How Fragile is Our Technology

Our recent trio of storms, while bringing us an abundance of fabulous powder snow here in Whistler, has not brought good cheer to many of our neighbors in Vancouver, or those on Vancouver Island. The arctic cold front descending south, combined with the low pressure system coming from the west, has produced hurricane force winds on the west coast. This has cost hundreds of millions of dollars in damages due to fallen trees, and consequently knocked out electric power to many regions, causing considerable financial hardship to retailers who are usually experiencing the busiest week of the year, as Christmas shoppers scurry to buy gifts at the last minute.

Whistler has been lucky, though not exempt. Ordinarily, I submit this column via email; this week, I had to use something I rarely use any more – my fax machine. As we all know, there has been no internet in Whistler since Friday morning, and as of this writing (Sunday evening), there is still no internet service from either of the two local providers. The reason? The weather has taken out the fibre-optic line between Vancouver and Whistler, though there is precious little information about the severity of the situation. Rumor has it that it may be as many as ten days before service is resumed.

Keeping this in perspective, it is certainly not life-threatening to be without internet for a few days, but for many businesses it is inconvenient and extremely costly. A few of my clients, who run accommodations businesses, depend on the internet for the majority of their bookings. Many of their customers use email as their sole method of communications; the booking companies, in order not to lose business, must resort to phoning or faxing every single customer in order to avoid losing their bookings, and to reassure customers that their unanswered emails were not being ignored. Others who have been hard-hit are all the retailers whose Interac and credit-card processing terminals have been converted from dial-up to high-speed internet authentication – these businesses are unable to process bank card transactions, and have had to return to the old imprint swipers for credit cards, for the duration of the failure. What a hassle!

Walk around this town and you can’t help but notice the number of internet cafés and internet kiosks that are temporarily out of business as well. I own nine internet kiosks, and this is ordinarily one of the best times of year for usage, so I am somewhat less than happy myself.

I decided to tackle the issue head-on and find a work-around. I thought, what about returning to dial-up? So I phoned Telus and asked for the local number. It didn’t work, as I had suspected it might not, because it probably uses the same fibre-optic line that was damaged. I phoned Telus again, asking for the toll free number to Vancouver. The agent said sure, here it is, but it will cost $2 p/hour. At this point I became terse with the agent; I asked - why do you call this toll-free when you charge a toll? I also explained that a toll seemed unreasonable given the circumstances, but of course he was just an agent. In corporations the size of Telus, mere agents have no ability to provide customer service (though in my opinion, this is a casualty of modern times). Anyhow, I tried the number and it worked. If internet is still down when you read this, the so-called toll free number for dial-up is 1-877-666-1179. You will need your Telus username and password. Hopefully, you still have a dial-up modem – many new systems today ship without them.

If not, forget your worries, and just go skiing. It’s epic right now.

Convergence, TV's and PVR's

Convergence is a term you may not have heard yet; it is the merging of PC technology with home entertainment technology. I remember about 10 years ago I got all excited about one of those Multi Level Marketing companies that promised to make me rich, and its product was a set-top box, a home-entertainment component that would bring internet to the TV set. High speed internet was still not widely available, and the set-top box provided low-res, dial-up internet on TV. Unimpressive as this sounds now, I was excited about it, and I felt that having internet on your TV was the future, so I signed up. Eventually, I was shipped my first evaluation unit. I spent a bunch of money having a TV wall-mounted in my retail store so that I could demonstrate the unit to all my walk-in customers. Unfortunately, that early prototype was an absolute piece of garbage. The modem rarely connected to the internet, and when it did it was agonizingly slow, even when compared to dial-up on an ordinary PC, and the image-quality looked horrible on a low-resolution TV. I phoned the company to complain, and they told me to send the unit back; I was promised a replacement unit. This must have been shortly before the company went bankrupt, because I never saw the replacement unit, and never heard from the company again. I began to think that this “convergence” thing was just a flash in the pan, and would never materialize.

