Analytics and morning coffee

Data can sometimes speak very loudly. The difficulty comes in interpreting what it means. As we become inundated with more and more raw information, the threat of "analysis paralysis" becomes all too real. Despite those pitfalls, there are signs that marketing teams are becoming much more skilled in the use and interpretation of analytics.

This article in Fortune discusses the rapid growth of analytics. Companies are expected to increase their spending by as much as 66% over the next three years. One of the main beneficiaries are companies like Quantifind--a new startup focusing on marketing analytics. 

Fronted by longtime marketing executive David Karnstedt, Menlo Park, Calif.-based Quantifind tripled its customer list last year to 30 brands, including beverage makers Pepsi  PEP -2.29%  and Heineken. Its specialty is sorting social media “signals” and correlating them with sales data. “(Our) platform allows marketers to explore, understand, and change their impact on revenue by serving up the most likely correlations and letting human judgment ultimately discern what to study further and where to take action,” he said.

Mr. Karnstedt goes on to give a demonstration of how their software works:

How does Quantifind’s software work? Without disclosing the name of the customer, Karnstedt offers the example of a quick-serve restaurant that was seeking ways to increase breakfast sales among teenagers. Despite the addition of several menu items catering to that demographic, the company saw very little impact on results.

Using Quantifind analytics, the company dug deeper and discovered a pattern of negative feedback—not from teens, but rather from their mothers. It turns out they didn’t care for the coffee on the restaurant’s menu. “More data also revealed that teens were relying on moms for a ride for breakfast. So the answer to the question ‘How do we sell more breakfast to teens?’ was to offer moms better coffee,” Karnstedt said. The strategy worked. Coffee sales, in particular, doubled.

Sometimes you find things where you are least likely to look!

Here is the link to the full article:  Marketing Analytics Specialist Quantifind Doubles Backing - Fortune 

Foster a sense of purpose

For most of us, there always seems to be an urgent project that demands our attention. Emergencies seem to pop up out of nowhere and force their way to the top of our priority lists. Despite that reality, this article by Kimber Lockhart in Medium discusses a different way to approach the issue that may achieve more lasting results.

Here is how she opens her piece:

I lead software teams. Part of the territory is people (CEOs, stakeholders, customers) wishing we could go faster. I’m often asked — “do you think the team has a strong enough sense of urgency?” or the direct “can you make the team feel a stronger sense of urgency?” More often, the request is more subtle, but just the same — “I’d really like to get this one project done, but it’s not a top priority. Can you hustle to make it happen?”

So, to all those out there wondering, no. I am not going to try to create a stronger sense of urgency on the team. And you shouldn’t either. A sense of urgency isn’t the goal. Trying to create urgency reflects the age-old confusion of hurrying with speed — the misguided notion that if you’re not always hurrying, you’re already behind.

If you’re not working on the product every day (and frankly, even if you are), it’s easy to believe progress should be faster. After all, we all want fast. There’s always more to do than we could ever accomplish, and moving faster would get us there. If the team just hurried a little more, we wouldn’t have to make tough choices.

As anyone who has ever forgotten their keys in an effort to get out of the house on time knows, hurry often backfires. The panicked, frantic pace values action over results and has consequences.

She goes on to point out the many flaws in rushing--shortcuts, sloppiness, lack of creativity. Most of all, she notes that this type of effort is not sustainable in the long run. 

Let’s retire sense of urgency and instead look for sense of purpose. A sense of purpose is a deep understanding of the reasons behind our efforts and a desire to pour in time and energy because that purpose resonates with the impact we’d like to make on the world.

A sense of purpose is immersion in our cause, and allowing that exposure to motivate action. A sense of purpose is about going faster and smarter toward a mission we all see clearly. It’s about using good judgment because we all understand the short and long term implications of our actions on what we’re creating together.

