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First, I want to thank the large number of readers who have taken the time to add comments to my blog. I've been blogging for about three years now, and this is the highest volume of comments, and the kindest words in them, that I've ever encountered. It's very encouraging.

Second, I should apologize for being lazy about adding new posts. I've been busy with books. The third edition of my How-To book entitled How to Set Up Your Motorcycle Workshop is coming out momentarily (it was supposed to be out in mid-January, but the publisher warned me it would be delayed at the printer). I have a collection of short stories entitled Shakedown Blues, which is just out. I'm also hammering hard and heavy on the keyboard with my first full novel, provisionally entitled Red. I hope to have Red out sometime in the second quarter of 2010. I'll have more to say about these books later in this post.

The main subject of this posting, however, is blogging itself. I've received multiple requests for advice about blogging. Now, I do not consider myself an expert. Lots of other folks have blogs that generate a lot more traffic than mine. But, I've been at it awhile, so here goes.

Blogging is basically another in a long list of publishing methods. It fills a niche between social networking, and professionally produced news websites. Professional journalists treat blogging as the online equivalent of newspaper or magazine editorial writing. That is, they commit to a regular deadline schedule, and write more-or-less to a set length. Usually, they draft the copy for their postings using a word processor (WP), such as Microsoft Word (I use the Open Source equivalent: OpenOffice Writer). They revise and polish articles extensively in their WP, and transfer them to the blogging software for publication. I do a final polish in the blogging software, where I can see what the final result will look like, and then hit the "publish" button.

Blogging software was developed a few years ago to make it easier for journalists, who are generally not web experts, to create copy for Internet publication. I believe the original idea was to make it possible for journalists to bang out short, highly formatted articles quickly. The folks who wrote the software imagined that writers would type their articles directly into the blogging software, skipping the word processing step.

That goes to show that blogging software developers had no clue as to how professional writers work. Professional writers start by spending a pile of time researching what they're going to write, so they know what facts they'll use, and have organized and checked them beforehand. By the time they pull out the electronic equivalent of a blank sheet of paper, they already have a clear idea of what the article will be about, what facts they will include, what will be their "lead" (which is the first few sentences designed to pique the reader's interest). They also have a pretty clear outline in their heads.

They then bang out copy based on that plan. The idea is to avoid writer's block by typing whatever comes into their heads, no matter how inane, confused, or inappropriate. Then, they go back and revise the article to make sure it's clear, concise, interesting, and complete. They especially try to weed out extraneous material that shouldn't have been included, anyway. Finally, they go back to check for typos, spelling errors, bad sentence structures, and so forth. All this work is best done using fully functional word processing software. Blogging software just isn't up to the task.

Once the writer is happy with his or her manuscript in Word format, he or she can transfer it to the blogging software. The blogging software provides, usually, a window for entering the title, and another for entering the text. It also provides a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) view of the posting as it will appear on the website, and some means of adding images.

Professional writers are all familiar with the effect that text seems different when seen in its final form. It's a strange phenomenon where, when you look at the final copy in a letter, magazine, book, or whatever, you always see things that you wish you'd done differently. Typos appear out of nowhere. Sentences that looked great in the manuscript seem clumsy in the final form, and so forth. So, professionals always look at a final proof of their articles as the readers will see them before releasing them on an unsuspecting world. Blogging software provides that opportunity.

Another thing blogging software does is pre-format the article. The writer doesn't have to think about where to put the ads, where to put the navigation bar, what type face to use for the title, and so forth. That's all done ahead of time by a layout designer (who might be the author some time in the past), and enforced by the software itself. The author only has to worry about the words.

Don't agonize over what blogging software to use. All the blogging software I've used, and I've used four different systems, does pretty much the same thing, can be used pretty much the same way, and produces pretty much the same result. For this blog, I chose MoveableType for its compatibility with Google AdSense. I wanted to run Google ads, so I made sure the blogging software worked well with them.

I do not, generally, design my own layout, or set up the software. I hired a professional team through my Internet service provider (ISP) to set it all up and make sure it worked. I then did some minor tweaking to the blog's look and feel. I could do that because forty years ago I made the commitment to learn computer programming, and fifteen years ago I made the effort to learn how to build websites using HTML (the programming language of websites), and seven or eight years ago I taught myself how to write PHP (a language folks use to control all the fancy databases and such needed for interactive websites). Tweaking blog formats is a dawdle after that.

Most bloggers, who don't have the programming background, just use the templates the blogging software provides. That's what it's for, anyway.

So, that's a rundown on what it takes to write a blog. To be successful, you should post at least two entries a week. More is better. The most successful bloggers post every day. Some even post more than once a day.

I find that my readers prefer longer posts. I know bloggers, however, who post a few lines once or twice a day. I feel they'd be better off on Facebook or Twitter, but that's just my opinion.

Changing the subject, I promised to provide a little more information about my books for those readers who might be interested.

For some reason, the third edition of How to Set Up Your Motorcycle Workshop was delayed. It was supposed to come off the printing press by 15 January, but still isn't out. You can, however, preorder it on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other online booksellers. A few collector copies of the first and second editions are also available online for exhorbitant prices. Most motorcycle hobbyists are familiar with the book, but I think it might be of interest to more general readers who just like reading my stuff.

