Jeff Bell Blog

First, Kirkland is unlike other parts of the transit plan.  It contains 10+ Natural Growth Protection Environments (Wetlands) that will be permanently altered and potentially destroyed by the Sound Transit plan.  I'm shocked by the intellectual hypocrisy of those promoting transit in the name of global warming and the ignorance of or cavalier attitude towards this environmental disaster.  Moreover, this section of the former BNSF rail is narrow with precarious curves.  The amount of construction required to place rail with overhead electric wires, with or without bike and walking paths, will exceed the $1.5 billion dollars -- and remember, the system will move 5,000 people per day (and if you doubt that, ride the train to SEATAC....alone).  Second, whether the citizens of Kirkland successfully oppose having other parts of King County impose something upon them or not, it is the right of the people to be heard.  ST3 may well pass with light rail through Kirk...

There is more and more conversation around three big trends -- the sharing economy, the gig economy and disruptive business models. I have previously written here about the first trend ( http://www.jeff-bell.net/2013/08/the-sharing-economy.html?m=1 ), and now wish to turn my attention to the 2nd. As I previously argued, the sharing economy is based upon underutilized assets.  EBay, Craigslist and Amazon created markets to sell "old stuff you don't want anymore." Uber and AirBnB extended this trend by adding the abiltiy to rent underutilized assets; namely cars and apartments.  So what is the "gig economy" and how does it relate? I had an epiphany this week, but now it seems self-evident.  The "gig economy" is the "sharing economy" where underutilized physical assets or capital are replaced in the model with underutilized human capital. When you think about fiverr.com, you see a bunch of creative people earning money moonlighting outside...

The Uber of Legal and Identity Theft Services | Scott Monty

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I want to wish everyone the happiest of Thanksgiving holidays.   As the United States faces both challenges and opportunities, especially in light of the recent events, I wanted to remind everyone of this origin of this national celebration.  It came from President Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, and he asked that we give thanks "with one heart and one voice" for the "gracious gifts of the Most High God."  I share his words below. Let us give thanks for our families, our friends, our communities and our country; but let us also embrace the challenges we face as a nation and know that at LegalShield, what we do will make a difference -- "To provide equal access to the Liberty, Equality, Opportunity and Justice that every North American deserve and expect." May God bless and keep you, Jeff _______________________________________________ A Proclamation:  October 3, 1863 By the President of the United Stat...

Post by Jeff Bell .

The venerable and erudite  Financial Times of London  wrote a opinion piece entitled, "the new model sharing economy" in today's paper.  I am a big believer in this movement, and wish to share a few historical observations on its development. We probably should begin with a quick definition.  As James Gardner wrote for Forbes, "The Sharing Economy (sounds) like the spiritual home of new age digital hippies, or maybe a step up from a barter system."  This is the risk for those businesses and consumers driving this movement.  It can been seen as "hip or trendy" but the true motivations are more profound and sustainable.  Let me explain. First,  the sharing economy is  a pure capitalistic and  self-interested endeavor .  The "feel good" element of the shared and sharing economy is that we are "sharing." It seems like we are doing something for others rather than doing for ourselves.  It seems anti-materialistic, and anti-...

The Republican party must lead an initiative to completely reform the immigration law and policy for the United States .  This new law would make it very clear that if you want to become a citizen, then you apply for a temporary work visa, and upon receipt will pay federal income, social security and medicaid taxes. You will be eligible for Medicaid. If after 5 years of employment, without any convictions, the person passes language and citizenship tests, they will be granted full citizenship. I would allow all persons in the USA who entered illegally to immediately be enrolled in this program with two years eliminated from the 5 year element. The Republican Party must champion a  comprehensive Household Tax Reform . The goal is that every citizen pay , excluding only the very old and the very poor, and that those who can pay more should do so without compulsion nor punishment, but rather obligation. This policy must borrow from the simplicity of the Flat Tax and the pr...

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Do you ever wonder where your data goes when it is stored in the “cloud?” When it comes to online backup , many companies store all your data in one centralized place. While this approach is simpler for the company, and may make access quicker and easier for the customer, what if the centralized storage fails? If a server crashes, or a storage hard-drive dies, having all your files in one place means losing everything. This completely overrides the point of having a backup system in the first place. As we discussed in our last blog post, what if someone hacks into the data center ? This has happened at Citibank, Sony, Amazon and Visa. Digital Lifeboat uses automated distributed file storage – breaking your files into small fragments, replicating and encrypting them, and sending them out into the cloud to be stored in multiple locations. Think of it as putting your eggs in a few different baskets, or diversifying your stock portfolio. Case in point: if you only schedule a ...

Capex vs. Opex - The Costs of Storing Your Data One of the great debates in cloud computing involves business economics and the inherent expense that stocking and running a data center entails.  You may even hear the phrase "Capex vs Opex" in this debate.  This phrase refers to the trade-offs of investing in building and operating your own data center (Capital Expenditure and Operating Expenditure) versus using someone else’s data center (Operating Expenditure) on a pay-as-you-go or rental model.  It's important to consider the financial implications of both approaches in the long run - especially since “renting” costs less in the short term, but the investments in data centers will ultimately be passed on to the end users, making that approach more expensive.   Owning and stocking a physical data center requires capital expenditure (Capex), large amounts of space filled with computer hardware, and the cash flow to pay the power bill.  Many "cloud-based" d...

