5 Reasons Why WEB3 Will Change Your Life

Watch this short video.

Web 3.0, the next evolution of the internet, promises a paradigm shift in our digital experience.

Decentralization, enhanced security, and user empowerment redefine online interactions.

Smart contracts and blockchain foster trust, while immersive technologies amplify collaboration.

Web 3.0 heralds a transformative era, reshaping how we connect, transact, and thrive.

Climate Action and the Pivotal Role of Municipalities

Reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 is a key goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

During the United Nations COP26 climate summit, Canada and more than 80 other countries signed the Glasgow Climate Pact, and committed to curb methane emissions, to halt and reverse forest loss, align the finance sector with net-zero by 2050, ditch the internal combustion engine, accelerate the phase-out of coal, and end international financing for fossil fuels.

The Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (formerly Bill C-12) became law on June 2021. Achieving our 2030 Emissions Reduction Target of 40 – 45% below 2005 level by 2030, and position Canada to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 will require a transition and an ongoing engagement on Canada’s Emissions Reduction Plans, at all level of government, Federal, Provincial, Municipal, as well as engagement from enterprises and businesses, as well as at the individual level.

This post will focus on the Climate Action at the local municipal level, and on the Mitigation aspect:

The town where I live, Wasaga Beach, in Ontario, Canada, declared The Climate Emergency in May 2021. The objective of the climate emergency declaration is for levels of governments to publicly acknowledge and declare climate change as the utmost global emergency, and start planning for Climate Action.

Climate Action refers to two large categories of responses to human-caused climate change:

–             Mitigation of greenhouse gasses (GHG) (Energy efficiency, Buildings retrofit, transportation, Electric vehicles fleet and charging stations, Renewable energy, water & energy conservation, heat pumps, green spaces, forests, parks, wetlands and natural heritage land conservation, tree planting, public education and incentives …

–             and Adaptation to projected climate change risks (flooding, stormwater, erosion, air quality, fire, extreme weather events, freshwater level and quality, natural habitat and species degradation, invasive species …)

The challenge is the need to connect adaptation with greenhouse gas mitigation efforts. This approach is increasingly referred to as low carbon resilience (LCR) . LCR has strong relevance at the local government level.

With decisions taken at the municipal level influencing around 50% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), now and well into the future, municipalities have a critical role, direct and indirect impact on the level of GHG emissions in the community, especially with municipal land-use planning, and infrastructure policies, investment and practices, and therefore municipalities can and must play a critical role in building a low-carbon, resilient and sustainable future for our communities. This is particularly true in today’s period of population growth, intensification and densification of urban areas, as we project in Ontario, which will have long term consequences on our environment and climate.

Municipalities can achieve their pivotal role towards Climate Emergency by adopting best practices to reduce GHG emissions, such as some of the recommendations below:

1. Climate strategy and Plan:
   • As a start, Municipalities must engage in community energy and emissions planning process, build an inventory of municipality and community energy consumption and GHG emissions, develop a Climate Strategy and Plan, set up reduction targets, track and monitor results and publish yearly reports.
2. Buildings

Buildings are the source of 12% of Canada’s GHG Emissions. Many buildings are old and not energy efficient. Retrofitting is expensive in capital cost upfront but reduce the yearly operating cost of energy and provides a financial return on investment and a high return in GHG reductions.

Solutions:

• Net-zero buildings strategy

• Net-zero emissions building code

• Green Development standards

• Electric Vehicles charging stations

• Grants to retrofit homes & businesses with heat-pumps & solar panels, green roof tops,

• Launch local communities net-zero initiatives.

3- Transportation

Transportation is the source of 25% of Canada’s GHG Emissions. It is Canada’s second highest source of emissions and, when combined with Oil and Gas Production, totals 51% of Canada’s emissions.

Solutions:

• Develop a mandate for municipal fleet at least 50 % of all new light duty and medium duty vehicle purchase be zero emissions vehicles by 2030 and 100 % by 2035,
• Plant electric vehicle chargers to municipal and public facilities and parking lots, and support the installation of charging stations in existing buildings,
• Mandate Electric Chargers for all new public, corporate and condominium constructions
• Improve local transit plan to make it more efficient
• Replace diesel buses by electric buses for local transit
• Open bicycles lanes and trails
• Pass and enforce idling bylaws (for most extreme measures: ban drive-trough from fast food, banks etc…)

4- Land Use Planning

According to a Nature United report, natural climate solutions could reduce Canada’s greenhouse gasses by as much as 78Mt a year in 2030. That’s more than 10% of Canada’s total emissions!

Resilient natural environment is essential for fighting climate change. Nature captures and stores carbon from the atmosphere and protects communities from climate change’s impact by reducing flooding and extreme heat.