Shakedown Blues is a collection of motorcycle touring stories written originally for enthusiast magazines. I think they'd also be interesting to more general readers who like reading about road trips. Stealing an idea from Herman Melville, I've embedded the stories themselves in explanatory chapters that would be of interest to general readers, and to folks interested in some of what goes on behind the scenes at national magazine editorial departments.

The novel I'm working on now, Red, involves a transcontinental motorcycle trip; a six-foot three-inch red head with a chip on her shoulder; a mysterious biker with apparently limitless resources and a Zen attitude; an evil step father; and a lost gold mine. The title refers to our heroine's nickname, which she got for the color of her hair, and those cute little freckles she has all over ... . The story includes elements of science fiction, a murder mystery, sex, a love story (or four), more sex, eastern philosophy, a look behind the scenes at the biker lifestyle, a peek into how engineers develop advanced technology, and some hair-raising adventure. Did I mention the sex?

It'll be out in a few months, if I ever finish writing the thing.

Racks of Cisco Unified Computing Systems gear supporting 23 different labs at VMworld. Source: Cisco Systems

In previous blog postings, I've attempted to pique your interest in the rapid technological changes that are transforming the data centers that we all rely on. Very soon these changes will revolutionize how folks around the world will use the Internet and what they will be able to do with it.

You don't have to just take my word for it, though. Tomorrow (Wednesday, 9/29) Cisco Systems will host a live Internet TV broadcast and Q&A session to discuss its vision for Data Center 3.0 and how the company's core technologies and new solutions are mapping to its overall corporate business strategy. Best of all, you don't have to be anyone special to attend. The session will be distributed free to all. No registration required. Just visit the event URL at 10:00 a.m. PDT and select "Play" to launch the live presentation.

Presenters will include:

Rajiv Ramaswami, vice president and general manager of the Data Center Switching Technology Group, will discuss how storage networking technology is evolving, including a glimpse at Cisco's future technology for storage networking innovation.

Ed Chapman, vice president of product management, Server Access and Virtualization Group, Cisco, will discuss how IT organizations are evolving their data centers with new protocols such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to reduce operating costs and simplify management. The presentation will include a glimpse at new technology being developed for unifying SAN and LAN networks in the data center.

Derek Masseth, Senior Director for Infrastructure Services at the University of Arizona, will describe how the university recently united its data center networks using Fibre Channel over Ethernet to create a unified fabric. Masseth will explain the reasons for choosing this technology and the upgrade process, as well as benefits and cost reductions achieved.

The event will air Tuesday, September 29, 2009, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. PDT. Attendees who experience difficulties connecting can contact support at (866) 614-0208 or (617) 778-9652. Phone support is available 30 minutes prior to and after the event, as well as during the videocast. Attendees may also submit an Online Support Request to CiscoTV_help@external.cisco.com or ciscotv_help@btci.com if necessary.

Volcano monitoring is a task that the Three Ds say definitely should be automated. Source: NASA

I've had occasion to write articles about factory automation several times, and one question that often comes up is: "Why automate a manual process?" In the short run, automation is expensive. It's a lot cheaper to keep running the same old manual system (especially if it's working well) than to take on the capital expense of replacing it with automation.

Any automated system replacing a manual one will be, by definition, novel. There is large technical risk in any novel system. Experienced engineers know that nobody is smart enough get it right the first time (at least not with any consistency). There are always things you don't know, forgot, or did just a little bit wrong - not to mention the dreaded unintended consequences that plague any complex system.

These days, it's possible to automate virtually any task. The challenge in the industrial engineering field is to interlink islands of automation into what my friends at Siemens like to call "Totally Integrated Automation" (TIA).

There are, however, still a few tasks that are manual in nature. Folding them in under the TIA umbrella, whether using technology from Siemens or another factory automation equipment vendor, as manual systems is problematic. There is a tendency to automate any task as a knee-jerk reaction to manualism.

That can be a mistake. Not everything should be automated, even in a TIA environment. Some things people are better at doing than machines. There aren't many, and the number grows fewer as automated systems become ever more capable. But, they are still there, and represent big land mines for system integrators.

The issue will also start to impact consumers in the general public as embedded control systems spread throughout society. In fact, it's already becoming significant in the automotive space, as systems become commercialized to monitor (and correct) driver actions that the computers deem suspect. Poor shifting habits were the first to succumb to the engineers' heavy hands with automatic transmissions. Then, decades later, overbraking by panicked drivers was theoretically eliminated by anti-lock brake systems (ABS). Now, we're poised for a host of computer intrusions into the driving process, from falling asleep at the wheel to clumsy parking techniques.

There are a number of criteria that can be used to decide when to automate a task, but the earliest, and still the most universally applicable, is the Three Ds. The Three Ds hail from the early days of robotics, when doing anything automatically was a major challenge. It's a razor that can be used to divide sharply between what is essentially for humans to do, and what is fair game for automation.

(A razor is a logical device used to guide difficult this versus that decisions. The famous Occam's Razor, which tells you to always favor the simplest hypothesis that explains the facts, is a well known example. Razors should be short, easy to understand and apply, and unambiguous. It also helps if the actually work!)

