Dana Blankenhorn

Time Traveling

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 36 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

I was brought up short this summer by a family project.

My wife wanted me to scan our old photos into the computer, so they would be part of the screensaver that plays over our family dinners.

Suddenly I was brought back into another time. There was a rugged Texas clan holding a reception for the kid who'd stolen their youngest daughter. Here was a California family welcoming that daughter as an in-law.

Days of Apps

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 28 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

In 2012 the software industry is like an iceberg. Most of it is under the water.

Not underwater, mind you. Under the water.

That's because the world of “applications” is over. It's all about the apps now, brutha. And no one in the app business has yet gone public. The smart VC guys and private equity people are putting tons of money into the space, so there's no need to go public, no need to give the public investor a taste.

It's like the social boom. You'll know the bust has started when one of these outfits starts looking for suckers on NASDAQ.

Doesn't mean there's no there, there. There is. I found that out Monday when I went to a “MeetUp” for Techcrunch.com at the Sweetwater Brewery, a few miles from my home.

The place was packed. Cars were parked around the corner and down the next street. (They could do it because this is a warehouse district where everyone else goes home around 5 PM.) There were well over 3,000 people there. Mostly male, mostly young, mostly white. But not exclusively. I was also pleased to find two people who rode bikes there. A guy my own age who admitted he'd taken the train to a nearby transit stop, and a younger guy who'd ridden 8 miles in rush-hour traffic. 

The Cloud Starts Now

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 26 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

One thing tech reporters often ignore, or forget, is that most companies don't live on the bleeding edge.

It's easier to ignore now, with the consumer market dominated by gadgets that anyone can afford, but which can go from latest-and-greatest to obsolete within a year.

The business computing market isn't like that. It's much bigger, and what works tends to keep working until it becomes obsolete.

So I make it a practice to connect, once in a while, with the realities of the business computing market. And I was fortunate that Red Hat invited me to witness their annual Summit in Boston, so I could listen to their customers.

Last Roadblock to A New World is Removed

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 23 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

In writing about Ipv6 Day, which was Wednesday, reporters struggled to offer a sense of what it means.

We're about to run out of Internet addresses, they said. (Well, there's a workaround, but...) Remaining Ipv4 addresses are rising in price, and we're going to run out of new ones in 2014. (True, but...) Ipv6 is better – more efficient, more secure, inevitable. (As to the last, well, sorta...)

The fact, we've been kicking the can on this for a decade. Ipv6 was actually proposed in 1996, the idea being to expand the address space from four sets of three hexadecimal numbers each – xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx – to eight sets of four – xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx. Instead of having 32 bits – 4.3 billion addresses – you have 128 bits – 3.4 x 10 to the 38^th power addresses. You convert from one to the other by putting zeroes in front of the Ipv4 number.

Fossil Fuel Gloating Premature

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 19 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

These are tough times for the renewable energy business. But it's always darkest before the dawn.

People are writing about a “green tech crash” but that's after the fact. Most U.S.-based green tech companies are flat on their backs and the few that continue to trade, like First Solar (FSLR), are down so far it looks like up.

What the green bears are fearing is an end to federal subsidies of the space between now and 2014. They assume that, since the space was subsidized in 2009, and needed to be subsidized, it must always need to be subsidized, that it lives on subsidy and can't exist without it, that it will disappear without subsidy.

I know the Koch Brothers and their minions across the political world wish that were the case.  But that's not the case.

What If Wall Street Is Wrong on Hollande?

Wall Street is banging the drums as hard as it possibly can, warning against a victory by French Socialist Francois Hollande in this weekend's election and of dire consequences should he win.

But what if they're wrong?

Hard as it may be to believe, sometimes business is wrong about what is good for business. Business wants what it wants, but you're going to find sometimes you just might find you get what you need.

That was certainly true during the 1930s. The first Roosevelt Administration saw China-like growth numbers, despite the Liberty League calling FDR a “traitor to his class.” The stock market has long outperformed under Democratic Presidents, compared with Republicans. 