Solutions:

• Improve land use management: defend, protect and restore natural areas (ex. forests and wetlands) that are essential for the removal of greenhouse gasses from our environment. Restore and enhance more wetlands, grasslands, and peatlands, to capture and store carbon. Enforce strict Conservation Authorities policies and recommendations.
• Promote Low-Impact Development systems and practices and Green Development standards
• Plant trees (Canada is committed to plant 2 Billion trees). Vote bylaws to limit trees cutting.
• Fund public green space projects in collaboration with municipalities, developers, communities and nonprofit organizations
• Protect our lakes shorelines, beaches, rivers basins, edges and water quality.
• Limit urban sprawl and expansion
• Protect farmland from developers
• Protect and manage our Provincial Parks.

5-WASTE

Based on drawdown.org following statement: “Over the course of a century, methane has 34 times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. Landfills are a top source of methane emissions, releasing 12 percent of the world’s total.”

Canadians dispose of about 3.3 million tonnes of plastic each year, (source: Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)) almost half of which is packaging. 75% goes to landfills, a small proportion is incinerated and about 1% ends up directly in the environment. Only 9% — or 305,000 tonnes — is recycled.

Plastic production is a major and growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and could account for about 13% of the world’s remaining carbon budget by 2050.

Solutions:

• Instead of leaking into the air or being dispersed as waste, landfill methane can be tapped, captured, and used as a fairly clean energy source for generating electricity or heat, to prevent emissions.
• Mandate reusable and recyclable plastic products in municipal procurement, facilities, and operations, encourage and incent local businesses to reduce their use of plastic and use 50% recycled plastic, ban single-use plastic, support community beaches and shoreline cleanup initiatives.

In summary,

This is just a short, non-exhaustive, list of Climate Mitigation Actions that can be taken by municipalities and communities, from the development and tracking of GHG emission reduction targets, to the creation and implementation of local climate action plans and policies, from the retrofitting of corporate buildings to improve energy efficiency to the adoption of green fleets, from improving land use planning and management, to raising awareness and education of the community, local governments can significantly and meaningfully act on climate change, and municipalities can improve the quality of life of their residents while saving money in operation and energy costs.

CLIMATE ACTION NOW !

Tips: Simple steps to reduce your internet energy consumption (and Co2 emission)

As highlighted in my previous blog post, Internet and Data Centers are huge energy consumers and therefore a significant source of CO2 emissions, up to 1 or 2 % of global emissions, almost as much as the Airlines industry.

As promised at the end of that earlier post, and as your use of electronic cloud storage, internet surfing, email communication, social networks, audio and video conferencing, music or video streaming (etc.)  consumes a lot of energy, let me give you a few tips and steps you can take to reduce your personal internet carbon footprint:

Cloud storage:

as you are dumping your photos, videos, music and back-up data into the Cloud, whatever Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud, iDrive, pCloud, Amazon Cloud, DropBox or other provider, look at how many GigaBites you store there – 10 GB, 100GB, 500GB, 1TB ? – All that storage occurs on servers somewhere, and those servers need energy to run. Data centers that house all this storage run 24/7, with redundancy back-up, require massive amounts of energy to process your data and to cool the servers. So, the first easy step is just to go over your photos, videos, music, documents, sort it and do a spring cleaning, getting ready of what is useless, too old or redundant, that you’ve been clutting over the years and will never use. It is not fun, it takes time, but it is efficient. To lead by example, I did some yesterday and saved 20GB of Cloud Storage (and of my laptop storage capacity which is almost full at 500GB). Another Tip: If your computer, tablet or phone, backs up photos and videos automatically to Google Photos: To make sure to reduce space, by resizing them, Go to Preferences menu, look under Photo and video upload size and select High Quality (free unlimited storage). Google will shrink photos to 16 megapixels and videos to a resolution of 1080p. Although this may reduce image quality a bit, most photos and videos will still look great. Apple and iPhone users can do the same on Apple iCloud. And last but not least, decide which files you really want to keep and upload in your cloud.  Stop automatically syncing everything. Keep a folder for important backups, and only sync that to your cloud storage. Just a heads-up, there is a big chance that you may be duplicating some cloud storage of the same files in several providers, ie on Google Drive and Apple iCloud.

Email:

Your Email box is yet another dirty and full closet, with thousands of files clutter up servers, some of them 10 or 20 years old, archived or not, with or without attachments, attachments that you probably already saved anyway if they had any value at that time, they still suck-up energy unnecessarily. Again there is an easy fix, whatever you use Outlook, CleanEmail, Gmail, Hotmail, Apple Mail, or other, just go back in time and get rid of old emails which have no value today, specially sort by size of emails and attachments so you can prioritize and get rid of the bigger ones, and save space. I do it regularly, still my Outlook file is 17GB, including archives. Also delete all spam, advertising emails daily, junk, unsubscribe from useless newsletter, promotions and notifications you received daily, weekly or monthly and you never open. Finally use the function to only download images from the emails received and open images only when you decide too, this will reduce your internet and network consumption. And keep in mind that all in all sending a single email results in about a gram of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.