The Three Ds are "dirty, dull, and dangerous." The razor says that any task that exhibits even one of these characteristics should be considered for automation. If it exhibits any two, its a strong candidate for automation with all deliberate speed. If it exhibits all three, get the humans out of there as fast as their little legs can carry them.

Recently, NASA deployed some robotic sensing devices atop Mt. St. Helens that demonstrate how to apply the Three Ds. The task is to carefully monitor a number of significant variables at hot spots on the volcano.

Dirty does not just mean a tendency to get coated with unspecified unpleasant guck. I once had a summer job cleaning the hard-water scale from the insides of boiler tubes. It came out as nano-scale red powder particles suspended in the air. That was a traditionally dirty job. It was also dirty in a wider Three Ds sense: ambient conditions were such as to physically stress human organisms. Basically, the insides of boilers were uncomfortably hot. Not quite hyperthermia-inducing hot, but hot enough that you didn't want to be in there any longer than you had to be. While being outdoors on the top of a high mountain might seem an ideal environment to a city dweller locked in an office, to those of us who've been left out in the elements long enough to feel the effects of exposure, it qualifies as mildly dirty. Add in noxious vapors and other things that tend to leak out of volcanic hot spots, and it gets dirty, indeed.

Dull really means tedious. Anything repetitive, especially if the situation requires constant attention, is dull. Again, data logging is something that sounds like a walk in the park to those who haven't done it manually. I remember one day as an undergraduate student, when I was studying the stability of an oscillator I'd just finished building. I set the thing up with a frequency counter displaying measurements to six digit accuracy on a nixie-tube display. This was before the days of LED readouts, and long before PC-based data acquisition. Only the last two digits were changing. I sat in a (happily reasonably comfortable) chair writing down the last three digits every 30 seconds for six hours straight. No bathroom breaks. No talking with the guy at the next bench. No reading a book. That taught me the real meaning of dull. The poor robots on Mt. St. Helens are tasked with doing that job 24/7 with the only reprieve coming when the mountain next blows its top and ends their miserable existences.

Dangerous means who or what is undertaking the task is in imminent danger of annihilation, or at least grievous bodily harm. NASA's robots weren't put in nice, safe locations. They were put in places the volcanologists deemed most likely to vaporize catastrophically, taking the robots' spindly little bodies with them.

Folks - and you're going to see a lot of them in the next year or so as the economic recovery seems endlessly "jobless" - who complain that automation is taking away their jobs should heed the Three Ds. The only people that automation (properly done) will put out of work are those who are so stupid they embrace tedium, so expendable they get sent into the lion's maw, or so desperate that they're willing to work under inhuman conditions. The rest of us will make do with the good jobs.

Some media analysts have admitted to being confused by the fact that companies engaged in the personal computer business, such as Dell and Microsoft, have recently published less-than-stellar financial results and gloomy guidance for the future, while other companies, such as Intel and Apple, are fairly jumping with glee over future prospects. This seeming paradox evaporates, however, as soon as one realizes that the vast majority of computers aren't PCs, anymore.

I talked about one aspect of this phenomenon in this blog's last entry ("The PC as Dodo"). In today's entry, I'll talk about a second trend: embedded systems technology. I've mentioned embedded systems before in this blog, but today I want to get a little deeper into the guts of the things to show how this trend affects so many technology companies so differently.

Embedded systems, as Figure 1 shows, generally embody a control loop where a microcontroller reads signals from sensors attached to some equipment out in the real world (IRL). Based on those sensor readings, the microcontroller calculates some changes it wants to make IRL to control the equipment. The equipment responds to these changing signals, which changes the sensor readings.

Figure 1: Embedded systems include a control loop governed by a microcontroller.

What makes the system a control loop, rather than the proverbial snake swallowing its tail, is the fact that there is a control input, called a set point to which the controller compares the sensor inputs. The controller bases its output signals on how the actual readings from the sensors compare to the set point. In actual fact, there may be several sensors and several set points, and the controller likely will take into account how the sensor inputs are changing with time as well as their instantaneous values. People can select how they want the system to behave by changing the set points.

The classic embedded system that everyone uses as an example is a digital thermostat. This system has one sensor (a temperature sensor sampling the room air), one IRL equipment unit (a heater or air conditioner), and one controller (the digital thermostat). You control the temperature you want to have in the room by changing the temperature set point. Almost any digital thermostat worth its price will also include a time sensor (a clock) that allows you to program different temperature set points depending on the time of day.

What makes this technology important is the fact that embedded systems are now used to control just about every device we have. In the past, I've commented that microcontrollers now run just about every device more complicated than a lead pencil. That may be an exaggeration, but not much of one. To paraphrase the announcer from the old "Chickenman" radio show: "They're everywhere! They're everywhere!"

(If you don't know about Chickenman, you missed one of the great campy entertainment experiences of the mid-1960s. Episodes from the original series and two resurrections are still available for purchase on the Internet.)

Figure 2: Microcontrollers include a microprocessor, memory and I/O circuits on a single chip.