A strong sense of purpose manifests when a software engineer watches a potential customer struggle with a workflow and stays late to make the changes that make it easier. It shows itself when a designer spends their weekend on a few extra iterations because they felt engaged with the problem at hand and want to produce a better solution.

Turns out when you stop looking to create urgency, the passion and purpose latent in your team might just cause the right things to get done at just the right pace.

This one paragraph seems to encapsulate her philosophy:

Your primary job as a leader is to hire the right team, and then to spend time inspiring this sense of purpose. Help people understand the impact of their work, and speed will follow.

Here is the link to the full article:  https://medium.com/@kimber_lockhart/don-t-create-a-sense-of-urgency-foster-a-sense-of-purpose-724e309ecdb0#.9do5qcftc 

How Millenials (Almost) Killed the Wine Cork

Fascinating article in the Atlantic talking about wine corks. They served well for hundreds of years but have (in recent years) come under attack from screw caps and plastic alternatives. More recent industry attempts to preserve the market seem to be working.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/wine-cork-comeback/470961/

Tips and Myths on Smartphone Battery Life

Smartphones are an essential component of modern life. These handheld devices are vital pathways to communication and information. Outside of their fragility, their one major weakness lies in the batteries that power them. With most models, it's exceedingly difficult to get more than ten hours out of even the largest integrated battery--especially if the device is used for intensive tasks. External battery packs can sometimes double the charge, but at a tremendous penalty in weight and bulk.

Most of us have tried some of the strategies outlined below to help minimize our drain and maximize our time between charges. This article from the New York Times discusses actual testing of each of these key strategies to help separate the myths from the useful tips.

The first paragraphs discuss the current state of battery technology:

So why is battery technology still underwhelming? Plenty of companies have been developing smarter battery technology for years, including methods to increase battery capacity tenfold or charge devices by pulling energy from the air. But lithium ion, the technology that most mainstream batteries are based on, is low cost and easily reproducible while being safe — so we’ll be stuck with it for the foreseeable future, said Charlie Quong, an executive at Mophie, a battery accessory maker, in an interview.

“There’s a lot of investments on all fronts for improving the technology above and beyond that, but I don’t think we’re going to see that hitting any kind of mass market for several years out,” Mr. Quong said. In general, lithium ion improves about 10 percent a year in terms of the amount of energy that can be stored in a given space, which is partly why consumers perceive batteries as being far behind other technologies.

The article goes on to describe the testing they did on the various tips and tricks. They recommended eight tips. I found these two to be most useful:

• Use auto-brightness for the screen (dimmer screens save energy--unfortunately, they are harder to read)
• Turn off wi-fi when reception is poor (an established connection is no problem; the constant search for wi-fi is very draining)

I found a few of the myths very surprising.

• Closing unused apps doesn't always help. This one shocked me. I thought that you had to shut them down to stop them from draining resources. For most programs on your phone, apps in the background are frozen and do not draw power! In fact, force quitting forces the app to reload from scratch which could end up using more power.
• Don't assume turning off wi-fi will always help. As noted above, established connections can actually save power. It's far more efficient to use wi-fi than cellular data!

Here is the link to the full article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/technology/personaltech/tips-and-myths-about-extending-smartphone-battery-life.html?

Intermountain's Big Bet

The Advisory Board printed an article outlining Intermountain Healthcare. This Utah-based system is at the leading edge in many ways. They have made a bold proclamation:  they will pass on $2 billion in savings to their patients or lose money! Here is an excerpt from the article:

The 22-hospital system is guaranteeing that SelectHealth Share, its new health plan, will cap annual rate increases at about 4%—one-third to one-half lower than typical rate hikes for employer-sponsored plans.

Most health systems would have to skimp on care quality in order to provide such a deal, Abelson says. However, Intermountain stands apart because of its innovative efforts to track and analyze care quality. And many of its contracts are value-based: the system is reimbursed a fixed amount to care for about one-third of its patients, providing an extra incentive to keep patients healthy and costs low.