Fast-forward to the present, and convergence has become commonplace. There are all sorts of PVR (Personal Video Recorder) products on the market, the best known being Tivo, which offer far more utility than mere “internet on your TV”. With these products, internet-on-TV is a given; what the new products bring is the ability to record TV broadcasts onto a hard-disk for later viewing, the ability to view digital photo collections on TV, and to rip CD collections to mass-storage (a big hard-disk) for convenient listening without all the hassles of shuffling, storing, cleaning and cataloguing all those CD’s and CD cases. The only problem is deciding which technology to choose.

In my most recent edition of PC Magazine, the front page topic is about HDTV. HDTV technology and the shift to LCD PC monitor technology have accelerated the evolution of convergence. Before HDTV became commonplace, TV resolution was terrible compared to the resolution of PC monitors. Now that the technology is shared between the two, making it easy to view TV on your computer, or vice-versa, displaying PC output on your TV.

If you have a modern computer with decent specs and a large hard-drive, preferably 500 Gbytes or more, without too much effort or cost you can build your own Media Center PC which will nearly match the capabilities of a Tivo set-top. You need two things; a TV tuner card and an upgrade to Windows Media Center Edition. The windows upgrade provides you with a nifty remote control unit which will put all your entertainment center functions on your TV screen. Alternatively, you can buy a Media Center computer which has been designed specifically for placing with your existing stereo components; some are even rack-mounted systems which will blend right in with your existing components. One example is the Niveus Media Center (http://www.niveusmedia.com).

So there you are; an over-simplified guide (due to my word-quota restrictions each week for this column) to the world of Convergence. If it captures your imagination, try googling “PVR” or “DVR” on your computer.

The high-tech world of skis

Let’s take a break from business technology and celebrate the snow! Wow – what a fantastic opening season! We’ll take a look at ski technology for this week’s topic.

Skis and snowboards have benefited greatly from advancement in high-tech modern materials, some manufacturers even incorporate microchip technology, to the great advantage of us wanna-be super-hero powder hounds and weekend warriors. Thanks to these advancements in technology, it is now easier than ever to ski or snowboard like a pro. It goes without saying that since the advent of “shaped” skis, a design innovation evolved from snowboard design, beginners more rapidly become intermediates, and intermediates more readily master the perfect carved turn.

Head Ski Co seems like one of the top technology innovators, and also happens to be one of my favorite ski manufacturers. Head has a few key technologies worth highlighting, namely Intelligence technology, incorporating “smart” fibers, a microchip in the premium models, Liquid Metal and SuperFrame construction. According to Head’s website, the Intellifiber technology is a kind of energy feedback system. The fibers react to mechanical energy; the flex of the ski can generate up to 400 volts of electrical energy, and this energy is fed back into the fibers, causing them to stiffen, thereby reducing torsional flex and increasing edge grip with the snow. Head’s premium ski models also incorporate a microchip, whereby the electrical energy produced by the Intellifibers is not just recycled, but accumulated and released bit by bit through a pre-programmed chip – individually timed to match the oscillation properties of the ski.

To describe Liquidmetal technology, Head’s website gives us a physics lesson, and describes the differences between water and ice as a way to describe how Liquidmetal works. Quoting directly from the site, “Water and ice are the same material – H2O. Water is H2O’s liquid state, ice is the solid state. The molecules in ice are in a fixed array, with more distance between the molecules and thus, less dense than the free-moving molecules in water.” Presumably, this means that Liquidmetal has a liquid-like molecular structure which cannot break, and does not break down with use.

It is highly unlikely that the average skier is consciously aware of all these physics principles at work while blasting down the couloirs, or racing down the groomers, but if the sport is easier and more pleasurable as a result, who cares? Expert skiers can feel the difference this technology provides, and will settle for nothing less. It’s kind of like the increasingly popular “active handling” of modern cars, perhaps not noticeable to the average driver, however indispensable to the driver who likes to push the limits.

Most ski manufacturers now integrate ski design with binding design, and nearly all ski models now have a “floating” binding bed. Instead of simply bolting the toe and heel of the bindings directly to the ski, which until recently was the norm, modern bindings are secured with a single screw in the center. The toe and heal slide on a rail as the ski flexes, allowing the ski to maintain a perfect arced shape as load is placed on the ski, providing a superior carve.

Go grab a set of these fantastic, modern boards, and shred like never before!