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Central coast leaders dig into broadband

14 February 2015 by Steve Blum
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There’s one big similarity between water and broadband access on California’s central coast: there’s a lot of it close at hand but high cost and low quality make it nearly unusable. That’s how I set up a discussion about broadband at the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership (MBEP) conference in Seaside a couple weeks ago.

The Central Coast Broadband Consortium has mapped hundreds of miles of fiber optic lines throughout the region. But most of it, like water in the Pacific Ocean, is too expensive for everyday use.… More

Santa Cruz tech companies need housing to draw talent to attract investment

8 February 2015 by Steve Blum
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Talent and attitude are the key to building a high tech economy in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. That’s the message from executives at four of Santa Cruz’s hottest start up companies, speaking at the kick off conference for the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership (MBEP) on 29 January 2015.

“There’s not a thriving scene of professionals in Santa Cruz yet,” said Carolyn Hughes, VP of talent and culture at Looker. Her company maintains a shared work space in San Francisco, allows employees to work remotely two days a week, and pays for rooms in a local hotel so commuters can work in Santa Cruz the other three.… More

Billions to be spent replacing Iridium satellites – will the business fly this time?

3 February 2015 by Steve Blum
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A flood of cash was ploughed into building telecommunications systems in the 1990s, with generally bad results for the original investors. Some companies went through bankruptcy, but more or less came out the other side still functioning. Others collapsed completely, with the assets selling at fire sale prices.

The most glorious of those failures had to have been Iridium. Backed by Motorola, it launched a low earth orbit constellation of 66 satellites that were designed to communicate with brick-sized phones from any point on or over the planet.… More

Microsoft doesn't offer a plausible proposition to the mobile world

24 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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The’s more to mobility than moving around the conference room.

This week’s coming out party for Windows 10 confirmed Microsoft’s slow shift from a shrink wrapped products company to a service provider.

The company will not execute that strategy quickly enough or effectively. To be a universal platform for desktop and mobile computing means mobile telecoms carriers and manufacturers will have to make a major shift away Android and adopt the Windows operating system and all the cloud services that surround it.… More

Glimmers of power innovation at CES, but only glimmers

22 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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Next year, you won’t be able to see it.

With power now the primary limiting factor for improvements in wearable devices, smart phones and other mobile devices, expect incremental improvements in capabilities and performance this year, but nothing radically game changing. New energy sources are nowhere near commercialisation, judging from what was on display at CES.

One positive development was the announcement of the merger of two of the three wireless charging standards organisations – Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and Power Matters Alliance – and an expression of willingness on the part of the third – the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) – to think about joining in.… More

President Obama’s community broadband initiative follows Santa Cruz’s path

19 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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Broadband competition makes local businesses competitive.

It looks like Santa Cruz County is on the White House’s invitation list for a community broadband summit planned for June. President Barack Obama pledged to support the Next Century Cities coalition – the county is a charter member – in a speech last week. He promised to meet with mayors and county supervisors from the coalition to talk about how to better develop broadband infrastructure and service at the local level.… More

Open standards and clear consumer branding will be the cure for CES home automation confusion

18 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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The new good housekeeping seal of approval.

There were plenty of home automation hubs at CES, as it turns out. The first home automation products out of the gate, at the pre-show press events, were primarily one-off gizmo-and-app combos, but the usual suspects eventually showed up.

Lowe’s Iris system was prominent in a demo smart home built on the show floor. Nexia had a presence too. Both have a similar business model: sell a hub and support it through a cloud server for $10 per month.… More

Electric vehicle creativity is built around new business models at CES

17 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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You wouldn’t mistake it for a McLaren, though.

Connected cars were everywhere at CES this year. A hot looking set of wheels was the platform of choice for showing off cutting edge technology. Plenty was written about it and there’s not much I can add. But very few of those vehicles – only 2 that I saw – were innovations in and of themselves.

Gogoro is an electric scooter that’s built around a swappable battery system.… More

Santa Cruz companies look for developer love in Las Vegas

13 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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Wayne Torres-Rivera, Seebright’s developer community manager, pitches next-gen headset at CES.

There were as many companies from Santa Cruz exhibiting at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as there were from all of South America. And twice as many as Africa. Which is to say, there were 2. One was Plantronics aimed at, among other things, robotics, security and authentication applications, and supported by SDKs for the developers they hope to attract.

The other Santa Cruz company was Seebright, a virtual and augmented reality start-up.… More

CES exhibit floor grows in size but not in global reach

11 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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The eyes of the world.

The Consumer Electronics Associations warns journalists that it produces a global technology event called International CES and that none should dare speak the name Consumer Electronics Show. The problem is, it’s still a consumer electronics show and it’s still noticeably weak on the global, if not International bits. At least where exhibitors are concerned.

African and South American participation is painfully slim. South Africa-based Geco Action Cam – was the only representative from that continent: same count as last year and down from 2 in 2013.… More