Social Media:

If you’re a social media addict as I am, you probably have accounts Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn, What’s App, YouTube, TikTok (I have all of them)… so now is the time to purge your social media: just go to settings of the apps, and download an archive of your data before you delete it online. It is good practice anyway to clean-up your digital history, as it’s stay there forever, like it or not, until you delete it (sometime you can’t even do that). I will not go into the details of each platform, but as an example on Tweeter, you can download your archive by opening Twitter Settings on the web and choosing Your account and Download an archive of your data. You can also use tools such as Tweet Delete or Tweet Deleter. For Facebook and Instagram there are  limited options for deleting older posts, but you can still delete old posts manually one by one though, and you can also make use of the Stories feature on where posts automatically disappear after 24 hours anyway.

Online Activity:

whatever browser you use, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer Edge, Firefox or Safari, there is way to reduce your consumption by using some of the tools, settings and auto-deletion of your browser. As an example, log into your Google account, click “Data & personalization” about your online activity, your search history, and your location—both to personalize your experience of its apps and to serve up targeted ads. In all of these categories, you can select the Auto-delete option to have the data erased.

Streaming:

Audio and video streaming is one of the worst when it comes to power use and carbon emission: Just In the US, streaming music dumps between 25,000 to 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. Now with people moving more and more to IPTV, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Hulu, Roku, AppleTV and others, streaming services are exploding and are making it worst. As highlighted on my precedent blog post, Visiting Amazon consumes 0.0003 kWh, streaming 5 MB MP3 song takes 0.025 kWh, watching 5 minutes YouTube video takes 0.065 kWh, streaming 3 GB movie takes 14.65 kWh, and online video game takes about 78.13 kWh. Therefore be aware and use streaming service appropriately. You can also reduce the resolution of the video quality when streaming on your phone, you don’t really need High Definition Resolution on such a small screen.

In conclusion,

making it an habit to spend a few minutes to one hour monthly to reduce your cloud storage space, cleaning your emails, deleting some online activity history and social media posts, streaming reasonably will reduce your carbon footprint and our planet will feel a bit better. We live in a digital smarter world, let’s also make it greener.

Data Centers and internet are some of the worst energy consumers and polluters, True or False?

Think about it: Every time you use Facebook,  Messenger, Instagram, What’sApp, Snapchat or TikTok or every time you launch a google search, order on Amazon, pay your bills via online banking, or just receive, send or archive an email, or stream music or videos, or sit in a zoom meeting, or almost whatever you do on your computer, tablet or phone, you are using internet resources hosted in Data Centers which means you are consuming electricity and generating CO2; How much? That’s THE  Question, so here is some background information based on well known studies and reports:

Data Centers are the Brain of the Internet, they host servers, computers, storage, controllers, network devices, and cooling systems all powered by electricity power, in order to connect, receive, process, compute, share, duplicate and store data, more and more data and higher flowing every day.

Data Center

We estimate an average energy consumption in a Data Center of 3% for the network, 11% for the storage, 43 % for the servers and 43% for the cooling and power systems.

As the number of internet and IT users is growing and the flow of data is exploding, with more and more audio and video streaming, more highly consuming Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and more and more Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors are deployed, so are data services and Data Centers growing exponentially and so is the energy consumption growing alarmingly.

Calculating the global energy consumption of these Data Centers and of the Internet is a complex problem requiring some estimations, as companies and countries are not really providing detailed reports.

Estimates varie depending on the following relevant studies and sources:

• Koomey in 2011 estimated that data centers accounted for between 1.1 percent and 1.5 percent of global electricity used in 2010.
• Masanet et Al in 2020 estimates that global data centers consumed around 205 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2018, or over 1 percent of global electricity use,
• Estimates of annual data center electricity usage vary from 200 terawatt hours (TWh) (Jones, 2018) to 500 TWh (Bashroush & Lawrence, 2020). The lower of these figures would suggest that data centers consume 1% of global electricity (Jones, 2018), but this could be significantly higher. One study suggests that global data center energy usage was 270 TWh in 2012 (Van Heddeghem et al, 2014). Another study estimates that 104 TWh will be used by European Union data centers in 2020, which makes a global total of 200 TWh unlikely (Avgerinou, Bertoldi & Castellazzi L, 2017).
• Wildly varying estimates for the energy intensity of the internet have been published, ranging from 136 kWh/GB in 2000 to 0.004 kWh/GB in 2008, but a more recent estimate analysing calculation methodologies settled on 0.06 kWh/GB for 2015 (Aslan et al, 2018). This is decreasing by 50% every 2 years (Aslan et al, 2018).
• Calculating the energy intensity of the internet is difficult – Aslan et al (2018) only considers fixed line networks in developed countries. Calculations are missing for mobile networks that will account over 20% of all internet traffic by 2022, growing at 46% per year (Cisco, 2019); and internal connectivity within data centers is not included but is doubling every 12-15 months (Singh et al, 2015). These excluded factors and no recent calculations examining networking equipment speeds up to current fastest 400Gb (Ethernet Alliance, 2019) devices means that it is difficult to estimate the true energy impact of networking today.

