forum

Start-up aims to keep boat waste out of waterways

Most owners of the 13 million recreational boats in the United States dump their waste in the water, fouling fish and coral reefs with sewage and fuel, according to Klean Marine. The start-up plans to help boaters clean up their act.

Its founders aim to launch a service that would clean sailboats, motorboats, and yachts in ports of harbor around the country. Klean Marine would thus be able to serve, say, traveling snowbirds whether they're docked in Chicago in July or Miami in December. An annual subscription would start at $250.

Company president Kean Fulton, presenting Tuesday at the … Read more

Wal-Mart telegraphs its clean-tech needs

For many new green-tech ventures, Wal-Mart is the ideal customer, sitting on top of the economic food chain of environmentally friendly products.

On Tuesday Wal-Mart and the Cleantech Group launched a Web-based tool that provides a sort of shopping list for Wal-Mart's sustainability strategy. The Cleantech Group is hosting its Cleantech Venture Forum in San Francisco, which starts on Tuesday.

Which "innovative ideas" Wal-Mart is seeking is instructive because it points to large corporate demand for clean-tech products.

The list:

Alternative battery technology for forklifts. Wind harvesting. Closed-loop water processing. Sustainable building materials. &… Read more

Blu-ray beats HD DVD... Now get ready for the next format war

I have to hand it to fellow analyst Rob Enderle. Way back in August of 2005, he called the high-def format war in a piece titled "Blu-ray Wins or Nothing Does."

Then again, he also said in that article that "the more likely outcome is that the market will bypass both products and move to something else," so perhaps he wasn't perfectly prescient.

And come to think of it, a year later (in December 2006) he changed his mind entirely in columns titled "Optical HD Battle May Be Over: HD DVD Wins," "… Read more

World Economic Forum: "Collaborative innovation is the answer to...[all] global challenges"

The World Economic Forum opened today with a call for more collaborative innovation. Tim O'Reilly talks about software above the layer of a single device, but the attendees in Davos are being asked to consider innovation above the layer of a single developer/person/group.

Imagine that.

"'The Power of Collaborative Innovation' is the answer to all the big global challenges we are facing," said Co-Chair Tony Blair, [former] Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1997-2007).

The sessions have titles like "Business: Competing While Collaborating." I would assume the conference organizers have something more in … Read more

Microsoft in new e-government push

Microsoft is making a new bid to get governments to go with its technology, rather than open-source alternatives such as Linux and OpenOffice.

At its Government Leaders Forum in Berlin, which kicks off on Tuesday, the company plans to announce what it is calling the Citizen Service Platform. It's not a whole new set of products, but rather templates and architecture that use a range of Microsoft products to provide electronic access for residents.

At its most elaborate, large governments could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on everything from Dynamics CRM to SharePoint to Internet Information Server to … Read more

Blu-Ray wins, HD DVD loses. Probably.

Warner Bros. Entertainment may have cast the deciding vote in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war, announcing yesterday-- just before the big Consumer Electronics Show opens in Las Vegas-- that Warner will support Blu-ray exclusively starting in June 2008.

I'm at CES, where I've just left the CES Unveiled press event. Although there was a lot of cool stuff in the various booths providing a sneak peek of the CES show floor (all 1.8 million square feet of it)--and I'll be covering some of this cool stuff in future blog posts-- the topic of … Read more

The one thing (question) for a better world

In fin d'ann?e mood, saving the world is en vogue -- and asking the "one thing" question obviously, too.

Inspired by Leonardo DiCaprio's gloom and doom documentary "The 11th Hour," OnEarth magazine asked a panel of leading scientists and activists to "move beyond bleak diagnoses and offer concrete proposals for a sustainable future:"

"Which one thing would you do to save the world?"

You can view it on YouTube or read a transcript of the entire conversation here.

In a similar vein, but slightly modifying OnEarth's impetus (and … Read more

Six Apart is fixing forums

Six Apart, which makes the Movable Type blogging platform and hosts the consumer blog sites Vox, TypePad, and LiveJournal, is releasing a new and very interesting update to its professional-level Movable Type 4 software: Integrated forums.

There are other forums tools for sites and blogs (see Jive Software, for example), but the Six Apart product, called the Movable Type Community Solution, is the first that I know of that integrates this tightly into a blogging platform. With MTCS, users logged into the blogging platform for commenting will automatically have a login for a site's forums, and they will be … Read more

Format war fanboys shut down AVS Forum

Anyone who's ever visited AVS Forum--probably the largest online forum for audio/visual discussion--knows that people can get carried away. And anyone who has dared to venture in the HD DVD and Blu-ray forum is well aware of rampant fanboy flame wars--the kind that used to be reserved for game consoles.

Well apparently a couple of the AV geeks have gone too far, which has led to AVS Forum moderators to completely shut down the HD DVD and Blu-ray forums until the end of the week. And in case you think it's an overreaction, check out this quote from the letter they posted to AVS members:

We have seen members attacking other members not only in debate, which is the right way, but with physical threats that have involved police and possible legal action.

Wow.… Read more

Beta goes meta: From innovation to trend in a heartbeat

David Armano from Critical Mass will moderate a panel on "Always in Beta: How Big Business Can Benefit from 'Little' Innovation" at the Forrester Consumer Forum (October 10 to 13). Here's a quick synopsis: "Innovation isn't limited to R & rooms anymore. The Web 2.0 movement--powered by start-ups such as Twitter, Malhalo and even YouTube, has proven that innovation often happens in iterations. Build, launch, tweak, measure, repeat. Digital experiences seem to be 'always in beta'--learning and evolving along the way."

The fact that the Forrester Consumer Forum dedicates a panel to … Read more