Intermountain says it will reduce SelectHealth Share's rate increases through $2 billion in savings over the next five years, including about $500 million in 2016.

The article goes on to quote Brent James talking about the program. Full disclosure, I have met Brent James at many conferences in the past and worked with him directly on a few projects.

Some of the tactics will have direct impact on Medtronic. I believe that we were one of the companies mentioned in this excerpt from the NY Times article:

Intermountain’s plan is “the first innovative thing we’ve seen in a long time,” said Dave Jackson, managing partner for FirstWest Benefit Solutions in Orem, Utah. “Share has got everybody at the table — everybody’s got accountability and got things to do.”

Intermountain has already saved money by renegotiating the cost of surgical staplers, pitting a cheaper manufacturer against another and saving $235,000 a year. It saved $639,000 a year by ensuring that heart attack patients get into the catheterization lab within 90 minutes of emergency room contact, thereby helping patients recover faster.

Here is the Advisory Board summary of the overall program (Ben Umansky):

Predictability is huge for employers right now. The idea of tying premium increases to something close to overall inflation is really attractive to a market that's seen health costs far outpacing the costs of other inputs. In fact, much of what employers are doing these days is predicated on a drive for predictability; take, for example, the move to defined contribution benefits: an employer who goes that direction knows exactly what it will pay no matter what happens downstream. Intermountain is responding to that same desire, but in a different way.

Select Health Share is the sort of provider-sponsored play so many systems are dreaming about, and this may be a lesson to other health systems about what they would have to offer in order to demand exclusivity. Select Health Share isn't trading on Intermountain's quality reputation alone, strong though it may be—this credible guarantee of predictable (and reasonable) cost growth is what many others aren't willing (or able) to offer.

This isn't something that happened overnight. If Intermountain hadn't spent years aligning governance, incentives, strategic planning priorities, and so many other factors across both the provider and insurer arms, they wouldn't be able to make this kind of play today.

I've always been impressed with how Intermountain designs its financial incentives to reflect and reinforce the system's strategic goals—from overall financial targets all the way down to individual incentives. It's a system that exemplifies "systemness"—everyone's in step—and that's so important for being able to offer this kind of value proposition to the market.

Here is a link to the Advisory Board article: https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2016/02/19/intermountains-big-bet-pass-on-two-billion-in-savings?WT.mc_id=Email%7cDailyBriefing%20Headline%7cDBA%7cDB%7cFeb-19-2016%7cintermountain%7c%7c%7c%7c&elq_cid=348425&x_id=003C000001GLXTHIA5

Here is a link to the NY Times article quoted by the AB:   http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/business/a-novel-plan-for-health-care-cutting-costs-not-raising-them.html?_r=3

4G? No, 5G!!

Mobile applications require bandwidth. Generally speaking, speed is a necessity. As the internet becomes more pervasive and we ask our smartphones and devices to perform ever more sophisticated tasks, the demand for greater capacity grows. The planned "Internet of Things" will add billions of new connections. Google's dream of self-driving cars will need near instantaneous responses that can only occur with vastly improved infrastructure--especially in wireless communication.

The current state-of-the-art is 4G LTE. Top speeds can hit about 15 megabits per second. When available, it allows the user to download a high definition movie in about eight minutes. There are lab tests underway on the next generation of access called 5G. At top speeds in excess of 10 gigabits per second, that same movie will download in about five seconds!

Today, this technology is confined to the lab and highly controlled tests. It could be many years before you start to see this in full production. Major companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Cisco are working on plans to invest billions of dollars in the quest for ways to differentiate themselves.

Here are some articles that give more background on the subject.