Some of these numbers may seems wrong as the percentage is decreasing despite the fact that the volume is increasing, but it just means that fortunately the significant improvement energy efficiency of the devices and data centers, as well and new technologies such as server virtualization and Cloud-Computing and Cloud-Storage have been compensating for the growth of users and data of the last decade.

Internet

The amount of computing done in data centers more than quintupled between 2010 and 2018. However, the amount of energy consumed by the world’s data centers grew only six percent during that period, thanks to improvements in energy efficiency. Servers, storage, and network hardware on its own consumed more energy in 2018 (130TWh) than it did in 2010 (92TWh). But these devices are now much more energy and a lot more computing efficient for every 1Wh used.

Still, The main issue is this hungry use of electricity generate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Again we can only estimate the level produced as it depends on many factors.

In 2018 Pearce claimed that the world’s data centers emit as much CO2 as the global aviation industry (which generates 3% of global emissions) , which is roughly 900 billion kilograms of CO2 (Air Transport Action Group 2020). Considering that global data centers recently consumed around 205 billion kWh, for this claim to be true, their average electricity emissions intensity would have to be around 4.4 kg CO2/kWh. Which is probably overestimated as fortunately all Data Centers don’t run on electricity produced by coal or fuel. Lately the larger providers such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and big Telcos are using more and more renewable energy or implementing their giant Data Centers in Nordiks countries to reduce cooling energy and cost. The new industry trend is for multi-tenant data centers to accommodate hyperscale cloud firms and fulfill growing demand from technologies such as AI and IoT.

Just a few others facts that may ring a bell:

• In 2020 Kamiya claimed that watching Netflix for 30 minutes generates 1.6 kg of CO2 emissions, the same as driving almost four miles/6 km. Again even if this value is a bit overestimated, it gives an idea we can relate to.
• Visiting Amazon consumes 0.0003 kWh, streaming 5 MB MP3 song takes 0.025 kWh, watching 5 minutes YouTube video takes 0.065 kWh, streaming 3 GB movie takes 14.65 kWh, and online video game takes about 78.13 kWh

In 2016 Koomey-led study of data center energy use in the US, which was paid for and published by the US Department of Energy, found that collectively, all data centers in America consumed 2 percent of all electricity consumed nationwide.

Fortunately the last 20 years have seen major efficiency improvements, but unfortunately they are predicted to come to an end and the data center energy usage is predicted to double by 2030. If electricity continues to be a major source of data center energy and is generated from non-renewable sources, data center emissions could exceed the aviation industry which is currently responsible for 2% of annual human-generated CO2 (IATA, 2020).

The Internet’s energy consumption, whatever 1 or 2% of global energy consumption is significant but still is a fraction of that of the transportation industry, (including cars, trucks, bus, trains, planes etc) which accounts for 61 percent of oil consumption, and of course the worst energy consumers and polluters industries are Chemical, Refining and Mining industries.

power generation

Therefore on a positive note as Internet uses less power and causes a smaller environmental impact than transportation, moving more tasks (like teleconferencing, telebanking and working from home) to the Internet to reduce travel and commute makes sense.

And on that note: numbers will certainly show a reduction of travel and transportation and an increase on internet use due to Covid-19 pandemic for 2020, and a consequent shift on energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

Every day Internet and technology are progressing with a devices and new services. The computing power is increasing and so is the energy consumption of these devices. Our mobiles, computers, laptops, and other gadgets rely on energy to operate all the time (About 0.0003 kWh is consumed while charging a mobile over USB for 7 minutes).

In the future the rapidly growing demand for information service and compute-intensive applications like AI and IoT (enabled by 5G, and 6G to come) will certainly outpace the efficiency gains, therefore significant investments in renewable power will be required to minimize the climate implications of data center energy use.

Objective of this blog was to raise your awareness on the energy consumption and C02 emission of the IT Industry and Internet and it’s potential impact on environment and climate change, as we are all users and consumers.

In my next blog I will share a few tips of how to reduce your personal internet usage, energy consumption and emissions.

Top Technologies to watch in the spotlight in 2021*

This is a non-exhaustive list of technologies which will be in the spotlight in 2021, which does not mean they are new or emerging technologies, but mature enough to reach full scale of application and ready to make a difference in our world and way of life.