The heart of an embedded system is that little microcontroller. Figure 2 shows what's inside a typical microcontroller. It's a monolithic integrated circuit (IC) that has a microprocessor, multiple types of memory, including read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM) similar to what you see in a PC, along with a programmable read-only memory that holds the software that the microprocessor needs to run, along with several types of input/output circuits to take care of reading sensors, driving actuators, and communicating with the outside world. Many microcontrollers even have microscopic radio sets to communicate wirelessly with other systems.

What sets these things apart is that, unlike the components of a personal computer, all of this circuitry is crammed into one tiny chip. As anyone who's seen a PC with the covers off knows, the PC architecture has its circuitry spread around on a number of ICs. That takes up a lot of space, adds weight, and makes the whole thing bulky. One characteristic that embedded systems, from experimental nanobots to cellphones to television set-top boxes, share is the need to have their controllers as tiny and as light as possible.

Now, the semiconductor companies that make chips for PCs also make chips for embedded systems. The companies that use these chips in their products are more-or-less traditional industrial companies that make dishwashers, microwave ovens, cars, cellphones, etc.

The software these microcontrollers run is not the same as the software PCs run, either. Instead of operating systems like Windows Vista, or Apple Mac OS, they run things like LynxOS, QNX, and VxWorks that most people have never heard of.

In the world of computer technology, embedded systems are where the action is. PCs, for all their historical significance and public share of mind, are a small part of the market with lackluster (at best) growth prospects.

So, companies involved in the embedded system business, such as Intel and Apple, report spectacular profits and predict stellar growth prospects. Companies whose businesses depend on the PC industry complain of shrinking markets and poor future prospects.

I've just spent some time debating with my book publisher at Whitehorse Press about what we should put into a new chapter to be included in the third edition of my book How to Set Up Your Motorcycle Workshop. The reason there's any debate is because we're in the middle of a change in computer architecture that's bigger than the introduction of the PC. (See my July 8 blog entry "Why a Thin Layer of Chrome Will be the New Thick.")

First of all, I need to specify what I mean by "PC." Some folks want to reserve the term for stand-alone desktop machines running a Windows operating system (OS). I, on the other hand, am old school. To me "PC" is just shorthand for "personal computer," and that means a computer made for personal use by, well, a person. It includes all the offerings of such machines from Acer to Zenith . Main PC OSs include Mac OS, certain distributions of Linux, and, of course, the various versions of Windows. It also includes laptops, tablets, etc. that are just modified packages for computers meant to be used in exactly the same way that the desktop systems are used.

Closely allied are workstations, which are intended for use in an intensive work environment. They are generally connected to an enterprise intranet, rather than directly to the Internet. They usually have enhanced processors and memories, and data-storage capabilities. They generally run larger and more involved programs appropriate to meeting enterprise-level needs.

Also similar to PCs are netbooks, which are essentially stripped-down models intended for thin-client applications, such as surfing the net. They have far less memory storage space, and may even lack hard drives. What distinguishes netbooks from what I call PCs is their intended use as thin-client terminals at the expense of making them practically useless for anything else.

Just as PCs' performance is sandwiched between that of workstations and netbooks, their price range is as well. Workstations are generally more expensive (often several times more expensive) than PCs, while netbooks typically cost far less.

In the past, any introduction to computer use would have to start with choosing an operating system. That's no longer the case, however. The choice of operating system has become pretty much moot, as there's application software available for every popular OS to do pretty much anything, and non-PC architectures are becoming increasingly important.

Advanced networking technologies, such as virtualization and cloud computing, are driving this shift by making it possible to serve up most applications, from email to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as Web applications. With this technology, the user's computer becomes a thin client - little more than a terminal to display the system's user interface. Since Web applications are OS agnostic, choice of OS to run on your personal computing station (PC, netbook, mobile platform, or whatever) is immaterial.

These are not future technologies. As a technology journalist, I get to see these things develop years before mainstream media. I've been watching these technologies - and using them - for about five years. They are quite ready for prime time, and in regular use by mainstream computer users today.

All major ISPs use virtualization and cloud computing technology to run their operations. Most e-commerce sites are built on MySQL databases. This generation of PCs are capable of virtualization using software downloadable from Xen. Every bank website is a thin-client Web app.

Dell's already seeing PC sales crash. Microsoft's scrambling to react. Apple's already made the transition, as have Google and leading chip makers like Intel.

In the end, PCs as such will be squeezed practically out of existence. Very soon PCs will be dinosaurs. Ordinary folks won't have or want to have them. It'll all be netbooks and mobile computing. Even Kindle may be obsolete before it really gets started! It'll just be an application on next years' iPods and Blackberrys.

What will count will be the application you run, and not the OS.

The trend is moving much faster than I thought it would. I figured we'd still have another 2-3 years for it to roll out. Now it looks more like a matter of months.

The PC, as such, is already dead, the general public just doesn't know it, yet. PC sales will not recover significantly from the present slump. "Computer" sales growth has already moved to other platforms, such as products from Apple, RIM, and Palm.

The media is painting it as a wrestling match between giants: Google vs. Microsoft. Operating system king Microsoft recently introduced a new Bing! browser, followed last night by search engine titan Google's announcement that it's working on an operating system for netbooks.