General overview:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/technology/what-5g-will-mean-for-you.html?ref=technology

Cisco, Ericsson, and Intel:  Cisco, Ericsson and Intel to work on 5G networks - Business Insider

CNET review of Verizon's plans:  Inside Verizon's vision of smokin' 5G speeds - CNET  

Blame it on the climate

We may soon have a new excuse for being late to an international event. Climate change is modifying the patterns of the jet stream. Strong winds in the upper atmosphere are intensifying. For eastbound flights, the resulting extra tailwinds will help to shorten the flights. Unfortunately, the penalty induced for westbound flights will add time to the flight. That will lead to more time for your round trip and additional fuel costs for the airlines.

The study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, looked at the effects of doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which will occur within the next few decades unless emissions are cut quickly.

The average jet-stream winds along the flight route between London’s Heathrow airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International airport are predicted to become 15 percent faster in winter, increasing from 77 to 89 km/hr (48 to 55 mph), with similar increases in the other seasons.

As a result, London-bound flights will become twice as likely to take under 5h 20m, implying that record-breaking crossing times will occur with increasing frequency in future. On the other hand, New York-bound flights will become twice as likely to take over 7h 00m, suggesting that delayed arrivals will become increasingly common.

The article goes on to point out why the airlines can't offset this effect efficiently:

Williams says airplanes can’t just fly faster to compensate because of another effect, air friction that builds up as the plane gets closer to breaking the sound barrier.

“Airplanes fly at about 550 miles per hour, or 75 percent speed of sound (767 miles per hour),” he said. “The closer they get to 80 percent, the fuel efficiency drops off a cliff and the airline has to put an afterburner, real gas guzzlers. That’s why they don’t go any faster.”

Here is the link to the full article:  Climate Change May Delay Flights : Discovery News 

Change in its own time

Words to remember.

Found on Medium:

https://medium.com/@jamievaron/to-anyone-who-thinks-they-re-falling-behind-f194afde9148#.75qamtogb

25 Things About Life I Wish I Had Known 10 Years Ago

Found this on Medium by Darius Foroux. It was originally published on dariusforoux.com

https://medium.com/life-learning/25-things-about-life-i-wish-i-had-known-10-years-ago-61d96e93a028#.5u6xim5p0

I thought the little advice like "Don't Complain" all made sense.

Depth in analytics

We often use terms like "big data" and "analytics" as if we mean the same thing for all applications and uses. That is not true. During one of the presentations at a meeting I attended last week, there was a slide that helped explain some of the major differences along a spectrum.

The presenter discussed three main types of analytics:

1. Descriptive:  What happened and why
2. Predictive:    What could happen
3. Prescriptive:   What will happen

As you can see, analytics starts by describing and reporting about past events. It helps explained what happened and then goes into the number of times specific events occurred and where. Over time, as you build your competency, you start to get into predictive and prescriptive analytics.

In the speaker's opinion, the best organizations are weaving analytics into the fabric of their organization. Data analysis becomes a key part of the basic decision-making and strategy of the organization.

I am a big fan of analytics, but I still think there are issues with this interpretation that require clarification. While I generally agree with the model, I still am unclear about how you decide whether or not you are asking the right questions. You might have tons of data, but if it isn't helping to solve your business issues, it may not be all that valuable.

Low, low prices

Last week, there were a few other surprises during my trip to Arkansas. Perhaps it's just the current world situation, but the price of a gallon of gas has dropped significantly. I was stunned when I drove past one gas station that had the following sign.

The next day, the price dropped again.

At these prices, I can understand why the cost of fuel may not be high on anyone's mind.

Ironically, the stock market is punishing most companies involved in the production of petroleum. The savings from this falling cost are not being felt by either the public at large or other companies that might benefit from this situation. I wonder how long it will take before that changes.

A search engine for your memories

There is a wide gap between the things I can remember and the things that I can't. Last summer, I got together with high school friends for an impromptu reunion and they started reminiscing about our experience from decades ago. I laughed and smiled, but I couldn't remember what they were talking about. No doubt, it was somewhere in the hidden recesses of my mind, but I had long ago lost the road markers that would lead me there.