• 3D printing (or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file.)
• 5G (The Fifth generation of wireless network technology, designed to expand the scope of mobile technology beyond the capabilities of LTE. It will be transformative, fueling innovation across every industry and every aspect of our lives. Over time, 5G technology will change the way we live, work, and play)
• AI-enabled sensors (smart sensors, hardware components enabled by Artificial Intelligence apps, taking input from physical environment and use AI built-in compute resources to process data and perform automated predefined functions
• Alternate proteins (Meat alternatives, Protein-rich ingredients sourced from plants, insects, fungi, or through tissue culture to replace conventional animal-based sources)
• Autonomous Vehicles, level 4 & 5 ( Self-driving vehicule with High and Full Automation, At Levels 4 and 5, the vehicle is capable of steering, braking, accelerating, monitoring the vehicle and roadway as well as responding to events, determining when to change lanes, turn, and use signals.)
• Bioinformatics (application of computational technology to handle the rapidly growing repository of information related to molecular biology, combining different fields such as computer sciences, molecular biology, biotechnology, statistics and engineering)
• Internet of Things (IoT describes the network of physical objects—“things”—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the Internet.
• Green Hydrogen (a clean burning fuel that eliminates emissions by using renewable energy to electrolyse water, separating the hydrogen atom within it from its molecular twin oxygen.)
• Materials Informatics (a field of study that applies the principles of informatics to materials science and engineering to improve the understanding, use, selection, development, and discovery of materials.)

• Natural Language Processing (NLP is the relationship between computers and human language. Natural language refers to speech analysis in both audible speech, as well as text of a language. NLP systems capture meaning from an input of words (sentences, paragraphs, pages, etc.)
• Plastic Recycling (Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing the material into useful products. Industry leaders have recently planned 100% recycling of the plastic they produce by 2040, calling for more efficient collection, sorting and processing)
• Precision Agriculture (Precision agriculture seeks to use new technologies to increase crop yields and profitability while lowering the levels of traditional inputs needed to grow crops (land, water, fertilizer, herbicides and insecticides). In other words, farmers utilizing precision agriculture are using less to grow more, a more sustainable way.)
• Predictive Analytics ( encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from data mining, predictive modelling, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events.)
• Shared Mobility (new shared economy models of carsharing, bikesharing, ridesharing, on-demand ride services)
• Synthetic Biology (a field of science that involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to have new abilities. Synthetic biology researchers and companies around the world are harnessing the power of nature to solve problems in medicine, manufacturing and agriculture.)
• I could add a few more such as Blockchain, Edge Computing, Quantum Computing, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, Robotics Process Automation… which are also shaping and transforming our way of life, but I need to stop somewhere…

*Alphabetic order

Happy Birthday facebook! Love it or Hate it, facebook changed your life…

Facebook is only 10 years old today, but in a decade it moved from being a social network to being much more like a platform of all thinks internet.

Whatever you like it or hate it, whatever you are an addict, a casual user, a curious user that just tried it, has a profile but don’t really use it, or did not like at all, felt an invasion of privacy and just deleted your profile or if you are one of those stubborn deniers who still refuses to join despite the pressure from friends and family, despite the isolation you may feel from not being part of that trend, group and communication, whatever type you are, I am pretty shire that facebook did touch and change your life in one way or another way.

Facebook has evolved quickly from just a place to share photos, videos, music or just a status of where I am and what I am doing at that moment, or a way to say “Happy Birthday!”, to a internet hub, a full platform, a content aggregator of all things internet, a platform which companies are using to build on top of it, and actually the best platform to sell you anything as anything you post, like, comment becomes an element on Facebook database, and they know more about you as a person and as a consumer than anyone in the world, and the new business model is based on revenue generated by this data-mining.

More people today use facebook from a mobile device than from a computer, so facebook follows you wherever you go.

So after blowing its 10 candle on the new billionaires’ cake, what’s next for facebook? Despite the fact that some obscure Princeton searcher, probably avid to come into light, predict the end on facebook, based on a nonsense model (and that facebook predicts the end of Princeton, based on the same model!), despite the fact that more serious studies show that teenagers are moving away from facebook to use others networks as Instagram (even is facebook actually owns Instagram), mainly because their parents are using facebook and not Instagram (yet), in the future facebook plan is to keep growing in the part of the world not yet saturated, and to make everyone connected. A glance to the future of facebook is the newly created internet.org, a new global coalition to connect everyone on the planet, “making the internet affordable, a global partnership dedicated to making internet access available to the two thirds of the world not yet connected” as they defined themselves.

So in my view from facebook to internet.org or whatever it will become, facebook is here to stay, until something that we can’t even imagine today comes to replace it. By then facebook will probably be blowing its 20 candles on a bigger cake.

Finally a new technology to restore sound quality and cure my ears!

Strangely, as technology generally is supposed to improve quality and performance, it has been the opposite in the music/audio industry.