As usual, the mass media have somewhat missed the mark. What's actually happening is the whole landscape of computing is changing, and a race is on to see who's going to plant their flag on the new territory first.

The change in computing is the steady migration of computer technology from a thick client model to a thin client model for most routine computing needs. If you haven't yet heard about this, yet, let me explain:

Thick Clients are powerful stand-alone computers with network access. To do something useful, you download the file you want to do it to from a server; do it; then upload the file to the server again, keeping (or not) a copy of the updated file on your local computer.

Thin Clients are computers with powerful communications and display capabilities, but which are otherwise pretty anemic by conventional computer-performance standards. To do something useful, you visit an extremely powerful server, which is actually a supercomputer based on cloud-computing architecture (see "Computing With Your Head in the Clouds"). This server creates a virtual computer (See "Virtualization flies under the mass-media radar") with enough resources to run an application program (which it preloads onto the virtual computer) to do whatever it is you want to do with the file (which is stored somewhere in the computing cloud). When you're done doing your thing, the server updates the file and dissolves the virtual computer into - nothing.

Thin clients have been around for a long time. The old time-shared computer terminals we used in the 1970s to access minicomputers were very much like today's thin clients, which you know as netbooks.

The term was coined in the early 1990s by Tim Negris, VP of Server Marketing at Oracle Corp. The technology has been growing in popularity and usefulness ever since. Expect in the future (probably less than 5 years) that this style of computing will be almost universal, with everything from mobile devices to home entertainment centers architected as thin clients allowing users to interface over the Internet with service providers, such as banks, online stores, news providers, and entertainment content providers. I'm already writing this blog entry using exactly this technology!

Don't invest in companies that make personal computers.

So, how does the Google vs. Microsoft struggle fit into this landscape? They both see it coming and want to provide you with the means to partake of its bounties. The problem is that they have competition. All the makers of mobile devices, household appliances, TV set-top-boxes, telecommunications suppliers, and virtually anyone who makes anything with even the potential for Internet connectivity sees it coming, too. Especially, all the Internet service providers building all the computer clouds see it coming. Google and Microsoft are really just struggling to avoid being left behind!

Google does have one advantage, at least relative to Microsoft. Google is wisely basing its Chrome OS on Linux, which is the Open Source leader. To develop application software in a Linux-based thin-client environment, a company can hire a few pimply-faced ex-hackers who learned to roll their own Linux distribution before they reached puberty. Software engineers with expertise in the latest of the never-ending stream of Windows versions are harder to come by.

Basically, the days when anybody cares what operating system or browser your Internet-connected device uses are gone. In the thin-client/cloud-computing world of the future, like in the post-Civil-War land of Gone With the Wind, frankly, my dear, nobody is going to give a damn.

Nearly every technophile on Earth has seen Star Wars medical droids subbing for human physicians, surgeons, and other medical professionals. Unlike most technological marvels portrayed by Hollywood as existing sometime in the far future, such robots aren't that far from reality. A case in point is GeckoSystems Intl. Corp.'s CareBot robotic elder-care system, which graduated to nurses' aid status with the addition of a miniaturized, solid state onboard blood pressure and pulse rate monitor.

Carebot interacting with house-bound individual.

"We believe that the incorporation of an onboard blood pressure/pulse rate monitoring system for our CareBots will further enhance their cost effective, utilitarian capabilities. Our CareBot's ability to automatically follow and verbally remind a designated care receiver at predetermined dates and times that their blood pressure/pulse rate needs to be checked by this onboard, integrated monitoring system will enable a higher level of safety, security and cost savings for those at home and in nursing homes, assisted care facilities, hospitals, etc.," observed Martin Spencer, President/CEO of GeckoSystems.

The company says CareBot is a multitasking personal robot incorporating advanced, proprietary AI engines. Given the CareBot's network connectivity and Internet accessibility, alerts of vital signs and other various healthcare events outside of normal range can be quickly sent by telephone, instant or text messaging, and/or email.

GeckoSystems uses sensor fusion extensively for actionable situation awareness in their complete multitasking personal robot, the CareBot. Their mobile robot's hardware and software architecture is designed to be expandable and upgradeable such that many years of cost effective usage can be readily achieved.

The primary market for this product is the family for use in eldercare, care for the chronically ill, and childcare. The primary distribution channel for this new home appliance is the thousands of independent personal computer retailers in the U.S.

Spencer suggests thinking of it as a new type of labor saving, time management automatic home appliance. The unit decreases the difficulty and stress for the caregiver who needs to watch over family members most, if not much, of the time day in and day out due to concerns about their well being, safety, and security. Not infrequently, the primary caregiver has a 24 hour, 7 days a week responsibility. There is concern that medication will be missed or the care receiver have an accident requiring immediate assistance. And the care receiver may be very resistant to a "stranger" coming in to her home and "running things" in the care giver's absence.