Personally, I think the reason goes back to FDR's time, and his argument with Austrian economics. 

The problem with the Austrians  lies in their long history. Something changed in the 20^th century.

Mass production happened.

Makers Define the Next Boom

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 18 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

One striking aspect of all recoveries I have witnessed is how you never know where you're going when you start the journey.

Instead, analysts look for the next boom in the embers of the last one, much as at present everyone talks about the housing market.

Forget housing – that was the last boom. (Picture from LiveScience.)

Similarly, early in the last decade, I don't recall many people talking about housing or deficit finance as being the keys to growth. Everyone was stirring the embers of the tech bubble, hoping for a rebirth. Google's IPO was celebrated in part because everyone saw it as organic growth, rather than as a replacement for many, larger, more unfocused efforts that had failed.

Same thing in the 1990s. We spent three years talking about multimedia when the Internet was on our doorstep. And the 1980s – everyone talked about the PC rather than the secular change in enterprise computing, toward client server, that was the real economic driver.

Point is we should not be surprised at the current mistakes. But we shouldn't be fooled by them either.

The next boom has begun, but it's not about housing, nor is it about the Internet.

It's about making stuff.

Today in the War Against Oil: Turning Commercial Engines into Hybrids

HPEV  is among the many companies trying to transform transport by making it more efficient.

CEO Tim Hassett said his Hybrid Plugin Electric Vehicle has patents on a technique for using heat pipes to turn engine waste heat into electricity, which can then help power the vehicle. The electric motor acts as a “load assist,”  meaning the main engine doesn't work as hard and uses less fuel. It all gets attached to your rear axle.

Hassett, who turned around a company called Hawk Motors after working for GE, is working with a vehicle control company called Inverom in Chicago on the retrofits, focusing on vehicles the size of the Ford F350-550 or Dodge RAM 5500, which presently have mileage ratings in the single digits. (The company says it can turn around a vehicle in a single day.)

Ultra-Bear Hugs: Your Assurance of a Bull Run

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 13 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

I like to joke that I've predicted nine of the last four recessions. Most who follow the market can probably make the same claim.

There are always Cassandras out there, like Peter Schiff, convinced that the end is near. Every once in a while, as in 2007, they are right. Usually, they are wrong.

Some 35 years as a business reporter has convinced me that the market's main danger signal comes when people like Schiff are disdained or, worse, ignored. That's an indication that everyone is in the market and buying, that no one is considering possible trouble ahead and selling, so the next step is inevitably going to be a trip and fall.

Schiff's bearish call is based on Austrian school economics , the idea that government should have no role in the market, and that ultimately the only cure for excess is austerity. He blames government policies for the last crash, and believes all intervention since then assures another crash, this time based in lack of faith in government.

I disagree. I admit there is danger in continuing to run huge deficits. But growth provides a glide path toward balance, and moves toward balance reduce the ratio between GDP and total debt, as Fed chair Ben Bernanke says, and as we found in the 1990s. I think we're more likely at the start of something than the end.

Besides, technology is naturally deflationary, and deflation is a far greater danger to any economy than moderate inflation. Efficiency technologies create commodity deflation, just as Moore's Law created deflation in goods production and transport. The Austrian School not only defies Keynes, with no explanation for the growth of either the 1930s or the post-war era, but Moore as well.

But if Schiff's concerns were ignored, or dismissed, if there were no stories about ultra-bears sounding alarms, then I would be bearish. Because everyone was boosting Internet stocks in 1999. And everyone was telling us to buy housing in 2006. Anyone who disagreed – and I disagreed quite loudly in the first instance – was dismissed as a crank.

Ignoring warnings is a sure sign a market crash is near.

Kitteh

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 12 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

After the War Against Oil is won, another great crisis will come to America, and the world.

As energy technology has been the story of my day, so this great crisis will be the story of my kids' day.

The crisis will involve terraforming this planet, taking responsibility for global climate and working to get evolution moving forward again.

Its symbol will be one of the great totems of our own time.

Kitty. Kitty cat. Kitty kitty cat cat.