My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: Apple iPad and the House of Representatives - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Apple iPad and the House of Representatives - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid


Then Hail to the Press! Chosen guardian of freedom!
Strong sword-arm of Justice! Bright sunbeam of truth!

Horace Greeley The Press

Happy New Year everyone in this 2011, the Chinese Year of the Rabbit, albeit the Chinese will argue that they wont celebrate the Chinese New Year until about January Friday 28th 2011! I took the night off blogging, celebrating, making as many Skype calls as I could to as many of my friends online.

Friends who, like me, use Skype for International Calling and increasingly Local Calling, keen on saving on phone calling as broadband spreads and the seven (7) year Recession wears on.

Seven (7) years, you say?

Sorry to depress you with the bad news, but yes, that is how long it will last.

Evidence of this is from the declared switch away from Fossil Fuel Based Oil by Senator Barack Obama, President of the United States of America obvious from yesteryears news as stated in the article “U.S. Halts Plan to Drill in Eastern Gulf”, published December 1, 2010 by JOHN M. BRODER and CLIFFORD KRAUSS, The New York Times. This may truly be the Year of the Tablet!!

The possibility of a Second Recession, long opined in countless of my blog articles, is also possible.

This as it appears that the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Spain) are ALL having trouble recovering from their Economy being so inextricably tied to the meltdown of the American Economy’s over indulgence in the Housing Market Sub-prime lending ponzi scheme, with Irish banks being bailed out as per the article “Ireland keeps corporation tax low”, published Friday, November 26, 2010 by Andrew Bushe, The Jamaica Observer.

Not to mention the possibility of Greece defaulting on her Government Bond Paper payments and being urged to restructure said Government Bonds  - as if the EU wide austerity measures were not enough as per the article “Greece PM rules out restructuring of national debt”, published 12 September 2010 12:22 GMT, BBC News.

This news is a follow-on and a necessary one at that, (cricket pun intended) as the Greek Economy is not growing but contracting by 1.8% in the Second Quarter of 2010 as confirmed by the article “Greece Economy shrinks 1.8% a consumers cut spending”, published 8 September 2010 19:03 GMT, BBC News due mainly to a lack of Economic activity, the fallout of which is consumer spending, akin to a Developing World Economy such as Jamaica. 

Ironically, if the EU does not recover and dips into Recession yet again, a Second Recession is certain, despite ambitious Obama Administration agenda to go Hydrogen/Electron Economy in terms of Energy supplies, evidence from the tapping into Shale Gas as per the BBC New video entitled “Energy alternative: Shale Gas extraction in the US”, published 21 December 2010 23:09 GMT, BBC News.

As well as my article featured on Administrator Kirk’s Geezam blog entitled “The American Race Towards Alternative Energy ”. Shale Gas is American slang for Natural Gas or LNG, which Jamaica is also pursuing as per my blog article entitled “Alternative Energy and BioFuels - Liberation from Fossil Fuels”.

So how does this connect to the Apple iPad? It does, by virtue of the fact that the latest iteration slated to debut at Apple exclusive event early 2011 may also feature something which so far other Tablet makers are not tackling: Power Supply redesign.

This is as my blog article entitled “Apple and the iPad 2 - Honeycomb, Chrome and the Dragonslayer”, effectively an analysis of the Apple iPad S rumours floating around (as Apple CEO Steve Jobs does not “play No. 2”, Jamaican colloquial!), effectively suggests additional hardware, all in two’s i.e. Dual Core Intel Processors, CDMA and GSM compatibility in one design, Dual 5Megapixel cameras, dual USB and proprietary Apple 30-pin port – and thus shortened battery life.

Thus it should have obviously dawned on all those giddy analysts and Apple fanboys that to support all these add-ons plus power consuming Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) and LTE and WiMaX support (that is definitely a rumour by the way!!) Apple would have to reinvent the Power Supply in order to maintain the ten (10) hours of battery life on full video playback simultaneously.

You see folks, Battery Technology Life Development and Power Supplies have been a backwater in the Electronics World, with most Designers in Silicon Valley ignoring this side of design in favour of fast speeds, better graphics, more features – you know, the stuff that techies like.

The consumer preference for the Apple iPad, however, means that SSD’s are the NKOB (New Kids on the Block) as per my my blog article entitled “Dell Inspiron Duo and Solid State Drives - Charles Darwin and the Survival of the Fittest” and the article “Google Chrome OS and Smart Books - Connection between SSD's, the Fountain of Youth and Lazarus”.