Spencer points out that the CareBot is a new kind of companion that always stays close to the care receiver, enabling family and friends to care for them from afar. It tells them jokes, retells family anecdotes, reminds them to take medication, reminds them that family is coming over soon (or not at all), recites Bible verses, plays favorite songs and/or other music. It alerts them when unexpected visitors, or intruders are present. It notifies designated caregivers when a potentially harmful event has occurred, such as a fall, fire in the home, or simply been not found by the CareBot for too long. It responds to calls for help and notifies those that the caregiver determined should be immediately notified when any predetermined adverse event occurs.

The family can customize the personality of the CareBot, modulating the voice's cadence to be fast or slow. The intonation can be breathy, or abrupt. The voice's volume can range from very loud to very soft. The response phrases from the CareBot for recognized words and phrases can be colloquial and/or unique to the family's own heritage. The personality can range from brassy to timid depending on how the caregiver, and others appropriate, chooses it to be.

Addition of medical-condition monitoring technology is a landmark for the robotic care system, upgrading its functionality from strictly social interaction as a companion (no mean feat itself!) to managed-care activity that may be beyond the capabilities of an untrained human caregiver.

As with so many terms bandied about in mass media, "Smart Grid" is a cutesy umbrella term that allows politicians, analysts, and newscasters to vaguely refer to a collection of technologies that neither they nor their audiences fully comprehend, with advantages that are easily stated, and of uncertain measurability.

While that sounds pretty negative, let me point out that nothing in the above paragraph says anything against the technologies themselves, or their value, but merely pans vague marketspeak terms in general, and the folks who rely on them for ... anything.

Smart grids are part of a general technology trend toward incorporating embedded microcontrollers and data-communication capabilities into all sorts of previously existing devices. For those unfamiliar with them, a "microcontroller" is an integrated circuit that includes a microprocessor and peripheral circuits that allow the microprocessor to sense conditions and events in the external world (data acquisition) and put out signals to drive actuators in the external world (control).

Perhaps the first "smart" devices were automobile engines, which came under microprocessor control during the late 1970s, long before the term "smart xxx" became current. Such engine control modules (ECMs) sensed such variables as outside air temperature and throttle position, and used that information to control such parameters as fuel/air ratio and spark timing. Later, ECMs gained the ability to communicate with additional embedded microcontrollers managing such functions as anti-lock braking systems (ABS) and alarm systems. Modern automobiles now contain dozens of networked microcontrollers operating nearly all functions.

Today, most significant appliances operate under guidance of microcontrollers. Microwave ovens, dishwashers, clothes dryers, televisions, and home thermostats are familiar examples. The extent to which manufacturing operations rely on "smart" technology is even more profound.

Electricity generation and distribution networks, however, are far behind other industries in incorporating smart technology. That is the impetus behind all of the noise and fury about "Smart Grids" in the media.

To be fair, there are significant barriers to incorporating smart technology into electric-power infrastructure. Most significantly, it is imperative to keep the system operating reliably while applying new technology to it. Second, the cost of upgrading existing equipment that was never intended to be part of a computer-integrated system is, shall we say, large. There are many additional issues to be considered when making the move to smart utility grids.

The motivation to incorporate computer control and networking technology into the electric power system is not just to make it more "modern." The concept avoids Scheiber's Rule (Just because you can doesn't mean you should.) by solving a number of present and future problems arising from electric-utility development trends.

The first issue is the fact that the present distribution grid developed from early systems where a single generating plant distributed power to an isolated netword of loads. That placed the responsibility for maintaining voltage, frequency, and phase of the provided electricity squarely on one generating facility. Such installations are amenable to simple closed-loop control.

Later, but still quite some time ago, outputs from multiple generating plants were combined to supply power to the user network. That created the issue of coordinating the output levels and phases of the sources. At least, the sources on a given network were controlled by a common authority capable of centrally guiding the generators via more complex closed-loop control.

Problems became serious when power-distribution networks were interconnected to allow power sharing between sources operated by separate authorities. This makes simple reactive closed-loop control problematic. When you have multiple agents independently providing control inputs in response to observed conditions, the system becomes chaotic. This is not a slam on the engineers who designed and operated the system. It's a fact of life dictated by mathematics. Voltage variations, unpredictable frequency and phase shifts, and seemingly random catastrophic failures ensue.

Happily, all the folks on the supply side of the system were highly intelligent professionals who realized that the only solution was to co-operate their power-generation controls. We'll call it meta-control, where individual operators don't blindly react to every movement of the controlled system, which is what drives the system into chaotic behavior. Instead, when they observe a departure from nominal status, they first communicate among themselves, and devise a coordinated response that brings the entire system back toward nominal.

You can do that when there are relatively few operators. As the number of operators grows, the time needed to communicate and devise a coordinated strategy becomes longer, while the frequency and severity of divergences become more severe.

In the past, the economics of power-generation have favored large generating stations because they can be made more efficient. Costs for fossil fuels and nuclear power scale more slowly than generating plants' output. Emerging energy sources, such as photoelectric and wind power, have been billed as "free energy sources," although they are nothing of the kind, so power-plant efficiency figures less in the installation decision. Thus, we expect to see many more smaller plants. With more small plants, the number of sources that need to be coordinated will rise dramatically, and system-control cost and difficulty will increase.

The assumption is that increased deployment of smart-grid technology will make it possible to maintain system control in the face of increased chaos. High-speed data sharing is to improve coordination while expanded computer automation improves the speed and quality of meta-control decision making.