When I was a little boy, I used to laugh at my mother all the time. She was constantly mixing up the names of my friends. Unfortunately, it seems that I find myself doing that now and the thought is a bit unsettling.

This article discusses one way to deal with this.

“Human memory is not the same as computer memory,” said James Kozloski, an inventor at IBM who focuses on computational and applied neuroscience. “We don’t have pointers. We don’t have addresses where we can just look up the data we need.”

Kozloski wants to change that. He recently filed a patent for technology that, in the simplest terms, will help finish your sentences for you. Like autocomplete for your voice, the system is a model of human memory that could be embedded in a device and offer prompts when necessary. It would use a combination of surveillance, machine learning, and Bayesian inference—a kind of predictive modeling—to recognize when a person has forgotten something, then provide the missing information.

“The idea is quite simple,” Kozloski told me. “You monitor an individual's context, whether it’s what they’re saying or what they’re doing ... and you predict what comes next.”

Kozloski has a specific use case in mind:

If you can get past the creepiness factor, a cognitive interface like the one Kozloski envisions could theoretically be useful for anyone, but he sees specific applications for people as they get older—and especially for those who suffer from diseases like Alzheimer’s. “The loss of ability to access memory in the moment is the beginning of the breakdown of normal cognitive function: the ability of individuals to interact with others, take care of themselves, clothe themselves, cook meals,” he said.

.....

Imagine for example, if your cognitive assistant knew that when you dial a certain person’s phone number—your niece, let's say—it should also remind you of the name of her husband. The system might also know that, because of the time of day when you’re calling, the husband is more likely to pick up the phone. Or that, by checking a calendar, it happens to be his birthday.

“All of that context becomes the basis for inference as to what name should be spoken when they pick up the phone,” Kozloski said.

That information—Paige’s husband’s name is Teddy. And it’s his birthday!— could come through an earpiece or mobile device. Or it could be part of a larger—and, frankly, more Hal 9000-esque—home integration. “It could be just the speakers in your house that are primed and ready to advise, literally waiting in the wings to assist,” Kozloski said.

To me, the idea is at once brilliant and creepy. Who knows what actually lurks in our minds and would you really want perfect recall of all your memories? There may be some things best left forgotten. Of course, maybe it could also bring back some of those brilliant ideas that I had in dreams that just as quickly vanished when I woke up....

I suppose it would be nice to have something that would never mix up (or forget) someone's name!

Here is the link to the full article:  The Cognitive Assistant That's Like Google for Your Brain - The Atlantic

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore

I'm on a business trip in Arkansas. At first, I didn't notice much of a change. The airport seemed relatively new and modern. It only had a handful of gates, so I wasn't surprised when I had to get a key from the counter for the rental car. It was only once I pulled away from the airport exit that I began to notice the changes.

The car radio was tuned to classic rock. I usually prefer to listen to news. As I scrolled through the FM dial, I noticed that there were no less than six gospel stations either preaching or playing Christian rock. I even caught this snippet of conversation:

Host 1:  Who is the person you should love the most?
Host 2:  Your spouse?
Host 1:  No, it's God!
Host 2:  Trick question!

As I rolled through the countryside, I passed a number of RV parks. I was also looking for a gas station so that I could refill the rental car upon my return. Sadly, a number of them were closed or for sale. One of them still had signs with prices over $3 per gallon, so it must have been vacant for a while. Then I saw this:

I guess the price of oil has fallen a bit....

Some sense of size

Original post:  Dec 29, 2015

The Hubble Space Telescope has given us some of the clearest pictures yet of the wider universe. Earlier this year, NASA released an enormously detailed photo of the galaxy Andromeda. To give you some idea of just how large the photo is, NASA points out that it would take 600 HD TVs to display the image at full resolution!

The YouTube video below will help give you some small appreciation for the incredible size of our universe. An excerpt from a Vox article puts it into perspective:

As the video zooms deeper and deeper, remember that every single pinprick of light is a star — in most cases, scientists believe, a star orbited by its own planet (or planets).