For more and more aspects of our lives, the Internet is the "everyday answer." For travel, almost everyone uses the Internet over a travel agent or calling an airline directly. Surprisingly, financial services have overcome privacy and security concerns and now most people bank online. This follows the acceptance of the ATM in lieu of branch visits, so perhaps is not too surprising. We see that people are managing their careers online, whether with job search (Careerbuilder) or resume management (Linkedin). Even finding love (Match.com) or other relationships (Craigslist or hookup.com) is more and more the mainstream. We read that most people buy goods in stores, but Amazaon and other shopping sites are generally accepted. Most people do not use Skype to call, but more people adopt it for one-on-one connections with distant friends and family. The power has certainly shifted over the past decade. Comfort with the Internet has grown dramatically, as fear has sub...

What is youth? Why does it matter to marketers? The following article addresses both of these questions, and in doing so, will provide an introduction to some of the strategic brand thinking we do at Tangible Worldwide. This discussion is not about marketing to young people. Quite the contrary, we are exploring why so many brands targeted at adults consistently draw upon elements of youth to present their brands. So let us begin by considering what makes youth so appealing to adults. Why does youth have such a tremendous emotional appeal to all human beings? We are naturally drawn to babies or toddlers and even adolescents. We obviously love the real thing, but we are also drawn to images of youth, and are fundamentally moved by what we perceive youth represents. I believe there are five fundamental reasons why we are attracted to the image and reality of youth. These are: The innocence of youth – also known as naiveté; the lack of sin; the curiosity and inquisitivenes...

A friend of mine was recently in London and visited a “Steam” museum, and Bletchley Park, and a conversation wandered into old computing devices. We talked about the first computer electrical computer Colossus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer and then to the first conceived mechanical computer a Difference Engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine It struck us as pretty amazing how old computing technology really was. Including the original binary storage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom Of which there is a working loom at Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn Michigan. I learned from a wizened old volunteer about the loom and its influence on IBM punch cards. This reminded me that I had read about an implementation that was developed in Little Big Planet, and found some blog posts and videos, which just blow me away: http://agreatbecoming.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/little-big-computer-a-modern-day-difference-engine/ ...

You may have heard by now that Digital Lifeboat offers cloud-based online backup systems . But you’re probably wondering just what is “the cloud” and how is it better than backing up to an external hard drive, for example? Let’s start with how your PC works. You open an application, like Microsoft Word, and you type a letter, and save the content on your hard drive. The application (Word) and the data (your letter) are on your PC. Cloud computing is an approach which involves the creation and deployment of services and applications over the internet, supported by a coordinated infrastructure. When you open your email, the application is “in the cloud” and when you send the email to a friend, the email is stored “in the cloud.” Lots of services like search engines, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook operate this way. The popular buzzword, “cloud” simply means storing digital files on someone else’s computer and accessing it by internet. What people like about “the cloud” is that they can...

If you’re a Play Station “fan boy” (or girl), you probably received an email from Sony offering you free games (in exchange for something about account security). The PlayStation Network shut down it’s cloud after “an external intrusion ” that resulted in the theft of personal information belonging to 77 million customers. In fact, PSN said they’re moving their network infrastructure and data center to a new, more secure location. Or, you might remember when Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Elastic Block Storage platforms were offline during an April 21 outage that had major websites unavailable for three days. Outages and security breaches like these have inspired fear that the Cloud may not be secure – or is less secure than a traditional data center; however, eWeek.com points out that major security holes are not unique to cloud services. PSN uses both cloud services and traditional data centers. Amazon’s outage drew attention to data availability issues and reliability . ...

Have you received an email or noticed this very blogged post? I have inserted it below and have added my comments to it. To my knowledge, no one has bothered to respond; probably because it is riddled with hyperbole and does not suggest what to do about this doomsday situation. Hope you enjoy my rebuttal which is italics and bolded after each number... So what happens when the debt bubble pops ? The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them. For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them. Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber. The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind.... #1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed ov...

What is youth? Why does it matter to marketers? The following article addresses both of these questions, and in doing so, will provide an introduction to some of the strategic brand thinking we do at Tangible Worldwide. This discussion is not about marketing to young people. Quite the contrary, we are exploring why so many brands targeted at adults consistently draw upon elements of youth to present their brands. So let us begin by considering what makes youth so appealing to adults. Why does youth have such a tremendous emotional appeal to all human beings? We are naturally drawn to babies or toddlers and even adolescents. We obviously love the real thing, but we are also drawn to images of youth, and are fundamentally moved by what we perceive youth represents. I believe there are five fundamental reasons why we are attracted to the image and reality of youth. These are: The innocence of youth – also known as naiveté; the lack of sin; the curiosity and inquisitiveness of th...

I am in no way, shape or form a visionary like Ray Ozzie, but he has made me think about Software and Information Technology and what I see as the immediate challenges facing the space. 1. IPv6 or 128 bit code. I am running 64 bit for the first time on Windows 7, and I have had no problems, but 128 is up and I have not seen much progress. Interestingly I have heard many Venture Capitalists say that software is not being developed to fully utilize the capability of 64 bit (nor dual processors). This is a very big challenge as a potential gap could develop between hardware and software. 2. The portable device and the "cloud." The True Cloud is NOT a web server farm. The True Cloud is the linkage of open hard drive space on all web-connected devices. This Peer-to-Peer sharing of data and information -- with the necessary security features -- is a key to our affordable progress (energy and equipment). The problem is whether portable devices (laptops, notepads, phones) wi...