What they're all seeing is nothing less than the future of the World Wide Web. Suddenly, hordes of volunteer programmers are taking it upon themselves to combine and remix the data and services of unrelated, even competing sites. The result: entirely new offerings they call "mash-ups." They're the Web versions of Reese's ("Hey, you got peanut butter on my chocolate!") Peanut Butter Cups.

This is one of the driving forces behind my strategies surrounding Physician Integration (backing P4P) and RPM. In the next few years, you'll see combinations of services that amount to new value chains and new businesses. The prerequisite for this is building interfaces (APIs) that allow people to build on what databases and services you already have. Not only is this good for you, since it expedites your own internal application and product development lifecycles (and maintenance as well), but enables others to unlock value from your assets, which you will surely benefit from.

When thinking about how best to position AMHC's technology resources for the near term, I'm struggling mightily with demonstrating this value to current business owners.

Also, I'm tired of getting my puns ripped off, since I've been referencing the Reese's line for about 6 months now when I describe the potential partnerships we've been trying to spin up.

Mix, Match, And Mutate

Basically, it fires a bolt of lightning. It can be tuned to blow up explosives, possibly to stop vehicles and certainly to buzz people. The strike can be made to feel as gentle as "broom bristles" or cranked up to deliver a paralyzing jolt that "takes a few minutes to wear off."

Bitar, who is of Arab descent, believes StunStrike would be particularly intimidating in the Middle East because, he contends, people there are especially afraid of lightning.

At present, StunStrike is a 20-foot tower that can zap things up to 28 feet away. The next step is to shrink it so it could be wielded by troops and used in civilian locales like airplane cabins or building entrances.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

Real life Red Alert Tesla Coil?

Bobier found a way to put one bit of data on one radio frequency cycle and recover that weak signal with a newly invented filter. If xMax uses a powerful carrier signal--which does require a dedicated, albeit very narrow radio band--it can even extend its range and capacity.

The first xMax network is currently being built in Miami and Fort Lauderdale where one base station can deliver broadband Internet over a 40 square mile area.

The capacity of that wireless network is not bigger than any other wireless technology, which means that more base stations need to be added if a certain number of people are using the network--typically several hundreds to a 1,000 users.

Sounds a lot like the DTMD technology that Bob Cringely turned me onto a few years back.

New wireless broadband 'whispers' below the radar

Todd Truitt, ideaadvisor.com senior telecommunications equity analyst, said Covad has booked $58 million in DSL sales last quarter, but only collected on $32 million of that amount. Because local and regional ISPs can't pay for the services they've booked, it's hurting the company that's providing the lines. It's a trend, he said, that's affected all DLECs, not just Covad.

"If these ISPs can't raise money to continue operating, then obviously there is no money to pay the DLECs," Truitt said. "We have the opinion that the current condition of the capital markets will continue to hurt stocks with capital intense business models, on more than one level. Not only does (the DLEC) have to worry about raising money itself to continue operating, but it has to worry about its customers having the capital to pay it for its services as well.

a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

DSL: Too Much, Too Fast?

What makes a Mac a Mac isn't the processor under the hood. It's Apple's elegant operating system, OS X, which won't see major changes for 18 months, and the company's stylish hardware designs, which it will continue to produce. When you peer at the screen of the first Intel-based Mac, it will look just like today's PowerPC Macs, only it should run faster.

Finally, someone who doesn't have an agenda or isn't freaking out by the Apple/Intel (still weird typing that) switch.

Apple/Intel switch - some reasonable perspective

A Silicon Valley start-up called Transitive is supplying Apple Computer with a crucial bridge to enable the move to Intel-based computers, but skeptics worry about performance problems that have plagued similar products.

it's confirmed. The Rosetta layer will be using Transitive's emulation technology. It should be interesting to see how well this concept works in terms of performance and resource consumption.

The brains behind Apple's Rosetta: Transitive

Live Coverage of Steve Jobs Keynote

a good wrap up.

Obviously this is huge. Apple does have a decent track record of making such a transition, so I'm sure they're going to have it go as smoothly as it possibly can. The big question will be what happens to current PPC models between now and 06 when Intel based models will be introduced.

While this is surprising news, it's not really a suprise. The first time I saw OSX it was running on an Intel box. I just can't believe they actually went through with it.

WWDC 2005 - Live Coverage of Keynote

If Apple has licensed QuickTransit for an Intel-powered Mac, all current applications should just work, no user or developer intervention required.

If this is indeed true, then the world will be turned upside down on Monday.

Consider the plausible chain of events that would unfold if Apple does indeed move to Intel AND Transitive's emulator indeed works as advertised.

o It will immediately disrupt the entire PC industry. Since no OS will be married to any hardware platform, all bets are off. The entire industry will be reorganized based upon market demographics, not price or distribution. Dell will still exist, but it may or may not be the market leader depending on what consumers of PCs truly want: affordability or well integrated design.

o Microsoft's dominance will be in serious jeopardy. With OS/hardware weddings being moot, then the value proposition for Wintel based systems will be seriously undermined. Right now its main value is price/performance. That ceases if Apple can produce an Intel based system, with its typical tightly integrated design, and top notch OS. Microsoft will be left forced to compete on features and functionality, a battle that it almost always loses in the end.

o Apple will be absolutely positioned to enter the content on demand market, with video at the fore front. They already are positioned well, but using an Intel based system could enable the DRM that the content industries are requiring. Yes, Microsoft has been a big champion of DRM, but Apple has the mind share of the marketplace right now. WMP does not. If this does happen, then Apple will surely enter this space faster than MS can, and it will put the two companies squarely against each other as they battle it out on the content industry front. Apple is clearly better armed than MS in this regard.

o If all of that comes to pass, Apple will be the dominant player, and will control not only hardware, OS, major applications, but also the content and consumer marketplaces. In one fell swoop, they will have united all of those subchannels and brought convergence to reality.

Which, added all together, makes me think that this is not possible. That would be such a radical shift and have such deep and paradigm shifting consequences that it seems nearly impossible.

Hollywood Orders: Apple Wed Intel

] Six blind volunteers now have an electrode-studded sliver
] of silicone tacked to one of their retinas. A digital
] camera mounted to sunglasses feeds images wirelessly to
] this implant, whose 16 electrodes zap retinal nerves to
] produce impressions of light in the brain. Although the
] resolution is crude next to the 100-million-pixel
] resolution of a healthy eye, the volunteers can
] distinguish cup from plate, light from dark, and they can
] tell when someone strolls past on the sidewalk.

I'll probably need this sooner than I'd like.

The Bionic Eye

] Mashing up Google maps and Gasbuddy = locations of cheap
] gas in your area on a Google map (map or satellite view).
] Just choose a city- then the data on the right side is
] updated cheapest gas prices. If you have mobile high
] speed access you could add a GPS and have this running
] while you drive. In the future, maybe our cars will do
] this for us.

YES! YES! Yet another application for my EVDO project. The 22nd century is rapidly approaching.

Find Cheap Gas with Google Maps