Sound reproduction quality reduced when technology moved from vinyl to CDs, and again reduced even more dramatically when moving from CDs to mp3 or other compressed digital audio format. Sound quality regular music listeners on most personal users devices, be it smartphone, mp3 player, computers, TV, audio system etc are worst today that it was 50 years ago… mp3 compression or streaming audio loses as much as 80 to 90% of original recorded sound quality…and it seems young generation does not really care, even when they spend more time than any other generation before listening to music, specially on their smartphone. Clearly mobility is more important.
Most young people don’t buy CDs anymore but download compressed digital music or listen to streaming music; Beyonce last album for the holidays was downloaded 2 Millions time in 2 weeks, a new record, but not for long. CDs sales are going down and down and down.
As I was a sound engineer in a past life, this keeps bothering me… I have been looking for a long time at Neil Young "PONO" project of trying to launch and market for a download service with a new technology reproducing high quality studio recordings, but it has been delayed and delayed, as it seems he did not find the right investor, probably due to a weak business model and a high price point … everybody does not have Steve Jobs Marketing genius.
BUT TIME HAS FINALLY COME!
Harman International announced yesterday at CES a software solution "HARMAN Signal Doctor", based on HTML5, Java and CSS, that automatically analyze and upgrade the audio quality of of compressed digital music files to restore the original sounds as it was recorded !
I have not been trying it yet but it seems this doctor is finally going to cure my hears.
Problem is, to be cured by Signal Doctor, you will have to buy a new Harman product for your home or for your car. However I suppose in a short term they may OEM their technology broadly to be embedded on other audio brands, and they even talk about marketing it as a mobile phone app, this could make this company rich, as I suppose everyone is going to want it, finally reuniting  Mobility and Audio Quality, this is THE Solution I was looking for, or am I the lonely  survivor concerned about sound quality ?

Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies- Hype or Reality?

You probably know about Gartner Hype Cycles, and just in case you don’t it is communicated as an infographic produced regularly by famous IT research and advisory firm, Gartner, “to represent graphically the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies” (wikipedia), in a nutshell the lifecycle of innovations and products in the markets.

I just wanted to share with you the latest Gartner Hype Cycle chart for Emerging Technologies (Image attached- dated August 8, 2013). It is of course a very interesting diagram, including a lot of technologies, and based on the collection of lots of data, which does not mean everything is thru and that we have to drink their coolaid, straight“on the rocks”.

What is predominant this year is the hype around smart machines, machine-to-machine (M2M), cognitive computing and the Internet of Things, all the Human/Machine relationship stuff and it’s impact on the enterprise of the future. There are so many innovations and emerging technologies and growing markets in that space, this is no surprise. (I just want to know more about SmartDust!)

However, and more specifically, based on my focus at my present job,  I am looking with some level of skepticism, with all due respect to Gartner analysts, at two of these technologies: Cloud Computing and Big Data.

Gartner shows Cloud Computing as having passed the Peak of Expectation and already falling way down the Trough of Disillusionment ! I certainly don’t agree with that assessment. In my view Cloud is delivering on premises and on planned schedule, with a steady adoption and with little failure rate and not much negative press and still has with a huge potential growth.

Also Gartner shows Big Data almost at the Peak of Inflated Expectation and again I would not embrace this idea; Big data is still in very early stage, it is transforming if not revolutioning all enterprise information management and business processes, and much more is  to come before it come to this peak.

Where I would agree, however is on the positioning of predictive Analytics, welcome to the Plateau of Productivity, my company should be able to make money out of it in the short term.

 

So Hype or Reality?

I am no Nostradamus… Feel free to comment and provide your own vision, as your real life experience within your company or your customers if you’re a consultant or a technology vendor, may be as valid as Gartner’s survey and interpretation. No offense, we are talking about predictions and there is no such thing as Magic! and as my charming wife would say “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion."

5 New Technologies to change your life in 2013

My Jan 2011 blog post “11 new technologies to impact our life in 2011” has been my most successful topic in term of audience and traffic, so I thought I will do it again. With the explosion and acceleration of science and technologies, 2 years is already a long time, so here is a short highlight of 10 new technologies that will change your life in 2013:

1- 3D printing

A 3D printer is a device able of outputting physical objects meaning they can create real, solid objects from digital data. They have been in development labs for quite some time but are now hitting our real life and are starting to revolution prototyping and digital manufacturing. There are several technologies enabling 3D printers, such as stereolithography, material jetting, polyjet matrix, DLP projection, Fused Deposition Modelling, Binder Jetting, selective laser sintering or selective laser melting, etc… and a wide range of 3D printers and online services are now available for industrial and manufacturing applications. This is only the first step, in the second step it is already becoming available to the public consumer with Personal 3D Printers or kits ranging between $1.000 to $3,000. We can predict a Desktop 3D printer will cost a few hundred dollars in 2015 …imagine a future where instead of going in a store to buy an object, it will be delivered electronically to your computer and created on your home 3D printer… 3D printing is going mainstream, future is coming to your door!