According to Wikipedia, support for smart grids became federal policy with passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The law, Title13, set out $100 million per fiscal year in funding for fiscal years 2008-2012, established a matching program for states, utilities and consumers to build smart grid capabilities, and created a Grid Modernization Commission to assess the benefits of demand response, and recommend protocol standards.

The Act directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to coordinate the development of smart grid standards, which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) would then promulgate through official rulemakings. Smart grids received further support with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which set aside $11 billion for the creation of a smart grid.

Progress has been swift, as it needs to be. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a proposed policy statement and action plan on 19 March 2009 for standards governing the development of a smart grid. However, FERC noted that the electric industry started moving ahead with smart grid technologies prior to these government initiatives. The Commission is proposing to establish some general principles that the smart grid standards should follow.

We have known for some years that the trend was toward more numerous smaller power plants. The handwriting has been on the wall since the introduction of a feed-in tariff (FIT) system in 1978. A feed-in tariff is an incentive structure to encourage the adoption of renewable energy through government legislation. The regional or national electricity utilities are obligated to buy renewable electricity (electricity generated from renewable sources, such as solar photovoltaics, wind power, biomass, hydropower and geothermal power) at above-market rates set by the government. The higher price helps overcome the cost disadvantages of renewable energy sources. The rate may differ among various forms of power generation.

FIT means that any Tom, Dick, and Harriett with access to enough cash can set up a generating station, then sell the power to utilities, which are obliged to buy it. This model works well for facilities, such as hospitals and certain manufacturing operations, that need to maintain back-up power generation plants in the event of power failure. Most of the time these generators stand idle. FIT allows their owners to defray some of their cost by running them during peak periods, when demand may exceed fixed-power plant capacity and electricity costs (and FIT repayments) are largest.

The unintended consequence, of course, was a more chaotic electricity environment. Specifically, since a hallmark of chaotic systems is scale invariance, departures from nominal expanded to higher spectral frequencies with smaller amplitude signals (amplitude varies inversely with frequency. While these departures are smaller, their higher frequency translates into the need for faster response. Utilities began experimenting with smart-grid technology in hope of reigning in chaos over a much larger bandwidth.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid

IBM Smart Grid

American Superconductor Smart Grid: It's More than you Think

This entry is about a survey of IT executives conducted by Symantec Corp. in which respondents indicated that Green IT budgets are rising and they are willing to pay more up front for energy efficient solutions. Before I get into that topic, however, I want to invoke the blogger's prerogative to interject personal ramblings only peripherally related to the subject.

It's been about two years now since I got really, really tired of hearing people talk about "Green" as if it were not only the most important thing in human history, but that it actually meant one thing and everyone knew what that was. It's the name of a color for pity's sake! Spectroscopically speaking, it's pretty mundane, lying dead bang in the middle of the visible spectrum. Yellow is more visible to human eyes. Red is much more exciting. Blue is about the coolest color you can see.

Green with a capital "G," however, is a broad, marketing-speak-like term intended to encompass anything and everything "environmentally friendly" (whatever that means). If most such vague terms are referred to as "buckets," Green is a bathtub. No, it's a swimming pool. It's like what Texans refer to as a "tank," which is an artificial pond containing enough water to get a whole herd of cattle through the dry season. We're talking ambiguous to an astronomical degree here!

Clearly, an underpowered electric car with bad styling and no leg room has no excuse for existing except to be Green. But, does a natural-gas-fired electric power plant, which generates the power to charge that electric car's battery, qualify as Green? It's certainly Greener than a coal-fired generating station built in the 1950s and never updated, but not as Green as a photovoltaic solar array.

I'm just asking.

Anyway, admitting the word Green (through tightly clenched teeth) to the modern English lexicon as meaning looking for ways to get the same work done (energy being defined in the professional physics game as "the ability to do work") while littering the landscape with less noxious byproducts and using up less of any limited resources, it certainly points to a noble calling. It's right up there with motherhood and apple pie on the list of things that should be encouraged by any and all means available.

So, what's the debate?

The debate is that it's hard. Ultimately, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it's a losing battle. You reach the point of diminishing returns where ekeing out that next few percent of efficiency takes more time, effort, money, etc. than all the gains made since Neandertals noticed that they got more warmth by building fires inside the cave than outside.

The point of diminishing returns is, of course, a fallacy. There is no point of diminishing returns. Returns always diminish! It's that pesky Second Law of Thermodynamics, again. The only trigger point is where the cost of the energy saved relative to the cost of saving the energy becomes greater than unity. And, both costs are moving targets.

What has changed is that the realization that the cost of energy to be saved has gone up, while the cost of saving the energy has gone down due to application of some clever computerized measurement and control technology. Now, we can actually measure, in real time, the power bleeding off into the Great Outdoors with finer granularity than ever before. The control part of the technology simultaneously gives us more effective means of doing something about it.

So, now we have a circular mechanism where clarity of observation makes it possible to know, for the first time, exactly what's going on. The picture that's emerging gives business managers apoplectic fits. That motivates facilities engineers to employ shiny new technology (always popular among engineers of every stripe) to stop up the energy leaks.

