Apple's value play is rather weak for several reasons.

Up until recently, the iPod device is not much fancier than a Quartz display digital watch with a big hard drive. What Apple did really well was brand the iPod in such a way that it became as cool as any fad in the 70's. However fads erode quickly. Another reason the iPod has worked -before iPod's advent, people were not aware that MP3's were so easy to deal with or that they evev existed. Remember the CDR/WAV format has been around since the early 80's. That MP3 took another 12-15 years to get to the geek market is just plain surprising.

WinAMP and similar apps have been around for many, many years. All you really had to do was burn the MP3's to a CD-RW, and then play them on $30 MP3 compatible Walkman that you could easily plug into your car stereo via the cassette deck for another whopping $10. I traveled all over Scandinavia in 2001 with nearly 25 Miles Davis albums burned onto just 2 CD's. We had 10 other CD's and we never ran out of music in two weeks and thousands of miles of driving.

The reason why products like iTunes sell is that most people are simply not good at putting disparate components together. They do like going to Radio Shack. They get nervous about their ability to make things work for themselves. They want the package. They want the image. And if you give it to them, they will pay top dollar. That is, until they figure out that it really was just the Emperor's new clothes.

All it will take to dislodge iTunes from its resplendent position and to kill Apple's stock price is a consortium of other player manufacturers and software player vendors deriving an open standard file sync interface for allowing devices to talk to any software player and play all the file formats. This should take the right group of three geeks in a basement about 10 hours to create.

Much hullabaloo has been made of iPod's video capabilities and the advent of podcasted video. WHOOPEDOO. Over two years ago, Archos (http://www.archos.com/) already has the handheld video & music market for the PC's done. ,The devices supported every video standard, boasted humungous storage capacity, offered tight form factor, and a long battery life. What more could a gadget guy want?? You could use it to take your favorite shows to another location and plug into a TV and watch like a VCR. You could carry a healthy music library everywhere you went.



Archos currently lags in the market for two reasons.

Visibility and Image – Who has actually heard of it? It is buried on the bottom shelf at the retail stores. The sales people are not trained on it. The accessories are not present to purchase with the product at stores. And who has ever heard of the company to begin with? There has been no meaningful market, no superbowl ads, no buzz, and certainly no cool image factor. It is marketed the typical way Pac Rim manufacturers try to enter our market without a US OEM label, quietly and unnoticed by the cash spending masses.

Inept competitive positioning - One has to question the business acumen of Archos. They have products that directly compete in Apple’s iTunes space. Yet, Archos provides no support for Mac at all. The device could have replaced TiVo or the large component DVR’s that is directly competing the space with iTunes that does NOT make an attempt to support Mac OSX, but DOES have Linux support. Bewildering. (Yes, "I" could compile Linux support on my Mac, as I have installed all the necessary development add-ons (gigs and gigs worth) but your average guy will not be able.) Archos works great UNLESS you need to use it on a Mac. There are no useful software sync or video conversion apps between Archos and Mac.

Sony and all the other handheld gadget players out there have not stepped up and addressed this market. If any of them would bother to turn their juggernaut in the direction of iPod, we would witness a rapid dilution of the iPod space.

(Which leads us to the other question. Given that iPod serves as Apple’s way to familiarize people with other Apple products, given that Microsoft Windows still is god awful and buggy, and given that Apple is now porting it’s OS to Intel, the right course of action should be for Apple to simply sell it’s OS in shrink-wrap at Office Depot alongside Red Hat and XP such that anyone could install it to any Intel machine. However in Apple’s usual fashion, they are limiting this only to their own hardware. )