2- Mobile Payments and Mobile Wallets

Mobile payment or mobile wallet refer to a payment performed via a mobile device and managed by a financial institution (bank, credit card) or service providers (internet providers, wireless communications providers), enabled by technologies as Near Field Communications or NFC. Newcomers are rushing to this huge market too and Paypal (owned by eBay) will be announcing next week it’s new mobile Point-of-Sale (available first in UK) at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where Mobile Payment will be a big Buzz. Samsung and Visa are announcing a new global alliance to boost mobile payment and NFC. Technology has been available and secure for quite some time, banks and operators have been preparing for few years, and time has come for wide market adoption by shoppers and end users, as a very convenient alternative payment method to cash, check or credit card, carry digital coupons etc. Adoption has been spreading from Asia to Europe and is starting in North America, slower for regulations and technical reasons. In parallel social Commerce is also growing and American Express customers who link their cards to their Twitter accounts are now able make purchases with a tweet, I like that! A good justification to upgrade my Blackberry Torch to the Blackberry Z10 J

3- In Car Digital connection, Connected-to-Cloud cars and Self Controlled cars

I visited the Toronto Auto Show last week, and ff you have been in the market for a new car, you probably realised that Connected Cars are becoming ubiquitous with increased deployment of telematics and infotainment services. The Connected car is out in the streets, industry targets and predictions are:

 Over 20% of global vehicle sales in 2015 to include embedded connectivity solutions

 Over 50% of global vehicles sales in 2015 to be connected (either by embedded tethered or smart phone integration)

 Every car to be connected in multiple manners by 2025

As examples, Ford’s Cloud-Connected Car, the Evos Concept was announced at CES 2012, and

AT&T+General Motors are announcing to sell 4G LTE-connected cars, smart-cars with built-in Wi-Fi hot spots.

Leveraging several wireless technologies as Bluetooth, 4G, LTE, Satellite, Wi-Fi, Wimax, and M2M (Machine-to-Machine) embedded technologies, Your car is becoming a mobile device, with constant connectivity. Applications cover safety systems such as intersection collision, avoidance and platooning, emergency services, as well as non-safety systems as local chat room, traffic, weather, music streaming, emails, social media, broadcast, connected games, infotainment…

About Self Controlled cars: US government believes wireless systems could address 81% of all light-vehicle target crashes, this number seems very high to me, and very controversial, specially when most people believe being good drivers, needing automated systems only in extreme situation.

In any case, your next vehicle will do much more than taking you from A to B, it will connect you, direct you and protect you. Are losing control of our cars ???

4- Wearable and Bearable computers

With the advance of miniaturization, new display technologies, sensors, smaller and faster chips are now enabling us to wear computers just like we would wear clothes or glasses or watches, and to interact with you based on the context of the situation, this new generation of miniature computers are called Wearable or Bearable computers, they are unobtrusive internet-connected multimedia computers built within clothes, glasses, watches or belt and to become a seamless extension of the body and mind. Wearable or Bearable Computing applications include seeing aids, memory aids, photographic memory, wayfinding, Personal Safety Devices (PSDs), heart and health monitoring, augmented reality, diminished reality, mediated reality, glogging, surveillance, smart badges, language translator, music and video streaming, visual and audio email, social networking, gaming, and overall will replace a smartphone, a tablet or a laptop. Until now most devices are used in the military, commercial, industrial, financial, and medical industries, however it is now coming to the consumer mass market with Google Glasses, Clothing+ sensors, MicroVision displays, Xybernaut Poma optical mobile assistant, Nike+ gear, internet connected shoes, Neptune Pine android SmartWatch, Pebble Wirstwatch, Apple iWatch and many more soon to come. Some may feel reluctant to being assimilated into a cybernetic relationship with computer technology, and but let’s face it, resistance is futile, it will happen.

Wearing computers will make you feel like a SuperHero with ubiquity power !

5- Micro-Networks

Don’t be shy, from 7 to 107 years old, most of us already use Social Networks, but the rise of Micro-Networks is going to change the social game and outreach. Social networking is about sharing, but sometime there is stuff you don’t want to share with all your social network, and the group or circles functions do not allow you to the full extent of sharing only specific topics of interest to the relevant people. Micro-Networks are the solution, they are more intimate and private communication social networks focusing on a common point of interest or topic, a local community, a political group, a club, a sport, a shared passion or hobby etc.

Social platforms such as Quora and Facebook are already at the top of the micro-network trend, but new platforms such as Path, Change.org, Neighborland, Collective Action Toolkit (Frog), are ramping up and many more will follow.

These micro-social-platforms are the new wave of social networking, go for it and share your passion, or may be just create your own !

In conclusion, those are only a very few 5 of the new technologies impacting our life in the short term, there are so many more, time goes faster and faster, if you don’t surf at the top of the wave, there is no way you will be able to catch-up, The Future Is Now, Embrace it, Ride it !