Yet past news from 2010 suggests that Apple Inc. is looking into novel ways of powering its electronics, focusing mostly on the integration of Solar Panels into their electronics gear as opined in my blog article entitled “Chrome OS Cr-48 and the Mobion Fuel Cell Generator - Green Lantern”.

Thus integrated Solar Panels as part of the design of the new Apple iPad is not a far fetched concept and would, ironically, be in step with the trending towards green that even Telecoms Providers such as Telecom Provider T-Mobile is investigating as a possible means of saving on the expenditure of running a mobile Node B (Cell site) as stated in the article “T-Mobile Cell Site Now powered by the Sun”, published September 16, 2010, 11:22am PDT By Katie Fehrenbacher, Cleantech - GiGaOM.

Especially as the Processor is rumoured to be an Intel Dual-Core Processor, the same Intel that recently acquired McAffee and plans to integrate this into their chip design, with a possible push into Fiber Optics and Solar powered Processors as opined in my blog article entitled “Intel and LightPeak - Race towards the Sun”.

As by way of information, Telecom Provider T-Mobile’s experiment is officially the ONLY cell site that is so powered, being completely off the grid.

The other is Core Communications in California, which started a similar experiment in conjunction with Helix Wind to power and resell Electricity to the Grid using Wind Power, which is plentiful in California as per the article “Powering cell phone towers with wind”, published November 11, 2009 11:35 AM PST by Candace Lombardi, CNET News - Green Tech and opined as the future of Telecoms as my blog article entitled “Alternative energy and Helix - A Test Case for Wind Power for Telecom Providers”.

Mobile Node B’s (Cell site) consume about 11KVA or 11KW of power, as Power usage accounts for about 80% of the total cost of running a mobile Node B (Cell site). Thus, this is beyond a PR Stunt, as it is an experiment akin to that of Core Communications that has implications for the future.

This as people become more dependent on their Data Services and are less tolerant of Data Outages in much the same way people are less tolerant of power outages.

Ao an Always-On Data Service is necessary my blog article entitled “Alternative Energy - A Telecom Provider's Strong Tower”.

Add to this the fact that such installations in the Developed World are rare, as Alternative Energy to power cell sites is utilized in the Developing World, even for mobile phones as stated in the article “Digicel to provide low-cost, solar-powered mobile phone”, published Wednesday, May 06, 2009, Digicel as well as in the article “Vodafone brings Solarmobile phone to India”, published Sunday June 27 2010 By DA YAN, Associated Press Writer, Yahoo! News.

Especially where access to electricity and conventional Diesel powered Generators is expensive as my blog article entitled “Alternative Energy and the Solar Generator - Pitch Black”.

Thus these bold steps taken by the Telecom Providers mentioned above is a step in the right direction as is in line with the Obama led White House plans to:

  1. Take the Government off the Grid as per my blog article entitled “Alternative Energy and the President - Three Days of the Condor
  2. Save on electricity and use Cloud Computing to reduce the cost of Administration as per my blog article entitled “Google Chrome Pres Event - Naked Gun 33 and a Third The Final Insult” as well as the article “Microsoft Windows 7 vs Google Chrome OS et al  - 300 and Quo Vadis Dominae”.

Thus a connection, albeit frail is obvious in all these moves: Efficient Power Consumption to improve performance is again on the front burner in terms of Design by Telecoms Providers and the Electronics Gadget makers of Silicon Valley, a trend the Apple iPad and the Apple MacBook Air started.

More recently and relevant to my argument is the fact that the Apple iPad is now being allowed into the House of Representatives after House Representative Senator Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who smuggled it in as per the article “iPad arrives in the House of Representatives”, published December 31, 2010 12:27 PM PST by Jim Dalrymple, CNET News - Apple.

House Representative Senator Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) spoke of the Apple iPad with iPadDailyNews on Tuesday December 28 2010, saying, and quote: “If you look at available technology, properly leveraged it can make us a more efficient Congress; there is so much immediate information we can gather with an iPad.”

So true!

After all, Senator Barack Obama, President of the United States of America did effectively endorse the Tablet and the revolution it is creating within the closed bubble that is the Silicon Valley sphere as per the article “Even the President has Praise for Apple CEO Steve Jobs”, published Thursday December 23, 2010 5:10 pm ET by Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com, Yahoo! News.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs would thus do no worse if the Apple iPad S were to sport these World-Ready Green trimmings, plus some liquid metal stylings to boot as per my speculation in my blog article entitled “Apple and Augmented View - The Future is Now”.

That would make the Apple Developer Conference the most memorable ever, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Style.

Stay tuned, folks…………. 

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