Symantec Corp. undertook the effort to measure this phenomenon by surveying senior-level IT executives about their companies' interest in Green IT strategies and solutions. Most of us techno-geeks know Symantec as a purveyor of anti-malware software applications. A closer look reveals that it does a lot more. It is, after all, descended from the old Norton Utilities company that helped us out of stupidity-induced computer jams long before anybody figured out how to surreptitiously introduce code into other people's operating systems in order to induce mayhem on purpose. It provides all sorts of tools that operate in the background to help computer users get the most out of their applications.

Ninety-seven percent of respondents, according to the Symantec announcement, state they are at least discussing a Green IT strategy, while 45% have already implemented green IT initiatives. Respondents cited key drivers as reducing electricity consumption (90%), reducing cooling costs (87%), and corporate pressure to be "green" (86%). Furthermore, 83% of respondents are now responsible or cross-charged for the electricity consumed in the data center, which brings visibility and accountability for one of IT's biggest costs to the enterprise. The typical respondent reported spending up to $27 million on data center electricity.

IT professionals are regularly deploying several key initiatives for green IT purposes. Replacing old equipment was the most popular strategy, with 95% reporting new energy efficient equipment as part of their strategy, followed by equipment for monitoring power consumption (94%), server virtualization (94%), and server consolidation (93%). Additionally, more than half (57%) of respondents see software-as-a-service offerings as Green solutions.

Significantly, respondents report a willingness to pay a premium for energy efficient products. Two-thirds of respondents said they would pay at least 10% more, while 41% are willing to pay at least 20% more. Additionally, 89% of respondents said product efficiency is either important or very important in their purchase decisions.

Company managements are supporting this practice with a significant increase in Green IT budgets. Some 73% of respondents expect some increase in Green IT budgets over the next 12 months, with 19% expecting increases of more than 10%.

It has been clear for at least a couple of years that reducing energy costs is good business. Years of political efforts to motivate Green behavior through education, moral arguments, and yammering about climate change have done practically nothing. Simple cost-benefit analysis of funds flowing through individual businesses, however, has made a huge difference.

Before I get into this posting, I want to apologize for going "silent" for a few weeks. I spent a week clearing a bunch of on-deadline projects off my desk so I could spend a vacation week obsessing about my "new" boat.

At 25 years old, most folks would not call my boat "new." Welcome to my life, in which Charlie spends inordinate amounts of time hunting the greater Chicago area looking for a fixer-upper that will provide an excuse for endless hours of puttering around in the workshop.

Anyway, I finally got the thing:
1. Legally titled and registered;
2. Tested to the point where I could believe it would both float and take me where I want to go;
3. Moved from the far side of Lake Michigan up the Illinois river to its berth at the (name suppressed on account of paranoia) marina, stopping for a week along the way to haul the thing out to check for damage after hitting a massive object drifting just under the surface in the middle of the channel;
4. Moved again to another (and far more expensive) berth to satisfy my wife's insistence on being in the Ritzy-cratic part of town; and
5. Finally getting in a one-day fun cruise.

Now that I list it all out, it does seem like an awful lot to have accomplished in less than a month!

Now to business: before wandering off to play boats, I'd started covering developments at (mostly) Cisco Systems surrounding virtualization technology. Mainstream media, including business media, haven't said much of anything about this development, despite 2-3 press releases coming over the wire per day. I know 'cause I've watched.

Apparently, virtualization, which is going to end up being built into every operating system for nearly every computer on the planet and will change the way we use computers forever, is too sophisticated for the liberal-arts majors running mass media. So, as usual, they're ignoring it.

In previous posts, I've explained what virtualization is and a little of what it brings to the party. Today, I want to give you a link to a series of seminars sponsored by Schneider Electric's APC unit that can help you learn a little more about it and other landscape-changing developments. To learn more about the seminars, visit the company's APC Learning page, and look for events with NetApp Alliance in the title. The series kicks off on 2 June with a seminar located in Chicago.

Entitled the "Go Green and Stop the Red" event series. The half-day seminars, co-hosted by APC, Microsoft and NetApp, at their technology demonstration centers across the United States, will examine how to leverage advances in data center applications and architecture to yield a more positive impact on the environment and the company's bottom line. One of those advances, as I've subtly intimated, is virtualization.

"Businesses are continually faced with the challenge of how to maximize efficiency and savings, while minimizing space and waste," said Alistair Pim, APC's vice president of global strategic alliances. "This event series features presentations from experts that look at how adopting sustainable IT practices, such as virtualization, can be cost effective solutions for long-term business growth."

"Deploy virtualization projects to save assets, support and energy costs. Such projects can produce a reduction of more than 80% in energy consumption," stated Rakesh Kumar, Gartner's research vice president, in the May 7, 2009 report "How to Cut Your Data Center Costs.

Seminars will feature industry experts who will demonstrate how to:
* Connect virtual and physical infrastructures to achieve a holistic view of your data center energy consumption.
* Accelerate business breakthroughs and achieve cost efficiencies by
implementing data management solutions.
* Build pay-as-you-grow data center architecture to reduce operating expenses today and plan more effectively for tomorrow.