Is your datacenter ready for BYOD ? (Bring-Your-Own-Device)

I remember a time where my employer was paying for my mobile phone, my laptop and my internet provider…With the reduction of IT budgets and the evolution of mobile technologies, the times are changing and the working habits are changing: the time of carrying 2 phones, your personal phone and a phone provided by your employer, and the time of the employer providing a free smartphone you may like, those times are over, and therefore more and more people are now bringing their own mobile device, smartphone, tablet or laptop, to their workplace, and more and more companies implement a Bring-Your-Own-Device policy  (BYOD).

However it means IT has to manage new and more devices; In a budget perspective it means IT is replacing CAPEX (Capital expenses) for OPEX (Operational Expenses).

A recent survey from CDW, shows that IT managers surveyed report that 89% of their employees use personally owned mobile devices for work.

But is your enterprise ready for it? And is your Datacenter ready for BYOD?

BYOD requires a strategy, process and policies, as well as hardware and software platforms, and applications, to secure, support and manage these new devices and endpoints.

So what are the challenges facing your organization?

What are your user’s expectations?

What are the benefits for your organisation?

What do you have to do to be successful?

 

1- The Challenges facing your organization and Datacenter

A new survey conducted in EMEA showed that 70% of the enterprises surveyed allowed their employee to bring their own devices, 40% allowing access to corporate applications and 30% allowing only access to internet.

First challenges that come to mind are, of course are bout security and bandwidth, in fact they come in that order: Employee device introducing a virus, Employee losing a device with critical data, Employee staling data.. but there are more. Here are the details results of this survey about those challenges:

– 20%: Securely connect employee device

– 18%: Ensure mobile device security

– 16%: Establish a corporate policy for acceptable use

– 14%: Enforce access rights, based on user, device and application

– 11%: Build enough wireless coverage and capacity (bandwidth)

– 10%: Avoid the use of more IT resources

– 9%: Evaluate the business benefit relative to risk

We can add a few more challenges you will be facing like policy enforcement, physical theft, malware prevention, IT support increase, storage infrastructure readiness, education …

 

2- What are the benefits of BYOD for your organization?

The BYOD brings some challenges but also provide some benefits:

– Increase in employees productivity and job satisfaction

– Reduced number of devices to purchase and support

– Reduced set-up and training time and cost, employees using devices and tools they like and know how to use

– Reduce maintenance of devices (employees take better care of their personal devices)

– Improve communication between field and office personnel as well as increased availability to customers – resulting in better customer service.

– Improve Work-Life balance of your workforce

The CDW survey also shows that 67% of small business mobile device users believe their company would lose competitive ground without mobile devices, and 94% believe their mobile devices make them more efficient.

85% of IT managers believe that mobile devices make their company more efficient.

 

3- What are the users expectations?

Based on a Forester research, 60% of companies offer BYOD, and Gartner predicts it will be 90% by 2014, accessing company data with at least 2 mobile devices.

Users love to be able to use their own device at work, not to carry multiple devices, they understand the security, policies and management challenges it generate, however they hate having to keep entering 8 digits passwords for each app., specially when it requires special characters (!)

The chart describe quite well some of the key users expectations:

– Users do not want their personal data to risk to be wiped-out

– Users do not want to have to enter enterprise passwords for personal apps

– Users want to be able to keep using personal apps as facebook, twitter, iCloud, Pandora, Spotify, dropbox etc.

Best scenario would be to create virtual separation on mobile devices applying different policies to personal and company data.

 

4- What do you have to do to be successful?

– Define a BYOD Strategy

– Create and communicate clear and strong policies and guidelines

– Educate your employees on Cybersecurity

– Plan for network bandwith and storage

– Secure personal mobile devices to protect your network and data accordingly

– Implement a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution.

– Implement a Mobile Application Management (MAM) solutions

– Other option is to contract a managed service solution from a service providers, ie in the cloud managed services solution

– Approve any mobile device being used in your business

– Have a separate network designed solely for BYOD devices

– Optimize your web platform for mobile devices and offer mobile apps for your business to your employee and to your clients

– Monitor results: security, performance, resources, cost, employee and customer satisfaction.

 

In summary, Does BYOD make sense for all businesses? Probably not. Different organisations have different business needs and security requirements and Risk policies.

Does it always provide all benefits promised? Probably not. Some businesses will get more benefits than others. As an example, about Capex vs Opex expenditures, Kris Lovejoy, VP of IBM IT Risk Management, declared at the recent Reboot Ottawa Conference that IBM spends more on securing and managing employees purchased devices than they do on those provided by the company, even when cost of the device has been factored in.

BYOD has become one of the main drivers of IT and Network transformation, it poses some serious challenges to IT organisations and to datacenters but it can be successfully managed and the benefits are real and worth embracing it. However One Size Does Not Fit All !

I mainly work from my home office, but tomorrow I will bring to my company corporate office my own BlackBerry Bold and my own Blackberry Playbook tablet to work, but will still bring my company owned Lenovo laptop. They’re better be ready, I know they really are as a matter of fact, but ARE YOU READY?

and IS YOUR DATACENTER READY FOR  BYOD?