Think of it this way: our Solar System is so big that we still haven't sent any spacecraftbeyond its borders. But it's replicated over and over, literally billions of times, in the Andromeda Galaxy. And Andromeda is just a single galaxy, relatively close to our Milky Way — both are part of a larger supercluster of galaxies called Laniakea.

Science can certainly be a mind-blowing experience.
Here is the link to the source article:  It's impossible to appreciate how vast the universe is. But this video will help. - Vox http://www.vox.com/2015/1/26/7915359/andromeda-galaxy-video

Healthcare isn't immune to supply and demand

Original post:  Dec 16, 2015

For years, hospitals have claimed that the wide variation in costs could be attributed to factors such as quality or patient mix. A recent analysis of the underlying billing data revealed that is not the case.

Here is an excerpt from Becker's that explains what happened:

Researchers analyzed the real prices hospitals negotiate with private insurers and found places that spend less on Medicare do not necessarily spend less on healthcare overall.

The new "Big Data" project from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics shows that the prices hospitals negotiate with private health insurers vary significantly within and across geographic regions in the U.S.

For the study, the researchers analyzed 92 billion health insurance claims from 88 million people covered by three of the nation's largest health insurance companies: Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare. The data was provided by the Health Care Cost Institute and represents spending and utilization for about 30 percent of individuals in the U.S. with employer-sponsored health coverage.

The study shows spending patterns for the privately insured aren't the same as those for Medicare, which may cause policy makers to reexamine some of the markets that have been lauded for their healthcare models.

Time Magazine went on to add further analysis:

Shopping for health care services is incredibly difficult. Prices for the same service can vary widely, for little discernible reason. A MRI might cost you $511, or it might cost $2,815, depending on where you go.

A new study sheds some light on why some people see much higher prices than others. For the first time, researchers analyzed some 2.92 billion actual insurance claims for 88.7 million people across the country. They found that a person on one end of the country “routinely” might have to pay eight times more than they would somewhere else in the country — for the same procedure. Within the same city, hospitals would routinely charge three times more than other hospitals nearby.

Market power inevitably led to higher prices. This is exactly what economic theory says should happen in a rational market.

One of the most important factors influencing the crazy differences in price? The number of hospitals in any given region. The researchers found that even after controlling for other factors, areas with just one hospital had prices that were 15.3% higher than areas with four or more hospitals. Areas with two hospitals had prices that were 6.4% higher, and areas with three hospitals had prices that were 4.8% higher.

“We have this large body of evidence covering many, many years that consistently shows if you happen to live in an area with only one hospital you are going to pay a lot more,” study co-author Martin Gaynor told Marketplace.

Intuitively, this makes sense. When you have health insurance, you pay monthly premiums to get access to the health care providers in your insurer’s network. Your insurer negotiates with local hospitals to get lower prices for its pool of customers. In areas where there’s more than one hospital, the hospitals may be more inclined to compete for each insurers’ customers — and therefore more inclined to cut better deals with insurers. But in areas where there’s just one hospital, that hospital has little incentive to lower prices: If you get sick, you’re going there no matter what.

With the trend leaning towards increasing consolidation in the healthcare market, this trend bears watching.

One of the most important counterweights to this type of market power is exactly the analysis conducted. By sharing their actual billing data, major payers can compare rates and help to negotiate more competitive pricing for their members.

Here are the links to the articles:
Becker's:  New data shows experts were wrong about where healthcare costs less
Time:     Health Care Costs More in Cities with Fewer Hospitals 

Truth hurts

Original post:  Dec 14, 2015

During the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's traditional for the houses on my block to light their houses with elaborate displays. Some have simple candles in each window. Others have strings white lights wrapped around poles or lining the sides of the houses. Still others have multiple colors in their trees and bushes and all kinds of other attractions.

We've been quite busy the past few weekends, so our house had not yet been decorated. As I was in the yard, our neighbor from across the street came rolling by. The four-year-old pedaled her Big Wheel up to me and said, "My mommy said your house looks sad."

I could only laugh because I had to agree with her!

Children do say the darndest things.

The equation keeps changing

Original post:  Dec 3, 2015

In Paris, the COP21 climate conference is currently underway. Heads of state from 150 countries around the globe are meeting to discuss what the world can do to help mitigate the potentially dangerous consequences of climate change.

This is not the first attempt, but it may be the first one to achieve lasting commitments. Worldwide, there seems to be a growing awareness of the issue and a growing consensus that some changes need to take place. What makes these talks very different from previous conferences is the sudden growth of alternative energy as an actual substitute for fossil fuels.

In this chart based on official information from the Department of Energy, you can see the electricity produced by land-based wind is actually less expensive than new coal power plants!

How did solar and wind energy costs drop so quickly? Here are some explanations.

Let’s start with wind. Two main forces have driven the price of wind in the past five years, MacDonald said. First, she said, it’s cheaper to produce wind turbines than ever before. Second, wind turbines are much more efficient than they used to be.

....

But the falling cost of turbines is not the only factor driving down the price of wind. Manufacturers have also gotten better at making individual turbines produce more energy. Wind turbines can now be mounted higher, so they reach more powerful breezes; and their rotors can be bigger, so they capture more air. Utilities have also gotten better at deciding where to place turbines, and they’re more reliable, so they don’t break down as often.

Back to that car-market comparison. MacDonald seemed to understand these many improvements to turbines as amounting to an almost fundamentally different machine. Today’s car market, she said, “is not just about producing a 1920s car more cheaply. When you think about a 1920s car versus a car today, the performance has improved dramatically.”

Solar had a slightly different path:

Solar is a different story. “It’s pretty simple—it’s all about the experience curve. The more of something we do, the better we get at it,” said Jenny Chase, the head of solar at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, in an email.

“Loads of solar got installed in Europe from 2004 to 2008 in response to German and Spanish incentives, meaning it was finally worth building big specialized solar module factories (mostly in China),” she said. “The manufacturers pushed down cost by making the wafers thinner, by optimizing the structure of the cells to get more efficiency (i.e. more energy output for the same area), by reducing the use of silver paste and other expensive components, and all the other ways scale can be reduced.”

....

As with wind, smaller improvements have also brought down the price of solar. In particular, Chase highlighted the falling cost of inverters, which convert the direct current produced by photovoltaic cells into the alternating current used by the electrical grid. She also told me that contractors have gotten much more efficient at installing solar panels: “Installers have trained their roofers to build residential photovoltaic systems in one hour, not one day, and got better at sending out teams with everything they need so they don't have to waste any time.”

If the world can sustain investment into continuous improvement in solar and wind while also addressing some of the storage issues, suddenly there are ways to address climate change that may not bankrupt us.

It will be fascinating to watch for the outcome of the summit. Perhaps we can look back and see that this was the real start of a new energy revolution.

Here is the link to the full article:  How Solar and Wind Got So Cheap, So Fast - The Atlantic

Marketing nostalgia

Original post:  Dec 2, 2015

Several years ago, I remember my reluctance at giving up my BlackBerry. What I missed most about it was my ability to thumb type. Over the years that I had the device, I was able to knock out quite a few lengthy e-mails with only two fingers. It took me some time to gain proficiency with the virtual keyboard on the iPhone. To this day, I don't think I can type as fast on a phone as I was able to on a BlackBerry. That said, the overall experience in most other areas is so much superior that I don't think I could ever go back.

BlackBerry is struggling as a company. They were too slow to realize the threat until their moment had passed entirely. They are now left with one desperate strategy:  nostalgia.

Having tried (and failed) at competing with copycat models, they are now marketing a smartphone with a keyboard.

Nostalgia is a powerful force. It evokes memories of how we used to be. For some of us of a certain vintage, it can remind us of less complicated times from younger days. If it's used well, it can make the retrograde version seem "cool" again. Think of all of the recent revivals of kitchen gadgets or fashion accessories that slide back into popularity with increasing regularity. It is rapidly making its way into technology. From an article on the Verge, here is a scientific explanation:

This nostalgic reaction to an old technology feature that most people no longer use is real. And so is the emotion driving it. "People have nostalgia for lots of things, including their gizmos," says Dr. David Linden, a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and author of Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind.

Linden says that some memories are written more strongly into the brain’s circuitry, like memories tied to emotions and memories for things that we hold every day for years — including gadgets. "Talk to orchestra musicians and they’ll give emotional descriptions of the cello they wrap their arms around, or the flute that they put to their lips," he says.

It might be BlackBerry last, best chance:

Contrast Apple’s subtle nod to its history with the BlackBerry Priv’s physical keyboard: the Finder isn’t driving Mac sales, while BlackBerry’s physical keyboard could be the single reason a person buys the new Priv. Apple can wink at users who are old enough to remember the original Finder, but BlackBerry may need this throwback feature to stay in the game. The Priv’s keyboard works as you might expect a tactile keyboard to work, but it also functions like a mini trackpad, letting you glide your fingers over its keys to control a cursor, making more precise on-screen selections. "We look to the past to modernize elements that created emotion before," says Scott Wenger, BlackBerry’s global head of design.

Here is the link to the full article:  Why BlackBerry is still betting on the keyboard | The Verge

Even mighty Amazon

Original post:  Dec 1, 2015

Last night, I tried to purchase some presents for my son's upcoming birthday. My timing could have been better. Yesterday was the online event commonly known as "Cyber Monday." The items I needed were available on Amazon. I went through the prompts but noticed that it wasn't allowing me the standard two-day shipping. I was unable to place the order. Perhaps it was due to the massive volume of others all trying to place orders at the same time.

Since I wasn't in a mad rush for the item (his birthday is this weekend), I decided to wait until this morning to place the order. Sure enough, it flew through.

I think it goes to show you that even mighty Amazon sometimes runs into issues with its technology!

Bonus fun fact:  while it may seem that Cyber Monday has always been around, it actually was invented a mere ten years ago by the National Retail Federation. Fast Company has an article discussing the origins:  How Cyber Monday Was Born

Here is an excerpt from that article:

A decade ago, during the happy years before the recession, retailers noticed a spike in online sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. In a stroke of marketing genius, theNational Retail Federation decided to make the it an official shopping day. In a small room in the NRF's Washington, D.C. office, Ellen Davis, then a mid-twenties executive on the PR team, coined the term "Cyber Monday." "It's a random bit of cocktail party conversation I like to bring up sometimes," Davis says. "It's surreal to think that I'm associated with a term that has taken off like this."

And taken off, it has: Americans are increasingly spending more money on Cyber Monday than during Thanksgiving or Black Friday. Over the last two years, in fact, they've spent more on Cyber Monday than on Thanksgiving and Black Friday combined. Today is expected to be the biggest shopping day of all time, with predicted sales of over $3 billion.

....

Davis and her team were tasked with come up with a term to easily describe this shift in behavior. There were other phrases that didn't make the cut. They considered calling it Black Monday, in keeping with the Black Friday theme. "But that was also what we call the greatest stock market crash of all time," Davis points out. Also in the running: Blue Monday, after the color of hyperlinks, or Green Monday, because, well, money is green. "I liked the idea of Cyber Monday because it clearly described what was going on," she says. "Also, if you did a search for the term 'Cyber Monday' in 2005, you got zero results."

The name stuck. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the rest of the media picked up the term. "We spoke the word into existence and we really haven't been able to escape it since," Davis says. "It took off so fast that I don't really feel a sense of ownership over the term. The media, the retail industry, and consumers have really embraced it."